yustyoking

Upheaval

 

Yikes! I just lost half a million dollars and 15 years of my life. Literally. I really wish I was kiddin’ ya, but I’m not. Boy, am I sore!

Since 1999, I have shared our family house in Oxburg, Maryland with my mom. Not an easy woman to get along with. Depression-bred— and she lets everyone know it— she hoards toilet paper and hand soap. Those items were rationed in World War Two, so she can never get enough. There are only the two of us in the house, but— coupons in hand— she overbuys like mad, purchasing everything that is on sale at the store. Everything. “I’m beating the system,” she exclaims. Like an Army Quartermaster, she buys battalion levels of napkins, facial tissues, laundry detergent, crackers, cookies, oatmeal, popcorn, bread, cake, meat and cheese.

I’ve tried to explain the economics of it to her. “You’re being manipulated into spending $3.40 on floor wipes,” I say. “Sure ’20 cents off,’ but who needs them to begin with?”

I’m talkin’ to a wall here. Mrs. Megabucks, she’s having fun, there’s no stopping her.

Neurotic as a bell jar, she managed to alienate my father to the point that he stalked around the house like an angry troll. He was such a piece of work, however, that I sided with my mom. I have lived to re-evaluate that perception.

This is a woman who shares a house with me in suburban Maryland but saves her faith and devotion for Billy Bush on Access Hollywood. Billy can do no wrong. I, on the other hand, am a sore disappointment and constant source of irritation. Or so I am told.

The tail wags the dog. Mom once came home, after a trip, to a dirty house. Therefore, even a two-day excursion requires that the entire residence be scoured and spotless from floor to ceiling. Once, as a teenager, she was twenty minutes early to a concert. She had to stand miserably in the rain. So we are never allowed to arrive anywhere more than two minutes before the appointed time. Behold, in 2005 our in-laws invited us up to New Jersey for Passover. Then to a convergence of June birthdays. And to the breaking of the fast after Yom Kippur. Three visits in one year! If— for any possible reason— we don’t make these three yearly pilgrimages to Mecca, that is because I am being an abusive, uncaring tyrant who is depriving her of the little joy she gets out of life.

So there!

She buys her great-grandkids enormous yellow bags of Swedish Fish and thinks this confers sainthood upon her person. Maybe it does. I don’t know. I’m not a Catholic.

Our kitchen is unusable, out of order, not functional, until the TV set is turned on and blaring. The car cannot be driven without all-news radio. The radio is the first component she adjusts after turning on the ignition. Before the seat belt, before seat adjustment, mirror or steering column. (I’m joking, of course. Mom isn’t aware that you can adjust the steering column. That’s one of those things they teach you in the Armed Forces. A civilian, mom doesn’t know what she doesn’t know.)

Emellertid… Swedish for “in the meantime.” The one constant in the last 15 years has been the refrain, “I am leaving my estate evenly divided between you, your sister Carol and your younger brother Timothy. All my money, all my stocks and bonds, will be evenly divided between the three of you. But not the house. You live here, you get the house.”

Holy Toledo, I live here, I get the house! Located in bucolic Oxburg, Maryland, this splendid 1927 abode is a mere eight blocks from the Metro stop at White Flint. Location, location, location, the appraised value is $650,000. Even after taxes, that’s a cool half mil. I have been willing to put up with a lot of aggravation, knowing that half a million dollars is the jackpot awaiting me at the end of it all.

You look at it and see a red-brick manse. My father Bernard, from New York City, saw it as a southern plantation. On a half acre of land, he planted grass, English ivy, forsythia, pear trees, red maple, loblollies, holly bushes, tomatoes and corn. “You three kids, you get 50¢ a week in allowance,” he decided. “You can take care of the place.” Talk about child labor, he converted us into pickaninnies, little black kids pickin’ cotton on massah‘s plantation. There’s a black and white enlargement on our dining room wall of me pushing the 30-pound steel hand lawnmower in our backyard, circa 1963. I look resigned to my fate.

Today, there are so many black SUV’s on our street, I feel like I’m living in Langley.

How can this tiny house be worth so much?

Here’s my description of Oxburg in a blog post from 2011: “Built by developer Julius Lapidus in 1927, he felt he couldn’t very well name it Lapidusville. Originally, he wanted to, but his wife said ‘no.’ Julius’ vision was a bedroom community for people working in Rockville, Chevy Chase and Bethesda, but also a location with direct access to Washington, D.C. The Blue Line ran local buses to and from the city, giant Studebakers with 6 cylinder, 40-horsepower engines and plate glass windshields. They provided a 1½ hour commute each way. Rockville Pike at the time was what its name implies, a thoroughfare linking several areas of habitation. A visionary, as I say, Julius left substantial lawns around each dwelling. ‘How I’d like to live,’ was his favorite expression. Black and white photos of the area show his billboards advertising ‘Cottage living in a rural paradise, accessible by car with urban centers.’ Pure Julius.

“… Hailing from Philadelphia, Julius named the place for Maryland historical figure John Ox (1617 – 1671) who was said to have owned property in the area. A developer, not a scholar, it never dawned on Julius to check out the bona fides of the man for whom the development was being named. A trip to the Library of Congress would have unearthed the trenchant facts: A Puritan from Boston, John Ox was at constant loggerheads with his Anglican Episcopalian neighbors. Basically a pain in the butt, after a few years, John Ox got run out of Maryland [ tarred and feathered, on a rail ]. No matter. Julius named it ‘Oxburg,’ and Oxburg it remains.”

 

Mom had an episode in October 2013 which landed her in the hospital for a week. She collapsed in the living room. I saved her life. Since then, her mobility is limited. Sharp as a tack— although she now has “lapses”— she can’t walk very well. Armed with a cane and a walker, she doesn’t want to acknowledge that anything has changed. I do 75% of the chores, bringing in the newspaper in the morning, putting away the dishes stacked in the drying rack, recycling newspapers and bottles and jars and plastic bags, doing laundry service, maid service, gardener, delivery man, handyman, bureaucrat on the telephone (she doesn’t hear well), assistant cook, dishwasher and taking out the garbage at night. Dealing with a compulsive neurotic, the line between caregiver and indentured servant is razor thin! Nothing I do is ever going to be enough. In the last six months, I have been run ragged and I still haven’t even begun a third of the chores she “would like to see done around this place.” When she noticed that I washed down the walls and ceiling in the kitchen, she now expects the same to be done in the bathrooms and bedrooms. She LOVES having a full-time servant whom she doesn’t even have to pay. I get room and board. She feels that I should be delighted she lets me live here.

Over the years I’ve gotten fortune cookies with messages like “If your desires are not extravagant, they will be granted.” A Buddhist, as superstitious as anyone, I admit that these statements lulled me into a false sense of security. Since mom never added my name to the title for the house, that should have set off alarm bells, but if I can’t trust my mom— whom I am living with— whom can I trust?

HA HA HA HA HA!

So while the world goes ape shit over the release of Sgt. Obi-Wan Bergdahl from captivity among the Taliban and the capture of suspected terrorist Wawa al-Kassucki for the attack on the consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi, my mom suddenly announces, “You need to make your arrangements. I’ve decided to sell the house and go into managed care. It may take a year to prepare the place for sale, but once sold, I’ll use the money for my old age. I expect you to stay in the region and take care of my affairs.”

Listening, I say, “Yeah, okay.”

Then I go outside to tear bags and bags of honeysuckle from among the English ivy on our fucking estate. And it dawns on me what I just heard.

Huh??? After 15 years, I am back to 1999, standing on a hillside with my possessions in a wooden crate. For all the years of aggravation and suffering, I am getting the hole in a donut! Nothing. Nada. At dinner that night, at our dining room table, I point this out. “FIFTEEN YEARS OF UNMITIGATED SHIT AND I GET NOTHING! NOTHING! THANKS A LOT, BITCH! TO THINK THAT I BELIEVED YOU! WHAT AN IDIOT I AM !!!”

It’s summer, a fly has gotten in the house, making kamikaze dives at our dinner plates. “Let’s go eat on the porch,” I suggest.

“Thank you very much,” mom frumps. “You’re going out to eat on the porch and leaving me with the fly!”

Congratulations, Oprah! A lifetime of abuse from her parents and her husband has convinced my mom that she is the perennial victim. Everybody is a mean son-of-a-bitch beating up on poor little Rosa.

 

Ads on the TV indicate that Heather Mizeur is running for governor of Maryland on a platform of improving schools and roads by legalizing and taxing marijuana. These are her own ads! She is proud of this proposal. I can’t imagine a worse idea! Is this woman totally crazy?

 

My mom has accounts at three different banks: Each of her pensions is a direct deposit into a separate establishment. Instead of consolidating these accounts— which would require an hour’s paperwork and a few phone calls— mom spends hours and hours moving her money around, based on some arcane method as transparent and understandable as tea leaves. When I go to Snazzy Bank to make a deposit for her using a check from United Bank, the Thai lady manager is delighted to meet me. “Hello!” she sings prettily, a small woman, exquisitely appointed.

“Yes, hi, hello. I’m just here making a deposit for my mom.”

“Is your name on the joint account?” she asks.

“Actually,” I admit, “it is. And our safe deposit box as well, thank you. This is an excellent bank.”

It’s not our fault that the local banks move their managers from location to location. We know John, the previous manager, intimately. Now I’m forced to bring someone totally unknown up to speed.

“You should get a Visa card with our low annual APY,” the Thai lady explains. “Do you have a Visa card with our low annual APY?”

“Actually, I’m good,” I assure her.

“Answer the question,” she chirps, unrelenting. “Do you have a Visa card from this bank with our low annual APY?”

There’s a fine line between customer service and becoming a pest, I am discovering.

“I’m fine. My mom is fine. We have our credit and debit cards. I thank you.”

“Yes, but this is a very good deal. You need to fill out this simple-to-read application and apply for a Snazzy Bank Visa Card with bonus points and our low annual APY!”

It’s America. Sales are an important part of the economy. Bank managers’ performance is based on the volume of business they generate. Periodically, they sit down in a classroom environment and practice their skills at creating new business. As an Asian immigrant, this nice, demanding lady wants to succeed. Here in the land of hopes and dreams, here in the land of opportunity. I understand all this.

Which doesn’t mean I want any additional credit cards. The U. of Maryland, my alma mater, offers me a Visa card. American Express, for some obscure reason, keeps sending me solicitations in the mail. Discover Bank in Utah, where I have an exceptional Certificate of Deposit paying a phenomenal 3% per annum, offers, in addition, a Discover Card. Linked to my CD or otherwise, at my discretion. Everybody but the U.S. Post Office and the local library, it seems, is offering me a Visa card or a Master Card. All with exceptionally low APY’s.

“The business of America,” said Calvin Coolidge, our 30th president, “is business.”

With a concerted effort and a mad dash to my car, I escape this persistent Thai lady who is trying to give me the business.

 

My younger bro Timothy sends my mom a shipment of chocolate-covered strawberries from Shari’s Berries. I love the packaging: “PERISHABLE – Once opened, contents may disappear immediately.”

 

Band night at the local music emporium on Rockville Pike. The headliners stink. We all help lug in equipment from their van. We stand around while they set up and run a sound check. Then— wham, bam, thank you, ma’am – 130 db of pure crap. “Maybe it’s the venue,” I’m thinking. So I approach the open black guitar case balanced ostentatiously on a chair. Expecting to find CD-R’s for sale— $10 each— from a studio recording session or maybe their rehearsal space in somebody’s garage. Instead I find— get ready for it— cassette tapes. In 2014. For $10 apiece. I mean, you really have to bend over backwards and pull apart your buttocks with both hands to come up with cassette tapes. In this age of digital recording and the resurrection of collectible vinyl, cassette tapes neither win nor place nor show. There just isn’t any market for them. No one has a cassette player!

What are they gonna come up with next, 8-track?

What a blow-out.

Never-the-less, you have to give the promoter credit, here comes DJ Frip carrying a cut-off white plastic milk jug, collecting gas money.

“But they’re awful!” I protest. “Music very bad! No melodies!”

“Hey, man, we’re talkin’ gas money here. They drove all the way from Ohio. GIVE ME TEN DOLLARS!!!” he’s screaming. To be heard.

“No! Fuck you!”

DJ Frip shakes his head sadly and goes to the next listener. Obviously, I’m not gettin’ it. Sure they’re awful, but THEY DROVE ALL THE WAY FROM OHIO!

Man.

 

It’s summer. Walking to the library, I can’t believe the young lady, as tall as me, raven-haired, standing on the sidewalk. In her frilly nightie. At 12 noon. Pointy nose, she looks like a cupcake, left over from the photo shoot for Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream. Her cell phone firmly clutched in her left hand, she watches me approach and… laughs. “A strange man has just come up to me,” she chortles into the phone. “Hi-i-i-i! ” she tells me, all but melting my plastic wraparound sunglasses. I take them off to stare into her heavily painted soft brown eyes. “I’ll talk to you later, Sandy!” she concludes, snapping shut the cell phone.

“You’re home from college for the summer!” I blurt. Sheer guesswork.

“Uh huh!” she giggles, leaning into me. Somehow the eye contact warrants closer proximity. I lean into her, too, taking off my baseball cap, so I won’t bean her in the forehead with its stiff visor. I find myself dropping everything. I wrap my arms around her waist— really slowly, in case she finds my advances offensive. Not at all! Her left hand snakes behind me, finding the bump on the back of my head. Her little fingers go to work on me. I mean, at this point, we’re embracing.

We kiss, long, full-mouthed kisses.

She stops to look at me. Smirking. “Hi-i-i-i! Y’know, I’m the fraternity mascot for AEPi at U. of Michigan.”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“Why do you taste so good?” she asks, her tongue diving back into my mouth. The tang of tobacco makes my tongue tingle. “Do you have a car? Can you drive us shopping? Sandy and I don’t have any money! We want to go shopping,” she explains guilelessly, staring into my eyes. ” ‘Cause it would be, like, really great if we three can all go shopping together. You have a credit card, right?”

Her name— you’re sitting?— God help me, turns out to be Monica.

What won’t we do for a summer romance?

With my car in the shop, I rent one at Luxe. The young agent signs me up for a silver-colored KIA Rio that roars like a lawnmower, revs to 6,000 rpm before every gear shift and glides down the road like an ice flow. The rental agent describes it as “perky.” When I return the car 24 hours later, I’m wearing a T-shirt from the Cayman Islands. “You like-a the Caymans?” asks a young, sandy-haired Englishman with freckles standing behind the counter. All the rental agents are good-looking young dudes in dark slacks and white shirts. Busy listening to this conversation.

“I always thought I’d retire there, but it’s gotten too expensive,” I lament.

“Yes, it’s all that,” he agrees.

“I was once offered a job on Seven Mile Beach as a scuba diving instructor.”

“You’re a Master Diver?” he asks.

“Yes, that’s why they offered me the job.”

“I’m still working on my 1-a certification.”

We talk beaches, coral reefs, moray eels, shark repellent.

“I’m returning the car a day early because I got mine back from the shop before I had expected.”

“Oh,” ask the agents excitedly, “what do you drive? An Alfa Romeo? A Maserati?”

So Kevin Feingold, international sportsman, answers truthfully, “A Toyota Camry.”

“Oh,” say the car rental agents, visibly disappointed.

 

I also consider myself a semi-pro golfer. I quadruple-bogey every hole.

 

My Camry has a brand new bumper without a mark on it, so in the grocery store parking lot, some jerkoff has to park his Dodge Ram pressed right up against my front license plate. To show me that my shiny new car don’t impress him much.

Sure, I want to take a hammer and smash in the black hood and fancy grill work on his pickup. Of course I do. This is Maryland. Fortunately, there is a paper thin space between his vehicle and mine. I carefully back up my Camry. I examine the paint job. No marks. All right. But no, I’m an old fox and I know: As soon as you have something you love, some frustrated individual is gonna smash it all to Hell.

 

When I ask mom for some names of managed care facilities I can look up online, she is back atcha hot and heavy. Med skrik och gap in Swedish. Sitting in her favorite chair, glowering, she shouts over and over, “YOU ARE NOT A BUDDHIST! YOU ARE NOT A BUDDHIST!” My cousin Jimbo in Portland, Oregon tried a similar tactic 20 years ago. “Buddhists don’t care about money! YOU ARE NOT A BUDDHIST!” lectures my mom, the atheist. “You make a fuss over saving the life of little insects, but toward people, your heart is stone cold and totally uncaring. YOU ARE NOT A BUDDHIST!”

Displaying her incomprehension of Buddhism. Yes, I try to preserve (almost) all life on the planet, weeding our flower beds but protecting the lives of flies and spiders. Distaining fly swatters, I catch insects in a paper tissue and release them into the great outdoors. Not having that option regarding human beings, I am careful how I meet and greet. And to whom. If anything, the purpose of my Buddhism is to increase and nurture my ability to get along with my fellows. Whom I find somewhat lacking in intelligence. And with whom I easily lose patience. Imperfect of soul, I need Buddhism to counter this defect. So I don’t argue when people point out my obvious imperfection. Shouting “You are not a Buddhist!” only makes it their problem, not mine.

I once had a Scotsman screw-up under my command who had the audacity to tell a Review Board that all his problems stemmed from me being his superior officer. I was asked to counsel him. “Okay, Colin, what exactly is the problem here?” I asked.

“You’re too friendly with the troops,” he claimed. “I hear nothing but complaints. You fraternize and that causes a newbie like me to have problems.”

“There have been complaints,” I noted aloud and wrote it down on a pad of notepaper. Pen poised, I asked, “How many?”

“A LOT,” said Colin.

“Fine. Let’s get a handle on this. A dozen complaints?” I asked.

“No,” he admitted. “Fewer than that.”

“Oh. Okay-y-y,” I agreed. “A half dozen. Six complaints from the men that I fraternize too much, creasing your style. Six?”

“No,” he admitted, slouching. “More like four.”

In the end, he agreed that the two references he’d heard about my fraternization with the troops maybe weren’t the entire reason he was having difficulty getting adjusted to his new surroundings.

Looking at my mom, I suggest, “You’ve lost friends since I came to live with you?”

“Yes I have!!!”

“How many? Fifty? More than fifty?”

“You know I haven’t put a number on it!” she seethes.

“Okay, 150.”

“That’s not the point. You don’t suffer fools! Well, some of our neighbors are fools. The Johnsons and the Kents,” she says, pointing in their direction. “Carolyn Davis… They were still my friends before you came along. My neighbors used to love me! Since you arrived, they never even ring the doorbell! They shun me.”

“I disagree. Because what they keep saying to me is, ‘Thank God you’re living with your mom and taking care of her, Kevin. We sleep better at night not having to worry about your mom.’ So, yes, they are less involved, but that’s because they think you and I are hunky dory over here, living the life of Riley. When they do take you out to dinner, why do they always invite me if I’m such a monster?”

“They’re just being polite!”

See. Nobody ever wins an argument with my 93-year-old mom!

Blame it on global warming, I’m going fucking crazy and then my neighbor David Davis acts up. Bigtime. I don’t expect someone I know to pop up in my living room like a genie out of a bottle. We leave the back door open in summer, so the physics of it is hardly mindboggling. Still, behaviorally, it’s a bit much.

Add the fact that White Flint Mall is being dismantled, a victim of online shopping and high gas prices. The place looks like Beirut in the 1980’s, rubble everywhere, only a few shops left standing. Jolene’s Hair & Nails is one of the last holdouts, basically because of the huge beige-colored metal chairs women sit in when getting their hair or nails done. Jolene is still scouting a new location. David tells his wife Carolyn to carry this heavy 1½-foot by 1½-foot iron case into the beauty parlor. Gun-metal, it looks like a relic of World War Two.

We all know that David had a checkered past in the Weather Underground. We just don’t talk about it. I still don’t know if he went to prison… or what. Who cares? Indiscretions of youth in the wild 1960’s. God knows I have a backstory as shameful as anyone’s. What I find out now, with a gun stuck in my ribs, is that David, my next-door neighbor— who I thought was mafia or CIA— ran his own business, a military tech firm under government contract, devising and building small-scale, unconventional armament. Coked up, in the middle of a meltdown, David is still lucid enough, standing by my mantelpiece, to explain that the recession killed his biz. The U.S. Government budget impasse in Washington, D.C. resulted in pared-down military appropriations. David’s firm got phased out. Sans recall.

He ain’t Gatsby and I’m not worried about the clock.

“Why me?” I bleat, the lament of every innocent bystander through the ages. Thank God mom is asleep upstairs.

“You’re military! I don’t know what to do!” grunts my neighbor, looking like a wild Russian anarchist, hair standing up spikily, eyes darting all over the room.

“Well, what have you done?” I ask, gently pushing the gun in his hand to one side. I don’t ask David to relinquish it, I just don’t want him pointing it at me.

“I’ve built an IED,” he concedes. “I’ve had my wife take it down to White Flint Mall.”

“WHITE FLINT MALL?” I guffaw. “The place is a dump. It’s moribund. There ain’t no White Flint Mall.”

“It’s a bomb,” David says, sitting on mom’s plush white sofa. Sheisse! Nobody ever sits there. I can just see the dust motes rising in the air. I really wish he’d asked beforehand, so I could have vacuumed the thing.

“What kind of bomb?” I ask.

Staring at the floor miserably, David Davis says, “AN ATOMIC BOMB!”

“Naw, I don’t think so,” I assure him.

“It’s a small atomic bomb.”

“I don’t know if you got hold of enough plutonium to reach critical mass,” I suggest.

“Well, I tried to do the math,” he explains. “But you may be right. In any case, it’s a dirty bomb, spewing plutonium over a wide area.”

“I mean, you’ll let me call the police?” I ask, walking over and plucking the gun from David’s lifeless hand. Rarely have I seen anyone so filled with remorse.

The Maryland State Police come and pick David up for questioning.

An hour later, I get a visit from the FBI in the person of burly black agent Mark Spencer. I take him out to the back porch, so we don’t involve my mom, who is sitting in her favorite chair reading the newspaper.

“Well-l-l,” drawls Mark Spencer, “this certainly sucks. If Mrs. Davis had come down Wisconsin Avenue, street sensors and the overhead satellite scan would have detected heightened radiation levels. Since 9/11, we do measure for this stuff 24/7. But since she never came south of White Flint Mall, the suitcase bomb fell into a dead spot in our satellite surveillance. Technologically, we never even saw the damn bomb.”

I’m trembling so hard, I almost drop my coffee cup. Helpfully, Mark shows me on his smartphone a topographical map of the region and where the blind spot is. He also assures me the NSA is fixing it even as we speak. “Your buddy— ”

“HE ISN’T MY BUDDY!” I shout. “He’s my next-door neighbor.”

“Your neighbor saved us all from a world of grief by constructing an improvised explosive device which malfunctioned. I want to think that was his American patriotism speaking out. He was angry, but he couldn’t bring himself to detonate a weapon of mass destruction on American soil.”

“Hail and amen to all that,” I tell the burly black agent in his alpaca suit. “Domestic terrorism rears its ugly head.”

Agent Spencer seems deeply offended by my attitude. Too flippant? What does he want, I should be a drama queen? Listen, I saw worse in Bosnia.

 

End of story?

HA HA HA HA HA!

No way.

Two representatives of EPA— dressed in hazmat suits that make them look like bit players from the movie Gravity— ring our doorbell. “Was ist los?” I ask them.

“We’re agents Sanders and Williams from the Environmental Protection Agency. We’ve been informed,” they tell me smoothly— only one does all the talking, the other stands there making faces— “that your carbon footprint is entirely too large for a dwelling this size. When, may we ask, was your current furnace installed?”

“When was the furnace installed?”

“Yes, when was your furnace installed?”

“Shit! 1973. It still works.”

“And pollutes the environment. Unnecessarily,” I am grimly warned. “Your refrigerator?”

“Yes, we have a refrigerator,” I concede, standing on the front step, getting extremely annoyed. “What is this???”

“FBI agent Mark Spencer is deeply concerned that you are breaking environmental laws and polluting the environment.”

Oh ho! The upshot is, the EPA fines mom and me $1,428 and requires us to replace our furnace, the freezer, the refrigerator and the air conditioning, all of which are deemed subpar because they were manufactured back in the Stone Age.

I do point out that the house was built in 1927, but EPA regulations are EPA regulations.

Jesus Christ! It must be summer. What an upheaval!

Big 10 McCartney Questions

 

10 Questions Not To Ask Sir Paul McCartney

 

1. Have you always been a solo artist?

2. Why did you divorce Cynthia?

3. Who does your hair?

4. Who writes your lyrics?

5. Is it true you have to pay Ringo to play?

6. Why didn’t you want Calvin Klein to manage the Beatles?

7. Why don’t you speak Chechen?

8. Why was your early music so much better?

9. Is it true you’re going to be the warm-up band on the next Rolling Stones tour?

10. Why don’t you return my calls?

Season For Giving

Dear Mister, Missus, Miss or Ms.,

Ho ho ho!

Santa’s on his way

‘Though I cannot find

Where I parked my sleigh!

            Even if you have never heard of The Price of Charity Is Charity Charity, I must say I am aghast at not receiving your contribution during this season of giving. Did your check get lost in the mail? For God’s sake, we are depending on you! I was just saying to Marjorie, my secretary, “The check musta got lost in the mail.” I mean, I know you want to contribute. Your $10 contribution will

• allow us to add a new wing to Charity Hospital in Muncie, Indiana
• save the followers of Baha’i in Hindu Goa
• protect the elephants of Kenya tusk by tusk
• open a gold mine in Brazil
• help prostitutes around the corner from our office make some money
• find a cure for vaginal herpes

and, most importantly,

• improve the quality of my paycheck as president and CEO of The Price of Charity Is Charity Charity.

Your contribution will be matched dollar for dollar in Spanish pesetas. Ever since Spain went over to the Euro, there have been lots of pesetas floating around. They may be totally worthless, but we guarantee to match your donation in pesetas.

We get a 4.0 out of 5 rating from the Bupkis Institute.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer, including my mother, my younger brother Tim and my Uncle Sid, all equally employed this holiday season.

Each time we count your money, we’ll say a prayer especially written for YOU!

Why is this man smiling? Why are you frowning? Happiness is a contribution to The Price of Charity Is Charity Charity.

Only speak Russian? Payem parusskii? Ne problema. Telephone our multi-lingual hotline. Ask for Natasha! One sexy lady.

We are listed in Checkbook. (Actually, we’re on their mailing list. Same thing!)

Bullets bounce off us.

So don’t make me ask twice. Things could get ugly. Let’s be friends and you send me that $10 contribution. Capiche?

I’d say “tax deductible,” but what d’ I know? I’m no tax expert! Call it a “maybe.”

Are you sitting??? For every $10 contribution, you will be sent, absolutely free, a complete, thoroughly dusted signed copy of the novel The Author’s Dolls from 1977. A wrenching characterization of author Kevin Feingold’s first marriage, this book was once banned (okay, some say panned ) by much of the publishing industry. Not available in stores!

Still reading? Huh boy! So far, I’ve only spoken of piddling contributions of $10. Should you choose to become one of our Lifetime Main Man Supporters ($100,000 and above), arrangements will be made for you to dine with the founder of our organization, my mom, tax accountant Mrs. Rose Feingold! Nu? Say you won the lottery and you’ve got money to burn. Good for you! The sky’s the limit at The Price of Charity Is Charity Charity. We’ll even buy an ambulance in your name and ship it to Soweto! (NOTE: This requires a $500,000 contribution or above. Used paramedical equipment don’t come cheap.)

If you’re worried that I’m some fly-by-night shyster, a quick list of my bona fides should dispel any such qualms: Graduated with a B. A. from the University of Maryland; U.S. Army (Ret.); featured on 2005 Dutch Antilles postage stamp.

Why contribute to us rather than some niggling, greedy, onerous, pushy charity that telephones you in the middle of dinner for a donation? Why? BECAUSE WE DON’T DO THAT! Listen, I don’t even OWN a telephone! (I use my mom’s.) But enough about me… Unlike Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty, we support gay marriage! I find lesbians strangely attractive.

On those occasions when we purchase office furniture manufactured in China (please, we’re only human), I nevertheless can assure you that not one pfennig of that money goes to financing al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria and Iraq. Others may do so. Not us!

Visit us online or at specially marked locations of Stolid Gold Cadillac Groceries. We’re over by the drug department. Where else?

Ask about our Spender’s Club ! You supply the moolah, we supply ideas how you should spend it! Or book a trip with Genocidal Travels to educational flashpoints like Darfur, Rwanda, Holocaust Poland, Bosnia or Tenerife.

Wait! There’s more! Send in your contribution right now and, for a limited time only, we are not responsible for misuse of our products or services, malfeasance, malpractice or claims of ownership by others than ourselves in both domestic and foreign markets. This disclaimer applies specifically to all activities in the Continental United States as well as American territories. Sorry, but there it is! This letter contains unrated, copyrighted material which may be inappropriate for young readers. Printed on recycled trash.   

And don’t forget this holiday season, everybody, eine Tonbandaufnahme von Willy Brandt im das deutsches Reichstag haben ich nicht.

So… God bless! And thanks a mil!

Sincerely,

K. Feingold

PS. Pls put yr traytables in the upright position. Thank you!

a 301 (c) 401 (k) 9/11, 4 X 5, 8 X 10 size 34B D-cup organization

Way of the Indian

I want to go home. I am a guest of Mr. Frank Clearwater at the Stolichnaya Indian Casino in South Dakota. Right away a disclaimer is in order: This casino has absolutely nothing  to do with the Russian vodka of the same name. This Indian tribe— thirty-two members and counting— appropriated the name and incorporated themselves as an official Indian nation for the sole purpose of opening a casino thirty miles west of the Harzen Mines. Everybody knows that. There isn’t a lot of hemming and hawing, but any discussion of Indian history finds a definite vagueness about tribal origins. Who knows what the name was before they changed it to Stolichnaya?!

Frank is an old Army buddy and obviously he means well, but nothing is quite as it seems. When I arrived in the afternoon of December 15, they told me the casino would open on the 17th. Now they say we’ll open on December 19. I’d be lying if I said we’re in a blizzard. The temp is a blustery, windy 40 degrees. I trudge across rock-hard prairie in store sample snowshoes from Arctic Winter Apparel. The snowshoes are made in Taiwan. I’m wearing thermal pants and a thermal, padded jacket, both in designer black. I have set up a tent guaranteed to – 40°, but we’re at the other end of the thermometer. I am out of doors playing games to avoid spending time in the casino.

The baize tables are set up for craps, the roulette wheels are polished, the chandeliers shine brightly with nary a burned-out bulb. Even the dining room occasionally serves food. However… The women in this tribe are only five feet tall. Wide in the hips, tiny breasts, stumpy-legged, their figures don’t correspond to anything in the Victoria’s Secret catalog. Decked out in beads and Santa’s elves costumes, they flounce around the main floor with nothing to preoccupy themselves but cat fights. The men are drunk. Once in awhile, one of the cooks will suddenly become inspired and prepare a feast. “Come quickly, paleface, there is turkey dinner!” a child astride a horse signals me. Hightailing it back to the main building, I too stuff myself to satiation. Then a day or two will go by where all we have to sustain ourselves are packets of oat meal and hot coffee.

Frank, meanwhile, is trying to educate me.

“Why do you live in concrete blockhouses?” I ask.

“We need to open the casino before January 1st,” he answers, a slightly different question. “Otherwise we miss out on the Indian grants for 2013. The government built the blockhouses, so that’s where we live.”

“Do you still know how to make teepees?”

Apparently I have insulted my host! Gathering a building party, he takes me out back, just beyond the concrete apron of the parking area, and directs construction right then and there of a teepee. When I start to apologize, Frank says, “No, no, kemo sabe. A teepee will look good for the tourists.”

Taking me down the road a full fifteen paces, Frank says “And this is our Wedding Chapel.”

“¿Qué? ”

“Why should Las Vegas get all the wedding business?” he asks rhetorically. We go inside. I can only admire the tidy rows of tiny pews.

“Do you only plan on marrying midgets?”

“We’ll expand later as business picks up,” he promises me. “Oh, here’s Pastor Daniel!”

Dressed in faux papal raiment, the pastor weaves his way down the aisle and vaults clean into the third row of pews.

“Ouch! That must have hurt,” I suspect.

“He does have a fondness for the grape,” admits Frank.

We get Pastor Daniel laid out on the floor, at which point he proceeds to shake the rafters with his sonorous snores. We decide to let him sleep it off, quietly closing the chapel door on our way out.

Frank also provides an explanation of Indian names. “Indian names,” he points out, “depend on what catches a father’s eye. The previous generation were a little irresponsible in that respect. They would go to the cantina to celebrate the birth of a new baby. Whatever caught a brave’s eye on the way back to his wigwam became fodder for naming.”

Frank’s Indian name is “Buffalo Turd Drying On Prairie.” And his is one of the better names.

One night the cooks include “buffalo taters” among the food selection. Just about to dig in, I find out that “buffalo taters” are the sexual organs of male buffalo. “Catch ya later,” I laugh, shoveling mine back onto the serving dish.

Writing this, I’m purposely avoiding one of those “Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee” laments. It’s already been done. I’ll settle for a cogent narrative.

In 1862, government surveyor John Hamilton spelled the demise of the Indian way of life in the Dakotas. Standing erect on the seat of a Conestoga covered wagon, he surveyed the miles of endless steppe. Not seeing anyone, he declared, “A land without people for a people in need of more land!” Legend has it, a prairie dog then spooked the oxen pulling the wagon, jostling Hamilton off his feet. Falling to the ground, the poor man hit his head on a rock. He spent the remainder of the journey laid out in the back of the wagon with a major concussion.

“Justice is swift,” say the Indians.

A wily chief of the previous generation canoodled a willowy blonde into being his wife— one of three, the other two coming from the indigenous clan. The result is the tallest member of the Stolichnaya, Swift Wind Mitchell. The first time I met him, I only got a partial view. It was when I went to the lavatory adjacent to the mezzanine. Crapper stalls proportioned for squat Indian braves, Swifty was using the stall at the end, the door wide open, his knees, shins and black leather boots sticking out for my inspection.

“Nice boots!” I commented.

“Him USAF fighter pilot,” Frank later informed me, reverting to tribal syntax. “Him 24 years old. Him originally called Breaking Wind, but name changed when he become pilot!” It made perfect sense that they would be proud of Swifty, he has a regular pay check.

Nice as he is, some of Frank’s idiosyncrasies get on my nerves. Every night, he counts all the silverware, not concerned that we have stolen any, but worried we have accidently thrown some silver plated fork in the trashcan. Three loaves of wheat bread on a shelf over the knife rack, Frank instructs us every morning which one we should be using for the day. To prevent any one loaf from getting staler than the other two. He keeps sending squaws to my room. But not for what you might think. They are there specifically and only to give me foot massage. Period.

Since we’re still vacuuming carpets and making beds in prep for the Grand Opening, Swifty and I get assigned mattress cover duty. “Drunks throw up,” Swifty explains laconically. “But not on our mattresses they don’t !” Before housekeeping comes in and makes the beds in each room, we pull a waterproof white latex cover over each jumbo-size mattress and zip it tight. “Very nice, but too small to use as a condom,” Swifty assures me.

“You must be a USAF fighter pilot,” I reckon.

Grinning, he doesn’t deny it.

While wheelchair accessible, someone forgot to put a handrail in front of the casino for people with canes. In a mad rush, four Indians and I spend all day outside in windbreakers, jeans, work boots, gloves and baseball caps, using a blowtorch to soften up the soil and a posthole digger to make holes, a mountain of wooden posts awaiting plantation. “It doesn’t need to last,” I point out. “Next summer you can put in something permanent, with nice blocks of cement anchoring each post and all that good stuff. This is for now. Anything you sink into the ground ain’t goin’ nowhere!” My companions grunt in agreement.

How many Indians does it take to dig a posthole? How many you got?

Considering the size of our garbage, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that we attract feral cats and coyotes.

Prejudice hurts. Frank’s wife Sunflower is as emotionally scarred and neurotic as he is. “Mrs. Persecution Complex,” she’s sure we are all ganging up on her. Since she spends more time at the kitchen door than anyone else, the cat population sees her as some kind of god. In homage, they leave her a prize catch: a nice big juicy rat carcass. “These cats are terrorizing me,” she complains, “leaving dead animals on my doorstep!”

“They’re sharing.”

“Let them go share with someone else!”

Listen, nothing surprises me. For four years, I was married to Veronica a k a “Mrs. Johnny Appleseed.” Holidays, birthdays, anniversaries and weddings, she gave each lucky recipient a plant. A growing, thriving green being in need of constant care and attention. The salespeople at Herman’s Plant Farm knew my Veronica well. Finally, my next door neighbor Tom said, “If your wife gives us one more fucking plant, I’m going to get a rifle and shoot the bitch!”

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “When you say ‘the bitch,’ do you mean Veronica or the plant?”

Meanwhile, the sun beats down relentlessly on South Dakota. In the middle of trucking away dirt in a wheelbarrow, I am confronted by the first normal-looking person I’ve seen since I arrived here. Her name is Charlotte or “Charlie.” She’s the blond, 14-year-old daughter of the mural painter they have brought in from San Francisco. “What ya doin’?” she drawls, hands on hips.

“Why aren’t you in school?” I counter.

“Christmas break.”

“Oh goody!” I sneer. She laughs.

Your normal teenager, Charlie prances around the casino, flirting outrageously. Mostly with me. Dig it! An Indian casino needs an Indian mural. Native art. So they get a bearded hippie white guy high on marijuana and paint fumes to come paint it. At what point does “authenticity” enter their picture? I wonder.

“We own the casino,” Frank points out. “That makes it the real deal. This is the Indian way.”

Miss Bossypants, Charlie takes to shoving her left hand in my face, fingers splayed, barking commands like a Sergeant-Major: “Come to dinner!”

“Frank says they need you in the office!”

“The shower curtain in my room is stuck! Come unstick it!”

“Shaving your head only makes you look younger. It doesn’t change your actual age!”

“Hey, mister, your fly’s open! Hee hee hee! ”

Raiding the children’s library, she sits in the lounge in the evening bouncing her foot, reading aloud children’s fairy tales with licentious innuendo in all the wrong places. “Jack and the Beanstalk ” she’ll say, giving me a knowing look.

“Little Miss Muffet sat on a… tuffet…

“Jack and Jill went… up… the… hill…” implying unspoken shenanigans of an unseemly nature.

Hey, we like each other! We also have the lounge completely to ourselves since her daddy Mark and all the Indian braves are crowded into the teepee out back smoking pipes of peace. “Come sit here,” says Charlie, scrunching up in her leather chair.

“Don’t be ridiculous! We’ll be sitting on top of each other!”

“I can sit in your lap, daddy!”

Her constant teasing has me noticeably engorged. This greatly amuses Charlie. Standing up and marching to my chair, she plops innocently into my lap, a giant grin splitting her rose-petal mouth. “Oops, what’s this?” she asks, brushing my crotch with her fingers. “Oops! Daddy, it’s alive! What’s in there?! ”

“What do you think is in there?” I grouse.

“Let’s look!”

“Let’s not!!!”

I mean, even South Dakota has laws.

*

            Like flies on a cow pie, the casino begins attracting some very strange birds. First to arrive is Eduardo Ramirez, ostensibly from Cartagena. “If you’re from Colombia,” I ask him, “why is your accent East L.A.?”

Whatever his mumbled answer, I never get it. He does give me his card:

Spiritualist Van Gogh

            Turning it over in my hands and examining the pristine back side, I ask, “What exactly does being a Spiritualist Van Gogh entail?”

“Coming to the Way of the Paint,” he exclaims, his left eye drifting disconcertingly off into space.

“Which you do how?”

“Such questions!… Mumble…”

“What’s that?”

“YOU SNIFF THE PAINT!” he shouts loud enough to disturb the coyotes in their lairs. Piqued, he proceeds to unload a backpack full of aerosol spray cans.

“Okay, okay, I get it!”

Next comes Baroness Van Pelz, just in time for me to inform her “We’re not open.”

“Look me up online,” she suggests in a throaty baritone, her Boston Terrier peeing on the black rubber welcome mat, made in Brazil. Once I google her, I indicate to Frank, “Jesus! She’s worth so much money, we should rent her a room!”

“I’m leaving my entire estate to Fluffy,” says the Baroness, busy signing the hotel register at the front desk.

“Good for Fluffy,” I reply, handing her a magnetic keycard.

“Come, Fluffy,” she says, leading the Boston Terrier to the elevators.

Eduardo and I exchange glances. Hearing his dog whistle, Eduardo is visibly salivating.

With Mark of San Francisco supine from an overdose of cannabis, it falls to me to find a replacement muralist. “I do it, I do it, I do it,” insists Eduardo, brandishing an entire suitcase of paint in spray cans, “if you put in a good word for me with the Baroness’s dog!”

“It’s a deal!” I lie, desperate.

“What should I paint?”

“Paint what Mark was painting,” I propose, showing him the sketches. “It’s Custer’s Last Stand. There’s Sitting Bull. There’s Custer…”

“He was gonna paint him like that? With an Indian brave slicing Custer’s throat with a Bowie knife?”

“It’s a representational depiction,” I explain lamely.

“Oh! Representational art!” enthuses Eduardo. “This I know! I can do this!”

“Please do!”
In a 16-hour methamphetamine rush of spray paint, Eduardo finishes the mural.

With more than a little trepidation, Frank, Sunflower and I unveil it before the rest of the tribe.

It’s good!!! Yellow and white cotton fields as far as the eye can see. Indians picking baskets and bales of cotton. In the distance, on a hillock, General Custer ruminates, gazing toward the clouds. The entire left side of the painting is a single giant Texas longhorn steer, floating in a glorious cloud of white light.

“Is great!” comments Hare Running With Tail On Fire. “What it means?”

With bated breath, we turn to Eduardo. “Is representational,” he explains serenely, a successful artist at peace with the world. “Is the last thoughts of General Armstrong Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn: ‘Holy cow, where did all these cotton-pickin’ Indians come from?’ ”

As Fluffy’s dog walker, I now make the formal introduction. Listen, she and Eduardo get along like a house on fire! Within a day, they’ve published the banns. Less happy is the Baroness. “How can anybody marry a dog?” she gripes uncomprehendingly, marching angrily into the Wedding Chapel.

“We-ell-l-l,” explains the sheriff, making it sound like a word of three syllables. “It’s this new Obama legislation, legalizing marriages between consenting adults in non-heterosexual relationships.”

“Yes?” asks the Baroness.

“I just told you,” says the sheriff. “They’ve legalized marriages between consenting adults in non-heterosexual relationships. It’s all legal. That don’t mean I like it none.”

“The dog is four years old,” babbles the pastor, drunk as usual, weaving before our eyes. Grabbing onto a pew to keep from falling, he adds “That’s way past the age of consent in dog years!”

“I don’t mind them getting married!” replies the Baroness shrilly. “Fluffy knows her own mind. What I object to is the two of them consummating the marriage! Who knows where this young man has thrust his ding-dong!?”

“I find that offensive…” complains Eduardo.

“Woof!” says the dog.

“Not my problem,” says the sheriff.

Needless to say, I lose my job as Fluffy’s dog walker.

*

            The tribe knows they need to pipe in music. It says so right on page 3 of the “How To Run A Casino Handbook.” Unfamiliar with the nuances of elevator music, the Stolis have chosen Gustav Mahler as their auditory muse, providing some range in their choice of ambience:

Ponderous (molto bene) – Symphonies 1, 2 and 3

Boring (langsam) – Symphonies 4, 5 and 6

Screechy (purgatorio) – Symphonies 7, 8 and 9

Totally nuts (scherzo) – Symphony 10, conducted by Eugene Ormandy

*

            What a difference four days make! Grab the skis and snowshoes, it’s a teeth-chattering 8° outside and snowing.

Opening night! Under a strident moon, wolves howling, members of a dozen Indian nations from up and down the West Coast come east to check out the competition. We also have Islandic tennis pro Sigúr Isaksson and his stunning girlfriend as our guests, lending international élan to the gathering, even if they arrive flat broke and we must comp them both the room and free chips. Purgatorio Mahler groans quietly in the background. Charlie, my little minx, comes dressed in a tartan skirt and cashmere sweater, butterscotch-colored kneesocks and weejuns, her flaxen hair pulled back in a ponytail. Nose in the air, small hands clenched, she stalks the premises like a tigress. Our medical staff consists of Dr. Horatio McPherson, M.D., who proceeds to get falling down drunk, telling me, “Well, I’m bored and certified, so I guess you could say I’m board certified!”

For the sheriff, it’s a quiet night: Only one domestic dispute on the floor of the casino, as well as expelling an itinerant priest who calls himself Willie Graham. His schtick is performing a benediction over the slot machines in the name of Christ.

Warrior braves stand two deep at the bar imbibing alcohol by the bottle, before stumbling to the gaming area and staring glassy-eyed at the spinning roulette wheels or the bouncing pairs of white dice. The croupiers and dealers are all Indian squaws. Every one of them either ignores this exhibition of boorish behavior or shuts down her table and leads the miscreant into a corner— or an available broom closet— for a quick bout of surreptitious lust.

What would Opening Night be at a casino without a mathematical genius from M.I.T.? Who, using superior algorithms, intends to break the bank. Spiky hair, an ill-fitting suit, way too much dandruff and eyeglasses like Coke bottle bottoms, ours is straight out of Central Casting. Name: Richard Robinson Claverhouse. “I’m putting everything I own on red,” he exclaims gleefully. As the roulette wheel clanks out a bright green zero, Poor Richard deflates like a toy balloon.

Then there are the four merry Jamaicans dressed in après-ski and knit caps, very tall, enormous pearly white teeth, huge hands, who swing their arms to warm up and cadge drinks off the trays of passing waitresses. They say things like, “Dis place be aw’reet. So glad t’ see you, mon! Is demon cold out. We passin’ by, we hear good things ’bout dis place. Yo’ got a car? You gi’ us a ride to Rapid City!”

Curious, I ask how they got here without wheels.

“We snag a ride, mon.”

“Do you work?” I ask, emboldened by their party-hard demeanor.

“Sho! Clear we work. We work for Bose, all of da highs an’ none of da lows!” they guffaw, punching each other. An in-joke, apparently. They seem pretty high already. I tell the staff to keep them out of the hotel wing, visions of them rifling rooms, taking showers, squatting and generally raising Cain floating like sugar plums all through my head.

“Hi-i-i-i-i!”

Wherever I go, this happens. There’s some sexy, incredible, eligible lass who smiles, flirts and comes on to me JUST WHEN I’M TOTALLY ENGAGED IN OTHER BUSINESS. “Hi!” I say. I love this lady! Thirty years old, great brown eyes, gorgeous nose, high cheek bones, wide mouth, round little chin, a sweet figure in a cheap fake fur jacket, nice hands, pink gloves, bleached jeans, brown leather western boots. She sports sandy, windblown hair. Arching her blond eyebrows and laughing at me, she stands there waiting while I silently curse myself for pulling security. And, of course, I get called away to explain house rules to a group of 20-something frat boys. This always happens!

When white men in suits proceed to inspect every inch of the facility, I naturally assume they’re the Feds. It turns out they are lawyers representing the Oneida Indian Nation of New York, here to ensure that we in no way perpetrate the coinage “Redskin” in either our décor or our activities.

At precisely 10:32 p.m., with military precision, the front doors swing open and bearded young men in kaffiyehs, bearing AK-47’s, flood the casino, stamping their feet and shaking off snow. They smell of jasmine, sweat and hashish. They also seem momentarily bewildered by the scene. Gracious as always, our serving staff offers them hors d’oeuvres: pigs-in-a-blanket, bacon wrapped asparagus on a toothpick, pulled pork fritters. Our visitors, Muslims, are not amused. Their leaders quickly organize them into groups, instructing them in Arabic to put an end to this nest of Satanic, despotic idolatry. Even when the intruders physically intervene— grabbing the ball off the roulette wheel, seizing the dice— the Indians go right on drinking and carousing.

“We hereby declare this area as the Islamic Republic of South Dakota!” decree the insurgents, hoisting the yellow and green flag of Hezbollah atop the espresso machine. Even this outrage scarcely makes a dent in the bacchanalia. Only when they begin blowing up the Mercedes automobiles parked in the back lot, do the Indians go on the warpath.

“Come with me,” says Frank. Opening the door to the kitchen, he counts heads, then arms us with pig-stickers, butcher knives dipped in swine blood, sides of bacon and various dismemberment utensils. Our two most intrepid young warriors, Robin’s Egg Atop Coyote Poop and Plays With His Thingy, exit the larder wearing the heads of wild boar. Turning out the lights, the wily redmen stalk the heavily armed militants, slicing throats, stabbing and castrating with vehement determination. Many an Arab extremist is sent into the waiting arms of his 72 virgins in Paradise.

“Git some! ” enthuses Frank, the banzai call of soldiers since the reign of Alexander the Great. Rarely have I witnessed a more unequal battle.

Nary a shot is fired before an eerie silence descends on the premises, the air pungent, sticky with blood.

“Indian anger knows no bounds,” say the Stolichnaya.

Weary, I sit on a twisted barstool and drink coffee while the Stolis collect scalps. Charlie climbs out of a pantry and offers me a slice of lemon pie, but my mouth is so cottony, I find it impossible to eat.

“I’m not going to die without losing my virginity!” Charlie announces, obviously traumatized, clutching my hand. Since the elevators are out of service, we trudge up three flights to her room. Locking the door and putting on the chain, we undress, my trusty pig-poker— with its scimitar blade— always within reach.

I do her. Therapeutically. To great acclaim, her rosebud mouth plastering me with kisses. “Can’t we move to a state where they let you get married at, like, thirteen?” she asks me conversationally.

“So now you want to marry me?”

“I’m just sayin’…”

*

            Flying home, momentarily B.B.E.— Befuddled By Events— I forget and try to pass through airport security with an honorary Indian tomahawk in my shoulder bag. This is seized by the TSA with a great deal of consternation.

*

My $91,000 Electric Golf Cart

 

            “This doesn’t suck,” says my younger bro’ Tim, admiring a towel-warmer for his wife. We are at the Brookstone cool knickknack store at Montgomery Mall in Rockville, Maryland. They feature a variety of 6-inch fly-in-the-house attack helicopters, as well as plastic quadricopter drones that hover at chest level and survey the room with an on-board camera.

“If people coming to dinner are greeted by a four-propeller drone, I don’t think anybody will stay for dinner,” I point out.

“Say what you will, they are pretty neat,” counters Tim.

I try the Osim all-leather electric massage chair, a $3,600 item reduced to $3,300 for the holidays. In the anti-gravity position, you float on your back helplessly ensconced in leather. Hey, it’s cheaper than a ticket for a sub-orbital flight and you don’t have to wait five years for the technology to catch up with demand. Nothing, however, beats the $60 super-bungee chair. Awesome! You sit in a web of bungee cords, bobbing up and down like a cork. For $60! Your perfect ride.

We are at the Mall to test-drive the $91,000 Model S Tesla electric auto. Because Tesla isn’t authorized to sell in Maryland, their reps are limited to general P.R. For example, the driving instructor isn’t allowed to quote me a purchase price! Fortunately, sitting in the back seat, Tim looks it up on his iPad.

The last time I got an electric car, it was under the Christmas tree. Driving the Model S feels about the same, either you’re pressing the accelerator and the car moves forward or you are not and the car slows down. Abruptly. Grinding to a halt. It corners well, driving is comfortable. The seats, steering wheel and mirrors all adjust. It is a fine ride but not a whole lot more fun than your late model Corolla.

You can adjust the rack-and-pinion steering between sport, standard and comfortable. Wow! That makes a noticeable difference: sports car tension vs. standard control vs. the floating sensation of driving a boat.

“If you’re looking to impress,” says jet pilot Tim, “buy a Mercedes or BMW for $50,000. By the time the Canadians mine the ore and ship it to China, the Chinese refine it and the Japanese manufacture the batteries and ship them State-side, the carbon footprint of an electric car is equivalent to a Hummer.”

I’m a proud supporter of Tesla — even if they never have $29 tees in stock smaller than XXL.

 

— Kevin

Eulogy to a Mystery Writer

  

            Hardboiled detective writer Arturo Dinkelstam is dead. He died as he lived, a resident of ennui, doubt and Santa Monica, California. Age: 66. Cause of death, a heart attack. L.A. isn’t my cup of tea but I’ve flown out here on a moment’s notice to do justice to an old friend with whom I grew up. Passing over innumerable wildfires, the weather is still too pristine for words, with temps in the 80’s.

Known as “Arthur” to his readers above the Rio Grande, it’s true that Arturo (his preferred handle) made his living as a copywriter grinding out luscious prose for mail order catalogs in the lingerie industry:

“This frilly, fluffy wholly appropriate teddy just waits for the right fingertips to caress its soft, supple cloth, unfasten its snaps and slink into nothing less than imperial elegance. Imported cotton/nylon/spandex. Available in Large, Special and Extra Large sizes for the discerning woman.”

There are those who will decry Arthur’s/Arturo’s place in the pantheon of hardboiled detective writers because he was self-published.

It was a dark and stormy morning at Lex & Borden copyshop. “Dinkelstam’s gone,” reported Craig “Molson” Larson to his crusty, moustachioed boss, the incorrigible James “Jim” Rothgate.

“What d’ya mean, gone?!” thundered Rothgate, who knew a thing or two about proofreading marks. His specialty was the squiggly line over the reversed letter “e”. “How can he be gone? Page 11 in the October issue. Two Brazilian supermodels entwining a mangy goat. We can get in a lot of trouble unless the copy is exactly right. I CAN’T DO IT! YOU CAN’T DO IT! Get Dinkelstam!”

“He’s dead, boss.”

The shock made Rothgate physically ill. He clutched the high, black composite plastic back of his executive office chair as images of a small dog rabidly disappearing into the middle distance flooded his brain.

*

Genealogist Lev Kosygin tells me Arturo and I may be related on Lev’s uncle’s side. Since Lev and I are fifth cousins, I find a Dinkelstam connection tenuous at best. “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,” according to Lev, everyone is related to everyone else in some way. Fuhgeddaboudit!

Philologist Harvey Crystal posits Dinkel as a form of German Dunkel or “darkness.” Stam is the equivalent of the English “clan” or “tribe,” so Dinklestam comes out meaning “tribe of darkness.” Nothing would have pleased Arturo more! “Hitler’s family name,” adds Harvey, “was Schickelgruber, meaning ‘trader of the hollow.’ German is lousy with family names made up of two-word combinations.”

Arthur’s detractors will insist that the low sales figures of his three outstanding novels limited his influence. True, his first book sold only 17 copies in hardback, but Arthur contributed over 100 copies to local libraries and the USO. His second book— considered by some to be his masterpiece— sold a respectable 152 copies. Not bad for a self-published vanity project in an industry chock-a-block with talented competitors. His third and last effort returned to the disappointing teens in hardcover, but saw somewhat brisker sales as a trade paperback. Ninety-eight copies might not sound like a lot, but it is the spirit of Arthur’s writing that impresses:

“Boozily, he sucked on her D-cup sized breasts. Tammy Sue’s languid fingers massaged deep into the murky lust of his consciousness, kneading his brow and temples with uncontrollable abandon. Slowly, searchingly, her right hand extended down, down, across his chest, his stomach, along his hip to the repository of his power: His left-hand pants pocket and the brown, alligator skin wallet resting therein.”

Wow! That’s writing.

Here are three testimonials I have gathered.

Mahjong Washington, a black man discreetly panhandling on Santa Monica Pier: “You The Heat? You Five-O? No? Well, yes, I know who you talkin’ ’bout. Dinkelstam. I was in the Army an’ read one o’ his books in boot camp. Damn fine author! Say, bro’, you got change of a twenty? Or maybe you just give me a twenty an’ we calls it even.”

Leon Backus, next door neighbor: “The neighbor from Hell. No, don’t object! You asked. I expect you to be honest and include my answer. You can’t edit out negative criticism. That’s what Arthur never learned. It’s not enough to call yourself a ‘Renaissance man.’ You also need to clear the derelict jalopies on cinderblocks from your front yard.”

Juliette Bush, checkout lady at the local grocery: “Dinkelhauser? Dinkelhurst? Oh, Dinkelstam! Yes, of course. She’s Chancellor of West Germany. I admire her. I had no idea she had died!”

Perhaps soliciting comments from local denizens isn’t the best approach.

*

            Elmore Leonard, Dashiell Hammett, Mickey Spillane and other titans of the genre exhibited styles equally distinctive as Arthur’s, to larger audiences and with greater commercial success. Never-the-less, Arthur attempted to hold his own. “I’m a leviathan,” he complained in 2010, only too aware that the proliferation of the blogosphere shattered his last, lingeringly rebellious reason for being. “How can I be the go-to guy for alternative literature when everybody is the go-to guy?” Arthur groused, still smoking a pack of menthol cigarettes a day and sinking scotch on the rocks several times every afternoon, Old School. Empty, decorative bottles littered his waste baskets both at home and at work.

His most lasting feud was with manager Stan Teller at Santa Monica Books & Smokes, the funky bookstore facing the beach. Arthur begged Stan to mix copies of his work in the remainder bin, going so far as to surreptitiously drop several into the square, dusty, black metal receptacle by the door. “I would have stocked his stuff,” reminisces Stan upon news of Arthur’s passing, “but I felt such trash lowered the quality of the entire bookstore experience, y’know?”

As with the exceptional Tesla electric automobile, it’s hard to argue with the man who owns one!

You’ll be missed, Arturo! Your penchant for maudlin self-aggrandizement. Your tendency, when criticized, to go into attack mode. Your needling, whiny demands for ever larger financial loans to support your ever more grandiose literary ambitions. You won’t be forgotten!

— Kevin Feingold

*

Mayor of Alla tiders

  

            Why run for mayor? “Because it’s there!” The same challenge that drove George Herbert Mallory to scale Mount Everest. Resulting in the Mont Blanc fountain pen, available at fine jewelers everywhere. In my case, sitting in my studio apartment staring at the four walls, I desperately feel the need to escape from NYC. “Oh, the pressure!” as the hooker says in the movie Pretty Woman. Let Anthony Weiner and all the other sexual deviants run against Christine Quinn for Mayor of New York City. Ce n’est pas moi! Ich will Bürgermeister af Alla tiders haben. I wanna become Mayor of Alla tiders.

Now since “Alla tiders” isn’t listed on the map at either Mapquest or Google Earth, look under Hemse. Southern Gotland. A farming area. Now run your finger along the screen northeast about an inch and a quarter and THAT’S WHERE THE FARMHOUSE IS that we christened “Alla tiders” (“Let the good times roll” in English) back in the summer of 1984.

Alla tiders. No one forbade us from putting it on envelopes as long as the address ended with postal code “62350” and “Hemse.”

“This is how new place names are created!” Björn assured us, his band mates.  A rock foursome, we called ourselves Social Security Safety Net. Think The Beatles minus a guitar and without Paul on bass. Synthesizers were all the rage back then, bands like Landscape, Soft Cell, Ultravox, Spandau Ballet, Depeche Mode and Kraftwerk. They weren’t us. We were synth-playing anti-capitalist crusaders.   

* 

            Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is out on bail. In typical Moscow show trial fashion, Russia’s most popular opposition figure has been accused of embezzling half a million dollars in timber from a state-owned company. And he’s been found guilty. Well, d’oh! He faces five years in prison. Well, d’oh! A Russian judge has released him, pending appeal. So why has he been set free? Because he is running for Mayor of Moscow! Vladimir Putin doesn’t want any more effing martyrs. This way, Alexei Navalny gets to run. And when Navalny gets thoroughly trounced by Putin’s own handpicked candidate, Sergei Sobyanin, yeah, then Navalny will be yesterday’s news. “The people have spoken…” and all that kal. Anyway, that’s the game plan. Let the bastard run and then defeat him. No way is an ex-KGB man like Vladimir Putin going to allow Alexei Navalny to become Mayor of Moscow! Never happen. This is going to be an interesting election: Only former members of the Communist Party will be eligible to vote! Yust yoking! And, you know, they have Putin’s people tabulating the votes… D’oh! Assassination is always a final option, but no one likes to use it, since it instantly produces a martyr. And Putin’s doesn’t want any more effing martyrs!

*

            I spent my Junior Year Abroad at the University of Uppsala in Sweden. Then I vacationed on the island of Gotland for the summer. You take the ferry from the mainland, an eight hour trip. Half of Stockholm heads to Gotland for a week or two of summer vacation. My college bros Björn, Ronnie and Hans wanted more than that, so we rented a ramshackle farmhouse outside Hemse, way down in the south. There had once been a railroad on Gotland. Imagine! It’s a pretty small island. Having torn up the tracks, SJ ran a bus service from Visby up north down to the southern tip and most points in-between. I took the bus.

*

            Like Navalny in Russia, I know I am facing an implacable government with total hegemony over legality, culture and public opinion. “That’s the price of democracy” I’ve texted Björn in Stockholm. “A gov’t that represents the views of the people. Scandalous! What R they thinking?”

Nyever mind that the government is unaware of my running for mayor in the middle of the annual, national July vacation shutdown. It’s an insidious plot to brand me IRRELEVANT.  As soon as I lose the election— to a fictitious entity, but still— all concepts of legitimacy go out the window. How Machiavellian of those devious Swedish bureaucrats! First they ignore me, and  then they ignore me some more!

I would admire their plan if it were happening to someone else. WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, for example. Get him to run for President of Ecuador and when he goofs, declare the man superfluous! Ha! You got to hand it to the Swedes! How ingenious. Otherwise, poor Julian has stepped on the cultural landmine built into Swedish sexual equality: The ladies wear the pants and hold all the cards. You sleep with a Swedish woman, you are signing on for a lifetime commitment, whether you like it or not. Swedish women are nice and they don’t necessarily push us men up against the wall, but if they have a beef, the system of justice protects women and children first. Men’s rights come way down the list, after dogs, cats, horses, cows, pigs, sheep, lynx, wolves, hamsters and parakeets.

Full disclosure: This isn’t the first time I’ve considered running for Mayor of Alla tiders. It is, however, my current run for this elective office, now, in the summer of 2013. Printed posters, buttons, bumper stickers and yard signs are all in the works, although the Swedes don’t actually do yard signs. Over in Svedala, yard signs never caught on.

Big music acts like to include Gothenburg and Globen in Stockholm on their tour schedules. “Money, money, money, it’s a rich man’s world!” to quote all-time Swedish record holders ABBA. Authors of Mamma Mia!, “Dancing Queen” and “Fernando.”

Our band, Social Security Safety Net, never made that big a dent. In a nod to Heavy Metal, my first attempt at a band logo used runic lettering. Very effective (all those S’s), it made us look like a cabaret act from the Third Reich. Ditch that! “Forget how the music sounds,” reasoned Björn. “It’s all in the presentation.” We taped over the names on our instruments, replacing them with Cyrillic lettering, spelling phonetically names like “Pony” (for the synth), “Boris” (on Ronnie’s guitar) and “Pivo” (Russian for “beer”) on our travel cases. I spent $125 on band T-shirts for our roadies: White on black, “SSSN” which in Cyrillic comes out “CCCH.” Go figure! Pins: The enamel work was done in Leningrad, since the Soviet Union had decades of experience. Buttons were made in the USA for the same reason. Album covers! Boy, did I ever design album covers. Art work. Photography. Liner notes. Everything but, you know, music.

“Our musical creations are so colossal,” Björn predicted, “it’ll take TEN YEARS for anyone else to catch up!” Throwing himself onto his synth keyboard with both hands, he wildly pressed down on two keys, his body vibrating with tension, head thrown back, face filled with emotion.

Wow!

I couldn’t wait for the day when we had enough cash to actually rent or buy amplifiers, plug in and, you know, hear how our instruments sounded. I got tired of singing into a dead microphone.

Being a rock star, I needed my fill of “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.” My summer flame was named Ylva Franzén. She still lives outside Visby, happily married. Her father had a farm. He grew hay for silage, corn and sugar beets. I met Ylva through her bro’ Peter, who worked as a stevedore on the Gotland’s ferry. See, my buddies Björn, Hans and Ronnie knew their place in society. They weren’t going to shoot the breeze with any uneducated stevedore. As an American, I had no such qualms. After three sentences, Peter (nicknamed “Per”) led me below decks and aft, plucking a bottle from the pocket of his overalls. Boy, did I ever sleep that night, zonked out atop the plush carpet under the main staircase. When we docked in Visby, I hung around until Per finished his chores. We walked ashore together. “Oh,” he remarked. “I forgot to mention it. This is my sister Ylva.”

Holy shit! As I live and breathe. Ylva Franzén. One whiff of her garlic scent and I was smitten. Waves of Viking red hair, enormous green eyes outlined in mascara, siren red rouge, red lipstick, melon-shaped breasts almost bursting through her blouse and wide, luxurious hips. And tall… A whole oak tree of a woman. She had me at “hello,” eating me up with those lantern green eyes!

“I’m only 17. I don’t know very much,” she lamented.

“You’ve got time,” I assured her.

She laughed, showing straight white teeth. “Oh,” she said, “I like you.”

Björn, Ronnie and Hans hated her. “Uneducated slut,” swore Björn impotently whenever Per and Ylva drove down in Per’s EPA-traktor— a sort of four-wheeled moped— to pick me up and spend a day at the beach.

“Don’t blame me!” I replied. “Find girls of your own!”

No way. They despised— and imitated, clumsily— the local accent and dialect. They made fun of the farmers. I began to realize that my band mates were parochial college kids and effete snobs!

We look back on our high school sweethearts and say, “I should have married her!” Those young marriages never last. At 25 or 30, neither partner is satisfied with high school fare. That was never in the cards with my friend Ylva. It was refreshing that she knew her own farm girl limitations. “I’m as dumb as a stone and know it” was a great way to put down the university snobs, but it left something to be desired in the marriageability department. Still, I would have considered it, but for Ylva’s “Muhammad Ali syndrome.” — “Float like a butterfly and sting like a bee!”— Ylva flew into rages and threw punches. It took awhile to dawn on me, but that was why her brother Per and his friends looked so shocked when Ylva and I became an item. Within a week, I had my first black eye. We Feingolds, on my mother’s side, are Zakroiskis from Zabludova, Russian-Polish peasants. I grew up listening to my parents’ screaming matches. Only Shanty Irish, however, actually threw punches and broke things. Gotland introduced me to an earthier kultur.

Since we had an entire, secluded house for the summer, just off the main road, all our university friends came to party. Of course they did! I have hazy recollections of Björn and Ronnie standing on chairs at the dinner table, calling for attention by scraping knives along the ceiling, roaring drunk. “Here! Here! Just wan’ t’ thank all youse peoples for comin’ t’ join our little soirée,” they screamed in Swedish. Every night, if Ylva wasn’t around, some drunk college lass “accidently” fell into my lap, planting French kisses down my throat, all of us drunk as skunks. Jesus! My Prince Harry moment. As Samuel Pepys said, “And then to bed…”

Half our gang bicycled down to the beach. Bike rental is a time-honored tradition on Gotland. You rent a bike in Visby and pedal all over the island, overnighting in sleeping bags and pup tents under the stars. On the beach, where bathing suits were optional, our crowd attracted the attention of the locals. “The students” they called us, implying immature high schoolers. Or “the nerds” (plugghästarna) which wasn’t a whole lot better.

The famous “Goths” or “Visigoths” (West Goths) originally came from Gotland, long boats at the ready. For a small island, the Gutamål dialect has four distinct variations: The accent in Klintehamn in the west is very different from Ljugarn in the east. Slite in the north differs from Hemse in the south. Speaking the Swedish of Uppsala and Stockholm labeled us as transients, tourists. The locals tolerated us for the cash we brought to the island, but we were never truly accepted.

Poor Ylva! From Visby, she was a Gotländska, but still not considered kosher in the south. “Råire jär laddet! ” When she talked with the locals, they looked at her like she was crazy. “She’s from Visby,” I would interject.

“Aha! We thought she was putting us on!” answered the kids or the adult vendors, who I found blunt but friendly. Farmer style. “You guys aren’t with the ‘zero-eights,’ then?” they would ask quietly, glancing toward my Uppsala cohorts. Zero-eight was the prefix for Stockholm telephone numbers, a way of indicating folks from the mainland.

“She’s from Visby,” I would croak desperately, my English accent all over the map. “I’m from the States.”

They’d shake their heads understandingly, giving us wary looks.

Sweden’s other major island is Öland. I was amazed to discover a bond between the inhabitants of the two islands. One of our student visitors was Hélène, from Öland, and the locals treated her like a long-lost cousin. All the girls in our shack shared an animosity toward Ylva, a high school “townie,” a local. No one despised her more than Hélène. For her part, Ylva tried to be friends with each of us, before physically beating the crap out of my colleagues. I was never there to break up those fights. I was out gathering kindling or spending the day hauling nets on a fishing trawler. Open for any adventure, I found the Gotlanders ready to humor “the American.” I had a ball! Only to arrive back at Alla tiders to discover Björn sporting serious bruises and abrasions.

“Your girlfriend,” Ronnie explained, “wiped the floor with him.”

As film director Nicolas Winding Refn says, “Even though we’re taught not to enjoy the oldest form of justice, which is an eye for an eye, we’re still rooted in it and take pleasure from it.”

One day, big to-do, Hélène approached me with a major black eye on the right side of her face. She had her knapsack packed, water bottle filled. Hans sat at the wheel of our one and only car, ready to drive her up to Visby in time for the ferry boat. “This is quite enough,” seethed Hélène. “If you can’t control that witch of yours, I don’t intend to stick around and be anybody’s punching bag!”

“Ylva’s a regular Ingemar Johansson,” cracked Hans helpfully, incensing Hélène even more.

“You guys are such shits!” she screamed. I held open the door for her. Throwing her gear on the back seat, she hopped primly into the car without giving me a second glance.

Adieu, Hélène.

*

            Now it’s true that Alla tiders is a fictional entity. You may feel I’m selling you a lot of bull. But if Obama has taught us anything, it’s that YOU CAN SELL BULL AS LONG AS YOU ARE UP FRONT ABOUT IT. So what are the pro’s?

Unlike Detroit, Michigan or Virginia’s start-up airline Independence Air (remember them?), my entity is not saddled with debt. In fact, I’ve thrown a few bucks in the kitty and paid all expenses out-of-pocket, resulting in a positive, if limited, capital base. No debt.

We have a low burn rate, running through our money slowly, giving us a longer runway to push-back and start-up.

I’ve got a stupendous national anthem (“Rock Yer Socks Off” by Scam Artist), flag design (think Cuba’s minus the Communists), bird (Swedish wild turkey), flower (fläder) and  beauty queen (Yvonne Nyberg, 17).

Although we don’t have any industry yet, I’m hoping to lure some part of Tesla Motors to the island, even if it’s only to manufacture door panels, glove compartments and key rings.

Extensive tourism already established.

Extensive bird life.

Complete infrastructure regarding roads, electricity, potable water, telecommunications, bath houses, pristine beaches  and marijuana (all but the last c/o Hemse).

Neither Bradley Manning nor Edward Snowden know any of our secrets.

Young Swedish girls.

The cons:

Long Swedish winters.

Accessible only from the mainland by overnight boat.

Proximity to Russia (well…)

Young Swedish girls.

I’ve found a farmer who’ll give us a good price on Queen Anne walnut window slats and an 18th Century George III coal grate. He’ll vouchsafe their authenticity with a handshake.

Since math isn’t my strong point and market fluctuations are enormous, I’ve designated Ronnie the banker as Comptroller. I’ll simply quote verbatim from his statement: “Times are hard. Although our starting equity is limited, the possibility for a profitable expansion of goods and services is large. How large depends entirely on Kickstarter and investments by readers like yourself.”

I think that puts it rather well. Alla tiders is a fine property. The house is a little old, a little run-down, a fixer-upper with a mouse infestation in the foundation, bats in the attic and water rats over by the ravine, but it’s open to development.

I have realized why, in the past, we drove our college girlfriends crazy. We chose the prettiest girls and then expected them to cook, clean, wash our clothes and help us study for our exams. Lesson learned: Plain Janes should do the manual labor. They won’t resent it as much. For this project, we are choosing THE PRETTIEST GIRLS WE CAN FIND, requiring them only to do that one thing: Be pretty! Everybody wins.

Hans, who will be location manager, provides the following résumé: “Orchestra conductor (hobby), play the harpsichord, collect prints of Renaissance oil paintings, connoisseur of fine wines and ancient Greek philosophers including chablis, pinot grigio, Plato and Socrates. Graduate of University of Uppsala. Hope to own yacht and sail to Miami.”

Ronnie on potential: “Join the vanguard of investment opportunities! We are floating bonds to finance the following— The Hans C. Frumpélius Hydroponic Water Park for the indigenous rat population, all-night disco, “Guitar Playing Made Easy,” and The Björn A. Lindström Conference Center for Extra-Terrestrial Life (T.B.A.L.C.C.E.T.L., a $750,000 project, including dormitories). As for generating profits, we are orders of magnitude bigger than Van Dyes Properties, our nearest competitor both geographically and in terms of size. Our potential is insanely bigger than theirs. Like us, they also only have a single structure on the market, a whitewashed farmhouse with walls of packed hay. Very chic. Anyway, we’re way better than them because we just are!”

Björn, who wants to handle conceptualization, makes this pitch: “We have the advantage of being the post-Sputnik generation. The Soviet’s satellite had already circled the Earth. A fact, a done deal. Freed of that, we can now think in non-linear, non-factual parameters. We do intrinsically what the ‘holistic approach’ people can only accomplish in theory. Our business decisions are made entirely based on feelings. What feels right. Just like the supplemental health insurance companies, we’ve made investment easy, accepting all four major credit cards, Pay Pal, certified checks and wire transfers. I don’t know how you get your money out just yet, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

To quote Micky Dolenz of The Monkees, “We’re not selling plastic.”

Angst pays. In 2012, Petter Olsen, scion of a Norwegian shipping family, sold the only privately-owned copy of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” at Sotheby’s here in New York for almost $120 million, the most any artwork has ever garnered at auction.

As for me, whenever I reach a dead end, contemplating suicide, I opt instead to run for Mayor of Alla tiders in Sweden.

Be well!

– Kevin Feingold

Lonelyboy in Gotham

  

            I blame it on the weather. When the climate doesn’t know what season we are in, everything else follows. Anubis, the jackal-headed Egyptian god of the underworld shrugs, New York trembles and I puke. Since 9/11, fear is the next normal.

*

            I used to live in Greenwich Village, but I got tired of the NYPD closing off the streets on Saturdays, Sundays and Muslim holidays to facilitate foot traffic to and from the local mosque. I try to be cosmopolitan, but if life is going to be inconvenient, I prefer to live uptown.

There’s an asinine web site called LinkedIn that presupposes that people network. It’s very retro. As if anybody is in a position to help anybody else get a job or make a career move! It’s 20 years since anyone has mentored anyone else in America. Yet the millennials, bless them, think that by tapping on their keyboards, they can introduce other people to the HR department and facilitate the hiring process. Pul-lease! People lose their jobs doing that. How do you know your “friend” isn’t a stalker, a hacker, a thief, an industrial spy, a Manning, a Snowden, a pedophile, a sex pervert or just plain boring? The safe thing to do— the smart move— is to mind your own business and become as distant as the planet Jupiter.

In need of income, I accept a job doing the narration on the schlockumentary “The Many Meltdowns of Justin Bieber.” The dude’s evolving into a male Lindsay Lohan. Try to figure that kid out! We end with his most recent gaffe, a TMZ video showing the 19-year-old Bieber peeing into a janitor’s bucket at a New York restaurant and then spraying a portrait of President Clinton with cleaning fluid while shouting “Fuck Bill Clinton!” What some people won’t do for a little attention.

The only way I can run for public office is by sleeping with one of Jengi Khan’s scarlet-clad daughters in the Wakhan Corridor of northeastern Afghanistan. Members of a Kyrgyz minority living in the isolation and brutal climate of the north, the girls are as strange and repressed as if they lived on the moon. Spitzer, Weiner, how meshuggah! Wouldn’t it be hilarious of they both get TOTALLY trounced at the polls? Show everyone that NYC, “Babylon on the Hudson,” cannot be stampeded into accepting just any kind of public behavior. “Turn the other cheek…” “To err is human, to forgive, divine.” Choke! Let’s not move the goalposts to Elbonia, people! Do I have to strip naked and parade down Broadway to prove myself qualified for elective office?

Always looking for interesting work, I stumble on polling the public regarding wheat cakes. Why should I be ashamed? There’s a government bill pending in Congress to provide funding for the introduction of this product into our public schools. Sensing a groundswell, I canvas our neighborhood. Finding like-minded individuals of all creeds and colors, I take the initiative and drum up some petitions. It’s amazing when you ring people’s doorbells: They look so relieved when they find out you’re not asking for a donation!

My neighbors, understandably, select Brand A over Brand B. The wheat is the same. They grow it out west. Brand A wheat cakes are manufactured in New York State. Brand B in Pennsylvania. New Yawkers, we prefer to keep the jobs in-state. It hasn’t gotten to the point where we are demonstrating in the streets. (Just think, if we were Palestinians, we would be throwing stones in protest over this very issue!) My spiel goes, “Federal tax-payer dollars. Buy New York produce. Sign here.”  We’re allowed to solicit for political causes. That’s the law. Once Mrs. McMullen or Ms. Diamandis lets me into her building, then it’s Neighbor to Neighbor. It’s not like anybody reports me to the super.

I get in touch with the president of the New York wheat cake company. I email him an interim report and attach an html of our signed petitions. Unsolicited. As an example of my work. As a booster. “Hooray for wheat cakes!”

He sends me an email, thanking me. One. He tells me how great it is to have street cred. “It’s the little people who matter most.” I send him a series of follow-ups, reporting my progress. Creating something at the grass roots level, I am damn proud of my accomplishment. I deliver.

Hey, I could be yodeling “Dixie” in the Alps for all the good it does me.

I am experiencing the equivalent of a politician waving from his limo during a motorcade. Hey, the dude waved! That shows he’s a nice guy. He didn’t have to. That doesn’t mean he wants to start a correspondence. That doesn’t mean he wants to “friend” me on Facebook. He’s not sending me a baseball cap with the company logo. Professionals are busy people, they really don’t have time to associate with us mere mortals. As Seth Meyers would say (only don’t expect Seth to “friend” you on Facebook), “Really!? ”

The higher people roost on Mount Olympus, the pinnacle of power, (a) the more paranoid they become about not screwing up and (b) the less inclined they are to help anyone else. After all, the young person they mentor today is their chief competitor tomorrow!

After a few weeks, I get the message and stop expecting to hear anything.

*

            I go to lunch in the limo of Jane Saltzman, my new employer. She has sent along an “exotic” to keep me company, a Venezuelan fashion model who pouts prettily. She’s got a lower lip the size of a car tire. Discreetly, I pluck lice out of her hair. I know Jane through our Neighborhood Watch Committee. We share the chairmanship. Jane starts every morning by watching Kathie Lee and Yoda. After Mandy, my former employer, got blown up in a terrorist attack, Jane accosted me in the elevator. Expecting condolences, what do I hear? “So. Unless you are otherwise disposed, I expect you’ll come to work for me.” Jane is 60 years young. She runs a spa empire. You don’t say “no” to Jane Saltzman without a damn good reason. I couldn’t think of any. The Upper West Side is certainly less crime-ridden and hairy than The Village, but the rents are astronomical. I went to work that afternoon.

I’m a commodities broker, meeting with companies, distributors, suppliers and truckers, trying to get 30% off the bushel price of soybeans, apricots and lemons. These are the natural ingredients that go into the shampoos and lotions used in Jane’s spas. Listen, brokering is better than driving a dump truck. Jane gets her carambola starfruit from Israel and her mangoes from the Caribbean, but otherwise, whenever possible, she buys American. She insists on using old-fashion family recipes for her goo. They come from Hungary, Poland and Belarus. I’ve always hated the shtetl mentality, but their manufacturing skills were legion. “They,” claims Jane, “could make vodka out of a speck of dust, copper wire, an old potato and water.”

They still do. Go figure. Now you have all these vodkas with Russian-sounding names like Vladimir’s and St. Petersburg and Kremlin One, but when you check the label, you find they’re made and distilled in Connecticut.

I amuse her. That’s why Jane sends me lice-ridden Venezuelan fashion models who sit next to me in Central Park, hungrily watching me devour a box lunch. “You’re not eating, señorita?”

“I gotta lose some weight,” she frumps. Her accent is as thick as Russian borscht.

I love these girls!

Jane’s a nice lady. She offered to blow a couple of hundred dollars, comping me and a date to tickets to The Book of Mormon. The thought of sitting in a theater with 500+ other people made my skin crawl. I couldn’t do it. But I appreciated the offer. It was Oscar Wilde who said, “Don’t you realize that missionaries are the divinely provided food for destitute and underfed cannibals?”

The occupational hazard of my job is that you start seeing everything in terms of components: Cardboard is compacted wood pulp. Plastic is a polymer made from petrochemicals. Ink is a pigment or dye suspended in a solvent. Jane uses Roland Sea Salt and takes iodine pills made from sea kelp. Life as Chemistry 101. Life in the lab!

I spend the afternoon negotiating with a chemical manufacturer. This is the real meat and potatoes of the cosmetics industry. Ninety-eight percent of any shampoo or lotion is chemicals. I approach their building in da limo. If you show up in anything less than a horse-drawn cab, you don’t get no respect. Front entrance security rivals, say, Kandahar. They X-ray my briefcase. Give me the full body pat-down. Then they X-ray me. I take the elevator, admiring myself in the wraparound mirror. I slick down my unruly eyebrows, get my appearance in order. The 10th floor conference room abuts other skyscrapers. I’m dressed for summer. I got slacks, sandals and a billowy Hawaiian shirt. Suits, they are dressed in full office regalia: pinstripes, white shirts, ties, wingtips. I shave my head for comfort. They sport a full head of hair. Don’t these corporate people ever sweat?

Their Executive Vice President of Sales, Wes Levine, asks how I am. “That’s Kevin Feingold,” announces Elizabeth Nutwell, a sharp-nosed shrew from the Marketing Department, barging in, arms loaded with files. She’s wearing an elegant black suit, off-white pearls, silver hoop earrings and kabuki make-up. “Not only did he steal my parking space last Tuesday, he’s a known bastard. Rotten to the core!”

“I don’t recognize myself in your description, Ms. Nutwell,” I counter.

“Not well,” comments Wes.

“Not well?”

“Nutwell. Actually, she has a point.”

“I know. We’ve met.”

Wes laughs. “The Hawaiian has arrived,” he remarks. “Marjorie, call our supplier and have him send us coconuts.”

I’ll give you coco, I think. I’ll give you nuts! Gearing up psychologically.

Wes opens the negotiation. Ten minutes later, Elizabeth has another go. “This man,” she declares, pointing at me with an accusatory finger, “is in the pocket of Big Labor. His hidden agenda is to hobble employers and drive workers into union sweatshops.”

Wes pricks you with a rapier, Elizabeth hits you over the head with a truncheon.

Okay-y-y. “Can we reduce the asking price of cetrimonium chloride, benzyl salicylate, benzyl benzoate, charcoal and paraffin by 30%, that would be more in line with what we’re looking for,” I reply.

“Du bist a hunt mit di oyearn,” Wes complains jovially, which is Yiddish for “You are a dog with ears.” Yiddish is the new Esperanto. If you speak it, you’re hip. Wes has delivered a deadly insult. Since he’s laughing, I shrug it off. Insults go with the territory. We compromise at 15%. I’m smart enough to know that I’m not going to get a better deal. They can take 15% off the top without direly affecting their profit margin. We can pay the going price minus 15% and feel better fast. I think it was Arnie Palmer who said, “A birdie in the hand beats a bogey in the bush.”

“I’ll still want 30% discount on the paraffin,” I reason.

“Oh?” smiles Wes, always ready for a joke. “Why?”

“From the Latin. Parum means ‘too little’ and affinis means ‘bordering on.’ Your paraffin borders on too little.”

“Pretium affinis parum,” suggests Wes. “The PRICE borders on too little.”

“You’re a hard man, Mr. Levine. If you ever choose to leave this mortal coil, I can offer decapitation with an Islamic sword.”

“Duly noted. Does that come with or without verses from the Koran?” he wonders.

I mean, thank God we like each other!

“Ms. Philips, take a letter!” he declares. “Dear President Obi-Wan Kenobi: So? Nu? How was Africa? We’re delighted you liked Tanzania. Although Communist, they have natural resources upon which we are deeply dependent. Give the First Lady a Tanzanite necklace. Or not.”

Polite applause. His staff shift uneasily in their chairs.

“How is your employer, Ms. Jane Saltzman?” he asks. “Is she sleeping with the fishes?”

“Naw, she’s relaxing with the corgis.”

I neither see nor hear Ms. Nutwell and her pile of folders during the rest of the meeting. She is not part of my universe. From where do people get these passionate hatreds? I once wished an opponent “Merry Christmas!”  He wanted to take me to court for racial profiling! “I’m Jewish,” he seethed. “Your characterization demeans me! How dare you???”

One Sunday a month, April through October, weather permitting, Jane has me drive her to Boston in her boxy 1969 Skoda sedan from Czechoslovakia. She buys old books and prints at the flea markets. It’s at the Raynham Flea Market south of Boston that I find a pristine copy of Music interview Magazine MiM, a cassette mag from 1984. In the original, sealed factory wrapper. A spastic color photo of Boy George on the cover and a grainy color glam shot of David Bowie on the back. Interviews with Boy George, Thomas Dolby, The Clash, Herbie Hancock, Pete Townshend and Bananarama (!). Sale price: One dollar! They’re giving this stuff away. “Put that back!” barks Jane.

*

            My loneliness and isolation aren’t new. The first indication that I wasn’t on the same page as everyone else came while I was still in the Army. This perfect example of casting pearls before swine took place in Alaska. My day job was Intelligence, monitoring Soviet military activity of every kind: radio traffic, freighter movement, their airspace, their weaponry, their boots on the ground and subs under the sea.

Civilians aren’t like military personnel. Civvies stand alone, self-reliant (good!) and all wrapped up in themselves (less good). Each of us is the star of his or her own little head-movie. This is particularly true in Alaska. Stand tall! Tired of vandalism and juvenile delinquency, the city gave its young people a clubhouse to do with as they saw fit. The kids turned it into a quite respectable punk music club, The Asteroid. I got involved because I love punk music, showing up on Saturday nights to listen to some truly raucous bands. Eventually, the adolescent punk music enthusiasts behaved so anti-socially, the public began to ask, “Why are these black-clad punks, Goths, ghouls and gremlins showing up in our town from all over the Kenai peninsula?! What have we done to deserve this blight?” The city pulled the plug, evicting them, cutting off the water and electricity, discontinuing the yearly endowment. By their very nature, punks are as anti-Establishment as you can get and still play music. The only adult in the room, so to speak, I interceded on their behalf. I talked to the authorities. City councilmen. Politicians of every stripe. “The club’s a good way to keep our youngsters off the street and out of trouble,” I pleaded.

“These aren’t just our kids, we’re a magnet for every low-brow underachiever in the state! Screw that!” replied the pols.

The powers-that-be and I reached an accord. What surprised me were the kids. “Oh,” they said, “that’s Kevin’s thing. The negotiations are Kevin’s idea. That has nothing to do with us! We don’t talk to pigs. We never asked him to do it!” This they announced to everyone. Newspapers. Radio. Their friends. How can I represent my clients when my clients renounce any allegiance? I reminded the Establishment that we were, after all, dealing with youth. You couldn’t demand too much ice-cold logic. Emotions ruled the day.

A year later, they ran aground and again faced foreclosure. The town wanted to build a hospital annex on the plot of land where the clubhouse stood. I kept busy at my desk. The kids got a dose of reality, seeing their clubhouse demolished. They also got arrested for disturbing the peace when they tried to block the wrecking ball with their frail, little bodies!

Not my problem.

Hasta la vista, baby!

When I’m dealing with The Man, I remind myself that once upon a time, I pretty much was The Man. People didn’t say “no” to me. Unlike today.

*

            I am just using the restroom at O’Day’s, but as I come back out into the sunlight, I can’t help but see the brunette hostess crouched behind her wooden podium between the sidewalk tables. She’s getting reamed out by a five-foot blond tornado. “Ah jus’ wanna borrow yo’ phone!” rants the customer. “I wanna cahl mah boyfriend!”

“And we don’t have a phone to loan you,” retorts the hostess, rolling her eyes and audibly sighing. I’m all for the hostess, she showed me the way to the men’s room without batting an eye.

I’m dressed in tan cargo shorts, brown leather sandals and a Les Tomkins charcoal tee. In the movie Vanilla Sky, Tom Cruise knows something is wrong when he doesn’t see a single solitary soul on the streets of Manhattan. Anywhere you go, there’s always somebody. Surrounded by people, I’m lonely as a stick. You know New York. All those people, but they don’t return your calls.

“Y’ALL LOAN ME YO’ PHONE!” drawls the blonde, not giving an inch.

“I have a phone,” I intercede, proffering my cell phone.

“Thenk yew,” she simpers. Face to face, I can’t miss how cute she is: Her piercing blue eyes, her pointy nose, high cheekbones, rosebud mouth and round, little chin. “Y’all are too kind.”

“What kind of accent…?”

She’s wearing what we used to call “culottes,” a cross between a dress and shorts, a divided skirt with a pocket on each hip. Navy blue. My cell phone disappears into her left-hand pocket. “Ah’m from A-la-bama,” she drawls. Wrinkling her nose, she bursts out laughing. As she moseys down the sidewalk with my cell phone, she doesn’t so much walk as sashay, swinging fulsomely. She has a tight little ass to die for. Curvaceous legs. Dainty feet in cheap leather sandals. She’d look sporty if she wasn’t so damn sexy. She’s a cracker. Trailer trash. “C’n we fahnd an outdoor café an’ git a cold drink?” she suggests, flirting.

We just left an outdoor café, I’m thinking. Anyway, in The Village, you find a place on every block.

We get a table. Her name is Maggie. “Do you work?” she asks, peering at me mysteriously over the rim of her water glass with her enormous blue eyes.

“Of course,” I hear my rather pompous reply. I find myself trying to explain what I do: “I’m a commodities negotiator. Only I’m not working, y’know, today.”

“That’s good because I’m not working today either!” she declares forthrightly.

“Oh. Splendid. What do you do?” I ask, faux Hugh Grant.

“What do you mean?” she demands, filled with suspicion.

“Do you work?”

“No. I just said. I’m  not working,” she complains, making me feel like an idiot. “I’m into agenda-driven advocacy.”

“Really?” I ask, impressed. “What’s your agenda?”

“Shopping.”

Consumer protection? “What do you advocate?”

“More shopping for everybody!… You look hot,” she decides. Wrinkling her nose and cackling like a witch, she douses me across the table with an entire glass of ice water. I look down at my soggy, half-eaten sandwich. Jesus Christ! As Orson Welles said, “Women are another race… You can only win by being the cool center of their being.” Orson, does ice water count? If Maggie didn’t have my cell phone, I would leave. But I don’t want to seem rude.

We go shopping among the street vendors. Mostly Jamaican Rastafaris, their wares are spread out on blankets. Which they can easily roll up and make a run for it if The Man come around.  “Ah wan’ this blouse,” Maggie comments in the tiniest voice imaginable. A white peasant blouse with red embroidery, I hold it up in front of her.

The Rasta gives me a toothy smile. “She looka dynamite, mon !”

I check the label. “French smock. Made in Haiti. 35% recycled material, 15% polyester, 50% cellulose.”

“They have it at Macy’s,” Maggie assures me, “but the price is much better here.”

“I would hope so!” I reply, Kevin the supporter of free enterprise among street vendors.

“I need some money,” Maggie whines, flexing the fingers of her left hand under my nose. I crank out my wallet and peel her some bills. Watch her make purchases. Even the plastic bag the Jamaican offers us is what we euphemistically call “previously owned.” I tuck it under my arm, the first of many bundles.

“This is so much fun! I’m fun to be with!” Maggie assures me outrageously.

I look at her, about to protest, when she marches up to me, widening her eyes, staring into my soul.

Yikes!

“I’m. Fun. To. Be. With!” she repeats.

Jesus! Yes, she is!!! — “Jesus! Yes! Please! Maggie!” I gulp.

“Don’t take the Lord our God’s name in vain!” she instructs, playfully thumping me on the chin with her index finger.

“You are! You’re so much fun to be with!” I stammer.

“Good!” she shouts, waddling off down the pavement like a duck. With me in tow.

Blond hair, blue eyes and a cute face do that to me. Rounding a corner, Maggie stops, turns and tells me, “I also like the way your pecker is tearing a hole in your shorts!” Followed by gales of merry laughter. She thumps me on the chin.

I feel my heart lurch. I find myself falling seriously in love with this vixen. It’s been awhile.

Well, I was feeling unappreciated. Maggie may have the mentality of a 14-year-old, but she appreciates me! My single gun theory is that capable people are busy creating and don’t have time to hang out, while wastrels have all the time in the world and never accomplish a damn thing! I would retrieve my cell phone and walk away, but this business of Maggie drumming on my chin with her hot little finger is rapidly becoming addictive! I once recorded sound for a film crew from Channel 4. Behold! The wailing of police sirens is the sweet, melodic background to our daily lives. Even amidst the 70 decibel hum of street life, Maggie’s peals of happy laughter fill my head. She also has that cute little Irish milkmaid face and a stacked bod. Looking at her, I don’t exactly swell with pride. The swelling takes place lower than that.

Yes, she’s fun, but it also feels like the afternoon will never end. “When do you call Ricky, this boyfriend of yours?”

“Oh-h-h,” she coos. Waving both hands in my face, she thumps my chin. “He’s out of town until Friday.”

Now. Wait. A. Minute.

She kind of tinkles, arching her eyebrows. Blue eyes flashing.

I’ll do anything for her, I suddenly realize, a dead weight in my stomach. Time to skedaddle, ace!

Then she thumps me on my chinny chin chin. “Let’s go to your a-part-ment,” she whines, giggling.

This, my friends, is how I find myself saddled with a new roommate. Summer in the city. Don’t talk to strangers. Forget “free,” the best things in life are extremely cumbersome and excessively expensive.

Django and His Street Musicians are serenading the traffic circle. He sings:

“Summer haze goin’ in my mind,

I don’t know if I’m feelin’ fine.”

            Join the club!

*

            Coming out of the bathroom at 3 a.m., I find Maggie trying to bean me with a sand wedge. “Jesus! ” I swear, disarming her.

“Ah thought yo’ were an intruder,” she whimpers. Her arms encircle my neck as she stands on tiptoe and makes amends with a French kiss that goes on and on. By the time she’s done, we know a lot about the inside of one another’s mouth. She smells heavenly, a mix of talcum powder and Dove hand lotion. I’m instantly erect.

Pressing against me, she holds herself aloof. Her body language clearly telegraphs, “Fuggedaboutit ! No way, José!”

I disengage and crawl back into bed. It’s at moments like this, I consider investing in air conditioning.

*

            “Can’t we go outside and track down some dope?” Maggie asks me next morning at the breakfast table.

“I don’t do dope.”

“Oh, I don’t either,” she assures me in a little girl voice. “But can’t we go out and track some down?” Standing over me, she drums on my chin with three fingers, playing me like a bongo, huge blue eyes staring into mine.

“I. Don’t. Do. Dope.”

“Let’s go,” she says, collecting her shiny new purse and Louis Vuitton knock-off clutch.

So I take her to Marquand, who I know is at least reliable. “Wha’ kinda heaven you want?” he growls genially, standing in his kitchen. He’s six feet tall with a massive African cranium covered by a fuzz of black hair, razor cut. Wearing baggy chinos and a green halter top, hands the size of hams, he flexes his spatulated fingers, a white moon adjacent to each nail. “No more cane on the Brazos.”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“Skype down, I ain’t heard nothin’ from Soweto.”

“I’m sorry to hear it!” I tell him. I’ve met a half dozen of his brothers and sisters, roasting lamb over an open pit on Staten Island. “Put in your order, honey,” I coax Maggie, who’s standing, looking at Marquand with her mouth hanging open.

“Wha’ yo’ wan’, lady?” he asks.

“I want you! ” she squeals, all but salivating.

“Hey now, wha’ kinda mahket you think I runnin’ here?” Marquand asks us, chitlins and guava resting uneaten on a white porcelain plate on his simple blue kitchen table. “I ain’ no gigolo!”

“Maggie, he’s a very good friend of mine,” I interrupt, once again the negotiator. “If you would like an illegal substance, Marquand will facilitate the purchase,” I mansplain. “Otherwise, that’s all she wrote.”

“Who wrote?” croaks Maggie, glancing at me suspiciously.

“Don’t be so literal! What’s your poison?”

“Does he have… Do you have any grass?”

“Sure!” says M. Opening a wooden drawer, he proceeds to line up little plastic bags on the table, listing the merchandise. We make our purchase. I thank him, stuff some bills into his giant hand and get us the hell out of there.

Maggie sits on my fire escape, rolling joints. “Don’t you want any of this?!” she calls innocently. When I join her, she hoses me down with her blue-eyed stare. Southern belles! “I don’t wanna toke alone!” she breathes, lighting up.

So I end up doing something I never do, getting totally wasted on high-grade marijuana. And, of course, once we’re whacked, we go through the whole munchies, climb in bed, sweat in the heat, unable to move, roaring with laughter experience. I want to peel off her clothes and cannot even lift my arms. I want to peel off my clothes, ditto. S.N.A.F.U., dear hearts!

“Ricky has substance abuse issues,” Maggie tells me.

“That’s terrible. Is he doing something about it?”

“Yes.”

Long pause. Hello-o?! “What’s he doing?” I ask.

“I told you. He’s abusing substances.”

Aha! Like… been there, done that.

“I’m fun to be with,” Maggie drawls.

“Yeah, so you keep telling me.”

“Say it! Say I’m fun to be with. Say it like yo’ mean it!”

“You are fun to be with.”

She props herself up on one elbow amid the bedclothes and eyes me critically. “Da-amn!” she smirks, thumping me on the chin. “Ah think yah in love with meh!” Guffawing uproariously, she reaches down to feel my boner. My shorts stand as erect as a circus tent. “Say it! Say you love me!”

“I… love… you!” I gasp, miserable.

Unplanned, unmanageable, this train wreck of a relationship has nowhere to go but down.

“C’mere, Honey Bear!” she giggles, rousing herself sufficiently to navigate the button and the zipper on my cargo shorts. Her fingers play up and down my penis like it’s a flute.

I lie on my back, inert, glutted, trails of sweat running onto the sheets. It’s gonna be a bad night.

*

            “This is Luis at the front desk. We got a situation. There’s a dude out front who says he know you. He look pretty bad hombre. I tell him go away, but I afraid he gonna breaka the plate glass window.”

“You want me to come down?”

“I no bother you, Mr. Feingold, but I see you with that woman. This dude, him looka more o’ the same.”

“I’ll be right down.”

So I finally get to meet Ricky. He’s a redneckognizable type. It’s not just the worn tan boots, stonewashed jeans and Texas oilman shirt, even his face sports an ornery expression. “Hello!” I say. We ride up in the elevator.

“So you been screwing my lady!” Ricky surmises, squinting like Clint Eastwood.

“It never happened, Ricky. Frankly, I don’t know which buttons you push. You guys are in your 30’s. I’m way older. I never got so much as a handjob.”

“But you wanted it!” he yelps.

“Wouldn’t you be insulted if I didn’t?”

By the time he figures that one out, we’re inside the apartment. Maggie throws herself into his arms. “Honey-ey-ey!” she squeals. Very touching.

Over coffee, I ask, “Where you been?”

“This some sort of federal investigation?” he sneers.

“So don’t tell me! I’m just makin’ conversation.”

“Y’know Macon, Georgia?”

“Sure!”

“Near Macon. It was a retreat.”

“A religious retreat?”

“Naw. Political.”

Huh? Ricky doesn’t seem the type for Young Republicans.  “Political? ”

“You makin’ fun of me?!”

“Cool down!”

“Yeah,” Maggie agrees, plopping herself in his lap. “Cool it, Sugar Bear!”

“Ever heard of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?”

“Oh, for cryin’ out loud!” I bitch. “Grow up, Ricky! You’re like a first-year college student who reads Marxism for the first time and wants to institute Communism world-wide. A few years later, he realizes that you cannot legislate against greed, corruption and inequality. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a bogus piece of bull written by the Czarist Secret Police in Russia in 1905. It’s been rattling around ever since, stirring people to irrational hatred.”

“The Jews control Wall Street and the lamestream media!” Ricky insists.

“If you don’t like Jews, what are you doing in New York?!”

“They’re everywhere! Even in China, there are Jews!”

“Yes! Right at the bottom of Chinese society!”

“All I’m sayin’ is, our time will come!” rants Ricky, a newly anointed  convert to White Supremacist ideology. “Like… like now that that Jew Zimmerman killed that nigger Trayvon, it’s open season!”

“Calm down, Ricky!” Maggie implores him, massaging the bump on the back of his scrawny head. “My great big stud muffin!”

Where to begin? I sigh. “Zimmerman is Hispanic, not Jewish. From his viewpoint, he killed the black youth in self-defense. He certainly wasn’t declaring open season on anyone, and you shouldn’t either!”

Ricky’s mumbled reply is inaudible. He and Maggie gather together her possessions. “Where did all this stuff come from?” Ricky asks, a twang of anger in his voice. I’m helping Maggie press it all down into a large pink suitcase.

“Kevin’s been an absolute angel,” Maggie replies, looking scared. “He knows how much I love shopping, Ricky. We never did anything! I just slept over and cooked. We never did anything.”

I could tell him, “I took one on the chin for Maggie,” but he doesn’t look like he’d be amused.

And just like that, they’re gone. No “Hasta la vista, baby!” No nothin’.

My Lonelyboy summer in Gotham.

 

*

A Patriotic Short

 

            Oops! I am so devastated to see my screenwriting career splattered against the windshield of reality. I would go on America’s Got Talent, but what are Harold Stern & Friends going to watch me do? Type? Call Dr. Phil! Intervention time. I need help. This cannot go on!

To: Silvia Plarsch, World Wide Pictures

Subject: Film for release December 2014

Title: “Go!”

This is an American adaption of an original Swedish screenplay. Stylistically, think Ingmar Bergman: black & white cinematography, heavy acting, pregnant pauses, sudden gusts of dramatic music.

Suggested Cast

Bernard: Robert De Niro

Greg: Greg Kinnear

Roger: Jake Gyllenhaal

Suzanne: Kirsten Dunst

Smooth J, the black dude: Chris Rock

Melvin: Tom Cruise

Alicia: Sigourney Weaver

Officer O’Malley, the cop: Harvey Keitel

Wolfgang Petersen directs.

The plot: Bernard (cameo by Robert De Niro) is in the hospital with a stomach ulcer. His friend Greg (Greg Kinnear) promises to look after his apartment, pay the rent, etc. Action follows Greg as he walks the streets of summer New York, meeting exotic characters: Street musicians, street people, Wall Street suits hailing taxis, hustlers, runaways, drug addicts, pimps. The proverbial voyeur, everything impresses Greg. If you burp dramatically, he’s on it in a second, recapping the event in excruciating detail.

            Meanwhile, at the group house where Greg lives, Roger (Jake Gyllenhaal) is in the kitchen enthusing aloud over synthesizers advertised in music mags. Z-Z-Zap! A space monster, suspiciously like Predator, rayguns him into a greasy smudge. The monster raids the china closet, eating crystal beakers and wineglasses by inserting them directly into its stomach. Crunch, crunch! Exit space monster.

            Roger’s housemates come home and complain about the odor of burning rubber, while slipping and sliding on his greasy remains.

            Bernard gets out of the hospital to find he’s been evicted, all his plants have died, his dog starved to death.

            The End.

It’s got legs. I think you should greenlight it. I’ll get to work on dialogue.

Sincerely, Kevin Feingold

*