by James Jarvis
from My Arcology
FRIDAY, DEC 7, 2001
Six and a half hours of humping strawberry flavored sugar water and fermented yeast (cold filtered) today left me feeling . . . unsatisfied. Came home, did two hundred more repetitions with the hand weights, watched a little war on Fox, made a protein shake, put on my leather anti-mugger's jacket and cruised over to The Four Kings looking for some action. Girls, fists. It didn't matter which.
I thought reconnecting myself to THAT gritty atmosphere would jump-start my coleslaw fart poem. I already have the storyline, since all my stuff is nonfiction, but lying around in a crack motel has disconnected me somewhat from that funky/desperate/fertilizer-in-the-air feeling I knew so well when I was living under the bridge.
The Four Kings didn't do it for me, so I decided to deposit my Arco paycheck at the darkest, most remote ATM I know. I drove up, parked in one of the assigned customer parking slots and just as I was signing the back of the check while still sitting in the Creepmobile, an obviously affluent businessman pulled into the lot and parked his fancy car right in front of the ATMs, in the driveway, blocking traffic.
He hopped out and started his ATM transaction. After he'd finished, a belligerent fat man approached him and asked in a very loud voice to see the businessman's 'Special Asshole' permit.
The businessman said something like 'f* off' and the fat man said, "No, I want to see the permit you got to park in the driveway and block traffic. You gotta be some kind of special asshole."
The businessman said he didn't have time for this bull----
The fat man popped the businessman right in the face . . . hit him HARD. The businessman went straight down like the twin towers. THUD! The fat man stepped over him and walked over to his piece of crap car, which was parked in one of the assigned customer parking spots where it was supposed to be, where the businessman should have parked if he hadn't been such a Special Asshole.
Suddenly, I remembered the vinegar-like nature of that coleslaw fart, how it squirted up my nose like pepper spray and made my head snap back involuntarily in that tiny little water closet in which I was trapped by the 'good' people of Hawthorne. People who wear ties at night like the ATM businessman.
Ah, inspiration, that six-fingered muse.
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