As I entered my second floor apartment, my arms loaded with what could be best described as hungover marionettes who had seen better Boston days, I was met with a barrage of recently beheaded ventriloguist dummy heads hurtling at me with the atmospheric re-entry fury of Charlie McCarthy meteors heading on a collision course with dinosaurs and a manifest destiny that manifested itself and festered unfettered in its quest to quash end extinguish life as I know it.
She was PISSED! She being the head hurler aforementioned who was responsible for the dummy decimation and decapitation. God damn it..she must have run out of painkillers again. Lovely little Darvons, or perhaps she took too little belladonna and her menstrual cramps were now in charge of her control tower.
“Whoa, what the hell are you doing! Stop it!” was all I could muster up in the way of offering a truce for something I didn’t even know we were arguing about.
She, again the head hurler whose name is Alexia Dyslexia, responded not too kindly I might add, “You...you asshole, we’re out of money. The rent is due in a week and all you do is to avoid a real job. You know WORK! PAYCHECK! FOOD! I earn a paycheck, but it’s not enough for the two of us and these...these creepy dummies you keep around here. IT looks like a flop house for puppet junkies!!!”
To set the record straight for you the reading public, I do have a job..two in fact two count them, TWO! I bust my ass as a writer and stage theatricals for a living. I felt smug as I reminded her of those facts.
She came close, you now that red face rage in your face close and slowly said deliberately emphasizing each word for me to absorb and comprehend as though I were a three legged dog named Tripod who laid about all day on some southern front porch dreaming of banjo music until a car went by that I could chase (hence how any dog named Tripod probably got its name in the first place on a summer day in pursuit of a Gremlin thereby losing a leg...paw and all of course, its front leg having gotten stuck in the rear hubcap and spun around at 50 MPH as though it were on G Force spin dry in a Maytag!)
“Job? You are kidding me, yes?” Oh shit. Here it comes, duck and cover. I better head her off at the pass.
“I know it’s not much, but I need time to write the next great American novel. For Whom The Bells Toll, that kind of thing. I also want to write plays. Make a huge Andrew Lloyd Webber splash on Broadway...the great white way where I can give the middle finger salute and my fucking regards to patrons of the arts.”
There that should do it. I told her off but good. Damn, I was proud of myself for that vendetta of an explanation.
“Write the next great American novel Mr. F Scott Hemingway Steinbeck Twain? You haven’t written one word,” she pointed out.
I countered her thrust and parry with “I have over 100 pages already written!” Proudly spoken!
“Yes, yes and all 100 are here, crumpled up in the wastebasket!”
“It takes time, you know for it to come together, but I do have that freelance writing job that pays a little, so yes I am a writer!”
Then she clobbered me with the ax of reality.
“You write shithole fortunes for the Shanghai Fortune Cookie Company for god sakes. I found this months list you did, what a joke…’Good fortune will smile on you as does Buddha’ or how about these, ‘Excitement and intrigue follow you closely wherever you go!’ ‘A pleasant surprise is in store for you.’ ‘May life throw you a pleasant curve.’ You call this a career? Miss Buddha here ain’t smiling!”
“But...but…” stammer…
She continued “Write plays? You do puppet shows on the Boston Commons on the weekends. Fucking puppets!”
“Now hold on,” my ire now erect, “they aren’t just puppets, there are some marionettes and hand puppets too!”
“Good, I’m leaving you so the next time you need sex let Senor Wences give you one hell of a hand held blow job, and if you’re really hurting go fuck a mime!”
With that she walked out the door, suitcase in hand, leaving me with an apartment that had been through a blitzkrieg of super bitch proportions. Head everywhere, headless dummy bodies strewn about mixing with marionettes tangled in twine. Hand puppets were headless as well. It was a crime scene...a real Charles Manson Marionette Murder spree…
I sat down on the floor to regroup with a warm bottle of Night Train wine, the toast of the town at the Jesus Saves Mission. I also broke open another box of free fortune cookies they always sent me along with my meager check.
If Buddha were going to smile on me...now was the time….
