Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Surrender

The endless miles of prairie slithered by in numbing brown and gold waves outside the bus window.

Time to settle in and relax.

By now the police would have found the bodies. Tomorrow she would be in the City safely anonymous in her new career as a the world's tallest midget porn star - there to disappear under a pile of pawing groping little hands and sweaty little bodies till she could re-emerge under an assumed name.

In the meantime it was work. Filthy work to be sure. But Dorothy, raised on a farm, was used to that.

She looked down at the ridiculously garish red shoes on her feet and cackled like a loon. Some farm girl she was. What a laugh.

Miss Almira Gulch, spinster busybody of the trailer court learnt different. Poor wet Almira. Drowned in her own kitchen sink. The old bitch's last words burbled out around the Sunday dishes were, "Wicked little girl. Oh what a world, what a world!"

What a world and wicked little girl indeed. If only she knew.

After rifling through old witch's meager possessions, she shoved the body into the crawl space under the dilapidated trailer. Thirty seven dollars and twenty eight cents was all she got for her troubles. That barely paid for the bus ticket.

Nothing seemed to be working out for Dorothy Gale. She couldn't even get the skinny bitch to fit under the trailer - even with the help of a chainsaw. Almira's long stocking feet ended up protruding from underneath the trailer for all the world to see. As an after thought, Dorothy snatched the ruby slippers off the old bird's cold dead feet, the only other thing the old bitch had that was worth stealing.

Well why not? she thought. She didn't need them any more and she wasn't just merely dead, she was really quite sincerely dead.

She clicked her heels together for luck.

Dorothy stared out the window at the endless cornfields rolling by. The sun peaked through the low hanging storm clouds bathing the landscape in an eerie yellowish glow making the cracked highway appear to be paved in dull gold bricks. Tornado weather for sure probably but who gave a shit?

Bored, she carved another swastika into her forearm. The feel of the penknife cutting into her skin made her tingle. Anything to feel - something - about anything.

"Fuckers," she thought recalling what the school psychiatrist Dr. Baum said about her. Tests, tests and more tests and then the bullshit concern. The words borderline personality disorder hovered in the air of his musty office as he excused himself.

Shadows moving across the opaque milky glass of the office door. Consulting with the principal in an agitated whisper outside. More words. Floating in the stale air. Seeping into the dingy wallpaper. words.

Deep seated psychosis coupled with narcissistic tendencies. 
A text book sociopath.
Dangerous. 
Involuntary commitment.

As if she'd ever give them the chance. She'd show them all.

Dirty, dirty fuckers.

She felt the crumpled postcard in her pocket from the Wizard. The Wizard. Another alias no doubt.  She'd heard him called all sorts of names: Professor Marvel, The Doorman, Cockney Cabbie, The Guard... now he was calling himself the Wizard. The knucklehead operated under the delusion that he could fool anyone by donning new clothes and slapping on a fake beard or mustache.

Wonderful. What a dipshit.

But Dorothy knew him as Bob, the man who had first turned her to hard drugs and prostitution. He ran a "gentleman's club' in a dodgy neighborhood on the eastside of the City. His real money came from the hookers and the cheap porno films he made with andfor midgets. 

She looked down at the crumpled card in her hands again - a grainy photo of midgets in an obscene daisey-chain spelling out the name EMERALD LOUNGE. The club's address was on the back.

She sighed. Hooking for Bob would pay for the drugs at least. Moral quandaries were not Dorothy's thing.

She sang.

A BJ here and a BJ there and a couple of Hot Carl jobs, that's how she'd pass the day away in the merry whorehouse of Bobs.

The singing was a nervous habit she'd developed on her first trip to rehab. Nothing like a bit of atonal warbling to annoy that bubble headed goody-two-shoes bitch of a counselor, Glinda.

♫ Someday I'll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far behind Meeeeee!
Where troubles melt like lemon drops,
Away above the chimney tops,
That's where - you'll - find - meeeeeee!
 ♫

And if one of the new fish laughed at her in group, she'd beat the fucking shit out of them in the showers afterwards. Sweet.

Dorothy finished her song and reached for another cigarette. The old woman in the seat opposite studiously ignored the wild-eyed pig-tailed girl's off-key bellowing, sensing on an unspoken animal level the very real danger hiding behind the empty blue eyes.

Dorothy, on the other hand,  thought she had a very nice voice.  Though even she might admit, the rot gut whiskey and unfiltered Camels were beginning to take a toll.

The bus hit a bump. Dorothy rubbed absently at her crotch. 

The clap was a parting gift from the last guy she was with, the empty headed farmer who looked like a gangly scarecrow. Sweet guy really. Simple in his puppy-like devotion to her.  Always remembering to bring her nice things when came calling. Sometimes he'd come around the trailer park with his two friends, Hickory, an emotionless robot of a man who performed mechanically and Zeke, his hair-lipped bashful buddy too afraid to strip in front of her. 

Gah!

She had killed them of course. But of all of them, she thought she'd miss Scarecrow most of all. If he'd only had a brain he might have noticed the axe in her hand at the end.

She squirmed uncomfortably in the cramped seat. Just thinking about the crotch rot seemed to make her gingham thong ride up her ass crack. Punishment.

~

Fingers begin to twitch, to satisfy her itch. And suddenly her brains started to -- unhitch -- She sees - that witch! -- and chopping her to bits - and puking her bathroom slick while humming perfect pitch.
But oh what happened then was rich.

~
Her pocket book moaned. Toto, her mangy cairn terrier wheezed and gacked inside the pocket book on the seat next to her. Toto was the only thing she'd taken from the home of Aunt Em and Uncle Henry -- besides her bloody trophies. She'd sell the mutt for some rock when she hit the city.

---

Aunt Em & Uncle Henry. Uncle Henry was just the latest in a succession of "uncles" Auntie Em brought home from the truck stop bar. Drunken pawing uncles. There's no place like home. Yeah right! Thank god for that. She mused that she should have off'd them years ago. Especially that royal perv Uncle Henry.

Dorothy had come home early one day and found old Henry parading around in one of her old dresses. It was kind of funny really; to find out that this grizzled old farmer was a closet transvestite. But it went further than that. It turned out that Uncle Henry had started a trend among his cross-dressing pals and that there were actually competitions down at the local tranny watering hole to see who could do the best Dorothy impersonation.  On stage! She only hoped that this fad would die out soon.

---

The tab of acid went on her tongue washed down with a swig from a warm forty of Colt 45 wrapped in a paper bag. She belched up a blast of stale beer and the Bar-B-Q flavored pork rinds she'd eaten for breakfast. That coupled with the metallic taste of the LSD brought up the contents of her stomach. She pulled her bag closer and barfed loudly into it. Too late she remembered that Toto was still in there, asleep.

Oh well.

Fuck him.

Fuck Toto.

She settled back and waited for her trip to really begin. Swirling colors and kaleidoscopic images played under her eyelids as she slipped further from reality. Bloody corpses and flying monkeys: the happy dreams of a young soulless serial killer.

Dorothy was too far gone to notice when the bus passed over the bridge to the Missouri side of the river and it would be hours yet before she was sober enough to realize that she wasn't in Kansas anymore.

Photo by Annie Leibovitz

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Cold Turkey

I kicked open the front door and unloaded a few rounds into the dark. Steve stepped up next to me and added to the fusillade. The sounds of shotgun blasts and the rapid fire of a Glock 17 were sucked into the night air and evaporated into the hills beyond. Spent shells clattered onto the trailer's linoleum floor.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Surrender


The endless miles of prairie slithered by in numbing brown and gold waves outside the bus window.

Time to settle in and relax.

By now the police would have found the bodies. Tomorrow she would be in the City safely anonymous in her new career as a the world's tallest midget porn star - there to disappear under a pile of pawing groping little hands and sweaty little bodies till she could re-emerge under an assumed name.

In the meantime it was work and Dorothy, raised on a farm, was used to that.

She looked down at the ridiculously garish red shoes on her feet and cackled like a loon. Some farm girl she was. What a laugh.

Miss Almira Gulch, spinster busybody of the trailer court learnt different. Poor wet Almira. She drowned the old bitch in her kitchen sink. The old crone's last words burbled out around the Sunday dishes were, "Wicked little girl. Oh what a world, what a world!" before she finally croaked.

What a world and wicked little girl indeed. If only she knew.

After rifling through old witch's meager possessions she shoved the body into the crawl space under the dilapidated trailer. Thirty seven dollars and twenty eight cents was all she got for her troubles. That barely paid for the bus ticket.

Nothing seemed to be working out for Dorothy Gale. She couldn't even get the skinny bitch to fit in the cramped space underneath the trailer - even with the help of a chainsaw. Almira's long stocking feet ended up protruding for all the world to see. As an after thought, Dorothy snatched the ruby slippers off the old bird's cold dead feet, the only other thing the old bitch had that was worth stealing.

Well why not? she thought. She didn't need them any more and she wasn't just merely dead, she was really quite sincerely dead.

She clicked her heels together for luck.

Dorothy stared out the window at the endless cornfields rolling by. The sun peaked through the low hanging storm clouds bathing the landscape in an eerie yellowish glow making the cracked highway appear to be paved in dull gold bricks. Tornado weather probably but who gave a shit?

Bored, she carved another swastika into her forearm. The feel of the penknife cutting into her skin made her tingle. Anything to feel - something - about anything or anyone.

"Fuckers," she thought as she recalled what the school psychiatrist Dr. Baum said about her once. Tests, tests and more tests and then the bullshit concern on his dopey Midwestern puss. The words borderline personality disorder hovered in the air of his musty office as he excused himself.

Shadows moving across the opaque milky glass of the office door. She heard him consulting with the principal in an agitated whisper outside. More words floating in the stale air seeping into the dingy wallpaper.

Deep seated psychosis coupled with narcissistic tendencies. Text book sociopath.

Dangerous. Involuntary commitment.

She'd show them all.

Fuckers.

She had the postcard in her pocket from the Wizard.

Another of his alias' no doubt.

She'd heard him called many things over the years: Professor Marvel, Doorman, Cabbie, Guard... now he was calling himself the Wizard, pompous ass that he was. Operating under the delusion that he could fool the authorities by donning new clothes and slapping on a fake beard or mustache.

Wonderful.

Dear God, she thought, I hope he's dropped that shitty British accent.

Dorothy knew him as Bob, the man that had first turned her to hard drugs and prostitution. He ran a gentleman's club in a dodgy neighborhood on the eastside of the City. His real money came from the hookers and the cheap porno films he made with and for midgets. She looked down at the crumpled card in her hands - a grainy photo of midgets in an obscene daisey-chain spelling out the name EMERALD LOUNGE. The club's address was on the back.

She sighed. Hooking for Bob would pay for the drugs at least. Moral quandaries were not Dorothy's thing.

A BJ here and a BJ there and a couple of Hot Carl jobs, 
that's how she'd pass the day away in the merry whorehouse of Bobs.

Dorothy sang out loud, a nervous habit she'd developed during her first stint in rehab. Her bubble-headed counselor Glinda would get annoyed whenever Dorothy burst into one of her inane songs during tense therapy sessions.

♫ Someday I'll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far behind Meeeeee!
Where troubles melt like lemon drops,
Away above the chimney tops,
That's where - you'll - find - meeeeeee!♫

Blowing off steam. And if one of the new fish laughed at her singing, she'd beat the living fucking shit out of them in the showers later on. All the merrier.

Dorothy finished her song and reached for another cigarette. She could see the old woman in the seat opposite her trying to ignore the wild-eyed pig-tailed girl bellowing off key, possibly sensing the very real danger hiding behind the empty blue eyes. Good call, Dorothy thought. And she had a nice voice anyway, though the rot gut whiskey and unfiltered Camels were beginning to take their toll.

The bus hit a bump and she rubbed absently at her crotch. The clap was a parting gift from the last guy she was with, the empty headed farmer who looked like a gangly scarecrow. Sweet guy really. Simple in his puppy-like devotion to her. Always remembering to buy her nice things. Sometimes he'd come around the trailer with his two friends, Hickory, an emotionless robot of a man who performed mechanically and Zeke, his hair-lipped bashful buddy too afraid to strip in front of her.

She had killed them of course. But of all of them, she thought she'd miss Scarecrow most of all. If he'd only had a brain.

She squirmed uncomfortably in the cramped seat. Just thinking about the crotch rot seemed to make her gingham thong ride up her ass crack as punishment.


Fingers begin to twitch, to satisfy her itch. And suddenly her brain started to -- unhitch -- She sees - that witch! -- and chopping her to bits - and beating her with a broomstick while humming perfect pitch.

But oh... what happened then was rich.

~


Her pocket book moaned. Toto, her mangy cairn terrier wheezed and gacked inside the pocket book on the seat next to her. Toto was the only thing she'd taken from the home of Aunt Em and Uncle Henry -- besides her bloody trophies. She'd sell the mutt for some rock when she hit the city.

---

Aunt Em and Uncle Henry.

Uncle Henry was just the latest in a succession of "uncles" Auntie Em brought home from the truck stop bar. Drunken pawing uncles. There's no place like home! Yeah right! Thank god for that. She mused that she should have off'd them years ago. Especially that royal perv Uncle Henry.

Dorothy had come home early one day only to find old Henry parading around in one of her dresses. It was kind of funny really; finding out that this grizzled old farmer was a closet tranny. But that was nothing. The real shocker came the night she followed old Henry down to the bar where he hung out hoping to lift some cash off his drunk ass.

Turns out it was a tranny bar but the really fucked up stuff was still waiting for her inside.

She watched in mildly perplexed horror as her uncle Henry and then a dozen other old geezers came out to sing on stage dressed as... her! Dorothy.

She found out later that it had become a real tranny trend - dressing as Dorothy Gale. She could only hope that this fad would die out soon.

---

The tab of acid went on her tongue washed down with a swig from a warm forty of Colt .45 wrapped in a paper bag. She belched up a blast of stale beer and the Bar-B-Q flavored pork rinds she'd eaten for breakfast. This coupled with the metallic taste of the LSD brought up the contents of her stomach. She snatched her bag and barfed loudly into it.

Too late, she remembered that Toto was still in there, asleep.

Oh well.

Fuck him.

Fuck Toto.


She settled back and waited for her trip to really begin. Swirling colors and kaleidoscopic images played under her eyelids as she slipped further from reality. Bloody corpses and flying monkeys: the happy dreams of a young soulless serial killer.


Dorothy was too far gone to notice when the bus passed over the bridge to the Missouri side of the river.


And it would be hours yet before she was sober enough to realize that she wasn't in Kansas anymore.



Thursday, January 5, 2012

Acme Dearest




Dear Sirs/Madams;


I am writing you this email to register my extreme dissatisfaction with a product I recently purchased from your company. Namely, the Acme Rocket Sled tm which arrived on my doorstep in a gigantic wooden crate Thursday last.


First, fair is fair. I compliment good service when I get it. I would not have you believe that I do nothing but spend my days online complaining and cataloging injustices; far from it. I do know how to acknowledge the positives and I like to think that I can give credit where credit is due. I must commend your trucking company upon their speedy delivery. I had barely posted the order to your web site when your truck arrived seemingly seconds later. I do not know how you accomplished this feat.

Bravo sirs! Bravo!

Now onward to the meat of this email.




My first disappointment occurred upon opening the box and finding the rocket sled in a disassembled state. I ask you, why use such an enormous crate - at least 10 feet by ten feet by my estimates - if you could not fit a fully assembled rocket sled inside? What a terrific waste of timber!


I proceeded with the unpacking post-haste. I was famished and my dinner was rapidly headed toward the vanishing point on the horizon - leaving a telltale jet contrail from his rapidly moving feet (you would really have to witness this phenomenon to believe it).


Whereupon I encountered my second disappointment of the day… your assembly manual.


All I can say is, "Huh?"


You sirs, would be well advised to take note of AND emulate Ikea's illustrated idiot-proof assembly manual before making another attempt at the English language. I take great umbrage at your willy-nilly use of the word "insert" as a noun and a verb. Let me tell you where I would like to insert your insert!


As I was engrossed in your arcane assembly instructions - in a language which can only be described as English by employing a serious suspension of disbelief bordering on psychotic delusion – my dinner returned.





Startling me.



After some time and a generous helping of Acme Brand codeine I was able to decipher enough of your manual to complete the assembly and I waited eagerly to try out my new rocket sled.




When my dinner passed my hiding spot, I activated the ignition. As I gripped the handlebars, the Rocket Sled took off with such sudden and precipitous force that my arms stretched out to a length I had not deemed possible.




A split second later, the rest of my body followed with such violent slingshot-like action that I found myself unexpectedly astride the Rocket Sled sitting backwards.




I regained control over the Rocket Sled and briefly caught up to my dinner.


Just as I was about to grab him, my dinner veered sharply following a bend in the road.


What occurred next can only be described as a catastrophic failure of your product to perform in an expected manner.


Although your Rocket Sled comes equipped with handle bars, there is no way to actually steer it.


Did you know this? Have other customers experienced this behavior? Are the handle bars a mere adornment?


In any case, I tried with brute force to steer but was unable to change direction due to your poor product design. It was at this point that I also discovered that the braking system on your Rocket Sled is not merely faulty but nonexistent! I cannot believe that I am the first customer to notice these glaring oversights in your design!


In retrospect, I suppose I should consider the next occurrence a small bit of fortune in an otherwise dreadfully dismal product experience. The forward progress of the Acme Rocket Sled tm was abruptly halted when it slammed into the pinnacle of a large sandstone butte.


Yes, the rocket sled stopped.




I however did not.




For a brief moment, I believed I might catch my dinner sans sled.




Unfortunately, by this point I was fully in the grips of that harsh bitch physics.


With nothing more to control my trajectory or forward progress, I was unable to avoid the cliff face in my path. My body slammed into the cliff with enough force to leave a hole in the shape of my silhouette in the side of said cliff.




I truly believed my travails were over. Sadly, they were not. Your rocket sled had other plans for my broken and battered body. You see, the Rocket Sled was still turned on and running; the rock pinnacle had only temporarily impeded its progress.


I include the following description of subsequent events only to underline my chagrin at the extreme malfunction of your product. 

Employing the "but for" legal standard, I suppose I could find Acme responsible. However, I can see now that these events were not in every case "reasonably foreseeable" by you or the rocket sled's designers. Pardon me if I still feel miffed at you and your product as I am in excruciating pain and low on my painkiller prescription.


I had passed completely through the solid rock and was now turned around suspended in mid air above a rather deep canyon. The rocket caught up with me a few seconds later striking me in the midriff. I believed that my luck had changed and I would be saved from plummeting into the canyon. What I had failed to notice was that the opposite wall of the canyon was slightly higher than I was.


After the impact, a rather large flat rock toppled off the edge of the cliff above me and fell into the canyon below. I soon followed.


I landed on the flat rock and lay there dazed. A heart beat later the Acme Rocket Sled tm landed on the opposite side of the rock catapulting me skyward and directly into the underside of a large outcropping of rock at the top of the canyon. Again, I fell onto the flat rock on the canyon floor propelling the rocket sled upward. It's all a bit hazy – as this process was repeated several times.




Returning home, I called your 24-hour customer-service number and spent 20 minutes listening to The Girl From Ipanema before speaking with a surly representative who identified himself only as "Yosemite Sanjay." After explaining my situation, Sanjay put me on hold where I spent a further 30 minutes listening to your infuriating hold music, and the even more annoying robot voice (Keanu Reeves?) telling me to look at your website. I alleviated the boredom by playing with my fractured tail for a few minutes - an activity at which you are no-doubt both familiar and highly adept. Somewhere around minute thirty-one I was disconnected as Sanjay attempted to transfer me to a supervisor.


I took this opportunity to change some of my bandages and scarf down another handful of Acme Oxycontin tm before redialing.


I called back and was eventually transferred to Sanjay's supervisor, Elmer. Once again I was put on hold with your annoying music. I really want to commit violence upon the body of the person responsible for producing a Muzak version of Smells Like Teen Spirit, by-the-way.


After a half hour more of this, Elmer came back on to tell me that he was "Vewy Vewy Sowee" which was in very poor taste as this is how I must have sounded to him with my swollen lip and fractured jaw! When I confronted him about this, he hung up on me.


Really, if you people used incarcerated felons here in this country as customer service representatives - the way Microsoft does - this sort of thing wouldn't occur.


I am almost ashamed to admit that again I find myself transferring funds from my Paypal account for the purchase of:

One Acme Catapulttm
One Acme Anvil tm
One Acme Super Magnet tm, 
One box of Acme Steel Pellets tm and,
One extra large bottle of your generic oxycontin.




Please don't disappoint me again or I shall cancel my account and take my business and prescriptions elsewhere.

I mean it this time.



Sincerest Regards,



Wile E. Coyote
Super Genius
Precariously Balanced Rock
Table Mesa, Arizona

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

The 400 Pound Refrigerator That Ate Boston





The fact that this is a re-tooled repost of an old blog is a testament to my laziness and should by no means be taken as a true reflection of the esteem I have for          THE INTERNET

I'm a slacker.

Caveat-Caveat-Caveat

This tale is not linear but resides somewhere outside the bounds of time and space. It's merely installment #10,002 of the serio-comic travesty I call Life. A core sample taken from the middle of the shit-pile. A detailing of my disastrous and always futile struggle with technology - both simple and complex.


It is a story full of evil portent and doom that I hope will both enlighten and uplift.

The thematic message that struggling against ones fate is futile should be obvious. 

It has not always been so obvious to the protagonist: me.




~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The 400 Pound Refrigerator That Ate Boston



I had some time to ponder my fate as I swung back and forth, suspended by one ankle. The color of the sky, the way the sun glinted off a cellophane wrapper caught in the rusty chain link fence directly below me. The clothes line attaching me to the third story porch rail gave just a bit then stopped, giving me the hope that it might hold just long enough for help to arrive.

Some might get philosophical in such a situation; contemplating the multi-fold path of life, the improbable chain of events necessary to bring one to arrive at just such a moment. The many choices made or avoided inexorably leading one to the point where you're suspended head down twenty feet above the ground with only a frayed clothesline staving off certain mangulation.

It was just my rotten fucking luck that I was sober for what came next.

Sure. We've all heard tales where people in similar fixes have that moment of peace as their end approaches, where they become calm and reflective. Maybe they see lost loved ones beckoning them from tranquil green shores and a feeling of peace envelopes them in its warm embrace.
I spent the last few moments before the rope snapped gibbering like a baby.

If my luck held true, there would be a pit bull lurking in the corner of the garbage strewn yard below.
Waiting.

*****
The ad in The Boston Phoenix read:

Roommate Wanted: DORCHESTER – 2 Roommates Seek 3rd to share apt. $125 per mo./ heat & elec. incl. Cent. loc. Conv, access to pub. trans. Quiet, clean, respons M or F. Nonsmoker only. Call Arthur @ (617).…

The only thing qualifying me to call for that ad was that I was an M or an F but call I did.


I was in luck; the apartment was still available. So, I arranged to meet Arthur for a roommate interview at the apartment the next day.

I'd been couch surfing for a few weeks. Ever since "the incident" that got me booted out of the house I'd been sharing with seven other idiots in Jamaica Plain, one of good old college town Boston's notorious student ghettos. Not that any college would give credits for my major. You'd have to go out toward Amherst to find a school that gave degrees in hallucinogens.

Yeah so one day I came home from work and found my housemates gathered round the kitchen table. My duffel bag was packed and sitting by the back door indicating I'd be the topic to be discussed. Apparently, I drank too much for that particular group of unemployed vegan solar powered dope smoking faux-anarchist hippies.

Mea culpa.

They were really quite decent about it. Eddie and his life partner K wanted to hug and shit as I was leaving. Just as well I got out before they discovered that half their Grateful Dead bootleg library was taped over with random fart noises. I was a pioneer in the early avant-garde Industrial Fart Sound movement in case you didn't know. Many called me the John Cage of the bean burrito.

Soooo misunderstood by my contemporaries.

But that's how I found myself off to find a place to live in Dorchester.

Dorchester is a weird neighborhood. It's this small Irish enclave, less famous than its Fenian shithole cousin, South Boston or "Southie" (watch the last ten minutes of Scorscese's The Departed), The only thing Dorchester's got going for it over Southie is its higher pub to people ratio. Seriously, there's a fucking bar on every corner and two to three in between. There's nothing like alcohol to compliment the naturally even keeled Irish demeanor.

The area is bracketed by a Vietnamese neighborhood to the north and the predominantly Black areas of Ashmont and Roxbury to the south and west respectively. The dirty water of Boston harbor blocks any possibility of escape to the east.

Columbia Point, my stop. I got off the train, adjusted the headphones of my knock-off Walkman and turned up the volume. John Lydon's angst filled voice screamed in my ears about black rubber body bags as I made my way past abandoned buildings and litter strewn lots.

I found the place easy enough. Right on the main thorofare of Dot Ave. The building itself was in the style known as "Dorchester triple-decker" which is another way to say white trash club sammich. The back porches sagged downward at a frightening angle and the balusters on the railing were popped out like jagged teeth. The place was one step ahead of a wrecking ball. But it was in my price range, near the train, a bar, and a liquor store so I was set.



A pack of shifty eyed teens were holding court on the stoop of the building drinking Narragansett tall boys. Edging past them, I got the up and down look then ceased to exist for them. No lock, no buzzer, I walked right in.


Two things hit me right away. An over powering odor of cat urine - like the cat died trying to pass a kidney stone, and a TV blasting at an incredible volume somewhere inside. Garbage was piled on the stairs and in the hallway like snow drifts.


The apartment was on the third floor. As I passed the open doorway of the lone second floor apartment I found the source of the TV noise. An obese couple sitting in their underwear watching Dynasty glared at me from a natty couch. It was hard to tell where they began and the couch ended. The gamma rays from the boob tube must've melted them into the pleather cushions.

Someone with any sense would have turned around right there. But you know what? To my twisted way of thinking, these were all good portents. If I moved in I knew I'd feel like the lord of fucking creation every time I left the apartment. 


Like a daily affirmation that I hadn't hit rock bottom on the food chain.



I waved hello at the TV couple and left them to fret over the troubles of the Carringtons.

Jesus. Dynasty! It was 1985 and a lot of pop culture escaped me. It still escapes me today and most of the drugs have worn off.

Arthur answered the door. My first impression of Arthur was that he looked like a cross between the Frito Bandito and Charles Bronson.







Turned out later, I wasn't too far off on either count. He was short, in his early thirties with sallow acne scarred skin, wiry black hairs sprouting from surprising places on his face complimenting his wiry frame in a simian way. His eyes shifted when he talked in the manner of a hunted varmint.


In fact he kind of looked like this




spooky

He invited me in to sit on a worn floral patterned couch for the interview in the "parlor."


The stuff inside the apartment was old and worn but otherwise the place was immaculate. Definitely no palace but it was neat and orderly. I was almost disappointed. The air smelled of malicious pine cleaner. It could have been masking the stench of a rotting roommate corpse. A boy can dream can't he?

Arty went over the usual roommate stuff – timely payments of rent and whatnot, no dead hookers, keep the noise down and esoterica like "if you touch snacks clearly marked as mine – you die." Arty was a Boston Cab driver so he kept odd hours working mostly nights. I'd have to be quiet and not disturb him during the day. Not a problem since I too liked to sleep during daylight hours.

He gave me a quick tour. The common room or parlor, which I'd already seen. Then there was his room which I was only allowed a peak inside. Stacked books and a cot on the floor. Next, the one other roommates room; a guy named Joel who wasn't there at the moment, full of audio equipment and a bass guitar leaned up in the corner. Apparently Joel had no say in the governance of roommate decisions.

The pealing paint in the bathroom looked like hieroglyphics, more scrape than paint. No shower just a rusty old claw foot tub with a spray attachment. Well there was always the Y or the Pine Street Men's Mission I thought. The sagging back porch I'd seen from outside was packed with crap. Old bikes, garbage bags, soggy cardboard boxes hiding what looked like nests. So the secret of the clean apartment was that all the garbage ended up on the porch.

My room would be the one right over Dorchester Avenue… and a Boston Globe distribution center as I found out later, 3AM one Sunday morning to be exact. Small and garret like it fit right in with my tortured artist delusions.

Oh the tortured part was real enough.

Arthur probably wasn't any more impressed with me with my spiked purple hair and leather jacket - I did mentioned this was in 1985 right? - than I was with him or the apartment. But he seemed anxious to get me in there paying rent ASAP and I need a place to sleep that provided marginal protection from the elements. The place was ridiculously cheap so we agreed I'd move in as soon as I could get my stuff over there.

Was that the sickly sweet smell of decomposition underneath the Formula 409?

I'm not now and was not then the most observant person but I did have one question for Arthur before I moved in. Something I'd noticed about the kitchen on our whirlwind tour.

The kitchen was as spotless at the rest of the interior of the apartment. There wasn't so much as a dirty spoon in the sink. But right there in the middle of the floor where a kitchen table should have been were three refrigerators.

Yes, three large old refrigerators, refrigerators of the "kid killer" variety. You know, the kind you hear about in news stories. Kids playing hide-and-go-seek end up stuck in one only to be discovered years later, a dried up husk clutching a perfectly preserved and still edible Twinkie.









Arthur told me that none of them worked. There was no working refrigeration in the apartment. He wanted to get a new one but there wasn't enough room for four refrigerators. It hadn't occurred to him to throw out the broken ones. Probably because of the three flights of rickety stairs he'd have to lug them down to get them to the curb.

Normally something like this wouldn't bother me. Most of my food came out of cans like Popeye. But some of those cans of food would be beer and that my friends would be a deal breaker. Warm beer. What am I, fucking English? Warm beer is downright unpatriotic.

It took me all of a week living with Arthur till I'd had enough of squeezing through those menacing behemoths to get to the sink. One of them caught me one night on a rusty projection as I tried to pass by giving me a nice gash in my side. The fridges drew first blood in the first skirmish. 


I was determined to even the score.

At night I'd lay awake imagining them coming to life. Sentient refrigerators oozing rancid drip-pan juice haunted my dreams. Their interiors covered in grey green mold, giving off an evil swamp gas light, waiting to devour me in my sleep.

Maybe there were already kids in there. 


Zombie kids.

So I formulated a plan. I'd disassemble them and then cart them down to the curb while Arthur slept and no one needed to be any the wiser. I had a pair of pliers and a screw driver in my duffel already, kept there in case I saw a street sign or something I wanted that was anchored to something else.

Progress was slow. It took me nearly a full day to get the door off of one of them. I had to stop in the middle to wrap my hand in a dish towel to staunch a bit of minor arterial spurtage. I don't know if it was my cursing that woke Arthur or if, like a vampire, he sensed a mortal invading his territory. And the blood.

At first he cursed me out for waking him. Then when he saw what I was doing he got excited and readily agreed to help me kill the refrigerators. He even knew where we could pick up a working fridge for forty bucks. Turns out he was just waiting for someone dumb enough to help him carry it up three flights of stairs. Our other roommate Joel had held out on Arthur ever since moving in a year prior.

Joel knew something about Arthur I didn't.

After a week living in the same apartment, I thought I had a sense of Arty. He was basically an OK guy if a bit on the wrapped too tight side. Back then, I thought anyone who didn't party the way I did was wrapped too tight because I was an idiot. Arthur didn't drink at all so to my mind he had to be some kind of ticking time bomb. The real reason he didn't drink was because he was even less successful at it than I was.

See. He'd been in the merchant marines for a few years and had got his ass thrown in jail every time he went ashore.

Every time.

Florida chain gangs, Gulf Coast jail cells, eating baloney sandwiches and drinking red Kool-aid under the hot Texas sun for stealing a cowboy hat on a drunken dare. The guy was the veritable Obi Wan of stupid.

The saying goes that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. I became his padwan*

*Star Wars reference, not jailhouse lingo for prison punk.

The watery blue tattoos on his forearms he'd picked up in Prison in Sardinia. I had to look in an atlas to find out where the fuck Sardinia was.


Arty took control immediately. As the senior roommate, the one whose name was on the lease and being a former merchant marine, he had rank which he pulled.

Arty's scheme involved moving the refrigerators to the back porch and then lowering them down to the street below using ropes and pulleys. Work smarter, not harder, right? He assured me that he knew what he was doing. Being a former sailor he knew all about knots and shit. We'd take it slow and everything would be OK.


Uh huh.

Arthur found an old clothes line and lashed it around a fridge. He looped the line around one of the roof support posts twice for safety. Up the fridge went up onto the porch rail balanced there by Arty as I held the rope wrapped around my hand to lower it, one foot stepping on the rope to keep the line taut.

For one golden moment we felt the thrill of accomplishment.

It's still blurry. There was a zipping sound. The sound of a rope opening up a furrow across my palm and then a jerk at my feet then a loud crash… like… uh… an old refrigerator dropping from three stories up.

Some sounds ARE unique. Trust me.

So there I was dangling from the rope attached to the porch. The other end wrapped around my ankle. Then the rope snapped. My plummet was slowed slightly by a rusty nail that caught in my jeans and then in the flesh of my thigh. Just long enough for me to grab a hold of the support beam for the porch right below ours. Just long enough for gravity to swing me right side up and then help me to do a face plant into the building to slide down like in a Warner Brothers cartoon.

When we got back from the emergency room the other two refrigerators were still there to mock me.

Fuck them. Fuuuuuck them. I convinced Arty that we should just shove the fucking things over the rail. It kinda worked once so why not again? No ropes. Let them crash. No one called the cops on us the last time.

I went down into the street below to act as a spotter and warn off any toddlers. The next fridge hit the street with a satisfying crunch landing perfectly at the curb. Didn't even need to move it. It could be collect right from where it landed.

No one so much as poked their head out their door to see what was up. It was THAT kind of neighborhood.

Excellent!  One more to go.

The coast was clear so I gave Arty thumbs up for mission go. Greg Louganis couldn't have performed a more intricate dive. It spun and pirouetted on its way down then hit the edge of the curb and the fucker bounced five feet in the air before landing on the back of a Datsun parked there. The car bounced on its springs and ended up with its ass end out in the street.

As we stood there wondering what to do, a man came out of his house across the road, calmly got behind the wheel of the Datsun and moved it across the street. I started to wave an apology (hampered by the sling on my arm) but the guy ignored me. He locked his car and then went back inside his house without a word. I guess he didn't have any questions for the bruised punk who looked like he'd been hit by a bus dropping refrigerators on his car. Pretty self explanatory.

I still wonder about that poor schmo, maybe he just lost his job at the aluminum siding factory, looking out his window and seeing a refrigerator drop onto his car…. The one he'd just made his last loan payment on. Then going back to sit in his breakfast nook, bury his nose in the morning paper and ponder what fresh shit sandwich life might serve up next.

We went and got the new fridge later that day and paid one of the stoop kids five bucks to help us carry it up the stairs.


Me? I crawled into my room to lick my wounds with a bottle of 100 proof peppermint schnaaps. I eventually passed out on top of a nest of dirty clothes and half finished law school applications and had evil dreams.




Epilogue: The new refrigerator died two weeks later – I don't drink anymore or live in Boston – I'm someone's dad.





The End.