My last story, Jesus Krishna was a flop, I don’t think readers cared for the opening bit about the character who makes the Guinness World Records by filling an empty peanut butter jar with mucous, his own.
As for references to the King of Kings, it's apparent quasi and stoney-faced Jesus people don't care for writers fiddling around on the subject. Praising the Lord is the only road, but wrangling about the Lord's existence is blasphemy.
Literati are overly sensitive in regard to vulgar images from second-rate writers, but fall all over Charles Bukowski when he writes—
I like shit, I liked to shit, I like turds but it was such terrible work creating them.
Stay with me,
Bukowski’s loo scene may be more convivial if you read the entire paragraph.
Anyhow, after Marie left I sat in the kitchen and drank 3 cans of beer I found in the refrigerator. I never cared much for food. I’d heard of people’s love for food. But food only bored me. Liquid was o.k. but bulk was a drag down—I like turds but it was such terrible work creating them.
Very little unnerves me — blood, a Nazi soldier squished as he’s run over by a tank on TV, people who never stop talking— but rats and cockroaches petrify me.
Particularly sewer rats that differ from country rats, which are clean and edible.
While living in Asia a Thai pal, Dacha and I ate lunch in a bamboo hut. I order meatless green curry soup with rice and he has fried rats with sticky rice, showing off.
Suddenly it's pouring rand and the roof of the hut folds. None of the Thais say anything about getting soaked because Thais never complain. It’s a Buddhist thing, but I tease Dacha by saying,
the downpour is bad Buddha for eating rats.
Rats are pests Henry,
You're heartless? They want the same things we want in life, to eat, sleep in a cozy nest, procreate, and live. They’re like Hamsters. Dacha says,
rats taste like chicken. I tell him,
people say the same about wild meat— it tastes like chicken— alligator, snake, rabbit, or frog legs. The meat-eating talk sets me off, I’m a vegetarian—
I can’t eat living things, take pigs, I pity them with all my heart, they’re intelligent and sensitive, the swine herders don’t give a shit about the pig's feelings or beings, the red necks just see bacon. Eggs are basically embryos, and the Gods created milk for baby cows, not cocoa geriatrics to drink at bedtime. We should eat like monks.
You’re nuts Henry, Thai monks don’t follow strict diets, they eat what their disciples give em, pork, eggs, chicken, rice, tomatoes, and some eat pussy.
Thai monks eat pussy? Did you know Michael Douglas got throat cancer from that?
No, Google it, Henry reads from the webpage,
Michael Douglas said cunnilingus was the cause of his throat cancer. In particular, pointing his finger at the human papillomavirus, or HPV. And, 80 to 90% of people who engage in cunnilingus get it. Dacha laughs,
That’s total bullshit, everyone you know would have it. Do you know anyone with HPV Henry?
No, and the HPV shit ain’t gonna stop nobody from bush diving.
A few years later, broke again, I go back to the US, because foreigners, as Thais refer to us no matter how long we've lived here, can't work in Thailand.
The American Embassy in Bangkok fronts me a plane ticket with a catch— pay back the money or go to jail.
The ticket deal calls to mind a scene from the film The Godfather when Michael Corleone tells the Godfather,
I'll make him an offer he can't refuse.
In the US, I find a cheap room in East Harlem, work in the service industry selling weed, paying off the plane ticket in a week.
I get out of bed one night, wearing shorts, a sweatshirt, rubber slippers, and stuffing my waist-length hair into a stocking cap.
It’s an animated Saturday night, I smoke a joint as I walk, the neon lights look prismatic— like being in a house of mirrors.
I pass a couple who’re arguing, the drunk woman yells at her husband—
get the fuck away from me, he squeezes his hand into a fist like he means to hit her. She yells at him again,
you fucker,
he opens his arms towards her as an offering, pleading until she falls into his arms. A hundred strangers pass not noticing any of it.
New Yorkers are famous for walking the city streets wearing blinders, wary of mishaps.
There’s a story about a married couple fighting in their apartment, making a racket— a concerned neighbor knocks on the door, the wife opens the door, and the neighbor asks,
are you guys OK?
the wife punches him, bloodying his nose, rudely saying,
mind your own fucking business asshole, if we wanna have a row it’s our affair.
The guy calls the cops on the outta-control wife. The cops show going with the bloodied guy to the pair's apartment, knock on the door saying,
NYPD.
The pugilist wife opens the door, and one cop says,
Ma’am this gentleman says you assaulted him, bloodying his nose, and you smell like alcohol, she says,
Oh him, he’s a drunk, everybody knows it, he runs into things. And by the way, I just finished gargling with Listerene. I’m going to bed
What can the cops do? It’s her word against his, no witnesses, and no surveillance cameras.
The story instantiates the wisdom of New Yorkers for minding their own business.
Still walking I hit Chico’s bar for a drink. The drunks are loud, they hold the bullshit inside until they're loaded, then let it fly.
I notice a sad-eyed gal with long dark dreadlocks, wearing a bulky sweater sitting alone at a table in the back of the bar, asking her,
could I buy you a drink? She says,
I’m the kind of girl people avoid, I’m a humpback.
Do you like beer? I’ll get a pitcher of German beer.
I bring the pitcher and ask,
What’s your name?
Twinkle,
I’m Henry,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are?
Twinkle says,
The little star feels like shit— people stare at me as I walk the street, I can’t cover this hump with makeup, I just wear bulky clothes.
Twinkle the world is full of blemished people of all kinds. I’m bipolar and can’t hold down a job or stay in a relationship.
Where do you live Henry?
Not far, East Harlem, in a wee room.
We pick up a bottle of Wild Turkey at Tito’s Liquor. Inside, we sit on the bed, I tune the radio to a jazz station.
We pour a couple of drinks and talk, Twinkle grew up poor in an abusive family, her old man was a drunk janitor and her mother turned tricks to make ends meet. Twinkle says,
I’m on disability insurance, it’s enough to get buy, I live at home.
They have another drink, Henry asks Twinkle,
do you like sex? She answers,
nobody wants sex with a humpback. He assures her,
I do, and Twinkle says,
How about 69?
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