19 January 2000

exquisite corpse one-liners:

Debb Karr, aged 25; takes photographs of women’s breasts and mails them to herself under an assumed name to impress co-workers, who are not impressed at all. In fact, even the postal employees, those implacable stalwarts, working at Target, where employees are "team members" and customers are given the respect of Turkish diplomats who have lost their luggage, Hari Krishnas circled like airplanes in a holding pattern. Weather on the go. I buttoned my rain jacket, shoeless abandon on the curb, a flannel-skirted hellion I was, dirty-kneed and bumming cigarettes from a yuppie who gave me Gauloises. I pulled out my fire hose and extinguished the blaze like a hyperactive Elmer Fudd; then we broke into a spirited version of "Greensleeves", except my friend Tomas kept singing it to the tune. I couldn’t listen to the song without remembering the time we danced together in the rain and you were incontinent all over the sidewalk, and that cop nearly shot us on sight. Well, he wouldn’t have done much harm, given that he had no arms or legs. He tried to bite me but his dentures fell out. Oh Debb Karr, how far we got is the stuff of legend,though speculation has it we’d probably be better off forgetting the whole issue and watching TV instead.

she made a dust bunny from all the hair of women he cheated with on their bed, held it in a locket round her neck while fucking his mistresses in their stretch limousines, dealing with their octogenarian cackling in the backseat. The traffic was bad, the air was a hgh-inducing, noxious brew. She sniffed her potpourri of dried spices, then placed it down her pants with an "I know" smile. Everyone around the stage immediately erupted in applause and nervous one dollar bills. The conceptual artists’s shaved poodle excited and disgusted by Byron’s cat, ran circles around Debb Karr’s house. We painted the lawn purple to celebrate Debb’s third anniversary of her coming out. We put on Neil Young, which wasn’t entirely apropos, but his soothing acoustic was a nice counterpoint to S & M on a femme/femme firefighting night, especially in the world champion Pittsburgh Steelers’ Wall of Fame corridor, where just about anything goes, and after that, the evening was hopelessly lost. I glumly pulled out a Mentos and up pulled a limo-nade in a two gallon jug. I drank it all, then felt a change be. Everything went back to normal once I got the farm back up to snuff. We even put up a sign that said, "Parking for Italians" but the Italians failed to show at our pasta palace; they went to the Indian joint down the block and paid $6.95 for a whole case of cognac, pure joy in a cardboard crate. And the other night I lost my bottle of Jim Beam in a fight with a dog. The dog won, and snooked boozily; damn dog, incontinent son of a bitch (literally); he peed on me during my solo aria at the church from his balcony spot, and I could have sworn he was winking. But maybe he just had Tourette’s Syndrome. So I waited and watched and endured a nagging tirade and went back into the club where the only source of stress was wondering which drunken sot would lose it next. I can’t stand that kind of scene, so I walked home and spooned the air, glad for the company. Three is always better than one, and sixty better than five, especially when it’s ninety degrees out and no one else shows up for the parade.

it went from Tang to cheap orange Popsicles, to 50-50 bars, to orange soda. The first taste was a nuclear sunset, the eclipse of which brought certain doom to all things living, god’s creatures all gathering innocently for bingo and evenings in subterranean ash dens, where the upholstery smells oddly of maple syrup. She realized with horror that her seat was covered with syrup, or so her friend explained when they were only eighth graders, periods new and old are each unique in and of themselves. Even identical twins start to look different with age, and different uniforms. The second story of the firehouse on the lower east side doubled as a discotheque and the site for the annual clog-hop social. But my date didn’t show. Did I tell you I was supposed to go out with girlfriends but I flaked? So I guess it’s bad karma to ditch a chyck, especially a tranny S/M butch dyke, in this life, would be the crowning achievement, thought I when I first started, but the crown they gave me was kind of too big and really heavy. Whenever I made my Miss America appearances, I got a headache because I wore my corset too tight and greased my nipples and my hair, but it was still no reason to get kicked out of the convention, after all, you can buy a decorative planter at any corner hardware store. They’re especially good for hiding decapitated heads; not that I used them for that! Please, don’t look at me like you did in the voting booth, ‘cause that’ll just get you injured swiftly. Didn’t you ever learn that you can’t get ahead in life by stepping on babies? They’ll bite your ankles and you have to snap their necks once they’ve begun teething and stuff ‘em with goose-down so they don’t stink up the place. But we could just stick up a Glade air freshener and go to the stretch of I-5 beside the cow yards. Here ends the story. So speaks the lord. Matthew 5:17-24.

the muzzle fell off too soon and confusion reigned once again. The dog seemed friendly, but nonetheless I had to keep my sister’s health in mind. So I crossed the street away from the dog, which back-fired because that’s where old-man-Zimpher kept his mule. Anyway, after the thing burned down, there was hell to pay. No matter how cute Timmy tried to look, th crowd wanted to lynch him, but lassie, then acting as th local firefighter’s dog, stepped in to save him from himself, but it was too late as he’d already downed the entire quart. He was a scorpio, and so I didn’t know if he’d make a good employee. So I checked out his blood type; O-negative, wow perfect for a milkshake or an after-dinner snack or even a nice belt of Canada Dry ginger ale, but dare I expect such things when they don’t even have seltzer water in this joint; the clowns were especially unhappy about that. I said, fuck the clowns, but Joan Baez sang Where are the clowns? Send in the battered shrimp before the tea gets cold; we can do the flan later, if we have any money left. But then again, I’d rather spend it on alms for the poor. It’s a sure ticket to heaven or a passport to hell-o operator, give me number three or I’m gonna have to get down there and work the damn thing myself, and you know I have a fear of enclosed places. I had a different birth, you see. They dragged me out of that blasted birth canal like an anchored ship. I found it quick and let go like a 1942 German Howitzer, sky blazing red in the August heat.