Poison Spur

November Child

2011-09-13T03:22:15Z

Milo sat in his car drumming his fingers on the steering wheel while he waited for the Creator to give him something to do. It would come, as sure as a porn star lies about her age at both the beginning and end of her career, Milo's moment would come.

He was looking at himself in the rearview mirror, scrunching up one eye into a flinty stare. He liked that look. It made him look flinty. The cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth added to the effect until it began to make his eye water. Flinty was cool. Crying was not. He flicked the cigarette out of the window toward some dry brush and quickly lit another.

He saw a child, maybe eight years old, wearing a little-league uniform and standing at a bus stop across the street. The kid was humming a Justin Bieber song. The Creator had come through, serving up Milo's next move. This was going to be fun.

Milo put his car into gear and pulled away from the curb. He drove half a block, made a U-turn, then came back and pulled up along side the kid.

"You're looking a little scrawny there," Milo shouted from the car window. "You could use some steroids so you can grow up to be big and strong like Barry Bonds."

"I'm just gonna wait for the bus, Mister," the kid said. "I'm not supposed to accept rides from strangers."

"A wise policy, kid. You never know when some sicko is going to abduct you and leave your body to be discovered in a drainage ditch strangled with a piece of clothesline and your mouth rigor mortised into permanent fellatio face. Lucky for you, I don't get off on that shit. So how good a ball player are you anyway?"

"I lead my team in stolen bases," the kid said.

"Excellent. Everything is better when it's stolen: bases, kisses, lunch money, cars."

Milo slapped his hand down on the dashboard when he said that. He assumed that he acquired his car by theft though he had no recollection of actually stealing it. It just seemed like the kind of thing he would do.

"You know what would make even better at stealing bases, kid? A cigarette, that's what."

"Nuh uh," the kid said.

"Yeah uh. When I played for the Lucas Orange Sox, I used to smoke half a pack before every game. I stole more bases than the rest of the starting lineup combined and there wasn't a pitcher alive who could pick me off."

He leaned across the passenger seat and held out a pack of smokes with one cigarette protruding from the rest.

"Go on, kid. No one ever made it to the big leagues by being a pussy."

The kid hesitated for a moment then reached out and took the cigarette.

"Here kid, let me light that for you."

Milo took the Zippo from his pants pocket and flicked it open. The kid leaned forward with the cigarette between his trembling lips. Milo shoved the burning Zippo into the kid's face.

"Smoking kills, you little fuckhole. Ha ha ha," Milo said.

While the kid was sobbing, Milo sat up and put the car into drive. His tires hopped the curb as he accelerated and the kid cried out when the rear wheel began to run over his foot. Milo stomped the gas at that moment. The spinning tires sprayed the sidewalk behind with pieces of athletic shoe, bone, and foot meat. The kid's base-stealing days were over.

Milo drove away, laughing and thanking the Creator for providing such a wonderful start to the day. He turned left on Expiration Blvd. and went past Casa de Llorar, a maximum-security retirement community. It was a huge, imposing, windowless building where the muffled cries of the inhabitants could be heard at all hours day and night. Milo accelerated. He was intent on putting as much distance between himself and that building as he could for reasons he couldn't quite understand.

He turned right on Caitiff Way and continued down that road past its trailer parks and strip malls full of liquor stores, check-cashing places, and massage parlors. He stopped at a red light at a corner diagonally across from a small church consisting of a double-wide mobile home and a huge sign above it proudly proclaiming "God Is Drunk."

There was a memorial service letting out and a small group of mourners shuffled out of the church. Milo watched a middle-aged man console and embrace a teenage girl in a black cheerleader uniform. It started innocently enough until he started sniffing her hair with deep lungfuls and slipped his wedding-ringed finger between her satin panties and her taint. Her eyes opened wide and she stood there paralyzed with fear as the man cleaned out the inside of her left nostril with his tongue.

Milo approved.

An old woman emerged from the group, got into her Chevy Nova, and turned left onto the road. She signaled as she changed from the left to right lane. The signal stayed on as she pulled away at a steady 24 mph.

"What a creaky old whore. I think I'll kill her," said Milo.

The light turned green and he took off after her. He kept pace with the old woman for a mile or so, half hypnotized by the blink of her right turn signal. He then gunned it and his front bumper met hers, first with a slam and then with a steady push. He thought the old woman would simply give up and let him run her off the road, but she started accelerating away from him. She had some fight in her after all. Milo's car was faster than hers, but rather than rear ending her again he swerved to the left so he was driving next to her and motioned her to roll down her window.

"What is it? What do you want with me?" she yelled.

"Relax, madam. I just wanted to say that I admire your spunk. I hope that fact brings you some comfort as I amuse myself by murdering you."

He pulled his steering wheel hard to the right. The side of his car smacked into hers and she went flying into a tree. During this moment she might have been thinking "Who is this man and why is he doing this to me?" or "Gee, I should have fastened my seatbelt." Whatever her thoughts were, they were to be her last as her life was snuffed out when her head went through the windshield.

"Creator, you are chock full of awesome today," Milo said. He decided he wanted a souvenir so he put his car in reverse and backed up to the crash site. He considered taking her head but with the skull split open and brains everywhere, it wasn't much of a trophy. Her lower half was far less of a mess. He reached into her car window, pulled off her panties, stuffed them in his mouth, and walked back to his vehicle.

Milo was now five miles down the road from the scene of the kill, the dead woman's underwear still clenched between his teeth. Up ahead he saw a woman in a hospital gown hitchhiking on the side of the road. He briefly entertained the notion of running her down and leaving a red smear where she once stood, but he didn't want to kill her right away. That would be wasteful. She had nice legs.

He slowed the car and pulled to a stop along side of her.

"Mblgrblglb," Milo said.

The woman laughed and pointed at Milo's self-administered underwear gag. He pulled the panties from his mouth and tried again.

"I was saying," Milo said. "I support the First Amendment. If you get in the car, I'll respect your right to worship my cock."

"You're a real charmer," she said. "Lucky for you, I'm not picky. My name is Madge, by the way."

She was older than Milo thought when he first saw her up ahead on the road. She looked to be about 50, a svelte 50, not unattractive but with a sadness in her eyes and the way she carried herself. She had obviously experienced some great tragedy in her life causing an emotional wound that would never heal. Milo shrugged and began to unzip his pants.

"Easy tiger," Madge said. "There will be plenty of time for that. Besides, I think we need to get out of here before they come looking for me."

"They? They who?"

"Police. Just drive, will you?"

Milo and Madge drove off. She slid down in the seat so no one could see her. Milo continued down Caitiff Way and the strip malls began to give way to vacant lots until there was nothing on either side of the road, not even plant life, just desolation. All the while, Madge.told him about her former life as a cancer researcher and then cancer patient. According to her, the last thing she remembered was how she was about to be murdered in hospital ward by a homicidal cult of fiscally conservative religious zealots. After that, she woke up as an unwilling resident of the Casa Llorar retirement community.

"I busted out this morning, slipped out in a laundry truck. Cliche, but effective. Unfortunately, they're after me now and when they catch me they'll lock me in solitary forever. There will be no more escapes for dear old Madge."

"Now wait a second," said Milo. "You're nowhere near old enough to be in a retirement home."

"You don't need to be old. You just need to be old news. You, for example, are in the prime of your life, but it won't last. In a month's time, it will all be over. You see, in Casa Llorar they let us know all about our new neighbors before they arrive. I know more about about you than you know about yourself. You probably think you're in your 30s when in fact you are less than 12 hours old."

"Lady, you're crazy."

"Am I? Today is November 1st. Is it not?"

"Yeah, so?"

"OK, just answer me one question. How was your Halloween?"

"It was awesome."

"Really? Tell me about about it. You don't have to tell me everything. One little detail will do."

"I...uh..."

"You don't remember a thing, do you? That's because you didn't exist then. Unlike a lot of us, you were never even given a past. All you have is a desire to harm as many people as you can and free rein to do exactly that. Oh the Creator must have been in a real foul mood when he came up with the likes of you. But when he's through with you, and come November 30 he will be, you'll go where I went, where everyone goes."

Milo clenched the wheel and stared out at the road that cut through the treeless wasteland beneath the midday sun. He wanted to kill Madge, to drag her from his car and jump up and down on her for a while then burn her with cigarettes while she slowly succumbed to internal injuries. If he sensed that she had any fear of dying, he would have done just that. By the way she was baiting him, it seemed like that was exactly what she wanted. Well he wasn't going to kill that woman, not on her terms.

"Oh I've hurt you terribly," Madge said. "That was never my intention. I don't want to ruin your fun, far from it. I might be able to fix things so you never have to set foot in Casa Llorar and you could have an eternity of sociopathic frolic. How does that grab you?"

"And how do you intend to do that?"

"With allies. If you take this road out past Memory Lane, there's a graveyard of sorts. It's filled not with dead people, but those who have never lived. They're the folks that the Creator conjured up and promptly forgotten. There are literally thousands of them, none of whom are under the Creator's control. If we can wake them up and release them, this will become their world. The Creator, feeling outnumbered, will give up. He does a lot of giving up you know. There is one thing though. I doubt our newfound friends will much like your proclivities, but I'm willing to make it our little secret if you will."

"OK," Milo said. "We'll do this your way, for now."

The two drove on in silence for over an hour. A few minutes after passing a road sign that said "Memory Lane, Jct. 100 mi," Milo spotted a police car with its lights flashing in his rearview mirror. He tried accelerating away, but the vehicle continued gaining on him.

"What is it?" asked Madge.

"Pigs."

"What's the matter with you? Why don't you outrun them?"

"Silence is an excellent way to avoid claw-hammer rape."

Milo continued looking in the rearview at the approaching car and failed to notice police roadblock ahead of him. He drove right through the tire breaker strung across the road. All four tires ripped open and as Madge screamed, the car spun off the road and into the dirt. By the time they stopped, the view of everything around them was obscured by a huge cloud of dust.

Barely visible, there were four people approaching on foot. Madge leapt out of the car and ran toward them.

"I've been abducted. He's insane. Thank God you're here officers!"

The dust had cleared enough to show that the men were police in riot gear. Milo saw four arms raised with nightsticks, which came crashing down upon the head and body of Madge. Neither her upraised arms nor her pleas for mercy did her any good against the blows that continued to rain down upon her. When she was reduced to a sobbing mass on the ground, three of the cops unzipped their pants and urinated on her.

The fourth approached Milo.

"You really should never try running from the cops, Citizen. But in this case, I'll let you off with a warning."

"What about her?" Milo asked.

"Well, it's a good thing we caught up with you. She was working for the Creator all along. She wanted you to take her to the Sanctuary of the Forgotten Ones so the Creator could follow you and enslave them all."

"Why would she do that? He's the one who imprisoned her?"

"Free drugs, a TV in her cell, it hardly matters. She's a whore and he probably picked her because she'd work cheap. Now that she's failed, the Forgotten Ones are safe."

"Wait a minute. Didn't the Creator create you cops as well?"

"Indeed he did. He put us here to protect and serve, but he failed to specify whom so we improvised."

"OK, so what about me? What's going to happen to me?"

"You? You have the entire month, Citizen. Have yourself a ball."

Porno Bastard Sends the Love

2011-08-11T16:06:40Z

Zach Zwyrn worked as a software developer in the collections department of a large financial institution. Among his duties was attending a weekly status meeting each Tuesday at 1 pm. It was scheduled to last for one hour.

Sixty minutes only. That was the rule.

After that time had passed, the meeting would come to a close. Whoever was speaking would be cut off mid sentence and given a halfhearted apology followed by an unreliable promise to take the matter up again the next time they got together.

The person running these meetings, Sheree Curtis (known to all to behind her back as "She-Ra Kotex"), was scheduled to report to her bosses directly afterward. Zach was pretty sure that part of her report was making recommendations whom to fire. Judging from the turnover of his coworkers, there seemed to be some sort of quota, or perhaps a bounty, involved.

They didn't meet in the traditional sense where a bunch of people all sat in the same room. This would have been impossible because those involved worked in offices all over the country. Instead, they all called into a conference line and start up the NetMeeting app on their Windows computers. The coordinator and taskmistress She-Ra Kotex would then share her desktop and the rest would dutifully follow along.

Zach had never actually met her in person. From what he'd gathered, she worked out of the office in Dallas, Texas, or perhaps it was Bangor, Maine. She never volunteered that information. Perhaps she believed that if she could not be pointed to on a map, her minions might believe she existed everywhere at once, like Jesus or Santa Claus.

The only picture of her he'd ever seen was in an online employee newsletter from last year. The caption underneath the photograph said that it was taken during a three-legged race during a team-building picnic near the corporate headquarters in Des Moines. The picture itself was a close-up of her face and it was a fearsome sight indeed. She might be considered quite attractive under different circumstances, without the clenched teeth, film of sweat on her face. and saliva foaming in the corners of her mouth. To be fair, there was only enough saliva to demonstrate her level of determination rather than enough to be truly disgusting. Her eyes were cast to the right, glaring with disappointment and contempt at the unlucky soul whose knee was tied to hers.

Week to week, Zach knew her only by the sound of her voice, which was as hard for him to pinpoint as the location where she worked. At its core there seemed to be something southern and rural, just a whiff of cross-burner twang. Whatever its humble origin, her voice had long since been buffed to a high sheen by a tony boarding school followed by the sort of liberal-arts college famed for its neo-Stalinist speech codes and astronomical tuition.

During the meetings, She-Ra stressed an orderly progression. So without deviation, the team would make their report in alphabetical order. It was once suggested that the meetings might be more productive if the agenda were organized on what parts of the project were relevant to each other instead. This caused She-Ra to spend no less than half the meeting making sure that everybody was well aware that the project had already been fully documented and that it was the responsibility of all to be knowledgeable on the interoperability of all its components. She then thanked the suggester for his input and added that if he wished to lead meetings, she could arrange it so he would have the free time to find a job where he could do just that.

As the members of the team made their reports, She-Ra would demo the code on her shared desktop for the rest to see. If you had no progress to report or (heaven help you) embarrassed her by having her click on something you wrote that caused her system to crash, she would take no less than 15 minutes to make you feel ashamed for wasting everyone's time. You would also be likely to be without a job within 24 hours.

Everyone was expected to make demonstrable progress every week. Therefore each meeting would start at the top of the alphabetical list rather than pick up where we left off the week before. With the hour hard limit in place, we seldom heard from anyone whose name started after the letter "L." Never once was anyone called upon from the letter "P" or beyond.

Zach Zwyrn used to hate his name. All his life he was getting picked last for everything, last to be called when the teacher was taking attendance, last to receive whatever freebie was being handed out when they wanted to make sure that everybody only got one apiece. It was as if the life enjoyed by someone named Adams or Baker would go stale before Zach's turn came to live it. Things were different now. With She-Ra Kotex as a boss, he was in no hurry to have his name get called for anything.

Back in the early days of the project, Zach actually worked hard ensure that his code was tested, checked in, and ready for demo. At the start of each meeting, he would chomp at the bit eager for his chance to shine. The hour would pass and the meeting would adjourn. Week after week, it was the same deal. He began to take it personally. This was just one more injustice that came from being given a name at the ass end of alphabetical order.

Then one week he decided to rebel. He deliberately failed to check in his latest code changes before the meeting. If by some miracle they went through in the allotted time and Zach's name got called, he figured She-Ra would just have to make do with the report he was going to give last week, or any other week when he was ready but never given his turn.

Zach's resolve held firm until dialing into the conference line and hearing She-Ra's voice. She was in a bad mood, even for her.

"I have spoken with upper management and they are not happy," she said. "They feel, and I agree, that the project has fallen far behind schedule and it's inexcusable. On their end, they are going to regroup, reassess, reprioritize to ensure that the development life cycle regains and retains its course toward project completion. In the meantime, you as a team have a few changes to make of your own because, quite frankly, we've been disappointed in both your performance and your accountability. Do you realize that some of you have never made a progress report during our weekly meeting. Well, I do and so does upper management. That crap, pardon my French, is over starting right now. I expect each and every one of you to impress me."

Zach felt a lump in his throat. What he expected next was reverse alphabetical order with his inexcusable failure as the opening act.

"Aaron Aachen, what do you have for us today?" said She-Ra.

The meeting ran through its hour until it ended abruptly halfway through DBA Denise Iverson's report of her most recent database schema changes. So that was it. They never even made it to "J," let alone "Z."

After that, Zach stopped caring whether he was prepared for the meeting or not. He would still dial into the conference line and connect with NetMeeting on the off chance that sort of thing was being monitored, but he only barely paid attention to what was going on. If he bothered to look at the screen at all, he would watch the yellow rectangular box come up and fade from the lower-right corner of She-Ra's shared desktop in which Microsoft Outlook would display sender and subject line of incoming email. With each message, he hoped it would be something urgent enough for her to cancel the rest of the meeting. This would happen occasionally, but not nearly often enough.

Mostly Zach amused himself by playing with a chimpanzee finger puppet he had bought from a gumball machine in front of the Safeway near his house. He named him "Mister Bananas." Zach liked to pretend it was Mister Bananas instead of She-Ra running the meetings and would idly scribble in his notebook the orders he imagined his simian boss might give such as "Kill them all. Hahahaha. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck You." and "Meeting adjourned. Fling poo!" What had once been the most dreaded hour of Zach's work week became the time he looked forward to the most.

The drawback in all this for Zach was figuring out what to do with himself during the other 39 hours. He certainly wasn't going to get any work done. There was no need, and even if he wanted to, he wasn't sure where to begin. This project he was hired to work on was now in its 18th month and there was no end in sight. Ordinarily you'd expect some higher ups to pull the plug on the thing and write it off as a lost cause, but it was these same higher ups who kept changing the scope of the project. What started out as a simple tracking system for bill-collectors had evolved into...actually, Zach had no idea what it had evolved into because he stopped paying attention to the design updates after he realized he didn't have to do any work.

He found his avenues for leisure activity were woefully limited. What he really wanted to do was not show up for work at all, but that was out of the question because people's intranet logins were tracked and used to as proof to fire people accused of taking unauthorized PTO. Internet use was also monitored for excessive (meaning any) web browsing for non-business purposes and rumor had it that all of the fun sites had been blocked anyway. Their thinking seemed to be that if everyone were denied all avenues of diversion, sheer boredom would compel them to work hard. Zach wasn't having any of it.

At first, his only sin (besides sloth) was gluttony. He would show up in the morning with both front pockets filled with loose change and make frequent trips to the vending machines in the break room so the day would go faster. By the time five o'clock rolled around, the wastebasket under his desk would be filled with empty wrappers of Cheetos, Butterfingers, Rice Krispie Treats, and some off-brand pastry that looked like pink styrofoam. It wasn't long before Zach had the complexion of a teenager and his love handles pushed the seams of his business-casual shirt to design limit as they spilled over the waistband of his khakis.

Zach's deteriorating personal appearance combined with his unabated boredom level began to depress him so he started to drink on the job. Prudent paranoia precluded him from keeping a bottle of liquor in his desk drawer for anyone to find. Instead, he picked up cocktail fixings from the corner store and used them to fill up his thermos on the way to work. He had always been fond of Bloody Marys and came up with his own version of the drink called a "Gate 'n' 8" made with Royal Gate Vodka and V8 juice. The drink was admittedly an acquired taste, but if mixed strong enough a thermos full packed a powerful wallop. Zach enjoyed his concoction, but found he had to take it easy and pace himself after he fell asleep in his cube for over an hour with his feet on the desk and Mister Bananas stuck on the end of his upturned middle finger.

Still craving diversion, Zach decided to buy himself an iPhone. They might have been able to spy on the computer on his desktop, but not on a wireless little computer held in the palm of his hand. He went to the Apple Store after work, put hundreds of dollars on his already overloaded credit card, and walked out of there with a portable employer-undetectable porn-surfing device.

The first thing Zach did with his new toy was to get a hold of complimentary visitor's preview passes at every adult site that looked promising. A number of the better ones required you followed an emailed confirmation link so he went to google and signed up as Porno.Bastard@gmail.com.

Almost immediately after getting his gmail account, he started getting port spam, and not just from where he went for those preview passes. His email address had obviously been shared, which would have surely been a violation of a site's privacy policy if any of them had one. Porn peddlers of every stripe started bombarding his inbox, trying to entice him all with varieties of perversions, some of which he'd never even heard of. Satisfied with the appetites he already had, he turned off his incoming-email alarm for that account and ignored them.

The next morning, Zach sat in his cubicle unable to get a signal. He hadn't counted on this. The transmission tower was on the roof of a building less than a block away. What he did not take into account was that his cubicle was in the center of the 7th floor in a 14-story building surrounded by signal-killing conduit, steel beams, wires, moist brick, and God knows what else.

The only place where Zach could get more than zero bars was in the corner of the building next to the printer and copier. Even there, cell-phone reception was far from perfect and he found that downloads were painfully slow and there was the risk of the connection getting dropped entirely. He discovered that the signal improved when he held his phone lower, peaking when it was about two feet off the ground.

Zach crouched down and navigated Safari to one of his favorite porn sites. The connection was good here with almost all the bars showing. While the page was loading, he looked out the window in the direction of the AT&T transmission tower. One floor up in the building across the alley he saw a young woman he recognized. He didn't know her exactly. He had just seen her on the street a number of times going to and from work, but she was memorable because of a strange innocence he saw in her, the alluring kind that had less to do with moral virtue than the law of averages not catching up with her yet.

Whatever truth there was in his assessment of her did not carry over into the realm of data transmission. The throughput of porn was at its most powerful when it passed through her loins. Vanilla sex, whips and chains, SS uniforms, it didn't matter. She was receptive to all of it.

Zach's days of boredom were finally over. When he wasn't in the weekly meeting co-chaired by She-Ra Kotex and Mister Bananas, stuffing his face with empty calories, or getting drunk on Gate 'n' 8, he was over in the corner of the building, crouched in the download position and pulling hardcore pornography through an ingenue's vagina vortex. It was the greatest job he ever had.

On an early Tuesday afternoon about seven months after buying the iPhone, Zach sat in his cubicle alternating between talking sips from his thermos and sucking orange Cheetos dust from the tips of his fingers. Mister Bananas stood upright next to his desk telephone beaming with his permanent smile. Zach picked up the phone receiver and dialed into the meeting.

"Good afternoon, everybody. I have wonderful news!" She-Ra Kotex said when she got on the line.

Zach farted.

"My next meeting has been canceled," she went on. "What that means is that we don't have to worry about the one-hour time limit. We can go all day, and all night if it comes to that. I'm really looking forward to hearing from all of you after last week's design overhaul. And Zach Zwyrn, I don't believe I've ever heard from you. This is going to be a real treat."

Zach let out a sigh and told himself that he knew this day would come even though he knew nothing of the kind. He considered many other possible scenarios: the project getting shut down, his finding work at another company, continuing his shenanigans until he reached retirement age, even thermonuclear war. However, the possibility of a 2 pm meeting getting canceled somehow never occurred to him.

Starting with Aaron Aachen, the project team began giving their status reports. Without exception, each person showed excellent progress, enough so to make She-Ra make such uncharacteristic utterances as "well done" and "strong work." Gone were the time-killing tirades of hers, not that it would have mattered in today's meeting with a clock that could click to eternity. At this rate, Zach's name would come up by 2:30 and then he would be doomed. He put his phone on mute and set the receiver down on the surface of his desk.

"Cover for me, Mister Bananas," Zach said. "I'm going to spend the time I have left here doing what I do best, surfing for porn."

Zach got up and walked away from his cubicle toward the corner of the building. He crouched down and pointed his phone at the young woman in the building across the alley. The signal through her was clear and strong, but the downloaded porn could not take his mind off the prospect that he would very soon be fired. Maybe he should be spending this time looking for a new job instead, he thought. He wondered if any of the companies who spammed his Porno.Bastard@gmail.com account were hiring. If nothing else, he certainly believed in their product.

Wait a minute. That was it. Zach opened up his gmail account and forwarded the message at the top of his inbox to Sheree.Curtis@----------.com. Though he couldn't see it, he knew that at that moment there was a yellow box coming up in the corner of She-Ra's shared desktop that said:

From: Porno.Bastard@gmail.com

Subject: Fwd: JIZZ SPATTERED ANAL SLUTS WANNA PARTY

Zach knew that his only hope of keeping his job was getting She-Ra to turn off her shared desktop and cancel the meeting. He also knew that sending one email would not suffice, so he followed up with "SCAT BLASTIN' BIMBOS," "SEXY AMPUTEE SNAIL TRAIL HONEYS," "HOT COLONOSCOPY CAM...YOU CAN WATCH THE GERBIL DIE!" and hundreds of others. There was no need to be stingy. He had countless thousands more where they came from, and there would be a supply of new ones every day. He had plenty of ammo, not just for today, but for whenever the need might arise again.

Zach put his iPhone in his pocket and walked back to his cubicle only vaguely aware of the bounce in his step or how he was snapping his fingers as he walked. He gave Mister Bananas the thumbs-up before plopping himself in his chair. There was an alert on his computer screen that the shared desktop had lost its connection. Zach picked up the telephone receiver, put it to his ear, and heard nothing but silence. The time was 2 pm. The meeting was over.

A Night of Bourgeois Horror

2011-08-06T01:38:14Z

There are maybe 200 calories in a ceviche tostada, give or take. I was eating two of those and was on my second pint of Trumer Pils. Each beer was also 200 calories. Combine that with the dressingless salad and however much sugar I dumped into the coffee I drank throughout the day, I figured my total calorie intake was somewhere between 1200 and 1500. Wait, my tostada came with tortilla chips. so maybe the maximum for the day was more like 1800 calories.

Still, that wasn't so bad. A sedentary fat bastard pushing 50 is supposed to burn over 2000 calories per day. Doing the math, I could honestly say I was slowly but surely getting myself back into shape as I sat at the bar, swilled beer, and stuffed my face with toasted corn and fishy bits.

Meanwhile, the others in the bar were making disapproving groans at the wide-screen TV as our own SF Giants continued to get their collective ass handed to them by the Arizona Diamondbacks. I already had my evening's fill of baseball that night.

It's usually more than the evening's half-inning saturation point, but i think a lot of that was because I was eating at the time. I get self conscious about my table manners, especially when the food is difficult to eat without being disgusting about it. Rather than be careful in how I consumed my meal, I instead sat off at the other end of the bar where I could have food fall out of my mouth without getting any dirty looks.

It was still early, not yet nine pm, but I knew I'd be going home soon. Two pints, or maybe three, was my limit most nights. It was enough to pay lip service to my alcoholism, but not enough to prevent me from doing a little reading in bed before I fell asleep. This was not always the case, not even close, but I'm more grown up now. At least that's what I tell myself.

I tossed my food container in the trash, said goodbye to the bartender, and headed out the door. As I walked down the street toward where Valencia runs into Mission, a 49 bus rumbled by me heading north. I used to get on this bus about this hour of the night. There was a variety of mischief to be gotten into at a couple of stops along its route. None of that had much appeal anymore, too exhausting. Maybe that's what maturity is all about. You don't really get any wiser. You just get tired.

I crossed over to Valencia Street and started walking up toward my house. The night air was cool and misting, not uncommon for an August night in San Francisco. It was the kind of weather that conjures up that Mark Twain quote we're all sick of by now, bullshit he never actually said.

To the left of me was the old stone-and-brick portion of St. Luke's Hospital. Even during daylight hours, the doors and front gate are locked and bolted. It is as if that wing of the hospital served no purpose other than to lend character to the rest of the institution. If that were the case, it was doing a damn good job of it. It looked like either the admissions office of Miskatonic University or perhaps an insane asylum run by Christopher Lee.

The main wing facing Cesar Chavez Street looked more like what you'd expect from a hospital: parking, ambulances, and an emergency room open for business. The chances of my getting wheeled into one of those have gone down since my behavior has improved. It would certainly go up again when I got old and feeble. For the time being though, emergency rooms were for those less fortunate than myself.

It was times like these when I felt reasonably satisfied with my life. After a productive day at work, I had a bite to eat and a couple of well-deserved beers before heading home. Tomorrow I'd be ready to do it all again. I might not have been a great success in life, but I wasn't a failure either. If nothing else, I was able to enjoy the peace of mind that comes from having no great crises on the horizon.

I got the mail before climbing the steps to my apartment. It was junk mail mostly, except for one thing from the company that managed the 401(k) from my last job. It was probably the quarterly statement with some less-than-stellar news on because the market's been in the toilet lately. After I got in and let the cat inside, I opened the envelope and read the letter inside. It informed me that the entire balance of my account had been withdrawn. If I had a problem with this, I could call them at 8 am eastern time to discuss the matter.

There had to be some mistake. I had withdrawn nothing. I got on my computer and went to their website, hoping to find what was going on. I tried logging in but failed. I then followed the forgot-your-password link to a page that prompted me for my username. It dawned on me that I wasn't 100% sure of that either. There was another link for forgotten usernames that took me to a page informing me that my username would be made available by talking to a customer-service representative start at 8 am eastern.

I went to the bedroom, lay on the bed, and stared at the ceiling with the light on. Maybe they'll be sending me a check, I told myself. This didn't seem likely so a number of other scenarios entered my head, all of them involving identity theft. Some involved an elaborate crime syndicate while others were the work of a lone hacker a local meth addict who's been stealing my mail. Very few of the possible outcomes included the perpetrator being arrested. Fewer still included me getting my money back.

I slept about four hours that night.

When 8 am eastern rolled around (which was 5 am for me), I dialed their 800 number and got put on hold. At this point, my mental state had deteriorated to the point where every detail no matter how small pointed to a worst-case scenario. There mere fact that they said there was a high volume of calls meant that they were dealing with a major crisis. Maybe everybody's money was gone, sucked dry by Al Qaeda operatives or handed over to Haliburton in the interests of national security.

When an actual person got on the line, I tried my best not to freak out. When she asked me questions to verify my identity, I took a moment to remind myself that this was perfectly reasonable and not some phishing ploy because she was in on it too. Eventually the truth came out. My money had actually been transferred from one internal account and they, in their infinite wisdom, only thought it was necessary to tell me about the withdrawal. It isn't often I feel like I want to simultaneously thank and kill someone, but this was one of times.

So there it was. a crisis that never was. I was now free to go back to my life of counted calories and rationed alcohol. The only difference was the lingering feeling that this little glimpse of hell could one day come back, maybe next time for real.

The Identity Thief

2011-07-29T14:08:50Z

He wakes up to the morning sun coming through the windows. At first he thinks he's in jail, but there are no bars on the window, just dirty glass and a torn screen. He's in a hotel room, but one that hasn't been used in a long time. There is dust on the walls and the bed he's lying on smells of mildew.

When he tries to sit up, searing pain tears through his abdomen. He has lain back down now and he stares at the ceiling. It hurts to breathe so he draws in air in short, shallow gulps. After a while, the pain ebbs to a throbbing ache and he is able to breathe more normally. It still hurts though. He knows he's in bad shape.

The last thing he remembers was feeling something like a hornet sting on his left buttock. He remembers reaching back and removing a dart, staring at it for a moment, feeling this strange wooziness, and then ... nothing.

But what came before that? How did this all start? Yes, he remembers now. He was at home, putting on new shoes that had just been delivered that day. They were great shoes, the kind of shoes he would kill for, the kind of shoes he had stolen for. They had stylish Italian leather uppers and rubber soles, fashion and function. They were perfect for a guy like him, a guy who knew if he looked good enough and could move fast enough, anything in the world would be his for the taking.

Just like it was with that phishing scheme. Somebody fell for that and he made himself the proud owner of a debit card with someone else's name on it and full access to someone else's bank account with a bunch of money just begging to be spent. He bought himself fancy dinners and nights on the town, all of them fleeting little pleasures, but the shoes he bought with that money, those were his to keep.

After lacing them up, he heard the sound of footsteps coming up to his front door. There was no mistaking that sound. It was the sound of cop shoes, dull and stupid cop shoes worn by dull and stupid cops who weren't going to catch him this time. They may have been able to find his address to this apartment (which of course he rented under an assumed name) from where the card and shoes were mailed, but he had his escape plan firmly in place. From the day he moved in, he planned for this very moment.

He dashed into the kitchen and went out the window there, slipped through a hole in a wooden fence outside. He then made his way along the bottom of a drainage ditch running adjacent to a vacant lot and emerged onto a sidewalk on the other side of an abandoned warehouse. He picked up the pace, the sound of his rubber soles hitting the pavement comforted him as they propelled him toward freedom.

And then out of nowhere there was a rifle shot, followed by that hornet-sting dart in his rear.

Did all that happen an hour ago, or was it a day or a week? He has no idea now. It doesn't matter though. The important thing is that he needs to get away. He doesn't know where, but knows that anywhere is better than here. Whoever brought him here will no doubt be coming back. If he can get to his feet, he figures he could make his escape no matter how bad his side hurts. It's at this moment he realizes that he is no longer wearing his shoes.

Rather than sit up again, he rolls off the bed and onto the floor, letting out a howl as his torso smacks down on a carpet carrying old stains of spilled wine and tawdry affairs. He sees the door is wide open. He begins to crawl toward it, but every time he drags one of his knees up under him, he feels like his insides are going to explode all over the floor and he has to stop. After twenty minutes of this he is only halfway to the doorway.

About a foot ahead of him he sees an envelope on the floor with the single word "THIEF" written on it. He reaches for the envelope and opens it. He has given up on the hope of a clean escape and now just wants to survive. Restitution, a full confession, it doesn't matter. Whatever it is they want, he'll pay.

The note reads:

Dear Thief,

Yes, thief, because we both know that's what you are. That money you stole to buy those shoes? That was my money, money I worked hard for but no longer have because some thief decided to steal it and buy himself a pair of shoes. Since you've probably never worked a day in your life, I'm going to tell you about the kind of work I do to earn your shoe money. I work in a doctor's office where we don't steal, we heal. I often thought I'd make an excellent doctor, especially a surgeon. I am an accomplished taxidermist, which is just like being a surgeon but you don't have to worry about malpractice suits ha ha.

Where was I? Ah yes, the shoes. I figured they're really my shoes since I earned the money so I could do anything I wanted to do with them. It turns out what I wanted to do was sew them up inside of you (If you pull up your shirt, you'll notice an excellent stitching job if I do say so myself). I probably should have cleaned them up first. Goodness knows what kind of icky stuff you stepped in while you were fleeing the cops.

If I were you, I'd go get some medical attention. There's a hospital 20 miles from here. I'm sure they'd fix you right up if you make it there, but we both know you won't.

I do hate thieves, but credit where credit is due. Those are excellent shoes. I bet when they arrived in the mail, you swore you'd never part with them. Well now you never will.

In Defense of Bullshit

2011-07-15T16:37:54Z

Prior to the Great System Crash of 2008 (See Back from the Dead for details), I used to categorize my blog posts. I had reminiscence posts. I had poetry posts. I had fiction posts. I had a category called "misc." I'm not sure what purpose a "misc" category was supposed to serve, but I had one anyway. All in all, the "fiction" category was the one that gave me the most trouble.

The line between fiction and non-fiction is not as clear as one might think. There is the kind of truth that a person is supposed to tell while under oath: purely factual, unembellished, devoid of opinion, and dull as dirt. It doesn't tell a whole story and it was never intended to. It's sole purpose is to give juries facts to chew on before they vote their emotions and preconceptions anyway.

So a little embellishment is to be expected even in a true story, but how much? For example, it's allowed to have composites of non-central characters and events without crossing the line into fiction. Some movie marketing makes an end-run claim to truth when it says the film is "inspired by actual events." It is important to remember that by this logic, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure would qualify as a documentary.

I've never claimed that anything in Poison Spur was inspired by actual events because when it comes right down to it, everything is so the phrase means nothing. Of course some material in the blog is truer than others. I ultimately gave up labeling some work as fiction because I told myself I didn't need to. I figured my readers (all 30 or so of you) would know when I've been making stuff up. After all, you're not a bunch of idiots, right?

Nice theory. True, many of my stories are too outlandish to be believed. Not all, it turned out. Some time ago, I was out on a date with a woman I met on craigslist. A few days before while we were swapping emails, I sent her a link to Poison Spur so she would know what she was getting herself into before we actually met. So we were sitting in this bar knocking back drinks and chatting away when she asked about my sister. I told her I didn't have one.

"But I thought you stole her Barbie doll for an art project when you were a kid," she said.

She was talking about the story where the doll has its eye socket raped by a GI Joe with a penis fashioned from a golf tee. I have to admit I was somewhat taken aback by her comment. Up to then, the idea I would do such a thing was unthinkable to me. After that night, I started asking myself why I considered it unthinkable. To this day, I can't come up with a believable answer other than "because I don't have a sister."

I mulled the idea of reviewing my blog and assigning the category fiction or non-fiction to each entry. That certainly would clear up any confusion, but as I said before, where to draw that line is a bit arbitrary. An invented sibling is clearly in the realm of fiction, but what about those accounts of nights at the Argus where some details had to be invented to replace the memories that drowned in my whiskey glass? Ultimately, I decided not to bother. I think I made the right choice.

In conclusion, I would like this blog entry to serve as a disclaimer. Please assume everything I write here, going forward as well as in the past, is a complete load of hooey. Or if that takes the fun out of things, feel free to believe what I write is inspired by actual events. That's true enough, I suppose.

Patriotism and Whatnot

2011-07-07T01:59:21Z

I was up late on the night of the Fourth. Illicit fireworks continued to crackle around the neighborhood like small-arms fire. Perhaps some of it actually was small-arms fire. There were definitely a few times when what I heard sounded more like a gunshot than an M-80. I've lived in the city for more than twenty years now. As a seasoned Mission dweller, I like to believe I tell the difference between the two. Then again, I like to believe a lot of things.

My cat stayed under the bed. I imagined her wearing a Civil Defense helmet. or whatever the English equivalent in the tube stations was while the Germans rained death down on London. I'm certain she had no idea what holiday it was, didn't care, and just wanted the noise to go away.

I didn't mind the noise. Whether fireworks or gunfire, it sounded far enough away that I felt like I was listening to someone else's war, someone else's problem. I did have one thing in common with my cat though. I didn't swell with pride over the fact that it was Independence Day.

Earlier in the day, I did try to make the holiday resonate on a personal level. As I sat in a cafe sipping my coffee, I thought of the long hours Thomas Jefferson must have put in drafting the Declaration of Independence. To ease his drudgery, I imagined that he had Sally Hemings under his desk while he worked and I began to write a story about it called "The Spurt of 76." What stopped me was when I took out my iPhone and looked up Sally Hemings on Wikipedia. It said she was born ca. 1773, making her about three years old at the time. There are some topics that are just too fucked up, even for me.

What kept awake till one, a mattress and box spring above my shell-shocked kitty, was that I was reading a very good book. It had reached the point where exciting things were happening and there was no way I was going to put it down until I was finished now matter how long it took.

In my case, that meant taking twice the normal amount of time you'd expect someone to read the last 100 pages of a novel and multiplying it by two. I'm a slow reader. I fancy myself a writer so I take time to make mental notes of how the author is telling the story, assessing what works and what doesn't. It's a good way to laugh at the mistakes of bad writers and pick up pointers from the good ones. You see, stealing a story line is considered bad form, but stealing technique is essential.

This works very well until you run across a writer who is so good, the exercise becomes depressing. In my case, I was reading Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart and the exercise was depressing as hell. He's a lot better than I am, but I'm OK with that. He's better and 10 years younger, but I can deal with that as well. He's a professional and I am not. What really bothered me was that he is good enough so no matter how hard I try, I will never be as good as he is.

It almost makes me feel glad I've never tried very hard at anything.

Mister Creative

2011-06-29T16:19:55Z

When I started blogging again, I thought the words would come easily. Well, perhaps "easily" is an overstatement. I've always agonized over what I'm writing, or to be more precise, what I'm going to write.

I put a lot of time and effort into mentally preparing myself for the task of putting words on paper (or into keyboard if the longhand imagery isn't working for you). When I finally feel I'm ready, I'm usually so frustrated by the whole process I just want to get it over with. What ends up on my blog is either a worthwhile read or it isn't.

I convince myself that the work can stand on its own merits. It doesn't need any of that window that editing and proofreading provide.

In short, the road to mediocrity is full of potholes. That doesn't have to matter though. When I hit my stride, I'm able to make it down that bumpy road in a matter of hours or days rather than weeks or months. It doesn't matter that I'm seemingly incapable of writing about anything except drinking binges, homicide, or poop, at least not to me.

I think what I need to do is get over myself. Those who write amusing gibberish aren't allowed to behave like they're tortured artists. Besides, it's not like anybody reads my stuff anyway.

A Modern Miracle Play in One Act

2011-06-02T13:36:56Z

ARMAGEDDON 2.0

Heath N. Savage

Dramatis Personae

Harold Camping

Ms. Flockhart

The setting is Harold Camping's office at Family Radio in

Oakland, CA. There is a line graph on a wooden stand in

the corner of the room. It showed a freefall in listeners

since May 21. On the desk, there is an empty tray where

donation vouchers are supposed to go. Next to it is another

tray for unpaid bills, this one overflowing. Next to the trays

is a desk calendar showing a date of October 20, 2011.

The "On Air" light over the office door has been turned off.

The clock on the wall says it is 11:55 p.m.

Harold Camping, President of Family Radio, is seated at

his desk. Standing next to him is Ms. Flockhart, a cleaner in

Harold Camping's employ. She is holding a feather duster

but will provide no exposition during the play.

HAROLD CAMPING

Knock knock.

MS. FLOCKHART

Who's there?

HAROLD CAMPING

Gumby.

MS. FLOCKHART

Gumby who?

HAROLD CAMPING

Gumby the End Times.

Curtain

In the Heart of the Pig Latin Beast

2011-06-01T01:51:43Z

I try to make it over to the East Bay at least once a week. It keeps me from feeling like my life is just one day rolling into the next, an unintended consequence of an easy existence.

My home and job are both in the city and my commute is 30 minutes or less, door to door. I like my job pretty well and food and drink are available in convenient abundance once I get off work. My financial woes all appear to be behind me. I have everything I need except variety.

That's where Oakland comes in. If you've never visited the place and only know it from headlines, you probably picture the town as nonstop free-fire zone with streets littered with empty shell casings and puddles of fresh human blood. You'll be happy to know that's only partly true. I've met many fine residents of Oakland and as of this writing none of them have ever pointed a gun at me.

This suits me just fine. About all the adventure I can stand these days is a little excursion from point A to point B that never strays outside my comfort zone.

Fortunately, this is easily done. I work just a short walk from the Transbay Terminal, or rather the temporary one. While the permanent one is being rebuilt, the buses have been rerouted to the corner of "Mad As Hell" and "Not Going To Take It Anymore" (Howard & Beale streets). BART is often the best way to get to Oakland, but there are those times when your destination isn't all that close to a station. There are also those times when you don't want to spend 25 minutes packed like sardines with a bunch of financial-services weenies on their way home to Walnut Creek.

Just to make things even simpler, I have a Clipper Card. For those of you who either don't live in the Bay Area or simply haven't been paying attention, the Clipper Card is a pre-paid electronically readable doohickey that allows you to get around on a number of local public-transit systems without having to fumble for single bills or loose change. You can also set things up so it attaches itself like a lamprey to your bank account or credit card and sucks out money every time it gets low on funds.

Around rush hour, the bus I'm waiting for comes every 15-20 minutes. When it pulls up, I climb aboard, swipe my card against the reader, and take my seat. There don't seem to be enough other passengers for any of them to sit next to me, but I'm not taking any chances. I know the old trick of making people stay away from me by sitting up straight, eyes forward, with just the tip of my tongue protruding from my lips. The move is effective because it plays upon people's irrational gears and subtle enough that they can't complain to anyone without sounding like a fool.

The doors close and the bus makes one of those hydraulic farting noises buses make for reasons I've never understood. Pulling out of the terminal, there are a few zigs and zags on surface streets before we curve up an onramp and onto a crowded Bay Bridge headed east.

The bus rattles along the lower level of the bridge surrounded by steel beams and the roar of traffic around us. After the tunnel through Yerba Buena Island, I stare out the window at the new eastern span under construction. We arrive in Oakland and after passing the huge cranes that look like Star Wars imperial walkers we get on the 580 and start heading southeast.

I get off at the first stop, the corner of MacArthur and Grand. The northern tip of Lake Merritt is in front of me. Downtown is more than a mile away to the right. I go left and cross under the freeway toward the Heart and Dagger Saloon.

I first set foot in that bar about a year ago, back when I had a girlfriend in Oakland. The place opens at noon, which made it a good place to get a drink after going with her to the farmers market. I used to do a lot more drinking in the afternoon back then.

The H&D is still pretty quiet when I walk in the door. It's not dead, but not bustling either. I recognize the bartender, though I don't know her name and have never said a word to her unless I've wanted a drink. I order a 24 oz. PBR for $4, which is a great deal if you mind don't low-grade domestic swill that has somehow become the preferred beverage of hipsters. Neither of these things bothers me though. I'm too busy getting in touch with my inner dirtbag to care.

I pay for my beer and head out back to the patio. There are a bunch of picnic tables, a bit like Zeitgeist in SF, but smaller in both size and attitude. Actually, the same can be said when comparing the two cities. We San Franciscans tend to be less friendly and more self absorbed than Oaklanders. It's nice to experience a lower amount of ambient attitude than I do over on my side of the bay.

If it were my nature, I'd probably strike up a conversation with someone and have a pleasant time of it. Instead, I choose to interact with no one. I may eavesdrop a bit, but only until a conversation bores me. I then contemplate going for some food and end up drinking my dinner instead. I lament how little I've accomplished in life while I spend another evening doing absolutely nothing.

Mostly I wait. I have the patience to stick around until enough time has passed so I can convince myself that the whole trip was worth it. That usually requires downing a second PBR tall boy. Then it's back on a bus to downtown SF and a BART ride home to the Mission from there, no room in my head for regrets because all of my thoughts are about how desperately I need to pee.

Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On

2011-03-22T04:05:41Z

I used to tell myself I had lived through a major earthquake. The Loma Prieta quake certainly was the largest local temblor in recent memory. It paled in comparison to the big one in 1906, but 1906 was a long time ago.

On October 17, 1989, I was about halfway through my noon-to-eleven shift as computer operator in the corporate office of Bay Area retail chain. I was just sitting down in front of one of the terminals in the machine room when the ground began to shake. My coworker let out an "Oh my God," and then went to go stand under a doorway. I was feeling pretty macho that day, at least enough so I felt no need to take cover just because of a minor tremor. And it was a minor tremor, at least it felt that way at first, but after a few seconds, it got a lot more lively.

As the room rocked back and forth, I hurried over to the doorway next to my coworker. The tiles in the false floor bounced around in their settings and tape racks began to fall over. Shortly before the shaking stopped, the power cut out. We stood there in close to total darkness for about 30 seconds until the emergency lights kicked in and the emergency siren began to wail.

There wasn't much of the building that required the emergency lights. When we walked down the short hallway and turned the corner, we saw the cubicles in the one-story office drenched in light from the afternoon sun. Outside in the parking lot, many of the other employees stood around in the parking lot wondering what to do next while some went to their cars to listen for any news on the radio.

There were reports of damage and deaths. Houses in SF's Marina district were on fire. A section of the Bay Bridge gave way like a trap door. In Oakland, part of the 880 freeways collapsed onto its lower level, smooshing an untold number of commuters.

While the news trickled in, one person pointed at a crack in the sidewalk and swore that it wasn't there that morning. A number of us gathered around and pondered the newness of the fissure in the concrete. I don't think any of us attributed any great significance to the crack, but compared to the guesswork and hearsay that was coming in from the radio, it was at least something tangible.

In the days that followed, aftershocks came through with decreasing frequency, electrical power was restored, and the final death toll stayed in double digits. For most, the aftermath was more of an inconvenience than anything else. The Bay Bridge was closed for a month, which necessitated a using the San Mateo Bridge as a detour. That was about it. You weren't likely to be homeless and starving unless you were that way to begin with.

After I was promoted to junior programmer/analyst some months later, I got to be good friends with another programmer there. In the summer of 1999, he vacationed in Japan with his then girlfriend and upon his return told me he planned on moving there. By November he packed his bags and left, only returning for a few short visits in the past decade.

When I woke up on the morning of March 11, I did my bleary-eyed ritual of grabbing my iPhone from the bedside table and checking the latest on Facebook. My friends were commenting about Japan. Due to an earthquake in the Pacific, a tsunami had hit the northwestern coast of Honshu. Hundreds were reported dead. Compared to what happened to Indonesia, Thailand, and Sri Lanka in 2004, it seemed like small potatoes at the time.

My thoughts turned to Tidal Wave, a really bad Japanese disaster movie from the 70's. The American release, taking a cue from the presence of Raymond Burr in Godzilla, had scenes with Lorne Greene spliced in to give it gaijin star power. I decided to email my friend an assessment of the disaster in his adopted home in the form of a link to Roger Ebert's scathing review of the film.'

Of course, jokes of this nature are a risky business. Though my friend lives in Tokyo, his girlfriend lives way up north in Morioka. I checked to make sure that city was situated safely inland before sending the email. I also posted the link with to my Facebook page.

I quickly regretted doing both. After I showered, I deleted the link from my Facebook page. I figure it was up there all of fifteen minutes. The email could not be unsent, but I hope my friend realized that I sort of mean well even if tact is not my strong suit. Those who know me have learned that I am no stranger to humor in bad taste. After the earthquake in Haiti, for example, I mused about how an entrepreneur might build a sex-tourism resort atop the rubble called "Port au Bints."

What possesses me to go for cheap laughs from tragedies on this scale. Well, I have been called an asshole more than once, but I think that's only part of the explanation. When something occurs that is too large for the brain to take in all at once, there is a very human tendency to trivialize the event into something more maneagable. There is an equally human tendency to get cute about it so we can share whatever joy can be gotten from a tragedy with those who are equally bewildered. The trick is to avoid telling these jokes to those who have lost loved ones or have otherwise directly affected. They don't see incomprehensible magnitude. They see a dead friend or family member.

Don't get me wrong. I don't believe any topics are off limits. Some of the most hilarious material out there is incredibly transgressive at its core. The only requirement is that joke needs to be genuinely funny. Mine wasn't, or at least not funny enough. Instead, I posted some quip about how Pat Roberston and Fred Phelps were going to attribute the disaster to God's wrath, thereby pointing out that there are bigger assholes than myself.

And let's be honest. They are bigger assholes. A lot of us have a hard time looking at a Japanese city in ruins without thinking of one or more residents of Monster Island paying a visit, but we neither take that seriously nor expect anyone else to. After our flight of fancy about tiny model tanks in a losing battle against Godzilla and Rodan, we then go give some money to the Red Cross because that's the right thing to do. Those who try impose some contrived reason, or worse, justification of why this tragedy happened, are another matter entirely.

It came as no surprise when Glenn Beck, a man so loathsome he is beginning to make his fellow reactionary nutters cringe, opined that God decided to off thousands of Japanese die because folks aren't taking the Ten Commandments seriously enough. I'm puzzled why he'd target a people who are overwhelmingly non Judeo-Christian in their beliefs. I'm an atheist so I can't profess to be an expert on imaginary divine beings, but it seems to me that even the most abusive father chooses to beat his own kids rather than those who live down the street.

Unfortunately, he's not alone. There are those, like some idiot named Cappie Pondexter who plays in the WNBA, who thinks God is getting back at Japan for Pearl Harbor. Gee, don't you think he's a little late? There is no denying that the Japanese Empire did some very bad things in that war. However, pretty much everyone who had a hand in that is dead by now and Japan has become a nation that has left its militarist past behind and has enjoyed over 65 years without war.. To harbor that sort of grudge against modern-day Japan, one has to be a very unforgiving God, or a whale.

If there is any lesson here, it will be from watching and learning how Japan recovers from this disaster. And they will recover. They came back from far worse in 1945, and they'll do it regardless of the fire-and-brimstone whack jobs like Beck or Pondexter or wisecracking jerk offs like me.

Things New and Old

2011-03-12T01:24:26Z

When I bought my computer, I decided to splurge and buy a new monitor as well. This could prove to be an unnecessary and foolish luxury. I did have five fully functional CRT monitors on the floor of my office. I am also on the fast track to unemployment. My current contract is over in a month. I may secure another job between now and then. Then again, I may not.

In my defense, there are reasons to get rid of your old CRT's. They don't have anywhere near the resolution of the new flat screens. I remember their time being up as far back as 2004. I had a short gig doing desktop upgrades at the offices of the California State Bar in downtown San Francisco. Part of this was replacing CRT monitors with new flat screens. The old equipment was taken to a floor that was still under construction. When I saw row after row of CRT's with their screens all facing me, my brain should have thought, "Gee, I have a bunch of these at home. Maybe I should get rid of some of them."

Instead, I thought that they kind of looked like space helmets and addressed them thusly: "Greetings troopers. I am Commander Zork. Today you will lay waste to the agrarian society on the planet below so that I may rebuild their world with gladiator arenas, fast-food restaurants, and whorehouses."

As a result, my own collections of old monitors spent the next six and a half years gathering dust on my floor.

These monitors were not only dinosaurs. They were also bulky, weighed a ton, and were full of toxins. You can't just throw the things away. The innards of these monitors can find their way into the ground water, resulting in a skyrocketing cancer rate and birth defects that would make a sideshow barker blush.

Fortunately, there are other ways disposing of these things. You can pay an electronics-recycling service to take them off your hands. Goodwill still accepts them as donations as well. At least I think they do. I dumped four of my five CRT's (all that would fit in my friend's car) in the donation bin just inside the front door. No one seemed to mind, though I'm not sure anyone noticed me. I didn't stick around to find out. It's amazing what kinds of things are allowable for those who are willing to make strategic assumptions and haul ass.'

So four down, one to go, and that will go the next time my friend volunteers to make a Goodwill run (note to self: remember to peel the "ASS PHLEGM" sticker off the front of it first). If there's room, I'll also get rid of a couple of old computers, minus their hard drives. I am too lazy to format the things and I doubt they want my porn.

What Are You Doing, Dave?

2011-03-02T00:01:53Z

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. By this, I mean life in general. I've embarked on some projects recently that have yielded some positive results, but nothing that has made me say, "Aha!" and certainly nothing that would make me want to listen to A-ha. Am I making any sense here and does it really matter? After, no less a genius than Charlie Sheen has already shown us that coherency is so 2010.

Ah yes, 2010. I was writing quite a bit back then. I convinced myself of my literary pretensions while knocking out stories about zombies, murder, upskirt voyeurism, and retards. Yes, retards. It wasn't the kind of feel-good story where somebody with a learning disability tried extra hard and achieved a measure of greatness, or at least managed to sew a wallet in arts-and-crafts class in retard camp for his case worker Bill. No, this is a tale where I shamelessly make fun of people with learning disabilities. Actually, I dedicated 6000 words to the subject. In my defense, the story was pretty funny provided you can get past the fact that the author is an insensitive asshole.

There are other stories in the queue, unwritten except for a few words jotted down in my spiral notebook. In none of them am I so crass as to make fun of those dealt a bad hand at birth. Instead, I stick to my time-tested themes: alcoholism, revenge fantasies, and loss of bowel control. I do plan on writing these stories. I really do. Some of them at least. At some point. Maybe.

I have been busy, sort of. I bought this neato linux box. Actually, it was a Windows 7 box before I wiped the stink of Redmond from its hard disk and installed a real operating system. I named it ralphus, in honor of Sardu's plucky and diminuitive assistant in Bloodsucking Freaks. I was so proud.

Granted, getting a linux machine up and running these days is no great accomplishment. This isn't like the old days when you could only expect the OS to work with the monitor, the keyboard, and if you were lucky, the mouse. Sound cards were at best iffy and most peripherals were out of the quesiton. Not so with the latest Ubuntu linux. The webcam, external storage, and a lot other fun stuff that plugged into a USB port

The scanner didn't work with it, but that was mostly because it was five years old. Most software for linux, and especially stuff like device drivers, is developed by volunteers in the open-source community. These people are awesome, no doubt about that. However, their time is limited so you can't expect them to make everything work seamlessly with yesterday's hardware. I dropped about 80 bucks on a new scanner and gave the old one to a friend.

That paved the way for at least one of my projects. A friend of mine (coincidentally the same one who now owns my old scanner) came into possession of a number of old Car & Driver magazines from the 60s and 70s with articles written by my father. I've been scanning his work in the magazines and checking out various OCR software with the eventual goal of setting up some sort of online tribute to him. I'm not a gearhead personally but I do like my dad's writing and think it merits being shared. This may run afoul some copyright law, but screw the bastards. I'm not doing this for profit and I am his son. I think I'm entitled to be proud of my old man.

Don't expect to see his work here on Poison Spur. I have a little more respect than that. Its eventual home will be on platypus.org.

That site needs a serious overhaul. It has not been updated since 2001 and can be accurately described as a cobwebbed lump of shit. Fortunately I have a project for that as well. I've installed drupal on ralphus and have been playing around with it during those evenings I spend away from the bar. Once I know what I'm doing and let trial and error eventually make up for my lack of design sense, platypus dot org will be a presentable site with Dad's tribute page and other nifty features.

My dance card is getting mighty full. So where does that leave Poison Spur? It will continue, I promise you that. New entries may appear sporadically, but I know in my heart of hearts that I am a showoff. I can't quit forever. If people stopped telling me I'm cute and clever, I'd probably dry up and blow away.

Short Bus Blues (Part 4)

2010-11-11T22:30:20Z

As soon as that first sentence hit the page, I felt a wave of inspiration unlike anything I had ever experienced. All the self doubt and pathological need for procrastination seemed to just fade away, if only for the time being. I might have considered this a miracle if I were a person of faith. Alas, I'd given spiritual matters a great deal of thought over the years and have come to the conclusion that if a god exists, he or she is no more than an absentee landlord who beats off to human misery.

Whatever the cause, I was not about to let this moment pass. I focused my mental energy on putting words on paper. Meanwhile, people came into the bar. People left. Songs were played on the jukebox. There were whispers, shouts, jokes, and laughter. I was barely aware of any of it.

The closest I came to having my concentration broken was when I felt a woman's hand on my thigh and her voice murmur in my ear, asking what I was writing and if I wanted a shot of tequila. At least I thought it was a woman. I was so consumed by my work that I couldn't tell. It didn't matter. I was not to be disturbed. With the simple white lie "I have scabies," the hand retreated and I was left in peace.

An hour and a half passed. I dropped my pen and rubbed my tired eyes. The story was done. Except for putting a title and byline at the top of the page, I never backtracked. There were no rewrites, no second thoughts. Kerouac would have approved, except for when I turned down that drink.

Whatever spell I was under broke when I finished writing and my recent memories began to fade like the hazy morning recollections of a dream. So when I looked down at the fruit of my efforts and began to read, it was like seeing the words for the very first time:

* * *

HOT LEAD, DEAD SPED

By D. Shithammer Jennings

It was a dark and stormy night at the donut shop. Ernie, the older and fatter of the two cops, sat in a chair made for a much smaller man, his gelatinous buttocks spilling over the sides. He turned, and with chocolate-stained lips that looked like a puckered unwiped sphincter, blew kisses at Trixie, the pert young cashier behind the register who worked 12-hour shifts so she could help pay the medical expenses for her mother who had cancer and AIDS.

"You're doing it wrong, Ernie," said Bert, who was considerably younger than his partner and rail thin from a metabolism that vaporized every calorie that went down his gullet. "If you want to make a favorable impression on a lady, you have to demonstrate an interest in fulfilling her needs."

"You don't say," said Ernie, wiping his upper lip and smearing the bits of chocolate into a dirty Sanchez.

"Totally," said Bert. "I read it in Hustler."

With that, Bert slapped the palm of his hand down on the table. When Trixie turned to face him, he brought his jelly donut up just below his lower lip. His gaze met hers and his tongue descended toward the jelly hole. It started working it gently at first, almost lovingly. He then grunted and his tongue kicked into overdrive, its now rapid-fire jackhammer thrust penetrating the gooey orifice, tearing it wider, and causing a high-fructose hemorrhage to spill down over the lanky cop's bony fingers.

Trixie averted her eyes and went back to her original task of making sure that all the dollar bills in the till were facing the same direction.

"Yeah," said Bert. "That's the shit."

Just then, a voice crackled in on the walkie-talkie hanging from Ernie's belt. It reported a domestic disturbance at 821 N. Piojos Avenue and was requesting a unit to respond.

"No rest for the wicked," said Ernie, reaching for the walkie-talkie as he rocked one butt cheek up off the chair and cut the cheese. Unfortunately for the police dispatcher on the other end, Ernie had his thumb pressing the talk button when his ass tuba was sounding the call to arms.

"Unit 47 is on it," Ernie said into the speaker. There was no utterance from the dispatcher other than an utterance that sounded like "eww," or perhaps "ugh."

"Let's go, Bert," said Ernie.

"Ready to roll," said Bert, who drew upon his high-school basketball experience and lobbed a hook shot of his jelly donut toward the trash can. It was a near perfect throw and he sank the pastry in the wastebasket easily. The watercolor Trixie had painted and hung over the receptacle provided an excellent backboard, the donut bouncing neatly off the portrait of balance-beam gold medalist Shawn Johnson planting her dismount and leaving only a small red stain between the young gymnast's supple thighs.

Ernie and Bert left the donut shop and sped away in their patrol car.

Meanwhile at 821 N. Piojos Avenue, a woman with a pair of garden shears was chasing her husband around the dining-room table. After flushing her medication a few days before, she decided that her husband was having an affair with their pet parrot and that the only way to restore domestic bliss was to emasculate him. Her husband's emphatic denials only served to fuel her rage.

"Give us a kiss," said the bird.

The husband knew he had no chance of fighting off his wife, who outweighed him by at least 50 pounds and possessed a feral strength common among those who have gone berserk. Earlier on while she was busy arming herself in the garage, he had managed to lock her out of the house and dial 911 before she used her Billy Blanks Tae Bo Workout training to kick in the front door. Now as the two did laps around the table, he was confident that he would only have to stay away from her for a few more minutes until the cops arrived.

He was sadly mistaken because at that very moment, Ernie and Bert's police car was pulling up in front of the driveway at 821 S. Piojos Avenue, home of Mrs. Mongo and her son Lloyd.

Lloyd Mongo, a 25 year old man with a learning disability, was crouched on the floor inside the house with his nose about a foot away from the TV screen. He was watching his favorite show, "Spartacus: Blood and Sand." His mother had outfitted his protective retard helmet with one of those paper snowflake decorations that folds back upon itself, giving his headgear the look that it was topped with a Roman gladiator's crest. Lloyd wore that helmet with pride and wielded a wooden yardstick as a makeshift sword.

Mrs. Mongo was not at home. She had gone to the store to pick up a quart of cheap vodka. Purchasing liquor was a violation of her parole, but she had found that the dull haze of inebriation provided a little vacation from the stress of caring for someone whose heart was good but was able to nothing but need.

Lloyd's lower lip folded down almost to chin level and thick rivulets of drool streamed from the corners of his mouth, as often happened when he saw full or partial nudity on television. Alas, this moment of prurient joy was cut short when Ernie and Bert's shoulders smashed through the screen door and the two police officers propelled themselves into the living room. Ernie staggered forward, barely able to stay on his feet while Bert was steadier and immediately assumed a firing stance with his weapon pointing directly at Lloyd Mongo.

Lloyd, startled by the commotion stood up and turned to face the two policemen. He had never had a gun pointed at him so he decided to introduce himself.

"I am Tardacus!" he said.

"Freeze, fucknugget!" commanded Bert.

Lloyd wanted to dance instead of freeze so he bounced up and down while waving his yardstick sword around over his head.

"See ya later, gladiator," Lloyd said, singing the words as much as speaking them.

Bert responded to these shenanigans by unloading his his service revolver into Lloyd Mongo's chest. The impact of the six bullets knocked Lloyd straight back. Marrowly missing the television, he landed on the floor with his feet crossed at the ankles and his arms outstretched at the shoulders. His heart stopped beating, his IQ dropped 57 points, and he was dead.

"Jeez," said Ernie, catching his breath and steadying himself. "I think you just shot an unarmed man."

"Yeah and I'd do it again," said Bert, illustrating his point by pulling the trigger a few more times so the hammer would click over the empty chambers.

"If we don't fix this up, it's gonna be a royal pain in the ass," said Ernie. "I've been through this before. There will be questions, internal affairs, community-oversight committees. I better go get the throwdown kit."

Ernie went outside to the trunk of the police car and returned with a black nylon sack. He opened its zipper and planted its contents on Lloyd Mongo.

"He doesn't look so innocent now. Does he, Bert?" said Ernie.

"He sure as hell doesn't," said Bert.

It was true. Lloyd might have been sprawled out in the same position as Jesus on the cross, but he looked decidedly un-Christlike with a loaded gun in one hand and a DVD full of kiddie porn in the other.

The hearing over the shooting would prove to be a mere formality, a rubber-stamp affair that ended with the suggestion that Bert be awarded with a citation of merit. The blame was to fall elsewhere.

Even though Lloyd Mongo was allegedly an armed and dangerous pedophile, records showed that his mental handicap was too severe for him to be held responsible for his actions. Culpability must therefore fall squarely on his mother. She was tried and convicted of parole violation and criminal neglect, which qualified as her second and third strike and she was sentenced to 25 years to life.

Mrs. Mongo gambled with alcohol and lost. Can you afford to make the same mistake?

* * *

And there it was, the finest piece of fiction I had ever penned. I had clearly outdone myself with this work of unparalleled savage beauty.

What separated the story from my lesser efforts, and in fact, propelled it from its opening as a charming if innocuous cop bromance toward its tragic conclusion and cautionary coda was an honest appreciation for an oft overlooked segment of humanity. In short, I owed it all to retarded people, the learning disabled, the mentally handicapped, dipshits, or whatever one chose to call them. It was their spirit and zest for living that I gave a face to in the form of Lloyd Mongo, a simple man who was denied the right to live his own simple dream.

"I love retards!" I blurted, unable to contain my gratitude.

My outburst garnered a few odd looks from a couple of other bar patrons, and approving nod from Henry Silt, and a perplexed smile from the lipstick-smeared face of Carl.

What? I could hardly believe it. I wondered how Carl, who had arguably one of the least kissable faces on the planet, ended up with a ruby-red smudge that went all the way from his mouth to behind his earlobe. That question was answered when he went back to making out with the woman sitting next to him. She was older but still attractive. In fact, she looked a whole lot like...Marlo Thomas? I'm not saying that it was her, but the resemblance was uncanny. Perhaps there was plenty of magic on this night of nights to go around.

At that point, my elation ebbed and I realized what a fool I'd been. I left Chuck E. Cheese in a huff because I didn't care for the Huey Lewis karaoke crowd. Well, that was the old me. From this point forward, I was going to cease being so petty and judgmental. I was going to march back to Chuck E. Cheese right then, order myself a slice of Hawaiian, and give a standing ovation after every Huey Lewis song.

Or rather, I would if it wasn't already too late. Bar time was ten to eleven, so it was probably actually fifteen minutes before that. There was a good chance that Chuck E. Cheese was closed. Maybe they were staying open later because of karaoke night. It was worth a try.

I put my notebook in my backpack and left the bar. It was raining harder now and had been for some time, judging from the size of the puddles in the intersection the traffic went splashing through. I hurried along at a brisk trot, almost slipping and falling on the wet sidewalk a couple of times because the soles of my shoes had worn to the point where there was almost no traction.

Chuck E. Cheese was closed when I arrived. The doors were bolted and there were no lights or signs of movement inside.

However, the Huey Lewis singers had not gone home. They stood outside in the rain, presumably waiting for their ride. The scene made me think of domestic turkeys and how they tend to drown when left outside in the rain because of their habit of staring up in the sky with their mouths hanging open. These birds are known for their low intelligence ('tard and feathered, if you will) and I hoped my friends standing across the street would not suffer a similar fate.

Let there be no mistake. These were my friends and I owed them so much. I decided to give them my thanks the best way I knew how. I burst into song, a Huey Lewis song, one I hoped they would enjoy. I am a terrible singer, utterly talentless, but I could think of no better way to express what I felt.

"The power of love is a curious thing," I sang off key. "Makes one man weep, makes another man sing..."

They were delighted and by the time I got to "Stronger and harder than a bad girl's dream," they had joined in, making up for my shortcomings as a crooner with their powerful backing vocals.

I walked across the street and by the time we finished the song, I was standing right in front of them. They clapped and laughed, and then in unison, opened their arms wide to take me into their fold. I stepped forward and let my friends envelope me. Never in my life had I felt so accepted. Arms wrapped around me, hands patted my back and pinched the softer parts of my torso. My armpits were sniffed and one person used my hair as a handkerchief to blow their nose. I felt a finger start working its way between my buttocks. I clenched at first then relaxed, welcoming it as one should any friend in need.

The power of love is a curious thing. It is a curious thing indeed.

Short Bus Blues (Part 3)

2010-10-30T20:57:38Z

Carl was quieter now from his end of the bar. Though his heart undoubtedly still ached for his beloved Marlo Thomas, he wouldn't risk getting cut off. The prospect of sobering up up must fill a man like Carl with dread, so the only noise he made was a low hum like a dial tone punctuated with the occasional tearful sniffle.

Henry had picked up his towel and glass, and started his cleaning routine. He seemed to be concentrating on one area, some smudge or water stain visible only to him.

"Any retards in your family, Dave?" he asked.

"No, but a lot of them sure act like it."

I laughed. Henry didn't. I was hoping a little levity would speed this process along. He would tell me about some cousin or niece of his who could recite Dr. Seuss books verbatim or had sculpted Barney the Dinosaur out of a lump of shit. I would say how wonderful that was and then steer the conversation toward Henry's cop past. Something told me it wasn't going to be that way and that I was going to get an earful.

"My grandfather was retarded," he went on. "He was also the greatest man I ever knew. Of course, when I was a kid I didn't used to see him that way. Back then, he was just Grandpa 'Tard. When we used to go visit, I would laugh at him for opening the cereal box from the bottom and spilling Cheerios all over the kitchen table. I stopped doing that the day my grandmother hit me upside the head and told me to show some respect. My grandmother had a huge hand to slap you with, big enough to palm a Thanksgiving turkey. Anyway, that was the day I found out that my retarded grandfather was a war hero."

"Really?" I asked.

"Yeah, the Big One. He stormed the beaches of Normandy and by the time the war was over, he had been through Operation Market Garden, the Battle of the Bulge, and earned himself a Purple Heart."

"OK, now I understand," I said. "There was brain damage from his war wound."

"Oh hell no," Henry said. "Grandpa was shot in the ass. No, he was retarded from the day he was born. People used to say the stork dropped him a few times on the way over. They didn't say it in front of Grandma though, not unless they wanted to get smacked by that big old hand of hers."

"No offense, but I didn't know the Army took people with a serious mental handicap," I said.

"There was a war on, so I guess they were a little more lax then. Maybe they had a whole different kind of 'don't ask; don't tell' going on at the time, or maybe he just put one over on those Army recruiters. 'He wore a hat and he had a job and he brought home the bacon so no one knew,' just like the song goes. Grandpa could be very resourceful despite being retarded and all."

"Wow," I said. "That's really amazing. May I have another bourbon?"

"Water back?"

"Please."

Henry put the pristine glass and bar towel down, then picked up my empty tumbler and water glass. I pulled four more dollar bills from my wallet. When Henry returned, there was twice as much bourbon in my glass as last time.

"This one's on me."

I put another dollar on the bar and stuffed the other three in my shirt pocket. Henry went down to the end of the bar, poured some more brandy in Carl's glass, gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder, and returned. He picked up his towel and glass again and commenced giving the rim a good wipe.

"So where was I?" he asked.

"Your grandfather's enlistment."

"Ah yes. Grandpa had a lot of trouble getting through basic training even though he tried harder than anybody. Physically, there was no problem. Grandpa may be have been pushing 40 when he enlisted, but working on the killing floor at his uncle's slaughterhouse since the age of five toughened him up for pretty much anything they could throw at him. It was the retardation. I remember how reading and simple arithmetic used to enrage him. He almost flunked out of basic. Fortunately, the army had a special, slower-paced program for people who grew up in Mississippi. Once my grandfather got transferred into that one, he did just fine and was the first one off his boat on D-Day. You remind me of him in a way."

"I do?"

"Sure, Grandpa was creative too, always making stuff. There's one of his creations over there," and motioned with his head toward a framed picture next to the cash register.

It was an old black-and-white photograph of a snowman in the woods. I never paid much attention to it before. Upon closer inspection, I could see that the trees looked like they had been blown apart by artillery fire and that the snowman was wearing a Hitler mustache.

"Bastogne," he said.

Henry stopped wiping the glass, folded the towel, and put them both down on the bar. It looked like he ran out of things so say, or at least ran out of steam. It was time to change the subject. His grandfather must have been a real inspiration to any retard who had ever lusted for battle, but I had heard about enough. I tried what I thought was a clever segue to move the topic to Henry Silt, police officer.

"I bet knowing what obstacles your grandfather had to overcome really came in handy during your tougher days on the force," I said.

"Indeed it did," said Henry. "A lot of people don't know this but most criminals are retarded, or at least borderline cases. I know their challenges and how their frustrations can lead them to break the law. Drunks are retarded too, at least while they're still drunk. Just look at poor Carl over there. But knowing what I know, I have never had to reach for that baseball bat because I know how to talk to people. And in the 20 years that I was a police officer, I never once had to draw my gun for exactly the same reason."

This was not the sort of cop story that I wanted to write.

"Not every cop was like me," he continued. "How could they be? And the results were often tragic. Cop plus retard plus misunderstanding equals senseless killing."

And right there, Henry Silt gave me my story premise on a plate. It was going to be intense, violent, moving, and full of gritty realism. I could not wait to get started.

Down at the end of the bar, Carl got it into his head that quiet time was over.

"Fuck you Troy Donahue!" he yelled.

"It's Phil," said Henry. "Not Troy. She married Phil Donahue and if you can't keep quiet, I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

I pulled my spiral notebook from my backpack and put it on the bar. Drawing a pen from my jacket pocket, I began to write:

It was a dark and stormy night at the donut shop...

Short Bus Blues (Part 2)

2010-10-25T20:03:57Z

I was glad to be outside. I stopped briefly at the front door to observe two Huey Lewis aficionados engaged in a game of rock-paper-scissors, perhaps to decide who was next to sing. The owner of the clenched-fist rock smiled with satisfaction at the two fingers scissors guy, who was not pleased.

"Scissors chip rock," I said and walked away, leaving the two to debate my interpretation of the rules between them.

The wind had picked up somewhat while I had been indoors and a light rain had begun to fall. I liked how the sparse cool drops felt against my face and was looking forward to a real downpour once I was safely indoors. As much as I liked it when city streets took a beating from the elements, I could not help but think about how the weather effected the homeless who had no place to go.

There was one such unfortunate soul up at the next corner. He was sitting cross-legged wearing a Hefty Bag fashioned into a poncho, the ink on his cardboard sign already starting to run. Here was a man who looked truly needy so I crossed to the other side of the street to avoid him.

Panhandlers are annoying enough under any circumstances. The way they ask for money, it's as if I'm personally responsible for their poverty. When the raindrops start to fall, they kick it up a notch and give me attitude like the bad weather is my fault as well. Do I really need to tell these people that even if I am charitable and give, it's still up to them at the end of the day? That if they ever wish to better their lives, they need to lay off the booze and be willing to work any job regardless if they feel it's beneath them? I resented the unfairness of the world for making me feel compelled to say these things when a simple "fuck off" should suffice.

Meanwhile, evidence of my own failure in life sat in my backpack. Or rather, it didn't. I might be better off giving up and never writing that story if it weren't for how much I'd hyped it, mostly to myself. Much of the power of this literary vaporware lay in the fact that it had never been written. Stories I've actually completed have visible flaws and are probably unpublishable nowhere other than my blog, but this is not the case when a creative work has no substance to tarnish its promise.

I hoped to get some writing done at Henry's bar. No, I didn't believe that liquor would improve my skills as an author, though it can seem like it does at the time. It was the proprietor, Henry Silt, who would. I walked the rest of the way in the drizzle and went inside.

Henry was a retired cop so I was confident that if I could get him talking about his days on the force, his anecdotes could put some meat on the bones on my story. He ran his business with a concise if old-fashioned vision of what a bar should be. There was the obligatory neon sign of a martini glass out front even thought most of the clientele drank whiskey or beer, or perhaps wine out of a box for the ladies. Unlike a lot of bars in the city, there was no art on the walls, just wood paneling and beer posters with patriotic bikini babes sporting Old Glory camel toe.

Henry's never had a deejay. If people wanted music they could pick a song on the jukebox that featured such 70s luminaries as Supertramp, Kansas, and the Captain and Tennille.

Nor was there a need for video cameras as a deterrent against misbehavior. Order was maintained by a baseball bat kept behind the bar and a proprietor who brooked no bullshit. People hardly ever got out of line and nobody did it more than once. This is not to say that Henry was not a nice guy, far from it. As long as you managed to stay out of people's faces and keep your head off the bar, he was a real sweetheart.

Henry was wearing his usual getup, a white dress shirt and a black vest. It was what you saw bartenders wear on old TV shows, back in the days of ashtrays, cigarette smoke, and pickled eggs in a jar. Henry was no longer a policeman but it was his nature to always be a man in uniform.

I took a seat on a barstool in front of Henry, who was cleaning a glass with a towel. As far as I could tell it was always the same glass and he never used it to pour a drink. It was the cleanest glass in the place, too clean for the likes of us.

I ordered a well bourbon straight up with a water back. Henry brought them and I laid four dollar bills on the bar, three for the drink and a buck for tip. He scooped up the money, rapped his knuckles on the bar, and went back to the register.

"Slow night," I said as he was ringing up the sale.

"Yeah, so far," he said. "It may pick up."

That was possible. At the moment though, the only other customer was a regular named Carl. I once made the mistake of making conversation with him. He told me he lost his wife. I never found out if he meant that she died or left him, a point that became moot when he showed me a picture of her. His "wife" turned out to be Marlo Thomas, the photograph cut out from an old magazine. Business might pick up later but it was a safe bet the barstools on either side of Carl wouldn't stay occupied for long.

"So how's the night treating you?" asked Henry.

"Eh, all right," I said. "I had hoped to get some pizza at the Chuck E. Cheese down the street but they had some sort of special-ed karaoke thing going on, which is fine but not my scene."

"You don't like retarded people much, do you Dave?"

"I like them about as much as I like anybody," I said.

"Fair enough," said Henry. "But you probably think the retarded life is easy street, kind of like going cradle to grave on 'Romper Room.' A lot of people do, but it ain't like that. Ordinarily, I wouldn't say anything. I make it my policy to let people believe what they want, but I know you're a writer so you're all up in that human-condition shit. Do you want to know the real deal?"

Down at the other end of the bar, Carl slammed his drink glass down, shouted "Marlo, you bitch!" and started sobbing with his head in his hands.

"Quiet down, Carl," said. "We're trying to have a conversation over here. So how about it, Dave?"

"Yeah," I said. "I'd like to know."