Accordion Rant (Excerpt from an unfinished story)

Here’s an excerpt I wrote about BAD ACCORDION music, taken from an unfinished short story. The main character, after a late evening of crazily sampling many other fast food restaurants in the dead of night (a spoof of John Cheever’s The Swimmer), arrives at his final destination and waits for his order at a Mexican drive-thru. The problem: In the late hours, when business was slow, the cooks used to play dance music at deafening levels, which almost always included the accordion. This character detests the accordion.

Yes, it’s all very silly and the only point here is to be playfully descriptive.

As I awaited my cheese quesadilla, anticipating gooey gobs of hot, melted cheddar wrapped in the seductive sheath of a corn tortilla, an intolerable strain of music suddenly assaulted my ears through the drive-thru window. The cook must have brought a boom box in for after-hours listening. For me, it was an agonizing din, so unbearable, so wretched, so unbelievably wrong that each note struck with blunt force trauma — the uninvited clamor vomited from what’s often mistaken for a musical instrument. Namely, that oversized harmonica some people call the accordion.

I was not a fan of the rusty squeezebox. I believed there should be a special place in Hell reserved for the inventor of that nightmare. It had always been my opinion that the only good accordion was one that had been backed over multiple times by a bus. To my ear, the accordion aurally depicted the final death throes of some pathetic creature caught in a wood chipper.

It’s not that I hated the instrument, per se, I just hated my life whenever I was within earshot of one.

Worse than the thumbscrew, worse than a thousand cuts of death, if the accordion had existed in the middle ages, it would have been used by the Spanish Inquisition as a medieval instrument of torture; the crown jewel of pain and suffering, the musical equivalent of being drawn and quartered.

Pain and suffering was indeed popular in the middle ages, so popular that leg stocks and spiked neck collars were practically a fashion statement. On any given day, I had read there was a rigorous schedule of activities and entertainment to enjoy. Activities like watching a live burial, or a morning stretch on The Rack, or roasting to death inside The Brazen Bull, or stepping into The Iron Maiden, a vertical sarcophagus with double doors and very annoying razor-sharp spikes inside that inappropriately poked at private parts, and if you had survived the experience, might have led to a lucrative sexual harassment lawsuit. In short, these devices were all guaranteed to inflict unbearable pain. The accordion fit right in.

The Grim Reaper himself, who back then, would have run a thriving business lurking in the shadows of bubonic plague outbreaks, saw the obvious windfall of the accordion and immediately plied his trade to the mass exodus of souls rapidly reaching room temperature at public executions. Our Grim fellow even reaped more benefits when rowdy spectators got too close to the stage, exposed themselves to the bellowing death rattle of the accordion, and dropped like the swollen gunny sacks of oxygen-guzzling riff-raff that they were (now worm food), undeniably and reliably dead before they hit the cobblestone streets. The angel of death, of course, as any right-thinking person would do, saved himself by inserting a bony finger in each ear — ripped from the hand of a corpse.

In modern times, a rousing rendition of Beer Barrel Polka, as played on the accordion, could still bring grown men to their knees, willing to confess to anything. And if it meant being spared the indignity of never hearing the accordion again, even willing to binge-watch episodes of Keeping Up With the Kardashians without a handy cyanide capsule to bite down on.

There was indeed something sinister about the torturously cheerful quality of accordion music: the musical equivalent of diabetes. It was a Bob Ross painting of spring flowers in Auschwitz; it was the Dalai Lama waterboarding Himalayan tourists.

Out of curiosity, I craned my neck forward to glimpse the cook working in the back of the restaurant, the big zero responsible for the God awful caterwauling that blared out the window. A young latino man stood at the grill, lightly bobbing his head to the irksome two-step of the music. Looking lean and muscular, in an embroidered grease-smudged western shirt, his cowboy hat tilted forward with an air of virility, a bottle of Corona in one hand, he was the heir apparent to total badass. But what the fool didn’t realize was when coupled with the emasculating cock-a-doodle-doo of the accordion, its clunky keys and squawking bellows merrily molesting the air with a soul-crushingly sappy oom-pah-pah, the status quo of this badass downsized into something more milquetoast and effeminate, like he had pulled his underpants over the outside of his pantalones. His strength of self-reliance, gone. An Aztec warrior, now a Disney princess.

This is why Señoritas, I surmised, were fleeing their countries by truckloads, crossing the border and going buck wild with American men. They had only wanted their children to have better lives, away from the persecution and destructive vices of Mexican polkas, and even further away from the accordion. At first they pleaded, then they cajoled, and their Hail Marys ran into exponential numbers. They tried picketing villages, carrying signs that said, “Real Men Don’t Play the Accordion,” and “Aren’t Our Breasts Squeezable Enough For You?” But nothing worked. The accordion had taken their breadwinners away from them. They had nowhere else to go. In their desperation, they even considered marrying Republicans.

I felt despair for the budding muchacho at the grill. Why, oh, why, did our youth throw away their lives this way? I wanted to shout, “An accordion is not an escape, it’s a trap! Just say no!”

Meanwhile, as the music droned on, and with no signs of stopping, I wondered when the fight-or-flight syndrome might kick in. When you’re stuck in line and the music is lousy (AKA some inconsiderate SON OF A BITCH is playing an accordion), it’s like being trapped in the underworld. “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.” I began to worry that, in an act of desperation, I might suddenly lose my cool, slam my foot on the accelerator and launch several thousand pounds of Toyota Camry from zero to sixty in the suicidally limited confines of a fast food drive-thru. Thankfully, the cashier then arrived with my meal.

The girl, still with that inclusive smile, leaned out the window and handed me the bag. “Here’s your quesadilla, sir. Enjoy!”

I thanked her and dropped the sack in the adjacent car seat.

That first whiff of the food, however, was the harbinger of an additional problem, the musical equivalent of another fine mess. I wasn’t sure if it was the ill-advised medley of ten previous fast food stops or the nauseating wail of the accordion, but the gluttonous orgy had apparently mixed everything together into some sort of microbial casserole. In other words, the gastric upset left me feeling like there was an old license plate rusting in my gut.

The first sign of alarm came from the cashier, her huge-socketed eyes engulfed in terror. She knew from the sour expression on my face that a fast food refund was imminent. Then, with hell-bent propulsion, like the after-effect of a lighted match tossed in an open sewer, my gaping mouth stretched into a cavernous yawn, and with a heave-ho, the contents of my stomach went south, projectile style.

Gallons of pre-chewed food, bubbling like cascades of molten lava, gushed down the side of my car, across to the drive-thru window (which the cashier, in reflex, slammed shut), and splattering onto the pavement below. It was X marks the spot. Ten fast food potlucks one too many, followed by an unwanted sidewalk pizza delivery, with extra bile and spew. In short, I had a yak attack in front of the girl of my dreams.

Watering the Begonias

By WORDRUBBLE

The pepper spray had arrived in the mail. I planned to be swift and merciless. I was tired of running. I opened the box, removed the canister from the package and read the instructions:

1) Hold can in an upright position. 2) Remove safety and direct spray at the face of an attacker. 3) Spray liberally then run for help.

I felt stirrings of excitement do somersaults in my chest. This could work.

My girlfriend disagreed. She thought I was doing the typical guy thing — which in her parlance meant something incomprehensibly stupid.

“That’s why women outlive men by seven years,” she argued. “That’s why men measure their penis sizes while women are busy raising future world leaders.”

The somersaults stumbled and fell awkwardly.

“Look, I can handle this,” I said, hoping to appear that I had more intestinal fortitude than a tapeworm. “I know what I’m doing.”

“But, if you need exercise,” my girlfriend continued, “isn’t joining a gym better than being bullied every night? Why subject yourself to needless torment?”

“Joining a gym would be a sign of defeat,” I said. “And I refuse to be chased out of my own neighborhood by a scruffy little dog not much bigger than a loaf of bread.”

I had just moved in with my girlfriend; we were even talking marriage. She was recently divorced, and I had been waiting in the wings, so to speak, for what we hoped would be a better relationship. I had hoped for other things, too, such as a toilet seat that didn’t slip when I sat down, but a better relationship was a reasonable start.

I took an evening walk before bedtime to help keep the middle-aged pudge at bay. In years past, I once ran track and field in college and even won some medals, but those years were behind me. And my girlfriend’s neighborhood seemed perfect, with neighbors who were early-to-bed and rarely outdoors to observe my wanderings. When I perched above their begonias and showered the delicate petals with a gilded stream — when you gotta go, you gotta go — I preferred to remain incognito.

The little dog, however, made my evening walks a thing of dread. The prospect of exercise now meant the terror of a moppy-haired, stubby-legged creature darting out of the shadows with a mouth full of pint-sized razor blades. On several occasions, I tried to punt the little monster toward an imaginary goalpost, but it always scurried away before I could marshal a proper kick.

The wretched animal had even stripped me of my wherewithal to hold an open bottle of beer afterward without trembling, the lager spilling on the floor into wasteful puddles of unrealized inebriation. I had to do something. My pride had become a chew toy for man’s worst friend.

The little dog, however, was not my only problem.

Millie, my fiancee’s nineteen-year-old daughter, hated me as much as I hated the little dog. Ever since I had arrived, she made me feel about as welcome as mononucleosis on prom night. Sadly, using pepper spray on Millie was out of the question — I had checked the legal statutes on that one.

I assumed her resentment had something to do with the extracurricular activity I enjoyed with her mom before the divorce. Millie had once barged into one of our afternoon matinees.

What I needed was to make a better impression on Millie, to do something for her she would never forget, such as drowning her in the bathtub. But alas, the legal statutes disagreed with that, too. And first, I had to rid myself of the little dog. Millie could wait.

Around 10 PM I decided it was time to launch my offensive. With the canister of pepper spray in tow, I felt armed-and-ready to face my four-legged nemesis. If the miserable mutt went for my ankles, I would wage battle — at least from a comfortable distance.

I inhaled a six-pack of Budweiser to take off the edge — much more satisfying than the time I once inhaled a wasp — and then I was off.

As I headed out the door, my girlfriend’s voice trailed behind. “The Weather Channel says it’s gonna storm!”

“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain,” I shouted back. “Meteorological hacks…all of them.”

I heard several padded footsteps coming from the house, and my girlfriend soon appeared in the doorway. With wavy black hair that crashed against her shoulders and soft, plump thighs that beckoned below her oversized t-shirt, she knew full well that if she wiled me with her curves and banter, before long I’d be dragging my knuckles on the ground and speaking in the clacks and grunts of an ancient hominid tongue.

“Millie’s at the movies with her friends tonight,” my girlfriend murmured. “If you skip that dumb walk, we could get some extra snuggle time.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t be long.”

She hopped toward me, wrapped her arms around my waist and put her head under the crook of my neck. “That’s okay, honey, size doesn’t matter.”

I pushed her away. “Oh, ha, ha…very funny,” I said, with a trill of sarcasm.

She crowed in amusement and then with a more serious tone, added: “Hey! Don’t you think using pepper spray on a little dog is asking for trouble?”

“But I’m the one that’s bringing the trouble,” I answered, feeling a little irritated. “And I gotta say, the comeuppance will feel real good.”

“Comeuppance?” she said, tilting her head to the side. “It’s just a dog.”

“The neighbor next door said several cats have recently gone missing.”

“That little dog couldn’t do that.”

“He may be little, but he’s Godzilla,” I countered, thinking I was upping the ante.

“Have you tried talking to the owner?”

“He never answers the door. Probably a drug dealer.”

My girlfriend rolled her eyes and shifted her tone from voluptuous seductress to a lecturing parent. “Be that as it may, my love, I’m just reminding you that choices have consequences. You don’t have to learn things the hard way.”

“Duly noted,” I said, although I had stopped listening. Tonight would not be another feckless retreat with my tail between my legs.

I began my walk.

Shrouds of mist cast a fuzzy glow on the sleeping row of houses, and something felt different about the night air.

Up one driveway a teenage couple huddled near a garage door and smoked pot, the unmistakable earthy musk, pungent, even at a distance. Farther off, a man emerged from the darkness to roll a garbage can out to his sidewalk, only to be swallowed again by the shadows as he retreated.

I then heard the rumble of a car up ahead, and when it raced toward me, I nervously ducked behind a parked sedan. The passing vehicle, however, was only a white pick-up, not the red Corolla. I had reason to fear that Corolla. A week earlier it had cruised into the neighborhood, and from a rolled-down window in the rear, half-eaten discards of fast food were hurled at my head. The car sped away before I could ream their shanks with a satisfying array of profanity.

I continued walking. Scattered leaves stirred to life on the sidewalk. I was getting close to where I often encountered the little dog.

Overhead, menacing clouds seemed positioned to launch an advance. The swirling air, now heavy with moisture and getting colder, formed eddies that shot icy drafts up my pant legs.

I stopped and leered at the sky. If my girlfriend was right, I would never hear the end of it.

Then, as if on cue, it began to rain — an unremitting downpour, like the inundation of the great flood in only a square mile. It was as if God had parted a cloud and pissed on my neighborhood. Within seconds I was drenched and feeling like I was floating in the Lord Almighty’s urinal.

I dreaded the punishing sneer of “I told you so” on my girlfriend’s face, but with the rain falling like shards of glass, I considered fighting my canine windmill another day.

I then noticed what appeared to be a scrap of shaggy carpet dumped on the sidewalk ahead. Drawing nearer, though, I ruled out my carpet theory: this was a clump of wet, matted fur — the remnants of a small animal, laying in a slick of its own blood.

Standing above the animal now removed all doubt about its identity: it was the mutilated remains of the little dog.

. . .

Now at this juncture in the story, I must admit to making three critical errors in judgment. The first mistake being a tactical miscue of the gravest consequence:

When in immediate danger, never — EVER — give away your position.

. . .

To my surprise, I felt genuine compassion for the pathetic creature. I kneeled and stroked the hair on the little dog’s head, gently brushing back and forth, then affectionately tugging at an ear, hoping to lend some comfort.

When the ear came off in my hand — unmoored from its happy owner and thoroughly dog-eared, as it were — I lost my shit.

“JESUS GOD! WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU?”

My panicked outburst echoed from house to house, zigzagging like electrical sparks from a frayed wire. In response, a minor disturbance emanated from a shadowy patch in the yard across the way, a disturbance that captured my immediate attention.

Staring into the blackness, my head craned forward, my eyes straining to see in the rain, I watched the terrifying mass of an impossibly large dog emerge from the shadow, muscles rippling beneath the taut skin, the corpse of an orange cat hanging in a downward crescent from its mouth.

I stumbled back in horror, barely stopping myself from forgetting everything I had learned about potty training when I was two.

As black as the inside of a grave, the animal could not possibly exist. It was like a dark defector from the mist-shrouded moors of Grimpen Mire, and it didn’t belong — not in this neighborhood at least.

. . .

The second of my three mistakes was having butterfingers.

. . .

I fumbled in my pocket for the pepper spray, clutched it in my hand, only to let it slip through my grasp and fall into the water gushing through the gutter below.

“No!” I cried, dropping to one knee and plunging my hands into the watery torrent, fingers groping through the muddy flow but not finding the canister.

Meanwhile, the dog had flipped the carcass of the cat onto the grass and was glaring at me with savage intent. With a low, subterranean growl, the animal crept forward, teeth bared, ears pulled back, body poised to strike.

In that desperate moment, blinkered with fear and hating my life because my girlfriend was always right, I began to wonder if there was an afterlife and if they super-sized your fries there. I frantically tallied my choices, but with my last option riding a swift current of debris down the gutter, my craven instincts took charge and seized my brain with the one command that might ensure my survival — RUN!

Convinced I couldn’t make it back home, I bolted in the opposite direction, hoping to spring onto the hood of a parked car or jump into the ugly dumpster that sat at the corner house. It was like a sprint at the track meet again, but I was ten years older, and my get-up-and-go had retired to the bleachers to eat a corndog.

. . .

The third mistake was a disastrous lack of common sense. The dog was like a primeval interloper from the Jurassic, and you can’t outrun the canine equivalent of T-Rex.

. . .

T-Rex snarled with contempt at my cowardly retreat and sprang into action. My plodding attempts to flee were soon in rhythmic counterpoint with the more sure-footed advance of the carnivore, its jagged toenails digging into the asphalt not far behind, the pace quickening with each step.

I veered up an embankment of ground cover adjacent to the sidewalk and scrambled toward a large palm tree on the hill, hoping to use it as a barrier between my opponent and me. The dog soon matched my ascent, consumed by frothy, growling fits.

“You’re not only fuck ugly, you drool on everything!” I wailed.

We shadowboxed on opposite sides of the tree, the dog darting its head round the trunk several times to savagely bite at my extremities, before going for the kill with a lunge and a snap at my throat that just missed the mark. I angrily shot a knee into its muscular chest, knocking it off balance. In a last-ditch attempt, I grabbed onto the hairy trunk of the palm tree and swung my body around, kicking the dog with both barrels and sending it sprawling. I rolled back down the slope and continued my mad scramble.

With the corner house just up ahead and my reserve of do-or-die attempts woefully depleted, I ran several more feet, took a running leap and launched into the air, aiming myself like a missile toward the gaping hatch of the dumpster.

My body ricocheted off the steel wall inside, and I slumped over onto a pile of garbage and lawn clippings. The impact sent shock-waves of muscle-bruising agony across my back and shoulders, and I pulled myself into a fetal position and moaned, heart pumping wildly, lungs gasping, sharp rivulets of pain coursing everywhere. At that point, I knew I had just bankrolled my chiropractor’s kids through college. For the rest of my life, I might sound like an accordion when I tried to walk.

Seconds later, the dog arrived in a rush of predatory speed and deadly miscalculation, four galloping legs skidding out of control, limbs flailing madly to avoid a collision — all accompanied by a terrified yelp.

The hapless animal must have struck the dumpster at nearly full throttle. The wall shuddered with a sickening thud of muscle and bone, creating a bell-like tone that reverberated in a comical sonority, a mallet hammering a gong that extemporaneously crashed to the stage.

I listened, too scared to move. Other than my own labored breathing, there was nothing but uncomfortable silence. Either the dog was dead, or it had knocked itself out cold.

The rain had slowed to a trickle, and I felt a sudden urge to pee. Sitting up, I looked around.

The dumpster was several layers deep in clippings, pruned branches, and what looked like the decaying body of a dead possum in the farthest corner. The arresting aroma of the rotting animal had just begun to invade my senses when the metallic jangle of a door opening came from the house.

A hushed tone of voices became more audible as they drew nearer. Embarrassed by my predicament, I kept quiet and listened.

“What is it, Dad?” a boy muttered.

“I thought I heard something in the yard.”

A patter of footsteps slowly approached the dumpster, followed by a gasp.

“Dad! Look at the big dog.”

“Stand back,” the father said.

I heard someone nudge the body of the inert animal. I cringed at the thought of the canine assassin arousing from its slumber to massacre the father and son while I helplessly listened. Instead, something more terrifying happened:

“He’s dead, son. Must have been hit by a car and kicked up into the yard. I don’t want your little sister to see this. Help me lift the body into the dumpster.”

At near light speed, I estimated the inside of the dumpster (or should I say coffin), was roughly eight-feet long by five-feet wide. Within seconds, the one-hundred-fifty-pound dog that had chased me four blocks and had almost torn my face off would soon be occupying the same space with me — a space that now seemed infinitesimally cramped, like an outhouse in a flea circus.

I silently screamed into my brain — get the fuck out! — and with both hands grasping the edge of the dumpster, flung myself over the side and rolled onto the ground, stopping at the feet of my new acquaintances. They looked down at me in disbelief.

The father resembled a praying mantis wearing faded denims and a ratty t-shirt — the son, his smaller counterpart. They both viewed me with bug-eyed suspicion.

“Would you mind telling me what you were doing in my dumpster?” the father finally asked.

“Do you see that dog over there?” I said, gazing up at them. “Well, it just tried to make a late-night snack out of me.”

The father shot a spindly arm down to hoist me up. I pulled a penlight from my pocket and trained it on the body of the dog, which remained motionless.

“Have you ever seen that ugly beast around here before?” I asked the father.

“It could be the Cunningham’s Rottweiler,” the father said, wrapping a bony hand around the back of his neck. “They live just up the street. They had wanted a guard dog to ward off burglars.”

“Well, midnight prowler was apparently on the menu tonight,” I said.

Somewhere in the distance, coming from a house several blocks away, the voice of an elderly male intervened. “Cuddles!…Cuddles!…Here, boy!”

None of us made a sound.

“Cuddles!”

Something stirred in the yard near us, rustling the grass as it moved. I trained the penlight on where the body of the dog had rested: it was gone. I stiffened and awaited the inevitable attack from the animal.

“Look!” the boy cried out.

The large Rottweiler trotted up the sidewalk to his expectant master, his tail wagging, his once ferocious growl now an excited little whimper that, in different circumstances, might have been thought adorable.

Miraculously, my strange journey was now in the rear-view mirror. The curtain had drawn. Finis.

Yes, I was soaked, soiled, and stinking of dead possum, but my limbs were intact, I wasn’t dog-eared and I still owned a face. The idea of going home to snuggle with my girlfriend now felt like the balmy bliss of being in the womb again. I needed that.

I turned to my acquaintances with a smile. “Well, gentlemen, it’s been one helluva evening, but mostly hell.”

The father smiled and stepped forward to shake my hand. Then his eyes widened, and he backed away as if he feared I might puke on his shoes.

Too exhausted for further alarm, I drooped my shoulders and uttered under my breath, ”Now what?”

I turned in time to watch someone hurl a burrito from a red Corolla that idled in the street. The half-eaten projectile struck me square in the forehead, the refried beans and cheese still warm and bubbly on my face.

This time I was angry — I really hated Mexican food.

I bent down, seized the remnants of the burrito and heaved the gloppy mass in a spiraling arc that caught the accelerating vehicle as it banked around the corner of the street, the burrito splattering against the rear windshield, leaving a long greasy smear as it slid down the glass.

Upon impact, the Corolla screeched to a halt, idling for several dramatic seconds before reversing direction. With another screech of its tires, it came roaring back. But I was already sprinting down the sidewalk.

Now I understood I was not the only one that had ever had a less than desirable evening.  But the bizarre plot-point in this farcical delusion, this freakish after hours miscarriage, this how do I extract myself from this fuckety-fucking nightmare, had become intolerable. You can only hit your funny bone so many times before it’s not funny anymore. Enough already! Before the night was over, I almost expected an enraged Catherine O’Hara to run me down in a Mister Softee ice cream truck, or watch Jeff Goldblum relentlessly pursued by four psychopathic Iranians. Nothing would surprise me.

Meanwhile, still sprinting, still seething, I had made it halfway down the street to a side road that jutted up a steep incline, when the Corolla, with an increase in speed, swerved to the right, jumped the curb, and smashed into a garbage can, the contents tumbling out into my path.

“Sweet Mary Joseph!” I found myself shouting, which was odd because I didn’t know a Mary or a Joseph.

I leaped over the debris undeterred and veered up the hill, which I knew would end in a cul-de-sac. But that was my strategy. Instead of continuing the ascent, I ducked into the first yard I encountered and ran to the gate of the fence, where I lifted the latch and hurried into the temporary shelter.

The backyard was pitch black, and the house itself — a single-storied ranch style with stuccoed walls and boarded windows — was abandoned, perhaps a foreclosure. I listened to the engine of the red Corolla as it continued up the street, eventually sputtering to a stop somewhere.

With jagged breath and my heart still running a track meet, I relaxed my shoulders, dangled my arms, and exhaled through pursed lips. At that moment, the shroud of blackness in the yard felt safe, even inviting. It was the first minute of peace I had experienced since I started the walk.

The rain had mercifully stopped, and the foliage dripped from the earlier storm. I counted each droplet that struck a leaf — a momentary escape from reality. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the deranged occupants in the red corolla: What had I done to them?  Did I uncontrollably giggle when I once passed their booth at a freak show? I concluded that the fly that luxuriates too long on apple cobbler becomes one with the fly swatter. I chose to keep moving. I had to get home.

Warily, with knees quivering and arms outstretched, I staggered forward into the darkness, one wobbly step at a time, feeling like Karloff’s mummy. I hadn’t stumbled more than ten feet before I toppled headfirst into the deep end of a swimming pool.

Being submerged in icy black water was disorienting, and I thrashed around for several anxious moments before fighting my way to the surface, where I immediately detected it was not a well-tended pool.

The water seemed mired in a festering ooze of debris, a noxious slick that had once been leaves, dead rodents, and other nameless filth, but was now a buoyant, fetid mass — and I was bobbing up and down in it, a turd in a toilet.

As I paddled to the side, still overcome by waves of revulsion, I harbored a disquieting fear of bumping up against something human, like the body of a dead pool man — whose drowning would have been justified, considering the appalling mess in the pool.

Standing on the rock patio, I assessed the damage: a sliver of light from a nearby streetlamp revealed a layer of black sludge now hung on me like a suit made from sewage. I tried shaking myself the way wet dogs do after a bath, but the feculent goo seemed determined to remain a part of my attire.

I collapsed on the patio, exhausted. I had given up extra snuggle time for this?

My state of disbelief was at Defcon 1. Hemorrhoid flare-up, root canal, being at the mercy of an over-zealous proctologist: these all seemed like petty torments compared to the evening I was having.

Frustrated, I rapped my knuckles hard against the bony mantle of my skull, perhaps hoping to entreat a more rational tenet residing somewhere inside.

“What was I thinking?” I knocked.

“Choices have consequences,” I thought I heard my girlfriend answer. And she had been right. The proverbial tail was between my legs, and I had been schooled by the half-witted machinations of my stupid male pride.

I got up and inched toward the rear fence of the yard. Perhaps I could quietly enter the property that faced another street, outfox my pursuers, and go home with a little dignity.

I climbed onto the fence to take a look and was immediately countered by an explosive force that jumped up from the other side, unleashing a battery of vicious snarls and grumbles. I fell backward onto the ground; my face a contorted expression of dumb surprise.

Now I knew where Cuddles lived.

“Go chase after a honking Winnebago you flea-infested skunk ape!” I shouted, in a feeble attempt at defiance.

Responding to my voice, Cuddles seemed driven by a primordial rage. He began to wallop the shit out of the fence with such violence I feared the pickets and railings might give way. At one point his ugly demon head momentarily lunged over the top, and although the only source of illumination was the soft glow of nearby street lights, in that fraction of a second — and it galls me to even admit it — I thought I saw my canister of pepper spray clenched between his teeth.

Having had enough fun with Cuddles, I made the prudent decision to get the hell out of the backyard. It was time to let sleeping dogs lie — on the other side of the fence, that is.

I crept along the edge of the house and peered out into the street: the red Corolla was parked and ready, its occupants presumably awaiting my reappearance.

A young girl stood outside the Corolla smoking a cigarette, pacing back and forth. Her door was ajar, and the cab light in the vehicle betrayed something of even greater interest: the car was occupied by three other females.

I bit my lip so hard it almost spouted a geyser.

Gone were the violent gang members I had imagined chasing me; gone were the drunken linebackers from the high school football team; gone were the sadistic prison inmates that had climbed over the wall looking for hostages. In their place: a giggling gaggle of college girls.

After the girl returned to the car, my mind reeled. Just who did these hellions think they were? Didn’t they have boyfriends to lord over? Didn’t they have legal guardians to keep them chained in the basement?

A lesson needed to be taught, and I was feeling just unhinged enough to mount a proper counterinsurgency.

. . .

Again, at this juncture in the story, I must instruct on the importance of avoiding critical errors in judgment. These range from the child that burns himself on the stove to the drunk that crashes his car into a police station — and I had done both. But this clanging gaffe would forever put me in the hall of shame of colossally stupid decisions.

. . .

I crawled over the fence, crouched down, and watched from the shadows until I was ready.  Then I made my move, liberated from my earlier fears.

I must have looked terrifying to those girls as I charged toward their car, screeching like something from a recently unearthed grave and covered in that black shit from the pool — my eyes, wild and maniacal, just two white cut-outs in the filthy sludge.

Soon Dirk Diggler was out of my pants, and it was like watering my neighbor’s begonias again. I blasted the Corolla with a hot stream of urine, the muffled shrieks from the girls inside only encouraging further dousing. I sloshed the windshield, the side doors, the mirrors. Before long the entire car was slathered in piss.

I embraced my victory by stomping around the vehicle like a Viking flaunting his debaucheries. The valorous virtues of my masculinity had been vindicated — or so I thought.

Inside the car, everyone was still screaming save for one girl who sat in the backseat, rigid and magisterial, as if she were presiding over a courtroom. She glared at me with baleful eyes that seemed horribly familiar. When I wiped the sludge from my face to look closer, I realized my indictment was complete: the girl with the baleful eyes was Millie.

With the rain dance officially over, Dirk Diggler now dangled limply from my pants like a busted slinky, and all I could do was gape at Millie dumbly. Her hateful visage left me feeling like a sleazy neon sign. I tried saying her name, but my speech was slurred. Sure, that previously inhaled six-pack of Budweiser had left me a little sobriety-deprived, but that was no excuse for my vengeful exhibition. I felt nauseous. My chest grew tight; my chin began to quiver.

Millie then revealed a sly little grin — a wickedly evil grin — that stretched across her face like a funeral procession. She was pointing an iPhone camera at me — and probably had been the entire time.

She then mouthed a frightening two-syllable word: F A C E B O O K.

And just like that, my fifteen minutes of fame had been assured.

The video immediately went viral and played on multiple online services. A local news station even ran an expose on “How to Stop Neighborhood Degenerates from Urinating on Your Children.”

Unbelievably, my girlfriend forgave me for my incomprehensible stupidity — to use her parlance. In my defense, she told the judge I had just made a horrible mistake, but I was still an upstanding human being — as long as I lived across the state line.

Our neighbors were less tolerant, however, and they frequently circled the property, carrying signs, shouting profanity, and brandishing garden shears.

Sadly, the judge wasn’t as lenient as I had hoped. I’m now doing time in the county correctional facility where I’ve received unwanted attention from the perverts in my cell block.

It’s on those nights that I miss the little dog the most. It’s on those nights  — when my cellmate has me pinned against the cot and his heaving buttocks bobs perpendicular in a rhythmic fury — that I find myself wondering…

For the love of God and all things holy, why didn’t I join a gym?

The Little Dog (Rest in Peace)  😉

The Girlfriend Solution

By WORDRUBBLE

“Going, going, gone — that’s what happens when the little blue pill wears off.”

Those were the parting words of Talisha Hickey — girlfriend from the past year, the Antichrist from now on. Her list of complaints was legion, of course, but her chief annoyance was something that still leaves me scratching a flaky snowfall of dandruff from my scalp:  I had never learned to spell her first name.

Admittedly, I often struggled with the phonetics: Ta-LEE-sha just sounded more correct. But to be honest, I had encountered similar problems with other girlfriends.

When I dated Candlelaria Caruso, for instance, it wasn’t spelling that doomed the relationship but my indecipherable scribblings. The legibility of my handwriting was, at best, inscrutable, and my fatal mistake was that the inscription on her birthday card looked like, To Malaria.

After the breakup with Talisha, everywhere I went, I saw someone that resembled her. The crude primitive that worked at the hamburger joint; the graceless gruff that took tickets at the movie theater; the homeless waif that threw her excrement at my car.  On this evening, it was the cashier at Glutton’s Groceries. The young woman was a dead ringer for Talisha, and I almost dropped dead when I saw her. She had Talisha’s Caligula hook of a nose, the blazing blue eyes as fiery as her spiked red hair, and that perpetual sour disposition, like a morning gulp of curdled milk.

True to form, when I thanked the cashier, she replied under her breath with Talisha’s favorite dismissal: “Whatever.”

I don’t even know why I dated Talisha. Making love to her scared me. For one, I never wanted to fall asleep afterward. She insisted I call her my little succubus.

In some ways, an ex-girlfriend was like a dead car battery. What once started your engine each day and took you to new and exciting destinations, eventually left you stranded along the side of the road, usually at the Overlook Hotel.

Tonight, my dead battery moment occurred in the parking lot of the grocery store. I had bought my late-night snack from the cheeky Talisha clone and was headed back to my car.

When I turned the ignition, the dashboard lights flickered, the engine cranked in a death rattle of “RUR, RUR, RUR,” and like a soul departing from a body, my car became a lifeless hull of worthless steel and molded plastic.

I pounded the steering wheel in disgust. “Seriously? This is happening now?”

I got out of the car, just 12 volts shy of a comfortable ride home, and punt-kicked the side door a couple times, leaving a dent the size of a basketball just to show an inanimate object that I was both dissatisfied and stupid.

About that time, Talisha’s look-alike left the store and walked to her car. She even had the same snooty stride that Talisha favored. I shuddered at the horrifying coincidence and silently mouthed the mantra that keeps most right-thinking males out of harm’s way: life’s a bitch and then there’s divorce court. 

With no cell phone, a package of Hostess Ding Dongs, and a credit card balance that had dwindled to fractions, I decided to walk the mile back home. I’d call my buddy and see if I could borrow his jumper cables to avoid the cost of a tow.

I crossed the main road, dodged a couple cars that sped up when they saw me — no doubt former girlfriends — and began my homeward trek. As I shuffled along the sidewalk, munching on a Ding-Dong and taking an appraisal of other ex-girlfriends, the final assessment was clear: I had never been a ladies’ man.

Suave, debonair, and dapper were not my usual adjectives. To borrow from baseball terminology, when it came to wooing the opposite sex, I perpetually rode the pine and never got up to the plate. The only wood I got from the interaction was a splinter.

And it wasn’t from a lack of trying — although most women found me very trying indeed.

To cite an example, Lucy Negativicoccus, a biology student I once dated, and a pretty young thing as hot as a Bunsen burner and with beakers to spare, said I was so inept at love-making that during a flu outbreak she doubted I could even seduce a lonely virus into having a hot and steamy mutation. And Susie Quasar, an astrophysics major who thought the closest I would ever get to a scientific equation was E=McDonalds, barked that she’d need a Hadron-Collider to detect my little troglodyte.

The hostility of these women confounded me. I had never understood what I did wrong. My date nights had become about as stimulating as a Fleet enema. Thankfully, just like an enema, the dates were mercifully quick and induced regularity immediately afterward.

And not all women disliked me. After all, everyone had a mother. From my youthful memories, I knew there would always be a place I could go where my bed was made in the morning and I would receive a few kind words over a cup of coffee — although the maids at Motel 6 rarely spoke English.

The couple of dates I had with one of the maids was surprisingly pleasant. She only spoke Spanish, but she smiled a lot. We soon developed an intricate system of communication through subtle variances in her smiles. For the first time, it was impossible to say anything stupid.

I still miss that girl. She was good to me and didn’t lunge at me with a steak knife like some other women I had known. And most importantly, she didn’t know I was a loser. Sadly, she died one day when she got her head wedged under an electric foot rest at the cinema. Horrible. I don’t even remember her name now. It was something in Spanish.

Still walking, still musing, I continued past a lonely stretch of road surrounded by an abandoned field. The walk had given me much to think about. I recalled something my buddy once said about a lecture he had heard, that, in his opinion, identified my problem with women.

To state it empirically, when 120 pounds of blonde entered my field of vision, a most unappealing biological mechanism occurred that had plagued homo sapiens since women first graced the planet and man decided to walk, more or less, erect. Research scientists sometimes called the phenomenon an involuntary neural synapse, resulting in disorganized communication and societally abrasive behavior — my buddy called it babbling cretinism.

Babbling cretinism had the effect of regressing the gene pool — which in my case was mostly used by mosquito larvae, anyway — and through a pre-evolutionary time-frame,  reconstituted the 
genetic code. In other words, it gave me the IQ of beef jerky.

I thought the theory was bullshit, of course, but my old friend was adamant that only one solution would work for me when it came to women: DON’T TALK TO THEM.

“Dude,” he implored. “I’m telling you this as a friend. Your only friend, in fact. The nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl was a quick fix with a band-aid compared to the toxic, radioactive sludge that spews from your mouth when you’re around a girl. You can’t fix that. This is all too common with babbling cretinism. If you go out on a date, look sharp, open the car door for her, but keep your mouth closed. Staple the fucking thing shut if necessary. Your words are like a stun gun.”

I wondered if my friend was just an idiot.

As luck would have it, in the distance, I spotted a young woman approaching me on the same side of the road. Here was an opportunity, I thought, to either prove or disprove my friend’s theory. Did I have babbling cretinism or not?

Enough light spilled from the streetlamps to see the girl was a blond wearing a floppy T-shirt and cutoff jeans. I would say something to her.

When the girl was within ten feet, I slowed my pace and gestured with my hands that I intended to make her acquaintance. With a sweet and mellifluous voice, I greeted her arrival with a warm and friendly salutation. I was eloquent, charming, and I imagined my breath was minty-fresh, too.

Unmoved and indignant, like an army battalion pushing past an offensive, the girl paraded by without stopping, remarking with a disgusted growl as she strutted past, “WHATEVER.”

I watched the girl fade into the shadows that invaded the road. A disabling thought overwhelmed me: What if all the women on earth were clones of Talisha and that’s why I saw them everywhere I went? Was her ability to torment me a ubiquitous thing? Was she an omnipresent offender? Could the world truly be that strange?

The lights of my neighborhood loomed nearby. I put my head down and walked with the brisk dedication to get home as soon as possible. I had failed the test and was giving up. I’d go home, pop a TV dinner in the microwave and watch a bad movie on Netflix.

On the final stretch, as I scaled a small hill and trudged past a chain-link fence that enclosed a backyard, I glanced down the embankment to a tangled quilt of ivy, no longer caring about anything, then fixed my gaze on a cinderblock wall, a string of outdoor lights, a small patio deck, a cushioned recliner chair, a naked man and woman — my eyes opened wider — a naked man and woman having rigorous sex in that same cushioned recliner chair.

Even on the cushioned chair, it looked like awkward sex at best, with the pudgy man slipping and sliding in an inept spectacle of oafishness, and the woman crushed by a partner who seemed like a blind harpooner missing his aim. I half expected the couple to up-end the chair and topple onto the cement below in a clumsy display of patio interruptis, but…the unthinkable happened instead.

“Hey! What the hell are you staring at?!” the man in the missionary position shouted at me.

I pretended not to hear him and continued to scale the hill.

“I’m talking to you, dammit! Come back here!”

“Good evening, sir,” I nervously replied, stopping my ascent to look down into his yard. “I’m really sorry if I intruded upon your privacy. I was just out for a walk and minding my own business when —”

“You think minding your own business means gawking at my wife!?”

Before I could utter another slew of apologies, the man leaped off his still very naked partner, grabbed his pants, and began furiously dancing in a circle as he tried to get a leg into one side of them. Gravity won the round, however, and he tumbled onto the ground with a thud, screaming, “Damn these tailored denims!”

I should have used the opportunity to scramble up the road and save myself, but something peculiar about the scene caught my attention: the woman lay motionless on the chair, perhaps rooted in thought. I wasn’t sure if she was mortified that a neighbor had seen her having sex or just enraged by her husband’s uncouth behavior. After all, he had just dribbled his DNA on the patio. It might take an entire biohazard crew to clean that mess.

With his pants finally on, the man glared up at me again: “Stay where you are. I’m coming up there!”

He then entered the back of his house, followed by the mechanical creak and groan of his garage door slowly opening. Soon I would receive the beating of my life. But still, I remained transfixed on the woman in the chair. In a moment of horror, I wondered if she had been drugged, or worse, the victim of an unspeakable crime. I decided to hop the fence and find out.

In my awkward leap, I caught a shoelace on the chain link and flipped over the top, torso rudely wrenched in an unexpected direction, arms splayed out, hands grasping at air, my body dangling upside down like a hog waiting for the butcher — or the shirtless fat guy, whatever fate came first. I could feel loose change tumbling out of my pockets, along with, no doubt, some of my brain cells — what few there were.

Within seconds, I had gone from hero to zero. The shirtless fat guy would soon lurch up the sidewalk as angry as the occupants of a wasp nest in the crosshairs of a can of Raid, and discover me hanging from the fence — a preposterous upside-down cake — stuck in a predicament of my own blundering stupidity. I was a body bag in search of a morgue; I was the maladapted species that proved Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

In short, I was fucked.

I thought of my well-meaning friends who often said to look for the positive in a tense situation. And sure, this was precisely how I wanted to spend my evening, strung up like an inverted messiah while doted on by an overweight Hannibal Lector.

Desperate, I needed an acceptable excuse to explain my predicament to the shirtless fat guy.

1) “Oh, I wanted to study the local fauna in the neighborhood and thought your fence was the perfect vantage point.” Too lame. 2) “The plane I was just on jettisoned its chemical toilets at the same time I was in the loo, and I got sucked outside and fell to this exact spot in your yard.” Too idiotic. 3) “I just wanted to stare at your wife’s private bits.” Too, uh…okay, twenty points for honesty, but don’t be surprised by the police chalk line that’s soon drawn around your cadaver.

Finally, to dislodge my foot from the fence, the only strategy my beleaguered brain could muster was to contort and wiggle my body, first in a nervous dither and then in an ever-increasing series of frantic convulsions. With eyeballs popping and teeth-gritting, I looked caught in the tractor beam of an extraterrestrial spacecraft, the victim of alien abduction, with big-headed greys intent on surgically removing my sex organ and replacing it with a toaster oven.

However…nothing happened. I was still held hostage by my shoe — and I heard footsteps approaching.

Given more time, I might have considered gnawing my foot off. I still had no idea if my corpulent opponent’s preference for orifices was gender-specific. But when I finally resigned to droop my body in a ceremonial display of utter defeat and babble like a simpering fool, the shoelace loosened and I fell cattywampus into the equivalent of a briar patch.

Getting stabbed by thousands of sharp, tiny thistles had never felt so good. I was free. I peered through the thicket just as the shirtless fat guy lumbered up the sidewalk to where I had previously been walking. He shouted a couple of times, “Where did you go?”, and then moved further up the hill.

I tunneled out of the prickly shrub, stood, and cautiously approached the patio.

Standing before the cushioned chair, I could see the woman was indeed quite beautiful, sporting olive-colored skin, a sizable bust, and a sensational summery smile. Still, she didn’t move — and she never would.

With rubbery skin made from silicon and synthetic hair, she was an exorbitantly expensive, anatomically-correct sex doll. I had seen one before on cable TV. She had all the goods. In some circles, if you had the discretionary funds, these dolls were considered the ultimate girlfriend solution. Even babbling cretinism couldn’t kill the moment. And the benefits were intriguing: no pregnancy, no disease, no mother-in-law.

The shirtless fat guy still shouted in the distance: “Come back here, Peep Show!”

I ignored him, gazed briefly at the raving beauty before me and gently caressed a well-shaped thigh. The dim-witted loner had probably viewed women as property for most of his life, and now he had resorted to a twisted, artificial version of one. It was inexcusable…disgustingly deviant…he ought to be put away.

As I prepared to make my escape, somewhat exhausted but a little excited, I felt a sudden wave of guilt, but that didn’t stop me in the end as I dashed down the shirtless fat guy’s driveway with his silicon-based wife slung over my shoulder, shouting at a delirious pitch, “Whatever!”

…..

Film: The Great Gatsby

gatsby

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy. They smashed up things and people, and then retreated back into their money and their vast carelessness.

Frenetic energy gushed everywhere in this film, creating such a motion sickness that I’m surprised they didn’t supply barf bags to the people in the audience. Sadly, some of the imagery was indeed clever and could have worked if it had been used sparingly and as a thematic spice, but instead it drenched the film in a stylized vomit that obscured the entire point of the story. In short, the signal-to-noise ratio in this movie might make your head explode.

Although Luhrmann presents a fair amount of the plot from the novel, it’s like reading the Cliff Notes version. The characters act out famous scenes, recite memorable lines, but in the end it’s all devoid of meaning. I felt sorry for Leonardo and Carey who were fine actors desperately seeking an equally fine director — at least a director who understood the definition of subtlety.

 

 

Film: The Tree of Life

tree-of-life-poster

The nuns taught us there were two ways through life — the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you’ll follow.

The Tree of Life is a brilliant new form of cinematic art by the masterful and sometimes enigmatic director, Terrence Malik.

The best way to appreciate the film is to flow with the imagery and drop all expectations of a conventional narrative. This is cinematic poetry, passionate and true, that is richly layered with the euphoria of human experience.

The premiere of The Tree of Life at the Cannes film festival last year hauntingly echoed, in a way, the 1913 premiere of Stravinsky’s intensely modernist ballet, Rite of Spring. Now considered a magnum opus, Stravinsky’s towering work caused a near riot when it was first performed; and at Cannes, the boos and hisses during the first showing of The Tree of Life were punctuated by intermittent cries of “Genius!” Isn’t it interesting how so much dissension is generated by anything deemed “different?”

Scanning the scathing customer reviews posted at Amazon and other sites, I was saddened but not surprised. Many people would rather worship the sterile conformity that feeds our consumeristic nation than step outside the feeding frenzy and savor a new and startling flavor. I wonder how art will continue to survive in a world where its occupants are so tragically losing their ability to see and hear. In an artistic sense it is like Puritanism come full circle, where a creative act of staggering originality incites a witch hunt.

Think of The Tree of Life as The Rite of Spring of cinema. You may feel ambivalent about it — or even hate it — but like other great works from the past that were once maligned and misunderstood at first, I predict The Tree of Life will reveal its brilliance with age and gradually earn its standing in cinematic history as a film classic.