Chromosome 11

Filthy Trollop

2010-08-15T09:06:00.000-07:00

The very thought of writing right now is abhorrent. The sore wrists I know will follow the backspace challenged typing I do, the level of pain to be measured by the number of words typed. How can the physical labor involved in the pushing of little buttons be a deterrent to...what the fuck am I writing here? That doesn't make a bit of sense. I was going to say that I don't like the idea of writing when high on some premium bud. Seems like it would be a buzz-buster, now don't it? Hard enough to type when the noggin is straight, gotta be a killer when stoned.

Many is the time I've had to consider the fact that the world does not revolve around me and that I am the center of nothing. Those spaces between centers, those are the ones in which I would choose to dwell. Usually the times I think of these things are the times when my head has finally exploded into the desire to know the things I think of, finally, exploded into the valley of the shadow of the space between the centers and hell yes, that's where I want to lay down me burden and tell my readership that I have decided to do something I have many times been encouraged to do by my Higher Spirit, of whom we bow and offer obeisances. Yet the demon in me made a lazy man from mine, of whom we bow. Finally, exploded, the secret you've been guessing the mind of which belongs he that is encouraged to do these things in the name of SCIENCE, bow thy humble forms to it's majesticism. Hanging from a cross of suspicion, the need to be crucified into atomic forms still he who sees what he only wants to see, only a cross. A cross of suspicion, a paranoia that almost shields you from the scornful eyes of your bitter mother.

You bitter mother, she left, left you behind, now did she? Yeah, I can see it in your eyes. The one on the left sort of twinkles when I mention her. That's a sure fire indication that you harbor much resentment for that foul bitch.

"That foul bitch is my mother!" you say.

To which I respond, "Yay, brother, that foul bitch is my mother, as well. We share more in common than the emperor we serve."

"'Emperor we serve'! Ha! Ha! I would laugh my stinky ass off to hear of his passing into the other side, where the prize is finding out if there really is a heaven or a hell. Lifetimes spent never once doubting the reality of both. Still, even the most faithful, have a bug of doubt running through your convictions. A little worm of suspicion. I hope he finds out that he's wrong. Another man would wish him right, as a lifetime subconsciously protected from psychotic breakdowns..."

I found his words offensive, so I turned my horses around and we headed north. My mind was plagued with considering the eternal questions, debunking prayer and then praying that my answers to those questions were the right ones. It was distracting, and I was suprised to see him, as his horse caught back up to my party.

"Yo, feller-dude! Do ya think ya could maybe accept my apologies, cause Mister, I got some explaining to do to my wife".

"And what's the deal with your wife? She been lookin' at stuff on the Internet she ain't suppose to be lookin' at? Did you ever cure her of that?"

"I don't think it's any of your damned business, but I thought you might be here to tell me news of our godforsaken mother," I must admit, I was curious about this news even though I'd convinced myself that I wanted nothing more to do with that bitch I call Mother.

"Well, Jeb, you knew that guy that was caught hiding in her closet...our dad got pretty wrecked, you must remember his nervous breakdown. Anyway, there was a rumor that used to make its rounds in this neck of the woods. That daddy of yours had killed that there man in the closet. Yes sir, he did. Now what do I, personally, think of all that? Well, I don't think he would do it. I don't think it was in his nature to kill. I would hope that this would be the case in all men, so it is a desireable trait."

"You don't think he would do something like that, even in his most heated moment, the anger swelling like a water balloon?"

"No I don't, if you want me to tell the gospel truth. Stone truth, that's all you'll get out of me. Here is the message, in full:

'My dear son, Jeb

'I know you think I'm a roto-rooter, little motor scooter, but I don't do this all the time. I had to tell you. It's not as if I "didn't want to", or that I "didn't want you". I just had a difficult time adjusting. I don't think I've even adjusted close enough to success to call it that. But I'm a whore. That's all. What can I do about it? I'm a filthy prostitute, a hooker on the street, a trollop unlocking her bodice and giving the most precious gift in the world to bankers, barbers, butchers, bakers, givers, takers, lovers, haters, killers, men with unclean genitals, men with unclean hands, staining my body. I'm a scag, willing and waiting for cash, it's not gonna hurt anymore. It's not gonna hurt anymore. Precious Jeb, it's gonna be alright. That's what I'm hear to tell you, son of mine. I know you disowned me a long time ago. You've tried every night to exorcise my memory from your mind. You have failed. Failed miserably. But that's alright. I'm only going to be around long enough to write this letter to you.

'That's right. I am going to kill myself tonight. If you haven't heard of it by the time you get this letter, you must alert the authorities and inform them of the location of my body, which they will find hanging from a rope tied around a beam that supports the ceiling in the sanctuary of St. Ignatious.

'Though the fact is that I have been a whore...and at this point it would be ridiculous and futile not to call it what it is...a filthy whore, at that...and yay I was once called to the profession of prostitution. I did this for many reasons, but the real motivation for becoming a prostitute was because I wanted a lot of indiscriminate fucking. I wanted to lay down and know many, many men. Men of all races, religions, customs. Handsome men. Ugly men. Men the same, both with the same dignity and integrity, deserving of equal respect. To see the real man is to look past the imperfections, which are, of course, only imperfections from your own, unique point of view. The reality exists that he is an attractive man in the eyes of many women. So that reality exists. Tap into it, and you will find the most desirable man you have ever known in your life.

'So that's exactly what I did. I tapped into it. Got my money's worth. Them fuglys were starting to look real good and the liquid aphrodisiac I'd been given was really doing the trick.

'Yes, Jeb, I'm your piece-of-shit mother. I'm the one that gave you life, and tonight I'm gonna take my own, and it really messes with my head, am I gonna go down screaming? Am I gonna give it up willingly? Don't mean a thing, y'all, cuz it's gonna happen nonetheless. I just thought you might want to know why I chose to hang myself over any of the other available methods..."

And this is where I get off. Nope. Can't go on with it. My mind's not in a great place right now, with all that "how many ways are there to kill yourself" nonsense. That stuff belongs on the same shelf as the other things I don't mind not knowing and never even want to know.

It's time to say goodbye. I'm gonna have to pull it down a notch or two, expel some of this pot anxiety, don't let it get to the paranoia stage. You can do that. You've done it before, haven't you? Why, sure you have. You're high right now, aren't you? Do you think you would be doing it again if it had ever overcome you? Dude, this is what you LIKE about smoking pot. When every sound is magnified. When music becomes solid. Or liquid. Or even a gas pervading the atmosphere around me in this room. Don't let it scare you. Work with it. You'll find a way to get around this, and when it's done you'll notice how easy it was.

Feeling pretty blasted. Nice throbbing in my brain. Music doing it's job. Losing perception. eoauo jgja dka g irjgoooak kdj oaidoaim. igjo lang kjkk ganga dkkl eiuav. No longer able to type woka jg aliuj jfiaaadi aoi galmost like an emotional shutdown, or what else would I call it? I'm going down down down down I'm going down down down down. I'm going down down down down...actually, I'm not. I'm headed up North to Alaska. I'm following my ugly nose to the wasted roadsl This is thje ea=z a q equivalent of "automati c writingl odij gf faoiej fjf oijajsourijf foisijf slijdji8jeijisomsmfj aoijd fjoe8ji d fojid can someone say something about my crack whore mother, Mary Jerusalem, the Whore of Babylon.

"Third Voice" (preview)

2010-07-20T06:31:00.000-07:00

The Smart Voice told me it was pure craziness. There could be no other voice other than my own. Two. The Smart Voice and My Own. There could not be three. Never could there be three.

But there was. And This Voice told me He was God. And He said to me, "I am made manifest in the Prophet Paul. He will speak to you. He will teach you the manner with which you should conduct your life, informed, as it is, by the Hermetic teachings delivered by the Holy & Sacred Internet Chorus.You will know him as Me. You will refer to me as 'This Voice' from now on."

Now, I'm not the kind of man to bow down before anything more lofty than a cheap trick whore looking for a hand out. But this thing was telling me It was God. It's an imaginary voice, after all. I've gone insane. That seems obvious to everyone but me, I'm sure, but I'm ALSO sure that if this 3rd Voice was to be believed I would be a fool not to take advantage of the benefits of walking with God. Talking with God. Listening for hours to It's teachings and realizing, deep in my soul, that they are exactly what I need. I know in my stomach that I will be a better man for following these precepts It's laid done, forever trapped in the spider web of the InterWeb.

The InterWeb. The silo of our souls. The repository of intelligence and sensation. Last bastion of the Unique. Well of shadows. Crawling Serpent coiled and hungry, a place to retain memory, the place to obtain recollection, the den of Hackers and disemboweled cyber-spirits. A Haunted House filled to capacity with ghosts, ghouls, goblins of the past, just waiting for their turn in the Resurrection. An endless novel, daring the reader to follow. An absolutely Unique journey for the brave Riders willing to dive into the Web's deep waters. Worth everything to the man choosing his skin. The Inter Web. Solitary confinement a burden more easily bared.

The Smart Voice told me to stay away. "Trouble, Frank. Nothing but trouble. I realize that it must be very important to you that you have not obeyed me up to this point, but now I'm offering a chance for redemption. I'm gonna stand watch on your ass like I have never stood watch on Anybody's ass before. "

But This Voice whispered in my ear, "Don't listen to him. He's a square. He's one of the most UN-COOL cats in the whole Pussy Willow. Come on, Sad Sack, let's have some FUN! I got plans...they be a hunnerd times more fun than the ones you been thinkin' about lately."

That sounded good to me. Who knew how long it would last? Might as well let God in on it. He seems like a swell fella. What would it hurt, you know? That's what I'm asking: How much harm can possibly be done from lettin' the old Bugger hang on me? Could do worse, you know."

A certain annoyance was easily detected in the tone of the Smart Voice's response: "At your own peril, Frankee, Old boy, at your own peril do you follow This Voice that whispers in your left ear while you and I speak on the right. He will drive you mad. You will soon wish him off of your back and you will feel him heavier to carry than any stone Sisyphus had to roll. He'll talk you to death and stuff your mind with the desire to know things you are never meant to know. Can't you see it? Ah, but that it seems so obvious to me, how can it be so oblivious to you?"

Then I'd go into the bathroom, where I had recently experienced a rather Uncommon tendency for This Voice, that is, the God Voice (NOT the Smart Voice, though you would think that This Voice would also be a Smart Voice and that the Voice of God would most assuredly be Smart. But the point is, there was a large, full body sized mirror in that bathroom, and it was in front of it that I not only heard the God Voice, I SAW the God Man channeling through me. I was not the man in the mirror. That was the Prophet Paul, the incarnate God Man, sent to spy on me.

I recognized Christ and I saw him looking back at me with the look of a man whose tender feelings have been trampled on. He had a gleam in his eye that a man could grow jealous of. He spoke often of his family and friends. He taught every single day of his life...only a scant few of his teachings are to be found in the Bible. But what a lot of people don't know, through no fault of their own, mind you, is that a great lot of these Life Lessons are still extant and can be accessed by certain members of the Hindu community. For a small fee there should be no problem in getting you inside and leading you to the chamber where the papyrus grow, where the Teachings can be found. You will rejoice when you get there, when you walk up to that door you'd better stop and consider that if you take one step through that door your whole life will never be the same again? It will change you in such a profound way as to render you powerless to even consider getting back the old things, the old thoughts, the old schemes, the old dreams, the old lies and the old truths, they are still the same, they are still the same. Damn that demon he's in my head again. I can see every word he would have me write and to you with faoo eiii sectarian a cataclysm the fairy tale monster's are cool as they come the come they come.

Lesson 1: The exact day, month, week, day, hour, RIGHT DOWN TO THE MINUTE can all be found in the Number of the Beast, 666, which was never meant to frighten the pious, but a mathematical equation that has not, until now, been accessible to the human mind's ability to comprehend how it works and what it means. But intense calculation at this moment will reveal to you that the final day will be in the month of May, in the year 947,873.989,666,666,666,666,666,666,666,666,776. Obviously quite a long time from now. I could only think of my family line, whether it will have become extinct by then. Will anyone presently living have a family line left only millenniums from now? The lesson? Be prepared mentally. Build a wall if you have to, just stick with This Voice that claims to be God. He is! Take my word for it. I'm fixing to get nailed to a tree at thirty three, so you'd better pay attention to me while you still got me around. Stick with Him as if your life depended on it. There will be many times when it will have and you may never even know it. Never realized that your life had been spared on so many different occasions as you walked on, still breathing, blissfully unaware of any danger you may have been in. And there will be danger, and you will be in it, but take heart. I will be your Shepherd, and you shall never be in need. I will tell you to lie down, in quiet warm breeze birthing ripples in still waters. I will take you on a funhouse journey, a freak out road trip into that dark, dark Valley. Loathsome Valley that swallowed twenty mean and ate 'em, whole.

Lesson 2: There once was a man named Abe. He was a good man, and just. But like every man, his folly was his downfall. You see, this man was a thinking time bomb. This man danced to the Four Seasons of Vivaldi, twirling and whirling to the familiar strains of Spring. This man liked it way too much, though. He liked it to the point that everyone who knew him could not think of him without also thinking of whatever it was he liked, I've forgotten.

Sudden Mental Breakdown, good lord it's happening again. Sudden Mental Shakedown, it's gonna get you out yo head, good god it's gonna get you out yo head...

Found on the Body of the Deceased

2010-06-19T06:15:00.000-07:00

Dear Caroline,

I got really good and ripped last night. I'm about to administer a little hair of the dog, so I thought I'd recount the things I did before I lose track of them.

I took the first few hits at a friend's house. Loosened me up pretty good and, as usual, I got in the mood to play some music. My brother was there as well. He set up the studio and my buddy whipped out his Ovation. We decided to do a little on-the-spot recording. Threw out a song I wrote several years ago but never polished. A thing called "She's So Vain". It came together pretty well, but I wasn't happy enough with the finished product to want to use it for anything. Maybe next time.

I also showed them a new song I wrote a few days ago. "Run" is about as country as you can get. I thought maybe they might want to work it up in their band. It might go over pretty well to the audiences they generally play for.

It was a couple of hours before I decided it was safe to drive home. If there's one thing I will not do anymore, it's drive stoned. Didn't used to be a problem. Scares the shit out of me now, though. I must have gotten it all out of my system, though, because the trip went just fine. I listened to a few songs from the most recent Sigur Ros album, then a few from Black Sabbath.

I had determined to take a shower as soon as I got home so I wouldn't have to mess with it after the next round. I'd purposefully not bathed until then because my friend smokes like a chimney and my clothes stink like fuckin' tobacco every time I come from there. God, I hate that stench.

Got out of the tub and admired myself in the mirror for a little while. Not really so much "admiring" as "inspecting". I was trying to decide if the person in the mirror was the "real me" and not the person looking into the mirror. Then I returned to the realization that my body was just a temporary wrap for the Self that experiences this paradigm through it's nerves, muscles, tendons, senses...

A few moments lost in such contemplation put me in the mood to watch a little porn on the Internet. I skipped through a couple that were pretty goddamn hot. Then my curiosity got the better of me and I wound up watching some 70 year old grandma giving head to a willing man who was considerably younger than she was. At times I thought, well, this old biddy has been around long enough, she has enough experience, she knows what she's doing, right? Maybe she wanted to make sure she got one more pop before the Reaper stepped in. But then, when I saw the look on her face as the guy pushed her head into his crotch, thought it just as well might be some drugged-up geriatric borrowed from a local nursing home. Start-up porn producers making a 100% profit from an old woman who doesn't even know what's going on around her. Fuck, she might even have had Alzheimer's. She very well could have honestly believed she was on some roller coaster ride at Disneyland. Either way you look at it, the whole situation was unsavory and I assure you that I didn't stick around long enough to hear her yell Rudolph Valentino's name when she came. From the looks of her even that orgasm could have been a figment of her Alzheimer's wrecked imagination.

That put me out of the porn mood, so I never got around to watching the clip of the pretty young lady kneeling naked in a bathtub while two guys piss all over her. Which would not be too bad, actually, but she drinks the stuff. That's right! She opens up her mouth and lets these reprobates fill it with urine, which she gargles and promptly swallows. It's really quite disgusting and I'm glad I didn't choose to watch it.

The THC was kicking in pretty good by now (despite the granny flick and the prospect of seeing someone drink pee-pee). I went into the living room and put "The Magnificent Seven" on the television. But the sound wasn't coming through my home theatre speakers...in fact, I was hearing no sound at all. Well, something's fucked up, I thought. Maybe it was the disc? No, probably I'd had the settings fixed so that I was not getting audio. As the night went on I eventually discovered that this was the correct assessment, but not before giving up a couple of times, confused at how I was utterly incapable of figuring out how to work a remote control that I'm reasonably familiar with.

Putting that off for later I did some channel surfing. As is the norm, I found absolutely nothing that I really wanted to watch. So I went to the old stand-bys...the religious networks. It is a strange aspect of my tastes that brings me to these weird shows. I don't put much stock in what the preachers and teachers are saying, but I think it's fascinating to watch how they say it. Very entertaining, at times.

I think it was the Inspiration Network that I eventually chose to watch (at least until my mind cleared up long enough to figure out what was wrong with the DVD/Home Theater shit). There was this really passionate gathering of people milking the praise and worship thing for all it's worth. The choir actually sounded very good. The leader was a goofy motherfucker but he was as sincere as a man can be in his concern for souls and his love for Him who would take them into His bosom. It was so cool to look at all the people wrapped up in the moment, praying, shouting, tears flowing from some eyes, a few of them firing off some unintelligible gibberish, "praying in the Spirit" or "speaking in tongues" as they would call it. I personally define it as "creepy" and "bizarre". It threw a monkey wrench of weirdness into the proceedings and kept my drug-addled mind entertained for about an hour.

Then I took my mp3 player into the bedroom, laid down and put Black Sabbath into Random mode. I've been in a hard rock mood lately, so you know I was diggin' me some Sabbath. It seemed like the right thing to do after my visit to the Holy Ghost Pot Party. I've got all the Ozzy Sabbath albums on the player. Even "Technical Ecstasy" and "Never Say Die" (though I tend to skip songs from those records).

I've also got all of Led Zeppelin's discs loaded, perhaps subconsciously waiting for this "high moment" when I ripped and synced them. At any rate, I took in a nice session of Zep before being consumed by a serious case of the munchies.

I won't even attempt to remember just how much I ate (it kinda makes me sick when I think about how much my stomach must have stretched to accommodate it all). Bear in mind that I didn't eat any lunch, so that may be how I pulled it off. Rice Krispies, Butter Pecan ice cream, Wavy Lays potato chips, Borden French Onion sour cream dip, pickles, three Little Debbie chocolate chip whatchamacallits and at least 15 Jolly Rancher hard candies (which I didn't count as "food items"). Now I didn't knock all this stuff back in one go...it was spread out through the night, but I might as well have. A couple cups of coffee this morning for my constitutional and I shit a good lot of it out. Even though I may have gained a pound or two, that defecation catharsis experience made it all worth it.

Back to last night. After listening to the music I was inspired to make one more go at the DVD player. I was in the mood to watch "Koyaanisqatsi" (if you don't know, it is a film of landscapes and other trippy stuff set music by Philip Glass...I highly recommend it to any stoner looking for something different, yet qualifying as a Grade A 100% Good To Go Head Trip if your ever saw one).

Still no luck with the remote control so I said, "Fuck it! I'm watching this movie even if I have to listen to it through the TV speakers" (which are pretty good, but not 5.1 Surround Sound, if you get my drift). I got 'er going. It was kicking my ass for about 10 minutes. Then I got to thinking...man, I NEED to be listening to this on the stereo. So I broke down and retrieved the owner's manual (which is not an easy tome to comprehend, but I've got a slight grasp of it). It showed me what I was doing wrong. I smacked my noggin, incredulous at how I could have been so dumb. Amused by how I could have been so high as to not be able to figure it out on my own.

When I did get the movie going I turned that mother fucking home theater up louder than it's ever been before. My next door neighbor to the east has been gone for several days and the guy on my right (a good friend from my youth) surely wouldn't mind, as he had been wailing on a guitar earlier in the day, seemingly unconcerned with what I thought about the volume.

I have to reiterate...this son-of-a-bitch was LOUD!!!!!! It was to the point where I thought the glass in my windows might break. It had to have been louder than the orchestra would have actually been in a concert setting. It was GREAT!!!!! Unfortunately I've got some new eyeglasses, which I'm not used to yet, so after 30 minutes all the images began to distort. I closed my eyes and basked in the pure volume. And one point I failed to mention...this was like at midnight! It's nice to live in an area where I can do that...but now that I think about it, it's entirely possible that the distant neighbors to the east may have heard it. Surely not, but then again...

I was just about worn out so I retired to the bedroom. I fired up the computer, navigated my browser to Wolfgang's Vault and found an old Grateful Dead concert that looked good. It was from 1971, recorded not too much earlier than the material that made it to one of my all-time favorite Dead records, "Europe 72". Unfortunately it wasn't all that great, so I dialed up some Blue Oyster Cult. It didn't take very long before I decided I wasn't in the mood for that either. Maybe a different Grateful Dead concert would do the trick. I found another from 1971 (there wasn't anything there from 72). The track listing looked better (though I did have to skip over the opener "Truckin"...I can't abide that one or "Sugar Magnolia").

But even now my mind is leaving behind the memories. I remember now that I listend to Henryk Gorecki's 3rd Symphony before the Wolfgang's Vault stuff. The Gorecki piece is incredibly intense even without the cannabis boost. To hear it stoned really takes it to another level of awesomeness. I kinda zoned out somewhere in the middle of is, only recovering when the last note was played. It was then that I got in the mood for some Grateful Dead.

To the strains of Jerry trading guitar parts with Weir I floated into the surface sleep the pothead knows only too well. Like straddling sleep and consciousness just enough to still dig the music. I was following the loping basslines of Phil Lesh, not concerned with how his style would be considered "over playing" in any other band but the Dead. I don't think Mickey Hart was on board for this concert. It sounded like Kreutzman was on his own. The show was from the Godcheaux era, so that annoying Donna Godcheaux's voice weas mixed into the harmony stew. No doubt they thought it beefed up the sonic texture. What they didn't understand was that the fragility of the sparse harmony they were only slightly capable of is one of their endearing traits...one of the things that set them apart from all the other rock groups of the time.

The end of the night was exactly as one would expect. I dropped out of the concert and fell into full-on sleep. I never dream when I go to bed high, and this has always been a bane of my existence. Back in the days when I got high just about every day I might as well have forgotten what it was even like to dream. I mean, shit! Dreaming is one of my all-time favorite things to do. How was I getting by without it? Surely it can't be good for a man's psyche to go too long without dreaming? Now that I only smoke weed every other weekend my dream life has returned.

This morning I woke up, much too early because I didn't take my Ambien last night. I need that Ambien to knock me out and keep me under or else I'll wake before I want/need to and then I won't be able to go back to sleep. As is my usual practice, I didn't take it last night because I wanted to enjoy every last minute of the ride before knocking off. Which I did...but I feel like shit now. The thought of food repulses me. My throat feels ragged from the pot smoke that passed through it. I've got a little bit of a weeze going. The ringing in my ears is somewhat more pronounced. My head feels consumed with what the Meat Puppets used to call "Confusion Fog". I don't know why I've waited this long to whip out the pipe again. I think it's because I'm not looking forward to the harshness of the particular marijuana I scored yesterday. As the above missive should make clear, it is some fairly potent weed (nothing like the Wheeler weed, the stuff that makes me feel like I'm about to die...good nevertheless). But it's all sticky and there are too many seeds. I'm so lazy that I don't even prepare the stuff before smoking it, I just cram a nice chunk into the pipe and hope that the ratio between bud and seeds/stems comes out in favor of the former.

Now I'm off to see if what I've got left is capable of doing as much or more than what I had last night. So long.

love,
Orenthio

ZZ Hater

2010-06-04T14:26:00.000-07:00

One evening, while enjoying the company and hospitality of friends, I was introduced to an old man who claimed to loathe ZZ Top with a passion unrivaled. More than the Tea Party hates Obama. More than a cook at McDonalds hates his job. More than a Macintosh devotee hates a PC. Even more than I hate Billy Joel. Serious enmity there, as you can see.

When I asked him why he detested that particular band so much, he was hesitant with a reply. He shuffled and shirked, then tried to change the subject. I pressed him. He avoided it like the plague. He turned to walk away, but I grabbed him by the sleeve of his jacket, pulling him back towards me before he had a chance to get even three steps.

“Dude,” I said. “It’s no big deal! I don’t think anyone here cares all that much. But there has to be a crazy explanation behind such malevolence. You’ve piqued my curiosity now, and I don’t intend to let you leave until you’ve spilled the beans. I mean, I can tell you exactly why I hate Billy Joel in five short words: ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’. So what’s your story?”

“Well…uh…I suppose that IS a pretty good reason to show no love for the Piano Man. I’m afraid mine isn’t quite so solid.”

He took a look to the left…then he took a look to the right…making sure no one would be able to hear him. He bent toward me and whispered, in an almost conspiratorial tone. “Okay, I’m a-gonna tell ya.”

And so he began.

“Well, you see, it was some time in the early or mid seventies when I left Chicago for a joy ride. I’d recently quite my job as a carpenter. The pay sucked and I had a frightening suspicion that my boss had it in for me. So I packed my bags and fled.

“I’d just got paid and had a lot of extra pocket change, so I decided to look up an old friend in Austin. It wasn’t too difficult tracking him down and, as I suspected, he was open to my suggestion that we find a biker bar where we might be able to hook up with a little ‘tush’. I think he must have lived behind a rock somewhere most of his life, because he had no idea what ‘tush’ even was. He thought it had something to do with bacon and eggs. When I filled him in on the details he became extremely excited and put the pedal to the metal.

“So we found us a broke down pre-fabricated building with one of those hoaky yellow signs in front…You know, the kind with the light bulbs and pointing arrow? I know you’ve seen ‘em — they’re everywhere. Big black tile letters spelling ‘WELCOME’ and the name of the establishment that owns it…This one said, ‘HARLEY CHARLIE’S DEN OF INIQUITY: BIKERS WELCOME’.

“‘I think we’ve just found the place,’ I said to my tush-challenged friend. He pulled the car into the drive and shut down the engine.

“Apparently Harley Charlie was a very popular individual because his den was packed to the gills. We could hear the sounds of drunken debauchery at least 50 yards from the building, parked in the car, splashing liberal doses of Hai Karate on our chests to make a good, solid impression on the ladies. My friend turns to me and smiles. A lecherous smile as I’ve ever seen, and says one word: ‘JACKPOT!’”

I had no choice but to agree as I opened the door and stepped in. All the rumors about insanely wild biker parties? They’re true! That place was ALIVE with foul talk, the smell of burnt weed and rancid breath, ugly chicks with their shirts off, more Harley Davidson paraphernalia than I’ve ever seen in my life. Hell, someone had even put a nickel in the jukebox and played a Steppenwolf tune. John Kay’s intoxicated, weary voice was pumped loudly through speakers that sounded as if they had been blown a long time ago. He was singing something about smoking a lot of grass and popping a lot of pills. For some reason or another, he seemed to be extremely ungrateful to the man who had sold them to him.

“Now I like Steppenwolf a lot. Always have, always will. So it pleased me to no end that the patrons of Charlie’s seemed to appreciate it when I fed the jukebox a quarter and played not one, not two, but FIVE Steppenwolf songs. I figured that if this gesture didn’t endear me to the hoodlums, nothing would. ‘Sookie, Sookie,’ ‘Jupiter’s Child,’ ‘Never Too Late,’ ‘Rock Me, Baby,’ ‘Magic Carpet Ride’…a veritable iPod playlist of Steppenwolf songs. Now THAT, my new friend, is some honest-to-God kick ass motorcycle humpin’, fuel pumpin’, sweat drippin’, tattoo-gittin’ music for ya there. This also appeared to be the opinion of a buxom redhead with a huge red rose tattoo that covered roughly a third of her left breast. She gyrated, shimmied and shook like a meth-infused contestant on Dancing With The Stars.

“OK…just as ‘Magic Carpet Ride’ fades out, replaced by the sound of smacking pool balls and profanity, I got the undeniable impression that my plan had been successful. Several people had smiled in my general direction; a couple had even spoken to me. The fact that I was even still alive counted for quite a lot. With our shared love for the Wolf, I actually began to feel a kinship with these rough boys. A kinship, if I may add, which I hoped to parley into a night of hard lust and soft pillows, if you know what I mean ***nudge nudge***wink wink***say no more.

“It was at that moment that I heard, on the jukebox, crisp tickety tack snare drum taps…the subdued, hushed guitar plucking…a voice that sounded as if it had barely survived the carnage of 1,000 cartons of unfiltered Camels. The singer’s voice had a leering cockiness to it that got on my bad side. I knew I was probably mistaken, but I’d already had a belt or two, and for some reason I thought the guy was singing about a nursing home. Then, just before the rattlesnake drum sticks got serious and the song kicked in for real, I heard him say, ‘They got a lot of nice girls.’

I was aghast. Offended past the point of reason, because my mother was in a nursing home and I know exactly goes on in those places. I turned to my friend and I said, in retrospect, I suppose, a little too loudly, ‘Man, this is SICK. What is this shit, anyway?’

“I guess my voice carried a little farther than I thought it would. The bar became deathly silent. Someone kicked the electrical cord on the jukebox from the socket on the wall. The tension in the room was as thick as exhaust fumes from an overheated hog. Every one of those behemoths was staring straight at me, eyes gleaming with the prospect of violence. The rustle of leather jackets and chaps broke the stillness, and next thing I know I’ve got a whole club of motorcycle enthusiasts surrounding me.

“One of them, a toothless giant with at least 20 Harley Davidson logos on his arms and chest, stepped up to me, looked me square in the eye and said, ‘Don’t you know where you are, boy?’

“I didn’t have a chance to answer that million-dollar question, as I felt the blunt force of 69 fists pummeling me to the sawdust-sprinkled floor. I’m positive I would have wound up dead, had it not been for the intervention of my friend. Apparently, he calmed them down with promises of smoked ribs, fried okra and a huge sack of CDS I’d bought so the two of us wouldn’t get bored if the whole ‘tush’ thing didn’t work out. (not compact discs, but Controlled Dangerous Substances).

“‘Dude! What’s wrong with you?’ he asked. “That was ZZ Top you just slagged! Don’t you know where you ARE? You don’t go bad-mouthin’ the Top in Austin. ESPECIALLY in a place with a name like Harley Charlie’s!’

“I took his message to heart. As bitter a pill as it was to swallow, I felt as if I’d learned my lesson. There and then I made three resolutions I planned to keep until my dying day:

“Number One: Never, and I mean NEVER, dis ZZ Top in a biker bar.

“Number Two: Stay the hell away from biker bars.

“Number Three: Go back to Chicago and beg my boss for my old job back.”

…As the old man took a break from his tale, guzzling a swig from a bottle of Lone Star, I said, “Wow! That is one hell of a story! No wonder you hate ZZ Top so much. I’m glad it wasn’t me…I would have made the same mistake. I used to work in a nursing home myself and I know what goes on in them.”

“Hmmph,” he grunted. I probably should not have told him about my long forgotten season at Parkland Manor.

“But you have to admit, they DO have a lot of nice girls!”

He almost came unglued at those words, but I settled him down by insisting I was talking about the Nurse’s Aides. It was a lie, but hey, I wasn’t in the mood to be spit on and sucker punched.

“I see what you’re saying,” I told him. “But ‘La Grange’ ain’t such a bad song. At least it isn’t when you take out the whole mistaken ‘mother in the nursing home’ element. But you just can’t tack it onto the heels of a Steppenwolf marathon like that.”

“Amen, brother. It’s a legitimate reason to hate those three bozos, but surely not to the extent that I do. My bitterness runs much deeper.”

“Oh my God,” I gasped. “You mean there’s more to the story?”

“Oh, yes, sonny boy. There is, and none of it would have happened had I kept my second resolution.”

He continued his fascinating tale…

“It was about 10 years later. I was watching MTV, hoping they‘d show that Flock of Seagulls video again. I was out of luck on that front and was feeling depressed because of it (I loved those haircuts). But then they played a video that was even better! I’d never seen or heard anything like it before. There were three guys in the band, you see, and two of ‘em were sportin‘ some really, really crazy looking beards. There’s hot chicks, a sweet automobile, and the strangest thing I’d ever seen in my life: FURRY GUITARS! I didn’t have a chance to see who they were, as I had an appointment with a quack chiropractor I was already late in keeping. But it was easy to suss out the song title from the lyrics: “Legs.”

“A day or two later and I’m riding around town with a business acquaintance when the same song comes on the radio. I said, ‘HEY! Stop the car! I LOVE that song! Who is that?’

“You should have seen the look on my face when he answered with two letters and one word: ‘ZZ Top.’

“As you can imagine, I was shocked and confused. I simply could not reconcile this glossy, practically new wave ear candy with the nasty barbeque bar band boogie I’d heard that fateful night at Harley Charlie’s…the night I lost my left eye.”

Sure enough the old geezer had a glass eye. I hadn’t noticed in the dim light, but there was an unnatural sparkle shining from that side of his face.

“I thought about it for awhile and came to the conclusion that I liked this song ‘Legs’ so much that it didn’t matter to me WHO did it. ZZ Top, Mike and the Mechanics, the Outfield — it was all the same to me. I had a hard time believing it was even the same band. A personnel change, maybe? Whatever it was, I found myself in the rather ironic position of being a new convert…a true blue ZZ Top fan.

“I even bought their ‘Greatest Hits’ record. It immediately went into heavy rotation on my stereo, eventually replacing my worn-out copy of ‘Steppenwolf 7’. ‘Tube Snake Boogie’, ‘TV Dinners’, ‘Sharp Dressed Man’ — this was stuff I could relate to. You could keep your 10 dollar whores, give me a pair of cheap sunglasses, ya know?

“I went to a couple of their shows and marveled at those incredibly long beards and the guitars that looked like some kind of weird, extra-terrestrial stuffed animals hanging from their shoulders. The only bad thing about the entire concert was when they played ‘La Grange’. I had to excuse myself at that point. The enthusiasm of the crowd when that song began made me a wee bit uncomfortable, if you can sympathize. I availed myself of the arena’s restroom facilities and took the opportunity to clean my glass eye. All the pot smoke in the air had irritated it. I got back in my seat just in time to hear them throw down ‘Gimme All Your Lovin’.

“I decided then and there that I would go back to that biker bar in south Texas. After all those tattooed love boys had done to me…all the pain, all the humiliation…I STILL yearned to be ‘one of them’.

“So I hopped in my car and made that long journey down south. I had no trouble remembering how to find Harley Charlie’s. When I got there, it was almost as if nothing had changed since the days when Jimmy Carter steered us through the oil shortage and motion lotion was at a premium. Raucous noise poured from the open door. The stench of tobacco smoke and old beer wafted, cloud-like, through the windows. It was almost as if the party had never stopped, all the way down to the music on the jukebox: John Kay still rambling about how much he wanted God to punish his dealer. I felt an overwhelming sense of déjà vu which, for obvious reasons, was absolutely terrifying.

“None of them seemed to recognize me. I do look quite a bit different than I did way back then, what with this little crystal ball in my noggin. Still, I was not deterred. I was gonna get in good with these bikers if it killed me.

“I walked over to the jukebox with 50 cents to feed it. I could have played 10 Steppenwolf songs for half a dollar in the 70s. Now it was only good for one. I scanned the menu until I found THE one.

“B-13 — ‘Legs’ by ZZ Top.

“The first few chords hadn’t even played out when I heard the familiar sound of silence as the cacophony in the den abruptly came to a screeching halt. Someone barked out, ‘What the hell is THAT shit? ’ Next thing I know, I’m surrounded by 30 or 40 really mean looking gentlemen and the girl with the red rose tattoo on her tit.

“I felt the *crack* of a pool cue breaking against my back. Fists jabbed at me, punches landing, hitting their mark with a sickening, muffled sound. A bolt of pain went through my torso, as a rusty blade slashed in a downward motion from my navel to my groin. I hit the ground, fast and hard, and I felt the unique sensation of my glass eye being scooped from its socket. Beer bottles broke on my head, the sharp glass edges tearing the skin of my face until I looked a lot like Jim Cavaziel in The Passion of the Christ.

“I have no idea when they stopped. All I can remember is waking up in the intensive care ward at Austin Regional with a sharp pain where my eye used to be. I was a little pissed off because I‘d sort of become attached to that mini-globe. Not to mention the agony of having it fitted and inserted. I never found out what happened to the old one. I figured it was probably broken in the melee…but no, my friend returned to the scene of the crime to buy a dime bag from Harley Charlie and he swears he saw it floating in a jar of pickled pigs feet. He asked Charlie what it was. ‘A trophy,’ the grizzled vet with the black P.O.W. cap told him. Said he had no idea what became of my real eye…the one they’d poked out on my first visit. God, it pissed me off. I really missed my real one, for obvious reasons. But the prosthetic one? It was NOT a cheap eye! I wanted to retrieve it, but I sure as hell wasn’t going back to that crazy temple of hedonism and hatred.”

His expression turned melancholy as he politely excused himself. I never found out exactly WHY he wanted to buddy up with bikers, unless he thought it would help him procure some of that legendary ‘tush’ he was after. But I did feel like I’d gained a good understanding of why he hated ZZ Top so much. It may not have been a valid reason, but it was a good one. I would have felt the same, had it been me. Especially if they’d jabbed out my eye, then stole the replacement. It really was ZZ Top’s fault, I’m certain. You can’t just turn into a new band for MTV and expect your old school fans to hop on the bandwagon with the newbies.

I’d enjoyed our conversation, but I was glad he’d left. I didn’t want to have to tell him I’d been rooting for the bikers.

You're My New Roomie Now

2010-02-03T18:18:00.000-08:00

Timmy saw himself floating at the bottom of a glass. He had a handful of grease in his hair and he sat towards the end of the bar with a glum look on his face.

His dismal state of mind had nothing to do with Terry…in fact, he was puzzled as to why thoughts of her warm body pressing up against his did not cheer him up. Those thoughts were definitely running through his head, but they were squelched by images of switch-blade knifes and motorbikes that made him depressed and hurt his tender feelings. Terry had only known him for one night and already she had told him, at least four times, that he needed to grow some thicker skin. He knew, deep down in his heart of hearts that the advice was sound, but he also knew that he liked to mope and wallow in his depression too much to do anything about it.

“Aw. Fuck…” he said, downing another huge swig of his cheap-ass Milwaukee’s Best beer. “I know what the problem is. I’m just a juvenile product of the working class.”

“Who you talkin’ to, greaser?” The bartender seemed a little confused, but he also exuded the air of a man who was used to his customers talking to themselves.

“I sure as hell ain’t talkin’ to you, you old bastard!”

“Who are you callin’ an old bastard, you half-drunk son-of-a-bitch?”

“I only see one of you behind that bar, and there’s only one bastard in the whole joint, so I guess that means I AM talking to you after all.”

“What makes you think I want to listen to the problems of a man who can’t afford to drink anything better than the Beast? In a bar, no less?”

“I don’t care if you listen to me or not, you self-righteous piece of shit. I didn’t ask you to. I’m perfectly capable of keeping my own self company.”

“Well I sure do feel sorry for you, because the company you’re keeping is a goat fucking asshole.”

“That’s as may be, but will you still feel the same when I pull out my gun and point it in your face?”

“Boy, you pull a gun on me and I’ll rip your fuckin’ head right off your shoulders and use it for a bowling ball. Don’t you threaten me, you lazy, no account…”…he cut off, not able to think of any profanity laced slurs he hadn’t already used.

“Then I guess it’s a good thing I don’t have a gun, doe, ain’t it?”

“What is this shit you’re talkin’ anyway, Timmy?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Fred. It’s Saturday night and I just felt like fighting.” He replied. “You’ve seen me, sitting here all night nursing this Milwaukee’s Best like it was milk from my own mother’s left tit. I swear to you that I am just about as oiled as a diesel train right now, and so far there has been no action to get in.”

“That’s true, old salt.” Fred said, scratching his head. “Slow night. It always is when ZZ Top is in town.”

“ZZ Top’s in town?” Timmy said with acute disappointment apparent in his voice.

“You’re goddamn right, they’re in town. Billy Gibbons even stopped in to have a few Lone Stars and shoot a few rounds of pool. He had this huge glob of tobacco juice all in his beard but I was too scared to tell him about it. Or maybe I just didn’t have the heart? I don’t know…I’ve never been good at dealing with these spoiled rock stars.”

“Oh, Fred, that’s to be expected. After all, he had you under pressure, showing up out of the clear blue sky like that.”

“I guess you’ve got a point there. But damn, the same thing happened last month when Geddy Lee walked through those very doors. I flat out laughed in his face, no reason, just busted out laughing.”

“Now there’s no excuse for that, Freddy Boy” said Timmy, incredulously. “Them Canucks will eat you for lunch.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“I guess that proves it. You got shit for brains.”

“Fuck you, Walrus. I’ll make you eat shit.”

“Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!”

“Goddamn, I love that word!”

With that Timmy decided he’d had just about as much “Freddy” as he could stand. The fellar was a good shoulder to cry on when things got tough, but tolerating him when things started looking up was no easy task.

He walked out the back door, whipping out his cell phone like it was an American Express Gold Card in a stripper club. Dialing the numbers he felt the cold rain drip down his face and no small degree of satisfaction that if Terry were to show up there and then the raindrops would disguise the tears. He’d been crying from the moment he stepped into the alley. He’d seen a homeless man lying in a puddle of his own vomit and felt sorry for him. That was when the dam broke and the tears began to fall. But he knew Terry would think he was bawling for her, so he was glad for the rain. Not that there was any reason he should have been bawling for her, but you know how some gals are. Always convinced that they’re worth crying over.

When Terry answered his call it was all he could do to choke back the despair in his voice.

“Hello?”

“Uhhh, yeah, babe. I was just calling to see if you got to the house alright. The moving men were there all day and I think everything is accounted for. Have you looked around yet? Is anything missing?”

“Oh, hey, that’s real nice of you to call. Yeah, I think it’s all here.” She said. “No, wait. There IS something missing. I’ve got this huge jar of pickles that my mom gave me just before she died. I never broke the seal on it, baby. Those gherkins are aged to perfection, I was hoping to break ‘em out on our fourth anniversary. I don’t see ‘em anywhere! What am I going to do?”

“Don’t worry ‘bout a thing, baby,” he said. “Pickles is one thing...”

She waited for him to complete the sentence, but apparently he had said all he had to say.

“Oooookkaaaayy,” she said, by this point confused. She would soon learn that Timmy had a way with confusion that she found alternately frustrating and loveable. “So what are we going to do about the pickles, then?”

“Well, the way I see it,” Timmy began, “we’ve got a few choices. Number one, we can go to the store and buy a new jar. But, then, they would not be nearly as old as the ones you lost…”

”Oh, I didn’t lose ‘em,” said Terry, anger quaking in her voice. “It was those goddamn motherfuckers on that moving crew. I’ll stake my life on it.”

Timmy wasn’t disturbed in the least by this logical observation, although he did silently make a compact with himself that, not only would he no longer do business with this particular moving company, he would, if the opportunity ever presented itself, beat the living shit out of anyone who worked for them. He never trusted people who got paid to do something he could do himself, if only he had a truck large enough.

“Number two,” he said, not hesitating. “We can buy a jar of dills, sit ‘em on a shelf, then wait for our 10th anniversary.”

At this point the realization dawned upon her that they were already talking about anniversaries. Not only had they never discussed marriage, they had only been together for a day or two. “What the fuck am I thinking?” she asked herself. “Either I am a fool in love or I’m one of the biggest, most naïve hepcats in the civilized world.

She settled on the former (although she rather liked the idea of being a hepcat, naïve or otherwise). Love is a funny thing, she understood instinctively, and there’s really nothing more satisfying to a young woman than a hunka hunka burnin’ love.

“I don’t like that idea, either, Chief. I was thinkin’ that 4th anniversary was going to be the special one.”

“Okay,’ Timmy persisted. “Option number three, and I hope you like it, cuz it’s all I got. Number three: fuck the pickles. Just forget ‘em. We can find something else to eat on our fourth. Maybe I’ll take you to McDonald’s, order you a quarter pounder with cheese, EXTRA PICKLES!”

“Yeah, baby dog!” she yelped with the excitement of a young teenage girl who has just been given permission to raid her parents liquor cabinet. “That’s a capital idea! What was I thinking? Burgers are better than pickles! But can I ask you for one favor?”

“What’s that, sweet cheekers?”

“Do you think we could make it Burger King?”

“Burger King? FUCK THAT SHIT! McDonald’s all the way, beee-ahtch. I’m tellin’ you for the first time, and no doubt it won’t be the last time, but me and the Hamburglar are TIGHT! I mean to say we are SOLID. Ronald fuckin’ McDonald, that’s my homeslice.”

“Whatever you say,” Terry said, somewhat disappointed. Her acquiescence, however, was feigned. Deep down she realized a truth that, had she affirmed it there and then, would have saved her a world of heartache, pain and misery. There was no getting around it: Timmy was an asshole of the highest order.

But she loved this asshole. That made all the difference in the world. The sacrifices she made and the hardships she faced over the next few years were, to her, a small price to pay for the joy he brought into her life. He could do no wrong, she believed, and so what if he had expected sex within hours of meeting her? At least he hadn’t broke down and cried when she refused. There was no denying, though, that ever since that fateful night she had been plotting and planning just how she was going to do the deed…if she could ever get him in the mood for it, that is. He had seemed not only disappointed that night, but she thought she saw a gleam in his eye that spelled M-U-R-D-E-R. “Whoooo,” she thought. “Murder! Big word!”

On the other end of the line Timmy yelled at her. “Hey! Where did ya go? Are you still there? Answer me, bitch!”

“Oh, yeah. Hey! I’m sorry babydog. I got to thinking.”:

“Well don’t do it again, y’hear?”

“Right-o.”

“So listen, I can’t be yappin’ on the phone all day long, and I sure as hell can’t stand here listenin’ to dead air on the other end of the line. Now I don’t know what’s so important that you have to waste my minutes, but I’m gonna let it slide. I gotta go, sweet cheekers. I’m ramblin’ on. I’m going home. You gonna be there when I get there?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Oh, that’s right. You’re my new roomie now. I almost forgot.”

Gather

2010-02-03T18:05:00.001-08:00

Gather ‘round, warriors. This is your time.

This is your time to shine. It’s your day in the sun. It’s one-of-a-kind, o ye cheaters of death, but this is, nevertheless, your finest hour.

You found a home in war. You entered into a contract with bad company and gave up the rights to your body, your mind, everything but your mortal soul. They took advantage of the circumstance and you wound up deep in a bunk hole, hiding behind the tenuous wall of a manure pile. Bullets whizzed by your ears, fear possessed your frames like a demon taunted by the Lord. Death swooped in to put it’s fear into you, but you all laughed in his face and spat in his eye, turned your back on him without saying goodbye. Perhaps “See ya later” would have been appropriate.

But no matter, husky gladiators. It is time to rest from your battle. It’s time to put away your swords and scabbards, your spears and your slings. Your automatic machine guns and your hand grenades. Your potent strains of anthrax and your agent orange. Surrender your arms, troglodytes. Cast them to the ground below. Consider the clatter they all make as they fall to the pavement. Take it in, breathe it all in, make it yours…

…for it IS yours.

Sorry, we didn’t get around to telling you. It was always yours, we just figured you would find it out on your own if you wanted it bad enough. No, I would agree: that is NOT fair. And I would also say this to you, “Fairness is a relative concept. When you consider the value we placed on you actually knowing this as a fact…well, I think it should be pretty damned obvious. Don’t be a moron, you give all servicemen a bad name when you do that, you know?”

But enough of the self esteem-building fodder all, that is not why I have gathered ye here to-day. Nay, not even close. I have brought you all here together because I wanted to be the first to tell you. You’re all going home. That’s right, you’re homeward bound. Soon you’ll be able to pack your shit and take a southbound train to ride. You’ve lost your minds killing innocent civilians, you’ve struggled to keep your eyes open most nights, as staying awake meant staying alive. But you’re going home! Warm nights tucked between clean linen sheets. Soft goose down pillows to bore your heads into. The smell of coffee in the morning, bacon and eggs if you’re lucky. The prospect of another day that won’t be defined by the number of lives you’ve ended between sunrise and sunset.

The journey home will be a victorious one, indeed. You shall see it from the comfort of a first class seat on the most expensive airliner we can afford! A small bottle of gin or whiskey is only a few feet away and all you have to do to get one is ask the attendant. If you ask nicely I don’t doubt she might let you have more of those little bottles than administrative policy usually allows. But she sees it in your eyes…you’re a grizzled soldier. You’re still warm to the touch from the heat of battle. You know this. This is who you are, it’s what we made you. And she will sense this. It will drive her mad with desire. Her knees will quiver, she’ll blush, she’ll radiate erotic charm…but all you’ll be able to think of is that Vietnamese farmer with the plaid shirt.

A dirty plaid shirt. Dripping with dark, brown mud, he smiled at you from beneath the brim of a straw hat that looked as if it had seen many better years. A smear in the drying clay was on the right side of his face where he’d wiped sweat. His lips were dry and cracked and his nose was a little runny.
The buttons on that plaid shirt were the cute mother-of-pearl finish jobs, the kind that snap shut real easy. How many men would have noticed that? How many of the sharpest minds in the known universe would have missed how his left boot didn’t quite seem to match the right. But you caught it right away and you stored it into that immense data bank that is your United States Marine Corps certified brain.

If only you could forget it, though. Right men? I see a few tears in a few eyes. I know I’m on the right track here, so if you still think I’m not talking to YOU, I have an invitation right here in my back pocket that will entitle the man to whom I give it a 6 month stint in the back of a mess peeling spuds. You don’t want that, now, do ye? What? No takers? I thought not.

But where was I? Oh, HOME, that’s what I was on about. You all have very nice homes, no doubt, and I’d better there’s not a single one of you who isn’t just itchin’ to get back to ‘em. Is it the one you grew up in? Is it one you just bought? No matter, when you leave this place it will either be in a body bag or on the better side Uncle Sam, who looks after all of those fine men and women who have risked life and limb in his service.

So what’s it going to be, worms? Death? He calls often here, and don’t think I don’t know that his is the song of the siren to many a worn out Spartan. But faileth not, loyal comrades.

Will it be insanity? Will the wage of life and death struggle prove to be nothing more than a tug-of-war between lucidity and madness? Yer going home, grunt, why should it matter? Either one’s better than lying face down in a pool of your own guts. Don’t worry about it, just get on the plane. Baby, it’s your ticket to ride.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

I stepped onto the tarmac with a firm determination to forget the last 2 years. Maybe even the last 15. I don’t know. I don’t care. I’m just tired of looking for an answer. I’ve listened for the still, small voice of reason and wisdom, but it seems to have stayed behind in the battlefield. Probably where it belongs.

The night was cloudy and the stars shone like pinpricks in a dark black veil that covered the most brilliant light…ha, I almost said “life”…I may not have been too far wrong there. I wanted to cut the cord of gravity, float through however many miles it might take to reach one of the punctured holes. Then I would tear the fabric and crawl into the other side. Disappear into the brilliant aura.

Only a dream, only a wish. I drug my weary frame from the bustling airport to the highway. An old two-lane road, dangerous after dark. It doesn’t bother me. It’s purpose is to facilitate the traversing of distance from one point to another. I could care less about where it could lead me. I only knew that I would not turn back no matter where I wound up, so I stuck out my thumb and waited for someone to give me a ride.

Does anybody stop to give rides to strangers anymore? I wouldn’t. It’s not something I condone. In fact, I have only done it once in my life, when I was just a kid, before seeing “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer”. After watching that seminal film I resolved to never, ever pick up hitch-hikers again. I wasn’t going to help anybody on the side of the road, either. Fuck being a “good Samaritan” if it means getting my brains blown clear out of my skull, flung to the side of the road like a rotten fruit.

Despite all of this I still had my hand stretched out, thumb in the universal position that signifies the need of transportation for the “down-on-his-luck” traveler. I remember asking myself what could be more pathetic. I was reduced, by circumstances beyond my control, to hitching or hoping that someone might be clueless enough to pick me up.

Yet, that is exactly what happened.

A hookah smoking caterpillar sat behind the wheel, and he seemed glad to do a small kindness to me. He could tell I was a veteran of psychic wars. He felt obligated, I was sure.

“Hop in, friend,” he said. “I can see that you’re a little down on your luck. I been there ma’self a time ‘er two. Just throw yer pack in the back seat and climb up here with me.”

I wasn’t shocked in the least that a hookah smoking caterpillar was driving a GMC Jimmy east on Route 66. It did, however, give me quite a shock to think that he would pull over and offer me a ride. I am no fool.

“Off we go,” I said to him.

The road was a long one that took us out of the state. As we crossed the line the caterpillar turned the radio up real loud and started singing along to the Journey song they were playing on the classic rock station.

“Ooooh, wheel in the sky keeps on turning,” he wailed. “I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow!!!”

I turned to him. “You have a very distinct grasp of Steve Perry’s vocal mannerisms. Have you ever sang professionally?”

“Oh no, not me. I could never go onstage in front of a lot of people and sing. I just don’t have it in me.”

“Well, you aren’t afraid to sing in front of me. What’s the difference between one stranger and a hundred strangers?”

“Oh, it’s not that. It’s not that at all,” he repeated. “I had a friend who used to play and sing in a lot of the bars on the circuit between California and New Orleans. It was a job to him, you know? He told me about a lot of the stuff that goes on in those places. He told me how one time he was singing a Roy Orbison song when some pool-shooting loser throws the cue ball right at him. Beaned him on the forehead, BOP! Had to hurt. Said the bruise swelled up so bad directly afterwards that people started calling him “the Elephant Man”. I was a beginner in the days when he regaled me with these anecdotes and mister, I’ll tell you, he put the fear of God in me. I was so terrified of getting conked in the head with a pool ball that I never pursued the craft.”

I felt a tinge of sympathy for his plight. “I’m sorry to hear that. I bet you would have been a star if you’d gone for it. Bigger than Steve Perry, even.”

“Oh, it’s okay. I don’t feel cheated or like I’ve missed anything essential to my happiness. As long as I’ve got wheels, my hookah and something to put in it, I am a happy caterpillar. Remember that: I am merely a caterpillar.”

“I will do that, but you’re a caterpillar who could kick Steve Perry’s ass any day of the week!”

“Wheel in the sky keeps on turning!”

“Damn straight…I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow!”

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

The caterpillar held the wheel steady and kept on truckin’. He sang along with every single classic rock song that came on the radio. From Kansas to Boston to “Sweet Home Chicago” he knew them all and, to be perfectly honest, he did a damn good job. He belted ‘em out like Springsteen, he crooned like Bryan Ferry, he croaked like Joe Cocker, he wailed like Janis Joplin, he screamed like that dude from Slayer. No two ways about it. This hookah smoking caterpillar had serious talent.

I was curious. “So, mister, what to do you do for a living?”

“My friend, I am a mortician. I deal with death every single day. I do a job that most folks would find distasteful and not a little disturbing. And yet I love my job. I do, oh yes, I do. I wouldn’t trade it for anything else in the whole world.”

“Sounds interesting,” I said. “How does a man get a start in a field like yours?”

“It’s not too hard, really,” he replied. “You come with me, I’ll make you an apprentice. You lookin’ for work?”

“No, sir. I can’t say that I am right now. Still got a little cache stashed away from military days.” I made a gesture with my hand that signified that I was grateful for the offer, but would have to pass. “Maybe one of these days I might change my mind. I think I could handle it. I’m not squeamish. No, not at all.”

“Oh, I’m sure you could handle it. I can tell by the way you look straight ahead, you don’t look back, you’ve got a grip on everything in this world and you think there’s nothing that could ever shake your foundations, whether it be from the east wind or the west. The north or the south. Do I read you correctly?”

“I reckon you do. I’ve had a hard run most of my days. Experience has taught me one lesson, but it taught me good and well: Nothing is as you really think it is, and it could all be gone tomorrow. ”

Dolenz

2010-02-03T17:47:00.000-08:00

Am I to understand, dear Fellow, that you are a man or your word and a true gentleman in matters heroic and chivalrous? Then I feel inspired to tell you about some things that happened to me.

…what’s that? You say you’re too inspired to want or need to listen to my sage words? O, she errs! Behold, see how she errs.

And do you expect me to believe you were the keyboard player for the Monkees’ 30 Year Anniversary touring band? You say you’ve even partied with Mickey Dolenz a few times?

You expect me to believe it and so I DO believe it. What does it matter anyway? It’s the Monkees. It’s Mickey fucking Dolenz! Are you bullshitting me? DOLENZ???

Ah, but my story is much like yours, and I long to tell it to you. Relax, have a seat. Toke a bowl if you need to. Every single word is true.

This happened smack dab in the middle of 1968, as both the Beatles AND the Monkees had huge records on the chart. They were riding high on a wave of popularity and adulation the likes of which have not been seen in over 2,000 years.

I knew this girl and she knew this guy who knew another guy who was dealing dope to the second guy, whose girlfriend knew the girl I knew and said she would pass on some crucial information to the third link in the chain.

Anyway, she was able to procure two good seats at a Monkees show in Philadelphia. Even better…she had backstage passes! You talk about hanging with Mickey D, that’s nothing next to meeting all four of them and shaking Mike Nesmith’s hand. That’s a-what I was-a
gonna do.

Lady Luck must have been stalking me that day, because right there at the show, not 15 feet away from me, were THE BEATLES! Not just one or two…all four!!! And then I saw a mind boggling exchange of words between Peter Tork and Paul McCartney. Never, in my wildest dreams could I have imagined John Lennon sharing song ideas with Davy Jones. Yet there it was, right in front of my very eyes.

I heard it all. I swear I have every word of it committed to memory…

PAUL: So what you’re sayin’ is that the a song like “Blackbird” would sound better with just me and the acoustic guitar, sort of folky, right? You didn’t like the polka band I brought in for the final mix? Or the death metal rendition that Linda likes so much? You gotta be crazy. That stuff costs a lot of money.

PETER: Settle down, mate. Don’t lose your nut just yet, eh, Old Salt? Take my word for it. There’s too much of that thrasher metal out there. The polka idea is cool, just not for this song. Chill it and kill it, Pauly.

PAUL: Okay, Tork, I’m takin’ your word for it. DO NOT let me down.

PETER: Have I ever let you down, Big Macca? Don’t you remember me giving you the idea for the “Sgt. Pepper” concept? Have you forgotten my contributions to the story line of “Help”? You even stole a few from me. None of the good ones, though. Thank God.

PAUL: I’ll do it. By God I am throwing caution to the wind and we are by god gonna do this your way, because it seems to be a good way and because I’ve got nothing to lose. I’ll lay down some tracks along those lines here in a few days. It’ll kill.

PETER: Of course it will. Now quit worrying and slip me a sack of that stuff I smell.

PAUL: You got it.

I was afraid to approach any of them after that. Lennon, especially, as I overheard him asking George Martin to make sure Yoko had all access to the studio while the group recorded. Paul would be furious.

But shit happens, you know? You hear it all the time…shit fucking happens. I hear it and I suppose people think they’re real clever in saying it. I hate that it is a cold, hard fact of life that rings out as true as a parable from Jesus’ lips…SHIT HAPPENS. So it does.

Long and short of it, that is my true story of how the Monkees, not the Beatles, hold the coveted title of “My Favorite Band”.

But what’s that got to do with you, you ask? It’s just to show how my experience with the Monkees and the Beatles trumps your lousy ass night with Mickey Fucking Dolenz. Shit.

It doesn’t matter, though. You know it and I know it, so let’s not pretend while we are alone. What would be the point? None of those things we thought would follow us to the grave…all the tastes, all the tendencies, all the tolerances and all the biases---none of them survive even an age. They all drop away, one by one, the strongest hanging on by a frayed thread.

And she will roll on as sure as the werewolf only comes out on a full moon.

It kills time, though, doesn’t it? Makes the minutes fly by faster. If I only had a package of sunflower seeds and a spit cup I would be in some bona fide business. Crack-spit-crack-spit-crack-spit. That will wile away the hours as sure as Elton John wears a lot of different pairs of eye glasses.

So while I lie here in this vat full of some kind of nuclear engineered ooze, while my mind still hovers just outside of my body, I need to tell you some things. I know, I’ve told you a lot of things. Some things I have never shared with any living soul. You were always there for me. So these things I want you to know. These things I need you to know. These things I wish I did not know.

Like the night when I stole all of my uncle’s Playboy magazines while visiting him on vacation. The folks wanted to stay there for a few days but as soon as I packed those Playboys in my suitcase I pestered mom and dad until they relented, succumbed to my demands: Put me on a Greyhound bus to ride, all the way home to wait for them to return in a couple of days.

I spent the entirety of those days holed up in my bedroom performing what was to become a ritual:

1. Peruse the pictorials first, before anything else. Of course.

2. Go back through the magazine in it’s entirety, noting the article’s names, the subjects, all that kind of thing.

3. Go back through the entire magazine yet again and read all the cartoons. If I’ve got a little time and I'm in the mood I'll take in the party jokes on the flipside of the centerfold.

4. Get aroused by accidentally catching a glimpse of a buxom gal’s nipple on the top page of the centerfold.

5. Repeat step #1.

6. Swallow my pride, retire to the bathroom to “read the articles”.

There had to be at least 10-15 Playboys in that stack of booty.

I was set. Might as well have hung a Do Not Disturb sign on my door. The phone was off the hook. Maybe that was the problem…

Julianne gives me call before vanishing again forever.

2010-02-03T17:38:00.000-08:00

I received a phone call last night from the woman who taught me what it takes to be a REAL MAN. I always thought I was a "real man" until I met her. She proved to me that I was nothing but a jackass punk all that time. Yes, it was Julianne, who you may have read about in one of my blog posts. As it turns out, she happened to read it herself when she stumbled upon the Music Pioneer's Weblog. She was doing an internet search for "incredible rock and roll superstars". Naturally she found me on the 1,537th page...she always was a tenacious one.

After seeing the glowing comments I wrote about her she decided to seek me out. Surely, she told me, I deserved to at least know what she's been up to during the last few years since her departure. It didn't take long for her to track me down, as she had memorized the phone number of my band's drummer. He left not too long after Julianne left, but he knew my phone number, and so the connection was made easily.

She said she didn't want to leave me, that she always had a soft spot in her heart for me, that she always would have...but apparently I snore. I had no idea, was completely unaware that my snoring was so bad (in fact, I always insisted that I never snored). Julianne told me that she tried to cope with it using earplugs and strong drugs that would knock her out before I fell asleep and began my nocturnal snorting.

But before long even the drugs wouldn't keep her asleep as my nasal noises continued to grow louder and more frequent. Looking back, I can only attribute it to the infinite pleasure and satisfaction that her sexual prowess provided, which lulled me into such a deep and peaceful sleep that relaxation and snoring went hand-in-hand, never to be separated.

Long story short, she walked out of my life because I snored. She said she didn't have the heart to tell me. She was convinced that if I knew of her plans to leave I would begin to abuse heroin on a level that would likely kill me (she assumed, correctly, that the stress of losing her, knowing that it was my fault, would drive me to an incredibly dangerous narcotics binge).

Julianne apologized, and said "Better late than never". To which I disagreed, but I let it slide.

We reminisced for several moments about the wild exploits shared between us, many involving strange alcoholic beverages and group sex, which was a constant in our relationship. She laughed as I recalled the 2 month joy ride with the band on tour, how each night the van was filled with 8 or 9 members of the audience who were lucky enough to join us in our bacchanals. There were times when some of those people took advantage of us, stealing our drugs and money, but those two commodities were flowing like a river in those days so it was easy to forgive.

She laughed as I reminded her of the time the tour bus left her behind in Green Valley on the way to Albuquerque, how the band and the driver refused to go back and pick her up. Julianne said she didn't remember the details (as she had been drinking quite a bit of absinthe that night) but I'll never forget. I told the guys that if they didn't turn around I would get off the bus, go back and get her myself. No sooner had the threat left my mouth than the driver pulled the bus to a screeching halt, opened the door and made a gesture with his hand that I understood to mean "I'll take you at your word...get the fuck out!" I walked the 5 miles back to the motel, debating on the way whether or not I wanted to stay in the band, and reached my destination in the wee hours of the morning. The door was locked and noone answered to my insistent knocks and kicks to the door. 10 minutes of wasted effort and I summoned the desk clerk who remembered me from the previous evening (as I had sold him a dime bag of some killer weed). He brought the pass key and when we opened the door we found Julianne passed out with two other women at her sides, a needle and a spoon perched conspicuously on the bedside table. Oh what a beautiful sight it was, I'll never forget as long as I live...that's a fact, too, because I used up a whole roll of film taking pictures of the unconscious women.

I tried to talk her into coming over to look at those photographs that I had cherished for so many years (two of which hang framed on my bathroom wall beneath a plaque that reads "The Good Old Days!"). But she couldn't. She said she was leaving the country within a few days. She had some kind of family there to turn to and that was more than I could offer her. Of course she was right, as I have precious little to offer at all these days...just because I have made a name for myself as a Legendary Music Pioneer does not mean that I am rolling in the dough. On the contrary, things have been pretty hard lately.

She expressed her wish that everything would work out alright for me, that my finances would take an upward turn, but she told me "no" when I asked her to come back to me and wait for my ship to come in. Her answer was spoken in such a firm manner that I knew better than to press my luck and so I abandoned the dream.

The time had come, she said, when she had to hang up the phone and we both knew that we would never see or hear from each other again. The notion was burning a hole into my tender, broken heart but she seemed to take it in stride. In fact, it was almost as if she WANTED to be rid of me.

But before I would let her hang up the phone I had to find out what she had been doning during the years since our love was proud and strong, before my snoring cut the cord of passion that bad bound us together through many an orgy.

"Oh, I've tried to keep myself busy," she said. "I travelled to Hollywood and took a few small roles in some erotic films. I got engaged to a drug runner out of Jamaica, but that bit the dust when the DEA snagged him on a trip to the Honduras. I wasn't about to be a convicts wife so I left him and became a Jehovah's Witness. I did that for about 3 months before I figured out what a load of bullshit it was. I left the church in disgrace and found my way into the mansion and the good graces of an older man, the wealthy publisher of a golfing magazine who had seen me in one of the movies I'd done. He begged me to move in with him, and he even had plans of proposing to me. Had I said "yes" I would have lived high on the hog for the rest of my life. He would have insisted that I get back into the movies full time, as he really had a fetish for that kind of thing. I had done a couple more then and again just for him, but it was only a hobby to me. I didn't think I could handle the pressures of doing it as a steady job...maybe I could have when I was with you...you always had the kind of drugs that made me think I could do anything...but this guy wasn't into drugs at all. I think he disapproved of my heroin use, he thought I would turn into a junkie. No matter, I wouldn't marry him, anyway, just like I wouldn't do many more films and I would never, ever kick the horse. Then, out of nowhere, he began to snore. Reminded me so much of you. I weighed the pros and cons of leaving him. Eventually I came to the decision that a life of destitution would be better than a lifetime of comfort with a man who snored even worse than you did. And so, indeed, I have been destitute since leaving him. I've lived under bridges and in homeless shelters...I've stood in soup lines for hours to get a bite to eat when my stomach was as empty as I always believed your heart was. I was reduced to using dirty needles, but I guess I got lucky because I never was HIV positive. A few days ago I said "to hell with this" and I called my uncle Charlie in Liverpool. He was more than willing to take me in and even asked me why I'd waited so long to get in touch with him. He's a nice guy, with a nice family and a steady job. But he also leads a double life as a pimp and a pill pusher with a penchant for sado-masochism. That's why I've always dug him!"

I'd heard enough. She was burning bridges, I realized. Maybe for the better. I felt a tinge of envy for her Uncle Charlie in Liverpool, but all in all I was resigned to the hand dealt to me by that mean old FATE. Who knows how long she'll last in his dungeons? Will I be invited to the funeral? Best to cherish the memories that we made together in better times. The sex. The drugs. The rock and roll. The dirty boots.

All The Girls I've Loved Before (okay, not ALL of them, just 15 of 'em)

2010-02-03T17:35:00.000-08:00

Many, many women have shared my life. Some stuck around for awhile and others moved on in a matter of days (hours, even). Each one, I assure you, left their own unique, indelible mark upon my heart, especially the ones I can remember.

And there have been many. Many. Many. An almost countless bevy of wonderful hotties who found pleasure in my company, in my sexual prowess and in my bottomless supply of drugs. But, as a legendary music pioneer, with desires common to all men, it's expected of me to "reel 'em in", as it were. I'm a hero to many young boys and they need a role model who can demonstrate how easy it is to manage multiple relationships. I mean, my own childhood hero was Mick Jagger and I always stood in awe of the sheer number of gals who passed through his motel room door, into his bed, then back out to the lobby, just as often smiling as crying.

Mick has settled down now, as all great men must do, so the gauntlet has been passed to me. I alone must bear this burden of being a jukebox hero to a nation of young rockers, all of whom expect great things from me. Decadent things.

Luckily my career as a star in the music industry has provided me with more than enough experience with which I am qualified to lead these young whippersnappers into a life of greed, despair, disease, corruption and addiction. "Follow me!" is my beckoning call, "Take up your guitars, put on your spandex pants, take a swig of Jack Daniels and let's get this motherfucker ROLLIN'!!!"

And if you need any encouragement, my libidinous disciples, read on...

Julianne
Of all the girls I've loved before, Julianne is the one that I adored the most. Sure, she could be a real brat sometimes, but such behaviour is often a necessary by-product of trying to satisfy a rock and roll hero. I lost track of her in 2001. Her departure broke my spirit and sent me reeling into an abyss of depression. Julianne, wherever you are, I can only hope that you know how much you meant to me.

Jeanna
Jeanna came along in late 2001 and tried her very best to help me overcome the tragedy of losing Julianne. She was successful for the most part. But there were times when she consciously tried to piss me off. On most of these occasions she achieved her goal. No matter, she made up for it by being an excellent cook.

Annie
One of the most uninhibited women I've ever had the pleasure to know, Ann was up for just about anything...including the members of my band. At first this troubled me but eventually I got over it. I figured it was just Annie being Annie. Unfortunately by the time I DID get get over it Annie had run away with our drummer. As much as I cared for Annie, I think I was more upset about having to find another drummer than with her hasty exit.

Jacqueline
I couldn't even begin to describe my feelings for Jacqueline. So I won't try. I will say that she was the biggest Stones fan I've ever known. Many was the time we were locked in a passionate embrace, pure lust flowing through our bodies like electricity. Two or three times this awesome, intense love-making was brought to a screeching halt as she screamed "MICK!" Eventually I got used to it.

Kristara
I met Kristara on a visit to Japan when my band, Tiny Tove, was on tour and stopped off for a little R & R (and I don't mean "rock and roll"). An Asian beauty, she showed me the ways of the Orient. She also stirred up a nice sweet and sour sauce that brought me to my knees begging for more. She thought Tiny Tove was a silly name for a band and we fought over it for almost the entirety of our short relationship.

Christy
The band's Econoline van had broken down next to a souvenir shop by the Grand Canyon. Christy (at least that's the name she gave me) drug a huge tool box from a back room in the store. She then proceeded to fix our van. I didn't have any sort of relationship with her (unfortunately), but I will forever be grateful to her for the mechanic work. She thought Tiny Tove was a stupid name for a band, too.

Victoria
These days I look back on the good times I had with Victoria and I think to myself, 'Damn but you had some good times with that gal'. And it's true. All the time I spent with her was good. There were no bad times, only good times. She had a way of taking a bad day and turning it into a good day. It was all good...except that her personal hygiene was considerably less than good. But you know what? Not only did I get used to it (I mean, just LOOK at her!), I actually began to like it. Until she left, at which point I demanded a higher standard of cleanliness in my lovers.

Lysa
Okay, I'll admit it. Lysa was probably not what many of you gents would consider "hot", especially when compared to the brick shithouses I usually go for. But I've got a few words for all the haters out there. FUCK YOU! What do you bastards know about true beauty anyway? Just because you don't stand a chance in hell of hooking up with the kind of dolls who fall for me doesn't give you the right to take out your well-earned frustration on my Lysa. No matter what you say, she's an angel, and she's good in the sack, too.

Kim
Okay, so Tiny Tove may well be a stupid band name. Kim did everything in her power to try and get us to change it. She tried to persuade our keyboard player. She tried to persuade our bassist. She tried to persuade our lead guitarist and rhythm guitarist at the same time. She even tried to persuade our recently recruited drummer. It's probably a good thing we didn't have a horn section...regardless, by the time she tried to persuade me I had already decided to change the name anyway. Of course I didn't tell her so she had little trouble persuading me.

Marilyn
Sleek and sexy, Marilyn was one of the first foxes to approach me after a show and ask for her money back. I laughed and said, "What a joker you are!"...To which she replied, "I'm serious. Give me my money."..."Surely we can work this out, baby", I said, "Howzabout you come with me to the van and I'll show you why they call me 'Big Jim'"..."Who calls you Big Jim?" she asked..."The sound man."..."Give me money back."

Loni
Loni, Loni, Loni...I call out your name once every 6 months. I scream it at the top of my lungs in a voice that betrays the agony and pain that you left, like festering sores, on my psyche when you walked out on me. The scars on my body that you put there with a dull-edged knife hurt like a motherfucker as well. No, they have not healed, as I am in the habit of scratching them periodically. But my love for you was real, despite what I said about your asshole father and your skanky-ho mom.

Darlene
What a happy girl Darlene was. Such a bundle of joy. She had a way of making everyone happy. If you were down in the dumps, all you had to do was talk to Darlene for a little while. If you were still miserable after an hour with her, well you had your own damn self to blame, because this girl had what it took to cheer up even the most grumpy son-of-a-bitch. She always had a smile on her face...until my cruelty wiped it off forever. Her whole world came crashing in not too long after we began dating, as I subtly manipulated her mind with false promises and brought tears to her eyes as, one by one, I broke them.

Candie
What is it they used to say? Candie's dandy but liquor's quicker? Oh, yeah, that's true. There was nothing "quick" about Candie. In fact, she often walked away from our bedroom unsatisfied because I, in fact, did share too much in common with booze. She may have been frustrated but she never let on. It was strange, though, how she always went on long walks after making love. Just as baffling were all the charges on our cell phone bill to our newly recruited drummer. As you may have guessed, it was not long until we were once again in the market for a drummer, and on a more personal level, I was in the market for a new girlfriend, too.

Bridgette
Bridgette actually liked the name Tiny Tove, and even better, she professed a strong distaste for drummers. She'd heard of us from a friend who attended a Tiny Tove show in a small backwater town. Her friend had enjoyed our 19 minute rendition of "Free Bird" so much that she told Bridgette all about us. Bridgett proceeded to seek us out, and me in particular. By the time she caught up with us we had already changed the band's name to Blind Society. She tried many, many times to persuade me into changing it back to Tiny Tove. I never gave in, so 8 months later she said, "Fuck it, Jimbo. I give up. I'm outta here!"

Veronica
I don't usually have a penchant for older women because...well...because in general they don't seem to have much of a penchant for me. That all changed the night Veronica came knocking on the van door. I was alone, observing my usual drug imbibing ritual while the other guys in the band knocked one off before last call. Veronica walked in on me just as I finished tying a tourniquet around my arm. Startled, I looked up at her, thinking that the jig was up, I'd been busted, and by one foxy mama as well. "Here", she said, "Let me help you with that"...She knew what she was doing as she plunged the needle into my arm, and she was even more skilled at the ways of booty-knocking. it was all fine and good until she began to scream Mick Jagger's name while we were getting it on. She hung around for four more days, and each evening she called out the name of a different Stone. And all this time I'd thought Jacqueline was the Stones' biggest fan..

"3 for the road!"

2010-02-03T17:33:00.000-08:00

Looking back on my illustrious career as a legendary music pioneer I realize that I've made a lot of people happy, pissed a lot of people off and treasured up a veritable cornucopia of memories that grind the ole Nostalgia Machine into high gear. The smoky bars I've played in, the cracking noise of pool balls shattering the delicate intensity of our unique version of "Desperado", the obnoxious banter of friends loudly congratulating each other for drinking beer, the occasional cat fight and the more frequent clashes between inebriated males, the club manager sauntering up to the stage and telling the rhythm guitar player that we've got to "turn that damn shit DOWN!!!"...

Memories galore. More than I can even remember, but the ones that survived the war with cannabis are really swell. And the best of all those memories are the ones starring the many, many women who came into my life as a result of my status as a legendary music pioneer. I'll kick the ass of any man who dares call them "groupies". They were, in the tradition of Cameron Crowe's documentary "Almost Famous", "Band-Aids" (and it is the opinion of every band I've ever been in that Crowe based his film on us).

Today my mind harks back to a winter evening in December of 1981. The group I played with back then was called Chaney Gong (at least that's the band I was a member of in late '81). The show was over and I was relaxing in the back of the Econoline van we used to haul equipment with. The other guys were having a couple more beers before last call. Nobody minded my absence, as they all knew I wanted to freebase some cocaine in private. They were nothing if not considerate.

Our show that night was incredible. We were hot as shit, I tell you, and there was a huge clan of women gathered near the stage. I knew I could...uh..."befriend" any of them I chose to. I figured I'd go back into the bar when I was nice and stoned, look over the potential "friends" and invite them to the Econoline to freebase a little more coke with me.

But I was saved the trouble as, one by one, these three gals came a-knockin' on the door...

She couldn't have been a day over 17. I don't know how in the world she made it into the bar, but she'd been there all night. I remember seeing her throwing darts with a couple of lesbians who were regulars. For that reason alone I had crossed her off my list. But here she was, all tanked up and ready.

"Are you freebasing coke?", she asked.

"Yep, sweetcheekers, that's what I've been doing the last 30 minutes. I'm just about useless, but if there's anything you want, say the word. I can probably git 'r' done."

"Are you sure? It's kind of asking a lot", she said.

"You name it, baby, you got it", I said with a disgusting leer in my eyes. It didn't seem to frighten her though, as she continued...

"Do you think you could loan me $20 cab fare? My ride has done gone off with some guy who says he only wants to have sex with her once before throwing her away like a dirty dish rag."

I'm sure she could see my countenance sag in disappointment...truth was I was thinking she might make a nice dirty dish rag herself. But I gave her the money anyway.

I didn't even have a chance to ask her name because she disappeared as soon as the cash left my hand and found it's way to hers.

It was then, just as she was walking out the side door, that another beauty came in. In many ways I found her more attractive than the last sweetie, though she was obviously a little bit older. Hey, no problem! I can "befriend" a teen some other time, I thought, maybe under more private circumstances (I mean, who knew when the rest of the band might come stumbling out...I may be shameless, but I wouldn't want them to see me fraternizing with a minor...you know what they say: "15 will get you 20").

I made sure I got this one's name before anything else.

"Sadie Young", she purred like a cat in heat, "Everyone calls me 'Sexy Sadie'."

Now some folks might think she was sexy and some folks might not. I tended to side with the former opinion. She didn't look like a drug head, so I didn't ask her if she wanted to shoot up some China White I had hidden in the glove compartment of the "Love Van".

As I began to unzip my trousers, I said, "Okay, baby are you ready to play?"

"Actually, I am," she replied, though she was not looking at me. She was staring out the window at a group of people who were milling about by a car, passing something around and coughing a lot. "They're having an after-hours skiffle tournament in the bar and I can't afford the registration fee. Have you got a 10 dollar bill you can loan me until I beat the pants off of 'em?"

I quickly pulled on my own pants, getting them zipped up just before she turned to see me.

"Awww, come on," she purred. "Pleeeeeeese?"

I could understand why they called her "Sexy Sadie". I wish I could have explored the etymology of that name a little more, but there was a knock on the door.

I whipped out my wallet and pulled a crisp bill from it. "Here's twenty, Sadie. Double or nothing, eh?"

Ms. Young walked out, and in walked this woman, climbing the van's doorstep with a slight wobble. She wore an old-fashioned cream-colored dress the likes of which I had not seen anywhere but in the nursing home where my great grandmother lived. The distinct odor of talcum powder wafted from her whole body, and her teeth didn't seem to fit quite right in her mouth.

"Hi there," she said, "I'm Anita Biggun."

"Uhh...nice to meet you, Ms. Biggun", I stammered. "What can I do for you?"

"Oh, well, I have to be honest. You know honesty is the best policy. I saw those other two girls leavin' here..."

"Oh, I see", I said. "You need to borrow some money. How much do you need?"

"Money?", she said with an incredulous look on her face. "Heavens no! What do I want money for? I want to fuck you like an animal."

I was speechless. Literally I could not say a word. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before, and I really didn't know how to deal with it.

"Do me like a dirty dog," she said, meaning every word. "And when you're dead beat I want you to get out yer works and jab me with that smack stick you keep hidden in your guitar case".

The night finally came to an end.

I was 40 dollars poorer and nursing the worst hangover in the history of the universe, but one thing I knew I'd never forget...

Anita Biggun got what she needed, even if I didn't get exactly what I wanted.

Maury's Diary, 9/4/06...a seriously fucked-up situation

2010-02-02T07:27:00.000-08:00

Dear Diary,

I woke up this morning and after performing my regular routine I walked into the living room. There sat my wife and daughter, reclining on the sofa, watching some Sunday morning Church of Christ program. You know, the kind of shit they air so that the bed-ridden can hear the gospel preached since they can't attend services. Hear it preached again. Again. Again. Like it doesn't stick.

I have never seen my family watch this nonsense. Oh, they go to the Church of Christ, screwed up organization that it is. But to actually sit and watch a sermon before leaving to attend another one? I'm sorry, but that smacks of overkill to me. If it were anyone else I would think they had crossed the line into fanaticism.

It will take more than this to worry me about my wife. Even though she has been reading the bible more regularly. I figured it was all about the church's "Daily Bible Reading" challenge. You know, "how many Daily Bible Readers did we have last week?" She gets a chance to raise her hand along with the other 7 who did it too. Seven out of 40 in a small congregation. What an accomplishment. What a learning experience.

What's the point, then, of watching this program? She loathes and despises the religious networks (one of the few things we share in common). I assumed that it was not only because she vehemently disagreed with much of what is propagated in these comedies, but because she felt that it was a waste of time for people to have to be reminded of what they believe in. Like indoctrination that requires repeated exposure in order to be effective.

So it was with some degree of incredulity, masked by the tone of humor, that I asked, "You guys not going to church today?"

The answer, "Yes. Why do you ask?"

"Well, I see you're watching a sermon already. I thought maybe you were going to stay home."

At his point my daughter gets this offended look on her face. Sort of a mean scowl that suggests I've been blasphemous. Like I've shit on her beliefs. Like I'd actually said something hateful, not just about the crap on the TV but about the crap doctrine she's was force fed as a young child. Yea, the brainwashing has been coming along just fine, thank you. I can only hope that the coming years will open her mind. I'm not asking that she abandon her God or lose her faith. But one would hope that she would develop a measure of tolerance and a questioning mind. So what if I think such attributes will lead her away from the religion she clings to now. She's a good girl. I can only hope that she will eventually understand that the credit for that quality doesn't go to a God that sits on a throne of judgment.

"I watch this kind of stuff alot," my wife says.

I think, "Bullshit". Unless she hides it like I hide the porn I watch sometimes in my "secret place". "Surely not when 'Bonanza' is on?" She was flipping through the on-screen schedule guide...she didn't look like she was finding anything she'd rather watch, so I pointedly got up, walked into the office and turned on a New Fast Automatic Daffodils CD at a nice, loud volume. I don't know if they watched the rest of that ridiculous Church of Christ sponsored broadcast, but if they did it was accompanied by cynical music, and the lyrics, "It was the Good Book, it was clear as mud."

It's just another wedge in a disintegrating relationship.

A Reality Break

2010-02-02T07:26:00.000-08:00

I never really appreciated what a panic attack might be like until the last time I was in the hospital (2006). When the psychotic shit went down I KNEW I was about to die. I thought that a nuclear bomb had just been dropped and that the world was only moments from annihilation. At the time I was still pretty religious and I started screaming, "I REPENT! I REPENT!". On and on until they shot me with some tranquilizer and I conked out. I don't really know what I was repenting of...

I lay there honestly believing I was going to die and then I lost consciousness. I woke up the next day and began the slow process of getting my shit back together.

But here's the deal...If I hadn't woken up...If I had died right then and there...You know, I might as well have, see? I didn't celebrate waking. I didn't think much about it one way or the other. I just woke up. I remembered what happened but it didn't mean much to me. I didn't understand it, why it happened, how... But I accepted something after they shot me with whatever it was they used to shut me up. I didn't consciously know I was accepting it. I was too afraid to even grasp the concept of "acceptance". I just lay there and let it wash over me. At some point I "fell asleep". It wasn't a release of any kind. I wasn't thankful for it because I had no idea it was coming...it snuck up on me unawares. I would not have cared, in those hours of "sleep", if I ever woke up. "I" was gone. Completely. There was nothing but a breathing body in that bed.

For some reason "I" came back. Did I "choose" this? No, there wasn't any "I" to make the choice. There was no "I" to will myself back. Who knows why "I" came back? Who put me back here? Did I ever leave?

I guess this happens to every single person in the world when they surrender themselves to sleep. In that moment between wakefulness and dreams. I think I read somewhere that some Buddhists believe that this moment, between those to poles, is where we came from and where we will go. That kind of frightens me still, even though I have come to believe it after my last experience in the looney bin.

There have been a couple of times since then, when I was really high on some very potent weed, when I felt like I was going to die. Truly believed it was going to happen then and there. I felt the same feeling I did in the quiet room...which, upon further reflection, was probably because the pot had overcome the mood stabilizers in my blood stream and I was likely very seriously close to another episode on these occassions...and I can't say I wasn't afraid, but the one thing that really shook me was the thought of my family and friends mourning me after I was gone. The grief they would experience and the individual efforts to put what they knew of my life in some perspective, how trying it all might be. To leave them behind. What it would do to them. This wasn't something I was trying to comfort myself with, like "I can't leave them behind, I've got to hang on." It had nothing to do with what I was or was not able to do. Or any kind of bullheaded hope that it would give me a reason to hang on. It just terrified me to leave them.

You'd think that getting this high would put a person off smoking pot ever again. But it didn't, and in the back of my mind there's this nagging thought that maybe, just maybe I knew what I might get into and that I wanted it. Some kind of really excessive thrill it gave me. Or maybe another chance to emerge "victorious". Or to "ride it out". Whatever it is, I'm not scared of death anymore, what it's like to be dead (as if it could be LIKE anything). I'm terrified about the HOW of it all... But I'm hoping that the fear that consumed me before I fell asleep that one night was strictly a symptom of the psychotic episode.

I'm sorry I'm pouring all this out on you. I hope you can bear it. I don't talk about it much but I am obsessed with dying. I can't help it. It's not some teenage emo-goth Cure worshipping obsession, either. I don't choose it. I watch a video that was made several years ago of Jerry and I...we're playing some kid's game...and I can't help but think that one day he'll see this same video when I'm gone and I imagine the feelings it will bring to him. Is that fuckin' sick? I dread the possibility of someone I love dying before I do. I fear I will lose my grip on reality if this were to happen. I constantly contemplate and question why people believe the things they do about the afterlife. I try to convince myself that what I really believe in my heart is the truth and not just a belief, even though I think I know what the reality actually is. I mean, here I am writing a letter about it.

I shouldn't. I know I shouldn't. I shouldn't be telling you this...I need to talk to a psychologist about it. I haven't found one yet, but as soon as I do... and a part of me is saying, "Don't send this." But I wouldn't have started writing if I didn't think I had something to say and a hope that whatever it may have been would be of some help to you.

Yeah, I am obsessed with the shit. But it doesn't consume me. At least I'm not so far gone as to not be able to realize when my mind drifts into it's territory. I can keep it at bay most of the time. It's just that when it comes back I feel like kicking myself for LETTING it, for surely they are "my" thoughts? Where do they come from? Do I not have the power to control them, or to ignore them?

I try. That's all I can do. It's enough for now. It may be good from now on. Maybe it's just the manifestation of my depression. I'm sure it is. Just as the expreriences when I was sure I was dying passed, so will these thoughts.

Don't get me wrong. I am NOT saying that I contemplate suicide. Even though I can't feel it a lot of the time, I value and cherish life. I don't want to leave the things I love behind until I have to, not when I might think I want to. I'm 46 years old and not only do I learn new things regularly, I enjoy the memories of what once was even more. Why would I want to put a halt to that? I'll never let thoughts of death keep me from standing in awe of what humanity is capable of...the wonder of the five senses...the imagination...the yearning in our hearts for even greater things...the passion we feel for something as relatively insignificant as a record album by a favorite artist...the sound of laughter...man, have you ever really listened to a room full of people laughing? Maybe listen to a good stand-up comedian on a roll and try to pick out individual people with their distinctive laughs? How it all combines to form a symphony! An incredible combination of joyful sound that is genuine and unique and perfect! Hear how it swells! Listen long enough and laughter will work alchemical magic on you, if you're able to drop your guard long enough to let it. It will convert you. It will absorb you and you will understand why life is worth living, even if only in that moment.

Could I choose to make that moment the one I exist in? All too often I don't. I keep it in. I'm sure I have my reasons, just as I'm also sure that none of them are good ones.

Letter #8: Don't you fuckin' DARE call it "ADULTERY"...

2010-02-02T07:25:00.000-08:00

Dear Caroline,

You know, I always tried to remain faithful to you. Don't know why, as things turned out. But such was my way in those days. I tried and I succeeded in limiting my sexual activities to our bedroom (or backyard on that one occasion). It wasn't too hard to do, because you had a slight kinky streak which put it all over the top. All the times we made up stories to tell each other while locked in the throes of passion...stories about possibilities. My tale of you being with multiple partners always seemed to elicit a more vigorous grinding on your behalf. Your stories of swingers and perverts brought me to the brink of orgasm on countless occasions. It wasn't until you mentioned a real person's name in conjunction with a fantasy you were entertaining that I got scared. All talkin', no walkin' for me. I don't guess it was the same for you. Or maybe it was just that I didn't approve of this particular person you wanted to bring in to the party. Probably not, though. I was unprepared to embark upon the depraved, immoral, unclean path you eventually chose. Look what it got you! Frank!

But I never committed adultery. At least not with you. And I wouldn't have done it against ANYONE were it not for those two gals who were impressed with my band. I tried my best to resist. I wouldn't have done it, I swear, if it had been only one of them. But the prospect of a threesome was too powerful to resist. A situation made even more attractive by the sheer volume of THC that was coursing through my veins in a mad dash to kill a few brain cells. It was a short hop, skip and jump to their house, where the pipe was produced. If there's one thing I like about marijuana, it's how the stuff settles you in to really enjoy sex. Plus, I don't know if it was the dope or the responsibility of pleasing two women, but my endurance was incredible that night. I got about an hour out of it, as compared to my usual 3 minute rut.

Sorry. You don't need to know that. It wasn't what I was writing for anyway. I was wanting to fill in a few details you may have forgotten (or never known) about the closest I came to messing around on you (uh...pretty close, if we're calling it "messing around", but you know what I mean).

I was playing in a rock band...it was the first time I'd had a chance to play that kind of music, so I was happy about it. Plus, I was the one who put the whole thing together, so that made me the "leader" of the band. With such power comes such satisfaction. I did a damn good job of it, too. I love to give orders. I can't abide anyone telling me I should "do it this way" or "do it that way". They're almost always wrong. Better to let me lay down the various laws than to let the project suffer from bad decisions which would invariably made if I didn't exercise my authority. It doesn't matter if they offer good ideas sometimes. Dismiss 'em. That's all you can do. If you realize they really are good ideas (and I can't help but do so, since I'm so in tune with what's best for the band) then you put 'em on the backburner until the person who suggested it has forgotten. Then you pull 'em back out and call them your own. That, my friend, will get the job done.

Anyway, some of the ideas I had about this band were incredibly good. The decision to play Devo's "Whip It", for instance. Everybody loves "Whip It", right? It's not really a hard song to play. So why wasn't anyone else in the tri-state area playing it? I'll tell you why...because none of those bands had a leader with such prescient vision as yours truly.

Another song I chose for us, "Centerfold" (as made popular by the J Geils Band), proved to be a real crowd pleaser. They especially liked the part in the song where I produced a copy of Playboy, held it up so that the centerfold would fall out, and then sang the last verse with a perfectly frightening sense of lechery. Hard enough to pull off such theatrics, made even more difficult by having to do it while playing the bass guitar. I swear to God I don't know how the hell I did it. But I did, and they ate that shit up like honey.

Then there was the most controversial decision I made for the group. I let "The Funk Daddy" stand on stage with us and pretend to play the synthesizer. Truth was he couldn't play any instrument at all. He had absolutely no musical talent whatsoever. But damn did he look cool standing there in his New Wave get-up...he looked like he was playing, and as far as I was concerned, that was enough. A band got a little more serious attention in those days if they were more than just a guitar-drums-bass trio. A synth was a basic requirement if you wanted to be taken seriously. Nobody said the synth guy actually had to be PLAYING, right?

So he was with us the day we played a Pep Rally at a school that was too small to have their own band...and they were fine with it, especially since they were to be entertained by an ass-kicking rock band that, gasp, actually had a synth player.

The show went well, for what it was. They might as well have been a captive audience. They loved everything we did, everything we said, the whole she-bang (especially when the Playboy was produced from out of nowhere). The boys were rockin' hard. The girls, however, were thinking of more than just "rockin' hard". There was a love light shining brightly in the eyes of practically every female in the house. To my surprise, few of them were trained on Funk Daddy. I was blown away that they were actually gazing at me with doe-eyed invitations to invade their virgin worlds.

The choice was mine to make...I suppose that's one of the perks that come with being a natural born leader.

Now, normally I do not like cheerleaders. I can't stand their routines. I can't stand the snobbishness that characterizes so many of them. I can't stand the way it's so important to them that they neglect things that really matter. I don't like the perceived social status that they believe cheerleading confers upon them.

But most of all I just hate the way every single one of them want nothing to do with me. Until that day...and maybe it was BECAUSE of this that I chose a fiery little sprite of a girl who just happened to be wearing a cheerleader's get-up.

Oh, man. She was really cute. I struck up a conversation with her and my suspicion was confirmed: this little girl wanted to know me better. She wanted to know what my dreams were. She wanted to know my hopes and my ambitions. She wanted to know where I came from and where I was going. She wanted to know if there was a place in my life for one such as her. Most of all, she wanted to know what my cock felt like in her hand.

My answers to those last two questions:

1. No
2. Play your cards right and you may find out tonight.

I knew, would go to the game that night and to the homecoming dance that followed. I told the guys in the band what was going down. I begged them to come with me to the game later. They all declined/chickened out. I looked at them with disbelief and they returned a gaze of scorn and disgust (they knew I was married, and that explains that). Fuck 'em, then. Right? It's as if they were starving and someone gave them a cornucopia of food...and they refuse it. Idiots.

When the time had come I got into my tight blue jeans and slipped on my black Talking Heads long sleeve t-shirt (it was a little nippy). If anyone in that little school doubted the breadth of my hipness, they would have to concede when they took one look at my "The Name of the Band is Talking Heads" tour shirt. It was one cool motherfucker, that's for sure.

The trip to the game was uneventful, unless you count the huge, ever-growing erection that pressed my ying/yang against the tightness of the jeans I was wearing. The prospect of the myriad possibilities of the situation had me in a state of arousal I had not experienced since first seeing Linda Blair in "Born Innocent". It was a very real concern of mine that the "moment" would occur before I even arrived at my destination. So I cleared my mind of the erotic fantasies I was entertaining and fixed my thoughts on Nancy Reagan. When this only seemed to further the intensity of my excitement I tried real hard to meditate on the mental image of Madonna. That seemed to work, so I put 'er in overdrive and motivated towards the football field.

I tried not to betray my negative feelings for cheerleaders in general as I watched her try real hard to get the apathetic crowd into it. It was easy to conceal those awful notions when I noticed that she had her eye on me almost the whole time. When a break came she would climb up the bleachers to sit with me. I didn't have to say anything. I was already in the door. She seemed too sweet to even consider deflowering. At least not that night. Maybe later down the road.

The game came to a conclusion with the home team losing. Yet, even in the midst of such sorrow and disappointment there were many, many players and other students who came up to me and praised my band's performance. Some worshipped me because of the leader I am. Others were jealous that I had this fine looking cheerleader on my are. Not a single one knew that I was a married man. Some secrets, I learned, are best kept that way. They all asked, "Are you coming to the dance?" To which my response was a leering glance at cheerleader babe, a knowing look returned to them, a wicked smile and a smirk that let them know that I had a plan. "Hell yeah!" they said. "I should have known! I guess I'll see you there."

The dance was actually quite fun. I had not enjoyed the dances at my Jr. & Sr. proms...basically because I couldn't find anyone to go with me that didn't look like a pit bull with tits. The tits were the only reason I even bothered to go. And they were nice tits.

I danced with cheerleadin' hottie on almost every song. Popular boys would step up to us and ask to cut in. She looked offended and said, "No!" I would look at the guy with sincere compassion, knowing how difficult it must have been to attempt to cut in on a superstar such as myself. Before I felt too sorry for him, I told him to fuck off and die. I didn't have time for this bullshit. I wanted to get what I came for and get the hell out of Dodge.

My expectations for this night were really not high. I wanted to get a good feel of this girl before making the decision to give her the dynamite. It very well could be a week or two before that decision would be made, because there were just too many angles, too many aspects, too many things that could go wrong. So it was not without caution that I approached this initial session. Besides, as much as I thought I despised Madonna, it turns out that her image in my mind nevertheless has the power to make me squirt in my pants. It was a good thing I had taken a spare pair with me. I'd originally hoped to change into them at the end of the night instead of the beginning. It turned out for the best, though, as I became even more convinced that she was an apple not quite ripe enough to bite into. It wouldn't be long, not tonight.

We drove around town for a minute or two in my sweet Chevy Nova with the Pioneer stereo, the graphic equalizer and the JBL speakers pumping Duran Duran. I'd just bought "Rio" a week before and it was fast becoming a favorite (which says a lot about the dismal state of the music industry that year). Cheerleader liked it a lot, too. If she didn't, she'd still say she did. It was the soundtrack to a very special night in her life, for I could tell that, even though I planned on taking it slow, she was hoping and praying to get her hymen busted by a rock star. She knew I was the closest she would ever come, so it's understandable that she would get worked up over it. Her virginity was definitely on the line. She was ready to present it to me like a gift wrapped present beneath the Xmas tree. Free of charge. No red tape. No hassles or commitments...the only thing she expected in return for this treasure was permission to spread the news to everyone in town. Unfortunately the request backfired when her father finally heard the news (which was not very long afterwards, I assure you).

I mentioned that we drove around for a minute or two. That was plenty of time to see what the town had to offer. Plenty of time to SEE THE TOWN 2 or 3 times. So we parked in front of an old gas station that had been closed down for ages. It was nice and dark. The only light visible was from the stereo that I left on, in hopes that we'd still be pitching woo by the time "Hungry Like The Wolf" came on.

Wound up hearing "Hungry Like The Wolf" a couple of times, as it turned out. In the cramped confines of my automobile I managed to get a good idea of her bra size and she found out the answer to her question about how my penis would feel in her grasp. She seemed to like it. At least she did when she could actually hold it all in her hand. If there's anything bigger than my ego, it's my ju-ju.

The only problem (and it was a serious one, IMO) was her mouth. Do you remember in my previous letter where I mentioned how dry your sister's pussy was? Well, cheerleader's mouth was every bit as dry, maybe even more. Cottonmouth to a degree I had not witnessed until I started smoking pot. I dunno, she may have been a swell kisser. I couldn't get over the arid dryness of her tongue, her upper palate, the sides of her mouth, every nook and cranny I could reach with my Gene Simmons-esque tongue (though I did purposefully avoid her uvula).

Still, she was too fuckin' gorgeous. Too cute for words. Now that I think back on it, she was also too young to be daydreaming about a man of my age. As the night darkened she asked me to take her home. She showed me how to get there, all the while snuggling up against my side, her angel's face illuminated by the dashboard light's glow. I knew that the dry mouth situation could not have been the usual state of affairs, and I looked forward to exploring her mouth and tasting her spit at a later date.

But, as you surely remember, I became increasingly guilty as the days went by. It was so hard to lie to you. I knew I wouldn't be able to do it for long. I also kind of figured you wouldn't mind so much what with all our epic love-making storytelling.

I confessed. I told you everything I thought was necessary to tell you. I felt like shit. I was glad to get it off my chest, even though it hadn't been there long enough to really matter. You were a little pissed, I remember. I slept on the couch for a few nights...that's fairly typical punishment for a transaction so relatively minor. I didn't fuck her, okay? So what if I'd hoped to? So what if I WOULD HAVE eventually, assuming that she do something about the dry mouth. But I DIDN'T. That is what counted.

You told me not to see her anymore. Actually I think your words were more like, "If I even catch you THINKING about that slut I'll take everything you own and leave you!" I didn't think you would ever do that (this assumption was proven wrong just a couple of years later when you did just that). But it seemed reasonable. My enthusiasm about an affair with cheerleader babe waned considerably (only to re-emerge at a later date when it became increasingly evident that you may not have been altogether serious in your threats). My interest in her was temporarilly curtailed by your objections.

My interest in cottonmouth cheerleader was PERMANENTLY curtailed a few days later when I got a phone call from her father. I don't know how he got the phone number of the place I was staying. I don't know how much he knew about what went down. Most importantly, I didn't know how serious he was about confronting me with a shotgun if ever there came a time he found out I was within shooting distance of his daughter. At first I thought he may have been angry because she had become like this hardcore radical Duran Duran fan in the days since our rendesvouz. I was a little slow on the intake at that point, but looking back I would probably rightly assume that he was more concerned with her virginity than she was (definitely moreso than I was). He spoke with such authority that I had no choice but to take him seriously. Not only that he was pissed, not only that he had a shotgun, but, more importantly, that he would, without a second thought, use it.

I never told you about that phone call. No doubt you think that your ultimatum was successfully responsible for putting an end to the affair. It was not. She may well have been worth breaking up a marriage, but she was definitely NOT worth taking a bullet in the gut for.

Okay, now you know. If only you were reading these letters. I would love to find out if you were as "faithful" to me as I to you. I know this: you would never have confessed, and I would not know, even to this day. I have my ideas. One of these days I might just elaborate on those ideas.

Until then,

Love,
Orenthio

Letter #2: Lost my faith, bitch...

2010-02-02T07:24:00.000-08:00

Dear Caroline,

How have you been? Has Frank beaten you lately? You know, you really should ditch the guy. It shouldn't be hard. After all, you walked out on me and I never laid a hand on you. I never thought you were one of those women who are so insecure with themselves that they'll let their old man abuse them just so long as he doesn't leave. Hell, if I'd known you were one of those women I might have slapped you around a little. It's not my way, that's true. But if it would have meant not losing you, I think I could have done it. Who knows? It may have been more satisfying than kicking the dog.

Of course there was that one time. But you threw the first punch, so I don't count it. I know, I know...they all say that it isn't right for a man to hit a woman under any circumstances. For the most part I do agree with that. But you were not a "woman" that night. Strawberry dacquaris and cheap weed turned you into an animal...a vicious 4-legged beast stalking the jungle for prey. I happened to be that "prey" and, as it was before so it is now and always will remain, I will not be devoured. So never forget how you stepped up to me and, even more importantly, how I put you back down in your place.

Like I said, if I'd only known you liked it, I would have beat you down on a regular basis. Still, I think it would have been a lot harder whip up on you than the dog. At least with the mutt you don't have to listen to long hours of crying and moaning. A yelp or two and their over it, no matter how bad they're hurt.

So, anyway, I guess you'd like to know what I've been up to the last few years. Yes, for a long, long time I missed you terribly, but I finally got on with my life and as I look back I can see that, yes, some shit went down.

Let's see...where to start.

You know how importanty church was to us? Surely you remember that. Every Sunday morning and evening, every Wednesday night...we could almost always be found at the United Methodist Church. Hell, we should have packed up our furniture and moved in. Devout motherfuckers, but you know what? Every time I prayed I felt like I was doing it wrong. I felt like I didn't even know how to pray and that, if I did, God wasn't listening. I'd read book after book about Christianity and religion, but I never read the Bible. I never gave a damn thing to the poor and I hated the word "Christian", even though I considered myself one. I never spoke with you about it because, frankly, I was ashamed to admit it. Plus, I was scared silly that you'd put poison in my spaghetti if you ever found out I was a "closet heathen".

One thing, though...the pastor there was ace. What a calm, collected, intelligent, compassionate, caring man. So different from most preachers. After you left and I got kicked out of my folks' house he felt sorry for me and put me up in the house where the youth director lived. You probably didn't know about that, but it's just as well. No concern of yours.

But that youth minister didn't like me. He never came out and said it, but I could tell. I didn't like him much, either, because he would always talk about the times when he sold drugs and partied all night long. I never could tell if he was telling me in a cautionary way or if he just missed those days. And who knows, maybe, just maybe, he was still into that scene. Don't know why he would have told me though, if that were the case.

Did I mention that he didn't like me? I think part of the reason for that is because I blew one of his high dollar stereo speakers and blamed it on one of the kids in his youth group. The guys came over to listen to some shitty song I had written and I guess I turned the amplifier up too loud. There was a loud POP and after that there was an irritating and unlistenable fuzz that saturated every frequency the high end unit was capable of reproducing.

It should have known it wasn't a good idea to blame the bozo kids. Dipshits that they were, I know he trusted them more than me. I was nothing to him but a washed up loser with no prospects, walking across town to the grocery store to shoplift a pound of sausage and a can of cheap soda pop. You could see the contempt in his eyes every time he glanced my way. He never said anything to me to confirm my suspicion, but you know I'm pretty good at reading people. And this guy did not want me there.

So it was no surprise when he evicted me. I'm not sure if it had anything to do with the fucked up stereo. Probably that was part of it. I tend to think that he valued his privacy more than his duty to the local Methodist church and it's well-intentioned pastor.

I doubt his opinion of me was boosted when he found several of his record albums amongst the items I had packed up for the move. I don't know, maybe ten, maybe twenty. All I remember is that one of them was "Rocks" by Aerosmith. Damn good record. Last decent album they ever recorded as far as I'm concerned.

But I stray, my dear, from my original topic. Religion.

It all boiled down to this: you left, you took the baby, I said "fuck it all" and I "lost my faith". For years I wandered the great flatlands of Oklahoma without a care in the world for God, for Jesus Christ, for ANY of it. You won't believe this...it's not like me...but for a long time I considered myself a Satanist. I would draw upside-down crosses and pentagrams on the pages from the notebook in which I wrote "I-been-beaten-down-please-feel-sorry-for-me" poetry. Bad stuff, too. Satan would probably be embarrassed if anyone saw his logos on the same piece of paper as my god-awful blank verse.

Hey...I gotta go. Billy Bob just got here with the sack of pot I ordered and the inevitable financial transaction soon to occur takes precedence over this letter to you. Tell Frank I said "hello".

Love
Orenthio

Letter #1: This husband of yours...

2010-02-02T07:23:00.000-08:00

Dear Caroline,

There was something I wanted to write about. I spoke with your brother last night and he told me some very interesting things about the day-by-day goings-on in your life...

This husband of yours...the guy you married a year after you ditched me...word on the street is that he "takes it where he finds it", which I suppose could mean a lot of different things, but in this case it means that he's not very particular about who he buys his crack and meth from. And he buys a lot of it, if my sources can be trusted. More than any normal man should be able to consume, which leads me to think that maybe, just maybe, he's selling it himself. But your bro says he's talked to EVERYONE in the small one horse community you call home, and NOBODY admits to buying from him (and they wouldn't lie to your brother...he's well respected and much loved there).

So I can only assume that he's buying for himself, for you, and for the five children the two of you have sired since I last saw you.

And what the fuck is that about? I NEVER used a condom when I was with you, and you never took birth control. I know our sex life leaned a lot toward fellatio & a wee bit of cunnilingus (not that you were particularly good at the former, but what did I know? It's not like I had a lot of experience getting my knob slobbed). Nevertheless, your vaginal orifice was injected with my semen many, many times and, in light of how you've churned 'em out lately, you'd think that your reproductive organs were fertile ground on which MY seed could could have been successfully sowed. But no...WHY NOT?

I have my theories. I'm sure one of them is correct. Perhaps he gets randy when the meth kicks in. That could well be. He gets high, drags you into the bedroom (though I'm sure you're not kicking and screaming), throws you down on the floor (fuck the bed, eh?), rips your clothes off, thrusts himself onto you and into you, then bangs you like the cheap piece of trash you are. Cheap as hell, trust me, I know. Cheaper than a Kentucky Fried Chicken sack that's been emptied, crumpled up and thrown into the drainage ditch by some teen hustler who had no use for it after devouring the chicken and the mashed taters and the green beans and the corn and the biscuit and HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHAT EXACTLY WAS IN THE BAG??? FOOD, GODDAMNIT! That's right...food. Nutritional energy to keep the punk ass hooligan going.

That's what you offer your pervy hub Frank. "Food". Sex. The one thing he married you for. But after he's taken it? As far as he is concerned (and the world, for that matter), your worse than a dirty, soggy, moldy, crumpled up Kentucky Fried Chicken sack.

You know it wouldn't have been that way if you had stayed with me...don't get me wrong, I'm glad you didn't, but it's true. I treated you right. You deserved to be treated right back then. But maybe not. Maybe I just hadn't seen your true colors yet. It matters not. I treated you like a goddamn queen. A QUEEN!

It's cool, though. You'll never be lonely now that you're with Frank. But you have to admit that he and I are nothing alike. You'd never find me passed out on the couch with a crack pipe in one hand and my penis in the other. You'd never have to turn off the DVD player when you got home because I had passed out and left it on. Consequently you never would have witnessed the unnatural sight of a woman sucking off a donkey.

And where DOES Frank get these DVDs? Did that ever cross your mind? What's next? As he continues to descend into the abyss of crack addiction whose to say that his sexual peccadilloes won't adjust to his woeful condition? Today bestiality, tomorrow necrophilia.

For God's sake, woman. Get out of this while you can. How far has he already dragged you down with him? It's shocking to me that you saw the donkey show video and yet you are still with the man. What does that say about you?

Take my advice, girl. When/if he kicks into Rob Zombie mode there will be no more good vibrations. The abuse you endure (and secretly crave) will pale in comparison to the "Hostel"-like punishment he will mete out to you. 3 days later he'll be back at Boots 'n' Saddles looking to score and you'll be 6 feet down underground wearing a cheap dress with all your jewelry stripped (all of which, by the way, will be found at the Cash America pawn shop on sale for considerably less than their original value).

Please don't let it come to that. Leave it all behind. Leave the brutal, abusive husband. Leave the 5 rotten, stinking kids, the offspring of a devil. Leave the house that was never a home. Leave the tiny little town where everybody knows everybody else's business (and makes it their own). Leave this once grand state, now contaminated with the likes of your husband and your brood of rabid vermin.

Leave it all. Find a home in the city aqueduct. Sleep in a cardboard box with your head resting on a pillow of solid rock. Conjure up the ghost of Tom Joad so you'll have someone to talk to, but just don't tell him how you gave up the good life with me to make a new one with a man who only married you because he knew you wouldn't "spoil all the fun", as he likes to say.

Hope all is well with you and yours and I'll write again soon.

Love
Orenthio

A Tasty Beverage

2010-02-01T12:36:00.001-08:00

…and that reminds me of what may possibly have been the meanest thing I have ever done to another human being. It’s something I would not want to be done to me and I would NEVER do it again. Yes, I wish I had never done it, but there you go…

I was staying at a house in the country. I was sort of watching over it, as the owner lived in a different home several miles away. I thought of myself as “security”, but in reality it was simply a case of a generous man giving a homeless person a place to temporarily stay.

It had only been a couple of years since I’d been released from the Naval hospital, A year and a half since my wife left me. About half a year since I’d stopped taking meds. I’d been booted from my dad’s house by his wife. I wound up at John’s place by chance. I didn’t even know the guy. Seriously, I’d never met him until the night he offered me the place after hearing my tale of woe.

John was the manager of the band my brother was playing with at the time. He owned all of their P.A. system, which stayed at the house, so it actually was a benefit for him to have me there watching over it, keeping it safe from thieves. The house was out in the boonies and it would have very easy for anyone to steal whatever they wanted from it at any time, day or night.

Anyway, I’d been there for a little over 3 months when a guy they called Bear started spending a lot of time at the house. Looking back on it, I wouldn’t be surprised if John had been planning on moving him in to replace me as their “security man”. His wife didn’t like me at all. Eventually I learned that she was convinced I had stolen a gun they kept (hid, they thought) in an unused bedroom. HA! I had no idea there was a gun, where it would be, or even how to use it if I HAD ripped it off.

But that’s neither here nor there. Point is that Bear was the kind of person who grated on the nerves. I was stuck with him on a regular basis. He disturbed my precious solitude, and that was his only sin.

Okay…so there was rarely anything to eat at John’s house. It was almost as if we survived on the Busch beer he left behind. He would stop by every day on his way home from work to check in and see how things were going. He’d almost always bring a 12 pack of beer that he would share with me, leaving behind several for me to enjoy the next day. There was almost always beer. It wasn’t unusual for the refrigerator to have a couple of cases in it, left behind from the band’s rehearsals (which always devolved into parties).

When we did run out of brews, Bear would make up a gallon of iced tea. I never liked tea so he was the only one who drank it.

And this is where we get to the MEAN part…

Bear had been getting on nerves that day. Not that he actually TRIED to annoy me. It just came naturally to him. In fact, I don’t think he even disliked me. There were a couple of times when he gave that impression, but those could probably be attributed to a bad mood. He was a nice guy.

One afternoon while he was gone I took his pitcher of tea, which about half full…AND I PISSED IN IT. I put it back into the refrigerator and waited for his return.

When he came back I was sitting inside the fenced patio, strumming an old guitar that had been left at the house from one of the band rehearsals. I was making up impromptu songs when he joined me. He sat down and listened.

It wasn’t too long until he got thirsty.

He went into the kitchen, found some ice, and poured up a nice, big glass of tea. Then he came back to the patio, sat down…and took a huge gulp. Of course he could not taste it, so he had no idea why I bust out laughing. I laughed and laughed and he kept asking me what was so funny. He didn’t believe when I told him it was nothing. I just dept guffawing.

Then I started playing a couple of chords on the guitar and sang, in a nasally voice and in a manner that assured he wouldn’t understand a single word…

“Pissed in your tea
Oh yes, I pissed in your tea
Ain’t you so pissed off at me?”

I still have this on a cassette tape somewhere, as I had been trying to write some songs that afternoon and used a recorder to capture ideas. It had serendipitously been running during this exchange.

Bear never found out about my practical joke. Which is a good thing, because he was a big ol’ boy, bigger than me, and had very likely been the one who stole the gun I mentioned earlier.

I got booted from the house because John’s wife hounded him to get rid of me. She didn’t think I pulled whatever weight she figured I should be pulling. And the gun thing, of course. I don’t know why she hated me, but, seeing as how I was the kind of person who would spike someone’s beverage with urine, I imagine she had some strong instincts that told her I wasn’t a good ‘un to keep around.

I don’t blame her. They say that “what you don’t know can’t hurt you”. That may well be, but I’d hate to think that my Dr. Pepper had been pissed in somewhere down the road, even if I DID deserve it.

Karma? Oh boy…

Sweet Patricia

2010-01-28T08:50:00.001-08:00

I met Patricia Howard last year around this time. She was teaching Sunday School at the Nazarene church when I asked the pastor to introduce her to me. He was hesitant to comply because he felt that I would be a bad influence on her. He took me into his office for a private conference in which he asked me what my intentions were with Patricia, who, he said, was like a daughter to him.

"I'm glad you asked", I responded. "That's a sure sign of a minister doing his job when he's so concerned with his congregation." I didn't say this to mock or belittle him, though it might have looked that way to a casual observer.

"Truth be told", I continued, "I just like a girl with short hair, glasses and a pretty face." Which was the honest-to-God truth. Ms. Howard met all the criteria, I informed the preacher, and I was anxious to find out if there was a tiger in her tank. I suspected there was.

The pastor coughed, straightened up his tie and told me, looking straight in my eye, "She's a good girl, Jimbo. Don't do her no wrong!"

"That's the furthest thing from my mind, sir. I don't know what in the world could have given you the impression that I meant to do her harm. I just think she's one sexy mamma-jamma who might want to rock and roll all night with me. And who knows? If she can hang with me on that, maybe we can party every day! What do ya say?"

He cleared his throat. Fact is he had every reason to think my contact with her might be harmful. Not harmful like a serial killer is harmful. Not even harmful like a deranged pervert could be harmful. It's just that he knew how cruel I could be. He knew all about my sordid past, as I had confessed it all to him throughout the years. He knew the real reason I kicked my first wife out of the house. He knew about all the toad frogs I killed when I was a kid. Most of all, he knew how I liked to manipulate the minds of pretty young women and degrade them with verbal abuse. I'd tried to convince him that all that was in the past, I was a changed man, I wouldn't hurt a flea. Whether he believed me or not was anybody's guess, but he was willing to give me one more chance because he did introduce me to Patricia.

I took her to dinner that night and she seemed rather shy and reserved. She spoke very little. At first I thought she was just uncomfortable in my company, as she had every right to be since the reverend had told her what a bastard I was. But I thought, "no...she's been warned. She knows I'm an asshole. It must be something else".

I ordered another bottle of wine, poured her a glass, and decided to break the ice.

"Is there something on your mind?", I asked her. "Don't you like the restaurant?"

"Oh, I suppose it's alright", she replied, but I could tell she was not digging the scene. I mean, four bottles of wine between the two of us and she still had that "I'd-rather-be-anywhere-but-here" look on her face.

I was willing to do anything to put a smile back on that pretty face. What had started out being a mild fascination with a Sunday School teacher whom I found quite attractive had grown into the desire to make her my own, to give her a ring, to give up my nights of rocking and rolling, to forsake my daily partying, to spend the rest of my days in her arms, just as I had wanted to spend the rest of my life with countless other girls I'd met throughout the years.

"Is there somewhere else you'd like to go?"...I was more than willing to oblige. "Just tell me."

"Actually..."...a pause..."there is..."...another pause, this one pregnant.

"Yes? Yes?"

"What I really want", she said with a serious look on her face, "is to go out back to the alley, befriend a couple of winos, burn a fire in a trash can, roll around on the ground with you just long enough to soil our clothes, barter with a junkie for some used needles and shoot up some crystal meth. Then you can take me home and we'll call it a night."

I was stunned.

Unfortunately, as it turned out, there was only one wino in the alley and he wasn't inclined to be friendly. There wasn't a trash can in sight so we had to be content with lighting a couple of old newspapers in a gutter. We were, however, able to get our clothes soiled and we did obtain some used needles. I don't think the guy we got them from was a junkie, though. But he was willing to trade us two nasty syringes for all the jewelry Patricia was wearing (he also got away with my wallet and my grandfather's timepiece, but that's another story).

Of course, the highlight of the evening was filling those suckers up with the dope and sticking 'em in each others' arms. What a feeling that was! So much better than the date I had planned out. And you know what? As good-looking as I thought she was the first time I laid eyes on her during that evening worship service, she was positively stunning when seen through the haze of a good narcotic buzz.

I took her home much later that night...in fact, it might have been the next morning, as time had lost it's value by that point. She had won my heart. I made a promise to myself that I would never degrade her, nor would I ever abuse her, physically or mentally, no matter how much I might want to. Most importantly I decided I would ask for her hand in marriage the next time I saw her.

But I never saw her again.

I fear she may have wound up in the ground.

Junk Days

2010-01-28T08:46:00.001-08:00

Hey, Charlie! Come look at this picture. That's me, shooting up a nice score of heroin. I'll never forget it. 1993 and the gettin' was good. I was livin' in Seminole, which is only about 15 miles from Wewoka (a small town known in some circles as "Little Chicago"). If it was controlled substances you wanted, Wewoka was the place to find 'em. Hell, I remember one time when I stopped to put some gas in the tank and this total stranger just walked up to me and asked if I wanted to buy some hash. I'd never had that happen to me before. It wasn't very good hash, but it was cheap.

My roommate and I knew at least 6 connections for smack in Little Chicago. We kept them well-fed and put clothes on their backs with the amounts of horse we purchased from them. I do believe that a few of them were under the impression that we were selling. But no, it was all for personal use. Shit, man, we were sticking needles into our veins at least 4 or 5 times a day. It wasn't too long before all of 'em were tapped out and we had to poke the needles straight into our eyes. That, my friend, will REALLY get you high.

Eventually one of our sources introduced us to his main man, a fat, cigar chomping mobster from the local Mafia union. He was pushing some serious kilos and asked us if we wanted a part of that action. It was a peachy deal. We'd have to buy in more bulk than we were used to, but the savings would surely compensate for that. Besides, the needle in the eye trick was working like a charm. We only used one eye, because, hell, a man has to SEE what he's doing. The particular eye that I used was caved in, a mass of blood and gore, eyeball long since torn to shreds...but that didn't matter. The location was so close to the brain that the need for veins was eradicated. It didn't even hurt too much...it got to be fairly numb after two or three months of excruciating pain.

So, long story short, we hooked up with this big guy and he supplied us with enough China White to not only keep ourselves in horse heaven for years, but to give some to our luckier friends, on special occasions, as well. I was hooked like a fish on a line for a long time, but I'm happy to say that those days are all behind me now. They are the stuff of dreams.

Every once in a while, as I'm walking down the sidewalks of Little Chicago, I will lift up my patch and frighten young children with the gruesome spectacle of the heroin ravaged carnage that was once my left eye. Young children, grown men and women, the elderly...they all seem to get a fright out of the sight. Personally, I can't see what's so scary about it...

Junk Days

2010-01-28T08:46:00.000-08:00

Hey, Charlie! Come look at this picture. That's me, shooting up a nice score of heroin. I'll never forget it. 1993 and the gettin' was good. I was livin' in Seminole, which is only about 15 miles from Wewoka (a small town known in some circles as "Little Chicago"). If it was controlled substances you wanted, Wewoka was the place to find 'em. Hell, I remember one time when I stopped to put some gas in the tank and this total stranger just walked up to me and asked if I wanted to buy some hash. I'd never had that happen to me before. It wasn't very good hash, but it was cheap.

My roommate and I knew at least 6 connections for smack in Little Chicago. We kept them well-fed and put clothes on their backs with the amounts of horse we purchased from them. I do believe that a few of them were under the impression that we were selling. But no, it was all for personal use. Shit, man, we were sticking needles into our veins at least 4 or 5 times a day. It wasn't too long before all of 'em were tapped out and we had to poke the needles straight into our eyes. That, my friend, will REALLY get you high.

Eventually one of our sources introduced us to his main man, a fat, cigar chomping mobster from the local Mafia union. He was pushing some serious kilos and asked us if we wanted a part of that action. It was a peachy deal. We'd have to buy in more bulk than we were used to, but the savings would surely compensate for that. Besides, the needle in the eye trick was working like a charm. We only used one eye, because, hell, a man has to SEE what he's doing. The particular eye that I used was caved in, a mass of blood and gore, eyeball long since torn to shreds...but that didn't matter. The location was so close to the brain that the need for veins was eradicated. It didn't even hurt too much...it got to be fairly numb after two or three months of excrutiating pain.

So, long story short, we hooked up with this big guy and he supplied us with enough China White to not only keep ourselves in horse heaven for years, but to give some to our luckier friends, on special occassions, as well. I was hooked like a fish on a line for a long time, but I'm happy to say that those days are all behind me now. They are the stuff of dreams.

Every once in a while, as I'm walking down the sidewalks of Little Chicago, I will lift up my patch and frighten young children with the gruesome spectacle of the heroin ravaged carnage that was once my left eye. Young children, grown men and women, the elderly...they all seem to get a fright out of the sight. Personally, I can't see what's so scary about it...

Shuteye

2010-01-28T08:44:00.000-08:00

Crash and burn these brain cells gasping for another moment...Burned out and born again. He listens to Iarla O Lionaird and thanks God he doesn't understand the language, for comprehension would spoil the moment, and the tears have just begun to fall.

They don't hang around for very long, do they?

He thinks his grasp on sanity is weakening, the architecture of his mind proven defective, constructed with shoddy workmanship. He's blunted his emotions in so many ways over the years that some of it was bound to work. Wanna be stupid, wanna play dumb.

Next morning finds him him sitting behind the wheel, thinking that a good chunk of his life has been wasted commandeering an automobile to and from countless shitty jobs with no future, the stereo's volume extracting even more of his precious hearing than he can afford to lose, what with the other irreversible nerve damage.
A man gets used to the ringing. What choice does he have? Can't stop it. Adjust or go insane. Liable to go insane anyway, so you may as well put it off till then.
Cruising at 80 down the endless Interstate, enveloped in the sound world he's chosen for the day...on this particular day it's a Sigur Ros album, Takk. With 85% of his concentration on the music and the other 15% on driving it's a wonder he doesn't have an accident. He is immersed in the sounds, he closes his eyes.

A nice straight stretch of highway, so his steady hand keeps him moving as he tilts his head back and decides not to open his eyes.

The straightness of the highway gives way to a sharp curve, but his steering hand remains stable, no plans to move it.

The car clips another vehicle, an old Econoline van, which barely escapes rolling. His eyes squeezed shut with effort, he collides, in the cab of his Ford Taurus with "Glosolia" swirling in the air, with a gas pump, then careens into the store, glass windows smashing and crashing all over the place and a loud explosion directly behind where the gas pumps had caught fire and blown up with the force of a bomb.

When rescue crews finally located him, his eyes were open. But his body was broken beyond healing and his heart had stopped beating.

The last one starved.

Toni in the Rain

2010-01-28T08:43:00.000-08:00

Tami.

No, I think her name was Toni, though it's a wonder I remember anything at all about the quiet, mousy little girl in our high school band.

Never once did I see her with a friend, and I never heard her utter a single word. Not even when she was spoken to. The teacher would ask her a question and she, like a deaf-mute, refused to answer him.

It's a wonder any one of us even knew her name. And it was a marvel how her name suited the person we saw, uncommon in our small-town confines.

She sat in the "third clarinet" section, holding her instrument, gazing at the sheet music in front of her. What she saw there must have transcended the notes and staffs printed on the brittle, yellowing paper. The sounds she made with the school-owned, fourth hand clarinet were barely audible above the racket we made. But I could hear the songs she played. They bore little or no resemblance to what the composer had written.

It still amazes me how vividly I can conjure up the memory of her. How aloof she was from everyone...I was no different---she never spoke to me, either. That was just as well, as far as I was concerned. She never even once looked at me.

But now that I think about it, I believe she DID look at me once. She gazed into my eyes and cast her spirit into mine, tortured and ecstatic. The transaction shook me to my foundations, even though I felt nothing at the time.

She planted her seed of alienation into my life.

Not love.

Not lust.

Not even a better understanding of why she was the way she was.

Those seeds took many years to sprout and blossom. but bloom they did.

I confess. I could have cared less about Toni. As hardened to her plight as the rest of my classmates were, I dismissed her strangeness as possibly drug related.

Maybe we were all right. Maybe she WAS a fifteen year old junkie floating out on the mainline. Who knows but that she'd dropped so much acid that it became impossible for her to relate to other people. So she'd crawled into her shell with her pills, needles and powders.

For some reason I could not bring myself to accept the "drugged-up" theories, the nasty rumors that floated around the entire school about Toni...weird, shy Toni.

Today, running it all through my mind again, I am even more confident that it was not drugs, that it was something else. Now the seed that she sowed is ripe for harvest. The alienation she planted within the virgin soil of my heart has become manifest in countless ways...

The most vivid memory I have of Toni is probably the ONLY thing my classmates remember of about her.

It was early morning and our marching band practice had been cancelled due to the rain that had begun to fall. The entire band was crowded together in the rehearsal room, creating havoc and generally having a good time.

Our attention was diverted when one of the guys, laughing, pointing out the window, called out, "Hey! Come and look at this!"

There, in the center of the practice field, stood Toni, soaked and dripping, her arms raised to the sky like she was praying to some Rain God. She seemed so naturally in place out there, alone in the downpour. It was the first time I'd ever seen her smile.

A sight so bizarre that it frightened me. To this day the recollection gives me goosebumps.

I think it was the smile.

The other kids laughed, mocked her, called her names, yelled scornful taunts at her through the window.

That was the day people started saying she was legitimately crazy.

That was also the last anyone ever saw of her. It was as if she'd vanished from the face of the earth. Her disappearance was mysterious, especially to us children who had spent so much time in her silent company.

It was not so mysterious, however, to the policemen who drove her away to a place we had no conception of. A place where noone, not even Toni, could feel at home.

Toni, if you were here with me right now, oh, how I'd like to talk to you. You wouldn't have to talk back...talking was never your style, anyway, was it? Just listen to me, because I've got so much to tell you now. So much I've learned in the thirteen years since I last saw you (a statue of wet flesh in the rain, praising the emptiness of sky that you called your own).

Maybe...just maybe, if I could treat you now with the dignity and respect you were denied all those years ago...you might speak to me, tell me all the thoughts trapped within your mind, be they mundane or twisted like the tunnels of time. You might share your understanding of the universe.

The secret of YOUR universe.

That would be enough for me.

Inside the Soldier's Mind

2010-01-28T08:42:00.000-08:00

We walk in circles, feet shuffling rhythm in the cold, sterile breeze. Staring directly ahead in a straight line, five columns of four, spaced out in divisions of nine beneath a series of seven moving fluently parallel to spirit brigades of nineteen. This mathematical precision is mind-numbing but they tell me it's necessary.

Necessary for what, I wonder?

"You must get used to the noise," says a wobbly man in a hand-me-down black leather pilot's jacket, ragged patches signifying some sort of rank. "Thus patience is instilled."

I remain unconvinced. The light is hurting my eyes...I'm not accustomed to being outdoors and the sun is a brutal bastard. I miss my cell already.

"It won't be long now," barks the flyboy in charge.

Do I even have to tell you I'm clueless?

Behind me I can hear the sound of heavy breathing laced with emphysema, a pre-death rattle from the throat of one who will not complete the drill. At any moment I expect to hear the sound of his burden dropping with a thud to the tarmac. Could be any second now he'll be out of the game, down for the count.

...And I will not turn around...

...And I will march on...

...And I know, as surely as I know my own name, that I could be next.

I swallow hard. My head aches, the pounding of kick drums getting louder and louder in my cerebrum, a precise tattoo inherited from some savage native residue.

What am I doing here? How did I get here? Such a heartless taskmaster who cracks the whip and keeps the procession in perpetual motion. I am ordered. The entire population is disordered. Or is it the other way around? I've stopped wondering if it even matters anymore. My slate is almost clean. Soon understanding will replace confusion. Soon chaos will metamorphosis into a sharp, mystical precision.

On the other side lies the prize of perfection. The mythical resolution to the infinite mystery. This is the abyss the poets dream of plunging into. It is the bottomless ocean of cabalistic oxygen, glimpsed rarely in dreams and visions but too pure to hope for in this incarnation. Mountains here are easily moved, but it is understood by all that mountains are just as they should be in the space the occupy. Therefore no one would think of moving them.

Here, to the left, all is pure. To the right there is nothing that is not immaculate. Behind no past, ahead no future...the moment is everything you need it to be, and the moment is never-ending...

...On the other side.

But the jet-lagged professor of patience wonders if even his most qualified grunts can tough out what seems to them like an endless waiting game. He knows that they have no conception of the goal he drives them toward.

I wonder if he realizes that I do?

But do I? The shimmer of enlightenment I was blessed with on the day before my father died was but a syringe-full of the ideal, and as it wore off I knew, even then, that a transfusion, such as the Messiah offered, wouldn't be enough to last until infinity caught up with itself (at which point the eternal explodes into another "big bang", resulting in a billion new uninverses).

Oh yes, I know, but only as a child knows the meaning of life.

I know, but only as one who has been teased with a foretaste of euphoria, told by the one who held me under the water that the best was yet to come (and I wondered how it could get any better than this...Until I comprehended that on the other side it may not get any better, but that it never gets any worse, and this understanding was the conception of hope within me).

So what, then, if the man in the dirty leather jacket thinks I'm just another one of his sheep? What do I care if he knows that I know that he knows? It doesn't really matter, does it? Let him go on believing that I play this game for his amusement. I have more patience than he has ever dreamed of possessing himself. What's more, I have no doubt that I understand our destination much more thoroughly than he ever could.

I suspect this because I have seen his badge. It is silver with 6 numerals engraved near the bottom, directly beneath a holographic image of a beast with seven heads and ten horns.

Signifying nothing, mind you.

Take the Lead, Kimo Sabi

2010-01-28T08:41:00.000-08:00

He didn't know what else to do. It seemed to be the only course of action. He was perfectly willing to do whatever he deemed necessary. His sweet-tooth was callin' the shots, though, so what HE deemed necessary was heavily influenced by the munchies.

So, this being the case, he hoisted himself from the couch and put his shirt back on. It was a cool shirt, at least he thought so. Swan Song label, man! Zeppelin, eh? Yeah, cool as fuck.

He grabbed his car keys after slipping into his worn-out flip flops. With no small degree of swagger he strolled out to the ratty 1990 Toyota Celica he called his own. The ignition fired up on the first try…the Celica may have looked like it barely survived a nuclear war, but it was reliable…damned reliable.

His destination was not far from home. Walking distance, actually. It probably would have turned out better for him had he just walked. Only two blocks to his favorite grocery store, which also doubled as a psychedelic utopian oasis when his head was in a good place.

Al & James Grocery. That’s what I’m talkin’ ‘bout. He knew that store like it was his own grub filled mansion. Every aisle was memorized. As you walk in the store, he would have told you, you’ll see the produce section. Lettuce, broccoli, cucumbers, a vegetarian’s dream. Fruits, too. Enough fruit to make a man sick of fruits in general.

“To your left”, he would continue, “is the soda pop aisle. I love this aisle. I drink it all, perty much, except for that nasty diet shit. Pepsi, Coke, I don’t give a fuck. It’s all the same to me. Motherfucking Sprite, that’s some refreshing swill. Hell, if I’m broke I’ll substitute one of the other “doctors”, the cheap-ass store brand, for the king of soft drinks, Dr. Pepper. Dr. Thunder, Dr. Shasta, Dr, This and Dr, That. None of ‘em tasting much like the Pepper. But hey, if you’ve only got 50 cents, well, they’ll do.”

Aisles, aisles, long aisles, crowded aisles. Aisles that smelled like spices. Aisles that smelled like coffee, a delicious, familiar flavor. Aisles, chilly from the frozen food showcases to either side. Aisles, clumsily stocked by the graveyard shift, already fucked up before the day’s half over.

Miles of aisles to choose from, but on this sunny Oklahoma afternoon the man in the patchouli-stinking Led Zeppelin shirt had only one aisle on his mind.

Ice cream, baby. “This is what it’s all about”, he says, talking to an investigative reporter sent by the “In Your Corner” team of do-gooders from the channel 4 news crew. ”This is the serious fuckin’ shit! You think I couldn’t eat me 3 or 4 gallons at a time? Just watch me. I do it up every which way but loose…I’m gonna get me a belly-full of Rocky-fucking Road. Make me a hot fudge sundae. That be a good idea.”

The reporter’s camera crew had shut down and moved on, but Terry, who was also the main anchorwoman at KFOR , hung around in an attempt to introduce herself to him on a less-professional level.

“That was a beautiful soliloquy you gave about those bomb pops. Has anyone ever told you that you look a lot like Sylvester Stallone in profile?”

“No”, he answered, a certain gleam in his eyes, “But it has often been remarked by those who know me that I bear an uncanny resemblance to Richard Gere”.

“So what’s your name?”

“Richard Gere.”

She giggled…”I would never have placed you…you look too much like Morgan Freeman; I could never have mistaken you for Gere.”

“Okay”, he conceded. “My name…no, my REAL name…uhh…that would be…”

“Yes…surely you’ve not forgotten it?”

“Timothy. That’s it…no, really. It’s Timmy Carver. You can call me Jim, if you want to. If I can call you Terry…”

Terry replied, “Oh, I would not have it any other way”.

“Has anyone ever told you, Terry, that your beauty shames the Venus de Milo? That your elfish eyes seem stolen from the Mona Lisa? That the very scent of you makes me swoon and stagger?”

“Yes”, Terry said. “I’ve heard all of that before… A couple of guys used that Mona Lisa line on me, one right after the other…but somehow it seems like when YOU say it…well that makes all the difference in the world. Now, Mr. Ice Cream Expert, what have you to say about the Blue Bell brand ice cream sandwiches?”

He smiled. “By God, you’ve made my mind up for me. What have I to say about ‘em? I say they are the shit. I say that they are on my top-20 list of favorite ice cream confections. Yes, ma’am, I’ve got a lot to say about them, but truth be told, I got Willie Nelson on the TV at home right now, and this grocery store visit has already lasted 3 times longer than I wanted it to. I’ve probably already missed ‘Whiskey River’…and that was the only reason I was even watching. So unless you’re wanting to come home with me, where we can enjoy what’s left of Willie’s show in private. Then move your bulk and girth., I really need to get these ice cream sandwiches paid for and skee-daddle before they melt on me. I hate that..”

“Oh, but yeah…I should have known you’d go for the sandwiches. And I would have thought that, had you found me half as attractive as I find you, you would have already asked me to go with you,” her lips moist and red, pouting… “…and I’d go. Yes, indeed I would take your grubby hand and go with you. Baby., you take me away to a world I never knew…what else can I say? I wanna go with you”.

She knew those were her own thoughts. But she hadn’t realized that she had actually spoken them out loud. She caught herself, but it was too late.

She looked away, and he watched her awkwardness. “If that’s how you feel, Terry…” he said, “well consider yourself invited, but I’m warning you…my house is a wreck. Now grab another box of Blue Bell brand ice cream sandwiches and let’s get the fuck out of Dodge.”

“Take the lead, Kimo Sabbi.” …and he led her down a path of murder, sabotage, prostitution and perversion. A shadow land of jealousy, envy, pride…His strange desires held sway, and she knew there was no way back now that she was in so deep. Her years were wasted, tossed away like empty beer bottles thrown through the windows of a speeding cars. He took the lead, alright. He led her straight down his own long and winding road to hell…

…But that’s not what happened…sorry.

What DID happen was this:

They got to the car and embarked upon the short journey. They spoke to each other in the tentative tones of people falling in love. They locked eyes once or twice, and saw hope there, as strong in her as it was in him. A smattering of laughter and even though hers was an intoxicating sound, he was surprised to find that some of it was his. They went on and on and on…and they would have gone on a little further if Timmy had not realized that he was completely lost. Two measly blocks from departure to destination and he is hopelessly lost.

Terry laughed it off…in fact she found it quite endearing, much in the same way his passion for ice cream sandwiches made here WANT to love him. “Here I am,” she managed to keep this thought to herself: “prepared and willing to offer my body and soul to a man who can’t even find his way back, less than 2 miles from his own house…What the hell am I doing here?”…but she liked it.

She led him back to Al & James, His mind had cleared up a little bit. He figured his short term memory would kick back in and the way home would become clear.

It was with a great degree of sadness when, after making it to the right address, they found that Willie Nelson’s “Austin City Limits” performance had given way to an installment of Nova, in which the phenomenon of black holes was being discussed by a panel of astronauts, rocket scientists, astronomers, movie critics, Satanists and carnys.

“Oh well”, he apologized. “I was really hopin’ to munch on them Blue Bells to the rhythm of ‘Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground’ or maybe ‘Always on My Mind’…something real smooth to get you in the mood to pitch a little woo.”

“Yeah, it’s a bitch, ain’t it?” Somehow he found Terry’s usage of such course language very sexy. “But hey, I like black holes. I think black holes are fascinating. Just think…a portal to another dimension. Or the entrance to transcendence. What does it feed on? Is it an intelligent life form? Does it prefer French fries to tater tots? Does the fact that it’s a ‘black’ hole signify that it’s white on the other side? Naw, dog, K-momma can hang with the black holes!”

“Okay…I’ll grab us some sandwiches. I always eat two or three, so how about you?”

“I’ll take two.”

“Good girl…that’s a good girl. What was that name again?”

“Terry.” She replied. “But you can call me Terry.”

++++++++++++++++++++

THINGS THAT TIMMY HOPES TERRY NEVER FINDS OUT, part one.

Timmy oftentimes wondered if he was a pervert of the meanest stripe because he downloaded porn movies and saved them to disc. His collection ranked in the hundreds of free 20 minute movies he found on the internet. His personal favorites included:
”twoforher”, “poolside threesome”, “oliviagangbang”, and “dirty old man”.

He liked to look at the different faces and examine their technique. Oral sex was his thing. He was always, like, “Get the cut the bullshit, get to the blowjob… and when she’s done we’ll move on to the next sweety pa-teetee…”

He often felt consumed with guilt about this. His collection of short porn movies, that is. But the shame, forceful as it was, did not deter him from downloading more. And he never regretted burnin’ ‘em to disc, either.

It would shatter his already frail psyche if Terry ever discovered his personal stash…If she were to watch even one from start-to-finish…well, hell…he wouldn’t be able to live with himself. And yet, when he thinks of her sitting through one of those dirty, rough-fucking videos, he gets the most incredible hard-on, and a fluttering in his gut like a sick butterfly.

Maybe…is it too much to even hope for?...Terry likes that shit??? Who knows, She might have her own collection of pornographic films. Furthermore, she might just be proud to let you know that she jerks off to them as often as any guy might. She does like to pop that pussy.

Still…it’s better not to take the chance. So he thought as he found a new place to hide the seven discs of smut. Terry’s got a wild streak in her…hell, it’s one of the things he loves about her…But he doubts she’d appreciate the collection very much.

But for now the discs are his own secret, and one that he’ll most likely keep with him to the grave.

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH

Timmy and Terry were snuggled together on the love seat. “Nova” was wrapping up, the consensus being that the Satanists’ theory of black holes was the most plausible one. “It,” they say.” is the work of the devil”. The movie critics also chimed in, making obligatory references to many of the classic motion pictures of yesteryear. The critics’ idea of a black hole, however, was markedly at odds with that of the rocket scientists, astronomers and the astronauts. Not only that, but furthermore, it was roundly denounced by not only the Satanists but the carnys as well (the carnys had the most bizarre black hole theory of them all).

…None of it matters, of course, because the couple we have already come to know and adore, Terry and Timmy, were too busy pitching woo to notice that the program had even ended. Their kisses tasted like chocolate and vanilla, cool as ice cream. Even their hands were sticky from it.

When it was all over they were covered in a light sprinkling of gooey sugar. Terry didn’t waste any time getting out of the bed. You’d have thought it would be the man, the insensitive schmuck, who would bolt first. But Terry had good reason for making a hasty exit. She was scheduled to anchor the morning news show in about 6 hours. She figured she’d be lucky to get 30 minutes of sleep. She hated having the make-up crew put through so much trouble so early in the morning.

“No, baby, no…” he said, rising from his seat. He hastily threw on some clothes…it looked as if he was going to be wearing that Swan Song shirt for a second day straight…”Don’t go just yet. One more hour, please? Who needs sleep?”

“I do.”

He rightfully ascertained that these two words signified the end of the discussion, period. It would be utter foolishness to describe them as anything less than authoritative. He did not try. He just lay there and admired her lithe figure putting her clothes back on, bending down to pull each garment from the pile she had made the night before. Then she walked out the door.

It was enough. He closed his eyes and ran the memory through his brain for a few minutes while they were still fresh in his head. He freed his own memory to fly away into fantasy, let go of the grip he was losing on the waking world, and he fell into sleep. The big sleep. The big fuckin’ sleep. Deep down swimming in shimmering pools of sleep.

And lo, did he dream.

He dreamed of gods and men, of warriors and priests. His unconscious mind conjured many characters, both spectacular and lame. Heroes and villains. Nightmares of decay, disease and death. Black horses and invisible riders. Slut fucking whores getting their asses tapped and his 24 year old daughter.

But the one he remembered for the rest of his life, the dream he claimed had changed his life in such a dramatic way, was the same dream that spawned two characters that have come to be known in literary circles as…

Eddie and the Jolly Rancher.

THE DREAMS OF EDDIE & THE JOLLY RANCHER

An opera by George Frederic Handel was playing softly in the background. Seemed out of place, such regal, uppity music in a rundown trailer house 7 miles north of Tecumseh.

Lying side-by-side (spooning, as it were)were the snoring bodies of Eddie Tubbs and his long time girlfriend, the Jolly Rancher. Beer bottles littered the floor around the bed and their clothes were piled up on both sides of the bed.

There they lay, naked to the world, cushioned by a queensize air bed they bought one night on TV Dan’s Video Auction. It had fit perfectly in their bedroom and it only had one small hole (which they were able to fix with a little superglue and a patch). Well worth their winning bid of $5.00.

I don’t think either the cultured Mr. Tubbs or the Jolly Rancher even liked opera. The Rancher enjoyed jazz and heavy metal while Ed leaned more to classic rock and some of that new country shit that people make fun of.. So it was somewhat unusual to hear “Xerxes” jamming the airwaves in that trailer house. Jamming in vain, it would seem, seeing as how the couple were both sound asleep. The sound of the arias, the tenors and altos – vibrating like an electric razor on a pane of glass – they fell upon ears closed to anything but a dream.

Somehow their biological clocks were perfectly synchronized to the point where they woke up together at the same time every morning. 8:30 am.

And so 8:30 am did arrive and with the crowing of the cock their collective eyes opened, all 4 of them.

“Good morning.”

“Good morning to you, Rancher. Did you sleep well?”

“I guess I slept about as well as can be expected under the circumstances. How about you?”

“Well,” he said, “I guess I got just about as much sleep as any man plagued with nightmares and visions is gonna get.”

He shuddered and blinked hard his eyes a couple of times, then continued:

“They were awful. Every one of them was about looking into the sky and seeing these airplanes. There were a couple of guys who were going to bungee jump from ropes tethered to the wings.”

“Foolish idea.” She did have a point.

“Yeah, maybe, but I’m looking up into the sky and I see them, although they seem to be higher than I should really be able to see.

“They jump out of the plane and everything looks fine until BOTH bungee ropes break and they fall to the earth to die horrible deaths. I could see them coming down, falling to the ground, one hitting so close to us that we could hear the body’s harsh “thump” when it met the tarmac.”

The Rancher watched him intently, admiring him, thinking of how cool it was to have someone who tells you his dreams and nightmares every morning. It had become a ritual between the two of them, this daily sharing of dreams. They were fresh and still real, untainted by forgetfulness, immensely enjoyable and sometimes enlightening.

“I don’t know why it frightens me so,” he went on. “Witnessing a tragic accident…I don’t know…I guess…maybe it’s just the idea of seeing someone die, in witnessing someone’s last moments of life…one of the last to ever see him alive.”

“I think I understand,” said the Jolly Rancher.

“Oh you do, do ya?” he thought to himself. “Well that makes one of us, because I don’t personally see why such a thing could be so horrifying, so mind-bending.”

A moments tense silence, then JR broke it by telling her own dream.

“It’s like the 3rd day of school, ninth grade, maybe 10th. I’m walking down the hall when I realize I’m lost, that I have no idea which room I’m supposed to be in. The principle has given me a schedule with class hours and room numbers. But for whatever reason I still can’t seem to locate the damn rooms.

“I read my locker number, 405, and I go to look for it. I see a 404. I also see a 406. But no 405. It freaked me out, like ‘what the hell happened to my locker?’

“Im still hopelessly lost…and then I hear…the BELL.

“Which is the exact moment in which I realize that I’m only wearing my bra and panties…that was all…just bra and panties. I am consumed by embarrassment…it just seemed so real.”

“Oh, I can tell you what that means,” Eddie broke in. “You know I’ve read several books about dream interpretation and I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on it.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“I wouldn’t shit a shitter,” he joked.

“You’re so original”

“Maybe so…but that dream you had this morning, it ain’t all that difficult to understand.”

”Okay,” said the Rancher. Silently she screamed, “Fill me in! I’m interested in knowing! My dreams, my dreams, you seem to have interpreted my dreams!”

“Basically, the fact that the dream takes place in a school hallway tells me that you stand in need of a spanking. You’re lost, stumbling through the halls, like a blind man whose had his cane stolen. Of course, you’re lost. You’ve left a home and a family thinking you needed to find a man who could dominate you. The missing locker just tells me that I could damn well be that man. It could sure enough be me doing all the spanking.”

“Oh, really?. Asked JR, incredulously.

“Yes indeedy. And when you realize you’re unclothed, it is at that moment you submit…all your desires invested in me and you will willingly be my virtual sex-slave . That dream of yours means you need to be fucked by me all night long tonight. It means you will achieve orgasm a total of four times before I’ve even mounted ye.”

“Ha! You know what the funny thing is?” The Jolly Rancher giggled…”That’s the exact same meaning you gave me for the last few dreams you’ve “interpreted” for me.

The second act of Handel’s “Xerxes” moved on to the third without either Eddie Tubbs or the Jolly Rancher even noticing. The beautiful music had become, to them, little more than a mantra chanted over a helicopter whirlwind---the sound of a ceiling fan set on it’s highest setting, blowing warm wind in a vain attempt at cooling perspiration soaked bodies.

The two have been up and out of bed for an hour or so. A couple of cups of coffee and a regular daily appointment with Matt Lauer.

They sit on a couch in the living room, XM satellite radio still pumping out the Handel.

The television sits directly in front of them. Next to the TV, a dusty old guitar, it’s pick guard scuffed by years of strumming by countless players (talented and otherwise). The strings have seen better days, they’ve gone from bright and shiny to dull and rusty.

Yep, a change of strings would have done that old guitar a world o’ good. A pretty good piece of wood. Not the best but probably as good as Eddie deserved, and he wasn’t half bad.

He played in countless dive bar bands throughout his life. He was pretty good by the time he decided to throw caution to the wind and serenade the Jolly Rancher.

It was a night to remember…who could forget the sight of him bowing to her and asking, “My dear, I would be much obliged if you would allow me to play you a song. May I?”

The Jolly Rancher was in the mood for music. “Sure. Pick it and grin it!”

“Yes, ma’am.

“Oh Suzi Q…O Suzy Q
O Suzi Q baby I love you
Suzi Q”

For whatever reason, he could never remember the other verses, but it didn’t matter. The Rancher, by that time, had already fallen deep in love with a raving maniac named Eddie Tubbs.

Yes. THE Ernie Tubbs. You may have heard of him.

More likely you haven’t.

THINGS THAT TERRY HOPES TIMMY NEVER FINDS OUT, part 1
(also known as Thought Directory)

You are not the most supportive husband that you could be.

You often tell wicked lies.

I hate it when people whistle.

Something about it just grates on my nerves.

You are a cruel human being.

What the hell are you waiting for?

I’m not moving so long as I know that you’re just gonna do those silly neopets

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE OLD HOMESTEAD

Meanwhile Back at the Ranch

2010-01-28T08:40:00.000-08:00

Timmy dreamed a lot of dreams that night. He had the kind of dreams that could convince a lesser man that he belonged in the nut patch. The kind of dreams that can get you stoned and driven out of town. Nightmares that could chill you to the marrow in yer bone. Visions of worms turning, flaming wheels revolving in the sky. Blind eyes opened to their first sight of blood, of murder, of transgression. So very deep, deep in sleep. He never would have owned up to these feelings…these revelations…in his waking moments. They were enough to drive a man off the brink of sanity.

He wakes to the grating alarm he’s set in “snooze” mode. Two or three times he’s already used that function, but it’s always the one after the third that’s the real charm.

Terry lay next to him, and it looked like she had just come back from her own dream world…the only difference being that she had to work early that morning. He was just going to sit around the house trying to find new ways of doing nothing. She thought it was a weird fuckin’ thing for him to even bother setting the alarm for, let alone jack around with the Snooze and all…

He rummaged through a pile of clothes that where in a hamper next to the toilet. From said hamper he produced a garment that has already played a relatively significant role in this drama. (Author's note: "Back at the Ranch" was originally written as a chapter in a novel...but, as you might guess, that project was scrapped and put on the shelf along with the other 7365 projects I started but never finished)

It’s not as if the shirt were absolutely so dirty that he couldn’t stand it. The Led Zeppelin shirt. Swan Song label, bro! Fuckin’ tasty, no? Is that Icarus I see between those big monster Swan wings? Fire up that jay, baybay!

It was never, “Yo! Swan Song label, dude! BAD FUCKING COMPANY! Rat on!”

No, no, no. If it’s Swan Song label it’s ALWAYS Led fuckin’ Zeppelin. No questions asked. Leddy Zepper. Led Leppard, sweet young thing. Ted Zeppelin. Dread Zeppelin. Fed Zucking Zeppelino. Do not even try to put Bad suck ass Company in the same league.

But for some reason Terry didn't like it very much.

“Will you take that fuckin’ shirt off and find another one? I am sick and bloody tired of seeing that thing on you. You do realize that it’s about two sizes too small?”

“So that’s the way it’s going to be, eh, sweet mother of love?” he protested. “You spend a single night with me and you think you can tell me what I can and cannot wear? I’m pimping Zeppelin here, can’t you see that?”

“Well that just may be, but you’re also pimping some serious body odor, of which I highly suspect the shirt as being the root cause.”

The conclusion she came to was a logical one. The white armpits were stained with a color similar to the hue of urine. By Timmy’s own admission the thing hadn’t been washed in a week. It would appear that during said week, at one point or another, he had feasted upon a pasta dish or two, as well as some greasy fried food. The t-shirt, no matter how cool the Swan Song label might be, was stained, smelly, and worn out. Why he bothered keeping it at all was an enigma.

“What, baby? You not down wit da Zep? “

“Oh, I’m down with the Led, but I sho nuff ain’t down wit da funk.”

He eventually conceded Terry’s point concerning the usefulness of the ruined t-shirt. He took it off, threw it in the trash can ("Jimmy Page, can you ever forgive me for what I’ve just done? Mr. Plant, surely you recognize that the shirt has long outlasted it’s usefulness? Johnny Paul, I’m sorry, man. I know how valuable the Swan Song merchandise has become. If it hadn’t been worn to death I don’t doubt that it could have pulled $500 on e-Bay, easy. Mr. John “Bonzo” Bonham, may you rest in eternal peace...this is not something I WANT to do"). He reached into the second drawer from the bottom of the chest in his bedroom...

…Chester drawers?...

…and chose from a stack of folded t-shirts, each one a loving advertisement for the classic rock bands he'd seen in concert. On top, neatly, if not properly, folded, was his prized Rush jersey, with it's logo that he thought had something to do with the occult. Beneath that lay a wild, trippy long sleeve baseball shirt emblazoned with the unforgettable skull and roses motif popularized by the Grateful Dead. Further down in the pile he could have chosen the Lynyrd Skynyrd tank top, bought fresh at the last show of the “Gimme Back My Bullets” tour. Or one of the shirts he bought at the three Rolling Stones concerts he had attended, each one sporting the signature “Licking Tongue” logo, which had been strategically placed in surroundings compatible with the name of their most recent tour.

So many to choose from…he closed his eyes and picked one out, much in the same way that a man reaches into a jar for a bingo ball or a pickled egg. He came up with a seldom worn Steely Dan tank top. It was a gift from his mother. She liked Steely Dan a lot more than he did, but he thought they were okay. He’d wear their shirts.

There were many bands whose shirts he would not wear.. It was a matter of principle as well as taste. And there were MANY more bands who didn’t cut the mustard than did. Some were dismissed because he didn’t think they were on the same level as the ones he championed with the t-shirts, although they may well have been some of his favorite bands. Just not in a league worthy of wearing their tour shirt. He would become repulsed at the mere thought of wearing shirt from one of those bullshit crack-smokin’ groups like Smash Mouth…Limp Bizkit…Maroon 5….Hooba-fucking-Stank to high heaven…"No sir. No way I’m wearing those shirts." Even so, he actually liked some of that music. It was a guilty pleasure.

Just before Terry turned to the door she bent down and gave Timmy a kiss, soft against his forehead.

“Are you coming back tonight?” he asked, groggy.

“It all depends…can I bring some furniture, my CDs, books and my entire wardrobe with me? Are you going to feed me? Are you going to please me? Are you just going to tease me? Can you make me feel like a natural woman? Are you gonna give me some R-E-S-P-E-C-T? Cause, bitch, that’s what I needs, git out my grill!”

She freaked him out with this ultimatum. You could tell by the look on his face. But he covered it well by pretending she was really serious. He kept his cool and said “Terry, baby, you know I be at your beck and call. Bring it on. Do you hear me? I said YOU bring it on, BITCH!" With fire in his eyes he barked orders to her. “Terry, I command you to drop yo shit and kick it with me. Scoot it up here, pussy willow, and lets try out the effects of yo magic over the long term. Your gonna let me drive your car, you miserable slut...I'm gonna fuck up the transmission in your little red corvette and change the oil in your pink Cadillac. ”

A small teardrop found it’s way down a path from Terry's eyes, down to her lips where she could taste it’s saltiness. She cried not for the harsh manner in which he had spoken to her. Her tears were not shed on account of the many cruel demands he made…some of them delivered in a most heinous manner and in a debasing fashion. No, those lonely teardrops were squeezed from her dye eyes by love for a good man. And thank ye gods for it, as well. Praise ye lord that her weeping was not for such trivialities as pain or despair. Those wells were emptied of their liquid treasure by a tingle she always felt upon first seeing him enter a room. A tingle that tangled. A tingle that Sasquatchiman tribal chiefs have identified as “Ukunkabunka ”…yes, real and true love. Sounds like something we’ve all heard before, don’t it?

TERRY IS RELATIVELY GOOD AT HER JOB

She sits behind a desk with the words “Newschannel 4, KFOR” painted on top of a spiffy logo attached to the front. The make-up guys in the studio were understanding and didn’t seem to mind the extra work she put them through. They always did a good job. Each one of them were of the same opinion: Terry was one helluva good looker with badonkidonk to die for.

But, beautiful as she was, the task of covering up the bags in her eyes was a difficult chore. They asked her about it and she was not ashamed to say she'd been crying non stop since she met Timmy. They didn't believe her when she said they were tears of joy and delight. They thought he was beating her or something. She tried to explain that tears are tears, they're gonna mess with your eyes one way or the other.

Even so, when the make-up guys finished their work Terry was transformed into a goddess. Nothing more and nothing less. Easily the hottest bitch working the local news. When she first went on, it was within weeks, Channel 4’s ratings began to rise.

She knew it would happen that way. She knew she was ratings gold. She didn't need to have sex with the station manager to get her job (she'd done that because she'd wanted to).

Intermission. And a word from the author.

In an attempt to provide some context for the last few paragraphs on this story, may I present to you...

OKLAHOMA NEWS ANCHORS AND REPORTERS

A round-up of the most well known personalities in the news broadcasting business. Channel 5 will have no representation here because the author and narrator never watch the Channel 5 news. No real reason. It looks like a decent enough set, with attractive anchors (though none as earth-shatteringly beautiful as Terry). Channel 9 will have slightly more representin’ done. There are times when I don't mind the 9th channel, with it's swank sets and even swankier anchor gals. The 10 o'clock edition, you know? Leading up to Letterman. Right before we go to bed. While we fuckin’ kickin' that shit back, waiting for Dave.

The real deal, I've found, is Terry’s own crew.

~~~Linda Cavanaugh. She’s Terry’s closest rival at NewsChannel 4. Thing look good though, with all the “30 years of Linda Cavanaugh” segments they've recently aired. No doubt the sweet thing has plans for retirement in the very near future. Regardless, when Terry Gaydawn came along the days of the Cavanaugh dynasty were already rapidly approaching their end.

~~~Kevin Ogle. A more self-obsessed fake the likes of which you’ll not often come in contact with. I’d like to meet that big phony in a back alley somewhere. I would stab him in the gut with a bowie knife. I’d listen to him grunt, hear the blood gurgle up into and then out of his mouth.. I’d feel his body jerk and spasm to the rhythms of my thrusting knife. I’d smell the sweat oozing out his pores as surely as fear oozes back in. This Ogle brother will be first to go. The House of Ogle, by trinity bonded, in one fell swoop, reduced to only two. But then again, I don't know. The man is a behemoth. I mean to say he is a GIANT who could work the carnival side shows if he ever lost his news anchoring job. He could probably squash me like a bug.

Uhhmmm…sorry ‘bout that. I guess I let that one get away from me. Love ALL of the Ogle boys. Just joshin’ you, fellers.

~~~Meg Alexander. The general verdict on the level of professionalism displayed by the corn-fed, cotton bread talking head Meg Alexander can be delivered in no more lofty terms than these: Adequate. Never rising to the peaks yet never plunging to the depths.

~~~Lance West. This one’s a mess. Honestly and truthfully West may well be the goofiest motherfucker in all of Oklahoma broadcast news. He earns that accolade on the strength of his outlandish hairstyle alone.

~~~Kent Ogle. For my money, Kent is the real deal, and clearly the heir apparent to Jack Ogle’s legacy. Then again, I am probably in the minority on this one. I imagine most folks would buy into the lie and choose Kevin or Kelly. Kent was, is and always will be King Ogle.

~~~Ed Doney, Ally Myers, Bobbie Miller, Ernie Paulson. These and a few other “weekend anchors” are often more affable and a good deal more professional than their seniors. Some are “rising stars” (Myers), some content to be second-tier (Miller, who is a fine anchorwoman) and at least one who went from being head anchorwoman on Channel 5 to second level reporting and part-time anchoring at the NewsChannel (Cherokee Ballard).

The list at hand does not, at this time, include weathermen, as they will be counted on a completely different list. The sports guys are gonna have to wait, too. That’s sports and weather, bro…we talkin’ news.

And in Channel 9’s corral we find…

~~~Kelly Ogle. Why do I get the feeling that Kelly Ogle firmly believes that he is the superior newscaster of the Ogle Triumvirate? He has somehow convinced the news department to let him do up a short editorial. He calls it “Kelly Ogle’s Two Cents”. Well, he could have saved a lot of money trying to give it to me. I’d rather die a broke man than to have to take chump change from K.O. Two cents more than it's worth.

~~~Lots of kick-ass hot chicks whose names I cannot, for some reason, remember. They are yummy, they are easy on the old peepers. But none of them, fine as they are, hold a candle to Timmy Carver’s newfound love, Terry Gaydawn.

12 Step Apocalypse

2010-01-28T08:39:00.000-08:00

1.)
It’s a little known fact but the streets of London are absolutely clogged with shadows. These aren’t typical shadows. These shadows have voices. And holes where their eyes should be.

2)
About miles into our trip to Heaven I asked my partner, Teddy, what his favorite song was.

“Why, that would be ‘She Believes in Me’ by Kenny Rogers….of course,” he said. “Isn’t that EVERYONE’S favorite song?”

3)
One more mile to heaven.

“Do you believe in magic?” It was his turn to ask a stupid question.

“Man, that is a stupid question,” I said. “What kind of magic? White magic? Black magic? Stage magic? Be more specific.”

“You know…MAGIC. The stuff in a young girl’s eye. The kind that makes a man believe in love.

“Oh, I see now.” I finally grasped his mediocre point. “If you[‘re referring to that SPECIAL magic betwixt two young lovers on a shopping spree, I’d have to say, I don’t know. I never really thought about it, to be honest. Pass that bottle over here.”

4)
Upon consumption of several lager brews Teddy begins to make more sense than he usually does. I think it’s because, when he’s drunk., he forgets all of that astrological mumbo-jumbo he’s come to accept as gospel truth. His semi-occultic religion loses all importance to him when he’s intoxicated, and he frequently forgets he’s a Virgo and insists he’s a Leo.

Leo the Lion. A cruel, inhumane feline motherfucker. Oh, I could count all the times I’d like to take a hard rock and crush the mighty Kin’s skull into a bloody pulp. Silly lion, believes no one loves him, so he takes Jungle Law into his own paws and creates wildlife mayhem of mammoth proportions. All of this, of course, symbolic of the Astrological mumbo-jumbo Teddy’s grown to believe is the God’s honest truth.

5)
Heaven was just across the horizon, and lemme tell ya, the line at the gate was one long son-of-a-bitch. Me and Teddy figured we had plenty of time to kill, so we took a seat behind a sad looking, effeminate young man who kept belching and complaining:

“Damn it! Every time I belch I taste that bitter-acidic shit that comes back from my stomach! Not just every once in a while…EVERY TIME! I think I’d rather die than have to taste that stuff again!”

Teddy whispered in my ear, “That, my friend, is one unreasonable chap.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “:But the fact is, he’s an innocent man.”

“Oh, yes. Without a doubt about that,” said Ted. “If there WERE any doubt about that, well, I think I would gladly give up my place AND yours in this line to a priest who deserved it more.”

Bigmouth strikes again.

Wouldn’t you know it? Father Joel, of the Stocksdale parish, walks up to us and says, “No one is innocent. Nay, not a one.”

“Well I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch,” said Teddy, as we both dropped through a trap door beneath us and fell, spiraling uncontrollably, down to the fiery pits of hell.

“You and your big mouth!” I got that much out just before the plunge, when I realized that I was destined to be a 21st century Dante,

6)
When we hit the ground, the hard unyielding tarmac of Hades, we walked around for a while and checked out some of the oddities.

In one area there legions of Peter, Paul & Mary impersonators, all of them singing “Blowing in the Wind”. One of the Mary Travers look-alikes said, “Is there anything you condemned folks would like to hear?”

Teddy, in his unmistakable imbecilic fashion, said, “’Puff the Magic Dragon”.

At the mere utterance of those four dreadful words the whole joint started jumping and all the folk singers fell into the soup, screaming and praying to Bob Dylan for forgiveness.

7)
Bon Scott, late of Australian supergroup AC/DC, once said “Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be.” But I swear to God he wasn’t there that day when the giant holographic image of Bob Dylan appeared in the flaming red sky to judge all the people who had ever covered any of his songs. Roger McGuinn was sweatin’ bullets. Joan Baez fainted and could not be revived by any means.

Fortunately for everyone concerned, Zimmerman just happened to be in a good mood, and his mood had just recently been leavened by a pitcher of Coors Light. Judgement Day turned into one hell of a party in hell.

8)
The greatest rock and roll band ever assembled took the stage next to a pyrotechnic light show that dazzled and amazed every damned soul in the joint. The crowd cheered and, in an obvious attempt to mollify Big Bob, launched into a killer rendition of “Like a Rolling Stone”.

Jim Morrison never sounded better. He was glowing with pride, having beaten Elvis Presley for the lead singer slot when the auditions were held the weekend before.

As you can imagine, Jimi’s solo before the bridge was a smash, but the real insanity came when the Captain and Tennille dropped in to sing the line about giving the bums a dime in your prime.

Everyone in the band was quite pissed off because of the fact that Cappy and his bombshell mistress WEREN’T DEAD YET. It was a common understanding amongst the members of Hell’s Union that LIVING musicians were not qualified to work in the fiery pits under any circumstances.

Jim Morrison saved the day, though, as he belted out a stream of profanity aimed directly at Toni Tennille. Laced with sexual innuendo, this outburst had the desired effect of sending the “LIVES OF THE PARTY” screaming and skee-daddling north bound.

9)
The band wrapped the concert up with what may well have been the best version of “Sympathy for the Devil” ever performed. All it lacked was the original singer to put it over the top (“Ah, dontcha worry, mates,” Brian Jones quipped. “He won’t be long.”).

It was then that things began to get REALLY wild. The cocaine flowed like a big white powder river up everyone’s noses. Teddy decided that an orgy was in the offing so we walked due north about 300 yards.

“YOU’RE IN HELL!!!” a demon shouted at us.

The specter’s observation got me to thinking…Hell, hell, hell, hell. So many conceptions of what hell is supposed to be. All those fire and brimstone preachers trying to scare their flocks with visions of an ever-lasting flame…could that be the way it really is? Indescribable pain and having to suffer forever? That’s some hardcore punishment there, bro.

But lemme tell ya…being condemned to listen to the Grateful Dead for eternity may be a hard way to go but it surely isn’t as awful as the hell those Charismatic folks believe in. So let’s load up the van, pack a sack and truck on to the show, right?

10)
“Old man!” I shouted. “Is there someplace I could get a Reuben sandwich or maybe some spinach casserole?”

11)
All of this happened last night, you know. Teddy’s been dead now for the last three years. Three years is a lifetime when it’s cold out, but it’s a fucking oven out there today so I’ll stop feeling sorry for myself.

Yeah, I know. Easier said than done. Don’t I know 6he truth of that statement. What good does it so me, though? I still have to take the pills every night.

12)
Everyone’s crying in my beer. It’s been going on for so long that there’s no beer in my stein to cry in. All that’s left is maybe a pint of hazy tear-water.

They come from all over the globe to tell me their stories, trying to make me feel sorry for them. But I’ve got problems of my own, so I tell them to “fuck off” and I slit a few throats, problem solved.

But seriously, my mind is being ravaged by a severe thunderstorm. It has nothing whatsoever to do with love. It’s a REAL STORM, my friends, with hail, high winds and a stunning array of thunder and lightning.

All that banging around up there has taken me back in time to the first time ever I saw your face, kissed your lips, lay with you and all that other heebee-jeebee nonsense that leads to a pornographic display of mammoth proportions. And all it does is get me horny. I lay in bed writhing, like I’m in hell again. It lingers and lingers and refuses to go away until a silly love song comes on the radio.

It’s okay, though, because I’m listening to the Adult Contemporary station and they play nothing but stale love songs 25 hours a day. I’ll never feel lust again.

Fever Dream 2004

2010-01-28T08:38:00.000-08:00

The needle falls down on the record, a thump deep in the bass, the speaker cone shakes and the sound ocean floods from my Serwin-Vegas...That alien who stepped out of the saucer in Close Encounters of the Third Kind decides to speak to Dreyfuss, and this is what it sounds like. This is the language of his planet, on the other side of a black hole in the Gamma region.

A murder of crows, cold in the snow, muttering low, squeaking and squealing. Love taking on flesh and blood, suffocated by skin, now let's let the service begin. They sing their gut-hungry praises then flitter away.

Signifying nothing.

The priest places the wafer on the infidel's tongue. He lifts the cup to the liar's lips. A subtle glow emitted from a place slightly behind his head. He intones the Mass and tries to empty himself to allow the Holy Spirit to work through him as he ministers in the name of Jesus Christ to his congregation. The Spirit lifts up his voice to the sky and intercedes for my weak soul.

These chants are ancient, as old as the book of Genesis. These are the languages of the Mishraites or the Zareathites or the Eshtaulites. These are the tongues spoken by Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak and Shuah. A language taught to them by their slave ancestors, excommunicated from the clans of Sarah, mother of the promised. A language used by Abraham himself, when he beckoned Isaac to the land of Moriah, making him carry the sacrificial knife soon held to his throat.

The procession moves forward, each recieving the body and blood in turn, enriched and better for recieving it. They walk like slaves submitting to a kind master they love to serve back to their seats in the cathedral, to wait, to get lost in the sacred relics and the sacred art scattered throughout this beautiful sanctuary.

And surely the Lord is in this place, for all that is good is from the Lord and this music is exceptionally good.

The chanting continues, now sung in the language of Baal-Zephon, where the king went after the Israelites, translated: "Wasn't there enough room in Egypt to bury us? Is that why you brought us out here to die in the desert? Why did you bring us out of Egypt, anyway? While we were there didn't we tell you to leave us alone? We had rather be slaves in Egypt than die in this desert!..."

These tone poems, written in the days of the Exodus, have a modern sound to them that is uncanny. Aliens who landed on earth in 897 BC bestowed gifts of prophecy and tongues to the individual members of Sigur Ros, and they are merely tools at the disposal of the leader of the aliens in their attempts to express themselves to the earthlings. No, there's no way any of us not from their planet could ever understand their language, borrowed as it was from the priests, Zadok and Abiathar in a meeting held on Mount Calvary the last time they landed on earth. The chord progressions are subliminally tainted with commands to relax, encourage a sense of floating, drift off with the thoughts that interest you most.

A looping tribal dance, recorded on site at a Buddhist monastary where the monks would mumble polyphonic OMs and the tourists would catapult their spirits through a needle's eye just to show that it can be done... Are they praying for rain? Or is it a rich harvest they petition the Great Spirit for today, their knees to the ground? The dance turns into an orgy, bodies tangled up misplaced pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

They kill the whale, and so we mourn.

They fester hate like a sore that won't go away, so we sing this lamentation. Translation: "The Son wants you...Hear things in the music that aren't there, only in your hammer struck head. Ring the living bell, ring the living bell, shine the living light, shine the living light...

They incite aggression, so we back off.

They treat the blind man with scorn and contempt, so we judge them.
They are good for nothing but fighting your wars, their stone hardened hearts too far gone to notice each life snuffed out under orders from ground patrol. So we pray for conflict. We petition the Lord for strife and discord. Exterminate these burned-out husks of men before their 4 years are up.

They lay hands upon the genius and lock him in institutions with people who pull steak knives on strangers. They are afraid of him, so they put him away, in sweat-stinking padded cells or wrapped up nice and tight in a straight, mornings woke and hustled to the breakfast line. They extricate his confidence, thought pattern by thought pattern, and curb the flow of his intellect. They leave us to sing a funeral song for the postmodern society on the day when common sense is evenly distributed amongst individuals and Moral Law is accepted as fact by each and all. A dirge for each time you've ever been hurt by someone's words or actions. Our common denominator of heartache and sorrow. Divided about all other things, by necessity united by tears, wailing, howling at the moon, primal scream therapy and insomnia.

And now the church is empty. Angels lingering to usher the Spirit from the echoing halls. Silence and stillness brutal proof of God. Music from the other side of this life. Welcoming songs played at St. Peter's Gate. Stubborn prayers from those passed over, coaxing us through, waiting with scissors at the ready to slice the mortal coil. Believers bellys full of the body and blood of the Lord, digesting it at this very moment, letting the body do it's digestive work, preparing it for re-birth.

This music is a hand reaching out and over the chasm of being to grab and pull you into another reality for a few moments. For a few moments you will experience the world from the viewpoint of Jonsi. It is an exhilarating sensation, coveted by all.

This music is the voice of Thor, the cries of Aphrodite, the sins of Baal, the dreams of Pontius Pilate, the sound of coyotes cuddled in a cave, wailing at the moon. This music is the war of the worlds. It's release. Orgasm. A little death. Afterglow then off to sleep. Waking to Philip Glass, inspired to listen to him by Sigur Ros.

The needle is yanked from the record and silence and stillness return to claim their divinity.

All We Were Was a Long Way From Home

2010-01-28T08:37:00.000-08:00

All we were was a long way from home. Too young to be so far from the loving arms of our fathers and mothers. They would not have wanted us to do these things. They would not have wanted us to think these thoughts. But they could not stop us, for we were out of their reach…this time in space, not simply victims of some generation gap of which we had no conception.

The ones we were told to trust tore the innocence from our psyches, ripped like wishbones, tossed into dustbins, and they had the nerve to laugh about it over tea and crumpets. What did they care? They’d lost theirs many years ago, forgotten, left only to extract sadistic pleasure in ruining our lives.

They told us we were wrong…

…and yet they could not tell us what was right.

So we became afraid to take comfort in red letter pages. Our hope, chiseled and scooped out, glossy oyster slick. Complicated beyond deconstruction. Would we ever laugh again?

Rained down, pain ground into fine powder we took to the brain. Despair the wind that blew back our hair, a hot steam vapor in our face to wipe away the smiles. Smiles we didn’t deserve, they told us, and we listened. It had to be better than what we’d left behind, right?

Where was the joy in an open hand to the face, forced, fast and furious? How long had it been since we gave up on love and sank down so low we dared not look above?

And I thought I had forgotten it all. I thought I had blunted every single memory from my mind of that wretched week. Seven days to erase away from my chalkboard vacant memory banks.

First day: Calliope crashed to the ground. I’ll never forget that Godawful sound.

Second day: Janie Jones all dressed in black. Rude boy’s gone and he ain’t coming back.

Third day: A lecture on the resurrection from a down-and-out agnostic. He had us convinced with his impeccable logic.

Fourth day: I ventured a kiss, you turned away. Must be that demon life that had me in it’s sway.

Fifth day: The sound of cars crashing just outside our door. The rattling rats that scurry underneath our floorboard.

Sixth day: Your father coaled. He said he was sorry for all the things he had done. Could I please give you the message?

Seventh day: No rest for the wicked, you left and stayed away. The sun turned to crimson in a sky shaded grey.

One week in the month of strange coincidences.

One month in the year of the Cat.

One year in the decade of dream-defying dogma.

One decade of six that were he was given, and of that six I shared almost four.

Of those I gave you two.

From those two you took your time in tearing me down. And from the rubble, after more time had passed, I recovered this haystack needle recollection. As clear as the first ray of moonlight cutting through the breaking fog. A tattered photograph carried in a worn out wallet.

A picture of me in my Sunday best. My old man to my right and you to my left. An aura of fiery orange shimmer from the overexposed film that shined around our heads, melting halos of flame. Proving somehow that we, all three, were blessed.

Despite or because of all that’s been said, I still search for Truth in the letters in red.

----January 7, 2003

Excerpt from "Brother Tom's Flock"

2010-01-28T08:36:00.000-08:00

He waited until right before the morning service began and then he locked himself into a stall in the men’s room. He needed privacy, and this was about as good as he was going to get. Even so, there were still two or three stragglers, washing their hands and talking amongst each other. Small talk, as it were, but it distracted Billy from his task at hand.

“Hell of a golf game yesterday morning, don’t you think, Dan?”, said a man with a burly voice.

“You’re damn right it was, Chet, “replied the man referred to as Dan. “I never thought Frank Orbeth had it in him to swing a club so motherfuckin’ hard.”

“That guy will surprise you. He’s a hard man, no doubt. But it would appear that some of the gals in the church Ladies Society find such a quality endearing.”

“And just how, pray tell, would you know about all that?” said Dan, pulling a couple of paper towels out of the dispenser.

“My wife can’t keep a secret from me,” replied Chet. “Oh, she can keep a secret all right. She knows better than to gossip about the stuff we do together, but she’ll tell me anything she finds out before I can ask her to.”

“Is that so?”

“Sure is. For instance, we’ve been seeing a sex therapist for 2 years now, and this doctor’s idea of therapy is a weekend on a ranch with 15 other couples who share the same issues that we do. She’s never said a word about it to anyone. We all get naked and sit around a fire at night. Everyone shares their issues with each other. And then the husbands share their wives”

“Oh, really? That sounds like some awesome holistic treatment, brother.”

“You better believe it is, my friend,” Chet said, trying to dry a small wet spot on his trousers where a drop of water had fallen from his hand. “My Marie says she thinks we should maybe do it two days a week instead of just the once. There’s this well-built feller there who she’s got it bad for. The guy is hung like a horse, I tell you. I feel like all I’ve got is a Vienna sausage when I’m near that guy. Marie says he’s got the knack, that he really knows how to put it to a girl. I don’t think he knows anything in particular. In fact, I think he’s a lousy lover. But all it takes is one gander at that gargantuan schlong of his and ¾ of the work is already done.”

“Wow, that’s interesting,” Dan said. “Now I wish I was married so I could get some of that action.”

“It might just be worth it, Dan. It might just be worth it, indeed. And you know what else?”

“I don’t know nuthin’, partner. Your secret is safe with me.”

“But there IS something else you might want to know. That Bloom gal…you know, the one with the fabulous tits she likes to show off with those low-cut blouses?”

“Of course I know her. She’s been attending this church longer than I have. She’s that Sunday School teacher’s wife, isn’t she?”

“You know her well, I presume?”

“Apparently not as well as I thought I did, if you’re about to say what I think you’re about to say.”

“It’s true!”, Chet said, “Oh, dear God, it is true! I could tell you a great deal about all the marital issues that she has with Greg. But how boring is that? I’d rather tell you how she winds up with me at least twice a month. How she is a powerhouse when it comes to a good old fashioned screw. I really want to tell you how she slaps the fuck out of guys who try to mount her missionary style. She likes it wild. I’d bet that Greg is wild, too, but in a gentle way. Lisa is sick of gentle, at least when it comes to rolling in the hay.”

Dan was incredulous. He threw the paper towel into the basket and picked up his bible, lingering only long enough to catch Chet’s last words before leaving. “I never would have thought of Lisa Bloom as such a slut.”

The expression on Chet’s face betrayed a righteous anger at these words. “Don’t you EVER call her a ‘slut’. Not now, not EVER, do you understand, you well-heeled spoiled bastard?”

“Sure, Chet, sure…I didn’t mean nothin’ by it. I just…no, that’s not what I mean to say, I…well…when I think of wild women who despise the missionary position the first thing that comes to my head is, ‘She must be a real slut.” Dan was backpedaling how, and he knew it. “But you gotta understand…’slut’ has never been a bad thing in my book. Never. In fact, ‘slut’ is a high compliment, as I see it. I can’t tolerate a whore, because she’s only in it for the money. It’s just a way for her to make a livin’. But a SLUT, on the other hand…now there’s a woman who knows what she likes and ain’t afraid to get out there and TAKE it. I respect that. If I get married, I assure you I will marry a slut. A slut who knows she’s a slut. A slut who is proud to be a slut. A slut who would be like a wild tornado blowing through one of your therapeutic wife-swapping sessions. A slut who would burn her sexual prowess into the brains of every man lucky enough to have her. I guarantee you that each and every one of those men would never forget her. They will find themselves lying on their death beds with dreams of her free spirited ways. The only thing they won’t remember is her name.”

The mean look of Chet’s face softened somewhat. “I’m sorry, Dan, old boy,” he said. “I don’t know why I’m so defensive about Lisa Bloom anyway. Maybe I’ve grown too close to her as a result of Greg’s generosity. I should probably play the field a little more. I mean, there are lots of hot women at these things…almost as many good-lookin’ gals as there are beasts…I need to test out some of the other merchandise.”

“There you go. Problem solved, eh?”

“I suppose, but this is between you and me, you got it. You’d better be able to keep a secret as good as my old lady does, or I sweat to Almighty God I will have your legs broken. You got that?”

“I got it, Chet. I’ll keep your secret”.

Having completed their toilette they checked themselves out in the mirror one last time, then sauntered into the sanctuary.

Neither one of them had heard the slap of fist on flesh that pounded with astonishing speed in the locked stall on the far end. There was no way they could have known that the easy banter between them was adding fuel to a fire of desire that coursed through Billy Newman’s body as he sat, hunched over, perched atop a dirty toilet stool. They would have been amused at the look on his face when Chet spoke of Lisa’s “swinging lifestyle” and Dan called her a slut. He could not fathom her as such an uninhibited, sex-charged dynamo. It crossed his mind that he could have become privy to this forbidden knowledge, had she not rejected him so heartlessly a couple of weeks before. The thought was a bitter pill to swallow, and it intruded upon the mental imagery of her exposing her ample breasts to a bunch of dirty, smelly, beer-swilling hooligans. It was a fine fantasy, and it was doing the job just fine until those guys upped the ante.

To Dance With Mary

2010-01-28T08:35:00.001-08:00

Without going into any damning details, I must confess that I spent most of yesterday with Mary. I do well without her most of the time. I don't feel like I need her. Certainly not the way I needed her before. She doesn't have me wrapped around her finger anymore. I've come to a place in my life where I can just take her or leave her, and it's all my doing this time around. I won't be her slave.

And yet, when I see her...when I just happen to run into her...I can't help myself. Those old feelings rise within me. I can't help but say "yes" when she asks if I want to dance. Nothing in the world, that I know of, is as blissful as the way Mary dances when she's in the mood. No. she's not always in that mood. But even then she dances like an angel.

All the talk of freedom and independence from Mary's grasp, but yesterday I made it a point to run into her. I arranged it, as I knew exactly where she would be. She always waits for me there and I think she's happy to see me every 3-4 weeks. That's about how long I can make it without her. That might sound like she still holds some sway in my life, but the difference is that I'M the one calling the shots now.

I called 'em at about 2:30 pm. She was hesitant, probably a little upset that my visits have been less frequent lately. I was not worried. She was just as glad to see me as I was her. Maybe even more so. She offered me her hand as the music began to play soft, low and psychedelic.

Her dance had begun.

All the clutter in my mind melted away like snow in the sunlight. The stuffing in my brain plucked like tiny wads of cotton candy in a child's hand. She loaned me the key to my soul's cell door and let me frolic outside for a couple of hours in the fresh, sweet, herb-scented air. She saw me in ecstasy. She watched my inhibitions shed as if they were an old, dirty coat. She saw me running towards a cliff, too wasted to see it coming, and she caught hold of me. She saved my life.

Then she reminded me of how many times she'd saved my life in our days together. Of course, I could not argue with that. She'd pulled me up from abysmal depths of despair so many times I wouldn't want to try and count them. She'd opened a window to the world that proved to me, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that my understanding of reality was flawed and without purpose.

I owed her a lot, it's true.

But it took me a long time to see the truth. Her love was depraved. Behind every beautiful experience we had together she was sucking the life out of me. She was turning a knife that she'd stuck into my heart. I didn't even know it was there. She was borrowing my thoughts, taking them out of my head, fucking with them, then cramming them back in. I didn't mind, but the morning after was a haze of exhaustion and headaches.

Her love was selfish. In the end, after all the flattery's euphoria dwindled to an ember, she simply did not give a shit about me. It wasn't even about dominance or submission. She needed nothing of me. Her gifts, as well as her curses, were bestowed upon me without the slightest regard for any power they might give her. She didn't care about power. She didn't seem to care about anything at all. That didn't stop her, though, from giving away a mixture of pain and pleasure, a strange alchemy she was proficient with.

All that. All that and more. And there we were, dancing again, in a smoke filled room on a warm April afternoon. All those life-changing memories...Every slice of enlightenment...The curve of her body nestled in mine, arms entwined, holding on to each other for dear life...Her musky perfume intoxicating me...Her eyes a window not to her's, but to my own soul...

Twisting the knife, sucking the life, she asked, "More?"

I wanted to say "no". I NEEDED to say "no".

But it was no good. I knew I would never refuse her completely.

"Someday," I replied.

"Soon?"

"Maybe. Probably." I said, with a slight bit of resignation. "I don't think I'll ever be able to avoid you for long."

She grinned, an impish grin. "So it is, my darling. So it has been and so it shall be. Until the day you have no more left to give. Until the day you will be unable to take any more from me. A long time from today, though. So tell me you love me. Don't let me see you walking out the door, or I'll follow. I won't be able to help myself."

"I do, darling Maria. I do love you. Turn away now. Turn away."

This morning I woke up feeling like someone had bludgeoned me with steel pipes the night before.

Joker Awakens

2010-01-28T08:33:00.002-08:00

Joker’s peaceful sleep is over. His thoughts come slow and groggy. Yet he thinks:

Like a dead slug I lay in the bed this morning, tired of snoring, sucked out of the last dream that had me in its thrall. Contemplating the hard work of opening my eyes, I realize that sleep has once again deserted me. What a tease.

With the strength of Hercules I pry them open, seeing nothing but a fuzz-hazed screen that temporarily hides my pillow. When they re-adjust to the morning’s light I will be able to see, with great clarity, the Harry Potter designs that illustrate the pillow case. This used to make me smile, when the idea was fresh and new. The idea, like most, has come and gone, with it the novelty.

There’s nothing that I have to do this morning, after I muster the will to rise. Brew up a batch of coffee. The morning constitutional. The hard chore of turning the computer on. Making sure everything is where it was when I went to bed last night. Turning on some music, a safety net to keep the reality of emptiness from consuming me. Or maybe it’s the emptiness of reality that shoots me down. Either way, Jon Thor can sew together the spider web coil that buffers and saves. I’ll want to go back to sleep.

But she’s gone, gone, lost in the exchange for wakefulness and life. Gone for a chance to make more memories that seem so integral and seem so important but are forgotten as surely as the strange faces that have marched before me all my days. Gone to seduce someone else, leaving only a note telling me she’ll back tomorrow night. “Enjoy your day.”

Eyes now open, sleepy crusted corners, I swim through the chaos and illusion until I find my mind. Your mind. Our mind. THE mind. I know what I am nothing more than an infinitesimally small conduit of this holy ghost mind. The only power I have is the ability to hunt it down and find it every morning. I take it back by force, but I do take it back. I make myself forget that it’s not mine for a little while. Yeah, it slips away sometimes. But I’m usually able to retrieve it before anyone notices. If there’s no one there to see, I’m content to let it roam.

My breath must reek. My mouth is dry and it tastes like something took a shit in there last night. Not that I would know what shit tastes like, but you get the general idea. The contributors to this ungodly stench: the Black and Mild “Wine” flavored pipe tobacco cigar I smoked before I went to bed. The detritus of pepperoni that cleaved to my gums after devouring an entire package, coated with mustard, before retiring (too lazy to brush my teeth) . And then there was the foul odor of the good, long hit of weed that helped me fall asleep. All in all, it added up to a smell that conjured the deep cesspools of the ninth circle of hell, guano and scum floating on it’s surface.

And yet, I debate whether or not I’m going to brush my teeth this morning. Another aspect of the morning routine I’ve abandoned of late, having developed a taste for the sickening flavor that coats the inside of my mouth. Maybe I’ll go all day without brushing, see just how many variations I can make on the original by the addition of various foodstuffs.

Foodstuffs…that reminds me. My belly is stuffed to the gills with a potpourri of vittles that I gorged myself on earlier in the evening. I was in the tight grip of a serious case of the “munchies” before Thor banged his mallet on my cranium. Can I even remember all the shit I ate? Flamin’ Hot Cheetos…Barbecue flavor Wavy Lays…Orange sherbet…Sunflower seeds…practically an entire Supreme pizza…so much food that I feared, even as I ate it, that I might very well vomit it all back out. Even as this notion threatened to manifest itself into reality I took another bite…I wondered what else was in the house I could eat.

So it was, I fell on the bed. I felt like a beached whale about 8 hours ago. Surely I gained 10 pounds. 10 pounds worth of calories I sure as hell didn’t work off in the middle of the night. So this morning, as I wake, I’m still that beached whale, smashing his sunk impression into the mattress.

And so it is, I lie here, still breathing. Another chance to do something worth remembering tomorrow. So much time to do it between the horns of the day. Inspiration to be found in all that I am, in all that we experience together. Choices to be made. Worlds of consciousness to explore and map out. Intoxicating words I can use to describe them. Concepts not yet discovered by mankind, ideas that could usher the world into a new age.

And so I lie here, still breathing. Wondering if ANYTHING is worth remembering tomorrow, still grasping at the moment before me. Time changes it’s tune with regularity, and right now he moves with the speed and precision of a NASCAR driver. It moves along, passes inspiration right by, careless of experience past, present or future. Any choices to be made, I realize, are so trivial, so inconsequential, they barely pull at the fabric. I’ve bombarded my consciousness with atomic bongs, I’ve given up trying to describe it all. I know, deep in my being, that I have nothing whatsoever to offer the world, nothing even to offer myself.

New age? Ha. Same old shit. Another generation begging someone to pull the plug and make way for the whippersnappers.

So Joker turns over, tries to find sleep again.

Fails.

Livin' Thing (1-7)

2010-01-28T08:33:00.001-08:00

1.

I’m told it’s a “living thing”, a given thing and, moreover, is a terrible thing to lose. ‘Nuff said, ‘kay?

2.

What was she doing at the reception? Why was she so envious of his riches? How many drinks under her belt since she started on that glass of wine she‘s holding in her hand right now? So possessive.

I always seem to run into her at the drug store. I wonder what kind of medication she takes. Some incredibly strange desire to know this floats through my ghost. Some generic anti- depressant or maybe something stronger, along the lines of thorazine or haldol. A bizarre sense of arousal consumes me as I fantasize about popping those pills with her. I don’t care what kind they are…if they cure what ails her then they’ll probably take care of what’s wrong with me.

I remember…it was just a week or two ago. Once again I bumped into her at the drug store. She was looking good. Real good. The prospect of reading the labels on her medicine bottles was overpowering, finally knowing the names of the many prescriptions she had filled once every month.

My plan was thwarted, however, when she ordered a soda. I never did find out those drug names, but I learned something which I felt could very possibly change the odds of she and I hooking up. And that is this: her favorite flavor is cherry red.

I don’t think she has a boyfriend, but there is this guy who is always coming around for no real reason. He seems to think that he’s her old man. I often pretend that I believe it as well. One night the three of us went to a karaoke bar. I got just drunk enough not to care if I made a fool of myself having fun. The other two in our party had no problem nominating me for the opening act.

I walked behind the booth and introduced myself to the DJ.

“Yo, yo,” he said, after I told him my name and shook his hand. “I’m DJ Crackhead. Steady chillin’ and ill feelin’, I got the wax and the tracks if you got the crack, Jack. Now get off my back ‘less you got somethin’ you want to karaoke to.”

“Actually, I do have a request. Do you see that hot little red head in the Hooters tank top? The one sitting next to the pimply faced weasel? Well, I’m wantin’ that dame for my own and I need to lose him. I need to shout out respect to my bitch and be dissing this dweeb at the same time. Can you play some Stones? I’m thinking ‘Satisfaction’ or maybe ‘Get Off Of My Cloud’?”

“Gee, G! I can float them joints easier than the pope be funny dressed. ‘Get Off Of My Cloud’, baby?”

“Only seems fitting. Let’s do this, Rider!”

As the short, sharp beats of the song bring down the house, to thunderous applause I strutted to the microphone. “People!!! All 6 of you! That’s not counting the bar tender or the wait staff, so we can’t really count this as the largest crowd we’ve ever had attend one of our shows. But I’m gonna tear the rood off this sucka’ with a brutal Rolling Stones tune I’m gonna send out to my gal’s old man, Jimmy!”

I wailed the hell out of that song. Jagger would have been proud of me, that’s for sure. He would have invited me back to the limo to maybe mainline a little smack with him. Everyone in that place was getting into it, but not Jimmy. Oh no, not Mister Jimmy. You could tell he was getting into the song itself, but not the singer.

As the song faded out I returned to our table, sweat dripping off of me like raindrops that fell into her wine glass. Wiping myself with a napkin, I turned to her and asked, “Did you like that one, babe? Did that spectacle turn you on?”

She replied, “O God, yeah! Yeah on both counts!” She leaned towards me and whispered in my ear, “You know, if we could ditch Jimmy I would sure be up for some kink-a-dee-kink. All the time you sang about “not hanging around” and how “two’s a crowd” on your cloud, I could only think of this leach. You’ve got to help me, sweetheart, you’ve just GOTTA!”

“I’ll do what I can,” I said quietly, then turned to Jimmy. “ Well Ol’ Jimmy, Ol’ Jimmy “ Boy, what did you think?”

He looked me square in the eye. I knew he meant business. You could tell by the squint in his eyes. He blinked once and said one word…”Dead”.

3.

Did we really count to one hundred? Why were we counting and perhaps even more important, WHAT were we counting? Why did the object being counted need to be counted to? Was 100 the exact count? Could we count further than 100? Did we have to keep counting even if there are only 79 units in total? Can you explain? I can’t.

4.

You got a big mouth. You know that’s an undisputed fact. When it comes to informing the town about the fine details of my alcohol problem…well that‘s where I draw the line. You are one hypocritical, self-serving, self-righteous biddy who doesn’t know when to shut up.

Everyone knows I’ve been drinking and foolin’ around. The Lord knows I’m sinning and God knows sinning ain’t right. But we’re gonna chat it up tonight, and if you want to see a change of attitude and tone, well I suggest that you stick a sock in it.

5.

Chewing on a piece of grass.
Walking down the road.
Wishing on a falling star.
Waiting on the early train.
Aging with time
Alligator lizards in the air…

Interlude.

All is quiet, save the ringing in the ears. The darkness envelopes me completely, I’m lying in it’s arms. Insatiable demands we’ll make against the wisdom of the Overlords. Who see it through those eyes that criticize all they don’t understand. They don’t understand me or you. You or me.

6.

Sometimes I just like to sit back and take in a good nostril or two of pungeant skunk stank. Years have come and years have gone but one thing has remained…I ain’t a-offended o’ the smell o’ Pepe LePew.

I don’t know but that my opinion might change if one o’ them little rascals were to saunter up to me and spray his stench on my leg. The buck will probably stop there.

But anymore that stuff just reminds me of the killer bud.

7.

The wolves ain’t the only critters howlin’ at the moon tonight.

That’s what she told me as inspiration swirled down the drainage ditch into the vat of apathy.

“Jump in, Jim, let’s go for a swim.”

She took off her clothes and I couldn’t help but stare.

Livin' Thing (8-9)

2010-01-28T08:31:00.000-08:00

8.

I need to know something. I don’t know if you want to tell me or not, but I really don’t care. You’re gonna tell me or you’re gonna find yourself in a world of trouble. I’m already pissed and it won’t take much to push me over the edge into dangerously angry territory.

No, fuck it. Never mind. I’m ALREADY in “dangerously angry territory”. No, it wasn’t your fault. I was already close enough I could see the other side of reason before you came along.

But it would still be nice to know, if you’re willing to tell me. I mean, I’m not going to force it from you. That was the plan just a moment ago, but I’ve changed my mind. I’ve decided that my bitterness is not your fault. I won’t make you pay for it.

Yet I do feel as if it would do me a world of good to know.

Where were you when I was falling in love?

Were you sitting in a back seat of a crowded subway train with a cup of Starbucks coffee in one hand and a copy of “The Catcher in the Rye” in the other, holding it in front of your face as if it’s pages were a fascinating mirror? Was there an old man sitting near who turned to look at you every so often to the point where it creeped you out? Maybe you eventually said something to him, like “Excuse me, but is there something you wanted to say to me?"

“Why would you get that idea?” he would ask, as if he were totally oblivious to his invasive nature.

“I don’t know…you just keep looking at me and I wondered if there were a reason for it.”

“Nope. Not that I can think of.”

Did you smack him real good right then? Did you draw blood? I hope you did. I hope the driver had to stop the train to come back and drag you off of him. It would have been a real drag if the police had to be summoned, but on the other hand, wow, how erotic the thought of you resisting arrest.

Or did you cower into your corner, turn a page in your book and let the lecherous bastard carry on? I don’t think so. I really don’t think so. I don’t think that’s the kind of girl you are. I think you’re a firecracker.

And I think that wherever you were when I was falling in love is not where I wanted you to be. Not where you should have been.

Because I fell in love with a robot. Who knows why I fell in love with an ottoman? I didn’t know she was one at the time. Do you really think I’m stupid enough to fall in love with a machine? No, she was flesh and bones when I met her. She seemed normal, like all the other women I’ve ever seen or known.

But then she started smoking cigarettes. She carried them around in a little soft leather pouch that could be mistaken for nothing else but a case for holding the little fuckers.

God I hate cigarettes. I hate the smell of them, whether they’re lit or not. I hate the dark tan color of their filters with the little white dots speckled randomly. I hate the cotton that stuffs their filters. I hate the white paper with the almost imperceptible stripes banding around their length. I hate how the brand is stamped close to the base of the filter. I hate the packages that they come in and the cellophane that wraps them. I hate how stray flecks of tobacco gather in the bottom of the boxes and the wrappers, too. I hate how they make a person’s breath stink. I hate how they make a person’s clothes reek. I hate the way they look in a shirt pocket. I hate the way they look between people’s fingers and in their mouths. I hate the way they burn down to the nub and the ash that they leave behind. I hate pitch black nicotine stains on hardcore smokers’ hands. I hate the way some people put one between their ear and noggin and actually think it makes them look cool. I hate how smokers seem to have some code of sharing, how it’s always “Hey, can I bum a smoke from you?” and 99 times out of 100 the answer is “sure”. It’s never, “Okay, but you gotta pay me back.” Oh no, Smoker’s Karma is at work here. I hate the way too many people call ‘em “smokes”. “I’m off to get a pack of smokes.” Good God, I think that’s lame. “Smokes”. Ha. I hate the way smokers bitch about laws that prohibit them from smoking in public and how so many of them have absolutely no regard for non-smokers who not only can’t stand the smell of the bastards but would just as soon not chance even the most remote possibility of getting lung cancer caused by second hand smoke. I hate how smokers would tell that person, “Oh, don’t be ridiculous. The chances of that happening are one in a million.” So what? Fuck you. Fuck you with your nasty cancer sticks and fuck your tar-lined wheezing lungs, too. Fuck the death bed you will lie on when emphysema steals your last breath. Fuck the oxygen tanks that cost almost as much as all the cartons of cigarettes you have wasted your money on during the last who-knows-how-many years of your life. Fuck all your attempts to quit. Fuck the feeling of disappointment that overwhelms when you fail once again, as Mighty God Tobacco hugs you, strokes your wet hair, wipes the sweat from your forehead and the tears from your eyes. Sweet summer sweat. The tears of a clown.

You know what? She never smoked before. I never would have thought she would pick up that disgusting habit, but she sure as hell did. Picked it up like it was a twenty dollar bill someone lost that she found on the side of the road as she walked to the smoke shop to buy another pack of Marlboro Lights.

There’s another thing I hate about cigarettes. “Smoke Shops”. Where the value-minded smokers purchase their wares. Not “Cigarette Store”. Not “Tobacco Warehouse"…oh, no. It’s a SMOKE SHOP. You’re going to buy some smoke, brother Jim. You’re gonna spend too much money at the 7-11 and it’s all gonna go up in smoke, but by the grace of God you are gonna save a couple of bucks by purchasing them at the “Smoke Shop” instead of the convenience store. You complain until you’re blue in the face about how ridiculously high the ciggy prices are at normal retail outlets, but when you run out of ‘em and the God-blessed “Smoke Shop” is closed ‘cuz it’s Sunday you’ll drive like a madman to Love’s and blow ten bucks because there’s a “Buy Two Get One Free” special going on. What a god damn good deal that is, eh, mister?

Furthermore…CIGGYS??? I hate how people call ‘em “ciggys”. But not nearly as much as I hate the word “cigarette”. I cannot stand to speak the word. I hate the way it rolls of my tongue. I hate the way the word sounds like it means “little cigars”.

I hate the way some smokers empty out their car ashtrays in the parking lot. I hate the way all the butts look lying there in a heap, a pile of paper soaked with the spittle of a hundred different mouths. And yet the nicotine python grips some desperate smokers so tightly that they will pick them up and try to smoke the last tiny flecks of tobacco from their crushed and blackened ends. I’ve even seen people extract the remaining weed from several discarded butts, roll it all up in a Zig Zag paper and smoke it. Don’t these people even know what Zig Zag papers are for? They sure ain't for tobacco, Charter.

“Butts”. There’s another word in the smokers lexicon that just sounds silly. “Smoke ‘er down to the butt, Jack, we’ve got more!” “I don’t have an ash tray, Terry, so just put your BUTTS in that half empty soda can over there on the table”…never thinking that there might be someone else at the party who could very likely mistake that particular pop can for his own and take a mighty swig from it. Oh my God, the thought, it gags me. How nauseating it would be to feel one of those wretched things fall against your lips and…Egad…the flavor…and yet the cruel smoker will laugh at such misfortune.

Fuck.

God help me.

She was not a robot when I met her. Oh, no, she was a beautiful, exciting, passionate loving woman with a heart of gold and a desire that was practically insatiable. Here…take a look, I have a photograph in my wallet. See what I mean? That’s right, daddy-O, she was a real dreamboat. I used to carry this picture with me wherever I went…I guess I still do, huh? But I don’t know why. I don’t know why I torture myself looking at it, remembering what was, all we had, our bright and glorious future wrecked and deserted by her newfound proclivity for smoking cigarettes. Yeah, my friend, she was a real keeper. But you know what? Fuck her now, y’know? Just turn her over and fuck her.

But hey…perhaps I’ve been too harsh on the smoker in general (if not to her…no, not to her). Perhaps I have exaggerated a bit. After all, some of my best friends smoke. It’s their business, not mine. Never has been mine. I know that. If they knew how I felt about the whole thing, whose to say they wouldn’t tell me to bugger off and never come back? Then again, if they are so shallow as to take any of this as a personal insult, then maybe, just maybe they aren’t my friends after all. I doubt the robot would want anything more to do with me if she knew what a stalwart anti-smoker I am. But I thought she felt the same. She DID feel the same. She told me as much. Before she lost her soul. Before she started smoking cigarettes. Before she started bumming ciggys.

I got no time for changes in her life so now I ask you again…where were you when I was falling in love?

Were you sitting in a Pentecostal Holiness church on a hard pew early Sunday morning before the service began, thumbing through the hymnal, looking for one that best expressed your feelings of devotion at that point in your spiritual journey? And what would that hymn have been? “Onward Christian Soldiers”? “Peace in the Valley”? “In the Garden”? “Smoke on the Water”? “Hotel California”? Maybe some obscure Black Sabbath song tucked in at the end of the book, next to the Doxology?

Did your hair shimmer, reflected in the light that poured through the stained glass window directly behind you? Did you feel it’s heat on your neck? Did it draw out beads of perspiration there, glistening? Would you have let me lick them and taste their saltiness even in the sanctuary of the church building? Probably not. But I don’t think the idea would repulse you like it would some other bonnet headed midi-skirt wearing holy rollin’ bitch.

Maybe I would have asked you outside so that you might feel a little more comfortable with what I’d had in mind.

And maybe you would have told me “no”. I couldn’t blame you for that. No, I wouldn’t. It’s only natural for a real woman to guard her integrity in situations such as this one. I could not hold that against you.

Is that where you were? I need to know. Where the hell were you when I was falling in love?

9.

How could this have happened? She lay on her bed with a steady stream of dark, smelly blood dripping from her ears. The pain in her head was debilitating. It consumed her and dumbed down all thoughts except for one:

“Is it possible to love a man who takes out his frustrations in the bed?”

She didn’t know the answer to that one, though she’d had several occasions upon which to ponder the question when the inspiration for it was still fresh and painful.

Maybe she just didn’t know what love was. She needed someone to show her, perhaps. Her old man sure enough hadn’t. She wouldn’t accept that he was a cruel taskmaster whose compassion was corrupt. In reality he had served up a huge helping of abuse and told her to take it or leave it. Until now she had chosen to keep it.

This morning she wasn’t so sure.

“It’s been my understanding,” she told a friend on the phone later that afternoon, “that life is seldom fair.” She said this with conviction. As if she were the only one who cared.

But by the time “Must See Thursday” had come around to “E.R.” he was back. Sprawled out on the genuine leather La-Z-Boy her father had given them as a wedding present 3 years ago.

“Goddamit girl, I needs me another can o‘ Coors. What the hell are you doin’ in there? Turn off that damn stereo. You know how much I hate R.E.M. What are you doin’ listenin’ to that shit anyway?”

She was going to do what he told her to do, that was certain. She knew that. She knew better than to do anything else. But not until that last verse of “Everybody Hurts” played out.

And so the night dragged on. From one can o’ Coors to the next can o’ Coors until there were no more cans o’ Coors left and it didn’t matter because he was knocked out flat until 3 or 4 in the morning. At which point he would wake up and feel like having a little fun. Havin’ a little bit o’ HIS brand of fun, he’d tell you.

She woke up the next morning in an unfamiliar room. At least that’s how it seemed. She tried to sort out the fiction from the truth but it wasn’t easy because that pain in her head was back. There were broken bottles on the floor, scattered from the bed to the bathroom…

And there was a body beside her.

She said a little prayer, grabbed her clothes and hit the door.

And that’s how it went down.

This Spongebob Clock is Fast

2010-01-28T08:30:00.000-08:00

I feel as if I am wasting away. Stagnating like a piece of rotting wood floating in a dank, scum-filled pond. A dead carp drawing flies. A bag of atrophied muscles. A Mason jar brain full of molding honey. Eyes sunken, radiation burned. Cramping fingers and sore wrists. Nothing to smell, nothing to taste, no feeling, no feelings. Trash ready to be burned. I try and try to lift myself out of this funk but I eventually realize that it's not my doing. It's not within my power to change it.

I don't want your sympathy. I only want your money.

I don't need for you to tell me that I should get my shit together. You think I don't already know that? Don't you think I've made it the grand mission of my life to get my shit together? Let me tell you something. I had it together yesterday.

I don't blame you for not wanting to get inside my head to find out why my engines are so rusty. I wouldn't, if I were you. If the shoe were on the other foot I assure you I would walk as far away from this crime scene as I could. In fact, I don't WANT you fumbling around in my mind. It's mine, and I really don't want to share it. It's enough for me to keep a handle on it my own self without giving permission to pick it apart to every Tom, Dick and Harry who just happen to have a ticket they bought from a less than reputable scalper on eBay. It's too late to get a refund, you three stooges. You'll find no grand scheme in the chambers of my imagination. I would say you get what you pay for but if you spent even a penny you got ripped off.

It's okay, mom. I don't blame you. I never blamed dad, either. I don't blame anyone. I don't play the blame game. I'll just sit back and ignore you for the rest of my life. I'll sit by the phone and wait for a call. I'll leave that WELCOME mat out in front of the door. I thought that by now it would have been filthy with the mud from the bottoms of your shoes.

I live in denial. A day will come. I will regret so much until time passes and teaches me that it was a two-way street and maybe, who knows, just maybe, could it be that everything evens out in the end?

Or it could be that I've got really bad heartburn.

Movie w/Dylan (Scenes 1-3)

2010-01-28T08:29:00.000-08:00

Scene 1: Bob Dylan sits on top of an old, worn-out tire. Just some piece of junk he found in the backyard of an dilapidated automobile salvage yard. His bare feet don't even touch the ground. Slumped over in the traditional pose of "folk guitar player", the pick he holds in his right hand, when strummed across the strings, causes vibrations that end up all together in the A minor chord he holds in his other hand. There is an angelic, prayerful expression on his face. A light of inspiration glowing from the inside out. He ain't singing about Johnny mixing up any medicine. "Forever Young", likely.

Scene 2: Bob sits in a smoky pub, smoking pot with Paul McCartney, who is sporting some of the grooviest sunglasses to ever hide a pair of bloodshot eyes. Paul seems to be yelling something at Bob, not really being heard over the noisy (and slightly inebriated) crew at the bar. It looks like everyone there is toking doobies, even Mickey Dolenz, who hides directly to the right, almost obscured behind Macca's head. No matter what any of them might tell you, the stone cold fact is that every single one of these trendsetters (J.P. McCartney right along with 'em) are only here for one reason:

ZIMMY.

B.Z. slouches unconcerned, his eyes riveted to the big screen television that sits on a shelving unit directly above the Restrooms. No one seems to care about what he's watching.

More fool them.

It's the seventh game of the World Series and Robert's got $500 in his pocket that says the Yankees will pull it off. There is a certainty, if that money has told a lie, that Dylan might actually have to resort to crashing at McCartney's pad. Or if that proves too difficult perhaps Mr. Dolenz will oblige. That would sure give him something to talk about when he hooks back up with Mike, Peter & Davy on the first day of shooting 3 new episodes of the show.

Yeah, Dolenz it will be. Dylan thinks it over and decides against even asking Paul. He doesn't like Linda very much.

Scene 3: Young Bob has ditched the entire pub lot, having decided to abandon any attempt to procure rooms from the cult of hangers-on. Instead he walks two miles out of town until he finds an old, white house with a beautiful picket fence all around. He's not sure if he actually knows anyone who lives here. If he does he's forgotten about them long ago.

Everything turns to black and white as he knocks on the door. He is perfectly willing to do whatever must be done to secure a room for the night. Maybe a few vittles for his growling stomach to boot. Anything at all for some grub, up to and including premeditated murder, if the situation calls for it. He actually kind of hopes it will come to this. It has been a long, long time since Dylan last killed. It wouldn't hurt his reputation one bit to add another notch to that belt.

Alas, none of these opportunities present themselves. It is a young boy who answers the door and first sees the lanky stranger with the big nose. The kid can't be much older than six or seven. His hair is tasseled and long. It falls across the back of a loose white t-shirt. The shirt looks like it's been worn a lot of times.

"Howdy, feller," he says to Bob Dylan as he sizes him up. "Is there something I can do to ease your weary load?"

An old soul, no doubt. His frank words of compassion are disarming.

"Well, son, what I really need is a place to hang my head for the night. A soft goose down piller if you've got one. My head's heavy and I've just come from a congregation of followers who would think they were dreaming if they saw me here begging for a room from a little tyke such as yourself. It drags on me, I tell you. It pulls hard. But it must be done. If you want me to cut to the chase, I will...I'm tired and I'm hungry."

"I guess I could fix you a sandwich or something."

"Sandwich would be just fine, if that's all you've got. I mean, if that's the only choice I have. I would prefer something that would stick to the old ribs better than a pithy sandwich, but if that's as close as I'm gonna get to bein' fed, well, mister, slap some 'o that mustard on a couple of slices o' bread." Zimmy starts to contemplate the possibility that, for all his bitching and moaning, a sandwich actually doesn't sound half bad. Maybe a nice pastrami with Swiss, or a thin sliced honey ham on Rye with 4 or 5 sliced bread and butter pickles. Provolone cheese. Maybe even some lettuce and tomatoes, if such extravagances were not out of the reach of this kid's obviously impoverished family.

"Kitchen's in here. You gonna have to fend for yourself"...and with that he hurls a small bundle of foodstuffs at Bob. Everything anyone might need to make one fine sandwich. A tasty sandwich, the likes of which even Bob Dylan must shout the praises of. French's classic yellow mustard. Miracle Whip. Various slice meats including corned beef, roast beef, salami, bologna as well as the afore mentioned pastrami and honey ham. Oh, and there's turkey, too. Bone dry white meat turkey that would be impossible to eat without some kind of side dish, like instant stuffing or between two condiment drenched slices of toast.

A fit feast for a king.

It isn't too long before the sandwiches are made and not too much longer until they're gone to crumbage. A decent scrap of eats chased down with a can or two of Schaeffer's beer.

"Here, kid...have a brew," says Bob Dylan, tossing a cold can at the youngster's head.

He snatches it from it's trajectory before it beans his forehead and cries out, "I can't! I can't, you devil. I am only seven years old. It might make me sick. My dad would kill me."

"Where IS your dad, if I may be so bold to ask?"

"He's gone our drinkin' to the Hammer Head...the last time he done that he didn't come home until 9:00 o'clock the next mornin'."

"Well, then. What's the big deal? Bottoms up, you feisty little whipper snapper."

And with that he forces the can to the child's mouth and pours it's acrid, piss yellow contents into his mouth. With much spurting and gagging the boy finally swallows the last gulp and Dylan lets him go, watching his jelly-bellied body lightly thump to the ground.

"I'm gonna be sick, sir. I'm gonna be real, real sick."

"Bite the bullet, you little bastard. If you're gonna dine with me you're gonna act like a grown up. You're gonna swill that beer like a pro. You're gonna guzzle until the time comes when guzzling doesn't feel like guzzling anymore. Do you like my hat?"

"Ughaugha....kachoooo...gurg...pfipt...you're...uhuhuh...claccccc...your hat, mister?...gggaaaaagg...spitoo-ee...what about your hat?"

"I ask you if you liked it."

"If I like it?"

"Oh come now, ostentatious youth. How can I make myself any clearer than that? My white hat with the swoosh back brims. The one I stole from John Lennon the night he came over and asked for a light. I thought it was a beautiful hat the first time I ever saw it. Yoko had it on her head and it made her look positively regal. I said at the time, 'I've got to have that hat. I've got to make it mine.' I tried offering him money, but he wasn't having any of that. 'This hat's not for sale," he says. So I punched him with a broomstick, knocked the wind right out of him. He dropped this hat, you see, and the rest is history. It's ownership passed hands at that very moment, and now I'm asking you, knowing what you now know, if you LIKE it."

"You want to know...now let me get this straight...you want to know if I LIKE that hat on your head...the one which, it may be serendipitous to add, was at one time owned by one of the biggest legends of all time? Now that it's perched on your head you want an outsider's opinion of just how retarded it makes you look?"

"Hey, I was a rock and roll legend, too, once. I just want to know if you dig the hat, that's all."

"I guess it's fine," the kid said. "It's not really your style, though."

"Well who's style is it, then?"

"I don't know. Might look good on another retard."

Brutal Juice

2010-01-28T08:28:00.000-08:00

"What's in that there can?"

I heard these words whilst walking down the sidewalk on my way home from a brief visit to Shadowplay record store. They frightened me a wee bit, not having known from whence they came. Moreover, the gruffness and deep, throaty tones of that voice sent shivers down my spine. There was no denying it. This man wanted information, he craved knowledge, he was not afraid to risk ridicule in his quest to know the key ingredients in the can that I was swigging from.

"Are you talking to me?" I asked, looking in the general direction from which I thought I heard the voice coming from.

"You da only sucka on da street sportin' a can o' beverage!" His tone was slightly condescending. It rang hard on me. "All I be wanting to know is WHAT PARTICULAR BEVERAGE is crossin' yo lips tonight, home slice butter top wheat?"

I called back to him. "Why are you talking that way? You sound ridiculous."

"Now you just wait one goldurned minute. I talk this way because it the way my mother taught me. Are you saying you got a problem with the way my mom raised me or even a grudge against the woman herself? Because if that be the case, m'nigga, you goan have to step to may. Let's get it on."

"What in the fucking hell are you talking about?" I was sincerely inquisitive. "I don't have a problem with yo mother, nor yo father, nor anyone else who had to put up with you during your troubled childhood. I wouldn't call that bitch lucky by any stretch of the meaning. You sound to me like you most probably be happiest in a room, alone with a mirror. Having a conversation with your reflection, for once truly speaking to the only one who gives a damn about anything you have to say."

"You a wordy mutha fucka," he shouted. His accusation carried some merit. "You a little too long in the TOOTH, now ain't ye? You got more to say than there is people who want to listen to it. You wanna know how I know these things? Do you really want to travel so far deep within a mind that, I assure you, is infinitely more depraved than any that you may have ever known before in your life? Is that what you're wanting to do, because if it is I need to know. I got plans tonight and I cannot break them and I will not break them and you have no control over what I say right now you are in a zone right now that has never had to dust your footprints from the welcome mat that lies and lies and lies."

"You got a lot of nerve to call ME a 'wordy mutha fucka'...I ain't even close to being as verbose and, to borow your words, long in the tooth as you are." I felt like I had a strong case to defend my position, if I could only find the right words to state it. Just the right words, you know It's the deal-breaker. "Dude, I don't know why you wanna argue and get into some kind of trouble with me, but if that's what you sought out to do this evening, well I'm fair game. Bring it on. I ain't shying away. If there's only one thing in the world that I have in common, it's that neither one of us is going to back down. Hell, no. Step yo sorry us UP. I don't know how I can say this any clearer. Fisticuffs? That's what you're after? Well put up yer dukes. You put 'em up and I'll be sure to teach you a lesson like you haven't experienced in a long time, if ever. "

"What's in the can, man? Beer or pop?"

"Huh? What? What are you talking about?"

"I want to know the contents of the aluminum can you are currently transporting."

"Well, it's a Dr. Pepper can, as you can see?"

I took him at his word.

"Well, hey, do you think I could get a drink from that, eh, guv'nor? I am on the brink of death by dehydration...you just may be saving the life of this thirsty man."

"Well, uh... you see...it's full..."

"Don't think twice. I don't mind. I won't take too big a sip. It'll still be 'almost' full."

"No, no, it's not that. You see, I've..."

"I see, I see. You may be worried that your germs, a huge lot of them at this very moment having a hell of a great orgy right there on the brim of that can, might be passed on to me and consequntly infect me with all that is ailing you. I assure you, it will not turn out that way."

"You've got it wrong, mister. You're getting it all wrong. You've got to hear me out. It' not about..."

"Silence. Silence, I command. You worry of getting your own set of germs from me. It's only natural, mind you. My only request is that you bestow a swallow or two from your can there. I like Dr. Pepper a lot, actually. I know there are people out there who say they can't stand Dr. Pepper, but I guarantee you this, if the Coke runs out and there are still a couple of Dr. Peppers in the refrigerator, they will lower their tolerance for the stuff right then and there. "

"Okay. I guess so, seeing as how you have put so much effort into making it crystal clear to me. Take it all, I'm being generous tonight, people."

"Thankee, Crown."

And with that brief expression of gratitude he lifted the can up to his lips. You could hear the liguid flow over his tongue and the sound of the swallowing...

...followed by a steady stream of projectile vomit as the guy realized, all too late, that a Dr. Pepper can does not always, and does not of necessity, contain Dr. Pepper.

In this case, indeed it did not.

The Dr. Pepper can had long since been drained of the original 12 ounces of it's name sake. In their stead was about 4 ounces of Skoal spit. It was fresh, pungeant, warm, pitch dark with the gooey gelatinous feel of thick saliva. I'm surprised the cat didn't know what was coming. Maybe he had a cold or something and could'nt smell the stuff. Whatever it may have been, he drank it down long enough for quite a bit to get into his stomach.
This was the root cause as to why he was so sick for the next few days. Though it must be stated, and he would tell you, that the constant vomiting and the foul taste of the tobacco diluted gob was the worst of it and that anything else that migh have happened in the near future, unbearable as it might be, could not hold a candle to the overture of nausea.

"I tried to tell you, you dumb shit. Why are you incapable if taking orders? I assure you that your dignity remains intact. It is not shameful to exist under the tyrrany of a faithful leader. You have my permission to bow down and worship me."

And so he did. I didn't expect him to. Don't go away thinking that I did. It was only a form of expression. But that motherfucker sure took it to heart, didn't he? So I let him do what he wanted to do. I let him get down on one knee and acknowledge that the great god of Baal commanded his sole devotion. I watched him bow, surrendering his integrity to me and my tormenting habits. Crouching, hunched over an altar I'd constructed in my mind for just such an occasion of this. His face expressed nothing less than total sorrow and repentance for what he had done. A tear glistened as it grew into a puddle that flowed down the side of his nose, to meld into the snot that has started running out of your nose...not just one but both nostrils...Having already sampled the taste of the light greenish snot, it will be quite an eye-opener to see what the snot/tear combo tastes like.

"Okay, you can get up now." I was being much more generous than he deserved. "Up with you, Cap'n. Arise from this degrading position you have somehow found yourself in. Bite the bullet. Let's see your face."

He arose and boy let me tell you what. His face looked HIDEOUS. It was a technicolor nirvana mix of teardrops, snot, sweat, blood and a mixture of Skoal spit with dense salival juices.

"My God, good God, O Lordamighty. O, Lordy, lordy. Praise Lordy!"...it was almost as if he was in a religious mood. "That was some BRUTAL JUICE!"

"Yes it is, my friend. Yes, it is. As you say."

"Well I'll be damned. The last time I had Brutal Juice I was living in a facility that provided lodging and health care for the developmentally disabled individuals in the community. I wasn't doing too good back then. I was struck mute, which was the icing on the proverbial cake. I was the target of much abuse, my friend. Never assume that there's a single one of 'em there that don't play with your minds or take out their frustrations on you in cruel, unthinkable ways.

"Had this guy working, he had a mean streak in 'im. Really mean and a drunk to boot. Trouble followed him, especially on nights when he brought in a bottle of the cheap whiskey he preferred to the more expensive brands. You see, Jim Beam had taken his woman away and Jack Daniels had drove him to bankruptcy. He was pissed with those bastards. He drove to the liquor store and became acquainted with a man named Evan Williams. He's a right stand-up guy. He's not quite as fancy as Beam or Daniels. But he knows how to party and his bark is never bigger than his bite. He's got as much proof as either of those spend thrifty SOBs. Class of 80. It's the real deal.

"What I'm tring to say, squire, is that he brought Williams to work with him all too often. He brought that glass bottle one night decided the time was right to risk losing his job and he was in the mood to beat on one of my retarded frtiends.

"Whack! Thwack! Schmack! Crack! Thump, the sound of a fist penetrating the air space of a belly. He made the guy pull down his pants, had him change his clothes in front of him. For years he lived with the realization that the only reason he did that was because he was so in awe of the guys large penis. He was jealous of it It's length and girth held a strange fascination in his soul. He felt he needed to punish the dude because he had this incredible cock and yet he was too fucked in the head to be able to use it.

"He would pour cold water on my back as I lowered myself into it. He would make a special effort to ge water in a cup from the fountain in the hall, as it was much, much colder than the tap water from the bathroom sink. He would pour that ice cold water on my back and laugh at the way my body would tense up and how I would jerk out of the tub. Then he'd say, 'Do you want some more?'"

"I thought I would be punished if I said 'no'. I played along. I nobbed my head. Did I mention that I was mute in those days? I did? Good. Because it's hard to fully grasp the things Im trying to say here without that information.

"He did it again. And again. And yet again, till I could not play along antymore. When I finally shook my head
'no' he erupted into fresh gale of laughter, fueled by scorn of someone who would submit so easily.

"One day he brought me a cup. Some styrofoam vessel he stole from the cafeteria or, more likely, pilfered from trash cans. There were several in the building to choose from. Inside the cup was a thick liquid the color of blood. He told me to drink it. I wasn't so sure, as I didn't like tomato juice very much, and I sort of smelled a waft of pepper or other strong spice.

"Go on. Knock 'er back. You'll like it. It's BRUTAL JUICE!"

"Apparently 'Brutal Juice' was the trade name of a concoction that mixed tomato juice and Tabasco sauce in equal portions. It was hot, hot, so hot I felt like the inside of my mouth was having the flesh melted. I lost all sensation in the back of my throat. I could, however, still taste the crackling flame.

"My friend, with God as my witness, I have no need of keeping secrets. I will not need a priedt at my death bed as all my dues have been paid, forged in the crucible of the real world. I will gladly represent you and spread the word to the Native American masses, THIS WAS, I ASSERT AND ATTEST, WORTHY OF THE NAME BRUTAL JUICE!"

I don't know how it came to this, but by now I almost felt sorry for the guy... I should have kept the can away from him. It really IS my fault.

"If all this is true," I asked. "How did it come to be that you were once a mute retarded man and yet now you converse with those even as lofty as myself? Oh, how you endured years of torture at the hands of a man whose only excuse was 'Because his dick's bigger than mine'. What happened that now you stand before and converse with one whose sheer mental powers are registered with the U.S. Government as lethal weapons. How do you presume to keep up with one such as I?"

"It was a stone cold miracle, that's what it was. It was a god damned stone cold miracle, by God. One day I was living out a Stephen King nightmare existence. Then the next I'm fit as a fiddle."

"Maybe it was the Brutal Juice."

"Hmmm. There's much reason in that. Compelling, indeed. I suppose the more reasonable of us would admit it...it was probably the Brutal Juice."

"Brutal Juice."

"Yeah that's what I said."

"Brutal Juice."

"Uuuhhh, yaw dude. Brutal Juice.

"Brutal Juice"

"Okay, dude, you're really freaking me out here. Why do you keep saying Brutal Juice? What's that all about?"

"Brutal Juice."

"Man, you're making me mad. I'm really getting angry. I can attest to the fact that I am getting very, very angry. A might pissed off, if you've got time to want to know. One more 'Brutal Juice' out of you and I'm gonna remove this switchblade knive from this convenient pocket hidden inside my vest and I'm gonna use it to test the strength of your blood veins. I'll take a punch at your very heart and ram this regal blade into that organ until the damage it inflicts takes you to a place you'd heard about but only seen in dreams. I'll suck the very life out of you, sir. I'll drain you of everything you need to survive. Are you really going to tempt fate by disobeying my most reasonable request that you stop foolishly repeating the words 'Brutal Juice' like a fool. Are you dumb enough to take a chance the I may not be downplaying the situation one bit at all, but that, there may well be the chance that I'm rock solid on the level, and that you're very life is at stake. One wrong move and it's to the gallows with you, my friend. Hang 'em high, high and dry, high and mighty...You better think twice and measure your words very carefully before you answer this here question I'm about to put to ye.

"Answer me, oh by the powers of Jesus Rice Pudding, be honest and forthcoming in your answer. This is life or death. I pray that you answer me when I ask...

"By the love of every living thing, every breathing thing, every moving thing, every wounded thing, every one on 'em...what have ye got to say for yen, Crown?"

"Brutal Juice"

...and so it was.

April 2002

2010-01-28T08:27:00.000-08:00

I was wrapping up the last hour of my shift when she walked in. Greeting her like I did every customer who came into my store, it took me a couple of seconds before recognition kicked in. Not because she'd changed so much...she really hadn't...but it had been so long since I last saw her. More than 25 years, and yet I was not surprised to see the youthful gleam in her eyes. I'd always remembered her as a very beautiful girl, but now she was stunning...a truly magnificent woman.

Linda was the center of my universe when I was 15. It wasn't just her good looks that drew me to her. Lots of guys thought she was attractive and most of them would have jumped at the chance to go on a date or maybe even...*gasp*..."go steady" with her. I was no different, but I was painfully shy. And, maybe, just maybe I didn't think I was good enough for her.

The most I had the guts to do was call her on the phone. Just to talk. No agenda. I only wanted to hear her voice. I wanted to know everything there was to know about her. She may have led a normal, uneventful life up till then, but to me it was fascinating. For better or worse I had her perched, in my mind, on a throne with a tiara on her head and wielding regal authority over me and my heart.

The telephone conversations became an important part of my day...every day. I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that we spoke to each other every single day of the week, sometimes for 15 or 20 minutes...but just as often we gabbed for several hours at time. What we were talking about for all that time is a mystery to me now. I do know that a lot of that time I was working up the nerve to tell her how I felt. Easy enough, right? Just three words. But God, the fear that she would reject them was debilitating.

Eventually I threw caution to the wind and spilled the beans. I like to think that my profession of love meant something to her. Maybe it did, but Linda thought of me as a friend. A good friend, a best friend, a special friend...but "only" a friend. Knowing she felt like that meant a lot to me...but not enough. I wanted more. When I found out that she thought highly enough of me to call me "best friend" I spent days practically begging her for a romantic relationship. She insisted that our friendship was better, more important, than that. It would only screw everything up were we to get more serious. Yes, she was quite savvy for a 15 year old.

It was an unusual arrangement. From all our telephone talk you'd think we'd be inseparable as friends. Yet we never spoke to each other at school, other than a polite "hello". I always thought I saw an expression in her face that told me it was okay for things to be that way...that it was normal...that it could be no other way under the circumstances. It still chafed me. She may have been right, but I thought it was a messed up situation.

To make things worse, there were a couple of boys in our class that she found herself attracted to. One of them wound up being her "steady boyfriend". There are not words strong enough to express the combination of frustration, disappointment, despair and hopelessness I felt at this turn of events. Yet we still continued calling each other every night. Things were different now, though...much of the time she spent gabbing about her new beau, asking me for advice, all that kind of stuff. I helped out where I could, and wondered if she realized how miserable it made me.

One night it all became too much for me to bear. It was about a year and a half after our first conversation. By that time she had 2 or 3 boyfriends. The "Can't-We-Just-Be-Friends" option was wearing thin. I thought I should be given the opportunity to see if it would work, if we could make it as a couple in the real world. And so an ultimatum of sorts was presented to her. The kind of stupid "either-or" choice that only an immature teenager would demand a response to.

Linda maintained that it would be much better for all involved if we didn't take things to the next level. I turned it all around in my mind for a long time afterwards. Why? Was there some reason she didn't want me to know for the way she felt? Was it me? Would she have been emberassed being seen with me? She told me a couple of times that she loved me, were they just words to her? Maybe words used so that I would get off her back with all my own professions of love?

At any rate, Linda and I drifted away from each other. I stopped calling her on the phone. I eventually fell in love with another girl and began a long term relationship. But all that time I still carried a torch for Linda. Within a few years I was wise enough to understand the value of a good friend and how she was right about romance often screwing up a good thing like that.

Time passed. Eventually the memories I had of her were all but replaced by the ones I'd made since we parted ways. I never even thought of her anymore. Those were the fabled days of our youth and they were gone, long gone. You look back to those times and you realize just how little you knew about "love". Not that what you had wasn't a powerful, almost palpable emotion. But "love"? I don't think so. That kind of "embryonic love" comes once in a lifetime and when it's gone, it's gone.

At least that's what I thought until she walked in the store that day. It all came back to me in a flood of those memories I thought I'd buried. I was overjoyed to see her again. I could tell she was delighted to see me, too. She had driven from Fort Worth to Kansas City just to visit me, to see what I'd been up to, to reminisce, just to spend a little time with an old friend.

It was difficult to make conversation in the store where I still had 30 minutes of work left to do. We made plans to meet later that evening. Not much to do in Kansas City on a Tuesday night, but it didn't matter. I'm sure both of us would have been happy just driving around enjoying each other's company.

We ate dinner at a very nice restaurant. It was one of a chain of steakhouses that Linda managed. We joked about the employee discount! But this much was no joke: I walked in that place with her on my arm and I felt like the King of the World. I was so comfortable with her that I began to pine for "what could have been" way back in our high school days. I don't believe in "soul mates", but if there are such things I was convinced, in that moment, that she was mine.

We made some small talk during our meal. Then we spoke of more important things. Before the second course had arrived we were confiding our deepest secrets to each other. We filled in the gaps between the 25 years since we last saw each other. It was fascinating. I began to deeply regret breaking off our friendship "way back in the day". We could have really supported each other through the tough times we'd both lived through. I would have learned so much from her. She could have confided in me when the pressure of every day living brought her down. Maybe I could have said just the right thing to cheer her up...like I did when we lived a good portion of our lives with telephone recievers pressed to our ears.

We decided to go for a drink. I knew of a very nice up-scale establishment on the east side, so I took her there. I led her up the stairs onto the second floor. There was an awesome view of the City through the full length glass walls. There wasn't a big crowd, just a few guys watching a football game on the big screen television. None of them seemed to pay any attention to us, and we returned the favor.

We had delved into each others lives for so long this evening that it was easy to simply relax and enjoy each other's company. We lamented the fact that she had to return to Fort Worth the next morning. There was the very real possibility...no, probability...that we would never see each other again.

Then...out of nowhere...I swear I had no idea it was coming and that I never expected it...

She kissed me.

Without a doubt, the most passionate kiss I've ever been a part of. What prompted it? I will never know. She didn't tell me and I wouldn't have asked anyway. I didn't care. All that mattered at that moment was the rush of emotions, the intensity of passion I felt, the desire that bubbled up to the surface, the way all the good and bad things from the last 25 years were temporarily forgotten as her lips pressed against mine.

The television was blaring and the guys watching the game were a noisy lot...but all I could hear was the rhythm of her breathing as we embraced and kissed again. I held her body close to mine. She wrapped her arms around me so tight that I felt like she might never let me go. As if I wanted her to. She was much shorter than I am, and she had to crane her head up to reach my lips. We both thought it was funny, but it was so endearing to me, just one more reminder of how much I really did love her long ago. It made me think there might be one more chance for the kind of relationship I thought I wanted in my 15th year.

Linda excused herself and walked downstairs to the ladies room. I stood up and walked to the glass wall, surveying the bright lights of Kansas City. Something I've seen a thousand times. And yet it all seemed so different now. A better place. I actually felt like the star of a romantic movie, something like "Casablanca" or "Love Story". The atmosphere was charged. Ecstasy. Elation. Eroticism. I hoped she felt the same.

Alas, as all things must pass, the evening came to a close. We both accepted the events of the night as if they were only what usually happens on a good date. Which is exactly what it was (though the word "good" is a little weak to describe it). She drove back to Fort Worth the next morning, to the life she'd made for herself during the last quarter century. I went back to the store, to my own.

In one single evening, in one particular moment, in one special kiss my life had become more bearable. Enriched. Enlightened. I would not forget her this time. I wouldn't forget the steak that was slightly undercooked but I didn't complain, just ate it, because it was the last thing on my mind. I wouldn't forget the smooth jazz we listened to on her stereo driving to the club (she said she hated it, that she needed me to get her up to speed on all the good music she was too busy to check out herself). I wouldn't forget that she ordered bloody marys for us at the bar. I wouldn't forget all the little things from that night. I relished them and placed them almost on the same level as the kiss because I wanted to savor each and every second of that night.

And I do.

Livin' Thing (10-11)

2010-01-28T08:25:00.000-08:00

10.

His skin is blue. Every inch of his body surrounded by a light aura of indigo. Surrounded, too, by blazing tongues of fire. It's as if he's stepping into this reality from a hellish gap between worlds. This is his destiny, to focus the nation's attention to the realms from which he came. To catch their collective eye and point it in the general direction of the Masters.

The blue man swirls and sways in a mad dance. His four arms reach out, alternately offering and receiving. White fire dances on the palm of one hand. Another waves a greeting. Another proffers the back of his hand to be kissed. But what's that in his other hand? He clutches it so tightly, as if reluctant to consign whatever it is to a rightful fate. What is it and where did he get it? The thought crossed my mind that it might be an urn filled with the ashes of some drug-dealing guru. Or maybe it's a vessel for drinking? I don't know that it matters. Could be a dog turd for all I care.

He stands at the top of a highest mountain. He is framed by the majestic and beautiful clouds that soar atop the world. Beneath his foot...an enemy, perhaps? An interloper? Just a friend letting the blue man use him as a step-stool, maybe?Only thing for sure is that he is blue, too. Asleep or dead? You decide.

But I cannot stare at the beautiful apparition for hours. I must turn from it's healing power. One last look, though, at the smile on his face. Surely, ye mankind, he must be happy, or content or maybe in a vary good mood. That is just as well, friends. I bet he can weild all that fire behind him. No doubt he's got a formidable amount of fire power channelin' those flames through his body, through those hands and into anything that gets in it's way.

Yes, one long last look. I'll never forget these things: The fellow wore some delicious smelling cologne, the scent of which lingers still in my olfactory. His blue skin was the result of a rare condition that the best medical minds in all of India had been unsuccessful in understanding it's cause or it's treatment.

Even though there were enough flames behind him to completely torch a small community his presence seemed to emit a very cold gust of wind. It was bizarre, and it made me question the reality of the vision. Every time I thought I'd convinced myself it was only a fragment of my imagination, I would get side-tracked by the blinking of the blue man's eyes. It woke a man up, it did.

11.

What's that sound? It came from the right. It was an ominous sound. It was a sound that promised violence. Is it no wonder I'm terrified? I just got out of the shower, you know. My hair's still a little wet. If you think I'm going to go looking for whatever's responsible for that sound in this condition, well, you are one confused individual.

What are you looking at me that way for? You got a fuckin' problem with me? What you think I'm gonna let someone look down their nose at me like that? You have got a lot of spine to think such a blank expression is going to make me believe you aren't putting out anymore. I know you better. I know when the winds blow in and when they blow out I know where they go. And I know this: five days out of the week you are gonna get fucked. You've tried going with less, maybe cutting it back to 2 or 3 times a day...then there were the times when you'll go hog wild and ride a whole month's worth of cowboy...for good or ill, the cycle always comes back to 5 days a week, give or take 4 or 5 days in the month during your menstrual period.

So don't stare at me like you're gonna cut me off. You don't fool anyone. One look into those pouty peepers and anyone can tell that you're in dire need of a piss stop. The trip has proven tedious and long. You're about to drop dead from boredom. This is the part where we find a nice clean restroom at the Rest Stop near the 200 mile marker on I-40 East. The one where all the trucker whores hang out. At this point I will wipe that spiteful expression right off of that cherry bomb bangin' face of yours.

Or maybe, if you ain't down with dat, how 'bout if I pulled this here car o'mine over to the curb? What would you think if I reached over the seat, ran my grease dirty hands through your hair and squeezed your tear moistened cheeks, flush with new found fever?. What will you think when I open the door and regally request that you remove your fat ass from my automobile?

Because that's what I'm about. Get the hell out my wheels, yo in another hood now and it ain't one that you want to get caught in at 9 in the evening. Here it is, 9:15 and I can see a mack thumpin' crew who have, to a man, noticed you. This is just the posse for you.

Now skee-daddle, wacky doodle. Get out. Get out of my life. Get out of my sight. Take that hate filled mug shot and quietly get the fuck out. You don't even have to go quietly, if yo don't wanna.

Mamlet

2010-01-28T08:24:00.000-08:00

1.

He wanted to conquer nations, to be remembered as a king, a grand figure in the history of Western Civilization. Lofty goal but he honestly believed he could pull it off. He had been surrounded by genius all of his life, it was only a matter of time before his superior nature emerged.

But for now he was busy trying to find his way home through a demented jungle of Edgar Allen Poe’s complete works. It was a chamber of many doors, behind each one a different path he could choose. But his decision would change the course of history. Every choice, any choice would be of his choosing. It didn’t make things any easier.

He eventually chose to fall with the house of Usher, that grand and noble house. It’s comings, goings, legends and mythology, it’s denizens and the account of their lives so vividly conjured through the pen of Poe. Yet he remembers none of it. Nada. It had just been too many years since he had last scanned it. He couldn’t remember a goddamn thing.

As his memory was being refreshed, locked between the pages of a nice green volume of literature on my bookshelf, he had a glorious thought. “What”, thought he, “would it be like to wake up one day and find ourselves in the world and the artistic vision of that gifted Frenchman Salvador Dali?” As he pondered this question he looked to his left and noticed that the clock on the wall was melting.

“How very odd,” thought he once again. “What strange creatures stalk the land and fill the sky with their black crow darkness swirling ‘round.”

It would appear that he crawled out of Usher’s timeless confines to slither into Dali-wood. As to his motives for doing so, the author cannot reveal, even if he were to know them. Which I’m not saying he does. But if anyone did it would obviously be me, right? And I just don’t know. That’s my bottom line.

So. The “real” world coagulated like blood and vinegar in a Mason jar. Nothing was where it should have been. It boggled the mind. It begged description. Faces like jelly. One of those things. With putrid carcasses and elephant heads tethered to the earth by hemp rope, strong and tight, harnessing it’s helium from it’s urge to flight. The situation is under control. That was the message they should have been sending. But they had seen it, too, and they felt pity for the man with the grasshopper fastened to his neck Who is eating who, you want to know? The answer, my friends, will elude the human race for eons to come.

It must have been 30-40 hours after Henry Mamlet passed out in Dali-wood. He’d entered the state of Nirvana. It was with fierce force of will that he tore himself away from it to spend another few weeks on this greedy planet. All the messed up clocks, all the drug references. The brilliance from a mind that must have been constantly possessed of such bizarre thoughts as to make the towne foole seem a saint. “Goodbye, strange abode. So long, dream-like landscapes that twist my senses. Your surreal atmosphere will be missed as will be the days when LSD was legal.

2.

“Hey, babe! I’m Creamy Slut Pie! Thanks for calling the Creamy Pie erotic phone sex service, where it’s been our pleasure to please you for the last 20 years. I’m assuming that you got our phone number from the back of a wrinkled and torn copy of Hustler magazine. If so, it would stand to reason that you are old enough to be engaging in this sort of lascivious, desperate telephone conversation. Am I correct in my observation?”

“You are correct. I am old enough to utilize your valuable service, though many would say that I’m too old to do these things. Think me a loser, if you must, as long as you give me what I paid for, it that understood?”

“Easy, soldier. No need for you to bust a gasket. You’re gonna need all your gaskets soon enough. Pick your battles, Gomer Pyle. I get that you’re old enough. I never doubted it for even a moment. We have to say that stuff, you know, the lawyers tryin’ to cover their basses, see?”

“Ok, I’m alright. I may have over-reacted. I’m sorry if I did, but you need to understand something about me. When I was a small child I used to swing dead cats in the air, then let ’em go to see how far they would fly in their rigor mortis hardened conditions. We’d find planks of two-by-four lumber and beat the lifeless body with them. I only did it because I was scared. Scared to death. Scared of death. This feline, whose heart had stopped beating at some point in the last seven days, left behind a body that provided a great deal of boyhood pleasure to someone you never even knew. A legacy. A token shell left behind, as if the cat-heaven bound kitty had sacrificed it for some cause only known by Cats.”

“Well, okay, Mr….” she said as if inquiring, lost for a name she’d just heard not two minutes ago.

“Mamlet, ma’am,/ Henry Mamlet.”

“Now that’s one hell of a name you got there, Hank.”

“Don’t call me Hank,” he sinisterly intoned.

“Well, why-ever-not? Hank’s as good as anything else. And it’s one less syllable. Rolls of the tongue a little easier. Makes you sound tougher than you really are. Has that “good old boy” tang to it. You have no idea how far you can go on that schtick. Hank,” she said,” now there’s a name for a REAL MAN. I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t want to be referred to with such a regal nickname as…oh, my, how I love to say it…Hank! Hank! Hank! Hank!”

“I told you not to call me Hank. I wasn’t shitting you. I don’t give two shits and a holler for your invaluable opinion about what constitutes the realness of a man. What a worn out old bed rag you must be, laughing behind my back and telling the other prostitutes that I’m not the breed they want to tangle with. Just don’t call me Hank. I’ll thank you if you don’t refer to me as Hank for the entire duration of our relationship, be it confined to the upcoming phone sex session or, by some twitch of fate find ourselves exploring the nether regions of forever together.”

“Sounds interesting, Hank. Now what can I do for you? Have you ever called us before?”

“No, this is actually not the first time. I wanted to call a few times. Even dialed the number and heard the phone pick up. But I never had the guts to stay on the line. I felt I would make a fool of myself.”

“You ARE a pussy, Mamlet,” said Creamy Slut Pie, representing the infamous Creamy Pie phone sex emporium. “So why did you stick around this time? Why didn’t you wimp out then, you weak scum.”

“I just don’t care anymore. Tell the whole world that I’m a lonely creep so desperate for companionship that I’ve found the logical end with a telephone receiver stuck to my ear and a greasy Hustler in my left hand. Tell ’em I don’t even masturbate while they try so hard to arouse me. As they pretend they’ve been waiting on my call for the last week. Their heavy breathing and well choreographed grunts of lust have absolutely no effect on me whatsoever. I may kill myself next week, so I didn’t want to die without having phone sex at least once in their lives.

*******IF I MAY HAVE YOUR ATTENTION*********

In an attempt to promote this work of fiction I have decided that it might be good idea to launch a campaign on behalf of the phone sex union to start a trend in which the following phrase is to be capitalized on:

“I DON’T WANT TO DIE WITHOUT HAVING HAD PHONE SEX AT LEAST ONCE IN MY LIFE”

…and maybe print of some tee-shirts, spread the gospel, what do you say? “Phone sex: I’ve made peace with my Maker” or even “Phone Sex: Reach out and touch someone, for once in your life” or “I’ll die a happy man! How ‘bout you?”…unlimited, people I am not lying.

Exploit this fashionable new trend I am starting. Spread the word. One time in a lifetime, whether it be filled with wealth and prosperity or burdened by poorness, disease, and haste, doing the one thing we’ve always known we’ve wanted to do: make a call to Creamy Pie’s. Do do it, damnit! Creamy Slut Pie was not shitting when she insinuated earlier that all men who are afraid to use their services without hesitation are pussies.

Which doesn’t really make a damn one way or the other as far as this is concerned. Because all I want you to do is start a trend. I want you to author a new fad. I want you to get out there and hustle like the John Paul George and Ringo. I want the fruits of your labor to benefit my own financial gains. It won’t be hard. Just say to your co-worker or fellow church goer, “Yo, Granny. You had yo phone sex yet? Better hit it up, baby, cause it don’t look like your liable to have much time left.

Start that trend, I re-iterate. Lets make this pithy tale fly on it’s psychedelic ride to mass recognition and acknowledgment of the author’s genius.

Remember…Phone sex. I wanna do it just one time before I die.

Solid…

Gold.

i look into the abyss

2010-01-28T08:23:00.000-08:00

I look into the abyss. Slow down the spiral, stare deep into darkness that shines, envelopes, embraces, caresses. I'm searching for a story. Hoping I'll see a ghost. Wanting to follow the seldom trod path that would take me to imagination. I want to see movement, progression, something I can remember. Something I can sing about, something I can write down, something that makes sense.

I'm tired. I'm so tired of trying to twist and fold the moment. I'm sick of being so goddamned impressed. So sure that I could do no more, that there could be anything more to do.

I thought myself a sage. I convinced myself that I was a poet. Yet my deepest fear was that someone would understand my poetry.

Still, even now the snow whirls a static blizzard 'neath the glass. What I wouldn't give to infuse form and color, solidity, to mold the void into living dream.

Charlie's Vision

2010-01-28T08:22:00.000-08:00

Charlie was not Grant's typical client. At the age of 10 he claimed to have visions. He called them prophecies but was always quick to point out that they were certainly not on a biblical scale. Now, at the age of 32, he had won the trust and devotion of the very same church that once ostracized him as a heretic, a rebellious teen with delusions of the priest hood.

These issues, and more, were being worked out through a controversial new behavioral technique, Stellar Discomfort Photographic Memory Process (or SDPMP). Many times he would fall into a trance during treatment and it was during these times of semi-consciousness that Dr. Grant began to gain enlightenment as to the possible meanings of the dreams. The symbolism, which had once driven him to despair, seemed now to be laid out like pieces from a jigsaw puzzle, ready to be placed into the context of the bigger picture.

He showed up that morning in ratty blue jeans and a t-shirt, which featured the logo of Judas Priest. Grant could tell he was miserable. It was not hard to see that he could tell he was cold because his skin was all prickly and shit. Goose bumps or something like them. No doubt his nipples were hard as pellets. He stank of a 7 day marathon of not bathing, but the doctor didn't seem to mind.

"Have a seat, Charlie. Tell me, is it true what they say about Sarah T? Is she really a teenage adolescent alcoholic?"

Charlie suppressed a grin. "She is at that, old gem," he said. "This coming from what I would consider to be a somewhat reliable source, she has done gone developed a taste for hard spirits. Her parents don't know a damn thing. She's thinkin' some hard thoughts about maybe doing some things she might have at one time made a commitment and/or a vow to the Lord not to do, but they always knew there would come one day. Well, here that day is, and I'll be god damned if I'm gonna sit back and let you tell me I don't know what I'm talking about."

"It's okay. It's more than I knew, that's for sure..."

"That's not what I came here for, and you know it."

"Oh, yeah? What do I know? Why are you here?"

"I'm your patient. That's right, Doctor Bill Grant, I am the man who pays you to get into his mind...I am the man who expects to get a large return on my investment...My insurance has paid for the swimming pool in your back yard. I'm here because it's my turn to be prodded. I am pretty sure I need it this time. You've been paid, now let's get this cheap ass carnival van on the road."

"Very well," Grant conceded. "Have you had a vision since I last saw you?"

Charlie barely hesitated.

"I did...I did and you know it." He settled in.

"There is fire in the sky, and an explosion that knocks me back. I see things now from the perspective of a god. From nowhere, from extinction, a brave buffalo materializes into space. He swerves to the right, into the white light. On his back, perched as a dominatrix, rides the raven, the dark carrion crow, croaking out death rattle to warn the flock...'You're flying in the wrong direction! Turn around! Turn around! You are flying into a radioactive fire!!!' But they don't seem to hear. They don't seem to see what's directly in front of them...birds, black birds, big black birds, big bad black birds, one by one, follow the leader into the nuclear sized black hole!

"The buffalo doesn't care. He doesn't seem to give one whit of a damn about the situation he's found himself in. He may not even know that a demonic bird is riding his furry hump back."

"Is this all?" I asked, knowing full well that if it WERE we'd still have more than we can handle. More right now would be too much of a burden to bear.

"Actually there were a couple more things, I may have just glimpsed 'em before I woke up, but they seem clear to me now," he said. "That there buffalo was a mighty find specimen of a buffalo. But he didn't seem quite real because he was running on a table...a table with many esoteric symbols carved into the wood."

Not one of his more extreme visions, to be sure. But Bill Grant was determined to gain a thorough understanding of this one. Even if it meant losing one of the fingers on his right hand.

Movie w/Dylan (Scenes 4-7)

2010-01-28T08:21:00.000-08:00

Scene 4: Dylan has left the scene. He's been gone for a long, long time. He walked out and said it was for good. Don't know about that. It wouldn't be the first time he bandied threats like that one about.

It's not so much a surprise that Bob Dylan has split. He never hangs around for very long at these affairs.

What IS surprising is that Slash has taken his place. Slash and mama, cute as can be with the Satanic tattoos, the nose rings and the gaudy Social Distortion t-shirts.

Slash has really let her down. Eased her to the ground, if you want to look at it that way. He's brought shame to her and to the family name with his hedonism. Still, she smiles a goofy, toothy grin that says "This is my boy. This is the one."

Sure he is. Ms. Slash, you have raised up a real spitfire. This son of yours is a convicted felon. His hateful, and sometimes cruel behaviour has caused many a man to question their own sexuality. "Celibacy," they say, "has never seemed like such a preferable option until now."

He wears his baseball cap backwards on his head. A real significant fashion statement from a man whose pubescence has weathered the years.

Your boy is a hooligan, Ms. Slash. We think you're aware of this and that you've BEEN aware of it for a long, long time.

So long, Ms. Slash. I fear I have come along too late to be of any valuable service to your wasted son. My time is too precious to waste delving into that rascal's deviant subconscious mind.

But make no mistake, dear woman. Your offspring is a thug.

Scene 5: Okay, Murray, you are a bad motherfucker. You've proved it to me. Once again, I might add, once again. Where the hell do you get off being so bad-ass? How long have you gone without washing your hair? This disheveled look you are cultivating is very unsettling. You can't get into any self respecting church service looking like THAT.

Where did you buy that watch? Big fuckin' watch. How much it cost you? I bet it's not one of those cheap Timex jobbies like they sell at Wal-Mart. Then again, I'd also bet it's not an heirloom timepiece you see recommended by the editors of Esquire magazine and that cost roughly the same as a small, used automobile. That watch is working double duty.

Good Lord, you smell of tobacco. Surely you are aware of this? Why don't you take a quick shower and get rid of that stench before we go to the wedding? You're not going to any wedding looking like that.

Who did those tatoos on yer arms? Charles Schultz?

Scene 6: Put that goddamn cigarette down, you filthy hobo. You're not fooling anyone and I don't care if you are a bad ass motherfucker, I won't stand for it beneath my roof. I don't know what made you think it was okay to light up in my quarters but if I failed to make it clear before, please allow me to elabotate: IT IS NOT.

And where'd you get that ridiculous hat? Is that one from your most recent shopping spree at the Goodwill? Or maybe it's one you found in the "All Headgear Bundle" at the Salvation Army? I'll bet you stole it. I'll also lay down good money that the inside band is dirty tan with the long-dried sweat of the last two bohemians who wore it. Here's what I say: it doesn't matter WHERE you got it. It makes you look like a stone fool. Like that dude who played guitar with Guns 'n' Roses.

But you're even dirtier. The sand sticks to your skin when you sweat...it turns to mud on you.

You want me to know about Amsterdam, don't you?

Scene 7: The balloon has landed. The bottle of booze is clutched tightly in the drummer's hand. Wait, what's that? ANOTHER bottle of hooch? The pilot's drinking Old Number 7 and it looks like he can sure put away enough of it.

That blimp really sailed high for a while there. It was a sight to behold, I assure you. You could get a sore neck craning your neck towards the sky to get a better look at that incredible floating craft. This was before the fires, you understand. This didn't happen until after the "Great Water Shortage of 2298" when even the majestic oceans were drained to pitiful pools.

But it's set down now, and that's a natural fact. The way of the world. The wisdom of the sages confirm that the zeppelin has descended for the last time.

Barry Leviticus and the Dart Board

2010-01-28T08:20:00.000-08:00

Barry Leviticus...that was his name. DO NOT forget it.

Leviticus was slick. You should have seen him, all decked out in his Wranglers, Tony Llama boots, gaudy pink-and-blue striped Brushpopper and a bitchin' Stetson. His beard was trimmed in a fashion made popular by Keith Urban, who was one of his role models ("ole boy snagged up Nicole Kidman, what the fuck is that?"). He was meticulously, obsessively clean...the smell of expensive cologne wafted from him is subtle waves...Ban Ray shades hid his blue eyes, totally unnecessary in the all-pervading darkness of the Top Cat, his favorite beer joint.

What was it about the Top Cat that kept Leviticus coming back every night? Some patrons would say it was the jukebox. It was the only one in the county that didn't have some Kid Rock song on it. Or "Strokin'". Great Googly Moogly in Heaven, how he detested that song and all of the jackasses who filled the dance floor to line dance every time it came on. He was the slightest bit skittish, and every time those boot heels would smack on the floor it would make him flinch.

The bartender felt certain that his devotion to the Top Cat was contingent upon the two-for-one happy hour beer specials that were so popular with the factory workers coming home from their shifts, stopping in for a quick, cheap beer buzz. Barry generally availed himself of the bargain, but this was not the reason the Top Cat was his pick. Hell, he was more of a Jim Beam drinker. Maybe ole Jerry Galileo behind the bar didn't notice, but he didn't gulp down the brewskis with the same fervor as the rest. Galileo was selfish with the hooch, so the liquor and the service had nothing to do with Leviticus' decision to keep coming back to his establishment.

The most logical reason that Mr. Leviticus chose the Top Cat was because the local Johnny Laws turned a blind eye to all the pot smoking going down in the back yard behind the club. Every 45 minutes, when the band was on break, a thick cloud of pungent bud fumes could be seen rising into the sky, like incense from a burnt sacrifice. The cops sometimes drove around the Top Cat, patrolling for fights. There was no way they didn't see (or smell, for that matter) the marijuana smog and/or the crew of potheads huddled like hunchbacks, each one waiting greedily for the hogleg to be passed his way. John Law just didn't care. Business as usual for them. The chief of police was a big time supplier for the Tri-City area, so there was no way his flunkies were going to throw a monkey wrench into his action.

No, that was not it, either. Leviticus was not a stoner. He got high when the occasion warranted it (usually this was when an unorthodox sexual activity demanded a measure of relaxation that was beyond the ability of Mr. Beam). But he didn't need it, he didn't want it. His position on the matter had always been, "Toke up, boys. I don't care. No, thanks, moondog, you can eat that roach. I'm all good."

All the Top Cat losers would would be more than surprised to know that the ONLY reason Barry Leviticus kept comin' back to the Cat was...

The dart board in the back corner just across from the pool tables.

There was blood on it.

HIS blood.

It was a memory that haunted Leviticus, one that few of the party-hardy asshole regulars knew anything about. Anyone who may have had a clue about why his blood stained the bullseye had either moved on to neighboring states or to that great suburb in the sky. He'd made damn sure of that. Not even Jerry Galileo knew what had happened to them, and he was content to let sleeping dogs lie.

But the dart board was like a ghost to Barry. It was a spectre that he had fallen in love with. Some masochistic urge kept him bound to it's power to the point where he could do nothing to resist as it compelled him, day after day, to return to "the scene of the crime", as it were. It would lay it's trap within the toss of a dart. Once Leviticus was snared, having been drawn inexplicably to that dreaded parameter, another kind of dart, an invisible one, pierced his skull and injected the memory of that night in 1964.

He had just come back from the war, tired and ready for a life that didn't include the taking of other's. Vietnam left scars on the majority of American soldiers who fought so hard for their country...but none so deep and painful as the ones Barry Leviticus bore on his psyche. The reasons for this are better left unspoken, but the results play a huge role in what happened in the Top Cat bar on February 14, 1964. What could have been unforgettable round of darts between a grizzled, yet incredibly fresh and clean, veteran with a chip on his shoulder, and a cadre of biker hippies who were probably only there to cause trouble. The kind of trouble that biker bad-asses are famous for.

Barry was sitting at a table in the back, close to the dart board, with his arm around a cheap hooker he'd picked up earlier at the International House of Pancakes. She'd told him about four of her friends and a reservation they all had at the Cinderella motel. Leviticus was waiting for a visit from the chief-of-police. He hadn't planned on sticking around for very long once the chief had hooked him up.

But then one of those filthy, fat bikers sauntered up to him. Like all of his co-horts, he was as unkempt as a skid row bum and every single article of clothing he wore was emblazoned, somewhere or another, with the Harley-Davidson logo. Leviticus wouldn't have been surprised if the dude's underwear was Harley Davidson brand.

"Is this here your woman?" he asked with a gruesome leer in his eyes.

"It is for tonight," said Barry. "What's it to you?"

Biker thug said he thought it was very important to him, as he thought she was one of the most beautiful, angelic women he'd seen all night.

"I want her," he said. "I'll pay."

Barry took the toothpick he'd been gnawing on out of his mouth. He turned to the hooker and considered. The decision he eventually came to was inspired not so much by the qualities that his foe found in her, it was more a matter of her four friends making it a fivesome and the money already invested (not only in the prostitution fees but also for the rarely smoked dope he'd just sunk a couple of hundred dollars into).

"She ain't for sale. Now why don't you hop back on that horse and mosey on back to whatever pasture you came from?"

Biker thug didn't like that suggestion. He called over a couple of his friends, who flashed muscular arms tattooed with the popular Harley-Davidson logo. They stared at him with a meanness that rivaled the most vicious pit-bull ever primed to fight.

"Howzabout a round of darts?"

"I don't play darts," said Leviticus.

"Oh, yes, you do," said biker thug.

"No, I don't."

"Yes, you do."

"No, I don't."

"Yes, you do."

"No, I don't."

Biker thug swallowed a lump that had found it's way into his throat. He looked to his cronies and said, "Oh, well. I guess he's not up to a game of darts."

"Damn!" said the biker with the Harley-Davidson bandanna around his head. "I wanted to play darts!"

No one was more surprised than Barry when they gathered their things and walked through the EXIT doors of the Top Cat. To a man, they hopped onto their Harleys, kicked 'em start, and drove off into a haze of dust.

He wasn't sure how he felt about the exchange. Part of him was relieved that it had not come to blows. But there was no denying that he was hoping for just that.

He sauntered over to the dart board, calmly considering what had just happened. It weighed heavy on his mind. What would have happened if he had taken them up on their offer of a dart game? Who would have won such a battle of skill and what were the stakes?

He took a sidelong glance at the whore whose friends were waiting for him just down the block in room 101. She was handsome, in her own hand-me-down way, but her honor had not been his to avenge.

They had not insulted him for his good looks, his refreshing cleanliness or the showy, if not somewhat tacky, wardrobe he was sporting. Even though he stood in sharp contrast with their slovenliness, they had not said a disparaging word to him about it.

In fact, none of them had done anything to upset him. The only one who even spoke to him, biker thug, had only desired an illegal transaction that he had already consummated. He had no right to be so possessive of a woman who only charged him 50 bucks and a quarter sack of weed. A true bargain when you throw in the four friends at no extra charge.

Basically, these guys only wanted to play darts. Sure, it was in bad taste to want to scag a slut straight from a paying customers arm, but it wasn't the first time that had happened. Barry Leviticus would be a liar if he told you that he hadn't accepted a similar offer when the price had been right (a 50% profit was more than enough to rid him of any traces of chivalry). On this occasion he had simply decided that his original plan was better than any he could have purchased with biker thugs money.

It all boiled down to this:

He had not wanted to play darts.

He stepped to the board. There were darts sticking out of the 14, 20, 15 and 5 point areas. Somehow this seemed significant. He pulled one of them out to inspect it (the one that had scored 5 points). Turning with his fingertips he reflected upon what had transpired. He came to the conclusion that the next time bikers showed up wanting to play a game he would indulge them.

Then, as he was just about to return the sharp projectile to the board, he accidentally pricked his finger. It didn't feel like much, but for some reason it bled profusely (as much as a finger can bleed, one might say).

"OUCH! Damnit to Hades!" he cursed, cramming the dart back into the board...

A small drop of crimson ocher welled up from the dart's end and fell like a teardrop down the circumference of the board. Lifeblood seed of a waif.

Every night since, Leviticus has returned. He's at the Top Cat tonight. He'll be there tomorrow night. Even if the music supplier puts a Kid Rock CD in the jukebox. Even if the line dancer's strokin' and stomping sets his teeth on edge. Even if Jerry Galileo decides that the two-for-one happy hour deal loses too much money to continue. Even if the DEA busts the chief and the Laws have no choice but to put the fear of God in the dopers.

Barry Leviticus will be there.

The blood draws him.

Okay, so this is how it went down

2010-01-28T08:18:00.000-08:00

You know, I'd always tried to remain faithful to the wife. I don't know why, as things turned out. But such was my way in those days. I tried and I succeeded in limiting my sexual activities to our own bedroom (or backyard on that one occasion)... It wasn't so hard to do because she had a bit of a kinky streak in her that put it all over the top. Many were the times we would make up stories to tell each other while locked in the throes of passion...stories about possibilities, fantasies very close to becoming reality some time soon. My tales of multiple partners always seemed to elicit a more vigorous grinding on her behalf. Her stories of swingers and perverts brought me to the brink of orgasm and then shoved me off on countless occasions. It wasn't until she mentioned a real person's name in conjunction with one of the scenarios that I got scared. All talkin', no walkin' for me. I don't guess it was the same for her. Or maybe I didn't approve of this particular person that she seemed to want to bring in to the party. That was a big part of it, no doubt. But the bottom line remained...I was unprepared to embark upon the depraved, immoral, unclean path she eventually chose.

But I never committed adultery. Don't ever try and tell me I did that. At least not against her. And I wouldn't have done it against ANYONE, were it not for those two gals who were impressed with the band. I tried my hardest to resist on that occassion. I wouldn't have done it, I swear, if it had been only ONE of them. But the prospect of a threesome was too powerful for me to resist. A situation that was made even more attractive by the sheer volume of THC that was coursing through my veins, spreading through my circulatory system like tiny, mad soldiers in a mad dash to kill a few more brain cells.

It was a short hop, skip and jump to their house, where the pipe was produced. If there's one thing I like about marijuana, it's how the stuff settles you in to really enjoy sex. I don't know if it was the dope or the responsibility of pleasing two women, but my endurance was incredible that night. The three of us got about an hour out of it, as compared to my usual 3 minute rut.

Sorry. You don't need to know that. It wasn't what I wanted to tell you anyway. I'd originally set out to fill in a few details that that may have been forgotten (or never known) about the closest I came to messing around on my dear sex-bomb wife (uh...pretty close, if we're calling it "messing around", but you know what I mean).

I was gigging with a rock band...it was the first time I'd had a chance to play the kind of music I actually enjoyed, so I was happy about it. Plus, I was the one who put the whole thing together. That made me the the "leader". With such power comes much satisfaction. I did a damn good job of it, too. I love to give orders. I can't abide anyone telling me I should "do it this way" or "do it that way". They're almost always wrong. Better to let me lay down the various laws that apply to these matters than allow the project to suffer from bad decisions. Decisions that would have inevitably been made even had I exercised the authority vested in me. It doesn't matter if my bandmates sometimes come up with good ideas from time to time. I have to Dismiss 'em. That's all serious man can do. If I spot a really good idea (and I can't help but do so, since I'm incredibly in tune with what's best for the band) I just put it on the backburner until the person who originally suggested it has forgotten. Then I pull it back out and call it my own. That, my friend, will get the job done.

Anyway, some of the ideas I had about this band were incredibly good. The decision to play Devo's "Whip It", for instance. Everybody loves "Whip It", right? It's not really a hard song to play. So why wasn't anyone else in the tri-state area playing it? I'll tell you why...because none of those bands had a leader with such prescient vision as I.

Another song I chose for us, "Centerfold" (as made popular by the J Geils Band), proved to be a real crowd pleaser. They especially liked the part in the song where I produced a copy of Playboy, seemingly out of nowhere, and held it up in front of me so that the centerfold would fall out, and then sang the last verse, with a perfectly frightening sense of lechery, to the reigning Playmate of the Month (April, I believe it was, and the buxom blond with the air-brushed belly was representing the Hefner dynasty quite well, thank you) . It's hard enough to pull off such theatrics, and even more difficult having to do it while playing the bass guitar. I swear to God I don't know how the hell I did it. But I did, and they ate that shit up like sweet honey in the rock.

Then came the most controversial decision I ever made for the group. I let Jay "Funk Daddy" Hollen stand up on the stage, where he would pretend to play the synthesizer. Truth was he couldn't play hardly a note on any instrument at all. He had absolutely no musical talent whatsoever. But damn, did he look cool standing there in his New Wave get-up...he sure enough LOOKED as if he was playing. As far as I was concerned, that was enough. In those ground breaking days a band were given a great deal of serious attention if they were more than just a guitar-drums-bass trio. A synth was a basic requirement if you wanted to make some money simply because no one else had that sound. Of course, we didn't have that sound, either, but we DID have a guy in a suit doing a boney maroni dance behind a micro-Moog. Nobody said the synth player had to actually be PLAYING, right? Perhaps I'm not being fair. He did have an uncanny knack for sneaking in an odd quarter note here and there...but these were hit-and-miss shots-in-in-the-dark and he was just as prone to screwing up even that novice-level technique.At the risk of being redundant, I must comment once again on the absolute coolness of his fashion sense. He had a button pinned to his lapel which showed a photo of Joe Strummer with the words "THE CLASH" directly beneath. It was my button. I let him wear it because it worked so well with his dress jacket. Odds are he had absolutely no clue who the Clash were.

We didn't consider him and "official member" of the band. But he was in the mix with us on the day we played the Pep Rally. It took place at a school that was too small to have their own band...and they were fine with that, too, at least for now. They were about to be entertained by an ass-kicking rock band. New spread on their little grapevine that this band...gasp... actually had a synth player!!! We could not fail.

The show went well, for what it was. They might as well have been a captive audience. They loved everything we did, everything we said, the whole she-bang (especially when the Playboy was produced from out of nowhere). The boys were rockin' hard. The girls, however, were thinking of more than just "rockin' hard". There was a love light shining brightly in the eyes of practically every little chickadee in the house. To my surprise, few of them were trained on Funk Daddy, whose lack of musicianship had gone by unnoticed by practically everyone there, which left him to concentrate on trying to look cool. He failed miserably andI was actually blown away that all the sweeties were gazing at meME with their doe-eyed invitations to invade their clean-sheet beds and conquer their individual virgin worlds.

The choice was mine to make...I suppose that's one of the perks that come with being a natural born leader.

Now, normally I do not like cheerleaders. I can't stand their routines. I can't stand the snobbishness that characterizes so many of them. I can't stand the way they think it's so goddamned important. So much so that they neglect things that really matter. I abhor the way they think cheerleading must automatically bestow status and high regard upon their pretty heads, with chants and spells ejaculated from grotesque smiling mouths and the infinite variations of Jumping Jacks that they put their bodies through in an all too often vain attempt to get the crowd in the bleachers to yell along, the spirit of which enthusiasm believed to instill new found courage and skill in the young gladiators on the field. Each one knowing that the REAL reason they do it is more about bedding down those warriors. That's a m fanning the flames of spirit.

But most of all I just hated the way how, in the past, every single one of them wanted nothing to do with me. My luck was about to change...and maybe it was BECAUSE of this change in universal policy that I chose a fiery little sprite of a girl, one who just happened to be wearing a cheerleader's get-up, to enter into conversation with after our show was over.

Oh, man. She was really cute. After a modicum of words were exchanged and I'd become convinced that she was nominally capable of speaking the language, my suspicion was confirmed: this little girl wanted to know me better. She wanted to know all about my dreams. She wanted to get the chance to understand my hopes and my ambitions. She wanted to know where I came from and where I was going. Was there a place in my life for one such as her? Most of all, she wanted to know what my cock felt like in her hand. Probably a few other things, but, sordid as it may sound, this was first and foremost on her mind.

From the moment I read her mind and ascertained her intentions I decided I would go to the game later that night and to the homecoming dance that followed. I told the guys in the band what was going down. I begged them to come with me. They all declined. Chickened out is a better way to describe the way they seemed almost afraid of any potential consequences that could arise from the aftermath of what I had in mind. I looked at them with disbelief and they returned a gaze of scorn and disgust (they knew I was married, so maybe that explains that). Fuck 'em, then. Right? It's as if they were starving and someone gave them a cornucopia of food...and they refuse to eat it. Idiots. Why not?

When the time had come I slipped into my tight blue jeans and pulled on my black Talking Heads long sleeve t-shirt (it was a little nippy). If anyone at that little school doubted the breadth and scope of my hipness, they would have to concede, when they took one look at my "The Name of the Band is Talking Heads" tour shirt, that I was one cool, smooth motherfucker, that's for sure.

The trip to the game was uneventful, unless you count the huge, ever-growing erection that pressed my ying/yang against the tightness of the jeans I was wearing. The myriad possibilities which presented themselves in the situation had kicked me into a state of arousal I had not experienced since first seeing Linda Blair in "Born Innocent". It was a very real concern of mine that the "moment" would occur before I arrived at my destination. So I cleared my mind of the erotic fantasies I'd been entertaining and fixed my thoughts on Nancy Reagan. When this only seemed to further the intensity of my excitement I tried very hard to meditate on the mental image of Madonna (not the performer...the Mother of God). That seemed to work, so I put 'er in overdrive and motivated towards the football field.

I tried not to betray the negative feelings I harbor for cheerleaders in general as I watched her trying really hard to get the apathetic crowd to display just a thimble-full of school spirit. It was easy to conceal the awful notions that kept playing themselves out in my mind, when I noticed that she had her eye on me almost the whole time. When a break came she would climb up the bleachers to sit by me. I didn't have to say anything. I was already in the door.

The game wound down and the home teal lost. Yet, even in the midst of sorrow and disappointment, there were many, many players (and other students) who came up to me and praised my band's performance. Some worshiped me because of the leader I am. Others were jealous that I had a fine looking cheerleader on my arm. Not a single one knew that I was a married man. Some secrets, I learned, are best kept in the closet with all the other skeletons dancing around in there.

All the kids who had been at the pep rally were asking me, "Are you coming to the dance?" To which my response was a leering glance at "cheerleader babe", followed by a lecherous,"knowing look", a wicked smile and a smirk that let them know that I had a plan. Apparently that approved, even the ones who were hot for this particular cheerleader I was in the process of seducing.

"Hell yeah!" they said. "We should have known! ...oh, by the way, did any of the other band members come up with you?"

"No", I replied. "Just me. Those killjoys turned out to be rat bastards."

"That's too bad," said a stocky 17 year old who had been staring at hottie chearleader. "That synthesizer player you've got is ace."

See what I mean?

I danced with my cheer leading sprite on almost every song. Popular boys would step up to us and ask to cut in. She looked offended . She's very sternly say "No!" In nursed some sincere compassion for the poor young 'un, knowing how difficult it must have been to muster up enough courage to ask... Indeed I did feel sorry for him...still I told him to fuck off and die. I didn't have time for that bullshit. I wanted to get what I came for and get the hell out of Dodge.

My expectations for this night were really not all too unrealistic. I wanted to get a good feel of this gal before making the decision whether or not I'd give her the dynamite. It very well could be a week or two before that decision would be made, because there were just too many angles, too many aspects, too many possibilities. On the other hand there were too many things that could have gone wrong. So it was not without caution that I approached this initial session.

Everything turned out for the best, though. I became even more convinced that she was an apple not quite ripe enough to bite into. It wouldn't be long until her need would blossom into a wild weed, but, alas, not on that particular evening.

We drove around town for a moment or two in my sweet Chevy Nova . It had a sweet Pioneer stereo with graphic equalizer and JBL speakers pumping Duran Duran. I'd just bought "Rio" a week before and it was fast becoming a favorite (which says a lot about how dismal the state of my musical taste had become in those days). Cheerleader liked it a lot, too. Even if she didn't, she'd still say she did. And she'd never forget each melody, each strain of music, each lame lyric. It was the soundtrack to a very special night in her life. I could tell that, even though I planned on taking it slow, she was hoping and praying to get her hymen busted by a rock star in an unusually rough and tumble manner, and she was too impatient to consider the logic in waiting. She knew I was the closest thing to a "rock star" that she would ever have, so it's understandable that she would get worked up over it. Her virginity was definitely on the line. She was ready to present it to me like a gift wrapped present beneath the Xmas tree. Free of charge. No red tape. No hassles or commitments...the only thing she expected in return for this treasure was permission to spread the news to everyone in that small one horse gossip-fueled town she was born and raised in.

Unfortunately that request backfired when her father finally heard the news (I can assure you that it didn't take long for him to break her into spilling the beans.)

I think I've already mentioned how we drove around for a minute or two. That was plenty of time to see what the town had to offer. Plenty of time to SEE THE TOWN 2 or 3 times. So we parked in front of an old gas station that had been closed down for ages. It was nice and dark. The only light visible was from the stereo, which I'd left on in hopes that we'd still be pitching woo by the time "Hungry Like The Wolf" came around.

As it turned out, we wound up hearing "Hungry Like The Wolf" a couple of times. In the cramped confines of my automobile I managed to get a good idea of her bra size and she found out the answer to her question about how my penis would feel in her grasp. She seemed to like it. At least she did when she could actually hold it all in her hand. If there's anything bigger than my ego, it's my ju-ju.

Best I ever had, she was, and too fuckin' gorgeous. Too cute for words. Now that I think back on it, she was also too young to be daydreaming about a man of my age. As the night darkened she asked me to take her home. She showed me how to get there, all the while snuggling up against my side, her angel's face illuminated by the dashboard light's glow, a glistening gleaming spider web thread of saliva dripping from her lips to my shoulder.

After it was all over, said and done, I began to feel increasingly guilty as the days went by. It was so hard to lie to my wife. I knew I wouldn't be able to keep it up for long. I also kind of figured she wouldn't mind so much, what with all our epic love-making storytelling.

I did wind up confessing. I told her everything I thought was necessary to tell her. I felt like shit. I was glad to get it off my chest, even though it hadn't been there long enough to really matter. She was a little pissed, I remember. I slept on the couch for a few nights...that's fairly typical punishment for a transaction so relatively minor. I told her, trying to mount what was to be a desperate and hopeless defense, "I didn't fuck her, okay? So what if I'd hoped to? So what if I WOULD HAVE eventually, assuming that she do something about her cottonmouth, which was dry as the tundra and didn't help her kissing technique? But I DIDN'T. We didn't even take out clothes off. That's what counts, isn't it?"

She told me not to see, to use her words, "that little cheerleadin' firecracker" anymore. Actually I think her words were more like, "If I even catch you THINKING about that slut I'll take everything you own and leave you! I'll drag you so far down a pit of misery that you'll wish you had never been born". I didn't think she would ever really do that, though it must be said that this assumption was proven wrong only a couple of years later.

My interest in the dry mouthed cheerleader was PERMANENTLY curtailed a few days later when I got a phone call from her father. I don't know how he got the phone number of the place where I was staying. I don't know how much he knew about what went down. Most importantly, I didn't know how serious he was about confronting me with a shotgun if ever there came a time he found out I was within shooting distance of his daughter. But that's exactly what he said he was gonna do if I ever even looked at his pretty daughter again. At first I thought he may have been angry because she had become a hardcore Duran Duran fan in the days since our rendezvous(for which I felt a considerable amount of guilt for). I was a little slow on the uptake at that point, but looking back I would probably rightly assume that her dad was infinitely more concerned with his daughter's virginity than she was (definitely more so than I was). He spoke with such authority that I had no choice but to take him seriously. Not only that he was pissed, not only that he had a shotgun, but, more importantly, that he would, without a second thought, use it.

I never told my wife about that phone call. No doubt she thought that it was her ultimatum that was successfully responsible for putting an end to the affair. It was not. She may well have been worth breaking up a marriage, but she was definitely NOT worth taking a bullet in the gut for.

...and I did.

2010-01-28T08:17:00.000-08:00

I hear…I will…I do not understand, if you are speaking through me won’t you please make your presence known. If not, kindly show me to the door. Jolly rancher, jolly Rodger…Every rose has it’s burden, a shifting stone takes in all it has coming. A stitch to throw in a ditch saves just three under a dozen. Come in and care. Come in and make yourself at home. Come in here and cough up a phlegm-ball. Rest your weary head on my tombstone.

There’s a reason for all the things I do. Do you want to know what it is? One thing, and ONLY one thing: Pepto-Bismol. Shit gets things done. That’s my excuse, pardon me, sir, if you don’t get it, you won’t get it you won’t NEVER git it down in yer soul where it needs to be.

Never so young as you were that day. What a show. What a show. Pretty maids all in a row, fit to a one with tight trusses emblazoned. BUTNER BUTNER BUTNER! Three cheers for Butner. One big long cheer with corresponding slutty dirty dancing routine thrown in for free. From your friends in Butner.

They ate that right up. Didn’t even have to spoon feed ‘em. They’z musta bin reeeel hungery. Sure thought mine was special.

And it was.

Take my pick, that’s the schtick. Maybe the doll in the unwashed dreadlocks? Maybe the gal with the go-hero pout. Maybe the one with the sad dropping eyelids? Maybe the bitch with the genital itch. Maybe the whore with the venereal sore. Maybe the slut with the cellulite butt.

Or maybe the tiny, mousy mouse of a sprite, never had love look in her eye, that stuff only makes a man wonder why. Her shorn short and shut out the lights or you will never see that incredible aura and glow she dwells in like a bubble. She’s the one to choose. She’s the one, you can’t lose, you’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain, how can I make it more plain? You’re gonna get wet if it rains and I haven’t got time for the pain, Strange Woman. MY woman.

Make some plans for a one night stand I’m a dope smoking’ man and I sure get around and my life revolves around Strange Strange Women. Strange customs. Strange habits. Strange ideas of just exactly how incredibly Strange they actually are. I’ve got mine, now you go get yours. We’re hookin’ up at the dance.

Dilly dance, dance of the week, American Bandstand dance and you didn’t like the words but it’s got a good beat so you give it an 85. You could dance to it.

Such was my hope. Twas to be my destiny, if luck stayed tucked in my pocket I was fittin’ to be gittin’ my share o’ what I got comin’…

…and I did.

Poison

2010-01-28T08:16:00.000-08:00

Hangin' w/ Dylan. He's Tothero to my Rabbit. Introduces me to beautiful woman. I'm in underwear, apologetic. She is flirtatious. We're listening to Dylan songs on stereo and I hear one I like a lot and say, "Hey, Bob, I like this one, what album is it on?" He mumbles, "I dunno" and we all laugh. Guy comes in, annoys me, kind of a male Margaret to my Rabbit. He suggests we all go outside to the pool. I don't want to, even though "Ruth" makes like she's going to get up, like the idea sounds good to her. I say, "I don't have a swimsuit" and she changes her mind, wants to stay with me, and at this point I know. She's all mine. She snuggles next to me and asks, "What is poison to you?" I say "WAKING UP IN THE MORNING KNOWING THAT I'M NOT THE SAME PERSON I WAS WHEN I WENT TO SLEEP THE NIGHT BEFORE."

Rivers

2010-01-28T08:15:00.000-08:00

I know the sound is beautiful - I've heard it before... What happened? Filtered and amplified beyond tolerance, it is stripped to annoyance. I'd like to unzip the horizon and step through to whatever's on the other side. Even an abyss of pitch darkness to float in for awhile would be better than what I've come to. Maybe the seams of my soul have been blunted. To gaze into the past only adds more guilt from a reservoir overflowing into rivers. I do not fear the future, but I expect no favors from it, either. More often than not, the moment of now, meant to be glorious, is shrouded in the vestments of despair, anxiety, mocking, cul-de-sac unsure which way to turn, believing nothing better 'round the bend but even if.......

My Mother's Coat

2010-01-28T08:13:00.000-08:00

It's been just a little over 30 years almost to the day since my mother walked away and left my dad (and, consequentially, me and my brother as well). I remember three scenes from that day as vividly as I see what's in front of me now.

I never found out the real reason she left. She and my dad told contradicting stories about "WHY". But they fought like cats and dogs for a long time before it happened. He'd holler at her from one room and she'd fire back from another across the hallway.To this day I have no recollection of what the arguments were about (I was 16 years old at the time.)

Inevitably dad would try to drag me or my brother into the fight to confirm and/or prove some point he was trying to make to her. This made mom even angrier and the row would expand to include how she thought it was so despicable for him to do that (of course, she was right about that)..

All of which leads up to the first solid memory.

I was driving my dad's pick-up truck around town. I don't remember if I'd left as the result of another fight, but it is possible. I did leave sometimes when they got into it.

I came home. When I walked through the door I saw, in the living room, my family huddled up, almost like a football team between plays, on the couch. I had no idea what was going on. But it looked a lot like my dad was on his knees begging for something.

Maybe they were simply hugging each other. I think, now, that was probably the case, because I vaguely remember dad calling for me to join them. And I refused. I had come to the point long before where I felt like the only logical thing for them to do was get a divorce. Of course, I didn't know, at the time, how that would break my dad. I was only thinking it would be best for all if the fighting stopped. It seemed as if a seperation would be the only way.

I turned around, pissed off, got back in the truck, and drove through town again. I was gone for about thirty minutes.

When I finally cooled down enough to come home I saw what became the second indelible memory.

About a hundred yards down the road from our house I saw her. Walking eastbound, down the road. She didn't have any particular expression on her face. It was a cold December afternoon and she was wearing her coat - I only bring that up because I remember exactly what it looked like, but couldn't describe it now, even if I tried.

I knew what she was doing. I even thought I knew where she was going. She was headed to a restaurant where she worked, a couple of miles down the road. She had become friends with the manager, who, I'm sure, played a role in the whole mess.

She was on the left side of the road. I couldn't even tell you the expression on her face because I don't think she looked up at me. She didn't seem to be too tore up about it.

I'm kind of ashamed to say it, but not only did I NOT stop for her, I actually thought "it's about time" when I drove past. You have to understand that I only wanted what I thought was best for BOTH of them. I could have handled an amicable divorce and living in a single parent household. But, then, I had no idea that this afternoon would eventually lead to my father's nervous breakdown. Hell, I didn't even know what a "nervous breakdown" was at the time...no trips to the hospital, we wouldn't have thought it was the thing to do.

I drove right past her. Though I honestly felt it was for the best, I still became intensely angry. Even more so when I got home and walked in the door, only to see my dad on his knees, in the same place I'd left him earlier. He was bawling like a baby. Never - NEVER had I seen my father cry, and this made me even madder that I already was.

I returned to the truck, slamming the door, and drove to the restaurant where I knew she would be.

And this is the third memory - even though some of it is a bit hazy.

The restaurant was called "the 99'er" and the afore mentioned manager was a buxom, unattractive woman everyone called Red Top. Her nickname was derived from her red hair, which was, indeed, as red as a tomato. I worked there for awhile myself and I always HATED having to call her "Red Top". I thought it was one of the stupidest nicknames ever thought of...but I don't think anyone knew what her real name was.

As I mentioned earlier, Red Top had befriended my mother some time prior to all of this. No doubt my mom confided in her and shared a lot of her issues with the obnoxious woman. I'm positive she was the one whose advice was the catalyst for the separation.

Anyway, I broke the speed laws a couple of times getting to the 99'er. I busted through the double-glass doors and demanded to see my mother. Red Top was there, but I guess mom had sequestered herself in another room, not wanting to deal with me just then. I KNEW she was there. I could read it in Red Top's eyes and facial expressions and the way she kind of tried to reason with me (because I was just about as angry then as I ever had been in my life).

I stayed for a couple of minutes, exchanging heated words with the interloper. When I left I slammed the doors so hard I thought they would break from their hinges. But not before yelling, loud enough for anyone who might have been there to hear:

"YOU TELL HER I SAID SHE CAN GO TO HELL!"

Actually I don't remember the EXACT words I used.There may have been a few more. But I'm pretty sure I did say that.

I tore out of that parking lot, wheels kicking up gravel, and everything was a blur untli later that evening at church youth choir rehearsal. I won't go into what happened there...not that it's anything to be secretive about. I just want to wrap up this part of my story).

So...this bit of reminiscing is brought on by a dream I had last night. It was a VERY vivid dream and the emotions I felt within it were palpable.

My dad was not in the dream, although he must have been alive. I didn't know where he was, though.

It was just me and my brother, and somehow we found out that mom was leaving again. Apparently my parents had reconciled at some point since all the bad stuff went down. Now, for whatever reason, she was going away, just like she'd done 3 decades ago.

I was livid...even madder than when left, in the real world, when I was just a kid . I was pissed off at her because her leaving meant that I would have to go through the same hell I went through with my father in the months after she moved on the first time.

I suppose I should say something about that.

My dad, rest his soul, was totally wrecked. He would cry and wail. He would beg for me to go to OKC to try and talk her into coming back. For some reason he was convinced that I could persuade her to return. Most of the time I tried to get him to see how futile that would be. I tried to tell him it could not be done. Not by me or anyone else. So I had to say "no". Inevitably a fight would break out and he would come to the conclusion that, since I refused to talk to her, I must not love him, or care about him. Or that I just didn't want her to came back. Truth be told, I wasn't sure WHAT I wanted by this time.

He would keep saying, "My nerves are shot - my nerves are shot" - and at the time, as young as I was, I had no idea what he meant. Once he got so frustrated that he punched a hole in the wall with his bare fist.

It was one of, if not THE worst stretch of time in my life. I'm not looking for sympathy, though. I'm ashamed to say that I exploited the situation a time or two for my own gain.

At some point he pulled back together. I think he always loved my mother, evem till the day he died, with an ex and another wife in the picture between '77 and '99 (both of whom would be entertaining fodder for a novel, though for different reasons). I really think he would have given it all up if only she were to come back to him. But I don't know...Hard to say. People do change.

At any rate...let us return to the dream.

We had just found out mom was leaving dad for the second time. I'm incensed at the thought of this happening. Mixed with the anger are other emotions equally as strong. Sadness for what my dad would go through again. Fear of how I'd have to babysit him one more time. Resentment that she would put me in that position. Hatred for her and sympathy for my father. What would this do to him? Would he be able to make it through this time?

After a little while a pick-up truck pulled up with my mother and three black guys in the cab. I'm not sure what the significance of her companions' race could be.

I don't remember what led up to it, but at some point I wound up standing in the bed of the truck, looking through the window at the back of her head, and I screamed at her, with all the force and conviction of truth:

"I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU!"

I raised the middle finger of my right hand and pointed it at her. I don't know why...her back was still turned away from me. If she had turned around she would have been terrified by the look of sheer loathing on my face.

But then, instantaneously we were standing, facing each other in the bed of the truck. For some reason I still couldn't see her face. In fact, I don't think I actually saw it at all during the course of the entire dream.

We hugged.

It was so strange... the only thing I noticed was the skin on her shoulder, with it's tiny birthmarks scattered about like stars in the sky.

And finally, just as suddenly, everything switched and I was standing in a dark room full of producers and engineers sitting in front of sound boards and video monitors. It dawned on me that everything that had come before in this dream was "only" a movie in the process of being made.

I didn't want to believe it. I COULDN'T believe it. But the next thing I knew I was watching another film they had made. A space shuttle launch is all I remember of it, and that was when I woke up.

I know this dream "means" something. I'm not one who puts a lot of stock in stuff like "dream interpretation" - so much of it is obviously bogus...but this one seemed to be a harbinger. Of good or bad, I don't know. Likely the latter, I'm afraid.

Still, I don't want to contemplate it or try to suss it out. I'm afraid of what I might find. I only wrote it down because it seemed like the kind of dream I'd need to remember someday. If I hadn't written it out it would be gone by this afternoon. I don't want to forget it. You know how it is..."write 'em down as soon as you wake up"...I never do that, even though I have some awesome dreams.

But this time...

Confession/Resolution

2010-01-28T08:11:00.000-08:00

I have a confession I’d like to make.

I never stopped smoking weed.

I didn’t even TRY all that hard.

I was doing the whole “Christianity thing” at the time and I felt like I SHOULD stop. I TRIED. But the lure of a good trip was too much for this old man to resist. After all, I had been a stoner for almost 20 years---which I realize is not all that long for a 47 year old man. I mean, I didn’t start until I was thirty years old, and most smokers I know began toking it up by the time they were in their teens.

So I started doing it again. Sometimes I would try to justify it and reconcile it with my “faith”. Other times I just resigned myself to “doing it even though I know it’s wrong”, figuring I’d be forgiven anyway. Kind of like a lot of Christians do with tobacco. And then there were times when I’d just say “fuck it, I like it, and I’m gonna do it.”

As time went by I grew further and further away from Christianity as a religion. Consequently I felt less guilt over my penchant for getting good and stoned.

But, in my defense to those who would judge me for smoking the demon reefer, my consumption did drop significantly. I went from being an EVERYDAY pothead to a pothead who only bought a sack every two or three weeks. I’d blaze through a quarter in three of four days and then I wouldn’t even want to THINK about doing it again. A few times I even thought about quitting. I’d say to myself, “If I could only focus on the really shitty things that come along with the overall experience I would be better able to lay it down for good.” Which, IMO, is very sound advice.

It would seem, however, that when the crappy aspects are put on the scales with everything I like about pot, they tip to the side of the good stuff every single time.

So you get the picture.

I was just fine with that. I admit I lied about it a few times when asked if I was still smoking pot. I liked to think in terms of relativity---after all, there is quite a gulf to bridge between the fortnightly dabble and the “wake and bake”. I might as well say I didn’t smoke at all.

I had no intentions of quitting---at least that was the case until a few months back.

It must be noted that it had been SEVERAL years since I thought my tolerance level would EVER be brought down to the point where I truly enjoyed marijuana like I did, say, 5 or 6 years ago. That, combined with the mood stabilizing elements of the medication I take, had me convinced that the “good old days: of getting REALLY fucked up were long gone history. Ha ha! Even now it seems absurd to think that a person would be able to maintain a good weed experience when the THC has to battle mood stabilizers that are already entrenched in the blood. Still, when you only smoke every two weeks the down time weakens the tolerance level so you can hope for at least one good night under the influence. Maybe two, if the dope is potent enough. Otherwise the rest of the baggie is wasted, and I’m not the kind who can just stash away any left-overs for the next time I’m ready. If I’ve got it, I WILL smoke it. That has been my policy and a rule that I have never been able to break.

Anyway, on the afore mentioned occasion I was with some guys---two good friends I’d known for a long time, and one guy who I had never met previously, but who seemed like a decent feller. We were to have a cook-out that evening and were on the way to Sam’s Club to buy some steaks when JF whipped out some bud and a pipe. JF has been know to sell a little bit now and then, but I’ve rarely bought from him because he never has anything but the real high dollar, ass-kickin’ weed. He’s good about sharing, though.

On this particular occasion I had no idea of just HOW ass-kickin’ his stuff was. I should have only taken one toke. Hell, a little half-sized toke would have served me well. It would have been more than enough. But the ol’ “smoke it if you got it” mentality kicked in. So I ripped off two monster hits.

If I had only known…

We walked into that huge store/warehouse and the next thing you know I’m giggling like a fool. I looked over to my companion, the one I didn’t know, and I could tell, by the expression on his face and in his eyes, that he was “stoned to the bone”. He saw me looking at him and at that moment a bond of friendship was forged.

I was in awe at the sheer immensity of Sam’s Club, with it’s countless crates of goods stacked almost to the ceiling. I sauntered over to the meat section where my other friends were picking out steaks for the upcoming BBQ. I can’t explain it, but I got the strangest, creepiest feeling looking at all the different kinds of meat. I wondered how many different animals made up the selection. I noticed the colors, the shapes, the sizes, everything about them. For some reason it really disturbed me, so I left that department and walked down one of the frozen food aisles.

I don’t know what triggered it, but all of a sudden I became convinced that I was going to die right then and there. All I could think of was that I was so far away from my wife and son. It saddened me to think of how they would take the news of my passing. The feeling was so strong that I feared I would crumble to my knees, that my friends would have to take me to the hospital or something. I wondered how they would react to the situation.

In the back of my mind, though, through all of this, I kept telling myself, “Calm down, relax. You’re just really high and you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be this intoxicated. Just ride it out. Remember, it’s supposed to be fun. Ride it out, you’ve been here before and done this many, many times---it will all turn out just fine.”

Once I saw the logic in this thinking I was able to chill out and the premonition of dying passed. I settled into a state of mind where I was inordinately interested in the other people shopping in the store. I’d take note of the food items they were putting in their carts. I’d watch them rolling from aisle to aisle and I realized that there was one common denominator among them all: they were ALIVE, living, and the engine of their existence was SPIRIT. ONE spirit. And so I felt a kinship with them because of this. It was simply fascinating to watch them, and that’s when I knew the hurdle had been crossed and I was in the initial stages of what promised to be a very good marijuana experience. (I realize that some or this may seem a bit strange, but so it goes in the wild and wonderful world of cannabis)

The night eventually turned out to be a very good one. The best moments occurred when I lay down at the end of the night, on the verge of passing out, and got lost in auditory hallucinations that reminded me of why I became a stoner in the first place.

Still, that whole “dying” thing had me thinking about quitting. Even though the rest of the night was great, you have to understand just how unnerving it was to be certain of my imminent demise.

Not long afterwards I was able to purchase another sack of the really good stuff. The expensive kind. Sure enough I had another experience in which I thought I was gonna die. It was like, I thought, “Everybody dies sometime and none of them know exactly when it is going to happen…How do I know this isn’t my time? Within the next few seconds, even?” And the paranoia kicked in, magnifying and multiplying the fear. I had to really try hard to occupy my mind with something else so I wouldn’t think about it. That wasn’t not easy, because most everything else was all out of whack, too.

I made it through that episode without losing my mind. Maybe it was the old cartoons I watched, with the sound turned down, that saved me? Or perhaps I broke through to a safe place by watching “Koyaanisqatsi”. Those are pretty much the only memories I have of that night, other than doing the “feel-like-I’m-fixin’-to-die rag”.

A couple of months went by after that without anything bad happening. Probably because the pot I was getting did not have the same incredible potency as the shit that messed with my head.

But the last few times I’ve smoked were incredibly intense experiences. In many ways even more frightening than the premonitions of death I had. I don’t really want to go into detail in describing those occasions or WHY they were more unnerving than those in the past. Suffice to say that I finally came to the realization that it would be best if I made a New Year’s resolution for the turn of the decade to get serious about quitting. I figure it shouldn’t be all that hard if I just call to mind the memory of how terrifying the last couple of trips were. If I could do that I should have no trouble leaving it behind.

I say that---I know it’s true---I feel like I can do it---and yet I still plan on buying and toking up one more quarter ounce before the year is over. Hasn’t come through as quickly as it usually does, so the weed I’d hoped to consume on Christmas day---which was supposed to be my last---still has not arrived. I don’t have any reason to believe that it WON’T come through, but since the order has already been placed I have no intention of cancelling it. If I get it in the next couple of days I will have it smoked up before New Year’s Day and can start afresh on the first of the year. BUT, if it doesn’t arrive in time I will just have to say, “Oh, well. This is my last satchel”, and enjoy it even if it stretches into the early days of the next decade. Then I’ll stop buying. Then I’ll stop smoking (the first resolution will be a lot easier than the second, but we’ll see. I won’t beat myself up for fudging on the second every now and again).

I know. I know. Why don’t I just nip it in the bud (pardon the pun) right now and don’t mess around with that last bag? Especially knowing what it’s capable of doing---the negatives, I mean, as opposed to the positive effects (which, regardless, always seem to overshadow the bad shit).

I can’t answer that. I imagine it’s like how a tobacco user wants to have “that last cigarette”.

So, if you’re reading this, whether you know me in person or not, won’t you please send out some good thoughts and positive vibrations of encouragement? I don’t think I’ll need them, but hey, I’ll take what I can get.

To anyone who I have deceived, insomuch as not admitting that I have smoked pot during the last few years (and that list, I assure you, is a small one), I’m sorry. I never want to “lie”. If I have done so it was because I didn’t want people I care about to think lowly of me. But I suppose that, in the long run and in most cases, I should not care what anyone thinks anyway. It’s my life, isn’t that what they say?

I’m not ragging on weed in general. Far from it. I’ve had a lot of good experiences while under the influence. I’ve learned a lot about myself and have been shown a whole different way of looking at things that I might never have known had I not tried marijuana. I firmly believe that it should be legalized. It’s not for everyone and not everyone should use it. But for those who enjoy it, can handle it without becoming slackers, it should be readily available.

My reasons for quitting have nothing to do with it’s being legal. I don’t know how strong my resolution would be, however, if it WERE legalized. My issues with it don’t have much to do anymore with how easy or hard it is to procure. But, that said, the temptation could well break me down. Especially in light of how I’ve championed legalization for the last 20 years. You know, “IT’S FINALLY LEGAL!!! This is what I’ve waited for! Let’s go to 7-11 and buy a pack of hoglegs!”

I don’t think I’ll have to worry about that any time soon, though. Do you?

So…My New Year’s resolution is…