"An Intimate Conversation With David Narcizo And Kristin
Hersh"
(written by Kristin Hersh)
Kristin:
There was a girl named Pike.
Pike was different from the other kids in some ways.
She had huge, yellow teeth which jutted out from her
face, particularly when she was angry and curled her lips back.
Her favorite food was oatmeal, gummy and sticky and
glue-like.
It was actually her only food.
Pike's mother would try to feed her Pop-Tarts and
fish sticks, but Pike would calmly remove the offensive food and fix herself a bowl of oatmeal, which she would strap onto
her head with scotch tape, and then walk around the house while she ate, masticating wildly.
Pike's manner of dress was odd.
She refused to wear any shoes but some ratty, old
platforms she'd found in the garbage.
You couldn't tell they were ratty and old, though,
as she had covered them with tin foil.
David:
For these reasons alone, Pike was ostracized at school.
The other children picked on her, called her 'Mary'
and other names, pulled her hair and stuff.
It was difficult for them to accept her into the peer
group, given her idiosyncrasies.
Pike was different.
Often, her mother would have little fits, when she
could take Pike's strangeness no more, ranting about what had she done wrong, and how she could have raised her weird daughter
differently, and why did her weird daughter do this to her.
These fits had no effect on the girl, however.
Pike would merely place one had aside each eye and
stare directly ahead, sometimes lending a swift kick in her mother's shin.
Kristin:
Even the family dog, Mike, seemed determinedly against
her.
He was always nipping her feet and chasing her into
rooms where she didn't want to be.
But the last straw was the morning she awoke to a
pair of aerobic shoes sitting by her bed.
Accustomed to these minor intrusions, she stepped
over them and reached for her ratty platforms.
They were gone.
At least, they weren't where she left them.
She called for her mother and inquired as to their
location, but there was no answer, and there were no ratty platforms anywhere in the apartment, only a pile of broken glass
in front of the shattered living room window.
And there, on the sidewalk, four stories down, lay
her special tin foil shoes in a tattered heap.
David:
As she swept up the glass fragments, Pike decided
to leave.
This was not a difficult decision, given that Mike
was biting her heels and barking very loudly.
She leapt over the mongrel and had just enough time
to grab some provisions and some tape before Mike lunged.
Pike ran barefoot into the elevator, panting.
It felt good to leave.
She hated the apartment and the stupid dog.
In fact, she hated the whole city.
But she loved her shoes, and even her yellow, jutting
teeth, no matter how unpopular they were at school.
Pike walked barefoot out onto the street, barefoot
along the sidewalk, scooped up her shiny, crumpled platforms, and continued barefoot along the road.
Kristin:
As the noises of the city faded, she discovered a
whole new world.
A lot of green, and room for bird sounds.
Cars didn't drive so fast, and children played happily.
They didn't seem to be full of Pop-Tarts and fish
sticks.
On and on she walked, and soon came to a stream.
On and on she walked through the stream, against the
current, her platforms dangling from her shoulder.
As dusk gathered and night began to fall, the sounds
of greenness enveloped her.
She caught sight of that for which she had been searching:
a big square entirely filled with grass.
She then knew what she had been born to do.
Calmly, she stepped out of the stream, into her shoes
and walked towards it.
She poured some oats right out of the package into
a bowl, and taped herself to it.
Slowly, she walked to the middle of the field, looked
up to the stars and masticated, wildly.
What blood type do you have?
David:
I don't know, I've never been -- well, I don't think
I've ever --
Kristin:
There are only a few, you could just say one.
David:
O.
