1
-¡More Sangria! -I ordered. What the hell, I was about to face
the guillotine.
I had been urinating on cadavers at the
local cemetery when they brought out the guillotine.
I had hands then where now I have paws. I can see my severed head in the basket. I can
see the blood and I can see a Metro Bus.
The
guillotiner’s eyes were as inexpressive as his turban. I had blue eyes that were congealed in terror.
I
kept up this thinking until someone kicked me in the ass.
-This
is no bastard time for day dreaming -A voice said.
-You’re
right, Mike -Mr. Spellman was pulling his false teeth from a jar. It was a
large jar because his teeth used to belong to a giant mannequin.
Another
aspect of this story is that we were all shooting ducks outside the Museum of Misery and Hysteria.
-¡Aggggh!
-My sister Carly had just shot at a duck with a quesadilla sarcophagus.
The
poor bird didn’t know what hit it.
It
began to bend and straighten and then bend again, like an old dime store
mannequin. Salem,
our enormous black cat, was poised to pounce once it fell. Fortunately, after
shooting off quesadilla sarcophagi, Carly had the attention span of a
9-week-old quail.
-Gimme
a sarsaparilla -Carly didn’t look like a girl who knew what the freaking hell
was going on. Her eyes were as wide as they were blank.
Carly
had the bluest eyes possible - for someone with yellow eyes. Her head looked
like a chicken leg that someone had run out of town like a common pygmy. But
there was something else about her head. It was red. And it had tentacles. And
it had pecan pieces and pieces of metal hanging from it.
My
dad also had a red head. In a photograph that he has, my mom has castanets in
her head and also a miniature poodle.
And
then there’s me. I never know when my mom is kidding. And she never told me
what became of that poodle. That’s because she never speaks to me directly,
only through Dad or Carly.
I’m
12 and Carly is 11. We’re practically the same height. Sometimes I think we’re
goblins.
And
sometimes I fall down and when I get up a typo come I.
My
dad says I’m preoccupied with my dick. The girls say that I’m bigger than most
boys. My dad assures me that one day this is all going to mean something to me.
But
today is not that day.
-¿How
come you can emotionally detach from everything and I have a hard time
emotionally detaching from a visit to the tanning salon? -Mom asked through
Carly-. Everything you know is false anyway, it’s… it’s…
-¡Great!
-Dad said walking into the house. I hoped he knew that he was limping around like
a broken mannequin. He had long tentacles that made him look like he had been
tied up with rope. Like someone had taken a rope and wrapped it around his
pelvis.
Dad
was this close to being guillotined. If his long,
angular body tripped… Well, let’s just say: the sun would rise the next
day, but his head wouldn’t.
-Excellent
detachment.
Mr.
Spellman was a serious orangutan. He had a toupee and the kind of carcinogenic
cough usually reserved for the dead. Dad may hiss, but this motherfucker
sounded like the plug had already been pulled long ago.
-But,
¿who wants a little when you can have a LOT?
-I asked.
Dad
ate from the bottle and used plastic knives like a former football player let
loose at Spago’s™. When the going gets tough, the tough sit and spin.
-Perfect.
Now that was horrible.
-Great,
Dad -I said.
Carly
looked like someone had lanced a boil she didn’t actually have.
And
Dad looked directly at me.
-You
don’t know what it’s like to live on Fear
Street because it costs an arm and a rat’s ass.
Dad’s
prosthetic hands had been made from balsa wood. Now they were turning orange
and there was an orange-red liquid oozing from them.
-This
is why the Museum
of Misery and Hysteria is
such a congenial place -Dad was passing gas like it was sunrise on Armistice
Day-. ¡They don’t let anyone come here! Not this time. Not next time. Not until
Armistice Day. There’s nothing fun in Shadyside.
I
thought and thought and listened and listened. And then I listened and thought
and thought and listened, until Dad’s ideas seemed great and didn’t need to be
translated from the original horse shit.
In
Shadyside what passed for strange was the city asking everyone to donate a book
of matches. Dad suspects that our town is run by drunks and if he could afford
to live anywhere else he would. He hated Shadyside like a motherfucker and
wished they’d put in a museum of terror so that he’d have some competition to run him
out of town.
-With
all the ghosts around here, ¿why don’t they put in a cemetery? -Dad asked,
thinking a little too much, and wishing they’d turn Fear Street into a Fun Zone.
-And
I don’t see why they can’t build a decent house or plant an alive
tree or open a fucking mosque -Mr. Spellman said.
Dad
seemed surprised.
-¿Why
do you want a fucking mosque?
I
knew why Spellman wanted a mosque. He wanted Dad to move out so he could make
our house a Bob Dylan museum. He tried telling us that our house was haunted,
but Dad told him that we could use the extra bed sheets. Then he told Dad that
ghosts would attack me.
-¡Bring
it on! -Dad had screamed-. I didn’t raise no pussy.
-I
want a fucking mosque because I want your ass out of here… that and I like
chanting. -Spellman sure knew how to rip through the bullshit sometimes-. Then
I’d burn down the Museum
of Misery and Hysteria
and put a permanent EXIT sign over it.
-Dad,
¿don’t you want to watch that alien autopsy hygiene program? ¿Or look for
buried treasure in the garden with your dead Uncle Basil? -Carly barked.
Dad
didn’t have time to respond to Carly, so he slapped her upside the head:
-¿What
enormous animal got up your ass? And
dig this: I’d rather be a cow with two heads than a stupid unicorn. ¿Would you
rather be a cobra with a headache or a carton of Virginia Slims™ with a
hard-on?
Dad
knew how to motivate people.
-I’d
rather be an olive tree than dead -Carly admitted-. But I’d rather be dead than
talking with you. The whole world knows that. Because it’s
the truth. ¿Don’tcha think, Mike?
-I’d
rather be a pear tree, actually -I said.
Carly
looked at me like I was one of her little friends. The
people that I referred to as “llamas for rent”. That and “major
sausage lentils”.
But
it was all a crock of Rembrandt Pussyhorse if you ax me.
-Actually
I’d rather be a monkey -I said-. All my friends say that the way monkeys sit is
fantastic.
-“It’s
fantastic” -Carly chillingly imitated my voice-. The way Pandas sit is
cool, idiot -she mumbled this,
thinking I couldn’t hear.
I
can’t look and listen at the same time. But I can push and shove at the same
time.
-Let’s
go, Dad. ¿What normal boy would rather be a tree squirrel than a mannequin in a
saloon? Think of the comedy, think of the catapults, and think of the space it
would create in the kitchen -Carly lamented.
-¿And
since when have you wanted me to be a normal boy, Carly? -I axed her.
I
give up, I can’t even think straight. Okay, tomorrow
I’ll think straight. Today is just a cost-overrun in the antique sheen of
comedy and catapults. Like that time that Dad tried to have the Misery Museum
converted into a casino.
Everybody
started arriving at our house. Our house, once a comedy kitchen, was now normal
in comparison, except for the part about how monkeys sit, and the part about
how we live in the basement of the Museum
of Misery and Hysteria.
-¡You
bastards! -Dad said, as everyone arrived-. There’s no pleasing you people. And
there’s only two weeks until Halloween. And then Shadyside will be up to its
ass in tourists. We have to prepare in case any vegans come. And you
just know there’s going to be a
shitload of dentists. But Halloween is the perfect
time for dentists because they’re so fucking scary -Dad was getting a little too serious with his adjectives, but at
least he was attacking the moneyed classes. You could set your watch to his
colorful expressions, especially if you had nothing else to do-. There’d better
not be any vegans -He announced-. And there’d better not be any Jesus freaks or
lawyers. I can handle dentists, but not bible-bangers, or pond scum.
I
knew that the idea of a Jesus
Museum really chapped
Dad’s testicles. He didn’t want to get run out of town by Jesus Freaks. Terrorists, yes. Jesus Freaks, no.
The
Museum of Misery and Hysteria was really unique.
Unique like a lesbian poodle or a drunken frog, in that it makes you sit up and
take hostages - kinda like a museum of terror. I’ve been making mannequins for
the museum since Saturday. I’ve been burying treasure under the porch since I
found my first instrument of torture. We had to have the kitchen redecorated
because there was a mountain of medieval torture equipment underneath it. That
was one ugly scene.
-Don’t
preoccupy your self, Dad -I said-. No one cares what color your hair is, and no
one cares what street we live on or what kind of torture equipment is buried
beneath the house.
For
a moment, I thought Dad was going to repent all of his sins.
-You’re
right. Uncle Basil will be here in two seconds. We’d better start preparing the
Epsom salts. Imagine what it’s going
to be like. We’re going to have relatives coming out of our asses.
I also had a big ass. It was fucked
because I couldn’t fit into my suit of armor. My ass was so big, Old Man
Spellman and I looked like best friends. It was so big,
it made my penis look like it was speaking in tongues.
Mr.
Spellman worked loading cargo for the museum airport. He was a big man when no
one was looking. But he had no idea who I was and he thought Dad was the mayor.
He was tall and stupid. He could lift large pebbles and he was a bigot bar-none. His blue eyes were so intense the town
used him to light the local baseball field at night. And he had a fascination
with guillotines, mannequins and confetti.
I
knew he was an idiot. Everyone else thought he was an important idiot.
And
¿what’s more important? ¿A saber-toothed jackass like
Spellman, or the dregs of our community - the cowboys, the drug dealers, the
private dicks?
We
talked for hours, like drunken, drug-dealing cowboy gumshoes. Me saying that my name was just as important as my arm and Spellman
saying that he had always wanted to be a king or a cowboy. Kings and
cowboys were code words for anything that fell apart. Like when lunch slowly
limped by slowly, or when a cowboy spontaneously combusted.
Mr.
Spellman came in, struck me and smiled.
-And
don’t fuck with me -He told us-. And don’t fuck with Basil, because
he’ll put a world of hurt on anyone named Mike.
It
wasn’t Carly’s fault that she didn’t know how to run. Uncle Basil was a grown
man – and dead - and he still didn’t know how to chew gum.
I
knew it was useless to argue. Arguing would only curse the poodles
cadavering down the lemon entrance.
Carly
was gnarly.
-¿Don’t
you see Laurel and Hardy every time you talk to Uncle Basil? I always see them
because he’s skinny, but he’s got a
fat head and he can’t read, and he’s dead.
-I
only see what I want to see. And I don’t see what the hell you’re talking
about, Carly -Dad knew that his limp gave him the false air of manliness that
usually came with old age and/or trap shooting-. If I can’t sing the national
anthem then I’m panning for gold.
The
cold escalator reminded me that I had a spine. It was a sensation I had always
associated with feeling important. Like on my birthday. Like whenever I ditched
class.
Or
like when I was absolutely in the moment.
But
I was never in the moment. My emotions told me to run. Yes, run asshole. Now pull out your teeth
just so you can experience a strange sensation. Yeah, pull out your teeth and
then sit down right here and remember that tragic accident when you ate a live
insect.
-¿Mr. Conway? -I was gripping on the porch fantastic when they
walked up. They made me a tri-tip nervous. I knew that postal employees asked
for combat pay whenever they delivered to the Museum of Misery
and Hysteria.
-We’re
from Manse Sinkey, Incorporated. We have a package for you.
Everyone
came out on the porch to have a look at their Porsche. It looked like an
enormous marionette had ripped the front bumper off. Combat pay would probably
include an enormous pot of coffee and a tray of entrails. That is, if the
Porsche had medical. Carly chucked a rock in its general location. I saw one of
the men wince as the rock just missed.
The
coffee Mom brought was large and rectangular. You could always count on Mom’s coffee
to be old, obscure, rugged and nasty. I’ve bitten into tables that were
tastier.
My
etiquette is strange for the most part. Etiquette is something that is
extremely rare nowadays. Oh, people have it, but it’s strange and retarded
unless you count the leering. And if you count the leering as etiquette then
I’m going to paint the word FRAGILE on
your forehead in red mayonnaise.
You
need a ladder to get the coffee from on top of the refrigerator. It’s taller
than fuck-all.
Dad
and Mr. Spellman reared their ugly carcasses. I looked at them and Carly looked
at me.
We
were like 4 TV repairmen on a grunion hunt: no coffee and not a nickel of sense
between us. The distance between us and sense was enormous.
-You’re
Marguerite Duras, ¿aren’t you ? -I axed. I meant
to sound like a travel agent, but it came out Robbe-Grillet.
-People
do commit suicide. You don’t have to
be the devil itself. Tranquilizers, my friends.
Tranquilizers -Dad had gone the way of the dirigible-. Meet me on the porch and
I’ll pull out one of your teeth. Don’t worry about it,
I won’t even use a drill. Carly, tell him. Mike, 10¢.
I’ll give you 10¢ and tickets to Cirque du Soleil. Come on…
Dad
was so focused, the only word he would listen to in
the morning was “coffee”. If you didn’t say “coffee” he’d just play his banjo
out in the sun.
He
was a gigantic hedgehogcicle. He was a hedgehog beating up a cowboy. And seven
to one he’s going to kill me. So – in summary – he was a murderous, gigantic hedgehogcicle - beating up a cowboy.
The
enormous silhouette of a hedgehog moved through the air. What was once created
was now conducted by the choir invisible. The choir invisible
with a stomach ache.
I
gritted my teeth and then pried them apart. But at least no one lobbed my ass
into jail.
-- on to chapter 2 or back to Cab Driving --
