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 ??07 Jan 94????????????????????_ROR_-_ALUCARD_??????????????????????????  ??
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 ?           The Beer Mystic's Last Day On The Planet            Tfile     ??
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 ??  ?  Written by:  Rabid Liberal (Joshus)                     - RoR -    ??
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 ?  ?? Shawn-Da-Lay Boy Productions, Inc.????????????????????????????????????
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   ???The HQ of SDBP, Inc - 510/237/8563??PolySpock Project - 510/524/3649???
   ?Drop Sites?????? Hollow's Renaissance - 510/669/9432?????Drop Sites??????

   
   
                  The Beer Mystic's Last Day On The Planet
                      A story by Rabid Liberal (c) 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.
   
   
   
   
. 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.