Prelude to a Lick
by Scott Hefflon
Editor/Publisher/Yadda-yadda-fuckin’-yadda
illustration by Kevin Banks
Naked. Breathless and glistening with sweat despite the freakin’ cold. We rolled and slipped across the bare mattress. The sheets lay huddles in a corner somewhere, trying to figure out what hit them. The pillows took flight not long after, now safely across the room from us. We tumbled. We groped. Bedsprings screeched. Somewhere a dog barked. I sat between her legs and kissed her knee, her thigh. I traced my tongue around her delicious hip bone. I reared back like a stallion, my wild mane thrown against.. well, my ponytail whipped against my arched back. (Leave the rest to dramatic lighting and a vivid imagination.) She looked up at me. “So”, she whispered in that dusky voice of hers, “I hear you’re going national.”
Welcome to the new and (hopefully) improved Lollipop Magazine. If you’re reading this, you (hopefully) shelled out two fat buckaroos for this bad boy. If you’re reading this whilst contemplating your purchase, don’t let me (buy it!) sway you (that’s right) in any way, shape, or (you know you want to) probably obscure form. Yeah, we’ve made some adaptations, some modifications, some… OK, so I fired half my staff (pun not intended) and started anew. We’ll be doing more of those feature thingies: Ya know, long-winded, pointless soliloquies about how “back in the day” things used to be so different. Maybe we’ll let down our proverbial (and rapidly thinning) hair and cover some topical topics and really affirm something or other. That would be a pleasant change of pacemakers. One of the biggest criticisms about the magazine (besides the chants of “drop dead, corporate scum suckers”) is that we, as a collective hole, didn’t really represent any, um, thing. We certainly resent just about everything, but evidently, that’s not the same thing. I sometimes feel like an amoeba: Stimulus, response – Stimulus, response. I wrote a great dissertation on how and why music ‘zines miss the whole fucking point of the power at their disposal. We write clever reviews of bands and call ourselves writers. Publicists working for free is more like it. We’re trying to tap into some kind of something-or-other that’s pure creativity. OK, so we’re mellifluously missing the meat of the matter. Alliteration rocks. The point is something to the effect of: Create something. Something original. Turd sculptures are art .(OK, I’m halfway done, bear with me.)
I’m going to stoop to regurgitating the previous page the way many Editors seem to in their “Editor’s wank.” In this issue, we have more fiction and various verbal vexations than ever. We’re always looking for new gonzo dysfunctionaries to tell us tales that “define” this squeamish alterna-nation, mostly so we don’t have to. We need a scapegoat staff (fallacy optional), but I’m sure that’ll come to an explosive climax. And anyone who begins what passes for a cover letter with the phrase “I’m responding to your plea for writers,” I hate you. You suck. Write in your fucking notebook for the rest of your useless existence for all I care, you waste of oxygen. That pisses me off, but I’d guess you were astute enough to ascertain that something I produce something that can reproduce what you’ve produced so that someone other than your friends see it. They think you’re the cat’s mewl anyway, why not show off to the teeming populace of vicarious and voracious vulgarians? We all want to read just how balls-fucking-out you are – how cutting edge your tongue and wit are.
Are you inspired? Are you enraged by the impotent state of our caffeine-driven times (Note: I share the guilt, I feel your pain. I fucking care), how they pale in comparison to the opium-gobblers of yore? Don’t be a consumer, be an exhumer (fuck it, it rhymes). Dredge up that pain, that rage, that hard-on, and put it to constructive and/or deconstructive use. As the former Nike representative with Tourette’s Syndrome never said, “Just fucking do it, you fucking fuck!” (Fuck quota reached at 10 to ensure Boy-Am-I-Punk credibility and limit the commercial potential of this magazine so when it folds, I can swear that I never sold out.) Response! Response! Response!
Lick me.
