Characters You've Never Heard Of: WISCONSIN, PARALLAX

Our guitar-player is not so well off.  His name is Parallax Wisconsin, and his parents are the two nicest, sweetest, most normal people you could ever meet.  It’s amazing how he ended up as fucked up as he did.  He’s an alcoholic, mildly delusional, and extremely apathetic about life.  Even worse, he’s a skater, and that alone makes him scum.  He keeps blaming his parents for all of his problems, and they keep calling us asking where he is because apparently he never goes home.  We have this theory that maybe his parents aren’t so perfect, that they’re really involved with child slavery in South America and they keep Parallax locked up in a closet in the basement and beat him with a vacuum cleaner hose, so that’s why he never wants to go home.  Did I mention that he’s a kleptomaniac?  One of our favorite pastimes is to get him drunk and let him lose at Wal-Mart.  It might be cruel, and I always feel bad afterward, but there’s nothing funnier than watching our 5'2" drunken guitar-player try to sneak out of the sporting goods department with a canoe oar under his jacket.

- from the notes for the unpublished "Diary of a Failed Rock Star"

This is a weird one.

Many years ago, when I first set out to write a serious novel, I worked with an acquaintance (it would be a huge stretch to call him a friend) on a book about his life as a wannabe rock star. I don't talk about it much because he's been gone awhile and I don't know if I can ever share the story, but as I was going through old notes and manuscripts for A-to-Z, I found not only the book but the original notes he transcribed to me.

John was a strange guy. He probably still is, I haven't seen him in a long time. The characters in the book are all based on people he knew with their names changed. Parallax "Perry" Wisconsin is one of them. I knew some of the parties involved, but not Perry. He may not even be a real dude.

That's why it's so weird. I'm not sure which parts of the story are true and which parts are stuff John made up (or hallucinated). I know some of it is exaggerated but I was also there for some of it, so yeah. I don't know what to make of it. I only crammed it in here because I needed a "W."

As a bonus, here's the lyrics to one of their songs, which conveniently also starts with "W." I no longer have the CD and I can't find another copy of it anywhere. John probably has it, maybe I'll track him down one of these days.

WRONGED

Lyrics by Vlad Frederick Knight

I am guilty

Please forgive me

I have broken

Something sacred

I have taken

Love for granted

Now I’m falling

Will someone catch me?

I loved once but I loved not well

Fate had no hand I destroyed it myself

I wronged you but now you’ll never tell

I hide my face and crawl into my shell

You are a china doll I crush beneath my heel

White shards of glass are dead, can’t feel

You gave me your heart and cry your bloody tears

I’m the fucking bastard who broke the sworn deal

I am guilty

Please forgive me

I have broken

Something sacred

I have taken

Love for granted

Now I’m falling

Will someone catch me?

Our love was like fireflies mating

Burning angels falling from Heaven

You lifted me up but I let you down

Eventually we had to hit the ground

The eyes I use to see are not mine

Vision is learned we are all born blind

We see what we want we can’t fight Fate

First you have to love before you learn to hate

I am guilty

Please forgive me

I have broken

Something sacred

I have taken

Love for granted

Please forgive me

I will do it again

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