Jack DeLuge Wears The Golden Hat

Nov. 28, 2006


Swamp Fox, Nice work on that last jangled missive. Just don't let me catch you at some goddamned poetry slam pecking at frappuchino lattes and spouting "why, why, why?" So Bobby Frost had a lover's quarrel with the world, then took the road less traveled, and that made all the difference. Good for him. He's dead, and we're still here-alive and unwell. So what?

Indeed. Since we're already mired in this strange plot to flee the country on the high seas, I think it's imperative we think as grandiosely as possible. As such, I'm currently furious with the red-taped state of third-world navies. These flat-broke, starving countries still won't part with any equipment-no diesel submarines, subchasers, hell, not even a functional LST. I can see these Sri Lankan fuckers needing to hang on to everything they have at the moment, but Somalia hasn't had a significant pirate attack in six months. Cheap bastards. I guess share and share alike just isn't going to apply when it comes to obsolete military hardware. Though there is still hope with the Knob Creek weapons exposition. We'll have to look into this.

Buddy is on my lap and he won't stop whining. Why is this, dog? Is this dissipation? Entropy? Existential lugubriousness over the modern Canine Condition? Truculence brought on by frustration of the hypocrisy of being born canis familiaris here in the Land Of The Free? Having this unfortunate genetic default setting in this bipedal ape-run society instantly renders you chattel...in no way a sentient, free entity but rather a possession for the rest of your natural life. No Buddy, there will be no rights or civil liberties for you, only state-mandated castration, leash laws and registration. Does it sicken you, my terrier friend, that your country-the very same one that repudiated and so vehemently decried the ethnic purity policies of the Third Reich-is the home of the American Kennel Club, the organization whose primary purpose is to monitor and certify that every dog within its ranks has absolutely no intermingled mongrel blood? Do you whimper because you have no legal recourse should you injure a human-even in self-defense? That in this case, you are put immediately to death, no questions asked, without any semblance of a trial? And of course, at the end of it all, when you become old or infirm, you get to stare down the barrel of a human-imposed, state-sponsored euthanasia policy. Ah yes! Land of the Free, Home of the Brave, where everyone is guaranteed the God-given rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. This is America, Buddy.

Good luck.

Is this why you whine? Of course not. He's whining because he wants me to pet him.

I lucked out with The Proud Highway; turns out Jason had it and I finished it a few months ago. I'm on to Fear and Loathing in America now, the second volume of letters. I'll send it your way when I finish. Anyways, so much for the status quo ante bellum. The way things were, before the war. It's a load of crap, as we're still fighting that war-whether against Arabs or stingrays, sobriety or complacency, we're still fighting the fucker alright-and there's no end in sight. Sic Semper Tyrannus. Once again, a great thing to utter, especially when you're a white supremacist southern weasel that just murdered the greatest statesman who ever lived. What's that Neal Cassady/Dean Moriarty line again?

Oh yeah: "Ah God, life!"

Meretriciously yours,

Malo

Without Remorse

Triangle steals a car.

Brute says this, then tosses me the Playstation controller. Already I'm starting to regret asking him to explain the controls to me.

We're all sitting in Matozzi's dorm room, stoned, watching Brute decapitate police officers with a chainsaw in between bong rips. When I tell him to teach me how to kill without restraint or remorse, he cracks up. "You'e joking, right?" he asks.

He waits for me to respond. I don't. I just look him in his bloodshot eyes.

The smile leaves his face.

"Oh, oh," he says. "You mean in the game." His stoner smirk comes back.

Sitting on the other side of me, Matozzi hits the bong, exhales, passes it back to Brute in silence. Brute flips me the controller before setting the bong on the table. As he packs fresh pot into the slide of the bong, without looking at me, he says, "Okay, I'll show you the basics."

My character, a man on the television screen that I can manipulate like a marionette, he' standing on a street corner after the cops he was slaughtering shot him down in a hail of gunfire. He's in one piece again, though he no longer has the chainsaw.

"The left-hand joystick controls your character's movement," Brute tells me. "Under your right thumb are four buttons. Each is marked with a geometric symbol."

I look down at the buttons, and he's right. One button has a square on it. One, an X. Another, a circle. And on the top button, a triangle.

"The X button," Brute says, "makes you run. Pressing square makes you jump. Press circle, and you will, punch, kick, shoot, stab, or commit some other act of violence. And triangle, triangle steals a car."

The way he says that last line, it's hard to forget. Since I'm high, I almost laugh.

Of course, Brute isn't Brute's real name. His birth certificate says he's Brent, I think. We call him Brute because Brent is a dipsomaniac. Dipsomania is a psychological craving for ethyl alcohol so intense it drives a person to consume anything that has alcohol present, regardless of whether or not the substance is fit for consumption.

Brent ran out of vodka the first night we moved into the dorm in Swiss Cottage. Brent ran out of vodka, so he took a whole bottle of Brut aftershave and drank it.

After that, he wasn't Brent anymore. Not to all of us.

Once our first day of classes was over, Brent put down two bottles of rubbing alcohol and was detained by campus security after they found him puking blood on the hall director's door.

Even for this offense, they still didn't kick him out of our campus' Study Abroad Program, on the condition that he agree to keep his mouth shut. If our gracious English hosts found out the program administrators back in New York sent a potential suicide case over, they'd pull the plug on these little foreign exchanges. Neither institution could afford that kind of negative press.

So Brute, he's still here. We just have to hide all our perfume.

Some people, they confuse dipsomania with potomania. The medical community defines potomania as an intense and persistent desire to drink alcohol to excess.

Potomania. What a crock of shit.

Wanting to be constantly blotto isn't some medical condition. It's not some disease you contract like leukemia or AIDS.

No, we've all made a conscious decision to be plastered at all times because all we want is to be numb. None of us wants to feel anything. Really, emotions can be such a damned drag.

I have been in London for going on four months now. In three days, finals will be over and I will go back to New York. In four months at the Central School of Speech and Drama, all I have learned is that Hans Christian Andersen might have been a fag, I am about to lose my scholarship, this city seems to be shrouded in a perpetual cloud of gloom, and now triangle steals a car.

Brute coughs more pot smoke into the room. He offers me the bong and goes, "When's your stagecraft final?" I take the bong, still playing the video game, and tell him, "Less than an hour."

When I press triangle, my character rips a paramedic out of an ambulance.

"Oh yeah," Brute says, "that's hot."

Pressing circle again and again, I beat the paramedic to death with a golf club.

"Happy birthday, I think," he says.

Since I'm busy trying to light the bong and crash my stolen ambulance into a city bus full of people at the same time, I don't bother to say thanks.

Matozzi asks me if after my final, can he take me out for drinks. You know, to celebrate being another year older. Matozzi, who I think is in love with me, who I can't stand, I tell him nope, sorry. I tell him I already have plans.

"Yeah?" he asks. "With who? A boyfriend?"

"An Israeli prostitute," I say casually, not even looking at him.

To Serve, Part 2

Davis was rummaging through the trashcans in the driveway of his suburban ranch house. He picked through leftover food scraps and pulled newspapers from the recycling pile. He was stacking the papers into a makeshift bed next to the house.

“Did you lose something, Davis?

“No.” He used his ‘I’m busy’ voice.

“Ok, well dinner is ready, If you want to come in.”

“We’ve been through this already, dear.”

As the garage door whistled shut, Carol Young considered her pre-nuptial. She considered the waitress job she carried up until her marriage to Davis back in college. Having not worked for the better part of a decade they had been married, Carol had next to nothing without Davis’ support. Davis, who was now eating from his own trash.

Animals will sometimes eat the feces of other animals, but rarely do they eat their own. Some law of nature tells them this is wrong. Just a thought.

Davis found a plate in the trash that Tuesday night. It was a Corel ware dinner plate, wrapped in Saran. It sat on top of a bed of newspapers that separated it from the rest of the messier stuff in the can. Above the plate were more newspapers, still folded. Under the Saran wrap was a hot meal; a salmon filet smoked with bruschetta style chopped tomato, rice pilaf and two dinner rolls, the Hawaiian style ones he loves. Davis took the meal to his patio, sat in one of the chairs and ate at the metal backyard table, pulled the fork from under the Saran wrap, and ate.

As he ate, Davis felt uneasy about his plan. He watched the sun set over the Salinas Valley with a fork full of pilaf and thought about the church dining room. What was he missing? He needed to make sure that he fit in among the others if his plan was going to work. Still, there was something missing, though he couldn’t put his finger on it. Davis stopped with a mouthful of salmon when it came to him. He stood and chewed the rest on the way to the driveway.

Davis had chosen BMW because the other men at the office had chosen BMW. He had chosen the five series because the other men had chosen the five series. TOSERVE was the personal plate he chose because SERVICE and BRN2SRV were already taken. On this drive, however, choices were not on Davis Young’s mind. Davis Young was looking for a liquor store tonight.

Davis didn’t know many liquor stores. Carol was the only one who ever drank at home, unless there was a party being thrown. In those cases, plenty of liquor was available, and Davis felt the keen edge of sobriety as his peers became intoxicated on his dime. Even then though, Carol did all of the shopping, and he was oblivious when it came to buying booze. Luckily, Davis had chosen the navigation system as an extra because the others in the office did not. He entered “BEER” and came up with one location within three miles.

There was a little gas/liquor store about a mile from the entrance gate to his neighborhood. Davis stepped inside Moe’s Liquors and Spirits for the first time that Tuesday night, though he had fueled there weekly for over two years he was not surprised by this incongruity. He walked up to the clerk and asked what he suggested along the lines of beer.

“Uh, I like fat tire, I guess.” The clerk, a twenty-something with long hair and a week's beard, looked like he knew what he was talking about.

“Ok, I’ll take one.”

“It’s back there, dude, and you have to buy all six.” He pointed back past racks of cheap wine and hard liquor, to a fridge rack full of craft brew renaissance beers. There was fat tire in the middle, next to something called skinny dip, above them was one called IPA, next to that was another with an old man on the label. This one was Old Leper’s Stout. Davis enjoyed the irony in this and saw a bit of the men at the church in the label’s amalgamation of what reminded him also of the album cover of Jethro Tull’s Aqualung, so he pulled one from the pack and carried it to the counter.

“Uh, Dude, like I said you gotta get all six if you want that beer.”

“Oh, but I only need one.” Davis was intrigued, sort of.

“Well you have to pay for the whole six pack, man, that’s the boss’ rule, not mine.” The clerk was getting defensive, nervous. He looked Davis up and down quickly. At a glance, he looked like some thirty year old hipster, dirty, unshaven, but with a certain deliberacy, a refinement. The clerk thought back the psychology class he took during the first of his two semesters at the Junior College. The class he failed. He hastily added, “You know how it is.”

Davis could tell the clerk was edging for a common ground, “Boy do I,” he lied. This was absurd, that he was forced to purchase more than he needed, but this kid was in no position to negotiate, and if this experiment was to work, he had to do it right. Davis went back for the the rest of the six pack. Halfway back to the counter, he pulled his wallet from the grubby jeans. “You take Am-Ex, right?”

“Uh, Am-Ex?”

“You know, American Express.”

“Oh, right. Yeah, we take American Express.” He looked Davis up and down again, definitely a hipster. “Can I see your ID?”

To Serve

Davis Young did his part. Since he was a young boy, he took part in the "I help" program at his church, donated food and clothes three times a year, and always gave change to homeless men. Whenever he did this, he would tell them to use the money to better themselves, to not use drugs. Davis felt very good about the things he did, the little things that he did to give back to those who didn't have the opportunities he had.

After college, when Davis started his career in Agriculture management, he also maintained his status as a provider to the less fortunate. He became one of the founding members of the I-Help program at his church, donated 5% of his yearly earnings to the goodwill. Each week, when it was his church's turn to receive the busload of homeless and wayward men, Davis stood proudly in the back of the room, as his volunteers served the healthy sustenance to the weak, to the tired, to the poor, huddled masses. He thought about how he really was doing his part, how it was so good that he keeps the poor on his to-do list. He thought most of all, though, about how this affected his social image. "Davis Young, man of the people." Hell, maybe he could run for county supervisor one day.

Weeks and years trickled on, Davis made his millions, managed his employees, mostly immigrant, mostly illegal, mostly hard working and poor nonetheless. Davis kept feeding the homeless, their white faces darkened and cracked from years outside, their blue eyes hollowed by drugs, their smell of unkempt and unabated rot. Davis kept donating his bit to the goodwill. Somewhere along the line, however, Davis began to feel a sinking sensation at the I-Help
that he so profoundly managed. His usually smug arms felt tight in their crossed pose at the corner of the room. His legs were weary and he felt nauseous as the men were fed. The proud glaze over his eyes was lifting, his image drifted from thought. The room had a new light, the men's faces were startlingly clear. Every lazy shift of lean a glacial break, every dull flicker of the eye a shutter's snap. These men were real. Men like him. What was it then, that strangled the base of his skull? What strange wind gave new weight to the backs of his eyelids?

Davis was shocked at the very least upon this unveiling, that many, at least 60% of these men, eating kielbasa and rice, drinking two-percent milk to ensure healthy bones, eating cookies and bullshitting with each other, were among the first huddled masses he'd seen nearly five years ago. What was keeping these men from getting out of their rut? Can they not be saved? Are they forced into an inescapable life of destitution? Is this our America? The land of the Free?

That week, Davis Young mulled over harvest reports, employee action forms, and new-hire paperwork, filing them as per company policy among others, nothing more than Social security numbers. More so, Numbers that go unchecked, as to maintain a solid workforce. It was no secret that many of the immigrant workers were illegal, but their tenacity for the American dream and sheer willingness to work made them an invaluable asset to the business, just as the Oakies were after emancipation. He was on assignment one day that week at one of the crop sites; ensuring work flow efficiency when, while looking on across a field of dirty, hard working laborers, he came to an epiphany. He could rest his weary heart and bring the pride back to his social service. These men were on the road to salvation.

To Be Continued...

The Art of the Short Story

...Is Dead. No more. Been Done. This is not another half-assed attempt at reviving a dead art, but more of a flailing fuck you to such. The authors are not to be trained, qualified, or farmiliar with the short story as it is known. This is a collection of events that may or may not have happened, told from the perspective of the histrionic personalities that believe the events they collect have merit to be shared sans recant. Do not read this.