fucked Up in NaSSau (cUt up verSion)

i've been writing for 11 years, rummaging through the antique furnishings of mind and soul, busting a gut to cook up something different. 

there are moments when i feel like a chimp jumping up and down on a typewriter, stomping it till it falls to bits.  

bonafide writing isn't a hobby— hobbyists are dry as dust, like, the bus driver who spends his weekends at the beach swinging a metal detector back and forth mining for pirate doubloons, finding bottle caps and pennies.

on second thought, fuck the grousing, it's story time. 

my dad bob was a gambler, he blew most of his dough betting. 

in the early 80s, bob took my older brother benny and me (henry) to the bahamas to gamble.

by the age of 17, i didn't care about money,  but I loved to get high. 

3 of us jetted from cHicago to the grand bahaMa airport.

the terminal was an exotic experience— the scent of the Caribbean Ocean in the wind, the local black police wearing white tunics, the palm trees, and pink houses. 

bob rents a Vw bug from hertZ. benny and i throw the bags in the pint-sized beast and pile in. 

on a deserted road to the casino dad says, 

watch me, boys, here’s how you drive a four on the flour. 

he shifts into 1st and steps on the gas, when the RpMs hit 8, he slips the stick into 4th.

bob knew fuck all about standard transmissions and we knew it. he drove cadiLLacs, trading them every yeaR.

the atlantis casiNo and hotel was on parachute Island, a mini island connected to Nassau by a bridge.

dad booked 2 rooms for 5 days, 1 for himself and the other for Benny and me. 

bob and benny, who gambled on bob’s dime, go straight to the casino, playing blackjack and shooting craps. 

half dressed wearing a baseball hat, eyeballing the freaks as I walk, busting out of a ritzy hotel that leaves me flat, walking over the bridge, with 30 bucks in my pocket. 

not knowing my way around the city I walk anywhere, ending up in the Sand Trap, where the poor live.  

Aablack man wearing white converse gym shoes asks me, 

hey whitey, 10 dollas for 3 fingas,

i buy the ganja, it's thumb-sized, wrapped in brown paper.

i here chaotic chatter in the market and follow it, buying a corn cob pipe and a zipPo lighter. 

at the beach, i walk until i until alone, sitting, leaning on a palm tree, pulled intp the indigo sea.

lighting up a bowl and getting thoroughly blasted, feeling elevated, warm inside.

on the outskirts of down, there's a wooden village. in a wooden village, looking like a spaghetti western set. 

in winKies place, I order fried octopus and spuds, drinking a coke. 

el brown girl comes up from behind, putting her hand between my legs. she smells like frenCh perfume,   

pussy, little white rabbit? 

i wasn't the virgin in the room, i had sex a couple of times,

MudDled, i follow her to a room in the back of winkIes. 

i lay on a sheetless mattress, it's moist from the humidity or something. she says, 

my name's hopE sweetie,  

i’m henry.

i watch HOpe take off her skirt, bra, and panties.

her belly's scared down the middle— the aftermath of a ceSarian birth. 

hope fills a plastic tub with soap and water, squats over it, splashing the mix on her groan— it won't save us from getting the clap. 

she lays in bed with me, rubbing my cock with the white side of her rough black hand. i'm turgid but not hard, she puts a condom on my dick, it's half on and half off, half tangling off the end of my chock,

getting up on all fours expecting me to mount her from behind. hope has a massive booty, and i can't elevate myself enough to get inside her.  

we bump, my dick's lame. in a few seconds she asks,  

did you cum, yet?

i tell her yes, it’s a lie, i dress and get outta there, after giving her 10 dollars. 

the gRaNd ahaMa casiNo isn't my kind of place, everybody smokes there. 

i'm comfortable living in the jungle, or, walking into town  

i fill a gallon-sized plastic bottle with water from a beautiful foUntain.

my dad and brother fly home without me, they’re used to my fanciful behavior and are unconcerned.  

sleeping on banana leaves a pack of wild dogs comes at me. Realizing dogs have sensitive hearing, i tap an empty bottle of kalik bEer with a rock, the dogs run away. 

i buy a wrap-around cloth that’s like a dress and go shirtless, walking with a staff widdled from a piece of a fallen YellOW PinE limb. 

thin as a stick, I walk to the market begging, I feel like jesus.

the black ladies in the village, the vendors ask me, 

is my nana in Heaven? 

or, 

who set my house on fire? 

I make up answers and it satisfies them, 

yes, nana’s in heAven, 

and, 

a bad man they call freaky frank set your house on fire.

i ate well then,  bread, dried fish, barbecued goat meat,, and baked yams. 

After a month in nassau, i'm tired of shitting in the jungle and wiping with banana leaves. 

i dig up my passport from under a palm tree with the engraving pp done with a nail, the blue pages are stained. 

at the american consulate in central nassau, i show the marine my passport, he lets me in. 

talking to a consulate official who’s safely behind bulletproof glass i plea like an asshole

miss, i'm broke and i need a boat ticket to Miami.

she looks at my passport and looks at me saying, 

henry lucowski? 

yeah, the embassy will pay for your ticket on the condition you repay the government in miaMi.

i wash my shorts, and half-t in the sea. 

on the way to the consulate, i clean up in a park fountain.

then flashing my passport at the mAurine guard, he laughs at me.  

i look at the woman in the bullEt prOOf cage, asking for cab fare to the airport, she says, 

okay, here's 10 dollars, i'll add it to your bill. 

i was the last one to board the miAmi-bound plane and the passengers eyeball me, like i'm a bum— for fuck's sake imagine that?  

Melancholia

 

The world leaves me flat, food taste flat, I’ve lost my desire for sex, travel, reading, and most of the crap people like, except writing. I write for R and R. 

I'm on antidepressants and, they don't do shit. 

I drive a 16-year-old Toyota, its rust free because I live in the tropics and there's no need to salt the roads because it doesn't snow here. 

Somedays, driving to the market, I look at the fancy new cars, telling myself,

you can't buy a new car fool. 

When you're living in reduced circumstances, dumb sayings can keep you afloat for a while, shit like, 

you can't bring the mud on your shoes with you when you die.

As for the next life, the religious believe in Heaven and Hell. How the fuck can they know, have they been there?  

Death is the great equalizer, if there is an afterlife, bums stand in the same queue as billionaires to get in. 

Yesterday I wrote a 500-word bit for Publisuite, it was rejected, of course, 1 mistake, and you're out.  

Publisuite is a platform that advertises and promotes different content for its users.

The Publisuite web page gives me a migraine.

The site is hard-nosed and cold.  

People rarely give away money. You have to go out of your way to make it. 

Homelessness is around the corner for many. 

When I go broke, I’ll go to Nassau, hawk cocaine, beg for bread from the Negras in the market, sleep in the jungle, and wash up in Goose River.

At the moment I'm without much money and depressed.

 

For many life gets worse, not better. 

Those on the top have special talent, I have no idea how it works, if I did I'd do what they do. 

Having money would placate my paranoia, but wouldn't soothe my melancholia.

Sure, this bit is melancholic— can you write happy-like if you’re unhappy without being phony? 

Every day I sit up in bed with the lights off and the curtains closed, listen to Netlfix through headphones, writing on my laptop. I don't know what else to do. 

I don't know what my problem is. I need help and don't know where to get it. 

You can write things off saying, 

I’m jinxed,

or, 

I don’t belong here. 

or, 

death where's thy sorrow?

I live on nothing sandwiches, they’re tasteless. 

I woke up this morning believing I might be on the mend.

Feelings and emotions are created by the chemicals firing in your brain of chemical messengers called hormones and neurotransmitters.

The Harvard Medical Center says early experiences affect the development of brain architecture, which provides the foundation for all future learning, behavior, and health.

In that case, I’m fucked, my childhood was a madhouse— my old man was a traveling salesman, a womanizer who'd come home at night drunk with lipstick on his collar. 

My parents would quarrel at the top of their lungs, throwing pots, pans, plates, and chairs, clobbering one another. 

The turmoil caused me to feel befuddled and beaten down.

At the age of 13, I was full-on lush, looting my old man’s liquor cabinet. I would grab a 1/5 of anything, I didn't know the difference between gin and vodka. 

On the weekends I'd bike a few miles to Lake Michigan, taking mescaline, smoking dope, trancing out while eyeballing the expanse of water, feeling all of Mother Nature as though She was wrapping her arms around me.

Throughout life, I've been a loner, avoiding people because talking to them leaves me flat. 

I'm anything but well-behaved. 

I am not a patriot. 

All the beguiling manifestations in the world will rot away eventually.

I’m a failure who gets by, not much else. 

I'm not afraid of dying, but I will be when I'm on my last legs in the hospital. 

Let's baptize this tale Melancholia, hail melancholia. 

Thich Quan Duck (Edited Version)

I don’t know where to buy cocaine in Thailand, but you can buy ganja everywhere here. Siam is the Amsterdam of the Orient. 

If I could get a blue vile of pharmaceutical cocaine, the crystals, I would snort once a month, storing it in the freezer. 

I eat ganja cookies 24/7, around the clock, I love getting stoned.

Weed is magical and beer is sweet. Who needs cocaine? Ganja is the most powerful drug in the universe. 

It’s a pain reliever stocked by hospitals around the world.  

There is no such thing as pure cocaine, it's cut with talcum powder, sugar, baking soda, caffeine, heroin, or fentanyl.

Only a fool snorts fentanyl. 

Quality hard liquor is safe to drink if you don't drink to get loaded. 

Jack Daniels, Dewers, Markers, or Añejo Tequila, are nectars of the Gods. 

Most people in the world live from day to day without a bank account. Others, a minority, are insulated with dough and worry free. 

The world is unjust, eat the rich, my mags are rusting and my breaks don’t work. 

I didn’t choose to be here, it chose me, I’m jinxed. 

It’s very hot outside, jai lawn, mak.  

People are afraid of AI and mass surveillance like it's the Stasi, and it will be.    

Yeah, I'm a Eurotrash nail-biter, who gets loaded every day. 

Someday Martians are gonna hoist me aboard their flying saucer. I will study telephathia, sell out, bow, and kiss their feet. 

Harvard Medical School says white-bread sunbathers are at a higher risk of getting skin cancer than people of color. Albinos should stay out of the Sun.   

In 250 years it will be so hot that mankind will need to be evacuated to the Moon, Mars, Heaven, or Hell, fat chance, I doubt it, Heaven and Hell, he he, you can't see Heaven or Hell.

None of us wants to burn alive. 

During the Viet Nam War, Thich Quan Duck was a Vietnamese Mayana Buddhist monk who immolated himself on 11 June 1963,  protesting the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government led by Ngo Dinh Diem.

Thich Quan Duck was in a Saigon park when he doused himself with gas and flicked his Bic. 

The smell of Quan’s burning flesh was awful, similar to the smell of burning garbage, or plastic. 

There are few things more painful than burning alive. 

It wouldn’t be something I would do. 

Pan (The Edited Version)

There’s nothing like a baby goat, they can jump straight up in the air landing on their feet, or jump sideways. 

The mainstay of a goat’s diet is hay and grass, so if you live in the suburbs and don’t want to mow your lawn, buy a small tribe of goats. 

Every urban and suburban farmer wants to keep goats. Fortunately, zoning permitted, you can keep a goat in your yard.

Some cities condone urban goat-keeping including—  Seattle, Portland, Charlottesville, Columbus, and Milwaukee.

In astrology, the goat is Capricorn, the 10th sign on the zodiac. 

The centaur Pan has the head, body, and arms of a man with the torso of a goat. 

Pan the mythic God is roguish, luxuriating in taking the mickey out of hikers trekking the forest. 

He played the Pan flute, making it himself from Motani wood and bamboo. The sound of his improvised tunes flows through the forest hypnotizing those in ear range.  

Laying on his side on top of a tree limb, he gazes down at gullible hikers, ad-libbing horror stories, scaring them away. 

He lives like a chimpanzee in the forest— a vegetarian who picks fruit from trees and drinks river water. 

Otto Ringling organized an expedition into Greece’s Almyros Forest to capture Pan in 1919, packing ample kit— thick woven nets, blowpipes with ballistic syringes. 

Ringling wanted to put Pam on show, half man — half goat, the goat man, the Greatest Freak of The 2oth Century. 

When Ringling's men approach Pan, the mythical God dematerializes, disappearing on the spot making him impossible to catch. 

Pan is a Germanic leprechaun.

ASIDE from the author— How can I write 6, flow of consciousness pages on a centaur?

Once, on the outskirts of the Mark Twain National Forest near St. Louis, Pan hid in the bushes of a suburban Wildwood park, waiting for the sun to go down.

Leaping a metal fence with ease, he grabs clothes off a laundry line, like a prison escapee would. 

With difficulty, he slips into a pair of brown trousers, ripping them at the knee because his legs are curved. He puts on a long-sleeved white shirt and socks over his cloven hoofs.   

Pan walks the city streets of St. Louis a freak like the Elephant Man. 

Passerbys eyeball Pan, assuming he's crippled or on drugs. 

He walks into Eddy’s Bar, you can’t hear a peep in the place, the winos are there to drink in the shadowy pub. 

The barkeep doesn't know Pan's a centaur, he orders a drink saying,

pour me a drink mate.

a drink of what? 

anything.

Pan picks up the shot, the scent of whiskey sickens him. 

The city is no place for Pan. He dematerializes, wisping through a bulwark of atoms and molecules, through the streets of Wildwood at the speed of light to Mark Twain State Forest.

The goat man runs through the woods, running for a week, deeper and deeper into the woodlands. 

After eating a dozen wild apples Pan takes a few steps and keels over into a puddle of quicksand sucked in by a whirlwind through a cylindrical tunnel that bypasses the earth's blazing inner core as it passes through to the outer core.

Pan breaks through the thin crust of the red mantle into China's  Zhangjiajie National Forest.

The forest is full of fruit— dragon fruit, mangosteen, mango, longan, and rambutan.

5 Chinese Forestry scientists are measuring the width of Katsura trees when they hear exotic flute music and they're drawn to it, following the sound.

When the scientist see Pan they are shocked. Some run, others snap pictures of the goat man with digital camaras, unable to catch the goat man's image in their viewfinders. 

Pan then hurls insults at Chinamen, telling them they are weak little men who eat bats and squat when they pee,  

The Chinamen hustle out of the forest to their van, as they driveway one says,

没有人会相信我们在森林里看到的，所以把它藏起来。

 

If we tell our colleagues we saw the goat man they will think we're crazy, so bottle it up. 

Pan migrates south through the Kulan Shan mountain range to Bhutan. Like a goat, he's sure-footed in the mountains.

Bhutan is 71 percent forest so Pan can roam freely.

The farmers of Paro province worship Pan. They pray to him for good luck, placing fruit and sticky rice at the base of the goat man's tree as an offering. 

The rascal Pan gobbles up the alms, then belittles the farmers in Bhutanese, calling them dull-witted hayseeds, and milksop.   

The King of Bhutan, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck orders a team of soldiers to go into the forest and capture Pan. 

When the soldiers come across Pan, firing a rocket net and entangle him.

Pan is caged like an animal in the Bumdeleng Zoo. 

The zookeeper places a bowl of chopped meat in Pan's cage, the goat man fingers the meat and smells it, he's nauseated. 

Craving fresh fruit he dematerializes, streaming out of the zoo in a lightwave, like a ghost. 

Pan lives in the sacred forest of Bhutan for the next 2000 years until a meteor collides with the earth, sending the planet into a tailspin. The goat man is airborne tumbling through the biosphere.

Eventually, Pan is pulled by gamma rays into the Martian craft Orion. The Martians overpower him without lifting a finger.

The goat man gets messages from the Martians telepathically, and answers them. 

The Martian children love Pan, they feed him boiled ants and sweet potatoes. 

A 2000-year-old Martian transmits a message to Pan,

Are the Earthlings friendly? They look pale next to Martians. 

Cuba

 

I met Lucia in Havana while she was working at El Gato Tuerto as a bartender, a lively place where Cubans close dance to Afro-Cuban music.

I order a bottle of Crystal beer, Lucia ignores me. To get her attention I say, 

I’m Henry Lucowski, I work at the Gringo Times writing feature articles on Cuban baseball and boxing. Excited Lucia asks, 

are the entradas free? 

Yes, gratis.

I meet my future wife after midnight in front of El Gato.

We walk to the Wiggle Club, she enjoys poll dancing. 

At 2AM, we're tired so we take a taxi home. 

 

In my 3rd-floor rental, we flop on the living room sofa, and she tells me,

I like long hair on guys, I ask her, 

do you have a bush? 

No, I shave it.

Sitting up naked in bed we page through the Kama Sutra, trying out a few positions, careful not to cum.

We sleep through the night and all day, waking at 5PM. I make a choriza omelet, and toast Pan Cubano, buttering it. Wearing my robe, Lucia takes her dress to be dry cleaned.

That evening at Mojito Mojito, El Fredico Blanca is on stage playing his composition El Brujo on a Japanese piano.

The're no open seats so we stand in the back.

After the concert, we go to a local place in an alleyway. Sitting on plastic chairs and tables we eat shredded pork, tortillas, black beans, drinking watermelon soda.

It's a cloudless night so we walk home. Lucia points at the sky saying, 

mirar, el Cazo grande y pequeña, there's Pegasus.

I ask if she can tell fortunes by reading the stars and she says, 

no.

At the apartment I play discs on my boombox, most likely the only one in Cuba, maybe Fidel had one, 

The average Cuban couldn't afford a record player so they listened to state-sanctioned radio, all news and classical music. 

I slip a disc in, the machine pulls it, spins it, bathing it with laser light to get sound.

It's Bob Dylan's Pledging My Time's, Lucia loves it, asking emphatically, 

who…..is….. that, Querida?  

Bob Dylan, 

she has never heard of him. 

I put on Leon Russell’s album, Americana— it’s country and western music and she says, 

gringo Musica hasn't made it to Cuba, there’s a US embargo, people are lucky to have a telephone. 

At noon we go for lunch in downtown Havana, eating at Van Van, it feels like Amsterdam inside, and there’s an open-air beer garden in the back. It’s secluded— bushed, treed, and flowered.  

Sitting at a picnic table, a teenage waiter with a waxed mustache and hair greased back take our order, Lucia like him saying,

guapa, a pitcher of fresh guava juice with 2 glasses and ice. You're built like a bullfighter, darling. 

Lucia massages my leg under the table, my cock swells some, a half-off, half-on hard-on. I tell her, 

baby not now, I don't want to soil my pants. 

When the guava juic comes, Lucia pours it into mugs, adding ice, spitting in them for good luck.

At 11PM we catch a taxi home.

We drink fresh brewed coffee in the morning then pack a bag for the beach. outside waving down a taxi, I tell the cabby,

amigo, take us to Campo Florida. 

At the beach, I buy a bikini for Lucia, I'm wearing boxer shorts. 

A large Cuban family is drinking beer and barbecuing chunks of fatty pork and chicken parts, they've set up an army tent under the palms.  

Lucia and I eat peanuts and drink Coca-Cola. 

She puts on her bikini in the bushes— she's all

tits and ass like a Columbian woman.

We run and dive into the sea, swimming out to where the water is over our heads, treading water. 

She takes off her bikini panties and then pulls off my boxer shorts, putting them on my head, it’s great fun. 

The hot sun's draining so we put on large Ts and walk to the taxi. 

Our taxi driver is asleep in a hammock strung between 2 trees. 

On the road to Havana, the cab's air conditioner goes on the fritz so we open the windows, the sea breeze flurries our hair.

That night we talk in bed all night, Lucia wants to get out of Cuba. 

At the American Embassy, we queue for 2 hours to talk to somebody.

The Embassy is no help. 

In the Coffee-Museum Revolución, we meet a dentist who knows a guy named Franky who can take us to Mexico in his speedboat. 

A few days later we meet the dentist at his office and he drives us to Mantanza Bay. His motive is unclear. 

We wade out to the speedboat with our suitcases on our heads with 2 other couples.

The boat is equipped with V8 Mercury outboard engine Franky bought in Mexico. 

It's dark out, Franky turns the navigation lights off. He can outrun the outdated and heavy boats of the Cuban Navy.

In the middle of the dark muck of the Sea of Mexico, he throttles the engine to low, refueling it with jerry cans full of petrol. 

Before sun up we are on the outskirts of Tampico Mexico, we know the drill, we wade ashore with our suitcases on our heads.

In Mexico City we stay at the Holiday Inn for a few days, this time having better luck at the US Embassy, the authorities agree to give Lucia a temporary visa.

We fly to Key West, my Friend Ringo picks us up in his Jeep. When Lucia get inside, she say, 

I love it a real yeep. 

It is imperative we marry so we go to the Key's County Court House and tie the knot. 

We are joined together at the hip, Siamese twins