julian peters comics

Jack stared broodingly out the window at the falling snow, and as he did so, he reflected that he himself was like that snow, ethereal and pure, fallen down to earth only to be trampled underfoot by unfeeling, indifferent passersby, ground down into the philistine muck and cast aside in the ditch by people whose only concern was to get to work on time, or sucked up and spat out by lascivious snowblowers.

Why in all hell had he come back to this frosty, winter-desolate city? Only a week ago, he had been in New Orleans, where he had been hanging out for the last couple of months, performing spoken word poetry in sweaty, smoke-filled jazz joints, supplementing his meagre earnings by turning tricks for drunken closeted frat boys in Bourbon Street back alleys (Women he charged half price).

Everything had been going along well enough for a time, especially on the literary front. His dazzling poems of heart-ache and ecstasy, which he would come up with there and then, freely riffing on the madcap flow of the backing band playing improvisational jazz, had the audiences hollering with delight, his words sliding and swelling like liquid silver upon the tossing swoops and dives of the mad free-form cacophony of horns behind him.

“A watchawatchawatcha doin’
Tooooo my heart, baby,
Thumpathumpa!
Like a tweedledeedleneeeeeeeeeeeeadle
In my veins, honey
You’re like a druggadrugga
YoooooouuuuUUUUU
Giveamegiveamegiveame
A rush! A rush!
To the head, honey,
TOOOooooo the head!
Tweedledeedle!”

That was how he would lay it down, and the hopped-up ragamuffins in attendance just couldn’t get enough of it. The trouble came, however, when these jazz-mad cats, many of whom had come from the farthest reaches of the Mississippi delta just to bask in the glory of Jack’s honey-tongued incantations, began complaining that they couldn’t clearly make out all of the words over the blaring of the band. They demanded that the musicians turn it down a few notches, so as to permit a proper appreciation of every inspired metaphor and dizzying phonetic twist. At first the band had obliged, albeit grudgingly, but Jack soon became keenly aware of the resentment that his talent had, once again, brought down upon him. And so it was that, one star-filled Louisiana night, he had packed up his battered suitcase and begun hitchhiking his way up north, all the way to the Canadian border, where he had then jumped a freight train to Montreal. Continue reading →