What did his voice sound like? I’m thinking about it now, and it was cool, unruffled, unhurried. —He would like that. —He was someone who sat down and was calm and not reserved but deliberate: I realize I’m using adjectives you’ve read a thousand times when describing certain people, —writers, — but he was careful and he listened, and you could hear behind his clear eyes little clicks almost audible in his head, cameric observance of your statements, I’m also realizing his thousand was startling and describing, you could hear his audible observance, he would sound like his voice. He was stories.

What did he talk about? —I realize now I had, I mean the above recent bit, had little right to write a tribute to Johnny. I had lunch with him several times, visited his home once, and exchanged a few dozen emails over 5 or so years. —But Johnny, too, could walk into the room dressed like a person who carries themselves and is dressed like someone who makes people turn their heads, and yet people don’t turn their heads. He comes in with a trench coat that makes him seem 7’ tall, a long coat of leather with a high pale face and forehead and … he had rent control. He lived with his wife and they had a fantastic apartment on a beautiful street in San Francisco. —He was one of those people you knew had dreamt of themselves from an arm’s length, who thought about how to think, how to speak, how to go from place to place. He would sit down and then an hour later look at your plate and comment on its lack of vegetables. He also had an incredible face, with high cheekbones and a forehead with white, thin and black hairs, and he would sit in the booth table across from you in the vegetarian restaurant and say, So what have you been up to? unshouldering a dark jacket with a pearl buttoned dark purple & gray shirt and a silver bola tie. Here you are (I am) (I was) in a blue polo shirt and khakis looking like you’re IT. More like ITT. He did ask me for some help with converting files from one software to another. I was somewhat helpful, recommending a friend who was knowledgeable. I visited his house once, and sat in his (was it?) blue wallpapered living room with the Moroccan knives and the long hallway … into a back room where he showed me old Crime flyers. He was in a new band with Hank Rank from Crime now, and he two years later sent you a passcode to download it free. There are l two emails where he urged and outlined his request for me to troll Graham Rae on the WSB forum at this website, — they’d had a beef when this site had been one of the “ sleepiest in existence”…. You have to remember, though, that whilst this was years later it had been, early on, a lot of fun to argue with people with what seemed like, talking 1997, AOL Chat, mock-combat. So if in Johnny he had a bit of childishness regards to the Internet, well, we were all trolls then and later, even to often now; maybe to tweet is to Troll.
I think now this about Johnny Strike: he had a light, gentle presence but carried an unmistakable well in his eyes that showed the mark.

I read Ports Of Hell. I was on Reality Studio’s forum and he was irascible, — another typical adjective, but he was. He was looking for an argument. Years later he sent me “ A Loud Humming Frim Above”. — I’ve read most of the stories at different times in different places but I’m going to read them all again from the beginning, through. I remember a last letter, that I didn’t respond to, and it was talking about his Exploding Memoir, and his music, and I’d written a few letters where I’d asked How are you? and Tell me what’s happening/ here’s what’s happening, and he’s reply with a link to an article, or an emoji and a link to buy his book. I didn’t follow the clicks, and then I read he was dead.

I can see a whole series of comments about Johnny. Look, he had a cousin vibe to Peter Weller, another individual with high cheeks and latticed foreheads, innaresting widow’s peaks and their admiration for a w i f e S h o o t e r.

Johnny Strike speaks with Burroughs:

https://books.google.com/books?id=pq_o5ky6MiYC&pg=PA15&lpg=PA15&dq=the+burroughs+brain+machine+%2B+headpress&source=bl&ots=QskgKI4l22&sig=nmMlGtf2hx-efiss8zPXo3eyjVg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiQ_ML3hoHeAhWOylkKHflVCY4Q6AEwAHoECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q=the%20burroughs%20brain%20machine%20%2B%20headpress&f=false

R.I.P. Johnny.

Posted by ZACK KOPP – OCTOBER 2, 2018

READ ME: THE LAST WISH OF JOHNNY STRIKE

https://pleasekillme.com/johnny-strike/