Post by Steve on Jan 29, 2011 11:51:51 GMT -5
A tablespoon of splunk arches, neatly misses the steering wheel and lands directly between the gas and brake pedals. The `84 Cadillac lurches to a rusty smoker’s-cough stop. There are two teen blondes driving a convertible in the lane to my right. I leave myself open, glance through the passenger window to notice the driver staring in awe-struck disgust, but not able to hide her deviance that’s gnawing its way through the back of her eyes. The co-pilot isn’t intrigued as she pulls her eyes away and stabs at her phone with carnival-red finger-nails. There’s no doubt in my mind that she’s calling the cops. I imagine that they’re on her speed-dial list, though I thought she would have saved them into the voice command so she could just scream into the mouthpiece. The light turns green and I allow them to move first, then I move behind them and make a right turn; close myself.
I’m nervous. Not because of the little whore calling the cops, the anxiety was the reason I needed to feed the goose in the first place. And I’m sure it’s perverted, though, if I had tinted windows it would have been fine. I shouldn’t even mention the questionable amount of splooge that the red-nailed cunt has had on her face. No, I shouldn’t mention her road-head extravaganzas. I can’t help thinking what expressions would be shown if I had performed my usual: bit-in-mouth/belt `bout my neck/lotion and cayenne pepper/ rough side of dish sponge/ rubbing my ass (making sure my anus is in contact) across the hay-woven mat/ style yank.
I suppose I should buy video games, attend clubs; play pinnacle; collect movie memorabilia; carve miniature rocking horses, to cope with stress and rattled nerves. Not tie-on-off, roll an l; stab myself with works; shouldn’t drink morning beer with a cig-butt dancing like a bobber in the sea. It’s not counter culture, no, it’s the submerged world. Life forced downwards below the surface. You take a fish-wife, make guppies (you’d better eat a few, rare, if ever, you get caviar), and the next thing you know you’re free-basing synthetic oxygen made in the dark-water. You begin beating your fish-wife, and just when you think you’ll never catch the bubble…you get caught in a net, raised above the surface and overdose on the pure stuff.
Everyone needs release. Forget parking tickets, overdoses, eating disorders; divorces-marriages; spontaneous poor choices leading to unfathomably dilapidated ends. I needed my immediate, perhaps even inappropriate, release because I’ve been sick for days; living off diazepam-chlonadine-subs and footballs, finding and surviving. Now I know I have to get there. My cells have changed and aren’t pleased with the alteration. My skin aches, when a breeze rushes over me I can feel the follicles shake like trees with dead roots. My joints are a test to see the bursting point of cartilage; finger-nails feel like they could just slide right out of their cuticle casket. There’ll be a line. There always is. Always a line full of people that you imagined had no similarities to link you to them, but there they are. All withered, deflated-defiled, scabbed and crusted as though they crawled to the steps, their eyes open and dead like an elk head mounted to thin air. The heads hung low, mouths subtly parted, (e) motionless, though they pass through the stages. And we wait, like in some soup-kitchen line; like McCourt, waiting for new boots for our souls. And ANYTHING forbid that the line has a newcomer. The questions, paperwork, physical exam, it would be ages for half the dopes to get the cure; junky time moves much slower than even the lingering time from dawn to next dawn on a child’s rainy Saturday.
The need to get there is so crucial that I ecstatically accelerate well above posted speed limit. A minute is a year and a year is a decade; there’s no time to lose. I blow stop signs, and pretend that I’m color blind, that I can’t see a difference between yellows and reds. Already it’s beyond obvious that there isn’t time to make both appointments, but, I stay the course for the theme-park lines and hope to find a holder so I can duck out of there in such speed that the line would think nothing more than a shadow had been there.
He died. That’s all there is to it. The eyes that will stare at me won’t have the twinkle of deceit, the hunger of an entitlement complex. The lips won’t arch and twist themselves into the self pity-generally malcontent-delusional grimace that he tried to pass off as a smile. He’ll be cold; depending on the temperature of the room he’ll be either clammy or slick. The parlor will most likely be well heated, having my relatives stripping of layers of clothing, muttering to themselves that they should have shucked tradition of a suit jacket into the backseat of the car. There’s an eerie coincidence with the funeral directors wanting the two extremes of temperature to join as the cavalcade make their pathetic and dramatic, public good-byes. Sadistic bastards. I bet they all smoke wet before the families arrive; take turns penetrating the corpse with everything from scalpels to pricks, then send it down to the make-up artist. –What the fuck happened to this guy? - A frantic dandy with rouge in the right hand would ask. –Fuck is exactly what happened! - The directors and person in charge of doing the great fluid swap would reply. And, well, it’s going into the ground anyway so…
Let him wait in his over-sized shoe-box. I need a bit of the cure before I see any of these people, and have to walk through the only not weeping, see the phlegm of false remorse that everyone would be choking back; blasting into tissues. Oh, microscopic bacteria and tissue lint floating in the air, what better atmosphere for me to be torn apart within the undertow of pseudo-sorrow? I sigh and the air settles quickly onto the gas pedal before I have time to consider altering my course.
It’s a Tuesday. That means the lines are at the edge of growth. Most people still have a few bucks to score from their normal cop-spot, those that use the done for lapses in their blood; and the usual are the usual no matter rain or shine. In my dream of a fix I somehow realized that I was dressed appropriately for a funeral, not appealing for anyone holding. In fact, I looked far too much like an IRS agent, or a person trying to serve someone their summons. I glance around the car, a fine blonde through the passenger window but nothing to dishevel my appearance. I check the ash-tray…nothing. I stopped throwing cigarettes in there, only the torn butts from the embers. I find an empty coffee cup with a sliver shaped drop left. I dab my shirt in various places with a coffee-coated finger. Not enough. I scan the car again and find a stick of gum…I’m not sure but I know it’ll be handy. Coffee stains, not what you would say is a stereotype for junkies but, I think my appearance, especially how aged I look, will help me.
Every traffic signal is an adversary, even with me skipping a few. It takes twenty minutes to get fifteen blocks and I finally arrive. There’s no line. There’s no LINE! A hooker standing by the railing, I think I recognize her from my long night walks, and that’s it. How? Why? It was about three in the afternoon, in the middle of summer, and only one lone hooker standing in the doorway. I pull up, get out, walk to the doors. She eyes me through to the scene behind me and I can’t help finding a smidgeon of attraction. She doesn’t have large blue puddles around her green eyes; her cheeks are tinted a shade of pink that’s evidently from the small fever and temperature of the day. Her nails are still painted aqua, but it doesn’t seem so…garage-porno. She’s still staring as I allow my eyes to shuffle along her breast, down the slender terrain of her abdomen and find that in fact, without O’Hara red dresses and exotic animal prints, she is definitely worth rubber-necking. –Well? Her voice was like a slinky falling down every letter. –I Thought I knew you…that’s all- it was odd to ask her if she knew anyone fisting dirt. –What do you think I’m here for? To drink that shit! Well, what else is there to do but nearly clear her out and ask her to accompany me to the funeral. –Who died? –My father. –When is it? I smiled and told her it somewhere near an hour ago.
As easy as taking a free drink she takes a seat in the car and has my works set and shiny for me. One after the other we smile, pulling out towards the funeral parlor; and as it goes, the first light is green.
When you enter a Roman Catholic church for a viewing there are always those book-marker obituaries, and as everything else in these types of churches, the option is yours whether to take one or not. Their propaganda is guilt. It’s nothing new but tried and true it’s been working since they took out their angst on the pagans. So why change? I figure there’s no harm in it and slide one from the desk, which is in a front foyer type area. This space, its décor, smell, arrangement of furniture seems too similar to a hostess’ station at a restaurant and I begin to feel uniquely sick; churning of stomach and bowels, simultaneously trying to wrench free of my imprisoning flesh. We take empty seats towards the rear and I begin scanning the spectators for familiar faces, for better or worse. Not one wrinkle, freckle, nape of neck; one mole, wart, congested chest; a blonde, brunette, bald; no aunt, uncle, cousin; not even my own mother to be found in the sea of polyester, skin and hair! Something was definitely awry. I glance over at, I don’t have the cottonest idea what her name could be, and I see that she’s content; a tea-saucer sore being trenched into her wrist has most of her attention, and the rest drifts towards a distant cough or walrus wail. –Is that your mother? - She was pointing to a fifty-something year-old downing a colonial shroud. Looking back I would add this to the inappropriate list of the day, letting a whooping gut-split laugh jump from behind the bars of my teeth. Anyone with proper self-control could have stifled it and only allowed the evil thing a view of the gathered mass, not I. Nope; I let that fucker right out and give it a seat next to me. With everyone facing me I’m able to confirm the sneaking suspicion that I don’t know ANY of these people. I look down at the trading card of the deceased and find my speculation affirmed. The bastard couldn’t even let this day go smoothly for me. They moved on! Some other schmuck is up there having his hair scented by that awful clanging incense holder. It must take weeks for the mealworms, roaches and ear wigs to be able to stand the smell enough for dinner.
We rise from the pew and begin our exit, the prostitute and I, before all the dismay and future belittling, the entire time she’s oblivious to the deep caves of eyes that are beckoning god to let one of the stones in his house to loosen and come crashing upon my head; spare the sweet little girl, she didn’t know better. I have a quick thought to wipe an imaginary speck of dirt off her face with the holy water but, then I think, spare the little girl, she didn’t know better.
I never understood why there are always gates and fences staking the perimeter of cemeteries. I imagine it’s another one of those old-time habits, like placing commas after and, something you just can’t shake. There used to be grave robberies, and body-snatching, but I don’t think as much of the stolen goods were taken by outside intruders as people believed. It can’t be much different from merchandise being lifted from a store, there are always inside people, and with a graveyard the inside people should have been the first to be interrogated. Sitting here in my elephant turd of a car, I can see myself dipping that low. In the case of honesty, the truest form of yourself isn’t always the one you’d like to show your in-laws, or even yourself. The upholstery in the car isn’t the best Beth, so she has a name, let me know several times during the drive from the church. Its wool or something similar, I stand by the fact that it’s actually dog hair, and not fine soft Husky hair but some short-haired mutt that lost the hair because of mange.
I can see the procession of relatives, the parade of genetics and hereditary glitches in health, I begin re-thinking this entire “showing up” for the funeral idea. There’s an aunt with an over-sized black mesh hat deal. One of those things you only see in the movies, donned by the sultry, flirtatious widow who has legs so long you think she chews her food with her knee caps; I know it’s the aunt who is going prematurely bald in random areas on her head, and she doesn’t have legs to her chin. His brother is there, the uncle who likes cock and never associates with the family, which is a surprise. He has a salmon coloured tie. I look over at Beth. She’s stopped scratching a little, now working the faulty zipper on my works bag. –I thought you might want a little taste if you’re going out there. Right? - Her hand rests on the bag until I tell her hell yes, that a taste wouldn’t do it either; I wanted a full mouth. Now robbing graves doesn’t seem to be such a low depth to sink to, I mean, people smoke pot and play with Quaji boards in cemeteries; though they were usually teenagers in the company of friends, not at one of their parents’ funeral, poking eyes in their arms with a prostitute that might like cock as much as my uncle. And if she doesn’t, well, she’s at least in the running for number of bones buried. –I think we’re gonna let it clear out. I don’t…- Is all that I got out before she had me unzipped and out in the air. For the mouth-fuck sake of the circumstances I take another load. Hell, if I die I’ve cut out at least half of the travel time for people.
It begins to rain as I reach the stone. Sun for them, rain for me. I don’t want to say anything, I don’t have anything to say, and even if I did I wouldn’t say it. Apparently the stone says more than I could ever say: Loving father brother husband son. Stones can lie; they don’t run the risk of going to hell. I notice Beth has her fingers locked in mine and I feel the faintest of squeezes, - have you had enough time?- I chuckle a little bit and I’m relieved when I don’t see the panic look that oh so many women get when I open my mouth. –yeah, this was over long before we arrived.-
I’m nervous. Not because of the little whore calling the cops, the anxiety was the reason I needed to feed the goose in the first place. And I’m sure it’s perverted, though, if I had tinted windows it would have been fine. I shouldn’t even mention the questionable amount of splooge that the red-nailed cunt has had on her face. No, I shouldn’t mention her road-head extravaganzas. I can’t help thinking what expressions would be shown if I had performed my usual: bit-in-mouth/belt `bout my neck/lotion and cayenne pepper/ rough side of dish sponge/ rubbing my ass (making sure my anus is in contact) across the hay-woven mat/ style yank.
I suppose I should buy video games, attend clubs; play pinnacle; collect movie memorabilia; carve miniature rocking horses, to cope with stress and rattled nerves. Not tie-on-off, roll an l; stab myself with works; shouldn’t drink morning beer with a cig-butt dancing like a bobber in the sea. It’s not counter culture, no, it’s the submerged world. Life forced downwards below the surface. You take a fish-wife, make guppies (you’d better eat a few, rare, if ever, you get caviar), and the next thing you know you’re free-basing synthetic oxygen made in the dark-water. You begin beating your fish-wife, and just when you think you’ll never catch the bubble…you get caught in a net, raised above the surface and overdose on the pure stuff.
Everyone needs release. Forget parking tickets, overdoses, eating disorders; divorces-marriages; spontaneous poor choices leading to unfathomably dilapidated ends. I needed my immediate, perhaps even inappropriate, release because I’ve been sick for days; living off diazepam-chlonadine-subs and footballs, finding and surviving. Now I know I have to get there. My cells have changed and aren’t pleased with the alteration. My skin aches, when a breeze rushes over me I can feel the follicles shake like trees with dead roots. My joints are a test to see the bursting point of cartilage; finger-nails feel like they could just slide right out of their cuticle casket. There’ll be a line. There always is. Always a line full of people that you imagined had no similarities to link you to them, but there they are. All withered, deflated-defiled, scabbed and crusted as though they crawled to the steps, their eyes open and dead like an elk head mounted to thin air. The heads hung low, mouths subtly parted, (e) motionless, though they pass through the stages. And we wait, like in some soup-kitchen line; like McCourt, waiting for new boots for our souls. And ANYTHING forbid that the line has a newcomer. The questions, paperwork, physical exam, it would be ages for half the dopes to get the cure; junky time moves much slower than even the lingering time from dawn to next dawn on a child’s rainy Saturday.
The need to get there is so crucial that I ecstatically accelerate well above posted speed limit. A minute is a year and a year is a decade; there’s no time to lose. I blow stop signs, and pretend that I’m color blind, that I can’t see a difference between yellows and reds. Already it’s beyond obvious that there isn’t time to make both appointments, but, I stay the course for the theme-park lines and hope to find a holder so I can duck out of there in such speed that the line would think nothing more than a shadow had been there.
He died. That’s all there is to it. The eyes that will stare at me won’t have the twinkle of deceit, the hunger of an entitlement complex. The lips won’t arch and twist themselves into the self pity-generally malcontent-delusional grimace that he tried to pass off as a smile. He’ll be cold; depending on the temperature of the room he’ll be either clammy or slick. The parlor will most likely be well heated, having my relatives stripping of layers of clothing, muttering to themselves that they should have shucked tradition of a suit jacket into the backseat of the car. There’s an eerie coincidence with the funeral directors wanting the two extremes of temperature to join as the cavalcade make their pathetic and dramatic, public good-byes. Sadistic bastards. I bet they all smoke wet before the families arrive; take turns penetrating the corpse with everything from scalpels to pricks, then send it down to the make-up artist. –What the fuck happened to this guy? - A frantic dandy with rouge in the right hand would ask. –Fuck is exactly what happened! - The directors and person in charge of doing the great fluid swap would reply. And, well, it’s going into the ground anyway so…
Let him wait in his over-sized shoe-box. I need a bit of the cure before I see any of these people, and have to walk through the only not weeping, see the phlegm of false remorse that everyone would be choking back; blasting into tissues. Oh, microscopic bacteria and tissue lint floating in the air, what better atmosphere for me to be torn apart within the undertow of pseudo-sorrow? I sigh and the air settles quickly onto the gas pedal before I have time to consider altering my course.
It’s a Tuesday. That means the lines are at the edge of growth. Most people still have a few bucks to score from their normal cop-spot, those that use the done for lapses in their blood; and the usual are the usual no matter rain or shine. In my dream of a fix I somehow realized that I was dressed appropriately for a funeral, not appealing for anyone holding. In fact, I looked far too much like an IRS agent, or a person trying to serve someone their summons. I glance around the car, a fine blonde through the passenger window but nothing to dishevel my appearance. I check the ash-tray…nothing. I stopped throwing cigarettes in there, only the torn butts from the embers. I find an empty coffee cup with a sliver shaped drop left. I dab my shirt in various places with a coffee-coated finger. Not enough. I scan the car again and find a stick of gum…I’m not sure but I know it’ll be handy. Coffee stains, not what you would say is a stereotype for junkies but, I think my appearance, especially how aged I look, will help me.
Every traffic signal is an adversary, even with me skipping a few. It takes twenty minutes to get fifteen blocks and I finally arrive. There’s no line. There’s no LINE! A hooker standing by the railing, I think I recognize her from my long night walks, and that’s it. How? Why? It was about three in the afternoon, in the middle of summer, and only one lone hooker standing in the doorway. I pull up, get out, walk to the doors. She eyes me through to the scene behind me and I can’t help finding a smidgeon of attraction. She doesn’t have large blue puddles around her green eyes; her cheeks are tinted a shade of pink that’s evidently from the small fever and temperature of the day. Her nails are still painted aqua, but it doesn’t seem so…garage-porno. She’s still staring as I allow my eyes to shuffle along her breast, down the slender terrain of her abdomen and find that in fact, without O’Hara red dresses and exotic animal prints, she is definitely worth rubber-necking. –Well? Her voice was like a slinky falling down every letter. –I Thought I knew you…that’s all- it was odd to ask her if she knew anyone fisting dirt. –What do you think I’m here for? To drink that shit! Well, what else is there to do but nearly clear her out and ask her to accompany me to the funeral. –Who died? –My father. –When is it? I smiled and told her it somewhere near an hour ago.
As easy as taking a free drink she takes a seat in the car and has my works set and shiny for me. One after the other we smile, pulling out towards the funeral parlor; and as it goes, the first light is green.
When you enter a Roman Catholic church for a viewing there are always those book-marker obituaries, and as everything else in these types of churches, the option is yours whether to take one or not. Their propaganda is guilt. It’s nothing new but tried and true it’s been working since they took out their angst on the pagans. So why change? I figure there’s no harm in it and slide one from the desk, which is in a front foyer type area. This space, its décor, smell, arrangement of furniture seems too similar to a hostess’ station at a restaurant and I begin to feel uniquely sick; churning of stomach and bowels, simultaneously trying to wrench free of my imprisoning flesh. We take empty seats towards the rear and I begin scanning the spectators for familiar faces, for better or worse. Not one wrinkle, freckle, nape of neck; one mole, wart, congested chest; a blonde, brunette, bald; no aunt, uncle, cousin; not even my own mother to be found in the sea of polyester, skin and hair! Something was definitely awry. I glance over at, I don’t have the cottonest idea what her name could be, and I see that she’s content; a tea-saucer sore being trenched into her wrist has most of her attention, and the rest drifts towards a distant cough or walrus wail. –Is that your mother? - She was pointing to a fifty-something year-old downing a colonial shroud. Looking back I would add this to the inappropriate list of the day, letting a whooping gut-split laugh jump from behind the bars of my teeth. Anyone with proper self-control could have stifled it and only allowed the evil thing a view of the gathered mass, not I. Nope; I let that fucker right out and give it a seat next to me. With everyone facing me I’m able to confirm the sneaking suspicion that I don’t know ANY of these people. I look down at the trading card of the deceased and find my speculation affirmed. The bastard couldn’t even let this day go smoothly for me. They moved on! Some other schmuck is up there having his hair scented by that awful clanging incense holder. It must take weeks for the mealworms, roaches and ear wigs to be able to stand the smell enough for dinner.
We rise from the pew and begin our exit, the prostitute and I, before all the dismay and future belittling, the entire time she’s oblivious to the deep caves of eyes that are beckoning god to let one of the stones in his house to loosen and come crashing upon my head; spare the sweet little girl, she didn’t know better. I have a quick thought to wipe an imaginary speck of dirt off her face with the holy water but, then I think, spare the little girl, she didn’t know better.
I never understood why there are always gates and fences staking the perimeter of cemeteries. I imagine it’s another one of those old-time habits, like placing commas after and, something you just can’t shake. There used to be grave robberies, and body-snatching, but I don’t think as much of the stolen goods were taken by outside intruders as people believed. It can’t be much different from merchandise being lifted from a store, there are always inside people, and with a graveyard the inside people should have been the first to be interrogated. Sitting here in my elephant turd of a car, I can see myself dipping that low. In the case of honesty, the truest form of yourself isn’t always the one you’d like to show your in-laws, or even yourself. The upholstery in the car isn’t the best Beth, so she has a name, let me know several times during the drive from the church. Its wool or something similar, I stand by the fact that it’s actually dog hair, and not fine soft Husky hair but some short-haired mutt that lost the hair because of mange.
I can see the procession of relatives, the parade of genetics and hereditary glitches in health, I begin re-thinking this entire “showing up” for the funeral idea. There’s an aunt with an over-sized black mesh hat deal. One of those things you only see in the movies, donned by the sultry, flirtatious widow who has legs so long you think she chews her food with her knee caps; I know it’s the aunt who is going prematurely bald in random areas on her head, and she doesn’t have legs to her chin. His brother is there, the uncle who likes cock and never associates with the family, which is a surprise. He has a salmon coloured tie. I look over at Beth. She’s stopped scratching a little, now working the faulty zipper on my works bag. –I thought you might want a little taste if you’re going out there. Right? - Her hand rests on the bag until I tell her hell yes, that a taste wouldn’t do it either; I wanted a full mouth. Now robbing graves doesn’t seem to be such a low depth to sink to, I mean, people smoke pot and play with Quaji boards in cemeteries; though they were usually teenagers in the company of friends, not at one of their parents’ funeral, poking eyes in their arms with a prostitute that might like cock as much as my uncle. And if she doesn’t, well, she’s at least in the running for number of bones buried. –I think we’re gonna let it clear out. I don’t…- Is all that I got out before she had me unzipped and out in the air. For the mouth-fuck sake of the circumstances I take another load. Hell, if I die I’ve cut out at least half of the travel time for people.
It begins to rain as I reach the stone. Sun for them, rain for me. I don’t want to say anything, I don’t have anything to say, and even if I did I wouldn’t say it. Apparently the stone says more than I could ever say: Loving father brother husband son. Stones can lie; they don’t run the risk of going to hell. I notice Beth has her fingers locked in mine and I feel the faintest of squeezes, - have you had enough time?- I chuckle a little bit and I’m relieved when I don’t see the panic look that oh so many women get when I open my mouth. –yeah, this was over long before we arrived.-