short fiction: Green Christmas

 

Green Christmas

 

Otis Wilkins was coming. He'd been gone for ages, and was borrowing some coed's Dodge Dart to make the trip to Erie. Cub Bartholomew dissappeared for four months, and came back to town by bus, via forced exodus or jail. Coming home to Erie is better than making a new one someplace steel. Matilda Chortleman was acting as social director. Dean Gibson put out the greenbacks to rent the hotel room. This was to be a green Christmas, even in a snow squall. Thus far there was four feet of anal retentive water piled up in drifts on the sidewalk. But this was to be a party for people with imagination, and no respect for the truth. It was passe'. Inconsequential to them. To "all the young dudes," as David Bowie put it. Viva Bowie. They have effrontery.

"We don't let concrete stay solid any too long" was their collective watchword, when they were students at the state college I find distasteful to mention. They were the avante guard and the underground and elite, some of them former members of a punk band. People wove baskets. Did ceramics. Copped a look. Gell-mousse slashing forelocks. At times, glitter. That was 1981-1983.5, before they scattered. For a while. There's been reunions.

The importance of having a green Christmas was to deny a deep shitload of snow in 2012. Going on a bell-ringing 2013. Creepy number. Not that your new friends upstairs are superstitious. Some people are, hint.

Green is a liberating color. Lets you cross the intersection. Makes oxygen. Earth Mother shit. Thought you'd like the image. Gazongas on an earthy fertility fetish. Green is a durable symbol of youth, envy, fertility, and take a powder, the whole green Earth. Money, too. Forgot to say 'money.' I could load myself with female hormones at any moment. I had college courses in feminism. For some reason, I may not be conveying the spirit I'd hoped for. A green branch is more bendable.... Enough. It was the symbol of the new way for that spot and time slot. And not only green.

They discussed at length the stupidity of worrying about doofy Judeo Christian ethics, without which any putz can prosper in mother US. But since then all have, some how or other, found civil obedience. Some. Good-o.

Cub was an original member of Howling X, Now one of Howling X works as a drummer in a cruise ship band. Otis was a bass player, big dude, real easy, likable, in and out of rehab. Currently hoary and bloated. Left a half-way house. Stayed with Dean, earning his keep like a geisha. For a big, physically wasted man, he is graceful moving. Looks nice serving tea.

Well did I forget to say that that ding-dang party had something cheery-special in store for everyone, in a clean, warm hotel room off Peach Street, down the row from squatter's heaven? Love that place. Free digs. Chilly surfers with grunge gear for cold nights in a frame with no windows, just entry ports. Hard years. Hard times. Spiritous cliches of specters on equine transport galloping at us till the end of time. Hallaluja. Had to wing that in. Sorry. Forgot to say I'm a dime store minister. Damn near deserve to preach on radio.

Took Otis some lively cavorting to find someone on a university campus who was not too attatched to the material. His fine presentations in the coffee shop nearest campus mirrored the current trend in metaphysical philosophy. Shit. There's beauty in that. It doesn't change much in 30 years. Assholes are still selling revised books they force kids to buy each year, new, since the old edition is unrevised rat shit. Cute book racket. He had his Dodge in less than two days of stalking the campus. "I'm needed at a peace convention," Otis convinced the maiden he palavered with after crashing a frat party. "Be back with your car real soon." For a man to accomplish that, at his age, takes pinache. He dresses college. Like it. Good choice of glasses on Otis. Slide down his scnoz like he teaches something that fucking matters. Deep. Arcane. Matter is incorporeal. Can't own it. Only fuck with it.

Pikers Ale. Dean. Dean. Did I forget Dean. Dean promised to supply mega-cases of Pikers Ale. It was a favorite in the days when Howling X ratted out their curt punk anthems. In a roadhouse just outside the legal limitations of a teensy rural college town that deserves a lite chin chuck from someone fucking smart. A fucking hell hole for higher learniing. Guests at the Christmas party should start banging in after six pm tomorro! Have to snooze. See ya' soon....



...Awake. Took a shower. Or didn't. You can't care. It's the day of Green Christmas. With enough snow outside the hotel room to make Greenland go, "Hey! We sure could use some of your snow up here, assholes." I fucking near forgot to discuss Matilda.

Matilda turned out swell. A career woman. Communications. In the dwindling field of tele-communications, now so barbed with punky no-call lists. Fuckers. They shouldn't do that to someone as comely and generous as she. She was the tall thin Earth Mother to most of that gang. A procuress. She was loved at that nameless college. Damn good earner on the phone. She's assertive on cue. Dean was already at the hotel cause he rented the fucking room. Matilda got there early because she has responsibilities. Just like at work. She's keen like that. The cases and cases of upper-crust cabin-by-the- babbling-brook type ale were stacked by the wall that served as the bar. The simplicity makes me go loosy goosy. Fuck it all, it's Christmas.

Now everbody who mattered worth a shit back at that slum state college in Nowheresville has finally arrived. Hooray. Let's party. I mean them. I heard about this shit. Maybe I was there. I'm not at liberty to be horribly specific. Was I remiss in saying that Matillda saved her shekels for some time to be ready for this extravaganza. Generous, inherritted greenbacks, Dean chipped in for the goodies. Too. Green Christmas! Blasting a punk favorite from back when they all were rad....here we go.......on a silver platter someone stole from a Tupperware party back in Kansas,......... an ounce of blow. A whole fucking ounce! Can you believe that much could be had? Cost a shit load. Everyone gathered for the viewing in the center of that clean, lovely-warm hotel room. Matilda had the baggie covered with an embroidery, beaded like royalty, that some one stole from some other social venue somewhere in Texas. There were tales to be told of everyone's travels. More gifts from residential/commercial places they stole shit from. Later on. When it kicks in. It will. Oh boy. Tick, Tick, Tick...



...Green Christmas. Matilda had laced the blow with a harmless green coloring agent. It was forest green cocaine. Can't bring myself to list specifically, by name, how Christmas-happy everyone was! The gifts they stole from all over the place, the green lines of blow on the Micky Mouse hat mirror Dean's mother bought him for his confirmation, so splendid. It was once viewed as an honor to receive such a mirror. Helped good Mouseketeers keep their hats on straight. You didn't get to see that blow-mirror any too often, I can tell you. Special occaission. More special to come. Holy fuck, dear sweet Matilda looks out the motel window and shits a post and lintel. There's a shit-storm of ugly green slime falling from the sky. Going greasy hideous kersplat, with force, on the four feet of snow on Peach Street. LIke in that Dr. Sues book. Except his green slime from outer space was gooey and comical. The grean shit that just started falling, like nearly now, like a plague, was really, really putrid. Worse than the green shit in the kid's book by Dr. Suess, who everyone still loves the way everyone was loving Matilda. Till she went frozen. Everyone rushed to the window to look at the horrible green shit coming down. Powerful green shit-storm. It stopped. They resumed enjoying the blow.  Except for Matilda, who was now a pillar of frozen green slime.  People serving as den mother to a pack of evil cub scouts deserve it for enablling a band of antisocials to feel so fucking good about their miserable selves.  On the other had, you don't kick a starlet out of bed for eating lime jello, and that hill of tainted, tinted  blow was too wonderful to waste on sentiment.

Past, Present, Future. It's against house policy to lock into time frames. Eastern. Hall of mirrors. Like some fake-ass mystic peering in his smudged, finger printy, blueberry muffin crumb specked crystal ball. That was the Apacalypse. The whole fucking Apacalypse. The four horsemen are economical, budget-constricted big fat pricks! They just picked their spot, and did it. Blew green slime on Erie, Pennsylvania. No reason for it. Threw a dart at the map and pulled a prank. That's all the Apocalypse is. A prank. Not that it ain't for good it happened. It's a message. There's a moral. And it's a really, really cool gag. Fucking Merry Christmas! Green Christmas. Write some songs about the event. Go over like Silent Night or White Christmas. But we're green.