Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?

SCENE: It's the middle of the night. A man and woman are sitting on a low brick porch with an iron railing, in cheap folding chairs. HE holds a 32-oz. cup full of whiskey and water, and he chain-smokes. SHE holds a can of beer, and there’s a cat asleep among the empty cans under her chair. It’s a hot night but there’s a misting rain that cools them and makes everything shine, even in the low light. Both are slightly drunk and laughing.

SHE: We’re going to Hell.

HE: ‘Sno such place.

SHE: No. But, pretend. Just to keep the conversation going.

HE: Okay. There’s a Hell. (drinks) Just the one?

SHE: As many as you like.

HE: Really?

SHE: Sure. How many do you expect to need?

HE: Ummm…fourteen.

SHE: Okay. Fourteen hells, then. And we’re going.

HE: Now?

SHE: Eventually.

HE: To which?

SHE: All of them. We’ll split ‘em. Fourteen hells…that’s seven apiece.

HE: Wait, we aren’t gonna share hells? ‘Cause, love, if I can’t hang around with you, I’m not going.

SHE: Well, you can come visit, I guess.

HE: Okay. We’ll build a subway connecting them all, like the boroughs in New York.

SHE: Won’t that be expensive?

HE: I don’t know from infrastructure. And anyway, will there even be money in Hell?

SHE: Well, it’s the root of all evil. I had just assumed, I guess…

HE: Maybe I’ll hitchhike, then.

SHE: Good for you. Though I’m guessing that in Hell, you have to be careful who you take a ride from. If Ted Bundy pulls up in his little blue Bug…

HE: Not a problem. Serial killers lose a lot of their mystique if you’re already dead.

SHE: I suppose that’s true.

HE: I’m gonna taunt ‘em. I’m gonna walk up to Jack the Ripper and just point and giggle. Their eternal punishment will be me making fun of them. It’ll be a blast.

SHE: Looking forward to it, are you?

HE: Hell? Oh, sure. I mean, who wants to go to Heaven? Singing hymns and praising God and all that, sounds kinda boring to me. And it’s forever, remember. A little bit of boring is gonna go an awful long way. Hell seems like it would suit us better.

SHE: You know, you’re right. The things we’re going to Hell for, those are the things we enjoy, right? So maybe in Hell we'll be surrounded by the things we love. We'll bring our taste for illicit substances and lewd entertainment with us...

HE: ...we'll have a few drinks, smoke a little pot, get in the odd barfight, fool around a bit...

SHE: ...an eternity of sex, drugs, and John Waters movies, huh?

HE: It'll be divine.

SHE: So to speak.

Dancing with the Moon

Months are getting shorter. This is happening so slowly that you can’t really tell unless you use very precise measurements and careful observation, but it IS happening. Back when folks first started to look at the sky and try to keep track of the rate at which things happened, months were approximately 40 days long. Now, as I expect everyone knows, they’re about 28 days long.

The reason for this is the gravitational effect that our blue planet and its moon have on each other. The tides she creates on our surface are very gradually slowing down our rate of rotation. And the pull we exert on her is speeding up her orbit.

To which you’re saying, “So what? I didn’t come to the blog today for an astronomy lesson.” Well, okay, but keep listening.

You know how the moon always shows the same face to us? Her rotation has synchronized itself so that she always faces the center of her orbit. It turns out that that’s natural; any two objects in orbit around each other will eventually do that. They start off like they’re next to each other in a mosh pit, swinging around each other and spinning crazily and looking every-which-way, but little by little they come together and start doing a waltz, locked in an embrace, gazing into each other’s eyes. That waltz, and not the slam dance, is the natural order of things, the result towards which our mutual orbit is drawing us.

So someday, about 20,000 years from now, we will reach a point beyond which we will always show the same face to her, just as she does to us now. Which means that she will, from that moment on forever, hang always over the same spot on the Earth.

And what I’m thinking is this: I want to find out what spot that’s going to be. And then, when I know, I’m gonna move there. And if I happen not to live for 20,000 more years (‘cause, you know, accidents happen), then when I die, that’s where my remains are gonna be stored. Wherever she’s gonna be, I wanna be there, too.

Quest

I am driving. I’m on a quest. I need a new tea pan, and it’s gotta cost less than $3.39, which is all the money I’ve got in the world until the bank processes my paycheck, an activity for which they have no apparent skill or enthusiasm.

I’ve been to the grocery. They sell pie tins and cookie sheets, but no pans. I’ve been to the dollar store. They sell coffee makers and tea pots, but no pans. Now I’m driving West, heading for a store I know nothing about, on the advice of my mother, who is wise in the way of such things.

I’m getting more and more absent-minded as I get older. I will put on water to boil for tea. It takes only a couple of minutes, I shouldn’t even wander off, really, but a watched pot never boils and so a-wanderin' I go. I have a smoke on the porch and soak up the sun. I sit on the couch and put on a movie. I check my e-mail, or a story comes to me and I begin to write. Next thing I know, it’s an hour later and there are bad smells and ominous crackling noises coming from the kitchen.

I make at least two pitchers of tea per day, and sometimes as many as four. It’s the only caffeine and sugar I get in my diet. A functioning tea pan is a necessity. So I’m broke, but I’m out looking for a tea pan. As noted, there aren’t that many places downtown that sell pots and pans, but I finally reach the Odd Lots or Big Lots or what-the-fuck-ever it is out on 14th Street West.

It’s hard to get into the lot, actually. Evidently Congress has declared today “National Rednecks Idling in Beat-Up Cars on the Side of the Road Day.” They are everywhere, just sitting there, and they are blocking at least two entrances. But I finally manage it on account of my vast skills and perseverance.

They have appropriate pans, in sets of three, for six dollars. Too much for me, but as I cast about the store I discover that someone has already broken up a set. I grab one, and after much discussion and sidelong, accusing glances, the cashier lets me have it for two bucks and tax. $2.12. I give her exact change and have money left over for a fruit juice at work tomorrow. I am triumphant.

I arrive home to discover that a local garage band is committing a violent crime of a quasi-musical nature in my little alley. But I’ve got a soft spot for garage bands, and their sloppy exuberance suits the ambience of 4½ Alley, and it’s okay. I walk into my apartment, put on Lucinda Williams’ Essence, and get out the sugar. The new pan is so beautiful that I am hesitant to use it. I feel like I should hang it on the wall above my bed and keep it shiny and clean and lovely forever. I show it off to Amy instead, and she pretends she's interested for my sake:

Isn't it beautiful?

Yes, it's very beautiful.

How beautiful?

Ohh...just really very beautiful. Very beautiful indeed.

It's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen, isn't it?

Umm...okay. She is doubtful, but at my crestfallen look, she reconsiders. Well, yeah, I guess. She nods her head decisively. It sure is.

Oh, thank you, sweetheart, and I smile a big goofy smile, and she smiles back tolerantly.

I put the water on to boil. The urge to write this story is tugging at me, but I do not leave the stove. I hover over it, and Lucinda and I sing of sofa covers and books ‘bout being saved, tables no one eats on and pianos no one plays, and think that it sure would be silly not to use my pretty little brand-new two-pint saucepan.

I don’t take my eyes off of it. And you know what? It boils anyway. And the tea is sooooo good.

On Sleeping with Ernest Thesiger

“The air itself is filled with monsters,” she says. I wince and shake myself. My knees and neck are locked in place; I crack them open patiently and painfully, and moan, and stretch, and the warm stillness of the room is filled with voices.

“We must have a long talk, and then I have an important call to make.” His voice is smooth and shiny and rich in malice. It is ichorous and venomous. It has ugly secrets.

I swim up into the light and shake a smoke out of the pack. I am dry and sore, and he is pouring a drink. “Do you like gin? It is my only weakness,” he says.

I exhale and scratch my head. I rub my eyes against the sun and cough. I need some sleep, I think. “Work, finish, then sleep,” he says, and waves his hand, and the motion is somehow both menacing and dismissive.

I reach for my drink, and he raises his glass. “To a new world of gods and monsters,” he exults, and I swallow.

I Don't Like Mondays

I just had a smoke break. I went and sat in the shade (it’s wonderful that I must now sit in the shade, instead of huddling in the sun trying not to freeze to death) and read and listened to my Walkman, which is set on random, because that’s the only way to fly. I was reading a collection of Philip K. Dick short stories. In one of them, a non-fiction piece I’d never read before called “Strange Memories of Death,” I came across this passage:

Going down to the newspaper vending machine, I buy today’s Los Angeles Times. A girl who shot up a schoolyard of children “because she didn’t like Mondays” is pleading guilty. She will soon get probation. She took a gun and shot schoolchildren because, in effect, she had nothing else to do. Well, today is Monday; she is in court on a Monday, the day she hates. Is there no limit to madness?

The girl’s name, if anyone’s interested, was Brenda Ann Spencer, and Dick was wrong about her probation: she is still in prison. The incident took place in January of 1979 at Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, and afterwards Spencer really did say, when asked why she had done it, “I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day...I had no reason for it, it was just a lot of fun.”

Spencer shot 11 people, two of whom died. This means, of course, that she’s been far surpassed in the 28 years since, at Jonesboro and Columbine and a few weeks ago at Blacksburg. I suppose progress has many possible definitions.

Anyway, I know all this about Spencer, not because I religiously follow news of school shootings, but because Bob Geldof of the Boomtown Rats was moved by the incident to write a song called “I Don’t Like Mondays,” which hit #1 in the UK in 1979 (people just love a good tragedy, especially if it’s served up in great sloppy dollops with a good soundtrack attached). It’s an excellent song, and a few years ago Tori Amos covered it on her album Strange Little Girls

The silicon chip inside her head

gets switched to overload

And nobody's gonna go to school today,

she's going to make them stay at home.

Daddy doesn't understand it,

he always said she was as good as gold

And he can see no reason

‘cause there are no reasons

what reason do you need to be shown?

Tell me why? I don't like Mondays.

Tell me why? I don't like Mondays.

Tell me why? I don't like Mondays.

I want to shoot the whole day down.

And the thing is this: as I sat in the shade and read Dick's words about Spencer and her trial, the song that my Walkman randomly chose to play was Tori Amos’ version of “I Don’t Like Mondays.” I am absolutely fascinated by weird little coincidences like this.

Sunshine and Stink

Good God, it was sunny today. Even with my sunglasses on, the light just about burned my eyes outta my head. It was hard to read on my smoke breaks ‘cause of the light reflecting off the pages…I wish publishers would convert to a nice off-white paper.

It probably didn’t help that I hadn’t had enough sleep; the semester is over, and until summer school starts I have to work mornings instead of evenings. I’m a night person, and nothing can make me fall asleep early, even if I have to wake up at 9:00. That’s always a difficult adjustment to make.

Bright is bright and pain is pain, but thirsty is thirsty and I braved the sun for a fruit juice, same as always. They had a table set up outside the student center, collecting money for a local shelter for battered women. They said nothing to me as I passed, which is just as well, really. That’s a good cause, but I only had one dollar for the fruit juice machine, and really it never occurred to me to give it to them. I went and got my Peach Papaya.

As I left one of them did call out to me, “Hey, would you like to help battered women?”

“Sure,” I said, “but I had only the one dollar, and I already turned it into fruit juice,” and I waved the bottle at him to demonstrate. He looked disappointed; I guess they hadn’t had much luck. I sympathized, and felt maybe a little guilty. Then I had a happy thought and said, “Here, you can have the fruit juice, if you like.” He was not impressed. In fact, he looked kinda pissy. So, in case you were wondering, battered women don’t need yer damned fruit juice, thanks.

I walked back across Buskirk Field towards my library. About halfway across I was struck by a strange smell. It was a disinfectant smell, but not only that, as if the smell of whatever they were trying to disinfect lingered persistently through the cleaning, like it was a stronger thing. And it was really overwhelming, and I was thinking, “How the hell can the smell be that strong, out here in the open, in the middle of a field?”

I caught sight of the Science Building, looming over the field. I wondered if the smell was coming from there. “Maybe some experiment has gone horribly wrong. Maybe,” I thought, “the whole building is filling up with this noxious gas. Maybe the whole Science Department is already dead, and now the gas is coming after the rest of us.”

Then I thought, “Maybe the gas is flammable. Maybe it’s just waiting for a spark to set it off, and then the whole building will go up. Maybe even the whole campus!” I sniffed the air, and looked down at my cigarette. “Eh,” I said, “it’s worth the risk.” I shrugged, took a drag, and kept walking.

When I talk I gesture a lot, especially if I’m excited, or tired, or drunk. I do it even when I’m talking to myself. It’s how I work things out. Bonnie used to say that I thought with my hands. We’d be sitting in the kitchen, each doing our own thing, paying no attention to each other but each drawing comfort from the other’s presence. Maybe she’d be doing her homework or reading the paper. Maybe I'd be doing a crossword puzzle, or writing a song, or maybe just thinking. And my hands would start to dance. I’d play with my hair, wiggle my fingers, drum complicated rhythms on my skull with my fingertips, point at imaginary objects, draw lines and circles in the air. I would gradually get that feeling of being watched, and I’d look up and she’d be grinning at me indulgently.

“What?” I’d say. “What?”

“You’re thinking with your hands again,” she’d say.

As I walked across Buskirk Field, wondering about the smell and whether I was about to blow up the entire campus, I was making broad, sweeping gestures with my arms, plotting the trajectory of shrapnel and brick and the bodies of researchers. I was raising my arms high above my head, imagining a fireball reaching to the heavens. I was running my finger along the outline of the Science Building, noting each exit that any survivors might make for. And then I saw, on the edge of the field, a guy standing and watching me, and grinning like Bonnie used to. He was in my path back to the library, and as I passed him I leaned in and said, by way of explanation, “Smells bad.”

He took a step back and looked affronted. He had misunderstood me. “Did you just say I smell bad?” he asked.

I looked at him, bemused, then tilted my head back and shut my eyes against the sun, and inhaled grandly. “Even if you did, brother,” I reassured him, “with all this ugliness in the air, how would anyone notice?”

Pop and the Chinese Food Odyssey

I’m about 16, I guess. Mama is off visiting some relative or another, and my sister Debby has gone with her, so the men have the house to themselves. It’s me, Pop, my brother Teddy, and Ricky Flowers, my best friend, who lives with us. Although the absence of the womenfolk entices us with the possibility of hanging around the house watching sports in our underwear, farting and wiping boogers on the sofa, we decide instead to celebrate the complete maleness of the occasion with some Chinese food, and pile into the long-suffering family car.
It’s an extremely beat-up Oldsmobile. It is painted a yellow so faded by the years that it’s really become more of an off-white, and has a brown vinyl top. The passenger-side door was torn off by my mother in a collision between the car and the concrete post protecting a gas pump at the 7-11 up the street. My father has cleverly fixed the door back in place with wire coat hangers, but of course it no longer opens. We enter the car through the window, like on The Dukes of Hazzard, and as always we shout “Yee Haw!!!” as we climb in. I love this memory.
Teddy rides up front with Pop, and Ricky and I are in the back seat. Pop starts the car with his trusty screwdriver; the key went missing a year ago. On the day it disappeared Debby was running down the street and ran face-first into a piece of lumber sticking out of the back of a truck. She injured her eye, not very seriously but it bled, and her panicked screams were heard several blocks away. In desperation Pop tore out the ignition and started the car with a screwdriver, and drove her to the hospital. Later the key turned up, but by then the ignition had been destroyed and the key was useless. Ignitions are expensive and the money never seemed to be around, so the screwdriver stayed.
After a couple of false starts the engine catches and we’re off. It’s a heavy summer evening in Richmond, overcast and we’re praying for the rain to come ‘cause it’s 100 degrees and the car has no air conditioner. But thoughts of Chinese food are comforting, and we take back streets towards our favorite place, out in the East End, so that there’s a constant breeze from the windows.
The radio is on as we drive, and the news is full of another day of Oliver North’s testimony over the Iran-Contra scandal. Pop is conflicted over this story. On the one hand he is appalled at the activities North engaged in, and wants the men responsible punished. But on the other hand, he can’t help but respect North’s courage, in his refusal to name names, to “rat on his friends.”
As the reports unfold he becomes more and more agitated, yelling at the reporter on the radio, and finally snaps it off. But this does not end the discussion. Ostensibly, I suppose, he’s talking to us, since we’re right there in the car with him, but really he’s having the argument with himself. He’s Hamlet. He’s reciting his own soliloquy, and we’re just in the audience.
“Umm…Pop…” Teddy says after a while, “isn't that the way to the Chinese place?” He points plaintively down the road we've just crossed.
When there's no answer, I reach up and grab his shoulder, and repeat the question. He looks at me for a second as if trying to remember who I am. Then, realizing where we are, he tries to play it off. "This is a shortcut," he says, and his attitude is the same as that of my cat when she pretends she meant to fall off the television.
After a few moments he turns on an unfamiliar road, but we're at least heading in the right direction now. But he just keeps talking and driving, and soon we’re someplace none of us boys have ever seen before. We’ve driven so far East that we’re no longer in the city at all, or even in Henrico County.
As if waking from a dream, Pop shakes his head and looks around him, then makes a couple of quick turns, as if nothing was wrong, and pulls into the parking lot of an abandoned drive-in theater to turn around and head back west.
He pauses for a moment before returning to the road. “You boys hungry?” he asks.
“Well, of course we're hungry. Listening to you arguing with yourself is hungry work.”
He denies that he was arguing with himself, says that he was discussing the important news of the day with his sons.
“Don’t discussions generally,” I ask, “involve one person saying something, and then a comepletely different person saying something?”
He laughs and admits that he was excessively caught up in the evening's civics lesson. But at least now we’re on the right track, he assures us. He knows exactly where we are, and Chin-Yung, the restaurant we're going to, is only a few miles away. We’ll be there soon.
He pulls back onto the road, but the nowhere we're in doesn't seem to change much as the miles pass. It’s dark now. My brother was already asleep when we turned around. Ricky and I are awake and aggravated, but the whispered passing of trees on the dark road, the warm air from the open window, the gentle swaying of the car on the backroads and the accompanying rhythmic rattling of the broken door, are hypnotic, and soon we’re nodding off, too, to the sound of the argument having started afresh.
We’re awakened by the sound of the driver’s side door slamming. We look up and find ourselves outside our apartment, and that it's been almost two hours since we left home.
Pop is walking towards the front door. I climb over Teddy and out the window, “Hey, hang on! Chinese Food? Weren’t we getting Chinese food?”
He stops and looks back at me in some confusion. “You know,” he says after a moment, “I believe we were.” He walks back toward the car, but stops and checks his watch. “It’s too late for Chinese now, anyway” he says.
“But, but…Chinese food,” I say, pleading. “Chinese food?”
“Don’t worry,” he says, “we’ll order a pizza.”

Being God

Well, brothers and sisters, this is something new to me: my very first Live Journal voice post. I’ve been delaying this, ‘cause I wasn’t sure what I should talk about. Many topics have been suggested to me, and while I appreciate all the input I do feel that my first voice post should be somehow special…personal, you know?

So, I’ve been looking for something important and serious, something poignant to talk about tonight, something that will change the lives of all who hear it. And I think I’ve found it in a momentous decision I’ve made recently: I have decided, brothers and sisters, that I should be God.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Oh, here’s another bleeding heart, gonna complain about all the injustice in the world.” Well, now, hold on, I’m not here to do that. Not that there isn’t injustice in the world…I mean it’s everywhere; in the first place, smokin’ and drinkin’ could certainly be less injurious to my health. A just God would pay more attention to things like that.

It’s pretty clear just overall that whoever’s in charge here, while clearly very creative, lacks certain… administrative skills, shall we say? It’s prob’ly time for a new hand to be on the joystick, if you know what I mean and I think you do.

But I’m not at all sure that it should be my hand. My sense of injustice is perhaps a little too pronounced, a little over-sensitive. Also, I’m very temperamental, a quality which is little improved by my personal habits. I might, in a fit of pique, strike everyone with an Ohio driver’s license blind, for example. Not that that would affect their driving much.

I can well imagine myself, sitting and watching C-SPAN over a glass of whiskey, deciding, “Well, that’s gonna be just about enough outta YOU, Tom DeLay…a curse upon your house unto the fifth generation!” At which point the entire DeLay family would be struck by a curious, hitherto unknown malady which would cause their right arms to shrivel and atrophy, finally falling off like dried-up umbilical cords; and from the place where each arm had been would spring a great, scaly, foul-smelling reptilian wing.

A God of Justice should probably have a lighter touch than that. It would be poetic justice, maybe, but not actual justice.

Still, it would be aesthetically pleasing, and that’s where my real talent lies. I don’t want to make macro changes. I don’t want power over life and death and the weather and continental drift. I am NOT the sort of man with whom that much power and responsibility could be trusted. But I could make micro-changes that would just improve the experience of living for everyone in small, simple ways.

Take hummingbirds, for example. They are very lovely and impressive little creatures with their super-duper-hi-fi metabolism and ability to float in midair. I love hummingbirds. But when the cold weather comes, they migrate south. I’m sure the tropical folks love them during winter, but you know what? Those of us in the cold parts of the world need them more. Folks in the tropics have the sun for company, but we need all the happiness and beauty we can get.

I think that hummingbirds should hibernate instead of migrate. I think they should create nice warm little cocoons for themselves. And because a hummingbird’s diet is mostly sugar, these cocoons would take the form of little bulbs that would look like they were made of spun glass, like Christmas ornaments with beautiful colorful birds inside, and they would hang from tree branches all winter long, catching the light and sparkling like precious stones in the forest.
The cocoons, which would be transparent to start with, would function like greenhouses to preserve warmth through the cold months. As winter passed, though, each cocoon would gradually fill with the hummingbird’s waste, but again, this would take the form of little sugar crystals that would line his feathers and gradually fog the glass and make the cocoon even more colorful, like a prismatic snowglobe; and you could tell how much of the winter was left by how opaque the cocoons had become.
And then in spring, when the bird was ready to awaken, the cocoon would burst in a puff of sweet, iridescent, multi-hued powder, and its resident would fly off to continue the business of whatever a hummingbird’s business is.
Think how much more beautiful winter would be if that was the case, and ask yourself whether I shouldn’t be Deputy God in Charge of Beautification Projects. I mean, it’s a big beautiful world out there already, and I have very few complaints, but I could touch up the corners a bit, maybe. I could airbrush away a few of the rough edges.
There’s a job out there needs doin’, and I’m the man to do it. I’m starting tonight, brothers and sisters. Forward any requests or ideas to this address, and love to all.

* * * * * * *

This is the transcript of my first-ever Live Journal voice post. It was originally published in October, just as the weather started to get cold.

Death of the Bar Culture Blog

This blog has now ceased to have an independent existence. I write so much over at Live Journal now that there isn't time to keep this one up, too, which you'll notice if you check the frequency of posts to this site since last spring. And anyway, my LJ has lots of readers, whereas this blog has become readerless (mostly a reaction to my inconsistent publishing schedule, I hope...or maybe it just isn't any fucking good).
So, I'm converting this one. I'm gonna use it as a repository for my favorite essays and stories, copied from LJ to here. In other words, it isn't really Ogre's Guide to Bar Culture anymore. I haven't decided yet whether I'm gonna leave all the old posts on here, or transfer them to LJ and leave only my favorites. I think it's pretty likely. When I do decide that, I'll leave another message.
From now on at least, though, this will be only my very favorite writings.

Why People Need God

My sister’s daughter, Olivia, was born a couple of weeks ago. She was very sick when she was born; she stopped breathing twice in the first few hours. They kept her in the hospital for a week, during which my sister didn’t sleep and just hung around outside the infant ICU until the doctors finally declared Olivia ready to go home. She’s there now, doing well, and it looks like everything’s alright.
My friend's son, Max, was born at the beginning of the week. He, too, was very sick, just like Olivia, and had to stay in the hospital. Unlike Olivia, though, he died last night. This is too awful for words.
What was the difference between Max and Olivia? Why did the one live and the other die? What whim of fate decided this, and what possible purpose is served by it? I’m sorry, I have so many questions, but none that aren’t clichés.
I’m outraged by this, but there’s no one to yell at. I hate it when something is nobody’s fault. I like to have someone to be angry at. If it was your fault, dear reader, I would have someone to blame. But whose ass do I kick for this? What name do I put on my shitlist? Whose head do I break the bottle over?
This is why people believe in God, isn’t it? It's so that, when something tragic happens, they have someone to blame. They can rage helplessly and vengefully at the sky and believe that someone is listening, that there's someone responsible that they can hurt.

(cough)

I walk out of the Student Center, light a cigarette, and start to walk across campus. It’s bitter cold and I’m wearing my heavy winter coat, made heavier now by full pockets; I have just bought myself a bottle of fruit juice and one of those containers of sliced fruit that you pick up for a couple of bucks in the cafeteria.
As I walk, I consider the various fruit products in my pocket. “This stuff is very good for us,” I say to myself. “We’re being very health-conscious today.” I think happy thoughts about nutrition all the way back to my own building. I could have gotten pizza and a soda, but I went with pineapple and strawberries and canteloupe.
“Very healthy indeed,” I tell myself as I put out my cigarette. I lean my face back to the sun, which has broken out of the clouds just for this moment in the midst of an ugly grey winter’s day.
“Yes,” my self answers back, “if we keep this up, we just might live forever.” I cough and go back to work.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

I’m thinking tonight about my friend Sonny from high school. I don’t remember most of the people I went to high school with, but Sonny isn’t the sort of person you forget.

He was, even at that tender age, just completely fried. He had smoked so much pot that his mind was on a kind of permanent bake. Even when he wasn’t stoned, he seemed stoned.

For example…we’d be sitting around on Monday morning discussing a party we had all been to on Saturday night. Sonny would sit and grin, and occasionally he’d add things like, “Oh, that must’ve been cool,” or “Sounds like a great party, man…wish I’d been there.”

And finally, we’d have to tell him, “Sonny, baby, you were there.”

“Oh. Okay. Well, I bet it was a blast,” he’d say.

I used to hang out over at his house, and we’d get wasted and have these deep philosophical discussions (well, they seemed like deep philosophical discussions at the time). One day we proved, logically and conclusively, that the Earth was flat. We even plotted all the arguments that round-Earthers might try to use against us and came up with unassailable responses. It was all watertight and undeniable. We were very clever boys, you see.

I wish I had written all of that stuff down.

I’m trying to picture him as he would be today. I see him living in a shack along the river, a little west of town. Probably he built the shack with his own hands; he worked as a carpenter in VoTech, and he was always clever about things like that anyway. I bet he does random work for people, building furniture, repairing gutters, to pay his meager bills, and spends the rest of his time on books and music and pretty girls sunning themselves on the banks of the James. I see herb gardens in his windows, a small vegetable garden out in front, and a bit of marijuana growing discreetly out back. I see him with a big stupid friendly dog whose color is impossible to guess, ‘cause he’s always covered with mud from the river. I see Sonny sitting on the front porch in a Pink Floyd T-shirt, taking a toke and playing his guitar and diggin’ the sunset over the city, like we always did back then. I don’t know if that’s what his life is like now, but that’s how I picture it. It would suit him.

Anyway, Sonny had this strange habit all through high school of constantly predicting the end of the world. Now, this was during the waning days of the Cold War, so it was at least possible; and Reagan was President and we were pretty sure that he’d push the button in a fit of cognitive dissonance sooner or later anyways. So the end of the world was something we all thought about, kind of casually. We weren’t worried about it…we were living each day as if it were our last, anyway, so the apocalypse wouldn't have mattered much.

Sonny worried, though. Well, I don’t know if it would be correct to say that he worried...on the contrary, he was very serene about it. I’d ask him if he wanted to come over and watch the basketball game and he’d say, very evenly and calmly, “Well, since the world’s gonna end this evening, I don’t think it much matters where we decide to watch the game.”

He was wrong over and over for years, but his faith was never shaken. He would always predict universal destruction very simply and in a very matter-of-fact way, with tremendous conviction.

“Hey, Sonny, there’s a warehouse party" [they were not yet called “raves”] "down on Leigh Street this weekend. You wanna come?”

“Maybe. But it looks like the world’s gonna end tonight, so I’m not making any plans.”

And it was all a big joke to the rest of us. I mean, the first couple of times it could be maybe a bit unsettling (especially if he did it while we were all wasted), but once you got used to it, it was fun. It was just a Sonny thing, you know? And conventional wisdom in our circle said that it didn’t pay to spend too much effort trying to figure Sonny out. He was like a Rubik’s Cube, and you liked him better with his colors jumbled.

In fact, he really became a sort of rallying cry. “Drink, screw, and be merry, for Sonny says that tomorrow we die!” Sorta like that.

So one night, after a couple of years of this, Sonny and I were sitting around his house. I was drinking cheap wine (Sonny liked having me over ‘cause I didn’t smoke up all his pot); he was taking endless bong hits and sipping on his mom’s beer. And I asked him about some event coming up and, as usual, he said that he’d be happy to attend in the unlikely event that anyone was left alive by then.

“Sonny, dude, I gotta ask you this. Why are you always so sure the world’s about to end?”

“It is gonna end. It’s gotta happen sometime.”

“Yeah, but why now? I mean, every day you say we’re all gonna die tonight, and you’re always wrong.”

“But if I keep saying it, sooner or later I’ll be right.”

“What the hell good will it do you to be right after being wrong all those times?”

“Hell, I’m wrong all the time anyways. We all are. Almost everything I’ve ever done or believed in or thought has been wrong. Prob’ly all of it was wrong; I’m not sure. I might never have been right about anything, ever, in my whole life. The things I think I’m right about, those are just the things I haven’t found out how wrong I am about yet.

“But someday the world is really and truly gonna end. And when that happens, it’s gonna be an incontrovertible fact. There ain't gonna be no mistaking it, there ain't gonna be two ways of looking at it, it's gonna be the real true end. And I’m gonna know, right then, absolutely and without any doubt, that I was right about one thing.”

“Okay," I said, "but I still don’t see what good it’ll do you. You’ll be dead. And everybody else’ll be dead, too. What difference will being right make?”

“Sure, we’ll all be dead. But you know what? Everybody else in the world, their last thought is gonna be ‘Oh, shit!’ But me, my last thought…well, it’s prob’ly gonna be ‘Oh, shit!’ too, but mixed in with that will be a lot of satisfaction. For once in my life I will KNOW that I was right.”

That’s pretty silly, really, even though his rationale is similar to that advanced to bolster belief in most major religions. I laughed at him at the time, and I laugh at the story now. It was just Sonny; it was typical of him, really. It was a simple idea taken to fantastic extremes.

But strangely enough I find that, as I get older, I really kinda treasure the memory of that conversation. I’ve come to realize what Sonny somehow had already figured out when we were 16: that we don’t really know anything, that we can’t believe anything, that nothing is absolutely true. It would be a great comfort to me to know for sure, just once, that I was right about anything important.

I’m not gonna go as far as he did. I don’t think the world is gonna end tonight. I’m pretty sure it’s not, in fact; and if it does, I’ll be as surprised as you are. I’ll be out running wild in the streets, maddened by the horror of it, just like everybody else.

Except Sonny. I don't think he'll be scared. And I know he won't be surprised. Wherever he is, he’s gonna sit and stare at the coming apocalypse, and have one more hit, and smile.

Jeannie Confuses Me With God

There is a cat who has, for her own reasons, decided to share my apartment with me. We’ve been together for about three years now. I call her Jeannie, because I have to call her something, but that makes no difference to her whatsoever. She is an extremely difficult and dangerous example of her species, a startling blend of fear and ferocity.

Tonight, she is being even more difficult and dangerous than usual. Since I got home, she’s been charging me every few minutes and trying to remove the flesh from my legs. Usually when she does this it’s because she’s hungry; she’ll bite and/or scratch me, then run into the kitchen and, standing over her food bowl, she’ll look at me and mew piteously. But it isn’t time for her to eat yet, and anyway, she doesn’t seem to be hungry. Instead of running to her bowl, she’s been running to the front door.

It’s a cool, rainy night here in Huntington, very comfortable and still, and I have the door standing open. Because of this, it can’t be that she wants me to let her out; she can go out any time she wants. It’s been a mystery to me, and quite a painful mystery at that, trying to discover what she wants so badly. But I think I’ve figured it out. I think she wants me to turn the rain off for her.

I suppose that, to her, I appear to move in mysterious ways. After all, I can make it light or dark. I can make it hot or cold. I conjure her food, as far as she can tell, out of thin air (not that the air in here is ever thin, given how much I smoke). I can even turn the rain on and off inside the apartment (in the bathroom, anyway), so why wouldn’t I be able to turn it on and off outside?

So she’s sitting, hunched in the doorway, looking out at the lot and longing to go play, and occasionally looking at me over her shoulder, saying, “Can’t you do something about this? I’ve got important business out there!”

No, sweetheart, that’s another item on the long list of things I can’t fix. It's very sweet and cute that she thinks I can, but it's a little bit sad, too, because there actually isn't anything I can do. I don't need metaphors for powerlessness in my life right now; I've got plenty of the real thing.

“But there’s things need killin’ out there! I’m on a tight schedule! I’ve got a quota to meet! Come on, just turn it off for a little bit? PLEEEEEEASE?”

There’s no way to explain this to a cat, is there?

Ed Wood, a Man for My Season

Huntington is, for reasons that have not yet made themselves clear to me, a town in which many, many people drive on the sidewalks. This can sometimes make me, as a career pedestrian, a little bit uncomfortable.
But I'm adjusting to it. I can tell I'm adjusting to it because last night we went out walking and got a little bit worn out, so we just stretched out together on the pavement at the corner of Fourth Avenue and Twelfth Street, across from the Union and whatever ridiculous name Mango's is currently trying to be known by.
Someone called the cops on us, and the cop that showed up was the brother of my best friend. He screeched to a stop just below our feet and called to me out of his window: "Hey, Rick!"
I sat up. "Oh, hey, Adam, what's up?"
"What are you doing? Are you guys okay?"
"Oh, yeah. We've been walking and we're relaxing a little bit."
"Okay. We got a call that someone had passed out on this corner."
"No, just hanging out. We haven't even been drinking."
"Well, alright, then. I'll see you later."
"Sure thing, brother. Love to your sister, okay?"
This was late in the evening, around eleven or so. Earlier in the day I'd worked. Well, "worked" isn't right. I'd been at work, but I didn't actually get much done yesterday. It was one of those days where nothing goes right, a reverse-Midas situation and everything you touch turns to dross. So I gave up on accomplishing anything at around noon and just wandered aimlessly through the stacks, dancing to music on my headphones and thinking dark, moody thoughts and hoping no one would see me and notice that I was doing a whole lotta fuck-all.
After work I went home briefly, and then to the Union to see Katy, who was working. I had a glass of rum, which was lovely and settled me down a bit. And Herbie's anniversary party was last night. He opened the Union (his second bar) exactly fifteen years, one month, and three days ago last night. I'm not sure why the anniversary party was last night, actually, instead of on the anniversary. But there was free food :) so I don't care that much.
I called Amy to tell her about the free food, and she came down. Afterwards we went for the walk that took us on a circuit from the Union to campus, up to Third Avenue, down to what used to be the Plaza, and back around to 4th and 12th, where we sacked out.
We were there, I don't know, an hour or thereabouts. I lay on my back and sang a little bit, and listened to her talk, and made suggestions for future stories, and stared at the changing traffic lights. And in the silences, I thought quite a bit.
I'd watched the first bit of Tim Burton's Ed Wood before coming out. I'd never seen the movie before, but I know quite a bit about Wood, widely regarded as the worst director in Hollywood history. In fact, I've made a bit of a study of him: he's one of my heroes, actually, and the movie had nothing new to teach me about him.
He is very different from my other heroes. Eugene Debs, for example, was an eloquent and driven leader of men, an important figure in the political history of this country who managed to receive more than a million votes for the Presidency two times, once while in prison for opposing US involvement in WWI. He was one of the major reasons that the US labor movement won the victories it did in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, victories the fruits of which we are all still enjoying (at least until the current Congress is done destroying them all). He faced down strikebreakers, the captains of industry, and the United States government, and he overcame them by sheer will and personal magnetism and determination.
Debs, or "Gene" as I call him, was a titan of the left, a man whose life affected (and continues to affect) those of millions of his countrymen. Wood, needless to say, is not like that. I doubt seriously that anyone's life has ever been significantly altered by seeing one of his pathetic movies.
Actually, most heroic people are considered heroic because they overcame obstacles and accomplished something, demonstrated in the face of doubt and derision that they had the skills or the talent or the willpower to reach their goals. Which, that's fine, but most of us aren't like that, you know? Most of us will never be world-class good at anything at all, and a few of us will never find anything at all that we'll even be acceptably good at.
Wood was one of those people. His lack of skill is appalling. He was a terrible director, and no force on Earth, no sudden insight, no intervention by a more talented and experienced mentor, no gift from God even, could have made him a good director. Sure, his movies were low-budget, but they'd have been even worse with decent backing. He's the guy that a low budget actually helped, because it meant he couldn't afford to put but so much stupid bullshit into his films. He was profoundly, atrociously, phenomenally, openly and dramatically awful.
And you know what? He didn't care. Making movies was what he loved doing, and he was convinced that he could do the job better than anyone else. He made an awful movie, and then without a pause he dove into the next movie, which would turn out to be even worse. And by the time that one, too, bombed, he'd be hard at work at the next one.
He directed 18 films (more than Kubrick) and was involved in some capacity in nearly a hundred. And it's gotta be said: they all sucked. Every goddamned one of them. Do you know why it's so easy to choose Wood as the worst director in Hollywood history? Because no other bad director left such a body of work. No one else with his lack of skill could have continued in the business for so long. Anyone else would have given up and gone off to be a car salesman.
The point is this: ANY idiot with talent, skill, vision, and determination can face and overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles; but it takes a special kind of idiot to overcome obstacles without any of those qualities. That is far more rare and precious.
Ed Wood, every day of his life, was confronted with the incontrovertible fact that his dreams could never be realized. Not the opinion of naysayers, not the machinations of competitors, but obvious, cold, hard, fact.
He just refused to believe it.
Ed Wood, the patron saint of mindless optimism and a bull-headed refusal to face the facts.
It was mostly him I was thinking of, lying on the pavement next to Amy, who was within arm's reach but very distant, and really I might as well not have been with her at all. And after she left I, rather than reconstructing a thoroughly unsatisfying evening in my head, went home and watched the movie all the way through, and then all the special features, and then the movie again, and drank sangria, and then slept very soundly. And now, today, I'm back where I started, refusing to acknowledge all the evidence which overwhelmingly points to the fact that I'm trying to claw through a brick wall and will never make it.
Ordinary heroes are of no use to me in this situation, and don't you tell me about yours 'cause I don't wanna hear it. You can keep your Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. and Margaret Mead and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Ed Wood, he's the man for me.

Help! I've been kidnapped!

So, I went to see Amy and was showing off my new camera. I noticed that, for some reason, the picture was clearer when I pointed the camera at the floor than when I, for example, pointed it at her. I said, "Well, I could take a beautiful picture of my feet."

She said I should do that, then, so I did:

I showed her the picture, and she said, "With your legs crossed and those loose pants, it looks like you've been kidnapped and your kidnappers have restrained you by wrapping you in a tartan rug, and you've somehow gotten one hand free and are sending this picture to your rescuers as a clue to your whereabouts."

And see, no one else in the world would've thought of that, which is one of many reasons I love her so much. She's just wired delightfully differently from everyone else.

Wild Flowers in a Mason Jar

The trip to Marlinton is over, and I'm back here where I...well, not where I belong, if I’m gonna be straightforward about it, but where I pay rent, anyways.

It's amazing how quickly you're back when you come home from a trip. You think you're gonna get your feet wet, maybe wade into the kiddie pool a little ways before you start relearning how to swim, and then someone comes along and shoves you right into the deep end.

I didn't even have a chance to put on my swimming trunks first.

So, before I get too awful caught up in all the Huntingtonivity, Huntingtonness, Huntingtonicity, whatever you'd say there...before I get too caught up in all that and forget the wonderful time I had this weekend, I'm gonna make a list of things to remember from the Marlinton trip:

• Walking into the radio station in time to hear Cheryl say, “No, you can’t have that one, ‘cause Jesus is using it as a ceiling fan.” This is the reverse of what happened with Reed last week…a punchline that stands on its own. I don’t even care what the joke was.
• Chicken fried steak, giant mounds of hash browns, toast, sweet tea, and all the gravy in the whole world at French’s Diner, not once but twice (and the second time with an egg as well…just like heaven).
• Not getting tetanus from the old railbridge, even though my Dooleys were sure I would.
• A four-word MySpace message that hasn’t been out of my thoughts for a second since Saturday night.
• Taking notes during the school board meeting. I was gonna write a big post on here about how the adult members of the school board are plotting against the Student Representative, who was not present at the meeting even though her name was on the agenda. There’s something going on there. They are trying to strip her of her power, is what it is. That post, obviously, never happened, but it was fun to think about.
• Also, the lovely irony of passing notes back and forth with Mrs. P at a school board meeting. It was like being in high school English class again.
• The Lewisburg apartment of Clan Dooley, which reminded me of home so much that it made me a little bit dizzy…I kept expecting to look out the window and see Church Hill or the Lee Bridge. Also, Ma Dooley saying that I looked “like wisdom beauty and gentleness personified.” I can never receive enough compliments.
• Continually NOT clipping my fingernails.
• The balcony, and the view that became so familiar so quickly, and poor hard-working long-suffering Cerberus, and Mrs. P thinking she needed to explain to me why the candle, when used as an ashtray, smelled so nice.
• My impromptu live album, recorded in the shower.
• Sarah furiously updating her Vocab from Hell because Mrs. P and I couldn’t stop saying stupid things.
• Live In Your Mom, Play In Ours. Your mom—Australian for Beer. Because So Much Is Riding On Your Mom. Happiness Is Your-Mom-Shaped. Melts In Your Mom, Not In Your Hands.
• Remedy sleeping on my feet.
• Marilyn’s speech while trying to organize a party that no one else seemed to know was going on, and my raffle ticket.
• Translating what my Dooleys were saying into French in my head and mumbling it into my pillow, half-asleep on Monday morning.
• Five books for a dollar in the bookstore, and a beautiful purple sweater for $1.50 at the thrift store, and drops of Jupiter to bring home to Amy.
• Riding a beat-up old bike out to the telescope. I’m gonna try only to remember the downhill bits, though.
• A punk rock show at the Opera House (which, I’m gonna leave that alone) and an old woman who scared all the punk rock kids enough that they called the police.

And most fondly, I'll remember these:

• Discussing buckwheat pancakes with Mrs. P. I don’t like pancakes, but it didn’t make much difference in the context of the conversation.
• Difficulty with the high beams on the way up. The fearlessness of Mrs. P on country roads. Janis Joplin and Joni Mitchell. Trading songs and stories with Sarah all the way home (the first person to hear me sing one of my own songs since probably 1998), pulling over to let the storm pass us, and fireworks from the highway.

Taking the Day

The Fourth is coming up, which, I know that's not news to any of you. I work for the state, so I'm off that day. It's a Tuesday. I'm off Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday. Monday, I'm supposed to be here.

I want to go to visit Mrs. P. A two-day break isn't long enough for that. So, I'm not working on Monday. I'm taking the day.

I like that expression, "taking the day." Americans say they're taking the day OFF, but to the British, it's "taking the day." It makes more sense. Deleting that one word makes a huge difference in what we're saying.

The American version sounds a little bit guilty, like you're getting away with something. You're supposed to be working, but you're not. It's like we think we're skipping school.

But the British, whose expressions are nearly always more elegant or wittier than their American equivalents, they get it right. I'm taking the day. My various jobs have stolen all these days from me, thousands of precious and limited days over the course of my life, and now I'm stealing this one back. It's mine, goddamnit, one of a limited number allotted to me, and I'm gonna do what I want with it.

I wanna get out of town. I want my Mrs. P. I wanna hang out and travel with Sarah. I wanna be off alone in the wilderness with Clan Dooley and with all the interesting people I've heard so much about.

To the state of West Virginia: get off me, you sons of bitches.

I'm taking the day.

The Story of My Life

There's a T-shirt I love which shows a guy, just a face in the crowd, suddenly looking at all the near-identical people around him and thinking, "Hey, what if I'm not the main character?"

When I was younger I definitely considered myself the main character in the story of my life (and back then there was some evidence to support the theory). These days I really don't. I mean, if I was gonna make a movie of my life, nobody as ugly as me could star in it. Actually, I'm hoping to get Chow Yun-Fat for the role.

No, I don't really want to be the main actor anymore, I don't think. I'm better behind the scenes. I think I want to direct my life rather than star in it. And God knows this life needs a new director. Whoever's running the show right now has no skill for the dramatic.

So, okay. The first thing I'm gonna do is fire the screenwriter. I mean, the original idea was pretty good, and he's got a knack for snappy dialog, but the plot is beginning to drag a little bit. So much could be done with this story; certainly a few of the characters are very well-drawn and interesting. But it needs a little spicing up. For one thing, it could certainly use a steamy sex scene or two. And we're gonna need a complete rewrite in Act Three...I mean, this ending needs work. Who wrote this garbage? You know, people are getting tired of movies that don't have happy endings. How's this: boy and girl go to Italy and take up raising goats on a hillside overlooking the Mediterranean? And have three perfect little girls named Xenia Voltaire, Circe Rousseau, and Virginia Mercy? And live simply and happily ever after? Everybody loves a movie like that.

Today's scene sucked ass beginning to end, writing, shooting, scenes and performances. The star was hungover and sick at heart, much of the dialog was turgid and excessively emotional, and at least one of the costars has gone completely off the script. Let's snap this up a little, huh? That little bit of violence with the fruit juice machine looks pretty good in the rushes. Let's build on that. Tomorrow we'll start with a car chase. Those are a lot easier to write.

Also, the production designer had better start pulling his weight. This setting is getting pretty dull, the same sad sorry tiny little town for nearly five years. What happened to the old guy, the one who set scenes in California and New Orleans and DC and New York and Boston? What happened to those wonderful old sets like the Southern Belle, Third Street Diner, Madison Square Garden, the Village Cafe, and the Art Institute in San Francisco?

We'll need to work on continuity next. In too many of the main character's relationships, the nature of the relationship changes from one day to the next. It's too confusing for the audience, and seems to make it hard for the actor to learn his lines, as well...half the time he's up there on the screen and you can just tell he doesn't know WHAT'S going on around him. We can't have the movie changing so radically from scene to scene. Let's go back to the tried-and-true formula, "Boy meets girl, boy falls for girl, girl digs other boy, other boy turns out to be unworthy, girl eventually comes back 'round to loving the hero." And for God's sake, let's try to be linear.

The casting director did a good job for a while but these days her choices are pretty lousy. We need to change all the actors who play co-workers, for example. They're nice enough folks, sure, but they should be doing commercials for the Kentucky Lottery. Bring in Sarah Polley, Peggy Lipton, and Jeremy Irons instead. Oooh...do you think Diana Rigg is free?

The prop man needs to get off his ass. The principal possessions of our hero are WAY too left-over-90's-slacker. I mean, they're so last decade. We're trying to make a hip, happening film here, and you can't do that with a twenty-year-old TV, a jukebox with blown-out speakers, and burned-out light fixtures in the john. That furniture is atrocious, and the kitchen is simply too small to be convincing. Can we get somebody in here to work on that, please?

I need to light a fire under the producer and get a bigger budget for this thing, too. $12,000 a year just isn't cutting it. How are we supposed to afford location shoots on that? We can't even get decent meals catered with that kinda money.

And somebody do a little research, alright? We need a little quality control here. I mean, a little while ago we're shooting a scene in early June and it's raining and forty degrees out! Somebody wanna get on his horse about fixing that?

For Christ's sake, I'm a hella director, but you can't expect me to do everything.

Lucid Dreaming

Amy and I watched The Waking Life the other night. There's a bit in it where the main character is talking to another guy about lucid dreaming, the idea that, if you know you're in a dream, you can control it. I've been hearing this for years. I think it's bullshit. I'm gonna tell you why.

Probably a year and a half ago I had a dream. This is when I was still working at Hank's, and I'd walked home dead drunk at around five a.m. and collapsed into the bed. I fell asleep immediately and suddenly I was walking home down the alley again. I thought it was strange, having to walk home twice in one night. Then I noticed that, though the alley was a perfect representation of my alley, it was very slightly too small, like it was a movie set that had been constructed to 7/8 scale. It was very nicely done, down to the trash in the gutters and all the broken glass, but it was just too small. And there was a guy following me, and a guy waiting for me at the end of the alley, and a guy coming towards me across the bus station parking lot. I figured they were gonna try to mug me. I wasn't worried, 'cause the guys were in 7/8 scale too. Figured I could take 'em.

Anyway, what with the repitition and the scale, it suddenly occured to me that I was dreaming. So I stopped under a light and said, "Okay, then, punk bitches, come on and get your Matrix-style ass-whuppin'" and they disappeared. So I thought, "Hey, awesome, this must be one of those lucid dreams where you can control what happens. I can do any cool thing I can imagine. So, what to do?"

So I thought for a while, about flying into space or burrowing to the center of the Earth or going back in time to hang out with Ben Franklin or Audrey Hepburn, and then finally decided, "You know what I need, though, is a blowjob. I haven't had a blowjob in forever."

I wasn't exactly sure of the procedure for this. "Now, what am I supposed to do? Just concentrate on fellatio? Okay." So I closed my eyes and thought REALLY REALLY hard about a blowjob, and then I opened 'em back up, but there was still no one in the alley.

"Well, when I threatened the bad guys they vanished. Maybe it's an aural thing. HEY, WHOEVER'S OUT THERE...MAN IN NEED OF BLOWJOB," I tried again, no luck.

"Well, shit," said I. "I might as well just wake up, then." And I looked around, expecting all the buildings to melt and fade away and my room to appear, but that didn't happen either. "Okay, fine, so what do I do now?" I thought. I couldn't decide on anything, so I just went the hell on home.

So, either there's a piece of my brain missing (and after the ungentle way I've treated myself over the years, that wouldn't surprise me) or this lucid dreaming thing is pure bullshit. When I'm dreaming, I almost always know it, and yet I'm just struggling to keep my head outta the water.

Scene from a Waffle House, Sunday Dinner

SCENE: Waffle House (THE HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH), int., early afternoon. An incredibly handsome young man (ME) sits with an older woman (MAMA) and two small boys (JOSH and JOE). The woman is having a conversation with the boys while the man sips his coffee, until someone says something that brings a Beatles’ song to his mind. He sings a verse of it, then turns to one of the boys…

ME: The Beatles are awesome. They’ve got a song for every situation.
JOSH: Do you like the Beatles?
ME: Everybody likes the Beatles.
JOSH: Not everybody likes the Beatles.
ME: Everybody who counts likes the Beatles.
JOSH: Everybody who counts?
ME: An appreciation of the Beatles is considered a baseline requirement for admission into polite society.
JOSH: I don’t like the Beatles.
ME: Then you won’t be allowed into polite society.
JOSH: ‘Cause I don’t like the Beatles?
ME: (thinking of all the other reasons the boy isn’t ready for polite society) Well, that’s what we’ll tell people, anyway.

The Litter Bug

I don’t mean to scare ya, my friend, but I betcha
Come Father’s Day the litter bug’s gonna getcha
The urge is righteous, but the face is wrong
I hope that something better comes along

I want to have children.

Well, more accurately, I want someone else to have children, sired by me. Not a wife, don't want a wife, and who'd have me, anyway? Just a surrogate mother, is what I need, so I can have my children.

I don't necessarily want to KEEP them, you understand. Children are kinda nightmarish, really. I just want to name them.

I want to have three girls. No boys, please. I was a boy myself, and I know what an asshole I was. If my sons would be genetically programmed to be like me, then No Boys Allowed.

You know how your more hysterical conservatives worry about abortion on demand because they think that people will abort fetuses because they don't like the sex of the child? I'm the one that they got that idea from. "It's a boy? I'm making an appointment at the clinic."

Anyway, yes, three girls. And if they have the same last name as me (there are no guarantees), then their initials will be CRW, VMW, and (my favorite) XVW. They're gonna have hell finding monogrammed clothing.

One name is a nod to my Slavic heritage, a good solid Russian name, a very beautiful Russian name actually, which is Xenia. Not ZEE-nia, like those idiots in Ohio pronounce it, but ZEN-ya, which is the proper pronunciation. Also there will be a Circe, connecting one of the girls with the classical age. Their middle names will be in honor of the great French thinkers, Rousseau and Voltaire. Neither is a feminine name, but they're both lovely-sounding enough for my beautiful little girls. And anyway, I'm heavily into androgyny. So, Xenia Voltaire and Circe Rousseau.

The third little girl will be named for my home, Virginia, and we will call her Ginny, which folks will think is Jenny and they'll say "Thank God he gave ONE of his daughters a real little girl's name." Her middle name will be Mercy, which I've always thought was just a beautiful name for a girl, even though Ace appropriated it from me for one of his stories. Virginia Mercy. That just sounds so wonderful. And then, because they all would have such beautiful names, I would prob'ly end up falling in love with them and keeping them anyway.

So, all I need is a prospective mother with 27 months to kill, and then we can get on with our lives. Any takers?

Yeah, Eddie, But Is It Art?

You know what I hate? Well, that's a lot to ask, really. Lemme rephrase that question. Do you know what item #17846 is on my hate inventory? It's semi-realism in movies. I don't object to realism. I'm not a huge fan of it, of course...after all, my favorite movies are zombie movies.
Realism, however, is okay. But incomplete, half-assed attempts at realism in the movies aggravate me. I hate it when, say, two ostensibly German characters are speaking to each other, and they speak English with a German accent. I'm gonna let you in on a little secret: Germany is really not full of Germans speaking English to each other in German accents. It's full of people speaking German to each other. That's why they call it that.
If you want realism in your movie, let your characters speak German with little English subtitles. And if realism isn't that important to you, just let 'em talk normally. You're not fooling us with these crappy accents, okay? We know they aren't really German, they are American actors pretending to be German, and that's okay.
Movie watching is about the willing suspension of disbelief. Forget the stupid accents. Just tell us they're German. We'll believe you. That's what we came to the movie for.
I'm gonna make a movie someday, and I'm gonna cast my friends in it, but I'm not gonna write particular parts for particular folks to suit their particular character traits or appearance. In fact, I'm gonna cast the movie by putting the names of my actors in a hat and drawing them at random. If we do that, then hopefully Mrs. P will be the 6'11" professional basketball player from Zambia. Stephen will be the beautiful woman that everybody's falling over themselves to get close to. Amy will be the fat girl with the great sense of humor that everybody loves and nobody wants to sleep with. My brother will be a six-legged Martian goatherd.
All of this without makeup; my brother, for example, will not have six legs, and Mrs. P won't have to stand on a ladder for the whole movie. I'll convince people of who my characters are through the use of clever dialog, stellar performances from my cast, and just repeating the big lies over and over. After twenty or twenty-five people make fun of my sweet little Amy for being fat, or walk up to Heather and say "How's the weather up there?" I think people will start to get with the suspension-of-disbelief program. It worked for the ancient Greeks; I'm gonna make it work for me.
On a not-entirely-related note: on payday, I have decided, I am going to Latta's and buying myself a new set of pastels. I miss doing my colorful little sketches. And what I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna start doing pictures on every surface I can find, and I'm going to sketch the pictures of what you really see when you're wherever the picture is. For example, I'm going to sit at one of the big concrete tables outside the library and do a picture (on the table) of what you'd see if you were looking up, out over the campus, instead of down at the table. I'm gonna lacquer it when I'm done, too, so it will last forever (and not ruin people's clothes). And my picture is gonna look exactly like the campus on an early-summer afternoon, only better, 'cause it'll be brighter and more colorful and the folks in it will be more beautiful, and people will sit at the table and compare my lovely picture to the actual campus and think, "Jeez, I wish the real world was like that."

Scene from a Sidewalk Cafe, Tuesday Evening

SCENE: Two young folks sit at a table outside a mom-and-pop coffee house, just before sundown. He’s sipping a China Black, and she’s drinking grape juice and eating dried fruit and cottage cheese. Their conversation turns from vaguely political and spiritual topics to the more practical matter of what they should do with the rest of the evening…

HE: Well, we could just go home and watch those Marx Brothers movies. They’re due back on Friday, so we need to watch them sometime soon.
SHE: Maybe. I don’t know, though…I don’t think I could really focus on a movie right now. Although, shit, I do want to see The Omen. Is that out yet?
HE: Yeah, it opened today. You didn’t think they were gonna miss this date, did you? I think the only reason they decided to remake the movie at all was so they could release it on 6/6/6.
SHE: I forgot that today was 6/6/6. The apocalypse is supposed to be tonight.
HE: Oh, right. (pause) Well, then, I guess we don’t have to worry about getting the Marx Brothers movies back on time. You wanna go to The Omen?
SHE: No. Not really. I guess we could just wander around…
HE: Yeah, we’re pretty good at that.

[a motorcycle roars past, obscuring her response. She gazes after it with loathing]

SHE: I want a Tommy gun.
HE: I’ll get you one for your birthday.
SHE: No, better not. If I had one, I’d use it.
HE: I’ll get you a paintball gun instead.
SHE: We don’t need a gun anyway. We could just stand along the sidewalk with, I don’t know, a crowbar or something, and when a motorcycle passed us we could jam the crowbar into the spokes.
HE: (grins) Oh, evil girl. (brightens) Hey, it’s 6/6/6!
SHE: I know. We were just talking about it.
HE: Right. We need to go out and do something evil in commemoration of the day.
SHE: Evil? Like sacrificing babies?
HE: Well, maybe not that evil. Just something fun. Something cheerfully, randomly, celebratorially evil.
SHE: What did you have in mind?
HE: I don’t…I don’t know, off the top of my head. Couldn’t we just walk around until evil came over us? You know, searching for inspiration? Just ‘til we ran across a kitten we could drown or something?
SHE: You know, now I’m not sure wandering around is such a good idea tonight. I’m not wearing good wandering shoes.
HE: Oh. Well, any ideas?
SHE: None.
HE: Our evil production has fallen well below quota recently. (lost in thought, gazing around) I’ve got it!
SHE: What?
HE: I’m gonna go over to that newspaper machine, and I’m only gonna put in 50 cents, but I’m gonna take TWO newspapers.
SHE: (with a tolerant smile) Oooh, that IS evil.
HE: In fact, I’m gonna take EVERY newspaper in the box! How’s that for evil, baby?
SHE: That’s about as evil as it gets.

[she rolls her eyes and shakes her head as he wanders off, stage right, only to return sheepishly a few seconds later, empty-handed]

HE: Damned thing’s empty.
SHE: Yeah, that kinda thing doesn’t work so well at 9:00. We should’ve done it first thing this morning, and hit every newspaper box in town, so that no one could have their paper.
HE: Well, next time, we’ll know.

[She speaks, but stops and stares with even more hatred than before as another, even louder, motorcycle passes]

HE: WHAT?!?!?
SHE: Automatic weapons!
HE: Noisy.
SHE: I’m serious. We need, I don’t know, submachine guns or something.
HE: Yes, but with silencers.
SHE: Oh, of course. They’re very loud.
HE: And we’ll go around very quietly killing noisy people. We’ll be the Noise Pollution Killin’ Bandits.
SHE: That sounds like a good name for a band.
HE: Yeah, and we’ll play on street corners, but if people throw change into our hat we’ll shoot ‘em, ‘cause the jingling makes us crazy.
SHE: And we’ll play electric guitars but they won’t be plugged into anything, ‘cause we hate the noise…and instead of singing, we’ll whisper the songs.
HE: And I’ll play my saxophone, only with socks stuffed down into the bell so it won’t make any sound.
SHE: I didn’t know you could play the saxophone.
HE: With socks down the bell, neither will anyone else.
SHE: And with the money we make from our music, we’ll buy automatic weapons and kill bikers.
HE: Now, THAT’S evil. There’s our next evil project.
SHE: No, it isn’t evil, really. I mean, they kinda deserve it, making all that noise. It’s justified.
HE: Retributive.
SHE: They asked for it.
HE: Performing a service really.
SHE: Plus, we can’t start that tonight, ‘cause we don’t have the guns yet. We need something evil for tonight.
HE: Let’s just get some cans of spray paint and exercise our artistic impulses while committing the evil act of vandalizing.
SHE: I don’t know. I think I want to break something.
HE: Well, we’re in a town full of glass.
SHE: True. (thinks for a moment) If you were in a riot, I mean if you were living in a city and there was rioting, would you be a vandal, or a looter?
HE: Hmmm….that’s a tough one. I’d probably be happy vandalizing, really. Looters get caught too easy, ‘cause they’ve got the evidence on them, right? Plus, I live in a fucking closet, and I don’t know where I could put the loot.
SHE: Yes, I suppose we don’t want to be too materialistic.
HE: Plus, I don’t really need anything. Except I need a toaster. I’d loot a toaster, and then I’d go about vandalizing, I think.
SHE: Yeah, you can’t just go out looting at random. You’ve gotta look for things you really need.
HE: Right. I’m looking forward to being in a riot with you. Everybody else will take to the streets, and we’ll be sitting on the balcony with a legal pad saying, “Okay, we’ve gotta hit K-Mart, ‘cause I need some new bath towels,” or...
SHE: …or “Don’t forget the drug store”…
HE: …or “Hey, better grab some smokes”…
SHE: …or “What do you think is the best route from Latta’s to the liquor store?”
HE: Oh, yes, better plan the route carefully. Gotta be careful which streets you go down during a riot.
SHE: We’d be very organized looters.
HE: That's right. We’d have our little grocery list…
SHE: Only it would be a looting list…
HE: And money would be no object. Maybe we should start compiling it now. ‘Cause, you know, when the riot actually starts, there may not be much time.
SHE: Well, that’s something to do with the evening, but I think that’s probably for later. What are we gonna do right now?
HE: It’s too bad you can’t loot the things you really want. You can’t, for example, loot a dinner from Waffle House…
SHE: Okay, stay with me. What are we doing tonight?
HE: You wanted to break something?
SHE: Yes yes yes!!! Maybe we should go throw bricks through the windows of really posh places. And have really stupid, subliterate obscene notes attached to them... like, "You Stink!!!"
HE: We could do that. Personally, though, I was hoping to set something on fire.
SHE: Hmmm...well, instead of bricks, we could throw Molotov Cocktails.
HE: I don’t know if that’s a good idea. Me, you, a lighter, and flammable liquid…
SHE: Right. I can see it now: you light the cocktail, and then stand there staring at it, “Ohh, it’s so pretty” and then it blows up in your hand.
HE: Yeah, that’s probably out, then. Plus, you can’t attach a note to a Molotov.
SHE: We could do burn-pattern designs in people’s front yards with gasoline.
HE: I’ve never had any luck with that. I always draw things really carefully but just end up with a big round patch of fire.
SHE: Oh. Well, something else, then.

[both sit thinking for a while]

SHE: We’re really pathetic.
HE: I’m still waiting for the apocalypse to start. Plans might well prove to be superfluous anyway.
SHE: I forgot about that. Maybe it isn’t the apocalypse, though. Maybe it’s the Rapture. I wonder when it’s going to begin?
HE: It might have already happened. Done and over. I mean, if every “True Christian” on Earth suddenly disappeared, you and I might not know about it for a few days.
SHE: I don’t know. We can’t seem to manage any evil; maybe that’s a bad sign. Maybe we’ve been saved without knowing it. Maybe we’ll have to go, too.
HE: Jeez. Think of something evil, quick!

[blinding flash, both disappear]

GOD: TOO LATE!!! (maniacal laughter)

CURTAIN.

Lighter Karma

Been out walkin' in the rain. Only briefly, unfortunately, 'cause the rain gave up on me not long into the walk. But that's okay. It was fun while it lasted. Leaving my house required a tricky bit of navigation, actually, because both Fourteenth and Fifteenth Streets flood when it rains this much this fast, and so of course Four-and-a-Half Alley transforms into a canal between these two great lakes. By the time I headed out, my apartment was an island in a sea of glistening glop. Now, I love splashing in puddles as much as the next guy, but I've seen what's on the ground in my little alley, and I don't want it floating past me in the dark. I waited 'til I got a little further away and found some slightly less-contaminated puddles to splash in.
I brought my favorite lighter with me. I call it the Magic Lighter, because it lights no matter what. I mean, it's a cheap-ass disposable lighter of indeterminate make and eccentric design, but it really is magical. It works when it's wet, it works when it's cold, it works in a car without rolling the windows up or in the wind when I've only got one hand free. I save it special to use in bad weather, 'cause it's the only lighter I can trust to stand up to the tempests the world occasionally throws at me.
But it's finally beginning to run out of fluid. I say "finally" because I've had it for over a year now. It's a really big lighter, you see (I mean BIG...I've never seen another one like it), and held a lot of fluid. It would, in fact, make a formidable weapon. I'm terribly depressed that it's dying on me, because I can't replace it. I can't just go to the store it originally came from and buy a new one, because it's stolen, and I have absolutely no idea where it was purchased.
Now, before you get thinkin' ill of me, I'm not really a thief. I mean, you could walk off and leave your wallet next to me on the bar and I'd chase you down and give it to you. But lighters...stealing lighters doesn't count as stealing. It just doesn't. I mean, in the first place, it's something most people do unconsciously. For a smoker, you light your smoke and then slip the lighter into your pocket in one motion. The pocketing of the lighter is part of the act of lighting the cigarette. Because of this, when I give someone a light, I usually light the cigarette for them rather than letting them actually handle it. It's a simple rule of self-smoking-preservation.
Also, I've come to subscribe to the Great Karma Lighter Wheel theory of lighter justice. See (an aside to the unitiated), there's this Great Karma Lighter Wheel that devolves lighters into and out of the possession of smokers (depending on diverse factors including merit, luck, and personal alcohol content), and this wheel has a Yin and a Yang. Yes, I know I'm mixing metaphors (or worse, unrelated concepts from two eastern religions that have nothing to do with each other), but try to come with me on this...
The Yin of the Great Karma Lighter Wheel: Anyone who fails to pay sufficient attention to prevent the theft of this object, which is probably the single most-stolen personal item in the long, dark story of humanity, does not deserve to have one anyway.
The Yang of the Great Karma Lighter Wheel: The person that you're stealing this lighter from came by it by virtue of its theft from ANOTHER person, and will steal it back from you at the first opportunity. In fact, this lighter probably belonged to you in a past life.
Because it's one of those bizarre facts of life that no one ever, in the history of the world, has actually bought a disposable lighter. I am completely at a loss, in fact, to explain how lighters get into the economy in the first place. I carry three or four lighters everywhere I go, just in case, and I've got probably fifty more in my house, and I can't remember ever taking money out of my pocket to buy one. The closest I come is that the little cigarette store I shop at, up at the corner of 20th Street and Fifth Avenue, gives away free lighters when you buy a carton of smokes. But that little place just can't, on their own, be responsible for every lighter on the market. Bill Gates himself couldn't have flooded the market with this many lighters.
I think the government's behind it. I think that the CIA decided to get everyone they could hooked on crack, and then they suddenly realized that in order to smoke crack you need a lighter, and so they hid a couple billion a year in lighter expenses in some HUD bill or something, and now they have secret lighter agents who surreptitiously leave lighters lying on bars, or slip them into the pockets of schoolchildren, all across America. No one but the government is capable of a conspiracy on this scale.
Anyway, yeah, I'm not gonna be lighter-less, 'cause my apartment's just plain lousy with lighters, but I am gonna miss this particular one. I'm glad the Great Karma Lighter Wheel dropped it on me, and let me keep it so long. Goodbye, old friend. I hope you've achieved Bic Nirvana at last.