26
N o t   a   P r o m i s i n g   B u n c h ;   T h e   T o w e l e t t e   E p i s o d i c  /   ( Another Q N to the L & C Y )

Part III
And then quite suddenly (just like Us)
One got Better and the other got Wuss.
Good Bear muddled his Twice Times Three—
But Bad Bear coughed in his hand-ker-chee!

A.A Milne
When We Were Six

She's very sick today and can't get out of bed. She asks me if I wouldn't mind heating up some ginger ale in the microwave. This one comes under the category, 'Things that have never, ever worked in the history of man, yet people persist just because they heard it somewhere.' A carbonated and clear amber drink flavoured with ginger extract may assist in quenching one's dry palette, but to look any further... inconsequential and pointless. Another great myth passed through the ages is to wrap a hot towel around your head as a response to some ailment. Come to think of it, I believe it was getting picked on at school - yes, that was the ailment! This blackening affair added to my growing unpopularity with the non-towel-wearing fella s on the wrestling squad back in grade 7. Or was it 8? Like there's a difference. Things become clear many years after the fact, far past the time it could have assisted with clues as to just what was brewing in those formative years.

"Do I have to go to school, I feel kind of unwell." Mom's response, "Well, wrap a hot towel around your head...or a lukewarm towelette."

Why such a concept didn't throw me like it should have, I'm sure I've no recollection. I do know I couldn't imagine where she wanted me to obtain these moistened towelettes that were reputedly so fluid and fruitful in our home. She provided instructions. When I wore it to school, it far from assisted with the not getting picked on part. But I stood my shaky ground. "My governess said it would help," but that Sound of Music line didn't do the trick: junior high students of such predictable and severely mirthless ilk, often more threatened than appreciative of imaginative banter. I was left to resort to rehearsing interludes, "Liars and beggars and stares, oh my, liars and beggars and stares!" or crooning the lyrics to that upcoming high school musical offering I ultimately wouldn't take part in, due to great bouts of bottomless gloom and talent-free vocal chords - the tumultuous sadness of it all retiring me and my towel to that high chair back at home, though not before I'm pelted with lunch bags, girly napkins and gruesome disparaging comments. The faculty, a dreary force to be mucked with, fooling nobody - those far fetched frumpy zipper-heads did little to intervene... their chastising, chuckles and loud whispers overheard through thin veils of cheap commissary pathetic partitions:

"There's the towel boy. He's not going to fair so well out there, is he?"

"No, his attitude doesn't appear promising, and what of that bowl haircut?"

"No siree Bob, he's an asteroid of trouble and gloom just waiting to be unleashed on the world."

I swear I heard them hum, "How do you solve a problem like Masterson?" I was too consumed with nailing down just which fire-sale-suited, undeserving-of-tenure buffoon would have played which character in The Wizard of Oz, to ask for guidance or pay proper attention; in the kitchen cafeteria. They'd already fried up and destroyed any notes I'd taken on "Keys to Surviving School" along with tips for how a student might fit in and extract more from this primordial scholastic tutelage.

Staring up at the sky for some God to shoot down a helpful play: any answer would've been amazingly appreciated, anything at all to arm myself (Water Wings would even have helped) as my ship was sinking fast

My support team from the pit, truly overwhelming

Especially from the Hindu contingent, who steadfastly believed their worldly ways were being insulted. ("I swear I'm not making fun of you!" I pleaded.) How could I make merry and poke fun at them when I knew nothing of it - them chanting at me, casting glances...and spells.

There should be an award, a council assigned, grant money and such, or even just a nice little ceremony with snacks and pretty coloured pills, for surviving some of that misery. Oh yeah, there is.

* A h ,   t h e   r e v e n g e   f a n t a s y   o f
wrapping the entire teachers union and some of the nastier kids in one gargantuan scalding hot towel. I orchestrate the proceedings, sitting in a high chair, wrapped in an edible, designer methamphetamine chocolate diaper, demanding that the girls football team, who wear only sheets, do as I say: subjects at my mercy, dancing and weaving all Maypole like, continuing with the immense gauzing and bandaging, despite the unmelodic pleading. Wonderful.

*

27
M i l k   M o n e y   &   M e s c a l i n e   C a p e d   C r u s a d e r s
Irresponsible Participatory journalistic uncooth cannibalism...
. . . . . just   s p i f f i e d   u p   b a d   b e h a v i o r ?

How about the time I apprehended a metal canister of milk and got nailed by The Dairy Police while living the life with her in Vancouver? Made to sit in one of those high chairs, with a bib that the coffee barista bitch tied around me that said I'M SOME THIEF! in big bubbly red letters, me unable to maintain my bearings, dumbfounded by my disease and the response time of police who dealt with intolerant-lactotic-street-villains-with-cream-and-sugar-schemes. I felt like a misbehaving child with a sweet tooth , out way past curfew. I needed to steal as much as an 8 year-old needs Gillette razors. Just bored probably. Bored and optioning poorly, my behaviour needing a good shave. My allowance from the lucky lady I was living with, the one who possessed a genuine job, more than used up on this particular day; let's just say I was 'A Scavenger Donning Disproportionate Milky Needs, Disenfranchised by the City's Watery Atmosphere'. Is there such a word as 'Misbesheveled'? How about 'Verbosiosity'? I'm probably out of luck on that one too.

While sitting unpretty in my high chair, while the coffee cops conversed about just what sort of ticket to write, sparkling visions poured into me, images that snapped my memory back to a time when I played the role of accomplice in 'The East L.A Nescafe Capers'. I'd needed some sort of employment and had befriended this caffeine cad on the streets of downtown L.A. I ended up carting him around to these food warehouses. His specialty was deeking in repeatedly and liberating 8 or 9 colossal instant coffee jars from the shelves at once. For these special outings, my slick pal devised a special leather wrap. Talk about utility belts! Lorne Greene 'The Bonanza Nescafe Machine' would have got a kick out of all that. He comes back to the car, dumps the jars in my trunk (Crispin, not Lorne) and returns immediately repeating the process a good four or five more times. When our task is done and my car is filled to the rim, it's off to see Winnie the warty Spanish lady who predictably sets up shop daily at the corner of Wilshire and Nowhere to exchange our goods and services for pesos. She sells her wares from a makeshift table: fresh fruits and the like, shrouded in some sort of gaudy-Catholic-loin-cloth-cloak to hide the many beverage urns that'd been lifted by us, the dyspeptic duo who dealt in seedy under bellied caffeine crimes. To write about it is yes, taxing - to have lived it, even more so... deathly draining, no filters found, all that.

"Why am I doing this?" I ask. Because I can. No one's telling me not to. It's free money, and I tell myself I'm in need, plus, all I was able to operate in and maneuver with was the 'Here', and the 'Now', oh yes, and the 'Again', (tf#23) there's room for mortal fibred coil in my trunk, so we're off, one more time, no fooling and a trunk full of neediness.

"We're going back for more? You think we should? Weren't we lucky to get away with what we did? Those guys have cameras, don't they?"

"Jesus, you worry like a mutha fucka. I'm goin' in one mo time, you just keep this shit box runnin' , hear me? We're gonna fly down to Washington and Alvaro, I know some fiends down there with s ome good shit. Hey, where ya usually score, anyway?"

"Look, old boy, I really think you're pushing it... " I offered, but he had split to grab the last of the coffee section. It was then I began to construct a mental list of the violations I will have to undergo in my particular cell block, with large sweaty men named Gina or Rex who will not find my antics funny at all.

I should be awarded hugely on the Absurd and Resourceful Scale, if one so exists.

God, if only I could have enlisted this guy to sing tunes from some rotten Broadway show, now that would've really been something. My fraudulent nature was getting a fair amount of air-play that summer, ripping through the A.M and F.M blistering sides of the city - my murky mise-en-scene soundtrack, and with the cigarette Mr. Crispy smoked out of his neck, his minor third melodic scale, and the unappealing costumes; all made for desperate performances in need of better rehearsal. Crispin The Coffee Crook wasn't much on the conversation side either, but he let me sleep in his carpeted box a couple nights (and let me order up imaginary room service) which was big of him...and it gives me another story to tell, right?

"Fuck, is coke supposed to do this when you shoot it? I have the freakiest ringing in my ears, and my heart is..."

"You just getting off, dog, you'll calm down, bro. Can I drive?"

"I don't think that license you made in jail is going to do the trick, Mr. C. That thing is a joke. Hey, are those cops?"

"No, they're just undies. Undercovers."

"Aren't they going to do anything?"

"Sheeyit no, they've got bigger cats to go after besides a couple of two bit hoods cooking up in a car not bothering nobody."

"Speak for yourself. I'm a Raider."

"Wha?"

"I mean, a writer. One day I'm going to write a book about all this. Maybe you'll even be in it. A lot of this is so I can get a first hand look at just how things work around here, ya see..."

"Um, okay. Hand me over the smack."

"Certainly, my good man. Hey, do they still have high tea at that Four Seasons off of Crescent Heights, do you know?"

"Huh?"

"Look, would you mind getting out, I should really get going."

"Okay man, drop me off at the food bank, would ya?"

Driving my white convertible down a central California city alley with yet another homeless junkie hanging out my passenger window yelling obscenities, it occurred to me that this was not the way God had intended me to be of love and service. To myself or to others.

________________________________________________________________

tf#23: I see myself as a male Elizabeth Wurtzel. She'll either want to sue me or marry me once she's had a look at some of this. I should really get in touch with her as, either way, we'll have a lot to discuss.

*

28
O u t   o f   t h e   Ma r g i n
( O n e   M o r e   N o d )

And then quite suddenly (just like Us)
One got Better and the other got Wuss.
Good Bear muddled his Twice Times Three—
But Bad Bear coughed in his hand-ker-chee!

A.A Milne
When we were Six

I recall failing in the 'Cool Department'. I mean, my buddy Brock and I knew we were un-with it, all that. Immensely. But since there was going to be no lightning bolt of hip anytime soon, we decided to have a little fun at our own expense and shed some silliness on just how uncool we were. But trying to magnify any healthy positive light into this stage of the game always ended in gross mental dishevelment and hopeless derailment; we had little to fall back on. This will give you an idea: driving down the main drag (and yes, it was), blaring the Italian Weather Channel, in parents' brown wood-paneled and matted-dog-fur-encrusted, crack-in-the-old-windshield station wagon - our four-wheeled oddity of slick, wipers wistfully spraying, not a drop in the sky, a blistering scorcher of an early summer night.

In our school halls we'd approach girls who already thought us very low on the evolutionary totem pole, daring them to like us in any way, given the strange shapes we were. We had no choice but to poke fun at the ones who took themselves too seriously. Sometimes with rulers or sharpened pencils. Oh sure, we made fun of the curt gals behind their backs (the only way to show a young lady that you truly like her), just out of earshot of the big-and-tall-fembots, not wanting to be tied up, beaten senseless and burned at the stake in the middle of the football field. I'd heard there were options, even better ways of getting noticed, other modes of romantic operandi, though no one happened to mention them during bouts of being picked up and chucked into the girl's locker room - me, lightweight fodder for the bigger goon-bags, the pin-heads and Ferris-wheel-headed-fuckers alike. My wearisome high school fumblings became much too much about downsizing sadness, as much as humanly possible, an all too familiar grief.

*

The girl sitting at the coffee shop remembers me from somewhere. In me, there's the teardrop of hope that I wasn't nodding off and drooling when this occurred. Or even worse, in high school. Whew. Lucked out. She says it was in her Italian Cinema Class at Bennington, one of the many I used to sneak into (often in full disguise - black handlebar moustache and cowboy hat - fairly slick for the times), until I realized the 'all girls' school' thing. There was no Tartuffe or even gelato served in class, mucho to my dismayo, this University cinema course I found out the screening schedule of, doing my best to attend. Funny when it came time for a test, I would sit there, grinning, deciding it best to slide up to the plate and whisper to the teacher, "You know, I'm just going to step out for uno momento." There were so few signed up for the course I figured he'd welcome anyone who showed a curiosity, even people who weren't interested in earning credits for degrees I'd already forged down on the old dossier a long time ago. A possible ongoing theme here - Escapism? Slipping out of the margin, through the fingers, avoiding competition or responsibility? What of accountability? Maybe I'm reading too much into it. She is pretending now to ignore me, having moved on in an attempt to appear uncaring and occupied, conversing with friends about screenings, or something. She plays hard to get, this shifty avenger, but I can tell she wants me. They are now walking out of the café. She'll be back. Girls are crafty and tough to figure out a good chunk of the time. Yes, my brothers, they can hurt.

*Note: why always white for the straight-jacket? Cream is pleasant.
And what of this 'Side-ways jacket' I hear is being put together?
Start calling girls I REALLY think are special, "Sugar-Puss."

*

29
T h e   I m p o s t e r   S e r u m  

Doctor Dave is strictly above board, brimming with multi-grainual advice. I'm fascinated to hear details from other cases he's got going, but even I wouldn't ask him to break 'patient-doctor-confidentiality-privilege.' Or whatever that's called. I know he can't reveal much to me of anything really, out loud...so I often resort to holding up cue cards with questions. Our Medical Quiz Show allows me to get intimate and interactive - maybe one day he'll let me direct. Our appointment often turns into an episode of The Party Game... muted court-like sessions, a tough time for all as no one speaks and it takes soooooo damn long to write all the inquiries down on the over-sized, bristol board cards.

"...All right then...sounds-like...uh-ha, 3 syllables, okay...what did she have?...You're kidding?...How might ya treat that sort of thing?...Yeah? What do you mean I have to buy a vowel?"

This says little of my responses to him. I mean, I'm supposed to be honest and everything and I know it's unnecessary to keep anything from him, but it's kind of weird 'cause I feel that over time we've become kind of like family. And truth be told, I'm afraid if I tell him everything, he won't like me anymore. And why would I want to drag my miserable infectious bouts with life onto his set? So we keep it light. Which isn't to say we sometimes don't get around to extracting the rare occasional answer - some understanding as to the how's and why's of just how I ended up getting to be the mess I am. And he'll let me hold up the cards for him sometimes, that's if I behave myself and don't pester too many of his patients while passing through.

"Hey, what are you here for? Yes, I'd get that lanced if I were you."

I take all the candy he keeps in a jar on his desk, for miniature patients I guess, but he doesn't mind - he loves me and expects it. His frankness, and great willingness to share his vast wealth of 'not enough', I've always found warming. "Look, Tim, my dad told me this a long time ago: in the beginning, most all of us are awarded a couple of arms and legs, most often a head, usually toes and all that's needed to get our game started, but as far as what is going on inside, no one really knows." Such confessions have always made me feel he wouldn't ever put anything over on me. And that's tough to find. Dr. Dave is one of the original dinosaurs - not to say he grazes around marshes or meanders or tally-ho's at a Stegasaurian level. What I mean is that he's a true original, enigmatic and from the old school, the good one. He's given me a stern glance on occasion, but in truth I fully deserved it, as my material in the waiting room, admittedly, was at times not first rate - often pissing off dumbfounded patients and visitors - there for a check-up, and NOT the pre-dinner warm up act. "There's a town I know where the hipsters go, called Bedrock, twitch twitch..." This I'd sing while juggling whatever was within reach: stethoscopes, syringes, magazines, purses. I always thought they liked me doing that though, that it kind of prepped them for when they finally got in there - you know, like an ice breaker, something to play off of, as some sticky things must get brought up behind that closed door. I often stood in the wings and waited for the right moment to break into the other auditioner's interviews. Maybe that's why he was more than eager to write me a quickie prescription and be done with my visit. I'm convinced that if the patient audience could have just seen the entire show, it would have contained more therapy than Dr. Dave's whole arsenal of modern medical science. But I was never allowed to mount a proper full scale production of my work, was told to cut it out before I really got going. I don't think the good doctor wanted the competition.

Doctors are people who have memorized old textbooks, aren't particularly queasy, are fairly handy with a scalpel and have a knack for paying exorbitant school fees for 12-15 years. At the end of the day, near the 'Finish Line Of Medicine', if you've stuck it out, you get something with your name on it that's suitable for framing and looks like an updated version of 'The Degradation of Co-dependence.' They are accountable folk, good at referrals. They don't often quite know what's up is all I'm saying, so stick that in your bonnet. (If you in fact happen to be with bonnet: first, check your sanity. Also, look into that musty soiled smell, as even bonnets need a good rinsing out now and again.) Doctors can manipulate the rules, even take advantage - they often have many children to put through pricey schools - but I don't blame Doctor Dave for any of that. He's put up with my nonsense far longer than anyone should, and to extreme degrees.

When I speak with him, I get the feeling he's a knowledgeable guy, packing a million stories of people's ills and concerns, their losses and growths. He's transcendent, not moved by petty stuff, an admirable militia of medicine he carries close. He's trustworthy and knows what things really are - it's a gut feeling, instinctual. I'd pick him first when choosing kids for the big baseball barbeque cook-off against those dopey girls, still in their unwashed saucy smocks from last year's contest.

The good doctor also possesses a rare ability to make you feel like a kid again, one of the reasons he's special to me. I like to think of myself as the illegitimate son. If I could get him to dole out an allowance, and borrow his Lexus, I think I'd really have something there.

I conjure up images of the doctor and his nurse performing Vaudeville, in-between selling snake oil and home-made potions. That would be funny, if they had canes and those cardboard hats, tails and spats and began each day with a pretty preamble in the waiting room, eating fish from the big tank they've got in there and giving their 'Rocking-horsie-riding-Playdoh-eating-dominutive-diaper-wearing-wet-panted-contigent' a kick.

I've convinced myself - just as would some 'Quadriplegic-Adirondack-dwelling hypochondriatic-Etymologist-shut-in'- that I simply must have contracted something: 'Seasonal Depression', 'Bi-polar Disorder', 'Manicky-Billys', 'Gone-bad-Reubens', 'Word-itus-Dipsi-doodle-situs', 'Attention hyper-depressive-intensive-waxy build-up'? C'mon work with me here. Don't you fellas do that 'Ear Candle' thing? What about a shot of Vitamin B? or Baileys? Should I look for a rash? Where might mine be hiding? Tell me what you're thinking 'cause I'm all out of clues. We'll come up with something: Look for something that sounds like 'GREENBERGER-MASTERSONIAN-SLEEP-IN-SYNDROME' or some such stylish neurosis. What works for some does not work for many, and what is good for you and a goose that's as good as cooked and some gander down the lane who just mopes about anyway, in all instances sends up red flags, spooks me out and has never worked out very well for any length of time. There's no precise rhyme, no candid candied reasoning, unsung or mumbled by a triaged trio of insanely focused pigs who've happily come across Ritalin, no wolves possessing naughty night-time tendencies. Things get murky through the haze. Like crazy complex, at the same time, stupid simple.

*Note: Broadway show idea: "Wolves Behaving Badly?"

These nuances, nimble, tricky and hard to keep track of, me again, systematically, rudimentally, ergonomically and fundamentally off of it - the track, I mean. Some madness is good for you, though. The least catastrophes have occurred on the days when I decided to stay indoors. It's proven safer in the long run, but this serves only as a short term condition... er, I mean solution. I've always been on the lookout for a remedy for a condition I'm not entirely sure is even there. I remind myself of this repeatedly... this ambiguous self-diagnosis, so as to commit it to memory, as my memory, along with my pre-mentioned lack of serotonin and spinal fluid, is also fairly fucken drained.

I've tried many cures, each and every time knowing in my heart that none of the medications were ever going to do what I needed them to.

So here's something. I'm in the waiting room, waiting, and this charming vivacious emotional train wreck of a gal (that's how I like 'em) waltzes out of his office and approaches me. She catches a glimpse of the book sitting in my hands.

"Is that Michael Shurtleff's, 'AUDITION'?"

The book in question was far from the actor's handbook she spoke of. Strangely enough, I was more than familiar with the text and had even owned it once, often needing to rifle through it during my actor days (though most often just to impress ladies who were over for dinner.)

Surprised at my own honesty, I blurt out, "No, actually it's on ADDICTION." She sits down beside me and queries further while simultaneously speaking with her agent on a cell phone.

"Why do you have a book on that?"

"Who taught you to talk with that nauseating smarmy-like whine?"

The attraction of a possible new narcissistic partner, is she doesn't listen too hot, to what I might be spouting out. therefore I'm able to get around and slip in comments she's too busy with her ADD to pay but. She was okay though. I immediately liked her lack of filtering flirty interaction as who really has time for politeness - those early-on tired fumblings - all that picking and choosing what's proper to speak of with strangers, never pleasant for me.

I turn my head to the imaginary camera over the receptionist's desk, shrug my shoulders, and inquire as to what type of slinky murdered animal my newly acquired girlfriend is sporting 'round her curvaceous form - taking the attention momentarily away from my liver. I recall that my grandmother used to have similar slinky wrap-around munkustrappy-things, except they most often had faces. (tf#24)

We ended up smooching a few hours later in some underground parking mall. But I quickly pulled away, just before I came, once she told me that she was married. I might be a lot of things but I'm not a home-wrecker. Other people's homes, anyway.

________________________________________________________________

tf#24: wrap-around sort of minx-ish things, not like the sultry voluptuous Jewess named Jean that stood before me, but the four-legged kind that had it's life cut short by trappers whilst being hunted by wolves and other gold-diggers, so my dear Grammy could feel all comfy cozy sporting a fox face (biting down on it's tail) wrapped around her form. Not the Grammy, but the fox. My grandmother's tail was a much messier, but funnier, fable. These spooky creatures often lent themselves to the frightening nightmares of my youth, me envisioning these ferrety-like ocelot types, standing up on hind legs ferociously cleaning and polishing items around the home, wearing mysterious aprons with pictures of humans they kept in cages to tease and to show off when other creatures came over to watch training academy films and enjoy afternoon grouse and tea. All this, need I say, has added to the mixed-metaphor, non-sequitur, eerie armoire and skewered point of double-un-entendre-irreverence that is My Mad Mind's Memory - (Now dubbed, "The 4 M's") These embryonic notions still wake me up in the middle of the night every once in a while. Pretty often, actually.

*

'BISCUIT BREAK'... Arrowroots/Digestives/Peak Freans of Various Sizes and Dimensions

*

30
H u n t i n g   f o r   H o m e
M y   D y s f u n c t i o n a l   f a m i l y   h o m e   O R   L i v i n g   a l o n e
  -   a n d  -   H o w   d i d   I   g e t   h e r e   a g a i n ?

Mom's castle of crazy concerns, and this weirdly woven jigsaw nonsense of a rekindled relationship that burns us daily, is beginning to drive me positively batty, and having an even more torturous affect on my nature. I absolutely must find my own space and get self-sufficient. But this positive thought canvas I paint gets washed over all too quickly with disappointing and dreadful memories that lead me to set the classified section on fire.

'Cheezy'. No, hold on - that's 'Cheery'.

I consider living out on the island but images pour into my unarmed mind - all the canoeing back and forth, frozen and exhausted, with pelts - somehow hunting is involved, maybe trapping. I'd be frosted, tapped and taxed beyond healthy living, a bizarre bracket, again dislodged, frantic and frostbitten. So I'll back away from that one, knowing 100 percent of the inhabitants are going to be freak-nuts anyway: fastidious, weirdo vegans, religious fanatics, seniors with out-the-window backyard gripes, left-wing, West Wing rerun watchers, wrought and uncentered, defenceless pointy political people, skating around the infected cesspool that is one of our less than Great Lakes, emotionally frozen - the lake and these island dwellers. These lost denizens who couldn't contend, compete or make their mark in the open wound of city life. Who can blame them? I can.

Again, there's still that aside, a soiled soliloquy somewhere that calls out, "Well, it might work out, maybe this time it will be okay."

But all that having to hunt for food, coupled with the unwanted ungainly children giggling behind my back, as I shuffle down picturesque streets between miniature cottage-like houses, cinches the deal to stay on dry land.

"There's the guy from the city that got chased by a cub." No attempt to cover up their taunting.

"It was a bear, a real bear and it was hungry," I'd yell back to the earthy yogurt-ingesting still cackling tricksters,

No dice, pal. Not this time. I'm smarter than the average cub. Yes, I am.

*Note to self: must examine all concerns, especially transportation, before making a live-in headquarters commitment.

Some stuff is just trouble brewing, waiting to happen, to me. Just as there are girls who are bad medicine, there are just as many less intimate recipes for disaster. Here's what I mean:

'8th to share home, environment friendly' (?!)

'Basement-bachelor at Gerard and UPPER beaches - 'Upper' meaning nowhere near.

'Share house with gay gentleman, must like pets.' Uh-oh. That's tragedy time. Also, must like an outstanding miasma of fur on their stuff, you can bet. Nothing ever good has come from that. Any of it. When I hear 'with pets' I'm thinking the cat and dog variety, not condors (condos?) or anything that slithers or is equipped with spontaneous flight-propellation, you know-aero-dynamics. Things that flap, or have maintenance fees, don't breed success. More often than not, what they breed is just more of that same spooky mucousy creature, with more pungent odor and fowl taste. I've been some pretty strange things, I mean, I've seen some pretty strange things. Let's move out...I mean, move on. No, move out too, as I most definitely need a proper place to lay this head I've had assigned to me.

I've ascertained that in the great hunt for a home, 'Funky' means little or no plumbing; 'Plus Utilities' can mean 'The bathroom key is on the wall at Texaco-town just a hop, skip, plus something best stepped over down the alley',

'Cozy' could quite possibly mean, 'Furry On-site Frankenstein-fella-called-Carl', who hails from the old country - which gets weirder, no one really ever finding out where this 'old country' is, but let's jostle forth. Carl, or any other nameless faceless lord of land, may literally have no face - just bandages. He may brandish a bad attitude (and a rubbery prop sword) due to some shabbily sewn-up surgery and may not have a real name that sticks, just a number safety pinned to his shirt. And there's always, always the off-chance of him launching into stories, and dance numbers, when guests (or breasts) come to town. You may have to contend with attentive ears pressed against the French doors going into your private domicile, but you also learn to make-up games such as CATCH CARL which end up being a sport any age can play. A solitary venture, just one player - you - dodging about, as you learn that he 'comes with the house': a live-in, unwanted snag slag appendage to your new home: it's in the contract slash snafu agreement. Sucker.

*Note to self: read the fine print next time or take a course in 'Contracts'. At very least rent 'Paper Chase,' with Timothy Bottoms and that 'Bionic' lady.

Also, you've gambled away any other money won - none left for further bonus round involvement, as last time you 'let it ride' (you big-shot high-rolling ignoramus), when you brought home the criminally attractive, alluring first date to get all kissy-kissy with, keeping your fingers and toes crossed that Carl wouldn't be in your room going through your belongings, looking for his gum (gums, gun?). "A lame excuse," is your later retort in court. It's a big loss. Being back to zero, homeless. You, wearing the sweatshirt with a big old 0 on it, the whole donut hole.

Pixel board reads: People, Places, Things : 2,348 –
You : m i n u s   m u c h

The last one on the list, an appointment with what sounds - over the phone anyway - to be a sweet gal with a sense of humour. She has a room for rent in an old house on a pleasant street called Henry. This familiar avenue has enchantment and could have promise, but I know going in, she'll be looking at me as 'the other' - the outsider to share the flat, the one who might fill the position of the Third Man theme. My own worrisome motif? I can't keep anything contained or quiet, can't lay down when those thoughts come-a-knocking, and I'm going to scare her off.

She's showing me around, things are moving along nicely, until we get to the basement, which looks as if no one's been down there in years. I can't help but ponder how fun it would be to play Phone Tag. Not played very often due to injuries, law suits and just plain hard-to-find proper apparatus and willing participants. A simple outing of pummelling, of pounding new house-mates with clunky, black rotary dial-phones. You invite maybe three good friends over, go down to the very unfinished-basement, turn off all the lights and just go for it. Sort of an initiation to a new home, 'breaking someone in', so to speak.

Soon, she's looks shocked, asks if I'm nuts and queries, "Uh, is there anyone I could speak with?" (I'm guessing reference-wise.) Not being able to come up with a quick retort, I decide to cut my losses and strike the set, careful not to make any sudden moves.

Strangely, I didn't hear from her. I'm guessing a lot of people came to see the place.

*