One Judo Chop Mother

Black Gi Bitch, Hai-Yah!

“Did you Judo chop him?” she asked, sticking out her bony little hand and chopping at the air with her knuckles bending back.  A real chick chop.

“No, I clapped him on the ear with a glass bar ashtray.  Besides, there’s no chopping in Judo,” I told her, “There’s no judo chop.”

“How do you know?”

“Oh, I know…Judo.  I took it as a kid,” I told her.

“I didn’t know you studied Judo.”

“Yeah, it’s just one more of the wonderful surprises about me that keep unfolding in a cascading cavalcade of wonder.”

She was lucky to be with me.  I wish she could see that.  I took a swig of my beer and finished it.  I got up and got another.

“What color belt did you get?”

“It doesn’t matter, that shit was worthless,” I cracked the beer, sat down on my mattress and put a heel up on the milk crate, “Fighting dirty is the only thing that works.  Trust me.”

Even my occasional reader might deduce by now that my life has had its share of physical encounters.  Some pleasant.  Others not so much.  I piled my plate high with both types, then splashed myself in the face with it all.  What can I say?  I’m a pig beast.  A repentant one, if that counts for anything.  Semi-repentant.

No bad-ass, I.  A more craven and fearful creature you would not find.  So it was especially hilarious that such a coward would find himself in the middle of so many angry and violent physical encounters with other men.  A certain cinematic masterpiece featuring Don Knotts as The Shakiest Gun in The West, comes to mind.

A fearful little bookworm, easily bullied, constantly humiliated, I withdrew deeper into my own terrible mind.  I wanted to avoid people, at all costs.  Summer camps, youth outings, team sports, dances, anywhere my peers gathered filled me with dread.  So many more of you to deal with, or better yet, run from.  Snot-wiping, ball-kicking, name-calling, nose-punching, tangerine-slice-down-on-bench-before-you-sit-down barbarians.

So I met the news that my parents had enrolled me in Judo classes at the Camarillo Community Center with less enthusiasm than perhaps another lad might have.  Sure I wanted to learn how to Judo chop off the heads of my tormentors.  Or kick them so hard in the nuts that they lodge in the throat and choke them.  But, I figured that learning that stuff would require having it done to me.  Or it would just somehow wind up happening to me.  All the time.  That’s how things rolled those days.

I needn’t have worried.  The Judo taught at the Camarillo Community Center was of the “for recreational purposes only” variety.  There was to be no ball-chopping or throat-kicking.   The classes were conducted, more or less safely, by a ringer for Sulu, named Mr. Nishimori.  He worked at the juvenile hall facility, and seemed like a guy who could fuck you up fast.  He was nimble and quick.  He’d announce the flip, then in a blur, the dude he picked to help demo, was flat on his ass.

He did all this in his office clothes.  I’d watch him demonstrate flips in his nylon dress slacks and thin brown socks, a pocket full of change constantly jingling as he’d pivot and spin.  It looked impressive, but weird too.  It was strange seeing him flipping dudes, while in his slacks and brown stinkies, clinking change and keys swinging in his ball pocket.  Some sort of civil servant bad-ass.

The rest of us had to wear Judo Gis.  I never approved of the Judo version, basically a white, heavy cloth pajama.  The Bay City Roller length of the pants, the white color, and generally dorky and harmless look just didn’t imply enough of a martial art threat.  I preferred something a little more sinister.  Something in black, with a more ninja assassin cut.  I would have to wait years, when I started Kenpo Karate, which did feature ball-chopping and throat-kicking, before I got to wear a cool black Gi.

What the fuck.  You play the hand you’re dealt.

We spent a lot of time learning how to forward roll.  It was sort of an aggressive somersault followed by a hard hand slap on the mat.  I didn’t know why it was considered so important, but over and over we would roll and slap.  All the kids waiting in line for our turn to tumble.  Sometimes we even had to Evel Knievel over two crouching classmates.  I just didn’t get it.  How is this going to help me in a fight?

Turns out, learning how to take a tumble was one of the most important things I ever learned.  No fucking way I would have made it through life without the forward roll.

Turns out Marko was taking the same Judo class during that time.  We didn’t know each other back then.  We figured it out one night, years later, when we were drinking at his pad.  Although his ability to safely tumble forward should have been a big clue, I didn’t know he was a fellow former Judo enthusiast.  It was only when I had asked him if he ever heard my story about how I ran into a guy that had pissed his pants in my Judo class 20 years earlier and how I made sure to remind him of it.

“Hold on, dude,” he says, “In Mr. Nishimori’s Judo class?  I remember that.  Mr. Garcia cleaned it up using his foot and a bunch of wadded up paper towels.  I was there!”

Fuck yeah.  That’s why it was so great hanging out with Marko.  Wonderful surprises were always unfolding from him in a cavalcade of cascading wonder.  We figured that it was more than likely we had actually fought against each other.  That did it.  Both of us talked shit about how we must have beat down the other into being our bitch.  What an amazing preamble to our friendship.  I’ll be damned.  The Universe exists.

I asked him if he remembered how Friday nights were.  He nodded.  “They blew dong, dude.”

The worst part of going to Judo was when class landed on Friday night.  Us little kids would have to run a gauntlet of older teen-types that were hanging around The Armadillo, the teen center the city hoped would curb juvenile delinquency–curb it by giving them a headquarters equipped with pool tables, pinball machines, and a bank of pay phones.

Kids would be outside the teen center huffing solvents and smoking joints.  Their long hair parted down the middle, headband optional, shell necklace not.  Marlboro Reds (hardpack only) dangling from their mopey mouths.  The girls reeking of patchouli, had tooled leather purses, and hair ironed straight and flat, then feathered back. They wore flared hip-hugger pants, cork wedgies and eye shadow and assumed a jaded facial expression common among old hookers, and women awaiting execution.  The guys wore surf t-shirts, low-riding 501s, and either leather Wallabees or Waffle-Stomper hiking boots.  All that, along with the same sullen, vacant look that was de regueur at the time.  A sort of pastoral, almost bovine countenance that belied a simple-mindedness, but not without a sense of menace.

Then there was me, in something that looked like a robe cut out for a gingerbread man, with flood pants and flip-flops, trying to flap through the crowd as fast and invisible as possible.  You know, really doing The Hurry.  I had to book it fast before some scary older kid jumped in front of me in a karate stance to clown me in front of his laughing friends.  It was something those dudes just had to do.  It was part of some unwritten social contract in ’70s suburban hooliganism.

Dance nights were the worst.  The  Teen Center would be teeming with these sagging sack, dope-smokers and their whore girlfriends.  The ones I loved more than life itself.  My dad would drive me up to the curb, and I’d pause before opening the door.  I’d do this thing where I would pretend that I was jumping out into a hot LZ, like I had just been choppered out into a rice paddy and now had to make it to the tree line before the mortars sighted in on me.  Really.

“Roger, Wizard 5, we are down.  Time to beat our boots through Cong country. I’m out!”

“I’ll pick you up right here.”

“Roger that, Daddy One-niner, fly this bird back safe.”

Slam the door and hustle.  Quickly, but not too quick.  Can’t just flap out of the bush like a quail.  Just maintain a steady forward movement, eyes locked three feet down in front.  Every step is one closer to safety.  The treeline.  “Though I walk in the shadow of the valley or the valley of the shadow…”

One night, while I was trying to teleport myself through the crowd as an invisible mist, I felt a sharp chop against the back of my neck.  It was one of the loady-stoner hard guys giving me the Hai-Karate bit for the amusement of the other Visigoths waiting in line.  He was just fucking around, but the chop hurt, and scared me into an involuntary cowering.  Everyone laughed.

“Watch out, now, he’ll use some of his Kah-rah-tay on you, Roy!”

“Hai-yah! Motherfucker!” some dude joined in, feinting a chop.

Somebody else yelled out, “Everybody was Kung Fu fighting!”

More laughter.  I stood frozen in fear, my fellow judo enthusiasts breaking right and left, swinging wide to avoid the enemy contact.

The worst was when some chick yelled out, “Hey, leave the little kid alone!  He’s really scared!”

That’s when I started crying.  Before that, I was just scared, but when that chick tried to call off the dogs, because it was so obvious how terrified I was, I lost it.  I was already embarrassed, but now that I was crying, I was really embarrassed, and that made me cry harder.  It was a vicious cycle of suck.

There was also something about the chick being nice, among all that meanness, that got to me.  Mercy always chokes me up.  Even to this day.  If I witness somebody doing something merciful, I crack.  Tight pain in the throat.  Eye’s bulging with sadness sauce.  Heart stroked like a viola.

Being on the receiving end of some of that mercy, sort of made me feel sorry for myself.  Now I was being seen as a crybaby in front of all these cool people.  I ran right out of my flip-flops in my flight towards the judo room.  I found a corner and wiped the snot and tears away.  I had to suck it up, and play like nothing happened.  Hoping nobody would remember this supreme embarrassment. (Irony Alert!)

We spent the rest of the night waltzing around the blue and tan mats with each others lapels in our grip, trying to flip and pin each other, then once more, we took turns rolling forward.  I did so with a little more intensity, a little more drive for achieving some excellence in this rough and tumble forward business.  I even pinned out this taller red-haired kid with freckles and bad breath.  Nut-crackered his neck in the crook of my arm and squeezed.  Okay Red…you…go…down!

(Hang on, I need to drive my search-engine count up)

Yes, a boy with freckles on his face, as opposed to a young woman with sexy freckled breasts.  Freckled breasts. Yes, how about ’em?  Those freckled boobs.  Freckled breasts are a different thing than a freckled face.  Freckled breasts are breasts that are freckled. That’s why they’re called freckled breasts.

(That should do it.  Gotta throw those guys a bone.  Long story.  Google freckled breasts)

Besides learning how to break my fall,  Judo taught me something else.  Something every man should know.  Bitches will fuck you up.

We had girls in our class, and if you thought I had some sort of chip on my shoulder, you should Judo fight a woman, and see what kind of pent-up anger she has to tap into.  These chicks weren’t just trying to throw your ass to the floor, but the ass of every man who had ever bossed, bullied, or belittled them.  Even by nine, most girls already had a death list.

“I read the kite, bro. A la verga, your name is on the list, ese.”

It was nervy doing  Judo with girls.  Any attempts at chivalry on the guy’s part were seen as cheap pandering, you perceiving them as a weaker sex.  They made sure you paid for it.  This was during the 70’s.  Women were starting the revolution without us.  The girls in our class weren’t putting up with any horny horseplay either.  They’d kick your fucking legs out and leg-scissor your throat closed.  Lights out, Romeo.

For the record, I think it’s perfectly fine to underestimate a woman.  You just have to be willing to pay the price.

One Saturday, I was enrolled in one of them Judo Tournamental events.  Big deal.  Lots of people, mostly families.  My dad was there, with his camera.  It was awful.  Usually, I would have been happy to have gotten out of there without crying or pissing my pants.  But that day, I was on a hot streak.  I don’t know what was going on, but I was flipping and pinning dudes left and right.  I kept advancing and racking up points.  I couldn’t believe it.

I beat five guys in a row.  This kind of shit just didn’t happen to me.  From my feverish calculations I was in the running for a trophy.  In fact, all I had to do was take my next opponent to a draw.  In that tourney, the tie went to the runner, and the person who had fought previously would advance.  Hell, I was beating these dudes, and now all I had to do was tie, and I would win a trophy!  I had never won a trophy before.  Not even a lame one for penmanship or posture.  For once, my Dad being there with his camera seemed okay.

Ham on cheese, this was going to be sweet.

Why was I so sure I could tie?  Because I noticed that my next opponent was a girl.  She was a cute, short, slightly chubby, Filipino chick.  She looked like she was nice.  As we stood facing each other before the match, my eyes looked into hers.  “Don’t worry,” they said, “I’ll be gentle.”

We bowed to each other.  The referee yelled “Hajime!”  We grabbed each other by the lapels.  Perhaps I did it a little roguishly, after all, I was the victorious conqueror.  Feeling very Marius the Great, I thought, “What good is war without spoils to ravish?  What good is Victory without a wench and her sweet wine?”

She looked up and smiled.

Hey, I think she like’s me.

She leaned back, put her foot into my solar plexus, then rolled backwards, launching me like a sack of rocks from a Trebuchet.  The successful flip was called.  I lost the match in less than six seconds, to a girl.  Now that was the kind of shit happened to me.  Back to normal.

I went home that night without a trophy, but I did get a new metaphor, one that would repeat itself throughout my life.  Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you.  Smile.  I think she likes me.  Foot in the gut.  On my back, destroyed in utter defeat.  Again and again.

It was my first lesson in an eternal truth.  Bitches will fuck you up.  So proceed with complete reckless abandon.  It will totally be worth it.  I want a trophy!

It’s 1996, and I’m sitting at a red light.  I look over to the other lane and see a dude, I recognize.  Hey, that’s the guy that pissed his pants in Judo class, almost 20 years ago.  I lean over and get him to roll down the window.  “Hey, you’re the guy that pissed his pants in Judo!”  I yell.  I was figuring to blow his mind, you know, that some random guy would remember him and then remind him of a moment he buried deep into the moldy folds of his medulla.  Freak him out that a witness still remembers.  It was a total dick move on my part, one I paid for with enough karmic drunken pants-pissing to let me remind that same guy again, in another life, and still be square.

Anyway, Judo turned out to be somewhat beneficial.  Not as useful as Kenpo, but it got me used to physically mixing it up with other kids, to be a little bit less of a pussy about physical combat, however watered-down the version.  Win, lose, draw, at least I was participating in something.  And if a fight ever went to the ground (and they always do) I would at least have some idea of what to do.  Just roll forward.  Preferably out the front door of the bar and into your car so you could hit the liquor store before they stop selling.

Hai-Yah!  Judo chop, motherfuckers!

Who’s the bitch now?

Gulags and Kitty Cats

Just sitting here digging life.

I’m trying not to get into pacing and hand-wringing mode, but one of my cats, Bugsy, has been gone for a day and a half.  I’m worried that he’s gotten into a fight or been killed by a car.  Big tough guy scared about his kitty cat.  God, if people knew.  They must never know.  I hate this shit.  It’s my karma for what I did to my folks.  I just have to trust his little kitty higher power is looking out, and distract myself as best as I can.

I’m on-line with Dave, and we’re talking about Mikhail Dyomin’s book, The Day is Born of Darkness.  We both get a kick out of thinking about life in the Soviet Prison system.  I don’t know why.  Maybe because it was so brutal, that it makes our regular shitty days seem down right paradisaical.  Not like we need to look in books for examples of brutal living.  We both can draw on our own past experiences.  Dave a lot more than me.  Fucker was not just some dilettante dabbling in brutal, like me, but a clock-punching, licensed journeyman worker at it, most of his whole life.

Anyway, the minute he messaged me something about the book, I was on Amazon getting a collector’s quality copy.  Are you kidding?  Dudes that make playing cards out of pressed bread that they paint with soot and drops of blood.  Oh yeah.  If you’re a connoisseur of misery like Dave and I, you know you can’t beat the Russians.  They are masters of melancholy.  The average Russian store clerk lives a life sadder and more tragic than anything in Bronte, or Celebrity Rehab.  However, throw one them into a Siberian prison, and see what kind of gloom oozes out.  A high-grade, pharmacological-quality depressant.

I read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s, One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich, when I was a kid.  I loved transporting myself into a distant Siberian labor camp, and really imagining how awful it must have been.  I used to do that so that when it came time to go to school, I could trudge with the fatal resolve of a Soviet prisoner.  Perhaps stopping by the window to wonder, “How long will the desolation of the endless tundra haunt my dreams?  How long before a fire or friend?  Mocked by the raven, hunted by the wolves, my heart hangs freeze-dried on the barbed wire of 6th grade.”

I get up from the computer and walk outside to see if Bugsy is around.  I don’t go out there and yell “Bugsy! Bugsy! Bugsy!”  It seems too desperate.  I make my girlfriend do that.  Instead, I send telepathic messages that he should get his furry little ass home for some dinner and a nap.  Then I pray to St. Francis to protect him.  Why does he do this to me?  Is he so self-absorbed in Tom-catting around the town, that he can’t even check in and let us know he’s alright?

A bigger cat moved into the neighborhood recently.  A big blonde beast.  I call him Boris.  Boris the Beast.  Bugs and him have gone at it a couple of times now, and once he came home with a tuft of fur missing and a big cut across his nose.  Bugsy is all street cat.  He loves it out there.  I don’t blame him.  That’s where the action is.

Except for a family of raccoons, he’s had the run of the ‘hood all to himself.  Now this cat moves in, and I get the feeling that Bugsy is just looking for trouble with this bigger cat, to prove something.  Prove something to Boris, and prove something to himself.

I don’t know why I think that.

“Do you think he’s okay?” I ask Lori.

“He’s fine,” she says.  I scrutinize the timber in her voice for any hidden anxiety.  She seems confident.  I’ll hang on to that.

I go back on-line, Dave has cut and pasted the lyrics to No River To Take Me Home, by Neurosis.

Digging a hole so I can rest
No tears from no river to take me home
The stones in my way, roots to the core
Of a rising sun falling through
the wind to the soil

As my body leaves me
I cling to a tree in a dream
I’m screaming to you
Whatever comes through me I will be.

Well… that’s kind of downer, I think.  But, I don’t diss a good downer. It’s a good song to sing on the transport train north to the General Dispersion Center, where you get processed, and then sent to your separate time-share gulag resort.  A sad little ditty to croak while the other convicts gnaw on dried crusts of bread, and long for the wheat fields of the Ukraine, their bitter tears turning into frozen stones that roll off their dirty cheeks.

At least, Louie is hanging around close by.  He’s had a big week.  Killed two bats, and two mice in a 72 hour period.  Dave called it a serial-killing spree.  He really got his predator on.  It surprises me, because Louie doesn’t look like a killer.  While Bugsy is scarred, sleek and lean, Louis is puffy and fancy.  He has a tail like one of those feathers in a Musketeer’s cap.  His fur foofs around his neck, giving him a fancy collar like Sir Walter Raleigh.  I always worry that he’ll get picked on by the other cats for looking like a little dandy.  I’m pretty sure this little outburst of violence is him compensating for the fact that he looks like a sissy.

I don’t know why I think that.

I get a Hansen’s Diet Ginger Ale and sit back down at the monitor.  Lori is watching some reality thing about a bunch of Amish kids that leave the rez and head out to New York City.  Hoo boy.  That town tore me a new one, and I was a native New Yorker, and slightly more streetwise then a wide-eyed Amish bumpkin.  I can’t believe the producers are doing this.  Real life Hunger Games.  We have become the modern Romans, enjoying the spectacle of throwing Christians to the lions.  It’s absurd.

“Did you know there are Amish prison gangs?” I ask her.

She just nods.  She thinks I’m fucking with her.

“I’m serious.  Dave said when he was doing time in Pennsylvania, there was Amish dudes there who had been busted for cooking meth.  He says all lot of them started out cultivating weed, but later set up labs because they were more lucrative.  Of course some are going to get busted and go to prison.  Dave said they all hang out together in the joint, and whah-lah!  There’s your Amish prison gang.  Neat huh?”

“Amish.  Were growing pot and making meth.  Isn’t that against their beliefs?”

“Who knows?  Maybe if they don’t use electricity for like grow lights and stuff.  And I’m sure you could set up a meth lab without using demon electricity. You know, cook the dope down on hibachis and shit.”

She shakes her head.  I can tell she doesn’t want to believe it.  She’s got this idealized, cozy-comfy version of Amish people she wants to hang on to.  Doesn’t want to believe they can get fucked up like the rest of us.  Well, I can’t let this go.  Time to riff.

“Oh, what a quaint little store you have here!   What a beautiful hand-carved wooden rocking horse.   Heavens, such a lovely kerosene lamp, and look at these baskets!  The workmanship.  Can I take a look at that butter churner?  Oh, while you’re at it, we’d also like a 1/4 of Purple Buddha Sky and an 8-Ball of White Line Fever.”

She tries not to smile, but I saw.  I turn back to the monitor and don the headphones satisfied.  The Pod shuffles out some Billy Childish.  The Day I Beat My Father Up.

Dave has messaged.  He tells me he’s finished his latest post and want me to check it out.  I click over to WordPress.  I dig his work.  He’s got a lot of gnarly tales.  His blog is called The Sun Burns Cold.  He writes about a lot of stuff, but I especially enjoy the street stories, his adventures in the shooting dens, crash pads, rehabs, insane asylums, squat flops, jails, prisons, and half-way houses he’s gotten to visit.  You know, all the little stops along the happy journey of life.  He’s interspersed that life with seeing some of the most amazing live music, during a truly seminal era.

Dave chronicles that era well.  Boots on the ground reportage.  Intrepid war correspondent, in the middle of the shit.  His matter-of-fact style gives his stories an elegant sadness.  He’s a maniac, but a talented, intelligent, and insightful one.  He may also be a weensy world-weary.

From homeless gutter punk in Seattle to doing an eight year bit for robbery, Dave’s had a rough ride.  The needle and the drink insured he got his share of action and adventure.  Today he’s staying clean and sober, washing dishes in a restaurant, and writing.  Dave can write.  He’s a machine.  He’s up until dawn hammering it out.  It doesn’t matter what kind of bullshit sandwich his day has served him, he writes.  He used to put out a punk rock ‘zine while behind bars.

That tells me something.  Aside from having the talent, it tells me he’s got the disciple to become great.

However, a week doesn’t go by that he doesn’t suddenly decide to quit writing altogether.  Hell, me too.  I think that comes with the turf.  Nothing we write will make a difference.  Nobody is really reading it.  We suck.  Who are we trying to kid?  With everything we’ve revealed about ourselves, we’ll never be able to run for public office or be hired by a successful corporation.

At least that’s something good that’s come out of it.  We take turns talking each other down from the ledge like that.  Two alcoholics talking.

I know he can’t quit writing.  I mean he can quit, but he’s powerless to stay quit.  He’s a writer, regardless of his protests and denials to the contrary.  He actually writes me these missives on all the reasons why he’s not a writer.  Long, eloquent, well-formed treatises why.  They’re very convincing.  And really good writing.  I, on the other hand, can quit anytime I want to.  I just don’t want to… right now.

Okay, I kind of do now.  Seriously.  It just hit me.  Fuck, I’m the middle of this piece.  Okay, as soon as I’m done dealing with this shit, I’ll hang it up.  For good.  It really isn’t worth it.

Anyway, it’s good to have made a bro in Dave.  A fellow escapee from the mutant zoo.  I always look forward from hearing from him.  It doesn’t matter what kind of mood he’s in, because whatever it is, he communicates it well, and we always wind up sharing a laugh.  I enjoy that.  I can cut people all kinds of slack for their moods.  I’ve been known to get moody now and then.  Once or twice.  So I think I understand a little about the human condition.

Not from being one, mind you, but from reading about it in books.

If you are pissed off, I figure you’re going to be pissed off no matter what, at least for a while.  If I run in with pep squad outfit on and start clapping and fist-pumping a cheer to rally you, I’m just going to add myself to that list of things you’re pissed off at.  Fuck that.  I’ll hang outside the blast zone until the rocks and shrapnel pitter pat to a stop.  Then if you need help picking through the rubble for any valuables, I’m around, dig?

Too many people can’t stand to be around somebody that’s feeling bad.  They hurry and try to fix it, and when that doesn’t work, both people just wind up getting pissed at each other.  You have to be able to sit with someone’s misery, hurt, or pain.  Just be there with them.  As much as you might want to squirm out, you sit there and share it with them.  Let it run it’s course.  If you allow them to fully express what’s bothering them, and offer no resistance, or get defensive, they wind up coming up with answers on their own.

The fact that you didn’t run off when things got un-fun speaks volumes for your commitment to the friendship.  Then everybody can cheer.

I hear a scratching at the door.  Oh, you little fucker!  If I wasn’t so happy to see him, I would kill him.  Louie’s happy to see Bugs, too.  He is burying his nose in Bugsy’s ass.   I don’t know what I think about that.  Bugsy heads to the kitchen.  Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I know.  Chow time.

I have to go through this whole big ritualistic production to feed him.  First, I have to get him a clean bowl.  He doesn’t like it when there’s old dry cat food still in the bowl.  It has to be in a clean bowl.  I also have to make a big deal about shaking the bag, and loudly sprinkling the new dry food.  That gets him figure-eighting between my legs.  They I have to open a new can of wet food, making a big deal about popping the lid.  I have to fork the wet food into the dry and mix it, but just a little.  He doesn’t like it too mashed up.  Seriously.

If I leave out any of those steps, or say, just spoon out some wet onto some old dry, he’ll just look at it, then look up at me, and keep looking.  The look says it all.  “So that’s it?  Just shovel out some shit and throw it down?  Like I’m some kind of animal?”  He’ll wind up eating it, but with that neck-rolling, shoulder-shrugging attitude.  Major guilt trip.

Tonight I don’t mind putting a towel over one arm, using the china, the silver, letting him smell the cork.  I’m just happy he’s back.  I watch him and Louie tuck into their bowls with the satisfaction of an indulgent Jewish mother.  He has a new scratch, but he’s okay otherwise.  I feel a big weight lift.  Thanks St. Francis.  Good looking out.

After they eat, I go back to the computer.  I could hear them rough-housing upstairs.  Big fucking racket.  It sounds like they’re dragging a couch down the hall.  Now they’re building shelves.  Big crash.  I think that was the vacuum cleaner coming down the stairs.  Yeah, it was.

“Hey you two! Fucking cool it up there!”

They love to go at it.  Just for fun.  Just fighting each other for the sheer joy of it.

Hmm.

I start reading Dave’s new piece.  It’s a prison one.  My favorite.  This one’s about when he played bass in a band while he was locked up.   That is so punk rock, I can’t stand it.  Life is good.

We never do anything bad.

Like Sand Through An Hour Glass, The Days Of No-Strings Sex…

Pokey and Aurie were trying to sweat me out.  They weren’t about to leave me alone with her.  Not as long as they each thought they had a crack.  It was getting late, Sunday night, and everybody had work in the morning.  Or at least I did, and that’s all that mattered.  The shitty bottle of wine they brought was long gone, and now everybody was subsisting off my largess.  My Sunday beer.  It was killing me.

Go home you lousy leeches.  Go home and vaporize into non-existence.  Just fold into some passing parallel dimension.  Hang out in quantum possibility for an aeon or three.  My beer is almost all gone because of you two fucks.

“Whose ready for another beer?” I asked, getting up.

“I’ll take another one,” everybody said.  Everybody in the entire world.   I winced, but my back was turned.

“Some more of my beer, coming right up!” I announced.  A little pissiness leaked through the pants of my facade.   I was hamstrung.   I couldn’t call these two couch mushrooms out as blood-suckers in front of the chick.  Not so early in the seduction process.   I would look like a petty alcoholic.  She’d get to see that part of me later.  Hopefully much.  This was no time to sandwich board it.

Besides, they might make a case for being Even-Steven because of the Two Buck Chuck they spotted earlier.  Like that counts.  I hate wine.

I looked at my watch.  33 more minutes before Owl Liquors closed.  The rail was coming down.  Should I just drive to the store now?  I have a sneaking suspicion I’m going to wind up having to spot a whole new party package myself, and with the arrival of lots more beer, I’ll never get rid of the Toad Stool Twins.  I can try to wait them out a little longer.  I’ll give them sixteen more minutes.  I rolled my shoulders and cracked my neck.

“I really have to pee!” Bobbi informed us.  Well alright.  She pushed herself out of her lotus, brushed the cracker crumbs off her jeans and walked to the bathroom through our little dude triangle.

“Excuse me, guys.”

We all checked her out.  Nice butt-cheekage.  Two big melons straining the seams of her jeans.  Our shifty eyes caught each other looking so we turned away.

“Cool chick.”

“Yeah, she is.”

Bobbi had moved to Santa Fe from Providence, Rhode Island, which made her kind of exotic.  She was a little crunchy, and a little grungy.  She was Crungey or Grutchy.  No make-up, air-dried hair, torn jeans and thrift store sweater type.  She did sport a personal Kryptonite in the form of cat glasses, and you can tell beneath all the woodsy, wholesome burlap and denim, she had a burlesque stripper’s body dying to get out.  That was not going to happen with three dudes sitting around drinking beer.  I’m sure it happens, but not in the dimensions that I tend to frequent.

“So you guys have to get up early for a landscaping gig tomorrow?  Or, are you free to party on?”

They looked at each other.

“We don’t do landscaping,” Pokey said.

“That’s right, ” I said, looking at my watch.  Eleven more precious minutes left.  We heard the toilet flush, and looked at each other.  Uh-oh.  I could tell they were both in it to win it.  I just better go get some beer now.  This is going to be a long night.

She came out and smiled at us.  She went back to her pillow, sat down, and crossed her legs.

Is it even worth it?  She’ll just wind up hating you anyway.  Everything winds up rotting.  This whole game is rigged against us.  Death is our only true relief.

“Are you okay?” she asked me.

“Oh yeah, I was just wondering if maybe I should make another beer run.”

Everyone agreed that was a great idea.  Yes?  Great idea?  Not so great that anybody reached for their wallet.  Fuck it.  I break.  Lost this battle, but the war rages on.  Double down on victory in the Kursk salient.

I got up.  My death ray was in full effect as I looked at the two urchins avoiding my eyes.  Can’t penetrate into their souls if they don’t look.  Sneaky fuckers.

“Be right back, guys.”

“Let’s burble some herbal,” one of them said, as I closed the door behind me.

I walked out to my car.  No muffler.  The roar set off car alarms when I drove past.  Sometimes, like now, it felt good.  Sometimes it was just embarrassing.  The clerks at Owl used to laugh about hearing me all the way from Maynard.  Ha-ha.  I pay your rent.  Show a little respect.  A little awe.

I drove up to the window.  It was the old lady.  She looked like an apple doll.

“EEEEEEEE! Crazy huero is here!  We were talking that we could hear you–”

“A case of MGD bottles, and two 40s of Old English. Throw in a shot of Dark Eyes, tambien…por favor!”

I had no time for idle chit-chat.  Those two back there are probably filling her in on all kinds of information she hadn’t received clearance on.  Homo Todd’s Halloween party, The St. John’s Incident, any number of open mike nights, the Dread Zeppelin show, Soul Asylum at UNM.  Just a whole bunch of information she didn’t need to process just yet.

I didn’t mean to, but I peeled out from the window.  The tires were bald enough.  They didn’t need the abuse.  Like anything did.  It just seemed like when I got uptight, I would naturally scatter that shit wherever I doth roam.

My roaming took me on to St. Francis then a right up Alameda.  I cracked one open and murdered half.  Threw the cap out the window, and killed the rest.  Tucked the empty under my seat, and hand signaled a left turn.  I fished a butt out of the ashtray and sparked it.  I was feeling a little better.

I was grateful that the State of New Mexico had come to it’s senses about allowing package liquor sold on Sundays.  When I heard it was official, you would’ve thought it was V.J. Day by the way I rejoiced.  Jumping up and down and punching the air kind of joy.  For a long time, you couldn’t buy booze from a store on Sundays.  Just at a bar.  If you’re already passing up meals to keep the lights on, the extra financial burden of getting your grog on a Sunday, because you drank up your stash on Saturday, could be just the thing that upsets the household budget, and severely restricts how much beer Father can purchase for the rest of the week.

And that makes Father cross.  Hostage-takey kind of cross.

But those Dark Ages were behind us now.  We were moving into a brave new world.  I looked over to all the beer and smiled.  My happy bunch of beer.

I parked the car and cracked another one.  Might as well get a few under my belt to fortify me for battle.  I sized up my chances.   The trolls kind of came as a set, and women hate to break up a set.  I knew that much.  Advantage me.  However, they were more from the same tribe.  That woodland, Kashi-crunching, outdoorsy knit cap wearing, hacky-sack kicking peoples.  Advantage them.

They were easy-going and mellow.  I was hateful and dangerous.  Pretty even there.

They had weed, although I never actually saw it.  Advantage them.  I had lots of beer, although they’d never actually see it.  Advantage me.  Big advantage.  Okay.  I win.  I tucked the empty under.

I grabbed a six-pack to bring in.  Six beers between four people.  Heh-heh.  A party-spoiler if there was ever one invented.  I couldn’t pull it off with people who knew me well.  They’d see me walk through the door with a six and know I was hoarding.  But if these people really knew me, I wouldn’t have to go through this charade.

The whole night had been a charade for me.  I had been as fake as an electric fireplace.  A faux-finished one.  Sitting there, trying to nod my head in all the appropriate parts of the conversation, when I would have rather just stared, slightly slack-jawed and entirely not interested.  It was grueling.

Pokey had been talking about his idea for Judo trading cards.  God, what a stupid idea.  I had already heard part of this brainstorm before.  Typical late-night, unrealistic pipe-dream ambition caper.  Who the fuck cares enough about Judo, besides Pokey, to get into collecting trading cards about that shit?

I took Judo as a kid.  Pretty worthless as a martial art.  Unless you go to a bar where everyone wears the pajamas and agrees to only flip each other in a fight.  If some ass-hole grabs your chick’s ass, you could go over there, bow, grip each other by the pajama lapels and start waltzing around the dance floor looking for an opportunity to roll him over your hip like a jitterbug dancer.  Then Judo wouldn’t be worthless.  Other than that…

I had to act supportive.  Couldn’t just piss all over his Rose Parade.  Really wanted to though.

“That sounds like a great idea.  Everybody loves Judo, so everybody would love Judo trading cards.  I hope you will buy me a beer or four to replace the ones you drank tonight when you become a millionaire.”

Ha-ha-ha.  We all laugh together.  Ha-ha-ha.  We’re all friendly friends.  Ha-ha-ha.

I cracked open another beer.  I’ll go back in right after this one.   Not too eager for another earful of Aurie’s conspiracy theories, and the inevitable buzz-kill that results from believing some of them.  Sure most of them you could shuck aside, but if a dude just keeps coming at you with them, like that’s his thing, and he is very eager to share his personal nightmare with you, eventually he’s going to spin one out that you find yourself believing.  Especially if your stoned.  We’re losing the war for Man to the Lizard People, being one that rang true to yours truly.

Holy shit. He’s right!  It’s them.  From Reptilis Reticula or some shit.  Bush for sure.  Others?   Too many to list.  What can I do to overthrow them? I have trouble holding down a day job.  Oh yeah.  We are fucked.

I call it Fear Tripping.  Get yourself on a course of thought that leads from one scary thought to another, but always slightly scarier.  Amp that bitch up.  See if you can get your teeth to sweat with fear.  The thing I’ve found about scary thoughts, is that there are always other ones that reinforce them.  Once you go down that alley you’re doomed.   All you can do is stop thinking.  Meditation is one way.  I had another.

It started to get clinky under my car seat as I stuck number four under.  One more, and I’ll go in.  I snapped off the top.

I wondered how long Bobbi would be my girlfriend.  She seemed like a three-to-six month.  Stable enough to make it work for awhile, and then too stable to make it work anymore after that.  Those are a little rougher to bounce out of.  By then there’s enough history to pull out the long knives.  You’re not going to scoot out without getting shived a few times with The Dagger of Ugly.  She seemed like a nice girl, but that doesn’t mean shit in a break up.  I’ve watched Gaia Goddesses and Moon Mothers turn into Medusas once they smelled the funk.

Works with animals?  Helps the poor?  Teaches children?  Christian?  New Age?  Green?  Rainbow?  Doesn’t matter.  Hurt them and they all go wolverine.  God bless them for that.  Most dangerous animals will leave you alone if not provoked.  Why did I keep poking at them with my stick?

Well okay.  Yeah.

But is that really a good enough excuse?  Bobbi seemed like a really nice girl.  Nice enough not to deserve the likes of someone like me.

It was that last thought that did it.  I started the car up, and backed out of the car port.  I had this moment of clarity.  Or at least as clear as a moment you can have after 7-8 beers.  I didn’t need to get involved.  Just because she was attractive, and I was bored and “lonely.”  I didn’t need to insinuate myself into her life, and then feel bad for doing it in the first place.  I wasn’t up for the guilt this time.

I’ll hold out for somebody equally traumatized by life.  That way we’ll be even when everything goes to shit.  I’ll let the two trolls fight over her.  It was an ever so small inching towards something resembling a conscience.  An emotional troglodyte’s first evolutionary movement towards a sentient bi-pedal existence.

I turned onto St. Francis.  They’re going to be wondering what happened to me.  Hell, I was wondering what just happened to me.  I wrote it off as just saving myself a six-pack, but it felt like more.

A cop climbed up behind me.  The no muffler.  He had to be hearing it all the way in his bone marrow.  I was going to jail.  Going to have to wake up Marko for bail.  He followed me all the way down Cerrillos, but turned off on Baca.  Only in Santa.  Maybe my karma was getting a little better.  I aimed my car for home.  I had work in the morning.

Sanitized for your protection.

Mad Dog

Getting his buff on.

He’s got some gig doing children’s theater (it’s a long story) and he’s starring in The Little Mermaid as King Triton.  It’s the first act.  He’s singing and dancing and the kiddies are filled with delight.  What they don’t know is that King Triton has really tied one on the night before.  He’s up there performing, poisoned to his Poseidon gills (in this case quite literally) in the fine theatrical tradition of Barrymore, W.C. Fields, and Judy Garland.

King Triton has got a problem.  He’s sweating out valuable alcohol under his suit of seaweed, and starting to detox, right there under the hot flood lights.  Dance, dance, dance, sing, sing, sing, sweat, sweat, sweat…start to shake, shake, shake.  He can’t hold his trident steady.  The corners of the room are starting to fold in on themselves, and he thinks he’s beginning to see cats walk across the stage.  Oh boy.

It’s going to be very hard to choreograph a seizure into the act, even for this veteran thespian.  He just has to hold on until intermission.  He knows what must be done.

The curtain finally falls to many little clapping hands, and he is a green blur that vanishes.  Out through the backstage door, and down across the street.  He’s still in full King Neptune/Sigmund und der seamonsters costume.  He’s got the crown of seaweed, little crabs in his beard, flowing cape of kelp, and still armed with trident, and he’s running down the street to the nearest dive bar.  He ducks into some rundown joint in the godforsaken San Fernando Valley.

He runs in and orders a shot of whiskey.  It’s two in the afternoon, Sunday, and the patrons inside are they kind that would be in a dive bar in the San Fernando Valley at two in the afternoon.  The bartender looks at him, then gets him his shot.  The other people in the place look at him.

“How ya doin’ there, pally?” he asks the guy closest, but only gets a slight nod in response.

Mad Dog flips the shot back.  Sweet mother of Calamity Jane that’s good.  He’ll take another.

The bartender pours him one, and he pulls his crab-infested beard aside and tosses it down the hole.  Okay.  That should hold him through Act Two.  He pulls out his wallet from behind his flowing kelp and pays the tab, includes a generous tip, and leaves in a cloud of plankton.  He’s got little children to delight.  The show must go on.

Never mind delighting the children.  This story delights me.  It makes me so happy that in the history of the universe, this event transpired.  If only to know that the sight of a detoxing Neptune bolting back two shots of whiskey and then disappearing went into those bar patron’s heads that Sunday afternoon.  Things like that just make me happy. Deeply so.

Mad Dog was good for stuff like that.

My ex-girlfriend, Sue, and I are sitting in my car outside a hardware store in Ventura, CA.  The store is closing up, and we’re waiting to pick up Mad Dog from his first night on the job as a cashier.  We know Mad Dog, and we know that this going to be good.  Until he finally got a job hauling ice for his Uncle Nicoletti at North Hollywood Ice, he had trouble finding suitable employment.  He was a gifted, brilliant and talented young man, and bat-shit insane.

Cashiering is not going to be one of his strong suits.  We can’t wait for him to get in the car and tell us what happened.  But, we’re going to have to wait.  All the other employees are leaving, but Mad Dog is still with another cashier and the manager is going over his receipt tape.  Oh boy.

You can tell there’s some problems by the way the manager is shaking his head, and at times,  just dropping the register tape to his side and staring up at the ceiling.  We could see Mad Dog’s body English telegraph extreme discomfort.  He’s squirming around, rolling his shoulders, and waving his fingers in silent movie angst.

“He’s trying to explain something,” I tell Sue.  She starts laughing.

Understanding Mad Dog and his double-speak, took a special Rosetta Stone, one only obtained by shutting off all left brain function.  You had to listen to what he was saying like you would listen to certain rock lyrics.  The cryptic references would make the analytical part of your brain yield, and allow him to paint pictures, pictures that would say more, deeper, and funnier things than with normal linear speech.  It was in the little cracks between the cryptic that the meaning would creep in.

Comedy is instinctive, being funny requires being intuitive, you can’t think about it.  Most people like to think, and hence you find most people really aren’t very funny.  It’s an entirely different part of the mind to tap into, and if you have an exceptional ability to do so, you are more than likely going to have some shortcomings in other types of ways of processing information.

Now here he was, trying to explain whatever his fuck up was, to this miserable square, a guy who clearly just wants to go home and drown away this 46 hour a week job in generic whiskey and porn.  He’s not getting Mad Dog, or his explanations.  Explanations that might be referencing anything from Disney to The Third Reich to make their point in a veritable kaleidoscope of concepts.

What he does get is that the register is short.  And, strangely, this young man-more than likely-didn’t steal it.  Afterall, he seems to have little understanding of financial transactions and hence no inherent knowledge of money’s worth.  It seems like he might only have a rudimentary grasp of what numbers represent.  He knows a lot about Bix Beiderbecke and the making of Fantasia, but what do those things have to do with why his drawer is short?

Okay, Mr. Manager fuck.  I’ll tell you what Bix and Mickey have to do with this.  Nothing, and that’s the absolute beauty of this moment.  He’s an artist, see?  Things like reason, logic, and common sense spell death to his craft.  A bean-counting, porn-pulling pud like you is not going to understand this.  Or anything, for that matter.

You like things to be how you expect them, which means you are no longer a valuable participant in this thing we call life.  You have become redundant.  You create nothing new.  You just eat, make trash and burden the earth with the weight of your shit.  You are a singular void, but a burdensome one.  Dig it?  A void, but a burdensome one.  Two incompatible bummers rolled into one big fat bomber bummer.

The fact is that nobody knows what the fuck is going on and the whole ride we’re on is caroming off the rails into a corner pocket of black mystery. We can all pretend we understand what is “happening here,” but the godawful truth is, nobody has a fucking clue.  Maybe some sages in caves scattered here and there, but not the people on the news.  We are all a little freaked out, and the sooner we all admit it, the better we’ll all feel, in a strange misery-loves-company way.

So Mr. Manager Man, your reality is basically…well, a drag, and Mad Dog knows this, so he just creates his own, and frankly you’re not welcome in it.

Being understood by some one like you is low on Mad Dog’s totem pole of priorities.

We once did an act together at The Comedy Store on an open mike night.  It featured nothing but inside jokes.  Jokes so inside that even the two friends we had sitting in the audience that night wouldn’t even get.  Shit only me and him laughed about late at night while trying to drink ourselves to sleep. It was high concept, you might say.

Well, an audience paying a twelve dollar cover and stuck with a two drink minimum isn’t the most receptive to this sort of avant-garde fare.  We both got up there and played it to the max.  Really sticking to the program.  Nothing anyone but us would think was funny.  We riffed the whole thing and really got esoteric, even between ourselves.

We were lucky to make it out of there alive.  I do remember hearing some very angry patrons actually screaming at us.  They were very pissed. Grab my coat collar kind of pissed.  We literally had to run out of there.  It was a total rush.

“What was the deal with that one character you were doing, Rocky?”  Riggsy asked us on the ride home.

“Rocky, the guy from the can of wall paste,” I explained.

“Fills cracks and screw holes and won’t shrink,” Mad Dog added, “What’s not to love about that?”

Mad Dog did a good Rocky Rock Hard that night.  He fucking nailed it.  But I was the only person there that knew it.  Had me in stitches.  We kind of didn’t care about the audience.  They sensed that and got pissed.  They were going to make sure we cared about them.  Man, that was insane.  I am so glad we did that.

Everyone knows Rocky

Mad Dog’s act is going over just as well now, but he was going to finish big.  He calmly takes off his cashier’s apron and lays it across the counter.  He nods to the manager and the other cashier and then starts cartwheeling.  He just cartwheels across the front of the store, stops, then cartwheels back across the floor to the front door.  Sticks the landing.  Solid.

He’s got his arms up, Russian gymnast like, which he smoothly transitions to take a deep show biz bow, then shuffles off to Buffalo.  He’s out the door in that elbow-cocked Vaudeville way of scramming.

“What the hell is he doing?”

I almost peed my pants I was laughing so hard.  I was useless jelly by the time he opened the car door.

“How did your first night go?” Sue asks, with a straight face.  That killed me even more.  Sue was awesome like that.

“I was ready to start playing the harp on Uncle Fester’s neck muscles back there, he was strung so tight.” he says.  He takes out a Tiparillo, breaks it in half, throws the other part away then sticks the rest in his mouth.

“Really sandpapery vibe in hardware world.  I need to drink a gallon of varnish to take that edge off.”

I handed him a beer and we pulled out of the parking lot.

He told us that at one point he started to really freak while he was working the register and was making mistakes left and right.  After a while, he just started pushing all the buttons in a giggling fit.  Whatever, right?  Might as well.  It’s all so fucked up you might as well really destroy it.

Sue looked at me.  I didn’t look back.  I knew she was thinking about the sandwich incident.  Me stomping one outside the mall in a temper tantrum.

“So you just flipped out?” I asked, redirecting her thoughts to what a maniac Mad Dog is.

“Oh man, I went totally presto pretendo, dig?  The old fake it until I make it out of here department.”  He lifted the beer, tilted it sideways back and forth, making it act like it was running away from something, then took a deep hit.  “Aacha-cha-cha, me matey!”  Pirate eye wink.

Sue was laughing now.  She worked as a cashier, so this especially tickled her.

“So you just pretended to be cashiering, but were really just doing whatever the fuck came to your head?”

Mad Dog’s broken cigar tipped down.  “Pretty much, dere. I mean sometimes I tried to do it right–”

“I think that’s great!  How liberating!”

I could see Sue was glazed-over with glee.  She got a kick out most kinds of strange behavior.  C’mon, she was my girlfriend for three years.  I’d never hang out with a chick for that long if she wasn’t totally on board.

When the cashier that was supposed to be training him wasn’t around to sweat him, Mad Dog was not only pretending to be ringing things up correctly, but pretending to be giving back correct change.  He just made sure that whatever he gave the customer was more than they had coming,  just to get rid of them.   He moved his line along pretty quick, except for the occasional boy scout who insisted he gave them back too much.  “That’s alright, it’s your lucky day, and thank Jesus for that!”

If they still insisted on giving back the money, he’d have the customer count out the correct amount and then just take the money and toss it into the drawer.

His guts started to tighten as closing time approached and it was time to face the music.  He had already decided to blow the gig, so now he was just going to have to go through the formality of officially resigning from the position.  In this case, by not saying anything, and just cart-wheeling out the door.  Fucking bravo.  Why waste calories trying to explain something to someone who could never understand?

Cartwheels are a much better investment.  If you’re going to go out, go big.

And that’s the way he merrily rolled along.  This guy invented thinking outside the box.  I  always marveled at how brilliantly demented his genius was.  A greater comic I’ve never seen, known, or heard about.

And while he may have played the fool, he was no dummy.   I think he had a pretty good idea what he was all about early on, and cultivated it.  He read and studied a lot.  The guy was a voted most talented in his high school and shit, but somehow he was never able to cop that big break.

I thought it was sad.  Here was this guy with all this talent, dragging melting ice through the sweltering San Fernando Valley, and drinking to put up with it all.  I didn’t feel sad about that part, since I voted for that solution myself.  We saw eye-color to eye-color there.  I too was once a malcontented artistic type, before I lost the art.  Now I’m just a malcontent.

Mad Dog is still performing these days in various community theater type gigs.  He’s still good.  He’s still drinking, too.  I wonder sometimes how much better he would be if he quit.  I can’t lie and say I don’t want him to at least try his craft from the other side of the curtain.  But, I’m the last guy to nag dudes about their drinking.  If you don’t want to stop there’s nothing anybody can do.  You just have to make yourself available to them if they ever decide they’d like help, and pray nothing too bad happens to them in the meantime.

Tough to let go.  I know when I started to think he might be on his way out to some tragic too-early end, I started to pull away emotionally. It’s instinctive, like comedy, only this not being about funny, but about death and pain, the opposite.  He seems to be okay these days, but he knows the score.  Like I said, he may play the fool, but he’s no dummy.  He can see this sobriety thing is just the thing his career needs to get to the next level.   Pirate wink, right back to you, matey!

I know you’re reading this.  And yeah, you caught me nagging.

Anyway, I’ve got plenty of good Mad Dog stories which I’ll part out as we roll along here, merrily.  If he brings you one tenth of the delight he’s brought me over the years, you’re in for a good ride.  He’s a character I’ve wanted to put into the mix for a while.  Besides, nobody can tell Mad Dog stories as good as me.  We see eye-color to eye-color on a lot of things.  I’ve had the same demons hang on my chandelier.  I know how they swing.  Hell, we swung back at them with tennis rackets and umbrellas.  Together we beat those little fuckers back into the cracks of a broken wall.

“Gotta fix the cracks of that wall, Pally.  With Rocky Rock Hard’s Wall Putty.  Fills cracks and screw holes, won’t shrink.”

I will always be grateful for that quality time we got to spend together.  My friend.  Be well.  Everything is going to be A-Ok.

He says it’s okay.