Writing in First-Person Confessional

 

I read somewhere that,

while strolling through the desert one morning, Dorothy came upon an old Navajo man painting pictures in the sand and she asked,

what's the job of the artist? The Navajo answers, 

an artist provides what life does not. 

We of the literary world like to feel we are not here to wrangle and claw but to create.

Writers on Twitter will tell you they write because they have to— they're addicts you know.

Whatever you do, don’t tell me about insanity, I wrote a short story about a man who had a toilet seat fetish and painted a smiley face on the lid. 

Sometimes he’d spend hours in the loo whispering sweet nothings to the thunderbox. One day, his wife called 911  because she was locked out of the WC. Desperate, she shits in a pot, squatting, in the kitchen, before the first responders got there.

Eventually, the poor guy, let’s call him Wet Willy, went to see a hypnotherapist hoping it would help him forget his loo obsession, but, it was no help— as soon as the session was over, Wet Willy ran home to be with his toilet seat.

Then ole Willy stopped going to work because he couldn't handle being separated from his lover, the ta ta seat.

Not surprisingly, his wife Loony, left him, because Wet Willy ignored her and she got tired of running next door to pooh, it was embarrassing.

One day, a meter reader noticed a foul odor coming from Willy boy's house and called the fire department, who knocked down the front door and ran upstairs, finding poor Willy dead with his head in the toilet bowl. 

No one knows for sure why or how Wet Willy drowned in his toilet bowl, but some people think he was partaking in a love ritual with his honey-lover-chamber-pot.

I hope this story is proof if you need proof that I’m bats. Not certifiably— but, bats to share this dumb story with you.

I’m going to lock myself in the garage with a fifth of Jack Daniels and bottle of Tramadol, roll the top of my Cadillac down, blow the speakers, sit in the bitch seat, and type on my Smith Corona like a trucker gone on bennies. Because I have an itch to talk things out, line by line, not for you, but for myself— GARBAGE TALK BABY.

I have always been pretty much outside it all. My writing is transgressive— outside the parameters of orthodox fiction.

Nothing seems real to me— insects, women, cornfields, sun or moon, sex, candy. 

Even death is surreal to me. One time I visited the charity ward of Coney Island Hospital with a midget friend who was a circus clown. The ward was horrifying, a place for the soon-to-be-dead to crawl around in. A purgatory on earth where the dying lay in the stink of their sheets for days waiting for a nurse to appear.

Even my friend the midget clown, going through routine after routine— with sweat beading through his pancake makeup, didn’t get any laughs— dying is serious business, outside the perimeter of day-to-day living, it's a time when normal people are railroaded outside.

Only the thousands on Twitter who read my stories at busted-on-empty know I’m a writer. But, I keep hoping AOC or Biden will phone and ask me to email them a campaign speech or something. I’ve been mulling over a eulogy for Biden’s funeral, something like—

Scranton Joe was born in a shoebox on top of a Pennsylvania landfill— by the time he made it to the Whitehouse he had more shoes than Elton John, all of them black.

America’s son did things in a big way— his mistakes were epic and his successes were few.

His lovely wife Jill, who’s sitting in the front row tonight, is a doctor of something, but, no one knows what.

Joe died while in office like Lincoln, Kennedy, and Roosevelt, a member of an exclusive club— let us pray for Scranton Joe.

I haven’t been feeling good (SHTICK WARNING SOUNDING). I need an operation for one of my maladies but can’t afford to go to the hospital. I never get genteel clean diseases you can chat about over a cup of tea, like a heart attack, stroke, or amnesia, but instead, for me, it's hemorrhoids, madness, boils, ingrown toenails, and rotten teeth. 

Life is avoidance of pain until death.

Life is love between two people that only go one way— one is always the master and the other the slave. 

Death is the master of life.

There are days, rare days, when I lay in bed in a fit of depression, afraid to get out of bed, knowing something dreadful is going to happen, something waiting around the bend.

Christmas Day, today— is one of those days. I’m spending the day in bed drinking Jack from the bottle and popping Tramadol. I’m afraid to go out on the streets because people on the streets are whacky, Christmas is something they have to do, if they had a lick of sense they’d pass it up.

The residues of Indian Summer have evaporated and we are stuck fast enduring Christmas and it smacks of something with razor-sharp teeth.

There is no way out of our present impasse, not just Christmas Day, but every day. Anyone whose eyes are truly open sees the horrors that surround us— it's so fucking lousy that I can't talk about it. 

Right now, I’m getting a little loaded, being loaded inspires me. I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do. And, honestly, I don't think much about right and wrong— allowing my well-lubed prefrontal lobe to do the job.

I want to bring this story— my confessional in first-person style experiment to an end, so I'll say good night to my esteemed readers.

We Three Kings

Some Christmas memories are atypical and have nothing to do with—garlands, cozy fireplaces, ornate cookies, eggnog, the giving of stuff, and mistletoe. 

This is a story about a seasonal memory that has everything to do with the magic of youthful adventure and little to do with Christmas.

Henry and his parents traveled to Acapulco from Mexico City on Christmas eve,1966, staying at The Las Hamacas Hotel, across the street from Acapulco Bay in the central city.

The Lucowski family show at the small-time hotel in a pink Cadillac limousine at 10 AM, checking in and going to the canopied dining area by the pool for a late breakfast. 

The hotel serves a homespun and memorable breakfast— freshly baked hard rolls, Churros or Mexican donuts, sliced avocados, tomatoes and cucumbers, bananas, fresh strawberry papaya, eggs, bacon, and brewed coffee. All of it served in a fun, relaxed manner on tables covered with white linen. 

The Mexican waiters wearing white chaquetas and black pantalones are known for their dark sense of humor— directed at each other and the gringo guest. 

Like, telling a woman with a wig on, 

señora your hair is bonita! 

Or, saying to a kid who isn't eating,

Niño, finish your breakfast or Papá Noel is going to bring you coal for Christmas. 

And, telling an elderly woman who's dining with her husband, 

señora, take it easy on the Red Snapper your eating, he looks like your husband.

After breakfast, Henry walks across the street to a taco bar on the bay, and his parents shop for souvenirs, crap really— bogus machetes that couldn’t cut butter, silver from Taxco that turns green by the time you get home, cheap sombreros wrapped with Shrink Wrap, making them look costly, and so on. 

Anyway, Henry's sitting at a taco bar on Acapulco Bay drinking a beer at a small table. He puts a hand full of pesos in a jukebox filled with 45 RPM records, the hippy music of the day— Sopwith Camel, Strawberry Alarm Clock, Hendrix, The Doors, and Jefferson Airplane. 

At 16 he’s an easily tempted, astute lover of everything native— psychedelic music, incense, exotic and erotic literature, who’s constantly reading— Hemingway, Henry Miller, Anis Nin, William Faulkner, William Butler Yeats, Kerouac, and even the Kama Sutra, still a virgin though.    

He notices a young couple approaching, crossing the street, coming from his hotel, they are walking arm in arm. As they pass he leans towards them, asking them to sit down, they oblige.  

They're siblings, Juan and Moon, 16 and 15 respectively, also staying at The Las Hamacas Hotel.

Moon’s fetching, willowy with long chestnut hair, wearing glasses, looking nymph-like, a child who's becoming a woman. Her older brother Juan is cool, lean, tanned, with long sideburns, his hair parted in the middle, a member of the Carte Blanca surf club of Southern California.

After a beer, Juan sees a shadowy figure walking the beach who locals call El Mago, The Magician. 

Juan stands, running to catch up with El Mago, then walking down the shore with him.

Henry and Moon talk over beers at the cafe, for them, love is in the air.

When Juan returns, he sits down at the small table, the lover’s trance fades as he says, 

look under the table.  

Juan flashes a plastic bag full of golden buds, Acapulco Gold. Henry was familiar with ganja, having read about it in Kerouac’s On the Road, and Henry Miller’s book Big Sur.

At sundown, the trio walks across the street to The Las Hamacas Hotel, going to Juan and Moon’s room. Their mother is staying next door and she respects their privacy. Something, Henry’s parents didn’t see as an innate right of youth.  

They sit on the single beds at the center, facing each other as Juan rolls a joint. Eventually, he lights it, instructing the nascent lovers on the art of taking a pull.

Draw steady, hold the smoke in long enough for it to flow through your veins, heart, and brain. Whatever you do, don’t fish lip the joint. Moon laughs at her brother saying,

fish lip? Where'd you dig that up? 

After smoking awhile, they laugh at nothing, and anything— exaggerated, fun, laughter. 

Finishing the doobie, the trio walks through the patio door to the pool, sitting poolside with their legs dangling in it, tossing fallen flower peddles into the blue water, watching ripplets expand outwards as their chakras open magnifying their senses. 

Henry stands on the poolside, bolting to his hotel room, returning with a paperback copy of Yeat's The Land of the Heart’s Desire, going to the diving board and standing at the end, reading out loud.

Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame!  

Juan and Moon stand and applaud.

On Christmas Day they wake at sunrise, giving their parents the run-around, taking a taxi to a beach on the Pie de la Cuesta coast. There's a rundown film location behind the beach where scenes of Johnny Weissmuller's last Tarzan film were shot by RKO in 1948.

The beach is packed with Mexicans who went to Mass on Christmas Eve to honor the Baby Jesus.

Going to the beach on Christmas Day helps the Mexicans to shake off the stifling circumstance of praying for hours in church pews the night before.

You can hear Ranchero music blaring from beachside cantinas, shacks made of bamboo and thatched straw roofs serving, fresh grilled chicken and fish, tortillas, refried beans, rice, beer, tequila, and soft drinks.

Juan, Henry, and Moon walk away from the crowd to an isolated area of the beach with a single cantina. They place a large Las Hamacas bedspread on the sand, strip down to their swimsuits, and drink Pacifico beer.

Juan body surfs while the precocious teens, Henry and Moon, talk about esoterica— 

What is life? 

Is there a God? 

Did Martians create the human race?

The young lovers bond intellectually, physically though, their both virgins.

At sunset, the trio catches a taxi back to The Los Hamacas Hotel and go to their room. The virgin lovers lay in one single bed and Juan passes out on the other. 

At this point, Henry's parents were missing him and suspected something was going on.

Henry and Moon make out on the bed, breathing hard, deep kissing, fumbling, confused, finally getting naked under the sheets— getting closer to first-time coitus.   

Hit and miss, he locates Moon’s pink taco and gently puts the meat to it, getting off in record-breaking time, 30 seconds. She's surprised, shaken some, and she can't recollect feeling anything.

As for Henry, he couldn't have pulled it off if he hadn't read the Kama Sutra.

In that it was their first time, the lovers clean up more than they need to, Moon spends 40 minutes in the shower. 

They walk out the patio door to the pool. Henry’s mother, Linda, is waiting and she corners him. He realizes he missed Christmas diner with his parents and she reads him the riot act,  

Henry, what were you doing in THAT hotel room with THAT girl? Where have you been for the last two days? Your father and I have been worried sick. You could have left a note at least.

She smacks him around, cross-slapping him European style on both cheeks in front of Moon. 

He's more embarrassed than hurt.

His mother goes on with the sermonizing, she’s juiced on Martinis.

Henry, you missed Mass. It's Christmas Day, a time for families to be together, to pay respect to the Lord. I can smell beer on your breath, and God knows what you've been doing with THAT girl? Go to confession tonight.

Linda opens her purse and pulls out a Rosary, handing it to him, knowing her son is beyond hope and backsliding. He says to her, 

Ma are you on a sainthood crusade? 

Speechless, his mother does an about-face and goes to meet his father somewhere.

In spite of missing Mass, Christmas Dinner, and getting chewed out by his mother, the happenings over the last few days are an awakening for Henry.

Maybe, the magic of new love discovered was paramount to— garlands, cozy fireplaces, ornate cookies, eggnog, the giving of stuff, and mistletoe.  

Juan, Henry, and Moon— We Three Kings, or Two Kings and Queen, win the crapshoot of life, this time around anyway. 

Teflon Carl, Blind Robert & Deaf Nil

 

There were people in Henry’s life whose memory he would carry to the grave and beyond. As for beyond the grave, better to leave the extraterrestrial stuff to holy rollers and snake charmers. 

One was his deaf nanny Nil— who made a lasting impression on him. Henry grew up with her in an apartment in the West Village, and Nil was all he had. 

His old man was a traveling salesman who sold brassieres, and French knickers from a wholesale catalog, driving his Fleetwood Cadillac up and down the Northeast coast.

His mom loved Black dudes, jazz musicians, dope dealers, and she thought she was Negra queen, camping out at the Harlem Flophouse— the ebony Chelsea Hotel of the time.

Nil, his nanny, was a Norwegian beauty, a natural blond, just twenty-five, raising fifteen-year-old Henry as his mother and lover— a dreamy mix for them that they savored.

 

Neither drove, so they’d walk the streets of Manhattan at night, beautifully naive, open to everything, and on the run.

One night Nil bought a bottle of Night Train Express and wrapped it in a paper sack— she and Henry passed it back and forth like two Bowery bums, pulling on it as they walked.

In the Meatpacking District, they go to a working man’s bar called Axels. A joint looking like a million other blue-collar joints, with wooden bar and stools, a hard brown tile floor, three levels of top-shelve booze, and bottles of rail booze in the speed rack for easy access. 

On the back bar, there was an old NCR cash register, and gallon jars of pickled pigs feet, hot dogs, and hardboiled eggs.  

Henry and Nil walk into Axels and sit at an empty table, surrounded by Columbia and NYU students dressed like truck drivers and stevedores wearing jeans and safety boots— college kids slumming it for the weekend who read Sinclair Lewis and Nelson Lichtenstein.

Merl haggard’s song Misery and Gin blares from a large speaker hung on a thick chain from the ceiling. 

Nil walks to the bar, a few of the pretend proletariats eyeball her, she’s slender, innocent-like, and moves gracefully. 

She pulls a pocket-size notebook and a pencil from her purse jotting down in caps, 

TWO VODKA AND ORANGE JUICES 

Vodka and orange juice is the type of drink newbie drinkers like because orange juice overpowers vodka which is tasteless.

The bartender, an older man wearing a checkered shirt who has bushy eyebrows pours the drinks, looking at Henry, knowing the kid is underage, not caring because New Yorkers don’t give a shit about much of anything.

Then, the geezer hacks open-mouthed, splashing Nil, who’s standing in front of him at the bar. Unnerved, she takes a hanky from her purse and wipes her face. She writes in her notepad and holds it up so he can read it,

COVER YOUR MOUTH NEXT TIME YOU HAWK ON SOMEONE, ASSHOLE

 

The rummy hoots, grabbing her notebook and writing in it with an industrial size magic market,  

SIT ON MY FACE LITTLE GIRL AND DRINK  FREE

She picks up the drinks, turns, and walks back to Henry, writing in her notebook, 

LET’S GO, I’VE HAD ENOUGH OF  THE PHONY PROLETARIATS AND THAT RETCHED BARTENDER

They walk out of Axels without paying for the drinks. On the sidewalk hailing a cab, getting in the first one that comes their way, and going home.

Another memorable friend was Miami Carl, who had a run of bad luck, open heart surgery— having to replace a collapsed heart valve with a Teflon substitute, which worked OK, but made an annoying noise as it opened and shut. 

When Carl was excited anyone near him knew, because of the audible sound of his heart valve, which sounded like the lid on a Tupperware container being opened and closed.

Finally, there was Robert the blind man who Henry met in a Key West bar known as the 66 Club one afternoon. Robert was sitting alone at the bar and Henry sits by him and shamelessly comments, 

I’ve never met or known personally someone who’s blind.

The blind man who's in his late fifties, heavy-set, balding with stoop shoulders wearing brown slacks, brown shoes, a tie, and a sports coat says, 

nice to meet you, I'm Robert, 

I’m Henry, Robert. 

He looks closely at the blind man’s eyes, there was something different about them. Too much white in the iris, for one thing, and the pupils seemed to move around in the sockets, creepy-like. Henry asks, 

How bout a drink? 

Yes, scotch and water, Dewars. 

Henry waves to the bartender and says, 

Give my friend here a Dewars and water.

Robert the blind man raises the tumbler to his mouth, taking a slow swig, savoring it, then lighting a cigarette, smoking it down to the nub, and then lighting another one. Henry then asks him,

what do you do for a living friend? 

I’ve done a little bit of everything.

Robert turns his blind face towards Henry saying, 

presently I'm selling Fuller Brushes door to door. 

The blind man picks up and places a brown suitcase on the bar, opening it and saying, 

I have toilet brushes, hairbrushes, toothbrushes, bottle brushes, brushes made of natural and metal bristles.

Henry’s had heard Fuller Brushes were overpriced,

how bout another drink Robert? 

You sure know the way to a blind man’s heart, make it a double. Then Henry asks, 

Robert do you have a TV? 

Why yes I have two of them, a color set and an old black and white relic. I listen to the news and try to keep up with what the announcer says.

Robert the blind man drains his glass taking a long pull and says, 

Henry would you mind walking me to the Greyhound station, I have to catch the 5:45 bus to Key Largo. 

Robert takes hold of Henry’s arm and they walk to the bus station where they wish each other luck and say goodbye. 

Robert, Nil, and Carl, three people who, for different reasons, greater and lessor reasons, made an impression on Henry.

If You're Christian, Don't Read This.

 

Henry and Lucia are giving up pork for Lent. Some things are in play here—

A few days ago while driving their station wagon on Stock Key, they noticed a passing truckload of pigs heading to slaughter up north somewhere, Louisiana maybe, where Cajuns are broke mouth for barbecue. 

The hogs in the back of the rig look rundown, beaten, and sad. Lucia sobs uncontrollable, Henry pulls the car off the highway, parking it, they look at each other, vowing to never eat the doomed creatures again, for a few reasons—

Pigs are more clever than dogs. 

Bacon is never fully digested, it turns black and sits in your gut for an eternity.

And finally,

When a person goes pork-less for a year a pig is spared.

As for Lent and Jesus, the atheist couple reckoned Jesus was an unorthodox thinker and a victim.  

He spent his missing years— the years between his childhood and the beginning of his ministry— studying Buddhism in India, and at thirty He returned to the Middle East where He roamed the sacred red planet known as the Sinai. 

During this period Jesus was a desert hobo— barefoot, naked, sweating flowers, his soul inflamed, leaping over hills, landing in no-mans-land on Mount Qurantania, colliding with Satan, face to face with Satan wearing his newly tailored Horned Piper snake suit, looking like a Hope Diamond, as big as the Gods, letting Jesus pass, bored by the rube.

Forty days and forty nights in the Sinai desert, Jesus’s halcyon days, the genesis of The New Testament—the greatest show on earth, the passion play, a hard-edged period for the young God. 

Sadly, He didn’t have a chance, in the end, as the story goes, Jesus was duped by the Gods and strung up by Dago Legionnaires. 

For the last 2000 years, Jesus has been hawked like Motorhead T-Shirts in the back lot of a Detroit arena by the high economist of the Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, and Assembly of God conglomerates for control, ego, and bling.  

Later, Henry and Lucia are in the kitchen, she’s frying turkey bacon, and eggs in an iron skillet next to a freshly boiled pot of black beans and rice, a favorite in Cuban where she grew up. Henry asks, 

darling, are Cubans religious?

After El Revolución del 26, Julio, Castro declared Cuba an atheist state. Fidel’s brother Raul was a Jesuit schoolboy who later talked of going back to the church, but wouldn’t dare mention it as long as his brother’s alive. Cubanos are free to practice religion, as long as they keep a lid on it. 

They can only pray underground? That’s not freedom. Are there Satanists in Cuba?

No sé Henry, you think I’m the World Book? 

Yes, The Cubano World Book,

Sí querido, there are Santeria cults in Havana, it's voodoo, not devil worship. They sacrifice chickens and small animals, burn incense, dance around campfires. Fidel threw most of them in the hole because Raul the altar boy was offended by the infidels.

Lucia, let’s go to the grotto at Saint Mary Star of the Sea and smoke ganja. The spots venerated baby.

Buena bebe, we’ll dress in black, like in clerecía.

After showering the love couple oils their waist-length hair with patchouli oil, braiding it Cherokee style. 

They lock the front door of the bungalow, then hop on their Vespa scooter, riding directly to Saint Mary Star of the Sea, parking on the lawn.

The church is made of rough-cut black rock and has a copper Celtic cross on the steeple— it was built in the thirties but looks hundreds of years old.

The couple bypasses the church, entering the grotto in the back where there’s a shoddy rock and cement structure that houses a shinny ceramic statue of the Virgin Mary—  overgrown red poinsettia bushes engulf the shrine. 

They sit on the manicured lawn, lighting a joint and puffing on it— the wind rustles, and the bushes swirl, reaching out to them. 

A powerful feeling of religiosity engulfs them. Then as the sky turns purple and the sun sways— the face of La Madre Virgen liquifies and she says in Latin, 

Henricus et Lucia omnia tua dant Deo

Henry and Lucia give your all to God

The air turns cold as the grotto is swallowed in blue smoke.

They look at one another and Lucia asks,

what happened querido?

That was either a hallucination or a religious experience, depending on how you look at it.

Was it real Henry? 

If you believe in God it’s real, but for nonbelievers, it’s an illusion, like an LSD trip. 

On the way home, they park the Vespa in the lot of The Moon Dog Cafe, across from Dog Beach, needing a drink after savoring the words drop-shipped in their laps by the Virgin Mary at the grotto of Saint Mary Star of the Sea Church.

The Moon Dog Cafe is an eclectic place where odds and ends are strung from wall to wall— fishing rods, surfboards, teddy bears, bras, you name it. 

The born-again lovers sit at the bar, ordering clam fritters, broiled grouper, coleslaw, corn on the cob, and a pitcher of Bucanero Draft dosed with Clamato— honoring their Lent commitment and not ordering pig ribs.

Lucia pours the red beer into mugs which they lift towards the sky, toasting all things religious, taking big swigs. Henry comments, 

the first mouthful is always the best.

Salud querido, I love you.

The bartender, an Israeli named Yoshi, sets the bar top with plates, tableware, and clothe napkins, then serves lunch.

As they’re eating, Henry points towards a shadowy figure at the end of the bar, someone who looks like he wants to be left alone, who's wearing a broad hat, black jeans, and a muscle T exposing his thin white arms. Lucia says, 

he’s a rock star, querido, 

yeah, it’s Keith Richards darling.

A few minutes later Keef walks towards them, sitting by them as Lucia says, 

you look hungry, bebe

she orders more plates of food and Keith says in his famous raspy voice, 

cheers, thanks, I don’t eat unless my old lady orders it, there’s no time when we’re touring. 

I’m Henry and she’s Lucia, 

Yoshi places an unopened bottle of Jack Daniels on the bar for Keith, gratis, and he says, grabbing the fifth, 

let’s get outta here, 

Henry places a hundred-dollar bill on the bar to cover what they ate and what's left behind. They follow Keith to a waiting limousine, things outside feel surreal.

In the back of the limo, Keith says, 

can I crash at your place for a few hours?  

Minutes later the limo's parked in front of the couple's bungalow.

Inside, Lucia pours drinks, Jack with coke, Keef passes out on the living room sofa, sleeping through the night till noon the following day, when Lucia makes him fried eggs, french fries, turkey bacon, and coffee. 

After breakfast, the legend grins, handing the couple a handful of backstage passes for the evenings' concert saying,

don't miss it, I might be dead next time around, fuck the naysayers!

Then Keef pads his chest with both hands, raising them towards the Heavens as he walks outside, walking his renowned unbalanced walk, staggering and getting into his limo which goes north on The Overseas Highway to Miami, where The Rolling Stones will play tonight at the Miami Orange Bowl.