WHAT'S THE WORD?

Throw me the good word

once in a while.

Why don’t ya, Man?

I don’t like to complain,

but it gives me a pain

to have your whiny ass

plopped on my divan.

Float me the good word

once in a while.

Why don’t ya, Gal?

Just pack up all that cheese.

Shift it on over please

and move it out the door

to a new locale.

Give me the good word

once in a while.

Why don’t ya, Dude?

I know things must be bad

to make you so damned mad,

but you’re putting me in

a really bad mood!

Slip me the good word

once in a while.

Why don’t ya, Dear?

Happy vibes would suffice

to make it a world nice

when you are in my face

and bending my ear.

Flip me the good word

once in a while.

Why don’t ya, Bird?

We all have our bad days

but it seems like these days

you’re turning into an

unbearable turd.

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IT'S GEEZER DAY at Walgreens, shoulder to shoulder blocking every aisle. Are these the same Geezers of my youth? Couldn’t be. Those Geezers didn’t have another 40-50 years in them. So, these have to be different Geezers, though they haven’t changed a bit. At what point does a regular person become a Geezer? How does that happen? Do you just wake up Geezered one morning, or is there some sort of ceremony to get inducted? At what point do I become Geezered? Maybe I’m already there. I mean, I do seem to fit in. Geezerdom, je suis ici! Could it be true? Geezer day at Walgreens, and I’m there. 

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BACK IN THE DAY,  I frequented  open mics at a seedy bar on Western called Shutterbugs. The photography theme of Shutterbugs was kind of loose. There were photos on the wall. I think the owner took most of them. I have an interest in good photography, but I can’t remember any of those. Kind of says it all.

They didn’t have paid acts in there very often. But for whatever reason, a lot of people would get up and play. Some of them were pretty good. It was more of a roadhouse than a coffeehouse, though. The Beatniks were long gone. Shutterbugs was more of a Beernik hangout.  Whiskey and vodka were flowing too.   

I guess I needed the aggravation at that point in my life, or maybe just the beer. On a slow night, I could play a couple sets and the bartender would buy me a drink. You know, it was an audience. That’s  another kind of addictive, beer like thing some of us need. What can I tell you?

Some nights a lot of people showed up to play. I think maybe the local songwriters group had a formal deal going there briefly. That was pretty good too. You got to hang with a lot of good musicians and laugh at the bad ones. Maybe, they were laughing at me too. Doesn’t matter. It was cool.

Shutterbugs did have their regular clientele, who were pretty rowdy. A  group of guys in there were always “fixing” the sound. If they liked what you were playing, four or five of them might get up on stage and sing along. Sometimes, they even knew the words and whatnot.  

There was a lot of aggravated drunk talk, but I don’t remember any actual fist fights going on. The cops did a walk through about every night, though. When they showed up, the owner would stroll down a couple doors to Sipango until it blew over. All the guys who’d been yelling their heads off got real quiet and took seats in dark corners. The under-aged drinkers (they didn’t card the girls real close) might step out for a smoke.

I was on stage on one of these occasions. I was, perhaps, crooning some kind of sensitive, singer/songwriter crap, like I do. There was an older lady sitting at a table up front in a denim skirt, chintzy  blouse and colorful western vest. Cowgirl boots I think.  She was holding a small accordion on her lap. She’d been sitting there, quietly smiling away at me, for quite a while.

When the cops walked past, she looked up and scowled. I’ve always wondered what she said to them. It was like one sentence to The Man, and they hauled her out of there in cuffs.  I never saw her again. I hope they didn’t trash her accordion. Good times.

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BRONSKI TAKES NOTE that the subject is heavily mulleted. While  discretely documenting from a distance said hair style with digital images, he checks his i-phone and confirms that it is, indeed, well into the 21st Century. But there it is: a crew cut backed with an incredibly ample ponytail. Mullet! Check! He seriously doubts the subject’s story that he ever had any contact with Fawn Knutson, much less “went steady” with her. Bronski knows from his brief encounter with Fawn Knutson years ago what a judgmental, mouthy bitch she could be. But why is mullet head lying? Bronski decides to call the office and arrange to put a tail on the subject. Bronski laughs so hard he throws up a little and drools down the front of his best tropical print work shirt.

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“The past is this moment escaping.” – Sam Shepard.

FOREST TRIES TO REMEMBER his last cigarette. It’s been about 23 years. Seems like it should be more memorable. There should be a good story attached:

 I took that one last drag as I stepped out of the El Divorcio Lounge about 2 am. A guy was pissing against the building right outside the door. Too drunk to care, I guess. I flipped the butt into his stream. It kind of sparked and sizzled to the ground. “That’s it! That’s the last one! I’m done!” I said.

That would be a good story, but it isn’t Forest’s.

Could his last cigarette be a traumatic memory he’s blocking out? Or maybe, Forest hopes there are more cancer sticks to come. It’s like the doctor will tell him: “I’m sorry. We’ve done all we can, but it looks like you’ve only hours to live.” That would be an entirely appropriate moment for Forest to say: “Well Doc, if that’s the case, could somebody run down and get me a carton of Raleighs and a bottle of Crown?” Who could argue with that?

Truth is though, it wouldn’t be the same. Even second hand smoke makes Forest kind of uneasy queasy these days. The smokes he craves are sense memories of freer times back in the day.

Forest can’t remember the last time he saw Bart. There is that guy that showed up a few years ago, but that doesn’t count. Every other word out of his mouth is “cocaine,” and he seems really attached to personal firearms. Tells the story about how he almost shot his dealer because he got the idea she is a narc. No more concern about killing somebody, somebody he thinks might be a cop, than hanging up on a telemarketer.

And there is Forest with a bad, but steady job, a girlfriend, a nice place to live and out of cigarettes to boot. There is somebody with his best friend’s face and Chuck Manson’s mouth. There should be some kind of amusing Hollywood narrative, a story  that wraps up the last of the good times running wild that doesn’t include psychotic transformations. There should be some kind of lucid, laugh about this later accounting of what the fuck  happens.

Forest doesn’t have it.

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BAGGY CLOWN PANTS and t-shirt are Mr. Troll Man’s uniform of the day, every day as far as I can tell. The t-shirt stretches tightly over his obese gut revealing a prominent outie. Too much information!

He always looks like he just crawled out of bed in a panic, as if he’s overslept and woke up almost sober. He’s playing catch up on a binge, like Ray Wylie Hubbard sang about: “them old hard boys from the Double A . . . how they ain’t gonna be drinking just for today.” I don’t think Troll is ever coming down. At some point there was probably an outlaw vibe to the process. Now it’s just wretched street theater about how long this suicide attempt is going to take.

I don’t know how he supports the lifestyle. It’s got to the point where he’s too disgusting to successfully panhandle. He was amusing (in a very disturbing way) when he first started working the pavement. He’d walk up to a car and ask: “Got any spare change?” If anybody actually handed him some coins, he’d always follow up with: “Got any of that folding change?”

But then he started heaving up all over cars. Velita had a cow when it happened to her. “You don’t know what’s in that vomit!” she howled. “It’s got to be some kind of corrosive shit in there, like Sterno or Green Lizard aftershave. A bum like that isn’t particular about what he drinks.” Word gets around in a town like this. Most folks give Troll an extra wide berth when they can.

Down at Willard Park, there’s a foot bridge over the drainage arroyo that runs through there. That’s part of how Troll got his name. He crashes under that bridge most nights. He hauls in scraps of wood and cardboard and builds him a little shelter. The city keeps tearing it out, but I guess Troll is more persistent than they are. Some people call Troll a homeless guy, but he seems pretty well dug in out there.

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“DON’T EVER let them put you on one of them enhalers. Ya know why?” he says.

“Inhaler?” (Just because I don’t know what else to say.)

“Yeah. You know what they do to ya?” He gives me a cockeyed look and slowly pats his index finger on his temple. It sounds like a rhetorical question, but he’s looking at me like I should guess. I got nothing. He nods, smirks and says: “Short term memory loss.”

“Wow.”

“It’s got so bad, it don’t take much to get me out of breath. Plus, I got to carry around this nitro with me.” He pulls an old, metal, 35mm film canister out of his shirt pocket. He shakes it at me. It rattles. “Total disability. They told me to come down here and they would fix it up that I wouldn’t have to pay taxes anymore. Because of the disability, see?”

I guess that’s one thing he can remember pretty good. I don’t say that out loud. I say: “OK. Like I told you,  the Tax Commission building is north about a half mile up this street on the right hand side.”

He takes a couple steps, stops and turns back like he forgot something. “Yeah, yeah. Thanks for the directions. It don’t take too much to get me out of breath anymore.” He rattles the film can again and walks off in the right direction.

I’m staying away from them enhalers!

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The Red Bull Incident:

Eddie Arnold singing Cattle Call is playing in the background. It’s a hayseed tune, but Merton knows it without having to think about it. He also recognizes the aroma of horseshit tinged with urine soaked mud and silage, even though it’s masked by decades of maple syrup, frying bacon, burnt potatoes and spilt coffee permeating the olfactory ambiance of the place.

It’s an unexpected sense memory brought to life. Six hours of interstate driving has him in a Twilight Zone frame of mind. Midnight at Denny’s is an iffy reality, but chain restaurants have their own air of normalcy. The rest stop is meant to be a partial return to earth. It’s a cruel ambush. He’s taken back 30 years to agrarian roots he’s trying to deny.

As his eyes adjust to neon illumination, Merton feels like an interloper in his baggy cargo shorts, Ramones t-shirt and fluorescent high tops. The place is packed with people in fancy Western wear. Some have white sheets of tyvek with black numbers printed on them safety pinned to the back of their shirts. “I guess, the rodeo is in town,” Merton mumbles to himself.

A pudgy uniformed teenage girl approaches, which is more in line with the expected. “We’re kind of full up. Would you like to sit at the counter?”

“Perfect!” he says.

She sidesteps, places an arm akimbo, stretches the other towards the barstools like a carnival barker and announces: “Anywhere you like.”

After ordering pancakes and downing a barrage of warm ups on his coffee, Merton starts coming out of road trance. He slips into people watch mode. The place is feeling less like the setting for a bar fight out of a 1970s rodeo movie, and more just like the only place open for the after party crowd. Merton is the invisible man. He’s already exploring story possibilities of the situation.

The waitress working the counter is a disheveled 60ish looking woman. She sports an oversized, rhinestone encrusted peace sign on a chain around her neck. As she tops off Merton’s already full coffee cup, she says: “I don’t know what to do with these girls!”

He thinks perhaps she is talking to somebody else, or to herself, but she has a determined glare locked right in his face. Not knowing what to say, he smiles and waits for a follow up comment. After a beat, she walks off mumbling.

It is a frequent experience for Merton. He doesn’t know why they pick on him. It’s like someone is locked in an internal dialogue and shares some it aloud, as if he could hear what their brain was silently processing in the prior sentences.

She’s coming back. He notices her nametag is blank. He wonders what name her character will have in the inevitable fictional narrative he will write about this encounter. “Maybe Verlene?” he asks aloud.

Verlene stops in front of him, poises the coffee pot over his already overfilled cup and asks: “Why would they give her a Red Bull?” Merton is unsure whether she is continuing the livestock motif of the evening or referring to the popular energy drink.  “I mean, she’s already on diet pills!”

“Ah,” says Merton.

Verlene looks at him as if she just noticed he’s there. She turns and puts the coffee pot on an electric  burner.  “I mean, she was just talking and talking and talking! She just wouldn’t stop! Duh! Let’s give her a Red Bull!” Verlene walks away, waving her arms and mumbling incoherently.

Had Merton left St. Louis a half hour earlier, or not made so many restroom stops along the way, perhaps he would have been here for the Red Bull incident. He sips his coffee and tries to visualize the scene.

The girl who seated him appears with pancakes. He notices her name tag: “Verlene.” It’s kind of a jolt, but he writes it off to the surreal nature of the midnight shift at Denny’s. “Hey, where’s the other waitress?” he asks.

“Oh. She’s on break.”

“She seemed a little upset about some girl hyped on Red Bull.”

“Well, maybe she was a little more hyped on some homemade diet pills.”

That’s another twist Merton hadn’t thought of. Maybe the cops got involved too. “Ha. Homemade diet pills? I’m sorry I missed that.”

“No, you’re not,” says Verlene. “Is there anything else you need?”

Merton looks out the window and contemplates the 4 hour drive ahead of him. He smiles at Verlene. “Nope. I think I got about all I need right now.”

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 I found on the web where Tom Robbins wrote 9 stories opening with the phrase: “Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear and sent it to Marilyn Monroe.” So, I wrote 9 stories. Some may call it plagiarism, but I’m calling it a writing exercise.

I'm putting a link to the Tom Robbin's stories at the end of this post because it takes you away from this page instead of opening the link in a new window.

So here goes:

#1 –

Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear and sent it to Marilyn Monroe. The package came back marked: “Return to Sender. Addressee will not be born until 1926.”

“What year is it?” he exclaimed. Vince’s Perelli Tire Company calendar read 1889, even though it featured nude pictures of Marilyn first published in 1953.

“Close enough!” he shouted as pulled out a 9mm Glock pistol, which would not go into production until 1982. He pumped a round into the chamber and shot himself in the chest.

He woke up a short time later, very much alive. He was an immortal artist.

#2 –

Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear and sent it to Marilyn Monroe. A few months later he received an unsigned painting in the mail. It was two multi-colored swirls, as if a woman had smeared her breasts with a palette of oil paint and pressed them against the canvas.

Vincent felt very physically stimulated just thinking about Marilyn Monroe exposing herself to him in such an intimate way. He proudly displayed the canvas in his studio and pointed it out to every visitor as a symbol of his connection to Marilyn.

About a year later, Vincent read an article about a woman in New York named Brigid Berlin, who was famous for her breast print art. And, his life was ruined, never knowing the true origin of the painting.

#3 –

Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear and sent it to Marilyn Monroe.

“Jesus! It’s another one!” exclaimed Joe when he opened the package.

“If it bothers you, don’t open my mail,” said Marilyn as she came over to the table. “Good! At least this one put it in a sandwich bag.”

“Whoa! Those things always creep me out!” moaned Joe.

“Fame is a bitch,” said Marilyn cheerily. She took the baggy over to a mirror and held it up to her the side of her head as if sizing up an earring. “Joe honey?” she said.

“What now?” Joe asked.

“I was just wondering?” she said. “Why do you suppose it’s always the left one?”

#4 –

Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear

and sent it to Marilyn Monroe.

And for the rest of that whole year

his skull hurt like hell: “Oh! Oh! Oh!”

So, each night he bandaged his head

until it was feeling better.

Then these are the words that he said:

“Next time I’ll just send a letter.”

#5 –

Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear and sent it to Marilyn Monroe. When she died, they found a ceramic matchbox on her nightstand. A portrait of a bare-chested woman standing in front of a painting of sunflowers was enameled on the top. The ear, encased in clear Plexiglas, was inside the matchbox. The Plexiglas was inscribed “Thank You Mr. Van Gogh,” and there were lip prints on it in bright red lipstick. The publicity man from the studio palmed both the matchbox and ear. They were never seen nor heard of again.

#6 –

Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear and sent it to Marilyn Monroe. A sliver of microfilm was secreted discretely in the tissue. It listed contacts and safe houses within the Dutch Resistance that were vital to the war effort. The package was opened and inspected by the German occupiers at the border. But, even the Nazis went “ew!” and passed it without looking too closely.

#7 –

Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear and sent it to Marilyn Monroe.

It all started the night friends hauled him down to a little club. A band called The 13th Floor Elevators were playing. The party continued after hours. He was introduced to Waylon Jennings and somehow wound up riding across the Southwest on Waylon’s tour bus.

It didn’t get really weird until, after a show one night, some guy everybody called Possum appeared. Possum introduced him to Kickapoo Joy Juice, a concoction drunk out of mason jars. It all went kind of dark after that.

Vincent does not remember the ear incident per se. What stands out is when Willie Nelson told him: “Van Goooh, you’re one gonzoooh sonnabitch. I’ll give you that. But, Waylon can’t have you dying on his gawd damned tour bus. We got to cut you loose, son.”

Vincent van Gogh woke up sometime later at St. Mary’s Hospital in Enid, Oklahoma. An elderly nun was standing by his bed, cheerily humming the tune to Fraulein.

Maybe, he actually just fed his ear to a dog. But, he likes to think somehow it got to Marilyn. That’s the way he tells the story, anyway.

#8 –

Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear and sent it to Marilyn Monroe. After that, his sunglasses never really sat right on this face.

#9 –

Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear and sent it to Marilyn Monroe. Two weeks later, she was on his doorstep. With her hair and makeup done up to perfection, and wearing the famous, ivory pleated, William Travilla dress from Seven Year Itch, every molecule of her screamed “glamorous movie star!”

She gave the door a timid knock. Van Gogh opened the door and froze in rapt ardor. She smiled broadly, locked eyes with him, stepped forward, and kicked the sharp tip of her Ferragamo stiletto into his groin. That area of his body still throbbed with passionate anticipation, as it suddenly also telegraphed helpless agony.

Sheltering against another low assault, his thighs clamped his frantic crossed hands. Grabbing his necktie at the knot, balling up her fist and taking aim at the anterior ridge of his snout, Marilyn cooed: “Norma Jean is here to kick your ass, you sick fuck!”

Check out Tom Robbins' stories here:  http://www.101bananas.com/garden/moon2.html

WHEN I PARKED in the driveway, a swarm of May Flies engulfed my car. I could see by the exertion of the ones on the windshield that they were trying to lift it. I was afraid to get out of the car. Maybe my added weight was the only thing keeping it on the ground. But, I was afraid to stay in the car too. If it turned out they could lift it anyway, I didn't know where I'd end up. So, I turned on the windshield washer and wipers and made a dive out the door to the pavement. The last time I saw my car, it was a Crown Vic shaped swarm of insects disappearing over rooftops to the east. I wonder if my insurance covers that?

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