Feburaury?

Okay it slipped by for a lot of reasons. Sorry about the lack of posts but to make up for it I am posting a bit of writing. Enjoy!

Few things are as frightening as a group of members of some bizarre civic group at 3 am in some seedy motel where they claim to be having some sort of convention. These things more often than not are nothing more than a chance to relive some sort of glory days of frat parties long missed and to provide excuses for tearing at the social fabric of society.

Secret handshakes and free hits of ecstasy make for an unruly and potentially dangerous crowd, especially when the midnight buffet begins to serve the all you can eat steaks for $7.99. Like animals they tear at one another with verbal claws and
knowing nods to each other, a respite form their unbridled liquor and mating fest that has permeated the wee hours of the morning while they run from room to room screaming about the lack of towels and ice buckets that are not just empty but make
fetching hats.

The parking lot looks like a collection of an oil sheiks wet dream. Land yachts without the wet bar or the ability to just let it float on the open road when your too ripped to actually pilot the things. Some of them are the standards of gold,
sliver and cosmetic dealer pink, but now and again you get flashbacks of some once cool high school jock trying to relive the 70s with a half buttoned shirt and a leisure green caddy with gold rims. The American dream with one dose of mescaline and two shots of tequila, hold the lemon. The workers of places like this seem to be jaded to all excess that the human mind can conjure. A $20 dollar bill and any bell hop or house keeper can tell you stories involving any number of oddities whither they are animal, vegetable, or mineral does no matter. They all contain one common element; secrecy.

I found myself wedged into a rear corner table, not through some act of strategic planning but more in an act of desperation. It was not the fortress of some great tactician but more of the refuge of a man recoiling in fear. I took stock of my supplies, one shot of tequila, four quarter lemon wedges and one strangely suspicious kielbasa ordered from the menu of international cuisine that featured such culinary surprises as shlimp corktail, grailfrit and ribneyes stack. I decided to make a tactical withdrawal and slipped into the kitchen through the door nearby that kept slamming into the corner of my table.

This was one of the less intelligent moves of the evening as I now found myself a stranger in a strange land, where mixtures of Spanish and Vietnamese flew through the air like a snowstorm of accented syllables. I dodged past a short man who was holding what could have been a chicken by its feet, heading one direction or another up or down the evolutionary chain.

Past the busboy with more tattoos than most people, wearing a hairnet in the kitchen to satisfy not only health code but more than likely some little pencil necked geek that was his parole officer. The kind of little man when he holds the sack of your
freedom likes to give it a good yank now and then so he reminds you that he is still in charge. The little man type than when he does get busted for making the ex-cons pay him off usually hangs himself in the local jail instead of heading to prison for a fun reunion with a lot of his old friends he had sent back there to complete their sentences with a few years tacked on for some violation either actual or perceived.

I break out of the kitchen into the main hallway with the smells and hot steam clinging to me like a man who just stepped from the jungle into the $39.95 a night coolness of a cheap Florida hotel, the smell of cooled mold assaulting me as
I struggled down the hallway with my satchel over one shoulder, my tape recorder held tightly in the other hand, like some holy symbol that I was praying to in great hopes it would never be called exhibit A in the poor unfortunate case. I try to hurry, but not run as running makes the predators pay attention to you, more of a high speed nonchalant. A hurried walk of a man with someplace to be and in that being may save his life and perhaps the lives of all mankind. I pass the desk where the skinny clerk with the pencil thin mustache seems to be stuck mentally unable to say hello, only can I help you, sir. Past the bellboy who looks like someone shaved an orangutan yet never took him to a dentist but kept him hyped up and ready for
service on a steady diet of sodas, candy bars and the occasional transfusion of pig blood that had the unfortunate side effect of making him sweat a smell something akin to rancid bacon, with a quick turn I wedge into the elevator with some short fat man in a polyester suit and his equally pudgy wife who seems to squint at me through her cats eye glasses, secure and safe under the turret of hair that surmounts her scalp in a fashion that lasted about 20 minutes around 1950.

The doors open on floor three and I bolt from the small closet of a room with the blinking fluorescent light and into the hallway of gold and red cut shag carpet, careening down the hallway as I bounced off one wall to the other like a two legged q-ball until I reach what I thing is my room. A few seconds of fumbling as I search my pockets and finally dropping my keys to the floor I reach down to pick them up and check the tag versus the room number. They match and I shove the key into
the lock frantically twisting it back and forth until the door either yields to the key or to the randomness of the picking attempt.

I jump into the room almost falling as I spin to slam the door behind me, my body going limp as I slid down its smooth face to floor. Now only questions remain for me: Where am I, where am I, and perhaps most importantly, When am I?

I reached into my pocket for something to wipe the sweat from my eyes, the lava of burning salt now running into them. All I drew out was several coins, a few wheat pennies, 2 state quarters, a pfenning, and a 6 pence. No help there. I opened the satchel case and inside found the handkerchief I was hoping for and some file folders. I wiped my forehead and dropped the fabric aside, discarding it for the time being. I grabbed the case and lurched across the room to the floor mounted air conditioner, my free hand trembling as I set the controls to cold and fresh air. I took a moment and basked in the cold yet musty breeze from the box, till I turned around and sat with my back to the box. The cool air started to blow at the back of my head as I lifted the satchel onto my lap and began to rifle through the documents. My hands were sweating and starting to shake.

To give an account of the content there was two file folders with no writing on them, one what appeared to be scroll rolled tightly and tied with a red cord. Lastly was a thick folder that had a stamp on the exterior. I pulled that one out and there, emblazoned on the side was a large black eagle clutching a swastika. What was really shocking was what it said underneath of the stamp in the same ink "Property of The United States". I snatched up the tape-recorder again and hit rewind. The sound of 2000 chipmunks on some sort of bad amusement park ride barked at me. I waited till the silence came then hit play. Then voice sounded like mine and I felt the sweat begin to run down my arm from my hands, the rest of the world getting fuzzy. A lifeline came to me from the recorder "Get the bottle in the bottom of the bag you freak!" I yelled at myself, my hands dropping the recorder and grabbing up the satchel again. "The blue ones..if your hands are sweating you had better hurry. Sweaty hands mean your loosing your grip on this reality…Take them!" I found the bottle in the bottom and ripped the lid off. Inside were several small blue pills that I dumped into my mouth. In the background I can hear the ranting of a psychotic yelling about the brute squad going to be here any moment and to hurry. "Remember the grapefruit! It is the only thing safe to eat."

On my hands and knees I scrambled towards the mini-bar and grabbed a beer from the door. I ripped the top off of the bottle and tipped it back to wash the taste of rancid distilled mule ass from my mouth. I don’t know how I know that that tastes like but I was sure that was the correct description. Suddenly they began to take hold of me. I quickly felt like a brother to a goldfish swirling down a toilet bowl. Slowly first but then faster and then faster heading head long into oblivion into the great sewer of the universe. Dimension hopping, like a man on a pogo stick who someone had kindly painted the grip with a liquid form of acid. I remembered a white tunnel and the feeling of a combination of a water slide and a high pressure enema. The sensation was fun, fearful and wet pressure all at once as I fell downward, around the bend, past the u pipe into the cosmos at large with all the other effluent. I heard a voice telling me to stay calm, to keep myself grounded and eventually this will all be alright. Keep drinking for 24 hours. It will help with the shock. It was my voice coming from the recorder. How did I know what was going to happen when I didn’t even know what was happening?

I sat bolt upright, my mouth dry and my floral Hawaiian print shirt from a major retailer now wet with sweat and salt rings like a shoulder holster of doom showing I had been to the edge and made it back. Not a man to be fucked with in any way, shape or form. The bastards, making me run like a sniveling coward back here to this crappy room. I’ll show them.

I stuffed everything back into the briefcase and stopped the tape recorder. I tucked a grapefruit into the inner pocket of the satchel, supplies for emergencies. I pushed a lit cigarette into the holder between my teeth and donned my lucky hat. A green visor with Las Vegas emblazoned on the front. How dare they treat a doctor of journalism like this?

Now it’s payback time.





Till next time,
Be mindful and awake.