At 4:00 p.m. a 196-pound male arrived in Palm Springs. He had driven straight through from Los Angeles, foregoing even his normal desire to stop at "Casino Eat," an old rambling place just North of the City, that had long been closed down. Everytime he drove by it, he wanted to stop, poke, and where he had intended to prowl around and take some notes.
The man had been totally blank when he drove, except for the usual
occasional cursing at his fellow motorists, which came not so
much from any real anger, as from habit. For the most part, he
was simply empty.
For most of his life, the man had been subject to crippling attacks of depression complicated by agoraphobia (this is what the doctors said). Despite the medication, the attacks did not diminish. Sometimes it was so bad he was unable to get a full breath. Everything about hemmed him in, pushed and pulled at him. Even his one respite--the TV--was no longer helpful. It was full of--real people. Hideous, monstrous creatures. Julia Child. Jack LaLane. Arsenio Hall. Countless horrid movie personages on this show or that, babbling about their various "projects." It was all too hideous. They were so terrible he could no longer look at people's faces on the screen--they were all so insistent on....something.
Almost immediately upon leaving the boundries of Los Angeles, the claustrophobia began to lift, supporting the man's theory that it was all "psychological." Or that Los Angeles was indeed under the power of some grand demon, as his bible tract had told him. There was this theory that each city was actually under the power of a particular demon; this had been the heavenly doctrinal, and God--for some unfathomable reason allowed it. One day surely, like Sodom and Gomorrah, God would simply give his decree that allowed the city to be blown to fucking kingdom come. But until then, the demon reigned. Actually, the man cared not for theorizing, Biblical or psychological. All he knew was that he was in pain, and he wanted the cessation of that pain. He didn't care about saving the world. He just wanted to save himself.
On the way to Palm Springs, he had made up a little song:
"Oh happy Negro, Oh happy Negro, O how I love you, You happy Negro...."
He sang the song as he passed the town of Yucaipa, and recalled that once, during a trip here with his wife he had told her that Magic Johnson, the basketball star, owned the town. He had no idea why he had told her this--it was a total lie, of course...but he just did. Later when he told her he'd made it up she was furious with him. "How dare you do that!" she had spit furiously. Oh she could have a temper, this fat little one. Actually, though, she had a right to. She was after all, only 16, and she counted on him to impart to her the wisdom of the world, and here he'd gone and told her something that sounded LIKE truth, but was indeed a lie. Yes, this had beena sinful act.
Actually, it is not fair to call our hero a man, for indeed, he was not a man, though he was 43 years old. Yet he was not a man.
Once in Palm Springs, he immediately turned the air conditioner on full blast. turned on all the TV's in the house to no sound, and then stripped naked. He examined his body in the bathroom mirror. It was curious, this body. He did not understand his 195-poundedness. He did not understand his whiteness, he, who as a teen had been "king of the suntans." He looked like a foreign object. Who, what, where, when why? The man had straightened his hair with a Negro substance called "Perma Strate," he had used it intermittently since he was 13 years old. On the box of the Perma STrate was a photo of a lovely Negro woman with a huge rocket of hair swooshing from her head. He admired the photo and wondered of his connection to the strange African Negro. The man had a pencil thin moustache, gained by carving out both the upper and lower halves of his regular moustache. With the slicked back hair, the moustache gave him the look of a 40's zoot suiter. A slicked back sharpie. His new face (fatter) moustache and hair made no sense on him, a Jew.
A series of bad things had happened to the man. He did not find this strange, for he knew that bad things often come in a series. This series had included: the loss of his wife, the loss of all his jobs, reputation, his arrest, a disease called Bell's Palsy which crippled the entire left side of his face, a 3 week long bout with a death-like walking pneumonia, and of course the accompanying depression which always came along with illness. Yet this series of bad things, unlike the last series, which had found him sitting in graveyards in Salzburg, Austria, did not result in he same kind of depression. Rather, this one produced in him a newfound disinterest in everything. Thus, the man's daily activities, aside from thinking --which he did constantly--consisted of: 1) watching the news and reading the paper 2) going to his job as a telemarketer for 4 hours a day 3) going to church on Sunday. Oh yes, and masturbating.
He passed a house with two chairs out on the front. Larry Ruiz--that's who used to live there, he recalled. Ruiz had been among the first Chicano families to invade the territory back in the fifties. They were quite well to do, actually. The family owned a series of hot dog stands around town which did quite well, that is, until several of the patrons died of the poisonous meats used in the dogs. Larry was rather a boring kid...a good companion for the house breaking which used to occupy their afternoons when school was out. It was so easy back then. No burglar alarms, no paranoia lurking in the wings. Just jam a screwdriver in between the bathroom window slats (all the houses had them then)---and bingo! you were in. What a high! What a terrific fucking high, being inside the houses... terrified---looking through the drawers, taking stuff that you didn’t' care about...most of it was worthless crap, cameras, record LP's,....and then there was the occasional treasure--the little box stuffed to the gills with--yes!--twenties and fifties, and eve a couple of one hundred dollar bills. Oh my God! He and the guys could go to afternoon movies and buy cigarettes (then 25 cents a pack) for years to come on this. His share, he stuffed inside the valves of his trumpet, a clever move he thought.
Ah, but that was long ago. Do the same thing today and blooey!--some old duffer was sure to blow your brains all over the floor with a shotgun. Houses were protected--and why not? Negroes had invaded the region, riding down Olympic Blvd., hordes of them...killers, one and all. They came in and they raided your sacred homes and wh en they were done they left a turd on the living room rug sometimes....just to say....this is what we think of you, white motherfuckers. Oh no, the world had changed. It wasn't the same place, that was all.
Wasn't he perfectly right then, to want to stay inside, in the dark, in the corner, in the blanket, in the bingo tree, with the doors locked and bolted. The gas chamber was outside, to be sure! Here, there could be no gas, no thunderclaps of farts let out in your face by old Jews, bending over accidentally as they stood to untie their shoes. Ah , the old Jews, how he loved them...how he adored their singing, their kvetching, their nachas, their schvitz bath, their cha cha cha cha cha cha chaaaaaaaaaaching on the bus and in the elevator. Those old Jews he'd once hated, now he longed to be in their company. Sometimes he'd go down to Fairfax and walk around, just to be around them, to soak them up into his skin.
On the corner of Fifth and Main, a man stood, preaching the Gospel. It was lunchtime. The man had a cup of water balanced upon his head. He had once been a truckdriver, a union man.
but now that was all over.
You fairy! You, union man. Come over here with your big balls! I'll show you a challah! Yeah, yeah--come on down, bubba. Let's go down to the pier, to see the fish with the bubble on his head.... the one you rescued years ago from the evil Edsel Ford Wong at the Chinese restaurant on the wrong sidef the tracks. The paper trip? Remember? Yeah, sure you do. The sneak in the back, the lesbian bitch. Her wimply husband.... remember? Yeah, yeahoooo. Oh god damn, give me a naked Jewish girl, right this second. That's all I ask.
Judy sat in her apartment twisting her phone cord. Untwisting it that is. She twisted and twisted and twisted, but she couldn't get the phone cord to straighten out. She twisted some more, but at the other end, as certain twists would go out of the cord, other newer twists would appear. Twist, twist twist, she went. The Twist Woman Of Fairfax---one of her friends ahd dubbed her. Milo was a creep; this was typical of him. Still, it made Judy feel bad. Actually, to be completely truthful, everything made Judy feel bad. She was a ball of suffering, of nerves, wracked with self doubt, shame, pity---all of it. Oh, she was a case, this one. The Twist Woman of Fairfax, indeed!
Judy lived alone, in an apartment building just South of the Farmer's market. She had lived in the buiding, which was occcupied primarily by elderly Jews, for seven years now. In that apartment, she lived, cooked, made love to an occasional man she'd drag home. In that apartment she'd continualy work on her story--the one in which she'd recalled her days as a stripper, the story she could never find an ending to, the story that louse Milo had told her that she would never finish, never finish because if she FINISHED it, she'd have to submit it, and if she SUBMITTED it, it might get rejected, and if she was REJECTEd, oh God--well, she coudln't stand to think of it. Judy couldn't stand being rejected. Of coure, that's exactly what had happened to her most of her life, she'd get rejected from this, she'd get rejected from that....it was all one big twist, and so she'd sit in the apartment and twist and twist and twist and twist, and still--the damn tangles would appear. Judy talked to her mother on the phone. Her mother lived in Palm Springs. "Oh come down, honey....come and spend the weekend," her mother had pleaded. Judy thought of it, but then decided no. She'd rather stay home and be alone than be with her mother.
But now, that's enough of Judy. Ju-dy Ju-dy Ju-de. Jew-dee. Ah, there it was! Jay-Dee. The little girl next door when the'd lived on the hill. So here's the story:
When I was just a little snuffer, maybe four or so, we lived in this big old house up in the Hollywood Hills. I don't remember it much, but I know lots of movie stars and people in the "business" used to live up there. I know it because my mom still reminds me of it to this day. Anyway, I had this little friend next door, a girl named Jay Jee. She was my little buddy. We used to play all day, out on the long brick front patio, cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers...all the usual stuff.
Anyway, one day, a kind of funny thing happend. Jay Jee came over to my house completely naked. I mean, we were only five or so, and her parents were probably the kind of parents that let their kind run around naked--I don't know. So there she was. And boy, was I in shock!"Mommy...mommy," I called. " Come quick!" My mother, a lovely dark women, appeared at the door with the Sunday paper in her hand. She seemed to see nothing strange in the scene.
"Look, mommy! " I cried. "Jay Jee has no penis! ....What happned to Jay Jee's penis?!" Poor Jay Jee. She didn 't seem to understand that her act of nakedness was causing me the most profound discomfort. My mother, in that soothing way of her, replied, matter of factly. "Oh, she probably got it cut off in a sword fight." Knowing that Jay Jee and I often played Robin Hood and other games like this, it was quite a good response. Anyhow, it seemed to satisfy me. Jay Jee, for her part, seemed quite removed from the inherent drama of the situation. That is, until her mother came out, rushed hurriedly over, picked her daughter up and began furiously to smack her bottom as she carried the poor thing home.
I guess I was wrong about those liberal parents. Anyhow, that afternoon, my lovely mother and I went for a walk, up by the dam. I think we were holding hands, I'm not sure. On the way, we saw a tarantula creeping along in the dirt and it scared me. But with my mother along, I was allright.
Everything was always allright with mother.
©harsh reality producitons, inc.
LINKS TO NOWHERE.......
BLEECHHHHH (throwing up now)
URGGGHHHH (diahrea)
NOSTRIL FETISH
POINTS OF SNOT
POINTS OF NIPPLES
SCROTUM BOMBERS OF YUCAIPA, CA
ARE YOU TIRED OF SEEING NEGROES ON TV?
