Oblivion and *penis

I saw my friend outside of the bar, taking a break from drinking to smoke cigarettes.  I hadn’t seen him in a while.

‘Hey you.  You drinking these days?’  He says.

‘Nah,’ I told him.

We used to stay in the bar until daylight — what a waste of time.  We even ate our dinner at the bar counter.

My friend’s an ex-cop.  He’s pretty tough.  He looked out for me when we drank together, way back when you could smoke in bars.

‘You were so bad ass,’ I said when I saw him.  When I got drunk he’d bring me home and be a gentleman about it.  At some point we were “romantically” involved.  Some “romantic involvement” I remember, some I don’t.  Shame.  But anyway — I miss that lifestyle when I want to glamorize it, because I’m an asshole.  It was pathetic, going around in circles, obsessed with drinking.

I wasn’t there to experience what should have been good times because I’d be drunk, blacked out.  Sorry to be a drama queen, but I’m lucky I got away from it with my life.

This video from the movie Shamus reminded me of then.  I would be in the Burt Reynolds’ role, minus the penis and mustache – though, sometimes I think it’d be nice to have a penis.

By posting the video, maybe I am glamorizing the lifestyle, because Burt Reynolds is a sexy bastard, but when I actually imagine myself in this position, it’s sad – especially when it happens more than once.  Like, grow the hell up!

After a night of cavorting, Shamus gets up — no shower — just puts his funky ass clothes back on…ah, memories.  Check out the way he looks at the shoe – haha!

* “PENIS” was just a cheap trick to get your attention I’m afraid. 

Mama why’s the lady wearing a crown?

“Mona, don’t, worry about your work,” says Vincent, the Director of Visitor Services.

Mona screams, “But Bobbi will be upset!”  Vincent stands a foot away from Mona’s desk with the blanket from the nurse’s office.  He steps toward her slowly.  His eyes narrow.  He imagines approaching a wild animal and calms himself.  Wild animals smell fear.

“Please Mona!”  He says.  The Personal Director, Maria, finally comes.

“Maybe it would be better if you…”  He thrusts the blanket at her.  Mona is partially obscured by the desk, which has a high shelf extending vertically from the edge.

Museum visitors swarm, whispering, peering around him, looking at Mona.  He radios back-up security.  People herd their children away.  Maria index fingers him over as she backs away Mona.

“Let’s wait.  We don’t want to make this worse,” she said, thinking of course it would be Mona.

She was drunk Tuesday, and had a fight with Winston on Thursday.  They should have sent her somewhere then.  There would have to be from this point on, some written protocol.  She’s a good employee, but, too many problems — that guy who left, the cancer scare, her mother dying…  Two years ago they took a collection to pay her rent.  Poor thing – how much could one person take.  But Maria thinks, She’s a mess, spilling her guts all over the place – really!  A person needs to take control of their own life. 

“You’re right.  We should wait,” says Vincent, looking at Mona behind the reception desk, which functions as a customer service desk at the museum.

Mona staples papers, placing them in the stapler on the desk and banging the top.  It echos like gunshots.  She does this several times then adjusts the tiara on her head.

A boy says, “Mama why’s the lady wearing a crown?  She looks like that statue we saw at the other museum.  But the statue wasn’t wearing a crown.”

“Well…she’s a performance artist.”

“What’s that?”

“Artists who perform — artistically — c’mon honey let’s go see the paintings upstairs.”

“No mama I wanna watch the lady.”

Mona stands up and grabs a pink file at the end of the desk.  A cluster of well-dressed middle-aged women gasp.  Mona addresses them.

“Hope you enjoy your visit.  Let me know if I can help you in any way.”  The women waddle quickly to the elevator bank.  Shrugging, Mona sits behind the desk again.

Sirens wail outside.  Vincent and Maria jog to the entrance of the museum.  They address the three EMT workers entering the museum.

“She’s over there,” says Vincent sadly.

“Is she on drugs?  Is she trying to hurt herself or anyone else,” says the taller one.

“No she’s just naked,” Maria says nearly whispering.

Fallen Angel

People comment on my author status on face book.  I’m an author all right, ‘the mad author of anguish’ I am.  This quote is from Sticky Fingaz of Onyx.  This phrase from another one of their songs ran through my mind like a loop the other day:  “Ahh, I hate your fuckin’ guts, and I hope that you die.  Sticky Fingaz, the name, and my life is a lie’, cause I’m havin’ a bad day, so stay out of my way…”  How many of us relate to this on a crummy ass day, huh?

I won’t insert these Onyx videos because my friend who lived in the shittiest of neighborhoods with rampant gun fire and rats running riot said that the video scared her.

But I’ve got a lovely song to temper all that filthy rank.  Le Clown reminded me of King Crimson in an earlier comment.

Here’s their “Fallen Angel” song.  The fallen angel could be the Devil.  Or it could be me in all my unchecked grandiosity – hahaha!  When I was 19, I used to get pissy stinking drunk with my boyfriend.  I would cry lugubriously and this song might be my background music while I mused over being oh so lonely and oh so misunderstood – bahahahaha!  

Beverly the man

I said in Le Clown’s comments that I dated a chick with a dick, and he and Jennifer Worrell said I should write about it – thanks guys for suggesting the material – here it goes:

[First, let me deconfuse you – I refer to Beverly in this story as Beverly, him/her, he/she, he, she, him, her – they’re all the same tranvestite.]

I went out with a chick with a dick – what?!  We met in the Tiki Bar or whatever the fuck the name of that place was.  We talked for the longest.  Though the bar was dark, this was clearly a man dressed like a woman — long blonde wig, white head band,  tasteful muted dress cut slightly above the knee, and white go go boots.  He/she was a white man, about 6’ 2”.  Beverly hipped me to the fact that he was just a man who liked to wear women’s clothes, but that he liked women and didn’t want a sex change.  We flirted with each other because I loves me a man dressed up in women’s clothes.  I told him/her that I wanted my ex-boyfriend to dress like a woman but he said hell to the no!  I think always of that sexy Tim Curry in the movie version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

We left the Tiki Bar or whatever the fuck it was called, and went to the Cancun Bar.  He/she asked if he could kiss me at that bar.  We sat at a small table.  Hells yeah!   Wow!  Beverly the man was the shit!  Beverly was the best kisser!  I met him/her another time at the Tiki Bar and I got soooooooo plastered, that he/she said I should take a cab home.  I slurred my address to Beverly and she told the driver and poured me into the yellow cab.

He/she called the next day and we made a date to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  I would have liked if we kissed on those big stairs where all the students and tourists like to hang out.  But Beverly couldn’t make it as it turned out.  I forget what happened to him her.  This was quite a while ago and I was drunk.  I wanted to have sex with him/her and write about it and/or tell alllllll my friends.  I told my relatives at Christmas dinner last year about this —  including one of my favorite Aunties who’s a minister – well all my aunties are my favorite – anyway, they didn’t judge me and they did laugh and ask lots of questions, which I liked, seeing as I could provide the x-mas entertainment and all.

23 Skidoo!

 

What’s that age where it’s okay for women to talk about how hot they used to be or to talk explicitly about sex in mixed company?  There’s an age where nobody gives a crap anymore, like that crazy old lady at the barbecue who takes her titties out and says “C’mere, suck on these!”  She’s the life of the party, the quirky old drunk broad. She’s not a threat to any of the women and nobody wants to fuck her so it’s okay if she says “I used to be a beautiful woman long ago who’s had sex with many many many many men, and boy what I would pay to suck your dick!”  “Oh boy, your Auntie Sandee’s a riot T!  She must have been something else back in the 20^th century!”  “Yeah, we know.”  23 skidoo!

Entenmann’s Cherry Cheese Danish

On the walk home with my groceries including my Entenmann’s cherry cheese danish that I totally planned to eat for dinner, a neighborhood drunk, sitting on the side of the historical house says, “I thought you was supposed to be losin’.”   That son of a bitch!  He sees me jogging all the time so I guess he felt like he was calling me on something.  [Warning to men: “Female Problems” Alert] I have fibroids that make my stomach stick out at “certain times.”  I was twisted with bags and wearing a tee-shirt so it was probably prominent.  I don’t have a weight problem.  I exercise regularly and generally eat quinoa, steamed vegetables every night – organic shit – that kind of thing.  So what he said didn’t make me want to run home, get on the scale and throw my danish away – I’m too old for that shit now.  My toothpick days are over, and it ain’t as bad as I would have imagined as a 25 year old neurotic who’d rather smoke than eat.  I do know this rat bastard – he’s one of the neighborhood bums and drunks that I plan to write about.  “How dare you?”  I said lamely, and went home where I indulged in a scrumptious meal of Doritios, orange ginger cookies and my Entenmann’s cherry cheese danish.  Suck my dick you greasy drunk bastard!

King of the bums

Yay!  Spring’s here, and in spring, John comes back to live on the bench by the historical house.  I don’t know where he goes in the winter and I miss him terribly.  Once the lilac trees and tulips start blooming around the historical house, I look for him on the bench.  There are other bums out there but he’s popular.  The others are a brood of unfortunates in tattered clothes and greasy hair.  Besides, the other ones can be, I’ll just say — non-communicative – one shook his penis at me before he went to take a leak behind the bushes.  Now how rude was that?!  And the one with the pompadour, well he mostly communicates with himself.  But John knows their language and speaks to them all regularly.  John has an entourage of homeless and non-homeless people and he shares his food and liquor with bums on neighboring bench units.  He holds court and commands a certain respect.

I must say he’s rather good-looking — Latino, reddish brown colored.  He said he was gay, but that was when he was drunk out of his ass.  I get jealous when John doesn’t notice me walk by the bench where he lives because he’s talking to somebody else.  Let’s say he doesn’t say hi because he’s speaking to a pretty, well-dressed woman.  I wonder then if I’m unworthy and worry that he has a hierarchy of friends, and that I’m on the lower rung.  After all I do work a low-skilled job, and dress like a bum, uh, I mean, I don’t dress as fashionably as some of the other types with whom he chats.  Sometimes he talks to them in Spanish because he’s bilingual.  I only know one language, this one — I could kick myself for not paying attention in Ms. Pina’s Spanish class!  I calm myself, “Oh silly, he didn’t say hello because he simply didn’t see you.  It isn’t just that he prefers someone fancier.”

John’s been in a wheelchair for the last year.  His homeless son’s been pushing him around in it.  Well, he said it’s his son.  Another time when he was drunk cruising up Broadway in his wheelchair he yelled out that the guy pushing him in the chair was also gay and that he was his son.  “Hello my lovely,” he said to me cross-eyed drunk, “This is my son.  My gay son, and I love him.”  I hate it when John gets like that.  I was comforted to see that his son had come here to take care of him.  When he’s sober he always asks me what’s new and tells me to have a good day at work.  He tells me to bring an umbrella if I decide to come out later when it rains.  Sometimes we kick a little neighborhood talk.  We’ve talked about who really started that fire on 211^th Street, and when that lady who feeds all the cats in the neighborhood was hit by a UPS truck.  I used to blush terribly when he’d ask me to marry him.  When he saw that I had a boyfriend, he respectfully flipped it and asked us when the wedding would be and if he could come to it.  He was really nice to my boyfriend which I appreciated — I so wanted my boyfriend to feel welcome in the neighborhood.  John never never ever in all of the years that I’ve known him, asked me for one red cent, except for that one time.  “You know mama that I’ve never never ever in all the years that I’ve known you asked you for nothing, but this one time.”  I was touched, though very concerned about his financial trouble, so I gave him a buck.  In the back of my mind I wondered if this would put me in good with him, so that I’d never feel like I was on a lower rung of his hierarchy again, but then I reminded myself that I am a worthy, capable, albeit unilingual woman who doesn’t have to buy friendship from anybody.