Shemp Hair Blues

A Lithuanian with great hair

He had taken some old bills, like the ones for his phone, utilities, a few from credit cards, and splattered them with his own blood.  They were nicely matted in brushed aluminum frames.  I’m sure he was trying to make a statement somewhere among all those statements, but I didn’t get it.

I did get that this art opening was only serving wine.  And that wine gave me a headache.  Had enough of those already.  Speaking of…

My date went from bloody bill to bloody bill, giving them her full aesthetic attention.  Judging them individually by some measuring stick in her mind, she’d nod at one then move on to the next.  Pause.  Stare.  Scrutinize.  Appear to discern something.  Smile.  Nod.  Move on.

Something about the whole act smelled like rotting baloney.  She was too earnest.  Too intent.  My Fraudulent Pantomime Meter was going off, reading “Total Fake-out.”  She just wanted to be seen appreciating the work.  To look like she gave a flying fuck.

I suspected this because that’s what I was doing.

“Very nice, see how he managed to get a clot over his cable late fee,” I pointed out.  “Pollock directed his splatter, but not this concisely.”

She nodded absently and looked over at the artist.  He was on the other side of the room, drinking a small bottle of sparkling water and talking to three women.  In his early thirties.  Mediterranean good looks.  One of those dark guys who can pull off wearing his hair in greasy dangling locks.  Like Shemp.

Very few guys can pull off that kind of hair.  I always admired the ones that could.  Guys like Gibby Haynes.  And Leo Gorcey.  And Danny Trejo.  And Iggy.

The blessed and lucky.

I always loved Shemp’s hair–the way he would curl it behind his ears after getting his nose clawed with a hammer.  Just one more thing to deal with.   Besides having furniture broken over his head, always having to flip back his greasy hair.  While spitting out splinters.

That says so much.  In other words, it’s all in a day’s work when you’re a gnarly fucker.  It’s important to keep your hair out of your eyes while your head is being pile-driven into a cast iron stove.  So you can see better.

That’s so badass it hurts.

It really hurt.  The fact that this guy had his own show at a prestigious Santa Fe art gallery.  That his work was selling.  That women loved him.  That he wasn’t drunk.  That he would soon be sleeping with my date.  And that he got to have Shemp hair.

It was too much.

I excused myself and went out to my ’73 Olds Omega where five beers were heating up in the August afternoon sun.  I got in the car and lied down on the front seat.  I gassed open a can and shotgunned it down my throat.  Dropped the empty on the floor boards.  Reached under the seat and repeated.

That’ll do.  Save three for later.  I sat up and looked around.  The parking lot was full, but there were no people around.  I wanted to stay there and hide.  I couldn’t bring myself to walk back in.

I lied back down and reached under the seat.  Pop.  Pish.  Gluggity-gluggity-glug.  Thirshhhhhhh-tee!

That one did it.  I recovered my intrepididity and rose up from the car seat.  Resurrection.

Back inside, I saw her talking to him.  No surprise.  Sometimes I just know how things are going to go.  Especially when it’s bad.

I circled the perimeter for a while, looking at his work.  What a bunch of shit.  Anybody could do this.  Sure he does some origami with some of the bills.  Whatever.  You can learn that from a book in the library.  But who has the nerve to present this mess to a gallery director?  Not me.  The gall.  The balls. 

Great.  We’ve established he has bigger balls.  More bile to swallow.  To go with the red dot by the $1,200 piece.

Finally, she waved me over.

Here we go.

She introduced us.  I took his hand, then bent down and kissed his onyx ring.  I don’t know why I did that.  It was just one of those spontaneous things you do while buzzed, then wonder about later.  I meant it as a gag, but here’s where it turned terrible–he received it.  He actually took it with a slight nod, all papal and shit.  Acting like it was appropriate.  What a motherfucker!

She noted the exchange.  Oh shit.  I clicked my heels and bowed, extending the gag.  Hoping to save it.  But the damage was done.  He had diminutized me.

It was clear now that I had to beat this guy’s ass that night.  To negate that awkward little scenario.  Seriously.  Dudes have gotten on the list for less.  I ran through the whole flow chart in my head a few times.  It always came back to beating.  After all, this was a major clowning.  He played me like a wash bucket bass.  In front of her.

He’s already better than me in everything.  That was hard enough to stomach.  Now this.  And I’m not even including the Shemp hair.  That’s just running the shank through all four gears.

Hmm…superior to me in every way.  Not enjoying that fact.   I should fix it.  Let’s see, he’s better than, in all things…ah… except perhaps in a mutual exchange of pain.  I might be able to endure more of that.  I might be better there.  I may best him in the ability to suffer.

Well, we would just have to find out.  We would have to exchange pain.  And before the crowd thins out.

Unfortunately, I lived by a strict warrior code, one that prohibited me from throwing the first punch, unless I could totally get away with it.  But this ran a little deeper.  Sucker-punching the artist at his gala opening is not going to win you any style points.

But successfully defending yourself from an over-sensitive, temperamental, thin-skinned effete, one who was over-reacting to some constructive criticism while being called out for false-flagging Shemp, was something else entirely.  Now that was a chapter I wouldn’t mind having in my bio.  I could see it.

I must make it so.

“Love what you’ve done here.  Instead of wasting money on a shredder from Costco, you used your mail to clean up after your menstruating dog.  And are now getting paid for it.  Fucking brill.  Mastermind caper you got cooking here.  I hope this scam is multi-level marketed, because I want to sign up for the seminars, Shemp.”

Except I didn’t say that.  I just looked at him.  And thought about things.  Wondered if goading him into a fight was the right thing to do.  What if he warranted the hair?  What if he had the holy power?  He looked fit.  The last thing I wanted was to be hitting on some guy’s head with a brick while he straightens his hair.  Plus, you could never get a good grab on that shit to whiplash the neck, something we in the trade called Bull-whipping.

“Don’t make trouble.”

That’s what I heard in my head.  Very clear.  Very loud.  It seemed to come from somewhere else.  Believe me, it didn’t come from me.

What?

Then again, like in case I didn’t get that something else was talking to me, “Don’t make trouble.”

I got it.  Clearly.  I was a little spooked, to be honest.  One time I heard something like that while washing dishes at The Natural Cafe, right before I was going to say something bad to the prep cook about a girl that worked there.  Something said, “Shut up.”  Distinctly.  Enough to make me shut up.  Not fifteen seconds later, that girl came in and hugged the prep cook.

“I’ll see you at home.”

“Okay, love you.”

Oh shit!  I had no idea.  Yeah.  That was close.  Good thing I…alright already, disembodied voice from beyond.  I won’t make trouble.  But don’t blame me if things get really boring.

“I like your work,” I forced out.

“Thanks, I like yours.  I read your column in The Reporter.  It’s some funny shit.”

I couldn’t believe it.  I had a crappy little column in the weekly paper.  I didn’t think anybody read it, much less liked it.  And here was both, in the same dude, and a dude with awesome Shemp hair.

Lightning 180 flip in my attitudey.  Feelings of brotherhoodship and good-fellowing welled up in me.

I couldn’t believe that I had been planning to beat up my only fan.  That would not have been a savvy career move.  Besides, he’s such a cool dude,  liking my writing and shit.   Making all this magnificently insane art, while looking all greasy.  And shit.

He turned out to be a decent yog.  Funny too.  We joked and bantered back and forth for quite a while.  He had a dry sense of humor.  I figured out that whole regally-receiving-the-ring-kiss was just him playing along.  He was just playing it straight.  With a more subtle touch than my inebriated mind could appreciate at the time.

What I did appreciate was that although all these artsy fartsy types were trying to draw away his attention, he would return to our conversation.  He didn’t blow me off to talk to some of the hot, semi-hot, or hot-enough-after-eight-beers women that were trying to glom on to him.  Which included the creature that rode up with me.  That really showed class.

When I invited him out to the Omega for a hot beer, he declined, telling me he was a recovering alcoholic.  Oh wow.  Poor dude.  Now I really wanted him to succeed in art.  Since he basically had nothing left to live for.

We wound up staying there until things wound down.  A bunch of people had decided to go to La Casa Sena for dinner and he invited both of us to join.  No fucking way I could afford that.  I begged off with a lie about having to write.

“I want to go,” she says.

“Go,” I say.

So she went.  She took the upgrade.  It’s not like I couldn’t see it coming.  I have a gift.

I can’t say it didn’t feel bad.  But I wasn’t pissed.  In light of recent events, I was wary of being pissed–being pissed about stuff I probably didn’t understand.  I could give it a rest.  At least until tomorrow.

Anyway, I don’t know if they ever hooked up.  I don’t know what happened to either of them.  To be honest, I can’t even remember the dude’s name.  He was just the guy with Shemp hair.

And he had what I wanted.

…

Note: None of the people in this story actually exist, including the author and Shemp.  However, any and all accusations of slander and libel will still be reviewed carefully by my attorney.  As I’m sure, by yours, as well.

Red Ink In My Eye

Relaxing the other night, watching some documentaries about Russian prisons, I found myself being grateful.  Grateful the optical mouse worked on my bed sheets.  So I didn’t have to sit up at the desk to click.  That’s such a pain in the ass.

A Russian prisoner is being walked to a cell by four guards and a dog.  He’s handcuffed behind his back.  His legs are shackled.  He has a black cloth bag over his head.  And they have him walking bent over at the waist.  At a right angle.  The don’t fuck around at The Black Dolphin.  That’s the name of this particular prison.  The White Swan is another.  But that one is not as luxurious as the New Age spa this prisoner is enjoying.

“Come, be pampered in blissful sybaritic abandon.  The Black Dolphin, privately nestled between the jet-set playground cities of Novokuybyshevsk, Samara, and Ufa.”

The prisoners are forced to spend the day standing in silence.  Standing.  With a Russian head on their necks, one that makes them think Russian thoughts.   Keep that part in mind.  What a mental and emotional bludgeoning that in itself would be.  What vast endless steppes of melancholy confront that average traveler.  Now throw him into the worst place in Russia (which has a pretty decent collection) and see what kind of misery you can conjure.

These boys distill a potent brew alright.  And I know a thing about moon-shining a mental nightmare.  But they when they tap into that still, the sorrow just fucking flows.  I always say a Russian with a guitar is good for at least two suicides during any picnic.  So when the camera shows two of their prisoners standing in a cell, I always try to picture what’s going through their heads.  What the interior landscape looks like in there.  How those seconds would tick-tock by.

Time that must really crawl when you’re eagerly awaiting a delicious bowl of cabbage water.  Not to mention the fifteen minutes of luxuriating on the sinful comfort of a wooden stool.  Precious minutes.  Oh yeah.  That part totally rocks.  All that… getting to sit.  While eating water.

Best fifteen minutes of the day.  For sure.

It’s brutal fare.  And I need to see this.  A little reality-check.  To get more gratitudinal.  Which is an important tool in my sobriety toolbox that I hardly open.

I reach up for my can of Hansen’s Diet Ginger Ale.  I have to sit up to get at it.  If I put the can on the floor, I always kick it over.  So I have to set it on top of the dresser.  I’d prefer to just be able to turnstile my arm out at the elbow and have one in reach.  But alas, life is exceeding cruel.

I guess, if I dragged in something like a TV tray I could set up a little temporary nightstand, but I refuse.  You start using a TV tray as an end-table and it’s over.  You’ve officially quit the race.  Start picking out battery-heated booties from the Harriet Carter catalog and await your death.  It’s coming on swift wings.

I’ll keep having to reach up a little.  It’s good for me.  Good for the obliques.

Now there’s some dude showing off his tattoos.  A sullen, nicotine-stained woodcarving of The Eternal Mope, he’s pointing out what each piece of creepy Russian iconography means.  The church domes each represent a full conviction served.  It looks like he’s got pretty crowded Kremlin on his chest.  The black cat a burglar.  A beetle means pickpocket.  Stars on his knees mean he will not kneel before any authority.  Cool.  Spider web denotes drug addiction.  A light bulb means he worked in a Uranium mine.  Sorrowful Madonnas.  Orthodox crosses.  Church bells.  Ships.  Barbed wire rosaries.  Dice.  Diamonds.  Skulls.  Angels.

All of it signifying something sad, bad, or both.  Laid out there.  Bared naked.  For all to see.  Every one of your underworld merit badges.  On proud display.

Think of all the talking it would save.  Instead of trying to catch up a new friend with endless stories.  I could take off my clothes and just rotate like a rotisserie chicken a few times and they’d be up to speed.  Need to refer to a time in my life, just lift my shirt and point.  Let them read the codex.

Fuck yeah.

Okay, now I want some tragic Russian prison tattoos.   I want my own illustrated history tattooed in flesh.  I want to be a living billboard of bummer.

But only if I could design my own.  A bear drinking bees instead of honey from a hive.  An onion dripping  juice into a bloodshot eye.  A babushka mother wringing her hands.  A stack of poker chips on each shoulder.  A rabbit plowing a field.  A skull head hand-cuffed to a chainsaw.  A bullet going through a screen door.  A pair of black Converse with wings.  A wizard bong.  X’s on my eyelids.  A Mexican peso on my palm.  A monkey stealing a peach.  Well, one monkey stealing three peaches total.

I could also get 0.24, 0.26, 0.19, and o.o inked on my forearm–my blood alcohol level during arrests resulting in a conviction.  Maybe the ones that I beat on the other arm.

“This flying mushroom on my shoulder means I’m a skilled pilot.  The gnome bathing in the kitchen sink means I can handle the weird.  The salt shaker on my fist means I fight dirty.”

“What does the stiletto heel through the heart mean?”

Silence.  I break down in sobs.  Big rolling heaves.  Some renting of garments.  Hair pulling.  Really uncomfortable to witness.  Finally, wiping away snot, I manage to blubber out, “It means nothing!”  Then more sobbing.  More shirt tearing.  Hair pulling.  Just over the top shit.

“I shouldn’t have asked.  Sorry.”

That would be fun.

Actually, I always thought that if I were to really get my criminal creep on, I would like to tattoo a monocle over my eye.  With the string coming down from it, like the Planter’s Peanut Man.  Just to really keep ’em guessing.

“They called me ‘Professor,'” I’d  tell the cashier at the drive-thru.  Then drive off before getting my food.  But after paying.

Ah, it’s a pipe dream.  I’ll never do it.  I’m just not that into advertising what a fuck up I was.  Except in this blog, that goes out to the world via internet.

Huh.

The tattoos would’ve actually been a better choice.

Oh well.  Gotta take the bad with the bad.  Which is what these lads on the telly seem to being doing…with style.

They’re marched out at six in the morning for exercises.  That’s right, no cup of mocha espresso is going to wake you up like a few scorching lungfuls of Siberian frost.  The interviewed guard explains that the routine is made up of light movements intended to get blood flow into the limbs.  Just the thing after you’ve spent the night hung up with your arms behind your back, on a meat hook.

Just do some tootsie-tappers and wristy twirls.  Under searchlights.  And snow swirls.

Got to hand it to those Ruskies.  They know how to suffer.  Always have.  I think best of all.  Although Keller and my mom have been reading about North Korean prison camps.  They both tell me the No-Kos can give the Russians a run.  Keller said they have something there called a Three Generation Conviction.  In other words, the conviction is handed down through three generations.  Like a gold watch.  Or alcoholism.

Pretty raw deal, but I don’t know.  The Russians take anguish to an art form.  I really do enjoy their mournful songs of loss and regret.  Real soul-achey stuff.  I just can’t picture the North Koreans being as lyrical.  Maybe because they always do pep squad foot-stamp-and chant-stuff during the talent shows.  Running around with banners.  Spelling letters out of people.  Basic totalitarian regime half-time extravaganza shit.  That’s not going to translate well on the cattle car railing you off to work detail.  While everybody inside is fighting over icicles.

(Soda reach.  Sprinkle some trail mix on the chest to eat from.  Neck kind of hurts from watching sideways.   This pillow sucks.)

Okay, I don’t like this part.  Seen it before.  Always kills me.   The dad coming to visit the son.  See, the dad can’t visit too often since he doesn’t drop by Siberia that much.  He can only make the long journey twice a year, to be with his son– for two hours.

The visits only reignite the flame of pain.  But in this case, it’s clearly a pain endured in the name of love.

(Gulp)

They sit huddled in a small reception room nursing a cup of tea.  The son cradles some sort of beef-stick his dad gave him.  He doesn’t seem to care about the nitrates or high sodium.  They smile bravely.  The father is holding his son’s hands.  He has clearly forgiven him.  You can see it by the love in his eyes.  After all the fuck ups, the father still loves him.  Even though it makes it all hurt more.  It’s that kind of love.

(Hard swallow.  Eye-ball juice forming)

Now it’s time to part.  Time for Dad to catch the 5:15 back 2.300 kilometers into the city.  Time to tell the mother, who will never see him again, about her son.  Again and again.  During long winter nights.  To keep the memory of him from fading like a ghost into the forest.

They hug deeply.  Both men have tears.

(Achhh!  Achhhhh-hah!  Ghrrach!  Ahuuurrr!  Fucking pollen count.)

I move the mouse and click.  That’s enough of that.

I lie there for a while thinking.  I want to write my dad an e-mail.  Just to say “hey” and that I’m okay.  And that I love him.  I’m pretty sure he still loves me.  After everything.  More importantly, I want him to know that I do.  I kind of don’t feel like getting up.  Maybe tomorrow.

No.  Now.

It won’t kill me.  But not doing it might.  I sit up and reach for the keyboard.

Fucking Russians.

“This next number I’m going to play is a sad little song.”

Abstract Lack of Expression

$1,700.

Edward looked at the canvas he had spent all summer on.  It had four brand new razor slashes across it–a creative addition by his newly-exed girlfriend, Mia.  A real hot-head.  Perpetually pissed and ready to shoot hostages, she finally blew.  Earlier, she had taken all her stuff and left, but not before vandalizing some of his best work.

He fished out a half a butt from the ashtray and lit it.  Easy come, easy go.  The girlfriend, not the painting.  He wasn’t so flippant about that yet.  Fucking oil paint.  Took forever to dry.  He really tried with that one.   Not his usual slap and splash.

It was of a cartoon devil smelling the stocking-clad leg of a fat woman eating a drum stick.  A signature piece.  Now ruined.

Fortunately, he had been suffering loss his whole life.  This stung, but not enough to want to make him change anything.  Except maybe to go back to acrylics.

And keep his fucking mouth shut about Pilates.  That’s what started all this.

He got up and walked to the fridge.  He opened it and counted seven beers left.  He closed it and put on his jacket.  He felt around for the keys in the pocket.  Not there.  Oh man.  He walked over to the window and lifted the blinds.

It was gone.

Walking to the liquor store, he debated calling the cops.  They ask too many questions.  He’d somehow wind up getting arrested.  So he wrote off the car too.  He had paid $1.700 cash for it three years ago.  The last time he sold any work.  All was not lost.  He still had some bolt cutters.  In the morning, he’d take a bus to the junior college and clip himself off a bike until he could figure things out.

He walked into the liquor store.  Devon the Dick was working.  Great.  Not in the mood for his brand of ball-busting.  Not tonight.  Feeling too sensitive.

“Ah, it’s the great arteest!” he greeted.

“Ah, it’s the great liquor store clerk, ” Edward greeted back.

Motherfucker.  At least I’m trying.  Living off the largess of some pretty vulnerable people, but I’m still trying.

Edward put two six packs of Steel Reserve on the counter.  Devon the Dick looked down and smiled.

“Uh-oh! 211 in progress!”

“Yeah, that’s funny.  A half a pint of Dark Eyes.”

“Hey, the good stuff!  You must have sold one of your masterpieces.”

“And Camel light, hard pack, please.”

Why is it that some guys can only communicate by being assholes?   It was always something with this one.  A remark about the shoes.  The gut.  The cheap shit you’re drinking.  Always a jab.  Fucker dying behind the counter of some shit-hole liquor store trying to make me feel like the loser.

He took the bag and started to walk out.  Here it comes.  He could count.  One…two…three.

“Hey, don’t forget us when you’re famous!”

“Yeah, don’t worry.”

You never forget the demons that have tormented you…as you lay in bed at night, chainsawing their heads off.

Edward knew he wasn’t going to make it.  He knew a long time ago.  Way before he blew his art school student loan smoking opium with that coven of performance art lesbians.  A good time, for sure, but not the power career move it felt like at the time.  Eventually, The Academy of Art kicked his can down the road.  He wound up delivering pizzas and eating handfuls of mail-order Tramadol to ween off the poppy.  Then he borrowed more money from his grandmother and moved back home.

He was resigned to languish in obscurity, using the tortured artist bit to cut him slack for his fuck-ups.  Show some stuff in group shows.  Try to bed chicks that go to those.  That would be good enough.  It would have to be.

While he knew he had some talent, he also knew that he lacked the self-promotion skills that move you up the gallery food chain.  He sucked at talking about his work.

“Tell me about this piece, Edward,” some divorcee in a western skirt and concho belt would ask.

“It’s a man licking a dog’s balls,” he’d say, which would be very clever, if it really wasn’t.

For a while, he tried playing the disinterested iconoclast, but it seemed his disinterest was contagious.  The less he acted like he cared about his work, the more people seemed to want to join in.  And not care about it either.

His new plan was to create a body of work while drinking himself to death.  A tragic death would have to help sales.  Trouble was, the older he got, the less tragic his death would be.  It was now a race against time.

He was walking along when he felt his his phone buzz in his pocket.  A text.

“I am telling EVERYBODY about the herpes!!! ;)”

He put the phone back and climbed the stairs to his apartment.  He could hear Narco rap blasting from the neighbor next door, a latino kid, that installed garage door openers.  He was okay.  Always had pretty good weed.  Told him about the volume, but he always claimed to forget.  Good weed will do that.

He went inside, and put the beer in the refrigerator.   He snapped off the cap of the vodka and took a long hit.  It tasted oily.  Dark Eyes.  He opened a beer and sat down on the couch.  He looked at his slashed painting.

The longer he stared, the more he liked it.  It really was a signature piece.  Now.

After his death, it sold for $1.700.

Nature’s Gnarly Gifts

Merry Christmas, Master.

I was coming down the steps one morning and almost stepped on it.  A dead bird one of the cats dragged in.  I nearly jumped out of my skin.  Did that little dance with the pumping knees and wavy fingers.  You know, The Creepy Crawl.

What’s the deal with these cats?  Their heaping the dead up as gifts?  I mean, it’s a nice gesture and all.  But I don’t  dig dealing with the bodies.  I looked down a little closer to it.  What the …?  It was on some sort of tray.  It was an ink stamp pad, turned upside down.

It was Bugsy’s work.  He had gone up to the den, brought down a ink stamp pad, turned it upside down, then place the dead bird on it.  He went to all that trouble to make a nice presentation.  Frankly, it creeped the fuck out of me.  It looked macabre.  Ghoulish.  Made me think about Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.  Probably not the reaction Bugsy was hoping for.  I felt bad.  Still, it was pretty weird.  Disturbing really.  What kind of kitty cat was I raising here?  Martha Stewart or Manson?

At least this victim was dead.  Half a lizard.  Headless mouse.  Doesn’t matter.  Dust pan, broom, Trader Joe’s paper bag.  Quick crime scene clean-up.  It’s when either him or Louie bring in something that’s still kicking that things start to jump around here.  You won’t see two more worthless people dealing with calamity than my girlfriend and I.  Lot’s of impotent hand-clapping and shouting, taking turns to jump up on the furniture.

Meanwhile, the cats are taking turns to slowly torture another creature to death.  What kind of family is this?  Daddy may be passive-aggressive, but in a very subtle way.  You can’t say I modeled this behavior.

Living here off this little artificial lake there’s been all kinds of opportunity to interact with wildlife.  Mice, ducks, lizards, turtles, possums, racoons and bats, all pay us a visit.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love animals, but there’s something about close proximity to the little critters that  makes me a little uncomfortable.  I’m from New York City.  We have squirrels, pigeons, and rats, and we’ve learned how to pretty much stay out of each others space.

That’s different than turning on the light and seeing a family of racoons in your kitchen making a midnight brunch.  One guy eating cereal out of the box, another one in front of an open refrigerator, peeling off slices of my jalapeno cheese.  Another using a can opener to get into my pork and beans.  All of them looking at me like “What the fuck do you want?”

“Uh excuse me!  I’m very sorry but the kitchen is closed for the evening.”

Nobody seems to care.  Maybe it didn’t register.  They’re looking at me, like I’m merely an irritant.  Almost like they know they could all take me.  Rip me to shreds with their Mutual Of Omaha claws and teeth.  They’re right.  There’s nothing I can do but back up the stairs and close the bedroom door.  They’ll leave when they get full or bored.  You have to just hope they don’t tear the place up too much before they go.  It’s like having a bunch of methed-up bikers crash your place.

My girlfriend called me one night.  This was before I lived with her.  Back when I lived a block away.  Anyway, she was all freaked out.  There was a bat flying around her house.  Makes sense, I thought.  Then I realized she expected me to do something about it.

“Oh.  Okay.”

I hung up, got in the car, and drove the seventeen seconds to her house.  I didn’t know what I was supposed to do to get rid of a flying bat.  But I’m already not digging the visuals.  Seems like it could be something I’m not going to enjoy.  Too bad.  You’re the man.  You have to deal with this.  That’s why God invented you.

I went in and quickly looked around.  I didn’t see any flying bat.  I also didn’t see Lori.  She had barricaded herself in the bathroom.

“I paused Grand Theft Auto 3 for this!” I announced. “Where is it?”

She slowly opened the door.  She peeped her face through the crack.

“It was flying around the kitchen– then it flew upstairs.”

Oh great.  Now it could be anywhere.  Lots of nooks and crannies up there.  She edged a little out of the bathroom and flapped her hand.

“It went up there!  Get rid of it! ”

“Alright alright! Let me come up with a game plan here. Relax!”

I stood at the bottom of the steps and looked up the stairwell.  There it was.  On the ceiling.  Pressed flat.  Looking like one of the gnarliest, ugliest creatures ever invented.  I can’t do justice to how ugly a bat looks in real life, especially when they do the all flat thing.  It’s breathtaking.

“I see him.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s on the ceiling.  All pressed flat.”

She groaned at the thought.

I squinted to see him a little better.  Oh Jesus.  That’s bad.  How can anything like that exist?  On TV they seem at least semi-cute, with their little piggy noses.  That shit doesn’t carry over in real life.  I watched it breathe.  Even that made me sick.

Then it dropped.

Like a Stuka to a Warsaw suburb, it dove straight for me.   It happened so fast.  I had no time.  No time to stop myself from throwing myself to the floor in abject cowardice.  No time to contain the most shrill, scared-little-bitch scream that ever came out of a heterosexual man.   It was coming at me.  And all I could do… was freak.

Now, I’ve talked to some people and they’ve said that the bat might not have been going after me.  Just that that’s how they fly.  All swoopy and shit.  I don’t think it matters at this point.  All I know is one second I was looking at some evil creature with veined wings, the next one, it’s a  foot from my face.  I’m not sure how many people would’ve stood their ground.  Maybe some bat whisperer.

So I manage to peel myself off the floor enough to look around.  I can’t see where he’s gone.  Neither can Lori, because she’s doubled-over laughing.  Ha-ha-ha.  Okay, that’s it.  Laugh it up.  Yes, I screamed like a girl.  Ha-ha-ha.  It’s over.  C’mon.  Not that funny.

Apparently it was.   She was helpless.   I could see her launch into a new fit every time she replayed it.   I really wanted it to fly into her face.  See how she likes it.  I crawled to the phone and called animal control.  They said somebody would be by in 45 minutes.  We camped out in the garage waiting for them.  Lori occasionally busting up out of nowhere.

The damage was done.  She had witnessed me at my most chicken-shit.  All the tough guy stories would always be tainted now–tainted by her memory of me screaming like a little girl while diving to the floor.  Awesome.

The animal control dude went around the house with his lasso-on-a-stick, poking at pillows, and behind curtains.  Nothing.  That’s great.  We look like a bunch of liars, and the thing might still be hiding somewhere, waiting to make a break when The Man leaves.  I swore that there really was a bat, and that he was about to rip my face off and fill the wound with plague.

“Thing came right at me.”

“They sometimes just fly like that.”

We didn’t see anymore of the bat that night.  But that wasn’t the last of them.  The Winter of Bat Terror was only beginning.  We think a family actually moved in.  It seemed like every other evening there would be another one flying around inside the house.  You’d be walking down the hall at night and FLAPAWHAPAFLAPAFLAPA!   They would just bust out of cover like spooked pheasant.  Out from behind the laundry hamper and into your hair.  Holy pant-crapping surprise, Batman!   And every time, the shrill, high-pitched scream would escape as I threw myself to the carpet.

And if Lori witnessed it.  The laughter.  The shame.

I had a girlfriend, Bubbles.  She had a pet bird, name Myra.  If she let it out the cage to fly around the room, it would take every ounce of my male courage to not just drop to the floor and curl up in a ball.  Birds flying around like that, scare me.  I don’t know why it is, but it is.  And that was a pretty little feathered song bird.  Not a furry, fanged, warm-blooded, rabies and plague-carrying sky gargoyle.  So whatever original phobia I had with flapping creatures, it now took off exponentially.

After a while, we did manage to get down a routine.  If one suddenly appeared in the room, swooping back and forth, we would hit the deck.  Lori would cover herself in a blanket on the couch–in a little cocoon of safety.  Meanwhile, I would have to crawl on my stomach to open all the doors and windows.  Eventually, sometimes after an eternity of ducking and dodging , they would fly out.  I’d close the doors and windows.  Check my underwear.

One night I opened the garage door from the kitchen.  FLAPAWHAPAFAPAFLAPA!  Right at my face.  Yeeeeeeeeeee!  I hit the floor.  But this one is not content to just strafe me.  He is on me.  Like stink on shit.  He’s flapping here.  He’s flapping there.  I’m crawling, laughing, crying, screaming and everywhere I turn to get away, it’s inches away from my face.  It’s really trying to make a statement.

Meanwhile, Lori is a mummy on the couch.  She’s all wrapped up and not moving.   I’m almost hysterical.  Part cracking up and part flipping out.  I can’t crawl very fast because I keep rolling up into a squealing pill bug.

–Is this how I would have been on Omaha Beach?  I don’t think it tests well.

I can’t make it to the sliding glass doors.  I’m pinned down by a dive bomber.  It’s taken me almost a minute to crawl twenty feet from the kitchen to the living room.  And this thing is still right there, flapping away, everywhere I turn.

I decide to crash the cocoon.

“Let me in!” I shout, sticking my head under the blanket Lori is hiding in.  She’s got it tucked in underneath her and is holding on to it tight.  I can only get my head under.  It looks like I’m trying to take an old time photo of a locomotive or something.

“Let me in!”

“Get out, get out! You’re going to let it in!” she screams, and then…pushes my face out.

Oh, I see.  So that’s how it’s going to be.  Every man for himself, eh?  I’ll remember that, Missy.  No room at the Inn.

I finally made it to the sliding doors, opened them, and belly crawled out to the patio.  The thing was still inside, now just diving and gliding around the living room while  Lori was trapped on the couch.  Too bad.  Hard to enjoy your television programs all wrapped up in a blanket while a bat flies around you.  Yeah.  I’m sure glad I’m out here in all this wide-openess and having this big area of non-bat flying around me.

I gloated too soon.  Although the sliding glass doors were wide open, there was still a sheer curtain blocking its escape.  I went to move the curtain and the thing flew right into my hand.  Smack!  We were separated only by the flimsiest gauze, so I got a good palm full of the beast.  Enough to discern it’s fuzziness and heft.  Did not enjoy that.  At all.

You would’ve thought I had stuck my hand into a jar of cadaver snot by the way I recoiled in disgust.  My reaction was so violent that I made myself laugh.  Like I was watching a prank, but at my own expense.

“Yeeeeeeeeeeeeech!  I fuckin’ touched it!” I yelled into the house, “It hit my hand through the thing!”

This elicited a piercing scream from the mummy, which made me scream.  It’s a wonder the neighbor’s didn’t call the cops.  It had to sound like an ax murder.

Then just like that, it flew out and was gone.  There was a moment of silence, then we started busting up.  We laughed hard and strong and long.  Whenever we’d recall another moment, a new spasm.  As it turned out, that bat, for all its terrorizing antics, had made our Friday night a memorable laff riot.  Thank you, flying rat.

Shortly after that we found a dead baby bat behind the TV.  We figured that mama bat was trying to protect it, and thus the aggressive nature of her pursuit of my crawling and crying ass.  You see, kids?  It’s all a part of the wonder of Nature.

One evening, I was sitting in the den upstairs slapping some serious genius on canvas.  Just getting my abstract expressionist on.   Lori’s gone for the night.  I’m in my underwear, there’s a World War 2 documentary on, and I am painting one masterpiece after another.  Fuck Warhol and Kostabi, I was a one-man factory.   I toss aside the finished works while announcing their prices.  $1,700  $850.  $600. each, but I’ll let the set go for a grand.  I’m getting very rich that night.  It was now only a matter of connecting with the right buyers.

Then I hear something behind me, scratching.   One of the cats?  I turn around and see a white possum clawing its way down one of Lori’s dresses hanging in the closet.  It’s long rat tail running down the sleeve of the gown.  “Oh shit!”  I blur out the room.  I am gone, Daddy.  I slam the door to the den and go downstairs to call Animal Control.  I am not going to deal with that thing.

I get a recording, basically saying that if this has to do with a lost dog or cat, runaway horse, dead seal, or having a possum in your house, call back during normal business hours.  Shit.  I’ll have to call them in the morning.

In the meantime, I’ll keep the fucker trapped in the den.  I hope he doesn’t shred up my reasonably-priced priceless art work.  The TV was still on, and I didn’t put the caps back on the paint tubes, either.  They’re going to dry up.  Once more, events have conspired to stunt my greatness.  “Well, you always said, ‘Life sucks.’  This is just another example.”

The cats are out so that’s good.  They’re probably with Lori and her girlfriends having margaritas and nachos.   I cracked the door opened and look around, but I couldn’t see it.  Must be playing…dead somewhere.  I closed the door.  I hope it likes the Military Channel, because that’s all it’s going to get to watch tonight.

I went downstairs and turned on the TV.  Marines were blasting out Japanese soldiers out of caves with explosives and flame throwers.  Should I get my .22 and storm the den?  Just take the beast out?  Who am I kidding?  I have no stomach for that.  Bad-ass gangster, can’t even cap a possum.

After a while, I went upstairs to bed.  I was lying there for about twenty minutes when I heard it clawing at the den door.  Scritch-scritch-scratch.  Scratch-scritch-scritch.  Hmm.  Scratch-scritch.  It will stop soon.  Scritch.   Even animals get bored.  Scratch.

…

See?

Scritch-scratch-scritch-scratch-scratch-scratch…scratch…scritchity scritchity scratch scratch scratch!

Motherfucker!  I can NOT sleep listening to this shit all night!  It sounded a prisoner trying to dig out.  A demon trying to burrow into my soul.  Not the sleepy-time send off I want to have before tripping the light subconscious.  My sleep tends to be fitful enough.  I don’t need the sounds of vermin clawing the walls as a soundtrack.

I have to deal with this.  I need to TCB the scritch-scratch situation.  It’s two in the morning, and I have to evict a colossal rodent squatter from my beatnik art den.  I decided to build a corrida, some rodeo walls to run El Rato Grande through–on his festival-celebrating run out the front door.  I don’t want to chase this thing out of the den, only to have it run into another part of the house and hide.  I don’t want to lose sight of him.  So using couch cushions, ironing boards, pillows, big screen TVs, and suitcases, I rebuilt Hadrian’s Wall.

When I finished with this grand building project,  I reviewed the fortifications like Rommel.  I saw a weakness in the line right away.  The ironing board.  The pointy end created a gap.  A small one, but one a determined sapper with initiative could exploit.  Unacceptable.  I punched a pillow into the hole.  Okay.

Now I needed to bust in and clear the room.  I decided to enter through the second set of doors from the bathroom.  He wouldn’t be expecting that.  Besides the element of surprise, I was armed with a mop and a wicker basket.  The basket to stand in so the fucker couldn’t claw it’s way up my boxers.  When I told this story to my friend, Dave, he laughed.  “Dude! ” he says, “You made a wicker basket Kendo suit. ”

Pretty funny, I have to give him that.  Anyway, fuck him.  I was glad to have the mobile defense.  I could hold on to the handles and hop around the room.  Get close and poke at the possum with the mop.  It will be easy.

Well, this gladiatorial contest was not determined quickly.  For a while, I couldn’t get it to run out the room.  It would just rear up and start hissing and clawing, it’s red rat eyes on fire with hatred, blind rage and fear.  I’ve seen those eyes before.  Usually when I look at the toaster.

The nasty little bastard was scared, and I really didn’t want to hurt him.  I couldn’t go in swinging.  I just wanted to poke him along, down the little maze I spent forty-five minutes building–my two-story Habitrail.  Not such luck.  He wanted to go toe-to-toe with me, trading jabs.  Poke poke.  Hiss hiss.  I’m standing my ground. but so is he.  It had become a battle of wills.  A stalemate.

I need to get more aggressive.  I need to show this marsupial what the most dangerous animal on the planet is all about.   Make him think I’m going to get all Beverly Hillbilly on his ass.  Get some vittles on the pot.  Pick my teeth with his pointy tail.  I had to become the hunter.

I had to leave the basket.

Okay, that’s it.  I really have to sell this.  Here we go.  I hopped out of the hamper with a rebel yell.  “For General Lee, and Granny’s Possum pie.!”  I Picket’s charged him with my mop.  It worked.  His nerve broke and he ran.

I flushed him out of the den, and where did he bolt to first?  That first turn, made with the ironing board.  Right at the gap.  He hit it like a furry football thrown hard into the corner.  The pillow held and he turned.  Still pissed and hissing he took off down the stairs.  The corrida worked.  The possum  zig-zagged through it and ran out the front door.  Just as my master planning planned all along.

Victory!

It was almost three AM, and I was too tired to take down the wall.  I’d deal with it in the morning.  What craziness.

Well, I did it, I thought,  I took care of business and nobody got hurt.  A small success, shot-through with comic misadventure.  Just the type I seem to specialize in.

Lori came home early the next morning, before I took down the improvised bull run.

“What’s all this stuff?”

“You’re not going to believe it,” I told her, “Sit down.”

She laughed and laughed and laughed.  Somehow that made it all worth it.

Anyway, I’m grateful to all the little creatures that have brought so much adventure and merriment into my otherwise routine life.  Animals are awesome.  Even when they scare the fuck out you.

I’m beginning to believe the same thing about life in general.  It’s all how you choose to look at things.  So now I try to thank my cats for all the dead things they bring in to us.  I may not enjoy them, but at least I know their intention was good.  And it really is the thought that counts.  No matter how gnarly those gifts might sometimes be.

Writer’s Block And Tackle

I got nothing.  I’ve been staring at a blank screen for a while now.  I wish it were metaphoric.  I’d be happier.  Maybe it is, and I will be happier when I realize it.   As it is, up until less than one minute ago, it was literal.  Then I had to start typing something.  Might as well type about not typing.

Okay.  That’s over.  Now what?

I guess I’ll write about what I just wrote.  Attention everyone, I wrote something earlier even though I had nothing to write.  There.  Okay, now just keep going.  One sentence at a time.  It’s got to lead somewhere.  Hopefully fruitful, but at this point, I don’t give a rat’s ass.  As long as I don’t delete all this, it’s a start.  Let’s see if I delete it.

Nope.  No such luck.  Looks like I’m committed now.  Here we go.  I don’t feel good about this.

One of the things I liked about drinking was it helped me get over these stuck points.  Drink enough and you become a fucking genius, and everything you write is brilliant.  Until you read it in the morning.  If you’re lucky, you might be able to salvage a paragraph here or a sentence there.  Sometimes I would go back, into the scrap yard, and weld some loose, working parts together.  I’d come up with something, and label the abomination, “Post-Post Modern Lit.”

Nothing left to do after that, but stand back and see if the hipsters salute it.

Most of the time, those scraps of paper got trampled underfoot,  and were left to sop up beer and broken glass.  They never saw the light of day.

And the reading public was better off.

Regardless, without drinking, I wouldn’t have had even those mutilated parts to cobble together.  I needed something to silence The Voice That Hates Everything, just long enough to get something, anything, down on paper.  There’s actually a window.  You’re drunk enough not to listen to The Critic, but not too drunk to coherently do anything about it.  It’s a sliver of time.  If I hit it just right I could bang out some decent shit before the aperture closed.  And The Moron took over

I once heard of this writer that was an alcoholic.  Yeah, I know.  Crazy shit.  But I trust the source.  If you are one, I don’t need to explain how alcohol can facilitate the creative process.  You guys know.  Get one us drunk, and you are going to witness some original thinking.  Bold even.
Ideas not hemmed in by bullshit like reason or meaning.  Or fear of social rejection.

When your diving board is that springy, you’re bound to get a good bounce.  Where you land, is not as important as how much air you catch.  A belly flop into a drained pool is still better than sitting on a chaise lounge.  It’s certainly a better story to write about.

This one time I belly-flopped into a drained pool.  Okay, not true.  But it seems like something that could have happened.  Can I just write about stuff the could have happened?  I can write a whole story that climaxes with a dive into concrete.  Seems me.

That also seems like too much work for tonight.   Too creative.

I just want this screen to magically fill itself with words.

So far it’s working.

Okay, I shouldn’t have said that.

Now nothing again…

…for longer than you’ll know.

Tunes.  I need tunes.  Time to put some Billy Childish on the old I-Podular unit.  That always help loosen me up a bit.  Some bad-toothed Brit spitting out the words.  Mad Billy.  The Churl of Chatham.  One of Thatcher’s bastard children.  Doesn’t give a flying fuck.  Snarling cur.  Pissed drunk.  Pissed-off.  Grab a face.  Hurl a gob.  Knee a groin.  Rebellion and riot.  Boots and pint glasses smashing into your skull while a bird in white leather blows you a pink lipstick kiss, then jabs a pool cue in your eye.  Action.  Adventure.  Romance.

…

It’s not working.  I’m not feeling it.

I feel like putting on a Snuggy and watching a cable show about luxury RV’s.  Going through my closet and getting together a pile for St. Vincent DePaul.  Organizing my dumb-bells in the garage, in descending order, by weight.  Anything but writing now.

However, according to the WordPress Word-O-Meter, I’ve got 733 words.  Just a few more, and all this can be over.

Let’s see…this one time, in my past, something really funny happened.  I’m not in the mood to remember any particular instance, or even make one up.  But if I did, hoo-boy!  What laffs we would have.  We’d be pissing our pants.  Imagine how awesome that would be.

That added some words.  Come on.  Dig deep.

Why am I even doing this?  What’s the point?  What’s my motivation?  Not fortune and fame.  Not on WordPress.  Why this compulsion to write, even when I don’t have anything?

My fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Wagner (who was totally hot) was the first person to encourage me to write.  She told me I had talent and that if I applied myself to it, I could go far.  Yep.  Yeppy yep yep.  She was so right.  If I applied myself.

She was my first muse.  Man, I had a crush on her.  I remember holding her hand when I was line monitor.  It was cool, white and chalky.  Holding it gave me intensely weird feelings.  The fact it was attached to a married woman made the medicine even more strange, more potent.  An attraction to females and danger was already reaching out through those cool, white chalkies.  The loving hands of death.

I wound up writing stories just so she would read them.  They always featured me as some sort of heroic force of nature.  I wanted to impress her.  Make her think I was something more than I was.  Working as my own publicist, you might say.  Anyway, she’d give them back with some positive comments and maybe one of her red-inked smiley faces.  Heady shit for a fourth-grader.  It meant she bought the lie, and maybe I had a chance.

It seems that writing was my earliest attempt at seduction.   Good thing I never tried that again.

942 words.  Almost there.  Maybe I’m already there.  I can just end this shit right now.  Kill it.  A little zinger and The End.  Make it a short one.  For a change.

I dunno.  I think it’s going to fart itself out here pretty soon.  Let’s poke it along and see if we can get it to crawl some more.

I had this gig once, writing a weekly column for a local paper in Santa Fe.  They paid forty bucks an article.  The deadline was noon Monday mornings.  I didn’t have a computer those days, so it’s not like I could just press send from the old home office.  Even if I could, there would be no point in sending something that didn’t exist.  I hadn’t spent the week-end working on an article.  I spent the weekend turning the old home office into a den of iniquity.  One filled with enough wretched excess and moral decay to have made Caligula uncomfortable.

Too busy living life to its fullest, baby, to be scribbling bullshit on paper.

On Monday morning, I’d be lying close to death from having lived so fully.  I’d stare up at the ceiling.  What the fuck am I going to write?  I was too poisoned to handle a pen and paper.  I would word-process the column in my head, in between vomiting and sipping canned beer.  Cheap, rancid shit.  Stuff that made you puff sewer gas out of your pores.  I’d be moving paragraphs around in my head.  Trimming sentences.  Inserting jokes.  Sweating and stinking.  Sprawled out on a stained mattress.  Trying really hard to be a genius.

For forty bucks.

Some mornings I wasn’t sure if I was going to live, but I was sure I wasn’t going to miss that deadline.  Or the forty bucks.  I never did.  It was my last vestige of responsibility and I clung to it tenaciously.  I’d get on my stolen bicycle with no seat, and peddle down to The Reporter.  I’d borrow somebody’s computer and bang out what I had in my head, while also trying to hold my alcohol smell in.  Tapping away, taking really shallow breaths.  Not wanting everyone in the office to know what a drunk I was.  Even though that’s what the article was about.  Genius.

Shit, that was hard.  This is easy.  We’re already at 1298 words and I haven’t broken a sweat.

Back then I needed a deadline.  Sometimes I would set up a reading, knowing it would force me to write.  If I didn’t have an ax hovering, I’d blow off the work at the first sign of a stall.  Whereas if I had a performance looming, I’d stick with it, and try to power through.  I had to come up with something.  The reading was in three hours.  And still, I would procrastinate.

I’d be burning it to the last minute.  One time, I actually finished a piece after I took the stage.  Wrote the last words after I sat down on the chair and opened a beer.  I’d have all these papers stuffed into a briefcase, sheets flying out everywhere, and the audience would think it was part of the shtick.  Fine by me.  Let them think this was performance art.  The truth was that I was totally unorganized and flying by the seat of my pished keks.

I wound up losing the part I had just wrote, that same night.  It was amazing.  I finished writing it up there on stage, set it down, and read some older pieces.  Things were rolling along.  Then I decided to lay the fresh one on them.  Hot off the presses this one, kids.  I get halfway through, and realize I can’t find the last sheet.

That’s funny.  I just wrote it.  I’m going through the whole briefcase while the audience waits, but it is gone, gone, gone.  I’m totally baffled.  I mean I didn’t go anywhere.  I was on stage the whole time.  So where could I have misplaced it?  Somewhere between here and here.  When was the last time you saw it?  When I was sitting right here.

Performance art?  Or just train wreck?  I’ll never tell.

I always wanted to see how close I could cut things.  Let me tell you, I could cut them wahfer theen.

There was a place in LA, called Al’s Bar, over by Little Tokyo.  They had an open mike on Thursdays.  Some friends and I would pile in the car and drive south.  We’d take turns going up to do something.  Didn’t much matter what.  It was for our own enjoyment.  The idea that we were up there “performing” something in front of an audience, was a pretty good rush.  But, it was even better if you could push the envelope.  Redefine what constitutes entertainment.  Get esoteric.  Make people wonder about you.  Provoke thought.

Scare the hell out of yourself.

One night, I decided I wanted to try an experiment.  I wanted to see what would come out of me if I had absolutely nothing prepared.  Nothing.  Just get up there and see what rolls out.  I’d create a vacuum in my psyche and hope something would fill it…at the very last minute.  Something interesting was bound to happen.  No matter what.  Maybe I’d even learn something.

I learned something alright.  I learned that I was fucking crazy.

As the evening proceeded, and my turn got closer, I started feeling some apprehension.  Maybe I should have some back-up, in case I can’t come up with anything.

And ruin the integrity of the experiment?  You idiot.  The whole point of this would be destroyed.  You’d be left doing something pointless.  We can’t have that.   Sufficiently penitent, I pushed any ideas away and tried to sit in mental void.  As best I could.

The place was noisy. There were people in the other room talking at the bar and shooting pool.  They weren’t paying attention to what was going on in the little show room.  In the performance space, there were probably thirty or so people.  All watching the terrible spectacle that is an open mike night.  Most of them were on the sign-up list to perform.  So you can imagine how pathetic.  How brutally dreadful.

That night, I couldn’t take comfort in how terrible the other acts before me were.  I didn’t know if my shit would be any better.  After all, I didn’t even know what my shit was.

Just be here.  Don’t think.  Stay present.

I was pretty awake by the time they called my name.  Not really able to anesthetize myself, at even dive bar prices, I was far too sober to enjoy the experience.  I always had stage-fright, but that night it seemed particularly acute.  The Fear had coiled in my gut and was constricting my throat.  Why was I doing this?  Nobody held a gun.  This was all my idea.  Of fun.

Why would I do this to me?

I got up and introduced myself.  I adjusted the mike, and looked down at it.  I stared deep into the meshed metal wire.  I really had nothing.  Nothing.  I clearly remember thinking, “Okay, I’m fucking out of here.”  I just stood there and checked out.  Evaporated.  My soul had left the building, leaving an empty husk staring at the mike.  Silence.  Then…

“I WANT TO FUCK YOUR MOTHER!!!”

I watched myself say it, from about two feet behind and above.  Sort of floating above it all.  Me looking at me.  I wasn’t too thrilled with what I was seeing.  The whole bar had gone pin-drop silent.  The people in the next room stopped talking and shooting pool.  Everyone was staring at me.  I guess that was good.  I had gotten everyone’s attention.  Or at least whatever possessed me did.  Good way to do it.  Although it seemed a little drastic.  No warming up the crowd with some friendly patter and a reminder to tip the waitress and bartender.  No.  Just cut to the chase.  Let everybody know what you would like to do to their mother.

Oh man.

Now I really didn’t know what to say.

Well, I wasn’t about to return into my body.  Not while I had to deal with this telling everyone I wanted to fuck their mother situation.  I decided that whoever yelled out that shit in the first place, could have the mike.  Maybe they can get us out of this, but I wanted no part of it.

It seems the invading spirit had some more things to say, some other pronouncements to make, because I was up there for the entire five-minute allotment.  I can’t remember any of it.  Not even right afterwards.  I had blacked-out.  And not my normal version.  It was strange.  I do remember people laughing.  Then afterwards, people clapping and cheering, and some guy wanting to buy me a beer.  Which I was nice enough to allow.

My friends said I did well, but I didn’t trust them.  I figured they had to say that.  I certainly didn’t want to press the investigation.  I never asked them what I had actually said up there, beyond the fabulous ice-breaker.  I really didn’t want to know.   My scientific investigation was over.  While many questions remained (like what happened)  I was able to come to some firm conclusions.

If you create a vacuum, something will fill it.  Whatever it was, in my case, got some dude to buy me a beer.  That was enough to label the entire experiment a resounding success.  It also helped my stage fright.  I was never as nervous after that night.  Maybe there’s some facing your fears message in there, but I don’t see it.

Oh shit, we’re at 2676 words.  That’s more than enough.  Okay, let’s wrap this fucker up fast.  Uh, yeah, things happened, blah blah, everything turned out cool, blah blah.  Explain some valuable insights.  Some lessons learned.  Maybe some shit about letting go and the creative process, or the entertainment value of demonic possession.  Ask some big questions.  Give few real answers.  Toss in a general observation.  Pair it with a specific absurdity.  Come up with a clever reference to something earlier in the piece, then a pithy popper to cork it.  This bitch is done.

And I had nothing.

Working on my article for Monday.

I’m A Rich Bastard Now.

.

I won’t be writing this bullshit blog anymore.  Why?  Because I don’t need to.  I don’t need you.  I don’t even need me.  I’m rich now.  All of a sudden.  Filthy, dirty, stinking, obscenely rich.  I will simply be too busy indulging my degenerate appetites to waste time writing some worthless, free blog.  This was only something to pass the time until I stumbled upon a windfall.  Well, I’ve stumbled… and the wind has fallen.

.

Of course, my elation at this turn of events is tempered by the fact that some people I don’t know, but blessed with my last name, had to die in a terrible tragedy.  Someone had to pay the ultimate price to deliver me.  But, like the old saying says, “Whenever a Gustaitis dies, an angel is born.”  Well, I have been reborn.

.

Please witness:

Roger Silas Kokou

Attn: Gustaitis,

This is an official legal notice of unclaimed fund left behind by Eng. Jacob A. Gustaitis, a national of your country, contractor by profession who died in a car accident along with his wife and their only daughter.

As the former official/personal attorney of the deceased and witness of fact of this subject matter, I hereby solicit for your immediate response and positive committed efforts to facilitate the transfer of the total amount valued at twenty million, Six hundred thousand U.S.D which he left behind, since you bear the same last name with him thus you are legally authorized to apply. Kindly Respond via my private email for details: cabinetwatdan(AT)yahoo.com or call: 00-228-9-95-27-743.

Regards, Barrister Daniel Wataego (Esq) Lomé-Togo

…

Can you believe my luck?  I’ve been waiting for something like this.  Deus ex machina, baby.

Twenty million, six hundred thousand dollars.  Even in today’s money, that’s a decent chunk.  I can put the twenty million in a CD, and then coast off the six hundred grand until it matures, in three or six months.  I haven’t decided which.  Is there a tax on getting money from dead people you don’t know?  Seems like there would be.

Well fuck that.  This money is mine, Uncle Sam.  That whole “render unto Caesar” admonition might have applied in olden times, but not in today’s economy.  I don’t care if I have to fly every week to use an ATM in Togo, I’m not letting you touch any of it.  I worked hard during various periods of my life.  When I wasn’t laying around drinking myself into a stupor, I was busting ass at all kinds of brutal and stupid jobs.

Thank you, sweet Lord.  Of course, I’m going to share my good fortune.  I promise to tip generously and hire only struggling young attorneys.  I think You knew that by bequeathing me this ample harvest, I would spread it among my fellow man.  And woman.  One rolled-up hundred-dollar bill at a time.

I don’t know where to begin.  I mean, I don’t want to go apeshit, but there’s been a lot of things I’ve needed that I just couldn’t afford.

Jet Ski with a grape jelly flaked paint job.  Gold-plated gatling gun.  Armored car with 10,000 watt trunk of funk and champagne slushy machine.  Private bowling alley with a stripper pole in the middle of the lane.  Rocket powered hang glider from Acme products.  Things I didn’t know I needed.  Until now.

Indian elephant wearing a poncho made of rubies.

I’m telling you, this really simplifies my life.  No more having to run the rat’s maze.  No more jockeying for position.  No more dealing with the complicated Rube Goldberg machine of social acceptance.  I no longer have to try to earn the approval of my peers.  You see, I don’t need their approval.  I just need the approval of some corrupt Third World bank executive…and I’m golden.

Everyone will hate themselves for not being me, and that’s approval enough.

I always wanted a satin trampoline.  To bounce around on naked while high on nitrous.  And a spider monkey trained to do cute stuff, like the laundry.

Will this change me?  It depends on what you mean by change.  Sure, it will change the way I act towards others, but it won’t change the person inside.  No.  That person is just going to feel a little more free to assert himself.  That’s all.  I’m still going to like what I like, but now will be able to stick my snout into the trough a little deeper.  Or better yet, pay others to stick it in for me.  Create jobs.

I might be getting ahead of myself.  I still have to come up with the $3,700 to release the funds.  This barrister dude,  Mr. Daniel Whataego (What a ego?) has been pretty firm about me coughing up the money before he can proceed.  I told him, “Dude, I will sign anything saying that as soon as I get my millions I will pay back the four grand.”  No dice.  My Sprint bill from talking to this fucker is going to be a whopper, but I can’t stress.  I have to be patient.  I’m sure there’s all kinds of legal bullshit, and probably a greedy official somewhere along the line that needs to be greased.  I know how this shit works.  People are just not going to hand over twenty million dollars.  Until you send them four thousand dollars.

Mine really is a typical American success story.  A son of immigrants wastes 30 years of his life as a dangerous drunk, gets sober, then one day while scrolling through spam featuring male enhancement products, comes across $20.600.000.  It’s Horatio Algers.  It’s the feel good movie of the century.  It’s now my story, an American story.  A story of redemption…and revenge.

Not everyone is going to be happy about my success.  (I’ll make sure of that)  There are a lot of people out there who will resent my millions, and I expect that.  It’s human nature.  I myself was human once, so I know how those miserable creatures roll.  Lot’s of people I know are struggling these days.  They’re going to see me as a soft touch for a handout.   They are in for a rude surprise.   I might have been willing to help them out when I was poor, because that meant I couldn’t give them much.  But now… now my generosity could really hurt.

Them, that is.

Look, I don’t want to rob them of the wonderful journey of self-discovery that financial insecurity and its panic provides.  If I help pay for an operation or make a rent or car payment for them, it’s only going to keep them from looking deep within themselves.  Do you really need a place to live?  Reliable transportation?  A biopsy?  Or is that just stuff our consumer-driven media brainwashed you to believe you need?

Well, the best way to find out, is to not get any of it.  Maybe you’ll discover that a cardboard box, a thumb, or a spoonful of rat poison will suffice as substitute.  You won’t know unless you try.  Try it a bunch.  You don’t have to report to me.  I know that sit-rep.  It seems like only yesterday I was at Ross Dress for Less, looking through the clearance rack.  Which is weird, because it happened today.

I rarely shop for shit.  Except for food.  I’m doing okay, but I’m not big into spending.  I think it’s residual survival instinct.  All those years living hand to mouth.  So anyway, I needed some essentials.  A new pair of those stretchy lycra thermal underwear for under my work-out gear this winter.  They make me look ridiculous.  Like a villain from the old Bat Man show. but that’s why I disguise myself with other clothes on top.  So nobody snaps.

I’d prefer to clothes shop at a thrift store, but not for underwear.  That’s a little too gnarly.  So Ross it is.  It’s hit or miss there.  They have some of the most hideous clothes ever invented, in my size, and some really cool threads, that don’t fit.  Anyway, I’m in luck.  There’s a set in my size.

Decent price, too.  I pull out the top from the box and try it on.  It fits.  Except the neck hole is too tight.  Everything else fine.  Hmm.  I can go next door to Target.  Target, right?  Not Rodeo Drive.  I can probably find a pair with a neck hole that doesn’t choke me.  The difference in price is really not going to make or break me.  But I’ve got this great deal over here, and except for the blocking my airways situation, it’s perfect.

“Fuck it, I’ll stretch the hole,” I decide.  I should be grateful.  There are people out there that don’t even have a hole to stretch.  And I saved enough to buy a twelve pack.

That’s how it is with me.  There’s this feeling that by saving money, there will be more money for beer.  Even though I don’t drink beer anymore.  Old habits die hard.  Back then, if I got, let’s say a traffic ticket, instead of being happy I didn’t get hauled in for D.U.I., I would picture how many imported beers the ticket cost.  Then I’d picture those bottles being smashed, one by one, in a drainage ditch.  Just to drive the pain in harder.

Lose a gas cap?  Six bucks to replace it?  That’s a sixer of Becks.  Forget it.  Stuff a rag in and drive a Molotov cocktail around.  Buy three forties to celebrate your savings.  No need to waste money on an oil change, not when you have to put in a quart every three days.  It changes itself.   Registration due?  Break out the paint set and change the color of the tag.  Proof of Insurance?  Pay the dude at Kinkos to make you one using an old one.

I knew lots of handy cost-cutting ways to stretch the family budget.  Savings enough to buy a Mayan pyramid’s worth of beer.  Instead of a real house.

Unfortunately, drinking on an empty stomach became a common cost-cutter.  My dire financial situations made that one easier and easier to employ.  When you choose to stop eating so you can keep drinking, it’s probably a red flag.  One to whiz right by on your glorious victory lap.  Some kind of end is roaring towards you.  Wave back to the flags.  Won’t be long now before something significant happens.  Will it be getting twenty million dollars?

It’s been hard to change my attitude about money.  Sometimes I think I’m still that bum.  I sure remember where I came from.  If I go to a restaurant, I will really agonize about making a waitress or waiter go back and get something.  I know what a pain in the ass it is to dance to somebody else’s tune.  If I go to a hotel, I have to tidy up the room before the maid comes so she wouldn’t have to work as much.  My mom cleaned motel rooms for a while and it was hard enough when the rooms were neat.

I was on a cruise recently with my girlfriend.  There’s all these Indonesian people serving as crew.  We’ll, I’ve been to Indonesia, and already knew those people are some of the most beautiful souls on the planet.  Happy and good-natured, they always friendly and provide excellent service.  And that’s what bothered me.  They’re such nice people, I didn’t want them to have to do anything for me, and when they did, felt like I had to over-tip and thank them like they saved me life.

If we ordered room service, I would ask the person taking my order, to tell the guy delivering it, that it was no rush.  I had been a room service waiter and knew that whole frantic hurry go-go that came with that gig.  I didn’t want to add to their stress.  If we had to call for something, like more towels, I’d hesitate.  They’re probably really busy now.  I didn’t want them to have to deal with my shit.  Speaking of…

One afternoon, Lori had gone up to one of the top decks.  I figured this was a good time to use the bathroom.  I like to be private about some things, and it’s kind of close quarters, dig?  So now’s a good time.  Well, I finish and push the flush.  Nothing.  Again.  Nothing.  Again.  Nothing.  Again.  Again.  Again.  Again.  Again.  Again…Again.  Nothing.  Oh fuck.  I can’t believe it.  This can’t be happening.

It’s not going away.

You see, I also used to work for a plumbing company, so I know what having to deal with something like this is like.  I remember having to work through somebody else’s problem while they casually popped peanuts and played ping-pong in the next room.   I cannot subject somebody else to it.  Can not.

It was one of those crucible, just-crapped-my-pants moments.  I MUST handle this.  Into action, NOW!

I’ll spare you the details, but I handled it, so to speak.  It was a secret stealth mission.  I felt like I was smuggling enriched Uranium trying to get it out of cabin and properly disposed of.  I left the package on the counter of the health and beauty spa.  Not really, but I dealt with it, so nobody else would ever have to.  I think it shows character.  Rugged individualism.

I dealt with my own shit.

Anyway, when I got back, I was able to finally call the ship’s maintenance guy.  He fixed the toilet.  I tipped him.  Thanked him like he saved my life.  Closed the cabin door and slid along the wall.  I felt like I had aged years.  So much for relaxing cruise.

I don’t know if that part of me would change if I were rich.  I couldn’t pop peanuts and play ping-pong while somebody else was dealing with my mess.  It wouldn’t feel right.  I don’t think it should.  I hope that part of me never goes away.  It’s a slippery slope if it does.  Next stop, total assholedom.  For me at least.  And tons of money wouldn’t solve that problem.

I do have some friends that have done pretty well for themselves and haven’t turned into total assholes.  They haven’t lost their humanity.  They’re still cool to hang out with and would probably help a friend out if they needed it.  That’s encouraging.  Not that I would ever ask.  Like I said, I’m doing okay.

Which reminds me, I have to get a cash advance off my cards to Western Union some money to Mr. Wataego.  He’s expecting it.

Unplugged Thug

I was downloading Kindle for PC when the computer shit the bed.  Two days earlier, I had downloaded updates from Sprint that ruined my phone.  Now this.  I was already a little freaked about getting a virus from going bareback for a week or two after the security expired.  Instead of re-subscribing right away, I thought, fuck it, let’s live on the edge again, if only in this greatly watered-down way.  How about some of that reckless youthful disregard for common sense that created your legend, huh?  Just for old time’s sake.

Hell, I wasn’t going to be downloading midget lesbian porn from Romania.  I was going to be a good cyber-citizen.  I’d stick to WordPress, Facebook, and whatever links on those.  Besides, I didn’t need to be paying some place to protect me from something I’m not even sure exists.  Computer virus.  Until I’ve actually seen one and gone camel toe-to-toe with one, it’s hard to believe it’s real.  Sure, I have heard plenty of anecdotal accounts of it, but same with Big Foot and Chupacabra.

Frankly, I believed in Big Foot and Chupacabra more.  Mostly because I wanted to.

I remember early on in my sobriety I was still living at my mom’s, and was getting re-aquainted with the computer in my room.  I had just joined MySpace and was poking around.  I wound up on some punk rock girl’s page and clicked on her pictures.  Scenes of human gore started flashing on the screen, one after another, with bizarre sound-effects and crazy screaming sounds.  One image in particular stands out.  It looked like a close-up of a hemorrhoids operation.  Anybody who knows how squeamish I am about seeing operation scenes will delight in knowing that shit went into my eyeballs.  Fairly traumatizing enough, but it wasn’t over.

After the strobing gore accompanied by the Bedlam Cacophony Choir, the screen froze on an intricate collage of gay porn.  Not just any gay porn, but some really esoteric stuff, featuring old men in their seventies.  Very graphic.  I don’t think I would have liked it even if I was gay.  Then a loud voice over the speakers repeatedly announced, “Hey everybody! I’m looking at gay porn! Hey everybody! I’m looking at gay porn!”  I couldn’t make it stop until I unplugged the computer.  I’m sure my mom heard that from her bedroom.  What an evil thing to do to someone, I thought.  Well played, punk rock girl.

There was no lasting damage to the computer, but my psyche had some disturbing images burned into its retina.  I didn’t count that as a virus.  It was just another fucked up thing that happened to me, in an already intricate collage.  It wasn’t something to drink over though.  I shrugged it off.

So now, when the subscription expired, I figured eventually I’d subscribe to some security or look for a free computer condom download, some Trojan Horse Trojan…but only when it didn’t seem like too much of a fucking hassle.  That might be never.  Meanwhile, I wasn’t going to take any crazy risks, like clicking on some punk rock girl’s pictures on MySpace, or downloading stuff that says “Warning. Are you sure you want to be downloading this? File found to be potential virus threat.”  Except when Dave dares me to.

I had an expired cert and an antiquated firewall, but I also had a good feeling.  I was an intrepid adventurer paddling up a malarial river while drinking a local remedy through a human skull.

Man, I’ve been through some real shit in my life, what’s a computer virus going to do to me that I can’t handle?  I would find out soon enough.

One night, I’m typing away and the letters start to place themselves randomly within the earlier text.  What’s coming up on the screen looks like it was encoded with an Enigma machine.  It would stop for a while, let me clean up the text, write some more, and then like a venereal wart resistant to Podophyllin, keep coming back.  O h yuo ffffffffukcr! e

That kind of bullshit really slows down the creative process, but this little virus had even more things to demonstrate.  It seemed to be showing off its newfound power and control over my computer.  It started with random highlighting, then began repeating letters, and then spontaneous scrolling.  It was replying when I didn’t ask it to, and leaving the page without my permission.  Was this a virus, demonic possession, or just youthful rebellion?

Ghost cat across the keyboard?

There was only one thing to do in any case.  Pretend it wasn’t happening.  Just keep on keeping on.  Smoke pouring out of the hood?  Turn up the stereo and floor it.  As a drunk, denial was an important survival tool, so it’s still my default go-to fix.  My messages to Dave became something like, “Dud e, thsi thngi is doign some fcukde upshhhhhiiiiiiit  to my keyb or   !!!!”

Dave knew I caught a dose.  He is Mr. Computer, but in a Mad Max way.  Picture a dusty, road-worn, ex-con wearing wi-fi goggles, going giga-geek on a laptop duct-taped to his motorcycle’s sidecar.

His deeply held anarchist principles don’t allow him to pay for anything on the internet, so he deftly circumvents anything that smells like capitalist exploitation, which is pretty much anything that charges money.  He recently put out an e-book, Subterranean Emerald City Blues,  It’s a sharp slice of Seattle street life during the 90’s, that I highly recommend.  A delightful piece of Misery Lit, or rather, Post-Misery Lit.  Neo-Misery?  Anyway, it’s as real as Dave, and that’s pretty fucking real.  If you don’t want to pay the price you set yourself, you should contact him and he’ll be happy to teach you how to steal it.  Knowing him, he would prefer that.  Steal his book even though it doesn’t cost anything.

Anyway, he jumps into action.  I need to download this and upload that.  Run an EOD -13 driver optimizer through my Pre-Dat file digitizer.  I don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about, and instantly get ice picks in the temples when I try to know.  Let’s face it, I’m still a barbarian.  A Russian soldier in some bombed-out Berlin apartment using the toilet as a water fountain.  Tippy-tapping on a computer has only recently become a past-time.

Before that, my hobby was pulling the shower curtains down around me while falling into the bathtub pissing.

Anyway, I tried my best and did what I could, but it was too late.  The little cyber spirochete had burrowed itself into my brain and was eating away at my motor skills.  In the meantime, my screen was erupting in the wildest misbehavior.  I was dealing with what Dr. Vernon Woolf would call “a self-organizing unit of intelligence.”  A holodyne.  This one, primary manifestation of intelligence that it might have been, was already an asshole and pissing me off.  In a few billion years of evolution it would join a fraternity and drive a Corvette.

For now, it had to be content with irritating me like this.  There was a mischievous quality to its hijinks, like it was really just running amok, not oblivious to the displeasure it was causing, but delighting in it.  I’m sure I caught it from one of my motley mob of Facebook friends.  Every one of them could easily have been a carrier.  Scroll through them sometime.  You’ll see.

The screen finally went turned onyx on Thursday night.  All my attempts to revive it failed.  By that I mean, I turned the router off and on a few times, and then unplugged the power strip twice.  When that didn’t work, I said, “Fuck it.”  It deserved to die.  This was what Joseph Campbell would say represented the myth of the hero’s journey, only in this case, instead of retrieving The Golden Fleece, the hero fails, bites the curb, and dies all dead and shit.

Let the dead bury the dead.  I had to move on.

Now what?  I had a phone that had a touchscreen that kept freezing every 15 seconds.  I could still make calls.  I just couldn’t hang up…without taking the battery out.  Forget about doing anything on the internet, unless it’s something that takes less than 14 seconds, like seeing how much e-mail you have to answer but can’t.

The cool thing was that it finally got me and Dave to talk on the phone.  Before this we had only interacted via keyboard.   Now that we were able to talk, we could really trade some stories.  These were tales we held out because they were too involved to type in chat message, and too not-passed-the-statue-of-limitations to blog about.  Dude’s got some good ones.  Me too, I guess.

I broke out my paints and started splattering a canvas while we jawed.  It was great.  I laughed for hours, and wound up with sore abs and a masterpiece of abstract expressionism.  Not a bad deal.

It would take days before I could get the computer back or a new phone from Sprint.  I had to go Yukon and rough it.  I could use this time away from suckling at a social media tit, and really take a look at things.  Maybe even tidy up and reorder some life priorities.  Of course, not without first experiencing withdrawal.

What if someone posts on my wall and I don’t “like” it soon enough?  They’ll think I’m totally stuck-up and start talking shit about me to all the popular girls!

I actually did find myself feeling a little anxious.  I had shit I wanted to do on the computer, and now couldn’t.  I was trying to download Kindle for PC so I could read and review my friend, John Carnell’s book, Thugs Like Us.  It’s a novel based on a true story of crime, drugs and drink set in late 70’s England.  What’s not to love about shit like that?  I wonder if I got the computer clap from it.  It did come with a warning “This book does NOT contain any teenage vampires, dodgy S&M soft porn sequences, witches, dwarves, dragons or indeed any mythical characters whatsoever.  This book does contain nuts.”

John being the main one.  Dude is fucking crazy funny.  Who else writes non-fiction novels?

Speaking of nuts, I was also in the middle of writing a story about spending Mardi Gras with some University of Michigan co-eds when the box went black.  I had just gotten to the part where I had OD’d on brownies on a Greyhound bus in Texas.  Shit.  I was going to miss my deadline for the blogula, and I hated to do that.  Sure, it was an arbitrary, self-imposed one, but forgetting that makes it still matter.  There was also a pile of e-mail I needed to answer, some friend’s blogs I wanted to comment on, and a few reviews I wanted to write.  Hard to thumb out on a phone that freezes every few seconds.

Well, all that stuff is going to have to wait now, isn’t it?   I’ve learned to shift gears pretty quickly these days.  Just another part of being sober.  Things are going to happen, and some you’re just not going to dig.  How you deal with them will determine a large part of whether you can avoid popping the beer can escape hatch.  I have sober friends that can just go existential.  Shit happens.  It’s all meaningless.  Nothing matters.  Why stress?  And I admire that.

I have to go a different route.  I have to tell myself that everything that happens is for the best possible reason, regardless of how it appears to me initially.  Whether I’m deluding myself is entirely unimportant.  The cold hard fact is that when I do, my behavior improves.  I respond in healthier ways, and it becomes easier for me to deal with shit in a more present, measured, and tolerant manner.  If nothing else, I’m not aggravating my initial irritation with the bad repercussions from throwing a tantrum and broodfest.  I also don’t get thirstier for anything stronger than a Hansen’s diet ginger ale.

The really strange thing is that, eventually, I begin to intuit/see/realize how whatever did happen was the best thing to happen.  A new narrative emerges.  I just had to stop being a petulant pissy-pants long enough to let it unfold.

This whole bullshit with the computer and phone, as pissed as I was when it happened, got me talking to Dave on the phone, spending more time with my girlfriend and cats, ruining perfectly good blank canvases again, cleaning and organizing my room, reading some history, pruning down my garden for Fall, staying longer at the gym, working on my jail house shadow boxing, mailing out some packages and post cards to friends, and basically, understanding that my life should be bigger than just the part that lives on the computer screen.  I needed to be reminded of that.

It’s easy to forget real life happens out here, away from the screen.  It’s easy to become a pasty, hunched little troll, growing too fat, lazy, and sheltered to participate in it. Tip-tap.  Click.  Click.  Like.  Share.  Unfriend.  Delete.

Unfortunately, when the real shit hits the fan, you’re not going to be able to click DELETE.  You’ll be too busy trying not to get deleted yourself.  Then you’ll wish you had logged off once in a while to jog around the block and work on your combos, or actually held a loved one, instead of “liking” Enterprise Car Rental and playing Slingo-Bingo for magic tokens.

Still, it was good to get the thing back from the shop, with my cat pictures intact.

Today, everything is fixed, but a little better because it was fucked before.  The Hero’s Journey.

Well okay, I have an epic tale of drunken misadventure to finish, some friend’s work to read, and e-mail to answer.  Then maybe throw some iron around to remember gravity still exists.  BBeBBee Saef out  threrrr ! e!!

Kick your computer to the curb. Your world won’t end.

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.

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.

Showdown At The Worm Saloon

“Hey hey, Babydoll, all you gotta do is call.  I drank a lot of beer, but you know I got a friend, and his name is Alcohol!” Alcohol, by The Butthole Surfers.