The Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys

The Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys

Quintin doesn't remember much. Except for one thing. He remembers "The Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys", grass, and this emptiness. It wasn't the gun who laid him to rest but the low spark of high heeled boys.

Quintin, called Quinn, wakes up. His head hurts and his eyes are hazy. His mouth dry and there is crust upon his eyelids. His tongue darks out to lick his lips. Looking about him his shirt is gone "What went on?" It's musty and dark in the room. Slowly, the brain tells Quinn to listen. Gingerly he pricks his ears. Traffic. What a glorious feeling to wake up to the same song you passed out to!

The apartment was furnished Spartan at best. All there was his turn table and a few albums in the small living room of the apartment. And an even smaller bath room. He stretches then yawns. Gliding over to the mirror, he notices that his long sea of hair is awry. "You have girl hair son. Shave it." His fathers voice echoed in his skull.

"You look like Jim Morrison." remarked Squib. His friend. Some would say his only friend. He didn't believe him. Squib was a junkie. He had bleach blonde hair naturally and he hung out in the back alley of a pool hall. He peers at his face in the mirror. The eyes are red, bloodshot. The stuff Squib gave him really did him right. He picks up his comb and goes threw his hair once.

The only sound in the room was the scratch of the album on its last run. It needed to be changed. Quinn walks back to his turn table and sits cross legged on the floor staring at it. He picks up a stack of albums and starts to sift through them. He always picks the one that speaks to him out of the pile. Strange Days. A Doors album. Chuckling at the luck and irony of the previous mention from Squib he sets it down. He presses play. The needle response accordingly, going down on the set path of the groove like a road. "Life is like a record..." Quinn toughed. "Strange days have found us..." Quinn nodded and agreed with Jim. He lays down and begins to smoke a cigarette listlessly listening.

But the spell is broken. A sharp knock at the door. He sits up at attention, suddenly becomes aware of his partial nakedness and covers himself. He slips on his glasses and hastily opens the door.

“Hey man.”
“Hey.” says Squib. His eyes are red and dog tired. He is a worn out shallow shell of a man that once was apart of society, now, turned to the lesser grade. The drug culture, as it was politely called by Policemen and the like. More so called “Bums” to the common man, dreamers call them “Free.”

“C-c-can I sleep here, man?” Squib spoke with a stutter.
“Fine man, fine.” Quinn replied coolly opening the door wider so that Squib could enter. They both seem to wreak of the same smell. You cannot describe it as anything else but “Unclean.”

The two sat on the floor cross legged facing the record table. Like people in a church facing the altar. And today at this moment, Jim Morrison is preaching to them “What have they done to the Earth? What have they done to our fair sister?”

The two lay on the ground now with there heads pressed against one speaker. Each note rolls over them as if they are being baptized in the sanctum of his words.

“Hey. Hey man…” Squib whispers as if Jim Morrison were actually there talking to them and as if he didn’t want to brake this God of There Culture’s concentration. As if his words were the truth.

“What?”
“Read me something. Something beautiful.”

Quinn draws out a heavy, heavy sigh. “Alright man, Alright.”

He turns off Jim. And grabs a piece of paper, a scribbling from the night before, he thinks but then again he can’t remember. He adjusts his glasses to gain a professorial air about him so he can perform a heart string to the only friend.

“We sit here, smoking.

Laughing.

Life is like a record.

It spins and spins and spins.

Eventually, it flips over, to produce a change from the previous sound.

And eventually as all things do, it dies.

As do people.

As do cigarettes.

As does love.

I saw a boy wearing women’s shoes.

And at first, I laughed at him.

But then I saw that it was nothing really in the grand scheme of the album of our life’s.

And I hated him in that moment because he was living his life on a B-side.

He lives his life caught in a world that is not his own.

He lives in eyes of a hollowed out generation gripped by television madness.

But people fear this boy.

And the next day I saw him again.

Dead in a gutter. With a gun in hand.

The gun was used to kill a man. And then himself.

The gun didn’t make any noise.

He was the low spark of high heeled boys.”

So it goes.