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.

Book Biz (at total fabrication)

I got Katie's permission to use her novel, "Opening Rings" as an example of the power of words. Katie came to me just after she left grad school in Massachusetts. "How do I get my novels out of the middle class?," she wrote to me. Hundreds of writers write to me, most after reading one of my books. My home address is always on the inside cover. Nothing to hide. I got no aversion to strangers. The six dobermans cased in razor wire around my mobile home are there like a half dozen lawn jockeys. Katie is one of the people who make me proud to be an independent publisher.



I got right back to Katie, that time. "You write what you need to write," I told her, practically ordering her into the kind of action I want. And without that dumb bourgoisie hestiation a lot of women, and certain men, authors get a problem over. I have been publishing all kinds of lady's books through Brass Plane Publishing.

Katie didn't waste any time putting out exactly the kind of work she had inside. I told her, "You get fucked up over that MFA program, you could get a bad reputation with the agents. You get that, you won't have books like "Inferiostomy," or your book. The one I told you I like."

"Shit," she said. "My daddie tried to get me to give it all up for the law firm he owns." There you are. "Fuck no," I says. Brass Plane Publications puts your books out without you having to go that route. Fuck no.



The little lady who wrote "Done Ragging" is also one of my protoges'. She's a little firebrand, married to a guy who races stock cars. Somewhere in the Ozarks. I'm gonna be heading up that way on the Harley, so we can talk about a deal I'm working out for them. Lisa Smith told me that her MFA is as good as a visit from pest control as far as getting you published, and Lisa's on her second book, made here in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania.

Right here are two women who have done great for themselves by way of Brass Plane Publications. My wife's right here with me, and I wouldn't fuck any other broad with your dick. It's all business between those women authors and me.

Following Uncle

We are/were close blood relatives, and there was a resemblence between us. We both have/had weak, timid chins, and we both have/had goatees that come/came and went with our chameleonic whims. He was a writer and critic, so the crap am I. Uncle passed at 55, I'm 53 and expect to reach at least 56. It would only be fair, considering that Uncle got famous while in his late 30s and I'm still treading the wet July air, as if the stuggle will lead to something. Uncle was best known for his work as a jazz critic, before bowling a strike with his book on the subject of graffiti. This is the reason I've turned to the subject of criticism. There are two movies that are for the most part long forgotten, and someone has to make the world know both were prescient.



I have in my private film collection a copy, on durable VHS format, of the low budget masterpiece, "Surf Nazis Must Die." On the surface, it's a schlock account of a cabal, eventually thwarted by honest American law enforcement. While the lead conspirator has black hair and post-Vietnam drooping mustache, how could anyone not be alarmed by the supporting cast of Nazis, most of whom were platinum blond. The flick could be clasified as mere cops and robbers, with neo-fascist theme, but the key word is 'surf.' Obviously, the West Coast has been spawning Nazis like violets in spring. And they can't all be just hanging ten and cursing minorities.


Not housed in my own collection, I had the good fortune of renting the B-classic, "They Saved Hitler's Brain." In this work, Der Fuehrer's scowling noggin is in a jar, kept alive with the same chemicals and electrodes that worked so well in, "The Brain That Wouldn't Die." Lucky for us all, those chemicals have been kept a secret, though I'll bet you a bowl of popcorn that Dick Cheney and half the CIA have it on paper, secured to their refrigerator doors with an ABCs magnet. It's just common sense. Why stay dead when you don't have to?

This movie also featured men and women with hair the color of Andy Warhol's wig. And wigging the late Hitler did. The only time he smiled was when the antagonist thugs were winning. Towards the end, as the virile fascist thugs fell into defeat, a look of abject horror came over the severed head in the inverted pickle jar. Knowing now that both great films were more than light entertainment, it's my duty to warn the public.



Of what should everyone be warned? Surf Nazis. Hitler's brain. Norway. No longer flexing oiled pecks on the beach, they have mobilized.

I'm in the middle of a sticky law suit over my publishing venture, Brass Plane Publications, but none the less I am willing to risk further persecution to squeeze off a more detailed account of what is happening. You too can see your manifestos and sagas looking more like a real book, and it won't cost you eternity in electrostatic brine. Just $5000 down and a modest editing fee, and you too can be an important author, like myself. Suffice, for now, to know that what you need to save the world is just a money order away. My new book, "They Killed Bruce's Novel" is available in hard cover, soft cover and astroprojection, $19.95, in the format that best saves you from advancing tyrany. Good day and good reading.





P.S. There is no such entity as 'Brass Plane Publishing.' It's purely fiction.