GT041522DVD.mp4

In the annals of musical history, April of 2022 stands as a chapter of profound resonance as GRILL TONES, in their original configuration, graced the stage for one last unforgettable performance on stage at Ralph's Rock Diner. This momentous occasion unfolded against the backdrop of the departure of esteemed founding members Liam Shepherd, Adrian Anderson, and their compatriots. Through the lens of an enterprising young film student, we are afforded a candid and factual glimpse into the intricacies of that fateful evening.  

Girl Against God

There’s a place I go sometimes, a blinding white nothingness on the edges of my mind where my eyes roll back and I so briefly grasp what it feels like to not exist. For so long I have wished deeply to be without a body, not just divorced from my physical form, but to feel as though it never existed. I no longer feel the visceral disgust I once felt when I look in the mirror; the happiest I have ever been was the first time I truly saw a girl staring back at me. I would have given up everything to be this way, and I would give up everything again if only I could be nothing at all. I think that’s what Heaven is like, that’s what it means to be God, to be nothing. If the physical body exists only to verify one’s own existence, what would we be without it but free? “The body is not a thing, it is a situation: it is our grasp on the world and the outline for our projects.”

Either way, nothingness is omnipresent, God is everywhere and in all of us and He does not exist. The despair of that realization is how true optimism is born. When you acknowledge your own free will, you kill God. And there is so much hope in that hatred. If I can mold my body to my will, why does my mind not follow? Gender acedia, moments spent in knowing silence with friends, resigned anhedonia, the angst building up inside me like tectonic plates colliding.

Everyday I carve “I am my own God” deeper into my forearm and let the blood drip slowly from my fingertips before the drop of the knife shatters me awake and the blood rushes back into my veins in a VHS rewind blur. And it’s over. With each passing day I feel less like Roquentin and yet the Nausea still persists. I have this dream where I’m in a winter forest at night: tall, skeletal trees stretching towards a pitch black sky dotted with otherworldly light. Powder snow crunches underfoot as I wander aimlessly into the void. And the blood is back, oozing down my arms, droplets falling to the snow below with each step. But the ground isn’t stained red and I leave no footsteps in my wake. In fact, my legs seem to disappear from beneath me as I observe them, my body assimilating into the nothingness that surrounds me until I am floating through space and my mind sounds like radio static. It comes in plagues of consciousness, with decisions like sharp pains. I talk myself off the ledge, but my mind holds on to images from the past.

Won’t you please open the window it is so. hot. in. here?

“Do not submit to any limitation. Submission is the resignation into eternal victimization. Acknowledgement is unconsciousness. Recognition of power is recognition of its existence. Protest is the equivalent of prayer. Do absolutely not, do absolutely. Condone absurdity and absurdly reject. All purpose is negligible. Endless historical recursion has eliminated our ability to see beyond what has already been attempted. Your giant head in an infinite mirror, forever obstructing the view of what’s directly behind it all. All power is paternalistic. Advocacy is managerial and therefore hierarchical. Membership and allegiance are voluntary. Lay down in the tall grass and cover yourself with bugs. The snakes will eat the bugs and you will eat the snakes. A symbiosis? No, a dinner with friends.”

C

Incongruous Conversation

★ HEY! YOU! ate my jewelry didn’t you?! FUCK you man I needed those pearls to pay off my medical debt You see I got the flu six 6 weeks ago and Brigham Womens didnt take my insurance like the receptionists promised. So yeah I’m fucked out of luck AND– 

◾Je w el   ry ? 

★ I'm Still Talking – You’re going to have to figure this out, its serious. Yesterday I paid the bodega cat in quarters. He didn't appreciate it told me it's hard counting all that change with no thumbs. I didn’t appreciate it either, inconveniencing my associate... Butt you know what makes me feel better?

◾ Gay shit?

★ Yes, I mean, No. Your shaving cream expires! tomorrow and I didn’t pick up any from the store like you asked. Yeah. Should’ve thought about that asshole! Should’ve been thinking about your asshole, asshole. What’re you going to do now that you have to dry shave??? HA-ha. Anyway, What were we talking about? Yeah there’s really no solution to the current economic crisis.

◾ Do you believe that?

★Yeah, think about it.

◾ Oh.

★ I guess we could go back to the bartering system

◾ Do you have any goods, or skills?

★ No. No cash either.

◾ Mmm… 

★ Well, I can wrap my legs behind my neck.

◾ … uhhhhh, Got it! Join a brothel, or the circus!

★ No circus, I can't stomach the animal abuse.

◾ Fine, sex work then. Did you see that video of the bear attacking her handler?

★ I wish a bear would eat me…

◾ Fuck that you’d make it sick. Chunky sick probably.

★ What do you think semi-digested human smells like?

◾ Alcoholics eating chicken probably. I need to change the subject. Let’s play chess, let's eat strawberries and cry about how our mothers don’t understand us and hate our art. Let's dress up like Richard Nixons and take hostages in Office Depot! It’ll all be some wonderful bullshit adventure.

★ Yeah! and then let's leave and never come back. We can barricade ourselves in your bedroom and set fire to the mattress. We can watch its springs burst and everything grow out of control while we stay very still. We can burn together Pass out from the pain and fumes of singed hair, pesticides and melting plastics. We’ll write an email first to the press, set it to timed delivery, it will be a protest. It will be a protest that changes the world after we leave it–

◾ For better or worse?

★ It doesn't matter I don’t care.

◾ I'm not ready to die, but I am open to the idea. Romantic theatrics excite me.

★ Morbid theatrics excite you, be serious.

◾ Stop it. I’m done don’t tease me, I can't take it not from you.

★ Grow up. You’re a stranger to me when you get like this, when you get all anal and neurotic

◾ No thats not it. You talk and you go on all dark and inconsistent like this and it's so confusing it's so confusing and it makes me feel that I'm in one of those shitty art house films you like, and those never end well. I want this to end well.

★ Fine then we’ll end well. I laid it all out already, plans all there. No one else I’d rather go out with.

◾ You’re freaking me out stop it it's scary when you – 

★ I’m sorry.

◾ You’re not!

★ Absurdity is absurdity is a joke is a plea is a lie is–

◾ A lie? Are you lying again? Are you lying about the nature of your compulsions?

★ There are no compulsions. There are no convulsions or intrusions or perfursions, conclusions or, or, or anything

◾ Or anything?– 

★ Anything! Everything! Nothing! Nothing nothing nothing it's, none of your business!! Your business is in fur coats, its sick stuff it's cruel, while we’re talking about cruelty, and what did you ever do with that muff you made out of my favorite pet opossum? She was just a little soft darling and you took her from me. 

◾ Oh! No, it’s not what you think. That thing was dead when I found it behind the wall. How was I supposed to know it was your pet? -- really that thing could've killed you with, killed you with diseases… anyway she’s no longer a muff, now it’s a merkin. A truly charitable repurposing. I donated it to an adult film star with alopecia. She’s famous now; it's her most valuable possession. I’m told she washes it with petroleum every Sunday, expensive stuff, always on Sunday. 

★ Well, that is a powerful testimony, one supposes… one supposes… that, this is a complicated matter, an real ethical dilemma. We should consult your sociology professor.

◾ We can’t be alone together – he wont stop trying to fuck me.

★ Whatever, irredeemable behaviors are just a symptom of some greater disorder, totally treatable.

◾ It’s “gooder”, not “greater”.

★ Grammar fascist. Irrelevant, AND, anyway, you couldn't more wrong.

◾ God I can’t stand it when you mumble. I can't stand it when you mumble or when you tell me your sickest thoughts and secret desires.

★ You really oughtn't make a confession like that to such a sensitive audience.

◾ Hardly a discerning one.

★ We should call this off.

◾ Take your meds.

★ It's all placebic bullshit, or irreversible non-senses.

◾ With that attitude, who needs to function well enough to go to work?

★ FUCK. I’m leaving you. NO. Actually, get out of my house.

◾ FINE! I'm taking the dog.

★ Great! Don’t let the door hit you or that horny fuck on the way OUT!

◾

★ Shit. How am I gonna pay the rent?

  ♥ L              

something we can all be proud of

 Get Up.

"i am sitting on the porch. i am listening to aimee mann. its hailing right now. i remember camping with my parents and it started hailing and the hail was the size of walnuts and I thought they were going to pierce through everything."

"i have been dressing a lot like I did when I was 19, 20. green jacket, the green jackets. specifically the one that was covered in blood in that one photo. 

"that poor girl
needs some help"

a million nights pass by effortless. something remains. most anything makes me cry. most anything makes me convulse against my will. i dont know if theyre seizures. i just feel something grinding and my eyes go wide and my muscles move and contort and lock and then move to another position like someone fucking with a ragdoll in gmod. "

What do you see right now?

"i see text messages, telegram messages that are long deleted. i see kik messages from guys threatening to kill themselves because i got scared of talking to them. i see this guy, this guy i sort of knew from online, a few years older than me, we'll call him aaron, he kept trying to get me to listen to folk punk, and like, crust punk music, like he was really into all this stuff and the voices just sounded annoying to me, and he would ask me what porn i was watching, he would tell me when he was jerking off and would send me the videos he was watching and then i did the same for him because he wanted me to and i hadn't really experienced that before. he was the first person to see my penis in a sexual context, i think i was 14? 15? he was maybe 16, 17."

"kik was bad but telegram was even worse for me i think. i met a lot of bad people, people i dont want to talk about. people are so nice at first but then morph into right wing weirdos who want you murdered. i was also in these chats that were like, it was from these subreddits of guys that jacked off together and shared wgat porn they were watching and i was in those and watched videos they sent of them jacking off and sent videos of me jacking off."

Why did you do it?

"i, uh, i just wanted to be wanted. i wanted to be wanted. i felt so unwanted, i felt disgusting, ugly, stupid. i just wanted to be wanted. i wanted to see the guys and pretend i was touching them and they were touching me. i, there was another telegram chat, of these guys from [REDACTED FASHION FORUMS], thats where i met aaron, they would tell me how ugly i was, they told me about my chin and jaw and pallor and how skinny and deformed and fucked up i looked and how every haircut i got made me look worse and they would make threads on 4chan about me about how ugly i was and everyone in the threads was agreeing. i was ugly and deformed and worthless and everything i said was stupid and i was not worthy of being wanted."

What else?

"i have been dressing a lot like I did when I was 19, 20. my first day in outpatient there was a scary meth guy that i thought was funny at first, because like, it was a queer outpatient group and it was all like 18-30 year old trans people mostly and then this crazy scary meth guy and he would actually participate in the discussions but he would just make all his commentss centered around how cool and good meth was. he had a big box with him with his stuff in it and like an hour before the day was over he started rummaging around and saying like, 'i got something here, this is gonna change your life, if you had something like this, your life would be irreparably changed' and he pulled out this box that looked just like i remember as a kid like the same exact size and shape white cardboard box that they give you handguns in when you buy them at the gun store and i ran outside and bawled and screamed and my right hand started rubbing uncontrollably against my left shoulder like this uncontrollable tic and no one helped me no one tried ot help me and i had to wait for an hour outside for it all to be over and i ended up ust sitting in the lobby rocking back and forth doing this rubbing tic cryying for like 2 more hours and no one helped me."

"i collapsed again at work on saturday. everything just kept building up and up and up. near the end, i was stumbling around just crying and manically repeated to myself "nothing ever stops spinning." i kept almost falling, i kept slumping but i kept going because i need the money you know, and i dont want it to be real when its happening, because its not something physiological so it cant be real right like im making it up like im making everything else up?"

What does it feel like when you collapse?

"

"its not fainting. the people at work ask me if i fainted the people in hospital ask me if i fainted my friends ask if i fainted this is not. fainting this is something else. there is no loss of consciousness, only dulling. the body falls, the mind follows, slowly, trailing after. it feels more like a machine breaking down, the knees buckle, everything weak. everyone tells me i need to eat more food drink more water but thats not it thats not it thats not it thats not fucking it its its its itsits its its from the mind its from the mind and it wont stop i just want to not be here please god things didnt things didnt thingsdidnt always be like this i didnt always be li i didnt always used to be like this 

"i dont really know what i was expecting to gain from this, from relaying this to you. its not a ploy at pity, i dont care about that anymore i dont care about any of these fucking people anymore. and i dont want to die, i am terrified of death. i guess that

i guess i just thought it would help."

"it isnt all so bad you know, like there are so many people and things in my life i am thankful for every day."

"are you still there?"

"i wonder if there is an end to hate."

confessions of a hooker that doesn’t put out

** DISCLAIMER: I am non-autonomously involved in every instance of solicitation, and am ultimately totally blameless **

• my  value in sum: $900p/h + $100 + $150 + $150 + $150 + $150 + $150 + $150 + $150 + $150 … ? = $2,200 (aprox) not counting the jewelry, the cigarettes, and the dinners
• the hook game starts early ideally before 7 yearsold, however the pay isn’t great just those Wanka hard candies shaped like fruit paid one at a time  
• you’ll love her she comes pre-groomed, adorable!
• I make a whorish first impression
• or at least a corrupted one
• the thing about being in this line of work (of not putting out) is that it’s a new, unexplored field with plenty of opportunities 
• applicants are motivated, strategic, feminine, of stereotypical pasts,disturbing, lovely, thrilling, sincere, needy, and suicidal 
• once I slept with a man I thought he was imaginary. he told me his fetish was sleeping with  prostitutes - they only wanted him for his money, in retrospect I should’ve kept the watch he fastened tight to my wrist before the night went on - but that’d break my pattern 
• I’d make a fabulous dominatrix despite my waifishness
• this isn’t about that
• how’d you like to make $100 asks the man walking crooked on a shoe and a barefoot, he says he wants very badly to run me a bath with fine soaps and epsom salts. and lick my pussy and thighs right there in the tub-I let him keep talking- can I tell u you something? - ___ - crack makes me re a l ly  horny. Sometimes.  I Can’t Control Myself. 
• all in the search of 
• I’m not prettier than the other girls just more interesting 
• Im so goddamn interesting 
• I’m so goddam embarrassing
• I’m so powerful
• I’m so good at hurting myself it’s actually creative
• give me credit
• I negotiated with Larry the regular for $900 an hour after he’d had his 3 mai thais, his wife was in the next room while we were at the bar, he asked why my price was so high, I told him I could show him things he’d never experienced before- it was probably true, I gave him my phone number and then blocked him an hour later 
• one day I’ll tell you things that’ll make your toes curl
• the old artist likes the feeling that he’s corrupting me, and I’m a traumaphile, we’ve been living in nauseous bliss for months now 
• tell your friends everything but leave out the details 
• turn the fan on 
• use your fear to your advantage soft breakable addictive saintly virginal fallen angel, they love it
• you’re so beautiful when you can’t move, stuck still
• if you play your cards right ( I do) it’s all cash and no mess
• the desperate ones (all of them) let you get away with anything and also with doing nothing 
• getting a call now, we’ll finish this later

All lovely intentions,

                                                                                                                                                 ♥ L