Gremlins

Jeeze.  I sure wish I could think of something to write about that's happened recently.  I mean, I guess I could but it'll either be totally uninteresting or reasonably disturbing.  Reasonably disturbing sounds like a paradox.  I'm not gonna rack my brain to think of something that's both reasonable and disturbing.  I guess a vasectomy is reasonably disturbing, but I didn't get one of those this week.  If I did though boy, lemme tellya.  I'd have one reasonably disturbing motherfuckin story to tell you about my recent activity.

Most stuff is unreasonably disturbing.  At least stuff that anybody wants to hear about.  I could tell you that my kitten played with a ping pong ball, to which you would most certainly respond with a resounding ¨who gives a fuck?¨ and then we'd all get on with our lives.  But I don't have a kitten.  That's cos I choked the goddam thing with a fuckin ping pong ball.  See?  That's unreasonably disturbing.  Fortunately for you, me and my nonexistent kitten, that never happened.  

I'm glad I could clear all this up for everybody.  

Now, if anybody's still reading this, I'll quit stalling and try to tell a little tale.  A tale of adventure.  Perhaps it'll be a tale of misadventure.  A tale that will make your blood boil, that will make your blood curdle, that will  make your heart stop, that will make your heart pound.  Basically folks, I'm gonna cause you to have a goddam heart attack.  Probably not, but if any of yall have a cardiac arrest from reading my stupid blog then I'll certainly have an interesting story to tell about that.

As things are, nobody ever died from listening to my nonsense.  At least I don't think they have.  If they have, then fuck em.  

So yeah, I remember walking around in Philly with a pack of dogs.  Pack of dogs sounds pretty intense considering what it actually was.  My buddy and I were high on cough syrup, and the dog pack consisted of a medium-small white dog who looked kinda like an albino fox and three or four dipshit puppies.  And that's if an albino fox even exists.  If it doesn't, then fuck you this dog looked like one.  Her name was Skitch.  She was an All-Star dog.  Made it to the Dog Hall of Fame.  So did most of her puppies.  At least in that litter.  There were two of them in the dog pack.  They were probably 3 or 4 months old, each of them a little bumbling ball of white fur.

Then there was my puppy.  He was the odd-man out.  He was about the same age as Skitch's pups but he was tall, brown and gangly.  Destined to become a good-sized alpha male, at 3 months he was a clumsy and semi-cheerful dingaling.  Well, he was never all that cheerful, but he was the big brown puppy amongst all the snowballs and he was about as cute as was ever gonna be.  All the pups were following mama dog, though.

So were we.  Christ, I was trippin my ass off.  So was my buddy.  Skitch knew what was goin on, so we figured we'd just follow her around.  She didn't need to be on a leash in the first place, and there really wasn't any traffic at midnight on a Sunday in the chilly, misty October in Philadelphia anyway.  Whenever me and Ian would be thinking maybe we should get the dogs some water, Skitch would miraculously lead us to a Wawa (the local convenience store chain) and we'd waddle in and fill up a few cups.  Skitch knew how to babysit a bunch of puppies and a couple of putzes who were technically too high to be legally walking around.  She was a good dog.

At one point, Skitch led our seemingly not-very-threatening gang down to the Schyulkill River Park, down by the railroad tracks that ran along the east side of the river.  It was an area that was well-known to be a pick up spot for homosexuals.  It was also a good place to get drunk or fuck around when you were tripping.  As we entered the little park, we were met by an army of Pekingese dogs who all had bows on their ears.  Our puppies pranced playfully up to the little furry weirdos to say hi.  

The Pekingese kinda cowered.  Cowered is the wrong word.  They were certainly humble, though.  I was trippin my ass off.  I immediately felt sorry for them.  They were happy to meet our dogs, and they were happy to meet us.  But they seemed somewhat apologetic, as if to offer a disclaimer that they had no choice in the matter as to their size, their crazy fur or their severe underbites.  They also seemed to shrug and telepathically explain that if it were up to them, they wouldn't have tied ribbons on their heads.  

I winked and told them that it was okay.  They were down, as far as the squatter guys who were doing the Robo shuffle around town were concerned.  And the puppies seemed to think that they were kinda funny.  Oddities that they had nothing to be afraid of.  I'm not a big fan of weird ass little dogs, but to this day I sorta tip my hat to Pekingese when I run into one.  Fuck it.  It ain't their fault.

Dog # 1

So there's a big-ass dog where I'm at.  I like him.  He's a Great Pyrenese. If I didn't spell that right, don't fuckin worry about it.  You'll be fine.  Or you can give me an A minus.  And I'll be fine.  Or I can get on with the goddam story, if that's okay with you.  Thank you very much.

Actually, nothing happens.  At least not yet.  You never know what I'm gonna fuckin do.  Well, you can be pretty sure that I'm gonna stall and yammer on for a minute.  So you know what I'm gonna do.  But you don't know what I'm gonna talk about.  Neither do I.  Let's embark upon this journey together, shall we?

I wanna talk about my old dog.  I actually have a couple of old dogs.  No I don't.  They're fuckin gone.  I don't ¨have¨ any of them.  But I've had three dogs.  There.  Now I'm happy.  Am I fuckin satisfied?!!!  Yes, I am!!!  

But I just rolled a dice and it came up with dog #1.  Really what I did was call heads or tails on an empty can of Grizzly tobacco.  Heads was Dog #1, tails was Dog #2, and if physical law had thrown us a curveball it woulda been Dog #3.

Now I forget what the fuck I was talkin about.

Just kidding.

Dog #1 was named Mac.  He was an over-sized Irish Setter who could likely have been a mutt but who looked like a stocky Setter who was taller than average.  I was 5 when we got him.  Clifford the Big Red Dog was one of my favorite books at that age.  Mac wasn't as big as Clifford but the motherfucker was certainly a big, red dog.  Yep.  A big, red, doofus dog with big floppy ears.  I've always been a sucker for big, floppy-eared goofball dogs.

I grew up with Mac.  One of my earlier memories and almost without a doubt one of my fondest memories was the day my dad came home with Mac.  I was 5.  Mac was 5 months old, destined to be about 105 pounds in his prime when my dad would jog with him regularly in the years to come.  I remember him standing nearly as tall as me.  And I could be wrong.  It wouldn't be the first time.  Still, he was a big, gangly, hyperactive puppy who was so happy to meet me that he could barely contain himself.  My memory is vague, but I remember   hugging him and just hoping we could keep him.  And we got to keep him.

Aw fuck.  Now I'm all weepy about a dog I haven't seen in 25 years.  Argh.  Lemme think of a quick mac story.  Heh.  Quick Mac sounds like a crappy hamburger that's gonna be on sale next month.  A Big Mac with dog hair in it maybe?  Oh yeah, Big Mac was another nickname for Mac back when the Big Mac was kinda new

Mac was extremely friendly to women and children.  He didn't like men that he didn't know coming to the house though, unless my dad introduced them.  And honestly, in a family home in Southern California in the late 70s, that's probably exactly what you would've wanted from a dog.  My dad was outta the house 1 week out of every month and me and my mom and my sister had Mac helping to hold down the fort.  And he'd bite a motherfucker, too.

Dog #2 was a psycho, and I'd get real worried when I'd see a little kid walking an alpha male dog up the street.  The kid can't hold the dog.  If there's a dog fight I'm gonna need backup, and this kid can't physically restrain his dog.

When I was 8, I was walking Mac down Indian road in Sunnymead California (now Moreno Valley, I think) when we passed a house where a large German Shepard lived.  I remember that Shepard cos he'd charge the fence and freak out and snarl at me sometimes when I was walking to school.  I've always liked dogs, but I've also always been scared of the ones that I could tell just wouldn't be persuaded or commanded by a stranger.  Especially by a defenseless kid.  

This German Shepard was one of those.

As Mac kinda walked me past that house on Indian Road, I realized that the gate was open to the house where that big, mean dog lived.  Then I heard it:  Footsteps scrambling through gravel and then a psychotic snarl.  Holy shit.  I was worried about my dog.  Shepards had a bad reputation when I was a kid.  And I was 8.  I believed the horror stories.

The dog exploded out of his yard and broadsided Mac.  I dropped the leash.  The other dog's owner was waxing his car or something, calling his dog but not looking real concerned.  We were doomed.

Man. Ol Mac got on top of that motherfucker and freaked out.  Now, Dog # 2 learned how to scrap.  Dog # 1 didn't have any experience but he'd be fucked if something was gonna happen to his boy who was walking with him.  That's my anthropomorphic assessment anyway.  Mr. ArmorAll came running as soon as his dog was getting his ass whipped out in the middle of Indian Road.  He didn't yell at me or anything but I remember him being in a hurry to involve himself once it looked like it was gonna be his problem and not mine.

I was gonna take Mac to the school playground that day but we went back home.  I was in no position to be buying steaks for a dog when I was in the third grade, but the fucker sure deserved one.

Paradise

Aw, Christ.  Me and a couple of other folks were supposed to write about our favorite place that we've visited.  I flaked out.  Each of them flaked out.  We're all a buncha goddam flakes.  But who cares?  Better to unite against productivity with a couple of other lazy, procrastinating fuckers than to be the guy who never shows up and when he does he's all wasted.  

That said, our little writing group isn't a contest.  For what little I write, it's kinda nice to have some kind of parameters that I can bend if I feel like it but also have a little direction and encouragement.  Fuck.  I'll shut up about all that and start talking about my favorite place I've ever visited.  I've been a lot of places, but for some reason I'm gonna talk about Sioux City, Iowa.  Cos I liked that place.

I've only been to Sioux City twice.  And I've never actually been wandering around downtown and checking out the social scene.  Nor do I ever plan to.  I'd probably wind up being a weekly guest on COPS.  I spent all my time out in train yard world.  One gas station right across the road from the little Burlington Northern yard.  The whole train side of the little two-lane highway that headed towards town was a buncha weeds and bushes and train track nonsense.  

The side that the gas station was on had a sidewalk that nobody ever probably used unless they were in my situation, give or take.  On that side of the road was kinda seedy and light industrial.  There was at least one shady little motel and a bread distributor.  Other than that, who fuckin knows?  A buncha crummy buildings that you don't pay attention to.  About a half mile past all that Americana (the good Americana, the kind that makes you kinda miss the US if you leave), there was a McDonald's and probably some other garbage that's the America you're glad you fuckin left if you're fortunate enough to leave.

The time I'm thinking of, one of my dearest friends at the time and offhand probably my all-time favorite train-hopping buddy of mine had arrived in Sioux City.  Damn.  I gotta get to the story here.  And there is no story.  In a fuckin nutshell, the ladies that worked at the gas station were some really nice people.  It was pretty chilly in the mornings and once the sun went down.  They just gave us free coffee and hot dogs and didn't mind if we sat at one of the two tables for hours while we watched them make our train across the street.

And we had cigarettes.  And we could smoke in the gas station at the table while we drank our free coffee.  And we were really stoned.  That's because after walking around a bit, we had returned to the gas station and some guy walked outta the place and said,¨Where are you guys from?¨  We gave him a simplified story that involved mumbling a few names of cities, that we were waiting to catch a train to Minneapolis.  

Good enough for him.  He drove us back to a crappy little motel about a half a mile back and he gave us bonghits and a couple of lines of coke.  He told us to hang on while he took a shower real quick while me and Micah sat, stoned and letting the coke kick in, kinda revelling in this seemingly cosmic good luck.  When the dude got outta the shower he did another bong hit with us and pulled off about an eighth of weed out of a giant bag that he had stashed under the bed.  Then he got out his wallet and tossed one of the twenties that was in it on the table.  ¨Well, good luck, fellas,¨ he said.  ¨You guys wanna ride back up to the gas station?  I'll take you but I'm going the other way after that.¨

¨Naw, man,¨ we yammered as we both stood up and spun around in half-circles, patting our pockets and looking frantically around for anything we might be forgetting.  Not like we really had anything in the first place.  ¨Naw really, thanks a lot.  Nice to meetcha, blah blah blah,¨ we blathered as we backed outta the motel room door.

Right before we ran into the guy who took us back to where the weed was, we had returned to the gas station near the yard after having walked to the McDonald's a mile and a half back or so.  As soon as we had approached the McDonald's and were looking for snipes (cigarette butts that are long enough to relight), a woman in her 30's hollered at us from her car to ¨come here¨.  We walked over and she handed us a ten dollar bill and told us that she wanted us to get something to eat.  You'd think that would happen frequently if you were eating half-eaten burgers outta the trash all the time, but it doesn't.  

The lady was gonna sit in her car and eat her breakfast so we couldn't not get us some fuckin breakfast.  I gotta admit, we wouldn't have spent that dough on breakfast any other way.  But fuck it.  This broad was playing hardball.  Might as well get a couple of egg mcmuffins and some stupid tater cake things.  They're gross but holy shit they're fuckin good sometimes.  Especially if all you've been eating is squished up bread and peanut butter lately.  We wandered outta there with a buck and a half in our collective pocket and waved to the lady and thanked her again.  She could've been my mom.

We had managed to get a few snipes at the McDonald's and we still had some dough but not enough for smokes.  We figured we could probably beg another 50 cents or whatever to get a pack of Bugler once we got back to the gas station, though it doesn't do you a lot of good to piss off the employees of the place where you'd like to fill up water and use their bathroom or whatever other facilities you can take advantage of.  

We were full and the day was getting warm and pretty.  It was probably late September.  Not the last day of pleasant fall, but getting there.  We'd be okay.  The speed limit on that stretch of outter town highway had to be at least 45 mph, but some ratty-ass station wagon swerved over by the sidewalk and screeched to a halt.  He leaned over and rolled down the passenger-side window.  ¨YOU GUYS NEED SOME SMOKES?!!!¨, he bellowed as if we were all on our way to shoot some Viet Cong out of our chopper together.

¨SURE!!!¨, we shouted in near-unison.  ¨THAT'D BE GREAT!!!¨

¨COOL!!!  HERE YOU GO!!!  I GOTTA GO BEFORE THE COPS SHOW UP!!!!¨, he screamed as he gave us the kind of nod you get from an okay uncle who had fucked up and joined the Marines.  ¨GOOD LUCK!!!¨

We smiled and waved as he sped off.  I don't remember what we got, but we had two packs apiece.  And that's good enough for me.  Then we ran into the guy with the weed.

Once we got back to the gas station, we were stoned and armed with twenty-something bucks.  No convenience store worker can say shit if you got twenty bucks.  Fuck them.  But they were sweet as pie.  They refused to take our money.  We thanked them and sat awkwardly at the table as the shadows grew long.  It was only awkward for a bit.  Anytime we'd look up they'd smile and wave and ask us if we were doing okay.

And as we sat there watching the sun set in the west over the train yard that was far too small to pay for its' own police, I watched the pigeons gather to eat their dinner.  I'd always liked pigeons, had always felt sorry for them and for their plight.  They're like flying chickens.  They don't seem particularly bright.  And I'm no bird psychologist, but I'll go out on a limb here and say that pigeons are fuckin morons.  But goddammit, those fuckers survive even though they're the big joke of the bird world or something.

But you know what?  Not in Sioux City, Iowa they're not.  They may be pathetic when  they're bopping around eating wino puke and cigarette butts on the sidewalk, scraggly and lice-ridden.  But that's in the city.  And they still make it.  They're graceful when they fly.  Hell, a lot of birds look dopey when they walk.  The pigeons in Sioux City don't have to walk.  They just go to the quiet train yard and eat all the corn that falls out of the grain cars.  And there are piles of it everywhere.  

I dunno, I watched those birds being as beautiful and free as I've ever seen them, bowing to no one and it looked like they had found paradise.  Me and my brother had found it too, for a day.

Physics and Anatomy Quarrel

My ass hurts.  That can mean a couple of different things.  In my particular case at this moment, it means that I probably got lucky that I didn't break my goddam tailbone.  A little over a week ago, I went swimming with a friend and his daughter and a small gang of his little girl's friends.  It was a good time.  The water was cold but the sun was hot, we were swimming in some secluded pond that seems like it'll feel like bath water by mid-July, it was one of the kids' surprise 9th birthday party.  Not only that, but the kids had no idea that her folks had managed to cheaply purchase a couple of miniature horses. So this little girl's fixin to get a fuckin pony for her birthday.  

There was a rope swing on the other side of the pond.  I wasn't really feeling it, but some of the kids were wimping out when it came to getting fully submerged.  If I would've known them better, I would've just tossed them in.  But I wasn't trying to be an asshole.  I'm actually quite the natural.  Still, I wasn't gonna start chucking little girls who barely knew my name into a freezing cold pond.  I made a deal with them though:  If they all got in and got their hair wet, I'd jump off the goddam rope swing.  They readily agreed.  Now that I think about it, the birthday girl managed to not get in all the way.  Little fucker…

Anyway, I swam to the other side and got a hold of the rope, whereupon I climbed up the snaggly hill to find what I assumed would be an obvious place from which to launch.  There weren't any obvious places, but I found a nice, flat rock and took aim at the pond.  Not like it was a little target, but if you went off to the left very much, you'd probably bash your head open on a rock and get eaten by cottonmouths or something.  So I had my sights on the right.  There were knots on the rope but I couldn't reach them from where I was standing.  'Whatever', said I.  As I type this 8 or 9 days later, I'm still leaning from one cheek to the other.

So yeah, it turns out the knots on the rope were there for a fuckin reason.  I jumped off of my launching pad and made it a good 7 or 8 feet down with gravity as my primary fuel when I bottomed out.  Never did the term ¨bottomed out¨ seem more appropriate to me.  That little bit of earth being my only obstacle before I made it to the pond, I smashed my ass real good (?) and then directly blumped into the goddam water.  It hurt, but at least I could swim to shore.  No big deal.  I surfaced, my invisible tail between my legs, to hear the kids shouting for me to do it again.  My buddy was on the other side of the pond grimacing and laughing and shaking his head.  I managed to hobble up to a different launching pad and jump off the goddam rope again just to save face and to give the kids an encore and all that, but fuckin A.  If the dirt I hit would've been rock or even hard, dry dirt I'm certain that I would've broken my tailbone.

I was supposed to be writing about something else but this whole my-ass-hurts thing is on my mind.