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Summer, 1998
THE BARE ASS NAKED CLUB - Kurt Nimmo (fiction)
Shit - Michael McNeilley
life in the box lobby - e. horn
Memorial Day, 1998 - ron androla
Rolling Thunder - Jazzbo Koontz (fiction)
High Board or Why I Resigned Local 509 - Marc Swan
TEN SECONDS OF HAPPINESS - Mark Hartenbach
A Guy Named Joe - Dean Creighton
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John looked out the window. They were packed like sardines in the yellow
cab. Six of them and the cab driver. They were going to Canada. One of
them was about to get married in the standard American fashion, which
meant the others had to take him to a topless club. It was a social
custom. Only the place where they were going was not a topless club. It
was a bare ass naked club. Only thing they wear, said Bill, one of the
others who was already married, are their shoes. Health Department makes
them wear shoes. All of the sardines packed in the yellow cab laughed.
John did not laugh. He sat near the window and looked out at the urban
landscape as the yellow cab moved toward Canada. Gloomy Gus, they called
him in the office. Sheryl, the project manager, called him Old Poopy
Pants. John almost liked that one. It had character.
* * *
The sardines were drunk. It was a very expensive drunk, even with the
exchange rate. John sat in a chair pushed against the wall as a bare ass
naked woman danced on the lap of the soon to be married man. She is very
beautiful, John thought, until you look into her eyes. She is a robot,
an automaton, and her eyes give her away. All of the men at the table
watched the woman very carefully. They did not care about the look of
death in her eyes. They were looking at her bare ass naked body and
thinking of other things. All of them were drunk, very drunk, and the
Bare Ass Naked Club was making quite a handsome profit on their
drunkenness, to say nothing of their lust. The beautiful automatons
wore shoes. Nothing but shoes. It was required by law. The absurdity of
it did not escape John as he sat in a chair pushed in the corner of the
darkened Bare Ass Naked Club. He wanted to be small, insignificant. He
wanted to be somewhere else.
* * *
Earlier, as they sat drinking in a bar where the women were fully
clothed, Carl had made a comment about Sheryl, the project manager. I
see her sucking two cocks at once, said Carl with a devious and drunken
grin. It was meant to be funny. John did not laugh. Carl demonstrated,
even made sound effects, and the others laughed. Across the room a woman
was having a bachelorette party. One of her friends had arrived with a
five foot tall pink inflatable penis. A can of whipped cream appeared.
Another woman sprayed a large amount of the whipped cream on the head of
the inflatable penis. A cheer went up as the bachelorette began to lick
the whipped cream off the head of the inflatable penis. It was on her
face and in her long brown hair. Look at that, said Bill. Jesus, would
you look at that. Carl made his sound effects -- yomp, yomp, yomp, he
mimicked, pretending to be Sheryl. He laughed and they all laughed,
except for Gloomy Gus, old Poopy Pants. He sat at the end of the table
and looked into his beer. Small bubbles rose from the bottom of the
glass and sailed up, only to burst near the surface. We are small
bubbles, John thought. We burst before we can realize anything. We go
through the actions, lick whipped cream off the head of inflatable
penises, travel across the border to watch as women dance in nothing but
their shoes. We burst before we reach the surface.
* * *
It did not mean anything, not really. The small dark-haired automaton
sat on a chair across from John with her legs spread. Carefully trimmed
pubic hair. Shiny red shoes on her feet. Tattoo on left thigh.
Pierced nipples. She wanted John, Gloomy Gus, old Poopy Pants, to give
her some money. American money. It meant more than Canadian money. He
did not give her money. Or anything. He sat there and looked at her. He
imagined her at home, in a small apartment above a Chinese grocery,
dressed in a kimono, watching television as she brushed her three year
old daughter's hair, maybe with a cigarette in her mouth. If you saw her
on the street you would not know that she had pierced nipples and
trimmed pubic hair. None of it meant anything. It was all meaningless.
When the song was over, the woman stood, slowly, provocatively, and
moved away into the darkness. It meant nothing to be bare ass naked in
red shoes with a three year old daughter. John wondered if it hurt to
have your nipples pierced. He imagined it did.
* * *
It was after three o'clock in the morning. John was very drunk. They
were back in America, standing in line at an all-night hamburger place.
It was crowded. A tall man drunkenly swayed at one side of the cash
register. He was quite angry. You fucking whore, he said to a waitress
on the other side of the counter, you fucking cunt. The waitress looked
at him with big brown eyes. Her face revealed nothing. It was just
another night, another drunk. The man wanted to pay with a credit card.
Sorry, the waitress said, but we don't take credit cards. Fuck you, the
man screamed. Fucking whore, dirty fucking cunt. John stood nearby. As
he looked at the side of the tall man's head, a wave of anger crashed
over him. It was the first time that evening he had really felt anything
except uneasiness. Hey, John blurted out, why don't you shut the fuck
up, asshole? The tall man turned, glared at John. Fuck you, he said, you
small ugly bastard. John looked at the man and the man looked at John.
The waitress said nothing. It went on like that for a few seconds and
then the owner of the hamburger shop came over. Listen, he said to the
tall man, the meal is on the house. Please just leave. Now. Yeah, said
the tall man, well fuck you too asshole. Shove your fucking hamburgers
up your fucking ass. John moved a few inches closer to the tall man.
Something is going to explode, John thought. If it does, there will be
no turning back. Shiny red shoes. Trimmed pubic hair. Pierced nipples.
Sheryl the project manager, yomp yomp yomp. The tall man jammed his
credit card in the pocket of his jacket and then stormed out of the
restaurant. He stood outside, ranting on the pavement. A few drunks
gathered around him and listened. Gloomy Gus, old Poopy Pants, waited
for his hamburgers. It was nearly four o'clock in the morning.
Kurt Nimmo
Nowadays, it's almost
the only time you're alone,
as you sit there in
your singular room.
Even the strange place
turns familiar
as you pull off enough paper
to wipe the lid, stretch
out a seat cover
and place it just so,
the flap to the front or rear,
depending on your training,
before you sit and at last
relax for a moment,
read the walls, the door,
or pull out the appropriate
newspaper, USA Today.
In childhood it's
the first big test,
and many another problem
shows up as shit,
shit in the diaper
worn too long,
shit in the underpants,
in amongst the cartoon characters,
"will you never stop doing this...
why can't you grow up."
As in old age, wait long enough
and the diaper returns,
and your traveling days are done
when the old sphincter won't
last until the next
rest stop.
But it's our point of commonality.
We all sit there the same,
truck drivers and movie stars,
typists and scientists and laborers
and the president, each alone.
Even bathing can be done together,
but the days of the 2-holer
are long gone.
And we use the time in
our individual ways.
In many cases these are the last moments
of the day that remain
wholly our own, in which
we are ourselves and none other,
in which pretense is wasted
and subtlety drains with
a pull of the handle.
The words pervade our language
as the century circles down:
90% of everything is bullshit.
Everyone's a shithead.
All the assholes are
full of shit,
need a kick in the butt,
and by the way,
up yours.
Shit happens.
No shit.
In Mexico City it rains
most afternoons in springtime,
big brown drops across the
hood of the cab.
Outside town, a huge suburb
of tents and shacks stretches
to the horizon.
The closest thing to a toilet
is a slit trench.
There's little growing but turds,
turds that dry in the sun,
powder to dust and blow
in blinding brown clouds,
a modern shitstorm monsoon
that boils up in tan thunderheads
and colors the rain.
It smells just like
you'd think it would.
Shit connects us
in its common-style variety,
from little black ones
to big thick brown ones;
from dainty beans through
sick flakes to the true tan
toilet plugging dump,
bulk indicator of health, vigor,
vitality and capacity.
As we move through life,
our food moves through us,
digestion recapitulating progression,
wave by peristaltic wave,
from crisp green salad
and firm pink prawns into
brown sludge, usable even as
fertilizer roughly in inverse proportion
to our meat consumption, forming
the vegetarian's best line of reasoning:
Eat meat, and even
your shit ain't
worth shit.
If you are what you eat,
what you shit is what
you are not.
The one in the bus station
smells like a dead otter
in the drainpipe.
Your lover's sly fart comes to
smell better over time.
The smell of your own
is a meter of your health.
If you're felling okay,
been getting laid lately,
eating right,
getting enough sleep
it smells damn
good.
We suffer a social constipation,
particularly in the arts, yet
in most other ways
we float among our waste products,
drift in our own shit,
in the air, the water,
the earth. We put off gases
that wear holes in the atmosphere,
blinding the penguins
with our great industrial windbreaks.
We produce nuclear waste,
the effects of which we
cannot so much as comprehend.
We teleport our stench
aeons into the future, saving our shit
by placing it beyond disposal,
dumping it in the toilets
of generations to come,
figuring if we're smart
enough to make stuff like plutonium,
they'll be smart enough to
find a way to
throw it away.
Shit rolls downhill.
Then again, just as cream
rises, some shit floats.
And in the end, when we clean
out the great leaky garages that are
our lives, it can be difficult
to tell just what to keep
and what to throw away.
And as with memories,
much of what we do not want
stays with us,
sticks to us,
becomes part of us,
prowls our dreams.
And out damned spot,
we wash and wash but we
cannot come clean.
Michael McNeilley
The Blue Moon Tavern
Seattle, Washington
April, 1993
(Previously published in God's Bar: Un*plugged No. 2)
No one else wants to notice,
but for a long time now
I've suspected that
people have been living here
- more than the driftwood intelligentsia
who stop by
every week or two
to pick up their mail
- or the zinesters
who spread it all out
on the large tables,
taking their goddam time
to read every word
as if it mattered
- or the bag ladies
with shopping carts
full of filthy comforters
and winter clothing
mid-July
- it's about the guy
I have to climb over
getting a haircut
from his girlfriend
on the steps
in the lobby vestibule
- and me, writing this
on the back of a form rejection
with a pen on a chain.
e. horn
ideal scenario, i'm standing
at my father's grave in ellwood city,
breathing in foggy morning. somebody
has put a small american flag
on the side of the headstone
since my dad was a marine
in the korean war, a sargeant.
u.s.s. coral sea.
many small flags flap in the cemetary.
how like large green flags trees are, i
consider, surveying the woods surrounding
this chained acre of buried corpses,
of so many soldiers
& fathers. i'm standing looking down
at his name, date of birth & death.
it is a small stone.
i'm 43,
100 miles away.
ron androla
I'm a distance runner and you've probably heard of me. The papers call me
"Rolling Thunder." They make a big deal out of a 385-pound marathon runner.
I suppose that isn't so unusual. Society doesn't have a lot good to say
about fat people. I've always found that strange, in light of the fact that
most people are overweight. Not obese like me maybe, but too heavy just the
same.
It would be different if I were seven feet tall. I'm only five-foot four,
however. When I ran the Boston Marathon last year, one writer noted that I
was "as wide as he is tall."
That was hyperbole and I let him know it. He then made the mistake of
calling me "fat ass" to my face. I decked him. All that talk about heavy
people being jolly is bullshit. Don't cross me, I'll fuck you up.
The writer is suing me now, but I don't give a fuck. I don't own anything.
My ex-wife took it all when she left. A guy named Max helped her load most
of it in a big rental truck. They then went to Rhode Island or somewhere. I
don't know and I don't really care at this point.
You'd figure my wife was a big fat lardass like me, right? Wrong. She was
about six inches taller and weighed 122 pounds. She was a ballerina and a
good one, until she ruined an ankle. It wasn't her fault either; one of
those skippy faggots dropped her. She was dancing with a little company in
St. Louis and they had no insurance. She was fucked, until she met me.
Truth is, she was one of the groupies. It might surprise some to know that
runners have groupies. People think that's restricted to rock stars and
actors, cops and firemen. Guys in uniforms of any type, rich guys. No,
runners have groupies and I have more than normal because I am considered
something of an oddity.
"Let me see your hand," this tall blonde asked me in St. Louis after I'd
finished 11th in a field of 896. She took my right hand in hers and looked
it over, then looked up and smiled into my eyes.
"You have a very broad thumbnail," she said. "That generally signifies a
very stout penis. Is your penis stout?"
"Are you a size queen?" I responded. "Do you have your tape measure on you,
and what are your minimums?"
"Only guys with small dicks say size doesn't matter," she laughed.
"I'm sure it matters," I said. "The size of a cunt matters, why shouldn't
the size of a cock? Is your cunt tight like a buttonhole or loose as the
ass of my big pants?"
"Come," she said, holding her hand out. "We'll answer both our questions."
And we did. It was the best of both expectations. And dancers are limber
beyond belief.
Well, I fell in love with her without intending to, and she had a similar
reaction to me. But I found she had a negative impact on me; the energy I
expended on her took away from my ability to run. Not only did I start
placing further back in the pack, I finally quit even trying. I enjoyed the
sex and the closeness, but it was not enough to make up for what I was
missing. Finally, I put it to her.
"I love you, but I love running more," I told her. "With you, I'm just
another fat guy. But running, that's who I am, what I'm all about."
She smiled a wan smile and nodded.
"I understand that," she said. "But we had fun for a while, didn't we?"
"Yes we did. But now it's time to move on. I'm going to win the Boston next
year, or the year after. If we're together that can't happen."
And so she left. She took everything, but I gave it all to her. Things
don't mean shit to me; all I need are my running shoes and open road in my
face. I want to roll like the thunder, make the earth shake beneath me. I
want to hit the wall and go on through, break through that pain to the
other side where it's all sweetness and light.
I want to win. I don't need anyone else for that.
Jazzbo Koontz
High Board or Why I Resigned Local 509
Goldfish school in a puddle of flickering
light above me. Fish surround me,
on three walls and the curtain beside
my head resting on a puffy snow white
plastic pillow. I hear the clinking
of chimes outside the window, smell
lavender, cannabis. This is luxurious.
This morning, I called the union
president at home. She had filled
the bird feeder, mopped the kitchen
floor, drawn a bath for herself
she told me ninety miles from where
I called. In this quiet space, I try
to picture her soft round curves sliding
easily into warm frothy water; Judy
Collins' blue eyes sparkling. All I see
are fleshy hips, tummy in need of a tuck,
raccoon circles on a lackluster face.
Here I go again, a perfect fantasy
performs a triple gainer, hits the board
chin up, flip-flops, dies a quick, hard death.
Marc Swan
once i've peeled myself
from maximum communion
i can ask
was that salome
or little sister
dancing for the inquisition?
is it possible
to squeeze heightened awareness
between wayward son
& coming attractions
or does it all rest
on sheer luck?
my eyebrows rise
as the veil falls
so label me more than happy
to ante up
on the two drink minimum
i'm transfixed
by small scar on ecstatic thigh
perhaps the white-washed face
of some cracked saint
without a recognizable name
left as stigmatic souvenir
or friendly reminder
Mark Hartenbach
I want to be
a guy named Joe.
I want the numbness
of that moniker.
To live in a double-wide
and be happy!
I want to drink
american beer
three cases,
and be able
to forget
why it was
I got drunk.
I want to see
the american flag
with the same humble fascination
that I had as an eight-year-old
for my mother's brassiere.
Instead I get
the moral inhibitions
of a half-ass saint,
the cognizance
of ungreased brain wheels
in a perpetual motion machine,
and a world
that looks
more and more
like the bottom
of a bird bath.
Go figure
Joe.
Dean Creighton
(C) 1998 by God's Bar
Press - Virgil Hervey,
Editor
Individual works are used with permission. Copyrights remain with the authors.
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