"Worn Out, Old, and Broke, Headed Straight to Hell"
When Bad Things Come Down on Good Friends
from 
JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
“Might Could” and “Maybe Should”
ANOTHER ANGEL TO THE RESCUE
I’m still not completely moved. My writing habit, my work habit--- teaching writing, doing community organizing and research, counseling a little here, freelancing a bit there---not to mention my dream habit all call me so, or pay me well enough these days, that I can afford to procrastinate. Thus, I’ve found myself awaiting an angel for about a week.
My rescuing angel, Marcus, is not Marcus Dixon, another angelic force about whom I’ve written who serves prison time for being human while Black. Today’s angel-Marcus is an amazing polyglot son of Dutch, Native American, French, and additional Western European infusions.
Blessed by his dad’s martial good looks, a blade thin NBA-sized hyper-handsomeness that women find infectiously exhileranting, he abandoned the military mien of his ultra-controlling and mean-spirited father, in Columbus, Georgia, home of Fort Benning and a history as tortured and bizarre as any combination of genocide and farce that is possible to imagine.
Marcus is the heroic anti-hero of several of the short stories that I’ve written and insist would make world class films, the most electrifying and erotic of which is “Tripping, or, Back in Hippy Days.” He’s also a feckless fool who rolls his own cigarettes, gives all his money away to comely women whose children need help that daddy no longer provides, would much rather find an obscure blues record than make a hundred dollars, and has a cast of freakish friends who by comparison make a party scene in a “Star Wars” film seem like a suburban PTA meeting.
Of course, in the fullness of time, “Lord willing and the creek don’t rise,” this will all come out, every seamy, steamy, dreamy, dreadful, and mad little detail of any import whatsoever. Mostly, however, today our interlude revolves around an unfortunate encounter Mark had three months ago---as he rode one of the two racing bikes which then provided him with workable transport around a city notoriously brutal and heartless toward cyclists---with a fucking Hummer. This was not a mere brush with mortality, but a head on collision with the reaper.
He nearly lost his arm, and a friend quipped about the accident, “it would have left either of us brain dead, but Marcus is missing so many brain cells,” due to pot and acid, that “there wasn’t enough there left to kill.” That’s why I hadn’t already called him to help me through the horrific nightmare of moving Jimbo. He’s the strongest man I know, other than the handful of NFL players I’ve moved or befriended over the years.
I met him for the first time, actually, when Francisco and I---who make another pair of almost unbelievably strong men---were moving a huge houseful of furniture that included a grand piano. Francisco sniffed in his peculiarly fastidious way, “check dat out!” I figured I might see a woman particularly gorgeous, but instead I spied this skinny, tall, pony-tailed white boy, all bones and muscle in tank-top and gym-shorts, loading a full-sized upright piano, by himself, ONTO A FUCKING PICK-UP TRUCK!!
Francisco and I rushed to the rescue, only to discover that this fellow---who turned out to be a younger and even more rebel-yell cute, proto-redneck Marcus---was handling it. We helped him with the other piano in spite of his ‘aw, shucks’ demurrals, and Marcus has worked with me off and on for the twenty years since. But like I said, I hadn’t called in my current straits because of his arm, which still looks like he’s been doing body double work for Frankenstein, cross-stitching as extensive as a crazy quilt of flesh continuing to mark his right side from shoulder to wrist.
He called me this morning, however, and, ever in danger of losing the little house that his mom bought him before she died, asked if I had anything for him to do. If I were a religious sort, I probably would have heard the flutter of wings as we spoke. Instead, I promised to pay him well and worship his essence if he would give me five or six hours.
I had actually hoped that the attorneys I recommended he consult would have gotten him something from the Hummer driver, a dangerous but charming thug who managed to convince Marcus that he had been partially at fault for the limb-snatching, brain-crushing battle of behemoth- versus-praying-mantis.
The policeman kept asking, “are you sure you feel like you’re at fault?” The light had been green and Marcus had had the right of way. “I guess I mighta coulda slowed down a little.” The officer had no choice, as the Hummer driver kept pointing out, but to ticket them both for the imbroglio.
Needless to say, Marcus was not a darlling of my lawyer friends, who want at least a heartfelt pretense of righteous indignation from their tort clients, to match plausible proximate cause and evidence of the other party’s negligence. In the event, in any case, he has recovered nothing and expects to gain no assistance in paying the $18,000 trauma care bill that has led the local public hospital to file a lien against his already embattled cottage. Not to mention pain and suffering. Leaving aside disability and lost wages.
Somehow or other, Marcus remains ebulliient. Through the offices of one set of CRAZY friends, who tutored him for several years in methods of "complete release" mutual masturbation and couple massage, he has a network of women, half his age but needy for both a firm touch and a soft-touch--- generally to succor the youngsters whom ‘Unca Marc!’ imagines as the children he’s never sired---who ‘exchange’ favors with him, borrow whatever he can spare to lend, and admire him for all that recommends him as a generous and blithe and spiritual envoy from some unknown cosmic region of univeral love.
Would that we manifested a world in which such benevolence garnered a reward even fractionally that of the driver of a black monster of gas-guzzling steel and military technology. I asked him today, if he felt like he ought to help me tell the whole story of his wild life. “I don’t know.” He laughed and kept rolling his Red-Man. “I guess so, might should consider it.”
What do you think? Sound like something worthwhile, interesting? The human panoply and the human prospect come together in each of us, of course. Some of us, though, wear the mantle so lightly that we need to watch more closely. Don’t you think?
ANOTHER ANGEL TO THE RESCUE
I’m still not completely moved. My writing habit, my work habit--- teaching writing, doing community organizing and research, counseling a little here, freelancing a bit there---not to mention my dream habit all call me so, or pay me well enough these days, that I can afford to procrastinate. Thus, I’ve found myself awaiting an angel for about a week.
My rescuing angel, Marcus, is not Marcus Dixon, another angelic force about whom I’ve written who serves prison time for being human while Black. Today’s angel-Marcus is an amazing polyglot son of Dutch, Native American, French, and additional Western European infusions.
Blessed by his dad’s martial good looks, a blade thin NBA-sized hyper-handsomeness that women find infectiously exhileranting, he abandoned the military mien of his ultra-controlling and mean-spirited father, in Columbus, Georgia, home of Fort Benning and a history as tortured and bizarre as any combination of genocide and farce that is possible to imagine.
Marcus is the heroic anti-hero of several of the short stories that I’ve written and insist would make world class films, the most electrifying and erotic of which is “Tripping, or, Back in Hippy Days.” He’s also a feckless fool who rolls his own cigarettes, gives all his money away to comely women whose children need help that daddy no longer provides, would much rather find an obscure blues record than make a hundred dollars, and has a cast of freakish friends who by comparison make a party scene in a “Star Wars” film seem like a suburban PTA meeting.
Of course, in the fullness of time, “Lord willing and the creek don’t rise,” this will all come out, every seamy, steamy, dreamy, dreadful, and mad little detail of any import whatsoever. Mostly, however, today our interlude revolves around an unfortunate encounter Mark had three months ago---as he rode one of the two racing bikes which then provided him with workable transport around a city notoriously brutal and heartless toward cyclists---with a fucking Hummer. This was not a mere brush with mortality, but a head on collision with the reaper.
He nearly lost his arm, and a friend quipped about the accident, “it would have left either of us brain dead, but Marcus is missing so many brain cells,” due to pot and acid, that “there wasn’t enough there left to kill.” That’s why I hadn’t already called him to help me through the horrific nightmare of moving Jimbo. He’s the strongest man I know, other than the handful of NFL players I’ve moved or befriended over the years.
I met him for the first time, actually, when Francisco and I---who make another pair of almost unbelievably strong men---were moving a huge houseful of furniture that included a grand piano. Francisco sniffed in his peculiarly fastidious way, “check dat out!” I figured I might see a woman particularly gorgeous, but instead I spied this skinny, tall, pony-tailed white boy, all bones and muscle in tank-top and gym-shorts, loading a full-sized upright piano, by himself, ONTO A FUCKING PICK-UP TRUCK!!
Francisco and I rushed to the rescue, only to discover that this fellow---who turned out to be a younger and even more rebel-yell cute, proto-redneck Marcus---was handling it. We helped him with the other piano in spite of his ‘aw, shucks’ demurrals, and Marcus has worked with me off and on for the twenty years since. But like I said, I hadn’t called in my current straits because of his arm, which still looks like he’s been doing body double work for Frankenstein, cross-stitching as extensive as a crazy quilt of flesh continuing to mark his right side from shoulder to wrist.
He called me this morning, however, and, ever in danger of losing the little house that his mom bought him before she died, asked if I had anything for him to do. If I were a religious sort, I probably would have heard the flutter of wings as we spoke. Instead, I promised to pay him well and worship his essence if he would give me five or six hours.
I had actually hoped that the attorneys I recommended he consult would have gotten him something from the Hummer driver, a dangerous but charming thug who managed to convince Marcus that he had been partially at fault for the limb-snatching, brain-crushing battle of behemoth- versus-praying-mantis.
The policeman kept asking, “are you sure you feel like you’re at fault?” The light had been green and Marcus had had the right of way. “I guess I mighta coulda slowed down a little.” The officer had no choice, as the Hummer driver kept pointing out, but to ticket them both for the imbroglio.
Needless to say, Marcus was not a darlling of my lawyer friends, who want at least a heartfelt pretense of righteous indignation from their tort clients, to match plausible proximate cause and evidence of the other party’s negligence. In the event, in any case, he has recovered nothing and expects to gain no assistance in paying the $18,000 trauma care bill that has led the local public hospital to file a lien against his already embattled cottage. Not to mention pain and suffering. Leaving aside disability and lost wages.
Somehow or other, Marcus remains ebulliient. Through the offices of one set of CRAZY friends, who tutored him for several years in methods of "complete release" mutual masturbation and couple massage, he has a network of women, half his age but needy for both a firm touch and a soft-touch--- generally to succor the youngsters whom ‘Unca Marc!’ imagines as the children he’s never sired---who ‘exchange’ favors with him, borrow whatever he can spare to lend, and admire him for all that recommends him as a generous and blithe and spiritual envoy from some unknown cosmic region of univeral love.
Would that we manifested a world in which such benevolence garnered a reward even fractionally that of the driver of a black monster of gas-guzzling steel and military technology. I asked him today, if he felt like he ought to help me tell the whole story of his wild life. “I don’t know.” He laughed and kept rolling his Red-Man. “I guess so, might should consider it.”
What do you think? Sound like something worthwhile, interesting? The human panoply and the human prospect come together in each of us, of course. Some of us, though, wear the mantle so lightly that we need to watch more closely. Don’t you think?
