Suit Flight

As a man in the botton third portion of a financial downward trajectory, steps are being taken to pull up the joy stick and point the nose cone upward. I've decided to dress better. Pinched for the operating budget, I had to obtain at least one clean, presentable business suit, in case any one is hiring kamikaze displaced middle management. Leaping from my crashing biplane to modern aviation, I decided to feret on the internet the cheapest ready made suit that escaped the sweat shops of Pakistan. Air mail, or ground shipping, it is here, fruit of some alien loom.

It arrived in the mail, in an envelope smaller than I had expected, though this polyesther business suit didn't even need the sactuary of a cardboard box. Its wrinkle free fabric is so advanced it's a space odyssey.

The color is good. And once there were no good colors in polyester gaberdine before this day.


Rose petals falling from the caked ceiling, the price, with postage, was fifty two bucks, with introductory discount. Not only was it impossible to look cool in a cheap suit of recent yore, there was no internet in the 1970s, when the disco era caused confusion and revulsion for what has emerged as the lungs of Orpheus. Synthetic fibers have risen in consciousness. This suit fits so well, you could style your way out of the Underworld. This, too, was only released from Olympus when man/woman was ready to apply themselves to the task of innovation.

Maybe it is the length of the trousers that validates the Golden Mean. There is less than a quarter inch wiggle room between the right length and a fashion blunder so paralyzing that even your earth tone silk tie will look like manure. I will not asperse the character of man whose cuff gently tap at the top of his shoes, and I will not be concilliary to a man who is dressed for a flood. A quarter inch shorter, he is a fool. But if the pant leg is from the fashion moguls of Zeus, it will take greater initiative than merely touch the shoes. Trousers of impact break about seven inches above the instep, such to give a yet more pleasing and compelling look. It is merely a subtle crease, again living to the tolerance of a indexing lathe, but if it works, you will be perceived as super-mortal. Here the coat is the proof of Golden Mean, as it's proper length is in harmonic balance with the ideal trouser. Should that be disrupted there isn't a hat or collar bar that can save your fashion statement.
My new suit breaks properly, and the coat, too is the proper length. Valhalla.

For this nest segment, subtited 'the lifting of banes,' cat hair doesn't stick to the material, and it is machine washable. The all-cotton cut rate off-brand chinos I had been wearing the past fourteen years are indellible with cat hair. The static cling is so powerful I once seemed to have fur. Be mindful the Ancient Greeks abhored body hair. The new duds abhor it as elegantly.

Now is the prima vera in a new way of dressing. I had suffered, in mind, about the right way to dress, and fretted the cost. I wondered, would it be possible to look hip, while sustaining a blood oath of cheapness. Victory. It has become clear that there are people in business suits, down town, and there are worse off individuals who are not dressed for advancement.
Polyester has achieved advancement. Victory. The mysteries of proportion, texture and responsiveness to flourescent commercial light have been in formation all that trying while, when the leisure suit caused a great fabric to be wronged. It has found itself, and has merged with the muses of Christian Dior and Oleg Cassini. The suit fits perfectly. The muses and their sartorial excellence. The ghosts are admiring this victory.

Talking Bears

Deer are family in Western Pennsyvania. Virtually all residents have hunted, shot, eaten or merely crashed into one with the family SUV. And most residents have stalked and beaten a relative, so there is unity. These nether-species cousins are abundant. So much so, a lot of them are turning up in the inner city here. I see fauns behind the house. Whole hurds of them stick their snoots in your pockets. They roll people.

Racoons enter and exit merrily through the holes in a neighbor's roof. To shame the poshest love nest, I have a view of the zoo out the front picture window.

Opossums are more rhetorical in my neighborhood than in others. Chipmonks have implimented family planning, without prompting from a bureau. My cat mastered plain English. And now, bears have been talking to me.

There was a black furry ursa minor, not bigger than me, but near enough for discomfiture. It lacked the clarity my dear Noodles expends like nickels, and Calicao cats are known to excell in ellocution and wit, but the young bear was able to convince me it wasn't Smokey the Bear. It was it's own fur and hide. He was a real person in his own natural costume. Not some bozo.

Visiting Stig

Some nights my beloved cat, Noodles, sits on the front porch and chats with Stig, the alley cat. Stig has no permanant address, yet his personality is superior to that of most homeless people. Last night I happen to over hear them talking about Stig's past.

"Yeah, I was living with a guy downtown"

"Where about's, Stig?"

"It was in one of those new type apartments, you know, where there used to be a store or a warehouse."

"So you were living with someone who was pretty well healed, and otherwise, a piece of shit."

"Yeah. Yeah. The guy has money."

"So what happened, Stig?"

"Problem with the guy's piano."

"Yeah..."

"Okay, it's his priceless Steinway concert grand piano."

"You fucked with it."

"Yeah. I did. I fucked with it."

"So you just decided to fuck with his Steinway?"

"No. He kept making me get off his piano. Fucking piano. That's what I say. It's his fucking fault. Anyway, when he was out of the room I'd hop in the open cover and piss and shit on the strings. Sometimes I'd take a piss right in the goddam hammer assemblies. Takes months for it to take effect."

"So he noticed sooner or later that there was piss and shit in his piano."

"That's about the size of it."

"Was he one of those assholes who think they're Carl Haas?"

"No. This asshole thought he was Liberace. Fucking closet case. But since you mention it, he was playing the Pathetique Sonata, when shit balls started flying out the front of the goddam Steinway. Some of them bounced off the canope and hit the bastard in the face."

"So it was worth getting kicked out."

"Oh, fuck yeah."

The Cats of Honor

It has always bothered me when some people have to explain beyond the facts why they need my help or want my friendship. Friendship is the worse explanation of the two for there being the leverage of need.

Ramon is a creature of honor, so his few impositions are never taken badly here. We have been speaking freely for several years now, and at times his infectious smile on a black moon face, with it's long jagged scar down the cheek, eased to plain talking when he told me why my help was needed. On one such occaission he told me that a bargain is a dinner table, across which the pork and gravy is said. That was something that I already knew, and needed to hear from an other.

It was getting to the end of the month. I was eating spagetti with my fingers, taking a few strands directly from the collender in the sink, lifting them over my head and lowering them down the hatch. Noodles was finishing a can of Nine Lives beef chunks in gravy, skewering the last of the chunks with a paw hook and lifting them over her head and into her lovely mouth.



Ramon came to the door, I let him in, and we sat together in the kitchen for a few minutes trying to put one another at ease, as the smile on the giant alley cat's face was in storage till his work was done.

"Bruce. Bruce. My family has been doing well of late, as you know. We have had woodchucks with meat like a Brahma bull, and we have had birds that flew too close to the sun"

"You mean they flew too close to those powerful paws of yours, Ramon," I said, to break up the tension a little. The joke was not wasted and Ramon was able smile just a little. But there was a reason for the visit, and it showed beside the scar and a broken whisker. "Bruce, this time it is for a friend of my family. A friend who has not been well. He has colitis and is unable to digest the foods my family has so enjoyed this great harvest season."

Noodles listened as carefully and fully as did I. Her white and pumpkin fur coat covered every grace in the world. And, too, she could be a cynic among cats and people who thrive among these complexities. "What the fuck, Bruce, I got extra food," she said, in a brash tone that, ironically, salved the hurt of need. "Will two cans of Nine Lives get your friend clear for a few days?"

"Yes, Noodles, two cans will permit my friend to regain his strength."

"It's in the closet over the sink, Bruce."

"Yes, Noodles, I know where we keep the food."

The Cat Saga

Noodles, Ramon and I sat at the cable spool in the house he and his had acquired through mortgage failure. We took turns pouring Cuervo and biting the lemon, while off to the side all the kittens were eating sweetly around the carcus of a fresh woodchuck. For the grown-ups the birds, tar tar, fluttered inside us all like birds drinking tequilla. Ramon can make robins into anchovies, or bacon to garnish his wonderful ground hog serviche.

"You might say that cats are, in some respects, like your fundamentalists," Ramon said as he looked at the thousand kittens. Noodles doesn't laugh out loud, or even move much once she settles in, but she registered that funny thought. "We're not very good ones," she commented.

"That's religeon, from the vantage point of sex" I said. "I think sex is better when it's used to influence politics."

"Was her name, 'Lewinski,'" Ramon dropped in. He was able to keep abreast of current events.

"Yes, Ramon. She influnenced politics a little bit by making Bill Clinton look like a jerk."

"It didn't make much difference," said Noodles, dryly.

As Ramon poured another round of tequilla, he sagely added, "No, but we should know that indiscretions are worse for people who are rich than for us."

Some people regard cats as thankless creatures, but that is because they are in the dark.