Torqued. Tortured. Treasure. Henry Miller twisted the valve He spoke of animals and wet love with the voice of a typewritten angel Big Sur. New York. Paris. 1930-style suffering in a cup, a golden flask a Barbados map all channeling the energy of my road. Red tilt-a-whirls spinning madly in some garden of red on a warm summer day far North where the ice cream vendors bleed blue and the bank is some giant morgue Airplanes streaking across the sky on the same warm summer day wrecking balls sexing up dirty brick walls all in the name of pain windowpane holding robotic Christmas cheer at bay with a knife or a guillotine or a child’s empty tear. Christmas morning glories gory stories of long lines and the word ‘bitch’ Clicking consumers all a bedazzle by the gold and green and other colors unseen the underscore of black and white dreams. But what of Henry Miller then? His days in Albuquerque long ago, walks to the park with children not his own the desert blur sparkling with real country dark. 3:38 a.m. in the den with the TV rhyming with the buzzes of saviors and someone old is having difficulty breathing on the wrong side of town on the wrong side of this dimension Someone … Don’t be afraid the solid background isn’t black anymore it’s white in the night of Christmas lights and the snow that blows up the alleyways of this city bright The skyscrapers are needles of light.
Author’s Note: You can read the previous part of this story HERE.
In Need of Serious Correcting
Rude Rudy squirmed in the chair in the office that smelled like sterile, dusty discipline. Across from him seated at the big important desk sat the stodgy principal, Mr. Simon Falcone, and he was staring at Rudy through round rimmed glasses lightly tinted green and he was rhythmically tapping the tip of a pencil against a pad of yellow paper as he considered his next words.
Beside the principal, standing and with thin arms crossed against her narrow frame, was the school counselor, Miss Clementine Grady. She was blonde like Marilyn Monroe and dressed tight like a mummy in its bleached white bandages. She appeared stern, but at the very same time she appeared light and airy as a feather loopily falling through the wind. She was nervously tapping her right toe clad in a glossy red shoe.
Mr. Falcone glanced at her rigid stature and then tossed his pencil aside like he was sick of life, and he got up and sat on the far edge of the desk nearest the boy. He took a deep breath and began to speak in that intellectual professor-type kind of tone he had. “Inciting a riot on school property is a very serious offense, Rudy. Are you aware of that?”
Rudy scoffed and shook his bushy orange head at them both. “I can’t help it if my people get excited. They have a right to be upset.”
Miss Grady leaned forward and blew the hair out of her face. She was always blowing the hair out of her made up with makeup face and people always wondered why she just didn’t pull it back and clamp it down to her head. “Your people?” she replied as a cluster of hair fell back down across the tip of her nose like a tail.
“That’s right. My people. They’re great people and they look up to me. Everybody knows this. These kids need a leader who doesn’t mess around.” Rudy grinned like an orange devil. “They need someone to direct their frantic youthful energy.”
“And that includes bullying poor Adam Longo?” Counselor Clementine Grady replied. “Why? Why would you taunt and tease him like that? You should be offering a friendly welcome, not sadistic rebel rousing.”
Rudy leaned forward in the chair and his lizard-like eyes bloomed wide and clicked. “It’s not my fault the new kid can’t take it. He needs to toughen up and quit being such a baby.”
Mr. Falcone broke in. “What do you mean when you say your people have a reason to be upset?”
“What?” Rudy said. “I can’t understand you. You talk like you have shit in your mouth.”
Mr. Falcone shot up off the desk. “Young man!” he scolded, visibly distraught by the words. “You will not speak to me in that manner.”
“A thousand pardons, master,” Rudy said in a salty, mocking tone. “Continue.”
Mr. Falcone eased back down onto the edge of the desk and wiped the nervousness from his face with a slowed, carving hand. “As I was asking, why are they upset?”
“Because school sucks. It’s boring,” Rudy said. “There’s not enough proper stimulation of our young minds. We have energy to burn and there’s no kindling.”
Mr. Falcone scratched at his face and spoke in line with his manufactured authoritative status. “What I’m hearing is that you want more options, more activities, a bigger sky in which to spread your wings… Have you ever considered getting involved with student council? It would be a wonderful opportunity to plant the seeds for positive changes that deliver results.”
Rudy laughed out loud at him like Bart Simpson. “I’m not hanging out with those nerds. They don’t ever do anything that matters. They’re limp wristed and idle. They’re horribly ineffective in their roles as so-called leaders of this school. Who gives a crap about some stupid school dance or what’s on the lunch menu or pep rallies for the so-called popular crowd. People want real-life action… And I give them real-life action.”
Miss Grady laughed back at him. “Well, young man. I’m afraid your real-life action has earned you a week of detention.”
“And you’ll be expected to help clean up the mess,” Mr. Falcone added.
“And another thing,” Miss Grady said in turn. “You’ll be required to attend anger management sessions with me once a week for two months.”
“What!?” Rudy yelled. “You can’t make me do that. I have rights. This is America! I have way better things to do after school.”
Mr. Falcone rolled his eyes at the foolish boy. “What things could you possibly have to do after school? Let me guess… Masturbate to underwear pictures in the JC Penney catalog and play video games?”
Miss Grady tossed a queer look of interested disgust in his direction.
“And it might be America out there in the silly world,” Principal Falcone continued. “But in here you follow my rules. That’s non-negotiable. You will do what we expect of you. Understood?”
The boy chuckled. “You’re so damn weird… And gross.” Then Rude Rudy rudely got up out of the chair and pointed at them. “Guess what,” he said. “This is happening,” and he turned around, yanked down his pants and wriggled his pale, freckled backside in their direction. “You can both bite my orange ass!”
Mr. Falcone took grave offense to the disgusting display and growled like an angry man-animal and leapt from his spot on the edge of his desk and put the whole of himself smack down on top of Rudy’s bent over body, roughly flattening the boy to the floor. “Oh yeah! How do you like that young man!? How does it feel to be pinned to the ground, to be helpless and with nowhere to go!?” he seethed into his ear. “I bet you feel like a prisoner, huh… Sort of like how you must make Adam Longo feel when you fill his world with nasty bullying. Not too fun, is it.”
“Get off of me you pervert!” Rudy yelled out; his breathing compromised.
Miss Clementine Grady was stunned, shocked, bewildered. She clamped her feminine hands to her powdery face and screamed out. “Mr. Falcone!” She rushed to where they were pressed together on the shiny school tile and grasped the man by the shoulders. “You’re hurting him! Stop it!” She tried to pull him off, but he was too large and strong, and she was too small and weak.
Young Rude Rudy was trying to buck him off like how a horse does to a cowboy, but it only tired him more and he relented. “Help! Help me!” Rudy screamed out to the counselor.
Miss Grady quickly scanned the room for something, anything she could use to dislodge the brute of a principal from the boy. She spotted a spinnable globe sitting on a table near the window. She snatched it up and then crashed it down on the principal’s head as hard as she could, leaving a cavernous dent in the continent of Africa.
Mr. Falcone made a grunting uummph noise and fell to the side allowing the boy to scramble up to his knees, his pants still down around his ankles. Rudy was panting like a thirsty camel and his face was flush and his wide lizard eyes nearly filled with tears. He looked up at Miss Grady in ultimate dismay as she stood over the moaning Mr. Simon Falcone. She was till holding the globe. “You stay right down there on that floor, Mr. Falcone,” she said in an uncharacteristic threatening tone. “Don’t even twitch, or I’ll put your lights out for good with the Earth’s core!”
She looked over at Rudy. “Go on now. Get your pants up and get out of here! Go to my office and wait there. Stay there. Don’t go anywhere else.”
A humbled and frightened Rudy nodded his head, embarrassingly fumbled around to get his pants back up and fastened, and hurried out of the principal’s office.
I don’t know what it is, but lately I feel like a human magnet.
That’s not the same as a chick magnet. I define human magnet as in everywhere I go, other human beings seem to have the need to get in my personal space… Uninvited and unwanted, of course. In light of the whole COVID mess, I have become hypersensitive to people getting too close to me when I am out in public. I really don’t like it.
Since I am a house husband, I do most of the grocery shopping. Other than our crappy Walmart, the town I live in has only one regular grocery store… And it sucks. It’s too small, it never has anything in stock, and it takes forever to get through the checkout lines because they can’t retain new employees for more than 4 hours it seems. But enough of that, the point is that the town is growing and growing and so the grocery store is getting more and more crowded. So, pretty much no matter when I go, the aisles are usually crawling with undesirables of all types.
The problem I have been facing lately is that whatever product I’m looking for, there’s always a cluster of other people right there and in the way. The section can be completely empty otherwise, but sure enough, when I go to get the one thing I need, someone’s right there, bent over and filling half the aisle with their huge ass. Ugh.
It happened to me twice today alone. The first time was in the Latin American food aisle. All I needed was one damn can of enchilada sauce. There was one other person in the whole area, and what was she doing? Standing right in front of where the enchilada sauce was and filling, and I mean filling, her cart with boxes upon boxes of taco shells. And she was going at it like a fiend. One would think she was on Guy’s Grocery Games and the countdown was on to win $20,000. Who the hell eats that many tacos? Wherever and whatever is going down with that kind of party, count me out. I like tacos, I just don’t want to be around when that digestive nuclear bomb goes off.
Anyways, I grumbled, looped around and came back later to get my one can of enchilada sauce. The taco shell section was obliterated.
The next event occurred in the salad dressing aisle where they keep all the mayo and Miracle Whip. Whip. That’s fun to say. But once again, the aisle was barren except for this couple kneeling down in front of the mayo… And I just got an image of Louis Gossett Jr. calling Richard Gere “Mayonnaise” in the movie An Officer and a Gentleman… Yeah, I watched it. So what? Check the clip out below.
But like I was saying, this couple was kneeling down in front of the mayo and looking and talking and talking and looking at all the different jars they had there. I’m like, “It’s god damn mayonnaise. Pick one and move on!” I didn’t say that out loud, I just thought it to myself. So, once again, I had to reroute, loop around, and come back. These people are chewing up my valuable time! Valuable time like writing about mayonnaise, I guess.
But the main point of this article is the fact that people have little to no sense of personal space. I don’t know if I smell good or what, but the last few times I’ve been at the store, people have creeped up on me so close that I can actually feel them breathing down my neck. I’ve had people rudely reach out in front of me, from the side and the back, and snag something off the shelf. I’ve had people nearly step on my shoes. I’ve had people nearly dry hump me from behind. What the hell!? I just want to step aside and say, “Could you back off please!” But of course, I never do. Not in this day and age. You never know what kind of lunatic you’re up against.
I want to wrap up my bitchfest by talking about the biggest violator of personal space in my entire life… Polly the cat. That’s right, our pet cat takes the cake, and the cat chow, when it comes to invading personal space. I don’t know what her problem is, and we are always asking that very question, but we have never had a cat that gets so right up into your face as this one does.
Polly isn’t one of those nice kitties that jumps up on your lap, curls a couple of times, and then plops down for a nap. Nope. Not this one. Polly is the type of cat that literally tries to crawl up your body and rest on your shoulder. And that’s how she got her name… Because when she was a kitten, she’d love to climb up and sit on your shoulder, like a parrot. Get it? But now that she’s full grown, and I mean really full grown, (she’s a fat cat, a chonker my wife says) she can’t sit up on your shoulder but really just rests her head on it, her two front paws wrapped around your neck like she’s giving you a hug. Cute, yeah, but then she licks. Yep, she’s a licker. Any kind of exposed skin is doomed to be assaulted by that sandpaper tongue. I don’t like it. My wife doesn’t like it. It’s gross. That’s the point at which we softly push her aside. And the whole gross licking thing is part of the reason we don’t have dogs. It’s so off putting and just not for us. We’re not prudes, just cat people. No offense dog lovers. She’s also into headbutting and nose to nose staring contests. It’s creepy.
If you haven’t guessed by now, the picture at the top of this post is Polly sitting in a spaghetti strainer while I was cooking dinner the other night. I never had a cat that had to be near me or next to me or on me so much. She literally follows me around the house. We don’t let her in our bedroom at night because she would literally sit on one of our faces. (I could say something dirty here, but I won’t). I don’t know about you, but I can’t sleep like that. So, out she goes to the living room. Nighty night.
Maybe I’m overreacting about all this closeness, but you have to admit, a lot of people are gross, and I don’t want to get sick. Besides that, it’s just downright rude. Sure, some might say “excuse me” but the majority say nothing at all and actually act like I’m in their way. Hmm. I was here first, dipshit. I have rights. I guess I just need to plot out my course more carefully and do the best I can to avoid the glommers who love to glom on me. My wife says I just need to accept and appreciate the love, not from the people in the grocery store, but the cat. Accepting love. That’s always been kind of tricky for me, but I’m trying.
mindless and blind like seven mice in a grinder, palpitating in rhythm to the chagrined man stuck high in the trees on Michigan Ave., trees of glass and steel penetrating the clouds like a needle copulating with the airy blue
a jumper at the precipice Chicago oil and steam below, a great sea of fluttering beings all wired on something mindless blind like cats with no eyes, eternally hopping from this and that with no real solid goals in mind, taxi exhaust floating up and stinging his eyes, his nervous wife at home in Arlington, pacing the floor, biting the blood red polish from her nails, clenching her thick pale lips wondering why why, why, why did I move to the suburbs mom? Is Darryl Ok? Yes mom, he’s fine, he’s at work watching the Sandpeople
he closes his eyes and lets the wind suffocate him the medics scrambled up from their lounge chairs dropping their Long Island iced teas, the sirens and the lights came to life, and they rushed to the scene, his body had bounced from the roof of a car, broken glass, spatters of blood, the smashed remains twisted freakily near a front tire, a mass of chattering folks gathered all around… Darryl, you forgot to close the door his mother screamed from some distant vision
his wife drinks a martini and smokes a fag in twilight the ringing of the phone breaks the big silence shrouding the American dream and she lunges for the receiver, her hands shaking, her drunk head reeling and angry. Darryl! where the hell are you? I’ve been waiting for two hours!
there’s a rainy funeral near a grassy hill his pieces lay in an expensive box, the wife sits stone still, her eyes looking straight ahead above and beyond the casket as it is lowered down into the ground, and one by one the people turn and slowly walk away, disappear into the trees behind the wet grassy hill, like ghosts from a previous life
the padded cell was comfortable but lonely she arranged invisible flowers in an invisible vase, she checked her invisible watch and then darted to the small wire laced window, the sun was dropping quickly, so this is winter in Madland she thought as she looked down at the red scars ripped across her wrists and the doctor pushes her wheelchair slowly along the path on the cold grounds, he points out the ducks skating across a near-frozen pond, they’ll be gone soon he whispers in a dirty breath, and puts his hand down the front of her sweater
an unwanted ache is born beneath an August moon she tries to stab it with a nail file, and they rush her away, a mad fever takes her hand and drags her to a lightless room where she stews in impending doom and has dreams of being killed by a pack of witches with brooms
a long coil of mercy strung tightly around her neck strangles her in nightmares and dark prophecies, images of her husband pecked full of bleeding holes, stabbed gently with shards of glass by an angel lightly spritzed with a wedge of cut lime and she bows down in grand finale within her cell and squeezes the tortured mind out of her head. she is mindless and cold upon a silver tray and her soul ponders how God looked away from the atrocities of her life, her husband’s life, their life together so quickly ruined by the madness of an unloving world too caught up in the gains and percentages, too caught up in selling every single freaking thing that there was nowhere left to go for free and everyone striving to be plastered in perfection, a glossy glow about their faces, a finely cut suit clutching the flesh and bones within so that when you walked you were admired for being so fashionable and beautiful and perfect and everything that mattered came from within a clean window on some fine street in some fine city where life is real and pumping and let’s forego the little children in Snapwood UK who go to bed with nothing in their bellies whilst Pa pistol whips Ma ‘cause he ain’t got no job and he’s frustrated to the point of inflicting bodily harm upon the one he fell in love with so many centuries ago when his blood was comatose in a hidden vein far beneath the rock of Planet X and the leaders of the free world step up to the microphone donning their $3,000 suits, smile into the camera and tell us how wonderful life is and how much more wonderful they’re going to make life for us whilst Bobby Blue stares into a nearly-empty refrigerator and curses the piles of bills and bleeds over his laundry list of worries that come creeping up from the shadows right when the sun rears its ugly, fiery face down upon the world, he swears at his trap, calls it all crap and beats himself with a rusty chain
cornflowers dripping wet in the sky Jesus passed her a joint as they sat on a bench in a golden-green park like Oz far up in Heaven and she asked him why the world was so mindless and he just smiled, shrugged off his Shroud of Turin and said: I don’t know why, I’m too high.
NAKED You can’t say no to that when she feels so good naked
RIVER The guide drew me to the edge of the river where a steamship was piping some smoky tune the flags that hung on its mast depicted the reality of falling over the waves and time takes a sleigh ride to another globe somewhere far, far away
GOLIATH To this blue and silver house on Sandra Lane with windows like little squares of chocolate veiled with thin curtains of muscle gone wrong the snow was thick and heavy on the ground, in the trees, across the spread wings of aeroplanes He noted that the queue was winding round and round like a child’s roundabout in the park a metal pinwheel with rainbow gills spraypainted upon the buttons of industry hammered by the Goliaths of war where friends never die and the sandwiches are made by clean hands in a turbine called Eden the glass wands spin threads with oil beads running like little mercury balls on fire no one to conduct them no one to stop them as they blur oblivious to the appreciation factor of the untamed heart
MASTER ROGUE Howie went to Paris with a pair of gloves and a cane he was studying the effects of ice on large groups of people winter lasted forever for him it was his paradise his burning drum unkempt by any silver maiden and he threw his arms up in the square and shouted to the whole city “Let me entertain you!”
TO KNOW IT’S LOVE Gene drank a bottle of Scotch and tried to play cards with diving flippers his old stash from the islands where he almost got stabbed in a bar and he wondered if it was love or just the thought of being in love and in the end he knew it was love
WATER There are police knocking at the door German guard dogs scratching at the wood pistols are drawn, batons raised and man takes another whipping from the guy who doesn’t like water.
CEREAL AFTER SEX 