A heartbeat on two lips, river red and candy pink.
A shade of warmth in her sleeping body beside me.
She’s beautiful. Sonic Ocean Water blue eyes in a meadow of golden sand.
And now there’s an empty blue bowl that just a few minutes ago contained blueberry pie. Why am I amazed by that? I put blueberry pie in a blue bowl… And then, I put milk in a white mug.
It’s a night of racing thoughts and all the other travelers of the night are crashing into each other. I’m an emotional demolition derby up in here. I’m a porcelain Fonzie wearing a crystal blue motorcycle helmet from the 1940s.
But I suppose it’s better than being dead in the head and like a log in a bog. The Creature from the Black Lagoon rising up out of the water with a penchant for panic.
My stories need to dig deeper into the core of the Earth and the mines on the moon. I need to be a jackhammer mole of odd, creative fervor. I need to dismantle the dullards of dementia.
But I want to be more than a bowl of alphabet soup… And now I’m reminded of the cereal Alpha-Bits. Perfect! My blog name: Cereal After Sex. Why? Because I enjoy a good bowl of cereal after sex. It’s like a magic Haitian cigarette for me. Plus, the words flow so nicely along the river of life and language.
Anyways, cereal:
I’d travel to the end of a rainbow for a box of Lucky Charms. I’d travel through a swarm of bees to get to a box of Honeycomb. I’d travel through a haunted cornfield on Halloween for a box of Corn Pops. I’d drink a forest of purple wine for some Grape Nuts. Nuts? That’s me. I’d lie out in the California sun until I was shriveled for a bowl of Raisin Bran — topped with two packets of Stevia.
A sudden rumble and I sense the combustion of a cookie. What was that noise? I set my 12 bowls of cereal to the side and go to the window. There are huge clouds of billowing black smoke in the distance. There is an orange glow in the sky and ash and rockets and flesh. It looks like a pumpkin exploded on a very massive scale. The room is suddenly getting much warmer and I see a vibrant wave of pandemonium and power rushing right toward me.
The panic, the tremors, the heart rushes, the worry, the candy fevers.
The daily death of dreams.
Cracked crystal balls leaking hopeless futures.
The bombs, the broken babies, the bazooka douchebags and their flags and Freedom Fries.
An orange farting papaya-shaped Jesus sort of guy named Oaf Doomsday sits in a dimly lit adobe cantina on the outskirts of San Diego near the Mexican border. He’s eating empanadas and drinking cold beer and a milkshake. He’s blubbery and not very holy. He starts loudly complaining about all the illegal immigrants and a guy dressed like a rough and tumble cowboy walks over to where he is at the bar and punches him in the face. Oaf Doomsday goes to the floor. A couple of burly rancheros pick him up and shovel him like coal out the door and into the dusty street. He hits the ground with a gravel-studded thud.
“Hate has no place in this establishment, mother fucker!” one of the burly rancheros yells at him, and then he disappears back inside the dim reverence of the cantina.
Loneliness and despair.
Black iron lungs in the air.
A hooker named Harper Rae stands in the street and looks down at the orange farting papaya-shaped Jesus sort of guy named Oaf Doomsday. She has ivory-blonde hair, puffed up bimbo lips, and inflatable intelligent breasts. She puts the pointed heel of a teal-colored high-heeled shoe on his flabby chest and digs it in. “You still owe me money you goofy ass sack of shit!”
He looks up and blinks. To him, she’s an evil angel of womanhood ringed by bright sunlight. “I don’t even know who you are,” he groans.
She digs her heel in harder. He cries out in agony. A small crowd begins to gather. “Harper! Remember? Like how you were calling it out the other night… ‘Harper, oh Harper. Yes, baby. I want to boink you so good.’ Ring a bell, ding-a-ling?”
“I’ve never met you. I have no idea who you are. Kindly remove your shoe from my chest before I sue you and take everything you have.”
She looks up at the sun and shakes her head. She reluctantly removes her heel from his chest. Someone from the crowd throws a burrito and it hits the orange farting papaya-shaped Jesus sort of guy right in the face.
Oaf Doomsday struggles to get up and wipes away the mess with a fat hand. “You are such disrespectful shits!” he yells. “Which one of you crappy little immigrants did this!? I’ll have you killed for such a mockery against me!”
The people in the crowd point at him and laugh out loud. More burritos fill the air, and he is pummeled with tortillas, warm beef, cheese, beans, sauce. He starts to scream like a little girl, and he runs off down the street to escape the onslaught.
Harper Rae the hooker high-fives the people in the crowd. “Yeah! I guess you could say he was torpedoed with burritos!”
Everyone laughs out loud and cheers. Street music fills the air, and the people there start to dance like the end of the world is on the horizon.
Oaf Doomsday comes upon a park, a plaza really, and he sits down on a bench beneath the shade of some large trees. He is sweaty and out of breath. His clothes, skin and hair are stained with the remnants of the burrito attack. He aches from the punch in the face. He fumbles around in his pockets for his phone and frantically calls his lawyer.
“Hello, Gene? I’ve been assaulted and I want to sue!”
There’s a warbled response on the other end.
“Burritos, Gene. They threw burritos at me like I’m some sort of awful homeless person.”
There’s another warbled response from the lawyer.
“Hooker?” He pauses. “I have no idea who she is, Gene. I’ve never met her before. And how did you know about that?”
“It’s all over the news!” the lawyer screams out from the other end.
“What? How!?”
Oaf Doomsday hangs up on his lawyer and pulls up CNN on his phone. The burrito attack outside the cantina is the top story, complete with video, interviews, quotes… Everything.
He shoots up in a rage and bellows at the sky. “This is a travesty of justice! I did nothing. I know nothing.”
“You are nothing,” comes a voice from behind him.
Oaf Doomsday whips around, growling in uncontrollable anger. There before him stands a brown-colored man wearing a long, white tunic with a red shawl draped across his neck and shoulders. He has unreal blue eyes, long hair, and a beard. Atop his head he sports a red baseball cap with the words: Make Heaven Great Again embroidered upon it in white, glossy thread.
“Who the hell are you?” Oaf Doomsday wants to know.
“I’m Jesus,” the stranger says in a soothing voice. He retrieves a business card from somewhere invisible and hands it to him.
Oaf Doomsday looks at it and scoffs. He tears it up and throws the pieces into the wind.
“Oh, boy,” Jesus groans.
“What?”
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why not. You’re completely full of shit!” Then Oaf Doomsday reaches forward and slaps the red MHGA hat off his head.
Jesus sighs. “You really are a piece of work, you know that? I mean, I was told you were an unequivocal asshole, but this… This is just ridiculous.”
“Look here, Jesus,” Oaf Doomsday begins to ramble. “Why don’t you just go back to Heaven. And you know, Heaven, it’s just such a terrible place. Run down. Dirty. Full of immigrants and gays committing crimes against humanity. Everyone says so. All you have to do is watch it on Fox News. It’s all right there. Every day. Bad reports. Believe me, I know this. So, why don’t you just go do your thing back up there, go clean the filth from your golden streets and I’ll do my thing down here. I’m the most important person on the planet, you should know. Everyone thinks so. Without a doubt… And here’s another thing, we don’t need two Jesuses down here. The people. They love me. They think I’m you. They don’t want you; they want me. They don’t want your peace and love and all that kindness crap. I don’t like people who are kind. Kindness is weak. The people want ignorance, ugliness and hate. They worship it. We’re burning Bibles down here. It’s all very popular. That’s me. I’m the real Jesus.”
Jesus sheds a tear as he looks upon the sack of hopeless pollution before him. He bends down and retrieves his red Make Heaven Great Again hat from the ground and puts it back on his head. He sighs. “Well, looks like I’m too late. I guess I’ll be going now.” The Real Jesus begins to walk away but suddenly pauses and turns to face the goldenrod scowl plastered with grease and cheese and swollen flesh. “But let me just say this. Someday in the not-too-distant future, you will die. And when you die, the world will celebrate. The air will be filled with music and the tolling of bells. People will flood the streets and they will cheer and dance upon your bloated corpse. And when you come to the Pearly Gates and obnoxiously rant to get inside, I will deny you entrance. In fact, I will come to you and kick you in the balls as hard as I can. I will kick you all the way to Hell and the devil will have his way with you for eternity and beyond. I hope that all appeals to you.”
For the first time in forever, Oaf Doomsday doesn’t right away know what to say. The only noise that comes from him is the revolting sound of long-winded, blubbery flatulence that stagnates the air all around them. “And that, sir, is what I think about that.” He grins like a baboon high on gasoline fumes.
The Real Jesus scoffs in disgust and begins to walk away. Oaf Doomsday watches him until he dissolves into the horizon like a ghostly apparition.
He then clutches his chest to cradle and manipulate some sudden, surprising pain. Oaf Doomsday is quickly short of breath and drops to his knees. He topples onto his side and then sprawls out completely on the ground. Before his final intake of air, he looks up to the blue sky and the clouds and the circular sun. “This whole damn retched life has been nothing but a witch hunt,” he manages to mumble aloud. “I’ve done nothing wrong. I’m innocent. Just ask anyone…”
Grandmama smoked cigarettes, the smoke swirling as the red-wing black birds she watched fluttered like ruby UFOs in the big yard of summer green, the glass orb on its pedestal surrounded by flowers and a garden of carrots and cabbage and long green beans … the rabbit war machines with glossy eyes looking upward at great big orange BOG riding the heat wave on his surfboard from another planet …
“Are there drugs in here?” the mirror asked me as I played Poseidon in the bathroom and my great trident nothing more than a broomstick painted red … red like blood, red like red-winged blackbirds, red like the lips on the gal at the corner grocery smacking pink gum like a sorceress from some pillow castle. I saw her there when the old woman needed more cigarettes and Sanka. She smiled at me. I stared back, dumbfounded. She laughed and then turned away. She sort of smelled like a pine tree.
And that’s where they found me … on the floor in the bathroom at Grandmama’s house, a red broom on the floor beside me, red eyes and red blood coming out of my mouth. They wanted to know if I tried to kill myself. They didn’t understand I just had a seizure and bit my tongue. Did they want me to kill myself? Would that have made them happy?
They wanted me to leave, but I wanted to stay. I yelled something like: “Just leave me the hell alone!” My mother was shocked. My father was disappointed. And then I ran out the back door and into the splash of heat and sun and moist air and I darted across the lawn and a voice called out from the house behind me … “Where are you going?”
I didn’t know. I never knew. I was aimless. Still aimless. And aimlessly I wandered along the babbling brook down in the forest behind Grandmama’s house. It was quiet, peaceful. I was doing nothing wrong yet I got scolded for running away like I did. Punished for just wanting to be free … free, free, free. Life is chains they put on you. Life is a cage they lock you in. Life is always having to do something you really don’t want to do. Life is always being somewhere you don’t want to be. We are dragged relentlessly from our peaceful places, our peaceful thoughts, our peaceful hearts and thrust into a world that knows nothing of peace.
I just wanted to sit on a rock and listen to the water and feel the sun but I was dragged out of there by my Grandmama and she scolded me for behaving so poorly. That’s what she said: “So poorly.”
I was made to sit in a chair in the corner of the kitchen. I wasn’t allowed to speak. I wasn’t spoken to. All I heard was my Grandmama’s slippers shuffling along the linoleum floor as she boiled water, dragged down a cup and jar of Sanka. I could hear the spoon being tapped on the lip of her cup as she put in the coffee. I could hear the water being poured in and then the spoon again as she stirred it, the scraping of the metal against the ceramic. I could hear her breath as she blew at the hot coffee. I could hear it go down her throat as she swallowed. I could hear the tobacco burn as she took another drag off her cigarette. She eyed me suspiciously, but said nothing. I could hear her cigarette being tapped against the green glass ashtray as she knocked off the precarious ash. I could hear her cough.
The next morning, I went outside and rode my bike up and down the street in search of the lady from the grocery store. I rang the bell on my bike in hopes it would grab her attention. I rode and rode and rode, like a mad child, ringing that damn bell in search for love and grace. The houses remained still. Not a single door or window opened. I was left alone on earth, brokenhearted, a boy who acts poorly, punished, exiled, made scandalous. I finally gave up at high noon and just went to sit in the grass on the side of the road somewhere. A car came barreling down the street and when it got near to me the driver leaned on the horn and yelled out the window: “Get out of the street!” But I wasn’t really in the street. My feet were sort of in the street. Why was everyone on my ass for merely existing?
And here I am – 40 plus years later and wondering the very same thing. By now the madness has become exponential. The killing, the hurting, the shooting, the ugliness of spirit. The rudeness, the criticism, the lack of empathy. The hatred, the bigotry, the heartless and gutless approach to debate. The death of human decency.
But no more.
I’m at the launchpad. I’m wearing my spacesuit. I made the cut and now I am going away, with others, to another planet. Goodbye earthlings. Don’t call. Don’t write. Don’t try to follow us into space. We’re tired of this. We’re done. You’ll never learn how to simply be kind to one another.
It was at a Red Lobster restaurant on the outskirts of Peoria, Illinois when the nervousness really kicked in.
I was sipping on a cranberry Boston iced tea and thinking about the loneliness of the sea at the same time I was looking out the window at the savage ravages of the world. The thought of going back out into that chaotic traffic made me upset.
I looked across at the woman sitting there with me. She was intensely studying the menu.
“What are you thinking you’d like to eat?” I asked her.
“A salad, maybe.”
“A salad? That’s gay.”
She looked up at me, disgusted almost. “What?”
“This is Red Lobster. Enjoy the delicious bounty of the sea, for Christ’s sake.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing.”
“You seem on edge.”
“You always say that.”
“Because you always seem on edge.”
“I have a nervous condition… You know this. And you ordering a salad at Red Lobster doesn’t help any. At least get some little baby shrimp on your salad. Geez.”
She leaned in closer across the table. “I can eat whatever I want, thank you very much.”
“Oh, right. News flash. I’m the man. You should eat what I suggest.”
She scoffed. “News flash. I’m not living like that. You can stick your antiquated ways of thinking right up your keester!”
“Keep your voice down, woman. Don’t you dare embarrass me at Red Lobster!”
“I’m going to use the restroom. Perhaps consider readjusting your attitude while I’m gone. And I swear, if I come back and you’ve eaten all the cheddar biscuits, I’m going to scream.”
She got up and I watched her shapely ass as she walked away toward the bathrooms. I suddenly thought about ditching her. Yeah, that would be a story to tell the grandkids. About how I ditched some chick at a Red Lobster in Peoria, Illinois.
I got up and walked outside to smoke a sailor cigarette and think about things. The roar of the traffic and the hot sun were annoying.
I went to the car, unlocked it, and got in. I started it up and backed out of the space and drove off.
I went along aimlessly until I found a cheap chain motel. I checked in and went to my room. It smelled like sex and cigarettes. The view from the window was poison and the color of love gone astray. I drew the heavy curtains, and the room became depressingly dark. I turned the A/C up to high. It was rattly and noisy. I went to the bed and laid down on it without drawing the blankets back. I started screaming at the ceiling and I just kept on screaming until some very strange people came into the room, lifted me up, and took me away to a far better place.
CEREAL AFTER SEX 