The Shitbag Opera

Leech Water, plus

2009-08-30T05:01:00.000-07:00

Leech Water

Something loud disrupted my nap. It had to be loud, to cut through a light, rye hangover and the gyrating dream shadows of a recent ex, on the back of my eyes. She was in the middle of performing an act that I had never been able to persuade her of, before.

"Oh fuck."; I was made suddenly aware that I was sleeping, dreaming and fantasising, facedown, on a filthy carpet in the middle of a room. My eyes felt like they were flailing in a sack. A greasy, sticky sack. Sideways.
Thankfully, it was my own living room.

It was nearly midnight, according to the watch under the couch. A watch that I had been looking for, the last three months. The entire afternoon and evening had been spent drinking, smoking and sculpting. Mission accomplished on the drinking and smoking, but the small mountain of modeling clay in the garage still looked like a pile of rainbow turds that a baboon had been playing with, on a brown boulder, for only about three minutes.

Somebody was pounding at the door, demanding entry. After battling my way to a standing position, I freshened my drink with whiskey and orange pop. After the first tasty swig, I wandered towards the door, but stopped, to check out the visitor in a side window. I was momentarily repelled by the awful visage in the glass, I nearly gagged, before realising that it was a reflection. I lit a cigarette to quell the butterflies and flipped on the outside light.

The gentleman caller at the front door is known to me. He's called 'Dirty Jesus'. He's twitchy-lookin', tonight. More so, than usual. He was clutching something... dingy, off-white, in his grubby paws. The sickly yellow of the porch's bug light does nothing for his complexion, either. The doorbell rang again, followed by a pounding fist.

"What the fuck do you want?... Do you know what time it is?" I walked over and pounded on the door twice as loud as he had, to punctuate my voice.

"Hey man, I gotta show you this... This thing. Lemme in!"

"Fuck off. I'm busy."

"Busy?
Busy, what!? Jerkin' off and making ugly lumps uh shit that nobody wants?"

I took that bait without hesitation. I whacked at the chains and locks and ripped the door open with the full intention of stomping Dirty Jesus... With all the artsy love that I could muster.

I lunged out and jerked to a clumsy stop.
I was staring at the wrong end of a can of pepper foam. It was right at face level. That can had gone missing my from apartment a few weeks before, but I hadn't reallyreckoned Jesus as one of the primary suspects.
I had used that shit on guys before and I knew what it could do.

"You... fuck."
It came out as a hushed hiss.

I stumbled back, yanking on the door, but he stuck both of his scabby hands, my stolen mace and a dingey styrofoam tub, through the opening. The door smashed his leather-sleeved forearms, but he held to the can of pepper foam.

I might have disarmed him at that moment and avoided the rest of that wretched evening, but something, wet and warm, splashed in my eyes. I reeled back in anticipation of pain and stumbled over my rubber boots. I fell against and then through the broom-closet door. My vision wobbled as I blinked. I could see.

My eyes stung a bit, but not pepper-foam sting.

His head came through the door, eyes rolling around, searching for something. His trailing arm popped through the opening, waving around a small, poorly-sealed styrofoam tub. More drops of liquid splashed on the carpet.

"What the fuck!!", I yelled. The liquid in my eyes had begun to sting. Enough to make me squint, but not badly enough to keep me down. I had to roll over a pile of boots, squinting and consciously abandoning all remnants of dignity, in order to get up.

By then, Dirty Jesus had closed the door behind him and messily locked it. Also, he had trotted into the living room and homed-in on my whiskey-orange pop cocktail.

I call the recipe "Musty Prairie Tangerine". Pour, in order: 1) 2 Gills of Rye, 2) 1 Gill cheap orange pop, 3) Handful of fresh, clean ice cubes, 4) 6 dashes Worcestershire sauce 5) 1 Gill Soda Water (Bottled mineral soda water, preferable to soda gun).

I was rubbing my eyes, madly, yet took notice of my unwelcome guest's tweaking, hangdog demeanour. He was a mass of microscopic, marionette-like movements. His eyes had the unceasingly jerky blank stare of several days' missed sleep. He was using every last scrap of concentration to maintain. Wisely, I granted him the depressant and headed to the kitchen to make, us both, another one. My right eye is beginning to water and burn, however.

"What the fuck did you splash in my eye?!!!", I yell, over my shoulder.
Dirty Jesus stood up and walked into the kitchen hallway. He stood there, vibrating. A slow mask of comprehension bloomed on his grubby, sunburnt face; then, a nervous half-grin. He doesn't say a damned thing.

"What... the fuck... is in that fuck-ing bowl?... In my e-y-e?"

He was standing in front of me, with his eyes and mouth open, but was someplace else. I waited and he came back in a minute. His face moved again. He breathed in, licked his lips and says... "Leeches.".

"Leeches?"

"Yeah..." He smiled, nodded, shrugged his shoulders, twitched his eyes and let out a short laugh, kinda all at once. "... leeches".

"Fuck!!!"

I bowed, roughly, into the sink, ramming my diaphragm on the counter-ledge. I run the cold water, opened my eyes and shake my face under the stream. It's a real bitch to open the eyes, but I forced them with my fingers and let the amazingly good tap water blur my vision. Canadian municipalities, of a certain size, love to rip up the streets and constantly upgrade the pipes. The water's great, but the air quality sucks.

I know leeches; I use them alot.

For fishing. They're scrappy live bait; hardy and effective. You can keep them in your fridge for months without feeding them, if you change the water and flush the leech shit out of it. The tepid nature of the liquid and burning effect of it in my eye convinces me that it was full of various leech excretions and may never have been refrigerated, since it left the bait shop.

Dirty Jesus is exactly the kind of fuck that wouldn't change his leech water. Too ignorant of the ways of live bait; no fisherman, by any stretch.

The cold, hard tap water makes my eyeballs feel raw, but better than burning. Both eyes are open, under the stream. Now, they are cool, no... cold. I had flushed them as well as possible, but would have to watch the mirror for a few days to scout for signs of some exotic, leechy conjunctivitis.

After the water stops, I squeeze the water from my long hair and wipe my face with the dirty dish towel. No paper towels. I felt waterlogged and greasy at the same time, but cleaner. My eyes no longer burn.

Dirty Jesus is no longer in the hallway. When I enter the living room with two new drinks, he is sitting in my chair, drinking the last two fingers of his Musty Prairie Tangerine.

"This is pretty tasty... Like one of those fancy salad dressings."

I place another in front of Dirty Jesus. He smiled and offers a pack of obscure American cigarettes. I took one of the smokes that he offered and sat down, across the table. He got comfortable on the couch. He knew me well enough to know that I wasn't going to toss him out... yet. I reached down with a napkin and picked up the pepper foam spraycan, without taking my eyes off him. It was about half empty.

"You dirty fuck."

"I had to borrow it, at your rent party, last month. Someone was gonna beat the shit outta me!"

"You borrowed it off my desk, without asking me or telling me about it." I managed not to snap at him, but had to remind myself to breathe, after saying this. I paused, leant back and closed my eyes while counting to ten. The little scared part of us that we all share, the monkey mind, wanted to scream at him. To punish him.
I regained my calm.

"Who was going to beat... 'the shit' out of you?"

I couldn't keep the hint of a sneer out of my voice, but I did not yell, or raise my tone, or volume.

"Your old lady."

This time, it was I that went silent and motionless for a minute. I chewed the information and its implications.

"You stole a can of extremely dangerous chemical eye, lung and skin irritant from me, because my 'old lady' was going to beat 'the shit', out of you?"

"Yeah..."

"Presumably... then... You were planing to spray my 'old lady's' eyes, face and mouth with this extremely dangerous eye, lung and skin irritant?"

"Yeah."

"Right. Now you are here... and you have brought my can of pepper foam back...
and it is half empty.

"Yeah."

"Right.
We've got a problem, you and I."

"Really?... What?"

I clenched my fist around the can and growled out "Where the fuck, is the rest of this can
-and- did you fucking use it on someone I care about, you fucking fuck?"

Dirty Jesus hesitated a moment, glancing up to check his memories, then says... "No."

I smile, warily, and then ask "Whom, or what, did you spray with this pepper foam?"

"I think it was a cop?... She may have been a cop."

I have, so got to, lose this can soon, tonight. Permanently disappear it.

"... Dirty Jesus?..."

"Yes, Aaron?..."

"Why are you carrying around a tub of leeches?"

"Well, Aaron... You ever get off while playing with jello?"

Now there was a question. "This has got to be good.", I thought to myself.

There may be a 'payoff', after all, for this evening's disgraces. There come rare moments, in our lives, when we can sit back and enjoy the cosmic joke. Precious clarity often found on those crazed, toxic shittrains that were our productive nights. If I could just chill, for a little while, I was going to hear a great story. Dirty Jesus was crazed and delusional, but he was a street-poet of the first water and a charmed adventurer. If you could create the right space in your head for him, he would fly you to the stars, drag you through the sewage and make you laugh through bloodied lips. Most people took a look at him and tried to put something else between them. Something wide and tall.

I lay back in the chair with my drink and cigarette. "No.", I said, " Tell me about it."

"Well ya see, there was this really creepy chick following me around the fishing tackle section at SportsWorld. I caught her looking at me, while I was feeling the plastic grubs. I love the way they feel between the fingers when you squish them. The dry ones squish real good, but the new, wet ones that come in their own pickle juice can make me come when I stick my hand in a big jar of these wet, fake worms in dayglo colours, floatin' in a big jar of stinking nectar that makes me, even me, wash my hands. There's no way that I can afford to buy one of these jars, ya dig; they're 20 bucks a pop. I imagine the day when I can bring one home; but, instead, I go to these big, fancy sports shops at odd hours, so that there are few customers or clerks around so I can wander to the tackle section, find the plastic grubs aisles and find a jar of my favourite grub colours... open it carefully, take a look around... make sure no one's lookin'. Then, carefully so's it don't spill on your clothes, puts my hand in. Just one hand, ya dig?
That japanese bug juice comesaspillin', overflowing, slowlydrippin', everstinkin'.
Don't get any on your shoes, your pants or your other hand.

Now; close your eyes and get to squishin'. Not too fast at first, loosen up, jes' swirl your fingers 'round, feel them gathering on your fingers. Now, gather as much, into a ball, as you can and slowly make a fist. Don't let any out! Slowly squeeze, feel it getting tighter, smaller, harder. Suddenly, pieces come squirtin' out your fingers, wriggling like they're alive.

If you do it right, it's a surprise and makes me cream my shotes."

"Dirty Jesus...", I interject, "You, are a profoundly disturbed human being.

"Yeeeaaahhh... I know."

"Why don't you just steal a jar?"

"That would be wrong!"

"Of course... Continue."

"I never got to cream my shotes, 'cause I heard a noise, opened my eyes and saw this really ugly woman staring at me from the end of the aisle.

I'm fucked and I knows it, so I pull a Heyoka routine: "I'm Okay! I'm Okay.", I shout at her. "I fell in, but I'm okay. I'll get a napkin." I pulled my hand out and make like I'm catching the drippings, but make sure not to get any more on me and started walking towards the bathroom. Well, I guess that I hadn't fooled her, 'cause she starts following me, but always a couple aisles over, not even pretending to look at the prices of coats, trail mix, or rifle brass. I don't see a walkie talkie, but she's talking to someone I can't see and what's my luck that there's a crazy lady following me from the tackle section of SportsWorld at 7 A,M, in the fucking morning? None, that's what. I looks down the store and see a couple monkeys in blue vests hanging around the bathroom door and trying not to look at me and 'oh fuck, I'm so busted'. There's no way to get out of this yuppie shit-hole aaannnd wash my hand of the damn sushi-juice..."

[Say "sushi-juice", three times fast.]

"and I'm gonna get it all over my clothes before this is over.

I know that you've covered yourself in fox-piss and sat on a rock, waiting for a stupid deer to come by, so you know what I'm talking about, you fuck, so don't you dare laugh.

So, I fucking ran. Cut left and headed straight to the closest emergency exit, but that pimply butt-faced lady cut me off and I ran towards the live bait kiosk, hoping that there was a back door to the 'employees only' section, where government law mandates an external egress, but was dead end. So I did the only thing I could; took out the pepper foam that you lent me and stuck my hand and a tupperware pitcher inna big leech tank to throw water at 'em."

"I did not lend you the pepper foam... Leech tank?"

"I didn't know it was the leech tank. Jest grabbed a handy container and stuck my hand in. I swirled my hand around... and it was just like the world's biggest jar of synthetic, salty, juicy, whale-flavoured flesh-bait that I had ever put my hand in, but without the dayglo colours or the stink.

It got too cold, actually. As the three employees entered the little room, I lost the feeling in my hand. My good hand.

I was jugglin' the can of mace you gave me, in my wrong hand, trying to get it to point right. The woman stares at my arm in the leech tank and she says 'My God, he's doing it again.' I figured that keeping my hand in the tank was giving me some sort of advantage in the situation, so I left it there... couldn't feel it no more, anyways.

'Don't come near', I says, "my hand's in there!'.

One of the monkeys said 'Maybe it's a suicide attempt... we should call someone.'
Then the girl starts to cross the room, sticking to the wall. 'Stay back!', I yells, but she keeps on comin' and says 'Let us call someone and help you', so I gave her a taste of the foam on her neck and mouth. She stops walking and blinks and wipes at the gunk on her face, then she drops to the floor, squealing and rolling like the tail you rip off a lizard...
If it could squeal.

The two monkeys stare at her, then they they stare at me, then they take a step into the room.

'I warned you!' I screams at them and rip my soggy, frozen hand out of the water...
and then things got weird.

I couldn't feel a damn thing, but the pale, firm appendage in front of me was covered in black globs that lay flat and weaved from side to side, dark boogers that hung and stretched and little tentacles that waved hello at us. Well, I nearly fainted. One of the monkeys ran screaming and the other just stood still as a rock and stared. The big girl still rolled on the floor but wasn't yellin' any more. 'I am leavin this shit-hole!', I yelled at blue monkey #2 walking towards the doorway of the live bait kiosk and monkey #2 backs into a corner of the little room, never turning his back to me. Then I run.

There are a couple more blue vests between me and the main door, but I shake leeches on them when they get close and I maced a big, tall customer in the doorway to keep 'em busy. Then I came here."

"... Oh my." I stood up and went to refresh my drink, fudging the measures. I took a slug and threw in an ice cube, for balance. I did not offer to top off his drink. I did begin to plot how to get him out of my place and stash him far away, for a couple days. I returned to my seat.

"Okay, DJ. This is how it's going to go: I am walking you to the 7-11 and calling my cabbie. He will take you to my cousins place upriver. You'll stay there for a couple nights. The cabbie will not give you the fare money. He will not take you somewhere else. He will not put up with your shit, nor will my cousin. I am giving my cabbie the rest of this pepper foam; he will get rid of it for me, but he will also use on it your crazy ass if you fuck with him.
Do you understand?"

It took a long moment. "Yeah."

My cousin owed me a shitload and didn't have any wife or kids to worry about. He also had a crappy cabin that would be like a fucking castle to Dirty Jesus. I have to remember to tell Brian, 'my cabbie', not to drive there in a straight line.

"Mix it up a bit, so Dirty Jesus can't find his way back there."

Him, I owe, huge. He's got enough juice with his cab company to get a legit car for days at a time, as long as the lease is paid, tank's full and no damage. He's also got a legit driver's license, legit hack license and no record. He looks pretty square, with Buddy Holly glasses and can pass for a banker with long sleeves covering his tats. Normally, he's expensive to hire out for special projects, but I find him things. Things that others cannot find, or would never touch. His wife loves my paintings. She has many.

"Tell me, Jesus... before we go; Where'd you get the tub and why did you keep some of these leeches, here?"

"I went down to the docks and picked up a bait tub that someone threw away. There was alotta them, down there. Tubs, that is. By that time there were only a few left hanging on my hand. I found a lid that fit and came here."

"Okay. But... Whyyy, did you keep the leeches?"

"Ooohhh.
I'm gonna teach them the exotic Ojibway Walleye dance."

"Oh. Good...
Let's get of here."

We left.

Cab Ride

I convinced Jesus to get rid of the leeches along the way. Actually; he "released them into the wild".

It is arguable that being released into a ditch that is only, theoretically, connected to a lake, isn't really "freeing the leeches". Especially from the leeches point of view. The chances of said leeches navigating far enough "downstream" in a sluggish current that zigzags a maze of culverts, weedy ditches and gravelly washes, that alternately run dry and flooded, before Autumn freezes them all solid and denies said leeches the luxury of hibernating in the mud or migrating to Miami for the winter, is remote. However... it has been a wet summer.

I decided to call Brian along the way, having decided that the risk of being publicly connected to Jesus at the 7-11 was higher than someone finding and connecting a call from my disposable cellphone. He agreed to meet us on the meandering riverside boulevard that ran from mansions to shitholes, as we traveled upstream, towards downtown. By day, it is home to nubile joggers in lycra sportsbras and retirees with toy dachshunds. By night, it's a cruise for junkies, cops-on-administrative-punishment, bull fags, teen shitbags and the clinically depressed. Dirty Jesus' wild stares and twitches stood out, even amongst this stew of perverts and nobody bothered us.

I like to presume that my own appearance did not contribute, much, to our pariah status. But, I imagine that I looked like some fallen, second-rate housepainter, out to score something cheap.

Brian rolled up on us, while we were perusing a beaver carcass, in the middle of the road. There aren't many beavers in the city. Not as far as I could tell, anyways. It stood out at a distance, and got stranger as we approached. DJ was totally freaked, never having seen a beaver, in person, before. The strangeness, for me, was seeing beaver out of context. There was little for it to eat, here, and no hope of damming the Mississippi River. The taxis driver-side window rolled down with a low electric hiss.

"Beaver out of context.", I said.

"Would you fuckers stop staring at the pizza and get in before the cops drift by?"

I count on Brian to provide rationality, in odd circumstance. We got in.

---

I had explained to Brian, on the phone, my desire to make it 'fucking impossible' for DJ to find his way back to my cousin's place, so we took the scenic route out of town. The cab slid like magic, between cop cars, crackheads and certain jailtime. I handed the mace over to Brian and it went straight into his utility bag.

"So... What the fuck have you dumbshits been up to?"

"Not much... Dirty Jesus, here, has been playing at public indecency, though. Theft and aggravated assault, too, with one of my bouncer tools. Nasty shit."

"Nice."

Dirty Jesus had taken the wise course of shutting the fuck up and not pissing anybody off, for now. I laid the whole story on Brian and he laughed his ass off.

"Jesus?"

"Yes, Brian?"

"Did anybody ever tell you that you are one weird puppy?"

"Well... all the time."

The dry, innocent way that he spoke, reduced us to tears of laughter. Dirty Jesus smiled and observed the circus, out the window. We watched the partygirls, homeboys, punks, skank tourists, whores and junkies partying in the alleys, the riverbanks, the back ways, cheap apartment-building porches, vacant lots and empty warehouses as we took the long way, out of the city.

---

"Okay, Jésus. It's time for you to earn Sanctuary.", says Brian. He's in cruise control, flying down some unlit backcountry road, cab-spidey sense doping out deer, drunk and raccoon around blind corners. "Give me the good word, Preach."

Dirty Jesus exhaled, eyes closed. He inhaled slowly, held it... and began to speak:

"Rose woke up in the bushes, covered in moonlight and bile... piss and dew. Her pains had faded to the low thump of fresh charley-horse. She was alone under the stars, but she was alive. She screamed at the stars until they shook and disappeared from her sight. They fled to the underworld, sought the forges of the Earth and quaked under Vulcan's cloak. She turned and walked into the city, void and vaccuum in her stare. Animals cowered. People ran, screaming, in their sudden nightmares. Streetlights winked out in her bow wave and Rush Limbaugh fondled himself as he waltzed the dragon, dreaming of liberal cities falling to the torch.

Concrete cracked and heaved under her broken heels. Lightning gathered in her face as she approached the strip. Ten thousand years endurance of patriarchy and posture blossomed in her gaze, unfurled and unmade the bars, the dance clubs, the yuppie cafes and university hangouts. Stadium seated micro-megaplex cinemas, dark and private texmex-brand shitholes, neglected public parks, sticky college dorms, alley and penthouse. All were swept away and made clean.

The places where old school motherfuckers made their old white man plans, ghetto dives where shiny black men shook on schemes and pipedreams, cedar bushes where sober old Indians quake in the presence of young drunks and paint-huffers, fancy oxygen-cafes where the triads carve up the boat people; all were swept away and made clean.

She would cleanse this place.

Everywhere Rose strode, she spat and it turned to plague and corruption that turned into Minnesota politics. She shat on a giant church and it grew. She pissed on the new library and it turned into a Walmart. She dripped blood as she walked and the drops became parking meters and pay-toilets. When she finally stopped, it all grew back before her eyes. It flourished in her goddamn cess and hate; as she stood there for sixtyty years, watching. In silence she became as stone. One day, some fucking artist stuck a pipe up her ass and water now squirts out her nose inna a pool with those big colourful fish... Poi. That's what I know."

"Amen, brother. You're paid up." He rolled his eyes at me, then said "You, however, are racking up the points!" Brian punctuated this, with his best Brad Pitt head shake and eyeroll. "... Yeah."

One hundred and forty-eight minutes later, we rolled to a stop at my cousin's place. If I had driven there, myself, it would have taken under an hour. I am fairly sure that DJ would not be able to find his way back, in any daytime.

Do not put your dingleberries, down, there.

The cab rolled to a stop, 50 feet from the end of the road. The reason for stopping short, has a sincere look of finality. A gaping trench across the road, gravel berm on the other side and a tiny hand-lettered sign, strongly affixed to a huge, tarry, heartwood-cut creosote timber.

Brian sat on the hood of his taxi, smoking a cigarette, trying not to get worked-up. He had made the mistake of walking up to the sign to read it, even though I warned him not to do so.

The sign is written in a bold, black ink script. Probably written with a broad tip fountain pen. It appears to be penned on whitened parchment; dried, scraped, stretched and limed animal skin, species unknown. More than rawhide, less than leather. It is set in a waterproof shadow box, fronted by heavy glass; only a foot, square. It was the scariest document that I had ever read, up to that point.

I made the mistake of having first read it, in the wrong context. This, too, was the wrong context for Brian; arriving late at night, without invitation and a good pre-explanation of the sign. He knew, as well, that there was something "not quite right" about my cousin, Billy. Don't get me wrong. Billy's not psycho, or anything, like that. He's just very different than most people that you're ever likely to meet.

The sign is hard to read, especially to those who are not familiar with the cool medium of manuscript. It brings you into the intent of the scribe, in a way that is missing from the uniformity of typeface.

To whom it May Concern;

You are now 50 metres inside of my private property. If you go back to the large pine stump, you will see the clearly posted "no-trespassing" sign. I have many legally-owned firearms that are properly secured against theft, but easily accessible to me. I can see you from my position. I know that you are there. You left the safety of your pretty vehicle to read this sign; I know the yardage. There's never enough meat in my smoker.

: Landowner

When Brian returned to the car and took out his cigarettes. He wasn't shaking, but I could tell that he was concerned. I had tried to warn him.

"What the fuck have you gotten us into, Aaron?"

"It's not as bad as it looks... My cousin's a fucking genius. That sign can put the love of Jesus in somebody's heart, like nothing I ever saw. That's true. It's just a flaming piece of psychological art, though."

"Psycho art... I don't think genius is the word for it."

"Billy knows the local cops and game wardens. They drink beer and paw strippers, together. Any hunter or hippy that reads that sign, freaks out and goes to the local authorities is liable to get laughed-at and a trespassing citation."

"You're going to leave Dirty Jesus with poker-playing, swamp-billy cops?"

There's no way the cops will come out here. They're great friends with Billy... when he's in town. They can't sleep ten yards from a shower, microwave and espresso machine. They hate it, out here.

"They're yuppies, not cannibal hillbillies."

"What about the game warden?"

"He only shows up at deer season to make sure that Citizen Willam, here, doesn't have half a dozen deer hanging, within sight of the road. Billy likes to put his first kill up in that tree, skinned, if the weather's cold enough. Really wows the yokels, but the warden makes sure that it doesn't look like House of a Thousand Corpses, up here."

(Continued, below. Amazon.)

"I nearly crapped myself, when I got to the end of that letter. The whole woods-at-night, NRA nutcase and mutant-hillbilly atmosphere."

"Marshall McLuhan is smiling on your ass. Just imagine what your reaction would be, if your runnathemill quarterback and head cheerleader get lost, looking for the beach and read that sign; all the while their SUV is sucking up a litre per minute under a cloudy quarter-moon, they can't get email or Oprah on their crackberrys and it looks impossible to put their hummer inna three-point turn, right here. They're shittin' goldbrick, I guarantee.... They go away and they don't come back."

"I imagine that none of their friends ever come back."

Once, somebody had come back, while I was here. What a clusterfuck that night had become.

"Don't worry about it. Nobody up here knows us, nobody is gonna come here looking for Jesus, nobody knows that we're here... and, you don't have to stay."

"I think that it's noble. You feel like babysitting the Jesus, like the worst Mother Theresa impersonator, ever."

"Fuck you."

"Nobody, except your cousin."

"What?"

"Nobody... knows that we are here... but your cousin, right?"

"Yeah, sure."

I sure hope so, that is. He hadn't answered his phone, but, I know that he screens every call and listens to every phone message. Religiously, like.

"I mean... I'm pretty sure, he knows we're here." I was staring at a wobbling reflection, off to the side of direct headlight beams. "... That would be best." I was fairly certain that the wobbling reflection, was the worn, blued-steel barrel of a pump-slug shotgun.

"Fuckin' great"

"Whatever you do, don't make any sudden movements. 'kay?"

"Shit... yeah"

I could count on Brian to be cool, but Dirty Jesus was trembling in the back seat of the car, as per my orders. I knew, that the sudden appearance of a gun-toting anybody would send him into a paroxysm of twitches and tweaker babble that could cause a shitstorm of bad craziness.

"Brian?"

"Yeah?"

"Go sit with Jesus and hold his hand for a minute, would ya?"

"Ah. You gotta be fucking kidding me..."

"No."

"He stinks like crazy and nobody's ever seen him wash his hands."

"Buy me a minute."

"This is going to cost you."

"I know"

"Big."

"I know."

Brian deliberately got up and slid in next to Dirty Jesus, on my side of the car. He slowly, but firmly closed the door. I turned towards the welcome party and called out my cousin's name, then mine. I mentioned that I had a couple guests.

There was an immediate and sharp click of metal, a familiar whistle, then the jarring clack of a shell being cycled out. If I knew Billy, he probably turned the shotgun sideways and tried to catch it in his pocket.

"It's okay, guys. Get out of the car, already."

A strong flashlight beam cut through the trees, as he approached. More for our benefit and peace of mind, than his.

"Boys. This is my cousin, William the BatShatner."

"Nice handle, pops." says Brian."There must be some sort of story to it."

"Yah...", Billy says, "but let's get your car parked and get you guys inside and comfortable. Then we can talk." He looked a little sideways at Jesus, but got down to business.

We'd dragged out some timbers with a "come-along" system that Billy'd barrel-stashed in the bush and drove the taxi across the side-ditch. A big green canvas tarp, a few bushes and it disappeared. There was one way to get over the berm, few roadbound vehicles could manage it. No visitors were expected and I'd only ever seen Billy's jeep crawl over the barricade.

When my cousin was satisfied, he turned towards the house and told us to follow in his footsteps.

---

Brian, Billy and I sat at the kitchen table, drinking scotch like gentlemen and swearing like sailors... keeping just north of piratry.

Billy's telling a little post-bowl fairytale, about when were little. "So, I tells Aaron...'I made you a birthday present.' He says,"Where is it? 'It's hidden, I says.' I says."

Brian's grinning, loving the scotch and the talk.

"Billy.", I says. "It really does seem to get funnier, as I get older. Just not at the time."

"It was the greatest fucking prank of my childhood, cuz. It's just too bad for you, that it worked so good."

"Yeah, no shit. There are still people in that town that think I'm Michael Meyers or the Antichrist."

Brian blows scotch through his nose, laughing. We howl with laughter, like we just invented it.

After we get Brian cleaned up and pointed at his digs for the night, we all go out to smoke on the porch, next to the Jesus. We're not worried about waking him. He chose the blue pill... and is sleeping off a six-day jag. He'll be comfortable out here, and we won't have to deal with his ass, until tomorrow night. At the earliest. We leave a big bottle of water by his head and sit with a different, better scotch and Billy's good cigars. The night is clear and warm and Billy's got great mosquito screens. Everything's good and humane, in the night. Brian looked better than I've ever seen him... and I probably did, too.

Billy takes half an hour to tell Brian a story that should have taken 90 seconds:
He goatse'ed my computer video for my science fair entry, randomly inserting the goatse pic and speed metal background. He had volunteered to help me set up at the science fair, the day after the promised birthday present. He left the video running, in what I thought had been a single looped copy, but was actually a huge file, of dozens of copies of my video clip. The goatses and speedmetal only appeared in the final five clips, but with increasing tempo until it ended in a single, screaming goatse image that refused to go away.

He had locked me out of my own computer, somehow and I could not turn it off. A teacher came to her senses and unplugged the whole schlemiel. Up until that point in my life, I was unaware that I possessed schlemiel. The next six hours of my life became defining schlemiel. [Weird linkage, here.]

Brian stayed the night and promised to come back, fishing, sometime. He called our business settled and told me to look him up for some work when I got back. Billy must have made quite an impression on him.

---

"Don't leave your dingleberries in my chair, all night. The end bedroom's made up and I opened the heat vents in there, so use it."

"Thanks a million, Shitbag." We both smiled the fleeting smile of free and innocent men. "I'll probably get there, shortly, but I'm going to sit here, watch the deer and work this bottle for awhile... Beside... you know that I love to sleep out here."

"I know.. there's blankets in that chest...."

" 'Night."

"Gooo -nite."

Brian had taken the small cabin across the yard. It is tiny, but clean, warm and comfy. He'll be leaving in the morning, but I have decided to stay for a while. I think that it's time to reacquaint myself with the good folks of Bog River, MN.

drunkass bikeride reloaded

2006-12-22T00:47:00.000-08:00

Will Lahti authorised this republishing of his self-published Drunkass Bikeride (WBSA, 2001).
Scans click to enlarge

Act XIX

2006-11-28T23:20:00.000-08:00

Shitbag Opera

ACT XIX

It's almost curtain time. There are only 6 consistent characters in the play and a couple of walk-on guests.

Somebody must have cashed in a chip, because the tallest, handsomest, most charismatic and defiantly gay local theatre personality has been called in as our first guest. He's going to recite a couple poems and give us a hint of celebrity and danger.

I'm fairly straight and think he's the sexiest thing I've seen in weeks.

I knew of his tamer work by text and his deepest works, by rumour. I couldn't wait to hear him charm and smite the audience.

-----------------------------------------------------

We've been practising for two months, collaborating with a local playwright and director who's tried his damnedest to make an actor out of some of us, better actors of a couple of us and just "stay out of the way and memorise your lines"; to me.

I'm no actor. I never claimed to be.

Why the hell –then?- am I standing behind a curtain, preparing to walk out into the audience with a microphone and do some kinda Monty Hall routine and "warm up the audience"?

Warm up the audience?!!
Do I look like fuckin' Ed Mcmahon?...
I feel like a bearded, wagon-burning Jon Lovitz/Chris Farley love child.

The lady who wrote most of the outline for our cabaret comedy also played a few parts. It was she, who sucked me into this vortex.

I ask her: "How do I warm up an audience? Have you ever done this? I don’t wanna fuck it up...
What do I do?"

[I swear that I wasn't panicking. My brain was just doing a thousand miles an hour in tight, little circles.]

"Take it easy, man..."

She and everybody else in the basement dressing room broke out, laughing. A couple of us sipped our agreed-upon "one glass of pre-curtain Zinfandel, or good import beer" to loosen up.

The advice came out short, whispered and furious.

"Relax... Just make 'em laugh".

From the left -

"You're a clown, boy, a natural clown, just act smarmy and clumsy, but don't be ignorant or disrespectful...
until you get 'em laughing."

From behind,

"Tell a buncha tiny stories"

says Mercy.

"Yeah, I can do this!"

"If they start applauding, don't hog it."

- Mercy smiled hard.

Of course, I stumbled. The first audience member that I approached to play with was not in the least bit interested in being playful.

I didn't know it at the time, but he was a local culture bigwig in the Twin Cities. An important reporter, editorial voice and theatre critic.

He probably figured that I was trying to pander to him and blew me off. Bad Luck, that. But he wasn't too hard on us in the paper that week. Almost encouraging, actually.

I recovered and got a few laughs out of the audience, before running backstage to change into my first character; 'Tech-Guy'.

-------------------------------------------

I first heard about Mercy's outline, when she called me up to make her props.

"What kinda props do you need?"

"Well, we need some kind of telethon gauge. Something that we can change to show the increasing amounts of the donations, ya know, like a big thermometer or sumpin'."

"Uh-huh... sounds cool"

"This cabaret is gonna have some commercial breaks, so we need some 'products' that we can flog between skits and acts." She told me a few of her ideas.

"That sounds hilarious."

"So will ya help us out with some stuff?"

Oh yeah.

In short time, I put together some of her requests; adding my artistic stamp to the pieces.

My favourite prop was an exhaust system (exhaust pipe, muffler and tail pipe) made from welded soup and coffee cans. I forget the name of the fictional business that was providing this "commercial", but I think it was something close to “Rez Auto Parts”. I loved that muffler.

Some of the props were a little ungainly... especially the “Television Screen”.

The “TV Screen” was a big blue tarp, stretched across one side, the top, tacked to a long thick wooden dowel. The tarp had a large opening that looked like a classic, rounded-off Cathode Ray Screen face and could be opened and closed by pulling or letting slack in the draw cord. At least it was supposed to.

Mercy asked me to come onstage and help work that prop... then other props.
Then I got a name; Tech Guy.
Then I got some lines, then a commercial.

I was an actor.

---------------------------------------------------------

One of Mercy's daughters, and I, were standing behind the curtain, centre stage. Our "MC" had gone onstage and begun his patter. The ball was rolling and it was too late to run.

We waited. Our cue was only seconds away and I was vibrating like crazy. I looked at Shannon and could see the "fuck-it" look, pulsing in her eyes. I could almost feel her skin crackling, too, with adrenaline.

She reached over, pulled my head down and kissed me good...long...
smiled; then took off through the curtain.
I ran after her, but never caught her.

That was one of the best damned kisses...
ever.

-----------------------------------------

My favourite gag of the show was a small, improvised move of mine that got incorporated into the finished show. One of the few touches that were entirely personal and mine:
We had a Native–American Elvis Impersonator agree in a recurring "guest spot" with the cabaret.

The "Vanna White'ish" – character, another daughter of Mercy, was supposed to swoon halfway through the Elvis-bit. It was workshopped that my character would come onstage; to revive her, with a fan.

My great inspiration was to screech and faint - in exactly the same motions and manner of the 'model'. It was an easy laugh and very satisfying.

I'm pretty sure that I didn't fuck up (too badly).

My striptease with the sisters went smoothly, even if I was choking on my nuts as they pulled deep into my thoracic cavity.

There were few stumbles.
We hit the punch lines and people laughed when I dropped shit.

--------------------------------------------------------------

We played the cabaret a few more times, in and out of town; actually getting paid for it. The drinking was good and the tobacco top shelf, for awhile.

People started dropping off the cast, continuously. And, so, it faded fast after an initial success. But then, people had been dropping off the project long before it got in front of an audience.

Where are you, 'nearly-naked-guy', whom danced across the stage? (For a little while, we even pretended to see you dance when we heard your music. I
swear I could almost see you.

Where are you, "big-tits-pancake-nearly-well-known-raven-black-died-hair lady"? Still angling for the soaps?

Where are you, "mumbling-princess"?... Off with "Two-Dogs" or "Chip and
Muffy"?

Where are you, me?

Tags:
fiction,Short stories,Blog,Shitbag Opera,West Bank,Minneapolis

2006-02-01T08:56:00.000-08:00

INTRODUCTION

Mpls.; the 90’s- crappy room. Desperate young couple reaches the breaking point. He doesn’t hit her but ‘e wants to. She cheats on him and she wantsta. I don’t hate them anymore, but I’ve wanted to.

The room wouldn’t pass for a closet in any decent neighborhood. Cockroaches have been spotted in the halls and crackdealers break the outside locks so that customers can find them. The day that I signed the lease, firemen came and carved up the walls, floors, pipes and electrical conduit looking for smoke; which they eventually found in the dry cleaning business downstairs. They kicked in everyone’s door and I lived with shitty neighbours for the first two weeks without a lock. I could tell that someone came in and looked around a couple times, while I was out, but I had nothing to steal.

The building is in a ‘funky’, culturally rich and wallet poor neighborhood hugging one of the asphalt arteries that feed downtown in the morning. By necessity, artery turns to vein after three, draining the core of lemmings and tyrants.
Just in time, the sun takes his leave.
But, wait... Listen...
You can feel the adrenaline running under Cedar Avenue.
You can feel the backbone of Riverside Ave., through the soles of your shoes.

Close your eyes and you can taste the BBQ- pork popkin, from the Chinese bakery and every type of hot dog ever served at The Wienery.

I can smell every beer and Brandy ever spilled at the Viking.

I hear every song ever sung at Palmer’s.

I gag at the sight of all the piss and puke in the alleys. The century’s bile and blood piles up like tar in the streets, “up to my knees”.

The original hot dog pimp is even more burnt- looking than I am.

I’m trying so hard to not look like a gorilla took a shit in my mouth. I’m trying so hard not to trade a kidney for aspirin. I’m desperately trying not to think.

Focus.

The original hot dog pimp is pointing at a book on the counter; jabbing with his good hand and talking about whores and whiskey.

Okay... That got my attention...

“What?”

“This entire street was covered, both sides, with saloons and whorehouses. Plus a few of them’s still standing... You can see them here.”

He put the book down in front of me. I could look up the length of the Avenue in the sepia-tone picture and see the distant hill where the big hotel now stands. According to the caption, every building in the picture has always been a piss-tank, whorehouse and/or dangerous flop of some sort. Living in one of them now makes you feel like royalty in the House of Debauch and Shite, and here was historic proof of the empire. There were times when I was royalty for an hour in those cool, shabby rooms (lying in some generous chick’s arms) and there were times when I was a solitary duke, for endless, lonely months.
Currently, I was sleeping in the moat.

Youth props up the whole shebang. I’ve thrown the last two-thirds of whatever youth I had left, at that neighbourhood.

Well... maybe I saved a lil’ bit. A secret stash, ya see. Some joy that I managed to scrimp and save. Kept it hidden. Hidden from friend and enemy alike. Looks so precious.

Now I treat it like Professor Bukowski taught us: “Hold on to that last bit like a gun.”

There’s alotta drunks and crazies around. The older ones are usually harmless, as long you don’t screw with them. It’s the young, dark, angry, unintelligible ones that throw ya... Belligerent drunks, muttering schizos and jacked-up gangstas put the blade in your pocket.

Don’t use it on someone who knows more about knives than you do, though.

It’s important not to get the wrong idea. It’s the best community both young lovers have ever lived in. And it’s under siege.

Attacks come from: “the city”, “the university”, “the police”, “immigrant gangsters”, “slumming yuppies”, “cowardly, vicious crackheads”, “speeding thrill-killers”, “drunks”, “thieves”, “fugitives”, “tax-evaders”, “junkies”, “nazis”, “corporate spies”, “traitors” and “crazies”.

Not necessarily in that order,
on any given day, though.

act I
The Room

Aaron and Shadow are shouting at each other in muffled gibberish, punctuated by brief blasts of clarity:

blah blah,

blahhh, blahhh, blahhhhh,

blah cheatin’ whore! blah blah,

Bla!Bla!Bla!Blah!, blaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!

BLAH! BLAH!
bllllllllllllaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh you boring shiiiiiiiitttttttttttttttt!!!!!!!!!!!!”

blah...........blah blah

blah, you fucking shitbag , blah, blah!
blah...blah, blah... you don’t respect me blah,blah,blah, blah

blah you and your filthy shit fetish ...
It was exciting...
once upon a time, girl.
(grin hard)

(Shadow screams. A short and incoherent howl. She then runs out of the room and slams the door behind her.)
(She stops in the hall and begins to sob into her hands, sitting on top of the stair well.)

(sobs and light on girl fades)
(a shadow crawls out of the closet and sneaks downstage, right, keeping its eyes on Aaron.)
(BOY waves a stale beer around. Stabs the air with cig...
in general direction of the shadow ).

BOY(sings)
I had assumed
that your shadow
would follow you the same way out.

(jerks up in his kitchen chair; moves to forestage, centre)
(music starts)

But, when I wander; it follows.
Then runs to the bed
and dives under a rotten duvet.

Licking its lips and saying those sweet old things: it jibbers and lingers.

(music fades)

Something soft and sore beats in my chest and begs to lie there
with it.

(Turn away, head to the kitchen, grab a whiskey bottle. The shadow scrabbles across forestage to other side of the set, keeping eyes on Aaron)

It’s pretty late in the afternoon to start drinking
whiskey, but I’ll crack it, anyway.

(Pours a large slug of whiskey in a collins glass, pours an equal amount of ginger ale , then drops in a single cube.)
(music starts again, as he walks over to the table and turns the chair around to stare over the table at the audience.)
(Boy takes a big swig , then begins to sing)

Your ghost crawls in, all pose and stench.
Your best pose was the feline arch;
showcases your tits like huge pale fruit and really
“presents” that big, white ass.

The hair on the small of my back stands up and hurts.
That’s what I feel when your ghost comes in the room.

(the shadow starts to circle Aaron, slowly, towards back of the set)

You’re always staring. Come to me.
Watch me take out my tinderbox.

(Aaron deliberately moves his arm in a wide arc, bringing it to his leather vest pocket, pauses, then extracts a matchbox in the same stylized manner and brings it to the table in a slow flourish.)

(The ritual of it all hypnotizes your shadow.
Watches my hands, spellbound.)

Lick your lips and, whisper thin old
things, I can feel you linger.
Something soft and sore squirms in my chest.
Longs to comfort...

But when a thing like this is started, it cannot
be stopped... so frivolously.

(softly) Don’t flinch now.

(I turn the box three times counter clockwise and face up.
Then flip away from you and spin three times ‘counter’.)
(Your shadow now sits on its haunches,
one paw, frozen, in mid-lick.)
(A few more times, then slow the matchbox down.)
(Rock it like a tiny bassinet, to and fro.)
(Stop,
then push it open with my thumb.)

(Dull redheads lie in rows like little soldiers waiting for reveille.)

(It cranes forward, stretching to see)

(Slowly, deliberately, painfully;
I select and extract a match.)

(Leaning, eyes bulging, whispering old madness,
it lingers.)
(Something soft and sore retches in my chest.
Sweet bile teases.)

(Match head touches paper and phosphorous;
Bright balloon of light and heat
darts out and licks your shadow.)

(Too close and too quick
for your fabled reflexes.)

Flees out the window, silently screeching.
No junky, drunk or crackhead will
sleep well on the Whiz Bang, tonight.

Boy “It’s bloody inhuman
What a fella’s gotta do fer a quiet drink
‘round here.”

(Tosses the match into the ashtray.)
(Pours a little whiskey, no ice,
and a slug of cold ginger ale.)

(Takes out a ZIPPO© lighter and lights the smoke;
Really holds the first drag.)

(music fades)

(BOY, speaks)

She used to be a janet,
but now calls herself Shadow.
hmmpfh.
Just a little, shallow.

(BOY shift in kitchen chair to fully face the audience. Legs crossed if the actor can figure out how to do it right. Make it look comfortable but authoritative.)

I love her various combinations of smells:
-soggy rawhide and plastic garbage bag.
-diapers and silk dress-shirts;
-prom-dress, lubricant and strap-on.

How she managed to do it, when our cupboards hold nothing but artificial sweetener and noodles, is a mystery.

(scratches his crotch vigorously, but slowly)

(Boy fades to darkness, but continues to drink and smoke as...
spot light on GIRL brightens)

(GIRL’s sobbing slowly fades back in with the spot)

(Music rises)

GIRL Why can’t he see?
There’s nothing more precious to me?
A house, a garden,
all the Tupperware in the world? ...
A baby!
( she continues to sob; starts down the stairs, then stops ... freezes. )

GIRL
(screaming)
I’ll show that cheap bastard...I’ll hump every friend of his that I can find.
(music slams shut)
(she leaves, down the stairs)

(lights come up on the BOY again)
(music rises)

BOY (sings)
She’ll come back to me, if I let her. I know.
Blessed memory informs me now,
what must be done...
I’ll throw her shit on the sidewalk, pronto...
and have a locksmith change the tumblers on the room and my studio.

(BOY leaps forestage and grabs the phone)
And do it quick!
The Palm club is calling!

(we leave Boy picking up a huge armful of things and then chucking it all out the window)

“hah hah hah, you fuckin’ blah blah blah”

(Boy chuckles and then picks up the phone book and scans it for a minute, flipping, then dials a number.)

“Hello; triple A locksmith?”

[music and lights slam to black]

act II

In the Cafe; slightly tight.

Aaron sits in the café, staring ahead in hangover stupour. The walls are boldly coloured, but seem to suck the warmest part of the light coming from the numerous, bare bulbs. You look directly at them and they glare with the most violent brightness. But look down and around at the tables, chairs and people. Look hard and you’ll see the clothes, formica and polished oak soak the life out of the light. Turns it dark and rotten-yellow, right in front of your eyes.

He’s mildly buzzed, listening to
“the one more week ‘til payday blues” coming over the speaker system. The speaker system was meant for a space about twice the size of this place and they’ve got the volume cranked tonight.

Newcomers huddle in a corner, acting very cool, but still flinch when some Somali insult comes flying over the back of their booth.

Takes a few seconds for them to realize -each time- that the aggressive, utterly foreign, loud screeching at the next booth has absolutely nothing to do with them.

Nothing at all to do with them, but the look on their face is just delicious: The “holy fuck, I knew that we shouldn’t have come to this place and we’re gonna get the shit kicked out of us “ look, that is so hard to reproduce under lab conditions.

They’ll talk about this place for years like it was the third circle of hell and they live closer to this place
than I lived to my primary school, growing up.

You know:
walking six miles,
through three feeta snow,
Uphill;
both ways.
anyways...

Ah
There she is.
Like some runway model with Platinum Blonde hair
(Remember that glam metal Canadian band from the
eighties?), deep tan, blank stare, scarlet-greased lips
and form-fitting red catsuit (covered in buckles and
zippers). A natural beauty that should be gracing the
screen in some gothic dance/musical/slasher flick,
instead of slumming it on the Whiz Bang.

So fucking hot.

Mind; totally shot. Like the Swiss-cheesed surfers that Douglas Coupland dreamed of.

Mary now blows for hotdogs and weed,
but will do anything for coke.

Unfortunately:
- She smells faintly like shit and heavy perfume.
-She goes for days without showering or washing her
clothes.
-Mary passes out more often than she goes to sleep.
(But, don’t we all?)

She whites herself now, and I go brown.
But, on occasion, so will she.

I like to catch her on her good days, but there haven’t been many of those, lately.

Tonight, oddly is one of the good ones. She’s been on a tear, though, probably for a couple days. Looked straight at me... through me. I don’t think that she’s recognizin’ anyone. Even if she does, it’s only on some reptile-brain level; probably won’t leave much impression on her a minute from now. But, hey;
she just looked right at me and grinned quickly. It was
only a flash of eye contact, but it seemed to say:
“Look at what a funny girl I am. I’ve got my own swarm”.

The blues man on the stereo is telling us all about how sorry he was that he “never, never... ‘pologised to her... Never”.

The last time that I fucked Mary, my girlfriend walked in on us at the studio.

GIRL
So, I suppose you’re fuckin’ painting!

BOY Well... as a matter of fact, yeah!

MARY I’m hungry

GIRL “blah, blah!
blah, blah, blah!”

BOY “Get the fuck out! This is my space!”

GIRL “That’s it. I’m gonna go fuck as many of your friends that I can find.”

(Slamming door )

BOY
Screaming at door: “And that would be new, how?!!!!!!!!”

MARY My asshole hurts

Mary then smiled and said it was “her turn” to hurt me.

Ouch.

Mary’s dragged a pile of college boys over to the cafe; probably from the yuppie club across the intersection and they’re starting to piss people off. So cloying ... so full of shit.

I swear that I can smell her from here: dirt, gin, sweat, baby powder, shit, lilacs and rank abandon. Mary’s down for just about anything, anytime, if you can meet her price. The great thing about the girl is that money, sometimes, just didn’t cut it. Cool, that. I’m nearly broke. Again

I get a fleeting mental image of her as a clownfish, slithering in and out of some obscene cardigan sea-anemone. I hadn’t thought that I was in the mood to deal with her shit, but the knot of little shitbags flitting around her is starting to get my Indian up. I don’t feel like falling in love, but I’m getting a serious hard-on for some cockblocking.

The arguments, against and for, doing something to prevent the shitbags hustling her out of here to some “party”.

Reasons AGAINST:

-It’s really none of my business.
-Mary’s a grown girl who’s been taking care of herself for a while.
-I didn’t want to piss off the cafe staff with a half-assed, unsuccessful attempt to play some paying customers. (Especially since I had gotten really wasted and fallen down in the cafe a couple weeks ago, knocking over one of the bussing tubs. That shit must be the strongest set of ghetto cafe dinnerware available. None of it broke, but I had been walking on eggshells since.)
-My ex was on the warpath and I couldn’t bring any chicks home and not expect to wake up in jail.

Reasons FOR:

-Just denying them their little shindig.
-The “party” would eventually have the appearance of a biker gangbang swaddled in Calvin Klein “One” ® aftershave, Heineken ® beer, Tommy Hilfiger ® tightie whities and squeaky voices. That little scenario made me want to barf.
-My ex was on the warpath.

The cardigans thought this was gonna to be easy.
They’ve been buyin’ her slings and dope for hours, winding her up like a Jill in the Box. They’ve invested their time, their money, their shitty little jokes, their coke and a good deal of self-respect sealing the deal.

They’ve scored themselves Gangbang-Barbie on the wrong side of town.

Maybe. Maybe not.

If I time this right and just out-last, out-play the wallets, maybe I’ll catch her in a moment of lust or boredom, away from her suitors.

They’re so self-assured that they’ve paid enough for her favours it makes me wanna puke, each time they high-five each other. Just a few more shitbags, slumming it on the Whiz Bang.

How many times have I fallen in and out of love, within these particular cafe walls?

There are bullet holes in the ceiling, puke on the sidewalk and cum all over the bathroom.

Right there. That’s the alcove I once passed out in and the nightshift built a wall of free-paper stands around me. Let me sleep it off when they regularly threaten and “86” the riffraff for falling asleep in here.

[I imagine they love me, but maybe they just couldn’t wake or move me. ;-) ]

So much latex, leather, lace and skid marks in one place; it boggles the imagination.

It’s too bad they aren’t open twenty-four hours any more, but the latest incarnation of the cafe collective got badly spooked by the last police invasion.

I wasn’t in the cafe when it happened. Supposedly “dozens of cops” came in and kicked out all the customers, waving a search warrant around, claiming that they were searching for “guns and drugs”.
Right.

Anyway; the customers weren’t allowed to finish or remove their food.

The staff wasn’t allowed to clean up or put away any of the food supplies that were being prepped or cooked.

The furnace was torn apart in the “search for guns and drugs”.

Their filthy plan became obvious when the health department marched in to cite the restaurant with violations of the health code since there was food left on the tables, prep counters and the grill.

Everyone was working the script.

The city inspector and the fire department came in to cite the restaurant with improper wiring and fire hazards;
For the ‘dismantled’ condition of the furnace and the
general disarray of the seating area.).

In what was possibly the greatest joke ever played on the Whiz Bang: police also searched the upstairs apartments over the restaurant and found no “guns and drugs”.
But...
They did retrieve the corpse of a tenant that had apparently died of natural causes, some three days before.

Believe me: When I saw the paramedics wheeling a body bag out the side door I thought that was it.

“Everyone is guilty... We’re all sunk.”

I walked into the corner bar to break the revelation, but the news had proceeded me. Half a dozen people hissed at me for repeating such a bad joke.

In a “three-month-long investigation”, involving undercover police trying to buy drugs, the sum total of the charges laid were a lame possession charge and “attempt to sell fake narcotics”. That and the manufactured health, fire and city citations.

Give me five hundred dollars and two hours and I could get you anything in this city. Fucking asshats.

Sweet memory sings to me of the various joys; initiated, celebrated and consummated in the cafe, here; or there in the alley:
- the job-quitting high
- the ass end of towns I will never see again
- the ass end of that nurse I would see again
- tales of jumping from a soggy crack in the cliff face to a rock ledge: no rope, no guarantee.
- drunken kisses, gropes, fucks and blowjobs
- poems, plays and the bestest doggerel.

Once battled a fire that smoldered in the walls, for hours; entire cafe filling with smoke, but I don’t think any customers left and the firemen sure as hell weren’t called.

My blood is, literally, in the walls, here.

-------------------------------

Obviously the bad noise and garbage legal actions had blown over; but at significant cost:

No more after hours party behind the cafe`.
No more weed and venison with the overnight crew.
No more 5a.m. flirting with unimpressed barista mistresses and hostile college coed crammers.

-------------------------------

Mary excuses herself from the cardigan anemone and heads toward the bathroom. I laugh, a little too loud, but nobody pays me no mind.

Pick up my coffee cup and walk past the yuppie clot, drop my dish in the bust bin and walk towards the cans. She’s standing in the hall, waiting for an open bathroom.

Sidle up to old girl: “Hey Mary, what’s up?”

She smiles, lazily. She’s been up for a couple days by the look of her, and she’s coming down.

“Oh... you know... not much.” she stretches her arms and breathes in deeply. The yawn does wonderful things to her face. All she needs is a flannel nightie and a teddy bear. (Well. That; a joint, whiskey and some hair dye, too.)

I should wanna wrap her in my arms, make her comfortable and tell her everything will be all right... forever. But I’m not privy to that level of bullshite. To her, or myself.

“Hey babe. Whyncha ditch these assholes and come home with me? Let me put you inna bath and a real bed so you can crash. Hmmm...? I got some weed and alotta booze.

“Ummmmmmm... That sounds nice... But... (pointing back at her little ring of assholes) What, am I gonna do about my boys?”

I looked up the hall and could see two of the little fucks staring at us. The others wouldn’t be far behind if they thought I was putting the make on their trophy.
“Depends. Do you really need to shit, or were you just looking for some space?” That got a smile from her.

“I just wanted to do a line. I’d offer you some, but it’s the last of their coke. (chuckles)”

“Okay, go in and take care of it; but don’t come out right away. Stay in there. I’ll be back in two minutes. Be ready to move when I tell you. Okay?”

“Gotcha.” She went in as some punk rock chick came out, trailing a horrendous stink... Nice.

I walked back into the cafe, ignoring the cardigans.

I need the right crackhead for the job and there he was: turdboy. Turdboy is the stupidest pseudo-rastafarian in Mpls. Of course, he doesn’t call himself turdboy, but the name has begun to stick. I take a certain pride in that. He likes to tell the marks he’s from Jamaica, but this dumbass is straight outta Chicago.

“So, turdboy! How’s it going?” He flinches at the sound of my voice. Good.

I’ve tossed him from the bar on the corner so many times and fucked-up his shit on general principles so often that he probably hears my voice in his dreams. Whenever he falls asleep, sober, that is.

“Don’t worry, mon. I’m not here to fuck with ya.”
I see the doubt in his eyes. He has the survival instincts of a cockroach, but still puffs up a bit.

“Fuck you, mon. You don’ work here, no.”

“I said I’m not here to fuck with you. In fact, I’m here to make you an offer you can’t refuse.”

“Don’ fuck with me, mon. I remember all your shit.”

”Bullshit! I bet you can’t remember the last time you took a piss. Do not fuck with me, turdboy...
You wanna hear my offer or not?”

“What you want? And what you got?”

“ 10 bucks now and I’ll let you into the bar tomorrow.”

“All night?”

“No. Just ‘till happy hour. Then you’re gonna fuck off.”

“I don’ like it.”

”You don’t have to like it. You don’t even know what ‘it’ is, yet. It’s easy money... I’ll make it twenty. You do want the twenty, doncha? Ten, now and ten tomorrow... That’ll buy you a fat, ol’ rock.”

“Whatta I gotta do?”

“Well, turdboy; that’s the easy part... ”

Forty seconds later, I was outside the cans again, trying to look inconspicuous. I tried not to smile, but couldn’t help myself. If it worked, this was going to be fuckin’ good. I must have looked too happy, ‘cause one of the shitbags who’d been watching me earlier started walking towards the back of the cafe.
Fuck!

I know that I could talk her outta here, smoothing it over with the cafe staff, but that wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying as stealing her. Especially from these precious little shits.

“Get ready, Mary.”

Turdboy erupted:
“Holymarymotheroffuckinggod, mon!
Igotsthevisionandthelightofselassieinme!”

That one, nearly unintelligible sentence turned every head in the cafe. Turdboy was doing a slow kinda dance, stepping to the beat from the PA. His hands and eyes appeared raised to heaven.

I hesitated for a moment, then knocked on the washroom door as turdboy belted out another piece of genuine pseudo-rastafarian gibberish, in time to the blues rhythm:

“Beware those that will not make a place in their heart for jah Selassie; bob marley will cornhole ‘em to righteousness and the virgin mary will spit down their gloryhole afters... and ganja will never be offered again so take jesus into your heart, or else, you stupid sonsabitches, mon”.

Mary opened up the door and we bolted through the fire exit at the back of the cafe, then past the cooler, through the stockroom, the courtyard and out the alley door. I managed not to laugh until we got outside. I could still hear turdboy wailing as we exited the courtyard, but knew it wouldn’t last much longer. His brain would give out soon enough or the staff would beat his ass into the street.

He was really gonna be pissed when he finds out that I’m not working the door at the bar tomorrow night.

“Got your car, tonight, Mary?”
“Shit, no. I sold it last week.”
“I’ll call a cab. Monty’s working tonight.”

I steered her through the neighbour’s yard and up the alley behind the Som-alien convenience store, before I made the call. We were both comfortable walking in this darkness, behind the safer, well-lit facade of Cedar Avenue. There was no assurance that her ‘suitors’ wouldn’t chance it, however.

I snapped my phone closed. “Alright, babe; we got a ride, coming, but we gotta keep walking. Those little shitbags of yours will figure out that you split with me, soon enough.”

I looked down as we walked. She had high-heel boots on, and she knew how to use them, of course. It looked like she was born in them. I always enjoyed observing women walking in high heels, who didn’t have to concentrate on walking in heels. Not just the heels, of course, but the calves, thighs and ass, also.

The whole package.

Usually, the only place you could do that without being tagged as an asshole was at the peeler bar. After a couple months on the stage, those girls know how to work it, at least the ones who last that long. I imagine that Mary’s doing some stripping, somewhere, but I haven’t seen her at the places I can afford. It was a joy to have her on my arm. It was also fun to let her skip ahead or swing aside and poke in someone’s garden and just watch her move. I’ve paid good money for less.

In the shadows, her tan and catsuit nearly disappeared, leaving only the platinum hairdo, squeaky voice and click of heels.

Monty picked us up about eight blocks from the cafe; two blocks over from the main strip. I wasn’t taking Mary back to my dump, with the newly-ex-girlfriend lurking around. Luckily, my hunting buddy and his girlfriend, Gina, were outta town and I knew where they hid their spare house key.

It was gonna piss Gina off to no end, but I had great need.
:)

It was very important that I not let Mary or Monty see where I got the key. I trust him with my life, but not other people’s shit. I didn’t trust Mary past the end of my smoke. I had him drop us off on the corner.

Monty took the last of my last few bucks plus a “weed tax” since I was a little short. It’s damn handy to have the personal cell number of a taxi driver, so you don’t have to go through the dispatch or pay cash all the time. Who carries cash all the time, anyway?

I left Mary on the front lawn and scrabbled around the side of the house, feeling along the baseboard for the rock with the spare key. The neighbour’s shize-hounds start barking.

Mercifully, I found the key before he could come out, recognize me and start being friendly. When I came back to the front lawn, Mary was hugging an ornamental juniper with her arms and legs; it looked like she was dry-humping it. I felt touched by the god of cess.

I dragged her ass up the stairs and nearly threw her over the threshold; meanwhile, she’s laughing like crazy. We’ll be lucky if one of the neighbours doesn’t call the cops. Mary rolls on the carpet, laughter still gasping out of her. I could fall in love right then and there if she didn’t smell so bad.

When she gets her breath back, the first thing that she does is flop on the futon and turn on the TV.

Right then I just wanted her to take a shower, so I put a clean towel in the bathroom then turn off the TV.

At knifepoint, I might add.

I’d forgotten that Mary always kept a blade on her. When I turned off the TV and turned around, she had it pointed at my chest. She was quite fucked up and I was prepared to take her seriously, but she laughed and dropped her arm.

I took the knife from her and tossed it, then got her ass in the bathroom. She asked for help getting out of that rank clothing. I didn’t mind, though. I had wanted to check that she hadn’t started shooting up, anyways.

She had me undo a couple buckles and zippers that were functionless accessories until I figured out that she was fucking with me. I found the ones that counted and unbound her while she giggled.

She looked good. I held her by those natural handholds over the top edge of the hips and turned her all the way around. Her skin was warm and damp.

There were no needle marks that I could see, but she did have a bunch of bruises on her arms that looked like she’d been held down recently. There was an old angry yellow bruise over one kidney. Makes me wonder if she’d ever see her thirtieth birthday. I kissed her bruises and then I kissed her nipples, lightly.

We kissed for a minute slowly. We took our time and I could feel her start to unwind. I left her to the shower, after making sure that she was good and soapy.

I checked Gina’s booze cabinet and found more rum, and less whiskey, than I would’ve stocked for myself, but why get picky? At least she had ginger ale to mix with the rye, not that spicy ginger beer.

The neighbour’s dogs had finally been beaten and shouted into silence, so I went to the garage for the stash of wild meat that Gina’s boyfriend and I kept there. This garage door had one of the few locks in the universe that I had a legit key for. I took the tarp off the barbeque and shook the tank once to check the propane level. Half full; good enough.

The door of the garage was ancient and so shot through with dry rot that my key was pretty much a formality, not so much a security.

The freezer was old, with the rounded corners of the “streamlined” school of design and probably had a shitload of cast iron in it, but it was a perfect size for our needs and extremely reliable. A few years back, we’d lost a bunch of ducks, pheasants and our precious venison to a freezer “malfunction” in our old place; while we were both outta town for a few days. What a nightmare to have to clean a freezer half full with rotting meat. I imagine it’s much like the stink in the aftermath of some battle or natural disaster. What a friggin’ waste that was.
Of course, the freezer that died was full of plastic,
stamped steel and cheap asian labour.

I was gazing down at the various crisp white and brown paper packages in the freezer, lost in a daydream of the previous fall’s deer hunt.

I close my eyes to prolong the dreamy air, a bit. I’m
lying down in a pile of high grass, the light dry snow has piled on top of the small clearing ahead of me, the sweeping Balsam Fir branches and over my still body.

The garage door’s spring whined behind me, then the rotten old door thumped, softly, closed.

I listen to the slow, deliberate crunching of an approaching deer before I see it. There are many breaks of long silences, but the deer is moving pretty deliberately.

I listen to the slow crunching of her footsteps behind me. I can hear that she’s wearing the rotten pair of Birkenstocks that are always by the backdoor. I feel the invisible rivulets of cold air flowing over my feet.

When the young buck walked into view, my heart began to beat wildly with excitement and pride. My work was about to be rewarded.

Something was placed on the edge of the freezer and the sound wafted into my reverie. I opened my eyes and saw a tall, strong whiskey-ginger; one cube. She knows how I like it.

Although the blood pounded in my ears, my hands were rock-still. The shot was a certainty, now.

Mary reaches around, grabs my basket and whispers, “what’s for dinner?”

My eyes flew open and it was all I could do to gasp: “Loin... Venison tenderloin.”

“Sounds good... Your turn to shower.”

One good, slow juggle and she’s gone.

That was nearly a perfect moment; Nirvana...
I damn near blew a load in my shorts.

Fuck the barbecue. I throw back the drink, spit out the ice cube and pull some tenderloin out.

Back in the kitchen, break it out of the wrapper (no defrosting here) and rummage in the knife drawer.

I lean on the cleaver to slowly separate the loinberg into thirds (it’ll turn into sixths, as it melts) and dump it in a fry pan.

Here’s the secret:
I put it on low, real low.
I put several splashes of olive oil into the pan,
some pre-chopped garlic out of a jar
some caper paste out of a tube in the fridge door.
sweet red pepper paste
a couple dashes of the best Hungarian paprika
and some good red wine.

I love Gina’s kitchen.

I pour another stiff drink, put a lid on the pan and leave the kitchen; loins heating up.

I grabbed a towel and paused at the bathroom door. Mary was in Gina’s fluffiest bathrobe, watching cartoons at three in the morning. I threw the towel in the bathroom and brought the drink over to Mary on the futon.

“Take this.”
“I got a drink.”
“Yeah, but it’s almost gone. Take this while it’s cold”
“You got any blow?” Took the drink from my hand.
“I thought you wanted to crash?”
“Yeah, probably.”
“I’m up for anything you want... The steak won’t be ready for half an hour. Keep drinking and watching TV. I’ll be out in a few and we can figure out what we’re gonna do.”

She’s too fidgety. She’ll be gone when I come out if I can’t keep her attention.

“Look in my backpack. I got some in one of the back pockets...”

It was a short bag that I’d picked up from the Old Man of the Whiz Bang as down payment on a painting, the night before. It was useless to me, but probably enough to keep her around. I was gonna make it a quick shower, however.

I popped a blue pill, took off my clothes and entered the shower to make myself presentable. I left the bathroom door open... just in case.

When I got out, she was still there. She had the boots on again.

The little baggie was open and empty on the coffee table. She was watching a cartoon, but the volume was down. Mary didn’t look back. She just pulled the robe up to expose her ass and got to her knees.

“ Fuck the tenderloin.” I says, I says.
....

I don’t like going down, myself, so it’s always a wonder to be with an oral girl like Mary. Some time later -and four seconds after I finish coming in her- she’s pulled the condom off and is sucking cock like a champ.

I feel like a porn star and that’s worth all the hell I’m gonna catch when Gina gets back. And then some

We don’t talk much after that, but have a few laughs over whiskey, rum, dope and some stupid movie on cable. It’s comfortable and I’m already missing it when I fall asleep.

When I wake up, it is to the trumpeting of one of the great hangovers of the twentieth century. I’m alone.

I take cold comfort in the certainty that katzenjammers had to be worse in earlier centuries when rats and snakes were added to the mash to improve the taste and curative powers of liquor. This knowledge, of course, does nothing for my headache.

I survey the previous night’s damage: frying pan with burnt remains of unidentifiable dinner (Oh yeah, what a bummer that was. I think that I ended up serving Mary a sandwich after throwing the smoking tenderloin out the back door.), only one broken glass, spilt Cuba-Libre in the living room and the faint odour of santorum on the futon.

In other words; nothing serious. I double-checked the locks on the door, strip off and replace the futon cover after a shower, then say a little prayer before I go back to sleep: “Please don’t let them come back today.”

If Gina and her boyfriend were to walk in on this scene, I’d just have to let her kill me

The god of cess continued to smile on me. I didn’t wake up ’til 11 pm, but was undisturbed. I leave a note listing the booze that we finished and sign it, swearing to replace it shortly. I must have been feelin’ real uppity.

As far as I can tell Mary only stole a bottle of rum. I walk out the door and replace the key at the side of the house. I make sure to tell the doggies to “go fuck ‘emselves” and head to the bus stop.

Is it my imagination, or are my balls starting to itch?

act III

The Ice King

Met me on the street, dintcha?
almost passed me by, too
except my wicked smile caught your attention
broke into this grin, and offers of coffee, whiskey and laughter.

You took me to your cherished discovery
a small place with hot, hot food,
cool lighting and the absence of yuppies.

I brought you to the river
A cave that you did not know was there...
even though you live and picnic on this stretch of the river
all your life.

We’d swapped sanctuary
shared each other, dream and flesh...

that moment, this brief moment
foreordained tiles in the mosaic of my confidence.

The world was good
and there I was
King Shit of the pile.

The masses rioted for my art.
Suitors, begged for my touch.
plants swelled in my gaze
snow melted under my feet and
turned to rivers, cool and sweet.

Then, as I should, turn to you
-finally admitting love to myself-
and begin to sing my rusty love ballad.

But, you stopped me.
With pity in your voice and your raw coarse truth:
“With all your talent and willpower...
is this alllllllll you’ll ever be?”

Cut me cold.

No longer would I be loved by the masses
or suffer my suitors.
Roots shall shrivel and rot in my passing
while birds fall like hail.

The world grows cold
and I was its master, the Ice King

While you and your sister and all of her brothers
danced,
whispering, laughing
down my trail of northern lights

“The world is trembling in our shadows
my love...
my only.
I’m bloody and I’m damned...
Now... am I worthy?

“My love...
you were King Shit, and loved.
Now you are the Ice King and feared.
(Hated; for me.)

But I shall not be happy,
‘til you’re the prince of worms.” *

Melting...
frostbit and putrid
sunk to my knees, powerless.
Drunk with bliss,
as she says

“We can do anything that you like
-maybe once or twice.
All’s as it should be...

Now that you’ve met my price.”

{fin}

* Pretty sure I got ‘prince of worms’ from Shakespeare.

act IV

dwight

I was sitting in the cafe when I heard that Dwight had been found in the river.

Nobody’d seen him for the last three/four months, but, you know; we figured he’d just fucked off without telling anyone. Happens all the time around here, people showing up again years later, others claiming to have been in touch with them all along. Just never got around to telling us about it.

Not Dwight, though. Looks like he went off the bridge. (Not the same bridge as that semi-famous poet. Does it matter, though?) Dwight was pretty well read, and thoughtful. It’s possible he knew about the sorta-famous poet and took the same path. But I don’t think so.

Dwight had a habit of sticking his nose in any argument, disagreement or fistfight that bloomed in his presence. A peacekeeper, in a sea of parasites who lived to shit-disturb. It’s quite possible that he got in someone’s face for the last time, with his pleadings of respect and love. That kinda shit really pisses some people off.

He was found in the rivers two weeks ago.

Where were his posters? Where was the reward for information?

act V

Denny’s place

I only see her in the bar, maybe, once a week; which is pretty irregular for our regulars. But, every time that she comes in, she’s always got a different sugar daddy with her.

He’s older, with a suit (usually custom). He’s got a hankering for dry martinis.
She’s usually wearing the same old crap: velour jogging suit, lamé blouse, lotsa perfume and plenty of cleavage and ass-crack.

He’s a lawyer, ad executive, stock-broker or fortunate son of some sort.

She looks like gold and smells like a girl’s gym-locker version of the fabled new-car smell. A combination of chrome, treadmill vapours, suntan booth, clean sweat, weight trainer and swimming pool. When I say she looks like gold; I mean it. We’re talking braided and corn-rowed golden hair with bronze highlights. A gold tan with golden glitter evenly distributed, gold lipstick, gold eyeliner and, usually, the gold sweat suit.

She had the Christina Aguillera “dirty” look going with the hair and makeup while C.A. was still wearing clothes.

A few of the bouncers have tried picking her up when she comes in alone -myself included. But she was always “waiting for someone” and gently put us off; although there were a few times that she flirted pretty hard with the bouncers.

She hardly ever gave me the time of day, but the few times that she did rub herself up against me, I musta gone home and whacked-off to visions of her loose little arsehole for a week.

Speaking of loose arseholes, I remember attending a little soiree at the bar up the street from my apartment in northeast Minneapolis, where some graying biker chick was stripping. Her arsehole ‘lips’ wrapped around her thong and saluted us all in the first row.

In my imagined recollection of the event, half a dozen of the front-row veterans are flinching visibly, as if they’ve just been hit.

In my own fucked fantasies, Charles Bukowski sits down the bar from me and recoils in amused sympathy.

Anyways... the guys that we saw her with were always older, scummy yuppie types wearing suits and whore-guilt. I don’t know why she kept bringing her clientele to the same bar, our bar. She seemed far too young and well behaved to have been 86’ed from downtown. Maybe she was just busy and liked to spread the action around. She gave us alotta laughs, however, checking out the shmos she brought in.

There was a younger guy (boyfriend?/pimp?) that she did come in with, fairly regularly. I don’t think that she ever brought in one of the ‘suits’ more than once.

act VI

There are only so many sodomies in a weekend.

The Girlfriend is in a room overlooking the Whiz
Bang’s foremost back alley, with a cock in her ass.

It’s hard to keep track, sometimes, but she’s pretty sure that this has been the only cock in her ass this weekend.

Shadow’s not particularly concerned, because the Japanese mutant beauty queen just shot her up with something particularly good a few minutes ago. Nothing is currently required of reality. Certainly not her rectum’s indignation, currently being introduced to the mutant beauty queen’s “friend”.

The baggie in her sock would last for a couple days, if she rationed it right. It’s funny how revenge can morph into economic opportunity of a sort.

How did we get here?...

It’s less than forty hours since Shadow swore to fuck all of my friends, but so far she’s only blown one of the ‘crew’.

LOL

She has however been able to sell her assets out of the pseudo-punk bar down the street. You gotta have a nice car and a straight job to be a regular at that shitbag saloon. A handful of rufies or blow doesn’t hurt, either.

The doorman -Chuck- saw Shadow sloshing her way towards the door, a glass halfway out of her front hip pocket. Her hand was jammed over the top of the glass to make a tight seal. Her purse dangled, slightly forward, to cover it up. The whole arrangement was a significant achievement, considering how fuckin’ drunk she was.

He figured that his life would be a much happier place without confronting that bitch, again; but it wasn’t an easy decision to let her go. Chuck did some legal and social math in his head before letting her split with the drink. He’s still got a scar under his chin from one of her fingernails, received at a different bar. He’d caught her pissing in the rear entryway half an hour after the bar closed. Too drunk to figure out how to get home, but not too drunk to automatically attack any guy who she caught watching her take a piss, however accidentally. She took a faceful of pepper foam and a ride to 72-hour detox for that.

The first reason why Chuck hadn’t 86’ed her ass from this bar: She kept the manager in blowjobs.

The second reason:
Shadow looked good to the suburban shitbags who came to slum it on the Whiz Bang.
If the cops caught her with the drink outside, they’d probably charge the manager with ‘over-serving’. So, “Fuck ‘im.”

... he let her walk.

-----------------------------------

-Unrelated editorial note: The word processor program just informed me that ‘blowjobs’ is a single word. Thanks micro$oft. -

-----------------------------------

Shadow sat in the parking lot with the last of her Zombie, which she’d cannily snuck past the bouncer.

Shadow had $44.50 cash, a small $2 bottle of mouthwash (to rinse the manager’s cum outta her piehole) and a new pack of smokes in her purse.
If you got smokes left at 2 a.m.; the world is your oyster.

By this point, Shadow’s cast her die; the next person to talk to her will either own her or take her somewhere safe.

Shitbags, coming out of bars all over the neighbourhood, smelt blood in the ether and took the most indirect route to their car/bike/bus/apartment/ cafe/squat, sniffing for the source. The poorer, local shitbags had an advantage; they were less tied to schedules, families or “fleeing the ‘hood”. They could afford to circle the neighbourhood and home in on the vulnerability.

Her fate was up to chance, again: What shall it be tonight? Rape, party, shower... robbery?
Bed, couch or ditch?

Fortunately, or unfortunately, she was found by a minor, local shitbag, turdboy. (This was about two hours before he helped me out at the cafe.). Shadow considers him to be “mostly harmless”, but she doesn’t know The Whiz Bang’s ‘eminent crackhead’ like I do.

He led her to the cafe; only taking five smokes and the rest of her Zombie for his services.

The cafe staff took Shadow off his shoulder and didn’t bother to kick his ass out, because of it.

Shadow’s good friend, the Japanese mutant beauty queen, bought her a smoothie and told her about the stash back at her apartment. All she wanted was “a favour”, for a “friend”.

act VII

Turdboy {The Whiz Bang’s eminent crackhead.}

Few people on the street can elicit the kinds of violent reaction to their presence that turdboy can. Whenever I see him on the street, my gut reaction is to scream at him. Accuse him of all kinds of stupid shit that he would’ve been too fucked up to remember, even if he did them. This usually attracts a few spectators, which is good, because my second urge is to stomp the old fuck.

A crowd suppresses the urge. Normally, I reserve a certain amount of respect for my elder elders, but there are a few that barely rate human status. Turdboy is one of those.

It’s not always fun, though; he’s like an old dog that’s used to being beat every day. He just casts his eyes down to the side and refuses to defend, explain or dignify himself in any way.

When someone turns their back, however, he often turns into a snake; baring his teeth. He sticks the point of a stolen steak knife under your shoulder blade and hisses in your ear... Relieves you of your wallet and about a month’s worth of dignity, if you’re lucky. I’ve heard that he’s stuck a few people in the guts knowing they were unlikely to die or identify him... and they were really going to suffer.

Turdboy claims to be from Jamaica. Has a pretty good accent. I have it on good authority that he’s from Chicago. He spouts all the panhuman brotherhood bullshit we’ve come to expect from a wannabe of any stripe. Turdboy’s cut off from the faith in his choice of drugs and lame-ass dependence on the stupidity of marks and the short tolerance of people who actually know him.

Of course, the sane among us don’t cut him an inch of slack:
- He’s a walking bag of lies.
- Every cent that he’s ever begged, stolen or found has gone toward the crack-pipe.
- Just talking to him makes you feel dirty.

I’ve had to kick him out of the bar for:
-sleeping in the booth,
-bugging the rare college customers we get
with his beggin’ shit,
-punching the odd stiff, and
-stealing tips, drinks, change and smokes.

Not necessarily in that order; but stealing tips will get your ass kicked in every self-respecting joint in this galaxy.

One of the most degrading things that another human being has forced me to do to him was to drag turdboy’s unconscious ass outta the bar’s doorway and across the alley. Then dump him in a decorative juniper bush in the centre of a broken quartz landscape feature that the town had bequeathed to the neighbourhood. Admittedly, he made a nice metaphorical centrepiece for all those spiny needles and shattered silica edges. I wish that I had the camera, then, that I have now. He kinda looked like a fallen angel; beautiful and horrible.

We called the cops on him for trespassing and he got a 72-hour hold at detox; instead of going to jail or the hospital.

act VIII

America’s Favourite Shitbag: loves to play pool, drink cosmos, stalk chicks...

...and has got a nose the size and shape of most people’s "biggest turd, ever".

He’s also balding, slouchy, greazy, clueless and a whiny son-of-a-bitch who can’t understand why people hate him. His voice combines ‘nails on chalkboard’ with east coast U.S. nasal whine. Truly; an achievement in aggravation.

The absolute first time that I saw him, I registered my distaste with the head bouncer of the establishment and was rewarded with the approval of my peers. It seems that this particular customer was pretty much reviled by the security staff, but allowed to remain by bartender fiat and waitress outcry; because he tipped well. A common complaint of respectable doormen, the world over... I suspect.

So what?- if I have to cut him off three times a month?
So what?-if he’s been accused of groping enough ass to fill all our shitters?
So what?- if his face makes me wanna puke?
So what?- if he generates more complaints from female customers than all our other male clients, combined?

Finally, he was caught jerking off in the bar; above the ladies shitter. Pardon me; powder room.

He had climbed into the ceiling-space through the men’s room hanging ceiling, while he was alone in there. He was then able to move through the crawlspace to a point over the girl’s latrine, look through the light fixtures and whack off while watching them piss.

* There are certain things that even cocktail waitresses can’t stomach *.

He was not physically disrupted (too badly) on our premises; I’m told, however, that he was deprived of a testicle by a lesbian punk hit squad, shortly afterwards.
Funny, how that happens in a civilized town.

The last thing I need to tell you
-and the thing that you need to know-
is that I am very proud to have been the man to coin the name “America’s Favourite Shitbag”.

His real name? ... Shall remain unspoken.

Act IX:

I just received a letter with no return address, but with a cancellation from the Whiz Bang. It’s been a couple of years since I lived there and at least a year since I’ve spoken to anyone from there?... It’s too small for a bomb.

Hmmm. I was wrong. It is a bomb, but a welcome one. A couple of old pals are gettin’ married and they tracked me down to send an invitation. Old girl and me had been a little close, but nothing had ever come of it. She did have an appreciation of my fucked-up artistic sense and that’s like gold. The news brings a welcome smile to this suddenly old face.

I had grown tired of bad news in the city: people laying down the motorcycle, another overdose, a suicide, an acquaintance eaten up by a cancer they didn’t even have a name for, people getting the shit stomped out of them by Somali mobs in the square and going to jail just for looking wrong. [You know... the little aggravations.]

The marriage is a bit of a surprise to me, but I have been out of the loop for the last couple years. I knew that they had a kid; wonder if they got any others on the way?

I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it down. I’d like to. I should tell them not to make me a dinner; but if I show up, I’ll brown bag it. :-)

act X

Shadow woke up in the Japanese mutant beauty queen’s bathtub. It was actually one of two bathtubs on the floor, split between the communal bathrooms. The reason that she awoke (lacking an alarm clock) was because some guy was sitting on the toilet taking a really noisy shit. If it had been one of her ‘brothers’, she probably wouldn’t have minded, but it was a stranger; an older Indian man. Very thin hair.. very long and gray. He was obviously having transom problems.

He looked up and saw her looking straight into his eyes with a combination of horror and fear. Her eyes were as big as the roasted chestnuts he had bought from a street vendor in Praia de Faro, Portugal, years and a life before. He had never been so embarrassed in his life as he was now. He glanced away and winced, from the pain that shot up from his pelvis, into his gut and up his throat. The pain and the humiliation combined in his eyes, mixed and precipitated out in sudden gush of tears.

Shadow wanted to run. To jump up and run down the hall and leap off the balcony to the shed roof below and sprint across the parking lot.

“Balcony?” she thought. “Oh god, no.” she had just figured out where she was.

A sudden wrenching pain in her guts doubled her over, pulling her stare from the old man’s spasm. Her eyelids slammed shut as her whole body convulsed with cramps in her gut and her legs, so bad that there was no way in hell she could get up and walk out, even at gunpoint.

An observer, standing some distance down the hall would have been startled to hear a simultaneous masculine whimper and feminine cry coming from the bathroom, then would’ve kept on walking while making a mental note to wash the bathtub before using it.

Somebody bumpin’ ugly in the head; no big deal.

But, there is no observer.
Myself: I would’ve paid good money to be listening at the door.

The old man had no choice but to use the bathroom, even if it were semi-occupied. It was already noon by the time he felt the need to hit the can; but once the need was felt, urgency took over that no one could ever warn you about when you were past baby diapers. You grew up figuring that your plumbing would always work the way that it should, but sometimes it didn’t. He saw the girl passed out in the tub when he first got to the can, but nature gave him harsher directives than propriety.

Besides, it was pretty late in the morning and there had to have been people who had already used this shitter (with her in it) before he got to it. That’s just part of sharing a can, sometimes.

Shadow looked at her watch; 11:56 am. The guy sitting on the can was making no moves towards her. Nor was he chucking his cookies; which meant that he probably wasn’t the source of all the puke on her shirt and skirt. Looking at and smelling the vomit only made her gag, again, and she threw her head over the side of the tub and puked all over the old man’s bunny slippers.

This caught him by surprise. Of course, his stomach was already weak from the pain in his bowels and he began to retch in chorus with her, spilling mostly bile onto his ruined slippers.

Shadow threw her head back and roared with laughter. She saw the look of shock in the old man’s eyes and giggled: “We’re both fucked... aren’t we?”
It was the first thing said, between them.

---------------------------------------

There had been three occupants of the toilet before she’d woken. But Shadow had no recollection of those bathroom experiences. One person had left her where she had found her and gone to the other bathroom on the floor. Another guy had taken a piss. After opening the door, he paused to assess the situation and found the risk acceptable. (How many of us have had to piss around a comatose reveler on somebody’s lawn, or front porch after a big party?)

The third encounter had been with a small girl who’d been badly frightened by the loud snoring and horrible stench of the strange creature in the bathtub.

She had to pee badly, however, and stared at the monster in the tub during the whole ordeal, silently praying that it wouldn’t wake up.

act XI

Hey, Eric?!

What?

Whaddya writing about?

It’s a story.

Story? ‘Bout what?

My time in the States.

What’s it called?

The Shitbag Opera.

The shitbag opera?

Yes.

Why?

Why what?

Why is it called the shitbag opera?

Because... there are only a few token humans that you will meet in this life: family friends, sometimes coworkers and lovers and even the odd stranger; but, for the most part we are floating in a sea of whining, screeching, babbling, mouth-farting shitbags....
The Shitbag Opera...
Why do you ask?...

Huh?

Never mind.

from: TRY
by Blue Rodeo

“Don’t tell me I’m wrong....’cause I’ve been watching every move that you make...

Every time ... that you walk in the room...
I could never be sure of a smile.
You were never the same way, twice.
... I’m falling in love... Oh, night after night...
Oh, it’s crazy...
Mmmmmm...

You gotta try... tryyy... tryyyyyy...ooo ooo ooo”
Oh, baby you try...”

Act XII

I heard the first version of what happened to Shadow, in the apartments, from the original hotdog pimp a couple days later. Supposedly some chick saw Shadow and an
o-l-d, longhaired Indian guy get out of the bathroom together -naked, shower-wet and laughing -
then hold each other up as they walked down the hall and into the old guys room .

“You mean ‘Old Hunter’ on second?” I says.

“Fuckin’ rights. But that’s not the end of the story...”

I play with my bacon. I refuse to take the bait.

“You wanna hear it or not?”

“Listen, man. There is not a single fucking thing in the universe that you could tell me about Shadow that would shock or surprise me...
I’m almost, nearly certain.”

I went back to sopping the yolks of my soft-poached eggs. The hotdog pimp knows eggs.

“You wanna hear it?... You’re gonna flip!”

“Try me.”

“Okay... So old girl goes to drop a load after they disappear...

Their clothes are in a pile of waterlogged sewage in the bottom of the tub. The whole room stinks of shit and puke and it’s obvious that the clothes are just filled with it...
She... is sooo disturbed... that she runs down the stairs, across the street and in here, holding a big dump, so she can use that awful fuckin’ toilet in my cellar.”

I start laughing my ass off and spew damp toast flecks on the counter. I’m pounding the counter and trying to clear my gob with some strong, hot coffee; hooting between sips. HP is laughing too, while putting the bleach-water tub in front of me and taking my plate. My mess; my cleanup.

I calm down quick and start to clean the toast mush off the black formica. The counter’s so old it feels soft and worn as skin. Skin with lotsa scars.

“You know she’s into brown, don’t you?”

“What?...You mean...?” (big pause)”...Nooooo?”

“She likes a guy to shit on her, every now then. Girls too, probably.”

“That’s so unhealthy.”

I just hoot at him. That... has got to be the understatement of the week. I continue wiping up loose flecks of toast and fry grease, making sure that the whole counter gets a good bleaching; from register to window. I used to work in here and feel a little protective of the place. I like it to look good.

“No shit. I hadn’t really thought about it, much... I mean, I’ve been hanging with some really skeevy chicks in the last year. I’m gonna have to get tested.”

“For what?

“Everything... I’ve been fucking Mary, too... Off and on.”

“You dumbass... She’s shooting up you know?”

“I didn’t see any tracks on her.”

“That don’t mean shit, man. Those fucking junkies’ll shoot in their pisser, between their toes, behind their eyeball. Anywhere you couldn’t see it.”

“You’re full of shit, sometimes, ya know...
Behind her eyeball?”

“Doesn’t matter. Don’t come behind the counter, ‘til you get all your tests. You’ve probably got Hep, at the very least.”
“Thanks, Shitbag. My balls itch, too.”

“I’m serious, man.”

“ I can see that... I couldn’t help myself, man.
She’s just sooo fuckin’ hot and crazy.”

“She’s a crazy hooker man. And a thief...
And she fuckin’ stinks.”

“She cleans up really good, though.”

“Just stay away from both those crazy bitches. Don’t you dare let Shadow move back in.”

“I threw all her shit out the window and the Somalis took ‘em away.”

“I heard it was crackheads.”

“Whatever.”

“So, you think that Shadow let some old Indian guy shit on her?

“Sure...
If she was really fucked up...
maybe she thought it was me.”

"You’re not really bothered, are you?"

"The only thing that really riles me, much, is your ham. Buy the good stuff. Some of us’ll pay extra..."

"Fuck you, cheapskate! When was the last time
you paid for a meal in here, or left a tip?"

"You wanna hear the story, or not?"

“Sure”

“The first time that I ever met Shadow, she was still called Janet.”

“Janet?”

“ Yeah, total square. Anyways, I was working at that historical reenactment place up in Wisconsin. There were a couple forts built there in the late 1700’s by rival fur- trade companies.

The site had been excavated back in the 70’s, I think, and had eventually been turned into a local tourist attraction when its buildings had been rebuilt and ‘actors’ hired to portray life during the fur trade era. You know... voyageurs and Indians.

I basically showed school groups and lost tourists around a cheezy recreation of an aboriginal encampment, complete with rotten, falling-apart “traps and lodges”, before bringing them up to the main show with the Voyageur at the ‘upper’ fort. What I lacked in convincing “traps”, I made up in humour, ‘legends’, BS, opinion and “traditional skills” (liberal use of airquotes,here).

“What the fuck does this have to do with Shadow?” says HP.

“Fuck you... Janet was a chaperone for one of the huge, unruly primary-school groups that we got coming through the site in the spring; just before school got out.

She was a blonde back then. She blushed apple red whenever someone paid her any attention on the tour. She wore a baggy sweatshirt, culottes and flip-flops. Just a gangly, shy, cute farm chick. She acted like she was used to avoiding attention. I had the feeling that she never registered my face on the whole tour. Not because she was mean, but because she was uncomfortable lookin’ anybody in the face.

I immediately fell in lust for her, of course. The whole ‘slutty-looking virgin’ thing. I never saw her again at the fort, though.

When I ran into her in the city last year, I didn’t think she even recognized me, but I sure recognized her. She didn’t look anything like the school-marm-in-training that I saw in Wisconsin, though. More like a Bizarro-world, punkrock anal queen farm girl. It was like Sandra Dee morphed into the Marquis de Sade and I was fuckin’ loving it. Who am I to argue with that? Anyways, she did remember me and we moved in together a couple months later.”

“And then you shit on her!”

“Well, it wasn’t like that...
She asked me to...

Now make me a Chicago-dog, bitch.”

Act XIII

The Worst Traffic Stop in History (that did not lead to an arrest).

The second time that I came to Minnesota, I came to stay. I brought my ‘Sconnie waitress girlfriend with me. The apartment belonged to my good friend, Goshen, the car belonged to Kelly and the ass belonged to me.

Life was good: I’d starting renewing contacts in the Native community, hooked up again with my buddies at the foundry and for the first time in my life found myself “fucked raw” liked those skin-mags had always talked about when I was in high school.

If you’ve never been “fucked raw” let me say that there are pros and cons to the experience:

PROS:

- No latex means that you’re human intellect has been overcome by base instinct. Fuckin’ A. Nothing else matters. World War Three could detonate and you wouldn’t leave the task.

- It lowers a household’s grocery bills, taxi bills, phone bills and any kind of ‘entertainment costs”.

CONS:

- Your cock is RAW.
- Your gal’s RAW.
- Household shit doesn’t get done.
- Your cock gets more attention than you.
- You’re not painting. You’re not sculpting... You’re not writing.

But I digress:

So... old ‘Sconnie girl and I are camped out in my foundry buddy’s front yard for his Oktoberfest party [1994 or ‘95]. One day we were coming back from to the camp, and got “pulled over” (I was driving her car) at a highway intersection.

Neither of us was familiar with Minnesota
highways, nor were we familiar with the directions back to the party. We crossed the big Minnesota River on our way back to the “Heights” and came up on our turn, quickly. We were in the wrong lane and I had to cross over to the left turn from the second lane over.

The whole car ended up hanging in the intersection at an odd angle and -unbeknownst to us- we had missed the street light sensor embedded in the turn lane. So... we waited. The light changed from red to green a couple of times before we figured out that we weren’t going to get a turn light and decided to go at the next green.

Of course, that’s when the cop passed us going in the other direction, then pulled a U-turn and threw on his lights and siren.

Old girl and I, in unison: “Fuuuckk.”

The cop pulled up, got out and approached the driver’s side window.

“License and registration, please.”

“Sure thing.” I had a license, but the car hadn’t been registered, yet. (In Wisconsin, you could drive a car with the registration application papers in the window. This was supposed to indicate that the paperwork had been filed, but the official papers hadn’t been received. Old girl had the ‘Sconnie application papers in the window, but hadn’t filled in the date, because the application had never been filed or paid for. A legitimate way to illegitimately bugger the system in Wisconsin, perhaps, but it may not fly in Minnesota.)

I dug in my pockets and realized that my license was -quite literally- in my other pants. In the tent about half a mile from here. “I’m sorry officer, but I left my license in my... other pants.”

Yeah, right.

“And the car registration’s been filed in Wisconsin, we just haven’t got the papers, yet. You can see the application papers in the rear window.”

“Turn off the engine and get out of the car. Miss... you stay right there.”

The officer took a good look around the interior as I shut off the engine and I began to realize the depth of the shit we were in. Both of us were outdoorsmen hippies and the car reflected that. There was a box of shotgun shells in the back window ledge, empty brass that we had picked up at a quarry in Wisconsin, a fillet knife stuck in the car interior’s roof upholstery (because we had lost the sheath) and condoms and cigarette papers in the open ashtray (I rolled my own smokes-“Drum” tobacco).

“What’s with the brass in the back seat?”

“We’re both craft makers. We picked it up in a quarry because we thought that we could use it for something.”

“Uh-huh. Get out of the car please.”

As I got out of the car, another police car came screaming up and blocked us in; in the intersection. Oh fuck.

“Bring the keys with you sir.”

I did as he said, his hand was on the butt of his gun, but at least he wasn’t pointing it at us. “Look, I’m serious. My license is in my other pants. We’re camped out at my friend’s place just down the hill from here.”

“Turn around and place your hands on the car and spread your legs.”

Which I did.

“Do you have any sharp objects or anything in your pockets that I should know about?”

“No.”

“ Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

As the first officer searched my pockets and frisked me, the second officer approached the passenger side and had Old girl step out and gave her the same routine. I knew that I didn’t have anything wonky on me, but I had a terrible vision of a pistol, grubby baggies full of all kinds of illicit shit and anti-american tracts pouring out of the old girl’s pockets. Fortunately, an unfounded paranoid vision.

“Open up the trunk, please.”

Ah, fuck. He probably figured that we had the gun to match the shotgun shells, in there. I knew there were no guns, but our situation was about to start looking even worse. As I picked out the key for the trunk, the second officer said “Hey, look at this.” and waved a nearly empty vodka bottle -with a bartender’s pour spout- above his head. Oh yeah, I had forgot about that.

Old girl had applied for a bartender’s position and had been sent home with a bottle and spout, filled with water, in order for her to practice her pour. One good thing about Minnesota is that free-pouring drinks was still common practice, unlike the soul-destroying mechanical dispensers that were everywhere in Canada. It, however, looked really bad.

“That’s just water.”

Suuurre...

“Stand over there.”

Old girl and I stood next to each other; looking reasonably fucked, I’m sure. As the first officer popped the trunk and looked inside, I tried to imagine what scenario he must have constructed for us in his mind.

---------------------------
Picture it:
An anarchist-hippy, mixed-race couple flies down the highway filleting walleye, blasting at traffic signs and pedestrians with an odd mixture of firearms and calibers, while practicing safe sex at high speeds, pouring and downing perfect ponies of chilled vodka between bouts of puppy molesting and senior abuse.
---------------------------

The trunk popped open.

Oh yeah. I forgot about the compound bow and quiver full of arrows in the trunk. I’m pretty sure that’s it; we’re sunk. There can’t be anything else in this car to fuck us any worse. Well, I was right. There wasn’t anything else in the car to make things any worse.

At this point, Old girl blows her top. She starts yelling that she’s a hunter. A licensed hunter and fisherman and she has a perfect right to have all this lethal shit in her car. (Hey, it is the USA). And... she doesn’t like the way that the cops are looking at her.
“Yes! I hunt!”

She’s radiating the kind of pure rage that would eventually force us apart, but it was kind of awe-inspiring to watch when it wasn’t pointed at you.

I figure we’re up for summary execution or a good maceing and kidney beating under some obscure Minnesota hippy / Indian-fragging law (They had only relatively recently repealed such statutes), when another car pulls up next to us, with the window down. Whoever he was, he looked quite amused. I didn’t recognize the man, but I knew the look in his eyes: he’s on his way to a great German beer.

I say “Hey! Are you going to F_____’s place? I forgot my license, there. Could you get it? The stranger took up our cause and the whole situation melted away, just like that.

* Never underestimate the power of a legit-looking white guy, in legal situations. *

Old girl and I piled backed into the car, made all kinds of promises to the officers and finally made the turn, following our saviour to the Oktoberfest.

Whereupon; I proceeded to get historically drunk and eat a pickled habanero, on a dare. Another awful event to cap off the night.

:-)

act XIV

Little John hoisted his greatest possession, his duffel bag, over his shoulder and headed south from the Greyhound station. His favourite way to travel was ridin’ the Pooch, nowadays. Too expensive to fly or take the passenger train. Way too fuckin’ dangerous to hitchhike, even in Canada. And, nowadays, too much like work to catch the freights and run from the CN cops or BN cops or local cops. Little John had developed a healthy allergy to cops and jail. He just wanted to “get by”.

Officer Benton and her partner, Grady, were parked at (Portland/Park?) and Lake, facing toward the Metrodome. The Vikes had lost, again, tonight and the partners were scouting for drivers who may have taken the loss particularly hard at some of the Uptown bars and decided to flee through the ”hood” instead of the core freeways in order to avoid the cops, not realizing that’s where most of the cops would be. Unless something really big happened tonight, Grady and Benton would spend the night ferrying drunks downtown and waiting for tow trucks; mostly in the immediate vicinity of, and between: Lake and Franklin, Franklin and Cedar and Lake and Cedar.

Before leaving Duluth, his buddy, Ron had given him the name of a few places to check out in Mpls. First was the Salvation Army, second was the Mpls American Indian Centre and third was the Hard Times Cafe.

He didn’t know it, yet, but Little John was less than three blocks from the Salvation Army shelter at the bus stop. He was also unaware that he was heading in the exact opposite direction of the Sally Ann; in nearly a straight line from the shelter and through the bus station.

Instead of taking a moment to make a plan before moving, his natural inclination was to start moving “away from” wherever he was, in the first path presented. Then to evaluate his destination as he fled. Although this is not the most efficient strategy of negotiating life’s twisting path, it had often kept Little John safe from ensuing danger and chaos... Never far behind him and hardly ever his fault.

He made a couple turns to follow a street that would take him straight between the other two places (if he could take it as the crow flies). As it was, the freeways would force him to turn again; either left, towards the still open Hard Times and relative safety, or, towards the closed MAIC, the deep ‘hood and lotsa police.

He wandered across Nicollet Ave., making note of the benches and wide sidewalks. It seemed like a nice downtown to come back to and explore during the day.

Benton and Grady were sitting on an old wiry Man’s back, both working to put the second cuff on his squirming wrist, nearly lost in the big, loose jacket he wore. Another unit had pulled up a minute before and the other officers were watching the few onlookers, the dark sidestreets and the beginning struggle on the lawn. The girlfriend had already been stowed in Benton and Grady’s unit, waiting for an ambulance. When Officer Daniel McCoy shouted to offer assistance, Grady and Benton were already hauling John Wayne Smith to his feet.

John Wayne Smith was not his original name, but he’d somehow convinced people to call him by it. He’d even cut a CD, under that name, of traditional Basque love songs accompanied by accordion. (On a small label.)
John Wayne Smith had aspired to become a minor local musical celebrity, but had only achieved the position of notorious weasel and unshakeable nutjob. He was no longer tolerated at any of the regular jam sessions in many parts of the cities, because his playing suffered badly when he’s all cracked up and had become truly atrocious when he was jonesing. He also had a penchant for stealing people’s drinks, tips, smokes, loose change, guitar picks, harmonicas, bags and whatever the fuck wasn’t nailed down. A real drag on the Monday night blues jam, especially, where people who’d known him when he was semi-human still hung out.

Tonight, he’d tried to pick up a whore down on Portland and Franklin, and ended up chasing and beating the woman over the length of a couple blocks, because she’d laughed in his face and kicked him when he’d slapped her. John Wayne was actually pretty lucky that a
cruiser came on the scene immediately, quite by accident, or he’d have been another dead white shitbag in the morning paper.

Little John stopped at 7’th and Portland and turned back to look at the Metrodome. He’d always imagined that it would be larger. He couldn’t figure how they’d fit a pick-up soccer game inside that stadium, never mind a major league baseball or football game.

There were four choices of direction. The first was back the way he’d come, past the Metrodome, and back downtown. Facing away from downtown, he could go straight, but it looked that the freeways cut the town in half in a few blocks and there was no guarantee of a way to cross the ravine still filled with roars at this time of the morning. A left turn would take him towards what appeared to a series of abandoned warehouses and large empty lots down towards where he figured the river was. Not the kind of places to explore at night. So, little John hoisted the increasingly heavy duffel over his shoulder, took the default option and walked kinda southwest on Portland.

Portland doglegged left, shortly and lead him down towards the ‘hood.

Meanwhile; John Wayne Smith had broken free of the cops and was running down the street, with his hands cuffed behind his back. Where he thought he was running to is beyond our comprehension. A few seconds later, both cop cars were up and screaming behind him. He ran smack into Little John who’d just finished pissing in a doorway.

“Get the fuck off me you little spearchucker crackhead; or I’ll fuck you up!”

“Get the fuck off you? Get the fuck off me, you old fuck.” Little John recoiled from the burnt plastic stink coming outta John Wayne Smith’s mouth and prayed the old shitbag didn’t have TB, as he flung him off to the side. Then got up and booted him in the ribs, for good measure. The cop cars came screaming up and a voice boomed out of the hood.

“Put your hands up and turn around. Now!
Step away from the guy on the ground and put your hands behind your head!”

“What the hell are you doing? This shitbag knocked me down!”

“Do it now!”

“Shit.”

Little John did as he was told, backing up to the cars, then getting on his knees, then down on his face.

Someone stepped between his shoulder blades and another set of hands put his in cuffs. Then he was left facedown on the cold, hard pavement.

“What the fuck are you people doing? I haven’t done a goddamn thing, here.”

“Shut the fuck up, or I’ll mace your ass. Ya ever been maced?! I promise you’ll hate it!”

Little John noted that this voice was a woman’s, not the same voice he’d heard on the PA. He could only hope that she didn’t have a huge chip on her shoulder and need to prove herself by being an extra-assholey cop.

Little John chuckled to himself, quietly: “Why didn’t you eat the red pill?”

It was gonna be a long night.

act XV

Hypothetically speaking...

[For “Dog Soldier”]

A terribly earnest-looking student is hunched over a table. His name is Jim. The table is crammed with books, writing implements, remains of dinner, a coffee mug and an overflowing ashtray.

He is scribbling away, furiously, eyes darting back and forth from journal to a big reference book, of some sort, balanced atop the pile. Occasionally, he grabs a deep, furtive drag of a cigarette or a quick, deep gulp of strong coffee; 3 sugars.

An old “street-Indian” wanders in. He looks like he’s been sleeping in the army
jacket he’s wearing; For a coupla months. The long hair is pulled back in a long greased ponytail that hangs down to his butt-crack.
Even though there is no grey in those strands, their blackness looks kind of haggard and worn; like it really, really wants to be grey.

This is Cutfoot. A legend, of sorts, in these parts. Seemingly, a legend in his own mind, as well.

When people speak of a friend or an enemy as “moving to his (or her) own drum”; they don’t mean it, literally. However... there is a constant beat in Cutfoot’s head that we don’t quite ever hear; but we can follow its cadence and tone by watching him.

Watch him bob his head, slap his knee and -occasionally- sing softly to himself.

Most people around here think he is listening to something that isn’t really there; some of us know better.

Cutfoot scans the room and -instantly- picks his mark. He sidles past the bus bin and pulls a glass out, then pours a water without the staff seeing him. He then goes the long way around the room and comes up behind Jim.

“Excuse me, brother! I couldn’t help but notice that you’ve been studying awful hard, there... Been here all night haven’t you.”

(Jim slowly gazes up from the journal, with a look that gets increasingly puzzled as he first gets a good look at Cutfoot.)
“I’m sorry... How did you know that...”

“I was eating my dinner back there, in the corner.” Cutfoot lip-points back towards the dark recess near the phone booths. “I’ve been watching you for awhile... You’re working on sumpin’ pretty important by the looks of it.”

“Well...yes, it’s...” As Jim begins to explain, Cutfoot nonchalantly grabs a chair from the table behind him and swings it around, narrowly missing a table of young Somali Men...
(let loose a chorus of “Wuddafuck?!”, then lapse into their unintelligible language. Clearly, they are peeved at Jim’s new guest.)

Before Jim can collect himself, Cutfoot says “I was wondering if I could get one of those smokes, from ya. I left my pack in the room and spent my money on dinner.”

“Uh... Sure. Yeah...” Jim smacks the pack in that American way and two smokes pop out instead of one. Cutfoot grabs them both.

“Thanks, Ko-la.”

“What?”

“I... said... Thanks... KO-LA... Ko-la means ‘my good friend’, in Indian.”

“Oh, yeah. What tribe are you?”
Cutfoot straightens himself up and says : “I am an hereditary Chief... of the Wasicu”
(Right.)

“You’re a... a... “

“Ugh... Chief...
But not in charge, anymore. Title just stays with you. You know, like Clinton is still called President...”

"Oh...Ooohh? I see.
Unnhh... What, are you... doing here?"

"I was sent to the city on a spiritual quest."

"Like uhhh, a visionquest?"

"No.... nothing like that. You see...
My people's most sacred object, the Copper Weenug was stolen from our tribe by the Indian Agent back before the trains had reached the Pacific. We thought it was gone, but we... just learned a few months ago..." (Cutfoot leans toward Jim and lowers his voice, conspiratorially. Jim instinctively leans in closer. Cutfoot has him.) "that... It is here, in the city." (Cutfoot sits up and speaks in a conversational tone.) "I’ve been sent to bring it back to our people, so it can be buried.
Deep... in the luscious hills of our mothers."
(Neither, Jim or Cutfoot, move or breathe for a moment. Then Jim straightens up and says...)

"That's quite a story, but ... Why are you telling me about this?" (His defenses are clearly slamming upward.)

"Well... I was hoping that you could help me out with a small donation... So I can keeping looking for the Golden Weenug."

"I thought you said it was copper?"

"It’s gold and copper. Do you think that you could help me out, brother?"

"Uh - huh? And how much will it take to "help you out?"

"Hypothetically speaking?..."

"Yeah."

"Thirty-seven cents."

-----------------------------

Dog Soldier; when I met him, was never this lucid or eloquent, but he did panhandle for amounts like 39 cents, 53 cents, 17 cents or some other such ridiculous amount. The first time was funny, but it got a little pathetic, fast, if he pressed the joke.

However, it felt like the ghost of ONE OF THE GREATEST JOKES, EVER; and he never tired of laughing at it all. I probably got mad at him more times than I was compassionate, but I lost a little bit of all my laughter when I heard. He’d -finally- passed out once too often.

Later, Dog Soldier.

Act XVI

I just heard on the radio that Don Ho -the noted Hawaiian entertainer- has just undergone stem cell treatment to try and repair his heart.

I always suspected Don Ho would save us all; and here he is, at the avante garde of experimental bioscience.

Where is Wayne Newton? It’s time for him to step up; and go to Mars.

And on a related note: Why can’t I buy a “Greatest Hits” collection of the Weirdo Hicks?

December 6, 2005.

ACT XVII

A couple guys slouch at a corner bar; ¾ cut, on an early Wednesday afternoon. One of them’s a middle-class white kid gone punk; the other is a come-from-shit-reservation, upper lower-class, mostly “city” Redskin.

They’ve been up all night; drinking, tokin’, screwing the neighbour-slut, smokin’ cigarettes, kicking the crap out of a Somali Tip-stealer and gettin’ stomped by a small Somali mob.

Now, they were just shootin’ the shit, getting exponentially bored and pissed off at the state of things.

Both of them were still oozing a little blood; but all the major cuts had been bandaged (no stitches needed).

Dude (fatiguing monotone) : You heard about that attack on a bus, downtown, a few years ago?

Eric: What attack?

Dude (fatiguing monotone): There was this deaf guy on the bus, about three years ago... He was riding on the #21 from Lexington/University to ‘Uptown’ when three ‘bangers got on the bus at Kmart, at 30’th and Lake.
Eric: Uh-huh.

Dude (slightly more animated): They were all pumped up from some hip-hop concert , downtown, and got on the #21 (transferring from the 18, I think.) ; flashin’ signs, showing off their Ling and talking trash to everyone.

Eric: Don’t you mean “Bling”?

Dude: What?

Eric: The term is “Bling”, not “Ling”. ‘Bling’ is jewelery and ’Ling’ is an ugly fish.

Dude: Are you sure?... Actually, I’ve been wondering why the hell someone would refer to a chain as ‘Ling’. I mean... a chain can be long and sinuous; kinda like a ‘ling’.

Eric: Dude... shut the fuck up and go on with the story.

Dude: Right. Anyways; this deaf guy didn’t even notice the thugs get on, because he can’t hear them right? He’s reading a paper and he’s making the odd comment with his hand - to himself. He’s muttering in sign language, dig?

Eric (fatiguing monotone): Yeah... yeah... I dig it.

Dude: Anyways... One of these little bitch gangstas sees the deaf guy mutter some sign language and figures that he’s flashing some weird gang sign at them. So, he shouts at the deaf guy. Starts calling him all sortsa derogatory, homophobic horseshit, eh?... The deaf guy doesn’t even flinch, of course; but, the little thug figures he’s gettin’ dissed, right? Anyways... the thug starts flashing signs back at the deaf guy, who’s busy reading his fuckin’ newspaper.

Now, a couple of the other gangstas are beginning to catch the drift of what’s happening; and they figure the same thing that their bro’s figured. They’ve been challenged and the fucker who did it is some punk white guy that’s ignoring them, right?

Eric (fatiguing monotone): Uh-huh

Dude: So the gangstas run down the aisle, grab this guy and start beatin’ the shit out of him.

The bus-driver and the the other passengers are freakin’ out, right? So, the driver pulls over and the gangstas take almost two minutes to drag this guy out the door, fighting past a few passengers who try to step in and help this guy. When they get outside, the bus driver locks the door so they can’t get back in, but it also locks in the guys who were trying to help the deaf dude and the driver won’t let them out.

Eric; “George! Get us a couple more beers and a couple Bloody Marys!”

George: Fuck you! Why don’t you two shitbags go dirty the Palm Club?
Eric: They aren’t open, yet. You know that you beautiful old black man.

George: Go fuck yourself you dumb little Indian. Let’s see the money before I give you shit; that’s thirteen bucks.

Eric: Here’s thirteen, seventy-five; keep the change.

George: Fuck you.

(George gets the drinks, moving with an efficiency that is the antithesis of everything Tom Cruise did in “Cocktail”, the movie. The drinks arrive; the Bloody Marys are perfect [even with the lack of shrimp]. George is the man.)

Eric: Thanks.

George: Fuck you..

Dude: So... these hip-hop thugs break a beer bottle that one of them smuggled outta the bar and stab this guy in the face. He’s deaf, and now they’ve taken his eyes, man.
How fucked-up is that?
How fucking ignorant?

Eric: So, he’s deaf, and now they’ve blinded him? Because they mistook American sign language for gang signs?

Dude: Yeah.

Eric: That’s really fucking ignorant.

Dude: Yeah.

Eric: Did you ever see the story in a newspaper?

Dude: Uh... No. Can’t say that I did.

Eric: Do you remember seeing the story on the local TV news?

Dude: Uhhh... No; I don’t think so....

Eric: Hmmm...
It’s an urban legend, man.

Dude: No waaaayyy, mannn. That really happened. Evereybody knows about it.

Eric: If it never even made the papers; then...
it probably didn’t happen.

Dude: Dude! This really did happen! I mean... everybody knows this story!

Eric: Yeah, everybody knows the story... but there is no proof that it actually happened, is there?

George: (Walking up slow and real unsneaky-like.) Why don’t you two fuckers get outta my bar!?...
Just fuck off?
Eric: I know you love us, George. Why can’t you just admit it?

George: I gotta wife. I hate her; but I love her more than all you fuckers come in here, combined.

Eric: Bring us two more beers.

George: Fuck you (goes for beer.).

Dude: Why can’t you just roll with the story, man?

Eric: It just doesn’t pass the smell test, dude.

Dude: Yeah?

Eric: Yeah.

(The beers come and the guys both take long, hard pulls off ‘em. Slam the bottles on the bar, in synch. Then, stare at each other for a few beats.)

Dude: I still hate chickenshit gangster wannabes.

Eric: Yeah...
Don’t we all. (Downs the beer.)
It’s one o’clock. Dave said not to call him before one, but we should be good.

Dude: Yeah; let’s get the fuck outta here and score some rock.
(Yelling) THIS PLACE BLLOOOWWWS, GEORGE!
- Eric and the dude get up fast and frogmarch
out the door to avoid the beer bottle whipped at their heads. It smashes; gloriously, precariously near the Rolling Rock sign.

George: And stay the fuck out!
Little fuckin’ junkies.

------------------------------------------------------------

CBC Radio has just quoted some report that states: that young people in Northwestern Ontario are smokin’, tokin’ and drinking at rates significantly higher than in the rest of Ontario (and, presumably, most of Canada, outside of BC).
Gee; do ya think?

A headshop just opened in town and they’ve nearly sold out of inventory. It’s the biggest thing that happened in town, this winter. My acquaintances at the main watering hole, downtown, were waiting for the new shipment to arrive, so they can get their swords, grinders and stuff. Much ado was made of the wages that were being offered, there.

ACT XVIII

It's been awhile since I've heard it, but you never forget the cadence, tone and subject matter of junky talk. It's a specific form of crazy talk that focuses on need -usually real- and perceived injustice; usually imagined. You hear alotta crazy talk sittin' around cafes and bars; people talking to themselves and people bitching to other people (often complete strangers) about girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands, wives, exes, children, parents, bosses, friends, enemies, the establishment, the military-industrial complex, aliens, science, religion, the CIA, implants, biopsies, water treatment and blah dee fucking blah, blah, blah.

The worst, most boring shit, of course, is junky talk. That'll put you to sleep quicker than quaaludes and vodka; do everything you can to not fall asleep in front of a junky, tho, 'cause they're likely to steal your pocket change.

And what is junky talk?: It's about going on and on about you almost had the perfect score until somebody else fucked it up. It's hammering the point into oblivion, with toneless rhythm, about how some motherfucker stole your shot. It's spinning stupid, contradictory stories about where your junk went and why your best friends and family are gonna get theirs for shorting your bag, your pills, your rock, your shot. It's about smoking plastic, drinking Lysol, shooting horse tranq, sticking opium up your ass and telling people -trying to eat- how fucking wonderful that is. It's about muttering how the person in the bed next to you must have convinced the nurse to give him your shot, because you're feeling bad.

The hospital is the last fucking place I want to hear junky talk; I had enough of that shit in the street.

----------------------------------------------------------

Updated , slightly on November 29, 2006.
Corrected numbering of "Acts" (chapters)from XII-XVII; there were two Act XII's, previously.
Added some '----------' spacers.
:E.C.K.

Tags:
fiction,Short stories,Blog,Shitbag Opera,West Bank School of Art,Minneapolis

The Shitbag Opera

2005-12-08T00:17:00.000-08:00

-Unrelated editorial note: The word processor program just informed me that ‘blowjobs’ is a single word. Thanks micro$oft. -

-----------------------------------

Shadow sat in the parking lot with the last of her Zombie, which she’d cannily snuck past the bouncer.

Shadow had $44.50 cash, a small $2 bottle of mouthwash (to rinse the manager’s cum outta her piehole) and a new pack of smokes in her purse.
If you got smokes left at 2 a.m.; the world is your oyster.

By this point, Shadow’s cast her die; the next person to talk to her will either own her or take her somewhere safe.

Shitbags, coming out of bars all over the neighbourhood, smelt blood in the ether and took the most indirect route to their car/bike/bus/apartment/ cafe/squat, sniffing for the source. The poorer, local shitbags had an advantage; they were less tied to schedules, families or “fleeing the ‘hood”. They could afford to circle the neighbourhood and home in on the vulnerability.

Her fate was up to chance, again: What shall it be tonight? Rape, party, shower... robbery?
Bed, couch or ditch?

Fortunately, or unfortunately, she was found by a minor, local shitbag, turdboy. (This was about two hours before he helped me out at the cafe.). Shadow considers him to be “mostly harmless”, but she doesn’t know The Whiz Bang’s ‘eminent crackhead’ like I do.

He led her to the cafe; only taking five smokes and the rest of her Zombie for his services.

The cafe staff took Shadow off his shoulder and didn’t bother to kick his ass out, because of it.

Shadow’s good friend, the Japanese mutant beauty queen, bought her a smoothie and told her about the stash back at her apartment. All she wanted was “a favour”, for a “friend”.

act VII

Turdboy {The Whiz Bang’s eminent crackhead.}

Few people on the street can elicit the kinds of violent reaction to their presence that turdboy can. Whenever I see him on the street, my gut reaction is to scream at him. Accuse him of all kinds of stupid shit that he would’ve been too fucked up to remember, even if he did them. This usually attracts a few spectators, which is good, because my second urge is to stomp the old fuck.

A crowd suppresses the urge. Normally, I reserve a certain amount of respect for my elder elders, but there are a few that barely rate human status. Turdboy is one of those.

It’s not always fun, though; he’s like an old dog that’s used to being beat every day. He just casts his eyes down to the side and refuses to defend, explain or dignify himself in any way.

When someone turns their back, however, he often turns into a snake; baring his teeth. He sticks the point of a stolen steak knife under your shoulder blade and hisses in your ear... Relieves you of your wallet and about a month’s worth of dignity, if you’re lucky. I’ve heard that he’s stuck a few people in the guts knowing they were unlikely to die or identify him... and they were really going to suffer.

Turdboy claims to be from Jamaica. Has a pretty good accent. I have it on good authority that he’s from Chicago. He spouts all the panhuman brotherhood bullshit we’ve come to expect from a wannabe of any stripe. Turdboy’s cut off from the faith in his choice of drugs and lame-ass dependence on the stupidity of marks and the short tolerance of people who actually know him.

Of course, the sane among us don’t cut him an inch of slack:
- He’s a walking bag of lies.
- Every cent that he’s ever begged, stolen or found has gone toward the crack-pipe.
- Just talking to him makes you feel dirty.

I’ve had to kick him out of the bar for:
-sleeping in the booth,
-bugging the rare college customers we get
with his beggin’ shit,
-punching the odd stiff, and
-stealing tips, drinks, change and smokes.

Not necessarily in that order; but stealing tips will get your ass kicked in every self-respecting joint in this galaxy.

One of the most degrading things that another human being has forced me to do to him was to drag turdboy’s unconscious ass outta the bar’s doorway and across the alley. Then dump him in a decorative juniper bush in the centre of a broken quartz landscape feature that the town had bequeathed to the neighbourhood. Admittedly, he made a nice metaphorical centrepiece for all those spiny needles and shattered silica edges. I wish that I had the camera, then, that I have now. He kinda looked like a fallen angel; beautiful and horrible.

We called the cops on him for trespassing and he got a 72-hour hold at detox; instead of going to jail or the hospital.

act VIII

America’s Favourite Shitbag: loves to play pool, drink cosmos, stalk chicks...

...and has got a nose the size and shape of most people’s "biggest turd, ever".

He’s also balding, slouchy, greazy, clueless and a whiny son-of-a-bitch who can’t understand why people hate him. His voice combines ‘nails on chalkboard’ with east coast U.S. nasal whine. Truly; an achievement in aggravation.

The absolute first time that I saw him, I registered my distaste with the head bouncer of the establishment and was rewarded with the approval of my peers. It seems that this particular customer was pretty much reviled by the security staff, but allowed to remain by bartender fiat and waitress outcry; because he tipped well. A common complaint of respectable doormen, the world over... I suspect.

So what?- if I have to cut him off three times a month?
So what?-if he’s been accused of groping enough ass to fill all our shitters?
So what?- if his face makes me wanna puke?
So what?- if he generates more complaints from female customers than all our other male clients, combined?

Finally, he was caught jerking off in the bar; above the ladies shitter. Pardon me; powder room.

He had climbed into the ceiling-space through the men’s room hanging ceiling, while he was alone in there. He was then able to move through the crawlspace to a point over the girl’s latrine, look through the light fixtures and whack off while watching them piss.

* There are certain things that even cocktail waitresses can’t stomach *.

He was not physically disrupted (too badly) on our premises; I’m told, however, that he was deprived of a testicle by a lesbian punk hit squad, shortly afterwards.
Funny, how that happens in a civilized town.

The last thing I need to tell you
-and the thing that you need to know-
is that I am very proud to have been the man to coin the name “America’s Favourite Shitbag”.

His real name? ... Shall remain unspoken.

Act IX:

I just received a letter with no return address, but with a cancellation from the Whiz Bang. It’s been a couple of years since I lived there and at least a year since I’ve spoken to anyone from there?... It’s too small for a bomb.

Hmmm. I was wrong. It is a bomb, but a welcome one. A couple of old pals are gettin’ married and they tracked me down to send an invitation. Old girl and me had been a little close, but nothing had ever come of it. She did have an appreciation of my fucked-up artistic sense and that’s like gold. The news brings a welcome smile to this suddenly old face.

I had grown tired of bad news in the city: people laying down the motorcycle, another overdose, a suicide, an acquaintance eaten up by a cancer they didn’t even have a name for, people getting the shit stomped out of them by Somali mobs in the square and going to jail just for looking wrong. [You know... the little aggravations.]

The marriage is a bit of a surprise to me, but I have been out of the loop for the last couple years. I knew that they had a kid; wonder if they got any others on the way?

I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it down. I’d like to. I should tell them not to make me a dinner; but if I show up, I’ll brown bag it. :-)

act X

Shadow woke up in the Japanese mutant beauty queen’s bathtub. It was actually one of two bathtubs on the floor, split between the communal bathrooms. The reason that she awoke (lacking an alarm clock) was because some guy was sitting on the toilet taking a really noisy shit. If it had been one of her ‘brothers’, she probably wouldn’t have minded, but it was a stranger; an older Indian man. Very thin hair.. very long and gray. He was obviously having transom problems.

He looked up and saw her looking straight into his eyes with a combination of horror and fear. Her eyes were as big as the roasted chestnuts he had bought from a street vendor in Praia de Faro, Portugal, years and a life before. He had never been so embarrassed in his life as he was now. He glanced away and winced, from the pain that shot up from his pelvis, into his gut and up his throat. The pain and the humiliation combined in his eyes, mixed and precipitated out in sudden gush of tears.

Shadow wanted to run. To jump up and run down the hall and leap off the balcony to the shed roof below and sprint across the parking lot.

“Balcony?” she thought. “Oh god, no.” she had just figured out where she was.

A sudden wrenching pain in her guts doubled her over, pulling her stare from the old man’s spasm. Her eyelids slammed shut as her whole body convulsed with cramps in her gut and her legs, so bad that there was no way in hell she could get up and walk out, even at gunpoint.

An observer, standing some distance down the hall would have been startled to hear a simultaneous masculine whimper and feminine cry coming from the bathroom, then would’ve kept on walking while making a mental note to wash the bathtub before using it.

Somebody bumpin’ ugly in the head; no big deal.

But, there is no observer.
Myself: I would’ve paid good money to be listening at the door.

The old man had no choice but to use the bathroom, even if it were semi-occupied. It was already noon by the time he felt the need to hit the can; but once the need was felt, urgency took over that no one could ever warn you about when you were past baby diapers. You grew up figuring that your plumbing would always work the way that it should, but sometimes it didn’t. He saw the girl passed out in the tub when he first got to the can, but nature gave him harsher directives than propriety.

Besides, it was pretty late in the morning and there had to have been people who had already used this shitter (with her in it) before he got to it. That’s just part of sharing a can, sometimes.

Shadow looked at her watch; 11:56 am. The guy sitting on the can was making no moves towards her. Nor was he chucking his cookies; which meant that he probably wasn’t the source of all the puke on her shirt and skirt. Looking at and smelling the vomit only made her gag, again, and she threw her head over the side of the tub and puked all over the old man’s bunny slippers.

This caught him by surprise. Of course, his stomach was already weak from the pain in his bowels and he began to retch in chorus with her, spilling mostly bile onto his ruined slippers.

Shadow threw her head back and roared with laughter. She saw the look of shock in the old man’s eyes and giggled: “We’re both fucked... aren’t we?”
It was the first thing said, between them.

---------------------------------------

There had been three occupants of the toilet before she’d woken. But Shadow had no recollection of those bathroom experiences. One person had left her where she had found her and gone to the other bathroom on the floor. Another guy had taken a piss. After opening the door, he paused to assess the situation and found the risk acceptable. (How many of us have had to piss around a comatose reveler on somebody’s lawn, or front porch after a big party?)

The third encounter had been with a small girl who’d been badly frightened by the loud snoring and horrible stench of the strange creature in the bathtub.

She had to pee badly, however, and stared at the monster in the tub during the whole ordeal, silently praying that it wouldn’t wake up.

act XI

Hey, Eric?!

What?

Whaddya writing about?

It’s a story.

Story? ‘Bout what?

My time in the States.

What’s it called?

The Shitbag Opera.

The shitbag opera?

Yes.

Why?

Why what?

Why is it called the shitbag opera?

Because... there are only a few token humans that you will meet in this life: family friends, sometimes coworkers and lovers and even the odd stranger; but, for the most part we are floating in a sea of whining, screeching, babbling, mouth-farting shitbags....
The Shitbag Opera...
Why do you ask?...

Huh?

Never mind.

from: TRY
by Blue Rodeo

“Don’t tell me I’m wrong....’cause I’ve been watching every move that you make...

Every time ... that you walk in the room...
I could never be sure of a smile.
You were never the same way, twice.
... I’m falling in love... Oh, night after night...
Oh, it’s crazy...
Mmmmmm...

You gotta try... tryyy... tryyyyyy...ooo ooo ooo”
Oh, baby you try...”

Act XII

I heard the first version of what happened to Shadow, in the apartments, from the original hotdog pimp a couple days later. Supposedly some chick saw Shadow and an
o-l-d, longhaired Indian guy get out of the bathroom together -naked, shower-wet and laughing -
then hold each other up as they walked down the hall and into the old guys room .

“You mean ‘Old Hunter’ on second?” I says.

“Fuckin’ rights. But that’s not the end of the story...”

I play with my bacon. I refuse to take the bait.

“You wanna hear it or not?”

“Listen, man. There is not a single fucking thing in the universe that you could tell me about Shadow that would shock or surprise me...
I’m almost, nearly certain.”

I went back to sopping the yolks of my soft-poached eggs. The hotdog pimp knows eggs.

“You wanna hear it?... You’re gonna flip!”

“Try me.”

“Okay... So old girl goes to drop a load after they disappear...

Their clothes are in a pile of waterlogged sewage in the bottom of the tub. The whole room stinks of shit and puke and it’s obvious that the clothes are just filled with it...
She... is sooo disturbed... that she runs down the stairs, across the street and in here, holding a big dump, so she can use that awful fuckin’ toilet in my cellar.”

I start laughing my ass off and spew damp toast flecks on the counter. I’m pounding the counter and trying to clear my gob with some strong, hot coffee; hooting between sips. HP is laughing too, while putting the bleach-water tub in front of me and taking my plate. My mess; my cleanup.

I calm down quick and start to clean the toast mush off the black formica. The counter’s so old it feels soft and worn as skin. Skin with lotsa scars.

“You know she’s into brown, don’t you?”

“What?...You mean...?” (big pause)”...Nooooo?”

“She likes a guy to shit on her, every now then. Girls too, probably.”

“That’s so unhealthy.”

I just hoot at him. That... has got to be the understatement of the week. I continue wiping up loose flecks of toast and fry grease, making sure that the whole counter gets a good bleaching; from register to window. I used to work in here and feel a little protective of the place. I like it to look good.

“No shit. I hadn’t really thought about it, much... I mean, I’ve been hanging with some really skeevy chicks in the last year. I’m gonna have to get tested.”

“For what?

“Everything... I’ve been fucking Mary, too... Off and on.”

“You dumbass... She’s shooting up you know?”

“I didn’t see any tracks on her.”

“That don’t mean shit, man. Those fucking junkies’ll shoot in their pisser, between their toes, behind their eyeball. Anywhere you couldn’t see it.”

“You’re full of shit, sometimes, ya know...
Behind her eyeball?”

“Doesn’t matter. Don’t come behind the counter, ‘til you get all your tests. You’ve probably got Hep, at the very least.”
“Thanks, Shitbag. My balls itch, too.”

“I’m serious, man.”

“ I can see that... I couldn’t help myself, man.
She’s just sooo fuckin’ hot and crazy.”

“She’s a crazy hooker man. And a thief...
And she fuckin’ stinks.”

“She cleans up really good, though.”

“Just stay away from both those crazy bitches. Don’t you dare let Shadow move back in.”

“I threw all her shit out the window and the Somalis took ‘em away.”

“I heard it was crackheads.”

“Whatever.”

“So, you think that Shadow let some old Indian guy shit on her?

“Sure...
If she was really fucked up...
maybe she thought it was me.”

"You’re not really bothered, are you?"

"The only thing that really riles me, much, is your ham. Buy the good stuff. Some of us’ll pay extra..."

"Fuck you, cheapskate! When was the last time
you paid for a meal in here, or left a tip?"

"You wanna hear the story, or not?"

“Sure”

“The first time that I ever met Shadow, she was still called Janet.”

“Janet?”

“ Yeah, total square. Anyways, I was working at that historical reenactment place up in Wisconsin. There were a couple forts built there in the late 1700’s by rival fur- trade companies.

The site had been excavated back in the 70’s, I think, and had eventually been turned into a local tourist attraction when its buildings had been rebuilt and ‘actors’ hired to portray life during the fur trade era. You know... voyageurs and Indians.

I basically showed school groups and lost tourists around a cheezy recreation of an aboriginal encampment, complete with rotten, falling-apart “traps and lodges”, before bringing them up to the main show with the Voyageur at the ‘upper’ fort. What I lacked in convincing “traps”, I made up in humour, ‘legends’, BS, opinion and “traditional skills” (liberal use of airquotes,here).

“What the fuck does this have to do with Shadow?” says HP.

“Fuck you... Janet was a chaperone for one of the huge, unruly primary-school groups that we got coming through the site in the spring; just before school got out.

She was a blonde back then. She blushed apple red whenever someone paid her any attention on the tour. She wore a baggy sweatshirt, culottes and flip-flops. Just a gangly, shy, cute farm chick. She acted like she was used to avoiding attention. I had the feeling that she never registered my face on the whole tour. Not because she was mean, but because she was uncomfortable lookin’ anybody in the face.

I immediately fell in lust for her, of course. The whole ‘slutty-looking virgin’ thing. I never saw her again at the fort, though.

When I ran into her in the city last year, I didn’t think she even recognized me, but I sure recognized her. She didn’t look anything like the school-marm-in-training that I saw in Wisconsin, though. More like a Bizarro-world, punkrock anal queen farm girl. It was like Sandra Dee morphed into the Marquis de Sade and I was fuckin’ loving it. Who am I to argue with that? Anyways, she did remember me and we moved in together a couple months later.”

“And then you shit on her!”

“Well, it wasn’t like that...
She asked me to...

Now make me a Chicago-dog, bitch.”

Act XII

The Worst Traffic Stop in History (that did not lead to an arrest).

The second time that I came to Minnesota, I came to stay. I brought my ‘Sconnie waitress girlfriend with me. The apartment belonged to my good friend, Goshen, the car belonged to Kelly and the ass belonged to me.

Life was good: I’d starting renewing contacts in the Native community, hooked up again with my buddies at the foundry and for the first time in my life found myself “fucked raw” liked those skin-mags had always talked about when I was in high school.

If you’ve never been “fucked raw” let me say that there are pros and cons to the experience:

PROS:

- No latex means that you’re human intellect has been overcome by base instinct. Fuckin’ A. Nothing else matters. World War Three could detonate and you wouldn’t leave the task.

- It lowers a household’s grocery bills, taxi bills, phone bills and any kind of ‘entertainment costs”.

CONS:

- Your cock is RAW.
- Your gal’s RAW.
- Household shit doesn’t get done.
- Your cock gets more attention than you.
- You’re not painting. You’re not sculpting... You’re not writing.

But I digress:

So... old ‘Sconnie girl and I are camped out in my foundry buddy’s front yard for his Oktoberfest party [1994 or ‘95]. One day we were coming back from to the camp, and got “pulled over” (I was driving her car) at a highway intersection.

Neither of us was familiar with Minnesota
highways, nor were we familiar with the directions back to the party. We crossed the big Minnesota River on our way back to the “Heights” and came up on our turn, quickly. We were in the wrong lane and I had to cross over to the left turn from the second lane over.

The whole car ended up hanging in the intersection at an odd angle and -unbeknownst to us- we had missed the street light sensor embedded in the turn lane. So... we waited. The light changed from red to green a couple of times before we figured out that we weren’t going to get a turn light and decided to go at the next green.

Of course, that’s when the cop passed us going in the other direction, then pulled a U-turn and threw on his lights and siren.

Old girl and I, in unison: “Fuuuckk.”

The cop pulled up, got out and approached the driver’s side window.

“License and registration, please.”

“Sure thing.” I had a license, but the car hadn’t been registered, yet. (In Wisconsin, you could drive a car with the registration application papers in the window. This was supposed to indicate that the paperwork had been filed, but the official papers hadn’t been received. Old girl had the ‘Sconnie application papers in the window, but hadn’t filled in the date, because the application had never been filed or paid for. A legitimate way to illegitimately bugger the system in Wisconsin, perhaps, but it may not fly in Minnesota.)

I dug in my pockets and realized that my license was -quite literally- in my other pants. In the tent about half a mile from here. “I’m sorry officer, but I left my license in my... other pants.”

Yeah, right.

“And the car registration’s been filed in Wisconsin, we just haven’t got the papers, yet. You can see the application papers in the rear window.”

“Turn off the engine and get out of the car. Miss... you stay right there.”

The officer took a good look around the interior as I shut off the engine and I began to realize the depth of the shit we were in. Both of us were outdoorsmen hippies and the car reflected that. There was a box of shotgun shells in the back window ledge, empty brass that we had picked up at a quarry in Wisconsin, a fillet knife stuck in the car interior’s roof upholstery (because we had lost the sheath) and condoms and cigarette papers in the open ashtray (I rolled my own smokes-“Drum” tobacco).

“What’s with the brass in the back seat?”

“We’re both craft makers. We picked it up in a quarry because we thought that we could use it for something.”

“Uh-huh. Get out of the car please.”

As I got out of the car, another police car came screaming up and blocked us in; in the intersection. Oh fuck.

“Bring the keys with you sir.”

I did as he said, his hand was on the butt of his gun, but at least he wasn’t pointing it at us. “Look, I’m serious. My license is in my other pants. We’re camped out at my friend’s place just down the hill from here.”

“Turn around and place your hands on the car and spread your legs.”

Which I did.

“Do you have any sharp objects or anything in your pockets that I should know about?”

“No.”

“ Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

As the first officer searched my pockets and frisked me, the second officer approached the passenger side and had Old girl step out and gave her the same routine. I knew that I didn’t have anything wonky on me, but I had a terrible vision of a pistol, grubby baggies full of all kinds of illicit shit and anti-american tracts pouring out of the old girl’s pockets. Fortunately, an unfounded paranoid vision.

“Open up the trunk, please.”

Ah, fuck. He probably figured that we had the gun to match the shotgun shells, in there. I knew there were no guns, but our situation was about to start looking even worse. As I picked out the key for the trunk, the second officer said “Hey, look at this.” and waved a nearly empty vodka bottle -with a bartender’s pour spout- above his head. Oh yeah, I had forgot about that.

Old girl had applied for a bartender’s position and had been sent home with a bottle and spout, filled with water, in order for her to practice her pour. One good thing about Minnesota is that free-pouring drinks was still common practice, unlike the soul-destroying mechanical dispensers that were everywhere in Canada. It, however, looked really bad.

“That’s just water.”

Suuurre...

“Stand over there.”

Old girl and I stood next to each other; looking reasonably fucked, I’m sure. As the first officer popped the trunk and looked inside, I tried to imagine what scenario he must have constructed for us in his mind.

---------------------------
Picture it:
An anarchist-hippy, mixed-race couple flies down the highway filleting walleye, blasting at traffic signs and pedestrians with an odd mixture of firearms and calibers, while practicing safe sex at high speeds, pouring and downing perfect ponies of chilled vodka between bouts of puppy molesting and senior abuse.
---------------------------

The trunk popped open.

Oh yeah. I forgot about the compound bow and quiver full of arrows in the trunk. I’m pretty sure that’s it; we’re sunk. There can’t be anything else in this car to fuck us any worse. Well, I was right. There wasn’t anything else in the car to make things any worse.

At this point, Old girl blows her top. She starts yelling that she’s a hunter. A licensed hunter and fisherman and she has a perfect right to have all this lethal shit in her car. (Hey, it is the USA). And... she doesn’t like the way that the cops are looking at her.
“Yes! I hunt!”

She’s radiating the kind of pure rage that would eventually force us apart, but it was kind of awe-inspiring to watch when it wasn’t pointed at you.

I figure we’re up for summary execution or a good maceing and kidney beating under some obscure Minnesota hippy / Indian-fragging law (They had only relatively recently repealed such statutes), when another car pulls up next to us, with the window down. Whoever he was, he looked quite amused. I didn’t recognize the man, but I knew the look in his eyes: he’s on his way to a great German beer.

I say “Hey! Are you going to F_____’s place? I forgot my license, there. Could you get it? The stranger took up our cause and the whole situation melted away, just like that.

* Never underestimate the power of a legit-looking white guy, in legal situations. *

Old girl and I piled backed into the car, made all kinds of promises to the officers and finally made the turn, following our saviour to the Oktoberfest.

Whereupon; I proceeded to get historically drunk and eat a pickled habanero, on a dare. Another awful event to cap off the night.

:-)

act XIII

Little John hoisted his greatest possession, his duffel bag, over his shoulder and headed south from the Greyhound station. His favourite way to travel was ridin’ the Pooch, nowadays. Too expensive to fly or take the passenger train. Way too fuckin’ dangerous to hitchhike, even in Canada. And, nowadays, too much like work to catch the freights and run from the CN cops or BN cops or local cops. Little John had developed a healthy allergy to cops and jail. He just wanted to “get by”.

Officer Benton and her partner, Grady, were parked at (Portland/Park?) and Lake, facing toward the Metrodome. The Vikes had lost, again, tonight and the partners were scouting for drivers who may have taken the loss particularly hard at some of the Uptown bars and decided to flee through the ”hood” instead of the core freeways in order to avoid the cops, not realizing that’s where most of the cops would be. Unless something really big happened tonight, Grady and Benton would spend the night ferrying drunks downtown and waiting for tow trucks; mostly in the immediate vicinity of, and between: Lake and Franklin, Franklin and Cedar and Lake and Cedar.

Before leaving Duluth, his buddy, Ron had given him the name of a few places to check out in Mpls. First was the Salvation Army, second was the Mpls American Indian Centre and third was the Hard Times Cafe.

He didn’t know it, yet, but Little John was less than three blocks from the Salvation Army shelter at the bus stop. He was also unaware that he was heading in the exact opposite direction of the Sally Ann; in nearly a straight line from the shelter and through the bus station.

Instead of taking a moment to make a plan before moving, his natural inclination was to start moving “away from” wherever he was, in the first path presented. Then to evaluate his destination as he fled. Although this is not the most efficient strategy of negotiating life’s twisting path, it had often kept Little John safe from ensuing danger and chaos... Never far behind him and hardly ever his fault.

He made a couple turns to follow a street that would take him straight between the other two places (if he could take it as the crow flies). As it was, the freeways would force him to turn again; either left, towards the still open Hard Times and relative safety, or, towards the closed MAIC, the deep ‘hood and lotsa police.

He wandered across Nicollet Ave., making note of the benches and wide sidewalks. It seemed like a nice downtown to come back to and explore during the day.

Benton and Grady were sitting on an old wiry Man’s back, both working to put the second cuff on his squirming wrist, nearly lost in the big, loose jacket he wore. Another unit had pulled up a minute before and the other officers were watching the few onlookers, the dark sidestreets and the beginning struggle on the lawn. The girlfriend had already been stowed in Benton and Grady’s unit, waiting for an ambulance. When Officer Daniel McCoy shouted to offer assistance, Grady and Benton were already hauling John Wayne Smith to his feet.

John Wayne Smith was not his original name, but he’d somehow convinced people to call him by it. He’d even cut a CD, under that name, of traditional Basque love songs accompanied by accordion. (On a small label.)
John Wayne Smith had aspired to become a minor local musical celebrity, but had only achieved the position of notorious weasel and unshakeable nutjob. He was no longer tolerated at any of the regular jam sessions in many parts of the cities, because his playing suffered badly when he’s all cracked up and had become truly atrocious when he was jonesing. He also had a penchant for stealing people’s drinks, tips, smokes, loose change, guitar picks, harmonicas, bags and whatever the fuck wasn’t nailed down. A real drag on the Monday night blues jam, especially, where people who’d known him when he was semi-human still hung out.

Tonight, he’d tried to pick up a whore down on Portland and Franklin, and ended up chasing and beating the woman over the length of a couple blocks, because she’d laughed in his face and kicked him when he’d slapped her. John Wayne was actually pretty lucky that a
cruiser came on the scene immediately, quite by accident, or he’d have been another dead white shitbag in the morning paper.

Little John stopped at 7’th and Portland and turned back to look at the Metrodome. He’d always imagined that it would be larger. He couldn’t figure how they’d fit a pick-up soccer game inside that stadium, never mind a major league baseball or football game.

There were four choices of direction. The first was back the way he’d come, past the Metrodome, and back downtown. Facing away from downtown, he could go straight, but it looked that the freeways cut the town in half in a few blocks and there was no guarantee of a way to cross the ravine still filled with roars at this time of the morning. A left turn would take him towards what appeared to a series of abandoned warehouses and large empty lots down towards where he figured the river was. Not the kind of places to explore at night. So, little John hoisted the increasingly heavy duffel over his shoulder, took the default option and walked kinda southwest on Portland.

Portland doglegged left, shortly and lead him down towards the ‘hood.

Meanwhile; John Wayne Smith had broken free of the cops and was running down the street, with his hands cuffed behind his back. Where he thought he was running to is beyond our comprehension. A few seconds later, both cop cars were up and screaming behind him. He ran smack into Little John who’d just finished pissing in a doorway.

“Get the fuck off me you little spearchucker crackhead; or I’ll fuck you up!”

“Get the fuck off you? Get the fuck off me, you old fuck.” Little John recoiled from the burnt plastic stink coming outta John Wayne Smith’s mouth and prayed the old shitbag didn’t have TB, as he flung him off to the side. Then got up and booted him in the ribs, for good measure. The cop cars came screaming up and a voice boomed out of the hood.

“Put your hands up and turn around. Now!
Step away from the guy on the ground and put your hands behind your head!”

“What the hell are you doing? This shitbag knocked me down!”

“Do it now!”

“Shit.”

Little John did as he was told, backing up to the cars, then getting on his knees, then down on his face.

Someone stepped between his shoulder blades and another set of hands put his in cuffs. Then he was left facedown on the cold, hard pavement.

“What the fuck are you people doing? I haven’t done a goddamn thing, here.”

“Shut the fuck up, or I’ll mace your ass. Ya ever been maced?! I promise you’ll hate it!”

Little John noted that this voice was a woman’s, not the same voice he’d heard on the PA. He could only hope that she didn’t have a huge chip on her shoulder and need to prove herself by being an extra-assholey cop.

Little John chuckled to himself, quietly: “Why didn’t you eat the red pill?”

It was gonna be a long night.

act XIV

Hypothetically speaking...

[For “Dog Soldier”]

A terribly earnest-looking student is hunched over a table. His name is Jim. The table is crammed with books, writing implements, remains of dinner, a coffee mug and an overflowing ashtray.

He is scribbling away, furiously, eyes darting back and forth from journal to a big reference book, of some sort, balanced atop the pile. Occasionally, he grabs a deep, furtive drag of a cigarette or a quick, deep gulp of strong coffee; 3 sugars.

An old “street-Indian” wanders in. He looks like he’s been sleeping in the army
jacket he’s wearing; For a coupla months. The long hair is pulled back in a long greased ponytail that hangs down to his butt-crack.
Even though there is no grey in those strands, their blackness looks kind of haggard and worn; like it really, really wants to be grey.

This is Cutfoot. A legend, of sorts, in these parts. Seemingly, a legend in his own mind, as well.

When people speak of a friend or an enemy as “moving to his (or her) own drum”; they don’t mean it, literally. However... there is a constant beat in Cutfoot’s head that we don’t quite ever hear; but we can follow its cadence and tone by watching him.

Watch him bob his head, slap his knee and -occasionally- sing softly to himself.

Most people around here think he is listening to something that isn’t really there; some of us know better.

Cutfoot scans the room and -instantly- picks his mark. He sidles past the bus bin and pulls a glass out, then pours a water without the staff seeing him. He then goes the long way around the room and comes up behind Jim.

“Excuse me, brother! I couldn’t help but notice that you’ve been studying awful hard, there... Been here all night haven’t you.”

(Jim slowly gazes up from the journal, with a look that gets increasingly puzzled as he first gets a good look at Cutfoot.)
“I’m sorry... How did you know that...”

“I was eating my dinner back there, in the corner.” Cutfoot lip-points back towards the dark recess near the phone booths. “I’ve been watching you for awhile... You’re working on sumpin’ pretty important by the looks of it.”

“Well...yes, it’s...” As Jim begins to explain, Cutfoot nonchalantly grabs a chair from the table behind him and swings it around, narrowly missing a table of young Somali Men...
(let loose a chorus of “Wuddafuck?!”, then lapse into their unintelligible language. Clearly, they are peeved at Jim’s new guest.)

Before Jim can collect himself, Cutfoot says “I was wondering if I could get one of those smokes, from ya. I left my pack in the room and spent my money on dinner.”

“Uh... Sure. Yeah...” Jim smacks the pack in that American way and two smokes pop out instead of one. Cutfoot grabs them both.

“Thanks, Ko-la.”

“What?”

“I... said... Thanks... KO-LA... Ko-la means ‘my good friend’, in Indian.”

“Oh, yeah. What tribe are you?”
Cutfoot straightens himself up and says : “I am an hereditary Chief... of the Wasicu”
(Right.)

“You’re a... a... “

“Ugh... Chief...
But not in charge, anymore. Title just stays with you. You know, like Clinton is still called President...”

“Oh...Ooohh? I see.
Unnhh... What, are you... doing here?”

“I was sent to the city on a spiritual quest.”

“Like uhhh, a visionquest?”

“No.... nothing like that. You see...
My people’s most sacred object, the Copper Weenug was stolen from our tribe by the Indian Agent back before the trains had reached the Pacific. We thought it was gone, but we... just learned a few months ago...” (Cutfoot leans toward Jim and lowers his voice, conspiratorially. Jim instinctively leans in closer. Cutfoot has him.) “that... It is here, in the city.” (Cutfoot sits up and speaks in a conversational tone.) “ I’ve been sent to bring it back to our people, so it can be buried.
Deep... in the luscious hills of our mothers.”
(Neither, Jim or Cutfoot, move or breathe for a moment. Then Jim straightens up and says...)

“That’s quite a story, but ... Why are you telling me about this?” (His defenses are clearly slamming upward.)

“Well... I was hoping that you could help me out with a small donation... So I can keeping looking for the Golden Weenug.”

“I thought you said it was copper?”

“It’s gold and copper. Do you think that you could help me out, brother?”

“Uh - huh? And how much will it take to “help you out?”

“Hypothetically speaking?...”

“Yeah.”

“Thirty-seven cents.”

-----------------------------

Dog Soldier; when I met him, was never this lucid or eloquent, but he did panhandle for amounts like 39 cents, 53 cents, 17 cents or some other such ridiculous amount. The first time was funny, but it got a little pathetic, fast, if he pressed the joke.

However, it felt like the ghost of ONE OF THE GREATEST JOKES, EVER; and he never tired of laughing at it all. I probably got mad at him more times than I was compassionate, but I lost a little bit of all my laughter when I heard. He’d -finally- passed out once too often.

Later, Dog Soldier.

Act XV

I just heard on the radio that Don Ho -the noted Hawaiian entertainer- has just undergone stem cell treatment to try and repair his heart.

I always suspected Don Ho would save us all; and here he is, at the avante garde of experimental bioscience.

Where is Wayne Newton? It’s time for him to step up; and go to Mars.

And on a related note: Why can’t I buy a “Greatest Hits” collection of the Weirdo Hicks?

December 6, 2005.