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.* O . . .. ..O .. 387 30 Jun 2001 ) ( ')
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* ***O O O O O O O O O \( _)|
* O o o.*..o.*..o.*..o. .net "If Bret Easton Ellis *
* O Had Been Born in Rural Ohio" *
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* /,`.-'`' -. ;-;;,_ *
* |,4- ) )-,_..;\ ( `'-' by Infernal *
* '---''(_/--' `-'\_) *mE0w* o
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'Anada is cat-friendly..o*`
So she keeps asking me how my ma was and finally I say "fine," just
to shut her up I say it and she says from what she'd heard my ma had got
paralyzed when a roto-tiller fell off a shelf onto her at the Quality
Farm and Fleet down to Newcomerstown, and that ever since she got home
my dad had been fucking Shirley from the Kwik Fill station, sometimes in
their old bed while my ma laid in the next room hooked up to a breathing
tube. I just nod and ask her if there's any more Pabst and she reaches
behind the seat and pulls another can off the 6-pack ring and hands it
to me and she puts in the new Ozzy tape and he keeps singing: "I'm
looking for a miracle man... To tell me no lies... I'm looking for a
miracle man."
It freaks me out and I ask her to turn it down and she just laughs
and cranks it up, trying to roll a joint on the back of her math book, but
her hands are shaking and she keeps scattering the weed everywhere, so
finally I tell her to forget it, let's just go to Misty Ann's, there's a
party over there, and she says "no, I can't go over there because Bob
Barrick is there and I slept with him when I was supposed to be going
out with Trevor Belknap, and now they both said they'd kill me if they
seen me and that's why I keep skippin' seventh period remedial English
'cause they're in there and I don't want to see 'em," and she keeps on
talking but all I can hear is the sound of my heart, echoing out of the
can of lukewarm Pabst Blue Ribbon, thumping like at the end of that one
Huey Lewis song. "The heart of rock and roll is still beatin'," I moan,
running my hands through my hair, wishing I had a can of gas to huff.
"What?" she says. "You're too much." She hits the gas pedal, and
we blast down Main Street, past First Avenue, then Second Avenue, and then
we're in the boondocks, and there aren't any more streetlights and the
moon looks like a urinal cake down to the truck stop bathroom where I
used to be scared to go pee by myself when I was a kid, when my dad
would look up at me with crumbs of Belgian waffle in his moustache and
holler "what are you, some kind of faggot?" and then he'd make my mom go
in there with me and she'd like to have died from embarrassment, and I
remember that I gotta be at work at eight-thirty 'cause we're supposed
to scrape some paint off the truck garage.
She pulls over and then she gets out of the car, laughing, and she
leans over and pukes on the front quarter panel, the one with "DUSTER"
written on it in rumbling letters, and when she wipes her mouth off and
smiles, I open my mouth to say something to her. "What?" she asks, but I
can't say nothin', I just keep thinking that we're all looking for a miracle
man, to tell us no lies, and that the heart of rock and roll is still
beatin', and that I really wish I had a bottle of Mad Dog. My tongue
sticks to the roof of my mouth and my socks chafe.
"Let's tip a cow!" she laughs, pouring the rest of her beer all over
her shirt and cackling. This is how the night works when it's a full moon
and it ain't a school night and people are afraid to merge on the county
road and the heart of rock and roll is still beating. She runs across
the field, but then she slips in a cow patty and tumbles, head over
heels, into a big cistern full of water for the cows to drink.
[When I was a kid I had this dream that I was made out of water, and
that I filled up a cistern. Cows would come and drink me up, and then I
was all gone, lapped up by their big red tongues, and I would be a ghost
until it rained again. Ever since then I'll stand outside in the rain
for hours any time I can, so I can fill back up.]
She takes her shirt off and winks at me. "Wanna take a bath?" she
says, producing a joint from some unseen pocket and lighting it. I walk
over to the cistern and push her, and hold her head under the water until
she stops thrashing, then I reach in and pluck the soaking wet joint from
her blue fingers. I stick it in my mouth and whisper "are you looking
for a miracle man?" I hotwire her car and drive down the wrong lane
back into town and I wish there was a store that was open past six and I
finally go to Misty Ann's but there's no one home so I break into the
garage but all they have to drink out there is three cases of Diet
Caffeine Free Squirt so I drink six of them and then I have to pee. I
go home and pass out, and dream I'm a cow patty and every fly that lands
on me is my grandpa.
[787 pages later]
Doug honks his horn and I leave my garage, where I have fourteen
quarts of Pennzoil Super Grade 10w30 motor oil arranged in a symmetrical
pattern upon my workbench, and a gleaming toolbox full of only Craftsman
tools, because they are made in the United States and are the finest
money can buy. I also have a GoldStar "all in one" stereo unit, combining
a turntable and a dual cassette deck with a 2-watt mini amplifier and an
AM/FM receiver, on a high shelf. I am currently listening to Boston's
"Don't Look Back," their second album on the Columbia label -- Tom Scholz,
Brad Delp and company deftly avoid the proverbial "sophomore jinx" here,
combining the lush vocal arrangements that only Delp can deliver with
Scholz's meticulous, yet workaday, layers of power chords. The result is
a record both aesthetically and viscerally pleasing, though perhaps a little
too intentionally "lowbrow" for the critics.
Dougie honks again, and I straighten a wrinkle in my "Pac Man Fever"
t-shirt, purchased that day for $8.78 at Hill's. I have fourteen pairs
of eyeballs preserved in a pickle jar on the top shelf, above the
stereo, next to the box marked "CHRISTMAS MISC." I wink at them as I
bend down to tie the laces of my Reeboks, and I sing to myself "rock and
roll band, everybody's playin'..."
In the car with Dougie, we drive past the tard who works up to the
dairy and Dougie swerves to splash him with a puddle. I laugh, snorting
the fumes of a can of Ronson lighter fluid, but inside it feels like I am
being eaten by caterpillars. I remember being a little boy and wishing
I had been born a giraffe so I could see over trees and maybe into the
next county. Dougie says "hey Petey, we're going to a party at Luann's,
the one with the trailer and the kid that's ain't got no head," and I
say "my name's Earl, Dougie, it's Earl," and he laughs and spits snuff
juice out the window, only it's closed, and it runs down and makes a
pattern that looks like that Shroud they buried Jesus under that I seen
on "That's Incredible" the other night on the TV.
At the party, Luann's walking around with her headless kid, and
she's pouring a box of animal crackers down its neck saying "the little
shit's always hungry" and I grab some pork rinds offa the table and stuff
them in my mouth to keep from screaming, and I see Becky and Crystal from
the vo-ed class and they're yellin' over who's hotter, Richard Marx or Bryan
Adams, and I stumble into the bathroom and I see Trevor Belknap taking a
shit in the tub, and he looks up and says "hey Petey, come on in, the
water's fine!"
I kick a hole in the side of the trailer and walk out, almost running
into Erma and J.T. fucking behind the utility shed, and they look up at
me and I see the moon reflected in their eyes and it looks like
something I saw in that one Dio video with the chick and the wolf, and
the little shit's always hungry and people are afraid of Huey Lewis.
And I run out into the gravel road and I trip over the headless baby's
Big Wheel and as I sprawl into the rocks and dirt I look up and I see a
yard sale sign tacked to a phone pole and underneath it a big piece of
cardboard torn off of a pizza box, and on it written in Magic Marker is
THIS AIN'T NO EXIT.
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( o.o ) (c) Anada e'zine anada387 by Infernal o
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