tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14635837303742364402024-03-05T06:30:10.267-05:00Sick CitySick Cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05328029727454505988noreply@blogger.comBlogger271125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1463583730374236440.post-45701371599252075762020-12-11T18:30:00.003-05:002020-12-11T18:30:01.718-05:00Test 6:04 scheduled for 6:30<p> !</p>Sick Cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05328029727454505988noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1463583730374236440.post-69436272548033053462016-06-07T04:20:00.000-04:002016-06-07T04:20:04.587-04:00The End<br />
<br />
I love you. Always.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Sick Cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05328029727454505988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1463583730374236440.post-78556982840851720852016-02-17T04:20:00.000-05:002016-02-17T22:07:07.771-05:00Pitchers & Catchers (Port St. Lucie)<br />
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<br />
<span style="color: #0b5394;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">He sat back</span></b></span> in the terminal of the airport lounge, sitting in the waiting chair made for waiting, waiting good like people were was supposed to in this waiting chair made just for waiting.<br />
<br />
He knew how to wait. <br />
<br />
Delta. Gate 4M. His ride would be here in time... eventually. He looked over the movies on his open laptop:<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">The Godfather (1&2)<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">The Great Escape</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">The Good, The Bad & The Ugly</span><br />
<br />
He had forgotten to watch them on the plane, got distracted by the morning view of the skyway. But his assistant had done her job- stocked him up right, everything from the wish list:<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">The Wild Bunch</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">The Dirty Dozen</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">The Magnificent Seven</span><br />
<br />
He would take in a flick in the limo, on his way to the bungalow just outside Port St. Lucie. Florida was there, waiting good for him, sun shining, just like he left it last February, like a bookmark in an open book of palm trees. Palm trees are patient. They know how to wait good too.<br />
<br />
He tried not to think of the bungalow, or Diane waiting there for him, naked or about to be, a sneer on her lips sliding into a smile and back again, the refrigerator full of beers in glass bottles icing slow, waiting good to get opened. He thought of the curveball, took the beat in his head and waited, waited for that split second before hauling back and swinging.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Slap Shot</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Scarface</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">The original Rocky</span><br />
<br />
This year was gonna be all about average... all about contact. This season was gonna be about moving up in the box and making the kid on the mound sweat... this season was about hitting out of the shift, placing the ball, driving to the opposite field, driving in runs, driving runners home. The pitchers and catchers were already on the field, oiling rusted shoulders and slowly sipping their coffee. They were waiting good for the position players to arrive. They were waiting for their first baseman.<br />
<br />
He thought of the guys on his team.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Goodfellas</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Animal House</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">The Blues Brothers</span><br />
<br />
He thought of the promise of the season ahead... ripe like a peach and dripping with the juice, sailing through the middle of the plate, twice the size of a grapefruit. This year was gonna be different. JFK to Pensacola. This year was gonna be different, or maybe just better.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Caddyshack</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Spinal Tap</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Die Hard</span><br />
<br />
The fans, screaming, the girls, girling...<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Lethal Weapon </span><br />
<br />
There would be thirty days of preparation, but he was ready to play right now, ready to wait on the changeup, ready to start swinging. And the shift better be ready to run like hell.<br />
<br />
He pressed play on a movie, leaned back with the bat on his shoulder, watched the pitcher's windup in his head and began the work of Spring Training... the work of patiently waiting good.<br /><br /><br />Sick Cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05328029727454505988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1463583730374236440.post-91254865826177094132016-02-06T04:20:00.000-05:002016-02-17T22:12:21.134-05:00Black Guy Steals A Pizza<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6bE6xIVTslBv10wf4xgp2Du0ksDm0QBLNaD4BfCIsBoIqcSt_2db9PL-XdsKX2Woj4RTf_ImSyL8-vvw83cxexABE2TINUyjtQz_19p3XSG1xK3lwgUCpso-1rV8EEdC30Amcpqf3RY06/s1600/root.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6bE6xIVTslBv10wf4xgp2Du0ksDm0QBLNaD4BfCIsBoIqcSt_2db9PL-XdsKX2Woj4RTf_ImSyL8-vvw83cxexABE2TINUyjtQz_19p3XSG1xK3lwgUCpso-1rV8EEdC30Amcpqf3RY06/s400/root.jpg" width="351" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-size: large;">“The thing that I notice,</span></span></span> what I find, is that people hear what they want to hear. It doesn’t matter what you say, or what’s right in front of their noses... most people have a way of making things look just about the way they want to see them. Most people have enough musical ability to rewrite the chorus unto the melody bends sweet to their ears... unto the tune is more familiar.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Eric took a sip of his ginger ale. The bubbles did that thing, that thing where they climb up in the glass to get free.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">“That’s the thing about you, Stephanie... I’ve always gotten the notation that you were ready for the ultra<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">br</span>ight... for the true music...”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Steph exhaled, unimpressed, listening to the Pet Shop Boys make pink pretty on the diner jukebox. This was not where she wanted to be.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Eric sat across from her- older, hungry, and she found her white Keds did the shoe shuffle soft underneath the booth table where they sat- where was this restaurant again?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Where the fuck was that waiter with her root beer float?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Eric, after hours, a good bite of his pastrami sandwich: “You’re more than a friend to me. An administrative assistant. What is that? What does that mean? Words are a word game. Administrative assistant? Lover? Babysitter? Captain? Sounds like girlfriend to me.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Stephanie saw the picture of his wife and two hideous children from his office desk. In her head she tilted the frame down so she wouldn’t have to look. Still, there was no way she was gonna give him honey: sleeping with her boss was just too obvious. They had fun at work but still: she used her skills in probability and statistical analysis to estimate the old man's chances at getting sticky: twenty percent- maybe twenty-five at best- but would it be that bad though? To say yes for once? Would it be that wrong? Would it be that bad?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">She looked at the specials and cursed her low-menu resistance. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Where was that goddamn waiter? How hard is it to scoop vanilla ice cream anyway?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The diner he had taken her to was wood and chrome, a train car crashed on a city street serving fries and cole slaw and hot grease season savory. It's always a warm night in early Spring, and the stars were falling out of the sky, streaking, beaming good, doing that thing that you never notice because you're too busy to look up.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">“You know, you never know what was good for you until you’re looking back. Then you say: ‘Wow, that was, that was really good for me. I should have done this earlier.’ That happens. That’s the magic. That’s how it happens all the time.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Stephanie got the sudden image of the ignorant waiter in her head, back behind the kitchen counter, his mouth open to reveal donkey incisors twinkle over his dead eyes as he held the ice cream scoop in one hand and gawked at the recipe book before him open to the page “Root Beer Float.” She could picture him squinting vacant at the cow symbol next to the plus sign.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Sorry Eric: you're too old for me. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Eric looked at her from across the table, his eyes doing that thing that made him look alive, that smile he smiled that bridged the gap, the warm on his face that made her butterfly, the smooth of his mojo that made grey another color of the rainbow.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Tonight had been the first time he had asked to see her outside of the office. He had asked her in the melting snow of the parking lot to join him for a late dinner because he didn’t want to be alone and just wasn’t ready to go home. Twenty-five percent. Maybe 33 1/3. But still he had no chance.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">“I like you Steph.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">He loosened his tie at just the right minute, his white dress shirt suddenly naked, and Stephanie forgot about getting home in time to feed her dog. She forgot about the cold vanilla bean froth in the sweet bark of carbonated birch cola. She looked at Eric and wondered if he could hold her down. Hard.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">She smiled. Maybe he wasn’t the worst guy in the world. Maybe he was right, maybe administrative assistant did mean something else. Maybe his odds were about even now.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">She found her foot had slipped out its Ked, extend beneath the table, her toe take its time against the older man’s ankle, rubbing awkward at the soft fabric of his sock. This man, this husband, this father... he didn't seem to mind.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><br />Eric smiled at her. Stephanie exhaled, smiling back.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">"I like you too Eric..." The blood went to her cheeks. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Stephanie cooed: “So about what you were saying earlier: you still <span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">didn</span>’t <span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">get to</span> the part where the black guy steals the pizza...”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Eric blinked. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Where the fuck was that waiter with <span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">her</span> root beer float?</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Sick Cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05328029727454505988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1463583730374236440.post-76800487910836680852016-02-02T04:20:00.000-05:002016-02-02T06:54:50.704-05:00Cranberry/Adeline<br />
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<br />
<br /><b><span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s how I saw it.</span></span></b><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> It's how I knew I was alive.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">You've been to this page before. Again and again and I’m pretty sure I’ve lived this day before, well maybe not this one, maybe <i>you</i> lived it. Maybe. Maybe you know more than I ever will.<br /><br />It was that day, that day I don't talk about because there’s nothing to talk about. There was an appointment, there was a doctor. There was bloody gauze. There were lost causes running through my veins.<br /><br />And like a passing thunderstorm it was gone out to sea, the ocean and the fears, the terrors and seams of reality unravel in a quick. The nurse- soft beautiful- brought me cup of cold juice, and I tasted it, and I drank from the cup. And when she walked out Adeline walked in, her pocketbook over her shoulder, her smile making me rise. The juice was sweet.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">The juice was real.<br /><br />On that day I think I look back- the déjà vu- I laid back, in the hospital bed, and I closed my eyes, not only for a minute but a lifetime or three or four, a smile on my face, a surrender.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">A soft dissolve to the next scene.<br /><br />I saw Adeline. I felt her breathe. I tasted cranberry. And that's how I knew I was alive.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br /></span>Sick Cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05328029727454505988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1463583730374236440.post-81743514753472833482016-01-25T04:20:00.000-05:002016-01-25T09:26:55.963-05:00A Message from Idiot Boy<br />
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>"Marmalade!!!" </b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b> </b></span></div>
Sick Cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05328029727454505988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1463583730374236440.post-44871821350829699772016-01-24T04:20:00.000-05:002016-01-24T06:56:36.194-05:00Radio Waves (In The Middle Of The Night)<br />
sacrifice<br />
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<br />
<b><br />CALLER:</b> I feel a sense of... displacement. Do you know what it-?<br />
<br />
<b>BRUCE:</b> Why do you-? I’m sorry for interrupting... why do you say displacement?<br />
<br />
<b>CALLER:</b> I feel displaced. Do you know what I mean when I say displacement? I looked it up today. In the dictionary. It means put out of position, to be removed from position. That’s me, that’s how I feel.<br />
<br />
<b>BRUCE:</b> It’s late. It’s late at night man. We all get-<br />
<br />
<b>CALLER:</b> It’s always the middle of the night. I have been displaced. I know it now. My wife had a place for me, a use for me- even if nothing else as the guy who can change the bulbs or stop the leak in the bathtub. She doesn’t need me anymore. My kids, their eyes do this thing where they used to look at me like I was rock, like I was granite, and now their eyes get this soft fuzzy look that I don’t recognize and they look through me like I was transparent. Or a ghost, translucent. I'm not even here anymore. I'm not even there. I don't have a home. And I don’t have a place that I call home, and it hurts me, and it scares the shit out of me.<br />
<br />
<b>BRUCE:</b> I’m sorry to hear that. But the question I asked at the top of the show was do you have a trade proposal for the Mets.<br />
<br />
<b>CALLER:</b> Hah? Oh yeah. D’Arnaud and Conforto for Bryce Harper.<br />
<br />
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<br />Sick Cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05328029727454505988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1463583730374236440.post-76288506881166350862016-01-21T04:20:00.000-05:002016-01-22T03:02:48.074-05:00A Safe Place To Daydream<br />
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<br />
<b><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-size: large;">Julie didn’t hesitate,</span></span></b> she answered like she’d been waiting for the question. “My papasan chair.”<br />
<br />
I had to think back, a long way, back from when we lived together. I tried to picture her condo, the second floor, and then there it was: the mental image of the papasan, the wicker pod with that enormous green cushion. It was in the study with her bookshelves, and she used to get up inside it- pull her legs up underneath her like a cat- close her eyes and sigh, lost in thought. I could picture it, and I realized I was smiling.<br />
<br />
“And what do you daydream about?<br />
<br />
Julie exhaled and uncurled a grin. “Sunshine,” she said, without a doubt, “I can feel it all over my body. Sunshine and people I love."<br />
<br />
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<br />
Magnus took a minute, took a long sip of his beer, wiped the foam from his upper lip, and he told me: “The movies.”<br />
<br />
“You daydream at the movies?”<br />
<br />
“Let me tell you something: I hate the movies. Same stories, same pretty faces... but in the dark, with the lights down, and all those people sitting around me... I get lost. I get... gone.”<br />
<br />
“And what do you daydream about?”<br />
<br />
“The Summer I was nine,” he said, without a doubt, “and bass fishing with my Dad."<br />
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<br />
My daughter looked up from her Caeser Salad, fork like a pointer. She was laughing at me.<br />
<br />
“For me? I don’t know, that’s a good one.”<br />
<br />
She was humoring me, and then sudden, for real: “The tanning salon.”<br />
<br />
“The tanning salon?”<br />
<br />
“They put off all the lights, and I’m alone in that hum and away from the kids... I just forget everything else and let my mind go.”<br />
<br />
“And what do you daydream about?”<br />
<br />
“Hotels. In outer space.” She stood up and headed for the rest room and then, without a doubt: “Being on a spaceship alone, cruising through the stars."<br />
<br />
The grilled ham and cheese.. the grilled ham and cheese was delicious. <br />
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<br />
The waitress came over while I sat alone taking notes. She had a bold smile on her cheeks as she refilled my water glass: “And what about you? Where’s your safe place to daydream?”<br />
<br />
I looked up from my notebook, blinking, remembering where I was. I looked down at the wet ink drying on the words I had realized.<br />
<br />
“The empty page,” I said. I sat up straight.<br />
<br />
The waitress beamed, flipped the hair out of her face. “And what do you daydream about?”<br />
<br />
“Everything. All of it,” I said, noticing the jasmine in her eyes, admiring her slim fingers. <br />
<br />
“Without a doubt.”<br />
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<br />Sick Cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05328029727454505988noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1463583730374236440.post-37983846293440350052016-01-20T04:20:00.000-05:002016-01-21T17:17:38.316-05:00Let's Get Away For A While<br />
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<span style="color: #6aa84f;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">There’s a whole world out there,</span></b></span> a whole America, a country that once was, a country currently dying.<br />
<br />
Everything dies eventually.<br />
<br />
Right now there are mermaids, in Aquarama, and spring training baseball, and the Overseas Highway as it unrolls to the Florida Keys, with miles of warm pastel sunsets, palm trees pausing to catch their breath, and as you drive out of Miami and away from the monster noises you lose all your history natural.<br />
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<br />
Sometimes the magic of a chili dog at a roadside stand is that it makes you sick. But in a good way.<br />
<br />
The highway has its own current. It pulls you, Your Honor. The Pacific Northwest is everything they say it is- flannel is for real- and the smell of the sawdust at the mills is better morning food than coffee.<br />
<br />
She turned to me in line at the pharmacy while we buy bicarb effervescent, and “Let’s stick to real restaurants the rest of the way,” and I nodded even though I knew we were both lying. There were pictures to be taken, highway exits to be missed... there were license plates to be collected.<br />
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<br />
Right now it’s time to take your time, let California tour you, through wine country, through endless weeks of endless summer, to taste the black and red of the grape crush slow and good while it spill easy over your lips and insides. There are no phone numbers in the Napa Valley.<br />
<br />
The day is crisp. A toast.<br />
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<br />
<br />
While we’re young. While our states are still united. While we can still taste the double cheeseburger.<br />
<br />
Okay I’ll shut up.<br />
<br />
For a while. <br />
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<br />
<br />
I’m thinking about doing this again, and I’m thinking of taking you with me. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.<br />
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<br />
<br />
One thing I have learned in my travels is that America is powered by double A batteries.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Day 42:</span> Is this place a dream?<br />
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">GUY SITTING NEXT TO ME ON BUS:</span> “Yup.”<br />
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<br />
I love her. I’m pretty sure she loves me. We’re traveling across the country this winter, to see the world, to escape the solstice, to say goodbye to America, to pledge our allegiance, and we start every morning with a kiss to seal our vows.<br />
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We’re off to see America. And we’ll send you a postcard from everyplace we get.<br />
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<br />Sick Cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05328029727454505988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1463583730374236440.post-84465751139744163542016-01-16T04:20:00.000-05:002016-01-16T08:05:17.297-05:00Wilford Brimley for Jolt Cola<br />
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<span style="color: magenta;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">Life. </span></b></span>It’s like a kick to the teeth while your neighbor violates your daughter’s private places. In this crazy town you need an elixir.<br />
<br />
<br />
I got your elixir.<br />
<br />
<br />
Jolt Cola. Suck it up like liquid fire while I violate your daughter’s private places.<br />
<br />
<br />
Jolt Cola. Because cocaine ain’t legal yet.<br />
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<br />Sick Cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05328029727454505988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1463583730374236440.post-6086870772767186012016-01-06T04:20:00.000-05:002016-02-01T21:16:18.454-05:00Tuesday Morning In Hadleyville<br />
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><b><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The bullet</span></span></span></b> sprung loose from the bank robber’s gun, travel stray ricochet out the front door, hit the steel spittoon outside the barbershop, made the metal pot wobble on the rough wood walkway, ma<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">k</span>e it tilt, tumble like a ten pin, the black slush po<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">u</span>ring out, soaking the steps, the horses tied at the hitch look up and complain out loud.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Deputy Varmin run into the Sheriff’s office, clutch his hat to his head. “Sheriff! They’re here! They’re doing it! They’re robbing the Hadleyville Bank! Bart Fargo and his gang!”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Sheriff Busser took a deep breath, sit back in the old wooden chair at his desk. It creaked slow as he tilted, the aural ache of an elderly man standing up under Arizona sun.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Sheriff Busser looked back blank at Deputy Varmin.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">“Did you hear me Enos? Bart Fargo is robbing the bank.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">“Now just hold on, Floyd, hold your horses...” Sheriff Busser slipped his thumbs into the belt loops of his coarse fabric pants.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">“You calm yourself, Floyd. I want you to take a good gasp of air and get collected. Panic don’t do nobody any good.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Varmin obliged, inhaling and exhaling exaggerated. The eyebrows of his thin angular face forming a tension-filled V. He tried again. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">“Sheriff Busser: Bart Fargo's back. He musta broke out. He and his gang just rode into town. They went straight for the Hadleyville Bank. They’re in there right now, just across the street. They’re robbing the bank. Right now.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Sheriff Busser pulled a cigar sloppy-rolled from an envelope on his desk. He brought it under his nose and sniffed. “Real Carolina tobacco. My brother in law Percy bring it in from Raleigh.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Sheriff Busser put the stogie between his lips, begin to gum it slow. Deputy Varmin watched him in disbelief.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">“The Bart Fargo gang-”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Busser winced like a wasp had stung his backside. Floyd Varmin looked away. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Sheriff Busser pulled a match out his desk drawer, struck it against the desktop, lit his cigar slow, the dry tobacco making audible crackle as it sizzle under the flame.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The Sheriff inhaled, letting the rich smoke fill his lungs. “Nothing like a good cigar in the morning time.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">"Sheriff..."</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">"I find I enjoy the simple pleasures much more as I get older: a fine-rolled cigar, a good brandy... the touch of a whore as she makes a sandwich of her womanhood..."</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">"Womanhood?"</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">"I learned how to shoe a horse just last week. Wyatt the smithee show me: how to tack the nails into the hoof. It's tricky work but I like it. I find it... satisfying."</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">"Sheriff..."</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">"He fought at the Alamo, ya know. Wyatt the smithee." </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">“Sheriff Busser... the bank...</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">“Now Floyd...” he began, a gust of smoke filling the room between them, “the word on the street is that Bart Fargo’s gang come into town.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">“I know. I’m the one what told you.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Gunshots could be heard just outside.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">“And as I hear it Bart Fargo and his gang are robbing the Hadleyville Bank. You know anything about this?”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">“You mean that thing what I told you? Just now?”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">“Some people say it’s just a rumor.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">“It ain’t no goddamn rumor... yeah Bart Fargo’s gang come into town. They come into town and they’re robbing the goddamned Hadleyville Bank is what I’m telling you!”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">“That’s what you say,” said Sheriff Busser, and then, “Isn’t this Hadleyville's problem?”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Deputy Varmin took off his hat. “THIS <b>IS</b> HADLEYVILLE!”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Sheriff Busser took another long drag off his cigar, the dense smoke making fog. “That’s what you say.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">A gun fired and a woman screamed from the bank across the street.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">“Sheriff... we gotta do something.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">“Now I don’t know about you but I reckon we ought to do something about this.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">For a long moment neither man spoke.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Varmin finally exploded: “Well what are we gonna do?!?”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">“About what?” Busser’s handlebar mustache gave him the droopy surrender of a walrus eating scrambled eggs. “You’re more riled than a polecat on payday. More jumpy than a squirrel on Easter Sunday."”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">“Sheriff... what in Jesus’ name is wrong with you? Bart Fargo is robbing the goddamn Hadleyville Bank! Across the street! Right now!”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Sheriff Busser sat forward, suddenly aware. There was a steel-fire in his eyes and Floyd could see the old man's heart was pounding hard. The Sheriff stiffened, his hands on his desk, palms down on the knotty wood. He had reached a decision.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">“I think I’ll have beans for lunch.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Deputy Varmin: “Awww for shit’s sake!”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Sheriff Busser stared into the cigar smoldering, laying it down in his ashtray as Deputy Varmin pulled his gun and walked outside toward the bank. The lit tobacco dwindled lazy.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">“Sometime I just like to watch it burn,” Sheriff Busser said to no one in particular.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Bart Fargo sent him a postcard.</span><br />
<br />Sick Cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05328029727454505988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1463583730374236440.post-82621916543628668912016-01-04T04:20:00.000-05:002016-01-04T12:51:53.653-05:00A Long Time Ago<br />
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<span style="color: #bf9000;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #bf9000;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span class="im">It is a time of corporate oppression. Fascism has quietly taken the
country in its hands and holds it in its vicious grip. Motion pictures
are rebooted to feed the consumer assembly lines, and childhood memories
are auctioned to the highest bidder.</span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #bf9000;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span class="im"></span>The Empire has overtaken
its own citizens, creating a new order of evil and permanent suspicion,
enslaving the masses through financial and social turmoil. All communication is monitored and recorded by the watchful
Imperial eye. <br /><br />The Empire- newly rejuvenated- moves to tighten
their stranglehold on the planet, but a small group of rebels has formed an
alliance, pledging their lives to the cause of the human condition. They fight from remote locations to hide their numbers.</span></span></span><br />
<div class="">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #bf9000;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span class="im"><div>
<br /></div>
These rebels
are the last hope for America, once the land of liberty and home of the
brave, in its struggle to break free and restore freedom to the galaxy...</span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #bf9000;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span class="im"> </span></span></span></span></div>
Sick Cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05328029727454505988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1463583730374236440.post-1168720519310799642015-12-31T04:20:00.000-05:002016-01-03T04:32:19.390-05:00Tough Lunches of the Twenty-First Century (Victory)<br />
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<br />
<b>Date:</b> January 31, 2015<br />
<b>Location:</b> USS Chowder Pot, Branford, CT.<br />
<br />
Sometime victory is hard to recognize.<br />
<br />
I took my baby out for clams, oysters and other aphrodisiacs from the ocean. I remember the smells: the sea and the sizzle and the spices of the gins and tonic. The old crinkle paper of the menus. I remember the grease stains.<br />
<br />
My girlfriend Rebecca, (don't call me Becky) she wanted to know why, why was I so insistent on this place- today. I told her it was nothing, just another overcast Thursday, just another lunch, but I was ready to tell my Rebecca (don't call me Becky) that I loved her and wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.<br />
<br />
Saying it out loud now it sounds insane- you either propose on your knees with a ring in your pocket or you just keep your mouth shut. But back then, back when I could conquer the world, I just had to say it. I had to say it out loud. I just had to tell Rebecca (don’t call me Becky) that I was in love with her.<br />
<br />
“Well I’m not in love with you.”<br />
<br />
The lobster came & I cracked shell. Melted butter oh my god. I think lobster is the sweetest meat. Of all the meats. In the ocean or the world.<br />
<br />
“This is too soon. Way too soon for that. I don’t even know you.”<br />
<br />
I took good to the scampi. My face was sunburn red. It’s better when you squeeze a lemon wedge.<br />
<br />
“I think you have issues- serious issues- and I think you’re trying to use me to escape them. I think you’re problematic. I think you’re fatally flawed.”<br />
<br />
Oysters they go down so easy. With that saltwater taste? The deliciousness. The deliciousness of the saltwater, the perfume of the maritime air. I wanted to sail someplace far away. The sound of the wind punching the sails.<br />
<br />
“I told you this wasn’t exclusive. I told you from the beginning. I’ve been seeing my ex and I’m sure you know we’ve been fucking. But it’s more than that... he gives me something that I don’t think you ever could.”<br />
<br />
The crab legs were seagull succulent, the scallions melt in my mouth, and when I took a bite of the clam chowder I could feel the sea spray misting my face from my place off the port bow.<br />
<br />
"I think I should get my stuff from your place tonight and give you some time to come down to Earth," said Rebecca (don't call me Becky) and she got up and left, her plate of tilapia untouched, and I don’t think I knew I was crying until the waitress sat down next to me. She was sweet, caring... I looked into her deep brown eyes as she held my hand and made sure I was okay.<br />
<br />
I was okay.<br />
<br />
It’s not everyday you get a lunch that good, or a waitress like that, like that Jackie, beautiful, my heart held gentle in her hands, her face filet of soul. I squeezed her hand back, just happy to be here, happy to be alive. <br />
<br />
We traded numbers and shared a shrimp cocktail.<br />
<br />Sick Cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05328029727454505988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1463583730374236440.post-69801116730945968122015-12-11T04:20:00.000-05:002016-01-04T12:53:59.252-05:00No Anchovies<br />
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<br />
<span style="color: #741b47;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Three cheers for the asshole</span></b></span> who says “No anchovies” when ordering a pizza, because we all know how often that sneaky pizza parlor man throws them on our pie without permission. Have you ever gotten a pizza with anchovies when you didn’t order them?<br />
<br />
Anyone?<br />
<br />
I’ll wait.<br />
<br />
The “No Anchovies” guy is the same guy who says “no vodka” when he’s ordering a beer.<br />
<br />
And what exactly do you people have against anchovies anyway? Did they kill your parents? Do they owe you money? Have you even <i>tried</i> them?<br />
<br />
I’ll let you in on a little secret. Come closer.<br />
<br />
Closer...<br />
<br />
Okay, that’s too close.<br />
<br />
The secret is that anchovies are my favorite pizza topping of all time. And the best.<br />
<br />
They’re tiny slivers of salty fish whose flavor compliments the cheese of the pizza. Set your mouth ablaze with flavor. Make the pie more juicy with flavor so flavorful you can’t pronounce the word flavor.<br />
<br />
Okay, I’ll grant you this: some pizza parlors glop them on in a care-less style, leaving you with chunks of fish too thick to enjoy. I can see someone trying them for the first time at a shitty restaurant and blaming the fish for the comatose cook. But if you specifically ask for them to be spread evenly, or buy a tin in the grocery store to add to your own homemade pizza- or even on a frozen pie- you will become addicted to the anchovy.<br />
<br />
You see, I’ve served homemade anchovy pie to dozens and dozens of people, and I don’t tell them they’re eating anchovies. Invariably I hear “Oh my god... this is the best pizza I’ve ever tasted.” I nod and say thank you.<br />
<br />
This pizza? The one you’ve been eating just now? There are anchovies on it. Would you like your fourth slice now or should I wrap it up so you can take it home with you?<br />
<br />
Smile and nod with me while we enjoy the salty seafood sensation. And we’ll all have a laugh at the “No Anchovies” guy. And remember: you were once afraid of pepperoni too.<br />
<br />
<br />
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Sick Cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05328029727454505988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1463583730374236440.post-65400454869973617452015-12-01T04:20:00.000-05:002016-01-25T09:47:59.154-05:00Sky Miles (Tender Hooks)<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: blue;"><b><br /></b></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: blue;"><b>Sleigh bells ring... I’m not listening.</b></span></span> We’re delayed at the gate with technical problems, something about GCU’s and repetitive maintenance, or maybe the pilot just had diarrhea. It is, after all, the holiday season, but while most people are making merry in the dark days of the solstice some of us have business to fly to. As we taxi the runway the flight staff pour some old Christmas music through our monitors, and although I refuse to plug in my headphones I can hear the jolly leaking out the earbuds of the other passengers: “You can do the job when you’re in town.” I don’t know which I hate more: work or Christmas. It’s too close to call.<br />
<br />
And soon enough, we’re all up in the air, above the land and taken to the holly heavens, flying high and wide, deep and crisp and even.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJTmadAABkI&list=RDDJTmadAABkI" target="_blank"><b>Twelve Drummers Drumming</b></a><br />
<br />
The people on the plane with me are mostly travelling to see family, carry-ons of gifts wrapped sparkle-bright and shiny, stray cats heading home for their annual bowl of Christmas cream, and they’re more than happy to share their plans with their seatmates and me. Everybody on board running at the mouth in holiday hush, like the woman beside me, an insurance salesperson, skirt short and sock-puppet personality: “I bought my son the hottest gift this year and I can’t wait to see the look on his face... it’s the iHog and he's gonna love it!"<br />
<br />
These things are the wonderful things we remember all through our lives. I smiled politely and poured my eggnog over her head.<br />
<br />
<b><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH5SawDVnG4" target="_blank">Eleven Pipers Piping</a></b><br />
<br />
Stoner kids hanging in the lobby of the Curtis Denver Hotel, and they’re looking at me and laughing as I check in, as if everything in the universe were some kind of cosmic joke. If they’re right I’m ready for the punchline. With my briefcase in my hand the bellboy grabs my bag and pilots the elevator Up- one of two complicated directional settings it took him weeks to master. Nat King Cole on the speaker overhead spooning sugar into my mouth in complete disregard of my Type 2 diabetes. If it’s been said many times, many ways, why bother saying it again? I gave the bellboy a dollar and punched him in the groin.<br />
<br />
<b><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwacxSnc4tI" target="_blank">Ten Lords A-Leaping</a></b><br />
<br />
In the conference room the next day the administrative assistants served ginger ale and cinnamon cookies on a tray lined with red felt. The sales numbers were served in red as well: insufficient quotas, failure to make targets, the inevitability of the upcoming audit in the next fiscal year. Jobs lost, holidays bleak. And the reason for our Colorado convening repeated in our open ears: a plea from the executives to salvage these final days, to get out and meet the customers, to beg and hustle and lock in orders for the new year which we could mark as pre-sold. Jose Feliciano kept saying “Feliz Navidad” in a song whose title currently escapes me. I threw up in the corporate urinal.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM70hBp2Fjk" target="_blank"><b>Nine Ladies Dancing</b></a><br />
<br />
Ethan of Cheekbone, a fuzzy-faced lounge musician, a manchild who would be beaten to a pulp if he ever left the soft and chilly town of Denver and crossed over the New York State line, was singing groovy Christmas songs on his acoustic guitar at the back of the bar. <br />
<br />
He was wearing a turtleneck.<br />
<br />
"Holy infant so tender & mild..." he sang half-ass molasses in slo-mo, and I and my fellow salesman drowned him out as the corporate-rented escort girls provided us with drinks and personalized entertainment. They did their job, all squish and jiggle, and as I zipped up I got a piece of tinsel caught in my fly. My company may be dying slow, my business a lost art, but the old boys back at corporate can still throw a party. As I pulverized Ethan’s guitar against the wall I reminded myself to come back to “Phil’s Bar” if I was ever in town again. I wouldn’t be.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87q5dmW6zDg" target="_blank"><b>Eight Maids A-Milking</b></a><br />
<br />
Back at the hotel I felt a mystical tingle in my belly, a feeling that comes from the kinship of all mankind at holiday time. Or I else I just had to take an epic holiday dump. Fake Paul provided the soundtrack as I made my daily foul on the toidy. “Simply having a wonderful Christmastime.” Flush.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMhMekfIyos" target="_blank"><b>Seven Swans A-Swimming</b></a><br />
<br />
Seven year-old kid at the mall pelts me with snowballs as I walk in the toy store to buy gifts for my own monsters at home. The place is a madhouse as Vince Guaraldi pounds out “Linus & Lucy.” There are tiny terrors roaming the aisles all over the place, a sly grin on their face as they point to the most expensive items and sigh to their helpless parents: “I sure do wish SANTA would get that for me…” Wink. Twinkle. Gag. On my way out I threw an icy rock at the seven year-old Cy Young. He went right over but the snow cushioned his fall.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6zypc_LhnM" target="_blank"><b>Six Geese A-Laying</b></a><br />
<br />
I really like that Bruce Springsteen song where he says “Santa Claus is coming to town” about seven thousand times. Slapped my cab driver for his choice in music and for smelling like holiday wine. Yule, baby. Big Yule.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xOe4GRyebo" target="_blank"><b>Five Golden Rings</b></a><br />
<br />
Another meeting, another unhappy customer who doesn’t want me in his office. He doesn’t like sales reps making unannounced calls and he has no time “what with the holidays in full swing.” (I’m guessing that has something to do with the open Victoria’s Secret catalog on his desk, but I’m not sure how.) He gets his revenge on me by serving cheese cubes and blasting the Chipmunks Christmas song, and the high-harmony bores directly to the center of my skull, reverberating in perpetuity for the rest of eternity. He’s in a bright Christmas sweater that obliterates my retinas as he studies my sales spreadsheet with furrowed brow.<br />
<br />
"I'm gonna say yes... but not today." <br />
<br />
Well-played, you merry motherfucker.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rnPHlOHb7g" target="_blank"><b>Four Calling Birds</b></a><br />
<br />
The Denver office holds its Christmas party, which might be fun, except I don’t know any of the assholes in the Denver office. That doesn’t stop the execs and salespeople from making soul boogie to “Holly Jolly Christmas,” and “Jingle Bell Rock,” which is even more pathetic than it sounds. No longer is liquor allowed in the office building so the suits and skirts go down in shifts to the bar across the street, with hired taxis on hand shuttling them the hundred paces and back, getting plaster-flabbergast on Christmas cheer and boilermakers. So it’s some to this.<br />
<br />
I have accomplished nothing on this trip except getting away from my wife and kids for a week. It’s been a joy but that still won’t stop me from sighing, looking sad, and telling people how hard it is to be on the road during the most wonderful time of the year, away from the people that I love. Hey, I’m an asshole. In the copy room an administrative aide is gleefully scanning her heinie into a group email with her pantyhose around her ankles. We high-five and she gives me her Santa hat. Kiss her once for me.<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6scK5HLdh1o" target="_blank"><br /></a>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6scK5HLdh1o" target="_blank"><b>Three French Hens</b></a><br />
<br />
I stopped off at the local Church for a Christmas Eve mass. Because I don’t know why. There’s something exciting about experiencing Christmas alone. And when I say exciting I mean terrifying. Everybody is coupled off on this night, everybody in pairs and trios, quartets and more, even the Wise Men never travelled alone. The stature, the solemn, the scope of the service stirs in me a deep ache in which I feel that something missing, something that’s been missing all along, something everybody else gets, something I’ll never have. Is it soul? Was there Jesus? Am I fool to believe?<br />
<br />
The boy’s choir sang Carol of the Bells while the priest moaned and bleated, gloating like a child molester at a Boy Scout picnic. He knows that on this night he is the only show in town, and he parades and preens the stage just like a diva. I want to drown him in the holy water.<br />
<br />
As I walked back to my hotel I saw a couple coming out of a liquor store holding bags of Christmas wine and while they smiled I burst into tears.<br />
<br />
<b><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LiccvcXdeI" target="_blank">Two Turtle Doves</a></b><br />
<br />
Turtles can’t fly you shitfuck.<br />
<br />
Back on the plane and headed home again. I’ll get there eventually if these wings hold up. I hate my job. I hate the holidays. I hate Christmas. I hate the noise. I hate the pain. I hate the gifts, the food, the memory of life when it was simple and I was free, the knowledge that I’ll never be back there again. I hate pretending to care about my customers. I hate the meetings. I hate the season, I hate these short days of no sun, but I fought it as I always do: work, kids, the wife, shopping trips, taxicabs, powerpoint, wrapping paper, neck tie, mistletoe, and the smell of potpourri. The shine of Vitamin D. The love you feel for me. The ache of the absentee. The dreams of what might be.<br />
<br />
Oh yeah. And a partridge in a pear tree.<br />
<br />
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<br />Sick Cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05328029727454505988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1463583730374236440.post-86357807876979242392015-11-30T04:20:00.000-05:002015-11-30T05:37:15.594-05:00Johnny At The Fair<br />
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<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #3d85c6;">Oh</span> <span style="color: orange;">boy</span>!</b></span> Could it really be? There were big signs on the horizon. Hurrah! It’s the World’s Fair! Little Johnny was straining his neck from the backseat of the station wagon trying to get a look at all the terrific sights. Mr. Henderson was patiently looking for a space in the lot, and Mrs. Henderson was chattering on, something about safety and manners and all that corny jazz.<br />
<br />
Wow, there was the Mondosphere, and the Imagination Pavillion, and the Atomic Tent of Tomorrow! It was just like the brochure Johnny stole from the school library- this place must be the most fun place of all the places in the world! Hurry up, Pop, and find a spot already!<br />
<br />
It was almost as if Mr. Henderson heard what Johnny was thinking, because he just then pulled the family car into a clean parking space with bright white lines. Mrs. Henderson was gathering her pocketbook and telling Johnny something about “comportment,” (huh?) but by then Johnny had broken out of the car and was already running the length of the gravel lot toward the steel-enforced perimeter gates.<br />
<br />
He peered inside the chain link fence. Zowee, there’s clowns and crazy magic inside! And huge buildings, full of mystery and fantastic things! There were scores and scores of happy peoples walking together in their summer clothes and riding trams around the grounds. And the eats! Why, there must be a booth from every country in the world inside, chock full of yum-yum vittles and- Oh, hurry up, Pop, and bring that billfold! It isn’t fair to make a boy wait.<br />
<br />
It took Mr. and Mrs. Henderson forever to reach the front gates. Pop told Johnny to quiet down, and he looked so very tired. After admission had been paid and hands had been stamped, Little Johnny was at last inside.<br />
<br />
He was speechless. The fairgrounds spread out as far as his eyes could see. He couldn’t read the big sign above him, but boy it was tall and grand and must have been made out of a hundred light bulbs. He pinched Mother’s calf and pointed towards it.<br />
<br />
Mrs. Henderson let out a yell- Johnny had pinched too hard- and then crouched down to him. “Why, that sign, Johnny? It says ‘World’s Fair and Science Expo- A Flight To The Future.’”<br />
<br />
Johnny didn’t know what all that meant, but he sure was ready to start seeing the sights. Pop had a different plan in mind.<br />
<br />
“Stay close and honest, Johnny,” said Pop with a smile, “We’ll take our time and see everything together.”<br />
<br />
Oh no, this would never do. Little Johnny could tell that there were a thousand super things to do and Mom and Pop would just slow him down; they were old and weak, and their souls were broken and hollow.<br />
<br />
Johnny looked up at Mother. She looked as if she were having another of her headaches. Her face was stretched tight and her eyes were shut and her fingers were on her temples. Too bad, Mom. Then Johnny turned to face Pop. He seemed to be staring at a girl about Johnny’s age. He was looking at her real funny, and then licking his lips. Grownups never have any fun.<br />
<br />
What if Johnny could get out on his own? To see the fair for himself without Mom and Pop slowing him down? The idea was so exciting to Johnny that his heart skipped a beat. Then a wonderful idea occurred to him: 'How can I distract Mom and Pop so that I can get away unnoticed?' Johnny took a moment to think, and soon the answer came.<br />
<br />
There was a teenage boy with a pushcart selling hot dogs. The boy’s face was funny- all oily and covered in red spots. Maybe it was from selling hot dogs? Mom was still rubbing her head and Pop was still looking at the little girl funny. Johnny saw his chance. He tugged on Pop’s trousers but Pop didn’t notice- he looked like he was in a trance- and it took a few moments before he finally saw Johnny pointing at the cart. Pop shook his head hard and turned.<br />
<br />
“You want a beef sausage, do you?"<br />
<br />
Little Johnny nodded. Pop knelt down.<br />
<br />
“You know, Johnny, not only do frankfurters taste great, they’re great for you, too. Why, each one is chocked full of supplements and vitaminerals, all the nutritious meat a growing boy needs.”<br />
<br />
Mr. Henderson pulled a half-dollar out of his pocket and handed it to Johnny.<br />
<br />
“There you are, son. Fill that little belly with everything good and true. ” He beamed at Johnny, his white teeth gleaming in the morning sun, “and add a little mustard for me.”<br />
<br />
Pop could be so silly sometimes. Johnny watched his folks take a seat on a bench. Finally, he thought, my chance has come.<br />
<br />
Little Johnny ran over to the pushcart. The Vendor straightened his cap and looked down at Johnny.<br />
<br />
“Well, hello there young man!” he said in a squeaky voice, “What can I get y-”<br />
<br />
Little Johnny punched the Vendor in the groin as hard as he could. The teenager fell forward and clutched his specialness, his cap falling off while his head hit the asphalt. Johnny got a grip on the pushcart and mustered all his might, heaving the wagon top ways. It went over easy, and soon the steaming frankfurter broth was spilling out over the pavement. The frankfurters themselves spilled out too, flopping and quivering like fish on dry land. The crowd nearby was hopping around the mess, trying to avoid the gliding wieners. The Vendor was still bent over, and was screaming funny.<br />
<br />
Like a little girl, thought Johnny. But this was not time for laughter- there was work to be done.<br />
<br />
Mr. and Mrs. Henderson both rose and came running toward the scene. Mr. Henderson’s face was turning that bright red color it got when he was getting ready to spank Johnny. Mrs. Henderson’s face was stretched tighter than ever; she was trying to pick up wieners as she ran, but they were slippery, and she was having a time of it.<br />
<br />
Now for the piece de resistance! Johnny grabbed the change pouch from around the Vendor’s waist and threw it to the ground with a mighty clank.<br />
<br />
<b>Spin! Coin! Hooray!</b> There was money everywhere, and greedy fair-goers came rushing in, scooping up all the loose nickels and change and creating quite a stir. Mr. Henderson was trampled in the shuffle and Mrs. Henderson was knocked to her bottom by a Chinaman chasing a dime, but by that time Johnny was gone long-gone.<br />
<br />
Oh, the glorious things to see! Little Johnny skipped through the crowd with a light feeling and a song in his heart. Where to first? Straight ahead was the Sports Complex, and Johnny, who was always fond of baseball, ran towards the round building.<br />
<br />
“Step right up to the Sports Complex,” said the old man standing out front. He was so old Johnny was surprised that the Lord hadn’t taken him yet. “The games of today and the innovations of tomorrow!”<br />
<br />
Johnny wasn’t sure what ‘innervations’ were, but he stood up from his crouch and politely nodded his thanks to the old-timer. “Hello, Junior… please come inside- and try a bottle of our new Pitch Cola,” he handed Johnny a bottle. “Extra caffeine and bonus sugar to give a growing boy all the energy he needs.” Johnny took a sip: his eyeballs fell out their sockets and onto the concrete, where they bounced back up into his head as steam shot out of his ears. Johnny took the rest of the bottle in one swulp and gave the old fellow a thumbs-up!<br />
<br />
The old man gave Johnny a smile, turned, and fell flat on his face. His glasses were cracked and his face was cut up something awful by the spiky shards. Little Johnny wondered if this had anything to do with him having tied the man’s shoelaces together, but that was a parable for another day- he had made his way into the Sports Complex.<br />
<br />
Inside, Johnny saw a fantastic display of sports inventions, fitness machines, and health equipment that looked like they came out of Captain Video! There was a man riding a stationary bicycle stuck to the ceiling, and a woman with an exercise belt around her waist that was vibrating so hard her giant joombahs were going jibjab.<br />
<br />
He started toward the baseball display- there was a new bat that looked like it was made out of metal! He wanted to swing that bat, and maybe hit a home run. Suddenly, Johnny stopped.<br />
<br />
A girl about his age picked up the bat and began to play with it. Who was this girl? Her bright blond hair was tied in thick pigtails that hung out over her shoulders. Her little pug nose was jammed up into her face, and she had a pretty smile that showed off her white-<br />
<br />
No, no, though Johnny, what am I saying? This is all wrong! That girl is playing with MY bat! I wanted to play with that, thought Johnny.<br />
<br />
The girl’s mother walked by and put her hand on the bat. “Now, Kelly,” her Mother said, “you behave while I go find your father. Share, and be kind to everyone you meet.”<br />
<br />
“I will,” Kelly grunted, as her Mother walked off.<br />
<br />
So, Kelly thinks she is the Queen on the World, hah? Not if Little Johnny had anything to say about it. A plan quickly came to him: If he yanked on her pigtails hard enough, maybe she would cry and drop the bat in confusion. Yes, if he timed it just right-<br />
<br />
Johnny was suddenly whisked away. Someone picked him up and oh, the commotion! He didn’t even have any time to bite or wet- he was plunked down on the lap of none other than Joe Striketop, the most famous football player in the USA. Joe smiled and shook Johnny’s hand. What a fix for a young boy! They were on a small podium, surrounded by newspaper photographers taking their pictures and yelling out things that Johnny thought were silly, like “Is that boy your new starting quarterback, Joe?” and “Someone went crazy at the hot dog stand!”<br />
<br />
Johnny wanted out. The flashbulbs were beginning to agitate him and he could see himself doing horrible things unless he got away from here. But there was a speech to be heard, and Little Johnny sighed and put his hand to his face as Joe Striketop started to declare.<br />
<br />
“Thank you, thank you, one and all. Well, it sure is good to be up here at the World’s Fair, where I can witness the games of today and the innovations of tomorrow! I sure am looking forward to the inaugural season of Frisbee-Ball! But I hope it doesn’t become more popular than good old football!”<br />
<br />
People were applauding- what was wrong with them? Joe had more to say.<br />
<br />
“Firstly, I would like to thank all of my loyal fans who have stopped by- I will be signing autographs this afternoon in the Hall of Illumination. Second, I would like to invite all of you- young and old- to join me on my Journey To Physical Wonderfulness!”<br />
<br />
Johnny looked up. Joe needed a shave… and he smelled like sauerkraut.<br />
<br />
Joe gestured to Johnny. “Now, this boy here has already started the journey- he’s one of my biggest fans. His name is Jimmy. And Jimmy knows just what it is that makes Joe Striketop such a winner. Striketop Energy Tonic! Yes, each bottle is brimming with vitality and triumph! Enough to help a boy of Jimmy’s size take on the entire offensive line!”<br />
<br />
Again, some of the reporters laughed, but Johnny didn’t know why. Where was this Jimmy person?<br />
<br />
“So Jimmy,” said Striketop to Johnny, “if you’re going to start drinking Energy Tonic, can we expect to see you in the Football Championships?”<br />
<br />
Now the reporters were looking at Johnny. Who was this Jimmy they kept talking about? There seemed like a hundred microphones and cameras all aimed at Johnny, and it finally got to be too much for a unbalanced lad to take. Johnny whacked his corrective shoe into Striketop’s shin. That got him! Striketop winced, shattering a bottle of Energy Tonic as he bent to clutch his leg. Johnny slipped off the stage and snuck through the crowd. The reporters were shooting even more pictures now, and Joe Striketop was screaming the skunk words that Papa used when Johnny left his roller-skates on the stairs.<br />
<br />
Oh well, where to next?<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * *</div>
<br />
Back at the entrance gate, things were not looking good. One of the officials from the Fair had arrived in a dark suit and was talking to Mr. and Mrs. Henderson in a quiet voice. Mr. Henderson pulled out his checkbook and started writing. Mrs. Henderson helped the Vendor right his pushcart.<br />
<br />
When the man from the Fair had gone away, Mrs. Henderson looked around and began to get hysterical. She turned to Mr. Henderson.<br />
<br />
“Oh no! Johnny’s gone! Oh, he’s run off again!”<br />
<br />
“Quiet!” snapped Mr. Henderson.<br />
<br />
“But what will we do? There must be fifty thousand people at this Fair! Little Johnny could have been kidnapped by a villain, or perhaps he’s become acquainted with dynamite!”<br />
<br />
“Shut up,” replied Mr. Henderson, “Do you want to burst another blood vessel?”<br />
<br />
Mrs. Henderson held her breath to stop the panic, and her face began to turn deep blue.<br />
<br />
“We are going to look calmly and patiently for our son. We are going to stay together and stay calm. We are going to keep our dignity. And when I find Johnny, I am going to paddle his bottom to a glowing ‘hot-coal’ red.”<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * *</div>
<br />
It must have been dark in the Sports Complex, because it sure was bright coming out! It took Little Johnny’s eyes a few moments to adjust to the blinding sun in the clear afternoon sky. Then something caught his eye- another big sign, and Johnny had no time to read it. The building behind it was shaped like a rocket ship, and there was a man out front screaming, “Come to the Space Complex, and behold the wonders of the galaxy!”<br />
<br />
Oh boy! Inside there were model rocket ships and deep-space jetpacks and a wax model of an alien from another planet, which kind of looked a little like Nana. A man in a spacesuit was signing autographs next to a sign with letters, which Johnny had no time to read. He pointed at it and punched a gentleman in the knee.<br />
<br />
“Why the sign? The sign says ‘Meet Buzz Cracklin, the first astronologist to orbit the Earth in a space capsule.’ He rubbed his aching joint and walked on.<br />
<br />
Getting people to read these signs sure is a pain in the neck, thought Johnny. Maybe I should spend more time in my reading primer and less time pulling the girls’ hair.<br />
<br />
Nahh!<br />
<br />
Buzz Cracklin was preening and parading like he had just won the World Series of Baseball: “By the year 1979 every home will have its own nuclear reactor to power your light switches, blender-sinks, & robo-butlers… and the space-age will bring you some of the most delicious food you’ve ever tasted: food pills, dehydrated milkshakes, & powdered toast. And families will take their Summer vacations on the planet Venus!”<br />
<br />
Cracklin pulled a sheet off an easel to reveal a posterboard with a picture of a planet on it.<br />Everyone in the crowd said, “Ooooh…”<br />
<br />
Cracklin pointed to the planet: “This is Venus!”<br />
<br />
The audience said, “Ahhhhh….” and then broke out in a round of applause. Were these people from Venus?<br />
<br />
Johnny licked his lips- suddenly he wanted another bottle of Pitch Cola- he wasn’t addicted! He snuck up behind Buzz and pulled his pants down.<br />
<br />
<b>Mercury! Gravity! Blast off!</b> Buzz Cracklin must have gotten his laundry mixed up with his wife’s, because he was wearing pink girl’s underpants- like a girl! The crowd started to laugh as Cracklin’s face went the color of five volcanoes. Johnny would have to laugh later- there were other sights to see. He slipped out the door as Buzz tried to pull up his garter belt.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * *</div>
<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Henderson were searching the Fair Grounds for Johnny.<br />
<br />
“Johnny,” his Mother pleaded, “come out, come out, wherever you are.” And then, “Olly olly oxen free.”<br />
<br />
Mr. Henderson stopped walking and turned to face her: “What the hell does that mean?”<br />
<br />
“Oh, we’ve simply got to find him…”<br />
<br />
Mr. Henderson started walking again. “I told you we shouldn’t bring him to the Fair.”<br />
<br />
“No,” Mrs. Henderson corrected him, “you said that we should kill him. I said we shouldn’t bring him to the fair.”<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * *</div>
<br />
Johnny was walking the fairgrounds and enjoying the beautiful day. He couldn’t find the old man who gave him the cola. He was probably dead or busy. The flags of every nation lined the great mall surrounding the Mondosphere- Johnny never knew there were so many places! He wondered if even the President had been to all of them!<br />
<br />
Just then a man shouted: “The Hall of Medicide and Pharmasupicals! Come one, come all, and come witness the wonderful world of chemistry!”<br />
<br />
The pitch man was standing in front of a wonderful dome-shaped building with a long line of people in front. Johnny didn’t feel like waiting so he cut the line and got inside fast. It was marvelous! There were doctorcologists and scienticians in white lab coats handing out free pills for everyone, and little tubes and a map of the human body (the inside with all the squishy parts) and a wheelchair with fins like a car! ‘I wanna be a quadriplegic when I grow up,’ thought Johnny. He took a bunch of pills from each of the bins and ate them up<br />
<br />
There was a large red blob in a glass case. The man looking at it put his arms around his two little boys and said, “That’s a cow’s heart, kids.” Yucko! Who wants to eat that?<br />
<br />
A swarm of people was gathering around a small stage. Say, let’s go see the show!<br />
<br />
Johnny hustled his way to the front of the crowd just in time. The lights dimmed, and the small curtains parted.<br />
<br />
An announcer’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “Welcome ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, to the Wonderful World of Chemistry. What medical marvels await us in the coming years? Doctor Anton Stopzak will tell you.”<br />
<br />
A man came out of the curtains, much smaller than the voice had described. He had a black bowl haircut and a little square mustache. He was wearing glasses and a white lab coat, and he talked with a funny accent.<br />
<br />
“Hello. My name is Doctor Stopzak. I am a medical doctor and geneticist specializing in the treatment of the neurologically impaired. The symptoms of the mentally-ill are easy to recognize- comas, blackouts, self-gratification… soon we will have a cure for all these ailments. Today we stand at the feet of a giant breakthrough in humanology: one day the average man might live to be sixty-five years old.”<br />
<br />
The crowd was cheering, but Johnny didn’t quite get it. Who was this guy, just making things up and talking as if he were so smart? For Johnny, the show was over. This place was boring!<br />
<br />
Something snapped inside of Johnny, and he smiled his devious smile. He reached out and yanked the cow’s heart right out of the display- it was mushy- and threw it into the crowd. What a stinker!<br />
<br />
<b>Splat! Gush! Organ!</b> There were shouts of surprise and shock from the crowd, and Johnny thought he heard someone going throw-up. That was different! Everyone was screaming things like, “Let me out!” and “Someone went crazy at the hot dog stand!”<br />
<br />
Just then, a loud whistle blew.<br />
<br />
It was a frightening sound, like a monster makes frightening sounds. Johnny didn’t know much about monsters, except what he had heard from the kids at school. He knew they were big, mostly, and that they liked to eat little children such as himself. He had never seen a monster, except in illustrations, and Johnny was afraid of what might happen if he met up with one.<br />
<br />
But this didn’t seem to be a monster. This was a big man at the entrance to the building holding a net on the end of a long pole. He had a lot of muscles, more than even Joe Striketop! He was wearing a white shirt and white short pants, and a white cap. His eyes were covered by a pair of shiny sun spectacles. He looked angry. He blasted his whistle again, and the entire crowd became still, turning to face him. He opened his mouth and the whistle fell to the string around his neck.<br />
<br />
No one made a sound.<br />
<br />
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentleman. I am sorry to disturb this portion of the World’s Fair. I’m from Behavior Control. We’ve had a few… disturbances today and we’re trying to find the culprit so that we might apprehend him and humiliate him. Are there any children in here unsupervised… that is, any children without their parents?”<br />
<br />
Uh-oh.<br />
<br />
“We have reason to believe that some of the mayhem that has occurred here at the Fair today is the direct result of one young child, so I ask again: Are there any children in here without their parents?”<br />
<br />
No one spoke.<br />
<br />
“Would every child please go and stand by their Mother or Father, please? Orphans and step-children lay face down on the floor.”<br />
<br />
There was a great shuffling about in the room, and when it was done, every child was standing close to their parents. Some of them were clutching their folks in fear, afraid of what might happen if the Man took them away.<br />
<br />
The man took a few slow steps into the room. He was studying every face in the crowd, looking for something out of place, looking for a child to take with him. His whistle swayed back and forth with every step he took, and none of the children were looking directly at him.<br />
<br />
There were many children, but they all seemed to be with parents. Perhaps this wasn’t the place after all.<br />
<br />
Little Johnny was almost a half-mile away, having sensed trouble at the sound of the whistle. Oh, what a great adventure this Fair was, he thought, and he took a moment to look at the brand new baseball stadium that had just been built outside the grounds. He wondered if he would ever hit a home run.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * *</div>
<br />
Mr. and Mrs. Henderson were trudging through the fairgrounds. It was getting hot, and they were both regretting their choice of flannel. They split up so they could find Johnny faster. No luck. After a while Mrs. Henderson started looking for her husband. Now she couldn’t find him! Oh, what bad luck.<br />
<br />
There’s Mr. Henderson! He’s kneeling down talking to a little girl. Mrs. Henderson watched him for a moment. What could they be talking about? Mr. Henderson was making gestures with his hands, but Mrs. Henderson couldn’t tell what they meant. If only she were home watching her stories!<br />
<br />
After another minute, she approached Mr. Henderson and the girl.<br />
<br />
“Why, that isn’t Johnny!” said Mrs. Henderson.<br />
<br />
Mr. Henderson rose, his face bright red. The girl ran off into the crowd so quickly Mrs. Henderson could almost hear the ZOOM!<br />
<br />
“I know that wasn’t Johnny,” said Mr. Henderson, “but I thought perhaps she had seen the boy.”<br />
<br />
They walked on for a while after that, stopping briefly at the music venue to hear the jazz combo play. “What a swinging group!” Mrs. Henderson said, “Man, that sax was blowing wild!”<br />
<br />
“Shut up,” said Mr. Henderson. They continued on, pausing momentarily to have a meal at the Italian Food restaurant. After the meal Mr. Henderson sipped on his cappuccino slowly, wondering what type of mess Johnny had gotten himself into this time.<br />
<br />
The boy’s outburst was nothing new. Many an afternoon had Johnny’s parents sat in the schoolhouse, facing a twisted stump of a woman with wooden teeth and a rat-hair wig, who would complain bitterly:<br />
<br />
“Little Johnny just isn’t applying himself… he has a head full of bad ideas and a belly full of sweets. God must have been blinking when Little Johnny was born.”<br />
<br />
Mrs. Henderson was thinking of Little Johnny, too. Every boy does his fair share of funny business, but Johnny was more than a handful! Throwing rocks at badgers was one thing, but running away from your own Mother… what could she do?<br />
<br />
“Boys will be boys,” she said out loud.<br />
<br />
“I thought I told you to shut up,” said Mr. Henderson. He smiled at the waitress and motioned for the check.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * *</div>
<br />
As Little Johnny wandered he began to get that dizzy feeling he got whenever he was hungry- or maybe those pills were making him gonzo. Say, there’s lots of wonderful eats here- grub from every corner of the globe! But what Johnny really wanted was a hamburger sandwich and some french-fried potatoes! Mmmm… and catsup, too! He still had Pop’s half-dollar, now all he had to do was find the hamburger hut.<br />
<br />
Just then Johnny looked up to see the ice cream stand. There were scores of children eating the most delicious flavors! Hawaiian Cherry! Jamocha Butter Fudge Swirl! Blackberry Delight! Blueberry Surprise! Orange Blossom Special! Double scoop! Triple scoop! With shots and jimmies and butterscotch sauce!<br />
<br />
Shazbots! This was too good to be true!<br />
<br />
That girl Kelly from the Sports Complex was here. She was standing there in front of him with her big double-scoop ice cream cone. Chocolate to boot! Look at those two scoops, shining under the bright sun and looking oh so tasty. Johnny licked his lips. Why did Kelly get to have it? No, doggone it, this just wasn’t right! Johnny wanted it for himself. He began to think of a plan to get her cone, but those pills had made his mind fuzzy.<br />
<br />
Before he knew what he was doing, he ran over and slapped Kelly in the face. She was shocked, and turned to look at him angry. Johnny was frozen- he hadn’t planned what to do next because he hadn’t even planned to do this. But before he could do anything else, Kelly reared back and dumped her ice-cream cone right onto Little Johnny’s head.<br />
<br />
<b>Splosh! Splat! Dairy!</b> Now he was a mess, a big mess with chocolate dripping down his hair and onto his shirt. What a predicament! Kelly was pointing at him and laughing, and some of the other kids joined in, too- even the colored boy. This wasn’t supposed to have happened! Little Johnny felt his cheeks go red, and he ran off into the crowd so Kelly wouldn’t have the satisfaction of seeing him.<br />
<br />
<b>Mope! Shucks! Beggar!</b> Johnny stomped through the crowd rubbing his nose and thinking what a mean kid that Kelly was. So this was the cost of monkeyshines.<br />
<br />
Just then he heard the sound of a whistle.<br />
<br />
If trouble had a sound, then it was surely the blast of a whistle. He would hear it in school during playtime when he wandered too far off. The neighborhood police officer would sound his whistle whenever Johnny’s fires got out of hand.<br />
<br />
Now the Man from Behavior Control was back, this time with a couple of partners in matching white shirts and short pants, and gosh did he look angry. He still had his whistle, and his net, and now he was staring straight at Johnny. Somehow, he must have thought Johnny was responsible for doing something wrong.<br />
<br />
Johnny did his best to look innocent, but the Man seemed to see right through Johnny’s pretend.<br />
<br />
Yikes! This sure could scare a fella.<br />
<br />
The Man seemed smarter than most grownups. Definitely smarter than Mom and Pop. Johnny was spooked good now. He couldn’t remember when he had been more afraid.<br />
<br />
At home Johnny’s father always closed the windows at night so that the Boogieman didn’t sneak in and steal Johnny’s goodness. It always gave Johnny the heebie-jeebies, but this was somehow more frightening: he was getting goose pimples. And he couldn’t be so slippery this time- the Man was too close. For the first time, he was afraid. He noticed Kelly in the crowd- she was looking at him and looked frightened, too.<br />
<br />
Aww, girls are always a-scared anyway.<br />
<br />
There was nothing else for a boy to do but turn and run, run for everything he could. Johnny was going as fast as he could, but he could see the Man over his shoulder, his net outstretched and reaching for him. Oh Mother, why do you make me wear these corrective shoes?<br />
<br />
Johnny took a turn into Storytime Barn, a place for the little kids. There were folks dressed as chickens and ducks, and other irritating farm creatures. The floor was covered in hay, just like a real barn. Yippee. There was a family up ahead eating lunch at a picnic table. The Father was lighting a pipe, the kind that Pop often smoked. Johnny ran by, snatched the pipe, threw it to the ground, and continued running.<br />
<br />
<b>Crackle! Ignite! Combustion!</b> The floor of the barn went up in an immediate blaze, and even though Johnny was quite a distance away, the heat brought tears to his eyes. ‘I wonder if the family survived,’ he thought, and he ran into the public walkway, where the sidewalks were covered in chalk drawings and a large gathering of pigeons were assembled, pecking at crumbs.<br />
<br />
As Johnny ran through the square all the pigeons took off, flapping up in the air in unison. What a tremendous sight! But he couldn’t stop to enjoy it now; he was running for his life. The people behind him started to scream- the pigeons seemed to be dropping something as they flew- but Johnny had no time to enjoy the beauty of nature.<br />
<br />
He ran past the Carousel of Tomorrow where a woman was shouting about the wonders of the flying car: “Faster than a heliochopper!” The Man and his assistants were only steps behind. Johnny spotted a fire hydrant with a loose bolt and gave it a swift kick.<br />
<br />
<b>Whoosh! Flow! Adjective!</b> The hydrant bent like Dutch metal, and the force of the water was completely out of control. It was gushing everywhere, flooding the street and soaking everybody in its path. Johnny felt the surge of satisfaction, but he had to keep moving. The Man was getting closer.<br />
<br />
Little Johnny was cursing his short, stumpy legs as he ran. He looked over his shoulder and spotted the Man closing in. His white wardrobe had been scorched by flame and had holes in it. There were white spots all over his blackened clothes, almost as if someone had been dropping custard from the sky. And to top it all off he was sopping wet. Doesn’t he know he’ll catch cold?<br />
<br />
Johnny turned his head back too late- he slammed headfirst into a wastebasket- he fell down to his knees.<br />
<br />
<b>Hot! Sting! Damage!</b> All was lost. Johnny lay there in a heap, waiting for the inevitable. The Man from Behavior Control had finally caught him. He blew on his whistle again, and his two partners came over. They surrounded Johnny with what seemed like dozens of pointy poles. There was nowhere to go.<br />
<br />
Is this the end of Little Johnny?<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * *</div>
<br />
Mr. and Mrs. Henderson were scouring the grounds, but they weren’t talking much.<br />
<br />
“Maybe we should consider this a blessing in disguise,” said Mr. Henderson.<br />
<br />
“What are you talking about?”<br />
<br />
“Well, let’s be honest, it was too late for Johnny. Why, with his behavior he’d only grow up to be a thief or an acrobat. He’ll probably be a drunkard… soused on cheap wine and nickel beer. He’d be living under the train tracks and eating dandelion soup. Is that what you want? Is that what you want?!?”<br />
<br />
Mrs. Henderson screamed like a wounded mule.<br />
<br />
“Quiet!” said Mr. Henderson. “We should leave this place, go back home, and start again. Who knows…?”<br />
<br />
Mr. Henderson took a deep breath and licked his lips, “We might even have a little girl.”<br />
<br />
Mrs. Henderson grabbed her husband by the lapels and shouted as loud as she could.<br />
<br />
<b>“WE HAVE TO FIND JOHNNY!!!”</b><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * *</div>
<br />
Johnny slammed against the chain-link fence again. No give. And it was starting to leave marks on his face. It seemed he was trapped for good in this Lost and Found detainment center, a correctional zoo for unsupervised children. All of the other kids here had been abandoned just like Johnny. And it was no surprise- they were frightful looking and punch drunk, with cuts and bruises on their faces, and messy hair. They all smelled of bad yogurt, and Johnny wanted no part of them. His face was tired, and his eyes were still adjusting to daylight after that bumpy journey in the burlap sack.<br />
<br />
‘Well, maybe Mom and Pop don’t love me after all,’ he thought, absentmindedly kicking a small boy who looked hypnotized. ‘Maybe they haven’t even noticed I’d gone off, and maybe they never cared for me.’ There were children packed like poultry into this little pen, and not much to do except play in the dirt or eat some grass, as some of the dimmer children were doing.<br />
<br />
Little Johnny began to reason that perhaps he might die here. Yes, he would die here and then Mom and Pop would have to pick up his body and finally they’d realize how horrible they’d been and, oh, they sure would care then, wouldn’t they? Then he would win! But even that seemed sad to Little Johnny, somehow. He sniffled and his face felt hot and, oh no, that wasn’t tears, was it? Not for a big boy Johnny’s age. What would the other kids think? And would he ever see his friends again? And-<br />Too late. The day had already had its way with Little Johnny. Tears spilled from his eyes like a faucet that had been left running by an absent-minded Mexican woman.<br />
<br />
<b>Sob! Weep! Emotion!</b> Here comes everything he’d been keeping inside for so long, and oh, what a bad boy he’d been. Selfish and impatient with his folks who were only trying to show him a good time. Poor Mom and Pop- they worked so hard to make things nice for Johnny, and here he was trying to escape. Oh, why was he such a naughty boy? Why was he so ungrateful? Why couldn’t he treat Mom and Pop like he knew he should? Why couldn’t he be good?<br />
<br />
Little Johnny took time out from wiping his eyes to slap an older girl who was standing too close. She must have gotten the message, because she wandered back to the dirt mound. But Little Johnny was still feeling regret. He wiped his nose with his shirtsleeve.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * *</div>
<br />
Mrs. Henderson was blushing… her face had broken out in hives from all that she had been through.<br />
<br />
Mr. Henderson did not look any happier. He was pulling his wife by the arm through the mobs of fairgoers.<br />
<br />
“Hurry up, dear,” he shouted.<br />
<br />
“Oh, what is my Mother going to say?” asked Mrs. Henderson.<br />
<br />
“She’s not going to hear a word about this. Do you understand? Not a word!”<br />
<br />
“Oh, but I mustn’t keep this from her, too. We’ve lost our son!”<br />
<br />
“I told you, it’s a blessing. We’re very lucky!”<br />
<br />
“Oh, couldn’t we try the lost and found just once more?”<br />
<br />
Mr. Henderson took a deep breath and checked his watch. Then he bit his bottom lip and gave an angry look to his wife.<br />
<br />
“Alright…,” he said, “one quick look. And if we don’t find him, we never mention his name again.”<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * *</div>
<br />
It could be worse, Little Johnny thought as he glanced around the yard. There was a broken slide, and even a flat-tire swing. So he would live out his days here, watching the fair from the chain fence, maybe living on chicken bones, or the occasional hamburger sandwich if he behaved. But wait! The fair was only on for three more days! After that they would surely discard the abandoned children.<br />
<br />
What then? Would Johnny be sent to the sausage factory and turned into morning links? Would they feed the children to hungry monsters? Or perhaps they would simply fill in the whole pen with cement, burying the youngsters alive in frozen, exaggerated poses of terror, like a juvenile Pompeii or a-<br />
<br />
“Little Johnny?” he heard a familiar voice ask.<br />
<br />
He spun round and sure enough it was Mom and Pop- looking older, and somehow different than before. Little Johnny had never been so happy to see them in his entire life! They did love him after all! What a swell thing for a little boy to know. Mom was crying, and Little Johnny was so happy he started crying as well. It was silly, but he was only crying so Mom wouldn’t feel bad.<br />
<br />
<b>Glad! Rejoice! Freedom</b>! Oh, what a happy ending to such a spectacular day. Mom hugged him tight and Pop lifted him up over his shoulders. Johnny just knew he was better than these other kids, and here was the proof. They left the detention center and headed toward the exit gates as the sun set overhead.<br />
<br />
On the way out, Johnny saw a familiar face- the hot dog boy he had teased before. He gestured to Pop.<br />
<br />
“I don’t know, Johnny… last time you went to get a frankfurter things got a little out of control.”<br />
<br />
“Oh, let him eat, Papa,” said Mom, and Pop gave her such a look!<br />
<br />
Pop did let him go, though. He bent down and put Johnny on the ground.<br />
<br />
“Alright, son. We all make mistakes, and this is the chance for you to learn a valuable lesson. You go over there to that Vendor, and you apologize for what you did earlier. I’m sure he’ll tell you everything’s swell and give you an extra-long frank. But you’ve got to do it on your own.”<br />
<br />
Johnny nodded. What a perfect chance to show Pop everything he had learned!<br />
<br />
Pop smiled. “That’s my boy,” he said, and he reached for his billfold to give Johnny money.<br />
<br />
But Johnny reached into his own pocket first and pulled out a coin. Surprise, Pop, I still have the half-dollar piece you gave me. This got a proud chuckle from Pop, and even Mom tried to smile.<br />
<br />
“Mother’s neuralgia is acting up again, so we’ll head out to the car. Meet you at the front gates in five minutes?”<br />
<br />
Little Johnny shook his head yes. He turned to the pushcart.<br />
<br />
“Oh and, Johnny,” said Pop, “add a little mustard for me.”<br />
<br />
Oh, Pop! Johnny watched Mom and Pop walk out of the big gates and into the parking lot. Grown-ups could be so funny sometimes.<br />
<br />
Little Johnny ran over to the hot dog wagon. The Vendor seemed to recognize him, because he jumped a little when Johnny came by. Little Johnny held up his finger- one, please- and the Vendor opened the lid to get the hot dog, looking nervous the whole while. He pulled the steaming frank out of the red-hot broth, put it in a bun and handed it to Johnny. Johnny fixed it up with mustard and relish and took a big bite. Delicious!<br />
<br />
The Vendor still looked frightened.<br />
<br />
“Uhh… that will be twenty cents, please.” His voice was higher than before, and squeakier, too. Little Johnny took out the fifty-cent piece. Suddenly he felt the tingle of imp. He could hand the coin to the Vendor, or he could make it fun. Oh heck, you’re only young once!<br />
<br />
Johnny flipped the coin in the air, directly into the steaming hot broth. Without thinking, the Vendor plunged both hands into the pot after it.<br />
<br />
Little Johnny skipped off towards the exit gates as the teen’s raspy, high-pitched squealing echoed over the grounds and his fingers boiled in the hot dog water. The frankfurter was delicious, worth the wait after all. The summer lay in front of Johnny like a wonderful open book, and there were many more adventures to be had in the future… where anything is possible.<br />
<br />
What a day to be a young American boy. What a day for the World’s Fair!<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />Sick Cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05328029727454505988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1463583730374236440.post-33845334763723849972015-11-21T04:20:00.000-05:002016-01-03T04:56:21.683-05:00Twins with Real Feelings<br />
<i>Do twins really share a mental telepathy? A cosmic understanding? Sick City sat down with four pair to test the theory.</i><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Suki & Pancho-Sosa</b></span></span><br />
<br />
<b>Suki:</b> We are like, like...<br />
<b>Pancho-Sosa:</b> Simpatico.<br />
<b>Suki:</b> I was gonna say copacetic.<br />
<b>Pancho-Sosa:</b> You owe me nine dollars.<br />
<b>Suki:</b> At least I don’t have an inverted vagina.<br />
<b>Pancho-Sosa:</b> You are street grease. You are an open sore. You are the sewage that leaks from vermin squeezed.<br />
<b>Suki:</b> Yeah, but I paid you the nine dollars. <br />
<br />
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<span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Edwild & Louie-Louie</b></span></span><br />
<br />
<b>Edwild:</b> My brother and I? We're the good guys. We make the magic happen.<br />
<b>Louie-Louie:</b> If by magic you mean two adult siblings sitting naked in a tepid bathtub of filth and poison bubbles then yeah, we’re Doug fucking Henning.<br />
<b>Edwild:</b> We got the powers. We're a satellite dish. We're a space station. We're intergalactic.<br />
<b>Louie-Louie:</b> You're letting the crazy show.<br />
<b>Edwild:</b> No I didn't. Let's do that nipple thing. <br />
<b>Louie-Louie:</b> We talked about this. We're with the interviewer. He’s writing this down.<br />
<b>Edwild:</b> Good. Let him write it on the internet. Let the world see. Let them taste our foul and hot shame. <br />
<b><b>Louie-Louie</b>:</b> You’re calling Mom this week. I’m not doing it. You’re calling Mom.<br />
<br />
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<br />
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Becwith & Sejmaze</b></span></span><br />
<br />
<b>Becwith:</b> We're pretty mellow.<br />
<b>Sejmaze:</b> She's not just my sister, she's my best friend. We love shopping... and going to the movies.<br />
<b>Becwith:</b> And we love robbing banks on mescaline.<br />
<b>Sejmaze:</b> And cheeseburgers. Oh my god when they do that bacon thing on the top of the cheeseburger? That’s the best thing.<br />
<b>Becwith:</b> That and cracking a teller’s skull.<br />
<b>Sejmaze:</b> Well, obviously...<br />
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<span style="color: #b45f06;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span></span>
<span style="color: #b45f06;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Ten-Speed & McMillan</b></span></span><br />
<br />
<b>Ten-Speed:</b> We haven’t been banned by Major League Baseball. If that’s what you’re asking. Because if it is that’s not the case.<br />
<b>McMillan:</b> Not at all. We <i>choose</i> not to go to San Diego Padre games. We always have.<br />
<b>Ten-Speed:</b> He knows, pigshit.<br />
<b>McMillan:</b> He doesn’t know anything.<br />
<b>Ten-Speed:</b> He knows everything. You can tell.<br />
<b>McMillan:</b> You’re paranoid.<br />
<b>Ten-Speed: </b>He knows. Look how he's looking at us.<br />
<b>McMillan: </b>He doesn't know. Be cool. <br />
<b>Ten-Speed:</b> Shaved testicles and the seventh-inning stretch.<br />
<b>McMillan:</b> I hate you.<br />
<b>Ten-Speed:</b> I know.<br />
<br />
<br />Sick Cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05328029727454505988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1463583730374236440.post-66128126659885145032015-11-13T04:20:00.000-05:002015-11-13T14:52:26.434-05:00Coffee With The Queen<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>I wait for her, she’s late.</b></span> I ache for her, for the drama that we’ve seen, for the heartbreak that we’ve been through together. I ache for her presence, her wake, through the Tuesdays, through the bodies we have buried in the ground. She’s been there, she’s seen it all, and she wears it like a halo, carries it better than I ever could.<br />
<br />
I look around the café, a couple on a first date, wide eyes and smiles full of stories to tell. There’s an older couple, her in her magazine, he on his tablet. There's a man without his wife and child, drinking black coffee, looking free and lost and late for something else. Water stains on the hard-grain wood of the tables, the chair goes creaky as I take my cappuccino. The waitress makes sure I’m okay.<br />
<br />
There are no bulbs burning in this coffee shop, just the light of the sun which has slid behind the cloud, leaving us in a dim, sipping our brew from mugs too big. The leaves are gone and the trees are naked, waiting for the holidays, waiting to say “I told you so.” The construction sound is loud across the street. The winter, I know. This winter is gonna leave us cold.<br />
<br />
Paper napkins and an empty chair across from me. I can smell her perfume, only anticipation. She will be here soon, pulling out her chair, apologize with her eyes, making sense of the dark, making light of the season, making sane of my crazy, if just for twenty minutes. She will be here.<br />
<br />
I will pay for her latte. I will smile as she sweetens with her spoon.<br />
<br />
<br />Sick Cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05328029727454505988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1463583730374236440.post-8863715187630309752015-11-12T04:20:00.000-05:002015-11-13T14:39:35.667-05:00Some Summers<br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />Sick Cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05328029727454505988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1463583730374236440.post-4474811295011203592015-11-10T04:20:00.000-05:002015-11-10T18:27:29.687-05:00Tough Lunches of the 21st Century (Zen Tokyo)<br />
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<br />
<b>Date:</b> April 20, 2014<br />
<b>Location:</b> Mucho Sushi<br />
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><b>I met for lunch with my best frend
Kölū.</b></span></span> She's a poet and performance artist and a real pain in the ass. As we munched on octopus appetizers she asked me: "What is the sound of one hand slapping your face?" I pondered this zen<i></i></span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i></i> koan for a long moment before </span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Kölū slapped my face so hard that blood ran out my nose.</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"Brilliant," I said, enlightened.</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">While we split an avocado roll to its subatomic particles </span></span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Kölū said, "Look upon the flower and the flower is looking back." While I searched the restaurant for blooms </span></span></span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Kölū inserted her finger into my ear and drilled toward my brain. "Well-played," I remarked, as she emptied her glass of wine onto my plate, "you learn me so much"</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">After tossing a few Kamikaze rolls at an elderly couple in the corner </span></span></span></span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Kölū said, "</span></span></span></span>Hey, let's freak this place out, okay?"</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">For the next
forty-five minutes we put cucumbers down our pants and ate food off of random
tables, and if I recall correctly at one point we were both naked on a
tabletop snorting wasabi and singing "Love Shack."</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The waitstaff
politely beat us with chopsticks until we left the premises, and as a result </span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Kölū and I are </span>banned
from Pepsi-serving restaurants until 2079.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: x-large;">Tin Roof! </span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">(rusted)</span></div>
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<br /></div>
Sick Cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05328029727454505988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1463583730374236440.post-88303044480453921112015-11-03T11:38:00.000-05:002015-11-04T14:50:16.179-05:00LUH-3417 (The Last Days of Hot Water)<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF22_63tXt9twBM2wbXkSCDEpvJg4OmjkHcKSgDRIJtGfi9ZFEGLFo0AXcw9BQoQVWL22mG59S53LjttWgE8hcTHXZ-0RNpWep2kSVoSy_20uP4a6ZeJ1ePhgxPUtJg-IOw_R7s8JUNo8d/s1600/thx+001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF22_63tXt9twBM2wbXkSCDEpvJg4OmjkHcKSgDRIJtGfi9ZFEGLFo0AXcw9BQoQVWL22mG59S53LjttWgE8hcTHXZ-0RNpWep2kSVoSy_20uP4a6ZeJ1ePhgxPUtJg-IOw_R7s8JUNo8d/s400/thx+001.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Days, days of hot shower days.</b></span> Days spent under the warm water days. Those days. These days. Some days are better than others days. These days I spend days in the shower, letting the hot water heat me days. These days I spend soaking days. These days are all wet days.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">[Workday, and all of us at our stations. Droids on down the line and the production day is under way on the factory floor. I’m feeling really fine. In the processing core the line attendant gives the go and the fusion begins. We make the mechanical man. To supervise us in making more mechanical men. 4-EB autocombs- obsolete mech droids- weave shoulder cable up through the torso on the line as sodder jets swing in on AG-pulleys, sewing the arms to the body proper. The robot is almost complete, not yet activated, and his lifeless face stares upward as the worker machines give him assembly. I attenuate the thermal regulator. I want to destroy all the machines. All of them. The machines that make other machines. The men that create those machines. I want to destroy the machines that keep me a slave. I want to destroy the machines that watch me work. I didn’t say that. I didn’t mean to think that. I’m feeling really fine.]</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">These days, these I can hear the birds days. They’re singing outside in the branches days, watching the snow melt days. They’re waiting for the bloom days. I know what they call these days, they call this springtime days. I don’t want to see the springtime days, I don’t want to see the sunshine days. Not these days. Days where I roll up the towel days, put it at the base of the door days, days to keep all the steam inside while I shower days. Days where the bathroom door is locked days.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">[I am making mistakes more frequently now. The humicologists in the pharmhouse have raised the dosage on my meditrition, especially my SEN-5241. I can feel it working. I am feeling really fine. My productivity reports have shown a trend toward imprecision and inefficiency, and all signs point to that trend spiraling to unacceptable levels, but those droid attendants have no soul and deserve to be disintegrated. All of the machines that watch and keep us prisoner should be destroyed. I did not say that. I did not think that. They’re watching me more closely now from the Operations Post. Robotic eyes on me, inside me, evaluating my ability to produce more immaculate robotics. The fail rate is .0001% here. I don’t know how it’s possible but I can feel a bead of sweat dripping down the back of my neck. The sensors will detect the moisture of course but I dare not wipe it away.]</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">Days, days where the water makes me liquid days, days where the dirty melts away days. I’m dripping in the hot water days, days of soap and shampoo days. Days of washcloth days. Days of bathrobe days, days of fresh linen days. Days in the heat of the hot water shower days. All days. Every days. All day long days.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">[I slipped up on a thermal transfer. I forgot to acclimate the torso shell to the heat of the iron and as a result a carbon rod broke loose from the binary <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">pliers</span>. It was red hot and melted the face of the droid on the line before falling to the factory floor and scorching its way through the rollers. It is glorious. The alarms are sounding. The factory supervisors have alerted the guards and they’re on their way to take me. I’m feeling really fine. I downshift the attenuator to the lowest setting and carbon begins to spill all over the line. The new robots are melting in a rush, the worker droids grinding production to a standstill as their programming goes overload, primary and secondary circuitry in direct conflict. Smoke sizzles out of their heads.]</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">Days, days of man-made thunderstorm days, days when I can make it rain on schedule days. Days where I turn off the phone days. Days when there’s nobody home days. Days when the daylight gets longer days, days when I hang a towel on the window to block out the bright of the days days. Days where I don’t have to think about the future days.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">[The droids in the Ops Post are scowling at me. There will be no surviving this. The guards have arrived. I’m going to take as many of them with me as I can. I am smiling. I think I’m smiling. Disaster recovery will take weeks. I’m feeling really fine.]</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">These are the days days. The good old days days. The getaway days days. These are the days. These are the last days of hot water.</span><br />
<br />Sick Cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05328029727454505988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1463583730374236440.post-7112740709835315302015-11-02T04:20:00.000-05:002015-11-05T19:28:04.165-05:00Pinkie Markie Makes A Sale<br />
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<br />
<b>Jojo snap his neck back, listen for the crack,</b> smile with his spine in fine alignment. He was lean back against the brick wall, dark brown skin simmer slow beneath the California sunshine, waiting patient for the ganja man to arrive. It was a Thursday morning in the loading zone behind the bakery outlet, the bakery gone out of business only a few months ago. Back then there were a dozen guys working all day: unloading boxes of ingredients and supplies, loading up boxes of cupcakes and cookies, clipboards and scanning wands in khaki shorts. He remembered those guys. He had been one of them.<br />
<br />
On this hot Los Angeles morning he had been alone in the ghost lot for forty-five minutes, forty-nine because Jojo was counting, waiting, listening to the music on his phone until the battery run low. The music was fine- warm sounds familiar- but he didn’t feel like dancing. Nothing made him dance anymore. And he thought, in passing, “this is getting older... this is what it feels like to get old.”<br />
<br />
And it scared him.<br />
<br />
The weed helped. All the chemicals do. He was ready for his guy to show up, anyway… he had been out of grass for two days- a long time- and he could already taste the soft sweet smoke, the hazy memory, the timeless bake of the fragrance The heat bounced off the blacktop in the back lot, good cook the burning rubber of the docking bay doors. It smelled good today, like the last days of school. He loved this back lot, the perfect place for a friendly neighborhood drug deal. <br />
<br />
The only trouble was, it was also the perfect place to skateboard.<br />
<br />
Two white teenagers- Corey and Bogart- had gotten here only minutes after Jojo and the dudes had been shredding sidewalk ever since. They arrived the way teenagers always do: stumbling onto the scene unaware, giving no indication as to whether this was their intended destination or a happy accident, and then simply occupying the area as if no one else existed. Jojo knew their names because neither boy had said anything else.<br />
<br />
Corey: “Bogart!” and then he would grind his way down the L-shape staircase leading up to the building, turning on the landings and smoothing out when he got to the bottom.<br />
<br />
Bogart: “Corey!” and then he would gather speed and try to tail slide his board against the curb, usually falling off and landing ass-first in the grass.<br />
<br />
Idiot kids going coconut. Jojo found himself hating them- not because they had decided to use his meeting place as their personal skate park… he hated them because they were terrible skateboarders.<br />
<br />
He watched them laugh and crash for a few minutes more until he finally couldn’t stand it.<br />
<br />
“Who taught you boys how to skateboard?” he said with a smile, his Jamaican accent strong in his resonant voice.<br />
<br />
The boys looked up as he approached, woke up out of their long Los Angeles daydream: guilty, cornered, confused. Pathetic. Jojo could almost hear their inner thoughts: “Dude! It’s like, a black guy!” and this thought made him laugh out loud. They seemed to relax a little at the music of his voice. <br />
<br />
Corey- with the dreads and mossy facial hair- spoke first, “I don’t know… I just do it for fun.”<br />
<br />
Jojo ran his palm hand over his shaved head to clear the perspiration.<br />
<br />
Bogart, in a backwards baseball cap, emboldened, took a stand and declared his independence: “Me too.”<br />
<br />
“That’s not how you skateboard, boys... you’re just thrashing. I used to skateboard… I used to be a damn sight.”<br />
<br />
The boys, who would have laughed at anything, laughed at this.<br />
<br />
Corey absentminded rub the road rash on his right elbow, “Like, how old are you?”<br />
<br />
Jojo, who considered striking the boy, answered instead. “I’m 35.”<br />
<br />
Both teens turned to face each other and burst out laughing, as this was evidently the funniest number in the history of digits. The chains connecting their wallets to their belt loops made jangle as their bodies rocked.<br />
<br />
Jojo shook his head in pity... what passed for cool in California was a sad state of affairs.<br />
<br />
After a moment, though, he found he was smiling too. These two dopes didn’t know any better. Today would be a good day for them to learn.<br />
<br />
“You see that over there?” He pointed to the far side of the lot where a steel loading ramp sat parked up against the wall, leading up to the truck bay door, twenty feet long with a 20° incline. The boys turned, open-mouthed, to take it in.<br />
<br />
“I’ll bet you fifty bucks I can take that ramp, do a kickflip at the top and skate back down again.”<br />
<br />
The smiles fell off the boys’ faces. There was money in the mix now, and testosterone, and a pretty tricky maneuver. California kids out of their jurisdiction. Jojo smiled, loving it. <br />
<br />
“What do you say boys?”<br />
<br />
Bogart put his hand over his wallet, trying in vain to calculate whether losing the bet might compromise his taco dollars.<br />
<br />
Corey spoke: “Nahhh, I don’t wanna bet.”<br />
<br />
Jojo shook his head. “Come on... where’s your sense of adventure?”<br />
<br />
Corey considered, and then finally, “It’s okay… you don’t have to do it… you can just have the money.”<br />
<br />
Jojo threw his head back and laughed. “I’m not robbing you, buddy...I just wanna make a bet. You in or you out?”<br />
Corey looked over to Bogart, whose eyes as always seemed to say ‘whatever.’<br />
<br />
“Yeah, we’re in,” Corey said, “let’s see you do your trick.”<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * *</div>
<br />
Jojo borrowed the bigger board, Bogart’s board, and he had skated around the lot a couple times, making sure he had his balance and his legs were still skate-ready. They were. The boys had been surprised by his turns, the way he walked the board, the melted butter of his beat as he made the maneuvers music.<br />
<br />
Just wait.<br />
<br />
Jojo positioned himself facing the ramp, about fifty feet away, and Corey and Bogart aligned themselves behind him to watch. He wondered if the boys would pay up. It didn’t matter. It was the principle.<br />
<br />
“You guys ready?”<br />
<br />
The boys raised their camera phones in sync.<br />
<br />
Jojo visualized his move a semi-second before he took it: gain enough speed to let the incline slow him just enough for that timeless moment to kick the board out from under him, flip, land back on it with a 180° turn. In style. It was time to stop thinking and trust his instinct.<br />
<br />
He kicked off, gathering speed, flying across the lot as Corey and Bogart watched in awe.<br />
<br />
Joseph “Jojo” Jeffries made glide across the parking lot of his former place of business, sail sweet in a tracking shot too pretty, dance the pavement surf, almost at the ramp when the board’s front wheel struck a small nugget of gravel. He was launched airborne- let out a yelp like a puppy under a Kia- and he landed with a crispity crunch against the scalding blacktop, his body bent at an angle perverse.<br />
<br />
He screeched in agony.<br />
<br />
Corey and Bogart ran over to him as fast as they could, eyes popping out their sockets like grapes squeeze out the skin. Jojo was convulsing in pain, seizing, making shriek in a voice he had never heard before, the cartilage in his kneecaps turn to cream corn. The boys looked down, horrified, to see the man’s ankle bone poking clean out the front of his shin. The bone was saying hello.<br />
<br />
The boys saw the bone.<br />
<br />
The bone was white.<br />
<br />
Bogart turned to Corey. Corey turned to Bogart. “Let’s get out of here!”<br />
<br />
The California kids turned and ran away, the wheels of the ill-fated skateboard still spinning downside up. Jojo keep howling, the sweet sound echo and bounce against the brick walls of the empty lot, and in his traumatized state he looked up and saw the billboard above him, a woman, maybe an angel: it featured a pretty blonde woman in a pink blazer. She was smiling. The copy read:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>PINKIE MARKIE</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>REAL ESTATE AGENT</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
“If you called her you’d be home by now”</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * * </div>
<br />
“You have to listen… you don’t talk, you listen. You listen to what the client wants and they will tell you what they need.”<br />
<br />
Three blocks from the bakery lot Pinkie Markie’s silver sport utility vehicle came to stop at a red light. She hated red lights.<br />
<br />
Pinkie- in her trademark pink skirt suit- reached into the backseat for her work bag when her seatbelt yanked her back into place. “Goddamit!” she spoke aloud, and then into the headset: “No, not you.”<br />
<br />
Pinky unbuckle, grabbed her bag from backseat and pulled out a dangerously large pair of black sunglasses. She threw her hair back and tossed on the shades. They were supposed to ward off the wrinkles- some of them anyway- but maybe it was too late for that: now in her late-forties her face showed the wear of Los Angeles ozone. She was still pretty in the traditional sense, at least she thought so, checking herself out in the rearview while flashing a warm professional smile. Laugh lines and crow’s feet had settled in her features fine, but the lines gave her a depth, some kind of story. She listened carefully on her headset as Steven- one of her junior agents- explained how he had lost another sale.<br />
<br />
“Mm-hmm... okay...”<br />
<br />
She rolled smooth easy through a stop sign and checked her roots in the side view.<br />
<br />
“Yes… but it sounds like you scared him off. You don’t want to sell him, you want to give him the option to buy… there is a- yeah, there is a difference.”<br />
<br />
The SUV accelerated to take a hill lined with palm trees. In the esplanade a homeless man held a hilarious cardboard sign asking for money. Pinkie drove by.<br />
<br />
Inside the car she pulled a Sting CD out of her work bag and tried to tear off the plastic wrap with her free hand. <br />
<br />
“You don’t call. Not for two days. And when you do you’ll leave a voicemail saying you have one- one- other house to show him and when is he free... hmm? Don’t worry about it, we figure that out later, you just leave that exact message. Okay?”<br />
<br />
She brought the car to a stop and finally unpeeled the plastic from the jewel box. When the light go green she started driving again, plucking the brand new CD out the tray just as the SUV hit a bump. The disc fell out of her hand and into the backseat.<br />
<br />
“Goddammit!”<br />
<br />
She pulled up the drive of a large modern house in the heart of the Hollywood Hills, come to a stop in the circular driveway next to a red vintage sports car. Leaning up against the car was Lamont Malvo.<br />
<br />
Lamont Malvo, eyebrow arched in sinister curl, styled hair spiked and poking in every direction. Black khakis, black blazer over gray V-neck, his face snarl and spew. He wasn’t the easiest client Pinkie had ever worked with, but a job is a job, Pinkie reasoned, and every girl has her job to do. Besides, he had money... that much she could smell.<br />
<br />
Lamont Malvo saw her, spotted the SUV silver, sigh as if her arrival was another in an endless line of eternal interruptions, toss his tablet back in the passenger seat of his Jaguar E-Type convertible, too cool to mention that she had kept him waiting, too menacing to put Pinkie at ease.<br />
<br />
He wondered if she had heard of his Father. He wondered if she knew evil.<br />
<br />
“I am so sorry for being late Mr. Malvo,” she said, stepping down from the driver’s side and removing her sunglasses, “I’ve been listening to that disc you gave me… it’s lovely. Lovely music.”<br />
<br />
Malvo, too cool to shrug, didn’t. He looked at Pinkie, pretty, tried to imagine her sex face.<br />
<br />
“What do you think?” she said, smiling, exhaling, gesturing to the house, “Should we go inside?”<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * * </div>
<br />
Pinkie take the first step through the doorway, into the echo of the household hollow, setting the lockbox on the foyer table, letting Malvo follow behind her. She looked away as he took his first steps inside, as she always did, because the client was entitled to a reaction private. It was not appropriate to try and read their faces or to play them as dollar signs.<br />
<br />
The foyer was hardwood floor, the ceilings twenty feet high. The corridors between rooms were high arches, eggshell white. From here you could see up to the second floor, the curved white staircase with black metal railing issuing an invitation with a curling finger. The decoration was minimal: an original modern art painting on the wall and a warm, colorful area rug in the center of the room. The house was massive but unassuming... a blank page waiting for a great idea. A tall glass vase sat on the floor beside the staircase, a single bright sunflower inside.<br />
<br />
“What do you think?” Pinky asked, eyes on the sunflower.<br />
<br />
From the entranceway you could see down the hall to the kitchen straight ahead, the den to the right and the dining room to the left.<br />
<br />
“I think it’s a foyer,” Malvo said, the trace of some faint accent buried in his voice flat, “take me to the kitchen.”<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * * </div>
<br />
This man- this Mr. Malvo- he hadn’t liked any of the houses she had shown him so far, hadn’t even been close, and Pinkie was beginning to worry that he would be one of those clients… eternally dissatisfied, a mailbox chaser, on the market with no real intention to buy. He had been very strange from the first: he wouldn’t tell her what he did, which meant he wasn’t in the industry. Everyone in the industry was always eager to share: actors, producers, writers, even crew. She thought this Mr. Malvo had mentioned something about screenwriting but that might have been another client. Besides there was more to him than that. It didn’t matter anyway: a client has a right to privacy. She watched him look the kitchen over, mentally running down the rest of her day’s agenda… the closings and the showings, the comings and the goings. Lamont tested the kitchen cabinets as everyone does: by opening and closing them.<br />
<br />
They seemed to be in working order.<br />
<br />
The owners of the house had already moved on, were already living elsewhere. The kitchen was too clean. There were no crumbs, no garbage bag in the trash bin, not a trace of food in the refrigerator. Malvo knew because he checked. He checked everything. He liked the details.<br />
<br />
He needed to know.<br />
<br />
“Four hundred square feet with a dining area just through there,” Pinkie said, and now she was watching him more closely, trying to get a read on his reaction. “Did you see the view, Mr. Malvo?”<br />
<br />
He corrected her, sharp. “Lamont.”<br />
<br />
“Oh,” she said, “Lamont.’<br />
<br />
“Don’t act so innocent, Pinkie. I’m sure you know who I am. I’m sure you know who my Father was.”<br />
<br />
Pinkie, clueless: “Your Father?”<br />
<br />
Lamont smiled, dishwasher hinge in hand. “The Admiral? Admiral Lamont Malvo?”<br />
<br />
Pinkie shook her head no, then nodded slow as to not offend. Admiral? <br />
<br />
“Tell me, Pinkie: did you grow up in a house like this?”<br />
<br />
She was caught off-guard. “What do you mean?”<br />
<br />
He pulled a glass from the cabinet and ran the water for a moment before filling up it up, two fingers to the tepid flow. “A house this nice, this expensive...? Did you grow up in a house in the Hollywood Hills? Or did you grow up someplace... more dirty?” <br />
<br />
Malvo took a tall drink of water. Pinkie didn’t like the question or the way he had asked, but she was a professional. <br />
<br />
“Well, there are very few places as nice as this…” she eyed the house around her, bashful. “This house was previously owned by some famous Hollywood stars.”<br />
<br />
“Really.” he said, disinterested.<br />
<br />
“Yes. Rita Hayworth. And I think the guy who played Shaft.” Pinkie beamed her billboard smile.<br />
<br />
Malvo smiled back, briefly, before pouring out the water. “So tell me: why do they call you Pinkie?”<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * * </div>
<br />
In the den Malvo found the remote and turned on the TV, squinting his eyes to read the buttons on the remote. “What’s the asking price again?”<br />
<br />
Pinkie had just caught up with him. She had learned to answer straight. “It is listed at eight nine.”<br />
<br />
He found a movie channel and they watched the giant wall-size TV in awkward silence for a moment. Some skinny guy with cheekbones was courting an anorexic model by looking very angry. It seemed to be working. The floor of the den was hardwood, covered with a grass green rug… on the wall across from the movie screen were two leather sofas and three leather recliners. In the center of the room was a coffee table long enough to sail on, faint rings from sour glasses engrained in the wood.<br />
<br />
Malvo examined it all, his body perfectly still, his eyes moving, processing.<br />
<br />
“And I suppose this is where I would be expected to my have my best friends over to watch the Superbowl!” He bit his tongue to keep from laughing. <br />
<br />
“That could be a lot of fun,” Pinkie said helpfully, missing his meaning, a wholesome smile on her face.<br />
Malvo blinked. “Are you married?”<br />
<br />
Pinkie exhaled, “Divorced.” She spoke the word as it was every little girl’s dream.<br />
<br />
Malvo smiled, turned back to the screen. “Well I’m married.”<br />
<br />
Pinkie beamed.<br />
<br />
“I wonder what my wife will look like when I cut her throat and leave her bleeding on the leather sofa...”<br />
<br />
Pinkie’s face fell.<br />
<br />
Malvo smiled again and clicked off the TV.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * * </div>
<br />
Pinkie led them both inside: it was a glory, a natural wonder of the modern world. Maybe the greatest secret in Los Angeles county, and that was no small claim in a city of secrets. The two hundred square foot master bathroom lay before them like an undiscovered country. There was enough space in this room to get lost. There were two sinks set in two separate vanities, a wall-size mirror between them… there was a magazine rack, a towel rack, a two-faucet shower, a bath and a whirlpool. At the back of the room was a linen closet larger than most people’s apartments... a picture window above the tub and Jacuzzi looked out on the Santa Monica mountains and down on the LA cityscape, where the haze of the day was settling slow. And the floor of the master bathroom was carpeted.<br />
<br />
It was carpeted in deep blue shag.<br />
<br />
The pure blue, like blueberry cotton candy, it lined the floors, overgrown at the base of the vanities, climbing like ivy up the side of the side of the whirlpool, surrounding the base of the gleaming white porcelain toilet bowl.<br />
<br />
Pinkie beamed, her smile bright and genuine. “Have you ever seen a bathroom like this?”<br />
<br />
Outside in the trees the birds sang, trying to get a recording contract.<br />
<br />
Malvo took a quick look around the room, heavy-lidded eyes staying low. “It’s just a bathroom.”<br />
<br />
“Well you don’t often see... I mean...”<br />
<br />
“Why do they call you Pinkie?”<br />
<br />
Pinkie looked confused for a moment then smiled again. “That’s my secret, Mr. Malvo.”<br />
<br />
“Lamont,” he said, and then, forceful, “Tell me.”<br />
<br />
Pinkie sighed, torn. The smile never left her face. “Mr. Malvo- Lamont- do you think you might be interested in this house?”<br />
<br />
He closed his eyes and nodded slow. “Of course I do. I wouldn’t waste your time. But I’d like to check the pipes…”<br />
<br />
Pinkie nodded. “Of course.”<br />
<br />
“Use the toilet.”<br />
<br />
Pinkie’s bag slipped down her shoulder. “What?”<br />
<br />
Malvo turned, casual, and leaned back against the sink to face her. “Use the toilet. I want to see how it flushes.”<br />
<br />
“Would you like me to flush the toilet for you?”<br />
<br />
He looked her directly in the eye. “After you use it, yes.”<br />
<br />
Pinkie, bubble mouth, “I don’t... I- I don’t... do you, what do you-?”<br />
<br />
“Pinkie: go pee.”<br />
<br />
He spoke with such a mixture of anger and need that she actually began to consider it.<br />
<br />
There was a long silence. Malvo looked into her eyes, waiting.<br />
<br />
“Well, I… well I do have to go…”<br />
<br />
Malvo folded his arms. “Good. I’ll watch.”<br />
<br />
Pinkie stood for a long moment, frozen, absorbing the insanity of the corner into which she’d painted herself, of what she was about to do. She found herself taking a step forward, then stopping, stepping back… <br />
<br />
Malvo made glare.<br />
<br />
Pinkie lifted her work bag up off her shoulder, set it gentle on the wall of the tub.<br />
<br />
Malvo watched, waited, folded arms.<br />
<br />
Pinkie took a step toward the toilet, trying to maintain her dignity, her professionalism, as she lifted the lid of the bowl. It slipped back down with a loud BANG and she jumped, afraid, then smiled when she realized what had happened, her face going back to serious as she remembered what she was doing. She bent slow, slid her control-top pantyhose down her legs, watching Malvo for some sign. His eyes gave her none.<br />
<br />
She slipped her pink panties down her legs, using her skirt to keep herself covered. She raised her skirt up in the back- just enough- and sat herself down on the bowl, the icy cool of the porcelain almost making her giggle as it touched her skin.<br />
<br />
Malvo found it absurd. Obscene. He loved it.<br />
<br />
Pinkie’s legs made dangle, her knees together as she tried to go but found she couldn’t. She could feel Malvo’s eyes on her, knew he was watching, so she had to look away, far off to the window.<br />
<br />
Malvo licked his lips.<br />
<br />
Pinkie thought of closing day.<br />
<br />
Finally it came, Pinkie making water, taking a spree in front of her client, warm liquid in the bowl. Her tongue hung slack out the side of her mouth as her eyes rolled back.<br />
<br />
When she was finished she squeezed out the last drops, smiling again like an airline hostess. She reached out for a wad of toilet paper and folded it delicate, dabbing it between her legs.<br />
<br />
She stood up, keeping herself covered, pulling up again, wiggling until everything was comfortable. Pinkie took a deep breath, glad it was over, smiling at Malvo with her face going red: “Well…”<br />
<br />
“Flush.”<br />
<br />
Pinkie, who had forgotten completely, turned and pulled the handle.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * * </div>
<br />
Pinkie and Malvo stood outside the bathroom door, looking at the enormous master bedroom. Bright California sun radiated through the quad skylight.<br />
<br />
“It’s a beautiful house… and all the fixtures are fairly new.”<br />
<br />
“It doesn’t matter,” Malvo said, “she’ll gut everything anyway.”<br />
<br />
He took a seat on the four poster bed, patting the space beside him. “Come sit.”<br />
<br />
Pinkie shook her head. “No, that’s okay.”<br />
<br />
He yawned… stretching. “Why do they call you Pinkie?”<br />
<br />
“Mr. Malvo we should probably move along…”<br />
<br />
“It’s Lamont. I want you to call me Lamont.” He stood up and walked to her deliberate, on prowl.<br />
<br />
“Call me Lamont, Pinkie.” He took her wrists in his and looked her in the eyes. <i>That</i> way. “I know you want this because I know you want to sell me this house.”<br />
<br />
She was uncomfortable. “I don’t want to sell it like this, no.”<br />
<br />
He pulled. “Just come sit with me… I know you’re no angel...”<br />
<br />
Pinkie voice was rising, “I am a lady, Mr. Malvo… I am no angel but I <i>am</i> a l-”<br />
<br />
Malvo threw her down on the bed, leaping on top of her, pinning her underneath him.<br />
<br />
“Mr. Malvo get off!”<br />
<br />
“Easy, baby. Be good… be easy.” He bent and kissed her neck.<br />
<br />
She fought but he was holding tight, straddling her.<br />
<br />
“Mr. Malvo let me go… this is your last warning!”<br />
<br />
“Oh come on, Pinkie…” he said, smiling, “Tell me why they call you Pinkie…”<br />
<br />
“Mr. Malvo!”<br />
<br />
He opened his mouth, brought it to hers, and that’s when Pinkie balled up her hand into a fist and punched Lamont Malvo in the nose. <br />
<br />
He was knocked back, stood up in silent shock, eyelids fluttering, and pointed his finger in the air as if to speak. Before he could get a word out he fell to the bedroom floor like a sack of sugar.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * * </div>
<br />
Pinkie, on her cell phone, stood at the front door of the house, reattaching the lockbox to the doorknob.<br />
<br />
Malvo stood beside her, his arms folded, doing his best to retain his air of nonchalant sophistication with a bloody tissue sticking out of his nose.<br />
<br />
Pinkie spoke into her phone: “Well that’s good, Corey, you did the right thing... okay... okay... no, I’m proud of you… Mommy will be home at five-thirty.”<br />
<br />
She clicked off the phone and turned to Malvo.<br />
<br />
“I’m sorry again, Lamont.”<br />
<br />
He rolled his eyes, looked up at her and nodded, the closest he would ever get to issuing an apology.<br />
She looked back at him, accepting, and a sad smile came over her face.<br />
<br />
“If there’s ever anything I can do for you, don’t hesitate to call… you have my card?”<br />
<br />
“Yes,” he said, before turning and heading toward his car.<br />
<br />
Halfway down the walk Lamont Malvo stopped and turned back to her: “Oh, and Ms. Markie?”<br />
<br />
She looked up. “Yes?”<br />
<br />
“I’ll take the house.”<br />
<br />
He threw himself into his Jaguar, peeling out and rolling down the Hollywood Hills toward the heart of Los Angeles.<br />
<br />
Pinkie Markie waited until his car was out of sight before jumping into the air.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />Sick Cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05328029727454505988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1463583730374236440.post-19239817260698259102015-11-01T04:20:00.001-05:002015-11-06T00:38:54.911-05:00Jailbreaker<br />
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<br />
<b><span style="color: magenta;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Cats come back sometimes</span></span></span></b>. That’s the problem. That's what the burlap sack is for. Cats come back but they can't untie the knot, can't break loose. They get stuck inside. They go through all nine of their lives in a quick as the wet of the water soaks through the jute fiber, invades their tiny lungs, turns their purr into a milky wheeze. At that point it's a countdown.<br />
<br />
9...<br />
<br />
8...<br />
<br />
7...<br />
<br />
6...<br />
<br />
5...<br />
<br />
4...<br />
<br />
3...<br />
<br />
2...<br />
<br />
One.<br />
<br />
Cats come back sometimes. Sometimes when you least expect it. Sometimes when they can do the most damage. Ricardo remember his childhood days, setting off cherry bombs and pulling hard on the girls’ hair- sometime he come away with a bloody fistful- and he remembered back to the shanty town outside of Santa Fe where he grew up, the Mexican immigrants pack together like a can of refried beans. He was just a boy and he already hated all of his neighbors, ignorant pigs and animals. At five years old he made the vow to learn English so he didn't end up like the other men: day laborers, drunk all night on mezcal and knifing each other over card games. <br />
<br />
Ricardo remembered being a boy, hating it besides the pinatas and the parades. Besides his Mother's tortilla pies. Back then she was always singing, always taking in stray cats, and when one of them had a litter she would make that ugly face, like she didn't see it coming, like she forgot that cats had kittens. It was her way of saying to him and his brother: "Take care of it."<br />
<br />
And so Ricardo and Miguel would walk down to the bodega, swipe a burlap sack from the pepper stand and load it full of fresh kittens, eyes moist, high mews, and walk a mile to the little bridge above the Golondrinas river. They would drop a few stones in for anchor, tie the sailor's knot that their father had taught them before he put the gun in his mouth, and then- unceremoniously- they would drop the sack into the water.<br />
<br />
Miguel used to smile in pure delight, watching for bubbles or resurfacing, but Ricardo always found the fall to be anticlimactic. Why kill them like this when you could get creative? It tasted better with a tire iron.<br />
<br />
It was the night before the big day, and Ricardo was lay back on his prison mattress, smoking his smoke, finding sleep for once hard to come by. His heart made jog in his chest as he thought about the blueprint. There was a lot riding on tomorrow, the rest of his life and then some: he would break free or die trying. He and Wally Mors had laid the dynamite in place at the construction site this afternoon... sealing the sticks of golden explosive behind fresh-laid brick, the wick extending between a hole in the cement like a serpent’s tail. The wick was waiting.<br />
<br />
Now it was time to dream... to dream of the outside.<br />
<br />
9…<br />
<br />
But it turned out in the end there was no time to dream, no time to sleep, because it was morning before Ricardo could close his eyes and open them again, the sun up in the sky early and unscheduled, and the jackets were poking him awake through the bars with their sticks, shouting to get up, get up and get eaten… there was work to be done.<br />
<br />
In the mess hall that toothless fuck Brewster put a load of cold mush in his mouth, opened it wide and shouted across the room: “Hey Cortez, I got a gourmet breakfast for you!”<br />
<br />
Ricardo didn’t blink. There was work to be done.<br />
<br />
8…<br />
<br />
At the job site the mortar and masonry tools where just they had left them, and while one of the jackets backed up a dump truck full of bricks into the yard two inmates with wheelbarrows began to stack and unload. There were thirty men on construction duty today, 100 yards from the jailhouse proper, at the South Wall building the addition to the prison that would house another three-hundred men, building a box to bury bad men alive. So far no one had noticed the missing TNT… the head of the construction crew stood in the guard tower shouting obscenities as usual. Ricardo began stacking bricks, thinking of the work there was to be done outside, the blood to be spilled and the flesh to be scarred. He tried to remember the last time he had ridden in a car, the last time he had been laid. He thought of the taste of lobster and his mouth made water. He wanted to taste it again. Just one more time…<br />
<br />
7…<br />
<br />
At 8:30 AM Wally Mors looked across the yard from the lumber pile and put two fingers to his temple. Good. Ricardo thought of Santos, and Violet, and would they ever be surprised to see him again. He thought of the day when he was thirteen, when he had got tired of drowning kittens and strangled his Mama with his bare hands. He could still hear the music. That was just before he shot Miguel in the face to see how big a mess he could make. He smiled, nostalgic.<br />
<br />
6…<br />
<br />
The jackets were watching him closer this morning, and least that’s the way it felt to Ricardo. If they knew something, anything, they weren’t giving it away. The bricks were piling high, they seemed to stack themselves. Ricardo realized he was numb, his body working on automatic and his mind a thousand miles. Suddenly he had to laugh out loud: one way or another all his problems would be solved today. Across the way Wally Mors lit a cigarette. Ricardo asked the jacket for a break. He leaned up against yesterday’s brick wall and lit a cigarette, ashing back in Wally’s direction.<br />
<br />
5…<br />
<br />
He wondered if Linda Darnell was still making pictures. He would definitely have to find her and fuck her if he got out.<br />
<br />
4…<br />
<br />
Ricardo’s heart start to pound in his throat. There was a world just outside these walls, you better believe it. His hand began to shake as he raised his cigarette for a drag.<br />
<br />
3…<br />
<br />
So long, you cocksuckers.<br />
<br />
2…<br />
<br />
Wally Mors started screaming, holding his hand and howling like a woman making baby.<br />
<br />
“Son of a bitch! Son of a bitch that goddamn thing stung me!”<br />
<br />
Ricardo looked up, watch Wally dance around the yard, jackets watching, looking back and forth to each other, dead-eyed drones in uniform, and Wally screamed like the Devil. He pointed to the stack of wood: “Fuck it! There’s a scorpion in there!”<br />
<br />
And as the guards advanced on the injured man Ricardo fell back, and with one chance, struck the last match he had left against his matchbook cover, which was wet with sweat from today’s nerves.<br />
<br />
And the match caught fire.<br />
<br />
Ricardo kissed it to the wick, and the flame begin its journey to destruction sublime, and there was no time for a countdown because-<br />
<br />
The South Wall exploded in a shower of broken brick and debris, the impact from the blast knocking everyone to the ground. Ricardo’s vision go shaky as the ground tremor and quake. The jackets and the other inmates run from the cloud, stones and gravel still airborne, hanging for a moment before the meteor shower that would rain like bullets, and finally visible on the other side of the hole was the sight he had been waiting to see. On the outside stood Wally’s sister beside her running car, waiting patient and afraid.<br />
<br />
The projectile rock cut the faces of the jackets still on their feet. And Ricardo, he ran.<br />
<br />
He ran to the driver’s side window where Felecia Mors wordlessly handed him the M16, and Ricardo turned and began to fire, pumping slugs lazy good, taking out anyone dumb enough to stand up, any inmate fool enough to think there was room in the car for him.<br />
<br />
Wally stood, rose to his feet, pounding his way across the work yard, and he almost got there. Almost but one of the jackets got to his knees and plugged Wally twice in the back. He fell to the ground.<br />
<br />
Felecia cried out but Ricardo didn’t hear. He shot the guard for what he did to Wally. Then he shot Wally, just to be sure. There would be no wounded on this ride.<br />
<br />
Ricardo jumped into the backseat, screamed at Felecia and the girl began to drive, the Dodge pulling away fast and up the valley road, away from Santa Fe toward Agua Fria. Ricardo turn to watch out the back window, but there were no police cars on their tail, no guards in hot pursuit. He only turned away twice to yell at Felecia: “Faster.”<br />
<br />
Ten miles later there was no one in sight. He wondered how long the car could last before it would give out and overheat, before he’d have to steal another one. He wondered where he would dump Felecia’s body when he was finished with her.<br />
<br />
The girl started crying then, only 19, and through her senseless sobbing she asked Ricardo without looking back, “How could you do that to my brother?”<br />
<br />
Ricardo laughed. He laughed like it was the funniest thing he had ever heard. He reached up from the back seat and put his hands beneath her shirt, squeezing her breasts and pulling hard on her nipples.<br />
<br />
“Drive.”<br />
<br />
The Dodge kicked up a trail of dust that died down quick in the breeze-free air. Ricardo could smell the cypress trees, taste the blue of the sky wide open. He saw release, and the potential to do some serious and permanent damage to the world that had caged him. He thought: sometimes things work out exactly like you plan them.<br />
<br />
Sometimes cats come back.<br />
<br />Sick Cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05328029727454505988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1463583730374236440.post-17473807801351953892015-10-28T04:20:00.000-04:002015-11-02T07:41:34.593-05:00Bricklayer (Prologue)<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: red;"><br /></span></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: red;">Every day I see the bars.</span></b></span><br />
<br />
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh….. FUCK!!!!!!!<br />
<br />
Every day I see the bars. I live behind them. They grow from the ground organic and symmetric, in perfect parallel lines, interlocking to form the fourth wall, to keep me from the three dimensions. They don’t need food. They don’t need water. They were forged from iron and steel, the fingernails of the devil keep me in his sinister grip.<br />
<br />
Fuck you, Satan.<br />
<br />
Every day I see the bars. Every night I fall asleep to them, swaying in the breeze of the open air window, lazy and tired after a long day of holding me down, keeping me in my place, sealing my fate.<br />
<br />
My fate is unsealed. <br />
<br />
Every day I see the bars, every morning smiling wide in my open eyes like a set of fresh-brush teeth. They grin. <br />
<br />
“You’re not going anywhere.”<br />
<br />
They all of them, they wrote me off a long time ago: I’m an ignorant, I’m a lifer, I’m an animal. <br />
<br />
They’re all wrong. All the people and all the bars. I’m a person. I’m a human being. With a taste for the bloody things in life. I order my steak rare just like you do. The only thing that separates us, the only dividing line: these bars.<br />
<br />
These fucking bars.<br />
<br />
I live behind them. Every day they mar my vision, they poke my eyes. People need to stop yelling at me. That toothless fuck Brewster in the mess hall every day, opening his mouth full of prison mush, making me look it, "Wanna bite, Ricardo?" One day I'll put my fist down his throat and choke him to death slow and pretty.<br />
<br />
I see them. I see the bars. Every day I make the walk: down the line, the painted line on the concrete floor with the other inmates, the painted line parade that leads us in a circle. Around the other faces. Around the second floor cages. It’s supposed to break us. Maybe I don’t break.<br />
<br />
Maybe I broke a long time ago.<br />
<br />
I’m coming out soon, to the world you call home, to the jotunheim, to the lap of your loved ones, to your kitchen table good and proper that shines in the sun you call your own. I’m going to overturn your shaker of salt. I’m going to spill your pepper.<br />
<br />
I do bad things, I know that. But that’s only because that’s what I want to do. That’s what’s inside me. Bad things, I suppose. Those are your words. Dark things that feel good. Somebody has to do the bad things. It’s a gift. It’s a fucking calling.<br />
<br />
Every day they let us out from behind the bars so we can build the wall.<br />
<br />
Day after day they march us to the construction site. In straight lines like soldiers under guard. Day after day they tell us to lay the bricks. It's our day labor and we have no choice: we build the building brick by brick, grids of geometric block stack to reach the heavens. To summon the hell. We build the wall. The prison is expanding. The jackets watch us and they laugh. They beat us with Cypress branches. You get not to feel it and the blood it clots eventual. I don’t no longer see faces. I want to break the wall. I want to topple those bricks to the ground.<br />
<br />
In solitary it’s so quiet I can hear the wolves crying. I can hear the ones separated from the pack, lost and lonely, looking up at the moon and praying they were not alone. Sometimes in solitary I howl along with them. The howling doesn’t help because the jackets and the men they think I’m just a madman. Maybe they’re right about the wolves. Maybe they’re right about the madman. I'm the madman.<br />
<br />
Every day I build the wall. I do what I am told. I eat my day's labor and cough up dust. Every day I stack the bricks. I was not born for this: I was not born to be slave for a society lie. I was not born to die a broken. I been drawing maps in my notebook. Maps and plans and smiles and schedules. You don’t need to know dates and times. You’ll never see me coming. Words have been underlined in pencil. Underlined in pencil several times. I have the idea. I was not born for this. Every day I build the wall. Every day I see the bars. I live behind them.<br />
<br />
But not for long.<br />
<br />Sick Cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05328029727454505988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1463583730374236440.post-73068144851314593862015-10-14T04:20:00.000-04:002015-10-14T18:33:18.305-04:00Microwave Magic<br />
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<br />
Congratulations on your purchase of a new Conmar Microwave
Oven Cooking System! This state-of-the-art food preparation unit will completely
revolutionize the way you operate your home kitchen. With this new 100-watt microwave powerhouse you can do things you’ve never been able to do
before:<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
- Make crisp bacon in under four minutes</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
- Melt butter for lobster, shrimp and personal use</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
- Warm up the cat on cold mornings most likely</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
- Make a successful sales presentation and earn that
promotion</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
- Soften ice cream, because sometimes when it’s a full box
and the spoon goes in and it just won’t dig
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
From this day forward your family’s mouths will start to collectively
water when they hear the musical hum of their new Conmar Microwave (ear
protection recommended). In no time at all the whole family will be microwaving
things just for fun, and that’s just the start of what you can do:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
- Take your microwave to the beach and set it out on a
blanket</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
- Encourage your microwave to take up a musical instrument</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
- Bring your microwave with you to the Clint Eastwood Film
Festival</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
- Strap your Conmar microwave to the roof of your car and
parade it around the neighborhood, rubbing your neighbor’s faces in the glory
of your latest consumer acquisition</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It also heats cold pizza. Enjoy!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
[Not responsible for radiation or carcinogen leakage. Not
responsible for Talking Foot Syndrome. Some items not microwavable. Not
responsible for any items accidentally microwaved into parallel dimensions. Do
not use microwave as flotation device. Not for use by Leos or Pisces. Some glowing of the skin is considered
normal. Microwave rays may or may not warp space-time. No longer responsible for bladder accidents]<br />
<br />
</div>
Sick Cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05328029727454505988noreply@blogger.com1