S Curve

     S. waited for his girlfriend to call.  Brain tired from thinking of things to do, thinking of things, not doing them, wanting to think of her.  Her voice talking about anything, just that, right now, if he could hear her, he reasoned, he'd feel better, forget about the problem with the unemployment office.

     Instead, rattling his brain case, cycled made up songs heavy on percussion and bass.  Boredom started to creep in, a malaise generated by two years of isolation and inner-directed thoughts.

     Twenty-five years ago, beginning of his first relationship, an older woman, as he now was older than his girlfriend, E., getting older each minute she didn't call.

     Are spaces between exciting moments also exciting?

     "Nothing is happening," a subjective statement.

     Bored with girlfriend-waiting, he didn't notice the never-bored spider down by the wainscoting to his right, waiting for food caught in a silk trap.

     S. didn't notice the basement's furnace activating.  A car's horn.  Exciting?  Yes, for honker and honked at.  A train five blocks away.  Nose breathing in silence accompanied irregularly by wind gusts in leafless trees.

     He couldn't fulfill her request for remuneration for transferring the object.  His lack of money could not benefit her lack of money.  Thoughts and prayers, unconditional good will he could offer, spirited encouragement from a foundation of caring.  Not politicians' "thoughts and prayers," a term for their farts.

 

     S. dreams he lies on dirt covered by a pebbly stone slab.  Someone lifts it like a coffin lid.  He's been buried beneath a German sidewalk.  German words on street signs and shops in a commercial neighborhood.  Helped out of the cavity by a passerby, S. speaks and understands German as well as he comprehends English.  When you see English in this tale from now on, assume some of it is German.

     S. walks inside his dirty pants to City Hall where he works as a teller in a little bank in the basement.  In the brass-walled vault he finds a gold Gibson Les Paul.  He plays the shit out of that thing.  Marshall amp reverb and echo in the small bank of marble and iron agitates the ears and wrecks the concentration of his coworkers.  A solo to die for, a pity it's not recorded!  A performance that would have had an article written about it in Guitar Player magazine.

     Remember that periodical?  I, Vic Neptune, had a subscription when I was in high school, a bass playing lad and singer in the band Derelict.  Back to the story!

     S., no longer unconscious, thinks, That was a dream! swings his legs, stands, chipper as birdsong.

     I'll never forget that dream!  I forgot to buy shampoo.

     S. uses the last thick drops of sparkly blue Surf Zone Ultra 1000 Plus, With Cruelty Free Conditioner, "Smell like a movie star!" nineteen bucks a bottle.

     He remembers the spirited day the Student Council voted for a new president.  A surprise candidate, backed by a student cadre concocting the plan over lunch period.  S. didn't win, but girls became interested.  One month later he had more girls paying attention to him than he could manage if he were to take any of them seriously, so he used them as sex toys.  He was a fucking asshole, but also charming.

     S.'s employer closed for the third time since the state lockdown of March 2020.  Unemployed for forty-five days, he tried for unemployment money, but confused his application by submitting the first claim twice.  Two hours on the phone, a woman straightened out the problem, no money had yet come his way.

     Need the money now, he thinks.  Got to perform for E.

     E. wonders why it rests upon her to smuggle away an object S. dreamed.  He considers giving the imaginary object to M., a non-existent person, for safekeeping in this dimension.  Don't let P. have it!

     E. didn't call.

     S. lost track of important mail sometimes because postal carriers working his street varied over a month, one of them reliable at getting mail to the right addresses, and two alternates, neither of whom were reliable at helping citizens feel secure their mail was in the right boxes.  

     A postcard of a buffalo told him nothing about the world situation, unless it were a reference to near-extinction.  He sought for a while to not pay attention to the war in Ukraine.  Hearing the outrage expressed by American politicians and news media figures who have themselves attacked and encouraged the attacking of many countries is nauseating to listen to.  

     S. gave short bursts of thought to politics.  He had no idea what the solution to anything was, so he preferred to avoid thinking about politics and instead concentrate on the reality in front of him.  He was poor.

     He left his girlfriend, D. the one prior to E., because D. annoyed him with her immature-sounding teenager's voice in a thirty-six year old woman's body.  D. worshipped him, more terrible than it sounds when on the receiving end.  Did D. ever resent S. when he said the words of separation.  Turned into a 100 minute conversation, S. knowing he's not backing down, waiting for her to get tired so he can go home and smoke pot, watch a movie.  D. not letting it go--how could you, why, why, I feel like you used me, you're really cold you know that?

     Turned down his offer of a ride.  Were this a melodrama she'd get into an Uber accident, lose a leg and require plastic surgery.  The hero, Robert Cummings, sticks by her, but S. was an asshole, remember? The two, sitting close on her couch, 100 minutes of talking, listening, wandering in concentration, living room windows open, hot day, touching and then what do you know, they're fucking.

     

     S. gets into his Jaguar--a fantasy--it's a fucking silver Jaguar, he feels like John Steed in The Avengers.  His tuxedo is also a weapon.  The flower in the lapel squirts sulfuric acid of high strength.  The inner pocket on the left has a surveillance blocker.  The parts for him to assemble an assassination pistol are in his costume and a few parts nestle in the Jag's dash.  He purposely loses 2,000 pounds sterling of Her Majesty's money pile, attracts attention from Milton Framm, the six foot seven giant of regime change.  The State Department's Man in Indianapolis.  This is Indiana trying to be free, getting messed with prior to an invasion by the United States and Chevron.  

     S. takes his mind away from the Bondian fantasy.  He remembers a cliff, the Grand Canyon, South Rim.  He could've so easily taken one step and tilted forward, and no more S.  Parents look for him.  Someone screams.  A man yells, "He's down there!  Is that your son?  I'm really sorry, man."

     S. didn't think of those thoughts, standing above a colorful abyss, but rather he surrendered to the bigness of the whole thing, the way the vastness of it makes it hard to take in entirely with your eyes.

     Years later, he rode in his Jaguar, ELO on the soundtrack, pulling through Burger King drive through on North Main, opposite the white evangelical church, a wooden structure, like some components of S.'s burger and French fries.  The chocolate shake would be better without the whipped cream.

     Damn!  Why didn't I ask for no whipped cream?

     A nice day for a drive, don't bring me down indeed, Jeff Lynne, how right you are, this was the song of songs in Freshman year at old Saint Cathy's.  Bryn Mawr, Yale, CIA, my own island, ruler of the Western Hemisphere, conqueror of space, engineer of the next Big Bang.  Free of D.  Let's see, what shall I do, I, I who create universes.  With a finger snap?  Or does it take more to make a universe?  Can there be twin universes?  I like to think there's another me in that universe, undergoing the exact same experiences maybe, or maybe already dead?

     A passing sign alerts him that Turkey has declared war on Estonia, while Botswana has ceded more territory to the Superpowers' Congo.

     S. switches identities with a man heading to Mars, by then a terraformed paradise run by technocratic billionaire authoritarians with a codified moral code consisting partially of recognizable Golden Rule principles, but otherwise one-sided, leaving out civil rights of those doing the work.  Haven't they seen Total Recall?  A divided society leads to gain for no one.  In the short term, technocratic billionaire authoritarians have the best furniture to sit on.

     Germany-U.K. Pact in danger.

     Kazakhstan says no to allowing last International Space Station crew to land at Baikonur Cosmodrome.  Three American and one British astronaut waiting for State Department diplomats and NASA scientists to work it out with Kazakhstan's Space Bureau.  Long periods waiting on hard chairs in long 19th century corridors.  The sound of a U.S. diplomat clearing his throat disturbs the other, pencil and Sudoku book purchased at O'Hare Airport.  The Cosmodrome is willing to inflict boredom and homesickness on the four astronauts, but they give in when offered the chance to increase their Air Force fleet with 12 F-18 fighters and training by advanced teachers in the art of aerial combat.    

     

     The astronauts report to Houston: "Food low, entertainment watched again and again, how many more times must we watch Robert Blake and that cockatoo?  Enough with Friends!  We astronauts have decided that's a horrible show!  It's not funny!  The characters are narcissists!  Give Kazakhstan what she wants!  

     

     S. called E.  She answered.  

     "I've been super-busy."

    "It only takes a few seconds to send a brief text letting me know you're okay, you're attentive to the fact that you're making me wait."

     "Are you coming over?  I'll have to be done by ten.  We can hang for three hours."

     "On my way."

     Three hours later he left her place on Bayshore Drive, by the river, thinking, This was a good idea, calling her like that.  I have to hand it to myself.  I sometimes have good ideas.  This one was one of the best.  Also, buying this Jaguar.  Look at that silver paint job!  The blue interior makes it that much more mysterious.  Plush, settle in, seat belt, test the engine's eagerness to roar without limit!  Shift into gear, off I go, driving my great chariot into battle against the Germans!  Or the Romanians, or the Mongols, or some beach community in Southern California!  Fourth gear, dare I try five?  Oh my god of speed you give an exhilaration to life!  Must slow down.  I think I shot past my turn.

     Ah, here's what I'm looking for, a can of beans, but which variety?  Black beans I think, good for a tortilla, and down there are bags of tortillas, good.  The beans.  These beans, they're fairly cheap.  I'll get two cans, why not?  It's canned goods, one of them will keep.  Look at the expiration date.  Wow, I don't know what I'll be doing that year but I hope I"m alive to do it, as long as it's not slave labor.

     

     Radio Free Albemuth by Philip K. Dick, written in 1976, published posthumously in 1985 shows an America becoming more authoritarian.  In the end the protagonist is in a work camp.  Intellectuals don't fare well in that society because they think for themselves, they're not swayed, most of them, by propaganda and war chanting among the news media personalities, writers, and entertainers.  

     Loving Ukraine is becoming a requirement in America.

     Back to the story:

     Settle in plush, comforts preventing advancement as a wise person.

     A sybaritic and parasitic class, the ultra-wealthy and lesser wealthy, prey upon us, upending our lives, killing us with wars profitable to them, wars serving their interest in remaking the world into what they want, which isn't what we want.

                                                        How To Win a Bad War

     Colonel Linwood Parker, USAF, Retired

     

     S., driving his Jaguar one handed, the other caressing the soft hair of Candice Chow, half Chinese, half Polish super-agent.  She reclines in her seat with the grounded ease of a bear, but with angled femininity, white dress with red polka dots, dark blonde hair, white gloves, a demoness at cards.  They met in a dive in Cleveland, The Anchor, a bar founded in 1895 and continually run since then.  Cleveland and the money wired to them by the Agency boosted them to Rochester, New York where they picked up the shot.  The shot to deliver to the target.  Agency people liked to avoid speaking directly about sensitive subjects, like murdering people.  But calling a human being a "target," puts one in mind of a deer jumping through snow in a forest, the moment he's seen and decided upon as a "target" the deer's a target, whether the bullet misses or not.  The bullet may fly unimpeded through the forest until it hits somebody's husband.  Or wife, or child.  That's happened in the state I live in.  Stray bullet kills hunter...

     S. thought of William the Second of England, William Rufus, a redhead with a foul temper.  He got killed by a supposedly stray arrow fired by Walter Tyrrell, a courtier from France.  According to most historians, this was probably an accident and Walter felt really bad about it.  He knew King William.  He'd known him before he was king.  

     S. thought of Prince Andrew, expelled from the Royal Family by his mother, her majesty the Queen, Elizabeth Regina, direct descendent of William the Conqueror, father of William Rufus, the king slain by one of his own men in the New Forest in A.D. 1100.  

     Andrew's a bad boy, S. thinks.  Andrew doesn't like older women, he likes younger women.  He has the financial means to screw underage girls and get away with it.  Andrew likes em young.  He's on the cover of a Grocery Store checkout lane newspaper.  

     The Queen's pissed.  She knew about Andrew's tendencies toward teenaged girls, she was willing to make nothing of it, "...but when that Epstein man got involved in your life, son Andrew, you changed into more of a reckless cad, always thinking of yourself, of gratifying your aging penis!  You are out of the succession!  I've already stripped away your titles, but you're my son!  I love you, Andrew!  You may kiss my hand."

     S. slapped away mosquitoes, thinking how many there are: ninety trillion mosquitoes alive at any given time, give or take a few billion, like the one S. smeared to gray remains.  

     Lunch hour.  Pretty Miss McGivers, always has the salad.  Mr. Vandersande, a milk and baloney man.  S. kisses his hand, imagining his palm is E.'s face.  He remembers when she read Dune by Frank Herbert, how it took her six months, how she found it tedious but interesting enough to hold her attention, one page at a time, sometimes a marathon reading session managing five pages.  Not a flowing narrative for her, unfortunately, S. thought, fondly remembering his nine reads of Dune.  He never read the sequels, just Dune, no sequels necessary, he believed.  He didn't see the two film versions or the TV miniseries.  Dune was just Herbert's Dune to him.  

     S. also read The Dragon in the Sea, Herbert's first novel, a submarine story in a near future world with U.S.A. versus U.S.S.R.

     How funny that the world seems bent on reentering a Cold War phase, his brain burst with a political thought as he drove one-handed, memories of the hair scent of Candice Chow in his awareness making him happy.  

     Clouded by the thought of the day: Will there be war between Russia and the United States?  How crazy a thought.  Ambitious men and women exist now, too.  

     Candice Chow had the code phrase, with its sequence of forty numbers, memorized.  She said she planned on taking a vacation after mission's completion.  Gambling in Vegas, in Monaco, in Oregon where she had her hideout.  

     S. greeted a new day thus: put clothes on his naked body.  He dressed thus: first glanced at item of clothing in whatever category; that tee shirt because it's the first tee shirt seen.  Socks, pants, over-shirt, you get the idea.

     S. knows or thinks he knows E. loves him.  Waiting to hear it, still.

     S. shaving one morning before work, has the impression he's shaved recently but has no memory of it.  Minutes gone, ground into the mind's memory pool, where they become unreliable as facts and convert to fictions as we misremember, but based on events experienced and seen, heard, smelt.

     S. dismissed the other two for now, taste and touch.  Covid took away his taste.  

     E. visiting her parents in Connecticut.  No one to touch but himself.

     Put on the Yes album, the only one he owns, Fragile. "Roundabout" starts it off, Chris Squire's busy bass lines his favorite enjoyment from listening to Yes.

     S. made pancakes.

     S. put honey on the pancakes.  He had a few drops of syrup left in a bottle bought three years ago, so he didn't trust it but it sat in his cupboard nonetheless.

     S. got a job disseminating State Department propaganda on his YouTube channel, a few hundred extra bucks a month to say encouraging non-critical things about U.S. foreign policy, like,

     "As we pursue democracy in Ukraine..."

     "President Biden was right to send more weapons..."

     "Is Putin going crazy?"

     He also made videos attacking anti-imperialist channels, got labeled by leftists as a faux leftie, and most everyone thinking critically viewed him that way, but liberals loved him.

     He had enough money now to buy a silver Jaguar.  With money came a new girlfriend; tall, model type though she actually was a RAND institute player named J.

     S. and J. had sex the first time after knowing each other for eight hours.

     J. was there to guide him and keep an eye on him.  In the meantime he enjoyed the favors, as did she because S. had a skill in pleasuring women that would not be rated as inadequate.

     J. did the same competent -jobs on him.

     Happiness in S.'s bedroom, J.'s living room and shower stall.

     A blissfully content couple, until the order comes for S. to denounce the man who got his YouTube career launched, C.  C. has faltered in the government's eyes.  His videos, always well researched and reaching true conclusions about the state of the country and the world and those running it, commit the sin of being true, thus fake news and misinformation.  S. is to make a video finally condemning C., denouncing him as a greedy charlatan with wrong sympathies.

     S. imagines himself as a noble Edward Murrow type, not accepting the lucrative assignment, making a video instead about the corruption of YouTube.  He would get taken down, like C., maybe join C. and other censored YouTubers in condemning attacks on free speech by corporations and government officials.  

     S. runs for President, standing on his Jag seat, speechifying to a growing fascinated crowd about how he'll flush the swamp!  He'll restore voting to LGBTQ+ people.  He'll legalize cannibis.  He'll withdraw U.S. troops from all countries and put them to work rebuilding America's infrastructure.  The entire Black population is in prison, well, S. will let them out!  He'll give us Medicare for All.  He'll prosecute predatory bankers and other capitalists who steal from the middle class and poor, he'll levy a 95 % tax rate on billionaires, he'll prosecute American war criminals like George W. Bush and Condi Rice.  He'll raise the minimum wage to 25 bucks an hour.  He'll recommend summer camp and fat camp for at risk youth.  He'll mandate a seventeen years old legal age for purchasing alcohol, cigarettes will be cheap again, guns will be free, "Our aquariums are full of captured fish!  I say let them go!"

     He has to drive over five people to get away from the enthusiastic loving crowd.

     What S. did the next day was record a video denouncing C.  He got it out of his mouth right away and then spent thirteen minutes giving twenty-two examples of C. making mistakes over the last eight years, stumbling over a word, or getting a fact wrong, reading things badly, making jokes about terrible events, a real insensitive cad is C.  Jokes about disasters and wars.  That he claims to be a citizen journalist is a joke.  No one serious takes him seriously as a journalist.  

     83 percent of S.'s audience hate the video.  He loses 300,000 subscribers.  The comments section features variations of "What the fuck?" "WTF?" "What's your point?  You never make mistakes?  Here's five examples."  "Really, S., you must know this is bullshit.  Who are you working for?"

     S. kept a Luger in the file cabinet drawer next to his desk, a foot from the spider web by the wainscoting.  He'd keep it open and glance at it while he put together his videos.  This time, reading the comments, he took out the gun, looked at it.  The weight of it loaded provided good balance.  

     Nice thing to hold when shooting oneself in the temple, or mouth, or under the chin, or against the heart, maybe.  I destroyed my YouTube career on the left side.  I shall go to the right side to survive at this profession.  I'll wear strangely shaped eyewear, hire a professional lighting man, I've got money, sellouts have money!  That's me, S.!  Sellout!

     Close the red curtain on S.  Cymbals clash, kettledrums throb and boom, a lone clarinet plays clearly a lovely melody, E.'s theme.

     Through all this drama relating to S., E. practiced gouache techniques with an art professor donating his spare time because he found her fetching.  Was E. fucking L.?  Some connected E. with H., the sculptor whack job serving time for bigamy and armed robbery.  So, quickly in her imagination, E.'s, did her story turn to film noir.  

     1951, New York, mists, March.  E. in costume of the day, gloves, hat, veil, out for a drink and a meeting with H.  Plotting the heist, for E. was in on that, drove the car, a '48 Plymouth Gargoyle with the polished chrome gargoyle hood ornament.  H.'s car, his ride, his distraction.  His bed of seduction.  H. had a way about him, E. found him hard to resist, at least that one time.

     E.'s philosophy of peril.  To experience peril changes perspective, grows a person to be more compassionate, or perhaps others are directed from the trauma of peril to vicious solutions.  

     E. had been in Beirut when the big blast happened.  She was on the outer reach of the blast zone but boy howdy, you had to postpone your meeting or take the rest of your shit later because What the fuck is going on?  You have to find out.  You hold in your shit.  You forget to shit.  The next day you shit.  Your city's destroyed, but you gotta shit.

     E. shat, ate what food was available, bought another musical instrument, a clarinet with a broken key, she talked the seller down by five bucks because of that defect.  Got to be frugal in a war zone, Chet, she says to her sound man, you see, this is for an album of hers, her second solo effort, to be called, Traveling Hag. A concept album.  E. plays the Hag, belting out vocals in an old woman's voice, quite eerie and horripilating to hear E. howl in multiple overldubs in "Get off My Property."

     She left Beirut for London, stayed with an old friend (male), one bedroom for platonic friends, I believed her.  She came home to me, my little muffin, full of stories about Beirut and London.  She showed me pictures.  E. by the Nelson column.  E. by 10 Downing Street.  E. meeting Boris Johnson.  E. playing her clarinet for Boris and Mrs. Johnson.  E. in a one piece swimsuit on a beach in Long Island with a Royal, not Andrew.  E., a selfie, just a sheet covering her, big grin.

     S. pondered her lunacy.  Everything she mentioned about herself constituted 22 percent of her overall life.  A mysterious woman.  S. went for that type always. He wanted mystery. He wanted lived stories with vivid imagery--Odysseus tied to the Argo's mast, enduring the Siren's song.  The promise of bong, sexy dancers, women bathing the Captain and his men, women crawling on the men, they feel good, a reward for their hard work, we'll never leave this island of sorcery.

     

     E. socks S.'s arm.  "Where did you go, Mitty?"

     "I was imagining a French film of Walter Mitty.  La vie secret de Waltoouhr Meetee."

     E. says, "We're here.  Turn down that lane."

     S. thinks.  The woman is bossy tonight.  Do I like it?  No I do not.  "I know where to go, just a little silence now, please."

     She keeps her mouth shut, slight pout.  This is film noir, remember?  E. waits for S. to park the car in the right spot, but he's adjusting it so the car is exactly parallel to the yellow lines, 100% inside the open box.

     E. says, "That's good enough."

     S. gives up, pissed that he can't make one more attempt.  Alone, he would have worked that problem for hours, never tiring, always sure he's not wasting time.

     E. carries her clarinet case.  People's well-dressed legs moving by, places please, audience members, curtain opens in five minutes.  Curtain.  Opens in five, make that four minutes fifty seconds, four minutes forty-eight seconds."

     E. thinks, Boy, my first solo before an audience, Clarinetti's Suite for Clarinet No. 2, Opus 640.  

     S. kisses E. and goes to his seat, high up in the balcony stage left.  The concert starts with selections from the opera Gustav von Dinkenhorst by Ernst Glitz-Glockenspieler, for it was Glitz-Glockenspieler's two hundredth anniversary last March.

     Gustav von Dinkenhorst is the youngest general, at twenty-three, in an imaginary conqueror's army.  He's handsome, ladies like him, he likes ladies, he beds the wife of his commanding officer, the commanding officer challenges him to a duel.  Dinkenhorst kills the cuckold, flees, joins a rival army, becomes a general of a wiped out unit, builds a solid brigade of men always relied on to spread havoc before them, laying waste to half of Europe.  Triumphant in the end.  Nothing bad happens to Dinkenhorst, so someone rewrote the ending, made Dinkenhorst fall off of his horse while drunk, strikes his head on a tree stump.  Not as colorful or as stirring as seeing Dinkenhorst in full Ares mode, war god of the time of Frederick the Great.  

     Tonight's presentation follows the original version of Dinkenhorst triumphant as conqueror.  But that's just part one, where part two gives us the decline of Dinkenhorst, the plots, the treason, Dinkenhorst condemns his son to death for attempted usurpation, Dinkenhorst kills himself by eating lead filings and drinking goat's milk spirits.  An hour of that on stage is worth the price of a thirty-nine dollar standing room only ticket.   

     E.'s interpretation of Clarinetti's piece receives a bad review from Smorton Jerjeel.  

     She might make a good recording star, I've heard her sing, she's better at that than with the clarinet, take my advice, dear, Give Up the Clarinet!  You slew Constantine Clarinetti!  Stay away from the Classics!  You lack the ability to interpret them properly!  Listen to Gage Perkins's interpretation of Suite No. 2.  You'll find he does it better than you did tonight.  He's a good clarinet player, you're not.  Gage commands six figures for a thirty minute show.  Gage played a command performance in Elsinore, Hamlet's castle.  Isn't that something?

     

     Smorton Jarjeel attended the same university as E.  He knew her from geology lab where they shared a bench, solved school work problems together and did experiments.  She left her scarf behind one day.  He put it in his backpack, took it home, sniffed it.  It smelled like her--good.  He gave it to her the next day.

     "Oh, I was wondering where I put that."

     Smorton Jarjeel's love life had failures, one good connection, dates going nowhere, alone in a condominium at forty-three.

     Smorton Jarjeel's columns featured sentences molded around hard feelings, a growing contempt for humanity, but also contempt for himself.  He liked E.'s clarinet tone.  An old instrument.  She told its story in an issue of Rock and Whatever Else Online Magazine.  The photo of E. accompanying the article showed a woman more beautiful than the college version.  Long dark blonde hair, nose matching her face where before it looked too big.  Holding the clarinet, she looked as a mysterious giver of life to the black breath stick.  

      Smorton Jarjeel knew S. in the 1990s, when Nirvana was in jukeboxes.  Zima was a new beverage, its appeal coming from its stylish bottle, rather than its taste.  MTV still showed videos, one could see The Cure on MTV!  

     S. read Jarjeel's review with growing anger.  E.'s clarinet playing, Jarjeel complained, missed notes during the splendid array of arpeggios in the Suite's Scherzo movement.  Much better she was with long drawn out notes, making her a good accent player, second chair in the orchestra quality.  Competent, but unimpressive.

     As the city's most celebrated critic, Jarjeel keeps busy with columns called Art Beat, Music Beat, Film Beat, Restaurant Beat, Zoo Beat.

     S. finds himself sitting next to Smorton Jarjeel on the Metro in this imaginary American metropolis sometime around 2023.  

     S. E. hasn't played Classical music since reading your review.

     Jarjeel: Good.

     S. Good?  No.  She's unable to play music.  She doesn't know what to do.

     Jarjeel: Tell her to focus on her singing.  I wrote that advice in the review, did she read the whole thing?

     S. I'm going to buy her a synthesizer.  She can play a clarinet noise on that.  Lots of noises.

     Jarjeel: Your strength is not musical knowledge.  I'm guessing you're good at Blackjack?

     S. How did you know?

     Jarjeel: The way your eyes peer, how you keep your hands close to your body.  

     S. E. doesn't want to marry a gambler.

     Jarjeel: Then stop.

     S. No, out of the question.  I'm not giving up the rush!

     Jarjeel: I've heard it's intoxicating.

     S. You really have no idea?  Let's go gambling, Smorton!  Put up twenty bucks of your own money.  If you lose it you're out twenty bucks, but if you get ahead, good for Smorton!

     

     You want me to narrate a scene of Smorton Jarjeel and S. out on Casino Row, smell of the Atlantic in their nostrils, casino to casino, cheap drinks, long-legged waitresses in tight small outfits, murmur of hundreds of voices, despair, desperation, ill judgment, victory.  Then the pair, flush with winnings by midnight, eat cheap steak dinners, drink more, make arrangements for a later assignation with two ladies of the evening, return to the tables.  S. tries roulette, gets ahead, loses it all in one marble coming to rest. Smorton spots him 500,000, enough to live on for ten years.  S. gambles it all away in two hours but he has enough to pay the women.  Smorton comes out a buck fifty ahead.  They eat a cheap breakfast and drive home.

     But that's not what happened, because Smorton refused the offer of a casino crawl.  Being among hoi polloi agitated Smorton's nose hairs.  One extraverted armpit and Smorton would flee, heading for outdoor air, even in frigid temperatures.

     Smorton wrote a public apology to E.  He'd not emphasized enough E.'s talent, her good work with phrasing, making the instrument inspire emotion.  "Forgive me, E.  I'm not perfect."

     If she read the apology, S. didn't know, for E. moved to California, lived in a commune, the Just For Us Sisterhood of Peace, Prosperity, and Consciousness Universal.  E.'s third solo album was minimalist recordings of her playing an acoustic guitar and singing mostly simple songs about grass, birds, her lover's thighs, beekeeping, cow milking, making small talk with the man who delivers necessities, group orgy night, and glass blowing.

     S. thought about people famous from prison, or from inside a nunnery, or brothel, of from inside the Army, inside institutions.  Inside the bank in City Hall, blasting the ears with my Gibson Les Paul sound.  Who am I, Ace Frehley?  Yeah yeah!  Or Jimi Hendrix?  Weee-oooh!  Or Brian May?  Oh so genteel!  What about Rory Gallagher?  Yeah, Big Rock Man!  

     They fired him for making a nuisance of himself, refusing to stop making a nuisance of himself, becoming belligerent and defensive when attempts were made to unplug the amplifier.  

     "Back off!  I will Robin Trower you against the wall, then pummel you with Foghat!"

     The cops got him into the back of Car 62, a prison cell with no window winding handles, not an electric window car.  Couldn't open the windows.  Seat belts used as handcuff attachments, firmly held in the back of Car 62.  S. thinks it would be a good idea to shift his mind into a different dimension.  

     There it is.  I'm a political prisoner on Planet Xeeeyeoh, colonized eight centuries ago by human explorers from an uninhabitable Earth, the Cosmic Diaspora, ongoing, refugees of Terra.  

     S. used to rule a planet hard by the Rat Nebula.  The planet's main intelligent species are rats blended with otters.  They swim and float most of the time.  S. took over the planet, providing more fish than the rat-otter rulers were providing, so, popular uprising, only a few deaths.  S. found they made good eating.

     Everything's dandy until Fleet 62, tasked with locating S. for his previous violation of Order 93, Spreading False Information About Government Agencies, arrives in orbit, puts a cordon around the planet, sends a force of 2,500 soldiers.  They set up a command unit, begin questioning the population.  The rat-otters play dumb.  They're honorable.  They're not giving anybody up.  They may be rats, but they're not rats.

     "We're here, buddy," a gruff voice says.  S. comes out of his reverie and allows himself to be placed in a wheelchair, taken into Big Hospital, with Big Psychiatric Ward.  Six weeks later, he leaves, taken home in the time being to live with his worried parents who treat him like he's a teenager again.  

     Fleet 62, commanded by Admiral Consul Imbolo, Hero of Cassandra's Rift, sends an additional 5,000 men to look for S., who hides in a remote command post in the forest, nowhere near any place Imbolo's men are looking.  This goes on for five years.  Fleet 62 personnel receive sixty less than adequate paychecks during this search for S.  An assessment two years into the search questions how important S. is, is it necessary to find him?  We may need the dreadnought flagship for a war we're working on getting started in the Roswell Nebula.  

     Still, the war machine must be stoked.  Fleet 62, sixteen ships, twenty-one thousand personnel give or take.  All of us ready to go, to maybe die on that rock below, who knows, maybe the target will go down in a blaze of stun pistol fire.  A melt pistol will burn a hole in his chest!  Ha ha!

     Cruelty and war go together.

     

     Io looked on with flares of light from its volcanoes.  Enceladus spouted water into its dark sky, a white ball of ice where the Meemies live.  They were well aware of Earth, ever since a probe called Cassini explored the Saturn System.  Cassini, empty of life forms, flew over Enceladus, discovered the water ice geysers indicating a sub-ice sheet ocean containing as much water as Lake Superior.

     Indeed, the place teems with life in the much warmer than super-frigid of the moon's surface.  Bio-luminescence gives the world a mellow glow, it's always lit up.  Some walls are completely illuminated, blue, orange, green, white, purple, red, gold.  The Meemies own no property.  They cooperate in full, every member contributing to the effort, on big projects, like going to war.  

     S. dreamed of this situation in the psychiatric ward, wrote disconnected Meemies fiction on yellow lined paper.  An attendant read it, pronounced it pretty good.  Keep writing.  S. didn't realize the attendant wanted to read more because that would help the psychiatrist handling S.'s case get a better idea of his mental state, like whether he knows the difference between reality and fantasy---

     ---The Meemies prepare themselves, uttering the vibrations through the dark blue waters underneath Enceladus's ice sheet.  They turn inside out, white and slick, coming together into one white gooey ball half a mile across.  No metric system in this futuristic story?  No.  Fuck the metric system.

     Half a mile, eight tenths of a kilometer.  

     This glob of Meemy heads to Earth and wraps itself around the planet.  Look up and what you see is a throbbing white glowing membrane with movements running through it and a hum.  The people go mad, it's that kind of a hum, plus there's very little feeling of hope when you look up and see from horizon to horizon an alien the size of the planet apparently destroying us.  Finally, a message from the Meemies.

     

     People of Earth.  Do not spread your destructive tendencies to any other world.  We don't want your advertisements.  We don't want your new flavor of Mountain Dew.  We don't want tourists visiting our world, polluting our one and only ocean.  You know now what we can do.  We can do worse.  Allow us to demonstrate...

     

     S. never put it past that point.  He read The War of the Worlds, but even there, despite the destruction and death, humanity prevails, there's a weak spot in Martian invasion plans, a biological factor.  Can one species exist on another planet without losing vital physical advantages needed to survive for long?  

     S. tried to write The Meemies, failed after twenty pages, started with the enthusiasm stemming from having nothing to do when living in a mental ward, mind brimming with ideas, like all caps for the Meemies passages, and regular text for the Earth situation, with military sections underlined and precisely dated.  He wanted to get to the scene of the Meemies wrapping their flesh around Earth, so he wrote that first, then wrote a scene between a female protagonist and the hero, a skeptic until he sees the alien membrane in the sky.  This former Olympic gold medalist in swimming, Ross Pugh, played by Pug Jensenhoff in the film--yes, S. cast the film version and wrote camera placements.  After he got out of the ward he spent months envisioning, but not writing, The Meemies.

     Heavily armored jets land charges on the membrane, blowing a hole through Meemy flesh.  Rocketships fly out, scorching the membrane at the hole's edges.  Rocket ships turn and blast the Earth's covering.  Individual Meemies flee to Enceladus.  Earth in five years builds fast vessels capable of soon invading Saturn's moons to colonize and kill Meemies, eliminate the threat, tamp down the fear.  

     

     S., feeling low, thought of how much he could've done had he been patient.  Which friends he'd still have if he hadn't given offense.  

     Too unwise with words I am, saying things people don't want to hear.  Just because something is true doesn't make it right to say, but people who can't take hearing truth really miss out.  There's something mature and satisfying to be had in embracing a bleak perspective."

     S. walked along the rim of the highest point of the Coliseum, stumbled, waved his arms to stay upright, for the fall would be fatal, landing on people possibly.  His young man's balance saved him, he had a story to tell!

     That was after he left the Army.  Two years in Germany doing nothing, not even a Baader-Meinhof-type situation to investigate, though S. was in the Investigative Division of the Thirteenth Regiment, "the Fighting Drakes," founded by Colonel Westin Drake, suppressor of the Armenian Revolt.  As a Drake, S. not only wore a cool patch on his uniform and fatigues, a mallard with a machine gun, he got to write propaganda for the unit, and for the Army's progress in Eurasia.  Drake S. yearned for assignment in Yemen, to cover the final assault by Saudi, the triumphant accomplishment of inflicting genocide, way to go, America, enabler of that.  Drake spent his time in Germany cataloging in the library, dating a girl named Marissa, maybe a spy for the Russians, though she looked Armenian, spoke Armenian, was Armenian.  

    S. got to participate in suppressing rioters in Nuremberg at the World Conference on What To Do About Overpopulation.  The answer the Conference came to year after year?  Get rid of most of the human population.  They were thinking this way as far back as 1970.  

     "Let's not live in the world of Soylent Green," a prominent think tank member said.

     S. didn't wonder where the people who got pushed into the police vans went, knowing there wasn't enough room in the jails.  

     We're arresting so many people this time.  Are we making the rioters into our food?  Is that guy with the upside down American flag tasty?  Are we all gonna eat each other?  

     S. came home to Indiana.  Windmills in the dusty distance.  Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s home town, Indianapolis, filled with Government troops, Capitol Police the CP, running Indianapolis, as they run Springfield, and Denver.  Dover CP have their own special relationship with the President's family.  

     

     The simple desire S. felt to make love with Maud Adams after seeing her in Octopussy struck him as a twisting of the knife, his never to be realized romantic schemes ashes in his brain.  S. saw the film a week after his release from the Ward.  Heavy on the drugs, S. couldn't get it up after a few weeks passed.  This depressed him even as he took prescribed anti-depressants along with his neuroleptic medication, the causer of involuntary movements, twitches in the hands, dropping objects, glasses, cleaning up messes with broken glass.  S. buys a copy of Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut.  Another end of the world book.

     Dark in spirit, S. stands on top of a cliff in California, feeling the lure of the jump.  

     Take a step forward, make a decision only you can make, you are your own boss, you can do it, but should you do it?  Come on, S. afraid to kill yourself?  It's just a step then you're moving fast.  You'll hit rock, the body will be torn and bruised, beaten and battered.  You'll be a mess, a horrible thing to look at  and someone, maybe a child, maybe a couple out for a romantic walk, will see your disaster of a body and puke, and puke and puke, and "Oh my god," "He must have fallen," "I'll call the police."  "Don't look anymore, Cheryl.  I'm going to see if he has identification.  Oh god, I can't do this."

     While you're out for a walk with your girlfriend and your day turns into a horror film  remind yourself you may yet soon have the opportunity to relax and not think about it.

     S. decides to not take that next step.  He saves it as a possible future act.

     E.'s back in S.'s life.  She lived in Atlanta for two years, returned to Ocean Town, glad of heart, having purged herself of wanting to go visit India by jaunting to Acapulco to play music on the street.  She had pictures in her Olympus camera.  Digital information, colors, arrangements, good compositions, her artist's eye adept.  S. wanted to get into the bed with her--he'd even by coincidence straightened his bedroom and made the bed.

     I want you, E.

     I'm with Car.

     Car was Carson Daguerre, a debonair fellow, painter in oils and gouache, not the guy who gave instruction in gouache, but another admirer of E.  Now, Car Daguerre, cool as he was, had S.'s woman.

     You fuckface!  I'll do something about this.  I don't know what.  Ah, what am I gonna do?  The better man won.  Car really is a cool guy.  He knocked twenty bucks off that last bag of weed, operated on an ability to pay with me.  That shows he's a mensch.  I like Car.  I'm glad he gets to put his penis inside my beloved E.  I wish I could put my penis inside E.  Dammit E, why not me? 

     

     E. was on another path.  Car proved to be a reliable life partner, gave her a baby, built her a house, fought off a Sasquatch to save her life.  S. couldn't compete in feats of derring do, but he could buy a gun and kill Car Daguerre, or kill himself.  Thus, the Luger.

     In his mind the violent scenes unfolded, one feature after another.  Medieval battle scenes, axes chunking into heads, World War Two, machine gun fire, men going down while they run across a field, no more war for them.  But he saw scenes of soldiers watching Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth, feeling good, able to forget what they've seen, looking at Technicolor high quality pussy.  Projected in the jungle in Saipan, in Normandy, on board a destroyer in the South Pacific.  America united in 1941, but uniting for Ukraine isn't going to happen without surrendering logic to false realities about the true nature of the war there.  Surrender to the present, motivations come from the past, consequences live in the future, but those consequences will someday be now.

     How many warnings does one need to give these idiots running the world? S. blast thought.  They're playing with our future.  

     Car Daguerre, magnificent lover by his own assessment, marries E., they live in Tucson where the coldest it gets is 114 Fahrenheit.  Car's been put in charge of Arizona until the next military governor takes his seat.  Car will have to sign extermination orders for migrants, including, sadly, children.  Trained to not feel emotion when determining who lives and who dies, Car Daguerre writes off fourteen underperforming boys for termination and conversion to fertilizer.  

     S. meets Car Daguerre in a parking lot.  S. has been stalking him, acts casual.

     

     S. Car!  How are you?  Haven't seen you in quite some time!

     Daguerre: S.?  Head shaved?  Did you join a cult?

     S. No.

     Daguerre: What are you doing with yourself?

     S. I have a very important position at the KennelCo Factory, supervising a group of ladies as they add decorative clips to greeting cards.

     Daguerre: That scam?

     S. What?

     Daguerre: Just joking!

     S. What are you doing?

     Daguerre: I'm in charge of this place.  King of Tucson, well, until the governor shows, Colonel Wilson Tengert.  Said to be a sane man.

     S. Yeah.  I feel weird.

     Daguerre: Want a ride?

     They say nothing halfway to the destination, S.'s parents house, where Car Daguerre once fucked E. against an outside wall by the garage.

     Daguerre: Still live here, huh?

     S. I had a time when I didn't.  Now I do because I have to, the state says so.

     Daguerre: Okay, I'm not criticizing.

     S. Maybe we can hang out sometime.  I'd like to get a sense of what you do, maybe.

     Daguerre: A field trip.  Okay.  Come to my office at ten tomorrow morning.  Just bring yourself, we'll feed you, we'll drive you home by six.  We'll hand you an envelope with five thousand dollars, you can join us or not, your decision, but keep the money in any case, and thank you for considering being a CIA recruit.  

     S. Sounds good.

     S. considers.  On the one hand, travel to interesting destinations, Tokyo, Malaysia, Antarctica perhaps.       I'm sure spy intrigue happens in some laboratory at the South Pole.  It's probably the entrance to Hollow Earth.

     Indianapolis falls, the speedway made into an execution ground where the presumed guilty are tried, sentenced, and added to the pile of dead.  It's a great world the President and his cabinet have created.  Obsessed with control, the leaders have lost their fucking marbles, embracing dystopia like it's not a cautionary tale.

     S. marries E. in his imagination, the two honeymooning on the Moon, Sea of Tranquility, special pass gets you inside an onsite mockup of the Apollo 11 lunar module.  The works, S. will smile at his bride inside a non-functioning replica of Armstrong and Aldrin's little ship.  From the Moon, Mars.  Retiring to Mars, S. and E. live another 7,000 years, blissful, happy to not know anything of outside events.  Earth gone, blown to pieces by an honest to god Death Star ray, except the weapon wasn't housed inside a Death Star, but fired by the hand of God.

     Plastic, iron, bits of flesh fly outward, going into orbits around the Moon, the Sun, some pieces drifting to Mars and Venus, Mercury receiving the impact of Rudolph Giuliani.  

     S. divorces E. in his imagination, playing with the idea, imagining messing with other women, an act easily identifiable to E. as she would see it in his tone, his eyes, his evasiveness.  S. felt guilty about one woman who showed interest in him, like the kind of interest resulting in condom use.  This woman, T., identified with vampires and werewolves.  Ghouls were not off limits, either.  She rubbed his shoulders, he enjoyed it and then backed away when he felt an erection not caused by E.  Vampire women, they exist, S. believed.  Androids exist, too, and they don't dream.

     S. nutted, thinking two decades later about the vampire woman, T.  Last he saw her was in the public library.  She had kids with her.  He remembered something about her having two kids, boy and girl.  Now, beyond the heady fun of 1998, he thought about how those kids of T.'s would be in their thirties.        

     Responsible adults, shouldering the burden of making livings, raising families, putting out the flag on July 4th and Patriot Day.  Eating three squares a day and taking up a hobby, like playing guitar, or fishing, or macrame.  Maybe read a Vonnegut novel?  Better than Better Homes and Gardens, although that magazine probably has its merits, I'm just not interested in reading it.  My home is fine as it is.  I don't have a garden.  Let's see, shall I continue reading Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle?

     Sitting before a TV set on a wheeled cart.  Nurses and attendants in view.  Movie before S.'s eyes.  A made for TV film of All Quiet on the Western Front, with "John Boy" Richard Thomas, the actor with the mole on his face.  S.'s brother called him Richard Mole.  

     Still, he's a good actor.  Check Richard out in Red Sky at Morning.  Anyway, back to the story!  

     German soldiers around 1917, trench warfare, could life get better?  Pointless tactics thought up by stupid callous generals.  Arms industry profiting.  Battle scene, charging the English, machine gun emplacements dropping dozens of men.  Running in overcoats and falling, not getting up, or lying there bleeding internally, crippled, legs blasted, hours just lying there while the stupid war continues.  You annoy your friends behind the line with your moans.  They finally draw straws, the "winner" creeps out and slits your throat, creeps back, drinks.

     S. watched All Quiet on the Western Front with Richard Thomas and liked it.  He turned up the volume to near maximum during battle scenes.  A nurse after five minutes leaned in, asked nicely for S. to turn it down.  He did.  He had wanted to share the muddy bloody battle with the nut ward.  The struggle as represented by these men on the Somme, or at Verdun, or wherever they, their struggle mirrors ours,

trapped here due to the activities of our minds.  

     

     Slanted weirdness became the name of his game.  His Hippy stage, 1972 all over again.  S. gambled at Monte Carlo, left in a tuxedo, exchanged it for a robe, sandals, blue jeans and beads, headband, groovy circular sunglasses, and a thirty-eight police special.  He'd been mugged in 1968 at the Chicago riot police convention, the hose patrol adding an additional shove.  No more muggings for Hippy S.!

     S. developed his weirdness to an epic height when he unleashed Egaah Number 1 on a surprised New York Central Park public.  A massive work, a commission by WeOwnYouCorp, advertising their third anniversary.  Six vertical stripes of white covering segments of a photograph of Julie Harrison, direct descendant of William Henry Harrison, ninth president of these United States.  Julie Harrison was S.'s patroness and sometime lover.  S. sought always to please Julie.  This image of Julie Harrison, huge in black and white, staring at the viewer with white stripes of paint vertically placed at uneven intervals, is either brilliant or terrible, an abomination of art, a statement for our time about how money is spent in grants, or a ridiculous manifestation of the line Vanity, all is vanity. Yes, Ecclesiastes would have been appalled.  

     S. moves to Vegas, blows a million, overstays his welcome in the Neo-Sands Hotel and Casino, featuring Wayne Newton Biobot.  Wayne has that smile, that killer come hither grin.  His teeth twinkle when he spots a lady he wishes to bed.  Always the gentleman, Wayne Newton Biobot, when programmed to do so, is as able a lover as any woman would want for her pleasure.  Wayne doesn't know he's a Biobot. He pisses like humans, makes sperm, watches it shoot from his bot penis, feels proud, cuts his finger on paper, repairs damage, notices redness of blood, tilts head, researches.  

     Ah!  Iron, that's the magic ingredient.  Core of Earth made of iron, place of iron snow.  Iron at that pressure, not liquid, not gas, a different state of Iron, iron flakes falling like snow, slowly to the hot to trot core.

     Wayne Newton Biobot springs a leak while rehearsing the song, "Can't Stop Beating That Thing."  Red and blue liquids shoot out of him.  S. searches for a bucket.  They don't go to commercial, for this is part of the Wayne documentary.  Now the star of that documentary is bleeding red and blue blood from nine tears in his yellowing skin.  Green spots appear, his face goes metallic gray.  His tongue swells, blackens, bursts open, a red pasty excrescence dribbles out, sizzling on the stage.  The camera crew get it all, bootleg copies sell for as much as 100 quatloos.  Watch a celebrity burst at the seams on stage during a rehearsal for a show now closed because the celebrity burst open on stage.

     

     The Closed Show, S.'s first short story publication.  Halls of Montezuma Magazine bought it for thirty bucks, twenty-one quatloos.  They asked S. for an adventure story, a man's man story.  

     "Be a man's man, S.," was the instruction, typed in purple ink.  He crafted a story carefully, studied maps of Afghanistan and the People's Republic of China, wrote about heroin smuggling, a damsel in distress, a rescue by an Afghan on horseback, a friendly CIA man, and more shoulder-mounted missiles than you can cry at.  S. wrote "Blue Horizon," a tale of the 1860s with time traveling arms dealers, of the Big Show, the Great Program, or whatever the hell it was called.  The Great Game, that's it, thank you.  Russia versus Britain, the two main troublemakers.  Tennis anyone?

     S. also dwelled on the savage symmetry of Bosch's paintings.  Growths of vegetation carry over from one panel to the next, nothing will be forgotten except by humanity.  

     Lonely late sound of train moving fast, get out of city fast, don't want to be in city.

     S. dated a radiologist, saw through her schemes, left her for an anthropology graduate student, I.  S. loved her complexion.  Blondes followed him in life, even his Mom, beloved Mom gone now, was a Blonde, and they do have more fun, dammit!  

     S. sat watching the First World War unfold in a movie with John Boy Walton.  A patient, a woman about thirty-five, spooked light gray eyes, nice body in thin hospital pajamas.  They watch John Boy Walton, the mud, the little caves with grumbling soldiers.  She wants out.  S. tells her the key to making that happen is to observe the workers, notice when they're not paying attention, and when the security door opens, they're not attentive to that space once they go through it.  Catch the door before it closes and walk out, act normal.   She left.  S. watched the movie, then he sees the woman in the area of the door sneaking out. Mental patient loose in the hospital.  She followed S.'s instructions.  He did not intend for her to try it but he enjoyed telling her about it.  While he spoke with her, giving her hope of escape, she entered into the quick camaraderie felt between mental patients.  It was fun talking with her because S. enjoyed women's company.  

     She did not rat on him.  For that he was grateful.

     S. thought about T.  Conversation about vampirism.  Conversation about psychotic episodes, both of them familiar, S.'s had a guitar in the story.  T.'s had a car accident.  She had a scar on her face, S. saw it for the first time.  It looked like it was part of her face.  She said she took a long while to come to grips with her face.  Symmetrical no longer.  

     Shallow to be obsessed with facial symmetry, when most faces are quite asymmetrical?  Look at Richard Burton.  Asymmetrical face.  Daniel Craig, asymmetrical face.  Embrace it, T.!  You're beautiful with that scar, it's a sexy scar, oh I want to lick that scar!  I'm sorry you suffered to get that scar but I am turned on by that scar!  My libido is glad you got that scar!

     S. worked himself up.  He wasn't sure if he would say all that to T.  He smiled and nodded.  He wasn't thrilled with the scar on T.'s face, actually.  J in shape, it looked like she'd been hooked by a barbed lure, yanked, causing, S. speculated, neck muscle damage requiring a plaster ring around her neck, but she wasn't in a lake or in the river being caught by a fisherman.  

     S. gave in, made the beast with two backs with T.  

     S. grunted.  S. showered, shaved.  Breakfasted.  Drove to the bank, his little bank, before he ended up in psycho-prison.  This day, September 14, bright and clear, high pressure zone making for a lovely Mediterranean late summer day with breezes from the southwest, chance of frost.  Greenbacks danced in his eyes.  Entering a thieving part of his career, S. stole 900,000 quatloos from the Weasel Bank during a transfer of payroll cash.  S. lived luxuriously for five months, in Tokyo, in Honolulu, in Mexico City, in Buenos Aires.  

     No more money, S. is a wastrel.  Dissolute, degenerate, lazy, a blot on humanity.  He considers jumping into the East River.  He doesn't live in New York so he'd have to go there.  While going there he reconsiders the suicide appointment.  He decides to keep it on the back burner of possible activities, but do all the others on the activities list first, before the suicide activity.  Do that one last.

     Psycho-prison.  Just because he went crazy with the glory of playing an electric guitar, it sounds great, you want to blow the walls down.  The tone of that gold Les Paul, so pure and innocent, yet savage and graceless.  His bank vault solo, he reasoned from the psych ward, could have destroyed the world.  He means musically.  No more Hendrix.  Why Hendrix when S. is available to rewrite music, all music with his powerful guitar?  He named the guitar Isaac Asimov after his then favorite writer.  

     I destroyed the cop orcs trying to get me, to yank my guitar away, my treasure, my lusty golden harp of magic tones and notes.  When they unplugged the mighty Marshalls, I screamed, "Ahoy, twenty-first century!  Your new god cometh!"

     S., a new god, the night before the guitar incident in the vault, made a nuisance of himself, knocking on doors, having one way conversations with strangers.  Put him in the backseat compartment of a police car, a little prison cell.  If something happened to the two cops in front, S. would be stuck in back, unable to escape because somebody immobilized the cops.  

     Cutting torch, the Group Therapy Cult rescues him from going to the place where his brain could slow down with the application of neuroleptic drugs.  S. becomes Cult Leader Understudy, the CLU, a very important mystic position among GTC followers and donors to the cause.  Sounds like a rip-off?  

     Don't judge seekers for wanting to take a bite out of the way of things because they've been lied to by more traditional religions!  "GTC will re-shape your mind," states a brochure.  "Reshapes it for the better.  We would not kid you."

     S. gravitated toward no religion after being with GTC for one year.  The men, yes, all men of GTC frowned upon carnal relations.  Only one's own hand was permitted as a kind of release valve, and that only once per fortnight.  S. needed to be with a woman again, so he resigned.  They were sorry to see him go.  They enjoyed his accent.  

     S. suffered from sore feet, always uncomfortable, peeling, several different colors.

     Orange toes, blue heel.  Toenails a dull yellow.  That growing black spot on my left big toe.  Oh, what's this, my right kneecap is green.  There's a potato spud tendril growing out of my armpit.  I'm growing a woman's breasts!  Not bad, oh no, they're deflating, now they're empty bags attached to me, yuck!  Motor oil pours out of my ass!  

     S. is prodded by he knows not what to a new body.  He assumes command of humanoform "Kevin" X-12, the professional man in his thirties biobot, a primitive model.  Trapped inside foam rubber surrounding sophisticated components, S. can barely move without looking like a stiff android extra in a movie, a dime a dozen, a penny a heartache.

     S. shot into space on board a rocket to Space Station Roast Beef, crewed by an agricultural cult based on the worship of steers and their shit.  The Exalted Cult of Bullshit invited S. to lecture them on the music of Foghat and Foreigner, like, what's the difference?  How can we weave the information you teach into our discourse?  Foghat, "Now you're messing with a...a son--no wait, that's Nazareth."

     S. realizes he doesn't know Foghat's music.  

     Jeff--the floating Answer Head of Jeff Bezos appears.  "What is it, S.?"

     "Play me some Foghat."

     "You got it, decision-maker."

     "'Slow Ride, take it easy.'  I wonder what that means?"

     

     S. meets the President and First Order Minister of Bullshit of the Exalted Cult of Bullshit on Space Station Roast Beef.  S. meets the President's daughter, half Chinese, half Italian Li Andronicus.  Smitten, S. tries to propel his polymerized frame towards her as she spreads caviar on a five hundred dollar cracker.  Standing now close enough to Li Andronicus to smell her perfume, a flowery concoction, not bad.  

     S. introduces himself, adding, "I confess to you I know little about Foghat.  I'm more of an ELO man.  I like Yess, Genesis, too, but Portishead?  I see the Portishead pin on your jacket, Miss Andronicus."

     "Yet, you will deliver a lecture on Foghat?"

     "Yes, and on Foreigner.  I know even less about them."

     "You astonish me.  Do you always operate this way?"

     "Improvising?  Yes, maybe.  I've been many things, now I'm an acrobat with words.  I'll make up a lecture on the spot.  Will I convey accurate information about Foghat and Foreigner and how to tell them apart?  I will try.  Maybe I'll try to listen to their music."

     "At least listen to one song each from the bands."

     "How long have you been part of this Society of Bullshit?"

     "Cult of Bullshit."  

     "Forgive me."

     "You don't mean that.  The way of bullshit takes pressure off, because we know we're bullshitting, except when we're not.  Note how that sentence ended with a moment of bullshit-free honesty."

     "Are we seated next to each other at dinner?"

     "Do you want to be seated next to me?  I can arrange it."

     "Do."

     "Back in a jeff."

     Did she say Jeff? S. wonders.  His modified hearing picks up a conversation across the room.

     Man: Fiddlesticks.

     Woman: That was it.  Stupid game.

     Man: But fun.

     Except all S.'s modified ears pick up is "But fun," which he interprets as Butt fun.  History hinges on misinterpretations.  

     "All this is planned, " someone says, a gentleman in a suit, Eddie Haskell hair, but a grown up Eddie Haskell, maybe Secretary of State Haskell of the Lumpy Rutherford administration.  

     S. approaches Secretary Haskell.  "Sir, did I overhear you correctly?  All goes according to plan?  What are you concocting, sir?  Are we in danger from the Russkies or are we in danger from you?  Speak, man!"

     Haskell blushes.  He waves to an armed aide.  "Escort this man to the baggage compartment of my plane, secure him in place, drop him off in Cuba."

     S. bolts, knowing the score.  He propels his silvery gray rubber body across a moor, trips over an up jutting stone, tears his suit in the fog.  Wanders for five miles, circles around like the four Hobbits in the Barrow Downs.  Lost in fog, keening of high wind, rattle of bushes and branches, twigs clicking, beauty all around, stars overhead, the pale swift clouds.  He doesn't see the beauty.  Survival most important thing to think about.

     I'm in a real pickle.  I don't like pickles.  Yeah, a pickle with strawberry jam, gross.  Put peanut butter on there, and top it off with an onion, and smear chocolate all over it.  Eat that, bitch!  See if you can keep that down.  Cast Iron Stomach of the Year Award for whoever can keep down that abominable gastronomic invention.  The Award is a two-thousand dollar cash prize and an all expenses paid trip to Miami.

     S. allows his imagination to sniff far ahead, but leashed, otherwise it gets out of hand and he's talking to the people he's invented, looking at actual people as his characters.

     

     S. dreamed of you reading of him.  

     

     The nightmare began when S., a trusting soul originally, lost faith in humanity due to E.'s "betrayal."  The betrayal consisted of E. choosing to split from S.  She gave him the impression, a deep one he argued, that her love for him was "everlasting," a poetic word for "a few decades."  Vying for E.'s attention near their relationship's end, his persistence in seeing her, thwarted at times by E.'s roommate, R., generated thought sessions in E.'s head as she worked on her music career.  

     S. didn't like R.  R. yelled at him through the phone, sick of S. calling.  "She'll call when she gets back!"  

     S. embarrassed now to think of those blunders, the pushiness.  R. was nice to him the last time they spoke by phone.  

     E. moved on to X.

     

     S. ordered his foot locker, inspection coming up at oh six hundred, awake at oh two thirty, calisthenics, running in cold fog, footsteps on wet pavement, cold showers, warm uniforms, chow, fifteen minute break, inspection coming up anytime, inspector makes them wait an additional two hours cuz he's a fucking asshole.  One recruit caught in the head taking a dump when the inspector shows, tight eyes inspecting the beds, pillow case smoothness, foot locker orderliness, alert for crumbs, the finding of crumbs worth a demerit.

     S.'s one demerit resulted from taking too long on his weekly phone call.  

     S. hated camp food.  Beef patties, smelly, suggesting rancidness, white mold spots on bread, mushy brown strawberries, pancakes drenched in cheap maple syrup purchased by the barrel.

     S. left town the next morning at five.  Sun just coming up behind him, walking west across Kansas, hot by noon, another town, wash up in a cafe, buy lunch, sleep at the counter, bored waitress lets him.  More walking, hitches a ride to a ghost town in eastern Oregon.  The driver he's with photographs ghost towns.  The photographer vanishes, leaving S. to find the car, but the driver had the keys.  No flashlight, just sense of hearing, wind, dust hissing against wooden structures, creaking wheels.  Sand dune stretching into the saloon, the United States of Drunk, est. 1876.  Graffiti, bird feathers, campfire remnants in the kitchen.  Beautiful cherry wood bar, dull but still shiny in places, brass foot rail.  Upstairs the bedrooms, the wash bowls, the private functions bowls, the hot bed of coals method of warming a bed, big tubs, buckets, towels, and a dead, desiccated body on a bed.  He reads the note on the nightstand.

     Time travel machines offer an exhilarating experience of an unfamiliar time, the sights, smells, dangers, too.  Don't do what I did.  Time travel addiction.  I covered the years 93,000 B.C. up to A.D. 6895.  Bopping around like a rubber ball.  Like scrolling on a phone, just some automatic reaction, therefore I'd be in 1212, followed a few minutes later by a glimpse of 2025.  I bought one of Hitler's postcards, I was at Woodstock, I saw a man crucified in A.D. 33, may have been Jesus, may have been someone else.  I saw what really happened in Dealey Plaza.  Nothing happened in Dealey Plaza.  I'm not crazy, I want to maintain access to the university-owned time travel machine but I'm stuck with killing myself, my body can't take traveling in time anymore.  Some molecules in my body are going one way, other molecules are going the opposite way.  I don't know if that's true but that's how I physically feel.

 

     He started to sign Edw____ but the pen on the floor indicated its drop from his dying hand.  

     S. time travels to Guagamela, watches Alexander the Great and Emperor Darius the Third do their big battle.  S., when a teenager, owned a board game called Alexander the Great.  The Battle of Guagamela, also known as the Battle of Arbela, is the game.  S. would've wanted the opportunity to fight additional battles, but the point was moot: he never played the game with anyone.  

     By the time he received the Guagamela game, S. no longer had male friends eager to spend a few hours on a Saturday afternoon sitting on the floor, playing a war game set in the 4th century B.C.  He tried to play it by himself.  The game's complicated rules, divided into Basic and Advanced, discouraged S. from delving very far into the game.  Square cardboard counters with illustrations represented units, a mercenary band of infantry for instance, or Persian heavy cavalry.

     S. watched Arbela from a distance.  Hard to tell who won, but he knew it was Alexander.  Dust, so much dust.  Blood and dying below.  A voice resonated behind him, a deep and reedy voice:

     "If you could control all you see here, a land important enough to fight for, would you take that challenge?"

     S. turned, saw a tall bearded man in white and tan robes, sandaled, long green hair and white glowing eyes.

     "I wouldn't want such responsibility."

     "Humble, modest, impressive from my point of view.  Tell me, do you believe unicorns exist?"

     "I do."

     "Goodbye, another lesson in reality for you."

     S. wakes up on a park bench in Central Park.  He remembers seeing a concert.  It's 1974, Nixon is still president but not for long.  Homeless one-legged veteran (by the fading green army jacket stripped of its insignia) crutches his way, crossing S.'s path.  S. wants to help.

     Holds out a dollar bill.

     The veteran takes it.  He's probably twenty-five, but he looks forty-two.  Unhealthy pallor.

     S. Are unicorns real?

     Veteran: Sure they're real.  Gotta smoke?

     

     Voila, S. has a full package of cigarettes.  He doesn't smoke cigarettes.  He gives them to the man.

     

     Veteran: Say, you're all right!  Any chance you could spot a few more bucks, like maybe five?  Then I can buy a new shirt and some lunch, maybe dinner, too.  Ten?

     S. I'll give you five.  Where can I see a unicorn?

     Veteran: The zoo?

     S. In the Bronx?

     Veteran: Yeah, sure.

     S. Here's the book of matches that goes with the cigarettes.

     Veteran: Hey you're a real pal.  Thanks!

     

     The Veteran received six bucks from S. in 1974.  According to the Inflation Calculator, that's the 2022 equivalent of $34.53.  A modest grocery run would work with that.  "Sensibly priced" jewelry would go for that kind of dough.  The Veteran put the five in his piggy bank, bought a good meal with the one.  He washed in standing water in Central Park.  He was known as Arthur Vet.  He died in 1991 of bone cancer, the VA red-taped him to death.  

     Arthur Vet liked Dirty Harry.  Not only did Arthur identify with Harry's penchant for voyeurism, he also enjoyed watching Harry blow away Andy Robinson, toying with Andy, wondering aloud how many times he's squeezed the trigger of his "most powerful handgun in the world."  Harry loves the sight of one of his victims reacting to the terrific lead punch from a cop's justice cannon.

     Harry in conversation with S. in Arthur's mind as he ate lunch on S.'s dollar.

     

     Harry: I suppose you'll want a report about when I blasted Andy Robinson?

     S.: Procedure must be adhered to, Callahan.

     Harry: Or what?  The institution of policing will cease to exist?  No paperwork, more patrols, more leeway to shoot and kill without having to answer questions from you or anyone else, especially the media, they're worse than Internal Affairs.  So I'm corrupt, so what!?  I kill with glee!  I make jokes about it.  I'm in a private war against punks, not because they killed my wife, I'm no Deathwish.  I just like to kill people I at least suspect are punks.  If you're dressed like a punk, I may kill you.  It's a perfectly understandable reaction on my part, given how much I hate punks.

     S. Nevertheless, punks have rights.

     Harry: You have to say that, you're bound by law and duty to be responsible to all parties, I respect that, it's not the kind of pussy attitude I would ever take, even if I were compromising my principles to make a hundred and thirty five thousand a year.

     S. I don't make that much, Harry.

     Harry: What I say goes when this is in my hand.

     S. Put that away, Harry, and don't point it carelessly around my office.  If it goes off I won't be able to hear my deputies' reports at the staff meeting.

     Harry: They're just going to tell you they're failing at their jobs, because they're not unleashed.  They want to kill, like I get to kill.  Give them punks to kill!  I'll give up some of my punks, as long as they're killed!

     S. notices Columbus doesn't push going to India.  Cuba and other islands in the rich new world of blue lagoons and brown naked people have pulled the journeying Spaniards west and south, warm waters, spears and arrows from dark green backgrounds.

     1493, the second voyage, S. grows his hair scruffy, no shaving for six weeks, works as a deckhand on board the Hortensio Carlrondio.  He falls in love with an Arawak woman, has a child by her, a little girl.  A raid by Spaniards takes the life of their daughter, they flee into the forest, S. captured, imprisoned, sent back to Cadiz, tried for consorting with the enemy and practicing witchcraft, questioned by the Inquisition.

     Inquisitor: Ever meet the Devil?

     S. I'm looking at him.

 

     Stretched on the rack, shot with arrows, tossed off a cliff into the Mediterranean, S. floats for days, disintegrated by fish and seabirds, skeleton gilded by late afternoon light, the ocean begins to age, bringing forth S.'s reborn body on a ship off the coast of Portugal, 1563, in command of a man of war, forty guns, slaves to row her into port and when the wind won't come.

     He has a Portuguese name, a Portuguese wife in Lisboa.  Their living room has paintings on an ocean faring theme.  S. loves his wife, E.

     S. greases his hair, lives among the Lapiths, centaurs ride with warriors atop their muscular haunches, conquering neighbors, a brief empire, so brief it ended before this sentence could be finished. 

     

     290 B.C.  S. comes down from sharp rocky heights, the place from where he'd look at Olympus, speak with Zeus or whoever was in charge when Zeus was hunting for females to satisfy his lust, outsized like that of Henry the Eighth, or Peter the Great and Julius Caesar.  S. imagines these great men having enormous capacity for intercourse, the kind of intercourse involving less sophisticated conversation and more grunting.

     Napoleon Bonaparte, S. found when he traveled to 1812, prior to the Russian invasion, had more sex  than a Parisian prostitute.  He walked around with his dick hanging out half the time.  Everybody saw Napoleon fuck the Tricolor at one time or another.  He loved his adopted country of France, the greatest country of all, soon to be extended into Russia.  

     Let's get going, we'll get it done by October, no winter gear necessary.  More room for bullets and sapping tools.  An army on the move, I'm not crazy to conquer Russia.  It's not so vast a place that Napoleon, Emperor Napoleon for Christ's sake, can't take it and hold it, extract all wealth from it, sell its carcass back to what's left of Russia.  I am beyond good and evil.  World conqueror Napoleon does not exist in any category except the singular category of perfection.  Perfection I am and no one else is.  

     S. warned Napoleon about the intensity of a Russian winter.  Are you sure you can execute this campaign before snow comes?  If you get bogged down in blizzards you can't fight in a blizzard.

     Napoleon: The Battle of Towton between the Lancastrians and the Yorkists in 1461 was fought in a blizzard.

     S. My idea leads you and history in a different direction.

     Napoleon: Do tell.  If it's a good idea I might adopt it.  I'm not married to invading Russia, at this time, anyway.

     S. Build your army to twice as many troops as you now have, and strengthen your navy.  Build warships, cargo ships, ironclad semi-submarine ships, build catapults, gather stones, arm your men with bayonets.

     Napoleon: They are armed with bayonets.

     S. Give them a spare bayonet.

     Napoleon: Very well.  What else?  It feels good to not have to do the thinking for once.

     S: Have your men ditch their hats and just wear white headbands with the initial N written in their own blood.

     Napoleon: A blood scarf.

     S. That faraway look in your eyes tells me you like my suggestions.  Here's another.  Everyone's expecting you to invade east.  Invade west instead.  Invade Canada, Britain, and get Ireland to help.  

     Napoleon: A brilliant campaign, I can envision it.

     S. Think it, your imperial highness, and it will manifest to you.

     Napoleon: Let's call in some ladies and some food!  Musicians!

 

     Napoleon eats like a hungry pig.  He snorts, wipes his greasy chicken fingers on his uniform, his white pants are stained with grease, dirt, horse's sweat, dried piss, cum.  Napoleon fantasizes about giving his conqueror's cum to other nations' daughters.  Create a dynasty of Napoleon progeny in every conquered country.  Napoleon thinks about how he would then truly penetrate a country.  

     He sends spies into Britain, a master spy speaks perfect English, G-46, one of Robespierre's men, changed identities, works for the Emperor, good pay, big house in Gascony, a title, wife and two little ones.  Now G-46 has a word with X-15, a saucy woman working in an upscale brothel frequented by gentlemen in parliament and rich merchants, and the occasional high ranking military officer.  Admiral Von Chambers, half-cousin to the Queen, has a special suite there used only by himself, or so he believes.  The Brothel keepers use that room as much as any other room, but keep it especially tidy and free of customers' odors for the sensibilities of the Admiral.

     G-46 learns much about the political situation and views of politicians from the prostitutes.  He learns their tastes, he learns their leanings on certain bills, proposals, drafts, treaties.  G-46 pays each prostitute generously, fucks the one who looks like his wife.

     

     Napoleon admires his pudgy body in a full length mirror.  "I am looking a little fat."

     S., hovering about like an obsequious courtier, the role he's decided to play in this time.

     S.: Your adipose tissue, sire, becomes you, rounds out your character, gives those purple robes depth, dimensions of straight velvety beauty molded around your midsection, your kingly hilltop fort!

     Napoleon: I've decided to promote you to Chief Flatterer.  Monsieur Hope was doing such a bad job of it.  He said, "Lord Emperor.  You shine like the sun!  Moonlight glows on your nose!  Everything that's good is due to you."

     S. Pedestrian.

     Napoleon: You think so?  Anyway, the job's yours.  An extra 3,000 piastres a month, how about that?

     S. All right.

     Napoleon: Look alive, I've just given you a raise!  Flatter me!

     S: Giver of gold.  Philanthropist of Europe.  Humanitarian of Corsica.  Conqueror, but not yet, of Russia.  Fighter, chafer, champion of bombardments, naval duels, land battles, wooer of Josephine, conqueror of a thousand women's hearts.

     Napoleon: A thousand?  Ten-thousand!

     S: To remake Europe one must destroy Europe.

     Napoleon: If that's not one of my quotes, it should be.

     S: (claps hands) Drive the Emperor in an enclosed cab to the Russia Penetration Planning Room.

     

     Napoleon takes along sausage and crackers costing 500 sous per cracker.  Brandy of course goes with him everywhere.  Drunk half the time, Napoleon manages to stay steady even when plastered.  Not ducking when artillery shells land and explode nearby is not a trait one associates with a sober man.  

     

     S. has things to think about.  He cultivates friendship with Countess Mardelia Owens of Fathrochel, a tall friend of Princess Blake Hornsby of Darbyshire Colony off the coast of southern France.  A year older with elegant calves, Mardelia Owens has seen unicorns, "confirms" their existence to S., showing him a tiny detailed pencil drawing in her cameo necklace.

     

     Napoleon prays to the War God.  "Oh Mars.  Please don't let me make a blunder so bad it costs me the campaign.  I'm prepared to sacrifice, oh, 70,000 of my men to accomplish the objective of crushing the Russian Empire.  Mars, I'm a modest man.  I didn't seek out to conquer the world.  My shortness is not the only reason I'm overcompensating.  My cock isn't very big, but that's not the reason, either.  I must gobble the world, I"m destined to rule it.  No one greater than I has ever existed.  I am cut out to rule this world, do you understand?"

     S. finds Napoleon easy to read.  The Emperor's into himself, he has a megalomaniacal streak.  He drinks too much, doesn't exercise, he's fatter than he admits.  He spends too much time fucking trollops, giving them candy and coins, indulging his passion for group orgies involving large numbers of women with himself the only male present.  

     S. knows Napoleon won't win in Russia.  He'll do damage, though.  Borodino, large land battle, hard to know who won when such slaughter accompanies the event.

     Burning of Moscow, probably from a stray tinder.  Wind made it a conflagration.  Rumor went that

French soldiers burned Moscow.  They did loot the place.  Carrying pelf from burning Moscow, walking into autumn snows, cold soon after, stiffening cold.  Trudging forward, frost bite, skin blackening, stolen family possessions from houses in Moscow, gold objects useless in pockets, extra weight, get rid of them, one set found fifty years later by a serf, concealed, passed down to Russian government operative, Ivan Biskop.  His Aunt Olga's gold figurines, chess set pieces, one of the figurines a silver knight, gold queen with breasts, silver castle, two gold pawns and two handsome gold bishops.  

     S. buys the seven pieces from Biskop, five thousand, cash.  

     Aunt Olga's gold figurines, chess pieces belonging to a lost set, or a partial set still around somewhere. 

     S. remembers when Napoleon walked onto the ship taking him to St. Helena where he would die six years later.  S. visited Napoleon there in 1817.  Cold day, wind, the Emperor said it's constant.  

     The wind oppresses N., S . wrote in his diary.  Gusts make him glare at the surrounding air, an enemy he has no defense against.  

     Tea in Napoleon's parlor, warm fire but drafty chimney.  

     "This was the house, the Emperor explained, of a kind English family who graciously donated it for my use.  Sugar?"

     S. accepts a lump.  "It's a lovely home.  Cozy."

     "Small," Napoleon says, smiling.  "Just what a battle commander wants, too.  Soft cushions, warm water to bathe in, a lamp to read by, books to read, periodicals eight months to a year out of date, crossword puzzles, knitting, gardening, fencing--well, I practice fencing moves with a stick."

     "Do you ponder your spectacular career?"

     "I obsess over Waterloo.  I think about Russia.  I think about how I shouldn't have sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States of America.  Could've developed that for France.  More beaver no doubt the farther west one goes in that huge unspoiled continent.  I envy your President Monroe.  All that land to subdue.  I miss taking land!"

     

     S. travels to 2022, standing in Russia looking over the border line with Ukraine.  War started in February, a winter war, time hop to 1939 and 1940, Russo-Finnish War.  Now, talk of Finland joining NATO, trouble for Russia.  Countries get talked about like they're persons.  Cities referred to like this: "Moscow issued a counter-proposal to Kyiv, but Washington balked, putting the screws to Kyiv and dealing a glancing blow to Moscow.  Meanwhile, Pyongyang continues to defy--"

     

     S. watched dark water with rippling torchlight, flecks of gold on coal.  His last moments, about to find oblivion, he nevertheless found beauty in the River Styx, flowing through a hell-cavern.  Across the water a tall black hole in the rock said, without saying, HADES, THIS WAY DOWN. 

     S. looked at Charon the boatman.  He had nine jars of coins, the boat a sturdy metal Grumman painted creamy orange.  S. and two other passengers sat on the bench seats.  One of the passengers was a young Blonde woman wearing frayed jeans with flower patterns sewn onto them.  A red headscarf gave her the look of 1971.  S. recognized her from Woodstock.  

     The other passenger was a fifty year old man in a black business suit, briefcase between his calves,  bowler hat.

     S. Why do you have a briefcase?

     Man: I have a meeting with a client.

     S.(pointing with his thumb behind his shoulder).  Down there?

     Man: Yes.

     S.  You're a lawyer?

     Man: Yes, the law firm (hands him a card) of Creek, Spaw, O'Neill, and Kermbridge.  I'm Peter Kermbridge.

     S. Can you get me out of Hades?  Better yet, can you recall some law trick that will get Charon to turn the boat around?

     Man: Call one of my colleagues.  I'm booked up.  What do you have in terms of remuneration?

     S. I know the location of seven splendid gold and silver objects from the third century B.C.  

     Man: That should be enough.  

     S. sat on the floor of his room at the psychiatric ward.  He didn't like his bed with its mattress sinking in the middle.  The sidewalk and terraces visible from his room looked ordinary, thus desirable.  A car passing, someone inside his or her car, free to move the steering wheel, shift, adjust mirrors, press the accelerator away from here, this stuffy prison.  Prison using drugs instead of bars over cells.  Psychiatrist appointments filled with no information beneficial to S.  

     "How is your medication?"

     "How are you sleeping?"

     In depth psychoanalysis.

     S. wanted to be the stoplight he could see at the limit of the distance his eyes could make out.  Green means go.  When he saw the green light down West 10th Street, he fled in his mind inside a Dodge Challenger, driving eighty to that green, passing through the intersection on yellow, 190 miles per hour!  A roar of speed, of escape, driving it somewhere, stowing it for later life-saving use.  Oh, to have resources!

     In his room at the psychiatric ward on West 10th and Benton, S. looked in his closet for his winter coat.  Coat hangers, no clothes.  Expecting to see the coat, going home, set free from the ward, not seeing a coat, but plastic hangers, red and white.  

     No chance of killing himself, he didn't even want to but he said something about hanging himself, though he was referring to William S. Burroughs' books.  Wear dark blue, no shoelaces or belt.

     Is a psychiatric ward as crazy a place as you can imagine?  You bet it is, and more.  We're all, humans and animals, using our perceptions to navigate our lives.  Every inmate of a psychiatric community, plus staff, has a unique perspective, a set of assumptions and expectations, a need to be taken seriously.  S. did not say all that at his hearing.  He merely listened to shrinks testify on his behalf, all of them favorably, one remotely through the kind of two way mike Charley uses to talk to his Angels.  

     The doctors liked S.  

     They just never told him so or showed it until they set him free.

     

     Dodge Challenger, driving a potted plant to my E.  My wonderful Irish girlfriend singer E.  Four albums, the latest a top of the charts favorite, Baby You Would Say That, with the number one hit, "Eaten By a Couch."

     S. exited the Ward, buildings outside looked too close, the air so fresh and cold he felt he was hallucinating.  Traffic a crescendo in a symphony.  Ride back to his parents where he would recover.  Parents brittle.  S. mentions how his father would make faces at him in the rear view mirror when he was a boy.  Father agitated to hear this; S. to avoid talking about meaningful things.  Meaningful talk strings chains of thoughts together, symbolic connections can lead to madness.

     S. writes and submits a Brady Bunch script.  Greg dates Patty Hearst, Squeaky Fromme, helps frame Sirhan Sirhan, while Bobby finds a copy of The Necronomicon, that evil tome of spells and sorcery.  He practices resurrecting dead mice.

     Marcia wins her second Homecoming Queen honor.  Jan runs away, no one notices.  She joins Charles Manson's Family, recommends to Charlie a hit on Marcia Brady.  Charlie gives the go-ahead, reads passages to them from Stranger in a Strange Land, one last orgy, and go kill, write the slogans on the walls with their blood, you know the drill.  I'm gonna call Dennis Wilson and let him know he has nothing to do with what's about to happen, I'm not going to rat on him.  We're cool, Dennis.  I think you're a great guy.  It's too bad we didn't deepen our friendship.  The Family would welcome a Beach Boy, big time famous drummer, look at you.  A Beach Boy, hangin out with Satan's Own, remember?  Talkin into the night.  My people living in your house.  You so high on good grass you don't care, you just float away while Charlie and Company take over your property rent free, how revolutionary of you.  

     

     Brady Bunch goes dark.

     Marcia receives numerous knife wounds from Angel Arcane, the reinvented Jan, skulls painted on her cheeks.  Bobby resurrects Marcia, earning him fifteen points on the Necromancer's list of necessary accomplishments to become a Necromancer.  A mouth grows on Bobby's back and speaks to him, tells him of the Old Ones.  Carol and Mike double date with Sam the Butcher and Alice their housekeeper, their Hazel-type.  Mike and Carol and Sam and Alice get into a fender bender with Paul Mazursky.  Peter's voice changes, girls think he's icky, not like his dreamy older brother Greg, who by now is a Cointelpro operative with a big smile for everyone.  Charming Greg, so well brought up, but engaged in sleazy FBI surveillance operations, setting people up, anything for money, right, Greg?

     "You bet," Greg replies.  "Bank accounts in five different countries, I carry a Walther PPK and a silencer.   Brady Bond.  I practice shooting every Friday morning with Sirhan.  He's not very good but that doesn't matter."

     S.'s time as a CIA recruit started with basic training and studying military history and spy craft as practiced during several different eras.  He got to take a test on Alexander's army at Guagamela.  

     Bedford, the dapper man who trained S. in the use of weapons, stooped like a harmless-looking man in his sixties.

     Bedford: Your grip should be more relaxed.  Pretend you're playing a violin.  Hold it with delicateness while murder blazes in your eyes.  That's right, now squeeze.  Pop!  Yes!  You've done it!

     Bedford's loud boom penetrated the ear coverings.  S. felt proud of his 100 out of 100 score.  Only thirty-nine recruits that decade had achieved so high a score.  S. was awarded a large bronze medal with a bas relief of a target rifle, a target, and the Intelligence Fist, the hard hand appearing everywhere in officialdom and entertainment programs relying on military and intelligence community funding to make their crappy shows.  

     S. learned about Gehlen, the German intelligence officer who worked with the U.S., offering a large amount of scuttlebutt on the Soviet Union.  Running out of stuff to share, Gehlen came up with the Missile Gap myth, causing the U.S. to make more nuclear weapon.  Gehlen fooled them, a Nazi collecting paychecks while his adopted country wasted money on nukes.

     S. thought Gehlen was one helluva cool guy.  Not among the resurrected, according to the latest Bureau  announcements, Reinhard Gehlen wouldn't be remembered by news media of 2022, but hashtag Gehlen may someday be written in a tweet.  

     S. thought, Swell, first person I admire and he's a Nazi.  Reinhard, why couldn't you be a CIA man?  Or a U.S. tank commander?  '

     CIA molded S.  When he became a commentator on MSNBC and CNBC, when he composed opinion pieces for The Washington Post, when he wrote political commentary for a CBS blog, and fan fiction centering around Norah O'Donnell, S. gave off a whiff of sanity, his suit expensive and tailored.  No American flag pin, that's so 2002!

     Now in the papers, now in the Cable News alerts, the U.S. Government will resurrect Reinhard Gehlen. S. starts with propaganda making Gehlen seem a reformed Nazi with "more knowledge of the Russians than almost anyone."

     S. meets Norah O'Donnell in the hallway outside Studio B in the Bilderberger Building.  

     Norah: I"m going to be interviewing you in five minutes.

     S.: Let's talk a little before then.

     Norah: I have to prepare.  I'll see you on set.

     S.: Coming forward and going away you're a sight for the eyes.

     On set:

     Norah: You've expressed opposition to the resurrection of Reinhard Gehlen, what's that about?

     S.: He's a Nazi.

     Norah: So was Werner von Braun, what's your point?

     S.: We shouldn't tolerate Nazis, not after what they did in World War Two.

     Norah: That was a long time ago.

     S.: All right yes.  Bring back Gehlen.  I look forward to hearing what he has to say for himself after lying about the Missile Gap.

     Norah: Whatever you say, S.  That's all the time we have--

     S.: More propaganda following advertisements!

     Norah.: That is not the case, disregard what my guest just said.

     S.: Set yourself free, Norah.  Let's fly to the mountains, drink fresh air, smell fresh water.

     Norah.: You're a loon, this guy's a loon!

     S.: Fresh.

     Norah: That's repulsive the way you said that.

     S.: Blew my chance?

     Norah: Go to commercial.  I wanted to see your artwork but now forget about it.

     S.: Whatever you say.  I'll write your real personality into my fan fiction.

     Norah read his fan fiction (vanity and TV personalities go together), found it pretty good, but noticed how her character, Sheila Spanner, became crabby, always had "an expression on her face like she'd just tasted Listerine." Page 345.  

     She allowed S. back into her life so he could get to know her, right more flattering fan fiction.  Following on what seemed S.'s genuine interest in the workings of CBS News, O'Donnell gave him a tour of the whole building, even the Freemasons' clubhouse.  He planted listening devices in two rooms: Network Manager Corky Lamantio's office and in the news room's largest break room.  

     Norah presented his fan fiction as hers, got paid 150,000 dollars, the book failed to sell until CBS bought 120,000 copies, making it a bestseller for two weeks in the New York Times, the reviewer of which wrote, "Burn it in the Trash!"

     S. let Norah steal his work.  She was on the short list of those who could commit any violation of personal trust and S. would overlook it.  

     Heading toward the cliff again, the thought in his mind about the opening line of his first novel, written when he was seventeen.

     "The Wasted Man walked to the edge of a cliff overlooking a Sea of Blood."

     

     Looking out, like Napoleon on St. Helena, sunrise or sunset making the desert of the ocean appear red, a man wasted in life, never given the right chance, through his own inertia but also through genetics, the bipolar disorder man, created to fail, unused glittering fragments, pieces of larger stories, a huge story or two hinted at.  

     

     Norah O'Donnell admits to her boss, CEO Chuck Pangolin, that S. possesses "raw talent," the kind to make it in this business as a tele-journalist.  Great grasp of wording, strong ability with creating language.

     A writer, you mean, Chuck says, laughing.  He never takes Norah, or any other woman, seriously.  He's bored hearing about S., unstable S.  Chuck has resources, Chuck's intelligence team compiled a report on S.

     

     Hospitalizatons for mental illness: 2

     Crimes committed: None

     Interests: The Lord of the Rings, volleyball, the life of Napoleon, sex, shooting with bow and gun, traveling to distant countries.

     Question to S.: Name one character in The Lord of the Rings you'd like to know more about.

     Answer: Galdor the Elf emissary from the Grey Havens, sent to Rivendell by Círdan.

     How many interceptions when you played with your varsity high school team?

     Fourteen.

     

     "Fourteen interceptions in one high school football season, those are what, ten, twelve games?  Impressive."  Chuck Pangolin smiles paternally upon Norah.  The man may be worth another look, but it says here S. spent every day during the very hot summer of 1995 sitting on his porch in a rocking chair, writing in a notebook, a novel called In Sad Generations Seeking Water, published in 1998 and forgotten.  I have an idea, Norah.  I'll buy that novel.  We'll make it into a blockbuster for our new app!  I see Jessica Lange, William Macy, Warren Beatty, Olivia De Havilland, we'll bring the old gal out of retirement?  Tom Selleck, I like Tom Selleck.  Blue Bloods, best show on television!  Jennifer Aniston might be looking for something to do, oh, and how about Marlon Wayans?

     S. likes the idea of someone adapting his little read novel, but he knows the film will take liberties with his novel.  The film, called Seeking Water,  gets made after one year of arguments and bumbling, turns out surprisingly good.  Olivia De Havilland, a 110 year old matriarch, Madame Gentry, has an eighty-five year old son, Johnny Gentry (Jack Nicholson).  He's been waiting to inherit the property so he can tear up the east wing looking for Dad's buried treasure which actually isn't there.  The three and a half hour long film wins two Academy Awards, one for costumes. the other for best supporting actress; Jessica Biel as Lee Ann MacGregor, owner and operator of Kirby's Casino and Laundromat, a setting not in S.'s novel, but Jessica Biel?  Okay.

     A key moment in the film comes when Micah, Marlon Wayans, realizes he's beating his half-brother, Elijah, Eric Stolz.  An Irish drunk had his way with a Black servant working in Master Dellmark's mansion.  Twins came from this, non-fraternal or whatever it's called when twins don't look alike.

     Eric and Marlon, the redhead and the Black man from the same mother, raised by different fathers, different, yet the same, one tall, the other shorter, one large in the loins, one not.  Eric and Marlon, getting used to being each other's blood.  Writing to each other using e-mail.  Exchanging comments on their Instagram pictures.  Eric sure likes dogs.  Marlon enjoys shiny black cars, dressed up women, tattoos, posts a promotion of one of Eric's documentaries, how nice of Marlon!  Two peas in a pod, along with question marks as to how they never found out until now how they're related.

 

     Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road on a paper scroll.  7,000 years ago papyrus was placed in a rock tomb in northern Sudan.  The papyrus contained three things.  A recipe for soup to take away arthritic pains.  Two of the ingredients had gone extinct.  The second thing, a lesson in how to build a sturdy house that can withstand rising waters.  And third, the nature of the oily black tar in the region, an oil field tapped out by 1919. Still, 7,000 years ago to 1919 is almost 7,000 years ago if you accept this is 2022 and not some topsy-turvy twenty-ninth century Hell zone consisting of a computer game with endless variations, a real future world able to send simulations of itself to other eras, parts of it intersecting with the present world of 2022.

     The scroll of words, of sentences, the music of jazz punctuating the writing.  Kerouac blended the present with the past, making the highway a guitar string of poetic expression, America about 1947, year of Cold War paranoia turning official.  

     Living life, Kerouac took the path on which he met Neal Cassidy.

Gyrations of Goth and Other Essays by S., Page 324.

     S. worked as a fry cook in a place named for the barbecue process.  He did a little hop on his right foot when he flipped a burger or pancake.  His pancake flips made the bestest hotcakes.  He enjoyed seeing on the ticket the waitress's scrawl, saying simply, Cakes, coff, 1 egg oe.

     Toast and coffee, raspberry jam, strawberry preserves, cherries jubilee, steak with potato, steak with Cole slaw, blueberry pie with whipped cream, S. dreamed of all these foods at the eatery where he worked for not enough money to afford the food he made for others.  A paycheck requires heft.  

     S. demanded a raise after working there for three days, was refused, threatened resignation on the spot.

     "Quit then," the manager said.

     "Very well.  I shall enjoy exiting the building."

     "I'll walk you out."

     "I'll be back on Friday to collect my paycheck."

     "Fine."

     "I'll be a customer of this establishment.  I'll order food made by my replacement."

     "You do that."

     "You've been a good manager.  In the upper five percent of good managers in my work experience."

     "Thank you, but you want a recommendation to future employers I'm not planning on making in your case, but, miracles can happen I suppose."

     "You are a miracle, sir."

     "This is where we part.  I wish you luck."

     A shaking of hands, others' hands, women's hands smaller than S.'s, men's hands often the same size and bigger.  Intimacy of hands, people touching palms together.  Strangers just met touching palms together.  Went away as a courtesy with Covid-19, the elbow bump made itself prominent when a former president did it with the self-proclaimed Queen of Outer Space.  

     

     S. remembered his time at the barbecue diner that way, but really, he was about to be fired for keeping a rifle in his locker.  The weapon in fact belonged to a H., another waiter at the eatery.  H. stored his gun in S.'s locker during a drugs inspection on H.'s locker.  

     H. had men after him.  He'd fled a nearby city with stolen stolen money to set up a new life in S.'s city.  The eatery manager a month ago had found pot in H.'s locker.  He suspended him for fourteen days, cut it to one week, gave him a second chance.  S. removed the rifle before inspection, leaned the weapon against a water fountain down the hall to the manager's office.  S. selected another false memory, played it out, knowing as he came to that he had never baited bears in the fifteenth century.  

     

     Smorton Jarjeel the critic looks up S., finds the latter in a disheveled state, apartment strewn with paperback books in the science fiction and fantasy genres.  S.'s crumb-covered floors also show whirling dust, the ceiling fan making a vortex below.

     S. saw through Smorton's eyes, felt a rumble in Smorton's stomach, felt stooped, feet sore and dry mouth.  

     Don't want to be Smorton, S. thought, exiting Smorton.

     Jarjeel, proud family name, now associated with S.  He marries a Jarjeel, Ithana, twenty-three, a banjo player of all things, a bluegrass aficionado.  They live in her father's palace in Himachal Pradesh, northernmost region of India.  Ibexes climb in the clouds.  S. discovers he doesn't like cold weather day after day, night after night.  They move to Spain, they attend a bull fight.  Ithana regards the bull as sacred, speculating that the custom has its roots in ancient myth.

     S.: (agreeing to be agreeable)  Yes, you're right honey.  Bull fighting goes way back to the time of Atlantis.

     Ithana: Looook!  The prancing moves of the matador.  He seduces the bull, the red cape is the cunt!

     S.: Honey, please!  You can't shout that word in public!

     Ithana: This is Spain, darling!  Coño!

     S.: People are looking.

     Ithana: Let them look!  Coño, ha ha!

     S.: The matador's preparing to kill.

     Ithana: Or be killed?

     S.: That happens sometimes.

     Ithana: The bull will find his release from prison.

     S.: An interesting way of putting it, but yes.

     Ithana: He lasted only a minute and a half.  Out there with the bull.  He should've gone fifteen minutes to prove he's a real man.  

     S. in the cab looks at rainy streets.  Downpour caught them as they left the corrida.  No umbrellas brought.  Ithana's gone to one of her impenetrable moods.  

     S. loves life, but not this part.  

     Time to break up with Ithana.  Here?  With the cabbie listening?  He's got the radio on, but...I'll do it when we get home.  But it's after one, too late to dump such a thing on her.  I"ll bring it up first thing in the morning.  Yes, I'll do that.  Maybe wait till evening.  In fact, the weekend would be best, take five days to practice the wording.  No euphemisms this time.  Honey--don't call her honey--Ithana, the time has come for me to tell you I'm breaking up with you.  I don't want us to be friends so don't ask about that.  Ithana, life has been good with you.  And bad.  The bad part is why I'm breaking up with you.  One: you didn't contact me from Chicago until you'd been there for two days, I worried sick. Two: That twerp of a friend of yours, Milton, I don't like him, you refuse to end your friendship with him even though you know he sickens me with his cheery demeanor and twisted personality, all those horror movies in his DVD collection.  And Three: I'm bored with our sex life together.  Just bored with it.  We always do the same thing.  I'm tired of monotony.  Life with you is monotonous.  I want some variation.  I want unpredictability.  I want to not have to wear a mask around you.

     S. never says this.  Much has been written about S. by this author and others, but one thing they all agree on is a trait of S.'s not much known to others in his acquaintance.

     He was in regular habit of imagining his friends and acquaintances as opposites of their true selves, so that a nice male friend would be mean and grasping; imagining these people that way showed S. the possibility of other outcomes, like how he might have been an heir, have received tens of millions of dollars upon the death of a parent or a guardian, but S. was the product of ordinary people who had to watch their money carefully.  

     Class war.  Rising in status, like the woman in Edna Ferber's Saratoga Trunk.  S. had time to read, no job, no wanted prospects, he hated working, he wanted out of society's conditions, rules, norms, laws, mores, hangups, political correctness, and flab, yes, flab!  The flab coming with computers, phones, the Internet, all the time spent messaging and looking at the phone, when you could be reducing your flab!

     S. writes a letter to the editor of the home city newspaper, "Eliminate Flab!" an opinion piece by Alan Edgegrain, a pseudonym of S.  

     S. becomes a bi-weekly opinion writer.  He creates a paid column called Nobody Asked Me!  Here he offers advice about what to do about the lead pipes in the city.  He runs down the series of avoidances the city has offered as excuses to do nothing, money for everything but the prevention of brain damage to children.  Nobody asked me!

     

     "I'm not on the City Council," S. wrote in his famous Christmas 1932 column, "that august body of super-beings elected by the people, that's us, to represent their interests in their community.  Lead.  It's a problem.  Drinking lead-infused water, as runs through pipes in poor districts, leads to learning disabilities, retardation, that kind of thing.  Bad news all around, wake up, City Council!  Stop sitting on your hands!  Help the little ones!  Do not, by your inaction, become guilty of causing lead poisoning in children!  Be sensible!  Look to your consciences!  Ask God to forgive you for taking so much time to make up your minds about a problem with imminent need of solution.  Do something!"

     

     This missive got 2,100 replies.  They loved the fuck out of it.  Direct, simple speech.  This Alan Edgegrain is a gas.  According to his bio he's 27, handsome, drives a Packard, smokes Chesterfields, eats caviar off of naked models in Paris, has acted in three films, all silent, doesn't act anymore, just writes and enjoys his time off.

     The Chesterfields part was true.  The models with the caviar was a fabrication.  Handsome?  God, yes, aren't most actors handsome?

     S., at 47, was all these things, 27 again, enjoying natural virility, no enhancers to make the thing work better.  S. at 47 had been feeling for over a year a flagging of enthusiasm in his membrum virilis.  Ejaculatory delay, side effect maybe of a drug he had to take.  Jacking off for forty-five minutes, almost there and unable to cum.  Exhaustion and frustration from failed masturbation, how hilarious.

     Alan Edgegrain plays a jewel thief in Blonde Embargo, starring Mae Clarke as the Blonde, Peter Lorre as Anton Eggers, the bomb-timing specialist, and Jeannette McDonald as the nightclub entertainer in three night club scenes.  She gives Alan Edgegrain a kiss.  

     Alan Edgegrain never forgets having been kissed by Jeannette McDonald, the redheaded singing actress, voice like an opera star.  Pretty.  

     As an old 109 year old man, interviewed for People Magazine, Alan Edgegrain misses old Hollywood.

     "Even a mediocre shit actor like me could get women, lots of women, women you would recognize."

     "Such as?"

     "Is People that kind of periodical?  Okay.  Jinx Grubenvahst and I had a little bit of a...

     "You don't say!"

     "After her, Moonie Crainheart and I had a fling during the making of Zombie Beachgoers Hit San Pedro.  Those kissing scenes between me and Moonie?  That was real emotion.

     "Your most well known affair was with the infamous Krystal von Bolk.

     "Praise to Krystal, the infamous darling of news media, bestselling author even wrote her own books, the best broadcaster, the easiest to see through once you learn to see.  I'm old, how much longer for this interview?"

    "One more question: Do you know where you are?  And when this is?  And how you came to be here?  And why?"

     One of them spoke, the interviewer had turned into three people, they paced about and shot questions at S.

     1. Do you remember Earth, 2022, S.?

     S. Yes.

     3.  You're not part of our world.  This is a world of pure imagination but real nevertheless.  You belong in your world.  Rooted.  Go home.  

     2. Think about nothing.  Memories will come, they'll change as memories do.  Go home.  Find yourself again.  You're none of your creations.  You're just yourself.

     3. Yourself.

     1. Do you remember Earth, A.D. 33?

     S. Yes.  Calvary.  

     3. What did you find?  

     S. Some men were crucified, a common sight in the Empire.

     2. Was one of them the Savior?

     S. How could I know?  There were eight or nine suffering men.

     3. Eight or nine?  Was it eight, or nine?

     S. Nine.

     3. Were any of the nine prominently displayed?

     S. Like the star of the show?  No.

     1. Do you remember Earth, 1931?

     S. Boy, do I.  The year I started at the newspaper.  I wrote a column for twelve years, then I joined the army, did my patriotic duty, fought in Italy, got grazed on the arm by a German bullet, the wound wasn't deemed sufficient to earn a Purple Heart, but I deserve one nevertheless.  Did I say Italy?

     2. Maybe you'll get your chance.

     1. Do you remember Earth, 1107?

     S. Yes, Jerusalem, Frankish knight.  Sir S.  Purple griffin on a black background on my shield, purple plumes, a gallant noble but a rogue with the ladies, goes through fifteen of them his first week in Jerusalem, I'm talking noble ladies and a few servants.  Sir S. veteran of the sack of Jerusalem, sworded at least thirty people that hot day, I did.  Worked off a lot of steam.  House to house, kill everybody.  Newspapers said the streets ran with blood.  I saw rivulets of blood.  I saw piles of corpses, but no torrents of blood.  I think about twenty-five thousand people died in the city that day.  We Franks explode into action, so watch out, Europe is a wild animal.  

     1. You will be let go.  

     2. Give in to your present self.    

     3. You are no longer S.  

     1. Be who you are.

Vic Neptune