Night In The Lonesome October

Night In The Lonesome October, by Richard Laymon: I read all 346 pages, so that’s a win right there, especially for a novel published in this century. (Although for a novel published in 2001, this thing seems terribly dated. I guess it was published after the author’s death, so maybe he had this manuscript lying around a closet or basement collecting dust for 15 or 20 years, that might explain why it seems way behind the times, particularly when it comes to homosexuality, which is, of course, completely ordinary in our current day and age).

Anyway, the hero(?) of this psychological thriller/urban horror story is Ed Logan, a 20 year old college student who just got dumped by his girlfriend, and immediately sinks into depression, wallows in self-pity, tinkers with misogyny and, as some sort of DIY therapy, begins cruising the late night streets of what he supposed was his quiet, sleepy little college town, only to discover an underside darker than that of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, and which tempts the dark side of Ed himself, as he begins peeping into windows, groping sleeping girls, and fantasizing/contemplating the practicalities of rape. . .all the while maintaining a bland facade (although, in truth, it may not be a facade, as other than his willingness to indulge his sexual quirks, he’s a pretty dull character) which nonetheless somehow quickly manages to attract the attention of 3 gorgeous females (one jail bait age, one college age and one adult age).

While he’s juggling these 3 females, he also attracts the attention of a bisexual rapist (?!) in a donut shop (?!) who makes it quite clear to Ed that is he going to rape Ed and Ed’s new girlfriend (the college age one).

Listen, this is a great story if you like sexual perversion. If you don’t, then there’s not much here to keep your interest. The dialogue is horrendous, and the characters are as shallow as the kid’s end of a swimming pool.

Oh, and there’s the homosexual character, Kirkus, Ed’s classmate. Of course, he too, for some reason, is insanely attracted to Ed, and is maniacally desperate to be his lover. The Kirkus character is the main reason the book seems so dated. Kirkus would make even the most over-the-top 1950s pulp erotica swishy seem like a Westboro Baptist choir boy. He’s the most pathetic, perverted fruit I’ve encountered in mainstream genre fiction.

One other reason the book seems so dated is even though it is set on a contemporary college campus, the college life depicted seems like 1970s Erich Segal Love Story. . .albeit with the characters from The 120 Days Of Sodom. 

Anyway, the story is basically Ed sulking around town at night feeling sorry for himself, even after he bags his new college girlfriend (because she’s a bipolar wreck and even though she’s beautiful, hey, he did see on one of his midnight cruises this jail bait girl who is even hotter, and seems way cooler, as well as the nude adult woman he peeped on), while simultaneously trying to dodge the city’s clan of homeless cannibals (?!) and the bisexual rapist.

This is not supernatural horror, it’s the horror of the damaged mind. The review probably makes the book seem worse than it really is. The technical execution is poor, but the idea behind it is interesting enough to keep turning the pages. The world is populated with lonely, desperate, damaged souls, driven by desires they can, at best, barely control, and as the novel’s Grand Guignol S&M finale of erect penises and sopping vaginas makes clear, there isn’t a whole hell of a lot that separates the best of us from the worst of us.

He Fell In Love With A Nazi

It’s odd the things that can make an impression upon us. Odd? Maybe surprising. Things we wouldn’t expect to make an impression that do end up making an impression.

10, 12 years ago when my youngest son was still in middle school, he had a homework assignment. He had to watch a World War II documentary, and then write a 300 word essay about what he had learned.

Bro, you know how many fucking World War II documentaries there are on Amazon Prime? Is there a more overworked subject in the field of history than World War II? We know everything about anybody who even so much as ripped an audible fart from 1939-1945.

Which fucking documentary was my son gonna pick? Scrolling through all these titles, it was probably the same shit, anyways, so I suggested to him he just pick the first one that was less than an hour long. Why ruin the whole evening? So that’s how he picked *The Battle of Aachen.*

I couldn’t give a shit about the Battle of Aachen. A bunch of people killed each other. Like that hasn’t happened before or since. The documentary was one-sided. It was basically just a series of interviews with old American GIs. Skinny geezers in their faded uniforms reciting the same cliches about freedom, camaraderie, sacrifice, honor, country, like they were reading from the same American state historian’s script, or they’d all watched the same *Greatest Generation* documentary before they filmed their own documentary. They were all pretty satisfied with themselves.

With one exception.

Gerard Crabb.

I’ll never forget the name. His brief interview, no more than 7 or 8 minutes, not even an interview, really, the documentarian just asked him what he remembered most from Aachen, and that was it, at least for the finished film.

His answer made a lasting impression. Unforgettable. Toward the end of this paint-by-numbers World War II documentary came this astounding kernel of human experience. Buried under mountains of WWII drivel, the treasure of the human soul.

I’ll summarize as best as I recollect.  The brief quotations are, I believe, remembered word for word:

As the Battle of Aachen was winding down, Gerard Crabb’s unit or battalion or whatever was going door to door looking for Nazi stragglers. They had just cleared a rooming house, and their sergeant had told him they could take a break before moving on. Crabb told the sergeant he was going back into the rooming house to look for some souvenirs to loot. When he opened the door to a second floor room he was startled to see a German soldier, a Nazi, in reality just a kid. Crabb at this time was 20 years old, and he believed the Nazi was even younger than himself. 18, maybe even only 17 years old. The boy was in the process of stuffing his Nazi uniform under a mattress. The only clothing he wore was a pair of dirty underpants.

Crabb and the Nazi boy stared at each other. Crabb knew he had a Nazi that he had to take into custody to be transported with the other detainees to a prisoner of war camp. ‘Put your uniform back on, you’re coming with me,’ he said in English.

It was obvious the Nazi boy didn’t understand. As he thought about what he should do next, he continued looking at the Nazi youth in his dirty underpants. He was hungry-looking skinny, blonde hair, blue eyes. Crabb said he thought he was three or four inches taller than the Nazi boy. He said he’d never felt so strong in his life as he did when he stood there looking at the boy. This occurred in a matter of seconds, Crabb said. And in even less time than those mere seconds, and less than the couple of seconds it took for the Nazi boy to take off his dirty underpants and stand naked before him, Crabb, for the first time, understood he was a living being in an impossible to comprehend state of existence. Crabb had, he believed, killed Nazis from a distance. And he had seen some of his own fellow GIs die. But it wasn’t until he was undressing himself in front of the Nazi boy that Crabb understood the awful wonder of life.

After Crabb undressed, the Nazi boy haltingly moved closer, then wrapped his arms around Crabb and rested his head against Crabb’s chest. They moved to the bed. They kissed and groped each other in, in Crabb’s words, ‘the fashion a normal boy and girl would.’ And then he said they 'made love.'

Crabb said that in less than a half an hour he was dressed and back with his fellow American soldiers. Given the era and circumstances he found himself in, he felt he had no other choice than to return to his army. He did not turn the Nazi boy in.

Crabb said he has never thought of himself as ‘queer,’ that later in life he was married twice and he had three children. He also had a ‘few one night stands with women.’ But he said though he had many moments of great personal joy, every day was a sad day after the day that he left the Nazi boy in a rooming house in Aachen. 'Of course, I have wondered and wondered about him. Life is tears, I would wipe all his away, if I could.'

Crabb said he understood how and why his fellow soldiers felt they had won something, and how they were able to participate in the national pride of War victory, but he personally never felt like he had won anything. At the most basic level of human existence, Crabb felt he and his Nazi boy had both been victims of the war and he often wondered how much human beauty had been choked out by mankind’s collective struggles.

As soon as Crabb’s segment of the documentary ended, I said to my son:

“Damn! I did not see that coming!“

“Right?” he said.

In my son’s essay, he wrote that he learned that in historical events too much emphasis is placed on national and political outcomes, and whether they were positive or beneficial, and not enough to the literally millions of individual lives that were impacted, and that it would be impossible to accurately assess the good and the bad outcomes to the point one could say any historical event was truly positive or negative. Only God could know such a thing. He got a B+.

The Bass Player's Existential Crisis

A couple days ago, a few days ago, I don’t know, not too long ago, I wrote about The Critic And The Crow. And I mentioned in that entry that I worked at Kinko’s. That’s not true. I worked at a copy shop but it wasn’t Kinko’s. But I couldn’t remember the name of the place, so I just said Kinko’s, I figured what difference does it make?

Then, like yesterday, or maybe the day before, I was watching some porn and, BOOM, right while I was watching a couple of grannies eat each other, for some reason the name of the copy shop POPPED right into my mind! Crazy, right?

Albert’s.

Albert’s Copying.

I worked at Albert’s.

Right down there on Liberty Street in Ann Arbor. Right down the street from the Michigan Theater. Late 1980s, maybe 1990 or 1991. Who the fuck knows? Don’t worry about it.

Like I said in The Critic And The Crow, I worked at the copy shop with The Critic, four members of a rock ‘n’ roll band, and one of the band’s girlfriends.

So when it came to me, when I was watching two old broads lick each other, when that Albert’s name popped into my mind, I stopped and thought for a minute. I thought, you know, Albert’s wasn’t a bad place to work. It really wasn’t. And as I thought about Albert’s a little bit more, certain moments were recalled. More than memories.  Fragments of various moments that tell a story. Almost a re-living. A re-experiencing. Episodic events centered on the rock band’s bass player.


THE STORY:
Minna was a fat girl with a fat crush on The Bass Player. She would come into Albert’s on an almost daily basis, using the self-serve machines to print two or three copies. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was just copying a blank page. Then she would linger around hoping to gain The Bass Player’s attention. Mostly The Bass Player ignored her. But he would say ‘hey, what’s up?’ just often enough to string her along and *borrow* ten bucks from her every now and then.

Everybody who worked at Albert’s teased The Bass Player about Minna the fat girl. Minnabago, we called her. But The Bass Player put up with it, a small price to pay, I assumed, for ten dollars here and ten dollars there.

The Bass Player insisted several times he never saw Minnabago outside the copy shop, or that he had any type of relationship with her other than as a customer at Albert's.

One day I went to Briarwood Mall. They had a Radio Shack.  I wanted to buy a shortwave radio so I could listen to Bobby Fischer‘s broadcasts from the Philippines.  After concluding my purchase, I headed out.  To exit the mall you had to walk through the food court and as I was walking through the clusters of tables of slobs eating Sbarro pizza and Olga's gyros, what do I see?

There were The Bass Player and Minnabago sharing an Orange Julius.  Through the same straw.  A truly grotesque sight.  I'm sure a look of disgust crossed my face.  I saw them, and they saw me.  I didn't say hello, or nod, and neither did they.  I kept walking, and they kept slurping.

At my next shift at Albert's, there was The Bass Player.  The Bass Player who had always acted so cool and aloof, as if nothing could ever perturb his disaffected being.  I hadn't even punched my card in the time clock before he started frantically begging:

"Man, please, please, DON'T tell anyone about me and Minna!  PLEASE!  You're not gonna tell, are ya?  Are you gonna tell?  PLEASE don't tell!"

I just laughed.  

"Relax, dude.  Why would I want to tell anyone you have a fat girlfriend?  Why would I go out of my way to tell some people I barely know that a person I barely know is in love with a fat girl?"

"I'm NOT in LOVE with her!"

"All right!  Relax already!"

"So you're not gonna tell?"  

The arrogance of others.  The arrogance of so many others.  They think their lives mean so much to the other people they pass by in life.  And as if their fabricated selves were so valuable.  It's all nothing.  Everything is nothing.

Well, anyway, as far as I know, this is the first time it has been made public The Bass Player had a fat girlfriend.  

Too Late For Tears

If any film confirms the Apostle Paul's observation the love of money is the root of all evil, it's certainly the 1949 film noir Too Late For Tears.

Jane (Lizabeth Scott) and her husband Alan (Arthur Kennedy) seem like an ordinary couple. . .for about the first one minute of this crazy tale of greed.  Then, in Satan Ex Machina fashion, a bag containing $60000 is thrown into their car.  The bag of dollars is explained later, and, like most of the plot, if thought about long enough, seems pretty goofy, but you gotta go with it, because it allows Lizabeth Scott to convincingly play the coldest, most hard-hearted money lover ever on film.  

Anyway, Alan insists on turning the money over to the authorities, but Jane becomes obsessed with keeping it, seeing it as her ticket to a life of luxury she has long craved (hence Satan Ex Machina).  As she tells her husband, even though she has never been poor, but has been comfortably *middle class* her entire life, she has always been envious of people who have more.  She wants the good things in life, without them, life is just a great big boring bummer. Jane's money lust leads her down an increasingly sinister and sloppily planned path, entangling her with the greasy Danny (Dan Duryea), an alcoholic small-timer with claims to the money.  Dumb Danny badly underestimates his ability to control the laser-focused Jane.

Like I said, the plot is certainly not air-tight, and like a lot of film noir, the bodies start to pile up (along with the unnecessary sub-plots).

But the film holds your attention because of Lizabeth Scott's performance.  Her Jane's morals are as bankrupt as her pocketbook, and her monstrous greed and determination to have the fine things in life make her one of the most appalling of all femme fatales.

Scott was a staple in 1940s and 1950s film noir, but she was never one of my favorites. She's one of those actresses who is more *handsome* than beautiful.  And with her *husky* voice, I always found her too masculine (which may have benefited her in her personal life, as she was involved in a notorious lesbian scandal in the 1950s).  

In any event, Scott plays Jane with a cool, calculating demeanor that gradually unravels as her greed consumes her. Scott’s Jane is not just a manipulator of men but an entirely self-serving heartless bitch willing to eliminate anyone standing in the way of her bag of money. 

The only other cast member worth noting is Dan Duryea.  Well-known for playing sleazy criminals, his Danny is one of his more memorable. Initially appearing as the film’s villain, Danny is no match for the ruthless Jane.  Weak, alcoholic, and with a shred of his conscience still left, he ultimately becomes a pawn in Jane’s ruthless scheme.  In one of their early scenes together, Danny manipulates Jane into implied-but-not-shown sex.  If the film were being remade today, by the conclusion we would have the weak Danny nude and crawling to lick the dominant Jane's high heels. 

Too Late For Tears, driven by Lizabeth Scott's portrayal of an amoral money-hungry monster, is an almost top-tier film noir, and is now showing in a very grainy print on Tubi. 

Close Encounters, Conclusion

“Let’s get out of here,” I say to Siegfried.

“I was thinking the same,” he says. “You wanna go to the titty bar?”

“Good idea. Those girls are a little more sporting.”

“Let me hit the head and take a piss, first.”

I stand there, waiting for Sig. More than a few people are staring at me with a look of contempt. I feel tired and on edge.

It’s never far from mind. That thought. That knowledge. That knowledge of how far you are from Christ. Of how far you miss the mark. In the end, you’re just tired of yourself. The real horror of Hell: You’re left as you are. None of this corruptible putting on incorruptible. You're left as the sorry sack of shit you are. That's got to be the worst of Hell.

I see that Martian I’d Like to Fuck heading my way, still looking angry.

“Do you think it’s funny?” she barks.

Name badge: *Judora.*

I don’t have the energy to ask: *do I think what is funny?*

“We’ve seen you and the other one, before,” she says. “You’re interfering!”

I don’t have the energy to ask: *interfering with what?*

She’s angry, this one is. Well, who the Hell is she, to be angry with me? It don’t matter what I’ve done, or what I haven’t done. . .people got some God damn nerve, being angry. What gives this person the right? Her anger wires me right back up. That’s what people just don’t seem to get.

Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee.

I’m tired. I just wanted to sin, find some nutty star-gazer to play with. Is that too much to ask? I don’t have the energy to go through all these God damn charades. I don’t have the energy to sin enough to get to the sin I really want: some body to use.

I don’t know how most people follow through, I really don’t. At heart, I’m a quitter.

I stand there while this Judora jabbers in my face, as if she has the right to be angry with me. It’s all draining away. . .draining away.

I remember this other night. . .some other night. . .a different night. . .from a long time ago. . .I hadn’t know Siegfried too long. . .we ended up in a motel room with a beat-up looking white whore. *Honey,* she said her name was.

The idea was that we would both have her, simultaneously. When Siegfried first pitched the idea, I remember thinking it was a little too homosexual for my taste. But the more Siegfried talked about it, the more he really got into describing it, the more I realized he viewed this tag-team partnership as a double assault on whatever poor whore we could find, a double degradation, a double insult.

So we’re in this motel room with this ugly white whore, this *Honey.* She was so ugly, really, it was criminal. She was criminal. I could momentarily convince myself she deserved to be abused. That’s all it takes.

She stripped off her clothes and climbed on top of Sig like it was the nothing that it was. Now I’m supposed to get up there and join the fray, as they say.

That feeling of being old and tired, no energy, hit me. It was just too much of a hassle to climb up on that bed and go to work. That’s what it seemed like: like it would be work.

I sat on the edge of the other bed and turned on the TV.

“What are you doing?” Siegfried asked.

“Ain’tcha gonna fuck me?” the whore asked.

“You guys were made for each other,” I say. “It wouldn’t be right for me join in. I’d just spoil your fun.”

I remember that scene very well. The blue glow of the television illumining the dingy motel room. . .and a kind of dull strobing flash as I flipped from channel to channel. . .the creaking of the other bed. . . And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. . .and here were three living souls, gathered together in that shabby motel room. You think of the uncountable billions and billions and billions of drops of blood, sweat, sperm and tears that preceded and formed that squalid scene. . .all the efforts of Creation to produce this tiny corner of the universe where three strangers could amount to nothing. . .it must have all gone wrong so long ago, it was now impossible to stop our own dissolution.

I flipped from channel to channel, and then there he was.

Jimmy Swaggart, crying like a baby.

“I have sinned against You!” he cried to God.

I learned later he had been caught with a whore in a seedy motel. It’s a small world, indeed.

I’ve always liked Swaggart. He was a great storyteller. . .a really first-class orator. . .at his best, he was truly spell-binding. But he had a problem that most of them have: he was a phony, a fraud. No, he wasn’t phony about his faith in Christ. He seemed entirely genuine, in that. But he was a phony about himself.

I remember watching old Jimmy, watching him on that television in that sad little motel room while Siegfried and the whore *made love,* watching him and thinking:

If there could be one preacher, one preacher anywhere, who wouldn’t wait until they got caught with their pants down.

If there could be one preacher, whose very first words in his very first sermon in front of his very first congregation would be:

I’m a scumbag. You, sir, there in the second row. . .I confess I would love to be in bed with your wife and your daughter. . .but I pray to God in Jesus’ name I enter not into that temptation. . .Christ, I pray You save all of these set before me, save them all from me.

Then, later, when he got caught, at least nobody could call him a hypocrite. . .we’d be a little further along than we are now, where we all have to pretend.

I watched Swaggart’s sermon, then I climbed onto the other bed. . .

I remembered that night, that scene, as the Martian I’d Love to Fuck was lecturing me. She lectured me and lectured me. At the end, she had this to say:

“We’re at the door to a quantum leap in human consciousness. People like you are relics. You will be left behind. You have three or four years, at the most. And in the meantime, I advise you stop your harassment. Pay very careful attention to what happens to the other one. You could be next.”

And then she stalked away.

When Siegfried came back, he looked like he’d seen a ghost. The ghost that he was to become, I guess.

He wouldn’t say anything, until we got out to the parking lot.

It’s really a hard story to make sense of. Siegfried, of course, became a *believer* in alien abduction. He spent his remaining months studying everything he could on the phenomenon. He became particularly obsessed with a book written by a fellow named David Jacobs: *The Threat: Revealing The Secret Alien Agenda.*

Well, to be honest, I got a little tired of hearing about the alien plan to takeover the earth. I wasn’t a good friend to old Sig, as he lay dying. My visits became pretty infrequent, as the cancer ate away his life. The cancer that had started in his testicles. . .the cancer he first detected that night at the Troy Hilton Garden Inn, at the Alien Abduction conference, when he went to the restroom to take a piss. He told me in the parking lot that as soon he had unzipped his pants, he felt a terrible pain in both of his testicles, a sharp ache that shot up and seemed to go right into his stomach. He said he felt his own testicles, right there at the urinal, and to his horror he discovered they were covered with little hard lumps, like pieces of uncooked rice. . .both testicles, just like little sacks of uncooked rice.

Of course, he was in no mood to go to the titty bar. I had to go by myself. Sig drove back to Chelsea, Michigan where he lived, to the hospital there, the emergency room. I heard from him a couple days later. Both of his testicles had already been removed. Cancer. Cancer not only in the testicles, but in the stomach, on the spine, the lungs, cancer damn near everywhere. The doctors were more-than-a-little puzzled at how he could have been so sick, and not had any symptoms until that moment he unzipped himself at the Hilton Garden Inn.

And the doctors were pretty amazed Siegfried lasted almost two more years. It was pretty brutal, though. He really wasted away. . .

The last time I saw him, about a month before he died, he had lost so much weight, and was completely bald, he kind of looked like an alien. . .so skinny, and with a big bald head, and sunken eyes. . .

It’s really a hard story to make sense of. Right after we laughed at the big ugly beast, right after we told her to squeeze Sig’s testicles, right after the Martian I’d Love to Fuck warns me to pay attention to what would happen to Sig, his testicles turn to uncooked rice.

Siegfried believed to his dying day that the *aliens* zapped him right then and there, as he walking to the men’s room at the Troy Hilton, with some kind of invisible *ray,* some kind of radiation beam that instantly turned his insides into a cancer soup. And, really, you can’t blame him for thinking this. Though, as I said, to hear him preach on and on about *aliens* as he lay dying, became a little much.

Let the dead bury their dead, as Jesus once said, and I guess this can apply to aliens as well as humans. . .

When I was at the titty bar later that night, I got to thinking about Sig, trying to make sense of it. . .and I had this young woman, a young woman who called herself *Angelina,* help me. . .

I gave Angelina 25 dollars and she danced right in front of me. . .her vagina about 8 inches from eyeballs. . .and I looked real hard at it. . and I thought about what had happened to Siegfried. . .and I was staring at the vagina, that little hole from which we enter the world, and I realized:

We are all aliens here. . .we all come from some other dimension. . .sure, some guy ejaculates his semen into the hole, and the sperms travels to the egg and crashes into it like American Airlines Flight 11 hitting the North Tower, and life begins anew. . .sure. . .but staring at Angelina’s vagina, I was fully satisfied, once again, that life simply cannot be that mechanistic. . .

Staring at Angelina’s hole, I seemed to see all the untold billions and billions and billions and billions, the mega-billions, of nameless, faceless humanity, copulating. . .in a moment of time I saw the history of human sexual intercourse. . .an ultra hyper-speed slide-show of ruined hymens. . .after the last trickle of blood from the last torn hymen, I saw Eden, the perfection of Eden. . .a garden of greens and reds and yellows, blues and pinks, colors so pure, it was almost blinding to behold. . .and then materializing out of the earth, like a funnel cloud shooting upward, there appeared Adam. . .a substance from another dimension, deposited here by God. . Adam, the first alien.

I realized as I was staring deep into Angelina’s vagina, that even though we may have all dropped out of similar sad, tired holes, there is somewhere in all of us a little bit of Adam, who came from somewhere better. . .we truly are strangers and pilgrims here on the earth. . .waiting for the Mother Ship Jesus to take us home.

THE END

Close Encounters, Part II

“I’ve never seen a woman that big.”

She is big. A hulking female. Must be over six feet tall. And fat. 300 pounds? 350 pounds? Who knows? Find a fur coat large enough to fit her, and you could make another Big Foot movie. The Decline and Fall of Big Foot. . .now too lazy to catch fish or whatever they do. . .just sneaks out of the forest to dumpster dive at the nearest MegaBurger fast-food place. . .

You could paint her green and she could star in a trailer park SheHulk series. . .

Anyway, you get the idea. . .

She begins to trudge toward Siegfried. Frankenstein was more graceful than this poor creature.

“No. No. . .please, God. . .no,” Sig begs.

“Don’t pester God over your sin, my friend,” I say. “This beast is your just reward.”

"Me? What about you? You’re here for the same reason.”

“And what if I am? Perhaps God will be merciful, and allow me to learn from your painful example.”

Siegfried is unable to reply, for the creature has just lumbered to a halt within arm’s reach. She towers over the 5’ 8” Sig, and gazes down upon him through weepy eyes.

“It’s you! I can’t believe it! It’s really you!”

Sig just stands there.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?” I ask Siegfried.

“Huh?”

“Who’s your friend, here?”

Sig looks at the beast. His face crinkles in disgust. “This thing ain’t my friend!”

The female Big Foot doesn’t seem disheartened by Sig’s tactlessness. Well, she’s probably had a lifetime of rebuffs. You get used to it, I suppose.

You get used to it, and then you imagine aliens need you, for some grand purpose.

“They must have cleared your memory,” she says.

I look at her name badge: *Isrella.*

“Where do you know my friend from?” I ask her.

“We were together--” she starts.

“It don’t know me! Quit screwing around!” Siegfried protests.

“This happens to me all the time,” Isrella says to me. “They don’t think he’s ready to handle the truth yet, so they clear his memory.” She turns to Sig. “But I think it’s so cruel of them. All those questions you must have. All those unanswered questions that haunt you and haunt you. You’re haunted, aren’t you?”

“I am now,” Sig says.

I am now, Sig said. I think about those words, today. I am now. At that moment, he had no idea how true those words were. But my friend Joe Siegfried was never the same, after that night. Never the same. And he would be dead in less than two years.

I remember, right at that exact time, I looked at Sig and said:

“Give the lady a chance. Let’s hear her out.”

It wasn’t so much that I wanted to rag my friend Siegfried. . .I really wanted to hear Big Foot’s story. . .because I knew it would be stupid. . .stupid, but amusing. . .something we could laugh about for years to come. “Hey, remember that huge ugly beast at the alien thing a few years ago, when she said she knew you from blah, blah, blah.” “Ha ha ha ha ha ha.”

What if? What if I hadn’t said “Give the lady a chance?” What if we had just brushed her off, went about our business of wooing abductees? Would old Sig still be alive today? Siegfried believed he would. He believed that night, the night at the Abduction conference at the Troy Hilton Garden Inn, was the night he died.

So I said “give the lady a chance, let’s hear her out.”

And she told us a pretty stupid story, all right.

She told us her and Sig and a couple other people were in some room on a space ship, undergoing medical procedures administered by beings she called “the bugs.” She described them as the typical *grays* everybody has heard about. . .big heads, oval black eyes, skinny little bodies. . .but they made strange humming and buzzing noises. . .insect noises. She said these medical procedures they underwent featured only minor discomfort, but they were conscious during the procedures, and the procedures were very disturbing to watch. . .

She said she watched these *bugs* remove Siegfried’s testicles. . .

A pretty stupid story, and we did laugh about it. Right then and there. We laughed out loud at Big Foot’s idiotic tale. We laughed so long and so hard at this ugly woman’s delusion, she started to cry. . .and that made it all the more funny.

By now, our little group had become something of a spectacle. . .people were staring, edging closer, straining to listen, trying to figure out what all the commotion was about. I noticed one woman, in particular. Very nice-looking, a fit fat-free body, long slender legs, early thirties. There’s a milf, for you, I thought. . .a Martian I’d Love to Fuck. But she had a very angry look on her face. Maybe she was Big Foot’s friend? That happens a lot, you ever notice? A nice-looking woman has a really ugly friend. These are pseudo-lesbian sado-masochistic relationships. . .very unhealthy, very unhealthy.

After I finally stopped laughing, there was Isrella, still crying.

Gee, I suddenly felt old and tired, standing there, looking at her crying. Mischief can get out of hand, sometimes. Things get carried a little too far, someone ends up crying.

Well, let’s be truthful, here. It’s a little annoying that a grown-up will still cry. A normal person should become desensitized to emotional pain or whatever you want to call it after living a certain number of years, say, twelve or thirteen. Why, if you stopped and thought about it, it was downright arrogant of Isrella to be crying. . .as if she were so much more delicate and sensitive than the average human being. This revelation energized me.

“Look, lady, quit crying. I am sure you were on a flying saucer or whatever. You just mistook my friend here for some extraterrestrial eunuch. But don’t take my word for it, convince yourself, ease your mind. . .put your hand down his pants and give his testicles a squeeze. . .then you can move on and look for your long lost alien eunuch somewhere else.”

That puts a stop to her bawling. She’s got a stunned look on her fat wet face.

“Go on. Squeeze ‘em, already! It’ll do you some good.”

Siegfried sucks in his gut, sticks his thumbs under his belt, and pushes the front of his pants out an inch or two.

Isrella bursts into tears, again.

Remember that scene in Carrie? Where Sissy Spacek is up there on the stage, wearing her crown or whatever, and then the bucket of pig’s blood comes crashing down? And Sissy Spacek imagines everyone is laughing at her? Remember that? Well, just imagine that scene, but instead of gorgeous thin Sissy Spacek up there, imagine Big Foot is up there. Big Foot is up there crying, and imagines everyone is laughing. Imagine that, and that would be about what it was like when I told Isrella to squeeze Siegfried’s testicles.

Yeah, anyway, she stumbled and staggered and lumbered off, crying her eyes out.

We were free of her. . .but our cover was pretty much blown. There were enough gawkers around that word about us would soon spread.

But at that point, I no longer cared. I was sick of people, in general. When people disappoint you, let you down, a hostility can develop. If people won’t let you use them as objects, frustration, aggravation develops. This woman’s mere appearance was disappointing. And it appeared there were no attractive women who could be used as objects. At such a point, just the presence of the average person is an irritation.

[TO BE CONTINUED]

Close Encounters, Part I

My friend Siegfried, one of the four or five friends I've ever had, died on this date six or seven years ago.  Ever since, I've had the feeling I've been living on borrowed time, as Siegfried and I were born on the same day in the same hospital (old Flower Hospital in Toledo, OH), though we didn't meet until many years later.  I have written about Siegfried, or Sig as I called him, in my books Holy Days In The Sun and The Unbearable Ugliness Of Being.  Frankly, I have been hesitant to relate the story I am about type out as it is a bizarre tale, and even in the ugly and weird pages of The Unbearable Ugliness Of Being it would freakishly stand out.  But I am at the age and stage in life where shit don't matter, anymore.  I can say whatever, and nobody will be embarrassed or upset with me.  So here it is, in memoriam and without apology:

Close Encounters

My friend Siegfried and I were scanning the crowd in the reception suite at an Alien Abduction Conference at the Hilton Garden Inn in Troy, Michigan. Outside of Sex Addicts Anonymous meetings, you can’t find a better gathering of promiscuous women.

One caveat: you must be able to discern the *true believer* from the poser. You tend to get a lot of bored housewife-types at these events. . .they look at it as a kind of *role-playing* game. . .a night of EBErotic chat, and then safely back home to their Fantasy Football-playing husbands. . .don’t waste your time on these Target moms, you’ll never get a rectoscope up one of them.

How can a newbie easily spot a poser? Look at the *Hello My Name Is* sticker badge. . .if you see *Mary* or *Sarah* or *Emily* or *Beth* or any other ordinary name, move on. The hardcore true believer will have their new weird name on their sticker badge.

You see, many of the true believers are convinced they are *hybrids,* part-human, part-alien. . .and they will tell you that during one of their close encounters of the fourth kind, the aliens have revealed to them their true genetic nature, as well as their *real* name. So look for a woman with something like *Amalla* or *Channen* or *Rahnana* or *Zionara* on her name tag. As Siegfried pointed out to me once, many of these names are *Jew-sounding,* which supported his theory that most of the true believers were unfortunate victims of a Masonic-Zionist mind control sex slave conspiracy.

My own personal belief is the majority of these troubled souls were raped as children, and their abduction memories are merely the result of psychological displacement. . .but whatever the origin, it would seem that these women have had their vaginas and anuses inflamed to such a degree they can no longer control the fire which burns within.

“See any good ones?” Sig asks.

“No.”

We stand around.

I question myself: preying upon abductees. That’s not very Christian. But, as usual, I content myself with the thought that not much is. If I weren’t committing this sin, I’d be committing some other sin. As somebody once said, a miss is as good as a mile.

“Uh oh.”

“What?” Sig asks.

“There’s this huge beast staring right at you.”

“Where? Where?”

“Over there, by the registration table.”

Sig spots her.

You know, there’s nothing quite as funny as the look that crosses a guy’s face when he notices an ugly woman staring at him. . .that combination of fear and revulsion. . .it’s as if the ugly woman were some dog shit you were just about to step in. . .

“She’s locked in on you, boy.”

“Why is she looking at me like that?” Sig asks. “It’s creepy.”

“I think she’s crying.”

[TO BE CONTINUED.  I gotta take a break.  This is a tough story to tell.  Gonna take a couple days.  And I may not be up to telling it all.]

Shelley Winters

 

I saw this Shelley Winters card on eBay a week or so ago and bought it, entirely for sentimental reasons.

My dad came to America from Iraq.  His brother was a famous actor in Iraq, and my old man thought he could one up him by becoming a Hollywood star.  Of course, he failed miserably.  But he did return from his four years in Los Angeles with a lot of amusing stories.  He claimed to support himself while chasing acting parts he took a job selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door, and his partner was Martin Sheen.  This would have been late 1950s, early 1960s Los Angeles.  

The stories I remember best, though, were the ones in which my old man claimed he was Shelley Winters boyfriend for a few months.  He loved to tell people he fucked her.  I always believed him.  If you were gonna pick an actress to make up a story about, you would pick a better-looking one than Shelley, who had a weight problem.  She was more of a slob than a hottie, the role that fit her best was as Charlotte Haze in Lolita, she really didn't have to act, just be herself, an overweight man-hungry cow.  

Though my old man never said this, I believe the main reason he banged Shelley was because she was Jewish, which for him would be the ultimate forbidden fruit.  

Anyway, now I got her autograph card to look at, which brings back some of the few fond memories I have of the old man.

The Critic And The Crow

When you’ve had to work as many shit jobs as I did back in the day (because I always had contempt for my superiors, and sooner or later, usually sooner, I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, hide the contempt and I would either be fired or quit just before I was about to be fired) you would run into a lot of oddballs and interesting characters. Without a doubt the most interesting was The Critic. The Critic was the greatest hustler and con man I have ever met. I met him at one of his low points after his first great fall. I had to take a job at Kinko’s. This is back before FedEx acquired Kinko’s. Back when Kinko’s was just a copy shop. The other employees were The Critic and four members of a local rock ‘n’ roll band who were just starting to make a name for themselves, and Astrid, the girl who did the desktop publishing work at Kinko's, and who was a girlfriend of one of the band.

The Critic was a tall, obese man with a booming voice, and when he spoke to you he would get right in your face and his head would bounce from side to side as he interrogated you or offered up his unsolicited opinions on anything and everything under the sun, or told tall tales about his personal history. Spittle often flew from his mouth as he told you his many accomplishments, which were all the more amazing considering his tragic upbringing (vicious beatings from his father, insane religious training from his mother, early sex addiction due to an unscrupulous female teacher, etc.).

I would be working at a copy machine and The Critic would lumber over, get right in my face and boom “AC/DC never made a single bad album! Never! We're all going to watch Astrid shave her pussy tonight, you wanna come?” and then he would turn around and stomp away before I could answer 'yes.'

I would be working at a copy machine and The Critic would lumber over, get right in my face and boom "I've got a metal plate in my head from the time I drove my cab into a Boeing 747 on the runway at Metro Airport!"

The members of the rock band told me what they believed to be the true story of The Critic. He had been an arts editor at a weekly newspaper when he was fired after it was discovered his resume was a work of fiction, including a masters degree from a prestigious university. He had now attached himself to the rock band and the rock band had let him attach himself as they both used each other's connections in the arts scene to promote each other. It was a strategy that was successful for both. The Critic would rise again, suffer an even greater fall, and then make an even greater rise to the position he maintains today as one of America's preeminent music critics. If you are a hardcore music fan and research music on the internet, you have read one of The Critic's reviews. You might not recognize his name, but it is impossible you haven't stumbled across one of his reviews, either online or in print in Rolling Stone, Creem, Musician, Spin. There are lengthy, heated debates about The Critic on internet music forums, there are parodies of his reviews, as the Critic is the master of the 3 star review, hedging his bets, never upsetting anyone, providing a few biographical tidbits then stuffing the review with empty phrases such as *open and purposeful melodies,* *the approach is both organic and disciplined,* and *appealing chord changes and a pop sensibility.* He invented a successful formula that pleased enough artists, content creators and fans to maintain a three decades long career.

Anyway, I worked with The Critic at Kinko’s for a couple months then got fired for cursing at a customer. My next job was as a manager of a store on the campus of the University of Michigan at which, among many other things, we happened to sell used CDs. That’s when I next ran into The Critic. I hadn't seen or heard from him in quite a while. I had no idea what he was up to. I was working in the store when the cashier called me to the counter. There was The Critic! We looked at each other in surprise. It turned out The Critic was still making his way back to the top. He had at this point secured a position as a music buyer for the most prestigious record store in the area. He had come into the store to sell some used CDs, well, technically they weren't used CDs, they were promo CDs The Critic had received as music buyer, these weren't supposed to be sold, but The Critic and I quickly agreed upon an arrangement profitable for both of us. I would buy his promo CDs for five dollars each, he would get three dollars and I would keep two, then sell them to my customers for 8 bucks. Once a month The Critic would come to the store and we would make ourselves a tidy little sum. We agreed workers were entitled to steal from the owners who exploited us.

If you’ve read this far, I apologize. I’m not going to finish this boring anecdote from my early work life. In truth, I lost interest almost as soon as I began writing it. I thought I could push through, but with every sentence I thought: what’s the point?

Anyway, I’ll give a brief summary of what was going to follow, so you at least will have some sort of conclusion.

I was going to tell about the day The Critic came into the store with an associate previously unknown to me. While we were doing the paperwork on our CD business, the critic introduced his associate. James O’Barr. ‘Hello.’ ‘Hello.’ We shook hands. Did I know him, The Critic asked? No. The Critic informed me James O’Barr was the writer/creator of a comic called The Crow, and had just recently concluded a lucrative movie deal.

All the while The Critic was explaining this to me, O’Barr stood there looking embarrassed by all The Critic’s effusive praise.

You would never guess from O’Barr’s appearance and demeanor he had just scored a huge success. He wore old blue jeans and a t-shirt, he looked about my age, late 20s or early 30s, a little bit younger than The Critic, he looked like he could be a pizza delivery driver or a grass cutter, just an ordinary white Downriver working class dude.

The worst part of the encounter was when The Critic informed me that the tragedy at the heart of The Crow was based on the real life tragedy O’Barr suffered with his girlfriend. O’Barr had to listen to The Critic, in his booming voice, explain to me about the brutal car crash from a drunk driver that killed O’Barr’s girlfriend. It had to have been an unpleasant experience. Here was The Critic, in his booming voice, telling O’Barr’s most painful experience to a complete stranger. He looked very uncomfortable, but didn’t say anything.

After The Critic finished with his recitation of the tragedy, we all stood there enduring an awkward silence. Finally I looked at O’Barr and offered the best platitude I could muster: gee that’s rough, I hope your artistic work can bring you some sort of peace. He mumbled something I couldn’t understand and nodded his head.

O’Barr accompanied The Critic one other time into the store. That meeting wasn’t as uncomfortable or awkward. We exchanged a few sentences, I can’t recall the exact detail, just mundane talk. I retain the impression to this day O’Barr was the most humble, down to earth person I ever met. You would never look at him and imagine he was some big comic book and movie guy.

I have no idea if O’Barr and The Critic remain friends or acquaintances or whatever they were. I would run into The Critic every four or five years, always under some odd chance encounter. My last contact was by email. I arranged to do an interview with him for this blog. Sent him the questions. He never responded. I asked him three times if he had changed his mind or if he just needed more time to answer the questions. He never responded.  Was he offended by the questions?  Who knows?  I haven’t heard from him in eight or ten years, probably.

The End.

Anus

I am at an age and stage in my life where I no longer have to work for a living. I do, however, work a part-time job at our local mall selling chocolates. I do this because I like to have a few extra coins in my pocket. I work two or three shifts per week, just enough to pay for a little extra amusement here and there.

Of course, that still leaves me a lot of free time. One of the hobbies I have picked up in my old age is writing to prison inmates. Of course, I only write to the famous or infamous or notorious or whatever you want to call them. I don’t write to just some random thug who sold drugs or shot his neighbor.

I like to ask these inmates to reflect on their lives, if they believe they understand themselves and what led them to act in the ways that led them to prison.  I also ask if they have a philosophy or theology, and if they are able to find any meaningful way to spend their time behind bars. 

Most of the inmates either aren’t capable or aren't inclined to engage in any meaningful correspondence. I've had some interesting conversations with a few, but most of them ignore my questions, and, instead, ask for some form of aid.

There is one inmate who is his own *category,* if you will. He will try to answer my questions in a serious fashion, but becomes frustrated with his own limited understanding, and then moves to a series of random research questions.  I don’t know if he doesn’t have access to a computer, or really doesn’t know how to research on a computer, but, for example, he will ask me to look up details on the figures associated with his case, lawyers, judges, police detectives, psychiatrists, etc. He likes to know if they are still alive, what they’re doing etc.  He also asks me about relatives of his victim. It seems to me he’s hoping to outlive them all, which would give him a sense of satisfaction.  "I may be behind bars, but I am above ground, which is better than you." 

But the overwhelming primary interest he wants me to research is celebrity women, singers, actresses, porn stars. In his latest letter he gave me the names of four porn stars and asked me to find out in the photographic and video material that is available on the internets how much detail you could see of their anuses.

Well, for me, it's a pleasant way to pass the time. And I feel good that I’m helping somebody in prison, that I am bringing a little joy into their otherwise dreary gray life.  Doing good for others is a tonic for the soul.

A Penny For Your Thoughts

Besides my two sons, my only living blood relative is my first cousin Mike. I never particularly liked him. When we were kids, he stole a 1909-S VDB penny from me. He was always very materialistic. He always had more money than me. When I was an adult, I wouldn’t give him the time of day.

My ex-wife, my sons’ mother, was very big on family. She pushed and pushed for me to have our family meet Mike’s family. He was married to some broad and had four kids of his own. I finally relented. Over the course of three or four years we probably got together as families five or six times. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.

Then Mike became a MAGA. That was fine with me, do whatever the fuck you want, but it wasn’t fine with him that I wasn’t a MAGA. The cocksucker proselytized me more than a Mormon or Jehovah’s Witness, but I would not relent.

I should also say that at this point in his life my cousin Mike thought he was quite a Christian and quite an expert on the Bible, but in reality he didn’t know shit about the gospel. He tried to tell me you couldn’t be a Christian if you didn’t support Trump. I tried to gently set him straight, but of course he didn’t hear a fucking thing I had to say. Then when Trump lost his election to Biden, I sent my cousin Mike an email in which I said ‘don’t worry, it don’t matter who the president is, your day-to-day life won’t change at all.’

He was furious. He said he could no longer have ‘fellowship’ with me.

I resisted the temptation to email him back and say ‘I never liked you, anyway, you fucking cocksucker.’

I bet that worthless cocksucker still has my 1909-S VDB somewhere.

The Ronald Wilson Reagan Effect

I began to closely observe the external world in the late 1960s and 1970s. I have no reason to doubt the authenticity of my memories, and I am confident in asserting people are much uglier than they were in my youth. It was not unusual to see an attractive person in the late ‘60s and ‘70s. In fact, it was quite common.

It’s hard to look at most people nowadays. It’s not just because most of them are fat. Even those who are of a somewhat normal weight are unpleasant to look at.

What could be the reason for the deterioration in physical appearance? Lack of sunlight? Radiation from all of our electronic devices? Environmental and psychic pollution? Micro plastics? Exponential increase in the intake of pharmaceuticals?

There are frequent news stories about young people losing interest in sex. Most young people don't fuck. Can you blame them? Even an ugly person doesn't want to fuck an ugly person. The human race will disappear due to ugliness. Sad.

Well, now that I think about it, it’s a not only human beings who have declined aesthetically. A similar decline can be observed in architecture, landscape, literature, cinema, music, economics.

I don’t know if it’s a coincidence, but all these declines began with the increase of Ronald Wilson Reagan in 1980.

The Gospel Of Jesus

For the first sixty-four years of my life, I thought I had to do something, accomplish something, behave some way. 

No. 

We simply exist. In the hive. Subject to supernatural forces.

Our temporal actions are inconsequential. Vanity. Fruitless. Masturbation. A delusional outburst. Schizophrenic ideation.

Setting an alarm to make sure you are on time for your lord the world is soulicide.

This is the gospel of Jesus Christ: The function of existence is the revelation of truth. What is your position in Christ?

The only freedom is to be called out of the world by the Lord Jesus Christ.

The worst sin a person can commit is to be called out of the world by the Lord Jesus Christ, and then still continue to set an alarm.

I wasted my whole life on sin, when I could have been free.

One of Paul’s most idiotic pieces of advice was when he advised those Corinthians who had been called out of the world by Jesus Christ to then remain in whatever situation in the world they were in.  ‘Go on setting an alarm. Keep performing the role the world assigned you.’  LOL!  That’s the mistake, the sin I committed.

Paul always wanted to set masters over people, both in the church and in the world. 

Malarkey! 

Those who are called out of the world by the Lord Jesus Christ have only one Master, Jesus.  They are set free from the world. To remain in the world is sin. Did Jesus tell the rich young ruler to remain rich?

LOL.

When Jesus calls you out of the world, you are to give up everything of the world and begin doing the labor of the kingdom of God. 

The Lord Jesus Christ said: 

‘Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.’

Paul’s idiotic advice to stay in your current position in the world is not the narrow way, LOL!

If Jesus has called you out of the world, you are free. This freedom can only be actuated by being contrary to the world. This is the gospel of Jesus. 

Darling Strange

Watched a movie today.  The title: Strange Darling.  It's a serial killer thriller with a lot of modern takes on identity and gender.  Pretty good movie.  Well-acted by the two leads. BUT. . .

It has one of those *non-linear* scripts.  You know, the fucking movie starts with the middle, then jumps to near the end, then goes back to the beginning, flip-flopping all the way through.  So tired of this gimmick.  This shit ain't even remotely avant garde or interesting anymore.  It's tired.  Just tell the fucking story from beginning to end, already.   And it's a very crude chop job, anyway.  It ain't even truly non-linear.  If you want an example of true non-linear cinema, watch Last Year At Marienbad. This shit in Strange Darling is just amateurish, and it made me annoyed at what was a decent-enough flick.  

Saturday At The Park

I am sitting on the bench at the Square, Cascade Square, you know, the one with the statue of the naked lady.  I have my lunch with me.  An applesauce cup. There is an empty coffee cup on the bench left by some previous deadbeat. I think about swiping it away, but I lack the required energy.

I stare at the statue of the naked lady for quite a while. She was modeled in what I guess they call a Rubenesque fashion. She has big fat titties and a big fat ass. 

I continue to stare at the statue.

If I were going to make a statue of a naked lady, Kate Moss would be my model.

I continue to stare at the statue.

Anyway, when the statue was first erected(!), it was probably milky white, but now time and pollution have muddied it up. This used to be a statue of a white woman.  Now it looks biracial. So I guess this fat broad, no matter what time in history, always reflects the make-up of our great nation.  Ten years from now an earthquake will probably rattle it enough to crack a piece loose from the belly and it will hang down like a cock, so that the statue looks like a big fat nude tranny.

After staring at the naked lady a while longer, I open up my little applesauce cup. 

My teeth hurt. Decades of eating pussy. The germs and bacteria and filth from a 1000 vaginas dripping into my mouth and infecting my gums and corroding my teeth. Now I can barely chew anything. I eat mushy foods.

The End