3279 lines
164 KiB
Plaintext
3279 lines
164 KiB
Plaintext
Living in such a state taTestaTesTaTe etats a hcus ni gniviL
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of mind in which time sTATEsTAtEsTaTeStA emit hcihw ni dnim of
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does not pass, space STateSTaTeSTaTeStAtE ecaps ,ssap ton seod
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does not exist, and sTATeSt oFOfOfo dna ,tsixe ton seod
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idea is not there. STatEst ofoFOFo .ereht ton si aedi
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Stuck in a place staTEsT OfOFofo ecalp a ni kcutS
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where movements TATeSTa foFofoF stnemevom erehw
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are impossible fOFoFOf elbissopmi era
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in all forms, UfOFofO ,smrof lla ni
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physical and nbEifof dna lacisyhp
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or mental - uNBeInO - latnem ro
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your mind is UNbeinG si dnim rouy
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focusing on a unBEING a no gnisucof
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lone thing, or NBeINgu ro ,gniht enol
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a lone nothing. bEinGUn .gnihton enol a
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You are numb and EiNguNB dna bmun era ouY
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unaware to events stneve ot erawanu
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taking place - not iSSUE ton - ecalp gnikat
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knowing how or what 9/30/98 tahw ro who gniwonk
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to think. You are in FORTY-NiNE ni era uoY .kniht ot
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a state of unbeing.... ....gniebnu fo etats a
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--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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CONTENTS OF THiS iSSUE
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=----------------------=
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EDiTORiAL Kilgore Trout
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LETTERS TO THE EDiTOR
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STAFF LiSTiNGS
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[=- ARTiCLES -=]
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PASSiNG DREMAY WAYBACK WiSHES Clockwork
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CONSiDERATiONS ON MONATARiSM Crux Ansata
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iT'S LONELY ON MARS Clockwork
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[=- POETASTRiE -=]
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COOL PRESSiNG Marie A. Kazalia
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UNTiTLED Griphon
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TRANSFiXed Marie A. Kazalia
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CROSSWALKS Downtime
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FAXSiMiLE Marie A. Kazalia
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[=- FiCTiON -=]
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SOMETHiNG ABOUT DELAYS I Wish My Name Were Nathan
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NiCKY AND THE PORN QUEEN Rich Logsdon
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FRAGMENT #1 Downtime
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i AM ALEX Rich Logsdon
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THE HiGHER THiRD I Wish My Name Were Nathan
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HOW SPECiAL DO YOU FEEL? Griphon
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VOiCES CARRY Sophie Random
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--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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EDiTORiAL
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by Kilgore Trout
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I've been a naughty boy. Somebody needs to spank me.
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Okay, so it's not really that bad to warrant the need for some corporal
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punishment. But I must tell you the reason why we missed the August issue
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because I think that you, our lovely and loyal readers, deserve an
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explanation.
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Tradition.
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Yes, that's right. After missing it for so long, it only seemed natural
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to continue the trend. Add to that my lazy nature during the summer and the
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hopeful optimism offered in issue 48's editorial turns into "nobody really
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believes that it'll come out in August, do they?" And, contrary to some
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rumors, no, I didn't die again.
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I think we've still got creative juice to not have to use that again.
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Anyway, so I'll let you dig into the issue since it's been a while and
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you'll want to get reacquainted with all of your old friends and some new
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folks, too. Oh yeah, next month, October, will be issue 50, so I figured we'd
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probably have to have a little gathering somewhere in the central Texas area
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at the end of the month. If you'd be interested in meeting a bunch of SoB
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writers and finding out just how socially challenged we really are, drop me an
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email and we'll keep you informed.
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--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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LETTERS TO THE EDiTOR
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Dear Kilgore and Company:
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I've been talking with ansat recently about the goings on on #unbeing,
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and he tells me that there was a certain mediaevalist who, reading my
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article on the weeping icon at Christ of the Hills Monastery, was
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interested in the votive body parts mentioned in the article. I've
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learned since writing this article that the plaques hung by the Orthodox
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on such miracle icons are called tamatas. These were also hung about
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the weeping icon of St. Irene at St. Irene Chrysovalantou Greek Orthodox
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Church in Queens, New York. This can be read about in Fred R.
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Bleakley's article "Questions of Belief Arise Once Again Over 'Weeping
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Icon,'" in the 15 July 1994 edition of The Wall Street Journal. As far
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as the cross to which votive body parts are nailed which is placed above
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the icon, I have learned that this may indeed be an Orthodox version of
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the Mexican miracle crosses. As it turns out, a large number of the
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monks at Christ of the Hills were once Benedictines who converted during
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the years following Vatican II, and one of the monks instrumental in
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this was Fr. Benedict, who was himself converted while visiting an
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Orthodox archbishop in Mexico. (The monks' conversion is discussed in
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Bette Stockbauer's "'Make Straight the Way of the Lord': The Weeping
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Icon at Christ of the Hills," which can be read at:
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http://204.189.12.10/1/Miracles/weepingicon.html. I believe that this
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was published in the magazine Share International, in which Ms.
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Stockbauer's articles usually appear and from which a number of articles
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are taken which appear on Ms. Stockbauer's webpage.) I do not know,
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however, whether this custom is prevalent among the Orthodox or is only
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at this particular Monastery.
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I'd also like to take this opportunity to try to rectify any
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misconceptions which may arise from my fictions. In my writings, both
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verse and prose, I've often portrayed the lives of various sinners, from
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black magicians (insert a "k" if you will) to adulterers and murderers,
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none of whose actions I condone. Unfortunately, often not much happens
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in the lives of the best of us from which the author can work fiction,
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and it is often the most evil among us to whom we turn for our fictions.
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I wanted to point out that these lives were not ones I thought should be
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imitated, but I especially wanted to point out that the evil of suicide,
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which is a sin I've often portrayed and which our readers would be most
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likely to commit. Sadly it is true that in the past I've seen suicide
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as, like Hamlet's soliloquy, somewhat tragic and, in a sense glamourous,
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although never good, but any view of suicide as glamourous becomes
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impossible once one has known others who have committed suicide.
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Self-destruction is really an attempt by the suicide to make the world
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see that he or she is the centre of the universe, but in reality after a
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person's suicide, the world continues to turn, and that person is slowly
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forgotten. Suicide is an ugly thing, for it wipes out futures and kills
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any chance a person has of making anything with his or her life and,
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more importantly, afterlife, for suicide is no end to pain. Perhaps the
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most important thing a person must learn in life is that the world will
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continue to exist without him or her, but that because of that person's
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existence he or she can make the world a better place. It is really the
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stronger person and, perhaps, the better person, who does not succumb to
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evil or flinch in its face, but stands firm despite their own personal
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difficulties. It is certainly this latter person who does what is right
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and what is needed, and it is this latter person who is remembered with
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anything but pain.
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Dark Crystal Sphere Floating Between Two Universes
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--SoB--
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From: Chris Hartley
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Subject: Hey, whats up with SoB?
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To: kilgore@eden.com
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Whats the deal here folks? I don't mean to be a prick, and I hate to bone
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ya so much but isn't it about time for another issue? God damn it, you owe
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it to me! I'm a god damn american citizen and I want my SoB!
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Also, could you please add me to your mailing list too?
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Thanks bunches!
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--
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Chris Hartley
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Following Narcissus
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[well, you know, we were busy trying to get an amendment passed that would
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make reading sob mandatory for every man, woman and child in the US, but
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unfortunately, our political analysts were not too competent (they worked for
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hot dogs and old getaway maps from playgrounds during the 50's) so we ended
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up attaching it as a rider on a bill to make the world happy once again.
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naturally, it was voted down. and as for the boneing, well, if you keep
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doing that, the price is gonna have to go up. and yer added.]
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--SoB--
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From: mcphive
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To: kilgore@eden.com
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cc: kilgoret@geocities.com
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Subject: SOB Site
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Hey there. My old mail account got cancelled so this is my new
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address, so it would be great if you could hook me up with da SOB
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subscription. Also, if you would like some graphics and/or design for your
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site, I would be more than glad to help you redesign or design a new SOB
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site with updated graphics, etc.
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also, if the zine is being discontinued or something :( then
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please let me know as well. thanks!
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mcphive
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[yer added. and, as you can see by looking at our web page, somewhere
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along the lines we apparently didn't transfer all of our graphics. so
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if anybody would like to do some graphic work for us, we'd really dig
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you and maybe even not make you eat that old time chunky butter. um um
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um, gods, i love that chunky better. it's an old apocalypse culture
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production ritual which will probably get us jailed if the nsa ever
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reads our archives. but damn, it's tasty.]
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--SoB--
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From: Bixenta Moonchild
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To: kilgore@eden.com
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Subject: loyal SoB reader not very happy with you
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Dear Mr. Trout,
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Are you temporarily dead again, or is your last issue just really
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late? Or have you become permanantly dead as far as the 'zine is
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concerned? Well, let me tell you a little story: I was looking for
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something in my bookmarks the other day and I realized I had forgotten
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about SoB for a long time. I thought to myself, "oooh, yummy, yummy, a
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brand new issue or two must be awaiting me at good old eden.com!!! I
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better hurry before it goes stale." So my modem connected to the site
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at the speed of Superman and then you can imagine my devestation when I
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found nothing new at all. You're lucky I didn't throw myself off of the
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closest skyscraper. But I thought to myself, "I have faith in Mr. Trout
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and his merry staff of writers. They will not be so cruel as to totally
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bum out hundreds of devoted readers."
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So, Mr. T., where is it? I want a full refund if you've shut down
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for good. Oh, nevermind, it's free. Well, it would be not-so-nice if
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you quit making the 'zine because I was going to start writing again
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soon and it would be nice to have somewhere to put my writing.
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I'll be standing on a ledge of my local skyscraper until you write back.
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But probably a first-floor ledge so that I don't hurt myself if I lose
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my balance.
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Achingly awaiting your reply,
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Bixenta Moonchild
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[sorry to keep you waiting on the ledge for so long. i'm notoriously bad
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about not getting back to people in august. it's tradition, i think. but
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just think, you won't have to worry about a sketchy publication schedule
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until next august, and then we can play this lovely game all over again. and
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remember, if you're own a first-floor ledge, watch out for those manholes.
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it's almost as embarrassing as drowning in a bucket.]
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--SoB--
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From: grind666@mindspring.com
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X-Sender: grind666@pop.mindspring.com
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X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 1.5.4 (32)
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Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 12:32:29 -0400
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To: Kilgore Trout <kilgore@eden.com>
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Subject: remove
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At 05:44 AM 7/31/98 -0500, you wrote:
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>here it is.
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>
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>eat it after you read it to protect the guilty.
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>
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>kt
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>
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>-----
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>Kilgore Trout |
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>kilgore trout <kilgore@eden.com> | "Quoi? -- L'Eternite."
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>Editor of State of unBeing e-zine | --Arthur Rimbaud
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>http://www.eden.com/~kilgore/sob.html|
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>
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[removed.]
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[i toyed with the idea of making this a longer editoral reply, but i figured
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that a one word response was all that that deserved. after all, the least he
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could have done is tell me why. i'm a human being, i need love and
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affection, and this outright rejection is going to stain my soul for weeks on
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end. where is a shoulder i can cry on? but no, i won't stoop that low. i
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will not allow myself to be demeaned in that fashion. instead, i will just
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use one word in reply and that is all.]
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--SoB--
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From: comedy
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Subject: Re: SoB #48 -- i don't believe in time travel, just tour packages.
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To: Kilgore Trout <kilgore@eden.com>
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kilgore,
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I have a question...
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It seems that most of y'all are from around the same place. So where is it
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in this grand and good country of ours that y'all are from???
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easy,
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comedy
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[the original writers since day one are all from the central texas area. but,
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of course, we've got readers and writers all the way from california to
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bulgaria. but our home base, the physical location of the apocalypse culture
|
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production offices, is austin, texas. remember to wave to moonlight in his
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cardboard box while driving underneath i-35 on 183.]
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--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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STAFF LiSTiNG
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EDiTOR
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Kilgore Trout
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CONTRiBUTORS
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Clockwork
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Crux Ansata
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Downtime
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Griphon
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I Wish My Name Were Nathan
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Marie A. Kazalia
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Rich Logsdon
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Sophie Random
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GUESSED STARS
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Bixenta Moonchild
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Chris Hartley
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comedy
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Dark Crystal Sphere Floating Between Two Universes
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grind666@pop.mindspring.com
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mcphive
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SoB OFFiCiAL GROUPiES
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crackmonkey
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Oxyde de Carbone
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--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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[=- ARTiCLES -=]
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--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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PASSiNG DREMAY WAYBACK WiSHES
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by Clockwork
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Sometimes I'll hear Tinkerbell buzz chatter connecting dots above my
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head. Sprinkling disposable packets of dust from her brethren, and home again
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she'll go, teensy grins before the moment wears off, snapshot pastel tracers
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left in the air, captured with infrared stop-stop cameras and turned for
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four-dollar sandwiches and wine. Enough of that and my genes will be altered,
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fused with sparkly sprinkles of Round Table times, I'll glow in the dark and
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fly away with leaves of willowy waves about me.
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Those North American homelands are almost artificial compared to sighing
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green hills in Europe, stone upon stone, Brazilian junglian land where mist
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thickens into vines and the ground oozes unfostered life. Lore and honor are
|
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bred in these places, and will be, kept from churning cement and monotone cars
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-- horses and carts and two-legged walks, sweat embroidered steel and blades
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before gunpowder grave digging, acts of war between persons and clans and
|
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countries no longer personal, no longer revealing, no skillful cross-chested
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folk. Knights of Templar squeemed into NATO and the United Nations, always
|
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with a higher purpose. Faith and religion once held true, science held in
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fringe embalmed tombs, so much left to explain, left up for each to explain
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for themselves. And now -- I don't wish to speak of now, pole position role
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reversals, science is God and God is a myth.
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Where has the fairy tale morals gone? Replaced with lust for fictitious
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paper currency and personified aerodynamics -- SURGE! Contracts and promises
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no longer sealed with handclasps and words, wax seals and eye to eye honor.
|
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Trust has been tossed from the table of elements. Can I say with embodied
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truth that it once was? If I was once there, whatever age ago, I do not
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recall, but my heart believes it to be. My heart will choose leather bound
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legends of lost grails and honor-bred long-haired men dashing through treed
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hills to protect the common good, over glossy tacked volumes chronicling the
|
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capitalist dreams of creamy executives come true. Simpler times, no, but
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nobler times, perhaps.
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Ah, but one must not forget life extension through science and technology
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breeding medical prowess and star-spangled rocket ships, football field sewer
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systems and radiating communication dimensions, the further elimination of
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classes and communism and Islamic extremists, equal rights for mom, dad,
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Timmy, and the dog on the porch. Let it be! Peace on earth, good will to
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men, life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, hallelujah, praise Thomas
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Edison. How effective can these advancements be if baskets of ethics and
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barrels of morals and locked chests of faith are traded for them? And the
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beloved people of the land all this is done in the name of, left in windowless
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buildings, detached and detached again, pushing no essence of their life into
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tasks they do, crafts they mold. Detached thricefold -- millions doing
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paperwork, scrawling forms in poor meaningless English, no value outside the
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Dow Jones colonies in silk studded sheets.
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Weep, I tell you. I shall weep for everyone, the people's hope stomped
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under camouflaged lead-laden holes and cigar smoke, $600 ties, white neon
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Cadillacs. I'll climb atop limestone walls and throw mudscathed hands at the
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heavens, watching generations seep into the ground after putting their lives
|
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into this new breed of mankind -- glittery fast cut 401k man, give it all to
|
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the Mindless Gray Company #476, and forty years later you may retire to the
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hills and meadows, just as you have your second stroke and can only walk
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twenty-two feet before stopping to rest, then, you faithful old American dream
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man, you can enjoy your life.
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Bring me cathedrals built with bleeding fingers, and duels in
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mid-afternoon streets, sacrifice of life for love of another, the ability to
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live and labor off one's own land, looms and blacksmiths, the butcher, the
|
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baker, and candlestick maker, and all their torrid lovers and treasure maps,
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marriage vows, the wondrous magic of a music box, and the full moon with all
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its secrets.
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--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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"We lay on our backs, looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had
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wrought when He made life so sad."
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-- Jack Kerouac, _On the Road_
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--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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CONSiDERATiONS ON MONATARiSM
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|
by Crux Ansata
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|
Reagan-Bush is gone from public office. Thatcher is gone. The Japanese
|
|
ruling bloc has shifted and, this week, Helmut Kohl, perhaps the last of the
|
|
prominent Cold Warrior government leaders, has been replaced.
|
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|
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Politics is not the only thing that is shifting. Each of these nations
|
|
-- and the rest of the world -- is on the brink of a fundamental shift in
|
|
economic policy. Each of the above-listed Cold Warriors was conservative,
|
|
free-trade, and monatarist.
|
|
|
|
Personally, the only formal education I have in economics was a semester
|
|
in high school when Coach taught me "There is no such thing as a free lunch"
|
|
and "Anarchism is a form of totalitarianism." So words like "monatarism"
|
|
often cause me problems. I knew who Milton Friedman was, and I had some idea
|
|
of his influence, but some of his ideas sounded banal, and the others sounded
|
|
moronic. Under the unreasoned assumption that one does not get a Nobel Prize
|
|
in a field in which one is a moron, I set out to do some research. Following
|
|
are some of my conclusions.
|
|
|
|
Monatarism is essentially parochial. It is very good at what it does,
|
|
but does not go beyond that. For what it does, a brief history lesson is
|
|
called for.
|
|
|
|
Capitalism, for Marxists, is shorthand for a particular relationship
|
|
between the ownerships of the means of production. It is, however, of fluid
|
|
form, and the mercantilism of Adam Smith, while no less capitalist, has
|
|
differences many and vast from the monatarism of Milton Friedman. From time
|
|
to time, the ruling class -- in Marxist terms; call it the Establishment in
|
|
contemporary ones -- has had to revise the theory of capitalism, to make sense
|
|
of what has happened in the past and is happening in the present.
|
|
|
|
Previous to the Great Depression, the great question in capitalist theory
|
|
was: What causes the business cycle, the fact that capitalist economies seem
|
|
to have periodic booms and busts. Marx had an answer, but no one else did.
|
|
>From what I gather, the answer of the non-Marxists was that the boom and bust
|
|
cycles were temporary growing pains of the new society, and that these booms
|
|
and busts would go away over time. They had begun to think the cycles had
|
|
been tamed when the Great Depression hit. (Incidentally, as we approach
|
|
another Great Bust -- which is inevitable following such a long period of
|
|
artificially forced boom -- some people are again imagining the business cycle
|
|
has been tamed.)
|
|
|
|
Picking up the pieces after World War II, a man named Keynes came to the
|
|
fore. I do not recall whether he could explain the business cycle, but he
|
|
could more or less put a stop to it. Unlike Marx, though, who was writing a
|
|
critique of capitalism from a philosophical perspective, Keynes appears to
|
|
have been writing a correction of capitalism from an economic perspective.
|
|
Under Keynes, a number of things were believed by reputable economists that
|
|
are not believed now -- for example, that it is a good idea for all people to
|
|
be employed. Keynes's economics did appear to prevent booms and busts, but
|
|
Keynes was brought down by another problem: the constant inflation of the
|
|
seventies.
|
|
|
|
Keynes's followers could not explain this inflation, and so, while
|
|
economics still accepts much of what Keynes accepted, he is now said to have
|
|
been proven "wrong." In retrospect -- not having much background in these
|
|
fields -- I suspect there may have been causes for Keynesians' inability to
|
|
take this inflation into account that are not economic. This inflation was
|
|
setting in during the time of the escalation of the war in Vietnam, with its
|
|
secretive budgets under Nixon, for example. It would be interesting for
|
|
someone with the benefit of both the Keynesian perspective and the wider range
|
|
of historical data now available to attempt a Keynesian reformism. That,
|
|
however, is not something I am either capable of nor interested in attempting
|
|
at this point.
|
|
|
|
Political economy, I suppose, can be said to abhor a vacuum. As Keynes
|
|
fell from an inability to explain inflation, in stepped Milton Friedman's
|
|
monatarism. Because he could explain inflation, he became the golden child of
|
|
the rising international Reaganite bloc. (To be fair, Milton Friedman's
|
|
economics is about a lot more than inflation, and even though he won his Nobel
|
|
about this time, if I understand it properly he won it for other work. The
|
|
rise of monatarism, however, at this point in history, seems to me to have
|
|
been a result of the inflation of the seventies.) These positions cannot
|
|
accurately be called "conservative" or "Republican" -- though they have been
|
|
called both. Kevin Phillips, Patrick Buchanan, and every Republican president
|
|
between Lincoln and Ford had economic policies I suspect Friedman and Reagan
|
|
would find fault with. But these positions that did such damage to the middle
|
|
and working classes of the world though the eighties -- the true impact of
|
|
which we are only coming to understand now -- were founded on these
|
|
principles, which seem to have gained credibility through their association
|
|
with an explanation for inflation.
|
|
|
|
Here I should note that I suspect I am parting from Friedman, though I
|
|
can't be sure. I suspect the misuse of monatarism is the fault of
|
|
poorly-understanding popularizers. Nonetheless, it seems to me that the
|
|
monatarists found a cure that worked for something -- the manipulation of the
|
|
money supply on inflation -- and figured it would work for everything. On
|
|
paper, and in the ideal world of Plato's forms, the manipulation of the money
|
|
supply seems to manipulate inflation rates, as well as -- if enough
|
|
assumptions are factored in -- supply and demand curves. The claim that since
|
|
monatarism was right on inflation it must be right on everything in the real
|
|
world, though, is superstition -- or at least inductive reasoning.
|
|
|
|
(An example of an assumption I find very questionable is that people
|
|
assume the amount of wealth they want to have on hand to be a percentage of
|
|
their income. While I may not have enough background in Friedman's thought,
|
|
he seems to be saying, for example, Person A wants to hold ten percent of his
|
|
income on hand, and will consume if he has more, and save if he has less.
|
|
This static measure sounded reasonable, for a while. But I don't think it is
|
|
realistic. I consider it possible, at least, for people to measure the amount
|
|
they want to hold to be dynamic or comparative: "more," "twice as much as
|
|
last year," "everything," "more than Person B," etc. It would only take a
|
|
couple of people operating on such mindsets to disrupt Friedman's idealistic
|
|
community, but these "exceptions" have not been factored in, perhaps because
|
|
psychology is an externality.)
|
|
|
|
As I mentioned, monatarism seems to be parochial. When imported into the
|
|
real world, even monatarism itself admits it cannot factor everything into
|
|
account. My calculus teacher once told me the power of calculus is, if you
|
|
can't figure something out, you can always rename it, and it will go away. In
|
|
monatarism, things that cannot be solved are called "externalities." With the
|
|
prejudices of someone influenced by Marx -- a philosopher who brings into his
|
|
economics everything a true humanism should -- I feel cramped in an economics
|
|
that covers so little data.
|
|
|
|
Let us take a classic example of an externality: advertising.
|
|
Bookstores -- not having consulted with Friedman -- often have advertising
|
|
books very close to economics books. In monatarism, however, advertising is
|
|
an "externality." Milton Friedman's opinion is that advertising should not
|
|
exist, or rather only purely intellectual, informative advertising should
|
|
exist. I tend to agree. In Plato's ideal world, where we are all cradled in
|
|
the caring embrace of the invisible hand and equality of opportunity ensures
|
|
equality of outcome, perhaps this does happen. From a Marxist perspective,
|
|
though, I don't see that happening. Marxists suspect people are not likely to
|
|
give away their power and wealth, and tend to suspect that advertisers are a
|
|
valid part of the economic battlefield -- arrayed on the side of the
|
|
bourgeoisie against the consumers. Monatarists appear to think everyone wants
|
|
nothing more than to ensure the liquidity of the markets, and that while
|
|
people may appear to compete individually to determine prices and exchange
|
|
rates, everyone in the big picture wants to make sure the market works in as
|
|
unimpeded a manner as possible -- or perhaps would if they could see the big
|
|
picture.
|
|
|
|
Compare this idea of monatarism's -- advertising should be only
|
|
informative -- with the view of advertising derived from Marxism. Marxism
|
|
presumes that people will work not to maximize fluidity in the market, but
|
|
rather to maximize their wealth. (At least, in a capitalistic society, the
|
|
only society for which we can gather direct observations.) Marx presumes the
|
|
classes battle against each other, not through any sense of ill will, but as a
|
|
result of each individual's attempts to maximize his wealth. Why will one
|
|
person give their wealth to another? Because this second can provide him with
|
|
something the first person needs. And in this context, one can take a break
|
|
from analysis and recall the claim Marxism would only supply what a person
|
|
needs, and none of his wants. This, like most misunderstandings of Marx,
|
|
comes no doubt from either an unwillingness to read or an inability to
|
|
understand Marx, for the very first page of the very first chapter of the very
|
|
first volume of Marx's principal work, Das Kapital, includes the passage:
|
|
"The nature of these needs [human needs of whatever kind], whether they arise,
|
|
for example, from the stomach, or the imagination, makes no difference." This
|
|
is to say, when one speaks of a "need," one may speak of a biological need or
|
|
a psychologically perceived need; in any case, we each live in a subjective
|
|
world.
|
|
|
|
Assuming that each person wants to maximize their wealth, and one
|
|
increases one's wealth through supplying a second person's needs, if one can
|
|
create a need, one can increase wealth. This is -- in a Marxist sense -- the
|
|
purpose of advertising: not to maximize the information available to the
|
|
consumer so as to encourage purchase of the superior product, but rather to
|
|
artificially create a need in the mind of the consumer so as to encourage
|
|
purchase of the advertiser's product. It is important to remember this is not
|
|
an aberration of capitalism -- at least not if one is a Marxist. Rather, it
|
|
is the logical result of that series of assumptions.
|
|
|
|
Monatarism, on the other hand, is less a science than a theology.
|
|
Monatarism tells how one should act, prescriptively, advising one how to make
|
|
the free market operate more smoothly. In monatarism, making the free market
|
|
work smoothly is a moral good -- and, as with many moral systems, is ignored
|
|
by those with the power to do so, and encouraged in the minds of those who
|
|
could only benefit by tearing the system down. Marxism, on the other hand,
|
|
observes how people do act, descriptively, and so can imply how people will
|
|
act, predictively.
|
|
|
|
Here it would be wise to note a place a couple of paragraphs back when I
|
|
defined money in a sloppy manner. Monatarism sees money as a means of
|
|
exchange, and nothing else. I referred to money as wealth. Money is more
|
|
than that; in our society, money is a measure of power. (I would suspect this
|
|
is the root of the insanities arising around money -- the ones mentioned as
|
|
psychological externalities in the hypothetical community above. Money being
|
|
viewed as power taps into people's fears of powerlessness, a very prominent
|
|
fear in our society. The apparent money addictions in our society can
|
|
possibly be reduced to this view of money as power. And, if this theory is
|
|
true, it shows another way how it is in the interests of the ruling class to
|
|
encourage feelings of powerlessness in the minds of the people.) Creating an
|
|
artificial need increases the suffering a person experiences -- recalling that
|
|
suffering, like need, has nothing of the objective in it. This increased
|
|
suffering decreases the power in the hands of the masses, and increases both
|
|
money and power in the hands of those who pretend they have the solutions to
|
|
the suffering. The worst caricature of the Medieval priest claiming an
|
|
eventual end to the suffering of the peasant in the next world barely holds a
|
|
candle to the current day bourgeoisie's self-serving claims that, if one gives
|
|
them enough tribute and obeisance, they will make one beautiful, happy, and
|
|
sexually fulfilled. Always at the cost of your neighbor's happiness.
|
|
|
|
Advertising is not the only externality, though it is one I have heard
|
|
Milton Friedman explicitly discuss. Some others that can be briefly
|
|
mentioned, but should be more thoroughly explored in an exploration of the
|
|
failings of the Populist position, include the State and guns. Populists, and
|
|
other non-Marxists, tend to consider fascism and totalitarianism to be, like
|
|
emotionally tagged advertising, aberrations of the free market. They are
|
|
aberrations in the grand, idealistic, Platonic free market, but are the
|
|
logical and -- barring counterforce -- inevitable results of the "free market"
|
|
system in this particular world. Guns and State force are transformed, just
|
|
as money, just as sex, just as humanity, into commodities, and those with the
|
|
wealth and the interest purchase from the State the service of suppression of
|
|
the people. Slavery pays.
|
|
|
|
While, as mentioned, monatarism is very good at explaining how the money
|
|
supply relates to inflation -- at least insofar as I understand it -- the
|
|
excess of externalities and what I consider an inaccurate faith in the
|
|
sanctity and incorruptibility of the free market cause it to fall in my
|
|
esteem. As a Marxist, I suppose I have been spoiled. I am impatient with any
|
|
"economic system" which fails to comprehend anything beyond the liquidity of
|
|
dollars. Politics is not economics by other means; politics is economics.
|
|
|
|
Coming back to where we began: We are seeing the monatarist heads of the
|
|
world passing from the field of battle, as we see the economic "New World
|
|
Order" pass. People are not simply economic animals, and a worldview that
|
|
believes everyone wants to work together for the benefit of the market is
|
|
naive, at best; it is remarkable it fooled so many people for so long. But
|
|
now we enter in to a more realistic world, perhaps still impacted by
|
|
economics, but only in the wider sense of Marx, not with the externalities
|
|
relegated to footnotes to make the equations balance.
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
|
|
"The integrity of an artist lifts a man above the level of the world
|
|
without delivering him from it."
|
|
-- Thomas Merton, _The Seven Storey Mountain_
|
|
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
iT'S LONELY ON MARS
|
|
by Clockwork
|
|
|
|
I'm getting lonely again. This dismal pet I've fought to keep away from
|
|
for years is dancing with my head and grasping my naked feet. Lonely may not
|
|
be the word to use, as I am surrounded by kinful friendfolk with minds drawn
|
|
from the nectars of above and souls that follow such natural causeways -- them
|
|
I appreciate, and cast respect towards, scarcely finding equals inbetween
|
|
crowds and comers. This kind of lonesomeness stems from the lack of, and
|
|
desire for, a beaming personal affection from some romantistically inclined
|
|
source, the lost feelings of you and your other leaning into each other,
|
|
spending hours upon hours and days upon days no more than a few feet apart.
|
|
That sphere of warmth that blips and bloops around you, the giving and
|
|
receiving of understanding and knowledge, caring knowledge, slipped to and
|
|
back on nanowire ether paths unseen in light, microscopes, or from satellites
|
|
above.
|
|
|
|
It is not as if I feel worthless and incomplete without it -- I am sure I
|
|
will survive and thrive and save humanity if such encounters refuse to occur
|
|
again. I simply miss those feelings, for they are highly enjoyable toxic
|
|
waves. And as the elders would have it, these desires were only enforced upon
|
|
my realization by the physical presence of others. In a chandeliered room
|
|
amongst toddler chairs and aching bones, Kilgore and I sat, awaiting for
|
|
lectures on the followers of Horus and tombs of Osiris, asteroid devastated
|
|
Mars, ancient artificial structures, cataclysm and mystery. Hours before,
|
|
jokes were shared about encountering vixens from Austin with massive intellect
|
|
and money for dinner. In the few minutes to spare, a girl arrived, with
|
|
father at her side, and sat directly in front of us. To this, I had to
|
|
chuckle, loving synchronistic events in space and time, and knowing Kilgore
|
|
noticed her presence as well. Ah, so what? Another count of another lost
|
|
chance, missed encounter, or grandiose fantasy, only sharpened by the thoughts
|
|
of loneliness. She was young, fifteen to seventeen, several years before me,
|
|
challenging any moral age boundaries I've drawn and redrawn. The few times I
|
|
heard her speak, it was done in clear, precise, intelligent ways, with warmth
|
|
and hope -- a good vibe girl at such a young age. GVG, not a thing to be
|
|
thrown around haphazardly, sparingly used, reserved for the pure. Of course,
|
|
her voice was accompanied with deep brown eyes, and some interest in the topic
|
|
present, although she may have been dragged about by her father. Such is
|
|
fine, enough to pull though patterns ahead, to divide and wonder, disguise
|
|
hope and wishes. I can escape such circular traps, dead-ends of desires.
|
|
|
|
Another twisting iron mass was tossed down, though, as we scurried to
|
|
smokeland at intermission. Outside the sliding doors, I sifted through the
|
|
information slapped into my head for the past hour and a half, only to glance
|
|
up and see the same youthful girl placing herself at a piano in the lobby, and
|
|
pour out uninhibited notes to unravel my mind.
|
|
|
|
This can not go unnoticed, as I have a divine obsession with pianos and
|
|
the array of sounds that float from their strings. The playing of the
|
|
instrument fills the gaps in my being and more, providing entirety, lifting
|
|
the gaze through towers of life. It is saddening to think I do not own a
|
|
piano, and have all but forgotten how to play. But she had not, and upon
|
|
entering the building again, I caught some words between her and an onlooker,
|
|
her stating she wrote the piece she had just played, and him being amazed, as
|
|
was I.
|
|
|
|
And that was all -- left with tumbling space and merchant booksellers to
|
|
drift home to electronics and dogs and phantom text entities. I am certain
|
|
the loneliness will pass, and most likely return with extra Bolivian force,
|
|
sinking me to a temporary core of grasping, and I shall grasp for a bit and
|
|
tumble back out of the hole, heading onward through my forest, to dance with
|
|
elves and lilies and swooping magpies, tainted with jazz and poppy seeds, on
|
|
paths of stone and dirt and grass to find whatever I am meant to find.
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
|
|
[=- POETASTRiE -=]
|
|
|
|
"In the East poets are sometimes thrown in prison--a sort of compliment,
|
|
since it suggests the author has done something at least as real as
|
|
theft or rape or revolution. Here poets are allowed to publish anything
|
|
at all -- a sort of punishment in effect, prison without walls, without
|
|
echoes, without palpable existence -- shadow-realm of print, or of
|
|
abstract thought -- world without risk or _eros_."
|
|
--Hakim Bey, _T.A.Z._
|
|
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
COOL PRESSiNG
|
|
by Marie A. Kazalia
|
|
|
|
plumber
|
|
pressing against my schizo-natural door
|
|
pushing to check my sink
|
|
filling it with water
|
|
to see where leaking from
|
|
into the health-food-store below
|
|
He stood in my room talking
|
|
about Patel who owns this shabby hotel
|
|
Never truly anything fixed/repaired
|
|
always patched-together
|
|
That plumber let me know
|
|
PATEL lost 300 thousand dollars
|
|
in a court settlement recently
|
|
I said: cool
|
|
with definite rancor in my tone
|
|
they took me out
|
|
screaming and kicking
|
|
my youth dangling by a thread
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
|
|
"The color of truth is gray."
|
|
--Andre Gide
|
|
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
UNTiTLED
|
|
by Griphon
|
|
|
|
She stoops near the end of the dock
|
|
her hair wet, heavy, curled behind her in a half-thought twist.
|
|
I grab the rods from the back of the truck.
|
|
Already the line is tangled, and the tackle box is overturned
|
|
probably from where we missed that dog on the highway.
|
|
He was lost, I think. And crazy.
|
|
|
|
I bring an old blanket from the cab to where she is sitting.
|
|
Her legs dangle in the black water
|
|
white swallowed by black
|
|
with only ripples from the movements of her toes.
|
|
|
|
Do you think they will nibble on my feet?
|
|
She asks.
|
|
I smile,
|
|
and decide not to tell her that it is too late to fish,
|
|
but I don't mind.
|
|
She really wanted a piece of pie,
|
|
and the slice of cheese
|
|
gooey and salty and oily on top
|
|
was a good idea.
|
|
|
|
I throw out my line, relaxing as it snakes through the water.
|
|
Dark silence rolls in from the sea two miles due east of us
|
|
from the sea into our harbor.
|
|
She yawns
|
|
and curls
|
|
herself
|
|
around me,
|
|
playing with my stomach.
|
|
|
|
You're getting fat.
|
|
She smiles.
|
|
Maybe we shouldn't have stopped for pie.
|
|
|
|
I kiss her gently on the ear and wait
|
|
as the sinker on the line falls further and further,
|
|
past seaweed, sleeping fish, rocks.
|
|
I think of the cricket on the end of the line
|
|
and feel sorry for him -- drowning and not in the feeder with the others.
|
|
|
|
I sing him a song
|
|
in a low hum
|
|
and she sighs and winds herself closer around me.
|
|
He will be dead soon
|
|
and she asleep.
|
|
And the sun will be rising in a few hours
|
|
in the rearview mirror.
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Deep inside I know that I'm one of the most dangerous criminals in
|
|
Europe. It's just that I haven't quite got started on my criminal
|
|
activities. So far."
|
|
--Lars Gustafsson, _The Tennis Players_
|
|
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
TRANSFiXed
|
|
by Marie A. Kazalia
|
|
|
|
I'm self-conscious
|
|
therefore uncomfortable
|
|
in jeans
|
|
haven't had a pair on since 1991
|
|
coyote shadow howling
|
|
Who Who who who
|
|
Every pore in her body
|
|
clogged shut
|
|
with a sharp little stone
|
|
Ask her a favor
|
|
Please take a shower
|
|
she staggers into bathroom
|
|
stands in pink tub
|
|
bashes out of the vinyl curtain
|
|
five minutes later
|
|
Lotus position in bed
|
|
anticipation
|
|
wet hair
|
|
Thought I'd wanted my first experience
|
|
kissing her stiff little mouth
|
|
non-responsive hurt
|
|
hard little ears
|
|
Closing herself down
|
|
like Bukowski said
|
|
doesn't mater what
|
|
you put down
|
|
one word as
|
|
good as
|
|
another
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
|
|
"The ritual which is celebrated each year struck me with a poignant fear.
|
|
A wedding ring is thrown into the sea to celebrate the wedding of Venice with
|
|
the sea. But it seemed to me a wedding which at any time submerge the bride
|
|
and take her into the deeps forever. I had a fear of the city vanishing."
|
|
--Anais Nin
|
|
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
CROSSWALKS
|
|
by Downtime
|
|
|
|
crosswalks. it's funny. i think it's crowd that really does it.
|
|
occasionally you get the really good crowds. you walk through the clouds of
|
|
perfume and after-shave, no person thinking about another, save the random
|
|
couple who are involved in discussion about the movie they just saw, a dinner
|
|
just minutes before or idle, first date conversation, whatever. you manage to
|
|
pick out one woman's perfume. with her chemistry, she smells, quite simply,
|
|
like sex. perhaps not actually like sex. more like a girl whom you slept
|
|
with years ago, who's smell you could pick out of a crowd... a crowd just like
|
|
this one. a smell so reminiscent of some one that you could never forget. no
|
|
matter how hard you try. even the smell of the group... the smell of the one
|
|
not forgotten, the smell of your father, a thousand smells, each with a
|
|
memory. all of them rush through your mind in a matter of seconds. for a
|
|
moment, you are frozen in time. you continue, casually, in anticipation of the
|
|
next crosswalk.
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
|
|
"If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don't have to nerve to
|
|
be homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts."
|
|
--Kurt Vonnegut
|
|
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
FAXSiMiLE
|
|
by Marie A. Kazalia
|
|
|
|
In China and Hong Kong
|
|
faxsimil-late-ing life
|
|
there is no keeping after death
|
|
like we do --
|
|
One man's story in English newspaper
|
|
about the plane crash
|
|
They simply sweep up the mess
|
|
Get on with everything---
|
|
Keep going, eating, working, moving forward
|
|
Day set aside for appeasing ghosts
|
|
Paper wealth to burn
|
|
Packed China Airlines flight forced into
|
|
a dive after fuel shortage in both engines
|
|
Mr. Slogan an American passenger said
|
|
the flight like "hell"
|
|
that the Chinese captain
|
|
repeatedly tilted the wings of the jet
|
|
in an attempt to force fuel in wing tanks
|
|
to engines--then lowered the nose by 25 degrees
|
|
the pilot rolled the wings 30 to 40 times
|
|
these drastic measures got both engines
|
|
working normally and the Shanghai-built
|
|
aircraft leveled out--
|
|
When we asked what happened
|
|
we were met with stone faces
|
|
like nothing ever happened
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
|
|
[=- FiCTiON -=]
|
|
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
SOMETHiNG ABOUT DELAYS
|
|
by I Wish My Name Were Nathan
|
|
|
|
We continued climbing up the overpass. If I reckon correctly, at our
|
|
current speed of 40 miles per hour, we had been on the overpass for about
|
|
three minutes and were not halfway over yet. Tom's car couldn't go any faster
|
|
because the person in front of us was going very slowly. Also the road was
|
|
steep. I agree with the naysayers who denounced the construction of the
|
|
overpass. It wasn't planned or executed properly. The overpass was made
|
|
about two years ago, but that was two years in geological time, and during the
|
|
construction the continental plates pushed up and created a volcano which then
|
|
solidified into a precipitous mountain. The contractors had been using the
|
|
standard technique of supporting the ever-rising road with beams of eight-foot
|
|
thick solid concrete, but as altitudes approached an eighth of a mile, they
|
|
had to resort to building an arch over the road, as in the Golden Gate Bridge.
|
|
As altitudes increased to half a mile, though, they had to abruptly end the
|
|
arch and replace them with groups of helicopters manned twenty-four hours a
|
|
day by contract laborers whose job was to keep them steady. When the shift
|
|
changed, the overpass trembled a bit as one helicopter at a time would unhitch
|
|
its titanium rope and let a new one take its place. Also, drivers were
|
|
occasionally run off the bridge into the downward slope of the mountain by
|
|
collisions with frozen blocks of toilet ice dumped from the helicopters.
|
|
|
|
"This guy is gonna run right into us," Tom kept on muttering and crying
|
|
out, gesturing wildly at the car in front of us. "And I can't stop. My brakes
|
|
can't handle it."
|
|
|
|
"Stop worrying. Keep going forward," I reassured him.
|
|
|
|
"He's gonna back up, the crazy bastard. Look! His backup lights are
|
|
on."
|
|
|
|
"No, Tom, the red plastic just fell off."
|
|
|
|
"Those are white lights. They're backup lights. God, I am going to look
|
|
like such a fool when he hits us. He's had his lights on for five minutes
|
|
now. He's given me ample warning. All this time, his engine has been
|
|
steadily slowing down and preparing to drive backward. It's going to happen
|
|
sooner or later. Oh fuck."
|
|
|
|
This is the time when the lady in the car would have snapped, "I've had
|
|
enough of this. Let me out right here." Tom gave me a surprised expression.
|
|
Did I actually say that?
|
|
|
|
"Oh sure, Maura, I'll let you out at the water slide," he muttered.
|
|
|
|
An amusement park was actually located right off the highway, at about
|
|
ten feet's distance, enough to park small cars single-file. The only ride at
|
|
the amusement park, contrary to Tom's opinion, was not a water slide, but a
|
|
slide about fifty feet in length that curved down into an upward-shooting arc
|
|
like a ski jump. The passenger would get on at the top, slide down, fly off,
|
|
soar into a crevice and get smashed to bits.
|
|
|
|
Tom bitched and moaned about the backing-up car in front of us until we
|
|
finally got to the crest of the overpass. By this time wearing oxygen masks
|
|
was mandatory and I didn't have to hear Tom's voice anymore, only that strange
|
|
rubber musical echo escaping from the mask.
|
|
|
|
So many people, when they reach the crest of the mountain, prepare for a
|
|
fantastic ride downhill at speeds in excess of one hundred and fifty miles an
|
|
hour with brakes fully applied, but the state ran out of money to finish the
|
|
overpass at this distance, so all drivers must get out of their cars at the
|
|
top, take an elevator down to the ground, and wait for their cars to arrive
|
|
through parcel post at a nearby post office. The cost of postage offsets the
|
|
salaries of the two hundred helicopter operators.
|
|
|
|
I was in a bad mood by the time our car reached the end of the road and
|
|
it didn't help one bit that to find out that the stamp booth was closed for
|
|
the weekend. I started screaming and cursing at the person whose job it was
|
|
to tell us that we couldn't buy stamps at least until Monday. And I marveled
|
|
at the others who accepted this information without a fight, just because this
|
|
person was a police officer and because the booth had just slid off into the
|
|
precipice and killed the employees. That didn't change the facts!
|
|
|
|
I was reluctantly grateful that the oxygen-enhanced lobby was still
|
|
functional and Tom and I wouldn't have to sleep alone here on the top of a
|
|
mountain, like in those emotionally torturing Everest days, dodging the
|
|
lightning and praying to God that neither of us would utter the wrong
|
|
pronunciation of "potato" and trigger three hours of passionate embittered
|
|
singing.
|
|
|
|
"You two should join the others against the nonpayers wall," the police
|
|
officer told us. "And remember, we have bathrooms -- I don't want to clean up
|
|
any of your messes, you hear?"
|
|
|
|
The nonpayers wall was the low water mark of a driver's life, a long
|
|
delay in a misplanned trip. Poor drivers and their passengers would
|
|
congregate here begging for stamp money so they could give their vehicles a
|
|
ride in the dirigible down to safety. Because, as large signs warned clearly:
|
|
|
|
THIS IS NOT A PARKING GARAGE
|
|
IT IS THE TOP OF A PRECIPITOUS PEAK
|
|
ONLY THREE VEHICLES MAY REMAIN AT ANY TIME
|
|
ALL OTHERS WILL BE LOST
|
|
|
|
The police officer understood this special situation, though, and was
|
|
allowing our three vehicles to stay indefinitely in the loading/unloading
|
|
dock, resentfully ignoring the discharging lever that "lost" excess vehicles.
|
|
Everyone else on the overpass had to leave their cars on the road with their
|
|
parking brakes on.
|
|
|
|
Tom and I sat on the nonpayers' bench and waited for Monday to arrive,
|
|
when new stamp booth attendants would be trained to come up and do their
|
|
tedious jobs. Tom suspiciously eyed the driver sitting next to us, who had
|
|
supposedly been about to back into us.
|
|
|
|
"You know what, Kate?" he asked me, eye suddenly ablaze as if he had
|
|
solved all the questions. He paused and genuflected. "We're damned lucky."
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Think like a tree..."
|
|
--Bob Ross, _Best of the Joy of Painting_
|
|
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
NiCKY AND THE PORN QUEEN
|
|
by Rich Logsdon
|
|
|
|
Nicky the Ghoul couldn't stand it. Ever since Lisa (also a ghoul) had
|
|
made her debut in the adult film _Lesbian Vampyres of Sodom_, he couldn't go
|
|
anywhere with her without every red-blooded male over twelve years of age
|
|
obscenely ogling his girl. Not to the mall. Not to a burger joint. Not even
|
|
to the gas station where the morons running the place fell all over themselves
|
|
just to pump gas for the woman now known as Lisa Lust.
|
|
|
|
Take the ball game at Cashman Field in Las Vegas last June, for instance.
|
|
Nicky thought a baseball game would be a perfect escape from the drooling
|
|
masses. Thus, Nicky and Lisa had just sat down in their seats behind home
|
|
plate when three pimply-faced adolescent boys came running over from their
|
|
seats behind third base and stood not three feet from the ghoulish duo; the
|
|
kids were panting like young animals in heat.
|
|
|
|
"Oh, Jesus, damn, wow!" yelled the breathless short overweight kid
|
|
wearing thick dark-rimmed glasses and a black T-shirt that had "Ozzie Rules"
|
|
stenciled in red across the front. "Are you Lisa Lust? Are ya? Huh? Damn!
|
|
Damn!!"
|
|
|
|
"I sure am, Sugarboy," mewed Lisa, flattered that she would be recognized
|
|
even in a minor league baseball park. A gorgeous woman with shaggy blonde
|
|
hair, killer blue eyes, and a figure that would give even the Pope a hard-on,
|
|
Lisa removed her sun glasses and batted her eye lashes to give the boy a
|
|
better look.
|
|
|
|
"Lady," panted another of the punks, a middle-sized boy who wore a blue
|
|
New York Mets shirt and whose dark hair had been shaved into a V, "you were
|
|
great! Can we have a autograph or something?" The kid rubbed his crotch.
|
|
|
|
"Uh, whaddya mean by 'somethin',' stud?" Lisa coyly cooed. Breathing
|
|
deeply to force himself to relax, Nicky closed his eyes and prayed that these
|
|
boys would disappear.
|
|
|
|
Overwhelmed by her week-old popularity, Lisa smiled, popped her gum, and
|
|
asked, "Whaddya want me to autograph, guys?" She gave the third boy, a tall
|
|
red-head wearing a Chicago Bulls cap and a T-shirt that read "Nine-Inch
|
|
Nails," a wink and glanced obviously at the bulge in his pants.
|
|
|
|
Nicky had had enough. He stood and removed his sunglasses. "Would you
|
|
three little perverts just get the fuck outa here!" he shouted, his booming
|
|
voice carrying across the playing field so that some of the players warming up
|
|
on the infield grass paused and looked up. As the three kids bolted like
|
|
badly frightened rabbits, Nicky puts his hands on his hips and looked down at
|
|
Lisa. Lisa was on the verge of tears.
|
|
|
|
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, thought Nicky to himself, here we go again. "Hey,
|
|
look, Sweetheart," Nicky began, trying to turn the evening around, "lemme go
|
|
get us some eats. Hot dogs and beer. You like a beer, honey?" Nicky put his
|
|
face next to Lisa's, smelled her hair, and kissed his girl on the cheek.
|
|
|
|
But Lisa was not to be moved. "I don't want nothin'," she sourly
|
|
mumbled, folding her arms and sticking out her lower lip, a porn queen pouting
|
|
at the ball park.
|
|
|
|
What a fucked up night, thought the ghoul to himself. Wishing that they
|
|
had stayed home to watch "Home Improvement" or even "Buffy the Vampire
|
|
Slayer," Nicky sighed, ran his fingers through his long, disheveled black
|
|
hair, and said, "All right, but I gotta go take a piss." Nicky left.
|
|
|
|
When the ghoul returned with two beers, one for himself and one for Lisa,
|
|
he found his seat occupied by a huge middle-aged man with shoulder-length
|
|
dirty brown hair, a hairy pock-marked face, tattoos up and down his arms, and
|
|
a red and black T-shirt that read "Boob Cruise '96" on the back. A huge smile
|
|
on her face, Lisa was writing something on the back of this guy's T-shirt.
|
|
|
|
Nicky paused long enough to set the beer down on one of the concrete
|
|
steps and decide his next move. He gazed out over the left field wall at the
|
|
blood-red sandstone mountains. The sun was beginning to set. Then he walked
|
|
up to Lisa and her new boyfriend and commanded in a firm voice, "Get lost, old
|
|
man. This is my girl."
|
|
|
|
Nicky looked down at the big man, hoping this guy wouldn't be stupid
|
|
enough to cause trouble.
|
|
|
|
"Not no more she ain't, you fuckin' runt," said the lummox, who stood,
|
|
clenched his beefy fists, gritted his teeth, and scowled. Nicky wondered how
|
|
many steroids this guy was on. "This girl's now public property," the huge
|
|
man stated. "Or, better yet, 'pubic property.' An' she says I got real nice
|
|
buns." The muscular man towered over Nicky and easily weighed three hundred
|
|
pounds. A ghoul of medium build but with huge, muscular arms as well, Nicky
|
|
ran his fingers through his hair again, looked out at the flag now blowing
|
|
east on the wall above center field, and wished he were a baseball player
|
|
instead of the lover of America's newest porn queen.
|
|
|
|
Then, suddenly, Nicky went into action. As she always did when Nicky
|
|
fought, Lisa shrieked and laughed simultaneously. It was like a game to her.
|
|
|
|
It was just as he grabbed the big man by the throat and dragged him out
|
|
into the aisle like a straw doll that Nicky realized he'd seen this guy on the
|
|
wrestling channel. He was called Pile Driver, one of Nicky's all-time
|
|
favorites. And Pile Driver was always one of the good guys. In fact, next
|
|
week on pay-per-view Pile Driver was supposed to wrestle The Beast for the
|
|
championship in a no-holds barred iron-cage match.
|
|
|
|
His rage dissipating, Nicky sat on the guy's chest (security guards madly
|
|
rushing to the scene of the altercation) and decided against crushing his
|
|
opponent's throat, an easy task for a ghoul who had the strength of ten men.
|
|
Pile Driver was already starting to turn blue.
|
|
|
|
"Listen, Pile Driver," Nicky placed his face about an inch from that of
|
|
his opponent and rasped in a bestial and guttural voice, "you big mound of
|
|
flesh, you ever fuck with my girl again I'll rip out your tongue and eyes and
|
|
shove 'em up your ass. Got it?"
|
|
|
|
Terrified, shaking, and sweating, Pile Driver meekly nodded his head.
|
|
Nicky held the man by the throat for a few more minutes until Pile Driver
|
|
began to cry.
|
|
|
|
When Nicky let him up, Pile Driver whimpered, dried his eyes, rubbed his
|
|
throat, gave the ghoul one last frightened look and sprinted up the aisle.
|
|
The security guards, all overweight retired men, stood ten rows up, afraid to
|
|
approach the ghoul.
|
|
|
|
Nicky sat down just as the first pitch was thrown. Lisa looked over at
|
|
him, put her hand between his knees, and squeezed the ghoul's manhood. Then,
|
|
in a tone that said, "Oh, honey, I wish you could fuck me now," she purred,
|
|
"You're so brave and tough, Nicky. I just love it when you scare the shit
|
|
outta people like that."
|
|
|
|
"Lisa, honey," Nicky responded in the sweetest, most charming voice he
|
|
could muster, "just shut the fuck up and drink your beer."
|
|
|
|
Things were not to get better as Lisa's fame spread like wild fire.
|
|
Again, take the now famous Southern Utah incident, which occurred about three
|
|
weeks after the ball game. Nicky, Lisa and their best friend Alex the
|
|
Werewolf had decided to drive up to Southern Utah during the middle of the
|
|
week, maybe even do some fishing. Alex would drive his Plymouth '76
|
|
convertible and play Big Band music all the way from Vegas.
|
|
|
|
It was late July, a full-moon night. The three arrived in Otter -- sixty
|
|
miles north of Cedar City -- around 2:00 in the afternoon, checked into the
|
|
old Stag Motel, and kicked back in their room, watching "Gilligan's Island"
|
|
re-runs until about 9 PM when Alex suggested they get a bite to eat.
|
|
|
|
In a good mood, they walked down Main to a restaurant called La Bamba,
|
|
the building worn and dilapidated on the outside and on the inside one of the
|
|
dirtiest restaurants any of them had ever seen. The tables were sticky, the
|
|
silverware dirty, and bits of food littered the faded red carpet. It was
|
|
enough to make a ghoul sick.
|
|
|
|
Nicky sat next to Alex and across from Lisa in a cherry-red upholstered
|
|
booth right next to the entrance. A thin bespectacled intellectual type with
|
|
light brown hair, a beard and a mustache, Alex was getting buzzed drinking
|
|
coffee and excitedly explaining to Lisa Michel Foucault's theories of prisons
|
|
as they applied to the development of restrictive systems of Western thought.
|
|
Fascinated, Lisa occasionally exclaimed things like "Wow, Alex!" and "I didn't
|
|
know that!" and "Huh??" As Alex droned on, Nicky worked on his second Bambi's
|
|
Double Deluxe Cheeseburger and selected a couple of favorite pieces from the
|
|
small jukebox: Nazareth's "Love Hurts" and Boston's "Foreplay."
|
|
|
|
Ignoring most of what Alex said and listening to the music, Nicky was now
|
|
silently blaming himself for Lisa's incredible rise in popularity among
|
|
American males. It was like he was losing his girl. Certainly, the blonde
|
|
ditz sitting across from him wasn't the same old Lisa he had met at the
|
|
Fourteenth Annual Southern Nevada Blood Feast years ago. In fact, thinking
|
|
back over the past year and a half as he put his fourth bottle of Wolf's Head
|
|
beer to his lips, he wished he'd never, never encouraged Lisa to try her wings
|
|
in the porn business. On the advice of Lisa's therapist, who claimed that
|
|
Lisa had rock-bottom self-esteem, Nicky had contacted an old friend and gotten
|
|
his girl involved in the adult film industry.
|
|
|
|
Drinking his beer, tuning out Alex, and studying his girlfriend's
|
|
half-exposed and very large tits as she ate her lamb chops, Nicky recalled
|
|
that five months after journeying to Tahiti to make _Lesbian Vampyres of
|
|
Sodom_ with Ricky Studd, Lisa's film had been released to theaters and book
|
|
stores around the country. For the first few days after the film's release,
|
|
Nicky was actually happy for Lisa: Lisa could go nowhere without twenty or
|
|
thirty people recognizing her; her mood notably brightened.
|
|
|
|
But things got out of hand. There was the ball game, for instance, when
|
|
Nicky had nearly taken the life of his favorite wrestler. Then there was an
|
|
ugly incident at the college involving one of Lisa's male professors, who
|
|
claimed that his interest in porn stars was entirely academic. There was a
|
|
bloody altercation with a softball team in Denny's parking lot late one night
|
|
when he, Alex and Lisa had gone out to get something to eat. And sure as
|
|
shit, something was going to happen tonight. Nicky could feel it in his
|
|
bones.
|
|
|
|
Indeed, La Bamba was the sort of place where trouble always occurred.
|
|
Located in the middle of some of the richest farm land in the Southwest, the
|
|
dark, dinghy little dive seemed to attract everything that crept and crawled
|
|
through the desert night.
|
|
|
|
For example, in the next booth behind them Nicky noticed a young lady
|
|
wearing a sexy black dress that reached to just below the crotch. With wild
|
|
raven hair and a ton of mascara around her eyes, the lady had unbuttoned the
|
|
dress down to her belly button. Nicky could even see her nipples. She wore
|
|
black fish-net stockings and probably nothing else underneath. Nothing like
|
|
advertising, Nicky thought to himself.
|
|
|
|
At a booth just across from theirs sat four young men, early twenties
|
|
Nicky guessed, all dressed in black, hair dyed black, their faces pale as
|
|
death, sitting upright, coked to the gills, and mumbling and laughing
|
|
together. A group of Satanists, most likely, out for a good time in Southern
|
|
Utah. They couldn't take their eyes off Lisa. They recognized Lisa Lust.
|
|
|
|
Finally, in a booth in the back of the room sat three men, all sporting
|
|
scruffy beards and wearing baseball caps. For twenty minutes, these yokels
|
|
had silently, unceasingly gawked at his girl. Obviously, they too had
|
|
recognized Lisa. Dressed in dirty jeans, flannel shirts, and black work
|
|
boots, these three clowns continued to drink their beer and stare and point at
|
|
Lisa, occasionally letting out a wolf-whistle. When Lisa turned around, one of
|
|
the men -- a balding fellow with fat cheeks and a huge golden toothpick
|
|
hanging from his mouth -- stuck out and wriggled his tongue at her.
|
|
|
|
"Hey, Nicky," Lisa exclaimed, turning around and cutting Alex off in
|
|
mid-sentence (Alex was explaining Stanley Fish's theories regarding
|
|
reader-response criticism). "Hey, Nick, didya see what that one guy just
|
|
done? Funny, huh? They gotta know who I am."
|
|
|
|
Of course the ghoul had seen it. No, it wasn't funny. And everyone knew
|
|
who Lisa was; therein lay the problem. "Don't worry about it," Nicky said
|
|
coldly, taking a huge bite out of his burger. "You ignore them, they ignore
|
|
you. They're dumb fucks. That's the way it's gotta work." Nicky was getting
|
|
sick of this shit.
|
|
|
|
Unable to resist, however, Lisa looked around again. This time, both the
|
|
bald man and the small, thin man with a graying crew cut made the same obscene
|
|
gesture towards Lisa with their tongues.
|
|
|
|
"Oooohhh, nasty, nasty boys," Lisa said in a loud whiny playful voice
|
|
loud enough to be heard all the way to the back of the restaurant. Then, to
|
|
Nicky's outrage, the giggling Lisa blew the three men a kiss.
|
|
|
|
"Oh, Christ," muttered Nicky, tossing his hamburger down on his plate as
|
|
he watched the three men get up from their table, smile, and hitch their
|
|
jeans. Hands shoved deep into their pockets, the men slowly sauntered over,
|
|
bringing the unmistakable odor of pig shit with them.
|
|
|
|
The biggest of the three weighed close to three hundred pounds, had dark
|
|
blonde curly hair and resembled John Goodman. He wore a blue hat that said
|
|
"Earl" in bright yellow letters.
|
|
|
|
"Well, well, well, what we got here, Phil?" Earl asked to one of the men,
|
|
moving closer to Lisa and putting his hand on her shoulder.
|
|
|
|
"Looks to me like we got ourselves some ass tonight, Earl," answered the
|
|
small man, who eyed Nicky maliciously.
|
|
|
|
As Nicky waited for the event to unfold, Alex put his book down onto the
|
|
table, removed his glasses, and said to the three men, "Pardon me for being so
|
|
terribly rude, but we three were just passing through, really, minding our own
|
|
business. You really have no right to so rudely interrupt us. Now please go
|
|
away." Nicky picked up his hamburger and took a bite.
|
|
|
|
"Ain't no one goin' no where, little man. An' the lady here sure as hell
|
|
ain't goin' anywhere without us," said the bald man with the golden toothpick.
|
|
"Anyone goes anywhere, it's her. She is a-comin' with us. We just wanna have
|
|
a little fun is all."
|
|
|
|
Nicky's response surprised everyone, even himself. "OK, fellas," he
|
|
conceded, his head in his hands, "go ahead and take her. I don't give a fuck
|
|
no more. But have her back here in, oh, say, three hours." Nicky then looked
|
|
away from Lisa and the three men, studied his plate, picked up, and bit into
|
|
his cheeseburger.
|
|
|
|
"Nicky!" Lisa shouted. "You serious? All these guys wanna do is fuck
|
|
me. Which ain't bad. But you just gonna lemme go without sayin' shit?"
|
|
|
|
"Nicholas," Alex exclaimed, using the name that signified that he was
|
|
quite upset over his ghoulish friend's decision, "just what do you think you
|
|
are doing?"
|
|
|
|
"Gentlemen?" Nicky looked imploringly at the three red necks. Fed up
|
|
with Lisa's antics, he hoped this would teach his girl a lesson she would
|
|
never forget.
|
|
|
|
"Nicky the Ghoul!!" exclaimed Lisa, stunned by her boyfriend's behavior.
|
|
"I am really, really, really kinda disappointed in you, I guess." Then,
|
|
shrugging her shoulders and looking up at the three men, then glancing back at
|
|
Nicky, she smiled hugely and, giving in to temptation, said, "Well, huh, let's
|
|
go, boys."
|
|
|
|
"Now that's what I call a real good girl," said Earl, his voice soft and
|
|
mellow. "You comin' on a ride in the back of my truck with the three of us.
|
|
Your boyfriend and his girlish friend here," and here the man looked
|
|
contemptuously at Alex, "they can sure as hell come along and watch." Staring
|
|
straight ahead at nothing in particular, Nicky just nodded as Earl gently took
|
|
Lisa by the right arm and helped her out of the booth. Then Lisa and the
|
|
three country yokels walked out of the restaurant and into the night.
|
|
|
|
Incensed, always concerned with the ethics of any situation, Alex looked
|
|
at Nicky. "Nick," he began, "what have you just done? Are you insane?"
|
|
|
|
"I let my girl go," came the subdued answer. Somewhat puzzled by his own
|
|
behavior, Nicky stared into the dark space at the back of the restaurant.
|
|
"She's a big porn star now. She dreams about everyone fuckin' her. It was
|
|
like she wanted those guys. So Lisa gets her way is all."
|
|
|
|
"But, but, but -- but that's your girl, Nicholas. I mean, c'mon, man.
|
|
She's fucking with you."
|
|
|
|
"Not no more, she's not my girl," sighed Nicky, finally picking up his
|
|
burger and biting into it; "now she's a star and all that, everyone wants her
|
|
-- and I guess she wants everyone." Though he spoke the words of rejection,
|
|
Nicky felt as if he'd given away his right arm.
|
|
|
|
"Lord above! Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" Alex responded, incredulously, his
|
|
staunchly Roman Catholic background emerging. Secretly, Alex was also in love
|
|
with Lisa and didn't want to lose her companionship. "This thing with the
|
|
adult film industry will pass. And when it does pass, you'll be out a
|
|
girlfriend."
|
|
|
|
"Y'know, I don't give a shit," mumbled Nicky, taking another bite, trying
|
|
to hide his hurt feelings. Ten or fifteen minutes passed as the two sat in
|
|
somber silence. Nicky actually felt like crying. Maybe Lisa was just playing
|
|
some kind of stupid game.
|
|
|
|
Suddenly, both Alex and Nicky heard a squeal and a scream followed by
|
|
rude, course laughter and then more squeals and screams coming from the
|
|
parking lot to the side of the restaurant. Instinctively, Nicky imagined the
|
|
pig-men brutally having their way with Lisa out in the parking lot. It was
|
|
like an electric jolt running through his befuddled brain. Nicky began to
|
|
realize he had made an enormous mistake in judgment. What the hell have I
|
|
done?, thought Nicky.
|
|
|
|
Depressed, Nicky looked at Alex and saw the malevolent, demonic blaze
|
|
in his friend's now yellowish eyes. Alex's face looked like it was ready to
|
|
explode, his brows furrowed angrily, his nose beginning to protrude, his ears
|
|
stretching back. Reacting as if someone had just drenched him with a bucket
|
|
of ice water, Nicky realized that he had allowed the situation to deteriorate
|
|
to the point of no return. Not only was his girl likely getting raped but his
|
|
best friend Alex was beginning the hideous and frightening werewolfish
|
|
transformation -- always and only triggered by rage -- that would inevitably
|
|
lead to the bloody death of at least one of the men with Lisa. An unusual
|
|
werewolf, Alex had undergone his hideous yet beautiful metamorphosis more than
|
|
once in order to protect Lisa.
|
|
|
|
"Get out," Alex the half-beast growled -- guttural, hollow, sepulchral --
|
|
at his friend, his facial features already subtly darkening and stretching.
|
|
Alex now sounded like a beast that had just learned to speak. "Please, get
|
|
out of my way." Alex' voice was more like a subterranean moan. Knowing he
|
|
was no match for Alex, Nicky quickly edged out of his seat and let his friend
|
|
pass. As Alex ran for the door, tearing his clothes from his body, Nicky
|
|
followed, realizing that he had fucked up royally by giving his one true love
|
|
over to the three men who probably shoveled pig shit for a living.
|
|
|
|
When he stepped outside, Nicky heard laughter, screams and squeals coming
|
|
from the other end of the unpaved parking lot, about seventy-five yards away.
|
|
Panic building, Nicky took off running towards the sounds. Alex was nowhere
|
|
to be seen.
|
|
|
|
When he came to an old '68 primer gray Ford pickup at the far end of the
|
|
parking lot, Nicky saw that the three men had put his now naked girl friend on
|
|
a mattress on the flat bed of their pickup. While two of the men watched and
|
|
held the porn star, the third one -- Earl -- climbed onto the truck bed,
|
|
pulled down his pants and, erect manhood in hand, prepared to mount Lisa, her
|
|
legs spread wide.
|
|
|
|
Not sure whether Lisa were laughing or crying, Nicky was building to a
|
|
kill when a shrieking hollow demonic baying sound tore the darkened night air.
|
|
The sound filled the area, penetrated to the core of Nicky's being, and seemed
|
|
to come from some dark invisible hole in the sky just above them. Something
|
|
was crawling into this dimension from a much darker place and time. Nicky was
|
|
sure he could feel the freezing heat of hell's furious flames.
|
|
|
|
"What the fuck is that?" said the smallest of the men, frightened. He
|
|
had been massaging one of Lisa's tits.
|
|
|
|
The three men stopped and looked around. The ear-piercing baying shriek
|
|
from the pit of the damned came again, a supernatural horror ripping into the
|
|
natural realm, this time much closer. It was as if something huge and dark
|
|
had just flown overhead, filling the area with an over-powering death-stench
|
|
that Nicky had learned to associate with the beast Alex became following the
|
|
transformation. Positioned somewhere in the now thickening darkness that
|
|
encircled the men and the truck like a wall, the beast-thing was almost upon
|
|
them. All could feel its approach, and Nicky felt the darkly energized fury
|
|
in the savage roar of the hellish thing.
|
|
|
|
There was dead weighted silence as everyone -- the three men, Lisa, and
|
|
Nicky -- waited, as if suspended in vacuum for a brief eternity. Nicky saw
|
|
the intensely black darkness swirling around them within the darkness -- proof
|
|
that the small patch of earth outside El Bambi had suddenly become an outpost
|
|
of Hell. All heard the low bestial rumbling, its sound vibrating through the
|
|
hearts of the three men and two ghouls, the sound indicating that the beast in
|
|
the darkness was insanely moving in circles. Nicky could hear the shifting,
|
|
shifting, shifting as the thing crept around and around, faster and faster.
|
|
The evil was tangible, even sickening.
|
|
|
|
Then Lisa started giggling uncontrollably.
|
|
|
|
"What's so f-f-f-fuckin' funny, bitch?" whispered the bald man, his voice
|
|
trembling. The man was sobbing.
|
|
|
|
"You three guys are fucked is what's so funny, bitch," Lisa laughed,
|
|
sitting up and looking around. "Totally, totally fucked is what you guys
|
|
are."
|
|
|
|
There was a pause as everyone, ghouls included, stopped moving or
|
|
speaking, waiting for the evil thing's immanent move. One of the men wretched
|
|
violently. They had all reached the eye in the middle of an insanely furious
|
|
storm.
|
|
|
|
Then, in a tiny girlish voice, Lisa spoke to the almost impenetrable
|
|
whirling darkness surrounding them, "Oh, Alex. Aaaaleeeeex. Come out, come
|
|
out where ever you are." The bestial rumbling could be felt by all even
|
|
before it could be distinctly heard.
|
|
|
|
Having summoned the night-thing, as if awaiting a visit from the Prince
|
|
of Darkness himself, Lisa paused, the surrounding darkness literally vibrating
|
|
with evil.
|
|
|
|
Exploding from the terrible darkness, the huge beast-thing roared,
|
|
shrieked and sprang, landing on and wrapping itself around the screaming Earl,
|
|
who was brought crashing off the truck and to the earth in a cloud of dust.
|
|
When the dust cleared, a huge savagely snarling black and gray wolf stood over
|
|
Earl, saliva dripping from its gaping jaws, looking into the eyes of the
|
|
visibly terrified, shaking man. As the big man squealed, turned over, pulled
|
|
up his jeans, stood and tried to run, the beast struck swiftly and
|
|
ferociously, leaping and grabbing the man's fat neck in its powerful jaws.
|
|
For a time, the beast-thing held and shook the big screaming man wildly as if
|
|
he were a rag doll, then bit powerfully with razor-sharp teeth, instantly
|
|
severing head from trunk in a shower of bloody spray. The bloodied head
|
|
bounced on the ground, rolled under the truck as Earl's corpse staggered and
|
|
fell, a crimson fountain staining the earth.
|
|
|
|
Of the other two men, the bald one with the golden toothpick crawled
|
|
whining beneath the truck while the other jumped into the cab and locked the
|
|
door. Swiftly, with predatorial ease, the growling beast flattened itself
|
|
and, snarling savagely, crawled under the truck, seized one of the man's legs
|
|
in its powerful jaws, and pulled him out. The man was sobbing and screaming
|
|
something about his wife and kids, knowing he was gong to die.
|
|
|
|
As the man wept, "Please, please, please," the beast-thing dragged its
|
|
victim stomach-down on the hard ground in relentless crazy circles, around and
|
|
around and around. Letting go of the man's leg, the beast lunged forward just
|
|
as the man sat up and took the man's throat in its massive jaws. Nicky could
|
|
hear the bones, muscle, and cartilage grinding and squishing together as the
|
|
wolf-thing's teeth bit through the human's neck.
|
|
|
|
The wonderful, intoxicating odor of blood filled the air, stained the
|
|
moon, and Nicky felt reborn. He raised his arms to the full moon now straight
|
|
overhead. It was at that point that Lisa -- still unclothed -- jumped off the
|
|
pick up, which suddenly took off in a flurry of dirt and dust. Enraged,
|
|
determined not to let this third man escape, Nicky took off in a mad, howling
|
|
sprint. A ghoul who could run three times as fast as any man, Nicky caught
|
|
the vehicle easily and, shrieking, mounted the running board. He could hear
|
|
screams coming from the man inside the cab. Holding onto the door handle with
|
|
his right hand Nicky sent his left arm crashing through the driver's window.
|
|
Seizing the man by the neck, Nicky jumped off the running board and rolled
|
|
forward, pulling the body of the screaming driver savagely though the broken
|
|
window and on top of him.
|
|
|
|
As the truck sped off of its own volition, Nicky stood slowly and held
|
|
the small man at arm's length, his huge and powerful ghoul's hand wrapped
|
|
around the man's chicken-neck. The man was light as a feather. Then, just
|
|
when he saw terror rising in his adversary's eyes, Nicky squeezed and crushed,
|
|
blood spurting between his long gray fingers and onto his face and clothes.
|
|
|
|
Having eaten more than their fill, Nicky, Lisa and Alex sat together in
|
|
the front seat of Alex's Plymouth convertible, its roof down. Their evening
|
|
ruined, they had decided to return to Vegas. Because he was driving, Alex had
|
|
again chosen the music, this time a series of Lawrence Welk favorites. Nicky
|
|
detested his friend's choice in music and on numerous occasions had tried to
|
|
encourage Alex to play some contemporary rock. Even something like Jimi
|
|
Hendrix or Janis Joplin would be better than this shit.
|
|
|
|
Lisa sat between the men, her top off, exposing her wonderful boobs to
|
|
the night sky. It seemed like old times. In the passenger seat, his left arm
|
|
draped around Lisa's shoulders so he could massage one of her nipples, Nicky
|
|
sat sullenly, silently, wishing the evening had never occurred.
|
|
|
|
"Ooooooooh, guys," cooed Lisa, suddenly throwing one arm around Nicky's
|
|
shoulders and the other around Alex, "that was so totally awesome. You guys
|
|
are so fuckin' stud when you get goin'." To Lisa, it was as if nothing
|
|
serious had happened. It was like some kind of stupid game in which Nicky and
|
|
Alex would always be there to save her if she got into trouble.
|
|
|
|
"You mean you're not upset with Nicky the Prick?" mumbled Nicky,
|
|
depressed almost beyond words, mortified by his failure.
|
|
|
|
"Yeah, maybe I am upset with ya a bit," whined Lisa in a nasally
|
|
sing-song tone, her Eastern upbringing temporarily surfacing, "but I been
|
|
fucked by other guys before. You even seen me on film. I mean, I might not
|
|
of minded so much. Besides, Sweetcheeks, I'm a ghoul, same as you. If I'da
|
|
wanted, I coulda snapped their bones, crushed their necks, and sucked out
|
|
their flesh. So you're still cool with me, Nicky."
|
|
|
|
Nicky felt as if someone had just hit him over the head with an iron
|
|
cable. Hoping Lisa were just teasing, the exasperated Nicky recalled that
|
|
before he had met her, Lisa had performed for three years with a snake and a
|
|
donkey as a stripper in Tijuana. Maybe he was the one who was missing
|
|
something here. I'll never fuckin' figure out women, Nicky thought to
|
|
himself.
|
|
|
|
As Lisa whined on, claiming that she liked being a sex object and
|
|
wouldn't turn down a good gang-bang now and then if Nicky didn't mind, Alex
|
|
turned up his stereo so even the coyotes and rattle snakes could get their
|
|
fill of Lawrence Welk.
|
|
|
|
Nicky reached for the twelve-pack at this feet, pulled out two beers,
|
|
popped the tabs, and handed one to Lisa.
|
|
|
|
"Lisa, honey," Nicky yelled into his girlfriend's ear, his headache
|
|
beginning, "just drink the beer and shut the fuck up. For five fuckin'
|
|
minutes. Just shut the fuck up and drink your fuckin' beer. Let's be like old
|
|
times."
|
|
|
|
The Plymouth sped down the I-15 at ninety miles per hour. Few other cars
|
|
were on the highway at this time of night, 2:30 am. In two hours, they'd all
|
|
be back in Vegas. As Lisa sucked on her beer can and, between gulps,
|
|
continued to brag about being a porn star, Nicky looked up at the full moon,
|
|
saw a meteor blaze across the glorious night sky, and dreamed of bloodied
|
|
corpses and different times.
|
|
|
|
Sadly, he realized that things between him and Lisa would never again be
|
|
as they once were. Life with Lisa would be a lot tougher from now on.
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
|
|
"The principal difference between dates and Nazi torture is that Nazi
|
|
torture took place during the 1940s and was seriously criticized at the
|
|
Nuremburg trials. Dating, however, is still legal and remains one of the
|
|
least-understood atrocities that humans can commit."
|
|
--Stephanie Brush
|
|
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
FRAGMENT #1
|
|
by Downtime
|
|
|
|
another exerpt of life as
|
|
seen through the eyes of
|
|
the world's forgotten boy.
|
|
|
|
The sulfer from the match burned his nose and left that horrible taste
|
|
on his tongue, but the cigarette itself was great, one of the few things that
|
|
he could actually enjoy. He was miserable. He stayed miserable. Only when
|
|
the weather was like this, did he feel comforted. Comforted by the fact that
|
|
hundreds more people were now almost a miserable as himself.
|
|
|
|
He stands alone, under the shelter of the doorway of a little cafe.
|
|
Countless and confused thoughts race through his conscious mind. Thoughts
|
|
that he can't express. More like feelings... emotions. A hundred degrees of
|
|
a hundred emotions, all at once. The dark skies remind him of himself. His
|
|
mind wanders back to women he's known, some that he'd loved. Some that he
|
|
might have loved, some that no longer had a name to go with the face. All the
|
|
nights he spends alone in his bed. All the nights that he feels the memories
|
|
of the time that he spent with these girls and women. He wishes he could have
|
|
just one to lie with at night in the darkness. Someone that he could feel
|
|
something for. Someone he could share his feelings with, and listen to, and
|
|
hold when he hates. Someone that could maybe help him forget, to help
|
|
straighten out his own head.
|
|
|
|
Once, a woman told him that there was no innocence in his eyes.
|
|
|
|
Could anything ever be pure again? Would he ever find the one? Will he
|
|
only have memories that were the pieces of his life? Would he find women that
|
|
would become only memories just like the rest?
|
|
|
|
And with that thought, he palms his cigarette and steps out into the
|
|
rain. All the people he sees are running for their cars or into stores or
|
|
cafes like one he just came from, to escape the cool autumn rain. The rain
|
|
seemed out of place, and he decided that the rain was for him. He walked past
|
|
stores where couples sifted through clothes and books, the men looking bored
|
|
to be there with their wives or girl-friends. He only wished he had someone
|
|
he could spend time with and hold hands with, even though the cliche is
|
|
repulsive. He longed for it just the same.
|
|
|
|
He discovered that his cigarette had gone out from the rain running down
|
|
his arm, and he realized how silly he looked. A grown man standing in the
|
|
rain, staring into a store window with the butt of a wet cigarette in his
|
|
hand. He turns and hails a cab.
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Absence extinguishes small passions and increases great ones, as the
|
|
wind will blow out a candle, and blow in a fire."
|
|
--Duc de la Rochefoucauld
|
|
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
i AM ALEX
|
|
by Rich Logsdon
|
|
|
|
[Editor's note: The following story is the 301st in the famous but now
|
|
defunct "Alex the Werewolf" series, which culminated last March with its
|
|
glorious 365th issue. In this unusual piece, a collector's item which my
|
|
staff and I feared had been lost to the public, Alex tells it all. We now
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submit to you, dear reader, the story entitled "I Am Alex," confident that
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Alex, Nicky, and Lisa will live on in the hearts of their approximately
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25,000,000 blood-thirsty readers for a few years more. --XY, Editor, _Bones
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and Flesh Review_}
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I.
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Grim reader, I am Alex the Werewolf. Or Alex the Wolf-God. Take your
|
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pick.
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Indeed, a psychiatrist's nightmare, I may be two different people -- a
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kind of red and black, opposites dancing madly in one small dark circle. My
|
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duality is a fact that author/creator L. has repeatedly failed to take into
|
|
account. Always, in story after story, L. pictures me in the company of my
|
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friends Nicky and Lisa, both good-natured but more often then not incredibly
|
|
dim-witted ghouls, whom I met years ago at the Southern Nevada Fourteenth
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|
Annual Blood Feast, held just north of Searchlight. The point is I am never
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seen alone by you, the reader.
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I am defined and understood only in relation to these two other
|
|
characters. L's creation of -- and (therefore) your perception of -- Alex the
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|
Werewolf is inextricably linked to L's characterization of two ghouls who,
|
|
between them, likely do not have a triple-digit I.Q. and whose consuming
|
|
passions consist of eating the flesh of the dead, watching Seinfeld reruns,
|
|
and fucking each other to death like a couple of sex-crazed minks. I mean,
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|
let's face it: Lisa is one of America's new porn queens (we've all heard of
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|
Lisa Lust, right?), and her boyfriend Alex is so incredibly stupid that he
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|
can't pass a class at the local community college.
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So please allow me tell you about myself. This narrative is to be the
|
|
unfiltered, unexpurgated version of Alex the Werewolf as told to you, the
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|
rabid reader, by Alex the Werewolf.
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II.
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Where do I begin? Probably with the fact that I am indeed a werewolf, a
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thing living under the blackest of curses, separated (eternally?) from The
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Great Whatever; I am a creature who, during the full moon, becomes a huge,
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savage, demonic predator capable of tearing out a man's throat or removing his
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|
head in one swipe of my razor-sharp teeth.
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When I change from human to werewolf, the transformation is, to a certain
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|
extent, self-willed. That is, there is within me a device that is triggered
|
|
by rage on my part and that therefore I likely could control if I so desired.
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|
I could apply the brakes, as my therapist is wont to tell me, and put aside,
|
|
once and for all, this "attention-getting mechanism" of gleefully ripping
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|
someone's throat out. ("Thank you, Dr. Freud," I always respond at this point
|
|
in the therapy. "Smithers," he always corrects me. "Whatever," I respond,
|
|
knowing he'll miss the joke. Somewhat like the trinity, I then insist to my
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therapist, "I am two persons, one god: Alex the Wolf-God." It's about that
|
|
time that he asks me if I need more medication.)
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Anyway, when during a full moon, in the company of Lisa and Nicky, I
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|
become the ravaging, drooling blood-thirsty beast of cheap serialized fiction
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fame, it's as if another timid Alex is still locked deep inside, observing his
|
|
"beast" self dismember and partially consume a human being. Speaking for this
|
|
meek side of my twisted self, I do remember the timid Alex's euphorically
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|
watching the huge black and white werewolf Alex seize the world-famous
|
|
wrestler known as Pile Driver by the neck and toss this over-sized WWF bozo
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|
around like he were a rag doll out behind Pablo's Bar and Grill in North Las
|
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Vegas one night to the rabid cheers of at least 500 spectators. I, Alex,
|
|
locked inside myself (it's like being stuck in a glass tube), thrilled to the
|
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death-screams of the man, whose conflict with Alex goes back to the night at
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Cashman Field that Piledriver put the hustle on the unsuspecting but always
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flirtatious Lisa, who had just realized stardom in the adult film industry.
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There is, thus, Alex One, who must be distinguished from Alex Two. Alex
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One is the seemingly nerdy, slightly effeminate intellectual who received his
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master's degree in English from Detroit University and who does indeed read
|
|
Nabakov, Pynchon, Borges, Calvino, Shakespeare, Bahktin -- everything he can
|
|
get his hands on that has something to do with the development of Western
|
|
intellectual thought. Indeed, at times, Alex One convinces himself that he is
|
|
the apotheosis of contemporary Western thought. Dressed in mismatched
|
|
clothes, wearing wire rimmed glasses, sporting a brown beard and mustache,
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this somewhat pretentious individual is the Alex that Nicky and Lisa -- God
|
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bless their ghoulish natures -- have come to know and love.
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Alex Two is as much a part of the total package as the intellectual
|
|
academic who discusses Heidegger with topless dancers working at a nude bar
|
|
like Stinky Pete's. Alex Two is dark and bloody, the depraved beast lurking
|
|
within me that has convinced Smithers or Smothers or whatever his name is that
|
|
I may need an exorcism more than therapy. ("Call in the priest, Dr. Jung," I
|
|
tell him. He generally bristles, glares at me, comments, "That's Smithers."
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|
"Whatever," I respond.) Alex Two, in fact, may be the real Alex, Alex One
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|
operating as a convenient shield.
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III.
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There is only one person in this darkly created and conceived universe
|
|
who fully appreciates my dilemma. The person I go to in times of
|
|
gut-wrenching distress over my grotesquely dual nature goes by the stage name
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|
of Bangkok Annie. Surely, you've heard of her. She's gorgeous, a sexy little
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|
Oriental ("Asian-American," Smithers corrects me when I come to this part.
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|
"Whatever," I respond with a yawn) with pierced nipples and a rose tattooed
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|
just over her pubic area. You may know her as the stripper who has worked
|
|
such Vegas nude bars of L's fiction as Pussy Willows and The Ninth Circle.
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Annie claims to be an angel or spirit from above, sent to help me in
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|
times of crisis. When she first led me to believe this, I thought her insane.
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|
However, it is she that grants me priestly absolution when, in the middle of
|
|
an unbearable hot and long day, I am wracked with guilt over having taken the
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life of (for instance) that poor undeserving homeless woman who just happened
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|
to be huddled on the street corner of Fourth and Fremont when, in a killing
|
|
frenzy, I ripped three rabid Satanists limb from limb. (In my rage, I thought
|
|
she might have been one of them).
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IV.
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To make the relationship between me and Annie a bit clearer I'd like to
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tell you a story.
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It was a dark and stormy night, the heavy, the suffocating scent of
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|
vampires and werewolves sitting on Las Vegas like a dark Pynchonesque fog.
|
|
Evacuations were proceeding around the country. Hunters -- slayers, if you
|
|
will -- having taken over LA, New York, Detroit, and New Jersey, the night
|
|
creatures had fled like mad rats by the thousands to southern Nevada, a sure
|
|
refuge for anyone of a shady, demonic nature. I had come down from Detroit.
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It was in Detroit that I got my master's in English literature years and years
|
|
ago, long before I was bitten. Life in Vegas was good for most of us. We
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went to the finest restaurants, walked the finest casinos, got comped to the
|
|
big prize fights, got girls whenever we wanted.
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With millions of tourists pouring in from all over the world, blood ran
|
|
like water, and we never wanted for a pound of flesh. Hell, we ran the place,
|
|
which became, in fact, a kind of Hell on earth. The surrounding desert became
|
|
one enormous burial ground. Word had it that the hunters were staying away
|
|
from Vegas, having conceded that environment to vampires, werewolves, ghouls,
|
|
bail bondsmen, attorneys and the life. This was long before Nicky and Lisa.
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|
A bad ass in those days, long after I had been savaged in a northern
|
|
Michigan forest by a werewolf who still roams the alleys of large Midwestern
|
|
cities, I kept the company of two dubious friends, also werewolves, Eddie and
|
|
Louie Genovese. ("There is no such thing as a werewolf," my shrink counsels
|
|
me, wondering, I know, if he should increase my medication. "Whatever," I say
|
|
with a snicker.) Eddie and Louie were from Toronto via Detroit, and Louie was
|
|
a vicious little prick any time of the day. He didn't need a full moon to fly
|
|
into a frenzy and brutally beat someone senseless. Working by day in a
|
|
Laundromat in Northtown, Louie would fly off the handle at the drop of a hat.
|
|
One afternoon, I even watched Louie kick some daywalker -- one who is not a
|
|
werewolf, vampire, or ghoul -- twice his size to death. In fact, Louie
|
|
enjoyed it. The whole thing occurred because this poor schmuck didn't want to
|
|
pay his laundry bill, which amounted to something like $2.47.
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Eddie wasn't much better. Eddie worked part-time as an accounting
|
|
professor at a local college at the time. Eddie loved the women. Eddie's
|
|
thing was to take one of his sexy co-eds home with him, say, once a month,
|
|
fuck her, strangle her to death, bite off her head, and then drink her blood.
|
|
What a life, I remember thinking to myself at the time. Where he disposed of
|
|
the bodies, I don't know. I suspect in the vacant lot that lay behind his
|
|
house. It's not my business. I never cared. Anyway, this is what Eddie was
|
|
like when there wasn't a full moon. Eddie and Louie were rotten as they come.
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Of course, I wasn't any prince. I worked in an adult book store down on
|
|
Charleston, where I had the opportunity to mix sex and savagery. I'd pick out
|
|
a real good looking guy, watch him all day long pop quarters, half-dollars,
|
|
and dollars into our smut films, get off watching him jack-off to some
|
|
peek-a-boo slut film and just wait for the full moon night. Then I'd track my
|
|
prey into the dark and unlit parking lot out back and savagely attack just
|
|
when he was opening his car door, seizing him by the neck, crushing violently
|
|
(blood squirting everywhere in a delicious, invigorating spray), dragging him
|
|
off into the Las Vegas night for a feast of flesh. I think of the three of us
|
|
-- Eddie, Louie, and me -- I had the highest kill rate, by far.
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Anyway, everything was totally cool in Vegas back in those days. The
|
|
hunters were leaving Vegas alone; southern Nevada was ours for the taking. I
|
|
was sure that I had found my Hellish little Paradise when one night, feasting
|
|
on a corpse out behind the infamous and now defunct Tarantula's Lil's, I
|
|
encountered a hunter, whom I recognized by his overpowering death-scent.
|
|
Feeling I was suffocating, I nearly gagged. At first, I thought I had become
|
|
delusional, possibly because of my victim's very rich blood. After all,
|
|
there were supposed to be no hunters in Vegas. But this one stood about 6'5",
|
|
and while I mangled, played with, and finally devoured the corpse of one of
|
|
the city council members under the dimly lit street lamp out behind Lil's,
|
|
this lone hunter stood in the darkness about ten feet away, smoking
|
|
cigarettes, and watched and waited, watched and waited. His name was Stalk.
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|
|
When I had finished and looked up at him, I recognized my enemy
|
|
immediately. I tried to will myself invisible, sure that I had reached the
|
|
end of my rope. His black satin cloak, extending to his motorcycle boots, his
|
|
short-cropped yellow hair, his big golden earrings, and his one enormous eye
|
|
(the other having been lost in a fight with me, believe it or not) gave him
|
|
away. I froze as only a werewolf can do when it realizes that Death and Sure
|
|
Annihilation is standing before him, calling him to a moment of reckoning,
|
|
pointing the way to the endless black Void that awaits us all. All the
|
|
werewolves had heard of Stalk, the black hunter whose coming meant that more
|
|
hunters and The Angel of Death were on their way. It would be the tenth
|
|
plague of Exodus all over again.
|
|
|
|
I remember looking up from my meal -- I had lost my appetite -- into
|
|
Stalk's granite eyes that night out behind Tarantula's Lil's, aware that this
|
|
vengeful black man had a heart of black iron. Sick at heart, I slowly,
|
|
mincingly approached him and circled and circled, snarled and moaned, hoping
|
|
to get a reaction as he stood and smoked cigarette after cigarette, insanely
|
|
confident, singularly unimpressed, certain he could take me out in a minute.
|
|
When I got close enough, he even blew thick clouds of smoke on me.
|
|
|
|
"Long time no see, Alex," he quipped, in his girlish high-pitched Mike
|
|
Tyson voice, blowing smoke rings into the night. He knew that I could
|
|
understand him. A dark knife, his voice cut right through me, fear filled me
|
|
like ice, and temporarily I felt estranged from myself, breaking into a
|
|
thousand fragments, like I was disintegrating and being sucked into the Abyss.
|
|
"Last time in Detroit, man, I believe, summer of '71? You took my fuckin'
|
|
right eyeball." At gun-point, he had chased me out of Detroit to my abject
|
|
humiliation, but that's another story.
|
|
|
|
To hide my terror, I growled, I howled, I snarled, but really felt like
|
|
pissing on the spot; in a burst of frantic, panicked fury, I then sprang right
|
|
at him. Swift as night, predictably even, he stepped aside as I lunged for
|
|
his throat, and I landed, awkwardly, several feet beyond him, on all fours.
|
|
But of course I didn't think I'd get Stalk. When I landed, my plan was to keep
|
|
running from this crazy black son-of-a-bitch, to get the hell out of there
|
|
with my life; but apparently (I didn't see him do it) he pulled out a small
|
|
pistol, silver bullet inside, and squeezed the trigger in my direction.
|
|
|
|
It was like being hit with a million volts of electricity and run over
|
|
from behind by a locomotive at the same time. Instantly, but only
|
|
temporarily, the universe became pitch black as the moon overhead went out.
|
|
He had shot me in the back, shattering my vertebrae. Hit in the process of
|
|
fleeing, I bounced forward and (as he laughed) rolled over, end over end, sure
|
|
that I had taken the silver bullet of death. The blinding pain from the shot,
|
|
which hit my spine, was intense, numbing, and I felt that I was burning up,
|
|
the fires of the Lake of Hell consuming me. Paralyzed, vomiting
|
|
uncontrollably, I finally lay on my stomach, blood pouring from my wound and
|
|
my mouth. (It's usually at this point that Smithers or Smothers or whoever he
|
|
is asks to be temporarily excused. Looking pale and wan, he then steps
|
|
through the sliding glass door at the back of his office, takes out his pack
|
|
of cigarettes, and, both hands trembling, smokes furiously for the next
|
|
fifteen minutes or so, never taking his eye off the smooth-as-a-plate-of-glass
|
|
pool that sits in the middle of the office complex his office occupies. When
|
|
he returns, calmed, I resume.)
|
|
|
|
Laughing like a hyena, Stalk just knelt over me, his gun pointed at my
|
|
head, waiting to pull the trigger and lodge a silver bullet in my brain. He
|
|
held the gun steadily and waited and waited and waited as I, my heart banging
|
|
in my brain, lay on the ground, a huge bloody ball of predatorial flesh,
|
|
slowly bleeding to death, my original form returning to me. "Lights out,
|
|
Alex," I remember thinking to myself. I don't know why he didn't pull the
|
|
trigger.
|
|
|
|
As I lay nude on my stomach, gasping for breath, the rocks from the
|
|
ground grinding into my face and forehead, I recall wanting Stalk to shoot me.
|
|
I couldn't speak; I couldn't beg for my own execution. Instead, Stalk spit on
|
|
me and kicked dirt onto my face, commenting, "You're outa chances, Alex," and
|
|
slowly walked away. I could hear the echoes from his hard black boots as he
|
|
walked from the lot behind Tarantula Lil's to the street, where he had
|
|
probably parked his car.
|
|
|
|
The silver from the bullet started to work its poisonous effect. It
|
|
really only takes one to kill a werewolf. Sliding into unconsciousness and
|
|
losing total feeling in my arms, legs, and chest, I realized for the first
|
|
time in my life that I didn't want to die. Nothing was worse than this
|
|
threatened negation of my entire being. If there was a Great Whatever, even
|
|
Prime Mover (assuming Aquinas was right), I wanted help, even if it meant not
|
|
hanging out with Louie and Eddy or working in an adult book store. I remember
|
|
crying out, or at least thinking, "Great Whatever, Endless Thing that lives
|
|
above the clouds, if it is possible, help me outa this shit. Send me an
|
|
angel. A devil. A hurricane. Anything. And take me back to what I was
|
|
before I became a werewolf. Of, God, oh, God, oh, God, I don't wanna die, I
|
|
don't wanna die, I don't wanna die." I was silently sobbing with what little
|
|
energy I had left, actually panicked and unbelieving that the end was drawing
|
|
near. A total, immense darkness was descending around me like a huge blanket,
|
|
when I suddenly felt a touch on my forehead and a blast of energy that
|
|
reminded me of the nuclear bombs the test site used to set off in the desert
|
|
north of Vegas.
|
|
|
|
The blast was a tremendous, almost blinding flash of light, in which I
|
|
saw in one second the creation of the heavens and the earth, the great flood,
|
|
the parting of the Red Sea, the giving of the ten commandments, the fall of
|
|
Jerusalem, the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and the end of
|
|
time, which was now. I heard singing in the sun. Light surged through me,
|
|
lifting me off the ground, it seemed, blinding me to all but the terrific
|
|
explosion of ethereal blue light.
|
|
|
|
When the light faded, I was on my feet and saw standing before me a small
|
|
Oriental woman, her eyes blue as I had once imagined heaven would be, singing
|
|
a celestial song in the full-moon night. A werewolf whose life had been
|
|
miraculously spared, I watched the girl until she stopped singing. Her words
|
|
cast a spell over me. She wore a strip-tease outfit, like many of the girls
|
|
that worked Tarantula Lil's: a thin g-string, high-heeled shoes, and no top,
|
|
exposing small tits whose nipples were pierced by golden rings.
|
|
|
|
Instantly aroused, I realized I had not a stitch on. I looked around, saw
|
|
the dismembered corpse behind me, felt frantically up and down my body, felt
|
|
for a hole in my head. Surprisingly, I was unharmed. There were no bullet
|
|
wounds. I was alive, free to prowl again, if I so desired.
|
|
|
|
"Who are you?" I asked this gorgeous Oriental chick. (Smithers sighs
|
|
here, shakes his head, seems ready to give up.)
|
|
|
|
She said her name was Bangkok Annie for the present, a dancer at
|
|
Tarantula's Lil's, and an angel to boot.
|
|
|
|
"You're shitting me, girl. Help me?" I said. "What does that mean?" I
|
|
angrily insisted. I thought she might be an escapee from a mental institute.
|
|
|
|
She approached me, unafraid, and glanced at my manhood. "What it means,
|
|
big boy," she began, coyly, "is that I am the answer to the little prayer you
|
|
just said to yourself as Stalk stood over your body, wondering if he should
|
|
blow you to kingdom come."
|
|
|
|
"My prayer," I muttered, embarrassed. Werewolves don't pray. ("There
|
|
are no werewolves," my therapist always reiterates at this point.)
|
|
|
|
"'I don't wanna die, I don't wanna die,'" she reminded me, in a mocking
|
|
but curtsey sing-song tone. "'Forgive me. Make me what I was before I was a
|
|
werewolf.'" She was flirting with me, I think.
|
|
|
|
She smiled up at me, came closer, and I instantly saw how incredibly
|
|
beautiful she was. Her hair was black as a raven, and her lips red as blood.
|
|
Though petite, she had a perfect figure and killer legs. I suddenly wanted
|
|
her.
|
|
|
|
I moved toward her in the darkness, my face inches from her face. I
|
|
caressed her silken raven hair. Unable to resist, actually overcome by her
|
|
presence, I leaned down and kissed her on the cheek, then on the neck, then
|
|
gently on her warm mouth.
|
|
|
|
Putting both arms around my shoulders, she said, "Not now, Alex. Gotta
|
|
get back inside the Tarantula. But when you call, I come crawling. And then
|
|
we can play."
|
|
|
|
She let go of me and began to walk away, looking wistfully over her
|
|
shoulder at me. "Wait a moment," I began. I didn't want this moment to be
|
|
over, but I struggled to get the right words out. "How did you know my name?"
|
|
|
|
She stopped ten feet from the building and turned, facing me. "Alex,"
|
|
she responded, "I am an angel, silly wolf. You see me in your dreams. You
|
|
call, I come. You can always find me." With that, Bangkok Annie turned and
|
|
walked away, opened the door of the club, and went in. Stunned, I stood where
|
|
she had left me.
|
|
|
|
I looked around the parking lot and saw the remains of the corpse that I
|
|
had been consuming before Stalk made his appearance. Then I walked over to
|
|
the body, stripped it of its bloody clothes and dressed myself. I had no
|
|
choice.
|
|
|
|
I knew from that point on that my life as a werewolf would have to be
|
|
different. As I walked down the deserted side street towards my apartment in
|
|
the downtown area of Las Vegas, I silently vowed that I would never again take
|
|
a life simply for the taking of a life. I forsook evil. While still a
|
|
vicious and bloody act, killing would have to be done to serve some other
|
|
purpose, like protecting somebody or feeding myself.
|
|
|
|
V.
|
|
|
|
The next morning, around 11:00, I got a call from Louie, who wanted to
|
|
meet me at a Denny's out in Henderson so we could set up a couple of cute UNLV
|
|
co-eds for a kill that night. I hesitated, the image of Annie flashing like a
|
|
warning light into my brain. I refused Louie's invitation, bringing confusion
|
|
and anger upon him. Never, never in the fifteen years that I had known him
|
|
and Eddie had I ever even considered passing up a kill. This was, after all,
|
|
Las Vegas.
|
|
|
|
"What the fuck is wrong with you, Alex? You gone fuckin' soft, man,"
|
|
Louie hissed over the phone, sensing I think that I wasn't the same. "You
|
|
quitting on me, kid, is that what the fuck you're doin', quittin' on me and
|
|
Eddie is what you're doin', right? Right? I can smell a fuckin' quitter, and
|
|
you're a fuckin' quitter, kid."
|
|
|
|
I gulped hugely, said nothing, just waited for Louie to finish.
|
|
|
|
"Listen, you worthless piece of wolf shit," he said, "you're not better'n
|
|
me and Eddie. No better. You don't put me off. Don't you even fuckin' put
|
|
me off. I ever see you again, you worthless fuck, I'll put a bullet into you
|
|
myself. Shit, I might come and find you, dead mutt."
|
|
|
|
Louie hung up, and I sat on the edge of my bed, somehow relieved that I
|
|
had a chance to begin anew, even if I was still cursed. I also knew that,
|
|
from that moment on, life was going to be a whole lot tougher.
|
|
|
|
And I was right. Three nights later, I ran into Louie and Eddie outside
|
|
one of Las Vegas' multiplex theaters. I had spent the evening watching
|
|
classic movies about nuns and priests, trying to come to grips with the fact
|
|
that I had vowed to abstain from killing for killing's sake. When I saw them
|
|
walk out of the huge bushes behind the parking lot out back, I saw the red
|
|
hateful glare in their eyes and knew they had come to destroy me. They
|
|
approached with baseball bats, steel hooks, wooden stakes, and sledge hammers,
|
|
beating me senseless and bloody. The ground out behind the darkened theater
|
|
turned crimson from my blood. They struck me with the bat, nearly caved my
|
|
head in, tore at me again and again with the hook.
|
|
|
|
Struggling to maintain consciousness, panting, dying, prostrate, my human
|
|
form reappearing, I remember peering through the film of blood that filled my
|
|
eyes as Louie knelt over me; he had a wooden stake in his hand, Eddie
|
|
encouraging him to get it over with. "Come on, man," Eddie would say, "just
|
|
drive the fuckin' stake through this loser's fuckin' heart. Then let's go get
|
|
sumpin' to eat. I'm starved." For some reason, when he looked into my bleary
|
|
eyes, Louie hesitated; in the dim light provided by one street lamp, I knew
|
|
then and there that Louie had actually liked me at one time; and I also knew
|
|
that Louie was pausing just long enough to get his breath, that Louie hated me
|
|
now and was going to drive the stake home.
|
|
|
|
It was just as Louie had the sharp tip of the huge wooden stake ready to
|
|
plunge into my heart that deep inside me I thought of Annie. Where are you,
|
|
my little angel?, I remember silently asking myself. Where are you, sweet
|
|
Asian bliss?
|
|
|
|
At that moment, the darkness that surrounded us was torn by illumination
|
|
and light. It sounded like a bomb going off, and the sky seemed to literally
|
|
explode in a blaze of blinding glory, so suddenly that it frightened me. I
|
|
thought that the stars in the sky had exploded, that eternal darkness was
|
|
here, that we had somehow, without warning, reached the end of created time.
|
|
I can only compare the sensation to witnessing a nuclear explosion for the
|
|
first time: you're awed but terrified. The air around me flooded with
|
|
intense light for several minutes, and I remember Louie looking up from me,
|
|
terrified, and opening his mouth to scream. I saw his arms fly off his torso
|
|
in a bloody spray, his body incinerated, exploding into a million drops of
|
|
blood and ashes, as he sat on top of me. Louie had lit up like a Christmas
|
|
tree light, and then, poof, he was gone. For good.
|
|
|
|
The air smelled heavily of burnt flesh. Dazed, but still perilously
|
|
weak, I struggled to sit up and looked around. All that remained of Eddie was
|
|
a bloody pile of gray ashes. Curiously, my wounds had healed almost
|
|
completely. I felt no pain. But I had no strength, and I felt terribly,
|
|
terribly cold, like I was freezing. Maybe I was dying, a structure that had
|
|
reached its point of maximum entropy. The wind seemed to howl around me. My
|
|
mind was going numb. Then, when I sensed my own immanent and frightening
|
|
dissolution and turned around to look behind me, I saw Bangkok Annie, this
|
|
time surrounded in a bluish, ethereal haze. She stood four feet from me.
|
|
|
|
"Close call, Alex," she said, stepping forth and kneeling, putting her
|
|
small arms around me. Then she did something that I'll never forget: she
|
|
kissed me on the mouth with lips red as blood. As she did, it was like a
|
|
pleasant warm current were running through me, from head to toe. My darkly
|
|
and coldly paralyzing panic subsided into warm sunlight as I rested in Annie's
|
|
embrace, allowing her warmth to fill me. I think it was for the rest of the
|
|
night, until sunrise, that she held me in the darkness, singing to me, somehow
|
|
restoring my strength and giving me the desire to carry on. Around sunrise,
|
|
my strength having returned, I was allowed to enter this angel.
|
|
|
|
VI.
|
|
|
|
And there you have it, grim reader ("Or Dr. Freud," I comment, grinning
|
|
at my ashen-faced therapist, who has heard this story at least ten times.),
|
|
straight from the wolf's mouth. This, at least, is what I was before I met
|
|
Nicky and Lisa. It was years later that I met them at the Fourteenth Annual
|
|
Blood Feast in Southern Nevada. Both ghouls were drunk from a combination of
|
|
whiskey, flesh, and blood. Indeed, as I watched them that night, I was duly
|
|
impressed by how much these two lovable simpletons could consume. They
|
|
insisted that I join them; amused by these two, how could I refuse? That
|
|
night, I glutted myself. I am, after all, still a werewolf. I need blood and
|
|
flesh. ("You shoulda been there, doc," I always remind my shrink at this
|
|
point. "I am vegetarian," he cleverly responds. He knows I am almost done
|
|
and so can afford a better mood.)
|
|
|
|
Anyway, Nicky, Lisa and I hit it off right away and we have been
|
|
together ever since. And certainly, giving L. some credit, I have to admit
|
|
that my association with Nicky and Lisa has had an effect upon the development
|
|
of Alex. Perhaps I no longer can be understood separate from the two ghouls.
|
|
But I like to think, I must think, that beneath the veneer of this Alex lies a
|
|
truly vicious, evil predator who would destroy the good and innocent simply
|
|
because it is good and innocent. It's because of the hideous evil prowling the
|
|
dark forests of my soul that I must cling to Annie. Yes, I am afraid of
|
|
myself. Besides, I'd be history if it weren't for Annie. But what the hell:
|
|
I may already be history. At least, she makes balancing Alex One and Alex Two
|
|
a little easier. She knows and acknowledges my potential for evil. She
|
|
realizes that one day, if my meanness ever returns, I shall turn on and kill
|
|
my best friends. I might even turn on you. For now, Annie is my sustainer in
|
|
a world that has gone completely bad, that soon will be entirely consumed by
|
|
hunters tracking werewolves, vampires, and ghouls.
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
|
|
"humanity i love you because you
|
|
are perpetually putting the secret of
|
|
life in your pants and forgetting
|
|
it's there and sitting down
|
|
on it"
|
|
--e.e. cummings
|
|
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
THE HiGHER THiRD
|
|
by I Wish My Name Were Nathan
|
|
|
|
Lovers, a boy and a girl, sit in a playground in the dark early morning,
|
|
he atop a slide, she in a swing, and they talk to each other, voices just
|
|
above a murmur, not disturbing the darkness. What is just an early morning in
|
|
the playground for others is for them a moment outside of time, untouched by
|
|
the ravages of change and fortune. The linear march of time stopped for them,
|
|
took a right angle and left them behind, reeling and confused in each other.
|
|
It is a cold place outside, and all they can do is wait to be let back in.
|
|
|
|
We can hear him speaking to her. The words come hesitantly, carefully
|
|
selected but unedited. He only looks at her, from his perch. She rocks her
|
|
head gently, feet lightly scraping in the furrow under the swing, listening.
|
|
|
|
"I love you so much," he says in a pained way, "and you *know* what I
|
|
mean" -- and she does, it is not a threat -- "but I just can't understand how.
|
|
How does it *work*?"
|
|
|
|
She pulls the chains of the swing tightly together and moans in sympathy,
|
|
the only immediate response not bumbled through words. She feels the same way
|
|
and cannot understand either; this rehashing of events tears both of them and
|
|
hardens their wills --
|
|
|
|
"We only love each other. Not ourselves! How?"
|
|
|
|
He feels it, the painful resonation of the taut line between them, and
|
|
begins to weep at having hurt her again; he hates himself bitterly, actively,
|
|
with complete mastery. Alas, we can hear from her a faint wail, growing
|
|
louder and darker, feeding on her love. She gives and gives and gives; she
|
|
wails for him.
|
|
|
|
Beginnings don't exist -- their love is. Before they met, they knew, and
|
|
afterwards, still failed to understand. She wanted to be for him, and he for
|
|
her, forever. Why do they hesitate?
|
|
|
|
"I can't see how you love me," he says, "I can only see you."
|
|
|
|
He can't see how, he only sees what, and she the same. Is it not
|
|
straightforward? Does a flower need a reason? But their doubt sustains them,
|
|
do you see? They cannot accept the facts; the facts would destroy them. The
|
|
one insight they haven't voiced is --
|
|
|
|
"You don't love yourself -- so I am in love with hate. You love me, and
|
|
all I do is push you away. If I let you in, ..." -- they would combust. A
|
|
delicate balance sustained them, a repulsion-attraction of love and hate,
|
|
continuing only because it exists at all. "But if I let you go, ..." -- even
|
|
the most serene tone is a violent and mechanical alternation of current. They
|
|
fall silent; the words have died. Like the dreams did, the gifts, and the
|
|
flirts before that. The media were used up, one by one, as the current surged
|
|
and tore them clean of their moorings. But what was left now? Will they see
|
|
it? Can they?
|
|
|
|
"Whose world is this anyway?" she cries out. "I can't take this!" She
|
|
is right, but *they* can -- she believes this at heart. Right?
|
|
|
|
He is startled, unstuck out of time. Where are they? What time is it?
|
|
What is she doing? She jumps off the swing and thrashes the chains through
|
|
the air. She looks at him and for the moment, unbound, can only see the
|
|
reflection of her self-hatred. She abruptly shifts her gaze, seeing too much.
|
|
She stopped too late --
|
|
|
|
"Come with me," she says, in a sort of beckoning growl.
|
|
|
|
"What -- what's going on?" he asks, worried.
|
|
|
|
"If we only love each other but hate ourselves, we don't really exist...
|
|
it is terrible, it is a terrible thing, our love. It has entrapped us, stolen
|
|
us. It is consuming us. We must stop it. We must! Our love -- and our hate
|
|
-- die together."
|
|
|
|
She is holding out her hand. He is frozen on the slide, petrified. What
|
|
is she saying? What has she seen?
|
|
|
|
"Come!" she cries. "What are you waiting for?"
|
|
|
|
He is off the boat, and gasping for air in the roaring current, seeking a
|
|
handhold. She is farther and farther away and he only hears the sounds of her
|
|
cries...
|
|
|
|
"It must end now!" she pleads, hands outstretched -- pointlessly. He
|
|
doesn't understand.
|
|
|
|
She snaps. "I only loved you!" she screams, running off. He never sees
|
|
her alive again, and is left only with the fact of his self-hatred. He does
|
|
not love himself to end his own suffering. He must go on.
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
|
|
"I'm no fucking buddhist, but this is enlightenment!"
|
|
--Bjork
|
|
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
HOW SPECiAL DO YOU FEEL?
|
|
by Griphon
|
|
|
|
Texas. Travelling a cool 83 mph down the slick asphalt past cacti, sand,
|
|
and a couple of cool-daddy lizards, baking. The sun was early rising,
|
|
painting everything a faboo gold and blue, and it reminded me of a Miles Davis
|
|
record I had at one time, but sold for a pair of authentic Kenny Lane bowling
|
|
shoes, white and black patent leather. It would be a lie to say I didn't know
|
|
where I was going. In fact, I knew exactly. My soul itched.
|
|
|
|
Suburban life can get old, even with the stereophonic sound and
|
|
technicolor visuals, can get really passe with an itchy soul. I started
|
|
walking around the cabana singing "King of the Road" (actually just the
|
|
refrain) and watching "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" late at night. I
|
|
had to scratch the itch. Susan, my New Orleans hip kitty, thought I just
|
|
needed a haircut. I was going to find Pappy. Pappy left when I was 18,
|
|
somehow reversing the relationship of the kid moving out and the father
|
|
resigning himself to puttering around the lawn and pestering the Missus. He
|
|
bought a silver Winnebago from Fred McCallister the golf club salesman with
|
|
the most digging style of plaid pants in Mont Beagle, Connecticut, and took
|
|
off after aliens. Every six months he sent a postcard with some
|
|
leather-skinned woman with breasts the size of Texas and something tacky
|
|
written on it like:
|
|
|
|
Went fishing. Caught me a titty shark. Ha ha ha. -Pappy
|
|
|
|
Susan eventually made a shrine for them in an old Converse shoe box and
|
|
we set them on fire, floating it under the Fifth Street Bridge. Fortunately
|
|
one last postcard arrived in the mail two weeks before I got bit. It didn't
|
|
make much sense. It read:
|
|
|
|
I have found the aliens. Ha ha ha. -Pappy
|
|
|
|
Susan figured out the last part, "Pappy," but the rest of it, well, like
|
|
I said, didn't make much sense. So that's what I figured I had to do to
|
|
scratch the itch. Find Pappy and make him make sense. There comes a time in
|
|
every man's life that you had to reconcile things. Some men beat drums in the
|
|
wilderness and talked about Daddy's drinking problem. For me, it was
|
|
abandonment for a higher cause of extra-terrestrial invasion. Or familial
|
|
instability. Either way it meant fabulous cash and prizes and the open road.
|
|
The postage was marked from Santa Cruz, New Mexico, and so I thought that
|
|
might be the best place to look. Now, I have to admit to something else, too.
|
|
I was beginning to find this alien hunting diggable. Maybe it's genetic. And
|
|
this last postcard sent me into overdrive. Thinking of drinking Bloody Marys
|
|
in the mothership left me with a feeling of buoyancy that the daily routine
|
|
right now lacked.
|
|
|
|
I decided to take Susan's advice and stopped in at a beauty parlor in
|
|
Beaumont, Texas. There was a lot of pink, the icy pink of lipstick on a girl
|
|
at the sock-hop, and big bangs busting all over Beaumont in this one little
|
|
shop. The bat behind the counter looked at me like I was a funny boy for
|
|
walking into a beauty parlor, but I flashed her my best Astaire impression and
|
|
soon we were gabbing it up -- well, she was gabbing it up and I had my head
|
|
under a big bowl and a copy of Cosmo in my lap. It was an old issue, but
|
|
since every periodical in a beauty parlor is about six years outdated, I
|
|
didn't care. I was going to find Pappy, and the last contact he probably had
|
|
with honest, hard-working, Protestant, missionary-position people was probably
|
|
about six years ago, so I guess it all works out in the end. When the bat was
|
|
done with my hair, I paid and left. It was time to hit a greasy spoon, my
|
|
hair now constructed into an elaborate pompadour sculpture on my head. I
|
|
looked in the mirror. Man oh man, I thought, I should have wine and cheese
|
|
for the people who see me, I am a work of art! A truck stop thirty miles down
|
|
the road promised country fried steaks, and normally I don't deviate from my
|
|
al dente greens and baked fish, but I thought I could use a little adventure,
|
|
and I remember once when Pappy made country fried steak and gravy and mashed
|
|
potatoes. He liked chili powder, and the gravy was pink, as I recall, and I
|
|
don't remember much about the meal but I do remember Mom having to go to the
|
|
hospital because some of the gravy splattered into her eye. I turned up the
|
|
smooth sounds of Bing Crosby and accelerated along, the flat Texas landscape
|
|
offering no resistance against my quest. The road dipped and curved here and
|
|
there, but for the most part it was a sure shot into the desert.
|
|
|
|
The name of the Truck Stop was "The Holler," and so when I cruised into
|
|
the parking lot I dropped the top (which I had raised to keep my beautiful
|
|
hair in place) and, well, hollered. A deep, full-bodied holler, enough to
|
|
make some snot-nosed ankle biter reach his grubby hand for his mama and join
|
|
me. Except his was more of a shriek than a holler. The family jewels rose
|
|
into my body and vibrated, I hollered so well. And it felt good. Somebody
|
|
told me to shut up, and I did, after I finished my hollering, and I walked
|
|
inside.
|
|
|
|
The American Truckstop is by far one of the single greatest inventions on
|
|
the face of the earth. A receptacle for the shit blowing along the side of
|
|
the road, you never know what'll emerge. On aisle one, next to the leather
|
|
koozies and porcelain frogs with a schlong twice his size, are your postcards.
|
|
Now the big stuff, the frogs and koozies and Aint Jemimah salt and pepper
|
|
shakers, are good, but they're overpriced. And while they make an attractive
|
|
and entertaining icon at the next fondu party, they're usually not worth the
|
|
money. You pick them up, play with them, and set them back while you're at
|
|
the truckstop. But with the postcards, you get the feel of the place for five
|
|
for a dollar. Everything from the local flora and fauna (nicely set off with
|
|
a bronze beauty in a bikini and some boots) to some of the slogans that are,
|
|
indeed, the cutting edge of American Poetry today. I grabbed a handful, and
|
|
walked into the dining area. My appetite had increased upon finding this mecca
|
|
of Americana, and the fresh experience excited me. Aliens and Americana,
|
|
life's finest components.
|
|
|
|
The table was formica, a plus. There were coffee stains, a minus. Good,
|
|
authentic formica is a rarity these days, and a nice kitchen table with
|
|
matching chairs will set you back nearly five hundred dollars. The menus were
|
|
sticky with pancake syrup and a fly had become permanently lodged on the side
|
|
of the menu, content to die a death of sugar and germs. I scanned the menu
|
|
and waited for my waitress. Believe it or not, her name was Flo, and she had
|
|
the same hairstyle that my stylist was raving about, nice and big and set
|
|
alive with some highlights and a ton of Aqua net. She slapped down some
|
|
spotty silverware and a glass of water, the sides of which had been melted by
|
|
various encounters with Pall Malls.
|
|
|
|
"What'll it be?" she asked, flipping through her note pad. She had a
|
|
definite bounce in her step, and despite what they say about waitresses being
|
|
overworked and underpaid, she sure looked like she was having fun.
|
|
|
|
"Well, maybe I ought to let you decide, otherwise I may have to kiss your
|
|
grits," I grinned, flashing her my pearly whites and red gums. I had a great
|
|
smile -- it came from perfect hygiene. I never left home without a toothbrush
|
|
and some floss. It comes in handy, believe you me.
|
|
|
|
"Yeah, buddy, you're a regular Johnny Winters," she said.
|
|
|
|
"Well, if you don't mind, I sure would love a country fried steak."
|
|
|
|
"You want gravy with that?"
|
|
|
|
"Oh you know I do."
|
|
|
|
"White or brown?"
|
|
|
|
"White."
|
|
|
|
"Mashed potatoes?"
|
|
|
|
"That would be divine."
|
|
|
|
"Vegetable or salad?"
|
|
|
|
"Do you have low-fat Italian dressing?"
|
|
|
|
"No. We only have ranch."
|
|
|
|
"Well, Flo, I guess ranch will do."
|
|
|
|
"Thank you." With that Flo grabbed the menu out of my hand and turned on
|
|
her sassy heel back toward the kitchen.
|
|
|
|
"Hey Flo," I said, sliding along the vinyl seat toward the aisle. She
|
|
turned. "Could I get a diet coke with that?"
|
|
|
|
She walked right into the kitchen, the thick white door swinging back and
|
|
forth after her.
|
|
|
|
"Dinner was divine," I crooned when Flo brought my check. I threw a few
|
|
bills on the table and reached out to grab a hold of Flo and dance her to the
|
|
register.
|
|
|
|
"Back off, buddy," she said, lifting the butter knife off my plate and
|
|
holding it up to my chest. "You speed freak, wacko, dope heads always high
|
|
when you come in here. Don't touch me, you slimeball, or I'll cut your heart
|
|
out and throw it on the grill back there."
|
|
|
|
"Whoa, kitty cat," I said, backing up slowly. "I'm not on dope. I'm
|
|
high on life. I'm freeing my soul and enjoying the rich technophonics of a
|
|
road trip."
|
|
|
|
"Whatever you call it, I don't want it." Flo popped her gum at me and
|
|
went behind the cash register, punching in the numbers fast and furious.
|
|
|
|
"Aren't you going to ask me if I enjoyed my meal?" I asked, cocking an
|
|
eyebrow.
|
|
|
|
"Go to hell," she said, slamming $1.43 in my hand. I scooped my hand
|
|
around and plopped the change onto the counter, adding another dollar to the
|
|
stack and winked. Flo just stood there and watched me, popping her gum. The
|
|
rest of the restaurant had now turned to stare at me, the crusty old truck
|
|
drivers and their Bettys, and I gave a quick nod and began to ducked out.
|
|
|
|
"Don't mind her," a voice said behind me. I turned to catch my
|
|
reflection in a pair of sunglasses that sat underneath a John Deere cap that
|
|
sat precariously on a head.
|
|
|
|
"What's that?" I said, somewhat taken aback.
|
|
|
|
"She's an abductee. She was taken up nearly six months ago. Still a
|
|
little jittery, if you know what I mean."
|
|
|
|
"An abductee?" I said. This was getting good, I liked this guy.
|
|
|
|
"Yep."
|
|
|
|
"Aliens. Six months ago?"
|
|
|
|
"Yep."
|
|
|
|
"Is that true, dear Flo?" I said, spinning on my toes.
|
|
|
|
"Maybe," Flo said. "You're not a reporter are you?"
|
|
|
|
"No," John Deere said. "He's just a kid a with bad hair. Tell him,
|
|
Flo."
|
|
|
|
"Bad hair?" I said. "But I paid thirty dollars for this. Elvis didn't
|
|
look this good."
|
|
|
|
"Well," Flo said, lighting a Virginia Slim, "I was closing over at my
|
|
other job, Smokey Joe's. My credit cards didn't match the receipts so I was
|
|
slow in getting out. Everybody else left and I stayed on, finally found my
|
|
problem. It was a Fuelman card. I never have liked Fuelman cards. Anyway,
|
|
when I got outside my car wouldn't start. And I thought about how I had just
|
|
bought a new battery from Ray down at the Auto Zone just last week and how I
|
|
was gonna give him the business end of my Smith and Wesson, when all of a
|
|
sudden this bright blue light come shining down on me and the radio and
|
|
windshield wipers start going haywire. I was frozen to my seat -- the
|
|
UFOlogist said they hit me with a nerve ray that caused my muscles to go limp
|
|
-- and then I saw these grey men come and get me out of the car and then I
|
|
blacked out."
|
|
|
|
"Wow!" I said. "That�s some groovy stuff!"
|
|
|
|
"I am not finished," Flo snapped impatiently, tapping the edge of her
|
|
cigarette against a coffee mug. "Well, I had the vague sensation of being
|
|
probed, just like them books always says happen to you, and I think they took
|
|
some of my eggs, which actually made me feel better because the family doctor
|
|
told me I was barren, and then they ravished my body. When I came to it was
|
|
nearly six in the morning and Donna, the morning girl, was shaking me awake.
|
|
Well, I had this bump on the back of my head and my womanly parts throbbed,
|
|
but that's not really any of your business."
|
|
|
|
I waited a sec to see if Flo would continue. She didn't. John Deere
|
|
stood up.
|
|
|
|
"Yep," he said, fishing a dollar out of his pocket. "Damn aliens are
|
|
making a super race of humans to come take over and inundate us with socialist
|
|
propaganda. They have a deal with the country of Sweden. Using it as their
|
|
home base. They grow them there. Have you ever seen Swedish television?"
|
|
|
|
"Actually, no," I said. "But I'd love to."
|
|
|
|
"Bunch of clowns and blondes," John Deere said. "Damn weird stuff."
|
|
|
|
"Well," I said. "Good luck. I have to find someone near and dear to me.
|
|
He's also hunting aliens. Say," I said, turning around once more to face Flo.
|
|
"If they take his sperm and your egg, then your alien baby will be my
|
|
half-brother. Or sister."
|
|
|
|
"Fuck off," Flo said. And so I did, straight to New Mexico.
|
|
|
|
* * * * *
|
|
|
|
New Mexico was a beautiful place. Wall to wall sea of earth colors, very
|
|
fashionable now that it was fall. The sun hung low, low, low in the sky, and
|
|
I felt like I was driving right into a scene out of _Fantasia,_ all the colors
|
|
swirling together. Me and Walt and our mystical visions. I stopped off the
|
|
side of the road to buy some RC Cola and some beef jerky. I also bought a
|
|
piece of violet quartz, for luck, and for a certain vibe of novelty.
|
|
|
|
New Mexico -- haven of the disillusioned. I remember reading somewhere
|
|
about how a group of realtors got together with a group of anthropologists
|
|
over some fondu and designed the look of the place. All that pastel blue and
|
|
foxy boxy "pueblo" styles. All a big sham. But then, like a disco ball in the
|
|
night, came Roswell, and New Mexico was saved. After all, kitsch is only
|
|
kitsch so long as nobody calls it something less, and the pueblo was on the
|
|
way out. Maybe the alien thing would pan out to nothing, but right now we had
|
|
it, and it felt good. Besides, it makes more sense than a dead-end job and
|
|
taxes and near-beer and urban slums and souse and all the other cold prickly
|
|
things that make this little water droplet in space not so groovy.
|
|
|
|
I cruised into Santa Cruz close to 11 p.m. The town was a dusty pocket
|
|
of nifty fifties-style hotels, shops, and the occasional home, which looked
|
|
like it had been transplanted from mid-America with its vinyl siding and
|
|
slapped down in the desert with some salmon sloshed on the sides to make it
|
|
fit in. I was now at the end of my quest, two days on the road and that much
|
|
closer to the adventure I was searching for. The only shop still open was on
|
|
the edge of town. The bright red neon called out to us lonely marauders. Big
|
|
Jimbo's Bait Emporium and Alien Tracking. I stopped the car, careful to wipe
|
|
away the fine film of desert dust that had collected on my chrome, ran my
|
|
fingers through my hair, and walked inside. On the right side of the wall a
|
|
large trout had been mounted, and a cardboard sign was stuck beside him, a
|
|
caption bubble emerging from his mouth. "Mm-mm I sure do LOVE those Wally
|
|
Brand flies" it read. On the left side of the store were various objects
|
|
pertaining to the alien culture. Posters of Roswell, video tapes of UFO
|
|
sightings, and Alien Protection Packs were now all the rage. Pappy left
|
|
before it had been so cool, making him less cool for leaving, because it
|
|
wasn't time. Everything has a time and place, and to exist outside of it was
|
|
Nerdsville. The shopkeep was a young man in his early twenties, with long
|
|
brown hair and a red goatee. He was eating a burrito and watching the
|
|
scrambled Playboy channel, leaning closer whenever the picture became
|
|
recognizable, green titties and orange butts and the occasional moan instead
|
|
of the constant whine and dancing picture.
|
|
|
|
"Whaddya say, Jimbo," I said, leaning heavy on the counter. He stopped
|
|
eating his burrito and turned to me.
|
|
|
|
"My name's not Jimbo. Do I look like a Jimbo? Do I look like a Big
|
|
Jimbo?"
|
|
|
|
"This is your store, isn't it?"
|
|
|
|
"No. It's Jimbo's store. I just work here. Can I help you?" Jimbo
|
|
chomped down hard on his burrito, the bean and cheese squeezing out of the
|
|
corners of his mouth.
|
|
|
|
"Oh I hope you can. I'm looking for someone. Drives a silver Winnebago
|
|
with some satellite dishes on top." I wasn't exactly sure about the satellite
|
|
dishes. "And a bumper sticker proclaiming the glories of Elvis's Church of
|
|
Guns." I was sure about the bumper sticker. The young man just looked at me,
|
|
chewing his burrito. He then began to watch television.
|
|
|
|
"Come on daddy-o. Throw me a bone, here," I said. My back began to hurt
|
|
and my temples started to throb. I realized I was extremely tired.
|
|
|
|
"Look, buddy," he said, plopping his burrito down on the counter and
|
|
using the back of his hand to clear away taco sauce and bits of cheese from
|
|
his face. "Do you have any fucking idea how many silver Winnebago driving,
|
|
alien-hunting, Elvis freaks come through here every single day? Of course
|
|
not, you're just a retard with bad hair and bowling shoes. Well, I'll tell
|
|
you. I've been working at this crappy store for five years now, and have
|
|
gotten the dumbest questions from the dumbest pieces of withered meat
|
|
pretending to call themselves human beings, but you are, without a doubt, the
|
|
dumbest person I have ever had the misfortune to deal with. There's a map on
|
|
the wall over there," he said, extending his arm out past me to the wall
|
|
behind him. "It's five bucks, six in your case, and will show you the three
|
|
trailer park camps in town. The 'Happy Hillbilly' is where most of the
|
|
families on vacation stay, the 'Roswell Connection' is for the alien freaks,
|
|
and the 'Cannery' is for people who have either been here a while or are into
|
|
the Winnebago as a true lifestyle. I would suggest the Roswell Connection,
|
|
or, as an equally good alternative, throwing yourself in front of a train.
|
|
Now give me my six bucks and leave me to my nudie flick."
|
|
|
|
My head was really hurting at this little tirade, but I went ahead and
|
|
paid. It's not everyday you have a chance to help out the criminally insane.
|
|
I actually pitied him. He had no hope of treatment working for what was
|
|
probably pennies a day here, his brain rotting from television and bad Mexican
|
|
food. I walked outside and jumped into my car, turning up the Benny Goodman
|
|
to fill the night sky. Jimbo looked out at me, scowling. I made a square
|
|
with my fingers on the air and winked, and he mouthed the words "Your momma."
|
|
I tore off into the night, needing a stiff drink and my Pappy.
|
|
|
|
* * * * *
|
|
|
|
I decided to hit the Cannery, despite the sage advice given to me at the
|
|
bait shop. On the way there, however, I blew a tire. The old gal had finally
|
|
gotten tired and decided we needed a break then and there. Fortunately I was
|
|
near a diner. Risking another close encounter with the trailer-park kind, I
|
|
ducked inside. The only person there was a young woman, obviously a peddler
|
|
of fleshly wares if her cropped blue jean jacket with an air-brushed "menu" on
|
|
the back was to be taken seriously. She was playing Patsy Cline on the
|
|
jukebox and eating eggs and toast. She turned when I came in and flashed me
|
|
her pearly whites.
|
|
|
|
"Hey sailor," she said. "That's some mighty fine hair you got there."
|
|
|
|
"Thank you," I said. "That's a might nice blue jean jacket you got
|
|
there."
|
|
|
|
"It's from the Chicken Ranch in Nevada. Funny thing, it's the only
|
|
jacket I packed." She shrugged and shoveled another forkful of eggs into her
|
|
mouth.
|
|
|
|
"You know of an all-night wrecker service?" I asked. "I seemed to have
|
|
acquired a flat tire."
|
|
|
|
"Well, I just stopped in town to grab a bite to eat, so I'd have to say
|
|
no on the tow truck, but I can fix a tire. You got a spare?"
|
|
|
|
"Yep."
|
|
|
|
"And a jack?"
|
|
|
|
"Yep."
|
|
|
|
"Well alrighty. Fifty bucks and we're all set."
|
|
|
|
"Well alrighty, but no thanks," I said. "That's too rich for my
|
|
blood."
|
|
|
|
"But I'm the best," she cooed, pulling herself away from her eggs and
|
|
walking toward me. I had to admit, she wasn't my idea of a legal prostitute.
|
|
She looked good.
|
|
|
|
"And I'm broke," I said. "I don't suppose you still believe in human
|
|
kindness?"
|
|
|
|
"I don't suppose you believe in a vacation in Honolulu? It's always been
|
|
my dream, you see, and I'm a couple hundred short. I'm doing odd jobs between
|
|
here and Lexington, where my sister lives. I want to surprise her with the
|
|
trip."
|
|
|
|
"But surely the money you're making--"
|
|
|
|
"I said odd jobs, sugar," she said, brushing a hot red fingernail across
|
|
my mouth on her way out toward my car, "not blowjobs. Don't let the jacket
|
|
fool you."
|
|
|
|
"How about fifteen?" I offered, winking.
|
|
|
|
"You got something in your eye?" she said, no trace of irony on her
|
|
face, just a little piece of egg. "Fifty."
|
|
|
|
"Well," I said. "How much for keeping me company while I change the
|
|
tire?"
|
|
|
|
"Company's free so long as you give me a lift to the city limit."
|
|
|
|
"I'm heading to an RV park," I said. "Will that do?"
|
|
|
|
"Sure," she said.
|
|
|
|
Changing tires is one of those rare events that humbles a man. It
|
|
requires a delicate balance of strength and smarts, and the slightest mistake
|
|
could send you hurtling over the landmark bridge into a protected spring
|
|
without so much as a farewell scream. I tugged and twisted and sweated and
|
|
cursed and Julia, the young lady with the most unusual jacket, smoked
|
|
cigarettes and told me of her dream of Honolulu.
|
|
|
|
"I've been studying," she says. "And I know that the word for 'hello',
|
|
'aloha', also means 'goodbye.'"
|
|
|
|
"How very postmodern," I said.
|
|
|
|
"What?"
|
|
|
|
"Multiplicity of meaning."
|
|
|
|
"Uh-huh. And something else," she said. "Although the luau is supposed
|
|
to be a big island thing it really isn't traditional. The natives would only
|
|
do it when something was wrong, like a drought or something. Now they do it
|
|
because of the tourists."
|
|
|
|
"Sounds like bad mojo to me," I said. Actually it didn't sound like
|
|
anything to me because I had just emerged victorious over my car and had but a
|
|
pair of dirty palms to show for it. I felt bad for not listening, so I opened
|
|
up the door for Julia, swung into the cockpit, and hit Mach 2 on the open road
|
|
and began to shoot the kitsch.
|
|
|
|
"So," I said, leaning over and lighting her cigarette with my genuine
|
|
mother-of-pearl car cigarette lighter. "Why Honolulu?"
|
|
|
|
"Haven't you just wanted to get away from it all?" she asked. "Well,
|
|
more away from it than you already are?"
|
|
|
|
"I can dig it," I said. "Sometimes, what, you just gotta trip on up and
|
|
trip on out."
|
|
|
|
"Yeah," she said. "Nothing about it particularly, just the experience of
|
|
going away."
|
|
|
|
"Yeah, yeah," I said. I dug this chick. She gave me a peck on the cheek
|
|
when I let her out.
|
|
|
|
"If your dad finds Mork, tell him to get something more than a blurry
|
|
Polaroid, okay?"
|
|
|
|
"Will do, captain," I said, saluting and shooting into the driveway of
|
|
the Cannery.
|
|
|
|
I must admit I felt a little embarrassed as I pulled into the parking lot
|
|
next to the check-in booth and saw row after row of silver Winnebago, each
|
|
with its own little satellite dish on top. But hey, I thought, I'm new at
|
|
this sort of thing. I walked up to the man behind the desk. He was watching
|
|
the Playboy channel as well, but his picture and sound was crisp and clean,
|
|
like the night sky above us. He turned and began to slide a form toward me,
|
|
but stopped short when he saw my means of transportation.
|
|
|
|
"This is an RV Park, kid," he said. "You got to have an RV to stay
|
|
here."
|
|
|
|
"I'm not interested in staying. I'm looking for my father."
|
|
|
|
"We can't give out the reservation list unless it's a matter of police
|
|
business or a crisis. You having a crisis, kid?"
|
|
|
|
"Well, not really. I mean, it's been ten years since I've seen my dad.
|
|
Does that count?"
|
|
|
|
"You got twenty bucks?" the man asked.
|
|
|
|
"I think so."
|
|
|
|
"Twenty bucks is a crisis."
|
|
|
|
He slid the register over to me and I thumbed through the pages. I
|
|
scanned the names, looking for his, Alex J. Gilbert, Sr. Disco! Lot 15,
|
|
reserved for three weeks. I jumped in my car and tore past every Lot until
|
|
finding his. Sure enough, the bumper sticker and antennae were both very real
|
|
and a little mailbox had been set up with the name "Gilbert" stencilled in
|
|
reflective orange paint on the side. I took a deep breath and combed my hair.
|
|
It still looked pretty good, I must admit, but it wasn't perfect. Oh well,
|
|
they say a parent's love is blind. I threw on a different shirt, this one red
|
|
with black pinstripes, and polished up my shoes with a quick spit shine. My
|
|
hands were sweating and my heart was beating a little faster than normal, but
|
|
I thought it normal, considering. I began to walk up to the door. And
|
|
stopped. It hadn't occurred to me how I might approach my father. I wondered
|
|
if he had taken on the bad attitude of everyone else in the southwest and
|
|
decided that perhaps it would not be so wise to breeze in as my charming self.
|
|
Maybe I should try to be a little more low-key. I changed shirts again, this
|
|
time into a white t-shirt with a pocket in the front and the sleeves slightly
|
|
rolled up. I would ask for a beer and flop down on whatever he was using for
|
|
a couch or recliner, and shoot the shit. No big parade, I thought. No flash,
|
|
just a mano-y-mano. I started the car, killed the headlights, and began to
|
|
put it into reverse when a voice came, like a thief in the night.
|
|
|
|
"Junior? What the hell did you do to your hair, boy?"
|
|
|
|
My heart hit my throat and I flipped on the high beams, flooding the
|
|
driveway with light. There, in front of my car in a red pair of Jockey
|
|
shorts, tennis shoes, and big snake skin cowboy hat, stood my father.
|
|
|
|
"Goddamit boy, kill your brights. Enough to blind an old man."
|
|
|
|
"Pappy!" I yelled, scrambling out of my car and rushing toward to him.
|
|
|
|
"Hold it, boy. Don't get too excited. I'm happy to see you too, but
|
|
you'll spill my beer."
|
|
|
|
My father extended a hand. It was pure leather. He smelled like cheap
|
|
beer and Aqua Velva, the two alcohols swirling together in my nose and tugging
|
|
at my brain. I needed to sit down.
|
|
|
|
Pappy's pad was pretty swanky, if not altogether clean. Beer bottles and
|
|
cans littered the floor, and cigarette butts were in every possible place,
|
|
including the soil around a small cactus wearing a cowboy hat. There was a
|
|
mattress toward the back and an ugly yellow leather sofa toward the front,
|
|
with a stove and bathroom separating the two.
|
|
|
|
"She ain't pretty, but she's home," Pappy said, flopping down on the
|
|
couch. "Can I get you a beer?"
|
|
|
|
"Sure, that'd be cool," I said. Pappy popped a beer open with his teeth
|
|
and handed it to me, the foam running down the side of the neck.
|
|
|
|
"So my old son has come back home," he said. "Well, I guess it is hard
|
|
staying away. After I left I got homesick. But I didn't come back, as you
|
|
probably know, and I don't regret it."
|
|
|
|
"So how're things, Pops?"
|
|
|
|
"Can't complain. I paid off the Winny and now I just draw on the social
|
|
security to buy gas and beer and turkey dogs. Ray owns this place and gave me
|
|
a permanent lot, free of charge, on account of being his most loyal customer.
|
|
I get free electricity, water, and Playboy. It's the simple pleasures of life,
|
|
son. The simple pleasures. How about you?"
|
|
|
|
"I have a job. Live with a girl. In a cabana. In Connecticut."
|
|
|
|
"A girl, eh? That's good. For a second I thought you were a, you know,
|
|
flittery-type what with that hair and all."
|
|
|
|
"No. I have sex with women. Yep." I felt a little too Brady Bunch
|
|
talking to my old man about the birds and the other birds.
|
|
|
|
"Well, I guess you're tired. No sense in forcing a conversation on you.
|
|
You can sleep on the couch. The one thing I don't have is air conditioning,
|
|
so you might want to think about shedding some of that clothing. Kick
|
|
whatever tries to bite or gets in your way. Goodnight, son."
|
|
|
|
"Hey, Dad?"
|
|
|
|
"Yessir?"
|
|
|
|
"You really hunt aliens?" My father looked at me laughed.
|
|
|
|
"Hell, boy. I've been out here for ten years and haven't seen anything
|
|
close to an alien except for once, but he turned out to be Korean. I told
|
|
your mother that because she was into that weird kitschy shit like you.
|
|
Besides, I figured it would hurt her less if she thought I was a lunatic, make
|
|
her think I really was crazy for leaving."
|
|
|
|
"Why'd you go, then?"
|
|
|
|
"Dunno. Guess I wasn't cut out for home life in the Breadbasket of
|
|
America. Didn't sit right. Itched me up inside. Well, goodnight. We'll go
|
|
to this greasy spoon that has a great Southwestern Omelette. You'll like it,
|
|
lots of plastic shit all over the place."
|
|
|
|
"Okay."
|
|
|
|
"Okay." My father turned off the light and shut the door to the back
|
|
room.
|
|
|
|
I sat there a minute and then my Pappy came back.
|
|
|
|
"Actually," he said, belching and tugging at his turkey wiener through
|
|
his threadbare shorts, "I do know why I split. You remember the extract
|
|
factory where we used to live in New Braunsfels? The one that smelled like
|
|
potpourri from hell?"
|
|
|
|
"Yeah," I said. "I think I do. Sort of."
|
|
|
|
"Well, there was this sign that I always passed that was right outside,
|
|
before the shit burned down. It was put there by Mormons, I think, a great
|
|
big sign with a fat guy smiling happily like he had nipped a little too much
|
|
vanilla extract and the phrase 'How special do you feel?' under it. For the
|
|
damnedest while I thought it was advertising valium, but it was just one of
|
|
those religious slash self-help slash happy people everywhere type of things.
|
|
I didn't pay too much thought to it until one day I spilled coffee on myself
|
|
and drove past it, cursing under my breath and saw it and felt, well, not so
|
|
special. Don't get me wrong, I loved your mother and you, but -- well,
|
|
actually, no I didn't. I hated my life and I didn't want a family and
|
|
somewhere between getting out of the Navy and at that moment with a crotch
|
|
full of Sanka things had went all to hell."
|
|
|
|
"So you left."
|
|
|
|
"Yep. It was selfish, I know, but hell, that Albert Camus fellow was
|
|
being revived and if someone'll shoot an Arab on the beach because the sun's
|
|
too bright then it doesn't seem to be too off-kilter that a man would leave
|
|
his responsibilities to try to find happiness. Besides, you wouldn't have
|
|
wanted your mom all doped up on grass trying to forget that her husband, your
|
|
daddy, was a drunk full of piss and vinegar about life. Wouldn't have been a
|
|
good environment for you to grow up into."
|
|
|
|
"Dad, frankly I don't give a shit."
|
|
|
|
"That's my boy, gimme hell."
|
|
|
|
"No, really, this is all too much. Sensory overload. Blowing a
|
|
transistor here. Let's talk about it in the morning."
|
|
|
|
"Good deal. Goodnight."
|
|
|
|
"Goodnight."
|
|
|
|
I stared out the window into the florescent-lit night. The dark blue of
|
|
the sky had a purple tinge around the edges and wondered what it would be like
|
|
to drive, away from the neon and florescent, in the middle of the night,
|
|
surrounded by all that blue. I finished my beer and pulled a postcard out of
|
|
my pocket. Outside I rolled the car out of the driveway and around to the
|
|
next lot before turning on the engine. In the light of the headlights, I
|
|
scrawled on the back and stuck it in his mailbox before heading out.
|
|
|
|
Dear Pappy,
|
|
Needed to get back. I'll come visit again sometime, and tell Mom
|
|
you're doing well. Keep sending the postcards to the box, Susan and I
|
|
get a kick out of them. I'll talk to you soon.
|
|
--Junior
|
|
|
|
"Hell," I said out loud to no one in particular. "Maybe someday I'll
|
|
find me an alien in the backyard and all this running around will be a
|
|
colossal waste of precious bingo time."
|
|
|
|
The open road didn't seem quite so open anymore. I wondered what Pappy
|
|
was going to do when he woke up and I wasn't there. He might consider it to
|
|
be the result of a bad wiener. Or maybe he'd lament his decision and come
|
|
home. Maybe he realized that laying it on like stucco wasn't where it was at
|
|
and might try to reintegrate into the world of normal people slowly, de-toxing
|
|
that personal happiness from him slowly. Maybe he would find an alien and it
|
|
would look like me and he would talk to it before it ate his brain. That's
|
|
the problem with aliens. You never know whether they'll eat your brain or
|
|
not. It's better to hang low on the homestead with an itchy soul than out
|
|
there in the unknown. Your brain might get eaten and then what do you do?
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
|
|
"I don't know what to do: I am of two minds"
|
|
--Fragment 36, Sappho
|
|
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
VOiCES CARRY
|
|
by Sophie Random
|
|
|
|
"How troublesome is my chaos," she mused at him whilst lying on her
|
|
couch. "It lacks the mystery of beginnings. You notice that we only hear of
|
|
chaos shortly before it collapses into order? It loses its novelty." Erica
|
|
paused and looked him square. "There's not much you can do with chaos.
|
|
There's not much you can do with me -- now is there? Which is what you wanted
|
|
to say." She laughed, too tired to be bitter but still young enough to
|
|
consider it. "Well, chaos doesn't mold easily with hands. It takes the power
|
|
of a god to organize chaos and I'm the god of this world, lover, and I don't
|
|
have the energy for it. I'm using it to keep my business from sinking under,
|
|
I'm using it to stay out of the red. You see, I don't have time for your
|
|
problems with my chaos. Take a seat, stand in line, just let me rest because
|
|
I'm tired of this mess I've gotten into. And I'm not moving. Don't you see?
|
|
There's a creature of habit in my room and he won't leave and quite frankly
|
|
I'm too exhausted to kick him out. Besides, I've had my Sublimation of Resent
|
|
extended so it'll be a while before it overflows and causes a problem. In the
|
|
meantime," she shooed him with her hand, "just stack it up neatly, turn out
|
|
the lights, and close the door."
|
|
|
|
The vaguely described, aforementioned gentlemen (who was interrupting her
|
|
day besides) once asked Erica why everything she said had to sound like
|
|
poetry. She replied that she suffered from an age-old disease that many young
|
|
woman suffered from: making everything they say sound like poetry. There
|
|
wasn't a name for it yet -- they hadn't found one with the right tragic
|
|
character.
|
|
|
|
The water was running and it reminded her that her bath should be ready.
|
|
She threw off her clothes piece by piece as she walked into the bathroom and
|
|
breathed in the aroma of scented candles. Preparing for a bath is always more
|
|
enjoyable than the bath itself. The idea of a hot bath is soothing. Your
|
|
body relaxes and everything around you takes on an air of luxury. You spend
|
|
the whole day fantasizing about the bath, preparing it to perfection in your
|
|
mind. The preparation itself is almost a holy ritual. But baths themselves
|
|
are too hot and uncomfortable, too long and too boring. The music is never
|
|
the right volume or the right selection, the phone always rings, or you get
|
|
ravenously hungry. Your pores expand and you break out the next day, and you
|
|
inevitably fall asleep with your hair wet and wake up with a scratchy throat.
|
|
So she didn't take baths, she just prepared them. She stood naked in the
|
|
bathroom, stretched, and wrapped herself in a clean towel. Then she drained
|
|
the tub and blew out the candles.
|
|
|
|
"Well, that was refreshing." she said brightly to herself.
|
|
|
|
Erica was a pretty albeit generally nondescript woman, if pushed to
|
|
describe her. But there was, at least, a Something about her, that je ne sais
|
|
pas which demised a respectable number of men. She did all right. And she
|
|
was always the one who left, which was what mattered.
|
|
|
|
She was raised, like most, with the idea of a redeeming meaningful love
|
|
that would enter her life at least by the age of 27. She had quite a few
|
|
years left, still she was a little concerned. Not overtly, but enough to lead
|
|
her eyes skimming over Cathy in Sunday's comics. Erica had love a good
|
|
half-dozen times, she was positive of it, but she hadn't experienced
|
|
redemption and she certainly found no meaning. She looked everywhere for
|
|
them, thinking that she had perhaps received them in the mail and accidentally
|
|
thrown them out with the trash. But she hadn't overlooked them. All she had
|
|
was pomp and circumstance and some good sex. She was beginning to conclude
|
|
that one couldn't ask for much more than that besides a decent dental plan
|
|
that covered some cosmetic work.
|
|
|
|
Love was supposed to rescue her, offer her an escape. But as the wise
|
|
know (or can admit), love just takes you away into a different set of
|
|
complicated yet mundane problems. No heaven, no hell. It just leaves you in
|
|
a state of unremarkable lassitude. There's probably more fulfilling routes to
|
|
go. But when one is raised so strongly, when one's whole being is inundated
|
|
with a belief, it's difficult to let go without expensive therapy.
|
|
|
|
And Erica had already spent enough of her money on expensive therapy.
|
|
|
|
So she lived on the line between anticipation of and actual major
|
|
disillusionment. She was perpetually balanced at that one moment before your
|
|
hopes are finally crushed, before you are finally forced to acknowledge to
|
|
yourself that the movie you're watching isn't really what you wanted at all
|
|
and wasn't going to get better. It made her a little cranky, to be sure, but
|
|
she thought she dealt with it well enough. Better than expected, all things
|
|
considered.
|
|
|
|
What was troubling lately, though, was the Past. She was convinced that
|
|
the Past still existed. This led her to believe that Time, in fact, probably
|
|
did not. This, in turn, made her feel like she was in a science-fiction
|
|
novel, and like most science-fiction novels, it left her ill and exasperated.
|
|
|
|
The whole problem began a few months earlier, when Erica had a dream. No
|
|
one really likes to hear other people's dreams, unless they're in them.
|
|
Dreams are only significant or quirky to the one who dreamed them. But people
|
|
always want to tell you their dreams, as if you could possibly understand
|
|
their meaning or humor. As if relaying them would have a comparable effect to
|
|
experiencing them. But the funniest part of dreams is actually dreaming them
|
|
with your mind, and it all boils down to a very sad "you had to be there."
|
|
Quite sad, as you never will be there, and you never will get it.
|
|
Nonetheless, Erica's dream was this: She sat in an old grammar school class
|
|
and, at the same time, she knew everything that was going to happen to her
|
|
classmates: what would happen the following year, what would happen in high
|
|
school, what they would become afterwards. Her present mind, with all of its
|
|
memory, was in her sixth grade body. She felt something, distinctly. It was
|
|
an uneasy satisfaction, a frustrated sense of accomplishment. None of this
|
|
expresses it very well, of course, and its importance is really only the fact
|
|
that she was greatly affected by this dream when she woke up. Erica saw how
|
|
the dream existed to some extent in her life and always had. Every moment of
|
|
her past was inextricably linked to her present and she felt an odd sort of
|
|
loyalty to her self in her past, as if they were pen pals living on different
|
|
ends of the world. Sometimes Erica would be in the middle of an experience
|
|
and then she would enter into a past experience; it was as if she was in two
|
|
moments of her life at once, as if both were occurring at the same time, or as
|
|
if no time had elapsed between the two. As if there was no time at all. It
|
|
made her dizzy.
|
|
|
|
Guy de Maupassant wrote, "Never read old letters," and Erica sensed an
|
|
ominous foretelling in that line. She kept all of the artifacts from her
|
|
past, but she never looked through them. However, after her bath she was
|
|
feeling particularly fearless (or nihilistic), and she pulled a box out from
|
|
the closet and rummaged through old books and journals. She chuckled at some
|
|
books she found on top: _The Marx-Engels Reader_, Stirner's _The Ego and Its
|
|
Own,_ and Marleau-Ponty's _Adventures of the Dialectic_. She left the pile
|
|
with the last one and brought it to the kitchen with her. She skimmed through
|
|
the underlined passages and ate strawberries. One passage in particular
|
|
caught her eye, it was underlined twice: "The man of understanding either
|
|
swears not to abandon the oppressed -- because the oppressed are always in the
|
|
right -- and so perhaps finds himself a revolutionary; or he follows the
|
|
oppressed only to the point where property and the State apparatus are put
|
|
into question, and since, when one is uncommitted, one is continually
|
|
reassuring the rights of property and the State, he soon finds himself more
|
|
conservative than anyone."
|
|
|
|
"The oppressed are always in the right," she said outloud. "The oppressed
|
|
are always in the right?" She threw the book down disgusted. "That simply
|
|
isn't true," she paused, "is it?" But no one was there to answer.
|
|
|
|
She tried to remember if she had ever been oppressed. When she was
|
|
younger and ugly and lumpy she felt oppressed. She felt like she spent her
|
|
life in a game that no one would ever let her win. She felt weighted down,
|
|
marginalized, scoffed, and disregarded. Erica began arguing outloud: "But can
|
|
one really compare the oppression of the world's fat and ugly with..." Erica
|
|
paused. She couldn't remember who was oppressed anymore. She bit her lip.
|
|
She scrunched her nose. "Well, there's some group. Who's oppressed.
|
|
Politically or something... The proletariat. They're always oppressed.
|
|
Right?" She couldn't remember. She was fairly positive that the proletariat
|
|
were always oppressed. But then she couldn't remember if there was an actual
|
|
proletariat anymore. And if there was, was she one of them? But she wasn't
|
|
oppressed. "Maybe I'm so oppressed that I don't even know it." She chuckled.
|
|
"This is serious, now. Let's try a little harder... Ok. Forget about the
|
|
proletariat." She chuckled and looked around in a mock paranoid manner. "I
|
|
didn't mean that. Of course, we mustn't forget about the proletariat,
|
|
especially if they do exist. How about women? Well, we can forget about
|
|
women. Heh. No, No. Ok, women are still oppressed aren't they? Er, I mean,
|
|
we? Isn't there some sort of database I can access to find this sort of thing
|
|
out? Like, a list or something of the Top 25 Oppressed Peoples? You're not
|
|
taking this seriously, Erica. Stop it. Ok. Women are still oppressed. Now,
|
|
are women always in the right?" She paused to think carefully. "Wait, are they
|
|
oppressed in the right way? I mean, do they qualify for the kind of
|
|
oppression that makes them... er, Erica YOU are a woman... right... that makes
|
|
us always in the right? The oppressed are always in the right. Hmm. That
|
|
doesn't necessarily mean all groups who claim to be 'oppressed' are oppressed
|
|
in his terms, though, does it? I mean, he might not consider them, us,
|
|
oppressed. So first of all, is that oppression? Second of all, are they
|
|
always in the right? Well, being in the right and being right are two
|
|
different things. You can be in the right and still be wrong... Ugh, this is
|
|
beginning to sound like a bad scene from Intro to Ethics..." she paused,
|
|
"Chocolate. I really want some chocolate." And the argument was dropped
|
|
while Erica proceeded to look, fail to find, and run out to buy some
|
|
chocolate. She would have resumed in the car, but a radio station was playing
|
|
Retro 80's hits.
|
|
|
|
She had a hard time at the grocery store. She couldn't decide in what
|
|
form she wanted her chocolate. She was holding a box of lowfat chocolate chip
|
|
cookies against lowfat chocolate frozen yogurt when she was approached by an
|
|
ex-something. Whatever he was, he wasn't it anymore.
|
|
|
|
"Well, well," he seethed.
|
|
|
|
"David. Always a pleasure," she responded sarcastically and not without
|
|
a hint of irony, since whenever they met it always ended in... pleasure.
|
|
|
|
"It certainly always has been, hasn't it? Why break the record?"
|
|
|
|
"Spare me. You've lost your charm. Too many bimbos. I couldn't even
|
|
trick myself into pretending that you respected me."
|
|
|
|
"Well, they all can't be you, Erica."
|
|
|
|
"Well, that's too bad for you, David."
|
|
|
|
"How would you know? And who would you know? I haven't told you
|
|
everything."
|
|
|
|
"For god's sake, David, don't even bother," she chuckled. "Oh god,
|
|
remember that one, right before me..."
|
|
|
|
"Which you-time?"
|
|
|
|
"The first. She only read romance novels. Remember? How could you even
|
|
get it up with someone who was that empty-minded? That's disgusting.
|
|
Remember her?"
|
|
|
|
"Yeah," he laughed but his eyes narrowed. "Oh, yeah, and then remember
|
|
how you fucked me anyway? Whose standards are on trial here?"
|
|
|
|
But Erica didn't even blanch at what was, she had to admit, a very good
|
|
quip. "If we intelligent women waited around for an intellectual
|
|
Bukowski-reading boy who had a history of only good choices, none of us would
|
|
get laid."
|
|
|
|
"Touche. Come on, let's go fuck."
|
|
|
|
"Classy. Classy and dignified, and wow how attractive. Forget it,
|
|
David."
|
|
|
|
"You know I'm madly in love with you."
|
|
|
|
"Good. I hope it hurts." She decided to take both the cookies and the
|
|
yogurt. "Kisses."
|
|
|
|
"Yeah, where?"
|
|
|
|
But she kept on walking away.
|
|
|
|
* * * * *
|
|
|
|
Erica lived what some would consider a lonely life. She talked to many
|
|
people, but only went out with herself. She had tumultuous affairs that were
|
|
scheduled in neatly and weren't too time-consuming. She wasn't quite sure
|
|
what purpose perpetual friends served, and until she felt an overwhelming
|
|
need, she was alone. She's that girl you see sitting by herself in the artsy
|
|
theatre reading a book before the film starts. Of course, that's every girl
|
|
sitting by herself in an artsy theatre. And like the others, she was only
|
|
pretending to read.
|
|
|
|
So, as usual, Erica, sans company, went to her regular late-night
|
|
hangout, half-regretting she had turned David down. It was your average
|
|
coffeeshop, over-the-top obnoxious, full of ridiculous angry boys, post-angry
|
|
boys, and their groupies. There were angry boys packaged separately or in the
|
|
half-dozen, there were groupies playing solitare or heated games of
|
|
strip-intellectual-banter. She ordered a double dry cap (heavy on the
|
|
pretention), plopped down, and opened Jarry's _Visits of Love_. She soon
|
|
noticed the exhibit sitting in front of her and off to the right. He was a
|
|
classic edition, with early 90s long-hair and disgruntled clothes. But what
|
|
made him priceless was the too-serious look on his face as he scribbled his
|
|
postmodern prose.
|
|
|
|
"The only thing more annoying than a post-adolescent male who takes
|
|
himself too seriously while writing prose in a coffeeshop," she thought,
|
|
"is a post-adolescent male who takes himself too seriously while writing
|
|
poetry in a coffeeshop." She laughed out loud. "Damn I'm funny. Can't
|
|
imagine why no one enjoys me as I much as I do."
|
|
|
|
"Probably because no one else thinks that you're funny."
|
|
|
|
Erica looked up to see who had spoken. But there was no one there. She
|
|
looked around suspiciously.
|
|
|
|
"But as long as you're enjoying yourself, well, I suppose that's okay,"
|
|
the voice mocked.
|
|
|
|
Erica slammed her book down. She picked up her drink and peered into it.
|
|
But that wasn't it. The voice wasn't coming from the outside. It was inside.
|
|
Someone else was inside her head. Everyone hears their thoughts in some sort
|
|
of voice. It's difficult to explain when you think about it, but it's
|
|
precisely when you do think about it that it seems as if the dialogue in your
|
|
head is spoken with a voice. But this voice in her head wasn't the voice that
|
|
had always been in her head. It was foreign, invasive.
|
|
|
|
"That guy over there certainly doesn't think that you're funny."
|
|
|
|
A little perturbed, and not a little put-off by the intrusion, Erica
|
|
didn't feel like responding. But as the voice was in her head, she had no
|
|
choice. Obviuosly, her response, although kept within her head, needn't
|
|
travel any further to be heard. "Okay, A, I don't know him, and B, do I
|
|
really care what some guy who is reading..." she peered at the book next to
|
|
the scribbler's notebook, "_The Anathema of Zos_ really thinks of me?"
|
|
|
|
"You don't know what that even is, so how do you know if you'd care or
|
|
not?"
|
|
|
|
Erica rolled her eyes. "Because I know these things. I'm pretty special
|
|
that way. How many people have foreign voices in their head, huh? I'm as
|
|
extraordinary as they come. Besides, I've never heard of it. So obviously it
|
|
can't be worth reading."
|
|
|
|
"He heard that. He thinks you're supremely vacuous."
|
|
|
|
"Oh yeah, then why doesn't he say so to my face?" she stuck out her chin
|
|
defiantly.
|
|
|
|
"You're supremely vacuous."
|
|
|
|
He had turned in her direction to say it and regarded her cooly.
|
|
|
|
Erica looked at him, irritated. His face reminded her of a sentence she
|
|
had just read in Jarry: "But the sombre wideness of his eyes is filled with
|
|
disquieting things that attest to the race of which deserters or assassins are
|
|
bred..."
|
|
|
|
"And which do you think I am?" he asked.
|
|
|
|
"A deserter," she replied.
|
|
|
|
He smirked and went back to writing.
|
|
|
|
"You're piqued by that smirk, aren't you, Erica? Absolutely amazing.
|
|
Here you are, dealing with an intrusive voice in your head and strangers
|
|
hearing your thoughts, and you're distracted by thoughts of flirtation? You
|
|
really are supremely vacuous."
|
|
|
|
"Listen, I fully understand engaging in dialogue with myself. I do it
|
|
regularly. But this is really insane. And trite. Very trite. What a dull
|
|
mental disorder, to have an intrusive voice. It's like schizophrenia or
|
|
something. How passe."
|
|
|
|
"You don't understand a word of that Jarry book. So can I have it?" He
|
|
was now standing at her side and holding out his hand expectantly.
|
|
|
|
"I'm in the middle of a conversation, do you mind?"
|
|
|
|
"In the first place," he sat down across from her and grabbed the book,
|
|
"his pieces are full of references to Celtic mythology, the Bible, the Koran,
|
|
the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and other things you don't know anything about.
|
|
Second of all, underlying everything he wrote is his philosophy of
|
|
pataphysics, which is completely over your head. As I'm sure you already have
|
|
a number of pretty shelf books that make you look smart, I don't see why you
|
|
can't just give me this one since I actually understand it."
|
|
|
|
"I do okay with the footnotes." It was one of the singularly most
|
|
insipid remarks that had ever come out of Erica's mouth and she felt like
|
|
rolling into the fetal position.
|
|
|
|
His expression softened. "That was the only honest statement you have
|
|
made, probably all week."
|
|
|
|
She was horrified, "You've been in my head all week?"
|
|
|
|
"No. I was just guessing."
|
|
|
|
"Uhhh... Hey, Steve," three tall and equally disgruntled looking
|
|
early-20s males stood at the table.
|
|
|
|
"Who's your... friend?" asked the reluctant spokesman.
|
|
|
|
Steve blushed, and Erica was under the impression it was a big deal when
|
|
any of these guys talked to a member of the opposite sex. It was her turn to
|
|
smirk.
|
|
|
|
"Um. We were just talking about Jarry... So, uh, yeah. See ya," he said
|
|
to her and gathered his things to sit with his friends at a bigger table on
|
|
the other side of the coffeeshop.
|
|
|
|
Erica cautiously searched her head for any sign of company. "Steve?
|
|
Hello? Is anyone else here?" She waited for a response. "I knew he was a
|
|
deserter. I can't believe he actually took my book..."
|
|
|
|
"But he was kinda cute, huh, Erica?"
|
|
|
|
"Cut it with the mockery, will you? And no, not really."
|
|
|
|
"Why are you even lying to me when I'm in your head? I heard everything
|
|
that you thought. He's gone now, anyway. He can't hear you."
|
|
|
|
"Why was he in my head in the first place?"
|
|
|
|
"It made for a better story, don't you think? I mean, another voice in
|
|
your head? That wouldn't make for a good anecdote. Please, how passe."
|
|
|
|
"Totally." Erica nodded. "So, do you know if he's got a girlfriend?"
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
State of unBeing is copyrighted (c) 1998 by Kilgore Trout and Apocalypse
|
|
Culture Publications. All rights are reserved to cover, format, editorials,
|
|
and all incidental material. All individual items are copyrighted (c) 1998
|
|
by the individual author, unless otherwise stated. This file may be
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disseminated without restriction for nonprofit purposes so long as it is
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preserved complete and unmodified. Quotes and ideas not already in the
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public domain may be freely used so long as due recognition is provided.
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State of unBeing is available at the following places:
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World Wide Web http://www.eden.com/~kilgore/sob.html
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irc the #unbeing channel on UnderNet
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Submissions may also be sent to Kilgore Trout at <kilgoret@geocities.com>.
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The SoB distribution list may also be joined by sending email to Kilgore
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Trout.
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--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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