THE MAKING OF MARTINEZ#4: THE BIRTH OF THE KOSHER RICAN

The power is out.

The manager’s office is the perfect place to commit a murder. Matthew feels awkward, hoping to have suspicions assuaged. Unfortunately this is not to be. He is in fact working in a madhouse.

“So they are all crazy?” my brother asks. “As in mentally unbalanced?”

“All of them,” agrees the manager cheerfully, revealing his yellow teeth, passing my brother a cookie to nibble on with an immaculately manicured hand. “You’ll do well here, Mr. Kimber. There is a lot of room for advancement. Though we prefer the term mentally ill.  People with problems who need something to occupy themselves.”

“And receiving returned Reader’s Digests is therapeutic?” my brother asks, choking down the remains of the cookie.

“Koolaid?” asks the manager, lifting a jug of purple juice.

“I’m fine.”

“It’s the lifting and arranging that they find pleasant,” says the manager. “You know what they say about idle hands.”

“What about sorting the death threats?” Matthew asks. They get a lot of death threats. People in Australia seem to hate Reader’s Digest to the extent that they enjoy describing terrible things they would like to do to the workers on a fairly regular basis.

“Someone has to do it,” says the manager. “And they don’t have much of a choice.”

This is not where Matthew expected to end up.

My brother Matthew launched himself across the globe looking for the world he had only read about in books. He left the night after his first album was released, leaving behind his dreams to see the world.

His companion was a man by the name of Mike Sheehan, a beat boxer with a relentless desire for women, conversation and newfound friends. Hanging out on the beaches where Sheehan had made his past epic journey to the land down under a year previous, Matthew watched him weave his magic. Surrounded by football hooligans and their big teethed whores he began to wonder what he was doing here. After many sleepless nights under bunks rocked by the bodies of sweaty patchouli scented tourists, he began to get hostile and wanted to leave the hostel.

After the first couple of weeks it became abundantly clear that the bromance needed to break up.

While being immensely social himself, Matthew needs time to himself.  After a while conversations about the universe and endless prompting to freestyle over adhoc beatbox started to drive him crazy. Like many people with a temper my brother lets the fuse get lit, pours gasoline on it and explodes.  Sheehan agreed they should take time apart and went off on his own.

My brother found himself a place in an eight person house in the suburbs of Sydney, which reminded him of the Sackville of his native Nova Scotia. Looking in the yellow pages under P he found a job just down the street in a packaging plant.

This is not an ordinary packaging plant.

My brother came to realize there was something off almost immediately.

Enjoying his morning coffee a coworker approached him. The man had a beard down to his waist, hair that hadn’t been washed in as long as it took him to grow said beard and a trench coat.

“Good morning,” says his fellow employee. “My name is Willie.”

“Good day, mate,” says my brother, trying out Australian slang to see if he can make it sound natural.

“Welcome to the team,” exclaims Willie, ripping open his jacket to expose a particularly small and withered penis.

Matthew notices that few of his fellow employees seem at all perturbed  by the man exposing himself. They proceed with their shelving as though nothing was amiss.

“Willie, stop that,” says a man in a business suit, who Matthew will soon discover has been hired exclusively to make sure that Willie keeps his wiener to himself.  “You know what we say about keeping the coat buttoned up.  Ok. It’s time out time.”

Willie buttons his coat and leaves for time out.

“Sorry,” says the man in the business suit. “He’s just being friendly.”

“I see,” says Matthew.

“Don’t worry, young man,” says. “You have a bright future here. Soon you won’t even notice the quirks.”

The man in the business suit goes off in search of Willie. His job is to retrain Willie to stop flashing strangers. He says that he has been having more success as of late.

Strangely enough my brother excels in the cuckoo’s nest. He rollerblades to work, has a warm cup of coffee and begins his day.  He waves to his coworkers, engages them in conversation, sometimes sensible, other times completely nonsensical babblings he follows without losing a step.

In the madhouse even the staff become inmates says the manager when he isn’t giving himself a manicure and offering my brother a cookie and koolaid.

They were right. My brother was destined to climb high in the ranks.

Soon he was named assistant manager. This happened as a result of the former assistant manager biting Willie’s neck after being flashed at lunch. Biting was unacceptable behavior and he was fired rather than sent into time out.

Australia had a peculiar practice in regards to dealing with their mentally ill. As the government paid to keep them housed, took care of their medications and small needs they used them as a cheap labor force to offset the cost.

Corporations were given access to a psychotic slave labour force for the very affordable price of 1.96 an hour.

Good days were the ones where everyone took their meds. Bad days were when people forgot and naked hijinx ensued.

One day Willie flashed a man who was urinating in the corner. Matthew barely blinked. It was at this point he knew that he had to move on.

**********************************************************

He dials the phone, twirling his Hasidic dreads with his finger, nervously waiting for the dial tone. This is the fourth time he was supposed to call and forgot.

The email said it was important.

“You know it doesn’t matter what time zone you are in.  You are always fucking late,” says DJ Moves, Canada’s most prolific producer and one of my brother’s best friends.

“I lost track of time,” says Matthew. “What’s so fucking important?”

“Being a jerk when I have such good news for ya,” says Moves.

“What?”

Matthew doesn’t like guessing games.

“I sent your tape to ATAK,” says Moves.  ATAK is the first underground tape trading website. ATAK sells underground hip hop tapes and allows independent an artists a way to get out to the masses. “Ten copies. Sold out in a fucking day. People love Deny. They can’t get enough of that shit. “

“Really?” asks Matthew.

“Things are blowing up in Hali,” says Move. “People are getting put on. Vice came down here and did a shoot.”

“Yeah?” asks Matthew, momentarily shocked into monosyllables.

“They made it look Harlem but whatever,” says Moves. “Buck and Sixtoo are getting huge play in San Francisco. You too man. They know you up there. And in Hali people are actually coming to the shows. And every couple days people approach me and ask where you are. You’re missing it man. You gotta be here.”

The cause of my brother’s success can be traced to the man known today as P-Diddy.

After the death of Tupac and Notorious BIG, hip hop took a turn for the worse.   Puffy Combs and Mase stepped up to replace them and gradually rap music went from the classics of 93 to the crass empty popularity of 1996.  Watered down raps and R and B hooks took the place of real raps.  Waiting in the wings, groups like Company Flow and MF Doom’s early manifestation as KMD begin a new movement.

Feeling as though hip hop had failed him, Matthew and his middle class suburbanite friends began to mine their own experiences for material.  Taking on the belief that everyone suffered no matter what economic class they belonged to, they sought to create a new genre in direct contrast with P-Diddy’s rank commercialism.

Leaving Halifax after his first release “Maximum Well Being” , he took four cassettes with him.  Latrix, Jugganauts, Diamond D and the Psychotic Neurotics and an album of beats to write to.  Inspired and alone, he looked for other people on the same path.

And he met Meta Bass N Breath.

Composed of three rappers, one from New York, one from LA and another from Sydney they formed a group. Freestyling over flute and Digiroo they were the closest thing to what my brother wanted his own music to become.  Spending his nights recording freestyles with their live band they provided a calm to balance the insanity of working at the asylum warehouse.

They played big festivals and gave Matt his first taste of performing in front of large crowds.

One day, resting on the beach, his friend Baba comes over, holding a copy of Rolling Stone. On the cover is a handsome black man who resembles Lenny Kravitz. Matt’s eyes scroll down.  The handsome black man’s name is Maxwell.

“Fuck,” says Matthew.

“He’s much better looking than you,” says Baba.

“I noticed,” says Matthew.

“Should probably change your name,” says Baba.

“Yup.”

He made a name for himself. Now someone stole it.

Fuck.

He started to miss home where everything he dreamed of seemed to be happening.  He quit the madhouse and left the country.  In the middle of the night he bought a plane ticket to Thailand. He wasn’t ready to go home yet. There was more of the world to see.

**********************************************************************************

The day he arrived in Thailand their economy collapsed.

Which was better for Matthew than it was for the people of Thailand. Broke and on his last dollars he found himself rich.

1 US dollar traded for 78 bots. For a US dollar he could purchase a delicious meal, with all the appetizers you could ask for and a couple drinks.

He spent his time at Full Moon parties, doing lots of drugs and lots of women.  Sleepless nights followed lazy mornings, feasting on Thai cuisine. At night he howled at the moon and Thai women with pretty smiles and little English. Drunk as a man yelling out of a taxi he made legions of friends whose names he didn’t remember.

Finding himself overcome by indulgence he sought out solitude and an end to the great hangover that came with each and every morning.

One day a monk approached Matthew and asked if he could teach him English. Having little money left he agreed.

He followed the monk back to the monastery and spent three months there, waking up at 6 am to do gardening and teach the monks English before breakfast and an afternoon of collecting money in the streets. He spent his off time reading Herman Hesse, filling notebooks with poetry, listening to his Walkman and the cassette of instrumentals he took with him all those many months ago, the night of circus rides and raves.

One day the notebook was full.

He was ready to go home.

***************************************************************

My brother will freely admit that he enjoys a drink or two.  On this particular night he had a few more than a few. But he is at the Marquee, where mannequins stare down at you from the ceiling, sofas sit off to the side of the dance floor and more importantly my brother gets free drinks before he performs.

He is giddy and brimming with ADD energy. He is with his best friends in the world and they are busting his balls.

“I walk down the catwalk,” says Matthew.

He shows how he walks confidently down the catwalk smiling with his eyes, nose held up in the air defiantly.  “And then I turn.”  His dreads turn with him, adding a little Bob Marly to his modeling.

“So Matty, tell me why exactly they want to model?” asks his childhood friend Noah, aka Kunga 219.

“The big nose?” asks DJ Gordski, who many years late will run this same club.

“Nah, I think it is something else,” says Noah. “Could you tell us how you became Calvin Klein?”

He knows the punch line. They have asked him to say it half a dozen times.

“They said I looked vaguely ethnic,” says Matthew.

“Vaguely ethnic?” asks Noah.

“I appeal to everyone,” says Matthew.  “I could be Islamic, Jewish, Italian, Scottish. Anything. A mutt that everyone loves to look at.”

His friends laugh and take a deep pull from their drinks.

“So what are you fucking Raoul Macgregor, the Spanish scot?” asks Noah.

“Nah he’s Mikhail Smith, the Russian brit,” says Gordski.

“Fuck that, he’s Achmed Goldstein, the Arab Jew,” says Noah.

“Nah, he’s Joshua Martinez, the Puerto Rican Jew,” says Moves. “He’s tanned. It works. Josh.”

Matthew has never liked his first name. Everyone had it. All the way through school every class had three or four Matthew’s and he was called Kimber everywhere he went. He needs a name. This might be it.

“Outside for some herbal refreshment?” asks Noah.

The crew drunken loud agrees and heads out. They’re joined by Miles and Tachichi, both drunk out of their minds and laughing about shit that happened when they were kids.

Freestyles are kicked. Jokes are offensive and hilarious as the best jokes always are. He’s finally back with the people he grew up with and things are better than they have ever been before.

He doesn’t know it yet but he’ll spend the next ten years making music with these same friends. Touring the world, rocking shows for people who don’t even speak English with the same fucks he went to high school with.

“Get the fuck in here,” says a security guard. “Things are about to kick off. You are up first, Matty. ”

He always gets nervous before a show and he usually gets drunk. The booze calms his tornado like energy and allows him to reach the zen state he learned in the monasteries of Thailand. Only his heart is pounding in his chest. They crush cigarettes butts in their wake as they make their way to the stage, moving through the gigantic ashtray that was the Marquee of old.

Noah whispers in his ear, “The show is being broadcast live to CKDU.”

Matthew nods. “Alright.”

“Watch this,” says Noah.

Noah walks to the front of the stage and speaks into the microphone.

“And I’d like to introduce one of Nova Scotia’s finest rappers back from a long trip overseas,” says Noah.  Applause comes from the audience filled with girls from high school and friends from University.  He can see every girl he ever fell in love with staring back at him.

He’s finally home.

“Let’s give it up for Josh Martinez,” shouts Noah into the microphone.

And that’s how my brother become Matthew Edward Kimber became Josh Martinez.   Soon more will be told of the adventures of the Hispanic Jewish rap star.

Until then……….

Shalom.

THE MAKING OF A MARTINEZ#2: PORN AND PATRIOTISM

“You have two options,” explains my white haired editor.  “One, you can give us his name, and we’ll talk to him and see what we can work out.  The other is you don’t give us his name, and you lose your internship.”

“I can’t give up the name of my source,” I say, feeling a strange combination of pride and absolute terror.  I’m playing Woodward and Bernstein, and the idea of calling my source Deep Throat threatens to make me break up laughing.

In a movie, I would spit in his face, but in a movie, I wouldn’t be panicking.

“Those are your two choices.  Have you ever heard of a man named Jayson Blair, Michael?” he asks.

Being compared to Jayson Blair is just about the worst thing to a journalist.  He worked for the New York Times and resigned in 2003 for fabricating quotes and whole stories, plagiarizing other writers’ work and generally being a piece of shit.

“Yes,” I reply.  “Fuck you,” I didn’t reply.

I should have just kept my mouth shut.  All of this could have been avoided if I’d just kept my head down and written the shitty entertainment listings that had been assigned to me.  He’s doing his job as he sees fit, pursuing a good story.  You can’t tell your editor and an idea while hoping they don’t pursue it, but I was young and apparently didn’t know how to keep my mouth shut.

If he leans on me a little bit, I could easily cave, and then we could all move on.  Only I don’t like being told what to do, especially when I think I’m right.

Fuck.

“How come you won’t let us just talk to him?” he asks.

A phone number can be checked.  A name can be found.  A front page can be filled with the face of a man who doesn’t want or need the attention.

“He doesn’t want you to know who he is,” I say.

“Why not?” he asks.

“He’s read your paper, and he thinks you’ll make him look like a piece of shit,” I say.

Pause.

“Is he even real?” he asks.

“I’m offended by the implication,” I say, even though it’s not really implication.  It’s just something he said.  Awful words form and die before passing my lips.  I say again, “He doesn’t want to talk to you.  He doesn’t trust you.”

My stomach rolls, and I need to stop myself from rising to the bait.  Losing my train of thought, I think about my stomach lining, and the coffee that feels as if it is burning its way through it.  On an average morning, I wake up and vomit up bile because of my anxieties, but since I took this trip, I have been hacking up blood.  I suspect this is not going to be helping any.

“You’ve got to give me something,” he says.  “Show me his website.  You say it’s choke porn?”

He is silver haired and tongued, about my father’s age, and here we are talking about choke porn.  I nod.  He looks up choke porn on his computer while I wait to see what he finds.

“Any other helpful tips you can give?” he asks.

“It’s not only choke porn.  He does what’s called horror porn,” I say.

“Have you been to his website?” he asks.

“I was going to try to go to a taping, but no, I haven’t checked out the website,” I say.

“Why not?” he asks.

“Not really my taste,” I say.

“You weren’t curious?” he asks.

“Thought I’d wait until I did the story.”

“Take this as a lesson,” says my editor, “a good journalist is curious about everything, even horror porn.”

I want to point out what a low point this is in my journalism career but instead sit in silence thinking of what I’m going to say to my internship supervisor, what I’m going to say to my father.  I also briefly ponder if my ever-loving brother will end up ruining his very good relationship with this newspaper by punching a hole in this man’s face.

This started a couple weeks earlier over a meal of expensive macaroni and cheese and spiced alligator.  My brother was discussing yet another scheme to conquer the world of music.

“So we do magic tricks on stage,” he says. “Fucking magic tricks, Mikey.  Sleep is a magician and so is Zone.  Magic, Mikey, magic and moustache rides.”

“Sounds really cool.  I’ve never seen a rapper do that,” I say.

“We are doing tons of new shit. You’re not going to believe the next trick up our sleeve,” he says.

My brother’s live show is as ADD as he is.  When he works with Sleep as the Chicharones they begin their show with a riveting version of Eye of the Tiger, his DJ wears a pig mask, and the rest of them sport fake moustaches.  Watching Matt on the stage is a rare pleasure for me.  When I was a teenager, he smuggled me into his shows, and I knew every word.  Rarely do you get to see someone do what they were born to do, and my brother was born to perform, not to be punctual.

We’re having dinner at 10 o’clock and he said we would eat at 7.  I’m hypoglycemic and struggling not to be rude.

“Did I tell you about the shit that happened at the show?” he asks.

I notice he’s got armbands with the American flag around his wrists.  As always, he’s wearing a leather jacket and a button up shirt, claiming to have been one of the first rappers to dress pretty.

“So I was doing a show in Vancouver a couple days ago, and I thought it would be funny to cheer, ‘USA, USA, USA…’, and the motherfuckers booed me.  Then I told them I loved Portland, and they booed me again.  I wasn’t going to take it anymore. Canadians think they can shit on America for everything, fucking ridiculous.  So I got the DJ to cut the music and told them to go fuck themselves.  Shit made sense when the US had Bush, and we had Chretien, but we’ve got fucking Harper now, and we barely have that. They’ve got Obama, and we don’t even have a government.  Shit doesn’t fly anymore.”

At this time, Parliament was being prorogued, and Canadian politics was in the process of sliding into the shit hole we now find ourselves drowning in.

A girl walks by, smiles at my brother and gives him a little wave.  My eyes bulge like a cartoon character.

“Nice looking girl, Mikey.”

“Who is she?” I asked.

“That’s Thomas’s girl.  And here is Thomas,” he says.

Thomas is larger than life and he’s pretty large in general.

A bulky dude in a Stetson approaches the table with the girl in tow.  Her magnetic cleavage leaves me unprepared for a proper introduction.  Thomas has small eyes, a big face, and a general joie de vivre that makes you feel like he’s waiting for a stripper to jump out of a cake at any moment.  He hugs my brother and smiles at me.  There is something blissfully childish in Thomas, despite the fact that he’s the oldest of all my brother’s friends.  Despite his size, he jumps up and down like a little kid that needs to pee.

“How is the little Martinez?” he asks.

My name has been ‘Matt’s brother’ throughout this trip.  Thomas hasn’t known Matt that long, and as such I’ve become Mini Martinez rather than Mini Matt.

“Pretty good,” I say.

“I’m just going to go powder my nose,” says the girl.

I take a bite of spicy alligator.

“Nothing like chicken,” I say.

Both laugh.

“Good looking woman,” I say.

“Stripper,” replies Thomas.  His voice vaguely reminds me of The Dude from Big Lebowksi. “Science Major.”

Portland has 95 churches and 95 strip clubs.  Everywhere you look is a beautiful church or a girl baring her tits.

“Wants to be a movie star.  Lucky for her, I happen to be her ticket to fame and fortune.”

Once more they both laugh.

“She’s got quite the future in front of her,” says Thomas. “Unless she winds up dead…”

He doesn’t make snuff films.  Don’t worry.

“Dead?” I ask.

“Choked to death,” supplies my brother.

“I’m missing something,” I say. “You make movies?”

As an ambitious overachiever, I start thinking of the proper way of pitching my screenplay idea.  My brother shakes his head as if he can read my mind.

“Adult films, dude,” offers Thomas.

“Oh?  Choking?” I ask.

“It’s my bread and butter,” says Thomas.

“Bread and butter?” I ask.

“Whips and chains if you prefer, though that’s sort of a different genre than what I make,” he replies and chuckles.

“Choking porn?” I ask. “What is that exactly?”

My brother bursts out laughing.  I think it’s because I said choking porn like I was asking for sugar.

“It’s not choke porn specifically.  Different market,” says Thomas, sounding vaguely offended. “I make horror porn.”

“Ghost fucking,” offers my brother.

“Sometimes,” admits Thomas, with a tiny shrug.  The bartender notices Thomas.  Thomas signals for another round for the table.  “Germans are really into it, control freaks mostly.  The basic idea is boy meets girl.  Girl wears little schoolgirl outfit, secretary, whatever the cats are into… then she usually meets her end.  Sometimes sex, sometimes just killing.  Creepy German dudes get off, and I make money.  Nobody really dies.  A Lotta clothes get ruined.  It’s nearly impossible to get corn syrup out,” he complains.

According to Thomas, there’s a market of about 2,000 hardcore users of horror porn, but they’re both dedicated and wealthy freaks.  Many movies are special orders, which means wealthy business execs provide a basic sketch of what they would like to see happen, choose from a selection of models, and get script approval before the movie even begins shooting.  Thomas pulls in around 15,000 grand a month from this business, and it funds his frequent trips to Portland to see my brother and Thomas’s never ending attempt to make his blues record .

“I help girls pay for their college tuition,” he smiles.  “I’m a humanitarian.  I pay for everything my kids need.  I’d fucking die for them. ”

He often speaks this earnestly.  He has a big heart and no interlocutor between thought and speech.

“Best dude in the world,” agrees my brother.

The lengthy powder session ends, and Thomas’s girl comes back out.  Thomas is ridiculously honest and as a result begins to explain his life story in less than an hour. He also buys us round after round.

According to legend, my brother met Thomas in New Orleans during a tour long ago.  Thomas ran a small club and performed soul tunes during Open Mics.  He got my brother loaded after his show and took him to a strip club… a life long friendship was formed.  Before that… well, he did a little of everything.  He worked for Hurricane Katrina disaster relief and suffered from posttraumatic stress.  It’s here that he developed his desire to rescue people.  He doesn’t let any of his girls do drugs and makes sure they get regularly tested.  When he says he pays for their college education, he actually means it.  He offers girls more money if they’re students.

He did whale watching tours, worked for the Coast Guard, tried too many drugs, and near broke his brain getting off them.  At 45, he wishes he had concentrated on music and is constantly asking my brother to record his Blues album.  My brother always replies, ‘someday’ and begins discussing a new topic.  My brother often makes references to his record company being a good investment and Thomas debates whether choke porn would be the best investor for a small indie label.

My brother might agree with him, but the gleam in his eye often works against him.  His label has been given grants by Factor.  My brother says the system is incredible for artists, as the government helps them build their business.  Since many artists are irresponsible and use too many drugs, Factor is built around trying to make sure the money is used correctly.  It’s a business building system which funds artists’ hopes and dreams retroactively, as in they pay for their albums, and then the government pays them back half.  As a result, artists with $20,000 grants are living hand to mouth, trying to raise the money to get paid back.

Which is where Uncle Thomas comes in.  My brother has received investment from certain female adult stars interested in promoting his career.  Thomas wouldn’t be that different.  The two stay out of business together, however, in efforts to keep their friendship in tact, and Thomas is about the best friend a guy could have.

Approaching Christmas, rappers with kids don’t have enough money to buy the Christmas presents their kids want.  Thomas offers interest free loans and usually doesn’t ask for his money back.  He is the baby daddy of four children and pays child support ahead of time.

To put it plainly, Thomas is one of the most fascinating people I have ever met.  Santa Claus funded by choke porn.

Thomas said he would love to have someone tell his story, so I brought it up to my editor.  She pitched it at a general meeting. The head editor assigned it to another journalist.  Thomas didn’t trust him and didn’t want any of his information shared.  So here I was, spitting up blood and at a moral crossroads.

My dad told me that they had no legs to stand on, and that I didn’t have to back down. My brother promised to punch him in the face, despite the fact that it would fuck up his good standing with the paper.

The next day I came in.

They asked whether I had the name.

I told them that I couldn’t give it up.  I was willing to accept the loss of my internship.

He looked at me and told me that he hoped I’d learned my lesson.  I still don’t know quite what that lesson is besides never get in between a reporter and a good story.

They let me stay at my job.  For two weeks I came into work, spat up blood in the morning, and hated every minute of it.

During my time in Portland, I got to know my brother and his friends… and a little idea called Colony of Losers began to take shape.

THE MAKING OF A MARTINEZ#1:

The idea for Colony of Losers was born in Portland, Oregon during the month following Obama’s election.  It was just after the collapse of the American economy.  These were the days when Priests prayed next to pick up trucks in Detroit.  CNN reported job losses like they were sports stats.  In between all the doom and gloom were commercials for Christmas presents that most people were no longer able to afford.  California collapsed, and Arnold wasn’t strong enough to pump his state up.

Dozens of media outlets closed and my hopeful journalism career became unlikely before it even began.

For now let us dwell in the land of doom, apocalypse, and delicious barbecue.  For those of you who have never been to Portland, let me sum it up.  Every restaurant has a daily happy hour where expensive becomes affordable, art museums exist in haunted schoolhouses, left wing is mainstream and hipsters are kings, old men sell dildos, bongs, and shotguns at the same store… and all types of madness ensues.

The moment I realized Portland was a different world was when I read about a protest against homosexuality.  The two religious protestors held up a sign that read, “God Hates Fags”.  A counter-protest of 200 held up signs that said, “God Hates Morons”.  The city’s motto is, “Keep Portland Weird”.

I was home.

Equipped with Hunter S Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, I was ready to carry Hunter’s twisted flag of hope into the land of doom and bury the sharp end in the crotch of the oppressor.  All I needed was a story.

Drinking cups of coffee next to tattered remnants of bacon and egg breakfasts, I kept my ears open.  I heard a woman rage about her recent dismissal from her job due to her inability to handle the requirements of the work.  Her inability to meet said requirements was due to her recent diagnosis of cancer.  As such, she couldn’t be expected to work to her potential.  As a newbie journalist I didn’t think to get her name or ask where she worked.  My first opportunity had already slipped out of my hands.

So I did what any good journalist/socially awkward person would do.  I listened everywhere I went.  On the buses, I stared into surveillance cameras, listened to old ladies talk about the ruinous price of healthcare, young junkies talk about where they would get their next fix, and beautiful ladies discuss getting laid.  High on coffee and Emergen-C (a vitamin replacement), I kept my ears open and my knees knocking.

Nothing.  It would be awhile before I found the story I was seeking.  Until then, my visit had another purpose; I was going to reconnect with my brother.

His name is Josh Martinez.  He is a little shorter than me, a little skinnier and looks like a Jewish version of my Aryan self.  My eyes are blue, his are brown, my hair is straight and blonde, his is curly, brown dreidel-locks.  His voice is almost identical to my own, much of which can be attributed to mannerisms I picked up from him as a child.  Back when he was my hero, and I was his favourite torture victim.  He is my brother and he is a rap star.

Most children are picked on by their older siblings, and my brother was gifted with an extraordinary imagination.  Highlights of this include the family trip to Toronto where my sister and brother explained to me that there had been many brothers and sisters before me, but they had been killed by ingenuous methods when they ceased to be of any use to the family.  At the motel, they drowned a brother named Tommy in a hot tub.  Then there was Jimmy and the hot air balloon incident.

After showing me a brief clip of Friday the 13^th, my brother invited all his friends over to enact a horror movie where step by step each of them got killed.  Hiding in the corner of my basement, after witnessing the death of my sister and my brother’s friends, it was calmly revealed to me that it was all a prank.  Years later I find this funny.

He picks me up at the airport in a beaten up shit-tank, destined to die in less than a year.  His trademark dreads are gone and his handsome face exists behind a background created by a mangled mullet he calls hair.  His leather jacket, stylish sunglasses, and jeans contrast with my ill-fitting, blue, button-up shirt and undone belt.  He was once asked to become a model because he looks vaguely ethnic, as he could pass for pretty much any ethnicity with his deeply tanned Mediterranean skin. Women are attracted to his wired up energy. I have the same wound up energy but from me it seems like I need to get laid.  He is the Will, and I’m the Carlton.  He is the rapper, and I’m the journalist.  He travels the world, and this is my first time out of Nova Scotia for more than a few weeks.

“How you doing, Mikey?” he asks.  He’s trying to charm me, and I can tell because he’s using my charming voice, which I guess I learned from him.

He is the only one in the world who calls me Mikey, and I feel the years falling out from under my feet.

“Pretty good, pretty good.  How’s my famous brother?” I ask.  I use the charming voice too.

“Hopeful,” he says. “Big things, Mikey, big things.  How’s the book?”

I give him a long rambling summary, and he likes the right things and has the right questions.  We are on the road, and the air tastes fresh.  I can almost forget the amount of times I was advised at the airport to watch my luggage.  It’s sprinkling.  In Portland when it rains, it is a day of the week.  The city is located inside of a rainforest.

“Getting excited to get back into the real world?” he asks.

I groan.  This is a man who made a song called Bermuda Shorts with the line: “Divorced from the work force, I am I be, free at 23”.

“Not quite yet. Hopefully the book can keep me from having to do that for too long,” I say.  He smiles.  He knows what its like to be young, talented, and think that’s enough.  For now, he’s willing to let me keep my illusions.

“Don’t worry Mikey,“ he says, “You’ll make it happen.  Just expect that you are going to fail a lot before you succeed.  But that’s all right.  You don’t know yourself until you fall on your face a bit.  I fell on my face a lot.  Still pretty though.  That’s just the Kimber genes,” he says. “Did I tell you my latest plan?”

He always has a little gleam in his eye when he talks about future plans to conquer the world, and there is always a new plan.

It’s been about ten years since we spent a substantial amount of time together, and both of us are wondering how well my month and a half stay on his couch will turn out.

There is a lot you should probably know about my brother. One is that his actual name is Matthew Kimber.  Josh Martinez is his stage name.  He flies around the world, rapping and singing his way into the hearts of strangers.  His life necessitates months on the road and puts distance between him and the people he loves most.

He has done a lot of things that most people will never do, such as open for De La Soul, tour Europe and Japan, play festival shows for thousands, start a record label and have the number one rap record in Canada for three months running.  That’s Josh Martinez: the man, the myth, the legend.

Then there’s Matthew Kimber. He lost the love of his life to years on the road and the strain it put on their relationship.  Months away and weeks at home followed by months away again, a business life without the  business hours.  His genius sense of rhythm and mastery of the moment can get lost in his untreated Attention Deficit Disorder.  On the road he is treated as a god, and at home he has difficulty making authentic connections because so few people know the difference between Josh and Matthew.

We pull up to his house, briefly ceasing our battle to charm one another to take bong hits with his roommates.

The weed is good in Portland, and despite my lack of sleep, I manage to make his roommates laugh, and not just because I hack my lungs out when I take the first pull.

At the time he lived in a small artistic commune next to his best friend Sleep (Chris Tafoya), Sleep’s kid, and his beautiful, pregnant wife, Rayne.  My brother gets his taste of family vicariously through Sleep, playing with his son Ezra, taking on the role of favorite uncle.  He lives with two other rappers and they all work together at Camobear Records.  They are all big personalities and have big dreams.

They have been grinding for years, always on the edge of making that big move that will make them into household names.  When they are on the cusp, the music industry collapses.  No one is going to do it for them so they fumble, fuck up, and do it themselves.

They tour the world, but they can’t afford a mortgage.  Living a life that is every child’s dream, but still they struggle to be men.  Hundreds of thousands listen to their music on the daily, and as a result of downloads, they make little money from album sales and most of their cash on the road.

This was my brother’s own Colony of Losers, talented as hell, smart as fuck, and grinding cogs in a machine that was slowly falling apart.  Over the next few months, we will learn the story of Josh Martinez, his ups and downs, successes and failures, and war to be free at 23 and free from being 23.  You’ll meet my brother as we became closer than ever before, when I fell on my face and needed someone to help me get up again.

But before all that, you must be introduced to a pornographer and hear the story that almost ruined my journalistic career.

Check out more of Michael’s work at his website COLONY-OF-LOSERS.COM