Spiritual Math

I'll do the math for you. If you are fifty four years old and lived for 21 years in Pittsburgh, you can subtract from your age the first 33 years, which is the age at which Jesus Christ bought it.

Sound like a good deal? Well, you have to live in Pittsburgh till your soul freezes. Till you no longer need to make sense. When you no longer expect it from others, and let yourself babble along with the illiterate rabble. Rhyming is a symptom of the process. It's known to come about following a brain injury. Mine is a sore train wreck. But I accept this black hole like the gospel.

And I never would have seen the light and the numbers had there not been a conversation in front of my shanty. I was trying to read The New Yorker on the front porch, as the conversation illustrated why this town can't pull itself out of oblivion. Five city workers were standing at the perrimeter of a grave-size oblong hole in the street. Shovels in hand and the city works truck idling near by, the men were standing stark still, talking about the many things that make them the very soul of Pittsburgh.
"If I make the next pay grade, I'm gonna upgrade my package in Vegas." One of the men said to the group. They all acknowleged the close relationship between pay scale and package deal.

"Well, I been taking my free time at the Rivers Casino, but I'm planning to see Vegas before too much longer." responded another.
Perhaps it was the foreman who boasted that he had a time share unit in Las Vegas, leaving him no chance of having a vacation that didn't serve the need. "You know, there's a hotel in Vegas costs $25,000 a night. Michael Jackson stayed there."

"If you won the lottery, would you stay there, at $25,000 a night," one of the men asked the group. All responded in turn, orderly as nuns, "Yeah, of course I'd stay at a hotel where Michael Jackson was. If it was the same room he was in."

Agreement was expressed around the oblong hole. They would all stay at the hotel if they won the lottery. It sounded as if only a fool wouldn't. Like, "Yes, I'd buy the Hope Diamond," or, "Naturally, I'd turn my heart to philanthropy," but their vacation packages were the only things that would change if they were suddenly filthy rich.

Virtually all topics of discussion crossed the same simple criteria. Pay grade. Las Vegas. The Lottery. It sounded as if the city works had geared itself to the price of vacation packages, time share units, and smorgesboards. Food splendor was another topic discussed around the oblong hole. None of the men were skinny, and they talked with extra ardor about the food, all they could choke down, at a favorite hotel in Vegas. Drink is a curse of the working class. So's Vegas. And gluts of fattening food.

Prophecies are tendered like the coins in a slot machine. A plethora of earthly heavens are there for the taking, while you enjoy your paid time off from your job digging holes in the street. if you win the lottery, you can quit your job shoveling asphalt. The next higher pay grade places you closer to the celebrities, and surely, the lottery could put you right in the Rat Pack's lap, inspite of them all being dead. If the workers won the lottery, the Rat Pack would all come back to life. Resurection in Vegas. Dead town, Pittsburgh.

More Optimistic Tweets

She has a trace of a beard and a case of tardive dyskensia. This is hacked out with appropriate guilt for making sport of the infirmed. It's gauche to ask if her habit of spitting is autonomic or something she hopes to perfect, practicing like a concert musician in her assisted living unit. But to be fair, few people don't practice something ugly.

The highrise is right next to my first bus stop of the day, first of many, in both directions, and I would be less averse if she didn't pace around in loops and cross checkings, with legs of her journey coming too close to me. Within inches. I'm averse to being spat on.

Since I'm being both honest and reprehensible, like a clown spinning plates on sticks, there's some points to discuss on her side of the topic, like she was there first. She had been utilizing the bus service before I began, and like I should go eat broken glass, the extra nice benches and lucite enclosure that grace the bus stop are only there because of the sensible modern highrise facility. Everywhere else in the hood there's a nest of cracked cement and mud to stand on while waiting for public transport. No shit, the system did put all kinds of people in circulation. People who in years past would have been kept in a vault. On the other hand, I'm still a lousy prick with a phobia about people who are sick and interactive.

But this young autumn day is a regular poultice. I feel better about everything, for there is a moment of clarity worth flicking across the breakfast table. I've been making a practice of pointing a stick at things that indicate an improving quality of life. The woman who paces around, wrecklessly, expectorating in all directions while sporting a Van Dyke has been wearing brand new glasses. They look like the kind of glasses lawyers, social workers, women professional people in general wear, and it's an improvement in both her looks, and in the way that social progress looks. Nice new glasses on that social progress.

Men's Parade

Honest, honest, honest, this is hacked out devoid of homophobia. It's supposed to be presented in good humor, cherios all around. I'm using the situation in a hearty, playful, gutsy sort of manor.

The event so named 'Men's Parade,' named by me, and fessed of free will, was moving and humanizing, as well as traumatic, so I'm going to let the true name for it shine, let it shine... More than a statement about the Pittsburgh gay community, in 1991, there was one night a month upon which a billion gay men would march through Oakland in a dazzling show of solidarity. Intimating that I'm a straight man, only slightly to the left of Jack Webb in Dragnet, one unique night etched the parade on my indellible yellow legal pad of life experience.

It was probably in September. I'm not that meticulous about dates, such as when I bought the leather trench coat at a Goodwill store. It cost five skinny dollars, fit immaculately, was of wonderful quality, and was identical to the coat Richard Roundtree wore in the original movie 'Shaft.' It draped properly, praise God. This was twenty years ago, at which time I had great hair. Since I'm working up to some sort of point, I'm the tall, willowy, nervous type, thus people have been calling me a fag since I was nine. I'm not. I'm straight. Willowy. Nervous. Wearing a leather trench coat that choir directors and synchronised swimmers would die for.

The power and glory of it all was that for no reason what ever, I decided to wear my new coat to Chief's bar, which was normally a semi-styling dive bar full of diverse mottled hipsters. But one day a month it filled like an aquarium with male homosexuals dressed to the nines. Honest to whom or what ever, I am just a silly straight fellow who hadn't been livng in Pittsburgh for very long.

I had no idea it was Men's Parade on that evening I wore that beguiling leather trench coat, walking more than a mile along the very route the men marched, together, joyous and overwhelming.

This all hapened at the very time at which simple new relationships had been forming. I had been making a lot of new friends in Chief's bar. Up until that catastrophic parade, there, as far as I knew, were no arch questions being asked about my character, background or groin yearnings. It was pure coincindence that I entered Chief's along with a thick stream of men all coming into Chief's Bar, all dressed fantasticly and all in rare form. I was not in rare form, though. I was almost my usual self, but a little off my graze from the mile walk in the jubillant, stunningly dressed, queer throngs.

I was not marching with the gay men. I was walking, to Chief's bar, alone, a male molecule encapsulated in the leather trench coat like the one Shaft wore in the original movie. But all the straight friend's, and gay one's as well, that I'd met thus far at Chief's all at once thought that I had dressed up special to share in the mass celebration of male gayness. In fact, they all, at once, assumed that I was gay. At the same time judgement was being passed among the bar flies I had come to see as friends, total strangers were taking a fancy to me. Guys were putting their hands on me. Making overtures. Striking up conversations, by the cock hairs of Zeus. There was no place to sit and took forever to get a beer because the dump was so crowded. I was getting groped. Then the walk home was the mirror image of the walk there, the streets and sidewalks a dense and random parade in celebration of men, men, men. All of whom thought I had dressed up special for Men's Parade. I was getting groped. Guys were making passes.

Making Up Words

This post is nothing to sweat over , you might do without it,I'd say go ahead, give it a read. Processing the info plucked from the droll universe that surrounds us all, I invented an acronym.

Since it might catch on, I want credit for it, and it could win a spot in the dictionary, I must needs to stake my claim in the frontier soil that word origin is. Gentle readers, I coined the acronym 'WAMF.'

"WAMF" stands for 'witty ass motherfucker.' I am a witty ass motherfucker. I am a WAMF. I'm a funny guy. Ask someone. Go on. Try it.

I am at least as scintillating and evanescent as Winston Fucking Churchill or Ogden Fucking Nash. In fact, I'm fucking near Noel Coward, minus a couple brownie points for provenence. That can happen to anyone, especially us riveting soiree' crashers who might be playing on the dark keys.

I'm one of those fuckers who look cool in a smoking jacket. Or a fucking lap robe. With the big business out like lasagne noodles. I'm a WAMF, fuckers. So go ahead and use my addition to modern language as you will. Pretend you're all cutting edge and hip. Just don't forget where the fuck you heard it first.

Learning To Shut Up

Hey, ya. Name's Orange Fitz, my real name. Ma was a ceramist, name of Allethia Fitz. They always give their kids wierd names. The wife dumped me a decade ago, let me keep the Winnebago. It don't run no more, so it's a sheet metal trailer with a grubby windshield. Mike's been letting me keep it behind his barn in exchange for doing odd jobs.

Had to use a stage name, Vince Viccars, in the last career, now I'm using my given name. Had to get back to where I began.
See, the trouble started long before that break up. I was having me a career in film. Till I done got myself blackballed.

They was big on giving jobs to bikers, when I rode west on the Harley, round 1962. Ain't had one of them bikes in a coon's age. Wife took that, along with everything else, except my digs. I was an extra in near all the flicks that needed a herd of bikers to ride through town and tear up the place. Seemed like I had it made. Long way up, same distance down. At the height of it all, I got a two second speaking role in 'They Saved Hitler's Brain.'

Since you're wondering what happened, it was something you couldn't anticipate in a thousand years, unless you was one them Hebrew/Americans that produced cowboy flicks since before the Great Depression. They also produced biker flicks. And a certain sci-fi flick. Ain't going full into details, but you never know where people got sore spots. All I said was, "They was on to something."

Romanian Chairs

Bellevue is a dry town, but a drinking establishment is in walking distance, spitting distance, if you will. I was waiting for the 14 bus just a cock hair out of town, no good place to sit, in front of the road house called the Rusty Dory. What the fuck is a 'dory?' What ever, the last place I went to shop is a Red, White and Blue thrift store, located right off of route 65, where I bought nothing. There was a close call with a leather trench coat that came near enough to my size to spark a mental picture of me in sadist regalia. Makes sense, somehow, that people would have secret lives in a town that forbids the use of alcohol. But a man burdened with unrelated guilt has no right to judge others.

The remorse was for pissing. There's a Burger King an eight lane jog across 65 from the thrift store, both still in Bellevue proper. Like a thief, I snuck in and used the men's room, and didn't buy anything. I could hear the invisible voices, saying, "There, that is the man who pissed in here, and now the door is always locked, and you have to ask at the counter for the key, because bastards like that lousy thrift shopper did what he just did. Fucker." Pricks like me abuse corporate kindnesses, and it's the commoner who suffers for it. Reminds how a term paper I wrote in college, titled 'The Ethical Suicide,' landed me a C-, and I didn't bother with grad school. Now I ride the bus. Standing guilty and alone, an ugly American, soon I had company at the bus stop along the highway. And again, I was still alone, though now among others.

Two men appeared from across the street, both quite old, very pale, one in chinos and a checked sport shirt, the other in blue work pants and a checked short sleeve sport shirt. One on the two men was carrying chairs. They were speaking, smiling their words to each other, in a rush of an Asian dialect. Both ignored me when I smiled and nodded in their direction. Both though, seemed to be thrilled with their purchase at he thrift store.

If I could understand their language, all doubt would be erased. They were talking about their two Romanian chairs. Stealing glances though, I saw on one of them the word 'Romania." It was on the underside of the hardwood seat, the chairs stacked in front of them, one upright, the other inverted. They were cheap, sturdy early American style, the kind supplied to nursing homes and group homes and condominiums owned by the tasteless middle class. My legs were hurting.

I was aching for a friendly conversation, as well as for respite from the heat and the burden of my own weight. But only a true ugly American would initiate conversation in what might be someone's second language. And I'm a cute son of a bitch, when I'm not pissing in some fast food joint where I'm not wanted. Two people close by, and no one to talk to. And two chairs left unused, like they weren't there to be sat on. With the two bleach skinned old men talking to each other, and no chance at all at any sort of kinship forming on my end, I decided to make a seat out of a pile of rocks, fresh clean rocks trying and failing at decorating the front parking lot of the Rusty Dory. Like the two chairs, it was uncomfortable, and it couldn't have looked good for a man to sit like a child on the ground, while two men remained standing beside the highway in front of their second hand furniture.

I've always admired the stoicism of the Asian peoples. One would have to be, to sit for more than a few seconds in a patently uncomfortable chair. Or, for that matter, to remain standing for as long as it takes for the bus to come. When the bus finally came, I waved the two men enter ahead of me, like a good American, like to allow them their best opportunity in finding seats and some free space for their ugly Romanian chairs. These are the silly rules I live by.

Checkered Flannel

Brad was in an ugly mood. He was pounding beer in a road house, the television news covering the Feenis County Fair, and the regs, mostly farmers and tool and die men, were talking about Linda LaMote.

"Hey LaRue, what year was she Miss Feenis County?"

"Don't remember. But I was driving that F100, I know that."

"What's that got to do with when she was Miss Feenis," Donnell Yokes asked.

These were all slow talking men, with whole minutes passing before replies.


"I crashed that truck two years ago, so it's a ball park figure."

On the nineteen inch black and white screen a local news personality was interviewing a husband and wife taffy pulling operation, with the Ferris wheel and concession tents in the background. The homely couple, both with white paper cunt-caps on their heads, did their laughing tug of war as they talked, both ends of the taffy gangling out of their hands like a low hanging scrotum.

"It ain't about liking to do this," the rotund, thin haired lady puller told the interviewer. "it's about just doing it. It's what we been doing since 1963."

The men seated like red flannel crows around the horseshoe bar were still talking about Linda LaMote. "She been in a lotta movies, since being crowned queen here." The comment sounded dangerously sarcastic, though LaRue's inflections were nearly flat.


"I wouldn't fuck her with my worst enemy's dick," Brad bellowed out, before he had even bothered sounding out the words in his head.

The outburst came as no surprise to the rest of the patrons. Linda had been invited to appear at the fair, and turned down the invitation. No one was ready to forgive her for doing a thing like that. Or, rather, for not doing a thing like that.

"Ain't that a crime of ommission?" A sincere and dry shot at humor by Larue

"Damn straight," Brad agreed, this time, at least, thinking before he spoke.