BOLOGNA AND DEAD FLIES

Excerpts from INDIGO, a novel in progress

All our fathers' dreams.

I hate bologna. Okay, I know, short list, I hate a lot of things. But just par exemple, I'm going to throw bologna out there. I hate it, I've always hated it, can't even get it in my mouth without retching and puking.

No matter how much I cried and whined about not wanting bologna as a kid it was, “shut up an' eatcha fuckin' food! Kids are starvin' in China, ya spoiled brat!” The fight would go on forever until me being unable to choke it down was too protracted and ugly a spectacle for my folks to endure and so they would let it go.

My Uncle was a prison guard. He used to tell me all kinds of stories about what happened to guys who wouldn't eat their bologna in prison. He said, “we'd put 'em up against the wall and say, 'buddy, you'd better eat your bologna!' “. I had a couple of takeaways from this....the first was that my Uncle, and probably everyone else in my family, thought there was something wrong with me and I was going to go to prison.

My second takeaway was that bologna was way the hell too important to these people. And they had veto power over my feelings. “He's just cryin' for attention! Eat that food or I'll smack ya teeth outta that mouth!”

And if it were so easy to just shut up and eat that food, I would have done it in a heartbeat.

Listening to other kids wax nostalgic about this shit, though, was the worst.

“Oh, there was none of that behavior in my house! If that food was on your plate you ate it!”

“Yes,” (insert sage nod of head) “That's the way it should be!”

“The way it should be,” a pile of buffalo shit that slides down the chute of your brain and gets all muddled up with sentimentality and turns you into a gibbering retard. The minute anyone gets all pie-eyed and says, “that's the way it should be”, you should shoot them in the fucking face,. That's the way it should be.

Yeah----thumb screws. That's the way it should be. Hot pokers up your hiney. That's the way it should be.

Nail your head to the floor. That's the way it should be. Goddamn Bologna Seditionists.

Bologna was the official religion of my youth. Death, War, Jesus, the President and Bologna, and by God you'd better eat that bologna or I'll bust yer lil' face open with my big class ring. You're a bad kid----eat your bologna or you're going to prison.

You go out of the house and it's hell. Unbearable sun, chainsaws, dust everywhere, screaming and vapor trails in the sky, dirt in your mouth and the local neighborhood kids say “HI” to you and then they turn around and punch you in the stomach, Some lady is yelling her ass off the next house over and you don't know why.

That's the Bologna, day in and day out.

You go to school and they cram you into this tiny little space and that's your space. The kids at school say “HI” to you and then they turn around and punch you in the stomach, just to see the look on your face. The adults ask you a lot of questions. If you get them wrong everyone laughs at you and calls you stupid. If you get too many of them right they all laugh at you anyway and call you poindexter. If you don't wanna play kickball they make you play it anyway. If you don't do it right they beat you up. It's Bologna, it's all bologna, the great world religion. Our lives run on goddamned Bologna.

Okay----done with the rant.

“You know,” says Gayla, “maybe your parents were just frustrated with you because bologna was all they could afford to feed you. Just throwing the suggestion out there.”

“No,” I tell her with great, sage, philosophical certitude, “it wasn't like that.” At least it never felt like it was like that.

                                                         ###########################

 

Fortune is a crime against us all.

Mike has a legion of dead flies lined up beside a spool of thread. The spool is mounted on a couple of pushpins so it looks like a cannon. He's recreating a famous battle, I guess.

“The place I worked at back in the 90s adopted this kid,” Mike says. “We had our own adopted kid.”

“What, did he run around the place and alla y'all told him to mind his Ps and Qs?” Dumb question, I know.

“No, nothing like that,” says Mike. “We sent him money. There was this big map of Oklahoma in the breakroom with the kid's picture in the middle, saying, 'INTRODUCING GILBERT GOOD-RICHMAN', 'cause that was his name---'FROM WHEREVER, EAST BUMFUCK, OKLAHOMA'. And he was our kid, you know, 'cause we gave him money----part of our paychecks every year were sent to him----this great fuckin' gift the company gave us.”

I try to laugh the whole thing off. “Well, you were a kind man, even if you don't wanna be.”

“I know, right? 'Gilbert Good Richman'----fuck kinda name is that? What's gonna happen if he joins the service? 'What's your name, Private?'--'Gilbert G. Good-Richman, Sir!!!!'---'Gilbert G. Good-Richman?! Drop and give me a hundred, ya fuckin' puss! Then when you're done with that you can go clean the head out with your tongue, Soldier!'

“So we're sending this pussy-ass kid money and then he starts writing us letters, and they start posting the letters in the breakroom! And the letters will kill ya,” Mike groans. “ 'Missus Johnson', she was our personnel director who dreamed all of this up, keeps saying I'm an Indian, but I'm not. I know a Cherokee Family that go to our church, but we're not Indians'. So the kid's not an Indian----he's not anything----I don't know what he is.”

“So his Suffering Street Cred isn't even that good.”

“No, it's not. I think he goes off at one point about how 'The Lord took our father last year', but the rest of the damn letter is him bragging about all this shit he has....his family has chickens. What kinda happy horseshit is that? I never had any goddamn chickens growing up! He's got a dog and goats....I never had a dog....I never had any goats. Why am I having to send this kid my money? Kid's bragging about his ten speed bike. I never had a fuckin' bike! Give me some fuckin' money!” Late at night after everyone went home I'd give Gilbert's picture cigarette burns and I'd stick pins in his eyes. Brag to me about your goddamn bike. Every night it turned into “it's breaktime and I'm pissed off----let's go torture Gilbert!”

                                                   #############################

With this whole “Indigo” trip these kids (and their parents, if they're willing to buy the snake oil) are being told is they're going to be the Neitzchean Supermen and women, they're going to shift the fulcrum of the world, they're all going to be tomorrow's important dignitaries, intellectuals, movers, shakers, rock stars---the next JFKs and Bonos and Hiram Abiffs and Martin Luther Kings and whatever, and if they throw a hissy fit over not being allowed to wear blue sneakers, well, you're just going to have to deal with it, because they're special.

So they don't get stuck eating the bologna, but they get fed a whole different brand of bologna.

I think about myself, and the razamataz, double-edged sword that it is....Bessie, career thief and drug dealer, and goddammit, whatever anyone wants to say about her, whatever she believes about herself, I know she could be anything she ever decided she wanted to be....she'd never make these people's all-star roster. I think of Mike, recreating the civil war in the break room with dead bugs, battle by battle. Where's his pat on the back? Where's his hand up? Maybe he was on to something, putting cigarette burns in the picture of that kid.

 

I'll never be one of Norma's fucking “Indigo” Children and here's why. I'm too old at this stage in the game----I'm not cute....I've developed a mind of my own at this point and that's no good.

 

And then there's Gayla, the little disappointment waiting in the wings. Gayla's losing favor with Norma and her crowd fast because she's got a mind of her own and she's learning how to say “fuck you”. That doesn't bode well in Norma's bubble world.

                                              ############################## 

         A Goat for all seasons

Copyright 2015 Molotov Editions

THE LONG, BLOODY CLIMB UPHILL

After working this one canvas for four months

I now only utterly loathe about a third of it. Yay progress!!!!!!!

My photography, as per usual, is complete shit. Sorry.
                                                 http://www.cfrobertsart.com/

THE HELL OF OTHERS’ AMUSEMENT II: CAREENING OVER A CLIFF WHILST JUICED TO THE GILLS ON SOME BAD PHANTOM

     It’s 5:40 in the morning and I know most red-blooded Americans in the Central Standard Time Zone are still fast asleep---not me. Our two black cats have designated 5:40 AM Monkey Hour, and they’re waging an epic set of loud skirmishes between the bedroom and living room. Sleep ain’t happenin’.
      The night’s endless loop of white noise in the DVD player is, once again, that Golden Turd of yesteryear, “Kiss meets the Phantom”…we’ve been here before, haven’t we? The wife briefly wakes up and expresses concern that she might not be able to get back to sleep. I rationalize that if we can get up (and I’m still on the fence) we might be able to get in a good, greasy southern breakfast at our favorite diner before work. I also confess that the wheels are turning in my brain and I’m back to contemplating transforming “Kiss Meets the Phantom” into a broadway stage musical.
      “Oh, God, of course you are,” she groans. Within moments she’s asleep again and all hopes of that greasy southern breakfast have been dashed---I’m left alone with my demons.
     “We got you again, ripped on Phantom, son----we understand that after a while there’s just no going back…but what about those five pedestrians you inadvertently plowed down when it occurred to you that driving on the sidewalk might be a good time? There’s no going back for them, either….”
      “It’s okay, kid----we believe rehabilitation’s possible, usually after you’re too old and broken down to be a danger to anyone but yourself….you can probably make yourself into a useful, productive member of society again---we’ll set you up with a gig bagging groceries at the local supermarket----okay----time to cool your heels for a while….say hello to your cellmate, Mr. Devereaux---try to keep your hands and feet away from his mouth…”

1. Welcome to my Breakdown

      There are a few things you need to understand about “Kiss Meets the Phantom: The Broadway Musical/Rock Opera”….wait. Lemme back it up for a sec. Before we even get to the Musical (such as it currently stands) you need to get one thing clear: I’m a goddamn genius. And this statement is not, though it might seem on the surface, simple braggadocchio.  It is, in fact, central to the whole thing…the entire gist of my musical is the horror of being a misunderstood genius. So let me just put it out there. I’m a misunderstood genius. Oh----yeah----and you are, too.
       The most bare-bones plot synopsis for “Kiss Meets the Phantom” I can give you is this: Mad toymaker Abner Devereaux gets fired from his job making animatronic creatures for an amusement park. Unbeknownst to his superiors, Devereaux has been turning hapless victims into android slaves. He vows revenge against the park, and against the cartoon rock band Kiss in particular. Kiss are playing a three night stint of concerts to boost sagging park revenues. Devereaux tries to sabotage the concert utilizing an evil robot Kiss. Kiss, however, are actually super powered beings---they beat up a bunch of robots and bad Abner is defeated.  The End.
      In my musical version of “KMTP”, Abner Devereaux is the hero of the story---the whole epic is a tableau of psychodrama that takes place in his addled, deluded, adulation-starved brain.  Ever read Joseph Heller’s SOMETHING HAPPENED? THAT kind of thing. You are never given any reprieve from the mental torture of Abner Devereaux, because you are trapped within his brain from the beginning to the end of my production---you are subject to the way he personally colors his relationships and experiences and you are given no respite from his madness and desperation.
      ANOTHER CRUCIALLY IMPORTANT POINT: The rock band Kiss---including any past or present members----never appear in the play. They are an abstract---often referenced but seldom seen---not unlike the great, white whale in MOBY DICK---they are technically the villains of the piece, although they are less characters and more of a plot mechanism----their influence is felt throughout, although the band themselves never actually appear.
      THE MUSIC OF KISS (and again---this is crucially important!!!!) is never directly used. All the songs (this is a musical, of course) are original----the disembodied “Greek Chorus” device of Kiss might be folded into the organic tissue of the story----snippets of “Rock’n’Roll All Nite” and “Shout it Out Loud” might be incorporated into the musical scheme in an apocryphal way---almost as postmodern jabs to the psyche of the main character.  The only exception to this would be the (hopeful) inclusion of the Gene Simmons solo song, “Mr. Make Believe”, which is used so effectively in the “Attack of the Phantoms” edit of the film….one of the secondary characters in the story will be Devereaux’s android replica of Gene Simmons. I envision the Simmons robot as possibly being played by former “American Idol” contestant Adam Lambert in Simmons greasepaint (tell me that wouldn’t be a goldmine of an idea!!!!!!)---early in the production the Simmons-android would serenade Devereaux with the song as kind of a soft, affectionate tribute (the story does, after all, take place in the character’s deluded mind)---later in the production, a reprise of the song would take on a more sinister, mocking tone (the misunderstood genius’s psyche turns on him and self-doubt reigns….how many of us have experienced that?)
      This is a Grade-A idea, to quote Willy Loman. Our main goal is to get Gene Simmons in on the ground floor. COME ON----you know he’d do it!!!!! It’ll be even hotter than Nickelback’s projected “Elder” tribute!!!!! We just need to convince him that it’ll be titanic, and of course, it will (in a striking-an-iceberg-and-sinking-kinda-way). It’s bound to rake in ten, mebbe twenty bucks----GENE----are you getting this????? There’s gold in them thar hills!
      So you’ve got nostalgia, you’ve got psychodrama, you’ve got total wink-wink-nudge-nudge action-----ain’t that a great basis???? We’re off and running.

THE CAST:

ABNER DEVEREAX---Hero of the tale----think “Phantom of the Opera”. Abner is a pariah, the misunderstood genius that dwells within us all. Abner spends most of the play’s action sequestered in his underground lair, turning people into androids and plotting the downfall of those who have wronged him.


CALVIN RICHARDS---Owner of the park, admitted bean counter, old friend of Abner’s
Who ultimately takes a hard look at his friend’s deteriorating mental state and is forced to fire him. This, coupled with his promotion of Kiss to boost park revenues, destroys their long friendship and sends Abner into a megalomaniacal rage. Calvin (and the amusement park) become the primary focus of Devereaux’s machinations.

SAM---A faceless park flunky who sees things that he shouldn’t. Abner turns Sam into a mindless android slave---as the play progresses, android Sam begins singing songs of longing for his freedom and his fiancée, and Abner has increasing difficulty silencing him.

MELISSA---Sam’s bland fiancée who is searching for him---she also becomes a secondary object of obsession for Abner.

CHOPPER, SLIME AND DEE---A trio of delinquents who vandalize the park and harass customers. They are captured by Abner, who turns them into androids and dresses them up as historical figures in a twisted, humiliating form of role play.

EVIL ROBOT GENE SIMMONS---the other members of Evil Robot Kiss are only seen in passing----they’re walk-ons, and they might be seen partially assembled on work tables. EVIL ROBOT GENE is the only one who speaks, sings, actively participates in the action and interacts with other characters. ERG is Abner’s enforcer, his instrument of destruction. His character is not unlike the Fool character in KING LEAR…he plays devil’s advocate with Abner---sometimes coddling him and soothing him, mocking him at other times.

RENT-A-COPS---They mainly run around, frightened and bewildered, and are menaced and abused by EVIL ROBOT GENE. My wife has helpfully suggested Flo and Eddie for the singing roles, and I think this is a fine idea.

THE BARBERSHOP QUARTET---Android Barbershop singers in Abner’s lair. They are in varied stages of construction---some are without legs---one is simply a singing head on the table. The Quartet tend to sporadically break into song for no reason whatsoever.

VARIOUS ROBOTS AND ANDROIDS---Including but not limited to: Simon the Gorilla, Fat Frankenstein, The Mummy, Ninjas,  albino weremonkey warriors. Their primary function is to dance during the musical numbers.



LIBRETTO (Such as it is….presently under construction):




                                                  ACT I


“Overture”

An orchestrated medley of the major numbers in the soundtrack segues to a lively production number on the park midway, where most of the major characters are introduced.

“Wait for Me”

Park flunky Sam and his fiancée, Melissa, have just gotten finished riding the roller coaster and he must report to work in Abner’s robot shop. He asks her to wait for him and she promises she will in this love song that reprises several times in the production.

“Chopper and Slime don’t hurt Nobody Unless they Want To”

Chopper, Slime and Dee, three young ne’er-do-wells, fool around on the midway, committing acts of petty vandalism and playing cruel pranks on park-goers (mostly children) until they are stopped by Calvin Richards and Abner Devereaux. I see this song as being jaunty and sardonic---perhaps similar in tone and style to “Consider Yourself” from “Oliver”.

“A Strange Interlude”

Sam is working, sweeping up in Abner’s shop. He blunders into an unguarded entry, looks aghast at some unseen tableau and plunges through a trapdoor.

“That Grotesque Kiss Cutup”/”The Two Saddest Guys on the monorail”

Abner is upset with Calvin because one of his animatronic exhibits has been replaced by a Kiss Standee…he begs for more research and development funds and Calvin is unmoved, urging Abner to spend more time doing maintenance work on the rides, which are malfunctioning and falling apart. They ride in the back car of the monorail together and a song breaks out----it’s a powerful musical number that might bring to mind “Go to the Mirror” from the Who’s rock opera, “Tommy”.  None of the happy amusement park attendees are aware of the communication breakdown and the dissolution of a longtime friendship taking place in the rear car. This tragedy plays out in song and dance.

“Chopper and Slime (Reprise)”/ “Simon”

Off on their merry path of destruction, Chopper, Slime and Dee vandalize a pathetic, motheaten animatronic gorilla called Simon, which jerks back and forth dully on a chain. Abner, on his way back from the sad experience with Calvin on the monorail, tries to stop their disrespect. He offers them free passes to the Chamber of Thrills. They insult him, humiliate him and spit on him, but accept the free passes and wander on. A dejected Abner serenades his broken-down animatronic friend with a musical condemnation of the cruelty of the human race.  “I’d rather be with my machines,” he laments.

INTERLUDE---The Kiss Army Marching Band marches onstage for a rousing routine to break things up. At the end of this performance our attention is drawn across the midway to the Snack Bar.

“Wait for Me” (Reprise)

Melissa has been waiting for Sam at the snack bar for hours! She whines their song and wonders what might have happened. Finally she asks some security guards where Abner’s workshop is.  They tell her it’s under the Sky Tower.

INTERLUDE—A bunch of acrobats come out to wow the crowd, forming pyramids and doing somersaults. They are all wearing Kiss Army Tee-Shirts and Kiss makeup.

“It Must be the Look in her Eyes”

Melissa goes to the sky tower and after badgering Abner over the intercom, is allowed into Abner’s workshop. Goofy robot creatures and half-built, lifelike androids are everywhere. Melissa is looking for Sam. Abner tells her he doesn’t know where he is but seems fairly unsympathetic…instead he’s reveling in his gadgetry, proudly showing off his inventions, including a singing, robotic barbershop quartet. Melissa is mildly amused but concerned about Sam. Abner stonewalls and sends her along, but not without a brief musical number…we see the beginning of an obsession with Melissa as Abner turns his attention to The Chamber of Thrills.

“Heart Attack Time (Chamber of Thrills)”

Chopper, Dee and Slime go to the Chamber of Thrills. They run out all the other customers with their antisocial antics. They are then converged upon and captured by animatronic monsters.

“My Buddy Sam”

Sam re-emerges  in Abner’s lab…he has become an android, completely devoid of personality---not that he was overflowing with personality beforehand. Abner taunts his android slave for being nosy as Sam stumbles around mechanically, performing menial chores. Abner tells Sam he will never snoop again, but be a model employee. He sings about Melissa, and tells Sam she might one day join him in mindless servitude.
       He receives a call from Calvin telling him he must meet with him immediately. He leaves Sam puttering around, tinkering with animatronic figures.




“I’ve Gotta Let you Go”/”Phantom of the Park”

Abner meets Calvin in the parking lot, with a panoramic backdrop of the roller coaster against the sunset. Calvin fires Abner, “for your own good”. Abner tells Calvin he’ll regret his decision. Alone in the shadow of the roller coaster, Abner swears revenge, declaring himself “The Phantom of the Park”.

                                                END ACT I

                                             INTERMISSION


                                                   ACT II

Act II opens with a malevolent swell of music and it’s obvious we’re not in Kansas anymore. Much of the action takes place in Abner’s lab, which now has many more androids and animatronic figures in it. The lighting is now mostly lurid reds and greens. As the first scene opens, Abner emerges from the shadows wearing a black cloak. The prevalent sound is a crowd, rhythmically chanting, “we want Kiss! We want Kiss!” It rises and falls throughout the next couple of numbers.

“Method to my Madness (The Secret Ingredient is People)”

As Abner the Phantom descends into his lair we see that Sam is hard at work tweaking to circuitry of a number of androids, some of which resemble Kiss. Abner sings his anthem of revenge and destruction, finally revealing his great scientific breakthrough----enslaving humans with electronic circuitry as he did Sam. He unveils his three latest creations, Chopper, Slime and Dee, now automatons, dressed as Revolutionary War figures. He plays with the three hapless androids, and some of his abuse has sexual overtones. At one point he partially disrobes Dee and gussies her up as Marie Antoinette. He tells her he has something that’s “really going to make you lose your head” when he is suddenly distracted by all the chanting.

“You Wanted the Best, you got the Best”.

In a frenzy, Abner unveils his “Secret Weapon”---a fully operational evil Gene Simmons robot that sings and breathes fire.

“Rip and Destroy”

Song-and-dance with Abner, Evil Robot Gene and a now very nimble Simon the Gorilla as Abner details his manifesto of annihilation. As the song hits its crescendo, the crowd’s chant has changed from “We want Kiss” to “Rip and Destroy”.  The whole thing grinds to a halt as Melissa buzzes, once again, at the entrance. Abner sticks Sam in a broom closet, throws a sheet over Evil Robot Gene and lets her in. She expresses her belief that everyone is lying to her. Abner gives her a pass key to the entire park. Momentarily satisfied, she leaves.

“It Must be the Look in Her Eyes II”

Melissa has now unwittingly become Abner’s pawn and he, the Barbershop Androids and Evil Robot Gene sing a sinister paen to Abner’s designs for her. Somewhere midway through this, Android Sam finds his way out of the closet. Briefly/stiffly joins them in song but ends up blurting a few lines of “Wait for Me”. Perturbed by this, Abner readjusts Sam’s circuitry and he falls back into his obedient robot self.
     This malfunction results in a change from Abner’s manic state to a crash into heavy depression.

“Heavy is the Head that Wears the Crown”/”Mr. Make Believe”

Abner sings a grievous soliloquy about the loneliness of misunderstood genius. Before he can succumb to depression, however. Evil Robot Gene bolsters him in song.

“Rip and Destroy”/”Phantom of the Park” (reprise)

Abner reaffirms his plan of destruction. Massive Android singalong, lots of dancing.
The unseen crowd is now chanting, “Ab-ner! Ab-ner! Ab-ner!”


                                        END ACT II

                                      INTERMISSION

                                           ACT III

NOTE: Act III is the sketchiest part so far…I haven’t got it quite squared away, yet, except that it details Abner’s downfall.

                OPEN ON THE DARKENED MIDWAY.

Several Security guards are assaulted by a rampaging EVIL ROBOT GENE.

                       “When Rock Stars Attack Part 1”

                            “Another Strange Interlude”

Melissa sees Sam walking across the darkened midway. As a mindless android, he fails to recognize her. She screams.



                             “ Must Have the Talismans”

Looking at the oncoming threat of Kiss, Abner decides he must steal the talismans that give them their super powers. He expresses this in song and this is an elaborate stage number like the ones in the last act----but where those were focused and cohesive, this one is less so and this problem grows throughout the final act. Abner is losing control of his androids. Sam sporadically launches into stilted versions of “Wait for Me” and the Barbershop quartet break into random, unwarranted song, usually clashing with whatever may be going on musically.

                             “When Rock Stars Attack Part 2”

Evil Robot Gene goes on another midway rampage while Sam steals the Talismans.

                          “It Must be the Look in her Eyes Part 3”

Abner is now plotting to take control of Melissa, but is conflicted as to whether he wants her as an android slave or as a living, breathing, willing partner. Sam continues his musical malfunctions, causing another depressive episode .

                           “Mr. Make Believe (Reprise)”

The evil Gene Robot serenades Abner again, but this time there’s a more cruel, mocking tone to it. It doesn’t do a lot for Abner’s esteem.


Things are a little dodgy after this---there will be a lot of fussing over The Kiss Robots and a lot of ranting about the Talismans.
     The basic gist is that the Evil Robot Kiss (in my version) succeed in starting a riot (offstage, never seen) but are defeated (again, offstage, never seen) and only Evil Robot Gene, severely damaged, makes it back to the lair.
     I’m contemplating an additional “catalyst” move which could incur the wrath of numerous fanboys---sure, most fans will readily tell you that “KMTP” is a bad movie, but Kiss fans are also insane---I would personally never want to risk buying a used car from one, and neither should you.
    ANYWAY, in a plot-changing move, my thought is to have Melissa killed during the riot. A ferris wheel comes unhinged and crushes her and a number of other park goers. This is never seen, just alluded to----if anything it might send Abner’s revenge fantasy into a downward spiral by seeing his pseudo-obsession girl die due to his negligence regarding the upkeep of the park rides.
     At this point, all bets are off.

                                        “Shout it Out Loud”

NOT the Kiss song, of course, but it could fold the chorus, in a clever-clever, postmodern kinda way, into the lyrics. Abner suffers a complete breakdown and his android friends (led by Sam, Evil Robot Gene, Chopper, Slime, Dee---possibly headless at this point, Fat Frankenstein and even Abner’s beloved gorilla Simon) all turn on him---“shouting it out loud”---pointing and accusing and converging upon him like an angry lynch mob.  In a crushing finale, Abner disappears screaming under the throng of android persecutors
and the stage goes black. When the lights come back up, the lab is empty and in ruins. An enthusiastic crowd is heard cheering and stomping, with an almost Nuremburg feel. A huge banner is unfurled that covers the entire stage. It is a gigantic version of “That Grotesque Kiss Cutup”, basically a replica of the cover of the band’s “Love Gun” album.
The hammer of justice---or mediocrity, anyway, from Abner’s vantagepoint----has been brought down.This is not unlike the end of “Cabaret”, when the glass partition reveals a pervasive Nazi presence in the audience (wanna steal? Steal from the best!). The lights go out once again and the play is over.

1. Every Piece of Equipment has a Shakedown Period

     There’s still some wiggle room as far as writing this thing goes----a little tweaking here and there. I’m doing what I can, but at this point I’m averaging, maybe, 3 or 4 hours’ sleep a night.
     It doesn’t show, does it?
      Damn phantom just keeps floating around my veins like ground glass…it’s just part of the overall experience. You try to deal with it---some hardcore freaks learn to love it.
     “You do know they cut it with rat poison, right? Or did you know?”
     Heather and I have come to loggerheads over this----it’s not that she’s adverse to changing the story---she just wants Abner to win at the end.
     I can’t do it, though----the logical arc to me is loss, doom and destruction. I’m just a Tragedy Pimp, I guess. You watch that whole damn movie---you don’t want Carlito to take that bullet, but he always does. Billy Bibbett always commits suicide and Mac always gets the lobotomy. The stoopid Titanic always sinks and our hearts go on, Cornelius and Zira always get gunned down---that errant Tralfamadoran Scientist always drops the ball and ends the universe and every time it comes around the damn Tralfamadorans let the whole sordid chain of events occur. Sure, I might be a Tragedy Pimp, but I’m not the only one.
     It’s hard to tell what might invoke the ire of Kiss fans more, though, and I’ve explained my generalized wariness of fanboys already. Killing Melissa might push some buttons, I’m sure---I’m still on the fence with that---but what’s a worse tragedy---Abner going down a la Joe Spinell in “Maniac”, or Sam and Melissa being reunited and running off to a boring house in a boring suburb, where they play racquetball, listen to their old Kiss records and have equally beige-clad, boring babies?  “I was once an android flunkie. Kiss played the park I was working at, but I was oblivious to it at the time---you know---the whole android slave-thing.” Yeah, that’s one helluva story to wow the grandkids with, buster.
     Fandom gets so weird when you mess with a classic, or even pseudo-classic text, though…I’m old enough to remember all the comic geeks who cried “foul” because Zack Snyder “changed the ending” to the “Watchmen” movie----never mind that he didn’t change the ending, just a plot device----fanboys are an unforgiving bunch, and they’re not big on drawing fine distinctions.
    I’m sure the most furious wing-beating will be reserved for the complete absence of an According-to-Hoyle Kiss or even a passable tribute band---no real Kiss songs, and so forth. Tough. Sometimes you’ve gotta be a fascist, fanboy----open up your mouth and eat your gruel, I’ve got a big ole spoonful right here to shove down your throat. Don’t try and tell me what has cache and what doesn’t---this is post-modernism, babies---it’s edgy and it’s clever, and you’d better enjoy it, ‘cause I’m a genius, whether you understand me or not!

1. That’s the Kind of Sugar Poppa Likes

     Another possible brickbat in my direction might be the amping up of Abner’s designs on Melissa. I really could see some misdirected insubordination from “Kiss Meets the Phantom” Purists (both of ‘em) but I’m sticking to my guns. It heightens the level of drama and conflict, and love triangles make for good musical theatre---everybody knows that.
     This is bank, man---it’s the difference between “Kiss Meets the Phantom: The Overblown, Pretentious Broadway Production” making ten bucks at the box office and thirty. You’ve gotta trust me. Nobody cried at the end of the TV movie except for the suicidal network execs who greenlighted the damn thing. Everyone will cry at the end of my “Phantom”. The furniture will cry. I’ll cry. You’ll cry. Your Aunt Tilly will cry.
      You’ve gotta trust me on this----I am a card-carrying member of the Misunderstood Genius Clubhouse, you know…next week we’re gonna perform “The Barber of Seville”, and I am personally greasing up my cowlick in preparation….
      In the very neutered film there may be the slight suggestion that Abner might want Melissa for his own but for the sake of a big-budget, quasi-Andrew Lloyd Webber Faux Rock Extravaganza we need to take that all the way. An old buddy joked to me once, “I didn’t know you had desires or urges---I thought you just existed.”
     Well, aren’t we foolish not to think likewise of our Phantom? Misunderstood Genius is a lonely calling, after all. Abner might have some misplaced priorities, but he’s still a man. He might be conflicted as to whether he wants an obedient automaton or a lover and partner, but that’s a problem of perspective. That part of us that wants Kong to get Fay Wray, wants Quasimodo to get Esmeralda, wants Hannibal and Clarice to live happily ever after eating people, cheers on the notion that Abner can overcome his damage and carry Melissa off to a magic castle where he can impress her with his neat inventions and they can birth an army of brilliant Brazilian Hitler Babies.
     My afformentioned Street Cred as a Tragedy Pimp, of course, makes such outcomes impossible---but the natural desire for such an outcome is one that will keep audiences riveted---and that, as previously crowed, equals B-A-N-K, the most beautiful four letter word in the world.
      This also reinforces my theory that Melissa has to die. For shit’s sake, people---you can’t expect Rima in GREEN MANSIONS to grow old gracefully---nor can one expect this of Melissa. She and Abner are a love that can never be, as much as you think you might want to see it. We Misunderstood GeniiTM, of course, understand Abner’s needs; He needs a captive audience who will clap and cheer and adore his every work of mechanical art---he wants someone who will love the Android Barbershop Quartet as much as he does…someone who will treasure Evil Robot Gene in spite of his concession stand-smashin’, rent-a-cop-bone-snappin’ proclivities.
      What does Melissa want? It’s hard to tell----sometimes I’m not sure she knows. My wife surmises that she wants Coulots. I’m not sure what Coulots are.
      “It’s a type of clothing,” she tells me. Fine. What else does Melissa want out of life? Something else…”Asperdiddles?”
        Heather’s face goes into a sarcastic sneer. “Yeah,” she snaps, “she wants Asperdiddles!”
     After some clarification, I come to understand---Esperdrills---not Asperdiddles.

      I don’t know what that is.

           You see the problem here---right?

1. Fractured Mirror: The Sad Psychology of Abner Devereaux

    A major point is that the movie, “Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park”, is all surface action. There’s no (intentional) nuance going on there, outside what psychotics like me will insinuate.
    My “Phantom”, as you might guess at this point, is a layered beast, rife with allegory, symbolism and introspection. Bow before the Master, bitches.
    None of the play is meant to be taken literally, of course---it’s a tale told by a misunderstood genius, full of sound and fury signifying nothing. The entire narrative is informed by Abner’s neuroses, delusions and mood swings---and you’re stuck having those things inform you from beginning to end---it’s not a pretty neighborhood, and you know what? Only a chump would want to buy property there.
    Yeah, in real life (the counterfeit Real Life of the fiction) there might be a struggle between a good guy cartoon rock band and an evil scheme---but that only concerns us on a contextual level.
     The action you see going on in the course of the play is the rising and falling of Abner’s brainwaves. You go through its highs and lows and you share his moments of elation, disappointment and defeat.
    The attack of the androids at the end shouldn’t be seen as an actual event---it’s merely the machinations of Abner’s mind betraying him---we have an unreliable narrator and what the audience has been witnessing the entire production is just an elaborately staged nervous breakdown. So another misunderstood genius bites the dust, right?
     Not necessarily----the catatonic, white-haired epilogue of the original film is the worst kind of copout---I know it, you know it and the people who made the damn movie know it. So you grab your coats and you leave the theatre and you get to go someplace to discuss the whole sordid matter over espressos or something.
     Is there anything else?
    Okay---misunderstood genius goes rogue, enslaves a few people, does some property damage and perhaps there is some degree of life and limb to answer for. Fine. He’s made some bad choices and ultimately he must pay his debt to society. But how harsh is his punishment gonna be? You’re talking about a guy whose best buddy is a singing, dancing, evil Gene Simmons robot.
      In short, there’s an eventual out for our hero---he may not be able to hide in an underground lair and build evil robots, but he’s not above rehabilitation…there’s always hope. Think about the kind of fake finality of “Requiem for a Dream”---sure, dude may have lost an arm, but he’ll bounce back from that----he’ll learn to live with it, he can clean up his junk habit and reassess the messy life he’s lived. Jennifer Connelly doesn’t have to keep hooking and the Wayans kid? He ain’t gonna be in jail forever. It’s a kind of false hopelessness that the movie chooses to leave you with.
    Abner Devereaux----you know him…sure, he may have a past life we don’t know about but that’s somewhere in a forgivable past…you know Abner, Skippy----you even like him. He’s the pleasant old man with the vague smile who bags your groceries every Saturday down at the A&P. He might be an ex con or something, you’re not sure, but those days are long over for him. He always asks you what you want---plastic or paper---and whichever one it is that you want, he’ll tell you, each and every time, without fail, “that’s my most favorite selection!” He bags those groceries like an artist, too, with military precision---some bag boys don’t care where things land in a bag---not Abner! The heavy things are always on the bottom, the light things are more toward the top so they never get crushed, and Mom’s eggs are always placed perfectly so that they never get damaged. Oh, we’ll never forget nice old Mr.Devereaux---there’s just something about him----it must be the look in his eyes.
     It’s survival, innit? Might seem like an obscure and inglorious outcome for a misunderstood genius, but it’s not all bad…the cards are terminally stacked against us, you know. That’s the danger with us---we don’t speak the language. People don’t want to hear our barbershop quartets---they aren’t impressed by our quaint, animatronic gorillas. They want Coulots. They want Asperdiddles. We don’t understand that.
      I don’t even know what those things are.

1. Rock’n’Roll Over: A Denouement of Sorts

       The Lady Goodwife is unamused by all of this. “First of all,” she says, “you’re comparing ‘Kiss Meets the Phantom’ to ‘Requiem for a Dream’! Second of all…NO!”
There’s a pregnant pause, and I’m waiting for her to elaborate on this point, but instead she just emphatically reiterates, “NO!”
     It’s 7 AM….the cats are still roughhousing and I’m not sure I’ve slept much at all.
       The average person doesn’t want to hear it, but there is a kind of existential beauty to these simple, redemptive acts. Paper or plastic---regardless of what they want, it’s the right choice. And making sure the light things are toward the top of the bag and the heavy things are on the bottom is an important function in our society. We’d have wholesale anarchy without our smiling bagboys. And at the end of the day, taking special care to make sure Mrs, Johnson’s eggs are safe is a perfectly fine surrogate activity to substitute for wreaking revenge on those who have wronged you.
     It’s my dream. It’s my nightmare.
      My wife has gotten up and is pulling on her shirt. “It might be your nightmare,” she grouses, “but I’m living it!” She heads out to the kitchen to make coffee.

Originally Published in ANTIQUE CHILDREN. Copyright 2012 C.F. Roberts/2015 Molotov Editions

THE HELL OF OTHERS’ AMUSEMENT: FAINT PRAISE FOR “KISS IN ATTACK OF THE PHANTOMS”

    Earlier this week I had done with the day’s duties and I was staggering off to bed. My wife had beaten me there by roughly an hour. As I entered the bedroom, I noticed that the night’s choice of sleepytime white noise on the tube was our copy of “Kiss in Attack of the Phantoms” and at the point of my arrival it was running at about the 45 minute mark. As I readied for bed, my wife sat bolt upright with the remote and flipped the DVD back to the opening credits, mumbling something vague about, “so you can watch the whole thing.” Then she promptly laid back down and continued sleeping.
      Wow, thanks, I thought----and due to some mad insomnia, I think I did wind up awake through most of the questionable spectacle. Later the next day, she informed me that she had been half-dreaming that the DVD was supposed to be a “special cut” of the film and somewhere in her head it was supposed to be radically different from the original---so I guess it was supposed to be a glam rock “Battleship Potemkin” or something.
      This terrible, terrible movie is late night video comfort food in our home, sandwiched somewhere between Something Weird trailer comps, box sets of “Kids in the Hall” and “Mr. Show” and Frankie & Annette Beach epics. This is the stuff we use to lull ourselves off to sleep and it usually runs all night long.
       “Attack of the Phantoms” is the theatrical release of the 1978 made-for-TV movie, “Kiss meets the Phantom of the Park”---Gordon Hessler, who gave us several Vincent Price films as well as “Murders in the Rue Morgue” (Herbert Lom version), “The Golden Voyage of Sinbad” and “The Girl on the Swing”, grinned and bore directorial duties.
     “Kiss meets the Phantom” is a bad movie. It’s important to note this. As fringe film geeks, we often find ourselves in the existential and thankless position of defending films others write off as “bad movies”,,,frequently there’s a “but” involved, because people weaned on the mainstream need a “But” preface to be pulled into our perspective…”sure, It has no budget to speak of….but they did a lot with what little they were given.” “Sure, it seems hackneyed, but you need to remember that they had two weeks to film the thing and then the set was used for this OTHER movie.” “The acting sucks, but the writing is great.” “The story might be derivative, but look at the cinematography!”  “It may be awkward and haphazard, but you have to look at these historical perspectives.” “But….but….LOOK AT THAT BADASS LIGHTING!!!!” If you’re waiting for the “But” with “KMTP”, don’t hold your breath. It’s a bad movie.
       However…and while there might not be a big cult film “But”, here, there are a few special, pleading “Howevers”---there are a couple of film conventions going on that are worth noting: First and foremost, of course, there are the obvious tips of the hat to  “The Phantom of the Opera”----in this case the titular “Phantom” is the Wiz behind all the rides and attractions, who, feeling spurned under economic pressures, goes on a sabotagin’ rampage with his robot creations. Secondarily (and in my eyes, most interesting), there is a common thread at work, here, with a lot of the Mexican Wrestling pictures from back in the day, in which Santo, Blue Demon and other masked wrestling luminaries battled monsters and alien invaders. Not that I think Hessler, Hanna-Barbera or (ESPECIALLY) Kiss and Aucoin, Inc. had any inkling of such delirious schlock---and KMTP is far too canned for such exotic Dada---but the thread is too strong to ignore. Lives hang in the balance and the future of the world is in jeopardy and so the President calls on…a Wrestler?! A madman threatens the lives of thousands and so who else could save the day but the hardest-rocking heroes of Puppetland? The narrative thread, even if unconscious, is staggering.
      But these tenuous threads notwithstanding, I’m not gonna blow sunshine up your ass; this is one titanic turkey of a film. Take no other assessments.
      Inna nutshell, the Amusement Park the flick takes place in (And yes---the entirety of the film’s action takes place IN A GODDAMN AMUSEMENT PARK) is facing tough financial times---in hopes of boosting attendance, park owner Calvin Richards (70s stalwart Carmine Caridi) books the 70s’ favorite cartoon rock band, Kiss, to do a three-night stint. This invokes the ire of his old compadre, Abner Devereaux (world-class character actor Anthony Zerbe, whose exemplary scenery-chewing is the only reason I can scare up to watch this turd---Zerbe scores an A-list ham-job in material that is demoralizing at best. It’s obvious that he knows the caliber of the piece he’s been saddled with and he plays it like a harp from Hell ). See, Devereaux is the brains behind all the rides and gadgetry in the park---he’s especially defensive of the motheaten anthropomorphic figures that delight the kiddies by lurching around in a 3-foot radius over and over all the live-long day. It seems a particular affront to him that all his research and development bucks are being siphoned off to promote this decadent and tacky rock band, just when he’s on the verge of a major breakthrough---alas for Abner, the bottom line is The Bottom Line.
     Behind the scenes, though, foul play is afoot---park patrons and employees are mysteriously going MIA. Devereaux keeps ranting that he is on the verge of a major breakthrough, but his raging, aggro narcissism finally forces Calvin to pull the plug and fire his old friend. Devereaux descends into his underground lab, vowing to destroy the park.
      Roughly an hour into the travesty, Kiss (Stanley, Simmons, Frehley & Criss) enter the film, lip-sync songs like “Shout it Out Loud”,  “Rock and Roll All Nite”, “I Stole your Love” and “Beth” amid a mishmash of concert footage---they wooden soldier through gawdawful dialogue and an idiot plot and fun and laffs ensue.
     Devereaux’s “breakthrough” is that his silly, anthropomorphic robots have become very lifelike and very dangerous---oh---yeah---and they’re essentially cybernetically enhanced slaves—all those folks disappearing? YEAH---Devereaux has taken them and turned them into an army of mindless “Small World” androids.
    Enter Sam and Melissa (Terry Lester and Deborah Ryan), a bland, beige-dressed couple who are the Allan Jones and Kitty Carlisle to Kiss’s Marx Brothers here. Sam is a new Devereaux lackey who blunders into an elevator and disappears only to be reconfigured as Abner’s favorite electro-zombie. My guess is that he caught Devereaux dressed as Holly Hobby, whacking off over his own genius, and paid the ultimate price---sometimes you see too much. Melissa is a walking plot device---she spends the rest of the film palling around with Kiss, wringing her hands over Sam’s whereabouts and screaming breathlessly when the situation calls for it.
    Devereaux has sabotaged the whole party by creating a bad robot Kiss---most notably a bad robot Gene Simmons, who runs amok (sometimes accompanied by android redcoats) breaking stuff and terrorizing rentacops (most notably dependable character actor Brion James, squandered here). Kiss, in addition to being the world’s greatest cartoon rock band, are beings gifted with superhuman powers. They stalk Devereaux around the park, battling android ninjas, a fat Frankenstein robot, cybernetic albino space monkeys and finally, onstage in front of God’n’everybody, their evil robot doubles---a scenario later copped for “Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey” in the early 90s…not everybody caught the reference in that movie----but I did.
      The oddball denouement has Sam being freed of his robot control while Devereaux is revealed, whitehaired and comatose (or dead)---segue to the ending shot---an earlier image of Devereaux wandering around the roller coaster with a facial expression that seems to blend introspection, Luciferian malice and a bad case of constipation---you check it out if you think I’m joking---I’ve made this face numerous times for Heather and SHE can’t argue---while the melancholy “Mr. Make Believe” from Simmons’ 1978 solo album plays….this might be to say the angry spirit of Abner Devereaux will always lurk in the park---or it might just be ham fisted editing on someone’s part---you can bandy theories about all you want, bucco---my money’s on the latter supposition, all the way.
     “KMTP” went from TV to a brief run around the driveins, then it unceremoniously disappeared into home video obscurity---and yet it refuses to die. A big part of the blame, of course, is the shameless institution of Kiss, Inc., who are all too glad to milk an abortion for a meal ticket---it’s also perpetuated by the Kiss Kult in general—and they’re a very scary, non-discriminating bunch---like rock’n’roll trekkies you dare not turn your back on.
     I can’t say a lot, though, since I own the horrific thing. In some inexplicable, sodden way, “KMTP” takes hold, like a deadly fungus, and it has a perverse kind of resonance.
My cousin recently threw me a “what if” scenario---what if this film had really taken off---not from a Kiss perspective, but from a “Phantom of the Park” perspective? What if a whole franchise of these monstrosities had been produced? “The Captain and Tenille meet the Phantom of the Park”…”The Dukes of Hazzard meet the Phantom of the Park”…”Wonder Woman meets the Phantom of the Park”….”The Bee Gees meet the Phantom of the Park”. Personally, I would have liked to have seen how Slade woulda handled the situation.
      Twisted, the way this crap worms its way into the brain, eh? Hang tight---I have an even more maleficent brainstorm---“Kiss meets the Phantom of the Park: The Rock Opera”. The real action surrounds Abner Devereaux and his inner conflict---Kiss themselves are just kind of a deus ex machina that come in at the end and sort everything out---you could even fold in the choruses to “Shout it out Loud” and “Rock and Roll All Nite” as kind of an ironic, apocryphal Greek Chorus device. I’ve given this a great deal of thought and I think it REALLY COULD WORK. There’s the part of the movie where Calvin takes Abner for a ride on the park monorail to explain the dollars-and-cents reality of his position---all the other happy passengers are unaware that a lifelong friendship is quietly going down the tubes in the back car. Now put this all to a “Tommy”-esque, bloated, baroque rock score and entitle it, “The two Saddest Guys on the Monorail”---TELL ME THAT’S NOT A GRADE-A IDEA. TELL ME THAT WOULD NEVER WORK. KNOCK THIS BATTERY OFF MY SHOULDER, I DARE YA. Think about the stampede of rockers who would kill to play Abner Devereaux in a rock opera! What’s Marilyn Manson doing these days? You know he’d eat this up….this is what the younguns refer to as “Post-Modernism”.

    And after a while, I just get so tired….so tired. It doesn’t show, does it? Do I look like I’m tired?
    “We found him by the side of the road, Chief, just rambling incoherently about Lil’ Abner and Marilyn Manson and sad guys on monorails---then he started screaming about being a misunderstood genius and we just had to haul him in for the general peace…you know, there’s a very nasty strain of Phantom floating around, lately, and this poor bastard’s obviously tripping balls…not a lot we can do for him except let him sleep it off…you feel that jitter, buster? Those are the strychnine jitters…you know, that Phantom stuff…you do know they cut it with rat poison, right? Or DID you know? Just relax for a while, pal---we’ll let you post bail when you’re calm enough to spell ‘Mississippi’…”
    After awhile I have to back off and drag my peepers from the abyss and acknowledge that that way lies madness. But what is it that perpetually drags me to that infernal  bottomless well? Why does goddamn Abner Devereaux ride herd over my shattered psyche, and how can I heal myself, or at least score a sizeable profit off the trauma?
     Who is this forsaken freak, Abner Devereaux, and how did he come into the possession of every joker in the maniac’s tarot? What was his background? What are his hopes, his dreams, his favorite TV shows? Is he a “Lou Grant” guy, or a “Love Boat” guy? Does he read NEWSWEEK? Where does he come from, and what does he want from me? What are his turn-ons and turn-offs? And what’s with Fat Frankenstein, anyway?
      I have this idea that he doesn’t correspond to normal, according-to-Hoyle sexuality. Certainly, he may have vague designs on Beige Oatmeal Girl, but I think it’s less a case of wanting to have his way with her and more a case of needing that certain special someone who will squeal with delight at all your impressive inventions…yes, kids, some deeply misshapen part of me understands the mad scientist’s wounded ego.
      Perhaps it’s that, in each and every one of us, the universal truth we’d all like to sweep under the rug is that we are ALL Abner Devereaux---that this tragic, misunderstood, mad genius lurks in us all, jilted by the bottom line and unable to make his breakthrough and waiting in rapt anger to bring the hammer down on all who’ve thwarted his dreams.
      That’s some nice damn fortune cookie rationale, but in the end even my feverish, gibbering mind can’t support it…the truth is that Devereaux doesn’t come righteously by his actions because the kindling that fires his dreams is PEOPLE. Poor ole Sam, milquetoast though he might be, doesn’t deserve a life of mindless slavery---and the juvenile delinquents who vandalize the park, only to become android minutemen in some historical “redemption” dreamt up in Abner’s twisted mind? They might have had their indiscretions, but the problem with the doctrine of Hell---even Devereaux’s tinpot purgatory, is that after aeons of suffering and/or robot servitude, even the Hitlers, Stalins  and Mansons of the world have to come up square with the house at one point or another.
      A world where Abner Devereaux emerges victorious is a world that’s not about to do anyone a damned bit of good---let’s just be honest, I wouldn’t be happy in that scenario, and neither would you. Do you want to spend the rest of your life applauding some clown in a lab coat every time he comes up with the hot new robot? He might land those crucial research and development dollars, but whether it’s a clunky mechanical gorilla who lurches back and forth on a chain, a historical figure cobbled from a young ne’er-do-well, evil robot Gene Simmons or a lifelike android Barbershop Quartet harmonizing over their missing body parts, it’s a pretty bleak future. Choose your own adventure, chief—do you want to listen to the spare parts quartet warble about how “it must be the look in her eyes” while Uncle Ab stands off to the side nursing a raging stiffy, or do you want to go spend three nights watching the greatest cartoon band in the world blow shit up real good?
      Me? I’ll take three nights with the cartoon rockers any day. Sorry…it was an easy choice.
     One of the saddest memories of my youth is being at the amusement park in Hampton, New Hampshire, watching my younger brother, who may have been 11 or 12 at the time, ride the bumper cars. He was constantly getting wedged up in a knot of cars---I witnessed a sad look of despair and consternation on his face as he haplessly worked the wheel and some rangy carny with a microphone harangued him. “Just back out of the corner, willya, Ace?!” My brother didn’t want to be on that goddamned ride…I don’t know whose bent, misbegotten idea of fun that was.
    In a world designed to amuse the likes of Abner Devereaux, we’re all stuck in that lousy bumper car gridlock, fighting the wheel for no good reason and to no good end, while some fleabitten carny of fate mocks our efforts, and it’s nice to play ”let’s pretend”, but who really wants to sign on for that ride?

    Gawd, I need some sleep.

Originally published in ANTIQUE CHILDREN. Copyright 2011 C.F. Roberts, 2015 Molotov Editions

ALL THE HACK WRITERS AND DEAN KOONTZ TOO

I wrote this, probably somewhere in the ballpark of the mid-to-late 90s for the Unbearables' compilation, THE WORST BOOK I EVER READ, and forgot about it sometime thereafter. The book, amazingly enough, popped up in 2009, long after I'd forgotten about it, but better late than never, and as I've said before, I always love being involved in anything the Unbearables do. The book is a fun and brain-crunching pile of deconstruction and my part of it is pretty much a puff piece by comparison. Check it out---it'll definitely give you a new way of looking at literature.

At the time I wrote this little pro-pulp/anti-Koontz jam I had read two or three of his books (I'm thinking one was called STRANGERS and one was called WHISPERS but I might be wrong on those titles)...'round about the early-to-mid 2000s (?) I went through this weird spate of listening to books on tape and among the books I “read” this way were the first two Odd Thomas novels. I decided that everything I disliked about Koontz as a writer back in the early days....I still disliked. So the Goof stands. Mr. Koontz probably wouldn't appreciate it, but what the hell? He can go cry on his bed of money. Wiseass attitude intact, here it is...

Not long ago, a friend and I were talking about books. He lamented the passing of the Era of the Hack.

Those were the good old, bad old days. They're gone----they were on their way out the door when I was a kid, in fact. You can still find their cobwebbed revenant in flea markets and used bookstores---even there, you'll see them slowly usurped by a fancier, slicker, more surefooted brand of garbage.

The best authors of my generation, and I can think of at least four I know personally, are probably doomed to die unpublished and unread. It's a painful reality to look at.

A few of these aforementioned writers were weaned on cheap, dime store trash literature. It shows in their writing---they deliver texts of gut-level simplicity, which, like the best works of the old hacks, betray sly and subtle depths. There is much to be gleaned from lowly bargain bin scribes.

Hack Writing---Christ Jesus. Gone are the days when a browser might score a cheap edition of Howard's Conan novels or a thirty-five cent Signet edition of an Ian Fleming James Bond thriller in all its violent, misogynistic glory. Gone are Edgar Rice Burroughs and Doc Savage the Man of Bronze. Gone is Zorro, fighting for freedom in a California that never existed. Gone is the day when a Jim Thompson could ply his sublime and bloody trade.

Gone, also, are the surprises---where H.P. Lovecraft could churn out such artful and mythic horror pulp that a generation of mystical dabblers would actually mistake it for occult fact; Where a Chester Himes could infuse raw, gritty detective stories with canyons of racial tension and urban rage. You'd be hard-pressed to find another Philip K. Dick, whose readable science fiction opened up into allegory, subversion and a new form of Gnosticism.

The writing hasn't necessarily elevated---in many cases it's regressed. But the prices of the books have gone sky high and the cover art is spellbinding in its obviousness. It's all about the package.

Dean Koontz is nobody's candidate for genius. His ham-fisted technique is pounded into a succession of thrillers that are perennial best sellers. He's not one to be stymied by hobgoblins like craftsmanship or finesse.

Big deal, anyway; He's laughing all the way to the bank.

The infotainment complex does not hedge bets on long shots or X-factors. Dean Koontz is the epitome of a safe bet. In the pantheon of modern horror he lacks the sense of history that a Peter Straub or a Ramsey Campbell might possess. He lacks the basic human decency of the Splatterpunk Crowd. He's even devoid of the sense of dramatic irony you might find reading some of Stephen King's better stuff. Not that it matters, of course—Koontz wouldn't know craft if he fell over it, but he does quite well without it.

My writerly mentors in college were all Hemingway Groupies. Whether you give a rat's puckered ass about Hemingway or not—whether you, as a writer (if you ARE a writer) choose to follow his lead, I reckon the Hemingway Model is a sound one. Scale it back to the bone. Take the terse, minimalist, journalistic road. Show, don't tell. I don't write like Hemingway, but I still think his style provides a useful foundation. Now and again I like to revisit the terrain, just as an experiment, just to make sure I'm still capable.

Koontz is no technician. If you're handing out marks using Hemingway as a guide, he's still in grade school. He's given to heavy-handed summarization, even in the realm of character development. When the time comes to show, not tell, just watch Koontz in action---he tells and tells and tells.

Like it matters. His books are fertile ground for bad movie adaptations and the cash register keeps on ringing.

Art, a truly useless term, is also a dead thing in the world of infotainment, and can easily be excised neatly from the product.

Is Koontz the bastard buttchild of Alistair MacLean and Jim Thompson? Does he carry the banner of the new pulp? Well...no.

The dime store hacks are, as previously mentioned, obsolete---Neanderthals dead and buried in the vast corporate tundra. Koontz and his ilk are the new model Cro Magnons---well-packaged, reasonably inoffensive sure bets who will twang your receptors, suck you in, spit you out and give you the sort of carnival ride you relish every time. It's a mediocre ride, but your stomach will churn as you plunge down the last hill and you'll laugh and pay to get on again. Koontz and his corporate pimps will cash your check and salute their take with a six pack of Coors (Beer of FascistsTM).

And you'll love it. Every second. Hell---even I read the bastard's books.

Copyright 2009 Autonomedia/ 2015 Molotov Editions

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

The wonderful folks at CORVUS REVIEW have just released their Fall issue, which includes my short story, “Boil Order”. Check 'em out here:

                                                           CORVUS REVIEW 

 

THIS WEEK'S PLAYLIST:

1. KING CRIMSON-Lark's Tongues in Aspic
2. KING CRIMSON-Discipline
3. THESE IMMORTAL SOULS-Marry Me Maxi-Single
4. BLACK SABBATH-Master of Reality
5. MINUTEMEN-Paranoid Time EP
6. LEFT OF THE DIAL Box Set

3 DAYS/3 WALKS PART THREE: THE EASTER EGG HUNT 1991

My head goes dervish derby and the music takes me to a sad, mourning, world-anchored bittersweet look back in sadness euphoria...in these throes of wounded despair I wish to tear my flesh off, break the indifferent membrane of this dirty, unjust coil, to go where it doesn't matter, won't matter, ever.....

In dreamland I see it again, head on, dead on, the image, blood creating a new and growing and altogether damp and sticky world on earthly, mundane floral pattern velvet and I am a sprawled mannequin, naked, pale, in a frozen, silent, muted scream---statue of drained human ash remnant, leftover, trash----my wrists hold the one semblance of a lifething as they sore and ooze and bubble---the twin, ragged, furious maws grieve aloud---bashed, mangled life ebbs away from them, still wet and blackcrimson and raging as they seem, the clutch of life would still appear to be upon them----

-----Music is playing closing out the slothful ignorant parchment world and my dark is a crazyquilt of mauled emotion; I'm huddled, manfetus, on this carpet and I'm rocking like precision machinery and somewhere in the haunted back, the pain attic, I know I'm crying---I can't stop---retreating into my nucleus, loser again—failure again—the worst man again—booby prizer tot of the Easter Egg Hunt again and I cannot change it, cannot steer it in my direction it won't end---

---I unkrinkle my body and try to heave it into a semi-upright position---I open my eyes and stare---the first time with open eyes in a sea or so; it takes nothing to focus as if I've been accustomed to the dark---I stare at the corner of my room---the space of white (now gray) wall between my closet and my bureaub and it's there, confronting me, glaring back eyeless shapeless but it's intent on me....

The black thing. I can't make it out—an object, a blotch, there sitting, facing me---what is it? Black----so deeply black it eclipses everything, like a cavity in the world that threatens to swallow everything, everyone----

Facing me---

No---

The black thing sits, stationary, immobile, looking at me----a penetrator, a cancer that poked, violating, thunder, raping this world and it is intent on me, this abomination......I can't look anymore.....

I fold up, enclose, and shut my eyes, wrap my arms around my head and pray for the black thing to leave me. The music merrygorounds again and again---I need it now to blot out the beckoning, the whisper of the black thing. Sick. I throw up on the floor. I keep my eyes shut and I try in my mind to crumble into coal, to unwant, to invincibility so that the black thing will leave me alone----

At an ageless time I awaken. The stench of my vomit is incredible and my displaced head feels like a racetrack-----the black thing is gone, it has vacated the corner. That's an empty worldsmile---I know with my deep downest that it will return come nightfall to torment me----

***********

Running, now, downtown in the cold and the laugh of the springsummer electric Coke commercial dirt---people laughing and squinting phase in and out of my tear bleared vision---nine beers plus what the hell ever and I can't walk a straight line, I can't stop, the Janeharrow is whittling at my insides---I can't go home; I have to escape the night sit solitude in my fetal crawl and the gloom and the close and the silent threat and stare and point of the black thing, the new intruder in my house.....

Outside is a teetering carnival full of jeering clowns---Emmett Kelly in shadow and cigar and shitstain and laughing, ballyhooing fat ladies, circus renegades with pissed-on flower sundresses all bleached and worn---pukes and pugs congeal and clot on corners, playing King of the Mountain for bleachy-headed, gum-snapping ragamuffin dumpster porn angels; yowling, smearingunshaven,, toothless phantoms rove by like obstacles on a hellish, nocturnal sideways funhouse distortion mirror drivers' course----they haunt me and chastise me and in the blunt of my blur and my desperation I throttle among them away as they come too close----

---the sidewalk, pissing and shitting, discarded journal rags blow by me and it's all a sewer, a sewer carnival and every fifth girl I bump into is a Janething, a giggling, mocking counterfeit Jane, a worm in the mold and disease of the rubble of that harsh dynasty---the haves, the have-nots, the you-can't-haves, the golden chalice in chains, the shut-in angels, away, Tantalus, the little Janes, the inescapable crush of sorrow, of madness, of hell, of hurt, and it won't stop, it won't stop----

Cal Kelly the remnant crashes, flaming to earth all ashen and ruined, uuuuuuuhhhhh, I cry aloud, uuuuuuuuhhhhh, no more, no more, oh, God please no more and I die and my stomach twists and needles up as I fall, teeth clamping down---I cry, I taste blood, I smash my chin on the cement...all around me the gleeing, sneering, roving outdoor den of shambling garbage people point and laugh at this new spectacle---wiping my chin I turn on them. “You don't know,” I roar and my voice is fragmented, teetering out of an even tone, a bellowing, cracked trumpet, “none of you, not one of you fucks know, goddammit, Confucius say no problem, but there is a big problem, a big problem, and it's right here!” I stumble to my feet and I mime throwing rocks at them, all the plaster-faced, sniggering multitudes. “I look around at all of you and there's nothing, just nothing!” I shrug my shoulders cartoonish and bigfoot, and then I start screaming again. “For the five fuckingb card games you win some sad son loses every godforsaken day of his life, damn you all, and this, and THIS sorry opus is the bare-assed crux of it all----who did you forget? No, don't tell me....ask yourself! What about the forgotten ones?!” Dull faces stare back----this is the downtown zoo and more and more I realize I am the panda bear. “She forgot me,” I cry, hands extended, “I am forgotten.”

They are frozen, uncomprehending----I give up. Zero. Gone. I turn and shun their dumb scrape of skeetch this, chillun and I look at the stairs, the classical, elegant rough bludgeoned railed cement tower thing, the walkway I cut my burning, babbling, grieving head on---the stoop is scopeful, architectural refinement and it leads into the church. I stumble up those stairs and halfway to the summit I crash splintering to my wobbly knees scuff scrape and bleed cold scorches like ropeskip asphalt mishap child-manhood---I crawl to the entrance and I'm muttering every spare despair desperate litany left at my disposal....the church's dim innards loom, the towering stained glass robular Sunday School legend hero designs and a hunched, shawled womanthing putters around inside, painstakingly setting ablaze a network of candles, all solemnly peeping hotlight in a tangled assortment of twisting candelabrum; each candle, each atom of twilight fire represents a Saint, from booming Saints like Anthony and Joseph and John and Jude (of that Novena fame) and Christopher and Patrick and Valentine all in their congregation with obscure Saints----the Saint of mottled flesh, the patron Saint of the nearsighted, the Patron Saint of Zydeco music, the Patron Saint of nose hairs, all in a holy jumble and I'm peaking, summitting and I'm creeping for the Jesusholy refuge sanctuary cavern and now the Priest, Father Ironclad, Padre McVictory, arrives in his robes of glory and rebukes me.

“Sorry, buddy,” he rasps, “we're closed an' we don't take vagrants.”

“I'm lost,” I squall. “I'm God's Children!”

“Want a medal?” The Priest snarls. He slams the Cathedral doors in my face and I hear the lock click into mechanical intercourse with itself---the Heavenly Host booms in boundless celebration and I watch the iron entryway solidify, become inaccessible, before my eyes....... 

 

Copyright 1991 C.F. Roberts/2015 Molotov Editions

I went about this kinda in reverse, or roundways, mostly because it's my fuckin' blog, and I can if I want. HELLO, UGLY was actually the first Walk, and I wanted to craft a kind of Dark Night of the Soul where you're literally with this kid every step of the way as his already-precariously-balanced cheese is sliding off his cracker.

The Walk in THE EASTER EGG HUNT is a nervous breakdown on paper....to me all of these bust down into a sequence kind of like the Stations of the Cross----that, of course, is my lapsed Catholicism at work.....and the Catholicism in THE EASTER EGG HUNT is pretty overt. Some of that is, yeah----obviously a Kerouac ripoff-----but you can take the boy out of the church-----can you ever really take the church out of the boy? Well, maybe, if you have a good scalpel.....I don't know if I was following a conscious motif at that point with the Walks, but it was definitely there......

When I wrote “The Walk” in '93 or '94 I knew exactly what I was doing and it was kind of a “Meta” piece where I was going through my usual messed up pathology and at this point I could break down the nuts and bolts of my pathology and tell you exactly what the ingredients were.

I wrote several Walks throughout the '90s somewhat similar to the ones I've posted in this little run. Another story I wrote around that time, “Shark's Fin Slices”(title taken from a line in The Birthday Party's “Six-Inch Gold Blade”) was very similar in tone and theme to “The Walk”----in fact, the line in “The Walk”, Not a bloody lot in the whole sad world, you saviors you liberators you hawkish mawkish regulators can preserve me from THE WALK---also appeared in “Shark's Fin Slices”, which probably tells you I have some trouble telling the two stories apart, but they share lots of similarities.

Another big early Walk was in a short story called “The Night is for Lovers” (The granddaddy of all my Guy Who Can't Get Laid stories), which was actually based around this semi-spoken word piece I did with the S.E. Apocalypse Krew. As a spoken word piece it was my knee-jerk reaction to codependency and dysfunction. The story, which was from 1990 or so, concerned a socially awkward office drone who gets passed up for a promotion in favor of a more extroverted, charismatic co-worker. To belabor the point, the latter also nabs the protagonist's longtime office crush. The character goes off on his own brief Dark Night of the Soul, which culminates in him watching some random couple engaging in a stupid, codependent squabble. He concludes, “I'll never be a part of any bullshit like that,” and he goes off, ominously enough, “into darkness”, and that's the end of the story----the note probably suggesting he might go postal or become a serial killer or something to that effect----in reality, using today's Johnny-on-the-Trend vernacular, he probably goes on to become an MRA, or a MGTOW, or a TFLer, or some other such asshole like that. In short, he's a lonely asshole who's very hung up on being a lonely asshole. And he will probably die a lonely asshole.

I released “The Night is for Lovers” as a longish chapbook on Shockbox Press. As far as short stories go it was kinda lengthy and way above the word count of what most publications were accepting for short stories. And again, it was my press----I was gonna do whatever the fuck I wanted. That was the inaugural year for Shockbox Press---I released THE MASSACRE ANNEX and BOTTOM LEVEL the same year, both of which got a better reception than TNIFL. Oh, well.

If I were to write another Walk in the future my goal would probably be to construct it very tightly around a Stations of the Cross motif and I'd probably model the various segments around the individual stations. I've got no immediate plans to do that, but it's a neat literary trope that might bear repeating in some form or fashion if the right piece of writing calls for it.

3 DAYS/3 WALKS PART TWO: HELLO, UGLY (1990)

And so now I walk away from my house. I have to get away from it. I really think it's just that I sort of have to get away from everything. No rest, no peace, my brain is a screeching light and I don't know how to shut it off.

Wandering about this jungle and everything I see bugs me. It's like it's all ashes in an ashtray. I can't ever touch cigarette ashes. They have this awful, alien feeling like they're nothing anyone is ever meant to put their fingers on. Everything around me is like that right now. Repellent. Get it the fuck away from me.

Ungodly suburbs. This shit isn't civilization. It's like a big, split-level Brady Bunch cemetery. It's like the cemetery I went to today, except that had tombstones, this has houses.

The rows of empty, dead houses go on forever, but the time passes fast because my head is like a big locomotive and it won't stop going. I can't continue like this, that's all I know. I need to be forgiven for the terrible thing I did. I know I was wrong but there has to be a way out of this trap.

Suddenly, “rurrurrurr,” a dog pops out of its yard and attacks me. It doesn't bite me, but it runs out of the shadows and it yaps and yaps away like a mad thing. It's probably afraid of my face. I'm scared and I can feel my nervous heart slamming away in my chest, but then the fear goes away and now I'm laughing because the dog looks like Lassie.

On I walk and I keep yukking even though that dog gave me a good scare. My heart keeps pounding away, though, like a piledriver, earth shattering. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.

After a while the hill bottoms out into Windham Street. Cars fly by, their lights trailing behind them like wild, glowing vapor trails from jet planes and it's scary and exciting and I think about diving into it for a few seconds. I don't go through with it, though. I'm not real sure that what's beyond the sailing lights is as big a thrill as the lights themselves. The whole thing blows me away, though, just thinking there's at least one person in all those cars. Maybe there are whole families in some of them. That's wild...all those people., catching this quick glimpse of me as they speed down the tubes. Where will they end up? What's their destination? Nothing good in this world. Maybe it'd be more humane if they put up this big detour sign that led them all straight to the bottom of the Merrimack River or something. Whatever. Still, the fleeting sight of me by the side of the road must be fucking with these peoples' worlds in a major league way. I try to imagine the trauma they must all be feeling, taking the image of my shattered, zig-zagged killer's face through the rest of their lives.

I can't begin to figure out how it might affect them, but it makes me laugh, Then I have to stop laughing because it's terrible. Then I have to laugh again.

The 7-11's across the street, beckoning me like a glowing, inviting church. The sight of it makes me sad because I have no money and it would be a waste of time for me to go there. It's not like I could even bum around there and read the magazines on account of the way I look. Some son of a bitch with glaring eyes and sharp wolf teeth would chase me out of the store, beating me over the head with a broom or something.

I don't know what to do or where to go. I walk down the road toward downtown Brookdale. It's just my nature, now, to follow my feet. I walk home from school, I walk the cemetery, I walk home from Juan's house, I walked home from the Hobby Shoppe, back when I still worked there.

Up, up, up the street...everything is shrouded in night-quiet like there's nobody living on this planet but me. I'm not sure I like it, but maybe it's better. Look at me, I'm a walking abomination that kills.

Sometimes I'm walking past trees, sometimes past little pockets of houses. Civilization. Civilization in a Coma, with all the lights out.

In the yard of one house I'm walking past I hear a big dog barking out its warning, “Woowoowoowoowoo! Woo!” It booms. I don't see it. The dog might be chained. Why be stupid and take guesses? I amble back across the street. I keep moving and the dog won't stop barking. I think I travel hundreds of feet and wind around the corner and it's still barking.

Summer is coming. Not that I give a flying shit, it's just that I know Summer's coming. It's hot and muggy out and the sky is clear. The crickets are chirping their lonely song in disunity and I wonder if all these brainless little bugs feel as lost as I do out here. I saw a close-up picture of a cricket once. They're not as cute as Jiminy. They look like little monsters. I wonder if they know it?

The sky is too huige and when I look at it I get dizzy and sad and I have to stop staring at it and keep my eyes on the ground. It's this giant patchwork of winking lights and it goes far past the horizon. It goes on forever and ever and now, walking under it as it threatens to crush me, I understand just how tiny I am, just how big and impersonal the whole universe is. I have to look again and I do and I can't stand it because I feel like I'm falling. Now I know why I can scream and scream and never, ever be answered. It's all too big.

An eighteen-wheeler blasts around the bend and vooms by me like a tornado. When it goes by my heart roars like an avalanche and I get scared and shivers go through me like high voltage. The truck barrels past so big and so rapid that I think for a few seconds I could be swallowed whole by something like that. I'm very small. It's like the way a man can wipe out an anthill without even thinking about it. I could go that fast, without anyone ever knowing.

I wander past some of the bigger, nicer houses in town. I'm coming up on the town center, now, and the library. I go by the library and I can feel my heart freeze up and smash like a piece of glass as I think about how Zoe and I were there and how those girls treated her that night and how we became friends then, very good friends and it was sort of uncomfortable at first, because showing yourself to someone is like stripping for a doctor and sharing isn't easy in the beginning. It was only later when I realized how much that night meant to me and now it all just sticks into me like a long, sharp knife and slices my guts up and now I look up into the endless sky again and I want to scream at it. I want to spit at it, knock all the stars out of it forever.

Windham Street crosses over into Brookdale Center. I walk past all these lifeless edifices I can barely recognize now. The First National Bank. The Post Office. The Brookdale Pharmacy and the Gentry Street Mall, where Mom and Dad do their grocery shopping. Where Zoe held a job for a week or so. Get it away from me. But then it doesn't even look the way I'm used to seeing it. It could be a whole different place, because it's after nine and everything's closed over, dead. Dark windows, dark storefronts, empty parking lots. The shadows are moving in, bigger than ever, to take over. The library is closed, too, blotted out. Everything's extinct. No life. I'm walking through blocks and blocks of darkness.

 

The center opens up and moderate traffic is still whizzing through, people in their transports rushing off to destinations I can't even imagine, not that I want to. They cast the only light on this shrouded town. Professional Buildings. Churches. Town Hall. The Waterworks. The Golden Lion Restaurant. All dark. Blank. They look like they've been abandoned and no one will ever come back to them again. Their doors and windows make gloomy, howling, empty faces that screech their hollow agony into a night that doesn't care. I turn my head away because those faces are too frightening to look at.

I walk past the 24-hour gas station in then intersection. It's the only stable light in the whole intersection other than a few streetlamps. There's a man with an overcoat and a knit hat pacing around. Again, I stress, Summer is coming. He has salt-and-pepper hair, the beginnings of a salt-and-pepper beard and he looks like he's waiting for a war to begin. His face looks like a rock, but it looks like a rock that's ready to open up its concealed mouth and bite a chunk out of someone's arm. As I skulk through his airspace I hear him talking. Spitting out every syllable like he hates them all individually, he snarls, “nine-teen-nine-ty-threeeeee,” and then he fades from earshot. I'm careful not to look at him, because I don't know what he'll do if he sees me looking at him. I cross the street to the right side of the center and I hit the bridge over the brook. Now I can hear the man yelling. He's raving like a monster and I don't understand anything he's saying. He sounds furious, though, and his hollering gives me a chill. I look over my shoulder because I'm afraid he might be yelling at me and I'm getting ready to run, but there he is at the gas station, stomping back and forth, waving his fist at something I can't see. I pick up the pace, though, because the sound of his voice is threatening. It's making me shake. Hoof it, Jack, hoof it. I want to put a lot of distance between myself and a dangerous person like that.

I hit the other side of the bridge and there's this fat old woman sitting on the little wall there. She's all filthy and she looks like she's been wearing those same mismatched clothes for at least ten years or so. She's just sitting there on her perch and she's rocking back and forth like she's in a trance. She's mumbling to herself and I can't hear what she's saying. I wonder if it makes sense? Probably not---anyway, I don't want to know.

She looks up at me with a big smile, but it isn't a happy smile that says she's glad to see me. It's a nervous smile that asks, you aren't going to hurt me, are you? And it makes me laugh at first that someone like her would be scared of a little puke like me, but then I remember that my face is this big, zig-zagging perversity and anyone would be afraid of it. Christ knows I am.

She has this long, greasy, black hair, parted down the middle. Half her teeth are missing and she looks like her nose has been smashed in and broken like ten times over. I walk away. I don't want to look at her. She's horrible. I don't know, though. I may be worse.

On and forward though I have no idea where I'm going or why I came this way to begin with. I walk past the darkened buildings. I don't want to look at them because I know, if I do, I'll see those doors and those windows form those howling, mourning faces again and those faces scare me. I keep my eyes on the ground and I don't look up. Everything around me is a big nightmare. I don't want to see anymore. I know I can't, but I wish I could just keep my eyes on the ground for the rest of my life---not see any of these horrible sights, not see my own face in a mirror, not see anything ever again.

Down Anderson Street and past Brookdale First Congregational Church. I try not to look but everything is magnetic and I'm forced to look. It's a little stretch of hot top on the left side of the church. There's a pair of cops working some guy over. I can only make out silhouettes against rear parking lot lights but I can see that the guy they're beating up is a very old man. He's short and slight and rumpled and the two towering cops are shaking him and taunting him. One knees the old man in the stomach. The old man falls down and pukes. One cop, I think, is looking at me, but it's hard to tell in the dark. I don't want him watching me if he is, so I keep right on walking.

There's a little dirt trail in back of Ebbet's Hardware Store that runs through a stretch of woods and comes out by the Mister Convenience Shopping Square. I take the trail because I don't want to hang around long enough for those two cops to start getting interested in me.

I wander down the little wooded path and I come out at the rear of the square. I see a bunch of people loitering around the back of the building furthest from me. I can almost hear them. The callous scrape of their coarse voices. The shadows make them almost invisible, but I can see them moving around and I can make out the orange pinpoints of their lit cigarettes.

I steer the hell clear of those people and I come out to the front of the square. Mister Convenience is another graveyard. All the light, even the the lamps in the parking lot, gone. Squeezed out. Strangled into darkness.

Across the street I see Callie's Truckstop and Dunkin Donuts, both open because they never close. I cross the street and ten I decide to avoid them both. I can't go into either place because of my face. I'm not fit to dwell with humans. I hit the bike trails in the woods  in back of those places, instead. I pass Kallie's. Then I'm passing Dunkin's and I no longer want to be on the trail. Up ahead I see them, fighting and rolling and yelling and flailing and kicking the shit out of each other. They're a bunch of rough, mean kids, or I think they're kids. I don't know. As I draw closer to them I can hear them, their bodies bashing together, and so are their voices as they tangle.

“UUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHGAWDAMNUUUUUUUUUUUH!!!!!!”

“YUHMUTHUHFUHKKUHUMGONNUHKIKYURASS,UUUUUUUHHHHHH!!!!!!”

“YUHDICK! YUHFUKKINSCREWINME, YUHDICK!!!!!!!!!!”

“UUUUUWWWWALLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUULLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!”

It's scaring me bad, now, because the closer I get to them the less and less human they sound. Are they even people, or are they something lower? Is there anything lower than people? Fuck this. Cut back through the woods, over to the back of Dunkin Donuts. I don't want to get any closer to this shit, I'm sure of it. I head through the stretch of woods and stumble over a rock, almost falling on my face. I bounce back and I keep going, faster, in case those creeps on the trail heard me. I have to step over a brook to get to the Dunkin's parking lot and it's an easy step, but I go off balance and splash my foot down in the muck. I pull up a little and SPLOP! Out comes my dirty, wet foot. Here it is, though, the back parking lot, and I'm limping with disgust into it, but I can't say I have any surprise in me. I hit the front lot and continue onto the street and then some guy with a skull tattooed on his arm staggers at me. “Heyy,” he calls, “hey, manh, yoo!” I keep limping forward. “Hey! You godda dollah faha cuppa cawfee? Hey! I bikedid alla way from fuggin' Vermon'! Hey! Muthuhfuckuh! Hey!”

Up the road on my wet, shitty foot and his shouts recede. I walk five minutes. Ten minutes. It's like the Boston Marathon with a shoe full of shit. Squish, squish, squishing up the road.

A pickup truck, a 4x4, coasts by me. As it passes, some freakoid leans out the window, “hey, faggot!” And douses me in the face with beer. The truck barrels off and I try to readjust my vision. This is what they do to you when you're a leper, a mutant, a killer, like me. This is the Real-ass world they try to teach you to brave in school. Eat or be eaten.

Good evening, Johnny-Jack, welcome to the fruition of the American Fucking Dream. This is it, the big, wide world in all its glory, only it loosened its tie and tore away its pretty Halloween Mask. Now here it is, leering at you, dead honest, maggots and all. Our happy, kickass, go-for-it, party-hardy world, minus the beautiful TV commercial facial job. Minus the glitzy, bouncy aerobics workout soundtrack. Minus the designer clothes. Naked, truthful, this is what we're left with when everyone gives up. This is the world that disassembles itself in the bathroom mirror when nobody's looking.

Hello, Ugly.

Only it hasn't got a sense of humor, it isn't cute and it isn't being friendly with you. Them only time it laughs is after it shows you what it's really about. When it pisses in your face.

The wonderful world revealed its face to me in the dark and it's an awful sight. It's a machine that chews flesh. I saw its teeth and halleluja, chillun, they were ravenous, gnashing, like a giant mouth full of piledrivers. This is the face I see when all Norman Rockwell's descendents go to bed at night with their warm milk and their candy-striped nightcaps. This is what I see when no one's around to keep up appearances.

Off I slog up the darkened street and under the overpass. I know a mile or so up the highway the Mall is closed and everyone at the Hobby Shoppe has gone home. It's abandoned. Barren. The whole damned mall, empty and yawning up at the sky like a cancerous crater.

I hear the “buh-doomp, buh-doomp” of cars on the overpass above me. It's like being in a cavern. It's like everyone and everything has been obliterated and I'm alone here on a giant ball of waste. But I know the truth, now, and if this were an empty world I'd be better off, but it's not and I'm not, it's night, it's unmasking time and this is all bad, sick, terrifying.

There's an unreal light up ahead, wedged in a comfortable nest of pines. It's Jourgenson's, which is open late. It may as well be open forever, because it isn't ten or eleven or even thirteen o'clock. It's far later than that. It's Forever O'Clock, and the Forever-Meter says to me, it's all over, Johnny-Jack, it's all over, because this is the long night, Planet Earth is fed up with maintaining its niceties and that's all, Chief, no more lost weekends. No more Matthews House with the ultra-green grass. No more Franconia Notch, no more echoes. No more comfort. The sun is never going to come up again.

And still I'm walking. Approaching Jourgenson's. But is it going to be stripped of all its garish, fast-food, quick-ratburger-after-the-game friendliness and homeyness? I see the red-and-white neon glare, but it's stil obscured by that wall of pine trees. I'm heading towards it and I know now that it's the last place in the whole fetid world that I want to go near. But can feel the place screaming for me. I can't stop, oh, Christ, I would if I could. I want to turn around and run, but it's like a magnet. I can tell there's something at this horrible place I'm supposed to see, but I have no idea what it could be. I don't want to go. I can't help it, though, and I can't stop myself. It's sucking me in against my will. I need to stop, to leave, because whatever's drawing me to that filthy neon pit will be too much, too terrible, like one of Zoe's paintings come to life, oh, God, now I understand everything she ever did, how did she ever cope with what she saw, oh, God, get me out of here, I can't handle it. Too ugly. Too ugly. Take this cup from my lips, O Lord, because I can tell that whatever I see here will end my world. I'm scared, so scared, oh, God, don't bring me here, take me anywhere else. I can't take what you're about to show me, take it away, I know I will be destroyed by this.

And the gentle, goading voice of The Lord touched Johnny-Jack and said, go, son, go. It's your destiny.

No, no, no, I can't, my feet still moving forward.

Yes, yes, says The Lord, whispering comfort into the heater of my head and so I move on, I move on, and yea, children, the hands of the angels lay on Jackie's shoulders and they pushed him along, and they bestowed upon him heaven's comfort in this dark, evil world, and yes, bear witness to the miracle of miracles, for te Heavenly Host played bucket brigade and they pushed little Johnny-Jack Pettet into the woods beside the Burger Brothel and they carried him to the light, bretheren and sisteren, to the edge of the forest.

No, I cry, no, I can't take it, I can't take it, please, no, pleeeeeaaaaaassse.................

And the hands of the Heavenly Host encircled little Jackie in kindness and they showed him the awful sight beyond the trees and Jackie's eyes would not close and he opened his mouth to scream but only silence came out. And all the time the hands caressed little Jackie and reassured him in soft whispers, no, no, little Jackie, you don't have to scream and run, nothing here will hurt you, we're showing you a picture, we're just letting you see something and it won't hurt you at all.

AND JACKIE WAS WITNESS TO THE AWFUL VISION OF BROOKDALE'S PRIDE LAYING WASTE TO THE WAILING NEON SHRINE OF PUKE. THEY WERE OUTSIDE IN THEIR BROOKDALE HIGH CEREMONIAL COLORS, RAMPAGING AROUND THE ROWS OF PICKUP TRUCKS AND TRANS AMS THAT WERE THEIR MANIFEST DESTINY.

AND THE VOICES OF THE HEAVENLY HOST SAID, SEE, JACKIE, SEE, THERE ARE YOUR ENEMIES. NOW, PAY ATTENTION, THEY SAID. THERE IS BRYAN AND BILL, THERE IS MARK AND ERIC, THERE IS CHARLIE, AMY, OH, LOOK! THERE IS CHERYL AND JACKIE SAID no, no, don't make me look, BUT THE LORD IN HIS WISDOM AND POWER SHOWED JACKIE EVERYTHING.

AND THE FLESHEATERS MADE MUCH NOISE, DANGLING OFF THE RESTAURANT DOORS AND JACKIE FELT THE POWER OF THEIR CRUELTY--”clit-TORIS!!!!” SCREAMED CHARLIE GOSSLING AND ALL HIS FRIENDS LAUGHED AND AMY SMITH CRIED OUT, “OH, YOU'RE BOGUS” BUT SHE WAS LAUGHING TOO.

No, no, don't show me, WHIMPERED JACKIE AS HE SHRUNK BACK, BUT THE LORD IN HIS WISDOM HELD JACKIE FAST AND MADE HIM SEE. JACKIE PITIED THE PEOPLE WHO WORKED AT JOURGENSON'S, THINKING ABOUT HOW THESE ANIMALS WOULD TREAT THOSE OF THEM WHO WEREN'T YOUNG TURKS----THE THINGS THEY MIGHT SAY TO THEM, THE NAMES THEY MIGHT CALL THEM. THESE BROOKDALE HEROES AND HEROINES WITH THEIR FAITH IN THE MARCHING BOOT. JACKIE ENVISIONED MESSY TABLES, UNSCREWED PEPPER SHAKERS. Noooooo, HE CRIED, no more, no more, BUT YES, SAID THE ANGELS OF GOD AND THEY HELD JACKIE FAST.

AND THEN THE WORLD FELL IN ON ITSELF BECAUSE JACKIE SAW BRYAN AND CHERYL, THE TWO WHO GLOWED TOGETHER BENEATH THAT NEON RATBURGER ROOF. JACKIE LOOKED FOR THE LORD WOULD NOT LET HIM TURN AWAY AND JACKIE SAW THAT THE TWO WERE NOT GLOWING, THEY WERE NOT AS HE HAD SEEN THEM BEFORE, NOT TOUCHING, NOT HOLDING HANDS, THEY WERE ANGRY, NOW THEY WERE HAVING WORDS AND THE OTHERS STOPPED FROM THEIR REVELRIES AND WATCHED BRYAN AND CHERYL IN SILENCE WHILE JACKIE KNELT, TRANSFIXED IN THE WOODS AND BORE WITNESS. HE FELT TERROR, WATCHING PIECES OF THE WORLD FALL AWAY AND NOW HE COULD HEAR EVERY WORD THEY SAID. HE TRIED TO SHUT IT OUT. THE LORD IN HIS WISDOM AND POWER DIDN'T LET HIM.

CHERYL WAS WALKING AWAY FROM BRYAN AND BRYAN WAS SHOUTING, SHOUTING “COME BACK HERE, BITCH! COME BACK HERE! GET IN THE CAR!”

CHERYL STANDING AWAY FROM HIM, ARMS STRAIGHT DOWN AT HER SIDES, FISTS LIKE LITTLE BALLS OF CLENCHED, ANGRY BONE, 'NO, BRYAN, WE'RE THROUGH, I'VE HAD IT WITH YOU,” AND SHE DIDN'T GET TO FINISH HER SENTENCE BECAUSE THEN BRYAN WAS YELLING AT HER.

POINTING AT THE PASSENGER SIDE OF THE TRANS AM, “SIT DOWN IN THE CAR GODDAMN IT! I'M NOT GONNA TELL YOU AGAIN, BITCH!”

“NO! NO!” CHERYL SCREAMED AND HER FACE WAS LIKE AN ANGRY FROG'S, PULLED TIGHT ACROSS, POP-EYED, WIDE-MOUTHED, AND THEN JACKIE SAW THAT HER FACE WAS SUNBURN RED AND SHE WAS CRYING. “I'm not getting in the fucking CAR with you, Bryan! I'm sick of the way you treat people, I'm sick of the way you TALK to people! Nobody's your furniture and I'm--”

AND AGAIN JACKIE SAW THAT BRYAN WOULD NOT LET CHERYL TALK AND INSIDE JACKIE SHOOK AND BURNED FOR HE KNEW WHAT HAVING SOMEONE BIGGER AND STRONGER THAN YOU FORCE YOUR MOUTH SHUT WAS LIKE. “YOU WHORE!” BRYAN YELLED. “I'M GETTING IN THIS FUCKING CAR RIGHT NOW, YOU FUCKIN' BITCH, DON'T YOU EVER CALL ME AGAIN, DON'T YOU EVER SHOW UP AT MY DOOR, THERE'S PLENTY MORE WHERE YOU COME FROM,” AND CHERYL WHIMPERED, CHILDREN, AND SHE RAN TO HER BRYAN. JACKIE SAW AND HE WAS SORE AFRAID AND CHERYL CLUNG TO HER BRYAN LIKE HE WAS THE HOLINESS OF LIFE MADE HUMAN AND LO, JACKIE HEARD HER CRYING TO HIM IN A MEEK LITTLE VOICE, “i love you, Bryan, i'm sorry, don't leave me, I love you.” AND SHE PRESSED HERSELF TIGHT TO HIM AND HIS ROUGH HAND CAME DOWN AND SQUEEZED HER BUNS GENTLY, LIKE A TENDER, COMPASSIONATE LOVER. LIKE A MASTER WHO KNOWS THE VALUE OF HIS PROPERTY.

LIKE AN OWNER.

THE BROOKDALE FLESHEATERS SAW THE REUNION, CHERYL'S RECAPTURE AND IT WAS GOOD, CHILDREN. THEY HOWLED THEIR OBSCENE APPROVAL INTO THE NIGHT.

LITTLE JACKIE COWERED IN THE PINES AND WEPT IN HORROR AND PITY AND THE HANDS OF THE HEAVENLY HOST STROKED HIS SAD LITTLE PUPPY DOG HEAD. THE SOUND WENT OUT WITH THOSE ANIMAL HOWLS AND THE NEON RATBURGER TRANS AM HELL IMPLODED INTO DARKNESS AND SILENCE AND THE CHOIRS OF HEAVEN WHISPERED INTO JACK'S EAR, NOW YOU SEE, THE TOLD HIM, NOW YOU UNDERSTAND.

I know, wept Jackie, I know, thank you.

THE HEAVENLY HOST WHISPERED AND CARESSED LITTLE JACKIE'S HEAVING BONES. SOME GET LOST, THEY TOLD HIM. ENSLAVED.

AND JACKIE HEARD THE VOICE OF THE MAD ANGEL HANNIBAL SNEER IN HIS LEFT EAR, THEY'RE ALL NAMED BIFF.

JACKIE, EXALTING THE GLORY OF THE LORD, I KNOW. Thank you.

SOMETIMES, WHISPERED THE ANGELS, THERE ARE THOSE WHO ARE GOOD AND SWEET, BUT THEY GET LOST.

Damaged, HELPED JACKIE.

YES, WHISPERED THE ANGELS, YES, JACKIE. AND SOMETIMES WE MUST STAND UP AND HELP THESE POOR, LOST PEOPLE, NO MATTER HOW HARD IT MAY BE. AND WE HAVE TO HELP THEM SEE BEYOND THEIR BONDAGE.

I'm afraid, JACKIE TOLD THE ANGELS.

WE KNOW, THE SAID, AND KEPT STROKING HIS SAD, SCARED HEAD. BUT YOU UNDERSTAND. YOU UNDERSTAND.

Yes, CRIED JACKIE IN HIS GRATITUDE, I understand. Thank you.

EVERYTHING WILL BE GOOD AND FINE, JACKIE, THEY SAID.

I know, CRIED JACKIE. Thank you. Thank you.

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

I've been scoping the Hobby Shoppe for three days. Finally, a day for me rolls around. No Barry. No Greg. Time to go shopping.

Mel is there, presiding by proxy over Barry's conquered Hobby Nation. “Jack! Jesus Christ! It's been a while!”

“Yeah,” being friendly because I have to, “hi.”

“You don't look very well, Jack. You look very gaunt. Have you been sick?”

'Yeah, I've been sick. I've been very gaunt.”

“No, seriously, Jack,” putting on is concerned face. Sweet, congenial, good on appearance, Such a Mel.

“No, seriously, I have been sick. Sick with the Flu.”

“Sorry to hear that, Jack,” looking sympathetic to fit the situation.

“Yeah, it was hell,” I tell him, “I was puking like a mad thing.”

“Well,” he changes tone and I get the idea he doesn't want to follow that line of conversation, “what can I do you for?”

“Nothing, really, I was just popping in to say, 'hi'.”

“Well, it's good to see you, Jack.”

“Yeah, uh, actually, as long as I'm here, let me grab a couple things.” And off I wander through the store. I scan the paint section and I grab a couple of Testor's paints up, just for the sake of appearance. Olive drab and brick red. Good choices. Then I hit another aisle and pick up the X-Acto Knife and the drafting compass. I double back and grab a cheapo pack of manilla folders, just in case he starts asking questions.

I drop the whole mess of it beside the cash register. Mel rings it all up. “Talk to Greg lately?” He asks. What, and Mel DOESN'T?

“No, he and I don't get along too well these days.”

“I'm sorry to hear that. Fourteen-fifty, Jack.”

“Wait a sec. You deducted something.”

“Ssshhhh.” winking like a sly compatriot. “I'm using your employee discount.”

I laugh at the proper, acceptable level in accordance with the situation. “Thanks, Mel,” but I mean it. I only have seventeen bucks on me.

He rings me in and hands me my change. “Like a bag, sir?”

“Sure,” and he pulls out a paper bag and opens it up.

“So,” loading the folders in first, “graduating next week, eh, Jack?”

“Yeah,” I tell him. Mel's little world is so fragile. Why fuck it up with the truth?

“That's great! I loved my graduation. My brother threw this huge kegger and....”

“Yeah, Mel? I can't really afford to hang around. I've got a lot of business to take care of.”

“Oh! Sorry!” Ever amiable. “Here you go,” handing me the bag.

“Thanks, Mel,” throwing him a playful salute. “Gotta boogie! See you in the funny papers.”

“Jack!”

Trying to exit, “yeah?”

“What's wrong with your face?”

“Huh?”

“Are those bruises on your face?”

“Bruises? No...”

“They look like bruises, Jack.”

“No, Mel,” leaving. Smiling, “that's just gaunt. Y'know....from the Flu.”

Copyright 1990 C.F. Roberts/2015 Molotov Editions