I briefly celebrated the White Sox win on Bourbon Street, then got back to work at the sweatshop. It's been busy there, so I raided the archives for a series I wrote some years back called Call Me Kitty. It all started after a long evening out on the town, but instead of passing out upon getting home I continued mixing my own drinks through the dark of night and had scribbled this out by dawn. It also marks the beginning of my Charles Bukowski phase...
Call Me Kitty IDave rolled away form the daylight that had filtered through the closed blinds, and his eyes pulled into focus as he checked the time. It took him several seconds to determine that it wasn’t a work day, after which he pulled the covers over his head. His mouth tasted like the smell of stale beer in the alley behind a tavern, and it forced him into action. After pulling on a pair of shorts, he sleepily stumbled in the darkened direction of the kitchen. In the cabinet he discovered a clean pitcher, and filled it with a can of Minute Maid he grabbed from the freezer. Within minutes, he tried to wash his mouth with the taste of freshly unfrozen orange juice, but it only made him wince as his taste buds rejected the attempt. Hair of the dog he thought to justify pulling a Moosehead from the fridge. The cap quickly joined others scattered across the counters, and Dave took the beer with him to the bathroom. Knowing a steamy, hot shower always helped resurrect his body, he cranked up a hot one and stripped his shorts to the floor. After relieving himself, he stepped through the mildew ridden curtain and into his own fountain of youth. As the water flowed over his waiting body, he drank the first half of the beer that accompanied him this day. The sauna-like atmosphere of the shower made the beer taste like it was just pulled from an ice-filled cooler on the Fourth of July as he took one more swallow before setting it next to the bottle of unused conditioner left by a discarded woman. His mind wandered to the night before as the water soothed his body, and he remembered the girl from Berwyn, PA drinking a Rolling Rock, brewed in the glass lined tanks of Latrobe, PA. He thought of his own hometown brew, Old Style. In Chicago, everybody’s dad drank Old Style, and so would he. He would get a six pack of Old Style if he had time today.
Suddenly he realized that he would never take a sleigh ride with Sarah Jessica Parker and fall asleep next to her while making snow angels. It must have been the blast of cold air as he stepped out of the shower that triggered the change of season in his mind. It was that pessimistic thought that followed him to his closet as he chose his clothes for a new day.
15 comments:
I haven't formulated an intelligent comment yet to such an inspired story.
However, hats off to you, Sid, for finding a way to circumvent the spammers! Yea!
Oh, I was wondering in the story if your character would accidentally drink the hair conditioner instead of the beer ...
Later ya'll!
Those new words are fun. They remind me of all kinds of things. I think that's how drug companies come up with the names of their new products. The one I have right here is very organic looking in green.
They make me hunt for little used letters too. I'm one of those people who types so much that the keys are worn on the keyboard to be very shiny on the oft-used letters.
Anyway, neat thing to have. I hope it works.
When do we get the rest of the story? I read a Dean Koontz novel overnight. So when we talk STORIES, I have NO patience. I went through a book reading frenzy, and was reading 3-6 books a week. And I have the hundreds of books to prove it.
Got them at Goodwill for a discount. A buck a book. And if they haven't been dropped in the bathtub, the cat box, or somewhere else, they may get donated back to Goodwill.
The library frowns on using a slice of pizza as a place marker, and hates wringing out blue-tinted bath-salts-scented books.
So, buying books that help charity and can be brought back and redonated is much better.
Thanks again, Sid, for putting in the new thing! Woo hoo!
Andree
Sid!
The way I was thinking of the spam here was more like being in a food and drink emporium.
Sid's Bar and Grill
Sid's Bar and Grille (does the extra "e" add class?)
Sid's Bare and Grille (nude waitresses)
Sid's Grille and Bare It (discounts for naked people?)
Anyway, it's YOUR space. Your place no matter who holds the lease. Your name is on the marquee. We come in expecting your fine blogs and grilled creations and a cold draught beer. And we enjoy the other patrons, whether they're milling about smartly on marble ledges or resting comfortably on a cushy club chair. Why, we even have a lovely piano player.
It's not a private club, all those who want to come in are welcome. Some join in. Some sit in the background, enjoying the atmosphere (the people at the tables in Cheers).
Then one day IT happens. We come to find there are more people than usual. That's okay...except every single one of them is in our face with a business card. "Buy stuff from ME" and "Come visit MY store" and "You really need this information".
Worse than an airport, we've been hit by enthusiastic throngs of robed bald-headed people forcing flowers on us and dorky guys in suits pushing issues of Watchtower. Both of whom use the "if I give you something, you'll feel obliged to give something back" thing. Don't fall for it.
Thing is, with Sid's, Sid can have them removed. With the flick of a wrist, they've been deleted from our fine meeting place. Doesn't mean more won't appear. But what Sid DID do is remove their presence, and prevent any website activity they may have garnered as a result of the spam.
Sid, if you can, even if you want to leave up the old spam, could you remove the links that lead elsewhere? It wouldn't hurt to report those that have Blogger accounts too. Because it IS against the TOS. Okay, so maybe they'll turn around a make a new account. Fine. But they will have to go through all the hassle of setting it up, and making the new pages. I say, give them a little extra work and annoyance, as they give to others.
One of my life philosophies, "What if everyone did it?"
If everybody reported the spamming done by people signed up for Blogger accounts, the spammorons would be setting up a new page after every single spam. Because every REAL Blogger would be reporting them. All the real Bloggers working together as a community to remove the unwanted elements of the Internet.
Leaving Sid's Gar and Brill and Krill unscathed.
Andree
delayed gratification
These are the words that come to me now as I re-read this story. Both reader (since this "may" be the beginning of a continued story about the same character, Dave) and Dave (being nostaglic - Old Style beer, the woman who left the conditioner, and over relationships that he can never have) must wait for gratification. We the reader for Sid to spoon feed us some more of Dave's story. And Dave to find "time" to buy the beer or find the relationship he thinks will satisfy him.
Will Dave's hunger be satisfied? Will ours? One never knows ...
And there's Sid as Bukowski says in "Night School:
I slouch back in my chair
with my dark shades on.
I am the class
intellectual.
looking forward to more ...
Call Me A Kitty is not really a cohesive story - just a series of events inspired by Dave's alcohol fueled adventures. There's no ending. Each installment stands alone. When I'm lucky.
Oooh, let's analyze the crap out of the story. I don't see any delayed gratification at all. Well, except for having to wait for more of the story.
Dave got totally drunk, slept in, woke up late, hungover, and had no idea what day it was. Dave did not delay gratification. Dave is a drunkard.
Dave is too stupid to know when to stop drinking or too stupid to realize how stupid drunk people are. Dave either drinks a lot and leaves the bottles all over the counter, or had a bunch of people over who are also slobs and leave bottles all over the counter. Now Dave is a drunkard and a slob.
Dave chooses something acidic to put in a queasy stomach. Dave is still stupid.
Then chooses beer in the morning to chase down the acidic juice. Dave is a stupid alcoholic who delays nothing.
Dave doesn't clean his shower curtain, or has one so old it's deteriorating, and hasn't bothered to buy a new one or clean the old one. Dave is a bad housekeeper.
Dave finds conditioner from an old girlfriend. She probably ran screaming in horror when she woke up with the guy. I would have run screaming in horror from the mildewed shower curtain.
The conditioner was unused. He says she was "discarded." I'm thinking she, too, ran screaming in horror at the appearance of the bathroom, hence the shower was never used. And she left at night, not in the morning. He didn't Getsomeville, and he didn't discard her. She RAN.
Dave's drinking in the shower signifies LOSER and he recalls other times he's gratified himself, namely on a National Holiday celebrating the U.S. Independence and freedom. I guess that includes the freedom to get drunk.
Dave's most startling revelation is that he won't make snow angels with Sarah Jessica Parker. Well, gee Dave. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure that one out.
I don't like Dave. He's a drunk, a slob (and may have slob-friends), and a nit-wit.
I'm hoping Dave will get hit by a truck. I'm hoping I get to drive that truck in the story.
Or that there is a happy ending. Dave recycles the beer bottles. Dave gives up drinking to the point of severe inTOXICation. Dave buys a new shower curtain and hopefully cleans out the shower drain. Dave uses the conditioner and find it makes his hair healthy-looking and manageable. Which in turn attracts huge numbers of women, who will fawn over him and his fragrant hair. They will be thoroughly impressed with the lovely shower curtain and lack of beer bottles on the counters.
The End.
Andree
By the way, I had trouble doing the letters once so far. It wouldn't take what it was showing. Maybe it's a Mac thing or browser thing. I reloaded the page, there was a new bunch of characters, and it worked.
That first time had both lower and upper case letters. I did them all in lower case first. That didn't work. It was only five letters. So I tried the two lower case and three upper case and it still didn't work. That's when I reloaded. If you're having problems, try reloading.
Drunkards are people, too.
Ouch, Andree! I didn't mean to hit quite a nerve with my comments. Just one woman's opinion after all.
I enjoyed your comments and "alternative universe" Dave, though.
I've only had one problem so far with the blog taking the letters I put in. I chalked it up to user error. But I could be wrong.
heh heh heh. Thanks, Sid.
Happy Reformation Sunday! I get to teach my 4 & 5 year olds in SCS about Martin Luther, uh, here it would be later today!
Sid and KeySunset, no problemo!
It's not what the writer writes, it's what the reader reads.
We all take our personal experiences and opinions and read FROM OUR POINT OF VIEW.
I have no idea from what point of view most of the writers write. I don't know them personally. I can only read their stories from my own point of view.
The old "it was a dark and stormy night" brings to mind your OWN vision of a dark and stormy night. We get heavy rain, and power outages. That's my dark and stormy night. Folks who went through a hurricane at night would think MY dark and stormy night wasn't nearly stormy enough.
Those on the ocean on a dark (real dark on the ocean) and stormy (you feel the storm in your boat) night would have another view.
My downstairs neighbors, some guys that I think are on their first apartment, they'd understand Dave and not look down on him at all. They ARE Dave. I've DATED Daves. Well, I can recall one in particular, who had the most disgusting bathroom. It was a place I was afraid to sit down in. The whole house, that is, not just the bathroom.
His regular guy at work appearance did nothing to expose his slobiness. But he was. And a liar. And a drunkard. And all the other Dave stuff. Oh, I don't know if Dave is a liar yet, we might find out in a forthcoming chapter.
So, when Sid unveils Dave in all his Davedom, I'm thinking of a bonehead and that house and that bathroom and those beer bottles and CRINGING. EWWWWWW. Yucko.
And those noisy downstairs heathens and their late night escapades into the courtyard. I don't think they are people or even human at that point. Friggin' herd of buffalo stompeding and mooing in a testosterone-filled way.
I bought a book based only on it's cool cover art, by Wally Lamb, "She's Come Undone" or something. The whole book was misery after misery and yet MORE misery. Maybe the last five pages were halfway happy. Book SUCKED. Art was great though.
I don't know what others could possibly see in it, because it was soooo miserable. I have no idea why Oprah picked it either.
Anyway, cover art aside, it's not what the writer writes. It's always how it's read by the reader.
One point of view is "cool beer-drinking, chick-discarding dude"...and the other is the one I saw. LOL! Each person has their own point of view. Key, you had yours too. Something I didn't see at all. Maybe everyone else who reads it could comment on what THEY read...
Hopefully folks read the story first and then check the comments area. You folks, yeah, YOU, you're reading this, you read that, what was your take on the story? How do you see Dave? His life as we know it so far?
And, will Dave recycle those bottles?
Will Dave get a new shower curtain?
What kind of shower curtain?
Will he get a matching bath set?
Will the set include a tank cover?
These questions, and many more will not be answered eventually.
Andree
Great Zeus! New TV show idea. Okay, we had JD living in his car being chosen at the lead singer for INXS.
And now I've been introduced to drunken woman chaser who apparently vomited and urinated on hosts who wrote something labelled as being "poetry" (sorry, I don't agree with it being poetry, or at least MY kind of poetry).
So, the next smash hit will involve bothering homeless people living in cars and drunks urinating in public to see if they are THE NEXT BIG THING.
They'll be put through rigorous tests, with art materials. They'll be given the opportunity to compose music. Write poetry. Sing. Without having to change their lifestyle.
In a way I'm being sarcastic. However, I'm also serious. These are discarded souls. Regular means of life have left them empty and passed by. Through bad luck, bad choices, bad twists and turns, they've been left on the side. Not invisible, although mainstream wishes they were. Yeah, even me. Because I can't do it all. I can't save everyone and everything from everything and everyone else.
What if the talents were uncovered of those on the sidelines? Those in their old rusty cars. Those in cardboard boxes. Those vomiting in alleyways.
Yeah, maybe I think that Charles guy is a loser too. But he has given me a peek into HIS life and what mattered to HIM at the time. What kinds of insights could we get from the street-walking divas? The off-ramp-underside residents?
I'm seeing coffee table book. Maybe not TV series, although that would be neat. I'm seeing collections of art and poetry and stories.
Finally a way for those with a grimy hand and a scrawled sign to reach out without being scorned by averted eyes.
THIS is who I am, they say.
THIS is how I live.
THESE ARE MY DREAMS.
And THIS IS MY NIGHTMARE.
The whore who draws daisies.
The wino who dreams of fields and rivers of port.
And maybe, maybe the book would sell. Maybe the book's proceeds go to help those in that city. More food. More shelter. No questions, just eat. Just rest.
Maybe people begin to understand. Maybe even me. I will understand that drunkards ARE people too.
Andree
What if the talents were uncovered of those on the sidelines? Those in their old rusty cars. Those in cardboard boxes. Those vomiting in alleyways.
Andre, I think you are already discovering that drunkards are people, too.
I've spent some of my life, not as one of those on the sidelines, but sometimes, so so close - living in a trailer, looking for change in the sofa, or pop bottles on the side of the road to put gas in the car to be able to get to work I hated, but enabled me to make it paycheck to paycheck.
I've spent time watching my family spiral around in drugs and alcohol, seven people living in a four room cinderblock house, but also seeing the humor and music that can come from the "losers."
I've been able to get past being an enabler - I quit making midnight runs to the ATM to get money to help get sibs out of jail - but I'll never be able to get past seeing that there is humanity and beauty in MOST people no matter how far down they have fallen or been crushed. And yes, some people just give up and give in and the beauty dies and it's just alcohol and mildewed curtains.
I'm anxious to see what Sid offers up for our eager minds to dissect next, Andree!
BTW, Ron Livingston (from one of my favorite movies Office Space ) is guest starring on House tomorrow night! House and Night Stalker have become the two tv shows I seem to have any desire to watch since Rockstar:INXS .
I'm still going out to the martycasey.org site to get my mc fix. Check it out, there are new videos out there, plus the site moderators have posted up all of Marty's blogs and photos to go along with each. Since I didn't start reading Leper Pop at this beginning of this thing, perhaps this would be a fun way to read all of it from the beginning - along with the martycasey.org stuff.
BTW, Sid, I LOVE the "Garbage Table" cartoon at the TL Puddinhead site. Everytime I read it I LOL! Did you do that, or is it by one of your other talented buds?
Well, I have to admit that when I read "Dave relieved himself," my first thought was not that he peed in the toilet before stepping in the shower. I thought he already was in the shower and I admit feeling a tad disappointed that we weren't given any description at all about the state of Dave's morning wood, or which fingers he used and how long he stroked and so on and so forth.
You see, I, too, have continued to immerse myself in things Marty, at the Sisterhood site, where we have many rooms to chat in, look at pictures, read interviews and watch movies. And then there's the porn.
Oh yes, the porn.
Softcore, with muted lines and hinted-at ecstasies, which are all very well & good for appetizers but don't satisfy the few of us who want our brains fucked verbally. That's where I live now.
Anyhoo, I still like reading the tales of Dave. I'd gladly contribute a virtual dollar to replace that shitty shower curtain. I mean, come on, Dave, have a little self-respect. Shower sex WILL improve I guarantee it.
One of my life philosophies, "What if everyone did it?"
Overpopulation.
He didn't Getsomeville, and he didn't discard her. She RAN.
Wrong. Not soon enough.
And, will Dave recycle those bottles?
Will Dave get a new shower curtain?
What kind of shower curtain?
Will he get a matching bath set?
Will the set include a tank cover?
Yes, yes, white liner, no, no.
Maybe people begin to understand. Maybe even me. I will understand that drunkards ARE people too.
Just when I was losing hope for you.
keysunset - re: your last post - wow. well said.
amai - perhaps we'll post the uncensored version at Leper Porn for you.
Thanks, Sid.
This is the first Leper Pop blog that I have actually printed out. Thanks again, Sid.
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