Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Monday, May 30, 2005
I don’t belong here
To understand the writer, you must become the writer and I don’t mean turning into someone that just willy nilly drops words down on a page, dons a smoking jacket and yaks about Joyce in a fake Cockney accent. Those aren’t writers, they are actors; the cocksuckers that think it’s romantic to be on the outside looking in. The ones that want to think their words matter in a world that imbibes the inane like some sort of orgasmic elixir. The writer knows that his words don’t matter that every day is a hellish struggle to get people to notice, to prove to himself and others that his life isn’t a huge fucking waste, that when he looks up through the grating and watches everyone above walking passed that the small guttural cries that are emitted by his words are worthy of just one of those passersby looking down even if in the end it was only to spit.
To be born with the soul of a writer is to be born flawed, to suffer a paper version of hell with REJECTION stamped in big red letters all over it. To realize that in all likelihood life will pass you the fuck by and you will give your best years to the bottle or whatever vice steers you clear of the edge. Just one step too close and your footing gives and before you know it you are lying on top of Hemingway and Poe and Thompson, their pens sticking through your vitals, their ink mixing with the last of your blood.
The writer searches for love through his words and this is of course foolish but inevitable in his evolution. No one will love him for his words; this much the writer will find to be true. The contrary is so. They will poke him with sharp sticks through the bars and jeer and brand him an outsider with a hot coat hanger and then they will drift away. At first relief will wash over the writer but then he will realize with no one to read his words that he doesn’t exist; only his empty cage will remain.
Perhaps there is one saving grace for the writer but I hesitate to mention it for it is an unlikely scenario and hope should not be spent entirely on it. I speak of a muse; a woman with LOVE tattoed on the small of her back. Between her long red flint nails she will hold the key that unlocks the desolate cage in which he exists but it is a sketchy proposition to trust all hope on one person, for after all you, the writer, are made of words and words are highly flammable and with one click of her flint red nails you will go up in flames and burn burn burn. .
Writers are all lost but we know exactly where we’re going. From the moment we are born we are all on the fast track to dying but for those that search for the words to explain this downwardly spiraling journey there is much more to life even if, in the end, it is all in our minds. I am running. I am tripping. Watch me fall…
To be born with the soul of a writer is to be born flawed, to suffer a paper version of hell with REJECTION stamped in big red letters all over it. To realize that in all likelihood life will pass you the fuck by and you will give your best years to the bottle or whatever vice steers you clear of the edge. Just one step too close and your footing gives and before you know it you are lying on top of Hemingway and Poe and Thompson, their pens sticking through your vitals, their ink mixing with the last of your blood.
The writer searches for love through his words and this is of course foolish but inevitable in his evolution. No one will love him for his words; this much the writer will find to be true. The contrary is so. They will poke him with sharp sticks through the bars and jeer and brand him an outsider with a hot coat hanger and then they will drift away. At first relief will wash over the writer but then he will realize with no one to read his words that he doesn’t exist; only his empty cage will remain.
Perhaps there is one saving grace for the writer but I hesitate to mention it for it is an unlikely scenario and hope should not be spent entirely on it. I speak of a muse; a woman with LOVE tattoed on the small of her back. Between her long red flint nails she will hold the key that unlocks the desolate cage in which he exists but it is a sketchy proposition to trust all hope on one person, for after all you, the writer, are made of words and words are highly flammable and with one click of her flint red nails you will go up in flames and burn burn burn. .
Writers are all lost but we know exactly where we’re going. From the moment we are born we are all on the fast track to dying but for those that search for the words to explain this downwardly spiraling journey there is much more to life even if, in the end, it is all in our minds. I am running. I am tripping. Watch me fall…
Friday, May 27, 2005
FDA Probes Reports of Blindness With Impotence Drugs
Most Incidents Involve Viagra; Some Reported With Cialis
Evidently beating off won't make you go blind but taking these little blue beauties just might. What do you think? Is it worth it? Yeah, it probably is...read it here: VIAGRA
Most Incidents Involve Viagra; Some Reported With Cialis
Evidently beating off won't make you go blind but taking these little blue beauties just might. What do you think? Is it worth it? Yeah, it probably is...read it here: VIAGRA
Thursday, May 26, 2005
Gargoyle Eyes
You stood me up; leaning against the wall outside your front door like a garden rake with a barbed wire bouquet digging into my bleeding palm. You looked through the peep hole with your gargoyle eyes once at midnight to see if I was still propped properly, wanting me to fold up my soul like a lawn chair, tuck my paper thin heart in my billfold like a losing lottery ticket and make for the horizon where the stars in their yellow nighttime underpants where licking the foam off the Guinness sky. I’m here. I’m still here, I cried but still you didn’t come and so I left. And you know as I drive along this highway and look through the hole rusted in the floor of my Oldsmobile I see your gargoyle eyes staring up at me. I think about reaching down, risking my digits to touch your stone cold stare but suddenly the reason I’d lost floats up in my cup of coffee and I drink it in. Bitch, I say and pour the rest of my coffee down the rusted out hole. I look in the rearview mirror as your stare rises up into the steam cloud that forms in the cold blue morning sky over the lonely highway. I drive all day and all the next night not for any reason other than I want to get away from you. I ain’t ever coming back gargoyle eyes. You only get to stand me up once. Sweet stony dreams my love.
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
See Ya
You of course do understand why I shut the door, barred it with a railroad tie, propped a Buick up against it, and stacked cases of TNT at the base. Is it really that hard to figure out? No, I won’t be lying on the other side. I’m not your doormat. I know you’ll be lying on your side; it of course is your nature. There will be moments of doubt as I’m cruising down that highway mad on animal tranquilizers and lust. I will look in the rearview mirror and claw at the vinyl, I will ooze down between the seats and come up with a rattlesnake in my teeth but I ain’t ever coming back to open that door. So babe, the last time, was really the last time. Stick your tongue in the keyhole I dropped some acid in there, that’s the last trip you’ll take on my dime…
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Censorship Anyone?
If you want to raise my ire just start talking censorship. The Republicans claim to be the party that wants less government in peoples’ lives. Funny their actions don’t jive with this but that’s their line and the people that vote for them and believe this should be ashamed of themselves for not keeping up with the GOP’s current political agenda.
When the Republicans talk about having less government in people’s lives what they are talking about is less control over corporations so they can run amuck and make money at your expense. They also want less taxes (framed as less government control) not because they want you to have money but so this taxed money is not spent on social programs and other government expenses. They want you to keep this tax money so you spend it on the stock market. Which is exactly why the want to end Social Security so that people invest the money taken out of their checks now into the stock market. They don’t care if you’re on the street in old age begging. They’re God is the dollar. Granted a number of social programs could be run more efficiently but scraping them and giving the money away to Wall Street isn’t going to help the average disadvantaged citizen.
The Republicans do however want government in our lives when it comes to matters of personal freedoms. They want to tell you what you can watch on television, what you can do with your body, what you can say (ala controlling the media) and even control things as ridiculous as cheerleading (which they did in Texas) because the cheers were morally objectionable to a fringe bunch of religious zealots. Aren’t there more important things to worry about? Such as the depletion of the ozone layer? Oh, I forgot the official stance of the U.S. Government at this time is that there is no global warming problem.
So let’s get back to the censorship now that we’ve covered what the Republican agenda at least in a great part is. In Jeffrey McMurray’s article: Congressman Slams Bill Maher Over Army Remark he states that Bill Maher said on his show: "More people joined the Michael Jackson fan club. We've done picked all the low-lying Lynndie England fruit, and now we need warm bodies." He was talking about how the Army recently missed its recruiting goals by 42%.
Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala saw a tape of the show and responded to this Bill Maher’s comment: "I think it borders on treason," Bachus said. "In treason, one definition is to undermine the effort or national security of our country.” And he further stated that: "I don't want (Maher) prosecuted," Bachus said. "I want him off the air."
Anyone that knows anything about Bill Maher knows he is a comedian and that comedians exaggerate the truth; they use satire to make us laugh. Did Bill Maher really mean that all people in the military are stupid? You’d have to be stupid to believe that. He was pointing out that the Army is dipping below there own standards for recruitment because no one wants to join because our government has involved itself in “preemptive” wars. Joining the National Guard no longer just means going to the local base and doing drills on the weekends, it means that you will most likely be put in harms way. Risking your life doesn't seem worth the college tuition anymore does it? You can’t go to college if you’re dead!
And you’d have to be stupid to believe that there isn’t more of a motive behind Bachus’s comment than merely sticking up for the troops. They don’t care about the troops. If they did they wouldn’t have started the war in Iraq were hundreds of them have died needlessly.
No, what the Republicans want is to silence the opposition. If Bachus really thought Bill Maher was being treasonous, which I might add is a preposterous claim, then he would try to prosecute him but he doesn’t want that does he? What he wants is to take Bill Maher “off the air.” This is the Republican agenda. They don’t want free speech unless it goes along with their agenda which, in large part is to further line the pockets of the extremely wealthy.
So speak out. Don’t sit back as these radicals take more and more of your rights away. I like that fact that I can turn on HBO and hear different opinions and see naked women in movies. I think I can run my life better than the government can and I resent them trying to push their phony morals on me. So if you want less government in your lives than you won’t support radicals like this kook Bachus from Alabama. Put the lid back on the jar of freaks before they all get out. Vote these cocksuckers out of office.
Link to Article:
http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/celeb/article.adp?id=20050523191209990004&ncid=NWS00010000000001
When the Republicans talk about having less government in people’s lives what they are talking about is less control over corporations so they can run amuck and make money at your expense. They also want less taxes (framed as less government control) not because they want you to have money but so this taxed money is not spent on social programs and other government expenses. They want you to keep this tax money so you spend it on the stock market. Which is exactly why the want to end Social Security so that people invest the money taken out of their checks now into the stock market. They don’t care if you’re on the street in old age begging. They’re God is the dollar. Granted a number of social programs could be run more efficiently but scraping them and giving the money away to Wall Street isn’t going to help the average disadvantaged citizen.
The Republicans do however want government in our lives when it comes to matters of personal freedoms. They want to tell you what you can watch on television, what you can do with your body, what you can say (ala controlling the media) and even control things as ridiculous as cheerleading (which they did in Texas) because the cheers were morally objectionable to a fringe bunch of religious zealots. Aren’t there more important things to worry about? Such as the depletion of the ozone layer? Oh, I forgot the official stance of the U.S. Government at this time is that there is no global warming problem.
So let’s get back to the censorship now that we’ve covered what the Republican agenda at least in a great part is. In Jeffrey McMurray’s article: Congressman Slams Bill Maher Over Army Remark he states that Bill Maher said on his show: "More people joined the Michael Jackson fan club. We've done picked all the low-lying Lynndie England fruit, and now we need warm bodies." He was talking about how the Army recently missed its recruiting goals by 42%.
Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala saw a tape of the show and responded to this Bill Maher’s comment: "I think it borders on treason," Bachus said. "In treason, one definition is to undermine the effort or national security of our country.” And he further stated that: "I don't want (Maher) prosecuted," Bachus said. "I want him off the air."
Anyone that knows anything about Bill Maher knows he is a comedian and that comedians exaggerate the truth; they use satire to make us laugh. Did Bill Maher really mean that all people in the military are stupid? You’d have to be stupid to believe that. He was pointing out that the Army is dipping below there own standards for recruitment because no one wants to join because our government has involved itself in “preemptive” wars. Joining the National Guard no longer just means going to the local base and doing drills on the weekends, it means that you will most likely be put in harms way. Risking your life doesn't seem worth the college tuition anymore does it? You can’t go to college if you’re dead!
And you’d have to be stupid to believe that there isn’t more of a motive behind Bachus’s comment than merely sticking up for the troops. They don’t care about the troops. If they did they wouldn’t have started the war in Iraq were hundreds of them have died needlessly.
No, what the Republicans want is to silence the opposition. If Bachus really thought Bill Maher was being treasonous, which I might add is a preposterous claim, then he would try to prosecute him but he doesn’t want that does he? What he wants is to take Bill Maher “off the air.” This is the Republican agenda. They don’t want free speech unless it goes along with their agenda which, in large part is to further line the pockets of the extremely wealthy.
So speak out. Don’t sit back as these radicals take more and more of your rights away. I like that fact that I can turn on HBO and hear different opinions and see naked women in movies. I think I can run my life better than the government can and I resent them trying to push their phony morals on me. So if you want less government in your lives than you won’t support radicals like this kook Bachus from Alabama. Put the lid back on the jar of freaks before they all get out. Vote these cocksuckers out of office.
Link to Article:
http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/celeb/article.adp?id=20050523191209990004&ncid=NWS00010000000001
Sunday, May 22, 2005
A muse
I rotated my eyes like the roving cameras in the far corner of a Seven Eleven. It wasn’t a extensive repositioning, not Kafkaesque—transforming into a bugging eye--nor CIA in your underpants, under your dress, spelling it out in your alphabet soup intrusiveness. What it was…what I really fucking saw…if you must fucking know, (digital replay in my synaptic centers) was her. Spelled m-u-s-e? Spelled out in the same green ink of the vine tattoos that twisted around her hips, where soon like Tarzan I would swing with my eyes and later my arms.
On the sidewalk, at a table, half finished pints of Guinness and her hand on mine…she went through my cell phone and looked at the names of the women there. “You won’t be needing these any more,” she said and I believed her. I pressed delete and it felt so much lighter in my hand. I curled my cell phone up in a ball and tucked it far away in my coat. “Where have I been all your life?” She said. I reacted cause commitment is a accelerant and my brain is a forest fire. “I drink a lot,” I said. “So?” she said, “we can drink a lot together.” “But I spend a lot of time alone. I write,” I said. “I write a lot too. We can spend time alone together,” she said. And that smile, the smile I just started to know and I knew for once it was a smile that I could trust at the very least for a day, a smile that wouldn’t fade when the booze broke down, when the sunlight came up and the bird shit sizzled in its heat and peeled the paint of my Oldsmobuick.
She said, “Alls daddy ever needed was a muse.” “Daddy?” I said, “I’m a little older but I’m not old enough to have a 29 year old daughter.” “Just finish that fucking book. That’s all you ever need to do,” she said and I believed her. “A muse you say?” I said, “It’s that fucking simple?” “It’s that fucking simple,” she said and I believed her. “Waitress,” I said. “What?” the waitress said. “Another round of Guinness for me and my muse,” I said. “Fucking weirdo,” the waitress said under her breath. “And waitress,” I said. “What now?” the waitress said. “I love you,” I said and threw my half finished Guinness in her face.
On the sidewalk, at a table, half finished pints of Guinness and her hand on mine…she went through my cell phone and looked at the names of the women there. “You won’t be needing these any more,” she said and I believed her. I pressed delete and it felt so much lighter in my hand. I curled my cell phone up in a ball and tucked it far away in my coat. “Where have I been all your life?” She said. I reacted cause commitment is a accelerant and my brain is a forest fire. “I drink a lot,” I said. “So?” she said, “we can drink a lot together.” “But I spend a lot of time alone. I write,” I said. “I write a lot too. We can spend time alone together,” she said. And that smile, the smile I just started to know and I knew for once it was a smile that I could trust at the very least for a day, a smile that wouldn’t fade when the booze broke down, when the sunlight came up and the bird shit sizzled in its heat and peeled the paint of my Oldsmobuick.
She said, “Alls daddy ever needed was a muse.” “Daddy?” I said, “I’m a little older but I’m not old enough to have a 29 year old daughter.” “Just finish that fucking book. That’s all you ever need to do,” she said and I believed her. “A muse you say?” I said, “It’s that fucking simple?” “It’s that fucking simple,” she said and I believed her. “Waitress,” I said. “What?” the waitress said. “Another round of Guinness for me and my muse,” I said. “Fucking weirdo,” the waitress said under her breath. “And waitress,” I said. “What now?” the waitress said. “I love you,” I said and threw my half finished Guinness in her face.
Saturday, May 21, 2005
As requested by Ty Bluesmith.
The last CD I bought was: I can't remember. I get my stuff off the Internet.
Song playing right now:Tender Crush: Beautiful
Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me (the last songs Kerouaced listened to)
:1. The Killers: Mr. Brightside
2. Box Car Racer: Cat Like Thief
3. Muse: Thoughts of a Dying Atheist
4.Bright Eyes: First Day of My Life
5. NIN: Hurt
I pass this on to Nicky and Lori.
The last CD I bought was: I can't remember. I get my stuff off the Internet.
Song playing right now:Tender Crush: Beautiful
Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me (the last songs Kerouaced listened to)
:1. The Killers: Mr. Brightside
2. Box Car Racer: Cat Like Thief
3. Muse: Thoughts of a Dying Atheist
4.Bright Eyes: First Day of My Life
5. NIN: Hurt
I pass this on to Nicky and Lori.
Friday, May 20, 2005
My Empire of Dirt
I bid you ado you cockucker. You see my beliefs lead me to a desolate, rust stained room, to the hidden sanctum of my reverberating mind, to the place that is miles away from the automatic smog spitters, the flammable cash whores, and the inflatable egos of the self-appointed holy. This is where I find succor, where I can elude the cranks with their pickled serpent’s tongues and bottomless cash boxes that double as portable souls. You see I never wanted to be part of that world, the world you screw yourself into. I hate it. This is what you never understood. I wasn’t running to you. I was running from you.
There are lines in old songs about bridges burning and lovers lost that I could swipe and staple on this page but to what ends would I do so? You find yourself where you lie, where you lost, where I am no longer standing for I am gone forever inside myself to you. The only difference between you now and you in a hundred years is the wood box you will be wearing. May the worms have mercy on your frilly underwear.
Thursday, May 19, 2005
The Kiss
The KISS. You know the one in the club when the strobes where shining down and distorting our motions so that we looked like we were moving in a Charlie Chaplin film? The one that you said was mechanical like kissing the motorized bull at Gilley’s? I never got to explain. You see there was a reason for my awkwardness, for six sets of thumbs, for the five second pause, for the foreplay I halted, for the three shots I did, for the two of us together and then in a moment alone. The reason my dear was the red rooster eyes, yeah the cock heavy stare of a friend of a friend who was beetling down on us, who was playing the keeper of the gate of a man that believes the world to be his private pedestal and you a porcelain knick knack to polish, to display for a time and then to stow the memory away in his foot locker when he bores of you. So you see it wasn’t for lack of lust that my lips turned plastic but rather for a lack of privacy. Later that night when I dropped you at your door, yeah the rectangular thing with the knocker, I extended my lips, puckered them exclusively, but they fell unattended onto your doorstep for you had already gone inside…
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Fuck the rosegarden yo
I never promised you a rose garden…well, yeah a Hummer H2 and a beach house maybe…yes, and a villa in the south of France but I hold fast in my stance that I never promised you a rose garden. Rose gardens need water and love and care and I’m too busy pruning back your lies to the cuticles to deal with the growth. So there, go ahead and run off with that crusty old coot, the rich one that one that fucks like a creaky door. You can’t wait until I “make it.” Writing is too much of a “gamble?” Well, the bitch of the matter is that I already have “made it.” I’m the one on the cover of your conscience. I’m the one with the bestseller list tattooed on your brain. I am the one you feel scribbling on the insides of your eyelids when you lay down beside him at night. You see all of this is just a state of mind. Believe in me and it will be so…
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
They Come
He said he would come down to our office and “kick some ass.” He was talking to a secretary when he said this. Big man. I commandeered the receiver and barked into it like this: COME ON DOWN MOTHER FUCKER. I”LL RIP YOU THE FUCK IN HALF!
He was so mad I could hear him giving me the finger over the phone but this didn’t deter me. I know. I know. It’s the GUNS isn’t it? The kind that shoot. He could easily blow me away. Pop me full of air holes, make me incapable of holding my liquor. But wait I can explain. There’s this wonderful little drug that the body produces that erases common sense. Come close. I’ll tell you what it’s called ANDRENALIN. Yeah that’s it. Along with healthy bursting doses of testosterone it renders all that is considered social acceptable void and yes nil too.
So. He came. He came to the large red front door, his nose holes flaring out as big as the top of two Styrafoam cups. I blocked him like this: KARATE KICK! BAM! Damn, that must have hurt. He came back. I sprayed him with the mace that I had borrowed from one of the secretaries. Gasping, he fell back. I kicked him in the stomach. I kicked him in the head again and again and again.
That’s not fair he said.
Survival never is I said.
He was HUGE, six foot something with muscles like bags of cement and me at 5’8 200 lbs. I am a giant killer. I am the wolf slayer. Stay the fuck out of my way. Yeah you. You know who you are...
He was so mad I could hear him giving me the finger over the phone but this didn’t deter me. I know. I know. It’s the GUNS isn’t it? The kind that shoot. He could easily blow me away. Pop me full of air holes, make me incapable of holding my liquor. But wait I can explain. There’s this wonderful little drug that the body produces that erases common sense. Come close. I’ll tell you what it’s called ANDRENALIN. Yeah that’s it. Along with healthy bursting doses of testosterone it renders all that is considered social acceptable void and yes nil too.
So. He came. He came to the large red front door, his nose holes flaring out as big as the top of two Styrafoam cups. I blocked him like this: KARATE KICK! BAM! Damn, that must have hurt. He came back. I sprayed him with the mace that I had borrowed from one of the secretaries. Gasping, he fell back. I kicked him in the stomach. I kicked him in the head again and again and again.
That’s not fair he said.
Survival never is I said.
He was HUGE, six foot something with muscles like bags of cement and me at 5’8 200 lbs. I am a giant killer. I am the wolf slayer. Stay the fuck out of my way. Yeah you. You know who you are...
Too far is always far enough
I probably went too far, which is of course my nature. I know I know you told me so. You were right. I was wrong but this of course is nothing new. I am always wrong and I don’t just mean about you. I mean about the way I thought I could drink that case of Guinness by myself and I nearly did before I puked in your hamper, I mean about the way I thought golf clubs for me would make a nice Christmas present for you, I mean about the way I thought I’d surprise you and came home early only to find you in bed watching Fox News (You know now it will never be the same). If you look you will find me at night sitting on my deck smoking a cigar, drinking a beer and writing these words on my laptop. Sure, you can come over but hide behind the shrubbery where I throw my cigar butts. If I toss one and you catch it be sure to wish on it and throw it back. I’ll then send the Chihuahuas out to bite your ankles because unfortunately I’m all out of dreams. I only have cigar butts now.
Monday, May 16, 2005
The Steel Rat
Like shiny steel rats in a futuristic sewer system maze--the stink from their baseness blasting holes through my head--they come bearing filthy children and rotting groceries to sustain their kind. The come, oh yes, they fucking come. Yes, they are the cocksuckers driving minivans with George W. Bush stickers on the bumper and they catapult through my consciousness and through traffic without regard for anyone but themselves. They are not the great thinkers, they are drones, they are fixated on the bump and grind, on Daddy’s outboard, on Mommy’s inboard, on the words that Jesus speaks through the tiny openings in their heads. Today I was almost killed by the mother of all mothers and she was driving a beetle green steel rat.
Yes, but what specifically is this about you ask? And I reply that it is an open invitation to her fat redneck husband to meet me at the East Mall at 5 O’clock in front of his favorite Bass Pro Shop store where I will kick his fucking filthy ass. Get it? Got it? Good. Where does my anger come from? Read on…
Today at lunch, as I rounded the exit ramp to the highway that leads to my modest abode, I spied a steel rat (minivan) behind me about three feet from my soot stained bumper. The woman at the wheel was compact and looked as if at one time she had been seven feet tall but someone had begun to slowly let the air out of her. What was left over time was a puddle of loose jiggling flesh that bucked and churned whenever she yanked at her steering wheel.
“Egad,” I cried, turning my attention back to the road.
As we exited the ramp onto the highway I glanced back and saw her lazy eyes tighten and her mouth pucker into a perfect fatty little O. The cords pushed up through the corpulent layer of flesh around her neck and she slammed down on the gas pedal and her steel rat shot out around me. What the flabby troll didn’t take into account was that I was already merging into the lane and as she tried to accelerate around me I nearly connected with her front corner panel.
Evidently this set off the tiny animal of fury burrowed under her layers of blubber--some primitive vertebrate with poisonous fangs--for no sooner had I steered out of her way than I saw her flipping her middle fingers at me with both hands off the wheel as her cross eyed interbred children--demon seeds that had dropped like rotten fruit from her syphillic loins--shrieked in the back of her steel rat.
I obliged the gestures whipping out my middle fingers faster than a pervert exposes himself from under his trench coat in front of a group of Girl Scouts. I was however perplexed. Didn’t the bitch understand that sitting behind her was someone with the capability of punching a hole through her fucking window and dragging her out of her steel rat and on to the highway in front of a Mac truck? Evidently not for she continued on her tirade, weaving madly back and forth across the road.
I put my middle fingers away as she continued looking back at me and screaming and cursing and flipping me off. I really wasn’t that angry and soon began to laugh at the absurdity of this woman’s tirade. She wouldn’t relent and in fact seemed to be gaining steam as we continued down the highway. I rolled down my window and waved at her which kept her focused on me and not on the traffic that had stopped in front of her.
BAM!
Her steel rat ate the whole piece of pickup truck cheese that was halted because of traffic, flattening it’s bed like a elderly man's embroidered handkerchief. Her fat head ricocheted off her steering wheel six or seven times. I slammed on my brakes and stopped behind her. Before I could blink she was out of her minivan and was screaming and cursing.
I pulled out around her and rolled down my window.
“If you want to fight tell your old man to meet me outside the Bass Pro Shop at 5. I’ll be in my vehicle,” I said and laughed.
“You mother fucker,” she screamed as I drove off.
I have to say that was one of the most fulfilling afternoons I’ve had in quite some time.
Yes, but what specifically is this about you ask? And I reply that it is an open invitation to her fat redneck husband to meet me at the East Mall at 5 O’clock in front of his favorite Bass Pro Shop store where I will kick his fucking filthy ass. Get it? Got it? Good. Where does my anger come from? Read on…
Today at lunch, as I rounded the exit ramp to the highway that leads to my modest abode, I spied a steel rat (minivan) behind me about three feet from my soot stained bumper. The woman at the wheel was compact and looked as if at one time she had been seven feet tall but someone had begun to slowly let the air out of her. What was left over time was a puddle of loose jiggling flesh that bucked and churned whenever she yanked at her steering wheel.
“Egad,” I cried, turning my attention back to the road.
As we exited the ramp onto the highway I glanced back and saw her lazy eyes tighten and her mouth pucker into a perfect fatty little O. The cords pushed up through the corpulent layer of flesh around her neck and she slammed down on the gas pedal and her steel rat shot out around me. What the flabby troll didn’t take into account was that I was already merging into the lane and as she tried to accelerate around me I nearly connected with her front corner panel.
Evidently this set off the tiny animal of fury burrowed under her layers of blubber--some primitive vertebrate with poisonous fangs--for no sooner had I steered out of her way than I saw her flipping her middle fingers at me with both hands off the wheel as her cross eyed interbred children--demon seeds that had dropped like rotten fruit from her syphillic loins--shrieked in the back of her steel rat.
I obliged the gestures whipping out my middle fingers faster than a pervert exposes himself from under his trench coat in front of a group of Girl Scouts. I was however perplexed. Didn’t the bitch understand that sitting behind her was someone with the capability of punching a hole through her fucking window and dragging her out of her steel rat and on to the highway in front of a Mac truck? Evidently not for she continued on her tirade, weaving madly back and forth across the road.
I put my middle fingers away as she continued looking back at me and screaming and cursing and flipping me off. I really wasn’t that angry and soon began to laugh at the absurdity of this woman’s tirade. She wouldn’t relent and in fact seemed to be gaining steam as we continued down the highway. I rolled down my window and waved at her which kept her focused on me and not on the traffic that had stopped in front of her.
BAM!
Her steel rat ate the whole piece of pickup truck cheese that was halted because of traffic, flattening it’s bed like a elderly man's embroidered handkerchief. Her fat head ricocheted off her steering wheel six or seven times. I slammed on my brakes and stopped behind her. Before I could blink she was out of her minivan and was screaming and cursing.
I pulled out around her and rolled down my window.
“If you want to fight tell your old man to meet me outside the Bass Pro Shop at 5. I’ll be in my vehicle,” I said and laughed.
“You mother fucker,” she screamed as I drove off.
I have to say that was one of the most fulfilling afternoons I’ve had in quite some time.
I am the Wolf Slayer
There are those that will call you compadre but underneath their sheep skin knickers they'll have legs as hairy as a wolf's. You could attack them with a Bic disposable razor and a bottle of Nair, slashing and smearing their hairy exterior but it will do little good. They are who they are. The wolf can sit down to a vegetarian sheep's meal and pad at the display of greenery on the table but in his boot is a bottle of A1, a steak knife, and picture of you with wolf saliva all over it. The wolf has a tale, the wolf is a predator, the wolf smiles as he rips your throat out. Be warned. I am the wolf slayer. You are now the hunted.
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
The Gas Station Diaries: Let’s Get it On
The Full Story
There stood but one as the glass doors clicked shut for the final time that night. Just gone were the pool table junkies who in their earnestness had licked the dewy felt clean, trying in vain as the bouncers had yelled, “time to go” to savor the last of their eight ball high . The residue of cigarette smoke clung to the ornamental tin ceiling tiles like some sort of carcinogenic epidermis and the tumblers clinked in the washing machine like the replacement elbows of a motorcycle daredevil.
“Cocksuckers, all of them cocksuckers,” I said, as I threw back the last of my beer.
Yes, I was the one; the lone bastard son of night that stood in the empty bar teetering on the edge of inebriation. Evidently, the rules didn’t apply to me or at least I didn’t apply to the rules, for I had brazenly stayed on as the others had been ushered out the door and cast into the sobering night.
“They’re still there,” I said as I watched the silhouette of Shrub Head and three of his posse pace back and forth in front of the large plate glass window.
“You’d better go out the back door,” Terrance the bartender said.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I’ll wreck the lot of them. They’ll be sorry they ever—”
But alas my poetic rebuttal was cut short as gun shots pierced the star embroidered sky.
“I think I’d better go out the back,” I yelled as I took off past the pool tables.
“Good luck,” Terrance called after me.
I would need it.
As I took off between the rows of pool tables there was a gunshot and the large plate glass window in the front that said FAST EDDIE’S exploded.
I hoped the back door was open….
* * *
Nights like these--when the floor has fallen out like the soda soaked bottom of a wax coated paper cup--are the ones which should be laid in pot holes and stomped flat so that the midnight traffic can ride smoothly over them, their sordid memory forever gone. But alas when one’s reality is bent, viewed through the prism of drunkenness and melancholy, well then there is no turning back and no words or primitive tribal rituals will make happiness rain down. There is only YOU just as it has always been and THEY will never understand and though you try to help them along, offer them hints, they still, sadly never catch on but still you try. It is after all your destiny.
“So, what have you been up to?” I asked.
“I went back and finished up my bachelors degree in forestry,” she said.
Even in the smudgy darkness of the pool hall her long blond hair glistened like the gold of a trend mongers nipple ring. Had it been socially acceptable I would have thrust myself upon her like a Mississippi leg hound and ridden her luscious calf muscle into oblivion but alas such actions are considered objectionable if not completely unacceptable and so I concentrated on her teeth as a distraction. Don’t get me wrong, her teeth were perfect little pillars of finally polished quartz but wedged between the two in front was a sizeable chunk of what looked like spinach.
“Right, like Smokey the Bear,” I said.
“Well, kind of. We don’t really fight forest fires,” she said, and took a sip from her vodka drink.
“What the Hell do you do way up there in the woods? Where do you buy beer? Who would you party with? It doesn’t seem like life to me but a flatter, far removed version. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a part time loner but I need people. I feed off their actions. I’m a people junky when I’m not alone,” I said.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Hey, isn’t that your friend the Weasel over there?”
I shifted on the cushioned bench and gazed out across the crowded pool hall to the direction which she was pointing. Sure enough the Weasel was poking his finger in the chest of a rather large individual with an afro as big as bean bag chair.
“This doesn’t look good,” I said.
I knew my duties, as a part time knight errant of modern day status, revolved around protecting those that could not fend for themselves or at least not adequately fend for themselves against considerable foes. This was such a situation and I would be abandoning my duties if I continued to court said beauty and ignored my comrade’s plight but what choice did I have? The reproductive impulse stapled to the genes of all male species, like some gaudy plastic flower arrangement, would not let me look away. I cursed myself for being all too human.
“You bastard,” I said.
“What?” she said.
“Uh, nothing I was talking to myself…I should do something,” I said.
She took hold of my biceps muscle and squeezed. I sank back into my seat.
“Perhaps this will turn out all right,” I said.
She nuzzled up to my cheek like she was a phone sex operator and my ear was the receiver. She licked my earlobe.
“Ooh, you are a little minx,” I said.
“You asshole,” the Weasel yelled.
I prayed that somehow what was happening wasn’t; no, not the kissing part, the Weasel part, the part where my friend was getting tossed around like a pair of lace underpants during a spin cycle.
“I have to go,” I said, putting my tumbler down.
“Don’t the bouncers will take care of it,” she said grabbing me around the waist.
“You would leave the fate of the world in the hands of bouncers?” I asked.
“What?”
“Nothing, wait here for me. This shouldn’t take but a minute.”
I glanced back at the divine beauty I was leaving behind for the untold horrors of barroom brawling. She sat under a cloud of blue cigarette, gasping at the cleaner air underneath so that her lips looked like those of a great goldfish. How I wanted to encircle her in my arms, for her to tell me I mattered, that all I had done and all I believed was worthwhile, that my quest, though I knew not where it would take me mattered and that she would be there eternally. At my 50th birthday she would pop out of my cake wearing nothing but a bikini fashioned from three ace of heart playing cards and a shoe string.
“Unhand my friend you cocksucker,” I said, stepping in between the weasel and his large shrubbery haired foe.
“Who in the fuck do you think you are?” Shrub Head said, his forehead wrinkling up in consternation like a Shrinky Dink in a hot oven.
“It’s not who in the fuck I am. It’s who in the fuck I think I might be,” I said.
“What?” Shrub Head said.
“This mother fucker stole my fucking quarters,” the Weasel said.
He never knew when to leave well enough alone, this of course was his nature. I had Shrub Head off balance and might have wrangled us some type of peace accord but now all was lost. Shrub Head lunged for the Weasel and with me standing in between I was knocked backwards into a pool table.
“You filthy cocksucker,” I yelled, pulling at Shrub Head’s Nick’s jersey.
“You ripped my fucking jersey,” he cried, and I knew then that there was no turning back, that this guy’s anger had now been displaced to my somewhat smaller yeah powerfully built shoulders. My strength being attributed to my stout German/Irish/English/Italian parents, copious amounts of weightlifting and chucking hay bales in my formative years for summer beer money.
“Calm down you behemoth,” I said, trying to sound rational. “I’ll give you your filthy quarters.”
But calmer heads did, of course, not prevail. I saw Shrub Head’s obsidian eyes take on the mad glaze of a institutionalized syphilitic and his meaty hands shot through the air like toaster ovens with wings. From my parents I am also blessed with great reflexes and can in fact catch a salt shaker that someone accidentally knocks off the dinner table before it hits the floor; a most valuable tool in pugilistic endeavors.
“Aha,” I cried.
I grabbed Shrub Head’s fists in mid flight and thrust them up in the air and then charged him hitting him soundly in his chest. I drove my legs like the great pistons that pound in the bowels of world’s largest cargo bearing ships and the big man was thrust back as if his tan work boots had lard smeared across their knobby treads.
“Ugghhh,” the large man cried.
Those around us scattered as I picked Shrub Head up off his feet and slammed him against the wall. I had lifted him high enough and slammed him hard enough that he know stood on top of one of the benches that lined the wall.
“Take that you cocksucker,” I said.
Yes, indeed I was gloating and rightfully so. Shrub Head was much bigger than I and I could see by the faces round me that all were duly impressed. I contemplated a little celebration jig but alas my triumph was shorter than short lived. For behind me were several of Shrub Head’s gang, numbering four or five. They grabbed hold of me, securing my flailing limbs and though I grabbed at sweat suit jackets and long baggy football jerseys I was rendered harmless and thus a sitting duck.
“You wanna fuck with me mutha fucker?” Shrub head cried.
Not waiting for an answer he began to wail on me in terrible form; fists flying at me in a windmill fashion. Defenseless I knew my only option was to duck my head, which was an old fist fighter’s trick. The skull as one knows is much harder than one’s fists and soon Shrub Head would find this out.
“Mutha fucker,” he yelled again and again, futilely pounding the top of my head.
Soon he was breathing in great guffs-- like a sumo wrestler skipping rope--and his punches hit the top of my head less frequently and with less force.
“Having fun?” I said looking up.
He sped his assault up momentarily with a burst of adrenalin but soon his blows weakened to the point where they felt like tiny sparrows flying into my head.
“I always say to use your head,” I said, and then spun madly, pulling free from those that held my arms and jumped up on the bench beside Shrub Head.
“Is that the best you have,” I said, the words with generous amounts of spit pelting his face.
Shrub Head jumped down form the bench as if I were a minor annoyance; a crazy man carrying an END OF THE WORLD IS NEAR sign? Is this what he thought of me or more likely had he found that I couldn’t be beat? I chose to believe the latter if only to boost my own often sagging ego.
I looked across the room and the Weasel was hopping nimbly from pool table to pool table as the rest of Shrub Head’s gang chased him with pool sticks. Such agility I’ve never seen in a drunken man and I doubt I will ever see again. He stopped every now and again to pick up a discarded beer as if to refresh himself and when they once again closed in he hopped agley away looking like Pan out on a summer dalliance.
The rest of the pool hall had turned into an orgy of swinging fists and colliding torsos; the long green shaded light fixtures above the pool tables, jarred in the ruckus, swung to and fro throwing light jaggedly across the room like bolts of lightning. I watched as the bouncers pulled one fight apart only to have another form right in front of them.
I might have just sat down and watched the spectacle play itself out but as my fate had always dictated I was not to sit idly on the sidelines and pass the water bottle to those that were playing the game. I would be put into the game, thrust in front of the pulling guard as the 275 pound tailback bore down on me.
“Come and get it mother fucker,” I said, leaping off the bench.
Immediately upon hitting the tiled floor I saw Shrub Head rambling towards the Weasel-- once again concentrating on his original source of anger--and I couldn’t let him do what he wanted to do. There would be a dreadful outcome if he grabbed hold of the Weasel, who had Muhammad Ali’s mouth and the fists of an arthritic pastry chef.
Dodging the mayhem I bound towards Shrub Head and just as he was about to grab hold of the Weasel I shoved him.
“Hey cocksucker,” I said and he turned. “You touch him and I’ll hang you by your hair from one of those ceiling fans.”
Shrub Head looked at the Weasel and then back to me. He was contemplating his next move. I suppose what might have been going through his head was that I had the hardest head he’d ever tried to punch. I could see his fists were swollen up like two country hams and that he wouldn’t be hitting anything with them anytime soon. I stepped up into his face and looked up.
“It’s over,” I said.
“It ain’t mutha fucking over until I say it’s mutha fucking over,” he said pointing in my face.
“I don’t like fingers in my face,” I said.
He wouldn’t look me in the eyes but focused on the Weasel who was now casually leaning against a pool table and talking to the young forestry woman I’d been cozying up to.
“You out,” Terrance the bartender said.
I turned and he was pointing to Shrub Head.
“You’re making a fucking mistake,” Shrub Head said, as Terrance escorted him out the door. It was an easy out for the bastard and he took it like a fat man takes free fried carnival food.
I gazed around the bar. Things had begun to calm down, the fights had petered out into heated discussions and rounds of beer in others.
“That was something,” I said.
There was no response. I turned just in time to see the Weasel exit through the back door with my forestry sweetheart. I had just saved the cocksucker’s life and he had stolen my girl and sneaked out the back door. This of course was his nature.
Alone, I sat and finished off a pitcher of Guinness as people began to filter out of the bar. It occurred to me that I was not destined for happiness in the conventional sense of the word that my contentment would not be found through another, but through the small and large triumphs I collected as my life played itself out on the hairpin turns of existence that only I would slam the gas pedal down on as I took them at death defying speeds. Sure, I wanted to find HER but where and how? Who could keep up? Who wouldn’t keep me down? Who wanted more out of this life than the version with the white picket fence, and a laugh track? I didn’t want to wake up one day dead and then hang around for another forty or fifty years. I wanted life and I wanted it now.
“They’re still there,” I said as I watched the silhouette of Shrub Head and three of his posse pace back and forth in front of the large plate glass window.
“You’d better go out the back door,” Terrance the bartender said.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I’ll wreck the lot of them. They’ll be sorry they ever—”
But alas my poetic rebuttal was cut short as gun shots pierced the star embroidered sky.
“I think I’d better go out the back,” I yelled as I took off past the pool tables.
“Good luck,” Terrance called after me.
I would need it.
As I took off between the rows of pool tables there was a gunshot and the large plate glass window in the front that said FAST EDDIE’S exploded.
I hoped the back door was open….
There stood but one as the glass doors clicked shut for the final time that night. Just gone were the pool table junkies who in their earnestness had licked the dewy felt clean, trying in vain as the bouncers had yelled, “time to go” to savor the last of their eight ball high . The residue of cigarette smoke clung to the ornamental tin ceiling tiles like some sort of carcinogenic epidermis and the tumblers clinked in the washing machine like the replacement elbows of a motorcycle daredevil.
“Cocksuckers, all of them cocksuckers,” I said, as I threw back the last of my beer.
Yes, I was the one; the lone bastard son of night that stood in the empty bar teetering on the edge of inebriation. Evidently, the rules didn’t apply to me or at least I didn’t apply to the rules, for I had brazenly stayed on as the others had been ushered out the door and cast into the sobering night.
“They’re still there,” I said as I watched the silhouette of Shrub Head and three of his posse pace back and forth in front of the large plate glass window.
“You’d better go out the back door,” Terrance the bartender said.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I’ll wreck the lot of them. They’ll be sorry they ever—”
But alas my poetic rebuttal was cut short as gun shots pierced the star embroidered sky.
“I think I’d better go out the back,” I yelled as I took off past the pool tables.
“Good luck,” Terrance called after me.
I would need it.
As I took off between the rows of pool tables there was a gunshot and the large plate glass window in the front that said FAST EDDIE’S exploded.
I hoped the back door was open….
* * *
Nights like these--when the floor has fallen out like the soda soaked bottom of a wax coated paper cup--are the ones which should be laid in pot holes and stomped flat so that the midnight traffic can ride smoothly over them, their sordid memory forever gone. But alas when one’s reality is bent, viewed through the prism of drunkenness and melancholy, well then there is no turning back and no words or primitive tribal rituals will make happiness rain down. There is only YOU just as it has always been and THEY will never understand and though you try to help them along, offer them hints, they still, sadly never catch on but still you try. It is after all your destiny.
“So, what have you been up to?” I asked.
“I went back and finished up my bachelors degree in forestry,” she said.
Even in the smudgy darkness of the pool hall her long blond hair glistened like the gold of a trend mongers nipple ring. Had it been socially acceptable I would have thrust myself upon her like a Mississippi leg hound and ridden her luscious calf muscle into oblivion but alas such actions are considered objectionable if not completely unacceptable and so I concentrated on her teeth as a distraction. Don’t get me wrong, her teeth were perfect little pillars of finally polished quartz but wedged between the two in front was a sizeable chunk of what looked like spinach.
“Right, like Smokey the Bear,” I said.
“Well, kind of. We don’t really fight forest fires,” she said, and took a sip from her vodka drink.
“What the Hell do you do way up there in the woods? Where do you buy beer? Who would you party with? It doesn’t seem like life to me but a flatter, far removed version. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a part time loner but I need people. I feed off their actions. I’m a people junky when I’m not alone,” I said.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Hey, isn’t that your friend the Weasel over there?”
I shifted on the cushioned bench and gazed out across the crowded pool hall to the direction which she was pointing. Sure enough the Weasel was poking his finger in the chest of a rather large individual with an afro as big as bean bag chair.
“This doesn’t look good,” I said.
I knew my duties, as a part time knight errant of modern day status, revolved around protecting those that could not fend for themselves or at least not adequately fend for themselves against considerable foes. This was such a situation and I would be abandoning my duties if I continued to court said beauty and ignored my comrade’s plight but what choice did I have? The reproductive impulse stapled to the genes of all male species, like some gaudy plastic flower arrangement, would not let me look away. I cursed myself for being all too human.
“You bastard,” I said.
“What?” she said.
“Uh, nothing I was talking to myself…I should do something,” I said.
She took hold of my biceps muscle and squeezed. I sank back into my seat.
“Perhaps this will turn out all right,” I said.
She nuzzled up to my cheek like she was a phone sex operator and my ear was the receiver. She licked my earlobe.
“Ooh, you are a little minx,” I said.
“You asshole,” the Weasel yelled.
I prayed that somehow what was happening wasn’t; no, not the kissing part, the Weasel part, the part where my friend was getting tossed around like a pair of lace underpants during a spin cycle.
“I have to go,” I said, putting my tumbler down.
“Don’t the bouncers will take care of it,” she said grabbing me around the waist.
“You would leave the fate of the world in the hands of bouncers?” I asked.
“What?”
“Nothing, wait here for me. This shouldn’t take but a minute.”
I glanced back at the divine beauty I was leaving behind for the untold horrors of barroom brawling. She sat under a cloud of blue cigarette, gasping at the cleaner air underneath so that her lips looked like those of a great goldfish. How I wanted to encircle her in my arms, for her to tell me I mattered, that all I had done and all I believed was worthwhile, that my quest, though I knew not where it would take me mattered and that she would be there eternally. At my 50th birthday she would pop out of my cake wearing nothing but a bikini fashioned from three ace of heart playing cards and a shoe string.
“Unhand my friend you cocksucker,” I said, stepping in between the weasel and his large shrubbery haired foe.
“Who in the fuck do you think you are?” Shrub Head said, his forehead wrinkling up in consternation like a Shrinky Dink in a hot oven.
“It’s not who in the fuck I am. It’s who in the fuck I think I might be,” I said.
“What?” Shrub Head said.
“This mother fucker stole my fucking quarters,” the Weasel said.
He never knew when to leave well enough alone, this of course was his nature. I had Shrub Head off balance and might have wrangled us some type of peace accord but now all was lost. Shrub Head lunged for the Weasel and with me standing in between I was knocked backwards into a pool table.
“You filthy cocksucker,” I yelled, pulling at Shrub Head’s Nick’s jersey.
“You ripped my fucking jersey,” he cried, and I knew then that there was no turning back, that this guy’s anger had now been displaced to my somewhat smaller yeah powerfully built shoulders. My strength being attributed to my stout German/Irish/English/Italian parents, copious amounts of weightlifting and chucking hay bales in my formative years for summer beer money.
“Calm down you behemoth,” I said, trying to sound rational. “I’ll give you your filthy quarters.”
But calmer heads did, of course, not prevail. I saw Shrub Head’s obsidian eyes take on the mad glaze of a institutionalized syphilitic and his meaty hands shot through the air like toaster ovens with wings. From my parents I am also blessed with great reflexes and can in fact catch a salt shaker that someone accidentally knocks off the dinner table before it hits the floor; a most valuable tool in pugilistic endeavors.
“Aha,” I cried.
I grabbed Shrub Head’s fists in mid flight and thrust them up in the air and then charged him hitting him soundly in his chest. I drove my legs like the great pistons that pound in the bowels of world’s largest cargo bearing ships and the big man was thrust back as if his tan work boots had lard smeared across their knobby treads.
“Ugghhh,” the large man cried.
Those around us scattered as I picked Shrub Head up off his feet and slammed him against the wall. I had lifted him high enough and slammed him hard enough that he know stood on top of one of the benches that lined the wall.
“Take that you cocksucker,” I said.
Yes, indeed I was gloating and rightfully so. Shrub Head was much bigger than I and I could see by the faces round me that all were duly impressed. I contemplated a little celebration jig but alas my triumph was shorter than short lived. For behind me were several of Shrub Head’s gang, numbering four or five. They grabbed hold of me, securing my flailing limbs and though I grabbed at sweat suit jackets and long baggy football jerseys I was rendered harmless and thus a sitting duck.
“You wanna fuck with me mutha fucker?” Shrub head cried.
Not waiting for an answer he began to wail on me in terrible form; fists flying at me in a windmill fashion. Defenseless I knew my only option was to duck my head, which was an old fist fighter’s trick. The skull as one knows is much harder than one’s fists and soon Shrub Head would find this out.
“Mutha fucker,” he yelled again and again, futilely pounding the top of my head.
Soon he was breathing in great guffs-- like a sumo wrestler skipping rope--and his punches hit the top of my head less frequently and with less force.
“Having fun?” I said looking up.
He sped his assault up momentarily with a burst of adrenalin but soon his blows weakened to the point where they felt like tiny sparrows flying into my head.
“I always say to use your head,” I said, and then spun madly, pulling free from those that held my arms and jumped up on the bench beside Shrub Head.
“Is that the best you have,” I said, the words with generous amounts of spit pelting his face.
Shrub Head jumped down form the bench as if I were a minor annoyance; a crazy man carrying an END OF THE WORLD IS NEAR sign? Is this what he thought of me or more likely had he found that I couldn’t be beat? I chose to believe the latter if only to boost my own often sagging ego.
I looked across the room and the Weasel was hopping nimbly from pool table to pool table as the rest of Shrub Head’s gang chased him with pool sticks. Such agility I’ve never seen in a drunken man and I doubt I will ever see again. He stopped every now and again to pick up a discarded beer as if to refresh himself and when they once again closed in he hopped agley away looking like Pan out on a summer dalliance.
The rest of the pool hall had turned into an orgy of swinging fists and colliding torsos; the long green shaded light fixtures above the pool tables, jarred in the ruckus, swung to and fro throwing light jaggedly across the room like bolts of lightning. I watched as the bouncers pulled one fight apart only to have another form right in front of them.
I might have just sat down and watched the spectacle play itself out but as my fate had always dictated I was not to sit idly on the sidelines and pass the water bottle to those that were playing the game. I would be put into the game, thrust in front of the pulling guard as the 275 pound tailback bore down on me.
“Come and get it mother fucker,” I said, leaping off the bench.
Immediately upon hitting the tiled floor I saw Shrub Head rambling towards the Weasel-- once again concentrating on his original source of anger--and I couldn’t let him do what he wanted to do. There would be a dreadful outcome if he grabbed hold of the Weasel, who had Muhammad Ali’s mouth and the fists of an arthritic pastry chef.
Dodging the mayhem I bound towards Shrub Head and just as he was about to grab hold of the Weasel I shoved him.
“Hey cocksucker,” I said and he turned. “You touch him and I’ll hang you by your hair from one of those ceiling fans.”
Shrub Head looked at the Weasel and then back to me. He was contemplating his next move. I suppose what might have been going through his head was that I had the hardest head he’d ever tried to punch. I could see his fists were swollen up like two country hams and that he wouldn’t be hitting anything with them anytime soon. I stepped up into his face and looked up.
“It’s over,” I said.
“It ain’t mutha fucking over until I say it’s mutha fucking over,” he said pointing in my face.
“I don’t like fingers in my face,” I said.
He wouldn’t look me in the eyes but focused on the Weasel who was now casually leaning against a pool table and talking to the young forestry woman I’d been cozying up to.
“You out,” Terrance the bartender said.
I turned and he was pointing to Shrub Head.
“You’re making a fucking mistake,” Shrub Head said, as Terrance escorted him out the door. It was an easy out for the bastard and he took it like a fat man takes free fried carnival food.
I gazed around the bar. Things had begun to calm down, the fights had petered out into heated discussions and rounds of beer in others.
“That was something,” I said.
There was no response. I turned just in time to see the Weasel exit through the back door with my forestry sweetheart. I had just saved the cocksucker’s life and he had stolen my girl and sneaked out the back door. This of course was his nature.
Alone, I sat and finished off a pitcher of Guinness as people began to filter out of the bar. It occurred to me that I was not destined for happiness in the conventional sense of the word that my contentment would not be found through another, but through the small and large triumphs I collected as my life played itself out on the hairpin turns of existence that only I would slam the gas pedal down on as I took them at death defying speeds. Sure, I wanted to find HER but where and how? Who could keep up? Who wouldn’t keep me down? Who wanted more out of this life than the version with the white picket fence, and a laugh track? I didn’t want to wake up one day dead and then hang around for another forty or fifty years. I wanted life and I wanted it now.
“They’re still there,” I said as I watched the silhouette of Shrub Head and three of his posse pace back and forth in front of the large plate glass window.
“You’d better go out the back door,” Terrance the bartender said.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I’ll wreck the lot of them. They’ll be sorry they ever—”
But alas my poetic rebuttal was cut short as gun shots pierced the star embroidered sky.
“I think I’d better go out the back,” I yelled as I took off past the pool tables.
“Good luck,” Terrance called after me.
I would need it.
As I took off between the rows of pool tables there was a gunshot and the large plate glass window in the front that said FAST EDDIE’S exploded.
I hoped the back door was open….
Friday, May 06, 2005
Don't mess with me...
Back in the day I had a Mohawk; circa 1982, not long after I first heard the Ramones I decided I must have one. This Mohawk was a big red static rooster job that rose up into the chandeliers of the rich parents I’d freak out when their daughters brought me home. They were all like FREAK and I was like COOL and they were like GET OUT! I would have my revenge in the form of quarter sticks of dynamite place strategically around the parameter of their glass houses; time delayed fuses (cigarettes) and in the middle of a peaceful cognac coma, at 3 am (according to the position of the moon in the sky) BAM! Their fucking mailbox would be in ten thousand tiny pieces; sans folding chairs, sans flower boxes, sans Rover’s little plywood abode…
What my elderly neighbor told me...
You will come to know the quick and the dead, the hangover and the hang up, the big bar tab and those little moments of drunken lunacy when the whole world swears you off as another bad dream. It’ll happen and you’ll apologize to every single one of them, even the ones you don’t know or have never even heard of you because salvation ain’t about forgiveness it’s about how many people you can con into believing you are righteous and just made one colossal fucking error fueled by booze and illusions of grandeur. You could try to tell them the TRUTH but it as useless as a superfluous nipple. When no one is looking you take that TRUTH out and hold it in your arms like a baby marmot and let it suckle at your beer bottle teet until it grows so big that you have to store it in a grain silo and then and only then can you release it on the world. Sure they’ll hate you but it was bound to happen now wasn’t it?
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
i pass this to Lori, and Bookfraud and ya better play along.]
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Luch, I know it's hot over there in Iraq and you might be a little delirious but for God's sake you have to know you can't run a dogsled over cement. Generally speaking Eskimos use those things in the snow. It might also help to have some dogs to pull it around if you are really set on trying to sled over the sand with it. It won't run on its own.
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