B O N D P H O N E.
Words and pictures by Chris Lamb.

I was in the last few pages of GENERATION OF SWINE and waiting for Patrick to give my back my computer. I wanted to climb in to bed and fall over with a stack of movies. It had been a long day of cold wind and bad art in Central Park, walking under giant horseshoes colored like parking cones with last week's laundry hanging off them and making snide comments about my friend's new boy parts with the nattering speed of someone not eating properly. It was time for sleep and moving pictures, and Patrick was filling his iPod shuffle with Bob Dylan.

Bondphone went off in my lap with an email. Warren Ellis was up and watching the AP wire, and Hunter S. Thompson has shot himself.

We went out, calling and texting and emailing on the way. By the time we got to Alice's, it was on the internet - The Denver newspaper had all the information any one had. Thompson was found dead at his home. His son identified the body. No word on a note. Nothing about the fifty-foot talk aluminum cylinder intended to shoot his ashes out over his mountain compound. It'll come.

It's snowing outside. I should have mentioned that sooner. "Potential blizzard" is the term to use. Run through it like bank robbers to Cheap Shots, which is full and humid and ugly with NYU students. We throw back shots of the most expensive tequila in the house and leave, disgusted. There's a snowball fight going down across the length of St. Marks Place to weed through and then International. I stand outside while Patrick runs to an ATM and make jokes about the fight over St. Marks; it's gone from powder-based turf war to guys vs. girls; "If I don't hit the ickle girlie my dick'll fall off." Run inside and throw money at Lauren for shots of Powers and Red Stripes - this is the worst idea. This is the best idea. I break the news to Lauren in the least graceful way I can and she pours each of us another shot and a kiss of the top of the bottle for the floor. She spreads the words around and suddenly we're the guys who know.

Outside again, taking blurry camera phone shots of the light on the snow. A small girl with dyed red hair spilling out the top of her parka, cowboy boots and a short skirt to match stumbles into Bondphone's frame and twists in the wind, drunk and broken and lost. Everything she says is giggling. We leave her at what looks like her door and move on.

It isn't until Thompkin's Square Park that the inevitable snow ball fight starts.

First it's us, then a random girl cuts the air between us with a shot at chest level. Her boyfriend holds her out as a human shield and we chase her down the street, pelting her retreating back. A misfire turns us on each other again before a pack of Englishmen, drunk to the teats on American whiskey and yelling "You gotta know! When to hold 'em! You gotta know! When to fold them!" start sending volleys across the width of Avenue A. Their leader catches Patrick's first shot and returns it. Clearly no one is fucking around here. After a few rounds of no one hitting each other and the bulk of the English mob stumbling off into the dark, their leader shouts "You're lucky I like you, lad!" I shrug and run after Patrick, who's rounding the side of the park in the opposite direction from the apartment.

We're planning an ambush, building up a store of ammunition in preparation for the group coming up on the stair case we're using as a fort. "On the three," Patrick says. "One...two...three!" And he pegs me. The group passes safely as we pour all available rounds on each other before resorting to shoving. Treachery in the ranks brings down the best-laid plans once again.

We're on the way home at last, passing the church on Avenue B. The stairs are cut in half by metal bars that don't open any more, the church was closed in the Fall after a Cardinal failed to be moved by a protest march of dozens strong. It's a squat, ugly building with little of it's old beauty remaining, but it was somewhere for the homeless to be a little less cold and hungry. Not the point now.

It was Patrick's idea. Target practice for shots of Sake, first to hit the center of the highest cross wins. After something like a dozen tries there's hardly any gold left to be seen. I finally tag the middle and we just keep throwing.

We top off the night by tipping a stand off over the edge into a full blown snow ball fight right outside our building before running inside. Hunter S. Thompson is dead and there's a blizzard on the ground. But inside there's cold sake and bad ideas and christ, it's only three thirty in the morning.

posted by chris  # 7:29 PM