Mutiny #2

 

Chapter 2

 

We meet Neccas…March, 1968…Not Vietnam…Familiar faces…Freedom of The Press…A fucking blood bath…Stop, drop, and roll…Starving, man…Tom Speed…Disappearing face…Mop-up…Lead and fire…

 

“He Loves Games? Then let him play for stakes. This, you see here these ruins, wondered at by tribes of savages, do you not think that this will be again? Aye and again, with other people, with other sons.”

***

The reporter had crossed the line, and now there was only the “when” of it. The LT – his name was Pierce – was straight up Company, working deep in the rubber when he got the call to My Lai, he said. He’d debriefed Major Neccas on the fly in between half a hundred other tasks:

This fucking guy’s cashed in his chips. Reporter from the Nation. Stevens or some fucking thing. The company has given the word. If you get a chance…

Pierce didn’t have to finish, and so he didn’t. Neccas understood him perfectly. Company business on the battlefield was always complicated and dangerous, and Maj. Pierce’s obviously capable hands were also quite obviously full. To Dunc, the guy seemed to be everywhere around them all at once: He’d started the day going hooch to hooch, directing fire and shouting warnings and encouragement and bigoted invective. Dunc saw him again minutes later, quicklime – ing the new dead in a shallow mass grave. There he was grabbing a shovel, directing the fill-in, throwing dirt over bodies. Next, directing strike teams to move onward in upward into the valley, shooting down a young mother, passing her baby to the rear, calling in air support, setting a hooch on fire, and – now - ordering the expedient assassination of a pencil whose time had come. Neccas was impressed.

He found the doomed newspaper man Stevens hawking a sheep Captain from Division, following the poor bastard around the festivities, crying in the guy's ear on what must have been a shit day already. Neccas could see a gook family, alone in the open space between the village front and the Company killing fields, eyeing this pathetic running battle with great interest on their faces. Duncan listened for a minute, caught the words “Geneva”…”Hostile intent”…and “atrocity” above the sulfuric hiss of the war-works. Finally Neccas walked up behind the two of them and tapped the nosy fucker gently on the elbow. The wielded, tensed and geared up for whatever, then softened visibly when he found the smiling face of the spook named Duncan Neccas. Dunc showed some insignia, motioned northward to a hooch some 300 yards distant from the firearm reports and rotor-wash of the raid. He leaned in and gave the guy’s elbow a comfy grab, got in his ear:

Let’s walk, I was told to look out for you.

The guy heard, stalled out for a second, rocked on his feet in the mud, then obeyed, something like understanding creeping into his look. Dunc didn’t turn, but he was quite certain the gook family would fall in at a distance. It got quieter halfway to the hooch and the guy started in:

Fuck this is insane. Who commissioned this fucking thing? It’s a goddamned blood bath. Fucking goddamn BLOOD bath!

Dunc couldn’t resist a little stagecraft. He stopped walking, turned the guy face to:

I lied about looking out for you. Recognized your face from the press pool at Hue last year. You’re one of the good guys. That’s why we gotta be quick.

The guy got smart:

I thought you looked familiar. Let’s double time it. I knew this was fucked up. I fucking KNEW!

The guy – round and pale and glistening sweaty – started out toward the hooch in a fake “run” slower than most people walk. It took minutes, and they were silent the rest of the way. Dunc could hear a flamethrower now, belching up flat white noise, over burning screams. The reporter had to have heard it too, Dunc was thinking. Then they were at the hooch, and Stevens went for the door. Dunc said:

Not inside, they’ll get out here quick. Besides, what you need to see is out back.

The shithead agreed for the last time in his life, walked ahead of Dunc and around the rear of the hooch.

Neccas reached into the leather clutch fastened just below his left arm with a silent, lightning quick sweep of his right hand. When the pencil wheeled around, the smiling, wholly reassuring face from moments ago had been replaced by the hellish barrel of a carbon-black, .38 Colt Anaconda. Neccas said:

Sorry.

and gently squeezed the trigger. The reporter’s eye, and everything behind it, disappeared into a vague red mist. The blowback covered half of Sgt. Neccas’s face with a shiny red slick. He emerged from behind the hooch, saw the gook family about ten yards out, inching across the field. Neccas held up a friendly hand that became a friendly wave when the gook family noticed him. He waved them in, smiling.

 

***

 
The weapon was made by a company called Saltech. In the catalogs they called it the “BurnTarget 1050”, but in the field its name was much simpler: flamethrower. Saltech had stopped manufacturing them in 1949, after unfavorable DOD reports referenced its excessive weight and narrow scope of strategic application. Recently, however, Air Force intelligence had created a modification that stripped the weight of the entire apparatus by more than ten pounds, going from an unmanageable fighting weight of 55 pounds to a feather-light 38.5 pounds. Saltech bought the patent on the fix, and by August of ’67 there was at least one BT 1050 in every platoon. The 1050 had been particularly effective in this My Lai operation. For the last few days it seemed to Neccas, he could hear the white noise of the flame-jet almost constantly, barely masking the awful moans cresting and wilting before it.  

Walking back, Neccas found the BT 1050 crew and sent them to deal with the mess behind the far hooch.

***

Wow. I’m fucking starving man. What’s lunch?

Dunc picked it up from somewhere behind. He was within five paces of Speed and the LT Pierce, walking and talking, humping towards a shitty looking buffalo graze to trade c-rats. Sgt. Speed spoke like they were standing in Washington Square, musing a carefree point just because. The LT answered back though, and sunk the conversation back deep in the shit, where it belonged:

Fuck yes. Sun’s brutal. Sporty this morning.

A guy from the old days named Alfonso was somewhere behind them:

Fuck yes LT. fuck yes Sarnt Speed. Fucking sporty, sir.   

My Lai wasn't a village, it was a region in which there were three or four population centers. The grunts had their orders, mostly play acting, sending any Vietnamese they could find rearward to the Company boys after short, loud "interrogation". The operators were working together as usual. Duncan was overseeing the photogs, Speed was watching the diggers. Both were keeping corpse count on tiny, army-green notebooks. The Company boys needed pictures and inventory to get full credit. Six mass graves dug 10 feet down bounded the tree line south of the the villages. Three were ready half full after only three hour's work. Duncan had to call up a shovel detail – Alfonse and two other grunts - from division just to keep up with the flow of confused cadavers-to-be.

Speed and Pierce was covered head to toe in dark black blood, as was most of the rest of Charlie. Speed’s pant leg was ripped from ankle to knee on the right side, and when he walked Neccas could make out a deep gash, bleeding and oozing onto the butt of a carbon-black pistol strapped to Speed’s ankle. The cut looked very painful, yet Speed was hurrying along with no obvious limp or scowl. Just arrived in the 3rd was Sargent Thomas Winchester Speed, from an Air Cav detachment somewhere in the mountains, “deep in Indian country” he said. Dunc had asked for him by name, and he’d arrived ten short hours later. Tom Speed – Neccas knew from hard experience - was the kind of operator that made everybody around feel a little bit safer.

As for Dunc himself, he wasn’t hungry. Wasn’t anything really. Bored, maybe. He’d been in-country almost five years – two with the Marines and three with the Company – and in that time, Dunc Neccas had done a lot of really awful things. He remembered a time, in the far distant past now, that the bullshit had some effect on him. Luckily he’d smartened up before fucking up in any kind of mortal way. The battle field – he’d learned long ago – was no place for reflection, or questions. Instead, Neccas had learned to trust the people around him, and the people above him. He studied their weaknesses and strengths, what they were capable of, and how to make use of them. These days, when the brass needed body-count in Southeast Asia, they turned to Duncan Neccas.

***

Then, something was happening.

Dunc heard three things all at once: First, the unmistakable sound of AK-47 rounds coursing through heavy brush from a long way away. Behind it, there were three quick reports, so closely spaced that the grouping sounded like one sound - a low, menacing growl – instead of three. Finally, Dunc heard screaming from somewhere in front of him. The squad - HIS fucking squad - was taking fire.

Dunc was on the ground instantly, getting small, thinking about the space around him. He rolled to one side of the single track and rolled again off a soft shoulder and into giant tee-pee of Cyrus root. He heard a noise rolling alongside him and felt somebody’s arm brushing by his calf. He spared a quick look down and confirmed: Alfonse from the old days, he’d hit the deck but not until taking a few instinctive steps down-trail. He was practically in Dunc Necass back pocket when the two of them heard the gunfire, and now they were lying in a big, stationary hunk of green-camouflage. Neccas hijacked the guy’s attention with a leg kick. The guy looked up, Neccas commanded:

ROLL!! Far shoulder!!...ROLL ROLL!!…

Alfonse looked, for just an instant, like he might not be so into the command, but no sooner had the shifty look made manifest, than Dunc watched it fade again to grim compliance. Neccas watched him roll across, and he was watching still when another burst of AK fire split the air around them. There was a sound like a very small rock, falling into calm water from a very high place, and Alfonse from way back’s head popped like a balloon full of bright red paint.

Sgt. Neccas took the shot the way a sprinter takes the crack of a starter’s pistol: he ran as fast as his legs would carry him in the direction he was facing just before the shots rang out. In a few seconds he heard the helicopters, charging in low from some place north of him. He said a silent prayer they’ land near a place where he’d be, and tried to run faster. The greenery around him was twitching and moving from bullets and down-draft, and Duncan Neccas realized as he ran, that he did not expect to make it. A wave of panic broke all around him, and all became suddenly louder. Neccas ran at top speed, but even as he went, he felt panic grabbing at his legs, dragging him down. He heard voices, felt a blow to his lower back. He fell. He was thinking about his daughter, and the lies they’d have to tell her.

Mutiny

Chapter One

 

A kitten’s misfortune – Jay does some work – KC steals drugs – A rat is dead – Pressing forward despite urine – An awful smell - Cocaine and hamburgers – The beast discovered – Illegal hit – Aftermath.

 

“The universe is made of stories, not of atoms”

 

The fucking kitten was NOT the solution. Kim Nicole Cayenne, 23 years young and having given real, painful, vagina-centric birth two times, harbored no disillusions on that point. Nothing that shits, she knew from cold experience, ever solved anything. Her mother had told her that, on her 15^th birthday, and KC remembered thinking how wrong that sounded, and saying how stupid her mother was.

Mother…

She’d said, in a mock whisper deployed to portray rage held back,

I’m aware of no such thing, and you’re embarrassing me.

Her mother had always been an asshole, but these days KC found herself wondering if maybe she’d been just a bit out of order herself. She'd felt her second marriage (the one to this boy Mickey’s father, Jay) crumblintg to dust in her hands for a long time now, and Jay let her know - everyday - how much of that shitty condition was her own fucking fault. Maybe they were both right. Either way, In these last few days, KC found herself holding on harder than ever, even as she watched the last bits blow off on a grey New England breeze, prisoners to the wind, lacking even the weight to plummet successfully.

The kitten wouldn’t fix any of that. Her mother was still an asshole and so was Jay, KC Cayenne had serious doubts about her own self, and far worse, she still lived in Vietnam (the resident’s pet name for Venetian Corner, the “Mobile Accommodation Development” of North Kingstown, RI where KC had lived since she was 20). She was still broke, and her ass was still growing, dripping from its original housing, and melting towards the ground at a dependable clip. So, she figured, while the new kitty couldn’t reasonably be expected to douse the various and plentiful raging infernos of her life, it might at least be counted on to cool-mist the hot wreckage, perhaps make preparation for rebuilding. Besides, Ames Michael Cayenne (6 years old, mega-cute, “Mickey” to all that knew him) had been asking for a pet since he’d been born, and the closest thing KC’d been able to muster was the schizoid meth - beast that was his father. That – more than anything else – was what brought KC here today: She couldn’t remember the last time she’d done right by her son, and she felt she owed him – at the very least - the effort. Besides, everybody loved kittens.

***

To be completely fair, the kitten actually was the solution for a while. From the minute she’d arrived at the house-trailer, the new pet had been making friends, dissolving old feuds, and – generally - uniting the household with the singular, optimistic cuteness that only very young kittens can possess. Tammy Fay Justice ( KC’s other bundle of joy, from another crack-head, and twice the boy’s age), playing against type for – perhaps – the very first time, welcomed this new, miniature princess into their midst with enthusiasm that actually seemed genuine.

Mickey was floating around the yard two feet off the ground, charging his buddies loose dimes for a look, and quarters for a brief cuddle with his new, awesome kitten. Tammy Fay was talking about shoplifting kitten clothes from the dollar store, and thinking about what she’d have to do to her boyfriend to convince him to drive her there. KC actually got laid twice in one night. So subtle was the kitten’s power and so potent, that it was able to move even Jay’s coke-damaged penis by the sheer force of its fluffy, benevolent presence. For three weeks, the mini-cat held sway over the entire household and things were – for the first time in a long time – better than tolerable at the Kim-Nicky Stroam-Cayenne’s. But just like always, the minute KC realized this, the whole shit disintegrated before her like a sandcastle dissolving at high tide.

As usual, the entire situation could have been avoided if Jay wasn’t such an asshole. The kitten, right up till the event, had been much more than a mere feline-shaped aphrodisiac. The occasional bouts of not-too-terrible sex were but a by-product of a top-down renovation, coming quick after the little cat’s arrival. Other tell-tale signs had included an apparent determination to begin drinking after lunch instead of before breakfast, a one-bag-of-coke per weekend rule, and the chronic wearing of both shirts and shoes, sometimes at the same time. KC was too shocked to be impressed, and found herself appreciating Jay’s efforts with a matching coke policy, and a vague commitment not to fuck anybody else for a while. At night they’d taken to rescuing the kitten from the kids room and teasing her for hours on end with fake mice and (jay’s favorite), the “kittylaser” cat toy.

it’s an army issue laser. You know, from the sights? On a gun? These guys are geniuses. They’re like: “let’s remove the laser, and cats and kittens ‘ll fuckin’ love it!” Sick!!

Jay loved that fucking kitten.

***

KC had gone over that night every night since that night at least a thousand times. Each time she recollected the same, and each time she found herself more confused about the way things ended up. Things had been great, she felt certain they would stay that way, and she felt like celebrating. Thus Wednesday through Friday of that week became one long day. Since Wednesday was almost Friday, KC was drinking. Since it was A day, Jay was drinking. Since they both felt awesome, and since they both got their SSI checks late Tuesday, there was a big bag of weed on the coffee table next to small bag of cocaine. Both bags would spend the next three days disappearing in slow motion, then reappearing, only to slowly melt once more as the duration passed. The kids, both already possessed of a keenly developed sixth sense regarding their parent’s partying, mostly slept out. The kitten spent the binge leaping and buzzing around the house-trailer like a stray bullet, ears pinned back, eyes reduced for the drug-toxic atmosphere. Eventually, nobody would ever know quite when, the kitten disappeared.

At some point, the mini-cat had gone into the recliner. What about that fucking recliner? It had been vestigial in the last few years, forced out of the living room furniture rota by virtue of the fact Jay’d pissed on it once in his sleep a few years back. After that, nobody wanted to sit there, but because there was always other shit to be paid attention to, and because nobody wanted to deal with the piss-chair or even look at it, it never got thrown out. Eventually (Jay said) it stopped reeking of pee, and he’d been sitting on it again the last couple months. In fact, Jay had taken it a step further, now spending the majority of his free time during the day in the chair, watching conspiracy documentaries on his iphone with his favorite blanket up over his head.

This is exactly what he’d been around the time the kitten disappeared, and KC – thinking back on that fateful morning – had been able to trace the kitten’s demise back to one memorable instant: She’d been washing the weeks dishes and yelling at Jay to feed the kitten, trying to get to him in those key moments between bed and chair when he was far more apt to honor her commands.

“Jaaaaaaaay feed the fucking cat!

She jumped when he surprised her, out of bed so early:

“Im right behind you asshole. We got bacon?”

This next part stood out in T’s memory like the HD commercials during reruns of “Sanford and Son”: Jay asking about bacon, avoiding her cat-feeding request, and suddenly airborne, heaving his entire six-foot-something, composed-mostly-of-fat, frame

into empty space,

then onto the chair,

hard.

Tammy heard springs and fabric giving way as if the whole works might be seriously considering disintegration, took an extra 3-4 seconds to actively hate her husband, and went back to deciding not to wash the dishes. Jay burped and said:

They’re taking more and more of your liberties away every day sweetheart, and you don’t care. For fuck’s sake WAKE UP!

The “Up” part sort of faded out, as Jay flipped to one of his favorite episodes of “Magnum” just at the best part.

***

The smell. Looking back on it, her strongest memory was of the smell. The kitten was a stinky motherfuck to begin with, with a litterbox that needed cleaned immediately after voiding, lest an angry, ammonia-reek settle over every room in the whole place. But whatever death-blow Jay’s untimely sitting had visited upon the thing, the stench in the aftermath made any litter box of ANY cat, anywhere. It began two days after the chair-jump, amidst a chaotic, house APB for the lost kitten, gone these two days.

“Fuck. You fuckin’ stink”

said Jay, deadly accurate in his situational awareness, as per usual.

Hours later, the Mr. and Mrs. Jay Stroam-Cayenne were way deep into a hard-target search that began with a thorough up-fucking of the house-trailer, continued through a massive, and severely disorganized mauling of the general area around the house-trailer, and ended with late night speed-smorgasboard during which the kitten was mourned lightly, and discussed at some length:

Fuckin stinks in here, even with the piffs…

Said Jay, looking around the place as if he’d just beamed in from deep-space. He continued after a long, snorty pause:

Fuckiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin…Fuckin’ you gotta tell the kids. NofugginwayIMfuggintelina’fuckinkids…Fuck.

And the next day, a miracle occurred: KC did tell the kids. What’s more, instead of leaving again, the vicious brats actually responded. It took the whole family – operating with something like unity for the first time since untold previous lives – 48 hours to turn everything for three square acres to a wretched, disgraceful, multi-faceted search-scar. Jay, in an incredible and amazingly rare feat of community galvanization, had selected and trained three guys from his horse shoe team to help him upend his prized 1993 infinity (leather AND a roof! Kayce! Dream Car!!), and flip it to it roof so that Jay could remove its guts and root out his kitten. The car was still roof-bound, gutted, and spun sideways in the driveway, its component pieces scattered about the thing in a smelly array of parts, fluid, and ancient motor oil. They all of them slept elsewhere that week, as the smell inside the trailer was ramping up. By Friday the air inside the house-trailer was un-breathable to any human whose nasal function hadn’t been severely compromised by drug use. The kids, again, had sought refuge in other trailers in other parts of Vietnam. Jay and KC kept the faith

***.

Even so, when Sunday came around, the kitten still hadn’t, and despondency was giving way to the inevitable paranoid blame-laying. The smell had gotten worse and worse until Saturday, when it disappeared altogether. KC did her best to disregard all of it: the kitten, Jay, the awful smells, and was successfully tuning out everyone but the Zach Brown Band. She was cranking his latest, and shaping raw hamburger into patties for the Patriots. The kitten had been lost, but football was football.

Because of this, the loud music and the raw meat, KC didn’t see the actual event evolution. To be fair, things happened awfully fast and it’s doubtful she’d have been able to stop the fateful events even with eyes and ears on the proceedings. As it happened, she never got the chance to find out. It took minutes: Tammy Fay said something about how she would have never let the cat out, started trying to spit on the boy, sitting next to her on the couch:

Ptew! Tew! Ptew!

She was thrusting her head at him, trying to get some distance, but her mouth was dry, and she could muster only microscopic blips of saliva in groups of twos and threes. Even so, the boy understood what was happening and began to sound the alarm:

WahhhhhhhhAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

It was his high note, perfected over years and deployed only in the most sensitive geo-political episodes in the house-trailer. KC stopped her meat-smooshing and tried to override the boy’s screaming with some strident banshee-cries over her own, enhanced a few clicks by the cocaine she’d stolen from Jay before he’d gone to “work” for the day. To be fair, he’d owed her 50 bucks since before they moved in, so KC’s conscience was clear as a bell. Besides, Jay’s “Work”, was stealing basic cable and hard wiring it for anybody in Vietnam that had anything he could eat or drink or snort while he did the deed. Tonight he’d be home with his “Wages” for the day, and the pilfered yayo would go unnoticed. All that in mind, she hadn’t been shy in the dosing. By the time of the exchange with the kids, KC was gritting her teeth and stuttering, reeling off patty after patty like a hamburger factory. Just then Jay rolled in, three hours early and speaking in one long, fast, word:

FuckinbullshitMacsaysIstillowehimmoneyandit’snottruethatfuckerowesMEmoneyanywayshe’sgotmethlikeathousandtonso’dynamiteandIneedsomeregularcoketotaketheedgeoffandIneedtimet’fugginthink…

He went through the entirety of the house-trailer hiding spots during the tirade, and ended up posted, like some vibrating totem, directly in front of KC breathing in gaspy huffs. KC could see no pupil in his head, just microscopic black pinpricks on a field of twitchy brown. KC found herself backing towards a drawer with sharp things in it almost before she knew what she was doing. Jays breath smelled like two skunks flattened by a semi, KC knew how he could be. Instead though, his tiny eyes were showing the rut. With Jay it was almost always about food.

KC was feeling pretty speedy herself, and Jay’s weird advances felt like interrogation even though the few lucid brain cells she had left were politely insisting that the feeling was incorrect. She spun and ducked but the sequence hit a snag when thousands of flight-reflex synapses cracked off in her skull at one cokey instant. Instead of hitting the door and escaping out into Vietnam like she should have, KC stopped when she reached the trailer-house front door, turned, and sat instead on the couch and began miming a frantic search for the remote.

Jay observed the odd behavior and immediately sensed that drugs had been stolen from him. He forgot about sex and hamburgers, and bore in on KC, still fake-searching under couch cushions for the channel changer.

Heyyougotuhhhhyougotsomeshitinyou’renose.

Jay threw it at her like acid, and KC vapor-locked again. She sat back, leaned forward, and sat back ten times before Jay spoke again:

Wellwhat?Well?Yougotsomethinginyourfaceuhhhyournose.

Jay got focused then. He bent at the waist, mushed his nose into her personal space, and rasped:

You fuckin’ bitch. Where?

Then he was tossing the place, same route as before, muttering and spitting:

Hmm. Fuckin’ bitch. Payin the rent. I fuckiiiiiiin. Where is it? Fuckin bitch fuckin’ bitch fuckinnnn…

***

Thinking back on it, years later, KC would always remember every second of it - in crystalline, HD resolution - from the minute Jay came back around to the couch, and shoved his hand down into the gap, on the opposite side from where she was curled into a coked-up defensive ball. He was muttering still, but KC recalled that by the time he’d sunk his hand into the cushion gap, Jay’s already jumpy grasp of syntactical coherence had fled the scene. His pathological stream of toxic invective had become a buzz of slow-phasing vowel sounds:

Nehhhhhhhuhhhhhmm?hmmmmmmehhh…FUCK!!!

He jumped and KC looked up. This was the part she loved best. Sometimes, when she was feeling discouraged or depressed, she’d sit down wherever she was, and watch just those 40 odd seconds of her life, running through it from different imaginary camera angles until she felt better. She’d start just then, leaning her whole body across the couch and pulling back on the cushion Jay had been fiddling with when he’d cried out. She’d take care to acknowledge Jay’s suffering on the way over. His vowel noises had morphed back into profanity with the pricking of his finger, and he was whipping it back and forth going:

Oooh. Fuck. Oooh. Fuck. FUCK! Hurts…

She’d thrill, remembering how she pulled the cushion back, and stuck her head down close to the gap. How Jay stopped swearing, touched his forehead with hers, looking from the opposite side. How they’d both sucked in concerned gasps with the extraordinary reveal:

The Kitten, along with the empty, blue-tinged cello-bag, looked up from an open space of one square foot at the bottom of the couch. The hideous smell, more concentrated this time, released face-ward as Jay and KC looked in. The tiny, enraged animal was working over the meaty skeleton of a Vietnam garbage rat like a team of piranahs consuming a wildebeest. KC could hardly suppress a laugh, realizing almost instantly, where the kitten had gone, why he’d stayed away, and what the cause of the haunting smell had been. Jay wasn’t near as quick, and so the laugh-spasm only made him angrier. He knew KC had stolen his drugs so fuck a rat and fuck a kitten. The time of beatings had arrived, and Jay started thinking about places that would hurt, yet keep realizing about the pilfered coke and just about to act, and – finally and best of all – the kitten’s attack.

Jay didn’t even have time to let go the couch before the coke-addled cat was on him. KC watched, shocked, as the little beast ran up Jay’s arm like a rocket-sled heading for a cinderblock wall. It smashed into Jay’s face with a fierce-looking head of steam, but instead of bouncing to the floor, making for underneath something, the little shit stuck fast. The scene froze for in front of her for one split second and KC saw the kittens claws release, burying themselves into the left side of her husband’s face and causing a weird scream / bellow, barely audible through the feline belly covering his mouth:

 Mrrrrf…UUUUGGHH….HMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmm…OHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

Then he was dancing, grabbing at the painful, furry facemask and thrashing about the already thoroughly tossed house-trailer. KC was laughing out loud by that point, but she caught her breath quick and tried to decided that enough was enough. She stood and rushed the twisting Jay, but her intoxication had betrayed her spatial awareness, and she came in way too hot. Instead of maintaining a helpful distance, KC plugged Jay with a shoulder-lowered chop block. He’d been standing at the door, twitching great twitches, and she lined him up with the complete momentary focus of a champion coke-fiend. Jay took the hit in his soft ribcage and immediately felt his entire torso crushing into his lungs. He went slack, but instead of submitting to gravity and falling to the sanctuary of the 1970’s – era trailer-shag, Jay felt himself flying. KC felt herself flying. Most importantly, the cat felt itself flying, and drove its claws deeper into Jay’s face to ensure a safe landing. The three of them launched backwards, through the unlatched trailer door, and down – hard – on the steamy August pavement. Another muffled exclamation issued from Jay’s mouth in flight, but it was cut short by the inevitable meeting of Jay with the ground:

MmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF…AHHP!!

She landed on Jay, so KC was actually OK. She bounced up quick as she could just in case the neighbors caught the act, whispered toward Jay’s unmoving form, still – she noted with some degree of amusement – covered at the face by cocaine cat.

OK Ok. Get up. We’re fine…OK. Come on. People will see and the kids’ll yell at me Jay…

Cmon Ja…

And that’s as far as she’d gotten before Jay began screaming again.

KC started at the new yelping, and again when the cat finally loosed its claws and split the scene. She watched it bolt for the front gates of Vietnam, meowing and spitting all the way. Then KC looked down.  Her first thought, seeing Jay’s wrecked countenance after the great cat battle, was that he’d somehow landed face down on some eggs. “He must have taken a few in the face”, she thought, “Serves him right”.

But eggs wouldn’t explain the continued screaming. KC knelt for a better look, but Jay’s thrashing was making examination unsafe. Then she watched most of Jay’s left eye come squeezing from between his stubby, twitching fingers, and KC ran inside and made a call to the local police.

Doberman

Ronald Reagan was, in many ways, a disingenuous creep. Reagan’s administration was the first to actually capitalize on Nixon’s impeachment almost a decade before, and he did so by observing Nixon’s myriad civil liberties shenanigans not as the extreme limit of a deranged megalomaniac, but instead as a sort of new baseline action agenda for political game-fixing. Don’t believe me? Go plug the words “Iran / Contra” into a Youtube and try and sit through whatever comes up without saying the word “MotherFUCKER!” at least ten times. There’s a wealth of information available everywhere about Reagan’s bullshit so I’m going to leave it you to follow up. This essay is not about Ronald Reagan. It is, however, about something Ronald Reagan said.

The time was September 21, 1987. The place The General Assembly of the United Nations.

“Cannot swords be turned to plowshares? Can we and all nations not live in peace? In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us? What could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our peoples than war and the threat of war?”

Now, whatever special knowledge or information (if any) may have informed this statement has not since surfaced. But the fact that Reagan said it, and the fact that he said it from the global pulpit of the U.N. is significant. Why the “alien” claptrap? There are a thousand other scenario’s RR could have used to illustrate his point, which is – ironically – the point of this entire essay. To wit:

killing each other, and/or scheming to kill each other is a stupid, ineffective, hopelessly archaic method of problem solving, and that we – as a society – are wrong to not see this. Unfortunately, we are also stubborn and defensive, so it would probably take a global event, of immediately apparent, immediately threatening, life and death proportion, in order for us to cease the intentional termination of one-another’s lives.

***

It’s a big idea, and peculiar for a host of reasons. Reagan was a military-loving dude. Hawkish to the point of seemingly soulless cynicism, Reagan seemed to be forever escalating the cold war with saber rattling speeches, then backing his words with seemingly infinite military spending. Guns to give the Zionists, guns for the Mujahidin, guns in space…If a weapon could go somewhere, the Reagan administration damn well intended to put one there. Strange then, to hear him decrying the very existence of armed conflict – President Reagan went on, in that same speech, to refer to the very act of war as an “Alien” in our collective midst. – at a UN gathering, in front of world leaders upon whom he might very well be making war on at some point in the future. So maybe this essay is a tiny bit about Ronald Regan after all. What the hell was that dotty old codger talking about anyway? Look how clumsy the rhetoric: “I occasionally think” is not a declaration one would associate with Presidential address by a archetypical GOP war pig, especially in snowplowing- as he was - for an exceptionally long winded, unbalanced, largely inappropriate comparison of aliens and hawkish policy. Is this really a President, waxing philosophical about interstellar engagements with an alien foe? How the fuck do I know? I keep telling you: This shit aint’ about Ronald Regan.

It’s an interesting idea though, no? Aliens! When you consider it, interstellar travel - expedient, viable, piloted travel between star systems, planets, and galaxies - is a prospect so far beyond human understanding, that any aircraft capable of it may well be the scion of intelligence practically god-like in its superiority to ours. Such a civilization probably wouldn’t just “drop in” every so often to have a look and catch up. In fact, they’d probably observe us for a good long while, making sure conditions here weren’t dangerous for them, looking down from the clouds, scanning for the use of weapons. They might have a protocol - one developed from years of practice, trial, and error – that they’d hold against any intelligent life they might run across. Call it pessimism, but I’m not sure Humankind would stand up to this type of vetting.

***

Let’s indulge shall we? Imagine: humans have discovered a new planet at the outer edge of our solar system, one capable of sustaining life. We decide to call it Dogshitland, and immediately begin to observe it, in hopes of one day going there. Before long we discover that our suspicions are true! Dogshitland is inhabited. It’s inhabited by (what else?) dogs. Massive, aggressive, ill-tempered dogs, of medium intelligence.

Further study indicates that there are different breeds of dogs on Dogshitland, and before long our scientists have figured out a dominant species: Dobermans. Dogshitland is ruled by giant, black, metallic Dobermans, each as big as a city bus and wide as a locomotive. They are violent, and mistrustful by nature, and they rule Dogshitland with huge teeth and military superiority. The Dobermans kill every day. Sometimes out of anger, or for self-preservation, sometimes one dog acting out vengeance on another. But also – and this is far more worrisome – the Dobermans organize, gathering in huge groups, heading across land to seek and destroy whatever they might find driven before them.

We soon discover that the inhabitants of Dogshitland seem to be dependent on doggie treats, despite the fact that – aside from tasting good and making other dogs jealous – the treats are worthless. The acquisition of doggie treats is central to existence on Dogshitland, and because the Dobermans are big and strong and mean, they’ve been able to amass treats than any other breed. Big, violent, not very smart, and addicted – as a race –to something worthless and frivolous, The Dobermans of Dogshitland don’t seem like the kind of dogs that would welcome strangers, even ones in spaceships.

There are other breeds on DSL, all displaying an equal array of favorable and unfavorable characteristics, but all subservient to the needs of the Dobermans.

I’ll save you the question and just provide the answer: No. No fucking way would we ever make an official visit there, intent on joining alien and dog in cooperative triumph. Why would we? The dogs that live there are oppressed, oppressing, and creepy. The entities driving the whole thing are stupid and paranoid, with huge weapons at their disposal. Their planet is nice, and we could probably learn a bit from interfacing from a world so far removed from our own, but none of those things would ever be worth the aggravation of dealing with arrogant, volatile, totalitarian douchebags like the Dobermans.

***

It’s not like we lack for shit that’s off limits. Brothers on this planet don’t often date, marry, and procreate with sisters, (except – obviously – in Florida). Cannibalism has been in decline for the entirety of civilization, and people don’t seem that into public masturbation. Flag-burning is sort of being phased-out, after a brief resurgence in the early aughts. Do-it-yourself brain surgery is a no-no, as is licking sidewalks, biting the heads off butterflies, and eating pennies. All these things we have enough sense to stay away from and not do. All these things and many, many more are frowned upon, and yet murder, the physical fact of willfully destroying another person’s consciousness forever, THAT particular undertaking is one that ALL countries engage in. In many ways, a nation’s capacity for killing is its most important measure of success. In most “First World” countries, we teach our children that they must always be polite, say their prayers, get to school on time, don’t use drugs, and – by the way - if you’d like to kill people, just say the word. There’s no shortage of thems we’d like not to be living! “First World”, “Second World”, “Third World”, “Disney World”, “Cartridge World”…All of ‘em got plenty of fuckers they’d prefer dead.

Looking down on this eternal group psyche-crisis in progress, would a race capable of producing machines made of pure white light, able to travel thousands of light-years in seconds and make not a sound in doing so, would those people even bother to try and tame, befriend, assist, or guide the giant black metal Dobermans who try to kill everything, and don’t seem to have a clue what to do with themselves? Doubtful, from where I’m sitting. Perhaps, if they were making a documentary, or something. I’d imagine we might be diverting for a short while, as reality tv for aliens:

This week on “Those Crazy Fucking People of Earth”, Watch as this stunted race of lunatics fight, and kill each other over works of fiction. Bear witness, as they shit all over the near-perfect world they live on. Laugh at them, so single minded in pursuit of shiny things.

***

It’s frowned upon to shit anywhere but the toilet unless one is camping. It’s frowned upon to grab at boobies. It’s fucking frowned upon to frown upon frowning upon things. Humans beings don’t normally walk around naked, mate with bees, Scream racial epithets around gathered strangers, or brandish loaded weapon in school zones. We all know you can’t scream fire in a theater, and that you can’t light a fire in a theater, and that if a tree falls in a theater, and nobody is in that theater to hear the tree fall, that it is bad form to even think about fire (Gadzooks man! you’ve got trees in theaters. The word “fire” needn’t come into the discussion). Most people don’t fart loudly around attractive women, or talk about how yellow their teeth are, or write poetry about their own bad breath, or leave the fucking seat down, or up, or with shit or little droplets of pee on it. Most people don’t marry cows. They don’t stand in one spot and hit themselves in the head with a brick, blackmail sixth-graders, or serve cockroaches at dinner parties. It’s common knowledge that you shouldn’t swim within an hour of having eaten, or having been eaten. It’s well known that gun powder is no substitute for celery salt, that Lance Armstrong is a dirty stinking shitbag liar, and that the NBA, no matter who wins what when, will never again be a million-billionth of what it once was.

So we do have guidelines. No shortage of mores, us. We got faux pas, fo-pas, sins, and shameful skeletons in disgusting closets for days and weeks and months and years. Truly, if there’s an act to be performed, you can rest comfy: People exist who will stand up and tell you not to perform it. Unfortunately, the extermination on members of our fellow species has yet to make that lists. Dare to dream. Just the opposite, in fact, the government – as has been demonstrated on countless occasions in ways too obvious and repetitive to mention – will actually commit murder, effectively and with great dispatch, if the political context seems favorable.

Yes I’m sort of being a stupid hippie but I’m not a wrong stupid hippie. Not for everybody, but for some. Also, we do seem to be entering a time where people seem more open to changing ideas and social strategy. Almost 40 years ago, President Reagan all but admitted to a clandestine alien colonization of Earth, in progress, and with the full cooperation and complicity of the United States government in same. 40 years! Yet here we are today. Actually, forget that last sentence there. It’s all bullshit, and this thing was never supposed to be about Ronald fucking Reagan.

Doghouse #1: "Like" Fun.

1994. Although we didn’t know it at the time, 1994 was probably the last entire year in history to enjoy a global internet penetration small enough to be called non-consequential. I remember it fondly: when I bought my tickets for that year’s Lollapalooza, Nirvana were the announced headliners. By show-time, however, everything had changed: Instead of Kurt, we’d be getting Billy. With news of Cobain's suicide, The Smashing Pumpkins - already slated to co-headline - had ascended to the top spot. Corrigan and his people seemed game enough come show day, but not as good as the coulda-been Nirvana shows burning though the minds of ticketed fans. Promised something sublime and unique, it was frustrating to accept what they were offering up in its place. Fortunately, I had a list of people to blame. I never attended another Lollapalooza, and I never voluntarily listened to the Smashing Pumpkins again.


Musical happenstance aside, the culture had a more pressing matter to attend in 1994. So complex and enthralling was this idea, even the people selling it had trouble understanding exactly what it might do. It’s roll out to the general public was through a series of commercials carrying the MCI brand, but shilling for something called, “The Information Superhighway.” The spots featured a young actress named Anna Paquin. Dressed smartly in a fancy dress, cute hat and speaking with an equally cute English accent. The tiny pitchwoman didn’t seem to be advertising anything. Instead, she looked cute and precocious, and spouted cute, precocious, positive affirmations interspersed with hopeful-sounding koanic riddles. (“There is no more “There!”). Apparently there was a highway being built. A highway that would bring the world together in ways that previous highways could not. A highway that could save us. By 1999, still years before You Tube, Facebook and Amazon, it seemed readily apparent to anyone paying attention that all the marketing promises could be kept. Everyone agreed: An age of miracles was upon us.

The MCI spots were ubiquitous for a while, but they were part of a much larger global awareness. The elephant had clearly been lured into the room, and now the blind would gather, touch, feel, and speculate.

Now, almost twenty years later, we’re beginning to see the potential end-products of those early years. After all those promises at the beginning, it’s hard not to be at least a little disappointed. If the internet was ever truly envisioned and conceived as a uniting force, it’s existence as such proved gallingly short. By 1998 Napster launched the first sorties of a music / info / file sharing battle between copywriters, artists and the public.

And it’s been sort of downhill from there. The upside potential of what was so obviously a world-changing device began to leaven itself with shitty by-products of it’s rise. Newsgroups evolved into forums and forums began to espouse exclusionary tactics, with the most knowledgeable active users policing the less knowledgeable (and/or those who couldn’t write as well) through castigation, bullying, and threats of expulsion. It’s that ethos that’s crystallized and perpetuated itself, to the point where most opt-in forums on the internet today seem to be run by a fandom of bullies, dead set on belittling the knowledge, opinions, and criticisms of their fellows in the group.

The codifying of the social media phenomenon didn’t help matters. The internet using public wasted no time in diving head first into a complete lifestyle re-jigger on behalf of Facebook. Suddenly we all found ourselves back in touch with - in many cases - a significant representative array of all the people we’d ever met. Now the uniting theme was stoked up again, this time, there’d be no weird forum hierarchy to navigate, and no banner ads distracting us from wasting time talking to people we never liked enough to actually stay in touch with in the first place. Again, the miraculous in electronic form. I think the goodwill lasted all of six months.


The “Like” button, a good idea in theory but beneficial ONLY in theory, and never in practice. The problem is in the weird duality of the feature. In many cases, internet users will share things that they want other people to enjoy. The “Like” button is a good way of closing the loop: Here check this out…this? Love it so much I’m gonna “Like” it. The problem is that “Likes” are used to determine page value in most internet monetization models. As that relationship became more and more prevalent and more and more obvious, the use of the damn “Like” button get’s more and more useless.

Hey look at this.

Awesome. I like it!

And so on. There are also many cases in which people who sell things might price those things according to their “Like” button value. By now most internet users understand this, and this understanding has created a weird new paradox. Now when somebody sends something they want us to like, we automatically assume that we’re being grifted into helping somebody else get paid. That effect alone is enough to negate the perceived benefits of a “Like” button, because the motivations of the “Likers” are seldom stated, and oftentimes not readily apparent. So too for the content provider’s, who maybe simply be sharing things for the sake of sharing, or earning advertising dollars based on “Likes.” Without that key piece of info in the bag, keeping track of “Likes” is completely useless, and that info is NEVER in the bag.

That’s shitty because this evolution was no accident. In my memory, the internet of the nascent, Netscape / AOL / dial-up years was a positive place. The people at work on internet properties were positive people. Conversations at parties, front page articles in the NYTimes. Feature stories in publications major or minor: All of them touted the new, amazing, light speed communication device that would link us all, no more “there!!!.” Every part of every country in the world sitting at one magical table. We would approach problems as one people now, and progress as we knew it would get botox. Then, after the thing was well on it’s way toward making at least some of the hype into reality, we, the young and tech-savvy, the users and builders who’d seen the upside potential and been astounded, we went and implemented every conceivable measure to reverse the effects.

So here we sit. The promises of the internet, save for the ones about how much easier it would be to buy things with it, have - largely - not materialzed. As a race, humans seem to be addicted - more than anything else - to our differences. We teach our children about familial pride and patriotism, but some how it transmutes into the belief in only us. OUR ideas...OUR country...OUR resources...We promise ourselves enlightenment and evolution, and build this awesome engine of attainment, then - just as all the pieces fall into place, we consciously engineer the results to be something other than that. Promised something sublime and unique, it's frustrating, sometimes fatally so, to accept something different offered in it's place. Unfortunately, in 2012, we've got nobody left to blame but ourselves.

Jeff and Crowe Step Out II

Thursday night, 11:49pm  continued…

Before he could make a sound, however, two small white baggies - one from each barrel – fell from the gleaming shotgun and bopped him on the forehead. Crowe had wanted to say “What the fuck is that screaming?”, but the advent of free narcotics had erased the entire recent past from his mind. Coming to his knees, he swiped one sweat-shirted arm across the ashtray and beer can still life on his glass coffee table. Then he looked around the room miming a drug-chop motion, imploring anyone within earshot:

Any you guys gotta’ card? Credit card?...No? Ah…

***

Friday morning, 1:47am

Jeff was struggling:

We uh…We oughtta mamllamugh…mmm…Wh…Wh…Whu…Whummizurzel…

Crowe could always tell exactly how fucked up Jeff was, because his stutter grew more pronounced as drink and drug demanded more and more of his brain function. Crowe hadn’t heard a coherent thought command his friend's breath since they'd blew up Nad’s tv, and that seemed like years ago. Crowe himself was watching his neighbor David, staring, really, although neither man was aware of it. David just happened to be the place where Crowe’s eyes had settled, and so Crowe heard the Domincan when he mumbled:

Sucio…Sucio.

David Rodriguez, Crowe’s next door neighbor and principle cocaine provider, also had a fairly reliable extreme inebriation tell: He began speaking exclusively in Scarface:

Sucio…Sucio…Punta. Her womb is so poluttesh…Palutesh. Suicio…

David didn’t limit himself to scenes from the movie. Although he could – and often did - recite the entire screenplay to anybody who’d listen, David felt he was at his best when actually narrating whatever was happening around him in his weird sounding, Dominican impression of Tony Montana’s signature Cuban patois. He was fully engaged now, and Crowe didmn’t even attempt to get a word in:

Ju white boise…Ju white bois ju nuthink. Ju got nothink. I bury youse cockarocka. Bury you cokarocka…

David made his living harvesting money from Crowe’s school mates by the bushel, selling really long nights to practically every single person Crowe had ever met at Gold Coast High. The fact that Crowe had graduated almost two years before seemed to have no effect on DR’s trade. Gold Coast continued to manufacture coke monkeys by the thousands, and Dave served as many freshmen as seniors.

Say khhello…Say Khhello….Khhhhhhhell…o…Say khhhhell…

DR found his own Scarface impression to be so funny and spot on, that the silly bastard could hardly make it through a quote without falling out. Tonight he was the only dude in the house who wasn’t hallucinating fiercely, and still his own hilarity had unmanned him. Crowe felt his own guffaws coming on when Jeff broke in:

Uh…Two sclabs each…And that was…Two. Two? Hours ago. Four hours. Four. And then how much David…?

DR, still muscling through the hilarity attack, attempted to croak up the word “two”. Jeff understood:

Two eightballs?

The Domincan nodded emphatically, smiling a toothy, bright-eyed smile:

What I tolt ju wha bois? What I tolt Ju?? Ah? Ah? I bury you cockrocka ju….Ju say Ghello to my Li-ew fren…My li-ew fren!! Ah? Ah? Ah.

Crowe thought DR had been there a few hours, Jeff thought only 45 minutes. Either way, three heads on two balls seemed, to each of them, vaguely impressive. They couldn’t voice their approval, however, as the narcotics coursing through their synapses had temporarily quieted both Jeff and Crowe. For a while there was almost complete silence as the three of them exchanged sketchy coke-glances and smacked their lips.

Jeff nodded with pursed lips to indicate his appreciation, spoke:

One of us needs to…

But before he could finish, An amazing scream rose in the apartment. This time, un-drowned by Pink Floyd, the wail proved gut-wrenching. Raspy and failing, the fractured exclamation set off seismic disturbances in the guts of Crowe and Jeff, just in time for the most vivid hallucinating of the evening.

***

Friday morning, 2:38am

They finally got him into Crowe’s car, but because the thing was full almost to the top with furniture and clothing, they were forced to dump Nadet in the trunk. For a while, they’d set Nads down on the grass by car while Crowe combed through the black 1998 Camry trying to Tetris-up some room for his thumb-less friend. It was pointless, and it took a loooong time. DR and Jeff were supposed to be taking care of Nads but instead they were freaking out:

What the fuck is that? Is that an ant? A fucking ANT? There’s a fucking ANT on his fucking, whoops, it went in his mouth…Did you fucking see that?!

Ju crazy mang, I bury youse…hey! That IS an ant!! It’s a whole line of them marching in this dude’s mouth…

Eventually Crowe gave up, announcing:

Fuck it dude. Just in the trunk is ok. Hospital’s only right over there…                                                     

He was pointing – Jeff noticed – in the exact wrong direction. However, Nads was looking rough and he hadn’t made a sound since the scream in the kitchen. Despite the extreme intoxication of everybody involved, an attempt on the hospital was in order. They flung the drained Nads into the trunk and made cautiously for the ER at Providence General Hospital.

***

Friday morning, 2:58

Arriving at the PGH ER Crowe couldn’t help but feel proud of himself. The roads to the hospital kept rolling up in front of him as if he were driving on wrapping paper, but his keen intellect and nano-second reflexes had carried them through. Now, with the day all but won, he wouldn’t just charge ahead. Crowe had learned all he needed to about leap-looking back at the apartment. This time he’d leave nothing to chance. He’d stopped the car in the middle of the street, holding up all emergency room traffic, including ambulances, at 200 yards distance from the glass front door. Then he shut the car off, and watched. Crowe saw doctors and patients buzzing around through the glass, but they looked small, and - to Crowe -like frogs. David had elected not to make the ER trip, but Jeff was narrating enough for both of them:

I see people. Doctors? No…Are those…Are those frogs? Fuckin…Is that a fucking frog??

The ER - land of cops and doctors, nosy nurses, and the possibility of getting arrested under florescent light – had never been Crowe’s favorite place. He caught a look at his frazzled, sweating self in the rear view, then looked over at Jeff, saw Kermit the Frog eyes, and Hulk ripped shirt, and decided that neither one of them could go in. Nads would have to walk to the ER.  

That’s when all the cars stacking up behind them on the street started yelling and beeping at the same time. A booming voice rose from out of it, strong-sounding, tall, and mean:

Move that shithead, or I’ll break ye fuckin’ face! This is an emerg…

A chorus of voices from other cars chimed up. In an instant, Crowe felt that everybody in the world was reprimanding him. The voices got louder and angrier, and before Crowe could make a sound in protest, Jeff threw open the passenger door and darted, top speed, away from the Crowemobile. The sight of his friend’s terrified flight threw Crowe into total immobility. He heard phantom noises that sounded like passenger jets, bullet trains, and missiles flying towards him. The creepy sounds were blending with the horn beeps and insults. They were all blowing and spinning together to form a dragon. Crowe saw the beast taking shape in the air and was overcome with worry: Obviously the Crowmobile couldn’t handle a creature of this caliber. It was much too big! The car was blowing up like a balloon. He could see the doors bulging, hear the rivets popping, and he became almost psychotic with crazed laughter. Laugh-tears water-falling down his cheeks, Crowe marshaled all his strength, reached into the glove compartment, grabbed a baseball sized rock, opened his door, and flung the rock in the direction of the mean-sounding voices. He heard a loud crash as he ducked back behind the driver’s seat and gunned it away from the scene quick-fast, taking a second to notice that Jeff was somehow back in the passenger seat. Crowe meant to drive to across to the other side of the hospital, eager to put the beeping and throwing of rocks behind them, but the acid was upon him in a complete way. What he perceived as a masterful example of tactical evasion, was in fact, a ½ mile creep going the wrong way down a one way street, during which Crowe saw millions of tiny UFO’s in the sky right over his car.  

Eventually they found a parking spot, right behind the ambulance whose windshield Crowe had done in just minutes ago. The driver was standing by, waiting for the police to arrive.

***

Friday morning, 3:30

They parked. Both of them jumped out of the car, walked identical paces to the trunk, and were secretly impressed by the naturally occurring choreography. Neither gave voice to his amusement. Instead, Jeff said:

Ok, you ankles, me wrist. Capeesh?

Jeff was starting to gain some confidence. He’d reached that most awesome part of voluntary hallucinating and was talking in great, well-annunciated streaks, as if he were narrating a documentary:

Three hours, thirty minutes, the body becomes used to the shaky drama of Lysergic-ness. The sensation is like falling, only it seems to last forever and instead of reaching a terminal velocity, you make yourself aero-dynamic with hands above head in a superman position and keep going faster. You can see through people, and into the hidden purposes behind translucent small talk. This is the period of tripping that snagged Doc Ellis no hitter, the sensations the seeded an entire counter – culture in the wake of the Korean Conflict. A heroic dose of good, clean, strong can actually change a man’s life. Not in a vague, emotionally ambiguous way that pizza, beer, and unexpected anal sex with a stranger can change your life, but in a deeper, more personal way. Acid – at least for the first few times one takes it – can create a crystalline new window in the McMansion of existence. 

Crowe hadn’t reached this point yet, and so when it became apparent Jeff had solved his, Crowe was jealous. He immediately began plotting nasty things to do to his friend. In the meantime, he grabbed Nad’s ankles. Crowe and Jeff were amazed by how much Nads weighed. Removing him from the trunk was like trying to lift a full sized cow that’d been halved in a guillotine and wrapped in cheesecloth. Not helping matters was the fact that the one two three count got all fucked up because of the drugs. Crowe was thinking go on three count, Jeff assumed the beat after the three count. Amazingly, and inexplicably (except for acid) they were both planning to throw the unfortunate Mr. Nads broken glass and broken macadam of the Visitors Lot.

AhhhOhWatchit!

Crowe said it, but by the time either of them realized what was happening, it was far too late for preventative measures. Instead, the acidified duo could only watch as their mistakes bore fruit. There was a perfect moment there: Jeff and Crowe with .12 gauge pupils, the inert form of Nads swinging, pausing frozen in mid-air like Dick Fosburry after a perfect flop.

Whoahhh!!!!

Jeff exclaimed as Nads hit the pavement. Crowe’s failure to launch created a whip-saw motion. When gravity realized Crowe had hesitated in his letting go, it took revenge by snapping Nad’s upper back, neck, and head against the pavement. Crowe said:

Youch

Jeff said:

Dude…

Nads said nothing.

Jeff and Crowe Step Out

“Wild Billy was a crazy cat, and shook some dust from out of his coon-skin cap. ‘said trust some of this, it’ll show you where you’re at, or at least it really help you feel it”

Part I

Thursday afternoon, 3:30pm

Nads heard them fucking with the stereo and immediately decided he wouldn’t be watching The Wall. He loved it, of course. He was the one who had told Crowe’s ignorant ass about the movie to begin with. But now, with his trip stalking him like an approaching tornado, Paul “Nads” Nadet felt like getting into something a little more unique, a little more high profile. He headed for the kitchen, noticing, on the way, his fucked up friends cuddling into the AV equipment like two piglets mushing down on a fresh teat.

Banishing his silly friend’s puzzling activities from his mind, Nadet opened up Crowe’s fridge and began pulling out the things he needed. After ten minutes he closed the fridge, moved to the drawers, and began to study and reject various types of cutlery. Nad’s focus was total, his purpose clear in his tumbling mind: He was looking for first quality sharpness and strength. He would seek his quarry with the psychotic myopia that only mega-powerful, totally pure LSD can elicit.

***

Thursday Afternoon, 4:30pm

Silver…

The hippie called it, counting out the five twenties the boys had forked him and still pushing a hard sell despite the fact the deal was done.

The real thing!

he proclaimed, scanning his marks for reactions. Then, after pocketing the bills in the sketchiest way possible and mock-glancing a full 360 degrees around them, the kid dropped his voice to a stage whisper and ducked closer to the boys:

Bet you never thought you’d see that again, right? Am I right?

The boys said nothing.

Taking a step back, the hippie extended his hand in a dramatic, “I’m-passing-you-the--drugs-now” type of motion that both Jeff and Crowe felt was at least twice the attention grabber as simply handing the fuckers over. There was an awkward silence as the hippie waited for proper drug quality appreciation.

They were in the food court of the Providence Place Mall, and both Jeff and Crowe suddenly found themselves wanting to punch the hippie in the throat. They resisted, of course, mostly because they both knew there was a police radio unit actually stationed in the mall. To punch a throat here were would mean instant arrest, and Thursday night was no night for incarceration. Thursday night was Acid Night at Nad’s apartment. Jeff and Crowe loved Acid Night.

***

Thursday Night, 8:30pm

“Silver” turned out to be a silly name for a severely potent incarnation of Lysergic-25. It had taken two hours for Crowe to figure out how to operate the stereo system, which he’d owned for 12 years before donating it to Nadet’s apartment. Everything worked out eventually, however, and for the last 48 minutes he and Jeff had been tripping heroically to Pink Floyd's The Wall, giggling like Saigon geishas circa November ’69. The giant bird animation sequence was coming up. JM and Crow both knew that, because they’d each seen The Wall 86 times, the last 78 of which had occurred together - in this very apartment - over the last seven months. It was at this time that Nads began screaming, loudly, from the kitchen, mere feet from where Crowe and Jeff were freaking out.

The giant bird animation was a shared favorite part, easily the highlight of the whole affair, and so Jeff and Crowe heard no screaming. Using an ancient-looking remote, Crowe tweaked the volume to beyond full power, as the enormous avian on TV ripped out an Africa-size chunk of cartoon continent. Nad’s apartment, a railroad penthouse halving the top floor of an ancient tinderbox tenement, heaved and vibrated with each surreal frame. Crowe smelled ozone. Too much electricity? Fire risk? He found himself momentarily tormented.

di-di-di-di-joo see the frightened ones?

Crowe looked like he’d been tear-gassed. He was pounding his own head with two throw pillows and bouncing like a monkey. Crowe always acted like this when the Wall was on, as if he’d not seen, and committed to memory, the entire screenplay - director’s edits included - a long time ago. As if he didn’t knew exactly what was going to happen and when. Nads continued screaming from the kitchen. The TV continued to drown him out.

Di-di-di-did you hear the falling bombs?

Crowe and Jeff both sang in involuntary whispers. Nad’s screams died out just as the animation became photography, and Jeff found himself watching in helpless horror as Crowe stopped his spazzing out, grabbed - lightning-quick - for the remote, and shut the VCR off. The tv volume was inconsistently calibrated with the Cable. When Crowe hit “stop”, the sound feeding back into the apartment was like the screaming jet-wash of an F-16 heard from inside the turbine. Jeff shit a tiny shit into his pants. Both Crowe and Jeff hit the floor and, succumbing to some cowardly stoner reflex, screamed as loud as they possibly could. The effort was robust, but apparently wasted, as their alarm sounded insignificant against the angry entertainment center. Ironically, the screaming din coincided directly with Paul Nadet’s latest, hoarse lamentations from the kitchen. Seconds later, the hellish noise crested and died with a final angry burst of static. The apartment went silent in ozone-smelling blackness.

***

Thursday Night, 10:37pm

Crowe’s pit bull Eric Clapton (the dog) came trundling in to the room to investigate the commotion. Jeff watched intently, saying “ah!” as if he’d been expecting the dog to show up. He said:

Clappy Clappy! Here girl

Instead, Clapton went to Crowe, who hadn’t moved since his stereo euthanasia moments before. The dog jumped on Crowe's back and sat down. Crowe was clearly dazed but attempted communication regardless:

Clappy…Girl…

The dog jumped down after a few seconds, sniffing his way over to the now very ozone-smelling, former entertainment center. He combed around for his nose in a very particular kind of way that seemed to signal to Crowe, who began twitching and leaning in, shouting:

Oh no. Fuck. Clap…No…Fuck!

But no sooner had he started than the tiny orange pit bull assumed a wide legged stance, thrust out his white doggy butt, and began to shit on the floor in front of the boys. JM saw the pooch begin to vibrate with muscle tension, heard a tiny fart escape its tiny, white, doggy asshole. At this, Crowe and JM became insane with laughter. They both doubled over, tears streaming down faces, making hardly a sound beyond the occasional desperate breath. For 15 whole minutes the Hilarity held the two boys in its sway. They were rolling around and kicking legs. Crowe began to fear disk herniation. They’d only just seized control of themselves and begun to quiet down, when Clapton began sniffing and nudging the poop, feeling at his fresh rug turds like a head chef picking through a shipment of oysters. By the time Clapton (the dog) began to eat the poop, Crowe felt like he might be dying. Once again, he and Crowe went rolling around the floor, clutching stomachs, tears streaming down perma-grin cheeks, trying desperately to breathe through it all. They went reeling around the room like that for a long time, trying hard to stop power-laughing, and laughing even more because they could not.

***

Thursday Night, 11:30pm

Oh…Jesus that’s fuckin’ gross

Jeff rose first, rolling over to one of the stained, ancient couches that comprised his living room set, and pulling himself seated.

Crowe did the same to the opposite couch and then the two boys just sat still, silently trying to reassemble their spatial awareness. They’d taken the drug 3.5 hours ago, and both of them were beaming away like cartoon characters. The ozone smell was still pervasive, but now Jeff had mistaken it for a color. He was sitting back, getting comfortable, pleased to be still and watch the florescent ozone rainbow slowly filling the room.

Crowe saw all this, and understood everything that was going on from one hard glance at his buddy. He stood and moved over to Jeff, speaking once more in that creepy stage whisper:

Dooood…Dooood…

But Jeff had flown, leaving only a perplexed, look-alike shell of Jeff color-gazing on the nasty couch. Crowe kept coming, allowed himself a few tentative steps, advancing until he was standing over his friend. He tried to begin speaking, but found he’d forgotten what he’d been about to say. He tried to press on, opened his lips to form words, but still, there was nothing:

Uhhhhh. Ohhhh. Uh…

Crowe was standing right over Jeff now, looking down into his friend’s moony leer. Suddenly he remembered what he’d meant to say, but before he could let fly a single word, a fresh scream came blowing in from the kitchen.

The scream was horrible. Broken and desperate, it sent dense rainbow clouds laser-beaming across Crowe’s mind where they congealed, and began flowing from his nostrils, ears, and eyes with a weird sizzling noise. Crowe poked about his face and ears for a few moments, trying to staunch the flow, but it was no use. He watched, helpless and bereft, as the last rainbow flavored mists left his body, then he collapsed and began to cry. The fact that he was crying made him feel hopeless and that’s when he REALLY started crying, letting all manner of sob, weep, and snarf come flooding out him like he was auditioning for a chorus role in “HAIR”. The tantrum lasted almost 20 minutes, and afterwards Crowe shut down completely, content to watch eyelid fireworks and leave Jeff and Nads to their own.

***

Thursday Night, 11:49pm

When the stocky black dude kicked the open the apt. door, the two boys remained silent, and perfectly still for almost a whole minute. When the same gentleman brandished a very large, very shiny Remington .12 gauge at them, shouting “On the floor faggots!” in a thick Dominican drawl (onaflaw fah-gots!). Crowe moved, but not as instructed, trying – instead - to dart straight for the kitchen door. Unfortunately, Crowe looked only after he’d leapt, and found he’d not allowed for the correct height, and density of Nad’s glass-top coffee table. Crowe went down hard on the paleolithic shag wall-to-wall. His field of vision went spinning off in a blue flash, while another part of his mind was feeding back phantom helicopter rotor-noise (whup whup whup whup…). The guy with the shotgun took two big steps, and was now standing over the up-facing Crowe, who opened his mouth to speak.