Mr. Piranha

I have begun applying for jobs. Today I sent an application to the wine, spirits, beer, and tobacco store which is just outside my apartment. It is a place I buy from. Every time I go there I have to ask the employees questions, and get their recommendations, because I know so little about liquor. It is a place I would like working for though – as far as I could like working anywhere – because my knowledge could be expanded, and being surrounded by liquor is not the last thing I would like to be surrounded by all day.

I tell Musette. She wants me to run over and speak to someone personally. I am hesitant. But then I get an email from the store’s owner asking me if I can come in.

I grab a resume from my filing cabinet. Musette gives me a shower. She doesn’t have me wash my hair though, because there has been a heavy greasiness present for the last few days and she doesn’t want to wash it out.

“It’s keeping your hair styled, and washing it would only make you self-conscious.” she says.

We pick out a shirt for me. It’s my favorite green one. The job listing said I would need to dress business casual or better. This is my best at the moment.

“We can buy you new clothes later.” Musette says.

“One day’s work is worth a new outfit right?” I ask.

“Right.” she says.

I head down.

 

There are a few guys working in the store. A couple of customers make their way to the register. I get in line behind them. One of the employees sees my resume. He heads down a back hallway and pokes his head into an office. The employee behind the register asks me if I need help.

“I’m here for an interview.” I say.

“He’ll be right out…” says the guy who went to the back office.

That guy is much better dressed than me… The one behind the register is dressed better than me also. I know that my hair is long, I know that my shirt is not tucked in, I know that I haven’t shaved; but this was Musette’s idea; she had practically forced me to come here; and I looked good enough for her.

I wander around the back of the store, zig-zagging between aisles of beer. The guy I’m looking for appears. I know it’s him the second I see him. He has a blue, tucked in polo shirt on. He has brown skin. His name is Mansac Piranha (it was in the email he sent me).

What am I supposed to do, call him Mr. Piranha? Mansac?

I avoid using his name altogether.

He takes me into the cigar room. I hand him my resume. He can’t get over the fact that I left OfficeStore without being fired. He thinks I’m leaving stuff out of my story.

I tell him the reason I left was because the store was taken over by new management.

“Management changes all the time.” He says.

I tell him that ninety percent of the employees left at the same time I did.

“Then you were all idiots.” he says.

He tells me the percentage of unemployment in the Orgone galaxy.

He asks me who my supervisor was.

I stumble telling him his last name, because he had a dumb last name: ‘Mullet.’

Mr. Piranha thinks I’m lying. He doesn’t make eye contact with me for the rest of the interview.

“Would he give you a good recommendation?” he asks.

I tell him that he would, but that he’s not there anymore.

“I never missed a day.” I say. “Never called in sick. I worked overtime. I worked hard.”

“There has to be some other reason why you left.” he says.

“I didn’t like the way the store was run. I didn’t like doing graphic design. I wanted to focus on my writing.” I respond.

He asks me if I have any questions for him.

I ask him a couple, and then he tells me that the position will be given within the next twenty-four hours.

I go to shake his hand, but his eyes are looking at my resume.

“After you.” he says, motioning towards the door.

I open the door and walk out. He follows me. I never get a goodbye handshake.

“Thank you for your time.” I say, leaving the shop.

 

The smell of bleach greets me at the apartment. Musette is buck naked, in the tub, scrubbing heavily and coughing horribly. She asks to breathe through my cardigan.

“I don’t think I got the job.” I tell her.

I explain what happened, but she’s too concerned with dying to see my point of view.

Confrontation

I feel the weaknesses of my enemies surfacing from me. The passivity of Musette’s father thick like half-and-half. The laziness of her mother overwhelming me with inertia. The death of a hero rebirthing as parasites. Prequel characters speaking through the silence of a cocoon’s hang. Others seeing me as the enemy holding the treasures they seek most in life. Best friends separated through a rift of passion. True love vs. Jealousy at it again. The old red vs. blue; black vs. white; light against dark; brothers on the field: Cain and Abel; Jesus and Satan; America vs. the rest of the world; the Axis of Evil vs. The Allies; Terrorists vs. America; America vs. the innocents; Capitalism vs. Communism; JFK vs. Lindon B. Johnson; Hunter S. Thompson vs. Richard M. Nixon; Kerouac vs. Ginsberg; West Coast vs. East Coast; California Dreaming against New York City true grit; realism vs. idealism; fiction vs. fact; memoir vs. fabrication; chronicling vs. constructing; Dostoevsky against Tolstoy; Bugs Life vs. Antz; Paris vs. Nigeria; Winter vs. Summer; the desert vs. the rainforest; boys against girls; dogs vs. cats; showers vs. baths; Acid vs. Mushrooms; life vs. death; monsters against aliens; Call of Duty vs. Battlefield; Walmart vs. Target; Mozart vs. Beethoven; Rolling Stones vs. The Beatles; Microsoft vs. Apple; Android vs. iPhone; happiness vs. sadness; failure vs. success.

Us city boys going against them country slickers. Crips approaching bloods like this is the new West Side Story. Jersey Boys with their doo wop combs slicking their heads back to say, “Hey, come on over here…”

But who can win with all this toxic sludge in his system? Like a creature of the black lagoon, my footprints leave puddles. I’m splish sploshing through the present, looking for the future. Career websites dropping hurdles for me to jump through. And poverty pulling at my stomach like the weights of my past confrontations.

Here Comes Ferris Again

Tiredness, taking shape as the growing curse, wrapping from my throat and into my sleeping schedule, sucking on the back of my brain and gnarling its tentacles through my sinus cavities.

“There’s insulation in my throat! I can damn well promise you that!”

Looking around the room beneath my throbbing eyebrow, “Who in this damn Hell is going to believe me? What’s it take to convince people something is wrong? Too many presidents died of pneumonia? Can I honestly say I’m better than them? Uninsured and with what all to live for? Children? a new mattress? more books? more words? flashing pictures? day after day of further masturbation sessions? friend envy?”

“Don’t worry about what there is to live for,” says the master. “Just live for it. It’s an easy solution, not thinking. Do your best to give not a fuck all. See how free you can jitter. How fast can you squirm. How loud can you scream, and will the shout sound more like your thoughts? Can you tell me what’s going on outside your window without getting in the way of yourself? Be the failure for me baby. Be there for them all, their messiah. Can you tell me what the lady you saw only ten minutes ago was wearing down to the small details? How about letting your head slip into madness? Not everybody can, you know. How about being the dishwasher for an Italian restaurant? or a cab driver? Have you ever thought about cutting up animal corpses? What about digging graves? Somebody has to do that. Not all things are done for you. You are not pumped with royal blood. There is a duty to society which you must pay. A pound of flesh is due from all.”

Now, don’t get upset… This isn’t me talking to you. It’s the master of me talking to myself. I wouldn’t come out here and preach to you like that. There are quotation marks around that rant. It’s a Miller Sagitack; the Ferris Bueller get-up-and-go. I’ve never been much for the running around, biking under the sun business. There is something I enjoy in the insomnia: that shaking of the head, with pain; bombs; lights flashing; epileptic seizures revealing the touch of god only a mouthful of paint dust can reveal.

I want a motel room, changing day by day, with the varying hot coffee of a long duster and a flip out badge. Give me a mystery and a brain capable of solving it. Throw in a bit of that zentuition which makes all the young men squirm, and a brain constantly beautifying itself while destroying it. I wanna walk these godforsaken streets with a body that can be boxed and battered without fear curling it to pill-bug patheticism. Give me the agility to ingest drug after drug, drink after drink, smoke after smoke, fuck after fuck, bashing books against your ears and laughing eccentrically.

“A real mad-man that one…” they’ll say, watching me from behind their curbside boundaries.

Like I’m Ferris himself, atop that parade float, dancing.

“Oh, the world is mine to play upon!” I shall shout. “And bullets are just fun slugs for practicing death around; and jail, well that’s just another place to go crazy in!”

A Dash of Salt

Coughing all night. Keeping my girl awake; she being like, “Kum on bro, stfu…”

Here I am, being like, “Babe, if I could I would… It just keeps coming out of me. This horizontal position’s got my goat…”

“So sit up.” she says. Which leads to more computer time logged. Just looking, browsing, passing it along, filtering, channeling, distributing, judging. The pillars of culture must not be afraid to express opinions. Latch onto your voice and scratch higher through the vacuum, because when that time comes you can say, “It was me said that. And I done that. It was me thought this way, and if it was good, then I was good, and if it was bad, then I was intelligent. For it wasn’t me who sat idly by. I was kissing, driving, shooting, laughing, talking, dancing, moving. I was a shaker back then. You could see me on the stage. They gave me VIP treatment. My berries were ripe with juice.”

That’s what they’ll say about me, teenage idol, rocking it in his bedroom, which he thought was a camera, as though the audience could do more than just read; like they could lift him into the strobing lights, sweating diamonds for his following.

But even heroes must submit. Hermes is more than Achilles and Odysseus combined; smaller than Pluto, the lover-boy, mama’s son, sailing through poetry to the shores of the future, wondering how I ended up here, in this dangerous world of hoboes, and lunatics; drunks and drug addicts; beggars; muggers; the ugliest of preps; dog walkers, smelling of bad jissom; all of us inches from the dinner table, always checking in, leaving dollars, bussing and bartending, hoping to contribute to a speedy service; filling out applications for account manager positions, models, advertisement actors, dispensers, bookbinders, writers of activist literature, copy editors, journalism interns: gotta pay the rent; respect the law; feed the flesh; awaken into tomorrow.

To die is the greatest sin. Yet living lies so close to death. Awakening eternally from that. The breath of freedom which might be found in chance. The song being sung at the pitch of intuition. Stepping in to make that goal. Something else taking over: more than the meals and the inertia: a fluid sort of grace; the song of life’s script, sung in silence, with all of life’s noise making up its harmony.

Curses and their Counterparts

This cough doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. In fact it’s getting worse. I wake each morning spitting dark mucus in the sink.

Curses are usually locatable within the physical world: spirit and form work together: no separation; so, when I spot the building’s maintenance crew pulling insulation from my hallway’s ceiling I get to wondering: is it mold? Dust? What am I dealing with exactly? And can it even be dealt with? Last time I had a mold problem, I abandoned ship on the brink of crazy.

Some curses require divine intervention. And when I say ‘divine intervention’ I’m talking landlords, maintenance men, plumbers, etc: a higher power.

Musette asks me if I want to talk to the landlord.

I tell her that I don’t. But what I don’t tell her is that the reason I don’t is because he is a new landlord, a man, instead of young woman; and he’s Armenian or something, middle aged, and intimidating to me. I don’t get along well with men. My father was a man. And he was, and may still be, my arch nemesis.

I decide to take out the trash. A week ago Musette had dumped the contents of the vacuum in there. That dusty mess has been at the back of my mind for too long. The gray dirtiness lie layered over a range of slimy egg shells, withered brown limes from God only remembers the last time we had margaritas, and a dead animal slime which spreads from the scooped out foam of a ground beef carton.

It’s been all too long accumulating: a stash beneath the sink; a plague of nightmares in my subconscious; the memory of two fags poisoning my guts; a stagnation settling in beneath the paint; that musky smell which makes the whites of my eyes dribble; shaking like that cut-in ghost man, the dark figure in the living room, clinging to life long enough to murder you with a stroke, squeeze your gallbladder till it collapses in my palm. Number one sinner here, needing your prayers so damn bad! Just another phase beneath the birthmark of Cain. Bloody hands showing up in the mirror just about every other day. Opening the oven to find another bout of melted face in place of the Digiornio. Here I am shaking the cat to a ghost in my hands. I’m filming the destruction for a top spot on B.J. nash’s, Clash of the Literal Killers.

“This week we’ve got kittens being ripped apart like phone books, puppies being punted like field goals, and rodents asphyxiating beneath your quivering prostate.”

Bombs blasting all around Montmartre open my eyes to the rattling in my skull. Vibrancy crackles through the slits in my vision.

“Keep your eyes on the road.” says the undulating spirit guide.

Gotta’ keep cumming to the Champs-Elysees.

Be Here Now

It is palpable, the changing of acts, like the changing of tracks, on the rails and in your cassette tape decks where we are bringing you today’s todays, yesterday’s tomorrows, and tomorrow’s yesterdays. Yes sir, yes ma’am, we’re broadcasting live action television straight into your soul. Keep it tuned to KJZZ for more of the sweet spots, the tender rubbings, the necktie tuggings, and as always Big Boy Thomas’s famous underbelly muffin suckings.

We Nymphomaniacs

The important thing is to not stop. Stagnation is the devil of productivity. He who can call himself or herself writer, is he or she who does not stop writing. You see, that’s the thing about the sacred, classic, pure art of literature, it is text on page, or text on screen, as we say these days. That’s not to say you should take a free-for-all pass for shit, because who amongst us, the writers which we all are, longs to spew the turd? That’s not to say we don’t all need to drop our loads sometimes; and if dropping that load rises you higher to euphoria then by all means squat and plop. We could all use a little manure at some point. It’s hot, steamy, raw, and real. It’s fertile. It spurs growth. If that’s your thing then let it spurt. Buttholes for mouths. Asses for brains. Colon throats. Poop for words.

I’ve got no place telling you what’s what. You who are skilled at living, having lived as many hours as you have, with each of them spent doing something, which was something that someone else might or might not have spent their time doing also. The thing is, we can’t spend our time doing everything, and we are bound to be doing different things at some points, so your opinion of something, of life in general, is going to be different from mine, varying by the degrees of divergence our life paths have wavered from each other.

It’s all about who over there is curious about what’s going on over here; and who over here is looking for somebody in her same situation to relate to. That’s what we mystic shamans of the chronicling are up to. Sure, there are creators of fictional universes also. But they are up to some schizophrenic sling hacking if you ask me. They’re snatching up your children, and taking them to delusional islands. They’re having their way with them to further solidify their fantasies. But it’s all consensual. Who ever heard of a mind raping book? Books are paraplegic prostitutes! It takes your dollar, your library card, your downloading fingertip to allow entrance to the author and his wiles. Like vampires we wait to feed your mind. The wolf at the door. We nymphomaniacs.

Partying Isn’t Going to Stop

Here I am, this narrator, pretending to be tough shit, or a pussy, or just a laugh for your day, popping up between your rapid thoughts, emotions, images, and sound, rattling our brains like a jackhammer. Don’t be offended, I ain’t after your mother or your girlfriend, I don’t have a thick one for your man, there is no eye in the sky whispering dark violences into my penis hole. Your chick’s clit can hold itself tight for all I care. I am after you. It don’t matter if your ballsacked or labia licked, I want you vibrating. I want your face to twitch. I want your stomach to turn. I want to be inside you. You and me kid, since way back when now. Can you believe how far we’ve come? me like your friend throughout this whole entire jamb. Like we were there when the rain was falling, back when the lights were sailing through space. Back when blackouts were crashing all around our songs, the music of our generation, those boys and girls singing their hearts out, everybody shaking their rumps, the soda fountains being jerked with strong forearms, “Here you are sir.” “Here you are ma’am.” All that candied cream soaring over the countertop, splashing the little girls with the froth off your top. “Mmmm… Dad, this tastes like sea foam.” says the tiniest one. “Don’t be acting like I ain’t ever taken you to the beach.” says the dad.

The party is on, it’s bumping strong, you don’t gotta dance, but you can’t just puss like a cyst. You know, these days, there are healthy groceries in almost every city. If you haven’t ever tried a pear, then I’d say it’s about time you whet your whistle with some of that sweet flesh. And if you’ve never eaten a brussel sprout, I personally recommend them seasoned and oiled.

So ask your mom if it would be alright for you to pack your guinea pigs in your little kid knapsack and run on over this way where we’re serving cherry pie, lime rickies, Reeses Pieces, and a whole lot of dum dums. Because when your lady says ya’ can’t smoke, you’ve gotta compensate somehow, and when the world throws you a curveball in the form of a death wish, just go run around the halls with that little sucker sticking out between your lips like it’s the toothbrush of your childhood.

The Charity of Pleasure

I never know what the next big thing is. It’s all happening so fast. The object becomes stomach acid, helping me digest the subject.

It’s true I heard the voice of Maxwell Foxhall, but I have heard it before, and now twice denied. In the denials remains the counterculture, with college being a mockery of truth.

There is one thing I know: when I was in school, I didn’t want to be there; and even now, considering going back, I still don’t want to be there. Because doing things is often that which I most don’t want to do; and paying extravagant amounts to do them is almost too ridiculous a concept for me to entertain.

Because if something has to be done, then one should get paid to do it.

Release

This next tale is tiny but deserves note, for it was a moment which could mean something later on, being that I’m so focused on the building of my courage, which in this instance shot right up and out of me, just like I’ve been looking for: the me existing within myself as myself; that sturdy part of me nestled in my weiner, coming higher up… through the heart… and out my throat.

I mean, that’s the goal at this point: through the heart and out the throat. So much energy getting wedged down in these nether regions, the same way people get colon cancer and heart attacks: unexpressed emotion. Letting those feeling translate into action is the only prescription: God’s prescription; how the world works without drugs and alcohol and loud music drowning out the truth; pure unadulterated stream, making everything ok. But it’s the kind of ok that’s within yourself. That is something I need you to understand: it’s not about what anybody else thinks, because they are stepping stones to your personal bliss: handholds and footholds; they cannot tell you what is right.

Hitler went to Heaven and so do the Jehovah’s witnesses. Those kids who shot the school up were pump, pump, pumping with emotion. Joan of arc was blissing all the way up her pyre. Even the poop scooting boogies, watching their boob tubes till the fat comes home, are just dreaming like dogs all day, swimming in the collective thought pool.

But this is all explanation; background information. Because what I’m about to say might seem so small and insignificant to you, and you will probably read it and say, ‘How is what you’re explaining heroic?’

 

Here’s what happened: I’m walking Charlo. We’re going around the park. It was the second time I’d done so today. Musette and I had agreed that he should get as much exercise as possible, without going to the dog park, because we didn’t want him to get sexually excited or abused, because tomorrow is the day he gets neutered.

I’m going round the bend and Charlo’s acting more a fool than he knows he can get away with. I have to put him in ‘time out’, which is what the dog whisperer refers to as the ultimate form of discipline.

You have to separate your discipline into stages for it to be effective. The first stage is either a ‘shushing’ noise, or a slight tug; the second stage is more forceful tugging; the last stage involves grabbing your pup by the neck and pushing him into the ground – this is ‘time out’. It’s nothing hard: no slamming, skull smashing, or rib pulverising; in fact it’s necessary to remain calm during this stage. The goal is to be the pack leader. It is what dogs to do when their subordinates are acting up. It resets energy and displays authority.

Anyways, I’m going around the bend, Charlo’s acting up, I grab him by the neck and slowly push him to the sidewalk.

I’m holding him there, monitoring his breath, watching his body, waiting for the obsessive thoughts to disappear from his mind when this dumb girl, sun tanning on the park lawn, wearing some bra which makes me want to jump her and pump her full of sperm, calls out to me, “You aren’t hurting your dog are you?”

“No, I’m not.” I reply, answering her honestly.

She’s quiet for a bit. I have to stay firm for the discipline to take hold.

“It’s just that the cement is hot, on his paws, and…”

That’s her piping up again.

The energy leaps from my dick, which is already jazzed thanks to her bra, up round my heart, which hates her type of intrusive, Samaritan personality, and out my throat, releasing a gorgeous slug of reprimand, saying, “Stop talking. I don’t want to hear from you again. Ok?”

 

I told you it wasn’t much. But to me it felt like light penetrating the walls of my self. It was something true, aimed against this oppressive world which annoys me so much sometimes; and it felt good.

I held Charlo against the ground, still for a few seconds longer. My body was vibrating. The girl was staring at me, dumbfounded I guess. I had given her a pretty wrathful stare along with my reprimand.

And then I got up. I didn’t look at her again. Charlo felt lighter, calmer. I knew it was because of what had been released within myself, like the change in me was transferring through the leash between us, both of us having been changed by this breath of relief.

 

The incident stuck in my mind for the rest of the day. I felt something similar to guilt, but I knew it wasn’t guilt, because I was proud of myself.

I touched my bare foot to the cement on the way home. It was cooler than warm bath water.