Sunday Funnies

Fiction Friday

PART III

THE DOOR

 

  Bon didn’t stand staring long. After a brief moment, his heart now racing, he pounded up to the second floor where he had his workroom: drafting table, and computer. He whipped open a tall cabinet – an old cherry- wood wardrobe he had retro-fitted with drawers and shelves- and pulled out his camera with it’s little remote that he put in his right pocket, as well as  a four-foot (the longest he could find)  cardboard collapsible periscope that he had recently purchased at a toy store.
          Going into his bedroom, stuffing the camera temporarily under his arm, he grabbed his passport – he now kept it out on his nightstand (really just a couple of plastic milkcrates with a beat-up oriental rug draped over them) – and shoved it into his left front pocket. He thundered back down the stairs.
          The light was still there, very indistinct and muffled.
          Now he could hear voices, and an irregular, sharp popping or cracking sound. The popping sounded like small-arms fire, but he realized he’d only ever heard gun sounds in movies or on TV, so he didn’t really know how they sounded in real life. This was real life, right? Bon thought it was.
          Crap. He’d forgotten his tripod.  Putting the camera and the periscope on a chair, he ran back up to his workroom – the tripod, folded up, leaned in the corner by the wardrobe - grabbed it and ran back down.
          The light was still there.
          He put the camera on the tripod, turned it on and aimed it at the door, putting it into movie mode. He started recording. Bon had hung a rope from a beam, with a loop at the end for a hand-hold, near the door. This he now took with his right hand – with his left he picked up the periscope and tucked it under the arm holding the safety rope. He opened the door.
          Three Arabic-looking men in cheap western dress, wearing Muslim keffiyehs, the flaming ruins of a village behind them, black smoke (the air that came in smelled of burning rubber, Bon thought) pouring up into a dead gray sky, stood screaming at him in what sounded like a machine-gun blast of Arabic. Two of the men aimed actual machine guns at Bon; the third man’s machine gun hung around his neck on a Nikon camera strap. He grabbed Bon’s periscope, yelled, shook it in Bon’s face still yelling. Bon heard the crackle of small-arms fire in the distance; even in his pants-wetting fear he thought that, indeed, the movie sound-effects guys –folly artists, isn’t that what they were called? - had got the sound of distant gun fire spot on.
          Bon kicked the door shut with his foot. In the half second it took to close, the two holding their guns pulled the triggers; their guns chattered. Holes appeared in the door and splintered wood flew into the basement. Letting go of the rope, Bon jumped to the floor, to the side of the door, landing on his stomach. His face stung, hitting gravel and concrete. The door slammed, he supposed, hitting the Nikon strap guy in the face, because, just as it closed, Bon heard what must have been “Ow! Fuck! That hurts!” he supposed, in Arabic.
          For several moments, Bon lay completely still, thanking his lucky stars he hadn’t been shot. He felt fluid trickling on his right thigh, and realized he had wet himself; he had heard that people often did that – and often more- in life and death situations.
          His head was turned away from the door; finally after a good minute of confirmed silence, he opened his eyes, lifted his head and turned it. Fragments of door wood lay scattered about in front of him. The light under the door was gone. He locked up and saw that the red record button still flashed on his camera. “Good!” thought Bon. He rolled over onto his back. He sat up, damn near passed out, steadied himself with his hands.
          “Whoa!” said Bon. He stood, grabbed the rope to keep himself from falling. Little stars shot around in the air before him. “Shit!” he said.
          In faint dizziness, he dropped his head, saw a pool of blood where his thigh had been, saw it trickle into a small, nearby puddle (most of the basement was now dry), saw the blood swirl into a paisley pattern…”Quite pretty,” he thought, realizing he was getting delirious. He looked down at his thigh, saw blood pulsing in rhythm with his heart out of a rip on the inside of his thigh, just inches below his wedding tackle. Where had he heard hat, “wedding tackle”? A Mike Meyers movie? He wasn’t sure. His knees buckled, but he caught himself, yanking on the rope.
          Suddenly he jerked his head up, shook it; the stars cleared away. With energy now, and a suddenly clearer head, he undid his belt while prying off his shoes, dropped his pants and shimmied out of them. The bullet had grazed him, tearing a rip maybe four inches long and one quarter inch deep. He knew if it had hit his carotid artery, blood would be spraying, not pulsing. Maybe it had nicked the artery? “Shit!” He didn’t know anatomy that well, but he knew he didn’t want to go to the hospital; they had to report all gunshot wounds to the police, and after his recent “visit” to France…“Shit!” he said again.
          He pressed his right hand to his thigh, then looked around. There seemed to be a lot of blood, but it was probably less than six or seven ounces; significant, but not life threatening, not if he could stay awake. He realized he felt faint from shock as much as, if not probably more than from blood loss.
          Bon had a bottle of Percocet a dentist had given him six months previously when he had an impacted wisdom tooth extracted. Far from hurting, once the offending tooth had come out, he felt remarkably better. Though the dentist assured him it would hurt once the Novacaine wore off, it never had. Once the shock from his bullet wound had worn off, however, his thigh hurt like hell. Like nothing he could remember, and he had had his fair share of stiches as a kid; the most extensive of which had been a result of a most painful wound, gotten while sliding down the tin roof of an old barn, a corner of tin had been turned up… Bon had, previous to that injury, believed human butt-cheeks to be low in nerve endings. He now knew this to be false.
          Bon was very grateful for the Percocet. He had staunched the bleeding – he was glad he always kept a good supply of Bounty paper towels around; washed it and sutured it with some butterfly band-aids he still had from having stepped on a nail while cleaning out the basement when he had first moved into the house..
          He had already had two Percocet. His thigh looked pretty good, and he’d wrapped it in gauze, also left over from the nail incident. Having just chased three more Percocet with two shots of brandy,  he lay down on his bed. He felt pretty great. Those opiates…They sure erased the pain, they erased everything; no fear, no fear of dying, of overdose even…well, almost everything…as great as he felt, as he began to peacefully doze, he thought he’d rather be having coffee with pretty Gina …

To Be Continued

A STORY OF PAIN AND LONGING

TO KICK OFF THE WEEKEND.

© Makoto Shinkai  Voices From a Distant Star

LETTERS FROM TWENTY YEARS

The dream goes on and on; through an enormous house, a bigger, darker version of the California Victorian I grew up in.  There is a big attic in the dream house, fifty feet high with beams halfway up: lurking in the shadows is something decidedly evil, something humanish with dark bat-like wings.  Like a vampire story, except, for all its distortion, this is my mother’s house, this is my dream, I’m in it, and it’s scary.  I dream in black and white here because it’s night.  If I pay attention, when it is night in my dreams, I only dream in black and white: there is no color at night.

     Then I’m outside, twilight maybe or early morning. I am certain my mother’s dead and that I can never go home again.  Small mounds the size of ski-slope moguls are covered in grass, greenish in the dim light and Civil War soldiers are peppering at me with muskets and lead balls fly by my head.  Suddenly a Mexican soldier grabs my arms from the jungle behind me; another Mexican soldier grabs Ginette’s arms, because now she’s there too – his partner shoots us in the chest.  Ginette scrams.  I scream.  I wake up screaming.

     Breathing hard, I sit up.  I reach out for Ginette, then remember she’s in jail.  Stupid girl: she told me she was straight then got caught with a bit of coke.  But she was on probation when she got caught, so now she will be in prison for a year.  I miss her.  Often I’m mad at her.  Often I don’t know what to feel.  When I need her, she’s not here.  And I remember that my mother is indeed recently dead.

     Shaky, I crawl out of bed, trundle into the kitchen and turn on my espresso maker.  I always turn it on before I put the water in it: that way the heating element is hot by the time I pour the water, it boils faster, and I get my coffee faster.

     I imagine Ginette’s jailhouse dishwater coffee: sock-juice, jeu de chaussette, as the French call it.  Some oatmeal or corn flakes; thin orange juice.  Black sheriff’s deputies who hate pretty white girls; stupid white trash girls who don’t know how to talk with a smart girl like Ginette.  Ginette being abused, or just alone, like me.

     I turn on the radio and listen to the NPR morning news; I hear that light speed has been achieved.  A small ship with a lone rider has made an orbit of the entire solar system in something under four minutes.  To the astronaut it felt like no time at all.  In a few years, maybe months, says the news announcer, people will be going to new stars, new solar systems, new planets.

     After I drink my coffee, I lean back in my chair, close my eyes and slip away: we’re telling stupid jokes and Ginette is laughing so hard she has to keep getting up to go pee.  “No, but listen,” I say, “This is true.  Really.  It’s how they get hazelnuts out of the shell in factories…”

     “Right,” she says.  “So how do they get them out.  I always wondered about that.”

     “Right.  They actually have squirrels who bang them on rocks…”

     “So why…”

     “Why don’t they eat them?  The have muzzles on.”

     Ginette can’t stop laughing.  We’re getting to the point where we’ll laugh at anything: it’s the middle of the night and we’ve been at this for hours.

     “It’s like how… how they shell coconuts…”  Ginette has to laugh for a full minute before she can continue.  “They have these big Samoans… with big net bags full of coconuts and chum… and sharks… sharks chase them…”

     Neither of us can stop laughing.  I laugh so hard it hurts.  There’s a candle on the table and Ginette has never looked more beautiful.  She wears a low cut spring dress, white with a blue and green flower pattern that seems to perfectly set off the warm skin of her face and her long black hair that falls in ringlets. One of her hands – her fingers impossibly thin and delicate, long, the most beautiful hands I have ever held -  rests on the stem of her wine glass that has dripped a little, leaving a couple of purple rings on the light wooden table.  Two little foil gum wrappers lay wadded up nearby.  Ginette eats a lot of gum, but I never notice her actually chewing it.  When I can talk again I say, “I love you.”  She smiles and makes almost no sound when she says, “I love you too.”    

She was arrested the next morning on her way to work.

     Letters from Ginette come once or twice per week.  I send her some money so she can buy decent food and warm clothes from the prison commissary: the prisoners are given only a jump suit and bad food in the dining room.  Ginette says they make it cold in the cells to keep fights to a minimum, but long underwear and sweaters, even extra blankets, must be purchased.  The prison is owned by Onoacom, a multi-national conglomerate whose primary industry is military technology.

     Six months go by and, like most days, I listen to the NPR morning news.  Onoacom has built a large light speed ship to send prison inmates to new stars, to “Create a New Australia,” a spokesperson for Onoacom says.  “Of course,” she continues, “the program is strictly voluntary.”  I know however, that in a prison system where, when a prisoner is beaten to death by guards and is reported to the family as having fallen down the stairs, “voluntary” can mean anything.  In a system with its own internal law and police, with little or no interference from outside, prisoners do what they’re told.  Or they go to solitary confinement.  Or they die.

     A week later, I receive a letter from Ginette: she is going to be on the ship.  Much of the letter has been “highlighted” with a black marker.  Still, I see she loves me, will miss me; my eyes are blurry and I have to put the letter down.  I listen to the news that night and hear there are to be five women for every male prisoner sent: breeder-mates they call them.  Whether from rage or sorrow, or both I can’t tell, I am chocked with sobs.  I hear the ship is to blast off in fifteen minutes. 

     On the screen I see footage of the “passengers” filing across the gangway from a tower into the ship.  They are all still dressed in Orange jumpsuits – a few have small bags, presumably with their precious sweaters and blankets.  The men leer at the women, grabbing asses, stroking hair; the women flinch away, or try to, but it is crowded on the gangway.  I don’t see Ginette.

     The ship takes off in enormous plumes from chemical booster rockets.  Twenty minutes later, she is out of the solar system, headed to a star 20 light years away, and there’s nothing I can do. 

     Ginette was younger than me already – in 20 years she will be 40 years younger than me.  She will not age.  She will still be 27.  I am 47 now. I’ll be 67 when she arrives at her new home.

     And then her letters will take another 20 years to reach me.  I hope she will write to me every day.

THE END

© Douglas C. Ferrin  2014

BACK TO HOME

HAPPY EASTER 

LINDSAY LOHAN

Poor thing.  I have a real soft spot for Lindsay.  Alanis Morissette said any form of child celebrity is child abuse (Alanis herself was a child actor in a Canadian soap opera): that when you see a child in a movie cry,  they are in fact crying, they're not acting, at that moment they're a kid in pain and crying.  A few people who had big acting or music careers as children have turned out alright like... well, like... oh you know, you know the one I mean.

Every time I see a photo of her (and I try not to read celebrity news, but it is impossible to avoid it all - the last thing I ever wanted to see was Justin Bieber's new hair cut [nor did I ever want to see his old one, for that matter], but see it I did, over and over) - anyway, every time I see a picture of Lindsay she looks lost, confused, as yet again she is hustled off to jail or rehab, having thrown another several months of her life down the toilet.  

I certainly know what it's like to fuck up big-time; I've been in a few rehabs and once in jail - not for the same reasons, but I know how awful it is to have everyone gossiping about you, making assumptions, having news stories written about you that are so fictional it is amazing the people who write them have jobs (by the way, I want to do a meditation soon on the people who write the "news": why on God's Green Earth do we trust them; journalists in general have a very justifiable reputation for having lifestyles worse than Lindsay's - I'd very much like to do an expose on the people who bring us the "truth").  It angers me that not only did someone "leak" a list of her lovers recently to the "press", but that anyone was willing to publish it.  Everyone who published it knew where it came from (rehab), and everyone who published it knew that everything that happens in rehab is supposed to be confidential.  Making life painful for people via the "press" has become a national past time, and it is a despicable one, and the people who profit from others' pain have a spirit akin to that of a Bridge Troll.

The above photo is a fake, another bit of mind-bending "press" that pops up about pretty actresses like Lindsay.  Why make a fake?  There are plenty of real pictures of her naked - and she's much prettier than the fake. 

Anyway, Lindsay kind of reminds me of myself, not only because of the trouble we've both been in, but because of our mutual beauty.  I know a lot of people have been wondering what I look like with my shirt off, so I made a fake of myself.  Like Lindsay, I look a lot better than this in real life, but I still feel a little uncomfortable about my body, and I thought it would be vain to post a rockin' selfie on my own page.

Anyway, and this I mean, 

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE

The Lord is Risen.

The Lord is Risen indeed.  Hallelujah. 

Yeah, I've been amiss.  I've had to make money,
god forbid, and I have made money.  God forbid.  Not a popular thing among artists.  Sorry I've missed the meditations.

Anyway here is Plato's shadow.  If you don't get it, read a little Plato.  It will take you a quarter hour.  The thing is, we are the shadow of the "larger" world.  We only see our little bit of reality, no matter how large nor how sophisticated it we, or the world around us, seem..
Big forces looming.  1%.  We are shadow puppets

, and not even worthy ones.

Jeesh, I almost forgot the

SUNDAY FUNNIES

Shows you what kind of mood I'm in.  

BACK TO HOME

AMERICAN ARTIST ARTICLE ABOUT MY EARLY PAINTINGS

NOVEMBER, 1993

Many thanks to Patrick Connors for getting me a copy of the magazine.

CLICK HERE TO READ FULL ARTICLE

DISOBEDIENCE

Illustration by Douglas Ferrin ©2014

My mother loved reciting this poem - indeed, she loved everything a.a. Milne.  Living in Philadelphia, this is what I imagine the "edge of town" looks like.

PS.  Speaking of Mom, I've noticed I have a regular visitor from Menlo Park, CA, which is where she went to high school and I spent much of my summers as a child.  Back before it was part of "Silicon Valley".  Just wondering if it's someone I know.  Let me know if you'd like - whether I know you or not - you can write me at knowewetwo@aol.com

TODAY IS

NO MEDITATION MONDAY

© B. Kliban Estate

My apologies.  Too much work at the moment.  I'll post "The Door" part 3 as soon as I can, for those of you who are following it.  In the meantime, if you have a Meditation you'd like to post, please sent it to me at knowewetwo@aol.com   Please put in the subject heading "Meditation".  Thanks and hope to hear from you.

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THE SUNDAY UN-FUNNIES

THE TEA BAG PARTY

I suspect most of the dimly intelligent people who belong to this "party" probably do not know that at the time of the Boston Tea Party, tea did not actually get delivered in bags.  They surely do not know that the idea of of confronting King George of England was an effort of unification and dissatisfaction with unfair treatment of colonial citizens.  They absolutely do not know it was not about literal tax dollars, but about being treated as less than the rest of the Christian British World.  Throwing the tea into the bay had nothing to do with certain of modern interpretations of St. Paul's notions of useful work.  St. Paul believed in poverty.  St. Paul believed in giving everything away, to whomever asked for it.  St. Paul believed in giving his life to the service and benefit of others.
The only person in perhaps seven hundred years who has truly walked in the steps of St. Paul, and his Lord, Jesus, is St. Francis, who died a miserable death of poverty, giving his life to the well being of others, whomever they were.  If anyone in the "Tea Party" wants to know more about how they should direct their efforts towards what Jesus would have wanted them to do, or are interested in being actually "Christ-Like", as is the purported goal of any believing Christian, including myself, read about St. Francis.  Give away everything you own. *  Attempt to become like Jesus in earnest.  Attempt to see Christ in everyone you meet.  Then give them whatever they ask of you, as Christ directed you to do.  "No shirts, No shoes, No service."  What are the greatest two commandments?  If you do not know them, you very likely have never done Jesus's service (although Jesus taught such simple precepts, it is not impossible that you have), and you will most likely get little help from Him when you need it most.  Like the moment just before you drop into Hell, and will quite possibly not know love, ever again.  Without love, I suspect you will never know anything, ever again.  You may in fact cease to exist.  I think most Christians agree that Hell, whatever else they might imagine it to be, is in essence a dire absence of love, without which nothing Is.

* "Do not worry about your life."

             Jesus of Nazareth

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SUNDAY FUNNIES

OK, SUNDAY FUNNIES.

Introduction.

I wrote this for the Shouts and Murmurs feature of the New Yorker Magazine.  They read it, and told me that Shouts and Murmurs were "humorous" fiction pieces.  I've sent many many things to the New Yorker, and been rejected many times, but that was the first time they had actually been rude to me in a rejection.  In fact, I think the problem was that whoever the ASSHOLE who read it and rejected it was, knew very little about mid-western, California thinking or humor.  Probably some brat brought up on 57th street who had not moved more than three or four blocks in his entire life  His, or her, range of humor lay within a 12 block radius.  Idiots are born and reared and well educated in NYC, and even get good and influencial jobs sometimes.  What they don't know about is the Redwood Mafia.  Old hippies who have a serious ax to grind with non pot-smokers in NYC.  They're coming for you.  They know where you live, you New Yorker Columbia fuck.  Enjoy your last few days on Earth.*

BRAVE NEW CITY OF THE FUTURE

By

Douglas C. Ferrin

I’ve been living in Eureka – that’s in Cali – but I always have considered myself a New Yorker.  I’ve been to NYC four times; this trip will make five.  That’s in fifteen years mind you.  You could say I’m bi-coastal.

            That’s a long flight from Arcata/Eureka to NYC – oh, about fourteen hours on a good day.  Once there were rumors of a non-stop but it turned out that that was just talk.  So on the jump from Eureka to San Fran, there were only two of us in the eight seat Cessna and the other guy pretended to be asleep.  I know he was pretending because I saw him crack open his right eye and I saw his eyeball dart around too.

            So when I got on the plane from San Fran to Houston, I was sure ready for some good chat with my neighbor.  He had the window and I had an aisle seat.  And boy what a grump he was.  He was mumbling when he said it, but I’m pretty sure he told Jesus Christ Himself to shut the bleep up.  Talk about trying to get blood from a turnip.

            The food was crummy but I didn’t care because I was going to be in New York in a few hours.

            Well it was night by the time I landed and I got a cab to my Soho hotel; I closed my eyes for the whole drive because I wanted to see the city at first in broad day light.  It had been nine years since my last stay and I wanted to see this “Brave New City of the Future”, as everyone kept calling it, in its boldest brightest colors.  Once in my room, I closed the curtains, ordered in Chinese and watched the tube until I fell asleep.  In the morning I went down to the coffee shop in my hotel and had the continental breakfast with eggs and bacon.  I sat at the bar so as not to look out the windows.  Then finally it was time.

            I was almost shaking in anticipation.  I opened the café door, fully opened my eyes – and a good thing because the guy with the jackhammer was three feet from the door and I would have lost a toe maybe a foot if I hadn’t been looking where I was going.  Now I really was shaking but mostly from the gripping fear that often follows the relief – that: “thank God I still have my toe, or my life or whatever” feeling – of still being in one piece.  So I scooted out of the way of the door and of the three guys working.  One of them was working anyway, the guy with the jackhammer.  The other two drank coffee.  I stood next to the building at the inside edge of the sidewalk.  I looked up.  I looked around.  I know it made me look like a tourist but I did it anyway.  My mouth fell open.  Soho hadn’t changed at all.  Where, I asked myself, was the big geodesic dome covering the city?  I’d seen it on the cover of a Scientific America at the dentist office just a few weeks ago.  And the monorails?  When the guy with the jackhammer stopped jackhammering and lifted his goggles to hoot at a girl, I said, “Hey.  Where’s the dome?”

            “The what?” he said, wiping the back of his wrist across his forehead, but still looking at the girl.  “Hey Baby, don’t be that way,” he called.

            “You know,” I said, “Isn’t there supposed to be a big dome covering the city and all the monorails?”

            Still distracted by the girl, the guy said, “Huh?”

            I repeated my question.  The girl had gone into a shop.  The workman frowned thoughtfully, looked up, shook his head and said, “Yeah I dunno.  Maybe.”

            “Hey, maybe you’re digging a hole for it now!” I exclaimed, the idea just having occurred to me.

            “Yeah, I dunno what it’s for.  I’m union,” he said.  “I don’t think so though,” he continued after a pause.  Nodding toward the coffee drinkers he said, “Think these guys are with Water.”

            “Well,” I said.  The jackhammer guy put his goggles over his eyes again, said, “Sorry man,” then once again shattered the relentless noise of the city.

            I felt lost.  I mean I knew where I was.  Like I said, I consider myself a New Yorker, but maybe I had been expecting too much; after all I hadn’t actually read the science magazine – I’d been called into Dr. Soman’s office just as I was picking it up - but it had looked so real.  I’d read other things too: about the friendly new face of the city; how people were more relaxed because there was less crime; how businesses were trying to have a kinder “interface” with the public, as one article had put it. 

            Well, being in Soho already, I hopped over to Mary Boone Gallery.  The same gaunt, effete looking fellow in the expensive suit who I had first seen maybe thirty years ago sat at the same little table outside the door to the gallery.  After thirty years, he still wouldn’t look at me, even after my big west coast, “Hi, howya doin?”  I went into the gallery but the walls were empty.  A guy who looked like an action painter from the sixties was up on a cherry picker moving lights around.  “Hey there,” I said.  He didn’t answer, but he did glance down at me.  “Any good shows in town?” I asked.

            “Futhiscrp,” he mumbled.  “CRAP!,” he said, having burned himself on a hot bulb.  He sucked the side of his hand, then saw me still standing there.  “Go to Chelsea,” he said.

            “Chelsea?”

            “Everybody moved to Chelsea after 9/11.  Check it out.”

            He didn’t have a gallery guide so I went to the subway to see how to get to Chelsea.  The subway to Chelsea appeared to be one of those proximity things, like the Vatican subway stop in Rome that lets you off when St. Peter’s is still somewhere beyond the curve of the earth.  “Bleep it,” I said and took a cab.

            I couldn’t believe there could be art in the concrete chunks that passed for buildings in Chelsea.  And yet, when I went into one of them, there must have been a hundred galleries.  In that building alone mind you.  I’m serious.  I started on the ninth floor and went to every gallery on the top three floors.  By the sixth floor I was parched and feeling faint.  I soldiered on for another floor but then I had to sit in the only chair in a white room the size of a college field house with one painting on each wall.  I put my head in my hands but it didn’t do any good because every time I rubbed my eyes or even closed them I could see sun-spot-like images that had burned themselves onto my retinas of twig horses and busted old radios and kitchen stuff on shiny wood floors and brutalized mannequins.  I staggered back out to the street and asked a man in a suit if there were any coffee shops around.

            “Go to the Village,” he said.  “It’s better there.”

            Suffering from severe Museum Fatigue, as I call it, tired, hungry, thirsty and sad, I walked east for a mile until I finally saw a cab.  I think he saw me too but I’ll never know.  After an indeterminate time one stopped for me.  “Where to?” asked the cabby as  I got in.  “I wanna go home,” I said, closing the door.

            “Yeah?  Where’s that?”

            “Arcata, Eureka… you know.”

            “Wellll….” he said.  “Uh… what street’s that on?”

            “I don’t care,” I said.  “Just head uptown.  Up the middle of town, please.”

            “Yeaaaaa, OK.  Fifth Avenue OK?” he said.  He was looking at me in the mirror; I nodded and off we went.  I had him let me out somewhere in the 40s outside of one of those old Chock full ‘o Nuts diners, except it wasn’t Chock full ‘o Nuts anymore, but it looked the same.  It was already late afternoon.  I had the place to myself so I took a table near the window.  “Whattl it be?” the sixtyish waitress with craggy skin asked.

            “A new lease on life,” I said.  “A functional childhood and a new look at the future.”

            “I hear ya’,” she said and laughed but I wasn’t trying to be funny.

            “I’ll have coffee and three Coney Islands,” I said.  “And a big water.”

            “You got it.”

And actually the peace and aloneness and the coffee and hot dogs were almost as good as a new lease on life (I knew I’d never get the functional childhood).  I sat in the warmth and silence of the diner looking at the noise outside – people in suits and skirts and with strollers, all but power-walking, the cars reflecting the orange late afternoon sun off chrome and mirrors so I had to squint sometimes.  Tired but somewhat refreshed, I almost started to feel at home.  I walked up to 57^th St., and went in to some book shops.  The air was getting chilly and the sun was going down as I entered a building with galleries.  There weren’t as many as there used to be because everyone had gone to Chelsea and some of my favorites had gone bankrupt, I was told by pretty girls behind big wood desks, and some of the owners had died, but I saw a couple of good shows anyway.

            I walked up to Central Park and saw the trendy shops for children and people who like Apple gadgets and crossed to where the carriages give rides.  Someone on a bike advised me to “Watch where the bleep [I] was bleeping going,” which actually made me smile.  I had saved the apple slices from the airplane lunch I had bought the day before – they were in plastic wrap and still in my pocket and they had that old-lunch pail kind of smell.  I asked a driver if I could give them to his horse and he said OK.  The horse gulped them down, almost taking off my hand and slobbering it with its huge lips.  It breathed out, warm appley horsey air right in  my face, then it rubbed its nose on my shoulder and I patted its warm, steaming, acrid smelling neck.

            I headed uptown: I wanted to see that big Rembrandt painting where he thought he looked like a Chinese Emperor at the Frick Museum.  Someone somewhere that day had told me that further uptown Harlem was jumping.  I didn’t really care, but it was interesting.  Across from the Frick, I breathed deeply and looked down at the darkening park and the crowd and rumble and all the movement and the middle-aged lady reading down below the balustrade on a bench, deeply absorbed in her book.  I hadn’t been to Times Square yet, which someone somewhere that day had told me was now a Disney park.  Nevertheless I decided things hadn’t changed much at all.  Not really.  That made me happy.

THE END 

* I am making perhaps the very wrong assumption that most people reading this have some sense of West Coast humor and don't need the specifics mapped out for them.  For example, when our protagonist claims there were rumors once of a non-stop flight from Arcata to NYC, he clearly places an excessive degree of importance in his tiny home town and its little airport.  Let me know if you need more help, or if for some reason some joke escapes you, like they certainly did for the New Yorker Columbia Fuck who rejected it from the magazine: the man or woman who will be dead by next WASP Wednesday, a Redwood spike with a banana slug strapped to it's blunt tip, driven through his or her spleen..

©2013 Douglas C. Ferrin

All Rights Reserved

MORE SUNDAY FUNNIES

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IT'S SLUTTY SPRING SATURDAY
Thanks for the great title, Melisa

Every year, at least when I'm back east, like I am now, that's the east coast: I grew up in California, there is always this week.  There are always a couple of days when I simply can't wake up.  I just sleep.  Not me, as a rule, not my nature.  Then I wake up and I'm so horny, I can't even see the crocuses.  I kind of hate Spring.  

But I'm really glad I didn't go out and get drunk last night, like many of you reading this did.  I'm really glad I didn't spend my last few hundred bucks on a bunch of girls who were only looking for free drinks.  Maybe more.  Who knows.  You didn't get any.  Go back to bed and get up Sunday.  Get some Xanax.  Sleep for 20 hours.  Then, a really great cup of coffee.  

Go downtown, Rittenhouse Square, good choice.  Everyone will be cruising.  The girls will be chatty.  You won't have to buy them drinks.  Look for the signs of attraction: they might pretend they're looking around for someone, maybe brush your hand with theirs.  They might say, "God, you're SO funny!"  Don't be afraid if they look serious at first or act a little stand-offish.  Some girls do that, and they want you to crack the shell.  Don't get all shy.  Maybe say something super simple, like, "Hi, I'm Doug."  Or Paul, whatever your name is.  Don't pretend to be me.  She just might give you a big smile and say, "I was wondering if you'd ever say something!"  After a couple of minutes, suggest something like, "Hey, let's go get a coffee.".  Have your tablet or computer.  Show her what a genius you are.  If you're into math, don't bore her, just give her the broad strokes, and how this new equation is going to make travel to new Earths possible.  

Maybe she's a scientist, like my friend Bonnie.  Maybe she knows how pheromones talk with each other.  Ask her to show you how it all works, how hers are maybe talking with yours right now, and wonder why that makes you want to kiss her.  "What's up with that?" you might ask.  Hopefully she'll lean in and say, "Let's find out."  Tell her you love science experiments. Science girls all like science experiments.  Bonnie's married (not to me, but to a wonderful guy by all accounts), but there will be lots of single ladies on Rittenhouse Square.  Pretty girls.  Smart girls who go to Drexel, or Penn, maybe the Academy or Temple.  They will be there Sunday too.  Probably more will be there on Saturday, warmer, nicer day, but if you're feeling crummy, wait 'til Sunday.  You want to look good.  Not great, but casual.  Loose.  Like it's Spring, or something.  Like you don't care.  For once, maybe you don't.  It's just a great day.

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I guess I'll stick with the phonetic days of the week, trying to make them subjects, and make this

F$%k IT FRIDAY

You're all dressed up.  You even put on a tie.  Nice, man.  You want to go out.  If you're a boy, you want to get laid.  If you're a girl,  maybe, but the boy has to fit some kind of description you've written into your head since you were about 5.  Nice guys are not part of those descriptions, even though you might say you want a nice guy, but you don't.  At least, not just yet.  Maybe later.  

Boys aren't so choosy.

So, boy, and that's who I'll write about because, even having mostly female friends, I've never really understood the female psyche...  So boy, there you are at the bar.  Nice place.  Lots of Ivy League girls around.  Maybe you're an Ivy League boy.  Doesn't matter.  It really doesn't.  This super hot girl bumps into you, spills half your drink.  "Oh, I'm so sorry!" she says as you grab some napkins and try to wipe it off your shirt and pants.  "Let me buy you another."

"No," you say.  You're cool.  "Let me buy YOU one."

"Really?" she says.  "Let me get my girlfriends."  Which she does.  You buy them two or three rounds.  You realize, and you're getting drunk right along with them, that you can't afford more than another one or two rounds, then you'll be flat.  "Ooooooh," one screams, "You're so ADORABLE!"  She bumps up next to you.  In fact, she lets you feel her breast against your chest.  Because you're getting drunk, money has less meaning.  What the hell.  

You buy another round.  "OH, I just LOVE you," says Breast Girl.  She even kisses you on the lips, a feeling you'll never forget, but later that same night, you will wish you could.  You all down the shots, something horrid like Sex On The Beach, that represents, very possibly, you're not exactly sure anymore, the last of your liquid Fungibility.  If there is such a thing.  You've been studying business, so maybe you think your ATM card is worth something you once imagined to be equal to it, like a bar of gold.  It isn't.  It definately is not now.  At the moment it isn't worth shit... or maybe a little more, you're not sure.....  "OOOOHHHHhhhh," says Breast Girl, "One more?? Oh, just one more."  "C'mon" say the other girls.  "Hell yes!!" they all shout.  "One more!"  It's a declaration.  It's not a decision kind of thing.  Maybe you have it, maybe you don't.  The money.  But OK.  Tequila Sunrises.  Down they go.  Breast Girl snuggles up again, now you feel both breasts, her bony thighs, you know she feels you, she kisses you some more.  Then she locks into a real kiss.  "Oh my God," you say.  "Hey," she says, "We're all lipstick lesbians."  She kisses you again.  And what a kiss.  "I feel very confused," you say.  "Oooh you're cute.  Maybe next time."  They all start to leave as a pack.

You start to follow, but the bartender says, "Your bill, buddy."  Whew.  You made it.  You sign, but don't leave a tip because you know you barely made it.  The bartender looks down at your receipt then up at you and you know he thinks you're an asshole.  "Look, I get you next time, I really will," you say.  He still looks at you, he still thinks you're an asshole.  You rush out the door.  They're gone.  How did they get away so fast.  You walk around the street, looking, listening hard, how did it get so quiet, but they just aren't there.  F$%k it, you mutter.  Oh, F$%k it. You know the idiot scholarship jock, hovering around in the background all night, confident, crew cut, bullet-head fuck, always had a Bud in his hand, went home with someone. He didn't pay for shit.  How could she kiss me like that?  How...

You'll never know.  You'll go back next weekend, but she won't be there.  You give the bartender a big tip, but he still thinks you're an asshole.  

You'll meet your wife at a bar-b-que.  Her you'll understand.  Sort of.  But you'll always wonder. After all, your wife is very pretty, has breasts a lot like Breast Girl's.  What did she do when she was in college?  She'll never tell., not because she wouldn't: she believes a good relationship is based on honesty.   But it's entirely likely she does not even remember.

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AND DON'T BE AFRAID TO COMMENT.  REMEMBER, A LITTLE APPRECIATION GOES A LONG WAY.

.

JEW JEUDI

Jeudi is French for Thursday

I'm a Christian.  I married a Jew.  My kids, at least by the state of Israel, are considered fully Jewish.  Anyway, I'd been talking with this French girl at least I thought she was French, off and on, kind of flirting, and it turns out she's Muslim.  OK, no problem for me.  I tell her my kids are Jewish, and she goes cold.  Then she tells me her parents moved her back to Algeria to get her away from all that Francophonic Tétoir, to be grammatically correct, what I would call Francophonicism, but I just coined the word, so it's not really correct, anyway, French head-space.  Meaning, I guess, democracy.  Or thinking we can all get along.  Or some such.  Or meaning guys like me who don't care if their kids are Jewish or Christian (although I'm sorry they missed the music) and I don't, I mean I really don't, see barriers between relationships, if we, one, you, us, get along.  Tell stories.  Tell really good stories because we have divergent cultures.  Our problem, Our American Problem, is that the kids from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, don't know shit about the rest of the world.  Between Brothers who love and the Angels, everyone is suspicious and stupid.  People here don't believe they have a story.  They believe they are "normal".  They don't believe their language has an accent, they don't know that Christian Bale and Gary Oldman worked for years learning to replicate not only their idiotic speech, but all the attitudes of their idiotic , middle-American, ideology (and in saying that I am in no way putting down Christianity - Americans so often confuse their culture with Jesus, absurd to the rest of the world as that is).

 Every American child should be made to spend one, probably two, years in Europe, The Far East, Russia, Israel, anywhere but here.  Get the bigot out of them.  Make them understand that the rest of the western world is Socialist - socialist-democrat. They are.  You didn't know England is socialist?  You didn't know, at core, Margaret Thatcher, even though she and Ronald Reagan were bosom buddies, was a Commie?  That India is Socialist?  Canada?  Mexico?  Japan?  Everyone on every side of us?  You didn't know Germany, and its new union with East Germany, is socialist?  That they all have "Obamacare" (actually they don't: they have something much better that actually works).  How the $#&king hell are we not teaching this in our schools?

Makes me tired.  I'm going to bed.  Jew Jeudi.  God bless us all.  God Bless my boys.  They're a lot smarter than me.

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P.S.  Jews really support each other, have each other's backs.  A lot of ethnic cultures do, have each other's backs.  Not us WASPs.  What happened to giving the sourdough starter to your neighbor, helping them plow the field?  None of us ever got to where we are by ourselves.  We threw the tea into the bay.  WE did.  A bunch of us.  That was a community effort.  It was not individualism made manifest.  I wish people would read.

P.P.S.  Blogger allows the writer to follow statistics, how many people have read a certain post, etc. Actually, I can read your IP addresses, which is kind of creepy, and even know, not exactly, but more or less, what neighborhood you live in.  That's a topic for a Meditation all its own.  However, this, for whatever weird reason, has been my most popular post, and

NO ONE HAS COMMENTED, OR EVEN GIVEN A FUNNY OR WELL WRITTEN CHECK.

It's a bit discouraging, I do work fairly hard on these posts.  A little comment would be welcome, you know, a bit of friendly advice, a little constructive criticism.  I know a lot of what I write is not the happiest stuff, but help me make it better.  A cliche, but a little bit goes a long way.

WASP WEDNESDAY

A cartoon by my friend Jeff.  Somehow it seems relevant.

I know I mentioned on Facebook that today, yesterday now, was going to be WASP Wednesday, but I'm afraid WASP Wednesday will have to wait 'til next week.  WASPs like myself, raised by Berkeley liberals, really have little but shame about who we are: I suspect my parents couldn't wait to see the end of our ethnic group.  We, and our Church, to whom we generously tithed, gave money to various African nations, Israel (I believe there are several trees there planted in my name), sent our nuns and monks (I am Episcopalian, but we do in fact have nuns and monks) to South America, gave relief funds to poor black neighborhoods in the US, money to Native Americans.  Meanwhile, my Uncle Dixon, an alcoholic and out of work, had one of his children starve to death in Cheyenne Wyoming.  I don't believe we ever sent him any money.  To do my parents credit, I'm not sure they knew how badly off he was, but they knew he wasn't well.  I remember answering the phone one night when I was eight or nine years old - this was when long distance calls were a rarity, and some old man said, "Is Dee there?"  Dee is what people called my Dad.  "No, he's at the office," I said.  "Who is this?"
     "Who's this?" the man asked.
     "Doug."
     "Doug, this's your Uncle Dixon.  How are ya Buddy?"
     "I'm alright, Dixon, how come we never see you?"
     "Well, ya know.  So how ya doin'?"
     "OK I guess.  Where are you?"
     "I'm In Wyoming."
     "Really?  Wow.  I'd sure like to go to Wyoming.  I've never even been out of California."
     "Well, I'd love ta see ya Buddy.  So when's your Dad gonna be back?"
     "Oh, I dunno.  Hour.  Maybe."
     "Well you tell him your Uncle Dixon called, OK Champ?"
     "Gosh, yeah!  I've sure heard a lot about you.  I sure wish you were here."
     "Yeah Buddy.  Listen, just tell him I called.  Write down my number."
     I wrote it down.  He hung up.  I don't know if Dad ever called him back or not.  He probably didn't.  Ten years later I heard about his child, I think one year old, dying of starvation.  But we were good liberals.

Maybe this IS WASP Wednesday.  Melding into Thursday, but oh well.  I was going to say something about art, but remembering this story has made me forget what I was going to say.  I remember my (very missed) friend Jeff MacNelly, Chicago Tribune Political Cartoonist extraordinaire, saying, "Yeah, I see my mother twice a year, whether I need to or not."  I know Jeff missed his mom when she died.  I miss mine.  But perish the thought.  So that we might perish.  And maybe we deserve to.

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IT'S FICTION MONDAY

Even though it's Tuesday - I'm a little behind

PART II

THE DOOR

If you missed the first part of the story, click HERE

2

“Merci,” Bon said to the woman, turned and walked up the street feeling stunned.  He heard the woman behind him saying, “Monsieur, air you sure you air OK?”  Bon waved a hand, tripped on a crack in the sidewalk, righted himself and continued on.

            This was too unreal.  He thought of asking someone to pinch him, but he couldn’t remember the words in French, and anyway, he knew this was real, as unreal as it was.  This was no dream – Bon could tell.  “Everyone can tell,” he thought.  That whole “pinch me” thing from the movies suddenly seemed utterly absurd.  He was awake and he was, incredible as it seemed, in Paris.  He dug in his pocket for his phone, swiped it on but he had no bars.  He’d never imagined he’d need international service.  He didn’t have international service.  Digging back into his pocket, he was relieved to find his wallet, that also contained a debit card (Bon fortunately had several hundred dollars in the bank) and his driver’s license.

            Nonetheless, the next three days were extremely difficult for Bon, so to make a long – at least what felt like an eternity to Bon – story relatively short, here are a few of the highlights of those three days:

            Bon went to a money exchange and got some Euros, then to the American Embassy and tried to spin a story about how he had flown into Norway, where they had not stamped his passport (a reasonable story to Bon, because that very thing had once actually happened to him) then, after a brief stay in Oslo, he had gone from Oslo to Bergen on the train where he had procured work on, and boarded, a fishing vessel bound for England and then France.  The fishing vessel, really a kind of factory boat, had let him off in Normandy, his new friend Olaf telling him not to breath a word to anyone that they had hired someone from outside the European Union.  Bon had promised. He explained that during his train ride to Paris, all his belongings except his wallet had been stolen, including his coat, where, he said, he had kept his passport.

            Bon had difficulty remembering the name of the fishing vessel, as well as any other name than that of his friend Olaf, explained that his lapse of memory was because he didn’t speak Norwegian.  The pretty young Assistant Consulate, Élodie, with whom he spoke, reminded Bon, that if he had ever actually visited Norway, Bon might have noticed that Norway had the highest English speaking population, per capita, in the world.  Having in fact been to Norway, Bon knew this perfectly well, but hoped Élodie did not.  Also, Élodie told Bon, that at this time, Norway was not strictly a member of the EU.  

            Knowing that if he started talking about magical doors – and he very much wanted to: Élodie was so pretty, he thought she might understand, like the pretty foreign girls in the movies always understood – he might spend a long time….  If he told her, he might well spend a long time, perhaps a very long time, somewhere he probably didn’t want to be for a long time, so he stuck to his story, as absurd as much of it was.  Why couldn’t they find his plane ticket?  Iceland Air?  It doesn’t seem you were a passenger.  Are you a terrorist?  Do you know any Muslims here in France?  What have you been doing since you got here?

            Bon spent a day and a half in solitary detention.  Although he was very lonely and only had a very thin mattress on a concrete floor with only a paper blanket to keep him warm – no books or TV – the food was excellent.  Much better, he imagined, than it would have been on American soil.  For dinner he had a steak (not big, but well-seasoned), fries and even a crème caramel for dessert.   In the afternoon of the second day, he was escorted into an office, obviously to a higher-level Consular Assistant than Élodie had been.  Élodie had been French. 

            “Sit down,” said the big American man behind the big wooden desk.  He was fiftyish, balding, with a roundish, clean shaven face that exhibited a tired and very no-nonsense expression.

            “Thank you sir,” said Bon, sitting in a green padded chair with wooden arms, across from the man.

            “Call me Mr. Burdens,” said the man.

            “Thank you Mr. Burdens,” said Bon.

            Mr. Burdens looked at some papers on his desk, then stared for perhaps a full minute at Bon without saying anything.

            “Bon,” said Mr. Burdens finally.  “That is how you say your name, Bon?”

            “Yes Mr. Burdens.  Bon, like the German city - Bonn.  Bon Ironsmith.”

            “Not short for anything like… Christ, what would Bon be short for?”

            “Bonhommie, maybe?” suggested Bon. 

            Mr. Burdens stared at Bon for another 30, unbearable seconds.

            “Bon, you’re full of shit.  I’m not sure what kind of shit you’re full of, but whatever kind it is, I don’t want it in nor around my Embassy anymore.”

            “No, Mr. Burdens, I see,” said Bon.

            “Bon.”  Mr. Burdens paused for what must have been another full half-minute.

            “Bon,” he continued, “You’ve just won the lottery.”  He picked a thick envelope up from the desk.  “This is a ticket to Philadelphia.  Air France.  Good Airline.  And a new passport.”

            “Oh, Mr. Burdens, than…”

            “Bon?”

            “Yes Mr. Burdens?”

            “Shut the fuck up.  Listen.  We couldn’t find anything on you.  Nothing.  Just that you’re some flunky in an architectural firm in Philadelphia and live in a crappy neighborhood.  Everyone we talked with gave you pretty good references, no one seemed to think you were capable of anything alarming…. of anything really.  They WERE surprised you were somehow in France. Your mother….”  Mr. Burdens rubbed his forehead.  “Your mother gave me a headache. I…”

            “My moth…”

            “Bon.  I said shut the FUCK up.  After speaking with her for half an hour, I found it hard to believe you weren’t already dead, perhaps having preferred to off yourself rather than listen to her lather of… of… utterly nonsensical… talk, if it can be called talk  – ‘Oh, Mr. Burdens, thank you so much for caring for Bon.  Would you like a roast beef sandwich?  Or perhaps you’d like to take a swim?’”  Mr. Burdens rubbed his forehead again.  “Now, seeing that, obviously, you are not dead, Bon, it’s hard to believe that you haven’t turned to drugs or alcohol, to forget."

Mr. Burdens paused, then said, “Bon?”

            “Yes Mr. Burdens?”

            “I want to forget.”

            “I understand Mr. Burdens.”

            “I very much suspect you do understand.  And I want to forget you, or that you were ever here.  And most of all your mother.”

            Bon was silent.  He didn’t want Mr. Burdens to yell at him again.  He looked at the floor.

            “Bon,” Mr. Burdens said, “Stand up.”

            Bon stood up. 

            “Take this envelope.  Go downstairs, out the main entrance.  There is a little silver car there.  Get in the little silver car, in the backseat.  It will take you to the airport.  I never want to see you again.  You are of course, welcome to come to France any time you like, with a passport of course – this is your privilege as an American Citizen.  But, Bon?”

            “Yes Mr. Burdens,” said Bon, reaching out to take the envelope.  Mr. Burdens didn’t let it go.

            “I NEVER want to see you again.  If you are here, and you see me, say, walking down the sidewalk, hide.  Do we understand each other?”

            “Yes Mr. Burdens.  We do.”

            Mr. Burdens let go of the envelope.  Bon stood looking at him, wondering what to do next.

            “Go,” said Mr. Burdens.  “Silver car.  Don’t say another word.  You’re welcome.  Go.”  Although Bon was thin, as he walked out of the room, he had the peculiar feeling his buttocks were somehow enormous, the most visible part of himself.

******************

“Flunky indeed,” thought Bon on the trip home.  He had graduated from University of Pennsylvania, had done very well, and landed an internship with one of the best architectural firms in the city.  Mostly they did corporate interiors, which he wasn’t crazy about – like most architectural graduates he had grand ideas of grand city plans and wonderful houses with waterfalls in the living rooms – but it was starting to be good money and, in fact, he had been hired on after his internship.

            “So why on God’s Green Earth do I live in this dump,” he thought as his cab from the Airport pulled up in front of his house.  Actually, he was kind of glad to see it.  Even though he hated it, it was “home”, and there was comfort in the mere familiarity of it.

******************

Bon began going down into the basement every day, especially around the time the “magical” thing had happened, which had been just after getting home from work – that had been a Friday, thank God: he had only missed two days of work.  Nonetheless, the next Friday, nothing happened. 

            He began consulting astronomical charts, astrological charts as well, looking for evidence of sun flares, meteor showers, volcanic activity....  Nothing seemed to coincide with the opening of the door.  He would have liked to think it had just been his imagination, but he still had some Euros in his wallet, as well as the multiple calls per day from his mother, to prove that it hadn't been.        

            Gina, one of the new interns at the office, kept asking him about France, what had inspired him to just take off… She wouldn’t let it go.  She sensed there was something peculiar about his answers – most of the people in the office didn’t seem to care or to even have noticed: they were too involved in their own lives and projects.  But Gina wouldn’t relent.  Gina was very young - 21 (at least to a 27 year-old, six years seemed like a big age difference) but she was also smart, an excellent draftswoman, and she had fetching little ringlets of hair that surrounded her roundish, happy and very pretty face, with the most voluptuous lips Bon could ever remember seeing.

            “If you’ll stop bugging me about it, I’ll tell you at dinner tomorrow,” he said.  He had stopped at her desk, because yet again, she had said, “This whole France thing.  Quelle mystere.”

            “That is, if you’ll have dinner with me,” he said, blushing.  He rarely asked women out because sooner or later he knew he'd have to show them his dump of a house.

            “I can’t wait,” she said, seeming to bob up and down a little in her chair.  Bon got the feeling she liked him.  "Like, right after work?" she asked.  Bon hated that use of "like".  But people could change.  "Sure," he said.  "Like, as soon as we're done?"  He was mocking her, but she just nodded happily.  "Cool," she said.  When was it smart people started talking like that?  Bon smiled at her, and it was guanine.  She was smart and pretty.  Christ, she'd gone to Brown.  Did everyone talk like that now?  He felt warm in his chest as he walked away from her desk.

*******************

That evening when he got home, after he took off his coat and made a cup of coffee, he went to the basement.  Light came from under the door.

TO BE CONTINUED NEXT MONDAY

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