BLENDS OF MOTHER’S MILK

So I went to look at a project this morning that I almost rejected outright because of the manner of speech employed by the caller when I talked to him yesterday. He was one of those people who seemed to deliberate for an exceedingly long time before deciding to utter simple sentences which made me imagine an interminable process of negotiation should a contract be drawn up. When I got to the house I looked for all the little clues to suss out the nature of the people I was going to meet. The types of cars, the objects in their yard, the colors of trim, what kind of gardening, dogs, cats, and all those sorts of things. My immediate impression was austerity topped with a tad of blandness. I rang the doorbell and waited. A funny looking woman came from around the bushes and told me to come around to the other door so as to avoid the dog. She was Russian. She brought me into the kitchen where there seemed to be a dog and it made me wonder if there was a really bad dog somewhere else. The husband came up from the basement and gave me one of those dead fish handshakes that sets my skin crawling because it makes me think of men who are not really men at all. I’m not into any of that macho shit but I have to say, there are some things that men should not forsake, one of which is a firm handshake. Yesterday, at another job I had the same handshake from another customer who didn’t look like a pussy but whom I will now always associate with being a pussy because of his limp mitt. Anyway, this guy starts explaining to me about what he wants done and it feels like I’m talking to a machine of some sort that takes input, computes, and then issues an answer that’s cold as an ice cube. As we talk, I realize that this guy is timid and afraid that I may do something violent to his house, something that has not been thoroughly computed. His Russian wife is vivacious and keeps her face right in front of my face whenever we stop walking around the basement. Her eyes are unusual, as if they’re not quite lined up with her nose, but she keeps smiling and sort of making little faces at me that I cannot quite understand. The husband hesitates at every turn trying to anticipate anything I might say that would imply the addition of cost. I can see the gears turning behind his pasty face as his magnified eyes peer gloomily from behind his glasses. He takes me through an elaborate workshop that reminds me of the kind of thing a German maker of exquisite toy soldiers or guns would have. I imagined this guy down there in the middle of the night wearing a sweater that had been pressed and a loupe turning one of his sad eyeballs into a giant dead moon staring into the face of a little general no bigger than a finger. And I wondered what this living Russian woman is doing down in this sterile pit with this creature. I see what appears to me to be the living and the dead matched up time after time. Do they compliment each other in some way that makes for a good relationship? Are they happy or are they just alive and pragmatically tolerant? It makes me speculate that I’ve always wanted too much out of things. This, to me, is the most complicated question I ever address. I’m pretty sure I will never figure it out but it amuses me to speculate.

LOVE & THE IRON KNEE

Well that was a record setting little relationship. Out of the blue, a week or so ago, I called a girl with a name that said everything I needed to know. Lola. But I wanted to know more so we met up at a restaurant named after the numeral made famous by Bo Derek and which also happens to be decked out with the same excruciating architectural design that was probably beginning to brew in the minds of some children in 1979 and came to fruition when bad taste should have been passe. The first thing Lola told me was that she thought that the restaurant was beautiful and I knew we were sliding down the canyons to doom right then and there. But I wanted to know more. She told me she really liked the way I said her name but I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about being particularly interested in the tongue work described by Nabokov in “Lolita” which, though not my favorite book, is certainly a perceptive little thing. So we’re sitting there blabbing away and I’m thinking, “This is the worst music in the world,” whereupon, she says, “You think the bartender could get me the name of this song?” I really thought to myself, “Could this song even have a name? Who would bother? Is it even a song?” and so on. I knew right then that it was over. But, of course, I wanted to know more. So she wanted to be a singer. She was going to start by doing Karaoke, eventually, which struck me as appropriate somehow though in a unhealthy way. She hated the country and loved the city and thought I shouldn’t be a construction worker. She complained a lot about her GF which I assumed met Goober File until I realized that a Goober File would not be flagrantly trying to marry a rich man. There were certain…, how shall I say, indices that seemed to portend unfortunate scenarios. They began to stack up at an alarming rate. By our third date I was thinking. “Just what is it I want here?” I went home and decided that I really had to ask myself a serious question. But I just couldn’t figure out how to construct this particular question without degrading myself in front of myself. Finally, I wore myself down and admitted that I was overlooking Lola’s brain and even, inexcusably, her limbic system. All I wanted was her body. Is that so awful? Despite my feminist bent, I don’t think I know.

FUNDAMENTAL SAPIENS

 Cynthia Wall’s wonderful book ‘the courage to trust’ struck such a  deep chord within my soul that I thought you should read this: So. These people associated with the Pew Environmental Foundation are shark activists. That’s no big deal. What is more of a deal is that the shark activists are people who have had their arms and legs ripped off in shark attacks. Now you have to wonder why someone who had their body ravished by a shark would decide to take up the cause of shark advocacy. Is this another version of the Christian, “love thy enemy” phenomenon which is certainly one of the most curious ideas humans have ever come up with. I don’t think that anyone has a good reason for thinking in this manner except as a last ditch effort to deal with something unimaginably horrible. I think it is important to understand that you can only love your enemy if your enemy leaves enough of you after the attack so that you can form a thought. For instance, if a shark were to eat your brain you would be completely incapable of becoming friends with him. It is possible that the shark would regard the remains of your body as a friend but it’s more likely that he would regard it as food. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that the shark would regard you as food if you possessed any caloric value whatsoever. But let’s face it. What’s really happening is that after having your arm torn off by a shark you are pretty disturbed by the workings of the world. You are searching for a reason and trying to make sense of it all. So with the inimitable human penchant for spectacular creation you come up with the most logical idea. “I will be friends with a shark!” You think, “This will just kill them to see me swallowing my negative thoughts and reaching out with a friendly hand.” But then when you reach out your remaining arm to befriend your shark it rips that arm off too and you, quite understandably, say, “What the HELL!” It is from that scenario that I think the human mind might truly reach a nirvana of pleasant thoughts towards the sharks. At least based on empirical evidence.

AMERICAN NOWHERE

On the edge or the town of Nancy France there was a bakery that had a husband, a wife, two daughters, and one infant son running the place. I include the infant son in the category of running the place because he was kept in the sunny window for pedestrians to coo and ooh at as they walked by and of course the more maternally frustrated women would be inclined to come into the shop under the pretense of buying bread when, in fact, they just wanted to be around the baby. It was above this little shop, which was called Rumbeaux after the general of the same name who fell under axe of Robespierre during the Reign of Terror, that I let a room and took up my vocation as a Redeemer. Now you may or may not wonder what a Redeemer is but the truth is, if I were to tell you then you would just shake your head in disbelief and I won’t have that so I’ll just describe my typical day. I would get up at four when the smell of fresh baked bread wafted up through the cracks in my floor.  As soon as I shaved and got dressed I would run down the stairs and begin an animated conversation with the daughters about the goings on in America which was, they were convinced, a magic place of violence and fashion. I spent every morning trying to imprint upon them the notion that the vast majority of America was a droll wasteland of suburban homogeneity depleted of anything remotely fashionable and lacking in any interesting violence unless you included bruises on the ass from sitting down too hard and too often. But they would hear none of it and bombarded me with the same questions over and over again. “Monsieur! How do zee bras look in zee Sears store.” “Sears!” I would say. “I have been unfortunate enough to have had relations with women who shopped in the Sears lingerie department. I will say it was unfortunate and nothing more.”

“Monsieur! Waz Michael Jackson killed with the knife or the gun or the fork?”
“Ecouter! He was killed with a pill and nothing else!”

“Monsieur! In the head have you been ever shot.”

“My darlings, if I had been shot in the head my French would be more precise.” and so on.

After my bantering with the girls I would address the mother who would insist on making me a bread roll with and egg on it thinking that everyone in America was addicted to Egg Mc muffins. I would eat that and then peek into the oven room to tip my hat at the father, pat the slobbering baby on the head, and then head out into the dark.

Even in the gloomy morning of an medieval French town the women rode their bikes with their backs straight up and their chins raised high. I think that they had someplace to go where there was no urgency or, even more likely, they didn’t have anywhere to go at all though it is difficult to imagine riding a bike in the dead end of the night without a reason. There were also men who shuffled along tapping their walking sticks on the curb while they puffed on short bits of cigarette. I couldn’t imagine what those people were doing except to think that they were being French and doing life in a different way from us Americans. Unlike them, I tended to walk along with the absolute knowledge that I was going nowhere, and it was an American nowhere which was a clean, simple nowhere without the drag of a thousand years of weariness that made the body assume odd positions in the dark like a straight up back or a mumbling face. I walked along the side streets until I came to my coffee shop which was called the Temploux which met God knows what. The first thing that would happen when I went into this coffee shop and sat down with my coffee would be that this bum, whom I detested because of his reeking odor, would come into the place under the pretense of looking for coins on the floor and then during his circuit he would make sure to brush against my back with his poisonous clothing leaving the scent of dead rodents on my jacket. I know he did it on purpose because every time he left he would turn at the door and smile at me with his broken out teeth. I simply viewed it as a necessary cost of doing business in France. After all, Napoleon would beg Josephine not to wash her armpits while he was away causing trouble in the soggy fields of Europe and the French did seem to be endowed with prominent snouts which would imply a heightened sense of smell or maybe an appreciation for smelly things. Personally, I didn’t notice much in France that smelled different than things in America. There was still the smell of self satisfaction but that was of a small comfort like a post card from home or a familiar pair of shoes. I will tell you the truth. I ran away from home. One morning I awoke and shooed away all of my pets. I smashed my cell phone with a shovel and then began burning my house down very slowly using the doors and windows as crude flues so as not to attract the neighbors. When there was nothing left but a black smoldering pit I set out for France thinking that I would blow the rest of my life, which I estimated to be two or maybe three months, depending on my mood, and then make a final journey to the wastelands of Afghanistan or Kazakhstan so I could expire in a dusty, absolute, emptiness where I thought the decks might be clear enough for me to observe what happened. Once I made this plan I felt relaxed for the first time in my entire life. I slept like a baby on the transatlantic flight which, evidently, got lost in heavy weather due to a seriously abnormal flight crew who were summarily fired the second the plane hit the tarmac. I never felt so rested in my life as when I got off that plane in Amsterdam and began lining up a bike ride to France. I rode my bike less than two thousand feet before I pulled off onto a little country road, crawled into a ditch, and went to sleep again just for the novelty of it. I began to think that I had never actually slept in my life and I began to see in how many places I could simply lie down and go to sleep. I slept in fields, under bridges, next to rivers, in alleys, abandoned buildings, holes in the ground, broken cars, just any where I could breath I could and would sleep. The more hours of sleep that I racked up the more my attitude seemed to change. I didn’t worry about things anymore and I seemed to be happy. But within my happiness was the little black cloud of my wandering pets, my burned down house, and my smushed cell phone. That kept me from being too happy which, I believe, could have caused a whole new course of events. There seemed to be balance between the good and the bad and the crushing blow of what precipitated my decline fell into the same category as the burned down house, wandering pets, and smashed phone, that is, bad, but not that bad. I could see that the internal balance of justice was finally weighing things equally and without effort which is the essence of all balance. But then this balance and effortlessness afforded me a wide open field in which to run my brain straight into a large oak tree. I would think of her and how I’d been whipped down before I even had a chance to inhale and then I would see my house toppling over in giant sheets of stucco as millions of embers huffed across the grass and my little animals peered through wide terrified eyes at the spectacle their master had elaborated through his sizzling neurons which were criss crossed and dark as roots under a horrible forest. Oh my God, the places where you can have thoughts! The counties and states, the political subdivisions and rambunctious boarders, the little rooms and big skies. Sitting dead still, I’m running full tilt and I tell you, where ever it is it’s just never big enough. So I have a little cup of coffee and read the French news which is lovely because of its incomprehensible words and inhumane familiarity. I couldn’t have come to a better place!

PLAYING IN RED

The rules of the evening are don’t drink too much and don’t have that beer when the sun is coming up. I really do sometimes wish that I were an animal so I could torment other animals, eat, sleep and exist in a state of guiltless bliss.

BANKING RULES

 This was the deal I made with my sister. I said that all the money that I signed would be real money that we could actually use to buy things from each other. So we got to work cutting out pieces of paper in the shape of dollar bills and drawing presidents on them. I determined the denominations and distributed the money. My sister got the ones and fives. I gave her a lot of them so it looked like she had some real money. But I got the thousand dollar bills, the million dollar bills, and the billion dollar bills. Every bill was stamped with our return address stamp and signed by me so that they had legitimacy. After we had done up all the money and I had distributed it we started wheeling and dealing for our toys. I sold some worthless junk that I didn’t want any more and then bought all of my sister’s toys. After I had all her toys I set them up on a ladder out on the side walk and put them up for sale for American money. I was up to about two dollars when my mom was informed and closed down my business. She made me go over to the Shell’s house to get some of my sister’s toys back and that was where I ran into trouble with Ricky Shell who had bought two Barbie dolls. I found him out behind his house under the bushes where he had dug a pit and filled it with water and dirt to make a mud bog. He was making the two Barbies have sex despite their lack of sexual organs and he had set their heads on fire. They were not only having sex while their heads were on fire but they were missing their feet and dangling precariously over the mud bog. I was like, “Ricky what’s wrong with you? Two girls can’t be having sex! You need a Ken or a GI Joe to fuck a Barbie!” It made sense though. Ricky Shell dated my sister down in the sewer on numerous occasions and since my sister was a tom boy I figured Ricky was confused and messed up about sex and gender. I don’t think he cared at all about the finer points of doll sex so I negotiated a buy back at a steep discount and brought back the two lesbian, burned up head, footless Barbies to my sister. She immediately told on me and my mom took all my American money and told my sister that they would buy some new Barbies. That was the last time I dabbled in monetary policy until I became a loan shark in the Navy. But that’s another issue.

BITTER VOLTS

 A light rain was speckling the window at the top of my cell as I packed up my letters and the few items I was allowed to keep with me. They gave me a box that was just big enough to hold it all and a sticker to fill out so that they could mail the thing off to my survivors. I addressed it to the prison and stuck it on the box then folded the lid down. For the next hour I didn’t think about anything in particular while I waited for them to come get me. Four guards that I’d never seen before showed up at quarter of twelve and said it was time to go. I was going to be dead in fifteen minutes and I couldn’t think of a thing to say. They opened my cell and four hands grabbed each of my arms. I guess they were always expecting someone to go crazy on this last walk but I was not about to pull any funny business. When we got to the cell with the electric chair I was introduced to the prison doctors and the executioners. I was also introduced to the doctors I had hired on my own even though  I already knew them via numerous missives. “Everything ready?” I asked my doctors. They said, “Yes.” and I let the executioner strap me into the chair. “Good luck.” said my main doctor. I nodded to him and said, “Same to you!” At twelve sharp they threw the switch and I was blasted with ten thousand volts. There’s no other way to describe the feeling except to say that it was shocking. As soon as I was pronounced dead by the prison doctors they signed a document saying that the sentence had been successfully carried out. The second they had signed the document my doctors went to work with adrenaline and cardiac massage. They had me back in less than two minutes. When I opened my eyes the first thing I said was, “Ouch!” My head, arms, and feet hurt where the current had gone into me. I felt like my heart was beating too fast and I didn’t seem like I was breathing correctly. But it was a success! What a legal coup! There was absolutely nothing in the law that said I had to stay dead once I was executed. A fantastic loop hole. My doctors put me on a gurney and rolled me out to a waiting ambulance which took me to some offices in the suburbs. They put me up in a room which was warm and cozy with a TV and a kitchenette. I hadn’t been in there for more than 20 minutes before I noticed a little slip of paper come sliding under the door. It was a bill for the medical services. Under the diagnosis section it said, “dead.” and under the course of treatment it said “returned to life.” Under the price part it said, $34 million dollars. Ah yes, the same amount that I had obtained durning the murderous robbery that had landed me on death row in the first place. I just don’t understand the meaning of justice when it’s applied to me.

 

PITCH BLACK WITCH’S BACK

 

 

 

 Ah, another perfect day in the virgin state of post confederate society. I spent the day in this last week of my indentured servitude sanding a floor with a massive, dirty, noisy, machine. I don’t know why it was so pleasant but it really was. Not encumbered by the presence of my overseer, I could simply day dream and grind hour after hour barefoot and shirtless without a worry in the world. I thought about this and that but nothing too important. I pondered my lack of a railroad but decided that I have it pretty good despite that one deficit. When I got home I took a shower, dealt with the animals, made a cup of strong coffee, and then played guitar and sang for a couple of hours. When it got dark I headed out into the cool rain and went to my favorite bar for a nip. I was sitting there reading about the machinations of OPEC when someone sat down next to me. I never look when someone sits by me. I try to stay in my space and concentrate but after a minute I ascertained by the voice ordering that it was a girl. Now it was harder to stay in my space but I continued reading. After about five minutes I stole a glance and saw that it was a girl named Mindy who was now known as Lola. Hmm…! Well I’d met about three new girls in the last couple of months but I just couldn’t apply myself for some reason. It’s almost like I’ve finally learned something though I’m not quite sure what. I will say it right out, I would happily have brought Lola home. She’s tiny and cute and I’d seen her running (literally) around town for the last couple of years. My impression was that she was thoroughly insane which explained why she sat next to me. We started talking and she said that she always thought I was quiet, which was a notion that I proceeded to dispel. We talked about biology, physics, electrical and mechanical engineering, energy, religion, hometowns, nutrition, unconditional love, animals, California, human nature, order, and…, well the works. I did detect little flickers of madness but she was much more composed than I had anticipated. What DO you do? I watch people pick up girls all the time. I happen to know some of the most talented girl picker uppers in the world. I just can’t bring myself to do it though. I have a dreadful passive streak. I didn’t ask for her number or anything! She asked me what kind of school you’d have to go to in order to build a hair drier. I told her how to build one from scratch. That’s the kind of thing I know! Good God, she could have added two years to my lifespan in one night! Well, I will keep my eyes open. I’m a big fan of anticipation and chance. Never plan around human dispositions I say! I forgot all about OPEC’s plans. That was good.

VIRGINIA DARE

“If we go in there I have a bad feeling we’re not coming back out.” said Tabehul.

“You’re just wired up from that sauce.” I said as I clicked six shiny shells into my gun.

“What if he has a gun?”

“Well, I assume he does. He killed someone a couple weeks ago if we’re to believe the paper.”

“Thats’ just it.” Replied Tabehul as he felt the gun in his jacket pocket.

“Let’s go.., there’s nothing to worry about.”

 We pushed through the door and walked down the isle of candy, condoms, and bug spray, past the display of cheap jade jewelry and flip flops, the bottles of sunscreen and foot sprays and up to the counter which stood very high before us since we were both about four feet tall. Tabehul pointed at the carpet to a large stain that covered about 9 square feet. “There’s where the fucker died.” He said under his breath. 

We stood at the counter for about thirty seconds before the proprietor came out from behind the drugs and asked us how he could help us. We pulled out our guns at the same time and I said, “Hand over all the cash you’ve got back there and all your morphine.”

“I’ll be damed if I will.” He said.

“Do you want to die today?” Asked Tabehul.

“You can’t kill me you little fuck wads.” He said as he wiped his forehead with a bright white kerchief. He reached over to a bottle of something, took off the lid, and started to measure out some of the liquid into a smaller jar. He was acting like we weren’t even there and I can tell you that when someone behaves like that under the barrel of a gun it will sure make you nervous. If nothing else it indicates that they are insane and not likely to react to the usual exhortations.

I reached up and banged the butt of my gun on the counter top which caused the small bottle he was filling to almost tip over but he grabbed it with a movement that was so fast that it didn’t make sense. 

“You bang that counter again and I’ll put some strain on you.” Said the pharmacist.

“I’m gonna pop a shell through your brain pan mister.” Said Tabehul as he sort of jumped sideways from one foot to the other. 

“You’re congenital.” said the pharmacist “I could give you a pill that might make you grow a some nose hair but it won’t help your brain.”

“Sir,” I said, “Please believe me, we’ll kill you. We really will. Just give us the cash.”

The pharmacist took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead and then his mouth. He put it back in his pocket and then poked Tabehul in the eye with his finger and slapped me on the nose with such speed that the hair stood up on my head. Tabehul fell to the ground howling in pain with one hand over his injured eye and the other reaching around for his gun and I felt my nose to see if it was broken or bleeding. 

“Now boys,” said the pharmacist, “I can outdraw you both by orders of magnitude. I have a gun back here and I’ll happily blow your brains out, assuming you have any, which I doubt. Now you want to buy some rubbers or magazines then go to it. Other wise…, clear out.”

“I don’t believe this.” I said. “How the hell can you move so fast mister? I’ve never seen anyone move that fast.”

The next thing I knew, there was a gun pushing on my nose and the pharmacist was laying halfway across the counter. I didn’t even see it happen. It was unbelievable.

“I practiced for years on people just like you who think they can just come in here and have anything they want. I realized that the quick and the dead were real elements of life and so I chose the quick. Now what do you think you should do you punk?”

“OK, Ok,” I said in a nasal voice, “we’ll clear out.”

I helped up Tabehul who was still whimpering and I noticed the stain again. I started walking out and then I turned and asked why he killed the guy a few weeks ago instead of demonstrating his superiority with the draw.

“I shot him because he was a spic.”

“So, you’re a prejudiced quick draw. That’s a bad combination.”

“Now just what the fuck’s wrong with being particular about who you shoot?”

“I guess it’s what you’re particular about in a given case that matters. Like, I’m glad you’re not particular about midgets.”

“You’re midgets? I thought you were kids!”

The two shots were so fast that it sounded like one big bang and Tabehul’s appropriately tiny last thought was, “I was finally right.”