"I can't for the life of me remember his name, but I've always been bad with names. I do, however, remember that he was from Indonesia, and that he was an artist - he was an Indonesian artist.
"He wore black combat boots and, uh, green fatigues, and... I think they're called fatigues... anyway, green army pants. He also wore a green shirt that had, like, a red star just above the heart. On any other person it would have looked tacky and pretentious, but this dude, man, this dude pulled off the look pretty convincingly, you know? He used to ride a scooter or a motorbike or a, I don't know, a normal bicycle or something like that. I never actually saw it but he carried an army helmet, which doubled as a normal helmet for his bike. When he wasn't wearing the helmet - which was always 'cause I never saw him on his bike - he had it strapped to his backpack. It was just a normal backpack, there were no, there were no, there was nothing really army about it, you know? He had... he also had aviator goggles. They were always around his neck, and I guess they served as goggles for his bike or whatever. The first thing I noticed... he said he was an artist by the way... actually, I can't remember if he told me that or I somehow inferred it later. It doesn't really matter, I guess. Anyway - [inaudible]... was I? - oh, yeah, the first thing I noticed was his hair, which was multicoloured, but not like greens and yellows and oranges and shit, but... [inaudible]... purple! there must've been about twenty different shades of purple in his hair! His hair was a fucking mess I remember that. A fucking mess! It went everywhere, just everywhere. It looked fake as well! It just looked plastic. One of the girls we were with told me that he dyed his hair so often that, eventually, he was just going to damage it permanently.
"The thing that stood out the most was his peculiar way of smoking cigarettes. He would hold a cigarette in between his pinky and his ring finger... his, uh, his third finger, and he would and he would cup his hands together tightly. And when his hands were completely sealed, he would make and suck at a gap between his thumbs and, using the vacuum created in between his hands, he would smoke the cigarette. I'm not too sure why he did this 'cause I can't imagine that it would further filter the smoke or anything like that, or, I don't know, cool it down further, I don't know. It was just odd, you know, but but cool too.
"We were at a local festival, and there were bands and people selling things in stalls. A friend's girlfriend tried to convince me to buy some Thai fisherman pants. I told her she was fucking crazy."
so the days roll into another
all the same in what they are
Written on Thursday, 17 February 2005