THE WILD OF SANCHEZ MOLL

EEEK! Was all I could say when I saw the face come out of the black doorway. I wasn’t really left with any other choice since I had been taught to respect pleasant things and act repulsed at unpleasant things. There must have been two hundred pockmarks where some one had shot him with a shotgun during some botched robbery in the past and not only was his face messed up but his teeth must have been blown out too because the teeth he had were all made of steel which was beginning to rust. “I’ve come here to pick up your daughter.” I said.” He beckoned for me to follow him into the house and we walked down a dark hallway that had piles of clothes pushed up against the wall on both sides. We went into a kitchen that was dimly illuminated with four night lights plugged into one wall and he pulled open the refrigerator door and took out a big crock pot which he placed on the table. “There she be.” He said. “Excuse me?” I replied.

“I cooked her last night but couldn’t finish her.”

“What! What do you mean you cooked her?”

“I mean what anyone else would mean when they say they cooked something. Are you thick?”

I was shaking my head when I heard Maria’s voice coming from somewhere down the hall. “Is my pa pa messing with you?” 

“I’ll say!” I replied. 

Her dad laughed and said, “I just wanted to see what your sense of humor was like.”

“I’ll be out in a minute.” Said Maria.

Her dad took the lid off the crock pot and said, “Hell I wouldn’t cook my daughter. That would just be crazy cannibalism. I did cook our dog though. That little fucker bit me one time too many. Dogs taste like crap. I can’t see how people eat ‘em over in China or where ever.”

I dated Maria for two weeks before she dumped me. She said I couldn’t get along with her dad and that I always looked like I was going to puke when she mentioned his name. I couldn’t argue with her.

NOISE

Grey  Coy, Donnie French, Dee Burch, Scott Elrod, and I decided to lie to our parents and say that we were all sleeping over at each other’s house. But we really went to the railroad tracks in Moraine and set up camp on top of a decrepit bridge abutment that had chunks of concrete falling off it and plants growing out of every crack. We would sit up there drinking and smoking while the trains went by with the locomotives so close to us that our chests would rumble and our breathing would go awry. The cigarette smoke, factory smoke, and locomotive smoke saturated our lungs while we gobbled down candy and fortified wine. We really couldn’t get enough of anything. In the quiet hours of two or three in the morning when it became damp and the fog began to roll off the river a train slowed down enough for us to run down the embankment of the bridge and jump on a coal car. It was the best feeling in the world when we first started a train ride. As the train accelerated the cars would begin to rock and bounce and you just knew people were not met to be riding on them, that they really were met for inanimate materials that could get very hot or cold and soaking wet or whacked by rocks from kids just like ourselves. But really, thinking back on it, we really were like inanimate objects, at least intellectually. Our bodies were immortal and that was all that really mattered. We roared past parking lots in small towns where kids were hanging out around their cars and we pelted them with chunks of coal and wine bottles. We smoked and watched our cigarette butts be swept away into the hurricane that followed the train down the tracks pulling bushes and flotsam into its wake while the wheels clacked and squealed like giant scissors being sharpened in the dark. It was just too good. But after a couple hours it dawns on you that you are far away and getting farther by the second but the train just keeps pulling and pulling with the industrial indifference of commerce while the coal dust gets in your teeth and up your nose. Finally, the thing slows down and we jump off in a freight yard outside of Cincinnati. We make our way to the highway  just as the sun comes up and start hitch hiking. Some guy in a hopped up convertible picks us up and we all immediately fall asleep as we head back north. Later, when we’re dumped off back in our town near where we started off, but not near enough, we swear we’ll never do it again because we’re so tired and dirty and sick feeling. I don’t know why, but it takes about two weeks to forget  the bad parts and do it all again. Two weeks is just about forever when you’re immortal.

DARK BUILDINGS

At one point, back some time ago, I rented this tiny hut over in the ghetto. It was super cheap and the day I signed the contract was the last time I ever saw the place in daylight. My schedule was like this: Go to work at the boiler plant at six in the morning and work until four. Then at five, go to work in the restaurant and work until two in the morning. Then at two in the morning, meet up with my girlfriend at my hut and hang out until about five in the morning at which time I would catch an hour of sleep. When my girlfriend would show up at two in the morning the first thing she would do was to pull a giant butcher knife out of her sweat pants. She carried this to deal with the hoodlums who inhabited the railroad tracks that she had to cross by the hospital. She told me that she once gutted someone and pulled out their ribs for messing with her. She also liked to drink and when she showed up with her butcher knife she was usually blasted out of her head. I never understood this since she worked at the same restaurant as I did and would often get done with work at the same small hour of the morning. Somehow, between leaving work, going to her apartment, and arriving at my hut twenty minutes later she would down some astounding amount of alcohol to pickle her brain and ensure that we were going to have interesting times while we conversed about sleep deprivation and the traumas of love. We lived in a haze of sleeplessness and booze until, finally, one day I found myself hallucinating from lack of sleep. I was sitting in the locker room of the boiler plant looking at the floor. I saw a dust ball blowing out from under a bench and as I watched it cross the floor it turned into a spider and then back into a dust ball. It was so real that I knew something profound had happened to my brain and that night I mentioned to my girlfriend that we might want to think about leaving. A week later we did leave, packing everything we could into a giant Cadillac Eldorado convertible that I had received as a half assed graduation present. I left half of my belongings in the hut and never saw them again. I also left both my jobs without notification or the slightest bit of guilt. I remember blasting up through the north east corridor on the way to god knows where with my girlfriend sleeping on the seat next to me. It was our hour, about three in the morning while I was roaring up 95 in the snow when I lost control of the car. We turned sideways at eighty miles an hour and slid along the highway with a wave of snow blowing up in the air behind us. Somehow the car righted itself and I found that we were driving like normal people again. I looked over at my girlfriend and she hadn’t stirred. I realized that sleep was the best place to be no matter what was happening outside. She was safe as an egg and didn’t even know it. But, really, I have to admit, I didn’t know it either when you get right down to it.

THE LIST OF 9s

Once again I am teetering on the precipice of bold language and feeble ideas. I am dissatisfied with all the currently used systems of thought. I am trying to figure out a way to make all people into computer like machines who can be programmed into doing precisely what I want them to do. First of all, I would program about five billion of them to walk off the continents and into the oceans where they would swim to the sharks and try to pet them. Then I would take the remaining billion or so and make them into builders so that I could tear down every city, suburb, mall, car lot, etc. until there was nothing left but dirt and grass. I would pile everything up on Manhattan island and have about three million people left there to sort through everything and recycle any usable materials to a warehouse in New Jersey. After about a year or two, when all the denuded spots had regrown I would begin building the new improved city. There would be no roads going into the city. Just four railroad tracks coming from the four cardinal points. Since no cars could come into the city the paths between buildings would  be a little wider than a sidewalk and a little more narrow than a street. The city would only be 5000 feet by 5000 feet so you could walk everywhere and cross the city in about 15 minutes. The buildings would be made of concrete, stainless steel, and glass and they would be extremely tall. Every one would be made to live in a numbered pod and all of the pods would be exactly the same. Everyone would also have the same job and get the same pay. The money would actually consist of a chit that stated you would be allowed to live for another week. The second anyone broke out and tried to distinguish themselves from the population they would be burned as fuel in the giant boiler which would generate electricity and heat the city. Imagine! The perfect society! Everyone is finally equal and all the progressives are finally satisfied. The right will have been exterminated and used for millions of kilowatts of free power. I, of course, will not be equal since I invented it all. Soon, the entire society would direct their last flickers of dissatisfaction at me and a whole new party would be formed with the express purpose of toppling my reign. But I would be ruthless. I would point out that for the most part equality had been realized and that it could not be maintained without an overseer to ensure it’s viability. As crazy as it sounds, I would tell them, equality is something that must be imposed from the top and the vicious monstrosity known as nature will do everything it can to dissolve equality and plunge the entire population into chaos and misery if allowed to rear it’s grimy head. But they would certainly not listen. Try as I might to whip and beat it into their heads they would insist that I come on down and join them in the great sea of oneness. Day after day I would sit up on the tallest building pulling levers and flicking switches while the populace bubbled below. Their leaflets and fliers would start piling up in the pathways and raise the level of the ground by several feet every month. Soon the city would be subsumed by paper and they would be upon me. The moment I joined them the melee would commence and equality would lose its commission. The city would be overrun by barbarians from the woods who had their programs denigrate via simple neglect. Fire and spears would be arcing through the air as the stainless steel turned black with heat and billions of papers floated into the air carrying fire to long lost places outside the border. Everything would be undone and my name would be permanently associated with terror and destruction. I would insist on a trial by rodents and would surly be installed in an insane asylum where I could contemplate my deeds for years and years.

SLAKE THE FILM

Two thousand years from now I should just about be done with my house. I have been working away at various things just trying to keep nature at bay and I realize that I spend a fair amount of time doing just that. I would like to figure out how to make a house that not only doesn’t allow nature to eat it but that actually channeled the nefarious bugs and plants into useful roles. I honestly wouldn’t mind it if a tornado came along and leveled my place so I could start again knowing what I know now. Everything would be made of concrete, glass, and steel. I would trap every drop of water that hit my house, use the sunlight to heat it and pressurize it, then have it spray out periodically to steam clean the bugs and plants off the outside. I would have the plants and bugs collected in neat little troughs which would funnel the biomaterial into a machine that would compress them into cubes and place them on a grid in the sun. When they dried out I would use them for fuel in the winter. My whole house would be an energy trap that ticked on its own just like a clock. It would take care of itself so that I could take care of other things. Now, having just written about it, I want to go home and work!

TILE IN THE AMAZON

Last night I had one of my recurring dreams that I was back in the military which, actually, is more of a nightmare with me chomping at the bits for a way out. When I awoke I was relieved but while I was lying there I thought, “I spent nearly five years of my life inside a machine that was designed expressly for destroying other machines and people.” What a strange thought…to live inside a machine of destruction like its your home and nest while it’s out hunting Russians or whatever.  But then I thought I’m glad I was on a destroyer. Why beat around the bush? People hunt each other and vie for control over various dominions. There must be some atavistic drive there that’s been buried under layer after layer of deception.  And what I’ve noticed is that the people who are most vehemently against war and violence are the ones who ply power in the most insidious manner possible. There is a whole crew of them who are connected through subtile symbols of sophistry and fashion, who run among the swift and clever, and whose deeds always appear reasonable and helpful despite the ultimately self serving outcome of their efforts. It really is such an amazing thing that has happened. Raw power has given way to this fascinating chess game that is conducted at little desks in front of computer screens. It’s like there is power flowing back and forth while deals are made and undone. But the participants seem to garner the same rewards whether they’re winning or losing. It’s just such a safe bet. The contemporary world is being turned into a huge computer game and a perpetual battle of wits. I guess it makes sense. Why move your body to earn a living if you can just play a game while sitting on your ass. I’m glad they’re doing it. I’m glad that they are becoming more entwined in this virtual world. With luck, there will come a day when all of these people are permanently ensconced in their pods where they can run through the virtual forests with one another chasing sparkles of electrons. It is, of course, unfortunate for nature because of the vast amount of highly refined energy used by these machines in order to recreate a world that is already here. But let’s face it, these people, despite their often strident advocacy of green, are most disconnected from nature. Yes, they are unnatural. But I guess that’s what people do… differentiate themselves. If nothing else, it’s fun to watch.

SHAKE IT OFF

Sometimes things go wrong and sometimes they go right. For instance, last night I went home and made the mistake of playing with the cat while drunk and she bit me right on the nose which made me imagine all sorts of scenarios of my nose falling off because of some cat disease. I don’t know if I deserved to be bit on the nose but there it was. Then I was attacked by the bunny rabbit who was trying to get my food and I began to think the animals were going crazy. When I fell asleep I had elaborate dreams about wandering through beautiful forests with some girls I know and then finding some railroad tracks in the middle of all the trees where trains were coming and going from who knows where. There were very beautiful black locomotives with small red embers floating behind them as they cut through the woods with their satisfying rumble. The girls didn’t care about the trains no matter how I tried to explain their significance. How could I care though? I just couldn’t have been in a better place. When I awoke I drove into town and did some stuff on the computer. I discovered that some money has magically appeared in my bank account from some company I’ve never heard of. I just find myself wondering if their couldn’t be a better balance between luck and un-luck. I would like things, in general, to be more sleepy and calm.

TORMENTING THE INFIDELS

Last night I dreamed that I married a tiny Mestizo woman while on a trip to Venezuela where I was supposedly going to work on a tunnel of some sort that was intended to serve as a conduit for water or some other fluid. It seemed that I had been misappropriated at the airport and mistaken for an engineer who was similar in looks to myself but, of course, who also had the knowledge to actually build the thing. I often have this same sort of dream where I am stepping into someone else’s profession on the spur of the moment and I find it slightly disturbing that I’m always willing to take on the mantel of whatever position I inherit without any qualms about the consequences of zero knowledge. Anyway, I was up on a steel structure looking down on crews of diggers who were all dressed in exotic plumage that struck me as unreasonable for the work, and I kept noticing a tiny woman who was always breaking away from the group and running off into the forest every ten or fifteen minutes to do who knows what. I didn’t care that she wasn’t working full tilt but I wondered what could be so attractive back in the dark green glob of plants and trees. So I climbed down from the structure and found a machete which I used to puncture the woods and begin traveling in the general direction where I supposed the woman to be. It seemed like I hacked along for quite a while constantly fighting off giant uncoordinated insects who would pick at me with their proboscises and brainless legs so that I was pulled into that familiar slow motion associated with dreams. I cussed and sweated as I slashed my machete with increased violence, lopping off arms and legs along with the jello like extrusions of plant life that tried to suck me down into the loamy floor of the forest. Just as I was starting to perceive the futility of my effort I broke through into a large field of very uniform hay that had a path cut out starting precisely where I stood. I walked along this path until I came to a city of tall, smooth, glass buildings which were ringing slightly in the breeze and there was this woman sitting at a desk in the middle of a deserted street. She was reading a book called “The Calls” and it had a very curious cover that moved and glowed as she turned the pages. I asked her if I could sit with her and she said yes. When I looked at her face I realized that she was beautiful in that rat like way that I find so attractive and I asked her what she was doing here. She said she was learning how to break me down into every different part that I could possibly be and put me back together in the correct way so that everything would be forever ok. I had no idea how she intended to do this but I told her to go ahead and the next thing I knew we were both sort of glowing inside one of the glass towers, with some strange tune playing in the background. And then there was a monumental explosion and we were pouring through the very tunnel we were supposed to be working on along with a few hundred unhinged workers who were sopping in their feathers and loincloths. We all spilled out into a future village where I was married to this tiny woman who was named Maria Tait. Then I woke up and realized that my insomnia is on the run. Finally!