yustyoking

May the Farce Be with You

 

Correct you are that I should not always pipe up after the fact. Keep you informed I should of my whereabouts via Twitter, making pithy comments straight from the battleground. Only I get so wrapped up in the experience, it isn’t until hours later that I can gather my thoughts and express myself in words. Unlike Katie Couric, I seem to be experientially dyslexic: I know what is happening right in front of me, I just cannot find a way to simultaneously describe it.

Put simply, Suzanne— a bud from my college radio daze at dear old Moosegrave— invited me to visit her in Scottsdale, Arizona. We’re both retired: I retired from the Army, she retired from her marriage to a dot com titan whose development company makes video games and gets listed on the Fortune 500. I shipped my golf clubs. Last Monday, I flew out west budgiprop. It seems I never learn. The weather is in the mid-50’s, Denver has snow, and I’m chasing my golf game.

Here’s the drill. Tuesday is sunny. Appropriately attired in windcheaters, we play 18 holes. During lunch, I get a text from Jimmy, also an alumnus of our 0 watt college megastation, piped into the dorms via the electrical outlets. “Glad 2 hear U 2 R back together,” he twirps from Torrance, California. “Since U R in Arizona, go 2 preview of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Wed. Dec. 16, Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport, 12 noon, International Air Response hangar. Be there! Love ya, Jimmy.”

On the upside, plagued by ADHD, Jimmy utilizes his X-ray focus to suss out stock quotations. He has actually scored over a million dollars in profits day trading. That takes talent. On the downside, Jimmy does suffer from ADHD. Suzanne calls him “Wildman,” which was his disc jockey persona, DJ Wildman Willard.

“What does Wildman want now?” she grouses, busily munching a country club bacon cheeseburger and an extra portion of southern style fries in guacamole. How does she do it? This girl never puts on an ounce.

“He wants us to go to the new Star Wars movie in Phoenix.”

“I don’t like downtown. Besides, weren’t you a Trekkie?”

“This is at the airport.”

“Which airport?”

“Phoenix-Mesa.”

“Oh. That’s in Mesa,” she says, latching onto my phone to read the message herself. “I thought the movie opens on Friday.”

“This is a preview.”

What to wear? Too cheap to spring for a lightsaber, I take a 46-inch fluorescent tube and duct tape a wooden handle from a broken golf umbrella on one end and the black plastic cap from a cold cream jar on the other. Ta-ta! A lightsaber… facsimile. Dyeing an old bedsheet brown, I fashion it into hood + cloak. I wear gray sweatpants and a red sweatshirt under it, securing my “robe” with a 1  3/4-inch black leather military belt from the former Soviet Union, replete with a brass buckle exhibiting the hammer and sickle inside the star of the Red Army. Black leather boots leave me stranded in appearance somewhere between a Tatooine dirt farmer and a Knight of the Rebel Alliance.

Suzanne dresses in a black leather jacket, a ballerina skirt and pink platform heels, her hair dyed purple. Blackening her teeth, she proclaims herself “Princess Hee-Haw of the Clown Colony.”

When we drive to the airport, the gravel parking lot is a madhouse, which well it should be. We are, like, two hours early and the line still snakes around the hangar. Not that many people in costume. Also, not the demographic I expected, too many blue-haired matrons and stuffy older gentlemen, a lot of rednecks and dudes in camo. I have read that ticket sales have broken all records and that white males have been the chief purchasers. I don’t know enough about Arizona to judge. “Any Hillary haters?” shouts a vendor, hawking buttons that say “Hillary for Prison.” Maybe this is what going to the movies is like in Arizona.

As we shuffle through the metal detector at the security checkpoint, the Rent-A-Cop in his stylized western police uniform grabs my lightsaber and asks, “What is this?!”

“It’s a lightsaber. You know, Star Wars. We’re here for the movie. I’m Captain Ad Hoc and this is Princess Hee-Haw,” I say, giving the Vulcan salute.

“Uh… What movie? This is a Donald Trump campaign event, y’ know.”

“Oh, well. Oh! That’s brilliant! Gad, why didn’t I think of that? Total synergy. You put together the Donald Trump crowd and the movie crowd and you double the audience. Smart!” Turning to Suzanne, I can see that she also is impressed by this marketing ploy.

“Wait over there to the side,” the cop tells me worriedly, calling for a supervisor. A dude in a nice suit with a walkie-talkie approaches, looks us up and down and asks, “Code Pink? No? Let me guess… Black Lives Matter! Not, God forbid, the Muslim Brotherhood???”

“The Rebel Alliance!” I inform him. I mean, don’t these dudes know anything about the Star Wars universe?

“White supremacists?”

“No, just movie enthusiasts.”

“What movie?”

“Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”

“There isn’t any movie scheduled.”

“Of course there’s a movie! It’s a sneak preview. In conjunction with the Donald Trump rally,” I explain. Suzanne and I did both eat Alaskan King Crab legs on Tuesday night, followed by wild lovemaking, so I’m sure we smell both fishy and funky.

“O-o-o-okay,” sighs the supervisor. “First I heard about it. Say something from the movie.”

“Luke, I am your father. Now will you let go of the drainage pipe or do I need to cut off your pecker?”

“Okay, you can go in. Don’t cause any trouble!”

Not only do they let us pass, I even get to keep my “lightsaber.”

The crowd is enormous, the tension both thrilling and palpable. This is the famous Trump Crowd the commentators natter about. People who are fed up, in search of a fight. Shades of Nazi Germany, the crowd has roughed up protesters at previous rallies. A mean-looking dude in camo gives me the hairy eyeball. “What’s with the robe?” he asks, grimacing, telegraphing distaste. “You think you’re Lawrence of Arabia or somethin’?”

“No, no. Star Wars.”

“Star Wars?!” he yelps. “Best damn anti-ballistic missile program ever devised by man. Missiles from space. Pure genius! All Ronnie Reagan needed to do was threaten the Soviets with it and they went broke trying to keep up.” Happy with the association, he stands there beaming. Regally, I touch him solemnly on each shoulder with my lightsaber and declare, “May the fudge be with you!”

I love the back wall of this hangar, it must be 150 feet long and 60 feet high. Colossal! Crank up an IMAX digital projector and we are in for one heck of a show. Gangbusters!

Meanwhile, Suzanne— of French derivation— has accrued a posse of hungry males, drooling and teasingly yanking on her skirt. Exasperated, a liberated woman, she turns around, pulls down her skirt and moons us through per delectable pink panties. Applause all around, from both men and women. A lady for any occasion, we’re buds because she’s such a great bitch to hang out with.

Amidst deafening rock music, Donald Trump’s plane taxis up to the hangar. As Trump makes his way to the podium, people’s right arms shoot into the air… hoisting their cellphones to photograph the event. Then there’s a pause while The Donald gives an interview to Fox News, using us as his backdrop. Smart move.

Here’s a dude in buckskin and a coonskin cap. At least we’re both in costume. I start to say “Brilliant minds think alike,” but he’s one jump ahead of me. “You takin’ a gander at mah squaw?” he demands, thumping me on the chest with his balled fist. That’s when I first notice his lady— maybe five feet tall—  decked out in pigtails, leather fringe and moccasins. His own personal Pocahontas.

“Not that I know of,” I tell him. “May the frost go with you!”

Suzanne intercedes and, smiling ferociously, drawls in Californ-eye-ese, “Y-Y-You-u  le-e-eave  mah  b-b-boyfriend  alo-o-o-one!”

At the podium, Donald Trump tells us how his crowds are so much bigger than anyone else’s.

“Dump Trump! Dump Trump!” shout a contingent of protesters, fists in the air, pressing their way through the crowd. Jeering, whistling, booing Trump supporters give them a quick boot outta the arena.

Suddenly, for no particular reason, there’s a boneheaded redneck hissing in my ear. “What kinda get-up you wearin’?” he wants to know. Glancing at his pimply face, red hair and the dozens of holes in his greasy jeans, I could ask the same of him. His teeth are stumps. He has an Arizona twang that all but screams “Poor white trash!”

“Let me listen to Trump— ” I suggest.

Latching onto my shoulder with an enormous paw, he burps, “Is that an Arab robe or somethin’?”

Distracted, I stupidly tell him, “A thawb? No, it’s not a thawb.”

“You is a slimy A-rab,” he seethes, looking bloody murder at me. “We worship Jesus, you worship Osama bin Laden!”

“Obama— ”

“I hate Obama! We should run all o’ you Mos-slimes outta the country! And that includes Kenyaboy!”

People to our left and right edge in closer and shake their heads in agreement. Shoving me discreetly, they kick me in the shins. Shades of fraternity hazing, everybody gets to take a poke at Captain Ad Hoc! As we say in the Army: Wear the uniform, bite the bullet. “Ours is a nastic movement,” I exclaim plaintively. “Some would even say thermonasty!” To no avail.

Suzanne is also getting the treatment. While she and I are being pushed around, Donald Trump says, “You know, I’m at 43 and the other guys are at two and three and seven.”

Boy, so much for being the “other.” People be angry. I’m confronted by a lady dressed in black lace like Madame Lafarge. My badge says “May the Fluff Be with You.” Hers, fully four inches across, says “Fuck Iran!” Eyeing me like she is a frog and I am a tasty fly, she croaks, “The silent majority sides with Trump!”

“Wisdom great should you find,” I explain Yoda-style. She wallops me with her handbag. Wow, am I relieved when security comes rushing over! They escort a furious Suzanne and me from the hangar.

“We’re the victims here,” Suzanne insists. Trump is still talking, but people have begun to vacate the premises.

“We knew youse was troublemakers from the get-go,” a helpful officer informs us. “We shoulda impounded Gonzo’s lightbulb, but we was tryin’ t’ be nice!”

“You’re a New Jersey transplant?” I guess. “Here for the weather and the golf?”

“Yeah, so? What about it?” he responds, very fast and hot under the collar.

“Whoa, wait! I think it’s a great move. I’d do the same. No, I just meant us Jersey boys should stick together.”

“No way! Where you from?” he scoffs.

“South Orange.”

“If’n youse from South Orange,” he asks, “why you causin’ trouble?”

You got me.

“I should have gotten an Emmy for ‘The Apprentice,’ ” says Donald Trump.

“Can we go in when the rally is over and they start the movie?”

“There ain’t gonna be no goddam movie!” the New Jersey cop insists earnestly. “I asked! No one in the Trump campaign has heard anything about a movie. Not even a campaign movie. They don’t intend to show a movie.”

Uh-h-h, boy! Wildman strikes again!

“I don’t want to be a nasty guy, but I don’t care anymore! I don’t care!” shouts The Donald as the masses depart.

Using Bing on Suzanne’s smartphone, we find a coffee shop at a Comfort Inn where like-minded Star War fanatics are getting juiced on triple lattes and constructing our own Most Desired Screenplay.

*******     Stud Wars: Balls Out on the Long Island Expressway     *******

Our tale chronicles the adventures of Tab Soho, a New York taxi driver who refuses to drive South of Houston. Together with his hairy dispatcher Chewin’ Tobacca and the Princess Nee-how (Chinese for “hello”), they battle the marching stormtroopers of the Uber Empire. These stalwart champions of free enterprise are aided by The Thug Boy Three who sing in a band when not beating people up and, vice versa, beat up people in bands when not singing. And they are the heroes! Horns honking, subwoofers blasting, pedal to the metal, much mayhem ensues. This is gonna be a great movie! There’s even an homage to Abdel Gamal Nasser, although we do get in a fight over who receives the primary writer credit.

 

Jack Frost

 

The cold weather is nipping at our heels. I wanted to write about ISIS, but I’ve got this legal conundrum. I’ve spent the day trying to figure out how to put the situation in the best possible light. You guys who know me are gonna be pissed! I blame it on the goddam picnic tables.

Oxburg, Maryland has three schools, Pierce Elementary— where both my younger bro’ Tim and I went to school— H. L. Mencken Middle School and, of course, Oxburg High. Long may the purple and yellow (yech!) wave victorious! “Oxburg, Oxburg, who’s gonna buy the slurpees?” as our cheerleading squad used to chant at football games.

My current legal battle has gone on for a month. As Tim says: “If Maryland is my lover, why am I ducking for cover?” It was only this week that my case came up on the docket.

The library sits next to H. L. Mencken Middle School. And there are these wooden picnic tables where, cloudy or bright, sweet young girls hang out after school. I mean, this is a given. Mindless maidens, noses buried in their smartphones, nobody using the library pays them any mind. Separate worlds. Fridays, however, are a problem. Predatory Friday, suddenly our young damsels are looking for a sugar daddy to finance their weekend activities. I came out of the wrong door at the library, and there were two young ladies waiting to pounce.

Sandee has hair three colors of blond, any one of which may or may not be natural. All this wavy blond hair cascading off the shoulders of her fire engine red outfit. Okay, I’m a pushover for girls with painted eyes. She had me right there. “Hey, mister,” she called in the cracked, nasal voice of adolescence. “Whaddya gonna do this weekend? Julie and I want to have fun but we don’t have any money, tee hee hee! ” Waving a hand, kicking her foot, smirking, she kept me enthralled with those dynamite blue-green eyes. This was a sad situation. I hoped her braces would demure me, but instead, they just made her seem all of 13 years old— which she is— and I found that strangely attractive. Kind of like revisiting my misspent youth.

Her girlfriend Julie was no help. Your foxy brunette with tight, tight blue slacks that showed off her exceptional hips and a round little rump, she wore a patterned blouse that somehow drew my glance upward to that laughing face of hers. “How much money ya got in yer wallet?” she guffawed.

(I need to stop grinding my teeth while writing about this, but read on!)

“No, really, guys, I — ”

“How old are you?” lisped Sandee, pointing at me with her whole hand. Her red lacquered nails resembled ice picks.

“I’m 42,” I lied, shaving 15 off my age.

“What year were you born?” Julie immediately countered, a smart cookie.

I, too, am nimble at math. “October 12, 1973.”

“L-L-Listen,” Sandee insisted, “It’s so warm out! Take off your jacket!”

Just kidding around, I took off my jacket and dumped it unceremoniously on the table.

“Lemme see yer wallet,” cracked Julie, both hands held out in front of her like an Egyptian maiden.

“No way!”

“Way!”

“Give her your wallet!” laughed Sandee.

God help me, I handed Julie my wallet.

My life is so barren of romance, the girls’ teasing had me swollen like a blimp, pressing achingly inside my pants. It’s been too long. Sandee and Julie gave each other a look of “Oh, wow!” while examining my crotch with wolfish grins.

“Now take off your shirt!” Sandee commanded.

“Oh, come on…”

With Sandee laughing, waving her nails in my face and kicking her legs, I found myself compelled to comply. Once I had my shirt off, of course, every Tom, Dick and Harry in the neighborhood was gazing, appalled, at my pale torso. Customers from the bank across the street, school personnel, neighbors on West 31st Road. Very quickly, I did a few Arnold Schwartzenegger poses and pulled my shirt and jacket back on.

Julie, meanwhile, took advantage of my little exhibition to relieve me of the $38 in my wallet: A twenty, a ten, a five and three ones. Foosh! Quick as The Flash, all gone!  “Here! Take yer wallet,” she drawled, tossing it on the table. Love that Maryland accent!

Sandee laughingly suggested, “Get down on all fours and bark like a dog!” That’s when the police arrived. I was busy tucking in my shirt tails, under my jacket.

“Okay, don’t move,” two male policemen instructed us, approaching edgily, looking larger than life in their brown uniforms.

Droooop, I lost that erection muy rápido! “Is there a problem?” I asked.

“Show your I.D. and shut up!” suggested one police officer. I really liked the way his partner unclipped the flap on his holster. Did they actually feel threatened?

“WE’RE JUST TALKING!” Julie insisted.

Sandee’s porcelain white skin had already turned a whiter shade of pale.

While one cop kept me under surveillance, his partner went to their cruiser and put my particulars into the computer.

The blacks in Baltimore are rioting in protest over police violence. Here in lily white Oxburg, the local gendarmes divide their time equally between investigating burglaries, directing Saturday traffic at the synagogue and Sunday traffic at the mosque, and running a series of speed traps along The 1812 Highway.

“So what’s it all about?” asked the first officer when his partner came up empty. “Do you know these girls?”

“It’s literally nothing. We’re playing. I work really hard, so when they saw me and I saw them, we decided to joke around.”

“Somebody called and said there was a streaker. Was that you?”

“THERE WAS NO STREAKER!” Julie volunteered, but I shushed her with a wave of my hand. I think she was ready to get in a fistfight with the cops.

“I told them about training on a Nautilus at the gym and they wanted to see my muscles, so I took off my shirt for a second. Bodybuilding poses. Half a minute at the most.”

“Okay, we’re charging you with pedophilia. You can explain it to the judge.”

“There’s no law against talking to people, officers.”

“Tell it to the judge! You did a lot more than just talk! Now shut up!”

BAM! Just like that, I and my book bag are loaded into the cage in the back of the police car and I am driven to the precinct house, fingerprinted, and put in a holding cell. My one phone call is, naturally, to my mom. She, in turn, calls her estate lawyer, who practically has a meltdown over the phone. Eventually, a chubby criminal lawyer named Richard Pope comes to my aid. Standing outside my cell, briefcase in hand, he’s sprung me! When the guard opens up, Richard shakes my hand. “I know who you are! I’ve seen the golf trophies. I graduated twenty years after you at Dorkburg,” he tells me, a big smile on his face.

“Long live the purple and gold,” I breathe.

******

I get several unpleasant telephone calls from the parents. They do not appreciate our little charade by the picnic tables. Sandee’s mom calls me a child molester. Julie’s dad accuses me of being a Muslim terrorist. “If you ever show your ugly snout around my daughter again,” he informs me, “I’ve got a gun and I’m prepared to use it!” They are out for blood. I find anything and everything I say only sets them off. So I stop trying to explain my concern that the girls not be traumatized by a court appearance. They’re good kids. We adults may be full of bilge, but there is no earthly reason to put them through such an ordeal. Thankfully, Richard agrees with me. He convinces the prosecutor to take oral depositions from each of the teenagers. These will be used in court.

******

My argument is that in a world where angry, radicalized shooters massacre innocent people once a week, what possible harm does it do if two young girls and I clown around?

“Firstly, you are not a legal expert, so your lay interpretation of the law interests the judge not at all,” Richard tells me, totally deflating my trial balloon.

Ouch!

“Secondly, you cannot put an equal sign between other people’s behavior and your own. The judge is concerned primarily with the letter of the law. Have you violated existing statutes? Only in extremis does the spirit of the law enter the picture at this level. We’re not talking Clarence Darrow pleading before the Supreme Court here. You are remanded to district court, the lowest rung on the legal ladder.”

Ga-a-a-a! At $250 an hour, I give it another shot: “There was no public nudity to speak of. No one touched anyone else. There was no intention of anyone doing any touching. Who took the ‘innocent’ out of innocent fun?”

“You’re not listening, Kevin! Think of the law as a game with a very intricate set of rules. All we servants of the court practice it daily. You cannot show up with neophyte opinions and ‘win’ against paid professionals. All you can do is lose. That’s why you pay me. To minimize the damage.”

Yikes! I feel like I’m on my way to San Quentin.

******

Richard is very good in the courtroom. I can’t quote the judge without risking a boatload of legal grief, so I’ll merely describe the issues. The county prosecutor charges me with pedophilia and contributing to the delinquency of two minors.

“Pedophilia presupposes a sexual motive behind the actions of the accused, which has in no way been substantiated,” Richard points out.

The judge lectures us: In nine out of ten cases of adults misbehaving in the presence of a minor, predation is the motive. A legal precedent is already in effect.

Richard objects that this hasn’t been proven in the current case.

The prosecutor insists that the charges stand.

Richard offers to take the case to trial.

The judge does that “please approach the bench” thing. I sit and sulk while the three of them confer. When Richard returns, he’s smiling ever so slightly. “They want to hit you with a $500 fine and give you a year’s probation.”

“Shit! Sure,” I tell him. “It’s a storm in a teacup. There wasn’t any ‘there’ there.”

“Hell, even I know that,” Richard insists.

“What about my first amendment rights? Certainly there’s no law against talking with a member of the younger generation.”

“You should have thought of that before you took your shirt off, Kevin!” he admonishes me, a less than amused look on his face.

“I acted like an idiot,” I agree.

“We won’t tell the judge that, he’d up your fine.”

******

“Hey, mister!” Sandee and Julie shout, waving from a distance outside the library this last Friday. It’s sunny, but the weather’s turned cold. We’re bundled up. “No hard feelings, huh?”

“You never did a bad thing in your life!” I shout back, waving.

They laugh.

I laugh.

******

The End. I hope.

 

***************** Ambiguous Law Enforcement *******************

The good news is, I was not arrested and I am not pro-pedophilia. The purpose of the story is to show how difficult we find handling ambiguous issues. While the local police in San Bernardino, California were issuing traffic tickets and investigating local disturbances, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik purchased 4,500 rounds of ammunition and assorted bomb components without awakening the interest of either the FBI or the San Bernardino police. Farook and Malik were not members of the military, law enforcement or a gun club. Why did they need 4,500 rounds of ammunition? While the police were going about their daily business, Farook and Malik killed 14 people and wounded 21 others. We need to get our priorities straight.