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The Beer Mystic's Last Day on the Planet
The Beer Mystic's Last Day On The Planet
A story by Rabid Liberal © 1990
Shawn-da-lay Boy Productions INC.
"World of Wheels" is on TV. A chorus of cheerleaders in smilie
spangles jazzes up the "star spangled banner". The PA prays with
feedback, something from Job: "behold, I AM vile.. I AM the king of
terrors," tying in the holy snuff king with the emerging Krusher,
"champeeeeeen" Big Wheel, a Godzilla of steel on wheels the size of modest
lake-side bungalows. With beer #3 I bear witness to the glorious slo-mo
ecstasy of shattering glass, splintering in a crystal shimmer up to the
rafters as the Krusher romps hunh-ho over the roofs of a line of mortal
transport vehicles. Crushing them in an awesome symphony of buckling and
imploding steel. At the intermission, Chubby Checker does an updated Twist
with extra girth and sincerity. Six playboy bunnies help. But I'm lost.
Which one is miss May? Which one is the cowgirl from Gillette? I fumble
through data. Wonder why I'm sick, a half-melted baseball trophy molded by
a drunken god, living a life of air fresheners, ill-fitting jeans and
beer. What a land of mind we are! Ah, now some mediacaster, holding his
ear, barks at us from above the blue smoke roar in the pit. The driver is
a hero. He removes his helmet and his hair looks great even after
crushing 35 cars. And now my Hagia Sophia beer is all gone. They say it's
Latin for "holy wisdom". Where's it from, the Vatican? I'm from a town
noted for its automobile by-products - of which I guess I'm one.
I dreamt of my only car. A rambler picked clean like a carcass. Like
a toothless grin. A wad of parking tickets under the windshield, blown
away when the blades finally got ripped off too. But I couldn't sleep with
the alarm wailing. Three hours. Counted 24,133 bottles of beer on the
wall. Besides I only got 28 hours left on this planet and I got plenty to
do. Three of my neighbors - I don't know them, they don't know me - were
relaxing on the hood of their prey, having just hacked and bashed the car
with the alarm into a hulk of gnarled steel and broken glass. It was like
walking through a museum diorama of cavemen who have just butchered a
twilight mammoth. The guy in the wool cap thinks he's Elvis and beats his
wife. He once hung a cat from a neighbors doorknob cuz she'd shot him
down. There's supposedly one rat for every person in NYC. Wonder if he's
found his "vermate" yet. I asked the three for a souvenir, they threw me a
hubcap with the center punched out, leaving a jagged halo. I put it on.
Where's the crime of the century? I'm ready. And six beers later I'd
black-eyed more than my quota of streetlights. i was out like a light
myself. I dreamt of sending my diaries somewhere - the papers, a
publisher. Thought has kinetic energy. It does. But it wasn't taking me
anywhere. And when I finally come to it was still night. my sneaks were
gone, someone had painted a scene-of-the-crime outline arond my body (a
premonition or a joke?) but my halo is still warm to the touch.
To revive myself I usually head for the Linger Lounge, a place of
purposeful and stylish dissipation. There's a sieve in the john, behind
the toilet. Check it out. In the mirror I look like Shemp - ugliest of the
three stooges. I scoop a sieve of water out of the toilet's tank, then
shower up by holding it triumphantly over my halo. Don't worry, there's a
hole in the floor that sucks up the water. The cool water revives the bony
plates, the gristle and cartilage and the wandering soul. It does! It's
like wetting a dull stone which looks precious when wet. And I come out a
new man. I am. No longer looking like Shemp. I'm ready to face the rest of
my life - all 20 odd hours.
Sure, my techniques have always been clever. But I'm tired of hanging
out in dance joints. I usually stalk a table of nervous birds in jangly
jewels. Wait for them to get dance fever. And when they hit the dance
floor I observe them while I suck down their neglected drinks no matter
sweet and gooey. It's a cheap drunk and a rather subtle way of
redistributing wealth. It's a little chancy with disease and all, but
adventure is the throb in the blood, the beer in the glass, the light in
my bulb. How does one go about patenting new drinks anyhow? I have two
surefire hits: "The Jersey Shore" (gin, Yoohoo and Alka Seltzer) and "The
Jersey Sunset" (Bacardi, Pepto-Bismol and Hi-C).
I pinched my wheels (no ordinary tin can) from in front of the
Heartbreak Club, where the innoculated money spinners dress up in $3000
worth of leather to get real, break a sweat, act artsy. Someone had left
it - my '63 abalone Lincoln - idling right there on Hudson. It was
immaculate, the hood awesome as Texas in tin. A right romantic grease
jock's dream. And it left me lushed, imagining the driver's face when he
returns with his Euro-trash bait under his arm. Oh, sweet reverie! I
adjusted the electric mirrors, electric seats, put it in gear like a warm
knife through butter, elbow out the window. All the dials stared up at me.
We were one. A noble cell with a mission. A time bomb waiting to go off.
To get fogged up I buy beer, the best, Harp, Guiness, Grolsch, Old
Peculiar cuz what good is a pocket full of chump change in hell? One of
the techno-convenience society's greatest inventions: the 24-hour deli
with 100 brands of beer. From Tribeca I bullet up Avenue of the Americas
doing menacing side swipes, shearing door handles and fancy trim along the
way. This boat's a dream. I glide across craters the size of which we'd be
able to see on the moon with the naked eye. I do felonious hot-dog donuts
at Crazy Eddie's. Heads turn. I'm a bumper car wacko on a tear. Don't they
understand? This is what Artaud would've done. I wish I'd had Francis
Farmer next to me. She could grenade empties at pedestrians along the way,
but she's dead too. It's 2am; I got 22 hours to live.
I wish crazy little Jenny was beside me. I was wearing her undies as
I often did when I was lonesome. I tried to call but every # was a wrong
#. She'd ride her bike to the Fashion Institute of Technology with blue
hair, army boots sprayed silver, holes in her T-shirt so her breasts could
grace us with their peculiar smiles. We once made love with an Alligator
baggie she'd salvaged from the freezer, unwrapping two pounds of chuck in
my honor. It was defrosted on the counter by the time we'd finished. But
chance will just have to be my copilot. at Fourteenth street I do a
dramatic stuntman slide, broadsiding a silver Mercedes. The sound is
meaningful. The jolt exaltingly tragic. A citizen gives chase but I lose
him quickly because I am not afraid of intersection death. I course
further up Sixth avenue, free of guilt and moral constraint with my nose
up the tailpipe of a trembling Volvo. I run 4 red lights, scattering
pedestrians. The threat of death animates them, wakes them up out of their
dull lives. But I get no thanks, no howdy-dos. I challenge stunned men in
important cars. Everything speeds up hell-bent beyond comprehension. At a
light I gun the engine, pour a Harp over my head, comb my hair back. I'm
James Dean. He's dead too. Yes, I am too short a chapter in an absurdist
novel. At 34th street I make a chase-scene left, cruise down the sidewalk,
watch strollers scatter, cling to Macy's windows. It's a movie. I wish my
head was a camera. I hang a ralph at Eighth Avenue, pick up a hooker at
40th. She's in chemical limbo, somewhere between Flip Wilson and Dolly
Parton in absurdly tight satin jogging shorts. She diddles my fiddle and
holds on to her 14th street wig as we cruise crosstown. I double park at
the Waldorf and block two black limos in. I drag her luded body in past
the big eyes under red caps. I order beer. She likes Long Island Iced Tea
with five packets of sugar. She's never seen Long Island. And we dance.
Her backbone is like saltwater taffy. Her skin smells like a candy bar. I
try to imagine sitting next to her in high school. How'd she get this way?
We bump tables, upset drinks into faces. Her eyeballs have disappeared
somewhere up into her forehead. I lead her out through the yawning doors,
heels dragging, wearing out like a pencil eraser. HA! I tell the doorman
that I was the model for Rothko's painting "Drunk on Turpentine".
I park in the intersection of eighth and 49th. I drop of Delilah.
Traffic backs up. I lean her against a lamppost, serenaded by the sealion
chorus of horns. Anyone can paralyze a city this way. Anarchists with
cars, listen up! The gridlock guzzler is me! I put my tub in drive and
challenge the honking backed up traffic like a bull in the arena. It's
6am. Workers on their way. But they're all bereft of purpose, wired to go
nowhere. Eerily preoccupied equally with weight loss and child abuse. You
can either go nowhere fast or nowhere slow. I back up, demolition-derby
style and put a BMW out of commission. Crushed radiator. It looks almost
sculptural. The driver bangs furiously on the windshield and dash, hangin
desperately onto the steering wheel. I'm becoming well-known now. I wander
up Eighth avenue to Harlem, weaving deliriously a very unusual tapestry of
steel misery and mayhem. Bouncing off cars from side to side. Crash nose
first through a furrier's window, and kids with askew baseball caps
ransack the place before I've even backed out into the traffic.
Thirty-five cars to Harlem. Just like the Krusher. They're filming on a
streetcorner and not only do I black-eye their jungle load of wattage and
spotlights, I also manage to scatter a pack of crack dealers who seemed to
be menacing the film crew. This is aggravated operation of a motor
vehicle, a churning delicious hunk of illogic. By now my back bumper is
dragging, trim is splayed and branching out.
I head down fifth avenue. Bump cars in heavy traffic chicken-style
with 100+ violations under my belt. One or two million in damages. I hit a
stretch limo at 45th and fifth, doing 40. It buckles into a U-shape and I
imagined it still running, running forever in a circle like a toy wind-up
car. The moment of impact becomes a crime of ecstasy, orgasm and felonious
vandalism for mere seconds. After that it's just hysteria, human foible
and stunned collective panic. After that I just comb the outer boroughs,
confident that Manhattan is all abuzz because of me and my tub. More abuzz
than anything I could ever write. I find my favorite sites. The Brooklyn
Bridge, the Long Island City salt mounds. Catch my breath and perspective.
Then I go to various banks and yell "They have no money!" in crowded
lobbies. This is, after all, how panics begin. Banks exist in out implicit
suspension of disbelief. A bank run is contagious. We've seen drug
companies drop to their contrite knees. But we're all free here cuz our
words are empty, ashes blown into the faces of the shivering.
This is the painting I wish I could do. George Grosz in crushed
steel. a panic of the fat. In Central Park it's 7:30pm. Hats climb the
hill with big-daddy shadows and coats the size of backyards. I'm tired. I
abandon my aritist's tool with beer soaked seats. In the Central Park Zoo
I talk to the seals and otters. They seem to understand, and at midnight
of the 7th day I shivered, I festered, but I did not die. No activist
lawyer came to my defense. The nobility of my terrorism had eluded them
all. Notoriety had failed to lift me out of my meaningless anonymity. I
was still alive, and in big trouble.
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