Poison Spur

Poison Spur will be shutting down temporarily, possibly as soon as tomorrow.  I've found a new place to host the site so it should be back within a week.

See you soon.

A couple of weeks ago, I started a my first Facebook group.  It was called I Bet I Can Find 14 People Who Like To Watch Old People Eat.  I thought it would go viral and millions of people would join.  I would find fame and fortune, quit my day job, and dedicate my life to hookers and blow.

Alas, that didn't happen.  With a paltry nine members, the group did not even live up to its eponymous promise.  I spent some time trying to explain its lack of popularity.  I disqualified the explanation that the idea wasn't all that funny to begin with on the grounds that it was hurtful to my ego.  That left me only one target for my blame.

Haiku purists.

The haiku I posted to the group had the proper number of syllables per line (without fudging by stuttering!) but lacked a seasonal reference.  I would have done better by writing something like:

Winter of their lives
Unchewables spat back out
Fucking disgusting

Live and learn, I suppose.

Michael kept his eyes shut until the train arrived at Montgomery and he almost missed his stop.  He alit shortly before the doors closed behind him and walked to the center of the platform.  He waited for the crowd of people surrounding the escalator to shrink before moving forward to exit the station.

During his short walk to work, Michael tried to make sense of what he saw.  There was no logical explanation but that Clarissa, his Clarissa, was more real than he had ever imagined.

He crossed intersections against the light.  Angry motorists honked at him.  He kept on walking.

The day was pretty quiet until about 11 a.m. when he got a phone call from an angry database administrator who was employed there.  The DBA's boss had rejected her time sheet because neither of the projects she listed had anything to do with database administration.

Michael vaguely remembered her name.  She was one of the last persons to be given project codes.  There was nothing left that matched her job description so he assigned her "Legal Counsel" and "Facilities: Plumbing and Heating."

Michael apologized to her and tried to make it sound sincere.  When this failed to calm her down, he put her on hold.  He liked her better as a red blinking light on his telephone than when she was calling him names.

He thought about contacting some people higher up to remedy her situation but thought better of it.  All that would come from his efforts would be extra paperwork and a lecture from his boss on how everything should work if you follow the proper procedures, whatever those were.  In the end, she might get her timesheet woes worked out but the process would remain as flawed as it always had been.  The best move for both him and the DBA was therefore to let her solve her problem elsewhere.

The red light was still blinking at noon when Michael got up and went to lunch.

He went to the Lee's down the street and bought a medium bowl of non-dairy cream of vegetable soup.  He returned to his office building and ate at the only empty table in the break room.  He took his time consuming his lunch, spending the last fifteen chewing a colorless mass of what might or might not have been a piece of potato.

When Michael returned to his cubicle, the light had stopped blinking.  Fearing she might call back, he unplugged his phone.  He spent rest of the day staring at his computer monitor.  Streaming P filled the screen with employees and projects but Michael made no effort other than to shake the mouse every so often so the screen saver wouldn't kick in.  All the while, he thought of Clarissa, outlining what to expect in the first year of their relationship in just a few short hours.

That night, he ate at his usual Sizzler.  He showed up a little later than usual to miss most of the dinner-hour crowd.  He didn't want to look at a single human being so when he ordered his meal, he spoke to the waitress' reflection in the window.  This was an improvement over the real one, but still, she was no Clarissa.

Michael then returned home and fell asleep watching a rapid-fire mix of sitcoms, Afghanistan war reports, and "American Idol."

He was happy to see Clarissa on BART the next morning.  If he hadn't seen her, he probably would have gotten off at the next stop, taken another train home, and tried again tomorrow.

Clarissa looked at Michael as intently as her counterpart stared down at the book she was reading.  Clarissa was smiling mischievously.  She was up to something.

His eyes beseeched her for an answer but that only make her shake her head and broaden her smile.  Whatever Clarissa was planning, Michael was just going to have to wait.

The BART train went underground after West Oakland Station and picked up speed as it crossed under the bay.  Lights from the tunnel streaked by the windows of the train car.  After a few minutes, Clarissa raised her finger, signaling Michael to wait.

The train arrived at Embarcadero.  Clarissa's counterpart closed her book, got up, and exited the train.

Clarissa did not go with her.

She was no longer a reflection either.  She was still as transparent as she had been in the window but now she stood in the aisle in the center of the car.  No one but Michael seemed to notice Clarissa, not even those who appeared to be staring straight at her.

The train arrived at Montgomery station.  Clarissa beckoned Michael with her finger and then turned from him and began to walk away.  Michael followed her out of the train.

The two walked out onto the center of the platform.  She took his hand in hers and turned to face him.  Michael's eyes closed as their lips met in a kiss.  When he opened his eyes again, Clarissa raised his hand up to show him that he was now as transparent as she was.

She looked to her left and gestured with her head.  Michael looked and saw his physical self continue to plod along.  With no one at the controls, it continued to walk undererred by the yellow safety strip and fell forward onto the tracks on the opposite side of the platform and into the path of an oncoming train.

The operator hit the brakes but there was no chance of stopping in time.  Metal wheels squealed as they skidded on the tracks.  Morning commuters screamed and gasped in horror.  People ran to the scene, some of them straight through Clarissa and Michael.

She kissed him again and they walked arm in arm toward the escalator.  Michael did not bother to look back to see what happened to that mass of skin and meat and bone he never had much use for anyway.

I have not yet finished the story yet.  I have no excuse but I can perhaps soothe the hurt by sharing with you some visual delights sent to me my Mr. Chappy H. Rammer, a dear friend and global citizen living in Japan.  Enjoy.

Her name was Clarissa, or at least that was what Michael wanted it to be.  He didn't know anyone with that name, but that was OK.  In fact, it was better than OK.  This Clarissa would be the original, and the one who could never be equaled.

He saw her on BART every morning and most evenings.  Michael would start his commute at the Pleasant Hill station.  She would already be on the train and he would make it a point to board the car she was in.  They would ride together until she got off at the Embarcadero station in  San Francisco.  His stop was one further down, at Montgomery.  He would ride that last part of the trip with his eyes closed, keeping the image of her fresh in his mind.

Clarissa was a fairly tall woman, about five-eight, with shoulder-length brown hair with a few streaks of gray.  She was attractive, not drop-dead gorgeous like a model but pretty in an accessible sort of way.  She dressed somewhat conservatively, business casual but with the librarian touch.  And through her near-transparent body, Michael could the lights outside passing through her.

Clarissa was a reflection, an image on the window of the BART car that was most visible when in a darkened tunnel.  The flesh-and-blood person who created the image probably wasn't called Clarissa.  Michael did not know what her name was, nor did he care.  It was Clarissa the reflection that commanded his attention and he could stare at her the whole time with impunity.  If he tried that with the other woman, she would notice.  She would make a scene.

Michael worked in a cubicle on the ninth floor of a twenty-story building in the Financial District.  The nearest window was down the hall and to the left.  It faced a light well.  The break room near the elevators had vending machines selling off-brand cans of soda for a buck fifty and candy bars for two dollars.  The free office coffee was discontinued.  It was a casualty of recent cutbacks that had also claimed ten percent of the company's workforce.

His job was to match his fellow employees with project codes that had been budgeted for that month so they could use them for their time sheets.  To do this, he used a piece of software called "Streaming P."  P was supposed to stand for project.  What made the program streaming was that the projects would show up on Michael's computer screen as soon as they were approved by the money people upstairs.

"Unleash the power of the stream!" read the bold text below the bright yellow arc on the splash screen as he loaded the application each morning.  In reality, project approval was such a slow process that the stream was more like a trickle.

As each pay period drew to a close, Michael would do his best to assign people codes for projects in a way that actually made some sense.  With so few projects approved, he would have to make do with what was on his list.  People would complain and demand he fix the problem so there would be some rhyme or reason to their time sheets.  Michael was not authorized to fix these problems.  He was only authorized to take the blame.

Most of the time though, he spent the day pretending to be busy and thinking about Clarissa.  He imagined himself going all sorts of places with her.  They would visit art museums and go to ball games.  They would eat at fancy restaurants and take walks along the moonlit waterfront.  They would do all these things not in San Francisco, certainly not in Pleasant Hill, but in a city of his own devising.

When Michael finished his workday, he would usually go have dinner at a Sizzler not far from his home.  He picked this particular place because the service was slow and he wanted to kill as much time as he could.  For the same reason, he ordered his steaks well done because the meat toughened by overcooking would take longer to chew.

Back at his apartment, he would watch TV.  His cable service had over 400 channels and each night, he managed to watch a little bit of almost all of them.  He would then fall asleep on the couch and wake up in the morning with pain shooting up his arm from the repetitive stress of his thumb hitting buttons on the remote.

This was Michael's life, day after day, month after month.  It continued like this until one overcast Tuesday morning.  Michael had not slept well the night before and did something he promised himself he would never do.  He let his eyes wander and they  fell upon Clarissa's counterpart. 

Fortunately, she was reading a book and did not notice him.  But then he looked at her left hand.  She was wearing a wedding ring.  Michael shut his eyes and tried to wipe that image from his mind.

It wouldn't go away.  He first felt angry and betrayed, but soon he just felt sad.  He took a few deep breaths and opened his eyes.  He took what he thought would be his last look at Clarissa and mouthed the word "goodbye."

Then he noticed something.  Clarissa was wearing no ring.  Since she was a reflection and he thought he might be looking at the wrong hand, he checked the other one.  There was no ring there either.

Clarissa looked straight at Michael and gave him a little smile.   Fearing he had been caught, he looked away.  He glanced back at the other woman and she was still engrossed in the book she was reading, a wedding ring quite visible on her finger.

The train pulled into Embarcadero station.  Clarissa and the other woman got up and left.  The doors on the car shut and the train moved forward.  Michael closed his eyes again.

Humphrey Bogart once said, "The whole world is about three drinks behind."  That quote had resonated with me over the years, often when I was sitting at the bar and should have gone home at least two drinks ago.

I was sitting at the bar last night, nursing a second drink in no hurry to finish.  My friends sitting next to me had been there for a while.  They were rambling on about this and that.  Most of what they said was unintelligible but it sure was important to them.

At that moment, I found myself on the flip side of Bogart's wisdom.  I didn't like it there so I polished off my drink and ordered a third.

I stopped after three drinks and headed home, a little numb but not completely blotto.  I refrained from embarrassing myself, which isn't too surprising.  I have no problem behaving when I'm moderately buzzed and am usually not an asshole even when I'm absolutely hammered.  There have been exceptions of course, horrible low points I'd rather not think about.  But for the most part, I do OK.  And thanks to my selfish and callous nature, I hardly ever have to worry about getting sloppy either.

So for the most part, I'm a regular Dean Martin.  Excellent.  Well, not really.  I wish I could be happy as a work-hard-play-harder sort of guy, but I can't.  I don't like my current job and never really cared much for my career.  I need something outside work to validate my existence.  Booze alone is not a good way to do this.

Last fall, I swore off liquor completely for over two months.  I had no set time limit for the duration of my sobriety.  I didn't know if it was going to last a week or forever.  Overall, the time off did me some lasting good.  My weekly alcohol intake is about half what it was in September.

So now I'm a moderate drinker, sort of.  Still, that isn't good enough. 

(At this point, I started in on some tiresome blather that was equal parts rationalization and self pity.  I'll spare you.  New story coming Monday).

No,the blog isn't going away.  At least I hope it isn't. It will be moving though.  When and where are still unknown.

My friend Alex has provided me with free hosting since 2006.  Other than a server crash two years ago, Poison Spur has given uninterrupted access to my blatherings to its 30 or so readers worldwide.

That's all over now.  Or to be more precise, it will be very soon.  Alex is moving on to the next stage of his career.  That work computer that hosts my blog will not be available for very much longer.

I owe Alex a huge debt of gratitude but knowing him, he'll just shrug and say if I buy him a drink, we'll call it even.

With luck, I'll be able to switch providers with nary a hiccup.  But if for some reason Poison Spur goes silent for a while, you'll know why.

I sat in the back seat of the Toyota four-wheel drive.  We were at an air station, a necessary part of road travel in Bolivia.  With all the different elevations, there is no single tire pressure that works everywhere.  If you're heading toward lower ground, you need to add air so you don't lose traction driving on tires that are half flat.  If you're heading higher, you need to have air taken out so the tires don't blow out.

Steve, the driver and organizer of our trip, made arrangements with the kids who worked the valves and air pumps.  A couple of American dollars for a tip bought you a serious level of professionalism.

Off in the distance, smaller children played in a puddle of gray water fed by a pipe from a nearby chemical plant.

I watched all this while taking swigs from a plastic canteen filled with what had to be the vilest-tasting liquid known to man.  It was a liter of boiled water mixed with a packet of rehydration salts and I was expected to drink it all.

The diarrhea that had stricken me was my own damn fault.  It came from good intentions trumping common sense.

Three days earlier, I was at an orphanage in Cochabamba.  I shook the hand of a small child in the infirmary.  The kid didn't look too happy.  Considering he was both sick and an orphan, I didn't expect him to.  Still, I wanted to try to cheer him up.  My Spanish wasn't very good so I made funny faces at him and hoped that would do the trick.

The kid gave me a puzzled look as I stared back at him with my fingers in the corner of my mouth. Some of those fingers were used to shake his hands just moments ago.  His germs were now my germs.

Two days later, the diarrhea hit me.

My traveling companions and I had spent most of that day going from Cochabamba to La Paz and arrived in the late afternoon.  You don't drive on Bolivian highways at night, that is not unless you want to end up as one of those crosses that seemed to adorn every curve and intersection we passed.

Local motorists, worried about getting rear ended, made it a habit of building a pile of rocks on the road behind them when they stopped to change a tire.  When they were done, they drove off, leaving the pile there.

This was just one of the surprises limiting your driving to broad daylight would help you avoid.

So we arrived safely in the capitol, got some cheap accommodations, and went out for a bite to eat.  At this point, I wasn't feeling too bad, just a little nauseous.

That night was a different matter.  For once in my life, I'll spare you readers the disgusting details.  Suffice it to say I spent less time in my dormitory bed than I did on the toilet down the hall.

So by the time we made it to the air station on the way out of town, I was gulping down the foul-tasting water so I wouldn't shit myself to death.  The road ahead would take us high into the Andes.  I had no idea what we would find there..  Would there be charming villages full of charming and quaint Quechua folk?  Or would we encounter cannibal plane-crash survivors?  Or perhaps we'd find Shangri-la? (I know, I know, wrong continent.)  As sick as I felt, I was absolutely elated.  My immediate future was one big glorious question mark.

These days, I go on much smaller excursions.  My looming horizons are not the snow-topped peaks of the Andes.  They are the windmill-topped foothills of Livermore.

Don't get me wrong.  I like my life these days pretty well.  It just that there's that bit of Don Quixote that still lives inside me.  I want that great adventure in my life.  Realistically, I'll have to wait on that but I won't do that for too long.  I can see the clock ticking on the wall.

Seymour salivated like one of Pavlov's dogs when the girls' field-hockey team got on Caltrain.  Accompanied by their coach, Ms. Van Dyke, the dozen plus teenagers from Saint Xena's Academy had just boarded in Palo Alto for a league tournament in San Francisco.

The coach and most of the girls managed to find seats next to each other.  Sally, aged 15, was the odd one out and the only seat left for her was next to Seymour.

He was sitting next to the aisle and made no effort to slide over toward the window.  As she stepped over him, his eyes drank in the tanned young thighs bared between Sally's white knee socks and tartan skirt.

After she sat down, Seymour began to look her up and down.  He took his time.  He was in no rush.  He liked the way her blonde hair was pulled back tight into a ponytail, leaving a clear view of her high cheekbones, upturned nose, and pouty lips.  He liked how she sat with her shoulders squared and back straight, showing off a bit of the adolescent pertness beneath her white-and-gold school jersey.  He liked her calves and knees, as well as her thighs.  He really liked her thighs.

Sally stared out the window of the train, never looking at Seymour.  He sensed that she knew he was looking at her.  She probably didn't like it but figured there was nothing she could do to stop him.

Seymour liked that too.

He reached into his jacket and pulled out his cell phone.  The phone had a camera.  Seymour extended his arm down between her legs and pointed the lens up her skirt.  He started taking pictures.

At that very moment down in San Jose, Seymour's wife noticed that she was almost out of cigarettes.  She called her husband to ask if he could pick up a carton on the way home.

Seymour's cell phone rang.  Before he could pull his hand away, Sally's knees came together and clamped onto it like a steel trap.  When he found he could not free himself from her grasp, he realized that he was no longer the predator.  He was now the prey.  His beseeching eyes, full of fear, met hers, full of hate.

"Pervert!" she snarled and delivered two powerful elbow smashes to his face.  The first knocked him back in his seat.  The second broke his nose.  She then relaxed her knees and shoved the hapless Seymour out into the center aisle of the train car.

He went sprawling face down.  His cell phone skidded down the aisle and came to rest at the feet of Ms. Van Dyke, who had gotten up to see what all the commotion was about.  The jostling had put the phone in slideshow mode and its upturned display clicked through its owner's vast upskirt collection as a woman's voice on its speaker said, "Seymour?  Seymour?"

Ms. Van Dyke raised her foot, and with elephantine pile-driver force, she brought it down upon the phone.  The call from the wife was disconnected.  The device that had stolen so much innocence was destroyed.

"Get him, girls," said Ms. Van Dyke.

With that, the entire team were out of their seats and descended upon Seymour.  He had raised himself up to his feet but quickly fell flat again as punches, kicks, and blows from hockey sticks rained down upon him.  The assault continued until it was halted by Ms. Van Dyke blowing her whistle.

"That's enough, girls," she said.  "Now throw this piece of garbage off the train."

Seymour felt hands grabbing him from all side.  He was hoisted up above the girls' heads and they began to march him toward the exit doors in the middle of the car.

A conductor came in and tried to intervene.  Ms. Van Dyke moved to intercept him.

"Federal labor law entitles you to a fifteen-minute break," she said.  I suggest you take yours now."

After sizing up both her bulk and her determination, the conductor decided to take her advice and quickly made his exit.

The train doors swung open.  Seymour looked out at the ugly, squat tract homes whizzing by and the Tanforan mall off in the distance.

"San Bruno?  I hate this town," he said.

"So do we," said the girls in unison and they tossed him off the train.

Seymour landed on the pile of rocks running along the side of the railroad tracks.  After bouncing twice, he rolled to a stop on a dirt path between the tracks and the back fence to someone's yard.  He tried to get up but every attempt to move revealed yet another broken bone.

High overhead, none other than Superman was on a routine patrol of the region.  He saw the man thrown from the train and swooped down to investigate.

"What seems to be the problem, citizen?" he asked after landing and placing his hands firmly on his hips.

"Oh Superman, you've got to help me," pleaded Seymour.  "Females have run amok.  All I did was a little harmless upskirt and they've gone and taken the law into their own hands.  From one man to another, I beg of you.  Do something!"

"You have a valid point," said the crime-fighting Kryptonian.  "But I have thought the matter over and decided not to care."

"Why not?"

"Well citizen, I have X-ray vision.  I don't need upskirt."

And with a hearty "Up, up, and away!" the Man of Steel soared skyward, leaving poor Seymour to suffer and long for a simpler time when a man could quench his thirst for beauty without fear.

I finished Monday's blog entry and posted it shortly before going to work.  I was glad I was keeping up the bargain I had made with myself to update Poison Spur every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  I was also glad that I had gotten over whatever bug had hit me on Sunday.

The latter gladness proved to be a tad premature.

I had slept well the night before (a couple of shots of Nyquil will do that) and woke up feeling a lot better than I did the previous day.  As I walked toward BART, I felt a little out of it but attributed this to getting too much sleep rather than genuine fatigue.

I rolled into work a gentlemanly ten minutes late.  This is a perfectly reasonable arrival time because there is a route from the elevator to my desk that goes nowhere near the offices of the few people who would give a shit.

I got to my cubicle and realized that I had left my laptop home.  The monitor, keyboard, mouse, and that gizmo that connects all those peripherals to it lay on my desk missing that one crucial part.

 I went home, got the laptop, and came back to work as fast as I could (on the off chance any of my employers are reading this, I stayed late that day to make up the time, so there).  The extra exertion all but exhausted me.  Fortunately, I have a lot of experience showing up to work with the sort of hangovers that make mere influenza pale by comparison.  Making it through the day feeling like a coyote shat me over a cliff has become almost second nature.

I picked up some crackers and orange juice on the way home and then curled up on the couch under a pile of blankets.  I was in no condition to think, let alone write.

Yesterday, I felt better.  Not great, but better.  My MWF commitment was still firm and if all I had to share was some lame excuse tarted up with self pity, so be it.

I promise something better on Friday.  You, not-so-gentle reader, shall be both amused and impressed.