I’m writing now. That’s a new thing for me. I’m not good with new things. I’m not good with much, to tell you the truth. To tell you the truth, I kicked a child into the river yesterday. Two days ago I waited around my apartment for the cable guy to show up. Never happened. Never got asked to the prom either. Yeah, I’m a guy. So what? I consider myself a feminist. You know who else I consider a feminist? Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Some say she actually was one. I disagree. But I consider her. I’m actually very considerate. I hold doors open for people who aren’t even there. Maybe someone else is coming. I don’t know. I’m not omniscient. I’m not omnipotent either, but I did once leg press my best friend in high school. I asked him to jump on the machine, he said no, so I blackmailed him. My mother once blackmailed my father into taking us to the zoo. Why it was such a chore is beyond me. My dad liked the reptile house. I didn’t. He made me look anyway. He said it would make me a man, put hair on my chest. Today I’m as smooth as the day I was born. You know what else happened on the day I was born? The Challenger blew up. It wasn’t my fault. I had just gotten here. I was the third child, the house was small, so the crib went in the laundry room. So did the dog when we went out. He pooped in there every time, and I had to clean it up. How does a six-month old clean up after a dog? I don’t know, and I was there. I wasn’t there for the English Protectorate, and I’ve since developed an unhealthy fixation. What do you want from me? Fairfax turns me on. I lived just off Fairfax Avenue for two years. I ate at Canter’s five nights a week. The pastrami does something to me that I can’t put into words. I did once put a small bag of oyster crackers into words. Actually it was just one word: obstreperous. It means noisy, rowdy. You might call a Western omelet obstreperous. I don’t know why. I also don’t know why someone would wear a tuxedo to a bowling alley. When I go bowling, I wear corduroy pants and a t-shirt that says, “Morrissey is a twat.” But of course the t-shirt doesn’t say that. A t-shirt can’t talk. I made that mistake in school and the teacher corrected me. “It reads,” she said. I said, “What do you know? You teach math.” I don’t like math. Too many numbers. When I can, I stick to Roman numerals. When I was eight, I got stuck to a tree covered in sap. My parents never thought to look for me, so I spent the night there. I made friends with the tree and gave it a name. I named it Mattress.
Showing posts with label comedy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comedy. Show all posts
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
EGADS, SOBER!?!
I’m an anomaly among writers. I’m not an alcoholic. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m far from a teetotaler. I enjoy a drink as much as the next guy with a modicum of self-control. I love a quality craft beer brewed with love and faith by Trappist monks and suckled by a rolling Aeolian chant. A good single malt scotch like Balvenie or Dalmore has the power to elicit in me near sexual satisfaction and childlike awe. And yes, I will on occasion go beyond tipsy, cross over buzzed, and land squarely in the province of drunk. I’ll enjoy it there too. I’ll happily slur my words, absently sway to and fro, and delight in my regression into stupid. But it’s been years since I’ve been smashed, wrecked, hammered, obliterated, fucked eight ways from All Saints Day, or any other charmingly violent colloquialism. I no longer possess the will or stamina to drink like there’s money on the line. When you’ve gone as far as I have into uncharted spirits, you eventually lose interest in crossing the Rainbow Bridge, burning it down, and setting up camp in the heart of Valhalla.
In high school, when most kids’ relationships with drinking go from innocent flirtations to codependent depravity, I was too big a chickenshit to risk incurring my parents’ wrath. So when I got to college and my testicles dropped with a booming clang, I took to booze like Kanye West to the sound of his own voice. I liked walking through the doors booze opened. I could open my mouth around strangers. I had the guts to crack jokes, to chat up girls, to try new things like cracking jokes and chatting up girls. It was honest-to-god liquid courage concentrate. It wasn’t too long before I was looking for excuses to drink. “I got a B on my final. I need a beer.” “Hey, that was a great joke. Let’s drink.” “It’s Wednesday. Close enough.” One night I went to a friend’s party, drove home drunk through Los Angeles on a Saturday night, sobered up, decided I wasn’t ready to call it a night, went to another friend’s party, and drove home drunk again. It was only a matter of time before I had The Night. You know what The Night is, that night where you take partying far beyond the realms of both common sense and self-preservation. Fittingly The Night was December 31, 1999.
I was home from L.A. for the holidays. My friend John had learned of a New Years party at his college in Trenton. It was being thrown by a few sorority sisters of his friend’s girlfriend. Is that circuitous enough for you? It wasn’t for us. You could’ve added half a dozen degrees of separation. As far as John and I and the rest of us were concerned, we were invited. Brian and Scum had already headed up to Trenton, but I was driving by myself because I had to be at the video store for work the next day at 11. I was going to this party with the intention of drinking myself into oblivion and full awareness of the professional responsibilities I had the day after. At twenty-years old this didn’t concern me.
I reached the house in Trenton around 9:30 and walked in. I was greeted by that scene of a couple of dozen faces turning to look at you, not recognizing you, then returning to their conversations. I didn’t care. I wasn’t there to make friends. I had friends, and they were waiting for me to start drinking. I found them all in the kitchen. Brian was already decently buzzed, but Scum wasn’t fazed yet. This was when Scum was a marvel of modern science, when he could put away ten beers and still drive. John was talking to his friend Vinnie – because only John liked Vinnie – and a girl he introduced as one of the party’s hostesses. I don’t remember her name, but she was very cordial and welcoming. She then introduced me to her roommate and co-hostess. I found her to be especially attractive, but any interest immediately dissipated once she opened her mouth and let loose the shrill clipped caw of Queen Shit of I-Don’t-Have-Time-for-You. In retrospect she probably was starting to realize that she had opened her home to the inevitable onslaught of destructive merriment, but at the time I just thought, what a bitch, and actively rooted for her home’s annihilation.
After those first three minutes I realized that it was time to start drinking. From 9:30 pm on December 31, 1999 to, let’s say, 4:00 am on January 1, 2000, I imbibed a twelve-pack of Corona, a six-pack of Heineken, three Yuenglings, two shots of Jack Daniels, three glasses of champagne, two liberal swigs of Bacardi 151 (because by that point, what did I care?) and more that I can’t clearly remember. I remember watching John and Vinnie lie down in the street and launch fireworks from between their legs. Right next to their balls. Because the fireworks were dicks. Get it? I remember making out with a girl I had met about an hour earlier. Let’s call her Stacy. I remember Scum getting angry because people weren’t as drunk as he thought they should be and vocally challenging them to drink harder. I remember the bitch hostess running around screaming because people were desecrating her house. I remember Brian and I laughing at her. I remember availing myself of her refrigerator and making a sandwich. I remember John passing out on the hood of a car that didn’t belong to anyone we knew. God knows what I don’t remember. But all inebriated things must come to an end. Around four in the morning I went to the basement, found an empty spot on the floor next to a bed, took my coat off, folded it beneath my head like a pillow and passed out.
At some point I woke up in total darkness, shivering and still nine sheets to the wind. I reached for my coat pillow and found that it too was cold. And wet. Too inebriated to call forth any semblance of deductive reasoning, and far too inebriated to get up and go to a lighted area, I pulled the coat from behind my head and allowed myself to fall back asleep, my head now lying on the cheap flattened carpet between it and the concrete floor.
When I woke next, I was still in complete darkness, but I heard a few muffled snores around me. Obviously everyone else was now passed out as well. Knowing that I had to go work, I stood up and realized I was still drunk as a surfeit of skunks. I grabbed my still cold and wet coat and tiptoed my way through the unseen bodies sprawled across the floor. Just as I reached the stairs, I accidentally kicked what felt like a person, and ran up the stairs to avoid a confrontation.
The sun was pouring through the windows. I looked at the clock on the wall. 8:45. I had plenty of time, so I took a moment to examine my coat. Vomit all over the right side. Joy and rapture. I trundled out of the house, through the snow to my car. I threw the coat in the backseat, cranked up the heat, and drove away. Before I even got out of the neighborhood, something dawned on me. I had no right to be driving at that moment. As drunk as I’d ever gotten previously, I’d never woken up still drunk from the night before. It was a new kind of disconcertion, and I wasn’t all that fond of it. Every manageable area of my brain told me not to drive. But even then I took pride in having never missed work no matter what I’d done to myself the night before.
I drove home in abject terror, knowing that State Troopers would be out on 295 in magnum force to catch drunk drivers. Somehow I eluded them. I pulled into my parents’ house around 9:30 in the morning. I have no doubt they took one look at me lumbering through the front door and drew all sorts of conclusions that were not far from the reality. I grabbed a quick shower, changed, had some eggs and toast (I don’t know how I was able to hold anything down), and headed to work. I remember pulling into the parking lot, walking into the store, greeting my boss, walking behind the counter, then nothing. From that point forward January 1, 2000 ceases to exist for me.
The day after that I spoke to Brian and Scum. They had enjoyed themselves as much as I did. Brian made fun of the angry host to the point where she was going to kick his ass. John slept with his ex-girlfriend. Let’s-call-her-Stacy ended up having sex with Vinnie in the bed right next to where I was passed out. Scum stayed up to see the sunrise, because he’ll drink until he is physically incapable of lifting a beer to his lips. And thank god he will. If he had passed out earlier, I’d be dead right now.
Scum said that he’d found me passed out in the basement with vomit dribbling out of my mouth. He turned me on my side, allowing the puke to land safely on my coat and saving my life. Since then I’ve lost my drive to drink myself into oblivion. It’s hard to top dancing with Bon Scott and walking away from it.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
"IF YOU HAVE SEX WITH YOUR OWN CLONE..."
“If you have sex with your own clone, is it gay or masturbation?”
Pookie and Dean sat with their backs to one another from opposite sides of the apartment. Pookie’s thumbs jumped around his controller, sending undead viscera coursing through the post-apocalyptic air. Dean was seated in his papasan, leafing through his dictionary for a word he had discovered in a Burgess novel. “Why would I have sex with my clone?” Dean responded.
“No,” Pookie shot back. “Don’t change the subject.”
“I can’t answer the question, since I would have no desire to have sex with my clone.”
“Doesn’t matter whether you’d want to.”
“Yes, it does. You can’t honestly answer a hypothetical you have no inclination to entertain.”
Pookie smirked to himself. “Ooooooh! Methinks thou dost protesteth too stronglyeth!”
“That’s too many ‘eth’s,’” Dean stated with a complete lack of enthusiasm for the subject at hand.
“You’re evading.”
Dean spun to face Pookie’s back. “I am not.”
“Then what do you think: gay or masturbation?”
“I can’t answer -- ”
Pookie paused the game, placed the controller on the floor, and turned around. “Okay, fine. You don’t have a choice.”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t have a choice. You have to fuck your own clone.”
Dean blanched. “Why?”
“What do you mean, ‘why?’ Why don’t you have a choice?”
“Yes. Do I have a gun to my head?”
“You want me to paint the picture for you? Is that what you want?”
“Yeah, I do!”
Pookie barked a condescending laugh. “Okay. It’s a dark and stormy night.”
“Just tell me -- ”
“You’re bicycling down a craterous road knifing through a dead field. You come to a stop at an isolated intersection populated only by a decrepit farmhouse at the corner and what remains of a raven’s carcass. A sepulchral odor wafts into your nose and your skin chills with pinpricked goosepimples.”
“I am impressed with your prose, I have to admit.”
“A giant gash opens in the sky and a pirate ship flies out!”
“There we go. And the figurehead has three breasts.”
“And they’re huge! The ship comes to rest above you before the tractor beam grabs you and starts to draw you aboard. You scream and flail about like the littlest of bitches.”
“Really? Am I wetting myself?”
“You already have. The ship draws closer when a face leans over the fo’c’sle, a face of Lovecraftian grotesquerie. Maws within maws. Skin a dripping reptilian film. And oh god it’s eyes! WHAT HAPPENED TO ITS EYES!?!”
“I’m Mia Farrow?”
“You lose consciousness. When you come to you are surrounded by these mutant space-pirates and your clone. He’s naked and furiously rubbing his laughably flaccid member.”
“Shut up!”
Pookie chuckled maniacally as he continued, “The captain steps forward and tells you they’re willing to return you to Earth but only after you’ve had sex with your own clone.”
“So the mutant space-pirates abducted and cloned me to watch me have sex with my it.”
“Yes.”
“Who’s the dominant one in this pairing?”
“Uh, does that matter?”
“Yes. Since I have to have sex with my clone, I’d rather be the dominant one.”
“And if the mutant space-pirates tell you you have to catch, what are you going to do, refuse?”
“C’mon, man!”
“Would you refuse?”
“What happens if I refuse?”
“You have sex with all the mutant space-pirates, and you’re still catching.”
Dean threw up his arms. “Fine! I’ll catch!
“So you wouldn’t refuse?”
“No.”
“Well at any rate it’s your choice,” Pookie said and resumed his maniacal laughter.
Dean threw his dictionary to the floor as he leapt to his feet. “Then what was that all about?”
“Dude you’re too easy.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“No argument. So,” Pookie clapped his hands together, continuing, “now that we’ve established that you would have sex with your clone is it gay or masturbation?”
“Masturbation.”
“Wrong.”
“I’m wrong -- just like that?”
“Yeah you’re wrong.”
“How am I wrong? I’m having sex with me.”
“No you’re not.”
“Yes, I am. If it’s a clone, we share the same genetic makeup.”
Pookie stood up. “You don’t share a consciousness. Your hand doesn’t have its own consciousness. Does it?”
“Your hand is just a tool that you use to make yourself ejaculate.”
“So’s anything you put your dick in whether it’s sentient or not. But if it’s sentient then you’re engaging a partner in sex which means you’re not masturbating which means it’s gay.”
“I disagree.”
“Prove me wrong.”
“There is no wrong. It’s an opinion.”
“No. I just proved it.”
“You did not.”
Pookie marched across the room. “Refute my logic. Go ‘head,” he said into Dean’s face.
“Get away from me.”
“Do it. Prove me wrong.”
“Why?”
A satisfied smile shot across Pookie’s face. “I think you want it to be masturbation. That way you wouldn’t have to admit you’d have sex with a dude.”
“I don’t want to have sex with a dude!”
“Of course you do.”
“You didn’t have to invent a pretext to call me gay.”
“Look it’s no big deal.”
“Shut up. Shut up!”
“I’m serious. Everybody’s a little gay.”
“You would have sex with a guy?”
“Jesus, listen to the phobia dripping off that question.”
“No, no, no! Now you’re evading!”
“No I’m not. I admit it.”
“You’ve had sex with a guy?”
“No but -- ”
“Have you ever made out with a guy?”
“No.”
Dean’s eyes widened with vengeful satisfaction. “Then how do you know?”
“I’m not dismissing it outta hand is what I’m saying.”
“But how do you know?”
“Iggy Pop.”
“Iggy Pop!?!”
“Sure. I mean I wouldn’t go after ‘im or anything. But if he came on to me then why not?”
“He looks like a month-old cornhusk!”
“Well now he does. But on the cover of Raw Power, you’re tellin’ me you wouldn’t hit that?”
“I’ve never seen the cover.”
Pookie grabbed Dean’s arm. “C’mere!”
Dean tore out of Pookie’s grasp. “No.”
“C’mere! Look at it!”
“Get off me!”
Pookie wrapped his arms around Dean with the singleminded force of an enraged gorilla and started to wrestle Dead across the room to the computer. Dean writhed, turning himself around, and slapped at Pookie with what strength his fettered arms could muster. “Protesteth! Protesteth!” charged Pookie. Dean backpedalled, knocking over the coffee table and sending both he and Pookie to the ground. “Lemme go!” screamed Dean. Pookie, carrying Dean on his belly, crawled on his back, the rug searing his neck and shoulders in the process. Reaching the computer, Pookie quickly flipped over, landing on the floor on top of Dean. “Owww, you bastard!” Dean bellowed. Pookie put one knee into Dean’s neck and held him down as he grabbed the mouse and raced to open his music files. Dean screeched, “You’re gonna break my neck!” “You’ll thank me!” yelled Pookie as the album cover filled the screen.
Pookie hoisted Dean to his feet and jammed his face to the screen. “Look at that! Look at it!”
“Get off me!”
“That is sex! Admit it!” Pookie hit the mouse again. The rippling guitar and pounding rhythm of “Penetration” filled the air. “Just look, damn you!”
Dean stopped struggling and silently stared at the photo of the lithe, sleek rocker as the music bored into his head, suffusing itself into his marrow. As the guitar solo started to blister the speakers, Dean’s muscles eased. He found his gaze traveling up the ripples of Iggy’s sternum to his iniquitous, sirenic mouth. He ceased to stare down Dean like a monolithic sentinel. He sang to him with winsome danger, inviting him to close his eyes and fall into the picture of menacing seduction.
Pookie’s hold relaxed as he watched his friend slowly come to the understanding. He let his hands drop to his sides and began to nod. “See.”
Dean sighed. “Is this what you wanted.”
Pookie shook his head. “I just wanted to kill time until Holly gets here.”
The doorbell sounded.
“There she is. Later.”
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
TAKING ONE FOR THE TEAM
"Now, man, that alto man last night had 'IT' - held it once he found it: I've never seen a guy who could hold so long. I wanted to know what 'IT' meant.
- Jack Kerouac
Loathe as I am to parrot the sociopathic stylings of Ayn Rand the Objectivist Bear, I have to call Shenanigans on the concept of altruism. Yes, I’m one of those people. Our goals may serve a true and universal good, but our motives are rooted in self-interest. Even our sacrifices tend to be little more than temporarily inconvenient trade-ups. When we take one for the team, it’s only for our own enjoyment of the game, and my readiness to take one for the team at the northernmost edge of the contiguous United States was pure selfishness.
In my early twenties I smoked Brobdingnagian amounts of marijuana. Enough to make sense of a Jodorowsky flick. Being a music fan I did the lion’s share of my smoking to an ever expanding soundtrack. I smoked to John Coltane (duh), Electric Wizard (very duh), Yes (yes – Yes), too many to mention. And then there was Phish. It took a little while for me to get it, but once I took the plunge into those limpid, phatty waters, my lips locked onto a hydroponic regulator and I never wanted to come up for air. When the band’s whalesong (yeah, I know – eat me) trumpeted a new festival in August, 2003, my friends and I set sail.
I’m done with aquatic metaphors.
The IT Festival, dubbed so after the Kerouac quote that opened this opus, was being held on the decommissioned Loring Air Force Base at the northernmost tip of Maine, a beautifully verdant state so sparsely populated it has town named after Battleship positions (“14F?” “You sunk my commonwealth!”) My one friend, Bloodvessel, lived in Boston and was responsible for getting the rental car and camping gear. Fucktoad lived in Los Angeles and was only responsible for getting himself to the East Coast. Having only to drive from Philadelphia to Boston it was my responsibility to procure the herbal refreshment. I bought half an ounce, figuring that would be plenty even with the three of us being the three of us at a weekend-long Phestival.
The ride to the festival was smooth until about five miles out, when the traffic suddenly became a parking lot. I shrugged and thought, Well, that’s to be expected. Phish’s previous festivals had drawn sixty thousand or more, and IT was not going to be an exception. What I didn’t expect was to be stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic for SIXTEEN HOURS.
Fucktoad, being six kinds of douche, curled up on the backseat and absconded with Morpheus the Dream King while Bloodvessel and I inched along through the night, making the best of it. We listened to Phish’s hour-long soundcheck, which they generously broadcast over the radio for the benefit of those of us trapped in our cars. Bloodvessel and I talked about the band, speculated on what they would play that weekend. We grabbed snacks from a convenience store we passed for an hour and watered the roadside. As high as my ire grew throughout the night, it all became worth it a little after five o’ clock in he morning. Bloodvessel and I smoked a bowl and watched the rising burgundy sun paint the sky over the forests of Maine as we listened to Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile.”
Of course the full weekend of live, unencumbered Phish helped make it tolerable too. I won’t wax poetic about the music itself. Nothing I write will turn you into a fan if the music can’t do it. But what made the entire weekend something approaching a transcendental experience was the harmonic convergence of seventy thousand strangers. Seventy thousand people from divergent walks of life and contrary points of view congregated peaceably with a common purpose. Everyone endured the lines for the sinks and the bathrooms with grace and humor. People who had never met helped one another pitch their tents or hand out leaflets warning you to steer clear of the bad acid. The merchants compromised with the customers who just a little shy the price of that spiffy glass pipe or vegan enchilada. You could make someone’s day simply by acknowledging that their tank top was an exact replica of Kurt Russell’s in Big Trouble in Little China. To have something as trivial as a rock band bring out the best in seventy thousand otherwise disconnected souls may sound silly, but after experiencing it, the word “miraculous” doesn’t feel like hyperbole.
So, Tony, when do you get all selfish and take one for the team already?
Don’t interrupt.
We had set up our tent amidst all the others, but kept our valuables locked in the car until we needed them. As show time drew closer each day, we retrieved our valuables (the ganja, the bowl… and that’s it) and headed to the stage area. The stage stood at the bottom of a small valley on the northern edge of the Air Force base. Before the stage was a four hundred-yard penumbra of closely cropped grass surrounded by a fifty-yard ring of dirt. Wait – did I say, “ring of dirt?” I meant, a swamp of mud. It had rained heavily the previous two days and turned the dirt into a viscous morass of brown. Fucktoad, Bloodvessel, and I found a patch of grass about a hundred yards from the stage, close enough to see the band clearly and far enough away to enjoy Chris Kuroda’s light show in full effect. That was generally our spot for the two days of Phish. Both days were the clearest explanation of why I love Phish, but it was on Day Two that I took one for the team.
See? Here we go.
During the day’s second set break, before the last set of the weekend, the three of us looked at how much pot we had on us and thought we might benefit from having a little more. You know, just in case. Not a problem: there’s plenty back in the car. Problem: who’s going to get it? We looked back at the mob we would have to trudge through. Let’s say it was fifty thousand deep. Then there was the quarter-mile walk back to the car, then the walk back. Plus, we were facing a ticking clock. The band was going to retake the stage in about ten minutes, and none of us wanted to miss a note.
Fuck it, I said. I’ll go.
I set off through the jungle of audience. In the middle of the night, with little illumination beyond the flame of a lighter being brought to bare on the THC conveyance of choice, I dodged through swaying, dreadlocked branches and various inebriated trees that weaved and threatened to topple. The going became more Sisyphean when I felt my feet sink into the mud. I was now struggling not to just to get to the car and get back before the band returned but also to not fall into anyone. I don’t know if you’ve ever done it, but walking in sandals that are freshly caked in mud is a wee bit hazardous. I finally emerged at the perimeter of the crowd, and as I tried to speed-walk to the car across the asphalt drives of the old base, briefly wondered if the concertgoers on the perimeter were at all embittered. Soon I heard the crowd roar behind me and the band launch into “46 Days.” I turned to look – why, I don’t know since they were well out of sight at this point – lost my footing and fell hands first into the asphalt, cutting up my palms. They weren’t quite like paper dolls after a kiddie-scissors class (bonus aquatic metaphor!), but they still hurt. I moved on, cursing out loud since no one was around to hear me, and finally reached the car. I reached into my pocket and –
Where are the keys?
Fucktoad has the keys.
God. Damn. It.
I hung my head for about three seconds before heading back. I took better care to watch my footing until I plunged back into the crowd, the entirety of which, now that the music had resumed, was dancing or whatever you want to call a Phishhead’s mid-song gyrations. That was when I first thought, How am I going to find them? I knew basically where they were from our perspective of the stage, but that was all I had to go by. The music blared and the lights swirled as my legs were whipped by flowing skirts of, I guess, paper mache and potato sack. My face was slapped by flailing arms and dreads. Halfway across the quagmire my right sandal came off in the dark mud, and I had to blindly fish for it with my foot.
During my trek back I entertained the idea that Fucktoad would feel bad about having the keys on him, making me go through all that for nothing, that he would go get the weed this time. Nope. He just handed me the keys with the silent smile that only comes from six kinds of douche. I dove back into the patchouli gauntlet, this time abandoning both my sandals in the mud and walking across the asphalt in bare feet so that my soles matched my palms, giving little consideration to what items and fluids I might be traipsing through. Health update: I’m clean as a whistle.
So… I got the weed and got back to Bloodvessel and Fucktoad just in time to catch the last five minutes of Phish’s forty-minute rendition of “46 Days.” I didn’t rant at my friends about my arduous journey through the shrooming Sargasso, or not giving me the keys, or losing my sandals, or my cut-up extremities. I just packed a bowl, fired away, and enjoyed the rest of the show.
On any other occasion I would’ve likely let my anger get the best of me and proceeded to scorch the earth, but in this instance I didn’t. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to ruin the weekend for my friends, or because I volunteered to undertake the Quest for Fire in the first place, or anything so frustratingly rational. No. Earlier that weekend Phish had ordered you – meaning, me – to enjoy myself – meaning, us, the crowd, not the band. I mean, they told me to enjoy myself, but they said you, but they meant… fuck it – they played “You Enjoy Myself” and I had intended to.
I’d taken one for the team, and time has proven it to be a temporarily inconvenient trade-up for my team of one. Every obstacle we negotiated has proven to be a sparkling baguette in the jeweled crown that was that weekend. I had a fantastic time, but I would not have enjoyed myself had I not been sharing the experience with two of my best friends. To be able to turn to Bloodvessel and share the thrill of a particularly blistering solo of Trey’s. To lock eyes with Fucktoad in mutual appreciation of where the band had taken the jam. And to look around and realize that the three of us where just a thread in a web of seventy thousand swirling around in the same musical holism. An isolated experience would be no comparison.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
A BRIEF HISTORY OF HILLFIELD (Pt. 7)
7 - Vote for Goat
Enter H. Grubbly Arrears. Born in Hillfield in 1818, Arrears began working at Linus Braggart’s Crippled Bear Farms at the age of nine. By seventeen he had saved his money -- and allegedly pilfered more from the increasingly prone-to-drink Braggart -- and used it to purchase his own small plot of farm land. By the age of twenty-one he had successfully ostracized Braggart’s children and convinced their now-alcoholically catatonic father to will his farm to the only young man with the old buzzard’s best interests at heart. Coincidentally, Braggart was dead within the year. Like Hugh Giggley before, Arrears began investing in extra-agrarian enterprises and gradually built an imposing fortune. Over time he gained a controlling interest in two manufacturers through means too byzantine and potentially homicidal to detail here: Broomward Clothiers in Newark and Cawley Canneries in the nearby metropolis-in-the-making Madsen. Arrears was a steely-eyed barrel of a man who, as Hillfieldologist Mark Krasker has awkwardly written, “sought to crush his enemies with his icy stare like a snail under hoof.”
By 1860 Arrears had vertically integrated his farming and canning, but Broomward Clothiers was by far his most profitable and highest-earning business. Broomward sold staggering volumes of its wares to the Southern plantation lords who clothed their slaves in cheap, practical scraps of cloth. Arrears was all too aware of the hit his income would take with the outbreak of civil war -- no Southern slave owner was going to outfit his slaves with Yankee apparel! -- and resolved that the diminutive fire-breather Douglas must become President, not the popular Republican lawyer from Bumfuck, Illinois, Abraham Lincoln.
Arrears was not the only industrialist indirectly profiting from slavery who conspired to undermine Lincoln. He was, however, the only one who, for whatever reason, did not resort to outright bribery. He could not have had an ethical objection to the practice -- it was, after all, instrumental, in his own rise to power -- and he may simply have deemed it more expensive than necessary. Instead, he poured his money into assassinating Lincoln’s character. His modus operandi was to paint Lincoln as a harbinger of doom, as the instrument of the nation’s destruction. Arrears commissioned numerous political cartoons and attack ads that literally painted Lincoln as the Antichrist stabbing at the American flag or the Mason-Dixon line with a pitchfork, replete with hooves and goat’s horns. Arrears then began verbally attacking Lincoln as, “a goat,” simultaneously scapegoating him for the impending civil strife and implying a lecherous and villainous personality masquerading behind the Honest Abe-persona.
New Jersey’s Republicans, however, fought back, accusing the state’s manufacturing interests of fear-mongering, corrupting the electoral process, and making fun of them. In July of 1860 several dozen Republicans (or, at least, several dozen roughnecks hired by them) gathered outside the Broomward factory in Newark and confronted H. Grubbly Arrears as he emerged from the factory. During the confrontation Arrears is reported to have barked, “Do you want an animal for President? He looks like a goat!” This off-the-cuff insult is believed to have inspired Arrears’ following salvo: a series of ads featuring a realistic portrait of the Republican candidate juxtaposed against a picture of a goat, highlighting Lincoln’s caprine resemblance. The state’s Republicans, not to be outdone, embraced the accusation and turned it on its ear, adopting the call “Vote for Goat,” and sporting hand-held signs and sandwich boards trumpeting the absurd battle cry. It is unclear if this tactic originated within Lincoln’s campaign, the only circumstantial evidence supporting the claim being Lincoln’s sardonic goat’s bleat in answer to a question regarding Arrears’ attack ads.
Ultimately H. Grubbly Arrears won the battle for the New Jersey electorate but lost the war. The state was one of only two to vote for Douglas, and Lincoln’s subsequent election led to the secession of the Southern states. Arrears doubled down on the election of 1864, backing General George McClellan as the Democratic candidate. McClellan, however, openly repudiated the party’s official platform of negotiating a peaceful settlement with the Confederacy. His campaign never gained traction, and Arrears’ attacks were now seen for the desperate and transparent sops that they were, specifically his insinuation that Lincoln enjoyed the remote woods of Illinois because he liked having sex with trees. McClellan was trounced and Arrears never again enjoyed such material wealth or political influence.
Next:
The Jughandle From Hell
Thursday, September 27, 2012
THE SIREN'S CALL OF BAKED GOODS
“I swear to God, I’m at a point
where all I want in someone is a pulse.”
“Don’t
get down on yourself.”
“I’m
serious. Yesterday I tried flirting with a crossing guard.”
“What
do you mean?”
“I’m
at a red light down the street from an elementary school, and there’s a
crossing guard at the corner waiting for the school to let out.”
“Was
she hot?”
“She
was at least sixty.”
“What
was your intro?”
“
‘If necessary, would you have to take a car for a kid?’ ”
“I’m
guessing she wasn’t receptive?
“She
said, ‘Have you ever heard of Megan’s Law?’ ”
“Well,
that’s uncalled-for.”
“That’s
what I said!”
“Of
course bringing up her mortality may not have been the savviest icebreaker.”
“The
icebreaker’s always been my problem. I’m like a golfer who can’t get off the
tee.”
“You
should try an online dating service.”
“Eh…”
“No,
seriously. My friend Mark met his fiancée on JDate.”
“Mark’s
Jewish?”
“No.”
“I
don’t know, man.”
“I’m
telling you, it’s all about confidence. You just be yourself – not obnoxiously,
but unapologetically – and people will gravitate.”
“Easy
for you to say. You’ve never had a problem.”
“It’s
not about quantity. I had to sift through a lot of rough to finally find a
diamond.”
“How
are things with Meredith?”
“Good!
She’s a lot more comfortable around the family now. In fact my mother invited
her down to the shore with us this summer, and she said yes. She even wants to
meet you and the guys.”
“Fantastic.”
“Yeah,
she’s really let a lot of her guard down. She’s started telling me more about
where she’s coming from, her parents and college and all that.”
“Is
it that bad?”
“I
mean, I don’t think so. But I can see
how she got scarred and why she’s gun-shy about opening up. I’ll go into details
with you one day. But right now she’s just coming out of her shell and she
trusts me, and…”
“Don’t
worry about it. When we’re friendly enough, she can tell me.”
“I
appreciate that, man.”
“But
let me ask you. How is she with you drinking?”
“She’s
fine with it. But I limit myself to one out of consideration for her.”
“That’s
downright chivalrous of you.”
“I
think so.”
“Have
you guys talked more about the A.A.?”
“A
little, yeah. She’s actually in a good place where she can talk about it and
she’s rarely tempted. And when she is, she immediately calls her sponsor and
then she’s fine again.”
“What
are those meetings like?”
“I
don’t know. I’ve never been to one.”
“But
what does she say about them?”
“Mostly
generalities. She takes the Anonymous part seriously, so she keeps the
specifics confined to her.”
“You
know, I heard something recently about A.A. I heard for your fifth year of
sobriety they give you a cake.”
“I
don’t know. She’s not there yet.”
“Yeah,
apparently they make a big to-do of it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,
they wheel the cake out on a cart and they sing and clap and chant or
something.”
“Chant?”
“Well,
not like some Druidic rite or anything. But the cake is supposed to be
outrageous.”
“
‘Outrageous?’ ”
“Yeah,
it’s supposed to be this secret A.A. recipe that gets passed down by
word-of-mouth. Like it’s not written anywhere.”
“What?”
“It’s
supposed to be so delicious that everyone comes to the meeting even if they
don’t attend religiously anymore. I’ve heard people who were in the program but
fell off the wagon will even abstain for as long as possible beforehand. That
way they can go into the meeting with a clean conscience and enjoy the cake.
And if they catch a drunk there, all of A.A., wherever he goes, will ostracize
him from that point on. But first they tie him to a chair and make him watch as
they feast on the delectable cake.”
“What
the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m
talking about A.A. cake.”
“Who
cares about cake?”
“It’s
really good cake. This one guy on a
message board called it, quote, ‘the culinary equivalent of a threesome with
Helen of Troy and a thousand-dollar bill.’ ”
“You
believe everything you read on the internet?”
“Everything
about A.A. cake.”
“Stop
calling it ‘A.A. cake.’ ”
“What
would you call it?”
“I
wouldn’t call it anything because I wouldn’t be sitting here talking about
cake, be it A.A. cake, N.A. cake, or KKKake!”
“Can
you get Meredith to get me some cake?”
“Are
you crazy?”
“Why?”
“I’m
not asking her to get you cake.”
“Please?”
“No!”
“Well,
can she get me into a meeting?”
“NO!”
“Why
not?”
“Because
I’m not asking the woman I love to sneak you into Alcoholics Anonymous so you can steal some goddamn cake!”
“You
got to help me get some of that cake. I need that cake!”
“Why?”
“Are
you my friend?”
“Don’t
pull that on me.”
“I’m
not, I’m not. As my friend, can I confide in you?”
“Yeah.”
“I
have met someone through the internet.”
“Really?
Where?”
“Yeast
explosion dot com.”
“What
the hell is that?”
“It’s
a website for baked goods.”
“You
sure it wasn’t, yeast infection dot
com?”
“Yeah,
I’m sure. Anyway, I was on yeast explosion dot com – ”
“What
were doing on a website for baked goods?”
“It
doesn’t matter.”
“What
were you doing there?”
“I
thought it was yeast infection dot com.”
“Ugh.”
“ANYWAY…
I was there and I started chatting with this guy who’s looking to take his
bakery to the next level. He started talking about how great it would be for
him if he could get his hands on the recipe for A.A. cake. So I told him I knew
someone in A.A.”
“And?”
“And
I told him I’d try to get the recipe or at least a sample – ”
“No.
I mean why are you trying to seduce a guy?”
“Not
him! We made a deal: I give him the A.A. cake, he gives me his daughter.”
“HIS
DAUGHTER!?!”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll
ask again: are – you – crazy!?!”
“What?
It’s on the up-and-up.”
“No
it’s not! He’s pimping his daughter!”
“It’s
fine. He says she’s very slow and stammers like Claudius. So if you think about
it, what I’m doing is straight-up benevolent.”
“Does
she have a say in this?”
“He
says as long as I take her once a week to McDonald’s and let her go in the
playground, she won’t even notice.”
“Oh
my God, I don’t think I can be friends with you anymore.”
“Don’t
judge me! When you’re a lost cause, you take what you can get!”
“I
told you, if you have confidence – ”
“I
will have confidence if you get me some
A.A. cake.”
“I
want you to listen to me very carefully. I will never betray the woman I am
going to marry so that you can infiltrate a group of people whose health depends
on anonymity, steal some fabled pastry with spurious properties, and use it to
barter with an unscrupulous scumbag you met on the internet in exchange for a
retarded girl who may or may not be his daughter!”
“You
only care about yourself.”
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
COMPLETELY CONFIDENT
Coquette
was curled up on the couch in clothes with no seductive ambition. The tea at
her side was still piping, and she was just getting to the next spicy portion
of her very sensitive pornography. Then the phone rang.
“Hello?”
A
sheepish voice of underwhelming masculinity said, “Hello, miss. I’m calling
from the electric company. You’ll be happy to know you’ve qualified for a
twenty-five percent discount on your monthly electric bill for all your years
of faithful patronage. I just need some information off the receipt from your
most recent electric bill.”
“Why
am I getting the rebate again?”
“Uh,
for all your years of, as a-a faithful patronage.”
“I’ve
only lived here for four months.”
…
“Well,
we’ve taken all the bills from your last house into—”
“I
lived with my boyfriend before moving here four months ago. And with my parents
before that. And the electric bills were in their names.”
…
“Your
twenty-five percent off can begin as, as soon as you—”
“What’s
the name of the company?”
“What?”
“The
electric company. What’s its name?”
…
“The
Electric Company…?”
Coquette
was now sitting up in her seat. “Really? Well, I’d like to lodge a complaint
with Morgan Freeman. Can you put him on the phone?”
“Uh…
he can’t come to the phone right now.”
“I’m
hanging up.”
But
she didn’t take the phone from her ear. She listened as the voice plowed
forward with ignorant courage. “All we need, miss, a little information off
your most recent bill’s receipt.”
“Why?”
“Huh?”
“You’re
the Electric Company. Why do you need me to read you information off my bill?
Don’t you have it right there in front of you?”
“Well,
no.”
“No?
You’re not sitting in front of a computer?”
“Uh,
well, er, yes.”
“So
why do you need me to give you information you already have?”
…
“Redundancy?”
“Excuse
me?”
“Redundancy,
miss.” He was very proud of his ingenuity.
“Define
‘redundancy’ as you’re using it.”
…
“To…
do… again?”
“Wow.”
“We can wrap this up in sixty seconds, miss, if—”
“We can wrap this up in sixty seconds, miss, if—”
“Just
stop. I’m not giving you my information.”
“But…
I won’t be able to process your twenty-five percent—”
“Enough!”
Coquette was now on her feet. “I want you to give up.”
“Miss,
I—”
“I
want you to concede this is a scam and hang up the phone.”
Initially
the phone ringing had aggravated Coquette, and the immediate realization that
the call was nothing more than a con had rankled her further. Now she was
enjoying it. It thrilled her to no end having this worm dangle from her hook.
“A
twenty-five percent discount can—”
“There
is no discount.”
This
spineless homunculus had turned out to be a godsend. He had been exactly what
Coquette needed: a mosquito blithely buzzing around her head and begging to be
swatted. She clutched the phone, delighting in the anticipation of bringing
down her heel.
“The
electric company—”
“—was
a dumb show.”
What
did he look like? she thought. What face and spindly imitation of a frame
produced that stuck pig’s squeal? Coquette was grinning and nearly licked her
chops with carnivorous excitement. She was practically trembling.
“Miss—”
“Just
admit it!”
“Look,
what do you want from me? I got over a hundred calls to get through a day. I
got a quota I got only two weeks left to meet. I’m way behind, and I got ten
million other things I gotta do. I gotta sign five people a day up for an
internet sales scheme, I gotta get the three-card monte in, I still gotta prep
for a badger game tomorrow. I got four different bosses, they never talk to
each other, and they’re all over my ass all the time. Now I can’t sleep because
the regional manager’s coming in next week to oversee a pigeon drop I’m
shilling for. I’m overworked, I’m underpaid, upper management doesn’t care, and
middle management just throws it all back at us here in the stores. I get no
health coverage, no 401(k), I think I’m developing an Adderall addiction! I’m
doing the best I can!”
…
“What
are you doing tomorrow night?” Coquette asked.
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