A Review of Amphetamine Sulphate’s 5-Year Anniversary Reading Event

Tonight I am the President. I have to go out and talk to people. If I do well, Jilly will give me ice cream. Wait, it’s Friday, October 28th, 2022, 7 pm EST?  Game 1 World Series Phillies, Jerry Lee Lewis died, I’m missing Misery Loves Company? No, I’m not! Yes, you are going to the 5th year celebration of Amphetamine Sulphate tonight, sir. Tonight, we must choose truth over facts.

Incognito, I go by cab to Chinatown. I walk up to the address and fling open a door revealing a long room with two Asian men doing something that set off my pedo-vibe-ometer. One yells, “Upstair!” Confronting my internalized racism, I tone down and adopt the attitude of the great Negro – at the time – pitcher of the Negro Leagues who went on to be a great pitcher in the pros in Major League Baseball after Jackie Robinson, his name was Satchel Paige.

There are white nationalists milling around outside who assist me through the secret entrance to an elevator. We go up to the 4th floor where the reading will take place.

Nice open gallery. Obligatory bucket of White Claw, Budweiser, and Corona, no red wine and cheese. Everyone is dressed like #metoo era Boyd Rice including myself. My testicles are throbbing gristle in these midnight black skinny jeans they put me in. The irony of my balls being crushed at this event is not lost on my secret service, as they offer me a Corona and a seat in the corner. Nobody puts baby in the corner, Ms. P-Orridge RIP, except when it comes to Russia and that bad dude Zelensky, gonna nuke em’ with my big ball energy tonight!

I’m given the code signal to stop speaking and am taken by my elbow to the seat.

There’s a big projector screen and a guy running the laptop and PA. They get it working just fine. Philip Best, the owner and publisher at Amphetamine Sulphate, mingles with the attendees. Staff members request I do not make the joke about him being the original Beatles’ drummer when we speak later. “He’s heard it too many times, sir.” Philip Best takes the microphone and thanks everyone for coming. He commends them for being “degenerates with good taste.” The man isn’t lying. Philip is building back better and fighting for the soul of the Nation. 

In attendance were two artists my team identified as Darja Bajagic and Lionel Maunz. All that stuff about Ernst Junger, c’mon man! The two occupy this reading. I went back to my lifeguard days, be it Corn Pop or Cold Cave, I’ll take my 6ft chain to both of those guys. My daily briefing includes intelligence, drone footage from the Donbas Region in Ukraine, uh, and this art, the Azov Battalion’s pride in being Jewish, and for nationalism and LGBTQ rights, uh well, it’s that. My team is taking me in the morning to the Downs & Ross Gallery to survey their current exhibit Forest Passage on display until December 3rd. 

Kaycie Hall took the microphone positioned above her head like Lemmy Kilmister from Motorhead and read from the Isabelle Nicou novel she translated from the French. Stricture, published by Amphetamine Sulphate, contains flowing prose glazed with childhood trauma and alienation, dysfunctional family roles. Hall verbalized Nicou’s work really smooth and sweet. This book would make me too sad, the way the damn world is today. I’ve never shied away from reading anything my whole life. But that pandemic made keeping a good mood too hard, to delve far into sadness on the page. Probably can’t read the Nicou, although the comparison of a carved chicken to a failed blow job does speak to my Oval office woes. I don’t want to be labeled a Clinton. Who is going to fix all these problems! I’m the President! I’m a goddamn devout Catholic. C’mon man! My staff flashes a peace sign at me, getting too loud in here, lay low compadre, lay low, and continue to bear witness, to keep alive the truth and honor of the Holocaust. 

Philip Best reads from “Home is the Hunter. Home From Hell,” published in Human Rights (2022) – Amphetamine Sulphate. Indelible in my hippocampus was the repletion of the words, “Animal Artist,” describing the sinister character who delivers the torture and goes mad throughout Best’s tale. No ambient audio track allowed in these pale green prison walls. Philip Best’s work commands the audience’s respect. Five years of ace publishing, Philip, but they’re going to put you all back in chains. By executive order I impose the detainment of that Animal Artist at Guantanamo Bay!

They took a twenty-minute break. Some Nazi skinhead started talking to me. I said, “Man, you really ought to get yourself a MAGA hat, it’s 2024, you can’t traipse around larping like a roadie for Skrewdriver in the ‘80s. Join the Proud Boys.” He laughed. Then I told him about Jerry Lee and the legendary writer Nick Tosches, my boy, Nick Tosches RIP. He never heard of him. “Hellfire! Hellfire! Best goddamn rock biography ever written, so I hear. Hellfire!” Some vampire-lookin’ hombre shushed me like a librarian. The reading reconvened. No ice cream yet… Wait, does he know Wolf Eyes plays the soundtrack to the Puerto Rican Pride Parade now? Onward, more poetry, less salt on this bad dude’s french-fries. We will always honor the bravery and selfishness of our troops. 

Thomas Moore with wonderful video and audio accompaniment reads. Tragedy and longing drip from every word, delivering a performance with an engaging, filmic flow. Thomas received the highest applause. Someone brought me a lemon Whitehouse Claw. Tasted like that lemonade those Trump supporters make, and if you vote for Trump, you ain’t Black! Got a signal, the finger across the throat thing, cease and desist. I have the best team. Isn’t it a bitch? This Vice President thing? That was a joke, that was a joke. Best decision I ever made. I’m joking. That was a joke. 

Adam Lehrer, a lying dog-faced pony soldier, took the microphone. Reading a diatribe about rape and ruckus, he went into it hard. He should join the Groypers. Then I stopped myself, began linking his prose to a higher cause, the weight of being a Manhattanite and proving points amongst this mayhem. I knew then he was a bomb, a dirty bomb, waiting for detonation. Philip Best is very optimistic and future-oriented, and Adam Lehrer’s next book will be published by the press in 2023. I might be looking forward to that more than ice cream.

Audrey Szasz performed, a refugee, from the Ukraine. Amnesty International’s spokeswoman for Anne Frank. A foster child telling us about her molestation voyage. Deprivation, hunger, abuse, delivered like a cheeky little brat begging for a spanking. I have to smell her hair, I want to sniff her youth. Think this through. No blood ritual tonight – Schumer, Pelosi, and the coven won’t allow it, nothing extra. I will settle for sniffing her hair, a deep inhale, breathing life into my soul. Thank you for this performance tonight. Now we have over one hundred million dead from Covid. 

I highly recommend purchasing all of Amphetamine Sulphate’s catalogue, including Human Rights, the tenderest of dark science fiction compilations reflective of our times. In this world, emotion has become suspect. The accepted style is smooth, antiseptic, and passionless. I will give press conferences all day praising this reading! Poor kids are just as bright and as talented as white kids.