Part Three: Petey
Petey Pappas told me that he never used his real name because he didn’t know what his real name was. He was raised in the lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans by mute parents and a mean spirited older sister. He knew his sister’s name. His sister’s name was pearl. Whenever Petey asked his sister what his name was, she would give him a different answer…every time. So, Petey, finding it easier than contradicting her, stopped asking and accepted whatever name his sister gave him at any given time. Because his parents were mute, they could not repudiate his sister’s edicts. His sister’s name was not really Pearl either. It was a name that she adopted.
She had come across the name ‘Pearl Prentiss’ in a batch of birth certificates that she had stolen from the mute parent’s doctor. Petey’s parents were named Moe and Marsha. Moe and Marsha McMannis; Mister and Mrs. That was not their real name either, in fact, they were not his real parents.
Petey didn’t know when his birthday was either; he could only go by what Pearl told him. Pearl would change his name and his birthday on impulse. One day Petey came home from school and Pearl had a cake waiting for him. The cake said “HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROBERT!” It had an icing drawing on the top of the cake of a cowboy on a rearing black stallion with a lasso that he was twirling right around the name ROBERT. The side of the cake had the sweet white flesh of coconut on it and a spiral trimming of azure blue. The lettering and the drawing of the cowboy, stallion and lasso were on a snow white background; it smelled like heaven.
As she lit the candles, she explained to Petey that his real name was Robert and that today was his birthday; Petey believed her and wanted to know what the day’s date was so that he could mark it down. Pearl exclaimed (as she always did) “April Fools!” and Petey, now Robert, believed her; the actual date was June 12th. At the birthday table a chair had been set for Maureen, a headless doll. Pearl told Robert that Maureen was his other older sister and that she, pearl, had decapitated her (Maureen), because she refused to obey her (Pearl). Naturally Petey/Robert believed her. Pearl also told him that the new kitten that she had found could actually speak to her in English. Petey would take a long time before he disobeyed Pearl or questioned her. That’s how it was when Petey was growing up; at least that’s what he told me. He also told me never to believe him about anything.
Pearl was a kleptomaniac that had St. Elmo’s Fire seizures, that’s how she came to be in Moe and Marsha’s doctor’s office. While the doctor and nurse were trying to get information from the mute parents, the young girl was thief enough, even in her starry eyed condition, to glom a fistful of the doctor’s documents, among them couple of dozen copies of stillborn birth records and stash them in her book bag. One of the certificates was in the name of ‘Pearl Prentiss’; the rest was herstory.
Mr. and Mrs. McMannis, along with Petey and Pearl, lived in a camel back house on St. Maurice St. Saint Maurice is the patron saint of infantrymen, armies and oddly enough weavers and dyers. I say oddly enough because the McMannis household was a household of weavers. The adult McMannis’ were weavers of bath mats, you know, the kind that are made from scraps of materials braided together in an oval shape? Pearl wove fabrications and Petey grew up weaving possibilities.
Moe McMannis roamed the streets and alleyways late at night, gathering rags to bring home to the missus. Marsha cleaned and disinfected them with the vigor of the demon possessed; of which she was one. Later into the evening the adults would weave the scraps into mats, Pearl would fashion falsehoods into realities and Petey would fantasize about the meaning of life and the workings of his universe.
Petey used to fantasize about his other brothers and sisters. Pearl had told him that he had four other brothers and three other sisters and she pointed with pride at the seven cigar boxes by the space heater in her room where she kept their ashes. Each box was labeled with the names of the departed siblings. Pearl often told Petey of the tortures that she had inflicted on each one before she killed them and cremated them in the space heater, prior to labeling and boxing them. She told Petey that if he ever looked into one of the cigar boxes that the spirit of the dead child would escape in a cloud of ashes and choke him to death. She also told Petey that she wasn’t quite done with Maureen yet and that Maureen was still alive and that if Petey listened closely, in the dead of night (pun intended), he would be able to hear poor Maureen’s screams as she begged for death. She also showed him two empty cigar boxes that she said were reserved for him and Maureen. She also told him that her pet feline had revealed to her that his name was Professor Morriarity and that if he (Petey) crossed her in any way the Professor would tell her straight away and there would be hell to pay.
Moe and Marsha often wondered why little whatshisname slept with pillows covering his head. Moe and Marsha didn’t know Petey from a turkey giblet, and no matter how many times Pearl had used sign language to explain his presence they remained baffled at his presence. They finally eased their confusion when they decided that he probably came with the house. The condition of miscommunication occurred because Pearl signed in the English language and the McMannis’ only understood sign language in their native language. It was a language that they had made up because neither one of them could get the hang of their native language signs, which were in Macedonian; and who could blame them.
Petey came to a sad realization on his fifty fourth birthday when he was sixteen; that is to say that Pearl had given him fifty four birthday parties, an average of three point five per year. Pearl was a real nut for birthday parties and she bought birthday cakes at the day old bakery counter and fashioned Petey into whatever name was written on the cake; on occasion she would regress Petey’s age, like when she bought a cake that said “HAPPY FOURTH BIRTHDAY LITTLE RALPH” when Petey was eleven.
Anyway, Petey’s mournful epiphany was this: Petey finally realized that his sister was lying to him with every breath and that she was using him like a frigging tool for her own warped amusement and that he was destined to be her plaything for the rest of his miserable life because he was too weak to do otherwise. Truth be told, it had taken the cat months to get Petey to answer the ‘get-a-clue phone (you know, “ring ring? GET A CLUE Petey!). Better late than never, you say? Well, that was before Petey met the librarian.
From the time that Petey was little, Pearl had dropped him off at the Martin Luther King branch of the New Orleans public library system and told that it was school. He was also told that if he misbehaved that he would suffer a worse fate than his sister Maureen, and Petey wanted ever so much to keep his head on his shoulders.
To Pearl’s credit Petey did not lack for education; she schooled him at home and gave him lists of things to take from library shelves to read and understand. She started him easy and advanced him as required, even giving him diplomas and graduation parties with her and Maureen. The cakes that were served had nothing written on them. Petey advanced through the grades and sections of the library until one day a young librarian stopped by the corner of the library that Petey had used for years as his desk and workspace. He was reading a book called The Art of War by Sun Tzu. By this time Petey was a long gangly youth with peach fuzz and acne on his face; his ears, nose and feet were four sizes too big for his frame. When he was older he would learn that this life stage was called ‘adolescence’ and was quite natural.
The librarians name was Anne Kenney. Anne Kenney was twenty years old, willow thin and as pretty as a speckled pup on a red rug. She gave Petey’s pheromones an olfactory stimulation as fresh as a soft breeze in springtime and as intuitive as rutting season in the Rockies; and just as nature intended in situations such as this, all the blood in his body rushed to his face and his groin. And also, as nature intended, the winsome Miss Kenney was as oblivious to her affect on an adolescent boy as a female mantis is to her doomed lover.
Anne was wearing a light cotton dress with daisies and black eyed Susans printed on it, at her waist was a cinched patent leather belt. The sun was streaming in a window behind her and cloaked her in a radiance that Petey had never seen before; the sun was also shining through her dress, outlining her shapely legs and torso. She stood with her legs slightly apart and Petey had never dreamed of seeing anything so stimulatingly exciting.
“Can I help you with anything?” asked Anne.
"Grummasigamafrackers". replied Petey softly.
Anne didn’t miss a beat “I’ve seen you in here before, haven’t I? What’s your name?”
Petey was able to blurt out that his name was Billy and that he had just had his thirtieth birthday two day ago.
“Well… my, you look young for your age” said Anne, sitting down beside Petey and glancing over his shoulder. Petey inhaled a breath of the sweetest aroma he had ever taken into his lungs; the earthy aroma of a female in estrous.
Anne put her dainty hand lightly on his forearm. She gently started asking more questions and slowly Billy/Petey opened up to her like a lotus and emptied the contents of his soul and mind; for an hour and a half.
He told her of taking law courses by mail (he wanted to be a lawyer), how he had just about mastered chess except for the famous problem proposed by Edward Laskers and how he had taught himself four languages and could navigate by starlight.
Anne asked about his future plans and told him about a friend of hers that was “looking for a few good men”; just by coincidence, his name was also Billy and he wore a very manly uniform that she was sure that he would look “just dreamy’ in. She turned her sloe eyed Alice blue gaze deeply into Billy/Petey's big brown cow orbs and sighed.
About that time Pearl came in to fetch Petey.
Friday, November 26, 2010
Friday, November 19, 2010
addition to possible New Orleans story part two
Part two.
Anyway, while my dog was being dogged by druggies, my kitchen helper was drinking and toking deeply and consequently went into a dream-state. As I mentioned before (or did I?), Hinch’s personality changes upon any type of slumber: naps (including catnaps), daydreams, nod outs, beddy-byes, space outs and any sustained states of drowsiness. In these states of semi-somnambulism he is prone to mischief, mayhem and maliciousness of an advanced order, hence the straightjacket. It is for his own protection, believe me.
That being said, at the moment that suspicions (“it’s ALL his FAULT!!”) were dawning upon me, I was busy bleeding and heading for the dining room for some first aid; as I passed the bathroom I saw (and heard) the fire engines pull up. I quickly dropped to all fours and scuttled back to the laundry room to look out of the front windows leaving a trail of blood behind me. I cursed the day that I rescued Hinch from the Oompa Loompa casting queue at a Hollywood soundstage.
Here I must segue a moment to explain my living arrangements; hold these thoughts and images though: zonked out Hinch, Hector and Hermes in hiding, howling Hercules, smoke, shots fired, fire detectors clanging, police pounding, chiming clocks, screeching cockatiels, fainting canaries, speed bump tortoises, half awake bleeding heroes (me), stepped upon felines, fire trucks, thunderclaps, phones ringing, Petey Pappas rushing to my rescue and not one of us had a clue as to what was happening. ‘What else could happen?’ you might ask. ‘It’s just getting started’, I would answer.
I live in what is known, down in New Orleans, as a double shotgun house; meaning there are two apartments side by side in straight lines and named so because, the way the rooms are laid out, you can virtually fire a shotgun in the front door and hit whoever might be standing at the back door. Let me clarify that I don’t actually live in New Orleans; I live in a place called Gretna, across the river. Neat, huh?
This building as well as a small trust fund was left to me by my parents who deserted me on my twenty-first birthday and went to live in the south of France with the instructions that I never try to contact them…ever. My precociousness as a tot and young adult obviously did not impress them; but, that’s another story for another time.
One half of my ‘double’, as we call the structures, is a fully ‘operation ready’ private (mine) saloon and pool hall which I open on whim or when I feel the need for entertainment. I hire staff for the evening and simply go out… next door. No driving, no last call, no spending out of pocket (except for impressive tipping); AND, I live in the other half! Five enormous rooms that I have aligned so that the back of the house is in the front of the building and you have to go around back to be let in the front door.
At the moment, I was crouching in the back of the house in the room that was in the front of the building, in my Star Wars pajamas, bleeding from my left temporal lobe and holding a silk handkerchief on the wound to stem the flow of vital fluids. I then backed into the darkened kitchen just as my neighbor reset the circuit breakers and I reached out and came away with a handful of electric wires and slid on dead chickens and what turned out to be bullet shell casings; I was thrown against the 1928 Magic Chef stove that took four men, big men, to carry in. The corner of the stove caught my lower back, chickens fell on my feet and one hundred and ten volts coursed through my body until I, as a faulty conductor, blew the breakers again and the imported Italian bakers rack (another two hundred pounds) crashed into a spot directly between my shoulder blades.
The clock chiming had mercifully rung its course and the windows had been opened by my neighbor, Petey Pappas, who was also my lawyer and who was at this time explaining to the police and fire department that this was all one huge misunderstanding and that they could leave with a large donation to their widows and orphans funds. The birds and beasts had quieted and there was only a soft guilty sobbing from Hinch in the dining room which I would shortly sooth with sweet approbations and heartfelt forgivenesses. The Hispanics had blended into the shrubbery and disappeared
“I thought you said the party wasn’t until six-ish” was the first thing Petey said to me as things started to die down.
“Call for the doctor, call for the nurse, call for that metaphorical lady with the alligator purse!” I replied with all of the self control that I could muster.”My back is in excruciating upheaval, I cannot straighten from the fetal position and, even in my semi-conscious condition, I canassure you that I am in need of strong medication, it feels like I’ve been run over by a school bus of gibbering capons. Mother Superior, jump the gun!”
I was still bleeding, my head was still pounding and my shins were still barked, my back was beyond injured, but it was quiet at the homestead and I was grateful for that. I had tried to find out what happened from Hinch but he was no help, having been in an altered state of mind at the time the catastrophe was occurring. Petey and I again reset the circuit breakers and crept to the kitchen to put some of the events into perspective.
We found five naked chickens hanging from ceiling fans (three on the floor), two fans, one bird on every blade that had not broken. With the electricity back on the fans began to turn and we quickly shut off the wall switch. It was a good thing that we did, for we discovered that Christmas twinkle lights had been wrapped around, and inside the twirling birds as well as ribbons and a red Sharpie marker had been used to draw targets on their little chests: little heart shaped targets. We knew that they were targets because there was not one but two guns, as well as spent casings on the floor by a barstool and bullet holes in the birds and walls and appliances. All this time I thought Hinch’s guns were toys. Idiot Moi.
The image came to me of an inebriated Hinch, up on the stool in his cute cowboy suit with two guns, firing wildly at the spinning birds and causing a short in the electricity, starting a fire, setting off the alarm and it all going south from there. I was grateful that I had no sprinklers.
“Well, that’s it for the party” I said to Petey.
“Nah” he said “we can salvage this, I’ll make some phone calls”. He handed me a tumbler of single malt Scotch and two little blue and red pills. “Now, take these little helpers of mother’s and go lie down; I’ll call you when all’s well.”
Anyway, while my dog was being dogged by druggies, my kitchen helper was drinking and toking deeply and consequently went into a dream-state. As I mentioned before (or did I?), Hinch’s personality changes upon any type of slumber: naps (including catnaps), daydreams, nod outs, beddy-byes, space outs and any sustained states of drowsiness. In these states of semi-somnambulism he is prone to mischief, mayhem and maliciousness of an advanced order, hence the straightjacket. It is for his own protection, believe me.
That being said, at the moment that suspicions (“it’s ALL his FAULT!!”) were dawning upon me, I was busy bleeding and heading for the dining room for some first aid; as I passed the bathroom I saw (and heard) the fire engines pull up. I quickly dropped to all fours and scuttled back to the laundry room to look out of the front windows leaving a trail of blood behind me. I cursed the day that I rescued Hinch from the Oompa Loompa casting queue at a Hollywood soundstage.
Here I must segue a moment to explain my living arrangements; hold these thoughts and images though: zonked out Hinch, Hector and Hermes in hiding, howling Hercules, smoke, shots fired, fire detectors clanging, police pounding, chiming clocks, screeching cockatiels, fainting canaries, speed bump tortoises, half awake bleeding heroes (me), stepped upon felines, fire trucks, thunderclaps, phones ringing, Petey Pappas rushing to my rescue and not one of us had a clue as to what was happening. ‘What else could happen?’ you might ask. ‘It’s just getting started’, I would answer.
I live in what is known, down in New Orleans, as a double shotgun house; meaning there are two apartments side by side in straight lines and named so because, the way the rooms are laid out, you can virtually fire a shotgun in the front door and hit whoever might be standing at the back door. Let me clarify that I don’t actually live in New Orleans; I live in a place called Gretna, across the river. Neat, huh?
This building as well as a small trust fund was left to me by my parents who deserted me on my twenty-first birthday and went to live in the south of France with the instructions that I never try to contact them…ever. My precociousness as a tot and young adult obviously did not impress them; but, that’s another story for another time.
One half of my ‘double’, as we call the structures, is a fully ‘operation ready’ private (mine) saloon and pool hall which I open on whim or when I feel the need for entertainment. I hire staff for the evening and simply go out… next door. No driving, no last call, no spending out of pocket (except for impressive tipping); AND, I live in the other half! Five enormous rooms that I have aligned so that the back of the house is in the front of the building and you have to go around back to be let in the front door.
At the moment, I was crouching in the back of the house in the room that was in the front of the building, in my Star Wars pajamas, bleeding from my left temporal lobe and holding a silk handkerchief on the wound to stem the flow of vital fluids. I then backed into the darkened kitchen just as my neighbor reset the circuit breakers and I reached out and came away with a handful of electric wires and slid on dead chickens and what turned out to be bullet shell casings; I was thrown against the 1928 Magic Chef stove that took four men, big men, to carry in. The corner of the stove caught my lower back, chickens fell on my feet and one hundred and ten volts coursed through my body until I, as a faulty conductor, blew the breakers again and the imported Italian bakers rack (another two hundred pounds) crashed into a spot directly between my shoulder blades.
The clock chiming had mercifully rung its course and the windows had been opened by my neighbor, Petey Pappas, who was also my lawyer and who was at this time explaining to the police and fire department that this was all one huge misunderstanding and that they could leave with a large donation to their widows and orphans funds. The birds and beasts had quieted and there was only a soft guilty sobbing from Hinch in the dining room which I would shortly sooth with sweet approbations and heartfelt forgivenesses. The Hispanics had blended into the shrubbery and disappeared
“I thought you said the party wasn’t until six-ish” was the first thing Petey said to me as things started to die down.
“Call for the doctor, call for the nurse, call for that metaphorical lady with the alligator purse!” I replied with all of the self control that I could muster.”My back is in excruciating upheaval, I cannot straighten from the fetal position and, even in my semi-conscious condition, I canassure you that I am in need of strong medication, it feels like I’ve been run over by a school bus of gibbering capons. Mother Superior, jump the gun!”
I was still bleeding, my head was still pounding and my shins were still barked, my back was beyond injured, but it was quiet at the homestead and I was grateful for that. I had tried to find out what happened from Hinch but he was no help, having been in an altered state of mind at the time the catastrophe was occurring. Petey and I again reset the circuit breakers and crept to the kitchen to put some of the events into perspective.
We found five naked chickens hanging from ceiling fans (three on the floor), two fans, one bird on every blade that had not broken. With the electricity back on the fans began to turn and we quickly shut off the wall switch. It was a good thing that we did, for we discovered that Christmas twinkle lights had been wrapped around, and inside the twirling birds as well as ribbons and a red Sharpie marker had been used to draw targets on their little chests: little heart shaped targets. We knew that they were targets because there was not one but two guns, as well as spent casings on the floor by a barstool and bullet holes in the birds and walls and appliances. All this time I thought Hinch’s guns were toys. Idiot Moi.
The image came to me of an inebriated Hinch, up on the stool in his cute cowboy suit with two guns, firing wildly at the spinning birds and causing a short in the electricity, starting a fire, setting off the alarm and it all going south from there. I was grateful that I had no sprinklers.
“Well, that’s it for the party” I said to Petey.
“Nah” he said “we can salvage this, I’ll make some phone calls”. He handed me a tumbler of single malt Scotch and two little blue and red pills. “Now, take these little helpers of mother’s and go lie down; I’ll call you when all’s well.”
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Possible Short Story from New Orleans
Casual Encounters
by
Phil LaMancusa
Po-tee-tweet!
It all started when I organized a chicken dismemberment party; another in a long line of my culinary travesties and here’s how that fiasco occurred: news was out that the local super market had whole chickens on sale for sixty-nine cents a pound, meaning that I could purchase some at couple of dollars each. Such a deal; I decided to call seven of my pals to show up at my house for a lesson par excellence in the art and science of bird dissecting, bidding them to bring themselves, implements of destruction (knives) and adult beverages of their choice. The evening promised to be one of blood, sweat and beers;
I replenished the first aid kit. I cleared the dining room of debris and furniture except for the dinner table, which I added leaves to, stretching it to its eight foot maximum length. I laid floor tarpaulins and removed artwork from the walls. Little did I know that I would be laid low because of a two buck cluck.
Did I listen to my instincts? No. Did I stop to the read signs and portents suggesting the day’s occupation would be one of endemic, ominous and prophetic significance? No. I was the man, I had a plan; the man with a plan, that was me. Oh, was I to be brought up short; and oh, how the mighty did fall.
The plan was to deliver naked shivering dead birds (one per guest) and perform avian surgery together, laughing and scratching and imbibing and generally just have a hell of a grand evening. The plan was sever the wings first to get started, disjointing them as South East Asians do for appetizers: deep fried and served Buffalo style with ranch dressing and celery sticks. Next we would filet out the breasts and pound them savagely for cutlets sautéed in Madeira wine and mushrooms, bone the legs after breaking them at the hip joint and cut them small for a Bolognese sauce, a la cacciatore, over homemade fresh basil rigatoni and lastly make a scrumptious stock from the skeletal remains and vegetable peelings to be served as a veloute diffused in Russian vodka laid over coddled eggs (mother and child reunion) with a mousse prepared from their delicate livers and a confit of giblets and neck bone renderings. Red, white and amber colored drinks, with high alcohol content would incite the mood and excitement like a goosed locomotive belching steam until all would be madness unchained and culinary lunacy unleashed. I was to be aided and abetted by my faithful cohort, Hinch the hunchback henchman, and that was the plan in a nutshell.
On the morning in question I walked the six blocks to the store with a song in my heart and gluttony in my soul, imagining the pullets served eight ways from Sunday; a gourmands dream come true. I bought the birds, celery, vodka, wine, French bread, ranch dressing and several other items and cursed myself for not driving, for dubious were the chances for a public conveyance at the ungodly hour of the morning that I had chosen to deal with my consumer issues.
The market was crowded at dawn’s crack with cretins, insomniacs and dazed unquiet minds on weekend passes. The pace remained dreamlike and frenetic throughout the experience with scattered flurries of cosmic debris falling and uniformed, obviously over-caffeinated, stock clerks rushing at erratic frenzied paces to complete sinister and mysterious errands. I was caught up in the maelstrom and weighed down a capacious shopping vehicle in record time.
As you all know, the grocery stores seem to possess an unlimited supply of plastic bags to burden one with. Evidently the persons chosen to do the bagging have been told to limit items placed in these petroleum based abominations to two per bag, at most; and, before I could say ‘pheasant under glass’ I was homeward bound as oppressively encumbered as an overzealous Sherpa, and looking, as I pictured it, as encumbered as a wandering Albanian refugee. I sensed that everything was packaged individually for the express purposes of humiliating me and insuring that any taxi driver in their right mind would speed up rather than stop for me; if you ask me, the super market service industry human resource department is rife with moonlighting comedians. Naturally, I took this affront on a visceral and personal level. Bravely I was determined to maintain, what my Indian chums call, ‘a high vibration’ and keeping a stiff upper lip, I soldiered my way back to my digs.
And so it was that I managed, bravely, to stagger and struggle home with every muscle wracked, every bone aching and every last nerve worked. To my dismay, Hinch had already been hitting the Herbsaint as a chaser for his prescripted antibiotics and antidepressants, a ghastly combination I ventured to surmise. I unloaded the bags and cursed the eight chickens one by one as I unbagged them, gulped four aspirin and a juice glass of absinthe and went to lie down with spasms in my sacroiliac. It was ten in the morning and the gang was due at six. I had decided on an early night so that they would be relatively sober, arriving and departing (who was I kidding?). A nice quiet nap would be just the thing. I left Hinch in charge of putting the kitchen in order; he was dressed in his cute little cowboy outfit. I asked myself: ‘what could happen’?
I awoke to shots being fired, the smell of burning pungent foreign substances and the sound of the smoke detector clanging like a prison break. Clouds of haze wove through the room like giant cuttlefish tendrils, and the acrid aroma of bloody, battling rodents in a convenience store Dempsey dumpster assaulted my senses. The gaseous miasma of werewraiths unleashed from hell assaulted my senses; My vision refused to focus, I was supremely disoriented and I struggled to assert myself master of the situation. Oh, woe.
“What mischief is afoot?” I shouted, trying to rise, and swatted at a scuttling, shrieking, delirious midge that was bouncing on my half prone unfocused carcass, clawing the air and raining spittle upon me.
“Hold, Sir!” I cried, for I recognized the form of Hinch (an obviously hallucinating, Herbsainted, hypochondriac hunchback henchman) who slathered and railed, as against the coming of a lubricious and apocalyptical catastrophe. Hinch was inconsolable and raved in his native language (Hungarian or Hawaiian or some such heathen twaddle), flourishing his little arms and slinging his stilted legs as if caught in some advanced form of Sydenham’s Chorea (St. Vitus Dance).
I managed to get Hinch into his straight jacket, usually reserved for his naptime and strapped him into his custom constructed cushioned highchair to query him further; hopefully he would explain in a language that I would be able to understand. Placing a raving stunted hunchback into a highchair is difficult enough, but when you’re seeing them in twos and threes… it is a challenge. I was indeed attempting to thread moving needles with undulating threads.
It’s important to note that Hinch is, most times, a docile little fellow (except when he’s sleeping); one of our most simple and uncomplicated of thinkers; to wit, he raises plush toy unicorns as in a family atmosphere and not as a playful past time or hobby. He actually wonders why they never seem to grow and only to age. He tries to feed them, worries that they might be catching something debilitating and sings little unicorn songs to them. It is heart rendering; the burden and curse of too much parental devotion cannot be overstated.
I jumped as the phones rang and my collection of cuckoo clocks chimed the noon hour. I have five land based telephones and they ring in tandem, letting me know, in whichever room I happen to be in, that a verbal communication is at hand; also, I have fourteen chiming wall clocks that I have lovingly synchronized to ring in scatological sequence. What with the phones and the clocks and the smoke alarms and Hinch shrieking, cacophony reared its ugly head and prepared its assassination.
It started to thunder outside, the dog began a primitive howling and just as I started up, I stepped on the cat’s tail who reacted with slashing claws and razor sharp fangs. This state, from a rapid eye movement slumber, zonked on absinthe, without my eyeglasses, was further exacerbated by what I thought was a pounding in my head. It turned out to be the local gendarmes that some concerned citizen had called hammering on the door, rounding out my experience with blue and red lights pulsing into every cranny of my house and fiber of my being. I roundly cursed the chickens again and told Hinch to shut the fuck up. I needed to think. Just then the electricity went out, taking all available light with it.
My matched pair of Peruvian cockatiels were screeching at my fainted canaries and my head was pounding like a Grateful Dead drum solo. The only cool head in the situation was the giant land turtle that had befriended me on one of my desert retreats; unfortunately he/she/it had chosen to withdraw into itself (all 300 pounds) center stage and quite par for the course, I tripped again, banged my shins and getting a nasty gash on my temple thanks to the placement of my imported teak Maru tea table.
To make a long story longer, what had happened was that Hinch (the hallucinating, Herbsainted, hypochondriac hunchback henchman), upon my departure, called an acquaintance of his: a Honduran named Hermes. Hermes and his brother Hector have a cottage industry business selling Humboldt Hemp; they have a process in which they transmuted the hemp into a heavenly hashish. Hermes and Hector paid a visit to Hinch. Hermes had brought Hector along because, although he spoke enough American to get by, Hermes had a harelip. So, Hector had self-appointed himself as helpmate in matters of translation and high finances. They had been at my place when I had returned from shopping but were in the back yard baiting my hound Hercules; the self same hound that was now howling as the Hispanics hid from the heat in the hedges, who were hammering on the door of my house. It is safe to assume that Hinch had partaken Hermes’ and Hector’s Hispanic Humbolt hemp heavenly hashish as well as my Herbsaint! I’ll halt here and let you imagine the other possible repercussions of what I found when my rest was so rudely interrupted with the (I can’t help myself)… havoc.
by
Phil LaMancusa
Po-tee-tweet!
It all started when I organized a chicken dismemberment party; another in a long line of my culinary travesties and here’s how that fiasco occurred: news was out that the local super market had whole chickens on sale for sixty-nine cents a pound, meaning that I could purchase some at couple of dollars each. Such a deal; I decided to call seven of my pals to show up at my house for a lesson par excellence in the art and science of bird dissecting, bidding them to bring themselves, implements of destruction (knives) and adult beverages of their choice. The evening promised to be one of blood, sweat and beers;
I replenished the first aid kit. I cleared the dining room of debris and furniture except for the dinner table, which I added leaves to, stretching it to its eight foot maximum length. I laid floor tarpaulins and removed artwork from the walls. Little did I know that I would be laid low because of a two buck cluck.
Did I listen to my instincts? No. Did I stop to the read signs and portents suggesting the day’s occupation would be one of endemic, ominous and prophetic significance? No. I was the man, I had a plan; the man with a plan, that was me. Oh, was I to be brought up short; and oh, how the mighty did fall.
The plan was to deliver naked shivering dead birds (one per guest) and perform avian surgery together, laughing and scratching and imbibing and generally just have a hell of a grand evening. The plan was sever the wings first to get started, disjointing them as South East Asians do for appetizers: deep fried and served Buffalo style with ranch dressing and celery sticks. Next we would filet out the breasts and pound them savagely for cutlets sautéed in Madeira wine and mushrooms, bone the legs after breaking them at the hip joint and cut them small for a Bolognese sauce, a la cacciatore, over homemade fresh basil rigatoni and lastly make a scrumptious stock from the skeletal remains and vegetable peelings to be served as a veloute diffused in Russian vodka laid over coddled eggs (mother and child reunion) with a mousse prepared from their delicate livers and a confit of giblets and neck bone renderings. Red, white and amber colored drinks, with high alcohol content would incite the mood and excitement like a goosed locomotive belching steam until all would be madness unchained and culinary lunacy unleashed. I was to be aided and abetted by my faithful cohort, Hinch the hunchback henchman, and that was the plan in a nutshell.
On the morning in question I walked the six blocks to the store with a song in my heart and gluttony in my soul, imagining the pullets served eight ways from Sunday; a gourmands dream come true. I bought the birds, celery, vodka, wine, French bread, ranch dressing and several other items and cursed myself for not driving, for dubious were the chances for a public conveyance at the ungodly hour of the morning that I had chosen to deal with my consumer issues.
The market was crowded at dawn’s crack with cretins, insomniacs and dazed unquiet minds on weekend passes. The pace remained dreamlike and frenetic throughout the experience with scattered flurries of cosmic debris falling and uniformed, obviously over-caffeinated, stock clerks rushing at erratic frenzied paces to complete sinister and mysterious errands. I was caught up in the maelstrom and weighed down a capacious shopping vehicle in record time.
As you all know, the grocery stores seem to possess an unlimited supply of plastic bags to burden one with. Evidently the persons chosen to do the bagging have been told to limit items placed in these petroleum based abominations to two per bag, at most; and, before I could say ‘pheasant under glass’ I was homeward bound as oppressively encumbered as an overzealous Sherpa, and looking, as I pictured it, as encumbered as a wandering Albanian refugee. I sensed that everything was packaged individually for the express purposes of humiliating me and insuring that any taxi driver in their right mind would speed up rather than stop for me; if you ask me, the super market service industry human resource department is rife with moonlighting comedians. Naturally, I took this affront on a visceral and personal level. Bravely I was determined to maintain, what my Indian chums call, ‘a high vibration’ and keeping a stiff upper lip, I soldiered my way back to my digs.
And so it was that I managed, bravely, to stagger and struggle home with every muscle wracked, every bone aching and every last nerve worked. To my dismay, Hinch had already been hitting the Herbsaint as a chaser for his prescripted antibiotics and antidepressants, a ghastly combination I ventured to surmise. I unloaded the bags and cursed the eight chickens one by one as I unbagged them, gulped four aspirin and a juice glass of absinthe and went to lie down with spasms in my sacroiliac. It was ten in the morning and the gang was due at six. I had decided on an early night so that they would be relatively sober, arriving and departing (who was I kidding?). A nice quiet nap would be just the thing. I left Hinch in charge of putting the kitchen in order; he was dressed in his cute little cowboy outfit. I asked myself: ‘what could happen’?
I awoke to shots being fired, the smell of burning pungent foreign substances and the sound of the smoke detector clanging like a prison break. Clouds of haze wove through the room like giant cuttlefish tendrils, and the acrid aroma of bloody, battling rodents in a convenience store Dempsey dumpster assaulted my senses. The gaseous miasma of werewraiths unleashed from hell assaulted my senses; My vision refused to focus, I was supremely disoriented and I struggled to assert myself master of the situation. Oh, woe.
“What mischief is afoot?” I shouted, trying to rise, and swatted at a scuttling, shrieking, delirious midge that was bouncing on my half prone unfocused carcass, clawing the air and raining spittle upon me.
“Hold, Sir!” I cried, for I recognized the form of Hinch (an obviously hallucinating, Herbsainted, hypochondriac hunchback henchman) who slathered and railed, as against the coming of a lubricious and apocalyptical catastrophe. Hinch was inconsolable and raved in his native language (Hungarian or Hawaiian or some such heathen twaddle), flourishing his little arms and slinging his stilted legs as if caught in some advanced form of Sydenham’s Chorea (St. Vitus Dance).
I managed to get Hinch into his straight jacket, usually reserved for his naptime and strapped him into his custom constructed cushioned highchair to query him further; hopefully he would explain in a language that I would be able to understand. Placing a raving stunted hunchback into a highchair is difficult enough, but when you’re seeing them in twos and threes… it is a challenge. I was indeed attempting to thread moving needles with undulating threads.
It’s important to note that Hinch is, most times, a docile little fellow (except when he’s sleeping); one of our most simple and uncomplicated of thinkers; to wit, he raises plush toy unicorns as in a family atmosphere and not as a playful past time or hobby. He actually wonders why they never seem to grow and only to age. He tries to feed them, worries that they might be catching something debilitating and sings little unicorn songs to them. It is heart rendering; the burden and curse of too much parental devotion cannot be overstated.
I jumped as the phones rang and my collection of cuckoo clocks chimed the noon hour. I have five land based telephones and they ring in tandem, letting me know, in whichever room I happen to be in, that a verbal communication is at hand; also, I have fourteen chiming wall clocks that I have lovingly synchronized to ring in scatological sequence. What with the phones and the clocks and the smoke alarms and Hinch shrieking, cacophony reared its ugly head and prepared its assassination.
It started to thunder outside, the dog began a primitive howling and just as I started up, I stepped on the cat’s tail who reacted with slashing claws and razor sharp fangs. This state, from a rapid eye movement slumber, zonked on absinthe, without my eyeglasses, was further exacerbated by what I thought was a pounding in my head. It turned out to be the local gendarmes that some concerned citizen had called hammering on the door, rounding out my experience with blue and red lights pulsing into every cranny of my house and fiber of my being. I roundly cursed the chickens again and told Hinch to shut the fuck up. I needed to think. Just then the electricity went out, taking all available light with it.
My matched pair of Peruvian cockatiels were screeching at my fainted canaries and my head was pounding like a Grateful Dead drum solo. The only cool head in the situation was the giant land turtle that had befriended me on one of my desert retreats; unfortunately he/she/it had chosen to withdraw into itself (all 300 pounds) center stage and quite par for the course, I tripped again, banged my shins and getting a nasty gash on my temple thanks to the placement of my imported teak Maru tea table.
To make a long story longer, what had happened was that Hinch (the hallucinating, Herbsainted, hypochondriac hunchback henchman), upon my departure, called an acquaintance of his: a Honduran named Hermes. Hermes and his brother Hector have a cottage industry business selling Humboldt Hemp; they have a process in which they transmuted the hemp into a heavenly hashish. Hermes and Hector paid a visit to Hinch. Hermes had brought Hector along because, although he spoke enough American to get by, Hermes had a harelip. So, Hector had self-appointed himself as helpmate in matters of translation and high finances. They had been at my place when I had returned from shopping but were in the back yard baiting my hound Hercules; the self same hound that was now howling as the Hispanics hid from the heat in the hedges, who were hammering on the door of my house. It is safe to assume that Hinch had partaken Hermes’ and Hector’s Hispanic Humbolt hemp heavenly hashish as well as my Herbsaint! I’ll halt here and let you imagine the other possible repercussions of what I found when my rest was so rudely interrupted with the (I can’t help myself)… havoc.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
New Years in New Orleans 2010
Po Boy Views
By
Phil LaMancusa
New Jeers Leave
Or
Never Too Late
It seems incongruous by rhythm or rhyme for us to chose to label our days with numbers on pieces of paper, catalog them into some nebulous kind of order and give meaning to their sequences and individual merit.
Likewise strange is our inclination to separate life into camps of ‘my ways’ and ‘your ways’, of boundaries and borders, of mendacities and integrities? How is it, at the beginning of (what we’ve decided is) our periodic calendar, we can become inspired and intimidated into asking ourselves if we are good enough for ourselves and exact from ourselves vows to become the person that we would rather be or become? Well, Cats and Hats, fools that we are, we can and we do. We call those absurdities New Years Resolutions; and, like it or not, we hold those truths to be self-evident that not all of us are created in god’s image until we shape up or are shipped out.
In a perfect world, resolutions (the process of re-solving) is merely our way of raising the bar for ourselves with a firmness of mind and purpose. Of course, you live in a perfect world; unfortunately, I do not.
My resolutions now are not to make any resolutions because my past resolves were selfish, harebrained or so far out of my reach and attainability that they were simply self-indulgent horseshit. Lessons in the futility of ego and ability; it’s almost like me asking myself what I want to be when I grow up, never admitting to myself that I will never grow up. I don’t have the ability or the inclination to mature, it’s enough just to be able to be responsible; I’m afraid that that’s as good as it gets for me. Of course, you’re different.
So, what’s it gonna be for your New Years resolutions? What do you want to change in your life? Your home, your partner, your job, your family, yourself or all of the above? Diet? Exercise? Quit smoking, go back to school, join a club, get a fleur-de-lis tattoo, go traveling or get a phone booth?
To want to change is a dissatisfaction with who you are and what your behavior is, right? Right. So, what you do one day out of the year is to sit down and give yourself a report card with those god-damning words scribbled at the bottom: “needs improvement”? Good move for you, I say, but not for me. You see, I make all of those resolutions…every day! Along with immortality, intelligence, integrity and the ability to make a butt load of money! In short New Years resolutions have got nothing on me. Every blessed day I want to hit the lottery, lose fifteen pounds, have twenty-twenty eyesight, and have… a phone booth!
But wait, to illustrate that illusive elucidation; here’s ‘the Superman myth’ that I/we was/were fed as kids: Take Clark Kent (please). Clark Kent is a wuss; he wears glasses, is unsure of himself in conversation and behavior and Lois Lane treats him like the lint on her impeccably tailored jacket. What’s his cosmic retaliation? His phone booth. He’s got a friggin phone booth!
He ducks inside (after doffing his fedora, loosening his cheapass tie and taking his glasses off so we can see his finely chiseled features) and comes out: “ Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. !!!!!!!” music crescendo, “LOOK, up in the sky; it’s a bird… it’s a plane… It’s SUPERMAN!!!!!!!!!”
Yes it’s Superman-strange visitor from another planet who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal man. Superman, who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in his bare hands and WHO (disguised as Clark Kent, mild mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper) fights a never-ending battle for Truth! Justice! AND The American Way!!!
{oh, by the way, I was able to write that Superman stuff from a memory etched into my brain of a television series that was on from 1951 to 1958. What are the chances?}. Question: What was the difference between Supermen and young mild mannered me? [Already I had girls treating me like lint, but that’s another story.] Answer: The phone booth!
NOW what do I have? Do we have phone booths any more? No, we hardly can find a public phone anywhere. So what would happen if I achieved my old New Years resolutions of stronger/faster/harder? I’ll tell you what: nowhere to change! Not that that would make a difference to me, I wouldn’t change out of that suit; it never stays dirty, it has great boots and a cape that I’m sure is hard to hide under your cheap mild mannered suit and tie. I’d probably look like “hey, look at that mild mannered guy with a hunchback!” It has that flashy S right in the middle of my now muscular chest. Nah, I’d stay in the suit, sleep in it, swim in it, walk on the beach with Lois (in her Victoria’s Secret bikini) and even go out for super cocktails in it; for, if anyone smarted off at me or stepped on my cape or distressed some damsel… boy, I’d give them a super ‘what for’! That’s what I’d do!
Every year I made the same resolution, the same wish on a star, the same birthday ‘blow out the candle and make a wish’ wish. The four-leaf clover, the golden ticket, the lottery ticket and that bet on the nag that never crossed the finish line. I even read a book titled The Phantom Toll Booth, thinking that it would give me clues to that phantom phone booth that I wanted and was looking for.
I even thought for one second that, maybe, in the movie The Birds, Tippi Hedren was gonna rip off her clothes, shake her hair out, reveal chiseled features and emerge from the phone booth to give those damn pesky birds a what for. She could have, but, she didn’t. Wrong phone booth, I guess. Gee, she would have looked great in a cape and tights, sigh.
Okay, okay; I’ll give it one more try. Ahem: this year, once again I make my New Years resolution to only use my x-ray vision properly, fight for truth, justice and the American way, and to find that damn phone booth!
By
Phil LaMancusa
New Jeers Leave
Or
Never Too Late
It seems incongruous by rhythm or rhyme for us to chose to label our days with numbers on pieces of paper, catalog them into some nebulous kind of order and give meaning to their sequences and individual merit.
Likewise strange is our inclination to separate life into camps of ‘my ways’ and ‘your ways’, of boundaries and borders, of mendacities and integrities? How is it, at the beginning of (what we’ve decided is) our periodic calendar, we can become inspired and intimidated into asking ourselves if we are good enough for ourselves and exact from ourselves vows to become the person that we would rather be or become? Well, Cats and Hats, fools that we are, we can and we do. We call those absurdities New Years Resolutions; and, like it or not, we hold those truths to be self-evident that not all of us are created in god’s image until we shape up or are shipped out.
In a perfect world, resolutions (the process of re-solving) is merely our way of raising the bar for ourselves with a firmness of mind and purpose. Of course, you live in a perfect world; unfortunately, I do not.
My resolutions now are not to make any resolutions because my past resolves were selfish, harebrained or so far out of my reach and attainability that they were simply self-indulgent horseshit. Lessons in the futility of ego and ability; it’s almost like me asking myself what I want to be when I grow up, never admitting to myself that I will never grow up. I don’t have the ability or the inclination to mature, it’s enough just to be able to be responsible; I’m afraid that that’s as good as it gets for me. Of course, you’re different.
So, what’s it gonna be for your New Years resolutions? What do you want to change in your life? Your home, your partner, your job, your family, yourself or all of the above? Diet? Exercise? Quit smoking, go back to school, join a club, get a fleur-de-lis tattoo, go traveling or get a phone booth?
To want to change is a dissatisfaction with who you are and what your behavior is, right? Right. So, what you do one day out of the year is to sit down and give yourself a report card with those god-damning words scribbled at the bottom: “needs improvement”? Good move for you, I say, but not for me. You see, I make all of those resolutions…every day! Along with immortality, intelligence, integrity and the ability to make a butt load of money! In short New Years resolutions have got nothing on me. Every blessed day I want to hit the lottery, lose fifteen pounds, have twenty-twenty eyesight, and have… a phone booth!
But wait, to illustrate that illusive elucidation; here’s ‘the Superman myth’ that I/we was/were fed as kids: Take Clark Kent (please). Clark Kent is a wuss; he wears glasses, is unsure of himself in conversation and behavior and Lois Lane treats him like the lint on her impeccably tailored jacket. What’s his cosmic retaliation? His phone booth. He’s got a friggin phone booth!
He ducks inside (after doffing his fedora, loosening his cheapass tie and taking his glasses off so we can see his finely chiseled features) and comes out: “ Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. !!!!!!!” music crescendo, “LOOK, up in the sky; it’s a bird… it’s a plane… It’s SUPERMAN!!!!!!!!!”
Yes it’s Superman-strange visitor from another planet who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal man. Superman, who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in his bare hands and WHO (disguised as Clark Kent, mild mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper) fights a never-ending battle for Truth! Justice! AND The American Way!!!
{oh, by the way, I was able to write that Superman stuff from a memory etched into my brain of a television series that was on from 1951 to 1958. What are the chances?}. Question: What was the difference between Supermen and young mild mannered me? [Already I had girls treating me like lint, but that’s another story.] Answer: The phone booth!
NOW what do I have? Do we have phone booths any more? No, we hardly can find a public phone anywhere. So what would happen if I achieved my old New Years resolutions of stronger/faster/harder? I’ll tell you what: nowhere to change! Not that that would make a difference to me, I wouldn’t change out of that suit; it never stays dirty, it has great boots and a cape that I’m sure is hard to hide under your cheap mild mannered suit and tie. I’d probably look like “hey, look at that mild mannered guy with a hunchback!” It has that flashy S right in the middle of my now muscular chest. Nah, I’d stay in the suit, sleep in it, swim in it, walk on the beach with Lois (in her Victoria’s Secret bikini) and even go out for super cocktails in it; for, if anyone smarted off at me or stepped on my cape or distressed some damsel… boy, I’d give them a super ‘what for’! That’s what I’d do!
Every year I made the same resolution, the same wish on a star, the same birthday ‘blow out the candle and make a wish’ wish. The four-leaf clover, the golden ticket, the lottery ticket and that bet on the nag that never crossed the finish line. I even read a book titled The Phantom Toll Booth, thinking that it would give me clues to that phantom phone booth that I wanted and was looking for.
I even thought for one second that, maybe, in the movie The Birds, Tippi Hedren was gonna rip off her clothes, shake her hair out, reveal chiseled features and emerge from the phone booth to give those damn pesky birds a what for. She could have, but, she didn’t. Wrong phone booth, I guess. Gee, she would have looked great in a cape and tights, sigh.
Okay, okay; I’ll give it one more try. Ahem: this year, once again I make my New Years resolution to only use my x-ray vision properly, fight for truth, justice and the American way, and to find that damn phone booth!
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Early Xmas in New Orleans
Po Boy Views
By
Phil LaMancusa
Sweet Baby Jesus
Or
Fools and Mortals
Okay, this is not a holiday article about Joe and Mary on a Harley looking for a room or three fat men on a bicycle with gifts of Frankenstein and Mirth. What do you think I am, an antidisestablishmentarianista? Not me. It don’t pay to make no fun of peoples fates or faiths; if I did that, the Pope would have a hit put out on me quicker than Salome can shed a veil.
And so this is the Christmas season where good Christians everywhere proclaim ‘Peace on earth, good will towards men’ as if that has been a possibility since the riding of Tamerlane’s horde. Think about it.
Here’s a question: how come you can write the word ‘Xmas’ and not Jesus X? Is that what Malcolm X was thinking about when he took that surname? Work with me here; this may get fast paced and require a little more knowledge than your GoogleTexterPedia can keep up with. I hope that my editor doesn’t correct my spelling or my voice; I actually make both of them up as I go along… much to his chagrin.
How about A Christmas Carol a-la-New Orleans? Scrooge can be played by anyone you’d like him to be (played by); preferably someone that pisses you off because they have a power over you and misuses, abuses, or uses it without it with a shred of honor. Someone you would love to see an epiphany of biblical proportions come down on (him, her or them) like a can of WhupAss on an irritating drunk. Like white on rice. Like ugly on an ape. Like a cheap suit on a used car salesman.
So, here comes the Ghost of Holidays Past looking like John Goodman in biker gear saying: “back in the day, Dude, you were stand up! Remember hangin’ at the Seven Seas with Sonny Dupre and Lady Blue?” and he takes Scrooge back to the French Quarter that was, when it was genuine and there were no parking meters. There were phone booths on the street and vegetables at the French Market; you know, when dinosaurs and hippies ruled the world. On Christmas, the saloons and public houses would serve huge holiday meals; everyone was invited and no money was asked for or expected.
Jimi, Janis, Jim and Joni were on the jukes. There was music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air. The Quarter was a candy store and the kids were in charge, rent was cheap and the grass was greener and more plentiful (or was that: ‘the rent was greener and the grass was cheap’?).
“Hey,” sings John Goodman in leather and now lace as well, “remember how we rolled? Reelin’ and a rockin’, we was reelin’ and a rockin’ way ‘til the break of dawn.”
Exit, John, exit stage left, let sleeping dogs lie and leave the past to fade….
BAM! Then comes the Holy Friggin Ghost of the Future played by James Carville; the economy has flat lined, there’s nutria swimming in the Carousel Bar in the Monteleone Hotel and all electronic devices have been rendered useless.
Other horrors and acts of depravity pervade the city on a scale that would make a category five storm seem like a walk in the park. Boats are sunk in the river, one on top of another and smoke and ashes cloud the sky. City Hall is housed in a FEMA trailer surrounded by razor wire; Chris Rose is now mayor and can you guess who is Chief of Police? Chris Owens? John Besh? Fats Domino? Some dude named Emiril?
“Don’t get me started!” yells James “you blew it, FEMA blew it, the Corps blew it, God blew it and even I blew it! The reason that you have drive by shootings is that there’s no place left to park! Kids have Ichips put in their heads at birth and The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has declared New Orleans a hazardous teenage wasteland; AND, now you’ve brought down the wrath and curse of the Bloody Blue Blazing Ball Busters! Oh woe! Oh calamitous unharmonic convergences! I told you that you shouldn’t have been nicer to good old whatsername!” here old James takes a deep breath.
(This is James taking a deep breath: “whuuuuuuuyuup!”…) “What you see around you is desolation, loneliness, hunger, darkness, madness, frenzy and a weariness of the soul. Despair and desperation from the lack of love, and the pains of broken hearts litter the streets like go cups on Sunday morning after a Saints game. Right now, it would suck being you!”
Well, needless to say, Scrooge is taken aback, dumfounded, and flummoxed. “Nay, nay I say!” he screams: “show me no more, Great Spirit, for I am humbled and will surely change my wicked ways!”
“What the !@#$%^&* are you talking about, Ebenezer” says James, “this is what happens when you do change your ways! You see, the world needs rat bastards like you, and you are a rat bastard of an epic proportion. And, had you not been so bad… others would have not been so good, just to have the satisfaction of not being like you!” Fade to black.
Next, Scrooge wakes up in his own bed in a cold sweat; there is a knock at the door, a knock a little louder, and then a banging to beat the band. “Let me in Scrooge, I am the Ghost of Christmas Present!” (Brad Pitt)
“Screw you,” says Ebenezer, “go tell those worthless pricks that I’m raising their rents, their vet bills and their taxes, I’m lowering their wages and their expectations. I’m not going to repair their streets and roads and I’m going to feed their babies pickles! Bwahhahahahahahahaha!” And rolling over in his covers… smiling peacefully, Ebenezer Scrooge goes back to sleep.
Oh, by the way, that’s you, in the future, tied to a red ant mound on Monkey Hill while your best friend steals your Jazz Fest posters! Mend your ways now; there’s enough rat bastards in the world. Happy Happy and Joy, Joy in the holiday season.
Has anyone seen my life; I left it around here somewhere?
By
Phil LaMancusa
Sweet Baby Jesus
Or
Fools and Mortals
Okay, this is not a holiday article about Joe and Mary on a Harley looking for a room or three fat men on a bicycle with gifts of Frankenstein and Mirth. What do you think I am, an antidisestablishmentarianista? Not me. It don’t pay to make no fun of peoples fates or faiths; if I did that, the Pope would have a hit put out on me quicker than Salome can shed a veil.
And so this is the Christmas season where good Christians everywhere proclaim ‘Peace on earth, good will towards men’ as if that has been a possibility since the riding of Tamerlane’s horde. Think about it.
Here’s a question: how come you can write the word ‘Xmas’ and not Jesus X? Is that what Malcolm X was thinking about when he took that surname? Work with me here; this may get fast paced and require a little more knowledge than your GoogleTexterPedia can keep up with. I hope that my editor doesn’t correct my spelling or my voice; I actually make both of them up as I go along… much to his chagrin.
How about A Christmas Carol a-la-New Orleans? Scrooge can be played by anyone you’d like him to be (played by); preferably someone that pisses you off because they have a power over you and misuses, abuses, or uses it without it with a shred of honor. Someone you would love to see an epiphany of biblical proportions come down on (him, her or them) like a can of WhupAss on an irritating drunk. Like white on rice. Like ugly on an ape. Like a cheap suit on a used car salesman.
So, here comes the Ghost of Holidays Past looking like John Goodman in biker gear saying: “back in the day, Dude, you were stand up! Remember hangin’ at the Seven Seas with Sonny Dupre and Lady Blue?” and he takes Scrooge back to the French Quarter that was, when it was genuine and there were no parking meters. There were phone booths on the street and vegetables at the French Market; you know, when dinosaurs and hippies ruled the world. On Christmas, the saloons and public houses would serve huge holiday meals; everyone was invited and no money was asked for or expected.
Jimi, Janis, Jim and Joni were on the jukes. There was music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air. The Quarter was a candy store and the kids were in charge, rent was cheap and the grass was greener and more plentiful (or was that: ‘the rent was greener and the grass was cheap’?).
“Hey,” sings John Goodman in leather and now lace as well, “remember how we rolled? Reelin’ and a rockin’, we was reelin’ and a rockin’ way ‘til the break of dawn.”
Exit, John, exit stage left, let sleeping dogs lie and leave the past to fade….
BAM! Then comes the Holy Friggin Ghost of the Future played by James Carville; the economy has flat lined, there’s nutria swimming in the Carousel Bar in the Monteleone Hotel and all electronic devices have been rendered useless.
Other horrors and acts of depravity pervade the city on a scale that would make a category five storm seem like a walk in the park. Boats are sunk in the river, one on top of another and smoke and ashes cloud the sky. City Hall is housed in a FEMA trailer surrounded by razor wire; Chris Rose is now mayor and can you guess who is Chief of Police? Chris Owens? John Besh? Fats Domino? Some dude named Emiril?
“Don’t get me started!” yells James “you blew it, FEMA blew it, the Corps blew it, God blew it and even I blew it! The reason that you have drive by shootings is that there’s no place left to park! Kids have Ichips put in their heads at birth and The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has declared New Orleans a hazardous teenage wasteland; AND, now you’ve brought down the wrath and curse of the Bloody Blue Blazing Ball Busters! Oh woe! Oh calamitous unharmonic convergences! I told you that you shouldn’t have been nicer to good old whatsername!” here old James takes a deep breath.
(This is James taking a deep breath: “whuuuuuuuyuup!”…) “What you see around you is desolation, loneliness, hunger, darkness, madness, frenzy and a weariness of the soul. Despair and desperation from the lack of love, and the pains of broken hearts litter the streets like go cups on Sunday morning after a Saints game. Right now, it would suck being you!”
Well, needless to say, Scrooge is taken aback, dumfounded, and flummoxed. “Nay, nay I say!” he screams: “show me no more, Great Spirit, for I am humbled and will surely change my wicked ways!”
“What the !@#$%^&* are you talking about, Ebenezer” says James, “this is what happens when you do change your ways! You see, the world needs rat bastards like you, and you are a rat bastard of an epic proportion. And, had you not been so bad… others would have not been so good, just to have the satisfaction of not being like you!” Fade to black.
Next, Scrooge wakes up in his own bed in a cold sweat; there is a knock at the door, a knock a little louder, and then a banging to beat the band. “Let me in Scrooge, I am the Ghost of Christmas Present!” (Brad Pitt)
“Screw you,” says Ebenezer, “go tell those worthless pricks that I’m raising their rents, their vet bills and their taxes, I’m lowering their wages and their expectations. I’m not going to repair their streets and roads and I’m going to feed their babies pickles! Bwahhahahahahahahaha!” And rolling over in his covers… smiling peacefully, Ebenezer Scrooge goes back to sleep.
Oh, by the way, that’s you, in the future, tied to a red ant mound on Monkey Hill while your best friend steals your Jazz Fest posters! Mend your ways now; there’s enough rat bastards in the world. Happy Happy and Joy, Joy in the holiday season.
Has anyone seen my life; I left it around here somewhere?
Friday, August 27, 2010
The next short story in progress
Christian Pilgrim’s Progress
Cover Page: I’ve been told by the doctor that it’s good to keep a diary of the happenings in my life and a record of my feelings; I don’t believe her, but anything is worth a try when you’re on the brink of a maelstrom that you feel isolated and insular in, and one where you fear that you might not be understood by whomever you or I confide in, so here goes. The shrink said to write a little every day, but I don’t know that I have that many words in me; oh well, we can not but try. I’m not sure who is supposed to read this; perhaps me when I’m well or maybe it’s just for the exercise of expressing myself; I’m no dummy, you know. Anyway, she says to ‘get it out of me and onto some paper!’ I’m not sure what IT is.
Friday July 16th Okay, hello my name is Christian…. Oh Qwerty!!!! that’s not right, nonononononono let me think about this !@##$$%^%^&&
Monday July 19th Here goes: This is what I recall: from the pillowed nest, the blanketed womb, the coverlet warmth that I’ve constructed in my long overnight, my right eye emerges from the covers to view the clock and my environment. Not much sunlight, just a blue gray haze that signals the breaking of dawn. check. Ceiling fan’s spinning, lazily as an old negress in a sweltering country church, check. The dog is curled at my back as if I were her litter mate and the rest of the bed is empty, check. Twenty minutes until seven, check. Back for more winks, double check. Lost in the DMZ of my REM’s, if you catch my drift, down to mine more dream gems.
I’ll repeat this ritual at least twice more until the sky’s hue changes to Alice blue and the clock gives me no alternative but to rise; swing out to sitting position and there’s my coffee, right where it should be, right where she leaves it, right where she‘s left it. But that’s not the only thing that she’s left. Somewhere in my slumber and her wakening she has leaned into my ear with a kiss and a curse. “Here’s something for you to sleep on…” she whispers, “you know what the doctor says about your drinking, and you know the trouble that you’re having with your penis…
“six beers while we were out last night and another four before you went to bed and that whiskey bottle is down to less than half. Sometimes I think that you’re more interested in getting drunk than having sex.” The words pour acid on my otherwise
Okay, so when I get up nothing is mentioned and everything goes according to ritual; I’ll go shower, shave and shampoo and Daisy’ll make the bed while I let the dogs out the back door and put some fruit in the blender. A morning But there is a boulder that is between us as we pack lunches for work and I drive us into town. She’s has said something cutting, and it can never be taken back; see, that’s the thing about talking and saying things: you cannot take back something once it is said. Sure, I’ve been told that drinking may contribute to my ED and I’ve done nothing to curb my thirst.
I have no defense, at my age I should know better and the child in me decries: ‘I shoulda never told you what the doctor said!’ but, at my age I am aware that honesty is not only the best policy; it’s the only policy, and I’ve dug my own grave with this one: I honestly answer any question asked me.
“So, what did the doctor say?” she had asked. Oh well, at least my TB test came in negative.
Tuesday July 23rd Today After I told Daisy about my journal she said: “I want to play too!” So round and round we went, and round and round until I just said “go ahead but don’t expect me to read what you wrote, after all it is my journal and my illnesses and my recovery thoughts and use your own pages and just slip them into the journal and maybe I’ll look at them sometime later and she said “Jerk!”
(this is Daisy in a completely different font) Tuesday July 23rd Yes, ‘Jerk’ is what I called him! And a silly man as well! He is glued to the computer night and day and is he looking at sports? No. Is he gambling or playing the stock market? No. Is he watching pornography or in some imaginary parallel world? NO! and NO again! He is on the medical sites finding cures for imaginary afflictions! He’s a dear man but his compulsion for complaints physical and mental could try the patience of the frigging Pope! He really thinks there are real doctors that can prescribe and send medication for every little irritation is somehow beyond belief but he keeps getting stuff in the mail to take; powders, pills, ointment, unction and advice. I’d say Lord help the woman that lives with him, but THAT’S ME!!
(Back to Christian)Friday July 30th: Let me tell you about my doctors. On the advice of my MDs and GPs I take a pill for high cholesterol, one to slow my urinary visits to the bathroom, one for my prostate and two for calcium. I wear a knee length support stocking on my right leg to help circulation and at home I have prescription Claritin and nasal spray from the time that I mentioned that I had a sore throat and a cough (both that went away on their own). All of the teeth that I smile with are not my own. I talk to the shrink once every two weeks, not that I can see the good of it; I’ll probably die before I’m cured of whatever I have.
At the MD’s I complained about a sore back and was sent prescription strength Aleve and muscle relaxers; I was issued a blood pressure machine to check my blood pressure twice daily (which I’m lax about) and I’ve been told to soak my big toes in vinegar water to rejuvenate their nails. I’m also told to exercise at least three times a week (I try to), to stay off smoking and to cut my drinking down to no more than two drinks a day if I have to drink at all; no caffeine after twelve noon.
I’m told that I will have to keep up this regimen for the rest of my life. My doctor told me also that I could pass for a man half my age if it weren’t for the lack of hair on my head and if I dropped about fifteen or twenty pounds, at least he never mentions my nervous tic. My indestructible youth has gone with the wind and the passage of time, sometimes I feel that I’m fighting to stay alive and young; and, that being young is the only proof one has of really being alive.
****************************************
Thursday August 12th: I know that I’m not writing as often as I should. My neuroses seem to be repetitive in nature and I try to keep them in check. I was in a conversation at dinner the other night when I brought up the fact that according to television, back aches are now so commonplace that I believe that they’re actually being sanctioned-- there are literally thousands of sites on the computer that will recommend remedies-- as in “sure you’ve got a backache, it’s perfectly normal but take this and you won’t feel it!!” and so my doctor sends me pills so that I won’t feel my back hurting and they never questions the cause of my discomfort. Go home. Take a pill. Take more pills. Ignorance (and medication) is bliss.
Did I also mention that cholesterol pill that I am taking? At my last visit my cholesterol level was perfect and I mentioned to the doctor that I was watching my diet (mostly vegan now) and exercising and wouldn’t it be about time that I stopped taking that pill? I was told that the reason that my blood pressure was so great was because I was taking the pill and that I would be taking the pill for the rest of my life. I whined to my dinner companions that I should be able to lead a life free of the medications that I feel are being foisted upon me as long as I watched what I put into my body and how I treated it.
Well, you guessed it; silence around the table until one of my companions (a man older than I) put it in a nutshell, and succinctly as well: “you’ll be able to do that as soon as you’re able to grow younger instead of older.”
Monday August 23rd It appears to me that nowadays man and beast are bombarded by the media with maladies that are unknown to them and that they may have, and that they’d better take remedies for before it becomes too late to go on that biking/hiking/camping trip with their grandchildren, balloons and all. They’re told very explicitly that they have this one life, this one body and your next heart attack (the one that you’re sure to have if you didn’t take this medicine) is lurking around the corner unless you take this medication. The ills that we are contracting appear as fast as the medications to assuage them are presented; their names are so long that they are relayed to us by their abbreviations. COPD, TTP, OTC, STD, CTS, MSD, IBS etc. And quietly (Shhh) at the close of any television commercial for relief of your three or four letter abbreviated lurking demon illness, you’re told the side effects: runny nose, thoughts of suicide, constipation, headache, dizziness, vomiting and/or shortness of breath! My favorite is: “seek immediate medical attention if you experience blurred vision, nausea or an erection lasting more than four hours”. They are trying to make me dependent on the medications hoping to get me hooked on taking stuff like a hypochondriac but I’m looking for a way out before they find more stuff wrong with me.
Which doesn’t take away from my current situation: the curse of the cat people. Note: conundrum number one: nothing that I used to do has done me any good and stopping doing what I did has done me no good either; the one supporting brick in the edifice of my immortal fortress remains to be dismantled and all of my instincts resist. For peace and happiness I have to take the first step to curb my alcohol intake. I guess it’s like the man says: nothing to lose.
But first, naturally, a few days of petulance and pouting; refusing solace as well as my usual excesses of alcohol. Daisy asks me if there is anything wrong, did she do something, did she say something? Of course I know that answering those questions is just what she wants; she wants to talk about this and I’m smart and experienced enough to know that that path is a one-way ticket to ‘It’s All My FaultVille’. No, it’s not my inner child, it’s my inner twenty-five year old reacting: I want to get drunk AND get laid!!!
Instead I beg off with the ‘a lot on my mind’ gambit, which is the lame stall tactic that gives me time to adjust and digest my predicament.
And so, I’ve gone kicking and protesting into post middle age; the one where one feels like they’re seventeen, acts like they’re twenty-five and is treated like an octogenarian. It’s a ‘tween’ stage where reality, philosophy and wisdom conflict with compulsiveness, spontaneity and vigor; and you’re not safe until you embrace an ignored inevitability of there are more days behind me and fewer days ahead and I’m going down slow.
It goes beyond the flip “I never knew I would live this long” excuses. I am now that old. I’m now old enough to know better, I’m old enough to realize that I’ll never be young ever again and that my body is going through the great recession. It can lead to the Great Depression if I let it. Coming to terms with degeneration opens up a whole new can of worms. Is the world conspiring to usher me into decrepitude? There was never any need for this much medical attention until I asked a doctor if there was anything wrong with me. Daisy says that I spend too much time at the SuperDoctor.com and she questions the advice that I’m getting; I tell her not to knock it until she tries it.
At sixty-seven years old with unimpaired mental facilities, I’m stuck in a
typical male dilemma:
*************************************
Sunday August 30, This morning I arose from the dead; that is, I awoke and she made love to me and it was good. And so we entered into the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell of my drinking. One thing that has never been in question is the love that we have for eachother; we are eachother, we are friends, lovers and romantics. We share a home and family, we are more or less happy with eachother and the life that we have carved out of this crazy world, and except for the fact that we both are having backaches now, our lives have an established rhythm. Oh, the hospital called to set up chest x-rays and a lower GI; I wonder what that’s about.
September 1st For whoever is reading this in the future: Daisy and I have a small bookshop in the center of town, which to say two miles away. We live in a spacious flat, half a shotgun it is called, and we’re away from the madding crowd that we used to run with. Peace and quiet in the country; alone… together.
We also have a yard for her to tend with flowers, fern and herbs; in this torrid climate it’s all she can do to keep up with the pandemonium. I’m more at home in the kitchen, a reversal of roles if one would look at us as a traditional couple; but our backgrounds have put us in a different kind of harmony: she a country mouse and I a city mouse with rituals and habits exclusive to our backgrounds. We also have critters: two felines and two canines. One big happy family. The doctors say I need a colonoscopy and a CT to measure bone density also I’ve noticed a ringing in my ears that they call tinnitus which they won’t give me anything for and I’m distracted by that noise in my head that make every thing sound static.
I let go of youth in a state of angst, I am betrayed by my body, I ceased looking in mirrors because I don’t like what I see. I take my medicines religiously and I am insulted at my age and the things that I can and cannot do. Daisy is ten years younger than I and has been nothing but patient with me and my whininess, and yet I’m hiding from her. I’m hiding my weakness and preoccupation with aging and death. She follows me around like she thinks I’m up to something
***********************************
September 7th and I want to ask someone; anyone: “what would you say, what did you say, what can you say when fleeting youth is treated with pills and powders but never cured? Would you sell the soul that you denied in your past that you possessed to go back to being young? Do you rail against the finalities and weakenings of your strength and agilities? Do you start conversations with your young friends with “when I was your age… or I remember when…?” Oh well, just a thought.
When I go to SuperDoc.com I can ask any question and it only costs $19.95 and sometimes there’s a special offer with the time that I spend and heck, they give some great advice; like yesterday, I was on SuperDoc.com/psychiatry and I asked why all the obituary photos that I see are of smiling people? It’s almost as if they are happy to be dead. Well, my psychiatrist on the Super Doc site told me plenty, I can tell you. Pages and pages! I’m glad that my every medical question can be answered so readily and that my medications will come in the mail and just be directly withdrawn from my bank account.
September 9th: Our shop is a quiet and whimsical bookshop; it makes enough money to support itself but not enough to contribute to our money situations. For this reason we have alternative employment for our living expenses, I spend two nights away from home and she works three days at the same establishment where the rest of the staff is pretty much younger than my grown children. I’m the oldest employee with my foibles and fantasies of immortality and basically the children that work around me are going through conflicts and challenges that I met lifetimes ago. I wonder what they would say if they knew how trivial their youth will all seem in twenty years; thirty?
I’m really sensitive about the dust in the shop, it seems to be everywhere and pervasive. I spend a lot of time dusting things but the dust seems to reappear the next day. I think that people look at me funny, which is why, if I’m not dusting, I sit at the keyboard on the computer and only look up when someone wants to pay for something.
*********************************
September 16th: They took more blood tests this week at the Super Doc pharmacy up the street, it was as simple as sticking my arm in a hole and it was over real quick as well; and the screen said that perhaps if I add some antidepressants to my regimen that I might feel like my old self. I tell her/it that my old self is a stranger to me. I felt better when I was drinking. She asked me if I knew what serotonin is. Does she think I’m nuts? She also wants to know if I’ve tried Cialis or Viagra. I told her that I have but I don’t like them because I still finish too quickly and then all I do is feel pain when my erection won’t go down. She wants me to have chest x-rays and an eye examination. I think that I have a lot of thinking to do but I can’t seem to concentrate. The words seem to flow out on the paper without me thinking about them. Maybe they’ll want to read this, but I don’t think I’ll let them; I mean, they’ve got all of my history anyway some where in their computer banks. Oops! I forgot that I’m not supposed to think of them as computers, that that is counterproductive; they tell me that I can only get well if I think of my help as coming from a real person doctor.
I wonder what they would say if I told them that sometimes, a lot of times, when they talk to me I can’t make out what they’re saying and that I can only stare at the computer screen as so much gibberish comes out of their mouths and I don’t understand a word of it? I wonder what they would say if I told them that that happens to me with a lot of people that talk to me, ask questions of me or try to reel me into a conversation?
September 20th Daisy wants us to take a week off before it gets too cool out and go to the cabin by the lake where we can laze about, yippee! I’m all for it and we’re even taking the dogs! The doctors want me in again next week for a spinal tap to check my bone marrow (again) and fluid, it sounds like it’ll hurt. I guess I’ll log in and ask them.
I asked about the numbness that I get in my upper left thigh and they told me that it might be fibro neuralgia or something and that I should spend ten minutes a day sticking a pin in different parts of my body to find out where I might be numb. They warned me that I should not stay away from them for more than a day if I want to get well; mercy me, I told them that I forgot what was wrong with me in the first place. Boy THAT didn’t go over well. Almost immediately my shrink came on and started talking real loud and fast. I told him that I couldn’t concentrate and that I would log on later when the fog in my brain clears. Then it sounded like thirty voices were talking at the same time and boy, that really freaked me out so I pulled the plug on the computer. I can’t think… I can’t tell what is real and what I imagine any more. I’ll be glad to get out of here.
October 1st: Up at the lake
Cover Page: I’ve been told by the doctor that it’s good to keep a diary of the happenings in my life and a record of my feelings; I don’t believe her, but anything is worth a try when you’re on the brink of a maelstrom that you feel isolated and insular in, and one where you fear that you might not be understood by whomever you or I confide in, so here goes. The shrink said to write a little every day, but I don’t know that I have that many words in me; oh well, we can not but try. I’m not sure who is supposed to read this; perhaps me when I’m well or maybe it’s just for the exercise of expressing myself; I’m no dummy, you know. Anyway, she says to ‘get it out of me and onto some paper!’ I’m not sure what IT is.
Friday July 16th Okay, hello my name is Christian…. Oh Qwerty!!!! that’s not right, nonononononono let me think about this !@##$$%^%^&&
Monday July 19th Here goes: This is what I recall: from the pillowed nest, the blanketed womb, the coverlet warmth that I’ve constructed in my long overnight, my right eye emerges from the covers to view the clock and my environment. Not much sunlight, just a blue gray haze that signals the breaking of dawn. check. Ceiling fan’s spinning, lazily as an old negress in a sweltering country church, check. The dog is curled at my back as if I were her litter mate and the rest of the bed is empty, check. Twenty minutes until seven, check. Back for more winks, double check. Lost in the DMZ of my REM’s, if you catch my drift, down to mine more dream gems.
I’ll repeat this ritual at least twice more until the sky’s hue changes to Alice blue and the clock gives me no alternative but to rise; swing out to sitting position and there’s my coffee, right where it should be, right where she leaves it, right where she‘s left it. But that’s not the only thing that she’s left. Somewhere in my slumber and her wakening she has leaned into my ear with a kiss and a curse. “Here’s something for you to sleep on…” she whispers, “you know what the doctor says about your drinking, and you know the trouble that you’re having with your penis…
“six beers while we were out last night and another four before you went to bed and that whiskey bottle is down to less than half. Sometimes I think that you’re more interested in getting drunk than having sex.” The words pour acid on my otherwise
Okay, so when I get up nothing is mentioned and everything goes according to ritual; I’ll go shower, shave and shampoo and Daisy’ll make the bed while I let the dogs out the back door and put some fruit in the blender. A morning But there is a boulder that is between us as we pack lunches for work and I drive us into town. She’s has said something cutting, and it can never be taken back; see, that’s the thing about talking and saying things: you cannot take back something once it is said. Sure, I’ve been told that drinking may contribute to my ED and I’ve done nothing to curb my thirst.
I have no defense, at my age I should know better and the child in me decries: ‘I shoulda never told you what the doctor said!’ but, at my age I am aware that honesty is not only the best policy; it’s the only policy, and I’ve dug my own grave with this one: I honestly answer any question asked me.
“So, what did the doctor say?” she had asked. Oh well, at least my TB test came in negative.
Tuesday July 23rd Today After I told Daisy about my journal she said: “I want to play too!” So round and round we went, and round and round until I just said “go ahead but don’t expect me to read what you wrote, after all it is my journal and my illnesses and my recovery thoughts and use your own pages and just slip them into the journal and maybe I’ll look at them sometime later and she said “Jerk!”
(this is Daisy in a completely different font) Tuesday July 23rd Yes, ‘Jerk’ is what I called him! And a silly man as well! He is glued to the computer night and day and is he looking at sports? No. Is he gambling or playing the stock market? No. Is he watching pornography or in some imaginary parallel world? NO! and NO again! He is on the medical sites finding cures for imaginary afflictions! He’s a dear man but his compulsion for complaints physical and mental could try the patience of the frigging Pope! He really thinks there are real doctors that can prescribe and send medication for every little irritation is somehow beyond belief but he keeps getting stuff in the mail to take; powders, pills, ointment, unction and advice. I’d say Lord help the woman that lives with him, but THAT’S ME!!
(Back to Christian)Friday July 30th: Let me tell you about my doctors. On the advice of my MDs and GPs I take a pill for high cholesterol, one to slow my urinary visits to the bathroom, one for my prostate and two for calcium. I wear a knee length support stocking on my right leg to help circulation and at home I have prescription Claritin and nasal spray from the time that I mentioned that I had a sore throat and a cough (both that went away on their own). All of the teeth that I smile with are not my own. I talk to the shrink once every two weeks, not that I can see the good of it; I’ll probably die before I’m cured of whatever I have.
At the MD’s I complained about a sore back and was sent prescription strength Aleve and muscle relaxers; I was issued a blood pressure machine to check my blood pressure twice daily (which I’m lax about) and I’ve been told to soak my big toes in vinegar water to rejuvenate their nails. I’m also told to exercise at least three times a week (I try to), to stay off smoking and to cut my drinking down to no more than two drinks a day if I have to drink at all; no caffeine after twelve noon.
I’m told that I will have to keep up this regimen for the rest of my life. My doctor told me also that I could pass for a man half my age if it weren’t for the lack of hair on my head and if I dropped about fifteen or twenty pounds, at least he never mentions my nervous tic. My indestructible youth has gone with the wind and the passage of time, sometimes I feel that I’m fighting to stay alive and young; and, that being young is the only proof one has of really being alive.
****************************************
Thursday August 12th: I know that I’m not writing as often as I should. My neuroses seem to be repetitive in nature and I try to keep them in check. I was in a conversation at dinner the other night when I brought up the fact that according to television, back aches are now so commonplace that I believe that they’re actually being sanctioned-- there are literally thousands of sites on the computer that will recommend remedies-- as in “sure you’ve got a backache, it’s perfectly normal but take this and you won’t feel it!!” and so my doctor sends me pills so that I won’t feel my back hurting and they never questions the cause of my discomfort. Go home. Take a pill. Take more pills. Ignorance (and medication) is bliss.
Did I also mention that cholesterol pill that I am taking? At my last visit my cholesterol level was perfect and I mentioned to the doctor that I was watching my diet (mostly vegan now) and exercising and wouldn’t it be about time that I stopped taking that pill? I was told that the reason that my blood pressure was so great was because I was taking the pill and that I would be taking the pill for the rest of my life. I whined to my dinner companions that I should be able to lead a life free of the medications that I feel are being foisted upon me as long as I watched what I put into my body and how I treated it.
Well, you guessed it; silence around the table until one of my companions (a man older than I) put it in a nutshell, and succinctly as well: “you’ll be able to do that as soon as you’re able to grow younger instead of older.”
Monday August 23rd It appears to me that nowadays man and beast are bombarded by the media with maladies that are unknown to them and that they may have, and that they’d better take remedies for before it becomes too late to go on that biking/hiking/camping trip with their grandchildren, balloons and all. They’re told very explicitly that they have this one life, this one body and your next heart attack (the one that you’re sure to have if you didn’t take this medicine) is lurking around the corner unless you take this medication. The ills that we are contracting appear as fast as the medications to assuage them are presented; their names are so long that they are relayed to us by their abbreviations. COPD, TTP, OTC, STD, CTS, MSD, IBS etc. And quietly (Shhh) at the close of any television commercial for relief of your three or four letter abbreviated lurking demon illness, you’re told the side effects: runny nose, thoughts of suicide, constipation, headache, dizziness, vomiting and/or shortness of breath! My favorite is: “seek immediate medical attention if you experience blurred vision, nausea or an erection lasting more than four hours”. They are trying to make me dependent on the medications hoping to get me hooked on taking stuff like a hypochondriac but I’m looking for a way out before they find more stuff wrong with me.
Which doesn’t take away from my current situation: the curse of the cat people. Note: conundrum number one: nothing that I used to do has done me any good and stopping doing what I did has done me no good either; the one supporting brick in the edifice of my immortal fortress remains to be dismantled and all of my instincts resist. For peace and happiness I have to take the first step to curb my alcohol intake. I guess it’s like the man says: nothing to lose.
But first, naturally, a few days of petulance and pouting; refusing solace as well as my usual excesses of alcohol. Daisy asks me if there is anything wrong, did she do something, did she say something? Of course I know that answering those questions is just what she wants; she wants to talk about this and I’m smart and experienced enough to know that that path is a one-way ticket to ‘It’s All My FaultVille’. No, it’s not my inner child, it’s my inner twenty-five year old reacting: I want to get drunk AND get laid!!!
Instead I beg off with the ‘a lot on my mind’ gambit, which is the lame stall tactic that gives me time to adjust and digest my predicament.
And so, I’ve gone kicking and protesting into post middle age; the one where one feels like they’re seventeen, acts like they’re twenty-five and is treated like an octogenarian. It’s a ‘tween’ stage where reality, philosophy and wisdom conflict with compulsiveness, spontaneity and vigor; and you’re not safe until you embrace an ignored inevitability of there are more days behind me and fewer days ahead and I’m going down slow.
It goes beyond the flip “I never knew I would live this long” excuses. I am now that old. I’m now old enough to know better, I’m old enough to realize that I’ll never be young ever again and that my body is going through the great recession. It can lead to the Great Depression if I let it. Coming to terms with degeneration opens up a whole new can of worms. Is the world conspiring to usher me into decrepitude? There was never any need for this much medical attention until I asked a doctor if there was anything wrong with me. Daisy says that I spend too much time at the SuperDoctor.com and she questions the advice that I’m getting; I tell her not to knock it until she tries it.
At sixty-seven years old with unimpaired mental facilities, I’m stuck in a
typical male dilemma:
*************************************
Sunday August 30, This morning I arose from the dead; that is, I awoke and she made love to me and it was good. And so we entered into the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell of my drinking. One thing that has never been in question is the love that we have for eachother; we are eachother, we are friends, lovers and romantics. We share a home and family, we are more or less happy with eachother and the life that we have carved out of this crazy world, and except for the fact that we both are having backaches now, our lives have an established rhythm. Oh, the hospital called to set up chest x-rays and a lower GI; I wonder what that’s about.
September 1st For whoever is reading this in the future: Daisy and I have a small bookshop in the center of town, which to say two miles away. We live in a spacious flat, half a shotgun it is called, and we’re away from the madding crowd that we used to run with. Peace and quiet in the country; alone… together.
We also have a yard for her to tend with flowers, fern and herbs; in this torrid climate it’s all she can do to keep up with the pandemonium. I’m more at home in the kitchen, a reversal of roles if one would look at us as a traditional couple; but our backgrounds have put us in a different kind of harmony: she a country mouse and I a city mouse with rituals and habits exclusive to our backgrounds. We also have critters: two felines and two canines. One big happy family. The doctors say I need a colonoscopy and a CT to measure bone density also I’ve noticed a ringing in my ears that they call tinnitus which they won’t give me anything for and I’m distracted by that noise in my head that make every thing sound static.
I let go of youth in a state of angst, I am betrayed by my body, I ceased looking in mirrors because I don’t like what I see. I take my medicines religiously and I am insulted at my age and the things that I can and cannot do. Daisy is ten years younger than I and has been nothing but patient with me and my whininess, and yet I’m hiding from her. I’m hiding my weakness and preoccupation with aging and death. She follows me around like she thinks I’m up to something
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September 7th and I want to ask someone; anyone: “what would you say, what did you say, what can you say when fleeting youth is treated with pills and powders but never cured? Would you sell the soul that you denied in your past that you possessed to go back to being young? Do you rail against the finalities and weakenings of your strength and agilities? Do you start conversations with your young friends with “when I was your age… or I remember when…?” Oh well, just a thought.
When I go to SuperDoc.com I can ask any question and it only costs $19.95 and sometimes there’s a special offer with the time that I spend and heck, they give some great advice; like yesterday, I was on SuperDoc.com/psychiatry and I asked why all the obituary photos that I see are of smiling people? It’s almost as if they are happy to be dead. Well, my psychiatrist on the Super Doc site told me plenty, I can tell you. Pages and pages! I’m glad that my every medical question can be answered so readily and that my medications will come in the mail and just be directly withdrawn from my bank account.
September 9th: Our shop is a quiet and whimsical bookshop; it makes enough money to support itself but not enough to contribute to our money situations. For this reason we have alternative employment for our living expenses, I spend two nights away from home and she works three days at the same establishment where the rest of the staff is pretty much younger than my grown children. I’m the oldest employee with my foibles and fantasies of immortality and basically the children that work around me are going through conflicts and challenges that I met lifetimes ago. I wonder what they would say if they knew how trivial their youth will all seem in twenty years; thirty?
I’m really sensitive about the dust in the shop, it seems to be everywhere and pervasive. I spend a lot of time dusting things but the dust seems to reappear the next day. I think that people look at me funny, which is why, if I’m not dusting, I sit at the keyboard on the computer and only look up when someone wants to pay for something.
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September 16th: They took more blood tests this week at the Super Doc pharmacy up the street, it was as simple as sticking my arm in a hole and it was over real quick as well; and the screen said that perhaps if I add some antidepressants to my regimen that I might feel like my old self. I tell her/it that my old self is a stranger to me. I felt better when I was drinking. She asked me if I knew what serotonin is. Does she think I’m nuts? She also wants to know if I’ve tried Cialis or Viagra. I told her that I have but I don’t like them because I still finish too quickly and then all I do is feel pain when my erection won’t go down. She wants me to have chest x-rays and an eye examination. I think that I have a lot of thinking to do but I can’t seem to concentrate. The words seem to flow out on the paper without me thinking about them. Maybe they’ll want to read this, but I don’t think I’ll let them; I mean, they’ve got all of my history anyway some where in their computer banks. Oops! I forgot that I’m not supposed to think of them as computers, that that is counterproductive; they tell me that I can only get well if I think of my help as coming from a real person doctor.
I wonder what they would say if I told them that sometimes, a lot of times, when they talk to me I can’t make out what they’re saying and that I can only stare at the computer screen as so much gibberish comes out of their mouths and I don’t understand a word of it? I wonder what they would say if I told them that that happens to me with a lot of people that talk to me, ask questions of me or try to reel me into a conversation?
September 20th Daisy wants us to take a week off before it gets too cool out and go to the cabin by the lake where we can laze about, yippee! I’m all for it and we’re even taking the dogs! The doctors want me in again next week for a spinal tap to check my bone marrow (again) and fluid, it sounds like it’ll hurt. I guess I’ll log in and ask them.
I asked about the numbness that I get in my upper left thigh and they told me that it might be fibro neuralgia or something and that I should spend ten minutes a day sticking a pin in different parts of my body to find out where I might be numb. They warned me that I should not stay away from them for more than a day if I want to get well; mercy me, I told them that I forgot what was wrong with me in the first place. Boy THAT didn’t go over well. Almost immediately my shrink came on and started talking real loud and fast. I told him that I couldn’t concentrate and that I would log on later when the fog in my brain clears. Then it sounded like thirty voices were talking at the same time and boy, that really freaked me out so I pulled the plug on the computer. I can’t think… I can’t tell what is real and what I imagine any more. I’ll be glad to get out of here.
October 1st: Up at the lake
Friday, August 20, 2010
New Orleans Giving thanks
Po Boy Views
By
Phil LaMancusa
Sine Qua Non
Or
Who Loves Ya?
Well, we’re coming up on Thanksgiving and besides the blessing of being alive, in relatively good shape and possessing a somewhat cognitive mind, I can’t think of a thing worth being thankful for.
Except-- (you knew that was coming, dincha?)-- except for the dear hearts and gentle people that live in my life or, I in theirs. The ones who call us friends and that we call friends in return. Friends.
You got ‘em, I got ‘em; I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours. If you’re anything like me, you’ve done nothing to deserve them aside from just being yourself. Funny how it works both ways; you know, free to be you and me and all that kind of stuff.
What do you call them? What’s in a word? Friends, chums, buddies, pals, amigos or a ‘peep’ whom you would look to for approval when you take a spur of the moment sheet-shaker in for a sleep over. Oooo, maybe a con-fi-dant? And, what defines a friendship? Harmonic reciprocative symbiotic convergence or…
Someone that would take a bullet for you?
Hmmm; well, well, well, a bullet? I don’t know that friendship, or I, would go that far; pause, deep breath, that sounds more like love, parental contra-interception, sacrificial masochism or in the least filial piety. No, I wouldn’t go that far under incidental circumstances; however, if we were in a food fight in Packastrami or Upper Nuoc Mammou I may concede to cutting the mustard but not just for any Frank… furter.
Two peanuts were walking down the street; one was a saulted… peanut.
Defining a true friendship is unformulated and nebulous in nature at best, just like those last lines. Is a friend somebody whose advice you take? Nah. Somebody whose advice you listen to? You bet, and not only that, it’s the person who you will ask for the advice that you’re not going to take!
A friend will take you on an adventure but probably not on a vacation, a friend is someone that will share bad news with you when they need a mirror of empathy and share good new for the same reason; it’s that same person that will laugh with you when you look silly and stop you when you’re being stupid, or absurd. If you and your friend have a difference of opinion, you will talk of other things, period. A friend doesn’t mind you listening to the Wu-Tang Clan (as long as you do it by yourself). If you want the last slice of pizza and your friend does also, they won’t feel bad about you sharing it.
Perhaps (you or) your friend knows more about something than you do; you know, rumors, gossip, how to tame that outbreak etc; well, when your friend’s (or you’re) talking, it’s ‘shut up and listen’ time, idn’t? Y’all will always listen to eachother in polite contemplation and understanding; that goes without saying, dudden’t? It’s what friends do, ain’nt?
It’s as if you, looking up from your reading, asked: “what exactly do they mean by a ‘stitch in time’: how do you stitch time?” Why, your friend would turn politely to you and reply: “what the !@#$%^&* are you talking about?” (See what I’m saying?) Friendship.
In the world of humor that we have, that bases its funnies on human frailty, your friend will catch you before slipping on the banana peel busts your butt. A friend will pull tricks on you but will never knowingly hurt your feelings; and, malicious mischief will be one bullet that they will take for you. Protection and attraction makes friends friends. A friendship is the best thing that you can have in a lover, relative, child or parent; and yes, somebody is giving me a nickel for every time I use the word “friend” in a sentence. (Not really, it just seems like it.)
Onward. Friends are friends in proximity and at a distance, I have people that I can call my friends that I haven’t had contact with for years. Years. And so have you, if you’ve got any friends at all. Being around your friends make you want to be around them all the more, they have compassion and concern for you. You will seek their endorsement on important matters: “does this dress make me look fat?” semi-colon, immediate response: “you’re not fat!” (Friendship).
Sit down, I’ll tell you a little story:
Girlfriend, once upon a time, back in the day, did belong (belonged?) to a loosely knit and tightly dressed group of women who rallied around a single philosophy; they called themselves…The Slut Sisters. Well, to make a long story longer, time and tide spread the girls out hither and yon where they found nests, neighbors and other lives; but they never did (or do) lose track of one another. When Girlfriend and I started getting closer and closer, about a half a dozen of the Slut Sisters came to town to have a look at me. Word was that I was in for either a pleasant chat or an ass-whupping on a major scale. If I remember correctly, Girlfriend left the room while I was having my ‘chat’, which was an interview nonpareil; that I still have my hide intact is proof of me having the right answers, whew.
Okay, now that we’ve flogged that horse another mile, what have we learned?
Lesson one: Chose your friends like you do your wardrobe: durable, comfortable, reliable and able to adapt to weather changes.
Lesson two: it’s not a good thing if your friends don’t like or approve of your choice of a partner. Friends can be more objective and subjective at the same time and they see things that you don’t because your eyes are clouded by your ‘lover’s logic’ or a film of body fluids. Besides, you never want to say: “I should have listened to my friends”; that’s a bummer, you don’t want to go there.
Lesson three: be true, loyal and thankful concerning your friends, they are a reflection of you and who you are; and hopefully you’ll be proud of their choice in picking you to that exalted station. Friend. Be proud and thankful that they like the person that you are becoming.
P.S. Girlfriend is my friend.
By
Phil LaMancusa
Sine Qua Non
Or
Who Loves Ya?
Well, we’re coming up on Thanksgiving and besides the blessing of being alive, in relatively good shape and possessing a somewhat cognitive mind, I can’t think of a thing worth being thankful for.
Except-- (you knew that was coming, dincha?)-- except for the dear hearts and gentle people that live in my life or, I in theirs. The ones who call us friends and that we call friends in return. Friends.
You got ‘em, I got ‘em; I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours. If you’re anything like me, you’ve done nothing to deserve them aside from just being yourself. Funny how it works both ways; you know, free to be you and me and all that kind of stuff.
What do you call them? What’s in a word? Friends, chums, buddies, pals, amigos or a ‘peep’ whom you would look to for approval when you take a spur of the moment sheet-shaker in for a sleep over. Oooo, maybe a con-fi-dant? And, what defines a friendship? Harmonic reciprocative symbiotic convergence or…
Someone that would take a bullet for you?
Hmmm; well, well, well, a bullet? I don’t know that friendship, or I, would go that far; pause, deep breath, that sounds more like love, parental contra-interception, sacrificial masochism or in the least filial piety. No, I wouldn’t go that far under incidental circumstances; however, if we were in a food fight in Packastrami or Upper Nuoc Mammou I may concede to cutting the mustard but not just for any Frank… furter.
Two peanuts were walking down the street; one was a saulted… peanut.
Defining a true friendship is unformulated and nebulous in nature at best, just like those last lines. Is a friend somebody whose advice you take? Nah. Somebody whose advice you listen to? You bet, and not only that, it’s the person who you will ask for the advice that you’re not going to take!
A friend will take you on an adventure but probably not on a vacation, a friend is someone that will share bad news with you when they need a mirror of empathy and share good new for the same reason; it’s that same person that will laugh with you when you look silly and stop you when you’re being stupid, or absurd. If you and your friend have a difference of opinion, you will talk of other things, period. A friend doesn’t mind you listening to the Wu-Tang Clan (as long as you do it by yourself). If you want the last slice of pizza and your friend does also, they won’t feel bad about you sharing it.
Perhaps (you or) your friend knows more about something than you do; you know, rumors, gossip, how to tame that outbreak etc; well, when your friend’s (or you’re) talking, it’s ‘shut up and listen’ time, idn’t? Y’all will always listen to eachother in polite contemplation and understanding; that goes without saying, dudden’t? It’s what friends do, ain’nt?
It’s as if you, looking up from your reading, asked: “what exactly do they mean by a ‘stitch in time’: how do you stitch time?” Why, your friend would turn politely to you and reply: “what the !@#$%^&* are you talking about?” (See what I’m saying?) Friendship.
In the world of humor that we have, that bases its funnies on human frailty, your friend will catch you before slipping on the banana peel busts your butt. A friend will pull tricks on you but will never knowingly hurt your feelings; and, malicious mischief will be one bullet that they will take for you. Protection and attraction makes friends friends. A friendship is the best thing that you can have in a lover, relative, child or parent; and yes, somebody is giving me a nickel for every time I use the word “friend” in a sentence. (Not really, it just seems like it.)
Onward. Friends are friends in proximity and at a distance, I have people that I can call my friends that I haven’t had contact with for years. Years. And so have you, if you’ve got any friends at all. Being around your friends make you want to be around them all the more, they have compassion and concern for you. You will seek their endorsement on important matters: “does this dress make me look fat?” semi-colon, immediate response: “you’re not fat!” (Friendship).
Sit down, I’ll tell you a little story:
Girlfriend, once upon a time, back in the day, did belong (belonged?) to a loosely knit and tightly dressed group of women who rallied around a single philosophy; they called themselves…The Slut Sisters. Well, to make a long story longer, time and tide spread the girls out hither and yon where they found nests, neighbors and other lives; but they never did (or do) lose track of one another. When Girlfriend and I started getting closer and closer, about a half a dozen of the Slut Sisters came to town to have a look at me. Word was that I was in for either a pleasant chat or an ass-whupping on a major scale. If I remember correctly, Girlfriend left the room while I was having my ‘chat’, which was an interview nonpareil; that I still have my hide intact is proof of me having the right answers, whew.
Okay, now that we’ve flogged that horse another mile, what have we learned?
Lesson one: Chose your friends like you do your wardrobe: durable, comfortable, reliable and able to adapt to weather changes.
Lesson two: it’s not a good thing if your friends don’t like or approve of your choice of a partner. Friends can be more objective and subjective at the same time and they see things that you don’t because your eyes are clouded by your ‘lover’s logic’ or a film of body fluids. Besides, you never want to say: “I should have listened to my friends”; that’s a bummer, you don’t want to go there.
Lesson three: be true, loyal and thankful concerning your friends, they are a reflection of you and who you are; and hopefully you’ll be proud of their choice in picking you to that exalted station. Friend. Be proud and thankful that they like the person that you are becoming.
P.S. Girlfriend is my friend.
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