Author Archives: Mike Murphy

Short Stories

Dulles

            The man in the stall next to mine hasn’t given a courtesy flush.  Neither have I.

            Nineteen eighty seven started out good.  Paul Newman won the Oscar for best actor for The Color of Money.  Prince put out Sign ‘O’ The Times.  That Iran-Contra thing was finally over and we could focus on the Democrats taking back the White House.  

            I feel stuck in 1987.  I feel stuck here.  I feel stuck.

            It started in 1960, the year I was born.  Really, it started a few years later, when I was too old for diapers and Mother made me go it alone.  

            Mother never let me stop till I was finished.  I couldn’t leave till I was done and if I did it badly, I had to do it over again.

            Like homework.  When I was in the third grade I had to redo my math problems.  She told me to finish my division problems even though they were already done.  I said I did the work just like the teacher taught me to.  Mother pointed to a problem and said, “Remainders are messy.”

            My father left when I was eleven, and I haven’t heard from him since.  In a fit of rage he hastily filled a few boxes with his possessions and split.  Father thought Mother nitpicked.  He said she was Miss Perfectionist.

            The guy next to me is talking about stocks over a portable phone.  They sound like good tips.  I’d make a few calls myself if I could get out of here.

            I met Molly when I was 25 and she was 22.  We fell in love.  Molly and I worked as computer programmers at IBM.  Molly had perfectly combed, chestnut brown hair and crystal blue eyes.  She and I made love on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

            And Mother didn’t know.

            I don’t know where Molly is now.  I hope she’s still out there, waiting for me.

            When Mother found out about Molly, she began acting strangely.  Calling me at  work, Mother would ask me to come to her house.  To shovel the driveway.  Clean the gutters.  Refinish the hardwood floors.  Polish the silver.  Wallpaper the walls, including closets.  Paint the ceilings.

            And if I didn’t do it right, I’d have to do it again.  I couldn’t leave until it was done right.

            Deja vu.  Repeat.

            Molly said that I was whipped by my Mother.  She said my Mother had instilled in me a “pathological tenacity” to serve her.

            I loved Molly and I still do and I think we could have gotten married.  Maybe we still can.  But I couldn’t stand the way she threw around these psychobabble nonsense terms like “pathological tenacity.”  Molly heard it all from a radio call-in show hosted by Shirley McCulloughssy.  All day and night it was “Shirly says . . .,” “That’s what Shirley’d say,” or “ . . . which is one of Shirley’s mantras.”

            I’m sure Shirley, or one of her ilk, is still making money by throwing around these sloppy musings on radio, on television and in print.

            But she had a point in that Mother was getting out of hand with her demands on my time.  When I was asked to do chores on Wednesdays and Saturdays as well, I knew a change had to be made.

            It made sense to stand my ground then.  Now, I don’t know.  1987 was a long time ago.

            That was the year I decided to propose to Molly.  I bought us tickets to fly to a little Manor in Amherst, Massachusetts.  I would take her on a horse-drawn carriage ride through the snow on New Year’s Eve.  And then I’d propose.  That was the right way to do it.

            I still have the ring in my pocket.  I take it out and stare at it all of the time.  I guess I should feel regret.  But I don’t.  I still feel that this is the right way to do it.

            During our ill-fated trip, Molly and I had a three-hour layover at Dulles International Airport in Virginia before our flight to New England.  To kill some time, I decided to do this new thing where you call your home phone from a pay phone and access the messages on your answering machine.  Very high tech for 1987.  (Not as high tech now, I’ve come to realize, as I’ve heard all sorts of beeps, bells and whistles emitted from the men sitting in stalls next to mine.  Full conversations.  Television shows.  Webinars.)

            A few messages were old.  Molly coyly saying, “It’s Wednesday night, and you know what that means …”  A few guys at IBM called with work issues.

            And then one from Mother.

            She said, “I called and called and there was no answer, so I called your neighbor, Mrs. Brown, and she told me you and that girl were taking a trip.  I can’t believe you.  You don’t tell your own mother where you’re going.  Don’t run away and abandon your mother like your father did.  That’s not the way to do things!  I don’t know what you and that girl are planning with your lives, but just know that I don’t think it’s right.  You should start over again with a new girl, the right girl!”

            I hung up the phone and proceeded to the nearest men’s room.  I entered a stall, closed and locked the door behind me, and prepared to defecate.  It seemed imminent.  I did what Mother taught me to do when I was two.  But I never seemed to get it right.  So I just … kept doing it.  That was December 30, 1987.

            A few years ago, someone dropped a copy of Rip Van Winkle on the floor of the adjacent stall.  God is funny.  No, I didn’t grow a 10-foot beard.  I kept a razor in my shoe – always on long flights.  Even if you lose everything you can still shave.  You can’t go into IBM looking scruffy.

            I suppose Molly left the airport a long time ago.  One day, when I do this right, I’ll marry her and have the right life.  

            I suppose my job at IBM has evaporated.  Not right, leaving without giving two weeks notice.  I’ve always felt bad about that.

            And about how Mother was abandoned again.

            I don’t consider this a waste.  No regrets.  This is just a long layover that will be over some day.

            When I do it right.

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Short Stories

The Trial of Prometheus

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”

Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

The Trial of Prometheus

            When I saw the mighty Zeus reading from Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time I had to choke back laughter.  He seemed perplexed that a mere mortal could grasp the scientific concepts behind a few tosses of lightning from Zeus’ mighty hands over a few short eons.  As he sat back in his judge’s bench twirling his beard, Zeus’ furry white unibrow undulated in confusion over the top of the paperback.  Apparently, the king of the gods was a mouth breather.

            The gods of Mount Olympus were assembled in courtroom J-7 for my trial, the honorable judge Zeus presiding.  The magnitude of what I had accomplished over human history was laid out before him on a long table.  Brickwork, woodworking, numbers, the alphabet, yokes, carriages, saddles, ships and sails, drugs, precious metal mining tools, animal sacrifices and art.  (Fire, for safety reasons, was not present; in its stead, a small placard read ‘fire.’)

            Zeus slapped the book closed and shouted, “Prometheus!”

            “Present,” I said, glibly.

            Zeus shifted in his chair, ready to proclaim punishment or throw a bolt of lightning or both.  Hera, his sister-wife, knitted quietly next to him, apparently oblivious to these proceedings.  A few other gods – Apollo, Athena, Hermes – lazed about reading old Life magazines with titles that read ‘Man of the Century,’ ‘Most Beautiful Women in Hollywood,’ etc.  Aphrodite, goddess of beauty, was shaking her head while reading an article on Julia Roberts.  From her dewy lips I could almost hear her mumble the word ‘slut.’

            Zeus cleared his throat.  “Right.  What you see before me is that which you stole from me and gave to men.  I forbid, and you do.  It’s as if you want to be the supreme deity!”

            Groveling like a pro, I said, “No, Great One, only you could rule Olympus and Earth.”

            “No one?”

            “Of course not!” I exclaimed.

            “Not even this Jesus I’ve been hearing about?”

            Just then a scruffy looking man wearing simple brown robes and a golden halo floating above his head leaned through an open doorway into the courtroom.  “Did I hear my name?”

            Zeus, never one to share a stage, said, “No, not at all.  Heh, heh.”

            Pointing at me, Jesus said, “One of yours?”

            “Yes,” Zeus said, gravely.  “A trouble-maker.”

            “That’s why we keep it simple,” replied Jesus.  “Me, dad and the ghost.  And if needs be, we can consolidate into one.”

            “Isn’t that something.”  Rolling his eyes, Zeus gave a wave to Jesus.  “Well, gotta dole out the punishment, so . . .”

            “Sure, sure, that’s your thing.”  Jesus slipped out as quietly as he came.

            Zeus peeked over his shoulder to make sure Jesus was gone.  Seeing he was, the god grumbled something about ‘hippies.’

            This distraction gave me the opportunity to position myself between Zeus and a dead eagle lying on the table.

            Suddenly, I heard the god shout, “You can’t hide anything from me!”  There was a crack of thunder and a bolt of lightning hit me in the chest, slamming me to the floor.  The pain didn’t sting so much any longer.  I had spent so many eons bound to a rock having that same eagle devour my liver every day (which would grow back every night) that nothing so paltry as a bolt of lightning would make me cower.

            “At least after that bonehead Heracles freed you he later apologized.  ‘Sorry for killing your bird, Zeus, but it seemed like a good thing to do at the time, freeing Prometheus and all.’  Would it be so hard for you to apologize?”

            “For what?”

            “For what!  For what!  Pick any damned thing off the table!”  Zeus gesticulated over the artifacts before him.  “Just one apology and I will consider mercy.”

            I studied the items in an attempt to find something I regretted giving the humans.  Then it could be over.  Zeus just wanted one apology for me.  

            Without looking up from his magazine, Apollo, god of the Sun, offered a suggestion.  “How about yoked oxen?”

            Zeus said, “No helping!”

            Apollo sat up in his chair.  “Zeus, Great One, I just wanted to point out that yoked oxen is an easy one.  No gods ever used this technology, I believe.  Humans stopped using oxen over 100 years ago.”

            Zeus said, “Well, what do you say?  Can you finally apologize and be done with this?”

            I said the first word, I, and made the required mouth embouchure for the first syllable of ‘apologize,’ but the word stuck in my throat when I remembered Agrolios, a farmer in Crete who dug troughs in his land with a stick all day and all night for months.  Yoked oxen spared Agrolios and countless others from starvation.  “I … can’t do it.”

            Hermes, the herald of the gods, made the next suggestion.  “What about precious metalworking?  Think of all the evil that came from that.”

            I shrugged.  “But the good greatly outweighs the bad.”

            Zeus said, “And of course with metalworking comes … fire.”

            I didn’t think he’d even try that one.  He waited for me to say something, but I just stared back.  I would never apologize for fire.  He and I both knew it.  But if I said so, there was no telling what the father of the gods would choose as my eternal punishment, as he surely would not tolerate such insolence.  We stared at one another as the minutes passed.

            A quick knock on the chamber door came before a lean Asian man stepped into the room.  “Ah, I see you’re not finished yet.”  No one responded.  “It’s just that Buddha,” the man turned and gestured to a fat, jolly bald man standing in the doorway, “he booked this room eons ago, and, well . . .”

            Zeus, without losing eye contact with me, said, “We’ll be finished soon.  But while he’s here, may I ask Buddha a question?”

            Buddha said, “Certainly.”

            “What is the ultimate price of obstinance?” asked Zeus.

            “One’s life.”

            “And what if one cannot die?”

            “Then one has reached enlightenment through obstinance, and it is good.”

            “And . . .”

            “Om.”

            Zeus looked back to Buddha in disbelief.  “That’s it?  This is all the Great Buddha advises?  Om?”

            “Om,” replied Buddha.

            “You have nothing else to say?  Just om.”

            “Om, motherfucker.”

            Dionysus, Greek god of partying and insanity, raised his head from a pile of cocaine he had been sleeping on and said, “Not all of us Greeks are like Oedipus!”

            Buddha and the other man then departed.

            I said, “Zeus, all of these gifts helped humans in some way at some time, even if it was an imperceptible change or occurred long ago.  I can’t apologize for any of it because to apologize would be to regret.  I don’t regret what humans have accomplished.  They deserved these gifts.”

            Zeus, pointing to an inscription written above his throne, said, “Do you see here it says ‘Zeus’, right?  Does it say ‘Zanty Claus?’  I don’t give gifts, Prometheus!”

            “Which is why I had to do it for you.”

            “You had no right!”

            Putting down her knitting, Hera interrupted.  “What about the book?”

            “What are you rambling about now?” said Zeus.

            She replied, “That very book in your hand that you slam upon the table for emphasis?”

            “Yes, yes.  So what?”

            Hera gave her husband a tilted eyebrow that conveyed a message in a physical language that the couple had developed over eons.  In response, Zeus’ unibrow rippled quizzically, to which Hera redirected her eyebrow to the book and then to me.  Zeus quickly thumbed through the first few pages.  

            Finally, he turned to me as if I hadn’t just witnessed that exchange.  Attempting smoothness, Zeus said, “Prometheus, the metaphysical realities contained in this book were gifts that you bestowed upon humankind.  Only a few human decades ago, in fact.  I don’t suppose you’d like to consider apologizing for such a recent misguided gift.”

            “Why apologize now?  Who knows what will be accomplished in the future in the realm of astrophysics?”

            “You should apologize for this knowledge because it isn’t such a big deal now.  I mean, most humans don’t even understand this book.”  The crooked, unsure smile that spread across his lips told me that he didn’t understand it either.

            I contemplated an apology.  “Yes, I could say it.  Then I could be absolved of all wrongs.  And then what?  What about me?  What about the things I suffered for?  What will I be the god of when I apologize?”  Clearing my throat, I stated, proudly, “I am Prometheus, a word that means foresight.  I see a future where humans will use the tools I’ve given them, including knowledge of astrophysics, for the benefit of all mankind.  And thus, I see a painful existence for me.”  I saw a look of pride and admiration in Zeus’ eyes, but like my refusal to apologize, the king of the gods would never permit a kind word about me to escape his lips.

            Zeus said, “Look around you.  Go ahead.  We are the only ones left.  Humans gave up on us centuries ago.  Most gods are gone.  It’s just us now.  And why?  Because we exist as things for humans to believe in.  As long as there is skepticism, we can thrive.  But mankind, with its technology and science, pushes into the unknown until we are no longer necessary.  And that is all your doing.  You gave them what they needed to survive without us, undermining all the work I did eons ago.  And I just want you to admit that you were wrong.”

            I said, “Gods use technology to further themselves only.  That’s what I discovered about your precious rule long ago.  It is vanity.  Man uses technology to become like the gods, and in so doing destroys the need for a god, and ultimately proves the nonexistence of the god.  The god is in the technology.  I gave your power away to man long ago.”

            Zeus fumed.  Had he been more reasonable over the millennia this wouldn’t have happened.  Now he was being overtaken by younger gods who knew enough to stay away from the nuts and bolts of the universe.

            Zeus said, “Someday your meddling will kill even me.  But I still have time, and while there’s time I can still deliver your final punishment.”  And with that the king of the gods zapped me in the chest one final time.  

            I awoke in the place where I am now, a void, floating under the Cosmos.  Star systems and galaxies – the entire Universe in fact – was above me.  Next to me in the Nothingness was a box of turtles.  I was on the outs, the only living thing outside of Eternity, except for my slow, hard-backed friends.  I suddenly felt the urge to place one of the creatures under the universe, then another slightly larger turtle under the first.  So on and so on, descending into blackness.

            Eons went by before I figured it out.  By then my green column had stretched further than comprehension.  Zeus had given me a pointless, impossible task of stabilizing the Universe on the back of a turtle, turtle after turtle, until I reached whatever it is out there that I can rest the whole thing on.  Someday a human will discover that there is nothing outside of the Universe, that the Universe is all there is, and thus my column of turtles will be obliterated.  Perhaps I will cease to exist as well.  Zeus would likely be gone by then, too, and without him to rebel against, what would I be?  

            I was furious at first, being the victim of my own methodology.  Hoisted on my own petard, as the saying goes.  Taken out by the very knowledge I bestowed on mankind.  But as the eons passed, I softened.  You have to go sometime.  And this fate surely beats having my liver eaten out on a daily basis.

            Onwards and upwards.

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Short Stories

Time

Circa 1995

            When we saw the back seat of Dave’s car, we started to laugh, until we realized that four of us had to spend an hour and a half folded into the glove compartment sized seat.  Lucky for him, Dave would be sitting in the passenger’s seat.  Mr. Georgini would be driving and Ben, Nora, Cindy and I would be in the back of “The Mighty Turismo.”  The Turismo was an awesome machine.  It stalled in the middle of intersections.  It released thick clouds of smoke into the air.  It trembled and began to fall apart at high speeds.  Regardless of all its eccentricities, we were still going to take it into the city to see the Mingus Big Band.  Since we were all jazz musicians and fans of jazz, this trip was almost a religious experience.  Charles Mingus hadn’t made songs; he had orchestrated adventures.  They had power, excitement, and danger in every turn.  Although Mingus was dead, his big band kept his music going.  It took me a long time for me to convince my parents that I should see them in action, but considering so well in school over the past 3 years, they eventually gave in.  Finally, via the Mighty Turismo, I would be able to see the Mingus Big Band.              

            “Hey Dave,” I said, “Did the back seat shrink in the car wash or something?” 

            “I told you guys not to eat anything this week.  You would’ve fit just fine.”  Dave hunched over, looking like an old magician, and said in a wise, confidential tone, “You see the mighty Turismo is a deceptive creature.  It’s giving you the illusion that it is small when in fact it is quite spacious.” 

            We were not fooled.  Ben and I sat by the windows with our heads tilted to the side to match the sharp angle of the window.  Nora and Cindy sat with their feet between the two front seats.  When the car hit bumps, we all hit our heads on the ceiling.  When we went over speed bumps, the bottom of the car scraped against the concrete.  When the Turismo struggled up hills, we had to pet the dashboard and say encouraging things to it.   

            We spent the first part of the trip listening to Mr. Georgini’s high school stories.  He and his friends would march in different directions in the marching band, play songs in the wrong key on purpose, and basically do everything else that he won’t let us do now.  He seemed very excited because as he told the stories, he turned his eyes away from the road to face us.  I kept trying to think of a story to tell about our high school experiences, but I couldn’t think of one.  I looked around at all the people in the car and thought of something we might have done together that would be interesting.  But the more I thought about it, the more depressed I felt.  I had a few classes with Nora and Cindy, but all of those stories would be about boring classes and boring teachers.  I knew Ben and Dave well, but we just hung out in school together most of the time.  It never occurred to us to do anything exciting, and if we did think of something there were always rules and consequences to fear.  So, as seniors with about four months left together, we were just beginning to live. 

            It was around ten at night and the streets of Manhattan were curiously quiet.  Cindy said that the city folk were intimidated by the Turismo so they stayed indoors.  We pulled up next to a car at a stop light.  Ben had the great idea to have a race with the guy.  The guys in our car all looked over and gave the guy in the other car an intimidating stare while Mr. Georgini revved the engine.  Cindy moaned and said “this is so stupid” and Nora just put her hand up by her face and remained embarrassed.  The light turned green suddenly, and we had the guy beaten for the first five feet.  Then he blew past us and settled his car down at the next stop light.  We caught up to him and tried once more when the next light turned green.  As before, the first five feet were ours, but the rest was hopeless. We continued this game for a few blocks until the guy in the other car had to turn off down a side street.  Dave said he must have been intimidated by the Mighty Turismo and had to scamper off in his cowardice. 

            We hit a pocket of traffic a few blocks from the club.  We were worried now because the time was running out and the line was expected to be long.  In addition to this, we were really starting to feel cramped.  Mr. Georgini was using his horn liberally.  Apparently, the cars around us didn’t like the music we were blasting because the dirty looks were as abundant as the rival sound systems.  The green lights were shorter than our fuses, and soon we were yelling at Georgini to use his horn more.  A cab cut us off from getting a parking space right in front of the club so Dave asked Mr. Georgini if he could shout obscenities at the driver.  After Georgini’s approval, Brain rolled down the window and shouted the word “obscenities!” to the stares of many passersby. 

            We circled the block a few more times, gave up, and went down two blocks and found a parking garage.  Opening the doors immediately, we exploded out onto the pavement.  We walked quickly down the sidewalk, but not quickly enough because when we entered the first room in The Time Cafe, we could see the line stretching all the way to the bathroom.   The wall facing the street was all glass and the city lights from outside bounced off the white walls inside the room.  The place was like a restaurant, with tables set upon on one end, a bar on the other and the whole place surrounded by plants.  It was a very bright, forest-like room and at first I was very impressed.  But then I started examining things more closely.  The men passed me by with blank, expressionless faces, plastic Ken-doll-like hair, and clothes that made them look like they just stepped off the cover of “GQ.”  The women looked too beautiful; almost like mannequins on display to attract patrons. 

            After spending too much time in the first room, the line suddenly moved along quickly.  I found out later that a group of about 15 people from Pine Bush were on line, but they left when they discovered that Mingus himself wound not be playing that night.  The next room I waited in reminded me of a brothel.  It was dark, smoky, and filled with lamps with little furry balls hanging off the lampshades.  We caught the end of the waiting line in this room.  I looked around and saw men and women lounging around on low couches sipping drinks and smoking.  We were being shoved and pushed around by people who needed to get to the other end of the brothel to “mingle.”  Two idiots behind me kept asking me if I was on this line because I had reservations, to which I replied ‘yes’ repeatedly.  A man on my left started hitting on a woman on my right as if I wasn’t even there.  I couldn’t believe these people could stand around and chat while an incredible event was about to happen downstairs.   

            Ben, who stood in front of me, turned around and said, loud enough for everyone around us to hear, “I don’t know if I’m going to be alright tonight.  Having tuberculosis is really starting to slow me down.”  After that we got a little more space.  Ben will say anything. 

            At last, after about an hour on line, we broke through to the ticket counter, paid, and made our way down the flight of stairs, down a dark hallway and into an underground room painted in dark colors.  It was dark and smoky and people sat around with drinks, but it wasn’t like the brothel.  The people in this room had something in common: they were filled with excitement in anticipation of music they were dying to hear.  They were an audience. 

            We were lucky enough to get a seat, and, even though it was towards the back of the club, at least it was facing the stage head on.  In reality there was no stage; just a section of the room filled with chairs and instruments with nothing to emphasize it but a few spotlights.  When the band settled into their seats, the whole club sat up, filled with anticipation.  A black man with dreadlocks, a wide-brimmed hat and a poncho stood up and introduced the band.  Mr. Georgini said that was Frank Lacy, but I called him Poncho Rasta Man, because he needed an incredible name to accompany all the amazing things he did throughout the show. 

            He started out playing the trombone while conducting the band, then moved to trumpet, then to flugelhorn, delivering magnificently deranged solos on each.  He even sang a song. The other soloists were also amazing.  They would start out with something mild, but as soon as the rest of the band came in with background lines, the soloist would explode, the energy from the band boosting him.  For one of the songs, the emcee introduced John Stubblefield as being an accomplished saxophonist who had played with Miles Davis in the past.  After everyone applauded, expecting him to take a solo, the emcee announced that John would be playing the tambourine during the next song.  After a burst of laughter from the crowd and a humble nod from John, the next song began.  Towards the end, Stubblefield put the tambourine down, picked up his saxophone, and took the most incredible solo I’ve ever heard.  He went on for several minutes, pushed forward from the energy from the band and the crowd.  At certain points he would stop and scream “Oh yeah!” in which the audience would scream in return.  After a while he closed his eyes and played the keys at the top of the saxophone with both hands and played the ones at the bottom with the inside of his raised leg.  The man was so intense, he didn’t even bother to stop to breath: he just played through his mouth and inhaled through his nose–don’t ask me how.  When Stubblefield decided to end the solo, the last song was over–too soon if you ask me.  We got out of our booth and headed to the door as we bounced around all the things we liked most about the show. 

            As we made it toward the door, Dave, who happens to be a saxophone player, bumped into John Stubblefield.  When Dave saw who it was, he said, “It’s you!” with his arms outstretched in admiration. 

            Stubblefield copied Dave’s expression and said, “It’s you!” in return. 

            Then Dave thought for a second and said, “Wait a minute, I’m nobody!”

            Stubblefield complimented Dave’s shirt, which said something like “Make Music Not Garbage,” and then we left.  This time I got the passenger seat of the Mighty Turismo. 

            I started thinking about how much fun I had and how it was stupid of us to wait until the end of our senior year to do this.  While on the subject of stupidity, I thought about how ridiculous high school is.  It’s nothing but a long journey with many pains and fruitless assignments and the final reward in the end is to get a few months with your friends before you graduate and never see them again.  You will see them again, of course, but they will be different.  You come back from college and see them over the vacations and you realize that you’re no longer a part of their present or their future.  You’re only a part of their past.  When I look back on high school now I don’t care about the grades I got or failed to get.  I only regret not spending more time with my friends, doing the things we enjoyed doing.  Time is the only enemy.  It will win in the end, but if you make the most of it, the beating won’t be so bad. 

            My thoughts were jolted by the sound of the Turismo’s stereo blasting the Mingus classic “Better Git Hit In Your Soul.”  I can’t say anything more than this: if you haven’t heard this song, your soul is lost.  The Mighty Turismo wasn’t much of a car, but the stereo was the best around.  It was the perfect way to end an evening where every minute was spent to the fullest.  It was quite an adventure:  it was powerful, it was dangerous, it was exciting.  It had style. 

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Trash Talk

No One Cares

Do you eat the years?  Do your hungry eyes mash the sunset in salivating jowls?  Do I agree with myself about our first meeting?  That was when you freestyled everything from my dance to my haircut, peeled my eyes with a hockey stick in the dusk with gnats, gnashed your eye teeth at my audition song.  You didn’t see potential through the enamel.  You seen it?  

Corinthian, you are blue-eyed souled-out David Bowie in linen white slacks, you are camel hair Italian suedey blues, you are scotch eggs 190 proof, you are enlightened darkness, you believe in leavened dorkness.  A touch from your dongle could infect billions of ones and zeros.  

I’m sorry that you got divorced, oh great reader of comic books and people.  Could you read your wife as well as you read me?  Was it the gambling?  Were impossible stakes in your vows?  Detach, detached, no attachments, no reproachments, no encroachments, no breath mints, no window tints, no fake tizzies, sham sham do away with them them.  

And under a dark cloud the dark wizard passes the time with me.  A prison I put us into.  Funny, I wonder if the monkeys in the cage hate their jailers, or just the baboons on the shady side of the footpath.  Why must those who have it together be in my eyeline?  Dark wizard, you fueled the rage we felt for the baboons, and I stood beside you ready to throw my shit.  But when target practice was over and it came to throw shit or get off the pot, where were you?  In bed reading your disorganized chemistry book.  Boy, the baboons didn’t like us, but really me, after that. Then the jailers gave me a lecture.  And you bailed, wizard.  You ran like a fucking coward.  Then what do you do?  You throw your shit at me!  The nerve of people!

Aardvark, get your protractors and rulers and measure my steps.  I take giant ones, like Coltrane-sized. You wouldn’t know.  Aardvark, you screw up your ugly face to talk to me in facial vortex.  It is difficult to look at you.  First off, only birds fly that high to get a good look.  That’s the only good look you ever get.

Those that get close to me may want to do me harm.  I’ve suffered too.  I’ve privileged out at a low level.  I’ve been bullied, crossed, joke-butted, smothered and covered.  And no one cares.

You care about cats competing for pets, the Players’ Ball of Chicago, a California Pizza Chicken Shake Shack, and a love supreme pizza.  You care about James Bond, the new cadillac, recycling, upcycling, unicycling, bike paths, and swaths of yoga pants on racks under air conditioning.  Pick pockets in France.  Where the Laker ladies dance.  Bip – that’s a rimshot on the Mars rover.

“Talk that gibberish, fool.”  Please.  Don’t act like I don’t make sense, all day every day, every customer served.  I just can’t pretend like you.  That it all lines up in the ledger correctly.  That it will all come out in the wash.  I hate all of you equally.  For reasons.  For documented slights of hand and mouth.

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Money Jungle

Tremulant

Skin rituals and pills, snow shaking out like a salt shaker.  One day an outline of snow will circle this city like a bullseye target for Zeus’ mighty arrow.  How he will hurl space satellites at this crater, terminating all of our worthless jobs.  Hail, hail Freedonia!

A bell sounds in my spleen. I punch holes in the walls and sing Irish drinking songs to my long lost security deposit. Inside collapsing buildings, inside collapsing bodies. A collapsing culture, and future. Up, up and away to … Mars!

Shadow puppets. There is a cutup art painting sculpture on the wall. The rotary phone dial counts tonight’s seconds by and an angular handset sleeps in the cradle. All the horrors of the world are thrown together to form a shadow over the sculpture. The shadow is a woman’s figure, her head covered in a fur hat and her collar turned up against the cold. The candle trembles her, shivering on this snowy night, and the phone rests in her mind, unringing. Will someone call her and warm her up? Who has the number? What is imagination’s area code? If there is a woman for every man, then there is a man for every woman, and if there is a phone number for every home then her soul has one, and only her soul mate knows it. Yet he never calls. I pass by this wall six million times per day. Whoever is playing hard to get better get it together!

Tremulous. It means to tremble in voice or emotion or both. To mean what you say so much your voice cracks. To shake with rage, regret or revulsion. I’ve done this for so long to anonymous memories. Nails bitten and pounded into the walls. You can’t build an alter in a collapsing structure. Hear that, Compassionate Conservative!

My insanity is I imagine myself impressing trembling girls from my high school.  I shake the cosmos with my time traveling, and they all know I’m the man-boy who has become a boy-man.  Bits of memory fall from my past like boulders from a rockslide.  I put them together as Stony the Rock Person, a carrot for a nose.  He’s my bass player.  We act out fantasies in D minor.  I’m a modernist.  I build.  Caveat emptor!

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Short Stories

In a Silent Way

His pain monster rides high in the saddle, on his shoulders, playing patty cake on his head, wearing the hair thin on his pate.  The pain monster pushes him into bars, barring his escape after a drink quenches his thirst.  When he’s done, the monster makes him stumble out under its scaled legs.

Sleeping is difficult with the rank stench of digested dreams in the air.  The man tosses and turns, tense in unconsciousness.

The man’s pain monster rides his mount all day with its paws placed directly over the man’s eyes.  He can look to the side and see garbage, sewage, leakage, but never in front.  The pain monster steers him down the path of seeing it all yet seeing nothing.

The man’s name is Alan, but the pain monster calls him “Grimm’s Revenge.” Like a thoroughbred racehorse. “Put $400 on Grimm’s Revenge to commit suicide in the 53rd year, 10 to 1 odds!” 

Alan doesn’t call the pain monster any name because he doesn’t know it’s there at all.  He just feels something on top of him.  But Alan is a realist — reason tells him these feelings come from the past.  The feelings follow divorce, which followed a bad marriage, which followed a good marriage, which followed being dumb kids.  He can look up to the summit of his life and see the slope that carried him down to the bottom.  He could look in any direction he wants and never see the pain monster.  It’s always out of sight, like shaving cream on the back of the ear.  The people who would have told Alan about the pain monster have been pushed away. 

Julie was with him a few years ago.  She was divorced too, and she had a pain monster.  The four of them double-dated.  Alan didn’t love Julie and vice versa.  They coupled, talked about how everyone else was a moron.  Their kind of happiness.

But the pain monsters couldn’t leave it alone.  They liked the action.  Julie’s pain monster bet Alan’s pain monster that Alan would propose marriage.  Alan’s pain monster greedily accepted and set Alan towards the right path.  Alan saw what he needed to see.  Not the good times he shared with Julie, but those times apart when he grew suspicious.  Not happy pictures on vacation, but all of those bridal pictures in Julie’s magazines.  What was she thinking when she stared at those pictures?

Should he test himself to see if he could do it again?  His ex-wife remarried.  She could do it.  Could he?

Alan never did propose.  But he thought of nothing else. Meanwhile, Julie was irritated, because by this point her pain monster was showing her Alan’s signs of willingness to commit:  a bank brochure about joint accounts, less time spent with his friends, etc.  Stasis drove them apart just as shared discord attracted them.

Alan was alone then.  But was he ever truly alone?  Why, pain monster, what a big gut you have!  Who better to drink with, my friend?  Why, pain monster, what terrible fangs you have!  How do you think I suck your life force, Grimm’s Revenge?  Why, pain monster, what big eyes you have!  All the better to see the world for you!

There is only one thing Alan does now and then to stop this thing, though he has no idea how much it helps him.  Photographs show us the instantaneous moment of happiness, and the good pictures are genuine – nobody needed to be told to smile.  

He still keeps a few shots of his wife when they were so young that they were other people.  They had different skin, and walked and talked like strangers.  And they were happy.

Alan is most fond of a picture taken of himself and Julie in Virginia Beach.  It was their first trip together in Alan’s brand new Mustang convertible.  A new girl and a new car.  Happiness could still come.  

When the drinks finally hit and his eyes relax, the pain monster steers Alan’s gaze away from Julie’s smiling face to the rear end of the Mustang to the axle that snapped, to the backseat where they had that dumb fight, to the transmission that fell apart at 40,000 miles.  Suddenly, he regrets all of it – the vacation, the car, the girl, the life.

And the pain monster wins again without making a sound.    

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Money Jungle

Beast

The tank is empty and the Beast still goes.  It still wants to.  Even though it is itchy.  Beleaguered by lice, no doubt.  Lousy with doubts, besieged with guilt, wandering with a keening yawp in the night, waking up not remembering.  Not sleeping soundly, soundlessly escaping through cracks in the window, ceiling, floor.  Slipping out like a thin slice of nostalgia after too much wine.

The Beast is out, wandering the night, saying nothing.  It isn’t embarrassed as it is in daylight, choked in a suit and tie, paw nails trimmed, hair matted down, fangs clean and gleaming.  No blood, just protein, unsaturated fat and lean carbohydrates in a perfect concoction.  Blended, a swill drained into the gullet and absorbed quickly.  There is no flavor to be savored.

Beast, now out and about, cool, eluding the authorities, that Beast.  The Beast in cigarette ads, beer ads, selling whiskey to children.  The Beast embroidered on the jackets of bad women sailing down the boulevard on the backs of choppers, in El Caminos and Eldorados, leaning up against street lights.  Aghast mommies in passenger seats sailing by with their driver daddies who close windows and tighten their grips on pistols.  The Beast has nothing to say.  He doesn’t speak their language.

During the world’s waking hours, the Beast transforms into the Monster that survives under fluorescent lights.  A Monster that thrives in air conditioned nightmarish echo chambers, fraught with doubt, the whole beehive communicating through stress chants, ultrasonic wavelengths emanating from their receding hairlines.  They communicate using the monkey chatter of clenched, ground down teeth.  “Ggggrreeeeeaaaattttt, mmmmmmammmammannnn.”  Another and another and another, casualties picked apart casually, dissected and evaluated for cost-growth strategies.  Let down.

The Beast and the Monster fight.  The Beast, while winning, has the cool humility that any hero strives for.  He knows the war will always slide his way, he feels it and knows it, he can bide his time until the sun goes down.  He knows he has always been there and always will be.  The Monster had to be invented, taught, shown how to work and how to feed itself.  The Beast laughs.

Beauty, as she is sought after, is affectionate, perfect, unattainable.  When she passes by, the flowers perk up, forked tongued serpents smile and grimacing frogs blush.  She is the distraught modern damsel in the clutches of corporate King Kong, hanging from the thirty fifth floor from a martini glass, wondering how it got to this point.  Going with the flow.  Not rocking the boat, biding her time.  Ready to be rescued from no particular distress but the boring, inarticulate present that surrounds her.  Ready to be whisked into eternity, past, future, limbo, hell, ecstasy.

The Beast, the Monster, the boys in the band, the man in the tie, they are the underdogs.  Beauty is up there, they toil.  The Beast will win her, he knows it, in the end.  The rest get the script, memorize and highlight, study inflection, and wait for action.  High infidelity occurs in the first and second acts.  The intermission is infinitely short, photos are taken, some go home.  The Beast is backstage, resting.  He idly twists his mane into a lock like a finger pointing to his heart.

Curtains up, the Beast has claws out, ready for riposte against the thrust of the Monster’s pen.  Beauty swoons.  Beast jumps; it is impressive.  Monster does the robot; it is not.  A dance number.  Two clowns sing the chorus part.  King Kong farts outside and the doors are closed, biohazard warnings are issued.  The Neighborhood Watch deputizes the ushers, they douse the audience in pepper spray like cologne in a college freshman bathroom.  Someone’s boss says, “Weeelllll, IIIIII nnnneeeevveeerr!”  The teeth-grinding sound scares the animal act away, the manager hangs himself with his widow’s pearls.  The Beast looks around for Beauty.

Outside, Beast is cool.  He turns away from the melee, clearing his head, smoking a banana peel, cooling off.  Beauty’s gone off.  It may not be the right time.  He finds himself in an all night diner that serves the Monster Mash Special, plays nothing but Andrew Lloyd Weber.  The Beast sits in a booth and orders black tar pudding.  She will come to him, in the end.  He knows it.  He grabs a lock of hair from his chin to use as a quill, dips it in the blood red monster mash and begins writing a love letter on the back of the playbill.  He never stops, the sun never rises.

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Nostalgias

1989

            As a young adolescent I wasn’t cool enough to know about anything cool.  The year 1989 was a breakout time for me – both in my interests and in terms of my acne.  Prior to that year it was all Weird Al and whatever I heard on pop radio.  Before 1989 all I wanted was to keep my toe in the water so that I didn’t fall completely behind in youth culture and wind up asking “What’s a Fresh Prince?” or not understanding that ‘bad’ was ‘good’ and ‘rad’ was radically better.

            What people don’t know these days is that the 80s didn’t end until 1992, so in 1989 we were definitely still into hair metal, hair spray, leather and denim jackets, hockey player and mullet haircuts, Paula Abdul and the mall.  The big event that year was Tim Burton’s Batman film, which had a soundtrack performed by Prince.  Every publication slammed this album, suggesting that he had lost his golden touch.  I was into everything Batman that year but Prince gave me a weird feeling.  I really liked “Batdance,” the lead single from the soundtrack.  I hated what that might mean.  As funny as I think this is today, I thought that liking Prince meant you were gay.  I was a fan of Guns and Roses, Poison, Van Halen and Mötley Crüe, all of whom flirted with or fully committed to androgyny, but Prince was a step over the line to me.  In my twenties, after Prince changed his name from a symbol back to being Prince again, I decided at long last that I could begin buying Prince albums.  In defiance of my 13 year old biases I remain a straight Prince fan to this day.  And I really like the Batman soundtrack.

            I entered junior high school in the fall of 1989.  My history teacher was the type of person who wanted the students to think he was still cool.  It got annoying.  A former athlete, he teased students like a jock does, pointing out things about their appearance they had little control over.  But he allowed one cool moment to happen:  he found out that a girl from Jamaica was an aspiring rapper, so he let her rap one day.  Somebody pounded a beat on a desk for her and she went for it, mixing in Jamaican patois with American slang.  Hip-hop was not used to sell laundry detergent like it is today, and you didn’t hear it in Disney movies or on Broadway.  This was possibly a first – a freestyle rap asked for and condoned by an authority figure in a public school.  I still remember how this normally quiet girl came to life as she rapped in front of the blackboard.

            I also remember that, for some reason, there was a collection of plastic WWF pro wrestling figures hanging from the ceiling over the students’ heads.  I had to take a standardized test under the watchful, cocked eye of one of the Bushwhackers*.

            The other unforgettable item in this classroom was an enviable hi-fi stereo and speakers, and most days while we completed worksheets we were allowed to listen to the rock station.  This is where I got to hear the B-52s’ “Love Shack” every day (like my Prince dilemma, it took me a few decades to admit that this is my all time favorite song).

            The other song that played every day that autumn was called “Love in an Elevator” by some new band called Aerosmith.  In the song, the singer seemed to be advocating the joys of making love inside the confines of an elevator.  I was fascinated.  After watching the music video, I confirmed that indeed this band was very fond of using this manner of conveyance in their love making.  It was then that I decided I needed to buy this cassette tape.

            This wasn’t just any other purchase.  This would mark the first time I would buy a tape with my own money, the first time outside of my comfort zone. 

            But I’d have to sneak it past my parents.  They were not very restrictive over content.  If they thought I’d enjoy a critically acclaimed movie I could watch it no matter what the rating.  No books were ever off limits.  On the other hand, they seemed to believe Tipper Gore and the PMRC** when she said that children needed protection from certain records.  One time, after reading a Newsweek exposé on the rowdy Beastie Boys and their degenerate fans, my father came to me inquiring if I too felt the need to fight for my right to party.  And he was serious.

            Now, as a parent, I understand the concern.  You don’t want your son to get any weird ideas.  And at 13 I was completely in the dark about sex.  I didn’t know what it meant when Steven Tyler sang “go-ing dooowwwnnn” suggestively on “Love in an Elevator,” but I knew enough from context clues that it was A) something I needed to know more about and B) something I needed to hide. 

            One Saturday morning I talked him into taking me to the record store.  I found the Aerosmith cassette tapes, but since I didn’t know they were around since the early seventies I had trouble locating the one I wanted.  I couldn’t ask the clerk – what if he and my dad were in cahoots?  I found the album Pump, saw that it had the track I heard in class, and bought it. 

            In the car, my dad told me to play the tape in the tape deck.  I was nobody’s fool.  This wasn’t a question.  I couldn’t say, “I can wait until I get home.”  This was an inspection and I wanted to pass.  I quickly scanned the names on side A to find a few tunes for the short ride home.  First side, first track:  “Young Lust.”  As a regular attendee of Catholic mass, I knew the definition of lust and assumed Mr. Tyler wasn’t going to be subtle on that track.  Further on that side I had to face “Love in an Elevator” and “Janie’s Got a Gun,” two tracks I had no way of defending on the spot.  The third single, “The Other Side,” started side B and it was an innocuous jam, catchy and empty headed.  My play was to fast forward the tape to side two and let the chips fall where they may.

            My father’s tape deck had a convenient technological advancement that allowed you to seek the gaps between songs.  Thus, hitting the fast forward button once would only get you to the next song, not all the way to the end of the side.  I had to pretend I didn’t understand how this fast forward button worked and press it five times while my father looked at me like I was one of the apes at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

            Aerosmith became my new obsession.  I quickly realized that in my attempt to become cool I had become a fan of a very cool band.  I learned about their longevity, the drugs, the breakup and the comeback.  Every time I saved $7.99 I would buy a new cassette tape, starting with Toys in the Attic (because I had heard “Walk this Way” somewhere), then Permanent Vacation (because you couldn’t escape “Dude Looks Like a Lady”) and on and on until I had all of their output.  “Walk This Way” is one of the best rock and roll songs ever recorded, a perennial favorite for inclusion on my mixtapes.  I remember listening to their self-titled debut album on the bus one morning.  Imagine hearing “Dream On” for the first time and having to process that at 7 am.  It struck me at once as moving and profound yet depressing, as if life was already over.  In essence, if you think you’re going to be anything you had better dream on.

            Once I had obtained every studio and live recording released between 1973 and 1989 I had my opinion of what was the best.  The first four albums – Aerosmith, Get Your Wings, Toys in the Attic and Rocks – and Pump were the absolute best.  I could find no fault in them.  They swung harder than any band, the riffs were dirty and dynamic, and the sexual innuendo, from what I could understand, made me feel bad, as in good.

            But then came the nineties.  You know the story – Nirvana, Seattle, grunge, alternative.  Hair metal died a quick death.  Did that matter to my favorite rock and roll band?  Not really.  Pearl Jam was just as inspired by Aerosmith as Guns n Roses was, even though Eddie Vedder only wanted to talk about Neil Young and the Who.  Aerosmith still got love on MTV and from younger artists, like the Black Crowes. 

            My love for the band was tempered when they released a single called “Livin’ on the Edge” from their 1993 album Get a Grip.  I watched the video for this tune and immediately my heart sank.  “There’s something wrong with the world today/ I don’t know what it is …”

            Oh, no.  Steven Tyler, the man who told me about his young lust only a few years prior, was turning into an old man.  As a teenager, all you hear from older generations is that “kids don’t know anything,” “back in my day …,” “the country is going to hell,” etc.  The song was comfortably delivering curmudgeonnish tripe like this, and I hated it.  It didn’t help that the record’s three huge singles, “Amazing,” “Crying” and “Crazy,” were the same song rewritten three different ways with varying amounts of country music affectations.  At least “Eat the Rich” was cool, but in pre-iTunes times one did not simply walk into Sam Goody and obtain a record on the strength of one song.  That album was a hard pass for me.

            I did pay attention to the band, though.  Their MTV unplugged set was revelatory – proof that a band that played together for two decades had the chops.  A three disc box set, Pandora’s Box, revealed many treasures, including a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Rattlesnake Shake” that has to be heard to be believed.  A late career album, the awfully titled Honkin’ on Bobo, was exactly what I needed – proof positive that Aerosmith could still do it.

            Then again, you had to see Steven Tyler as a judge on American Idol.  Was that okay?  What about the band cutting back on touring and instead serving a residency in Las Vegas?  What are they, the rock and roll Rat Pack?  And how much longer did I want to see Tyler sassafrassin’ around on stage, singing about getting laid like he was still a teenager? 

            Meanwhile, I had gotten serious.  I had a corporate job (sadly, only a one story building, so no elevator).  I had begun listening to Radiohead.  I began denying that I was an Aerosmith fan.  Hiding it.  As I became more sophisticated they became synonymous with beer bellies, fireworks and monster trucks.  Aerosmith was dirtbag music.

            Then I figured out something that I had a hard time comprehending at first.  Steven Tyler and my father are the same age, born within months of each other in 1948***.  When the band released its first record, my dad was a newlywed.  The same year that Aerosmith had their first big tour, I was born.  And when Mr. Tyler was boogie-footin’ around in 1989 my dad was going to work.  As they aged in the new millennia, both were prone to embarrassing themselves, but Tyler was rewarded for it.  Nobody ever seemed to say, “Christ, you’re in your seventies now!  Stop singing songs about chasing women!”

            Then I reached my early forties, the same age as Tyler during the period of time between Pump and Get a Grip.  What am I like now?  I’m not a former athlete trying to look cool around seventh graders.  I’m also not some legendary musician that exudes coolness.  But you know what?  I’d like a little young lust back in my life.  I’d like to feel F-I-N-E fine once in a while.  And if somebody copped a feel in an elevator now and then, what’s the harm?

            Looks like I’m a dirtbag after all!

*The Bushwackers were a tag team from New Zealand that licked each other’s cheeks.  It seemed that the WWF were implying that they were inbred hillbillies.

**Out of touch Boomer organization that created Parental Advisory labels for albums with explicit language.

***Same year as Billy Crystal.

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Trash Talk

24 Hour Revenge Therapy

10/3/06

You work out to build the muscle underneath your tarp of skin, piling it so high that the covering stretches and fat has no choice but burn up or join the mound of flesh.  When everywhere is muscle you will be complete.  Finished.  But you can’t go home.  Home is waste, fat, temptation.  Stay here.  It’s 24-hour now.  Think about the woman who looked at you as less than a man.  If she could see you now.  How about that guy in traffic?  Bet he didn’t think much of you when he cut you off.  Blue Pontiac thinks your Pacific-Northwest-gray Nissan Sentra (wearing worn, indecipherable bumper stickers, college parking passes from the Clinton years and a too-big-to-ignore/too-small-to-fix dimple dent on its bumper) is a waistoid vehicle blighting the traffic real estate.  Do overhead presses and imagine throwing your hunk of shit car at his head!  I’d tell you to imagine throwing it over a cliff and washing your hands of it’s “fix me” lights, but that’s too high-concept for you now that testosterone is the junk to your hungry bones.  Just get your revenge while expelling stress while inflating muscle. You know, multi-task.  It never has to end.  When you need sleep you don’t have to leave.  Sleep in our beds, tanning all night long. For food, why spend all that time, money and gas buying food and eating it?  We have protein smoothies, which can be consumed through straw, IV drip or “other.”  You never need to separate from us here at Global Fitness.  We bring the world to you.

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Poetry? Oh-No-etry!

The Ghosts of Numbers

For E — thanks for the title

Time is an infinitely long number 2 pencil eternally sharpened by hand crank mechanisms.

I have a friend who never laughs when he cheats death.

We once dated the same girl; the other night I dreamed of her old digits.

You measure a man by his number of mattresses: firm, coil, soft, latex. Hybrids when he’s confused.

His time on earth is a winter beanie never covering his ears.

In Irish folklore, there are many stories where the card player cheats Death and the reader laughs even though Death writes the sequel.

What do you do in the spare time? Rub 40 proof tequila goo on your body. Affix your breathing apparatus before you assist the child next to you.

Go long. Intervals of 3 and 7. The ghosts of touchdowns past inside a burrito inside a taco inside a super bread bowl.

What now? Marry someone. Their worst smell is their realest, their dart never joining yours on the color swatch.

Death is when an oversharpened number 2 pencil tip snaps off for no reason at all or for all the reasons, falling into God knows where.

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