Not The King of The Mountain
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Of all the places I have ever lived, our house on Welcome Drive was the most full vessel of memories in my life. I have lived in a few different places since childhood, but nowhere else do the details of where I used to live so stick. I can still tell you my old address and even my first phone number without missing a beat. Am I alone in this?
With as many subsequent phone numbers as we've had, being able to recall the first seems rather odd. Try and remember all your previous phone numbers. See how hard it can be. 12808 Welcome Drive, San Antonio, TX 78233 was the old address. View it on Google Earth. That chimney visible from the road, that driveway and wooden window posts...dad put those on there himself. If you sent me a postcard in the 80s, it would come to me at this address. If you could jump in a time machine and head back to make a call to me at any date prior to August 6, 1990, you'd have to call me at this number: (210) 653-8526. I'll confess that as I wrote this article, I couldn't resist the urge to call the old number just to see who has it now. A damn automated answering machine picked up.
So many memorable things happened inside that house, from unwanted enemas to large belt buckle butt whippings, from first porn video viewings to my first spooch rag to go with. One of the more memorable things outside of the welcome drive house was a steep hill with a yard to a house directly across the street. This was 1984-85. Brother was 7 and I was 11. Our friends Brian, Brandon, and Tommy were only 3 houses down. We met up regularly and the place we played was the yard across the street, the yard on the hill. The game we most often played was only one among a few games that didn't involve social ridicule or peer pressure to smoke or fear of the ditch people. It was called "King of the Mountain." Most kids have played it that have access to each other and a hill simultaneously.
There were only two rules: 1) Get to the top and throw down anyone getting in your way, and 2) stay on top while everyone else tries to throw you down. And that's it. The only reward for winning is your pride. I never won. My little brother Eric did better than I did, all things considered. He wasn't afraid to be tackled or get a slight concussion from being thrown down and hitting his head against the curb below. I still loved the game, a few skin burns notwithstanding. But none of us were king of the mountain because the kid whose parents owned "the mountain" was king of the mountain. His name was David Holmes. He was 17—and a big 17. Thankfully, he didn't compete that often, and of course, he never needed to.
Holmes was held back twice in school, making him extra big and brawny for a somewhat stemmy, thin guy. But speaking of "held back," Holmes was his own social "hold-back" force. The kid was a degenerate, one our parents could see right through and weren't fond of us hanging around. But what the heck...we'd never go further than just across the street to play, so they never really complained. This awesome tiny mountain, this teeny, weenie-but-aspiring foothill, this was the place we had our best time ever as we were allowed to play King of the Mountain during the great snowstorm of 1985.
Yes, it's a real event. Google it. In San Antonio in 1985, the city got over 4 feet of snow and it stuck around for nearly two months at below-freezing temps. We built a 9-ft-tall snowman in our yard and another on the hill and did enough sleigh riding on it to crack two tailbones in one day. I remember the morning I loaded up on hot chocolate and charged upward to claim my prize. I was the first one tossed on my ass. Snowball fighting, well, I was a little better at that.
After those great times, Holmes quit letting us play in his yard as often, and pretty soon, not at all. His parents never cared one way or the other. It was his decision. His character went from stupid, clueless, self-interested loser to completely dickish in a hurry. He suddenly quit being at home as much, and even his parents didn't seem to know where he was.
Pretty soon, things start turning up missing at home. My brother's skateboard, and then a volleyball, basketball, and a jar of quarters we kept on the hutch in our den. Holmes never came inside very much, but he had his opportunities to swipe a few items when he did, which we soon knew could only be him.
Holmes was from Nebraska. The kid had been in and out of boarding schools for a while. We knew he was trouble, just not this much trouble. Holmes provided us our first taste of being overly embarrassed at a true, raging idiot. We get home from school one day and catch him skateboarding down the big hill adjacent to his house—with my brother's skateboard. He had plenty of time to hide it before we arrived. He didn't because he thought he didn't need to. We run into him, and same as always, he is spitting loogies while finishing off a crumpled bag of Ruffles, and saying: "What's up!" in his lazy sort of way. We stare at what we notice to be my brother's skateboard!
It makes sense now. He stole it and thought he could get away with it because Holmes was a freaking moron. No wonder he never had much to say, and no personality whatsoever. It takes a while longer to notice stuff like that when you are a kid. Now it made sense; Holmes was stupid as hell. He threw some neon green paint on the front of the skateboard and carved a large "X" across the front and took a guess we kids wouldn't know any better. That was because he wasn't smart enough to know any better himself.
We stood there and pretended not to notice at first. At first, he made no attempt to explain the similarity between his new board and our old one that somehow went missing at exactly the same time his “new” one showed up. When he finally saw us staring too long, he said: "This board looks like your old one, but it's not. There is a x on it and green paint. See?" He said nothing else, and we were too scared to say anything else with regard to calling him out on his pot plant-level IQ for low-profile thievery.
OK, so he's stupid and a thief. We promptly tell our parents, but they decide it's not worth doing anything about. Mom and dad weren't confrontational, even back in those days. I think we got a "He'll get what's coming to him soon enough" response and a warning to steer clear, which we did, despite being pissed and wanting our stuff back.
Over four months pass. The hot summer now in full swing, we were having fun in other ways, with other friends. But we still never forgot about the hill. Four months is a long time for a kid to go without playing on it. There were just too many good times there before the Holmes family moved in, like when we first sat on it and placed a “boys only” sign at the top and taunted the “yucky” grade-school girls who walked by on the street two summers earlier: “You can't come up here!” we would say. “We don't want to come up in your stupid yard, idiots.” they would holler back, walking away. This was the same hill where little Raymond Sosby tried to do a running jump-kick to knock down his older opponent, but ended up a crying mess before us all on the street. His kid was the mayor's kid, but we never got more than a talking to from mom about the whole episode. Like I said, too many good times.
One bright and hot Saturday morning, I remember being woken up by dad. Bro and I both were both hauled out of bed. Saturdays were no excuse to not work outside in the hot sun alongside dad just because school was out; and so we did. Dad kept us busy all day, folding and snapping tree limbs and taking them out in bundles to the road. It was an all day job, which didn't end until mom came out with glasses of sweet iced tea and said we'd done enough. She always wore that light pink, cotton shirt on the hottest days. She made a cake for us, too, and a pitcher of lemonade.
We finished the limbs project. By the evening, dad was mowing, and by then, we didn't even want to go in. We played in the cut grass paths as dad made them in the yard with the mower. Even the bugs seemed to make different sounds in the summers of our youth. We played with sister, barely one year old at the time. It was nearly magic to watch this tiny child try to push a beach ball in the front yard as she laughs hysterically when it rolled. Then mom takes her in for the night and dad settled down with a large Mason jar of tea to watch Saturday Night Shockers like he always did.
That left brother and I outside and bored. What started out as a great day seemed to want to end in a night of frustration. We sat on the back of mom's '81 Ford Escort waiting for some friends to come by, listening to the symphony of locusts and bugs in the trees. None of our pals ever came. Then we noticed Holmes and his new tramp date exit the house. The porch light came on suddenly and the two, holding hands, made their way to the awesome hill to look up at the stars together. These girls Holmes would hang around with weren't exactly looking “yucky” anymore.
Seeing this irked me terribly. That was our hill, the one we had so many good times on, and Holmes - that crooked, stupid thief - was sitting pretty on it with some girl who looked older than him and who could drive! Oh, the indignity! I wanted him to pay! Now we were banned from the great mini-mountain, and then robbed, and now this?! My eyes veered left at that pile we so tirelessly brought to the curb that day...when it hit me. I said: "Eric, follow my lead, and whatever you do, stay down!" He had a confused look on his face, but he went along.
We made our way, ducking and kneeling, to the amassment of limbs and branches. Our brows once again hot and sweating as earlier in the day, we watched through the truffle of twigs, the smell of gasoline still on our hands. We could hear our own breathing. All was quiet until I let out: “GO TO HELL!”
I tried to make my voice deeper and scratchier to sound like an older kid. I had no idea how good a job I did. I figured, we'd make a run for the house if he called us out, but he didn't. Their giggling with hands held stopped. They got quiet and listened, obviously startled. Holmes yelled back: “WHAT THE HELL? WHO'S THAT? WHO'S THERE?”
And I let out another: “HEY, DICKSUCKER! FUCK YOUR MOM! EAT MY SHIT!” He got up and looked around. She looked around and the two exchanged words. They really can't tell where it's coming from, we realized. “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?” he says, getting a little closer this time. We hide by positioning ourselves deeper within the brush in case he comes into our yard. He stops and goes back.
Then I yell: “FAGGOT ASS FUCKING FAGGOT FUCKER! FUCK YOUR MOM AND FUCK YOUR DAD!” He starts getting angry. More huddled words between them, and then she starts getting scared. She ups and leaves. He says: "Wait, come on!" or something similar. More arguing as they retreat, and that's the end of his good time! He looks around one more time at our yard and others and then goes back in. Success!
And it was double-success since barely a month after this, Holmes broke into a sporting goods store, got caught, and was sent back to juvenile hall. This gloriously outspoken night, laced with sucker-shot profanity, was the last we ever saw of David Holmes. The lesson should stand out in all of our minds like a larger version of that little mount we claimed dominion of: I may not have been king of the mountain, but I was the king of my own mind. And sometimes the greatest satisfaction comes just from speaking it.
(JH)
With as many subsequent phone numbers as we've had, being able to recall the first seems rather odd. Try and remember all your previous phone numbers. See how hard it can be. 12808 Welcome Drive, San Antonio, TX 78233 was the old address. View it on Google Earth. That chimney visible from the road, that driveway and wooden window posts...dad put those on there himself. If you sent me a postcard in the 80s, it would come to me at this address. If you could jump in a time machine and head back to make a call to me at any date prior to August 6, 1990, you'd have to call me at this number: (210) 653-8526. I'll confess that as I wrote this article, I couldn't resist the urge to call the old number just to see who has it now. A damn automated answering machine picked up.
So many memorable things happened inside that house, from unwanted enemas to large belt buckle butt whippings, from first porn video viewings to my first spooch rag to go with. One of the more memorable things outside of the welcome drive house was a steep hill with a yard to a house directly across the street. This was 1984-85. Brother was 7 and I was 11. Our friends Brian, Brandon, and Tommy were only 3 houses down. We met up regularly and the place we played was the yard across the street, the yard on the hill. The game we most often played was only one among a few games that didn't involve social ridicule or peer pressure to smoke or fear of the ditch people. It was called "King of the Mountain." Most kids have played it that have access to each other and a hill simultaneously.
There were only two rules: 1) Get to the top and throw down anyone getting in your way, and 2) stay on top while everyone else tries to throw you down. And that's it. The only reward for winning is your pride. I never won. My little brother Eric did better than I did, all things considered. He wasn't afraid to be tackled or get a slight concussion from being thrown down and hitting his head against the curb below. I still loved the game, a few skin burns notwithstanding. But none of us were king of the mountain because the kid whose parents owned "the mountain" was king of the mountain. His name was David Holmes. He was 17—and a big 17. Thankfully, he didn't compete that often, and of course, he never needed to.
Holmes was held back twice in school, making him extra big and brawny for a somewhat stemmy, thin guy. But speaking of "held back," Holmes was his own social "hold-back" force. The kid was a degenerate, one our parents could see right through and weren't fond of us hanging around. But what the heck...we'd never go further than just across the street to play, so they never really complained. This awesome tiny mountain, this teeny, weenie-but-aspiring foothill, this was the place we had our best time ever as we were allowed to play King of the Mountain during the great snowstorm of 1985.
Yes, it's a real event. Google it. In San Antonio in 1985, the city got over 4 feet of snow and it stuck around for nearly two months at below-freezing temps. We built a 9-ft-tall snowman in our yard and another on the hill and did enough sleigh riding on it to crack two tailbones in one day. I remember the morning I loaded up on hot chocolate and charged upward to claim my prize. I was the first one tossed on my ass. Snowball fighting, well, I was a little better at that.
After those great times, Holmes quit letting us play in his yard as often, and pretty soon, not at all. His parents never cared one way or the other. It was his decision. His character went from stupid, clueless, self-interested loser to completely dickish in a hurry. He suddenly quit being at home as much, and even his parents didn't seem to know where he was.
Pretty soon, things start turning up missing at home. My brother's skateboard, and then a volleyball, basketball, and a jar of quarters we kept on the hutch in our den. Holmes never came inside very much, but he had his opportunities to swipe a few items when he did, which we soon knew could only be him.
Holmes was from Nebraska. The kid had been in and out of boarding schools for a while. We knew he was trouble, just not this much trouble. Holmes provided us our first taste of being overly embarrassed at a true, raging idiot. We get home from school one day and catch him skateboarding down the big hill adjacent to his house—with my brother's skateboard. He had plenty of time to hide it before we arrived. He didn't because he thought he didn't need to. We run into him, and same as always, he is spitting loogies while finishing off a crumpled bag of Ruffles, and saying: "What's up!" in his lazy sort of way. We stare at what we notice to be my brother's skateboard!
It makes sense now. He stole it and thought he could get away with it because Holmes was a freaking moron. No wonder he never had much to say, and no personality whatsoever. It takes a while longer to notice stuff like that when you are a kid. Now it made sense; Holmes was stupid as hell. He threw some neon green paint on the front of the skateboard and carved a large "X" across the front and took a guess we kids wouldn't know any better. That was because he wasn't smart enough to know any better himself.
We stood there and pretended not to notice at first. At first, he made no attempt to explain the similarity between his new board and our old one that somehow went missing at exactly the same time his “new” one showed up. When he finally saw us staring too long, he said: "This board looks like your old one, but it's not. There is a x on it and green paint. See?" He said nothing else, and we were too scared to say anything else with regard to calling him out on his pot plant-level IQ for low-profile thievery.
OK, so he's stupid and a thief. We promptly tell our parents, but they decide it's not worth doing anything about. Mom and dad weren't confrontational, even back in those days. I think we got a "He'll get what's coming to him soon enough" response and a warning to steer clear, which we did, despite being pissed and wanting our stuff back.
Over four months pass. The hot summer now in full swing, we were having fun in other ways, with other friends. But we still never forgot about the hill. Four months is a long time for a kid to go without playing on it. There were just too many good times there before the Holmes family moved in, like when we first sat on it and placed a “boys only” sign at the top and taunted the “yucky” grade-school girls who walked by on the street two summers earlier: “You can't come up here!” we would say. “We don't want to come up in your stupid yard, idiots.” they would holler back, walking away. This was the same hill where little Raymond Sosby tried to do a running jump-kick to knock down his older opponent, but ended up a crying mess before us all on the street. His kid was the mayor's kid, but we never got more than a talking to from mom about the whole episode. Like I said, too many good times.
One bright and hot Saturday morning, I remember being woken up by dad. Bro and I both were both hauled out of bed. Saturdays were no excuse to not work outside in the hot sun alongside dad just because school was out; and so we did. Dad kept us busy all day, folding and snapping tree limbs and taking them out in bundles to the road. It was an all day job, which didn't end until mom came out with glasses of sweet iced tea and said we'd done enough. She always wore that light pink, cotton shirt on the hottest days. She made a cake for us, too, and a pitcher of lemonade.
We finished the limbs project. By the evening, dad was mowing, and by then, we didn't even want to go in. We played in the cut grass paths as dad made them in the yard with the mower. Even the bugs seemed to make different sounds in the summers of our youth. We played with sister, barely one year old at the time. It was nearly magic to watch this tiny child try to push a beach ball in the front yard as she laughs hysterically when it rolled. Then mom takes her in for the night and dad settled down with a large Mason jar of tea to watch Saturday Night Shockers like he always did.
That left brother and I outside and bored. What started out as a great day seemed to want to end in a night of frustration. We sat on the back of mom's '81 Ford Escort waiting for some friends to come by, listening to the symphony of locusts and bugs in the trees. None of our pals ever came. Then we noticed Holmes and his new tramp date exit the house. The porch light came on suddenly and the two, holding hands, made their way to the awesome hill to look up at the stars together. These girls Holmes would hang around with weren't exactly looking “yucky” anymore.
Seeing this irked me terribly. That was our hill, the one we had so many good times on, and Holmes - that crooked, stupid thief - was sitting pretty on it with some girl who looked older than him and who could drive! Oh, the indignity! I wanted him to pay! Now we were banned from the great mini-mountain, and then robbed, and now this?! My eyes veered left at that pile we so tirelessly brought to the curb that day...when it hit me. I said: "Eric, follow my lead, and whatever you do, stay down!" He had a confused look on his face, but he went along.
We made our way, ducking and kneeling, to the amassment of limbs and branches. Our brows once again hot and sweating as earlier in the day, we watched through the truffle of twigs, the smell of gasoline still on our hands. We could hear our own breathing. All was quiet until I let out: “GO TO HELL!”
I tried to make my voice deeper and scratchier to sound like an older kid. I had no idea how good a job I did. I figured, we'd make a run for the house if he called us out, but he didn't. Their giggling with hands held stopped. They got quiet and listened, obviously startled. Holmes yelled back: “WHAT THE HELL? WHO'S THAT? WHO'S THERE?”
And I let out another: “HEY, DICKSUCKER! FUCK YOUR MOM! EAT MY SHIT!” He got up and looked around. She looked around and the two exchanged words. They really can't tell where it's coming from, we realized. “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?” he says, getting a little closer this time. We hide by positioning ourselves deeper within the brush in case he comes into our yard. He stops and goes back.
Then I yell: “FAGGOT ASS FUCKING FAGGOT FUCKER! FUCK YOUR MOM AND FUCK YOUR DAD!” He starts getting angry. More huddled words between them, and then she starts getting scared. She ups and leaves. He says: "Wait, come on!" or something similar. More arguing as they retreat, and that's the end of his good time! He looks around one more time at our yard and others and then goes back in. Success!
And it was double-success since barely a month after this, Holmes broke into a sporting goods store, got caught, and was sent back to juvenile hall. This gloriously outspoken night, laced with sucker-shot profanity, was the last we ever saw of David Holmes. The lesson should stand out in all of our minds like a larger version of that little mount we claimed dominion of: I may not have been king of the mountain, but I was the king of my own mind. And sometimes the greatest satisfaction comes just from speaking it.
(JH)
Crazy Men Tell No Tales: The Adventures of Stonewall Davis
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
George Davis “stonewalled” the authorities for as long as I knew him, as he did teachers and counselors and all who in any way represented authority figures. For that reason and no other, we called him “Stonewall.” It soon became like he had no other name.
Crazy
I've known some interesting people in my life—you know that if you've read much of anything I've written. But there are “crazy guys” and then there are crazy guys, the kind who never quit kidding around when you need them to and wish they would. They can't quit playing around because they aren't playing around; they're being themselves. Some never mentally grow to fit their larger bodies; they age, but fail to mature.
Stonewall was crazy. Of all the friends of friends I ever had, this chump would qualify as “most memorable once removed” if ever such a title existed. Ron White is correct when he says, “You can't fix stupid!” But I'll add that you almost can't forget crazy. Speaking of crazy, I have a saying: Crazy men tell no tales; they live the tales to be told. They live out the tales that others tell about them and have, in my experience, no interest in telling their own stories. The ride of life is enough for them.
If you think about it, I'm fulfilling my own saying with every strike of each key.
A Scary Good Time
The very presence of Stonewall was an indication of a scary good time. Stonewall drove this 1986 Chevy Astrovan. It was white with orange stripes, as I recall, with the paint starting to chip off. You always knew that van coming and going. In the back sat a checkered brown, 1960s-style couch that rode around on that scratched floor in the empty back cargo area. It once sat squarely in the center of a 3rd floor apartment before being deemed unfit and too tacky for living room usage.
I can't say much for riding around in that vehicular abomination, but at least we were comfortable everywhere we went. So what if some pieces of foam were stuck to our pant legs when getting up. And just as you suspected upon hearing about it, that damn couch slid around everywhere we went. The ride was always a blast. Stonewall made it a game to throw on the brakes and see how hard the couch would knock against the driver's seat, but that was only part of his agenda; the other part was to surprise us and see how uneasy he could make us when coming into or out of a turn, or a sudden stop or start. He laughed with every “thud.”
This old van had seen it's day as a commuter's cargo van for a local and now defunct courier company. Stonewall's dad got it for him and always told him he'd learn to treat it better than he did when he came to have to pay for the repairs. Those ghetto speakers lodged against the back doors...those cracked and sun-baked cupholders...they only seemed to make the tattered old bomb look better. I memorized every line of every crack. That six-cylinder had some go-ahead power for a vehicle of that size, I'm telling you. And Stonewall never let us forget that. But the poor old auto would never live long enough for Stonewall to learn the lesson dad wished he'd learn.
Oh Honey! Don't Forget Me!
Stonewall had a way with words like he did waywardness and throwing food at people when their backs were turned. When his girlfriend decided things weren't working out and broke up with him on a whim, he drove over to her house – owned by two older, white parents who hideously hated the guy – and sang a love song entitled: “Oh Honey! Don't Forget Me!” It was intentionally old-fashioned, designed to sound romantic to the young girl, but also to satirically lash out at the cheesiness of generations before his. We all shared in that ridiculing passion.
Unexpectedly, the song was followed by a power-braking segment on her parents' front yard flowerbed that left a huge patch of ripped-up dirt in their $260,000+ home. It was Stonewall's way of saying: “I'll get you flowers! I'll tear out your dad's and my spinning tires will land them on your doorstep. I never said our love isn't wild, baby!” Neighborhood security couldn't get there fast enough. Her dad ran out to catch him and pull him out of the vehicle, but Stonewall just locked the doors. He took his time fleeing, and “dag nabit” (my own little stab at older generations), the son of a bitch won his girl back.
+1 for Stonewall. -1 for the police and security letting him get away.
On Deer Hill in Stone Oak Parkway
I remember a night in 1995. The night was clear, but oh so dark and hot. The mosquitoes were out. You seemed to be able to see more stars than normal. I remember there was no wind.
I take only a moment to stare up at the sky on the way out to the car, and then head over to cousin's house in Stone Oak Parkway in San Antonio. The road leading up to my cousin's house was steep and deer were always spotted there. It almost never failed. Drive through and you spot a large, innocent family of deer traipsing out, usually with a buck among them, even in broad daylight. The area came to be called Deer Hill.
This was the place a week before that my cousin's Ford Ranger took a beating from a 6-point buck that got bloodily trampled under the front left tire and shot out the back like a crushed-headed porceline baby doll thrown by an angry child across a room. Jace said you could hear the hooves clicking against the pavement as its lifeless deer body came to a stop while spinning and slapping against the pavement. That was so cool...but, yes, sad. The Ford logo barely survived, missing getting smashed to bits in the impact by only inches.
Always drive slowly on Deer Hill.
But Deer Hill had another feature—it was steep as a motherfucker! The hill was so steep that you could get to over 50 mph just by costing without touching the pedal. It was a long way down, with a wide field out to both sides and a stop sign at the bottom, with a huge dip leading onto a flat surface where the road evens out. The surface acted as a ramp, giving a jolt (right into the air if you went fast enough). Just coasting would make for a thrilling ride.
Tonight promised to be more scary than fun or funny. The booze were ready, the ice chest was cold, the buddies had been called, and it was to be a night to remember, which began and ended with a full-speed ride down deer hill. I was a minister in training at the time and never participated in their “sinful” activities at this point, but simply tagged along in hopes of converting the heathen crowd.
The most rebellious sinner of them all was Stonewall, of course, the same guy who rounded us up, and just when we got comfortable on that old couch, floored the gas at the top of the hill. He didn't plan it. It just happened, as with most of the chaos in Stonewall's cop-familiar life.
The thrill of barreling down a hill at nutty speeds soon gave way to fear, and quicker than we thought, to shoulder-grabbing panic. After the laughter, our protests were all that could be heard: “Slow down, man. Stop! I mean it! Stop, dude! Seriously, I mean it! It's not funny!” All we could hear is his chuckling and the engine accelerating. We grab his hair after shoving him from behind, hoping more yells would get him to slow down. Made no difference. He kept on. It was the prelude to a reckless teen beginning to an “I Know What You Did Last Summer” sequel.
According to the digital speedometer Stonewall had installed, we hit 110 mph. We were somewhere in or around that speed, now shaking and shimmying violently as the vehicle felt more and more unstable and lighter. The feeling was so intense. And as expected, here came yet another innocent, ripe-for-the-ripping-apart family of deer.
No, we didn't hit them. We flew right by them like a formula 1 car. The blast of the ride ended with a bump...a bump that felt like a train wreck. By now, we were expecting to die. The stop sign at the bottom we were coming upon with Stonewall’s foot still on the accelerator—no point in even trying to stop now. Just go with it...and pray...
We didn't hit another car. That blurring thing made of asphault with a line in the middle that we ignored and were riding on, plummeting in this tretcherous moment was the now flat road that we hit. The popping that morphed into a chorus of crushing metal parts were the shocks, engine mounts, the transmission, and the oil pan underside of the engine that had done a Spock-style “mind-meld” with the pavement. Our heads hitting the roof as we bounced to a stop was not the end. It was the last moment of being upright before landing face-first against the cargo main side door with that couch slamming against our backsides as we hit a curb.
Now, we were at a stop, with a swaying of some parts of the front bumper and license plate holder. A rolling sound was coming from the engine as all rotating parts came to a stop. We had to crawl out the front. I was the last one out. All were yelling at Stonewall, but at first there was silence. The adrenaline was pumping. We were just glad to be alive. Now to check for bruises and blood splotches we missed in the shock.
Oh, that's right, it's nighttime and the only light we have is from the amazingly still on headlights of Stonewall's van as it stood on its side against a curb next to a field, as we began our walk back home with the beginnings of whiplash. It was a dark walk home that seemed to take forever.
We got home that night and every one of us was soar from the experience. We slept in late the next day. But at least we weren't stuck with the bill to repair the van. Stonewall said his goodbyes to that trusty bomb and never looked back. Off it went to the salvage yard. He couldn't pay to get it running again and dad refused to help. A 1983, “old-man” style, maroon El Camino was his new ride, donated unwisely by grandpa. He actually liked the ugly thing.
The Good Times End
Life and Stonewall weren’t meant to get along. If they had been, causality wouldn't have taken the route it took over the next two years. The good times were about to be over.
Stonewall had a passion for mudding in his new truck. The 83' El Camino didn't last long because when he had car trouble, he couldn't pay to have it released once fixed, so a mechanic's lean ended up with him losing it. The new love was a 1989 Chevy S-10, one that, believe it or not, ran well. He had it only six months before a mishap had him crawling out through the driver's side window to get the thing towed as it stood 4 feet high in mud. Another week later, when his lazy ass managed to get back out to have it towed, the windows and lights were smashed out and cow crap patties had been tossed inside. It took yet another week to save up to get it towed and fixed again.
A year passes. Stonewall is none the wiser and in his first legal pickle for possessing a controlled substance and driving while impaired. Probation, then some leniency from a cool old dude judge, and he's back out again. Then he's in trouble, again. This time, it's a wreck he caused due to driving under the influence. Some fines and now a little jail-time later, he's driving again—but that's a bad idea since he lost his driver's license in the second pop and was supposed to wait three years to get it back.
That didn’t stop him from trying to drive home one rainy night after getting off work from Chester’s Night Club. And it didn't stop him from pursuing altered states of consciousness, or to recollect what he so convincingly told that cool judge back at the second sentencing...
He both thought of it and did it.
Stonewall pulls out in front of an oncoming car, some girl in a tan Ford Taurus. A wreck occurs. Cousin and I are sitting at home doing much of nothing but polishing off a pizza and playing video games when a call comes. It's Stonewall calling from a gas station pay phone at 2 am.
After approximately one minute of conversation, we begin to think two things; one, why is there a girl crying in the background? And two, why isn't Stonewall laughing like usual? We practically hadn't heard him cease to laugh except for that short period of time upon finding out that his truck windows were smashed while stuck in the mud, and as he stood before that (soon to be furious) cool, aged man judge, assuring him of his newly found penitence.
We ask what in the fuck is going on. He tells my cousin: “I…I…I…don't know what to do. I caused an accident. I'm high again. I’ve got coke all over me, and the police are coming. I wasn't even supposed to be driving…now, now what am I going to do?” Cousin: “Is the girl I hear really hurt?” Stonewall: “Maybe. I think so...what...what I am going to do?” A few more airy pauses as the rain continues to pour and hit that tin roof above the phone. Soon, the sound of a police siren getting close can be heard. Then…
“CLICK.”
And we’ve never heard from him again, and that was back in 1997. But Stonewall gave me a story to tell, one I’m sure he wouldn’t care to hear or read about. And that’s the way it is with the freaks and the insane; they live it; they never talk about it. But the rest of us – we cautious cowards who sit on the sidelines and watch – we sure talk about it. And the philosophical moral beneath the moral of the story is not a comforting one.
It doesn’t matter who you are. Life will do a flawless job at robbing you of your laughter. It seems the only things to laugh at without fear of repercussion are the miseries of life, along with the wasted chances and blown opportunities on the part of some that give the rest of us something to talk about and to learn from. If you can't laugh at the expense of yourself and everyone else, then maybe you shouldn't be laughing at all.
(JH)
Crazy
I've known some interesting people in my life—you know that if you've read much of anything I've written. But there are “crazy guys” and then there are crazy guys, the kind who never quit kidding around when you need them to and wish they would. They can't quit playing around because they aren't playing around; they're being themselves. Some never mentally grow to fit their larger bodies; they age, but fail to mature.
Stonewall was crazy. Of all the friends of friends I ever had, this chump would qualify as “most memorable once removed” if ever such a title existed. Ron White is correct when he says, “You can't fix stupid!” But I'll add that you almost can't forget crazy. Speaking of crazy, I have a saying: Crazy men tell no tales; they live the tales to be told. They live out the tales that others tell about them and have, in my experience, no interest in telling their own stories. The ride of life is enough for them.
If you think about it, I'm fulfilling my own saying with every strike of each key.
A Scary Good Time
The very presence of Stonewall was an indication of a scary good time. Stonewall drove this 1986 Chevy Astrovan. It was white with orange stripes, as I recall, with the paint starting to chip off. You always knew that van coming and going. In the back sat a checkered brown, 1960s-style couch that rode around on that scratched floor in the empty back cargo area. It once sat squarely in the center of a 3rd floor apartment before being deemed unfit and too tacky for living room usage.
I can't say much for riding around in that vehicular abomination, but at least we were comfortable everywhere we went. So what if some pieces of foam were stuck to our pant legs when getting up. And just as you suspected upon hearing about it, that damn couch slid around everywhere we went. The ride was always a blast. Stonewall made it a game to throw on the brakes and see how hard the couch would knock against the driver's seat, but that was only part of his agenda; the other part was to surprise us and see how uneasy he could make us when coming into or out of a turn, or a sudden stop or start. He laughed with every “thud.”
This old van had seen it's day as a commuter's cargo van for a local and now defunct courier company. Stonewall's dad got it for him and always told him he'd learn to treat it better than he did when he came to have to pay for the repairs. Those ghetto speakers lodged against the back doors...those cracked and sun-baked cupholders...they only seemed to make the tattered old bomb look better. I memorized every line of every crack. That six-cylinder had some go-ahead power for a vehicle of that size, I'm telling you. And Stonewall never let us forget that. But the poor old auto would never live long enough for Stonewall to learn the lesson dad wished he'd learn.
Oh Honey! Don't Forget Me!
Stonewall had a way with words like he did waywardness and throwing food at people when their backs were turned. When his girlfriend decided things weren't working out and broke up with him on a whim, he drove over to her house – owned by two older, white parents who hideously hated the guy – and sang a love song entitled: “Oh Honey! Don't Forget Me!” It was intentionally old-fashioned, designed to sound romantic to the young girl, but also to satirically lash out at the cheesiness of generations before his. We all shared in that ridiculing passion.
Unexpectedly, the song was followed by a power-braking segment on her parents' front yard flowerbed that left a huge patch of ripped-up dirt in their $260,000+ home. It was Stonewall's way of saying: “I'll get you flowers! I'll tear out your dad's and my spinning tires will land them on your doorstep. I never said our love isn't wild, baby!” Neighborhood security couldn't get there fast enough. Her dad ran out to catch him and pull him out of the vehicle, but Stonewall just locked the doors. He took his time fleeing, and “dag nabit” (my own little stab at older generations), the son of a bitch won his girl back.
+1 for Stonewall. -1 for the police and security letting him get away.
On Deer Hill in Stone Oak Parkway
I remember a night in 1995. The night was clear, but oh so dark and hot. The mosquitoes were out. You seemed to be able to see more stars than normal. I remember there was no wind.
I take only a moment to stare up at the sky on the way out to the car, and then head over to cousin's house in Stone Oak Parkway in San Antonio. The road leading up to my cousin's house was steep and deer were always spotted there. It almost never failed. Drive through and you spot a large, innocent family of deer traipsing out, usually with a buck among them, even in broad daylight. The area came to be called Deer Hill.
This was the place a week before that my cousin's Ford Ranger took a beating from a 6-point buck that got bloodily trampled under the front left tire and shot out the back like a crushed-headed porceline baby doll thrown by an angry child across a room. Jace said you could hear the hooves clicking against the pavement as its lifeless deer body came to a stop while spinning and slapping against the pavement. That was so cool...but, yes, sad. The Ford logo barely survived, missing getting smashed to bits in the impact by only inches.
Always drive slowly on Deer Hill.
But Deer Hill had another feature—it was steep as a motherfucker! The hill was so steep that you could get to over 50 mph just by costing without touching the pedal. It was a long way down, with a wide field out to both sides and a stop sign at the bottom, with a huge dip leading onto a flat surface where the road evens out. The surface acted as a ramp, giving a jolt (right into the air if you went fast enough). Just coasting would make for a thrilling ride.
Tonight promised to be more scary than fun or funny. The booze were ready, the ice chest was cold, the buddies had been called, and it was to be a night to remember, which began and ended with a full-speed ride down deer hill. I was a minister in training at the time and never participated in their “sinful” activities at this point, but simply tagged along in hopes of converting the heathen crowd.
The most rebellious sinner of them all was Stonewall, of course, the same guy who rounded us up, and just when we got comfortable on that old couch, floored the gas at the top of the hill. He didn't plan it. It just happened, as with most of the chaos in Stonewall's cop-familiar life.
The thrill of barreling down a hill at nutty speeds soon gave way to fear, and quicker than we thought, to shoulder-grabbing panic. After the laughter, our protests were all that could be heard: “Slow down, man. Stop! I mean it! Stop, dude! Seriously, I mean it! It's not funny!” All we could hear is his chuckling and the engine accelerating. We grab his hair after shoving him from behind, hoping more yells would get him to slow down. Made no difference. He kept on. It was the prelude to a reckless teen beginning to an “I Know What You Did Last Summer” sequel.
According to the digital speedometer Stonewall had installed, we hit 110 mph. We were somewhere in or around that speed, now shaking and shimmying violently as the vehicle felt more and more unstable and lighter. The feeling was so intense. And as expected, here came yet another innocent, ripe-for-the-ripping-apart family of deer.
No, we didn't hit them. We flew right by them like a formula 1 car. The blast of the ride ended with a bump...a bump that felt like a train wreck. By now, we were expecting to die. The stop sign at the bottom we were coming upon with Stonewall’s foot still on the accelerator—no point in even trying to stop now. Just go with it...and pray...
POPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!
We didn't hit another car. That blurring thing made of asphault with a line in the middle that we ignored and were riding on, plummeting in this tretcherous moment was the now flat road that we hit. The popping that morphed into a chorus of crushing metal parts were the shocks, engine mounts, the transmission, and the oil pan underside of the engine that had done a Spock-style “mind-meld” with the pavement. Our heads hitting the roof as we bounced to a stop was not the end. It was the last moment of being upright before landing face-first against the cargo main side door with that couch slamming against our backsides as we hit a curb.
Now, we were at a stop, with a swaying of some parts of the front bumper and license plate holder. A rolling sound was coming from the engine as all rotating parts came to a stop. We had to crawl out the front. I was the last one out. All were yelling at Stonewall, but at first there was silence. The adrenaline was pumping. We were just glad to be alive. Now to check for bruises and blood splotches we missed in the shock.
Oh, that's right, it's nighttime and the only light we have is from the amazingly still on headlights of Stonewall's van as it stood on its side against a curb next to a field, as we began our walk back home with the beginnings of whiplash. It was a dark walk home that seemed to take forever.
We got home that night and every one of us was soar from the experience. We slept in late the next day. But at least we weren't stuck with the bill to repair the van. Stonewall said his goodbyes to that trusty bomb and never looked back. Off it went to the salvage yard. He couldn't pay to get it running again and dad refused to help. A 1983, “old-man” style, maroon El Camino was his new ride, donated unwisely by grandpa. He actually liked the ugly thing.
The Good Times End
Life and Stonewall weren’t meant to get along. If they had been, causality wouldn't have taken the route it took over the next two years. The good times were about to be over.
Stonewall had a passion for mudding in his new truck. The 83' El Camino didn't last long because when he had car trouble, he couldn't pay to have it released once fixed, so a mechanic's lean ended up with him losing it. The new love was a 1989 Chevy S-10, one that, believe it or not, ran well. He had it only six months before a mishap had him crawling out through the driver's side window to get the thing towed as it stood 4 feet high in mud. Another week later, when his lazy ass managed to get back out to have it towed, the windows and lights were smashed out and cow crap patties had been tossed inside. It took yet another week to save up to get it towed and fixed again.
A year passes. Stonewall is none the wiser and in his first legal pickle for possessing a controlled substance and driving while impaired. Probation, then some leniency from a cool old dude judge, and he's back out again. Then he's in trouble, again. This time, it's a wreck he caused due to driving under the influence. Some fines and now a little jail-time later, he's driving again—but that's a bad idea since he lost his driver's license in the second pop and was supposed to wait three years to get it back.
That didn’t stop him from trying to drive home one rainy night after getting off work from Chester’s Night Club. And it didn't stop him from pursuing altered states of consciousness, or to recollect what he so convincingly told that cool judge back at the second sentencing...
“Oh, don't worry, your honor. I've learned my lesson. I will never so much as think of getting behind the wheel wasted again.”
He both thought of it and did it.
Stonewall pulls out in front of an oncoming car, some girl in a tan Ford Taurus. A wreck occurs. Cousin and I are sitting at home doing much of nothing but polishing off a pizza and playing video games when a call comes. It's Stonewall calling from a gas station pay phone at 2 am.
After approximately one minute of conversation, we begin to think two things; one, why is there a girl crying in the background? And two, why isn't Stonewall laughing like usual? We practically hadn't heard him cease to laugh except for that short period of time upon finding out that his truck windows were smashed while stuck in the mud, and as he stood before that (soon to be furious) cool, aged man judge, assuring him of his newly found penitence.
We ask what in the fuck is going on. He tells my cousin: “I…I…I…don't know what to do. I caused an accident. I'm high again. I’ve got coke all over me, and the police are coming. I wasn't even supposed to be driving…now, now what am I going to do?” Cousin: “Is the girl I hear really hurt?” Stonewall: “Maybe. I think so...what...what I am going to do?” A few more airy pauses as the rain continues to pour and hit that tin roof above the phone. Soon, the sound of a police siren getting close can be heard. Then…
“CLICK.”
And we’ve never heard from him again, and that was back in 1997. But Stonewall gave me a story to tell, one I’m sure he wouldn’t care to hear or read about. And that’s the way it is with the freaks and the insane; they live it; they never talk about it. But the rest of us – we cautious cowards who sit on the sidelines and watch – we sure talk about it. And the philosophical moral beneath the moral of the story is not a comforting one.
It doesn’t matter who you are. Life will do a flawless job at robbing you of your laughter. It seems the only things to laugh at without fear of repercussion are the miseries of life, along with the wasted chances and blown opportunities on the part of some that give the rest of us something to talk about and to learn from. If you can't laugh at the expense of yourself and everyone else, then maybe you shouldn't be laughing at all.
(JH)
Life, the Best Viagra Promotion
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
I get them in my inbox and I'd be hard-pressed to believe you don't, either. I'm talking about the loads of email spam, the kind that disgusts its readers and clogs up search engines and creates coding havoc everywhere there is internet.
Spam – particularly Viagra or ExtenZe advertisements from online pharmacies foreign and domestic – has become a thing I expect to see. If I got up to check my email and did not find these unwanted manhood-making advertisements, I'd feel like I'm in a parallel universe of some kind. They are always there and they read to the affect of...
Yahoo spam-blocking sucks. No matter how many messages of this sort I mark as spam, more still show up in the inbox. The system never learns how to handle them with what has come to be called “spoofmail,” which is where you find messages to you that appear to have come from you or as a reply back to you. Pretty malicious tactics when you think about it. Google is much better in preventing this unwanted onslaught of garbage. I talk from experience.
As unwelcome as these bulk spam attempts are, they are a good indicator of the obsessive nature of humankind and why our lives become as plugged up and complicated as they do. Life itself is a Viagra advertisement. No longer do orgasmic-ally challenged men and women have to watch an infomercial and call the 800-number on the bottom of the screen. They get the info right in their inboxes, whether they want it or not. The shame of confessing that your needle isn’t up to its task is a thing of the past. Your secret is safe with the seller—right up until they decide to sell your personal info and set it free into the vastness of the Spamiverse for others to stuff up your inbox with “special offers.”
As cheap as email advertising is, just one positive response (a sale) makes the 275,000+ auto deletions and spam-blocks worth it. Those bogus email address extensions, like “.com.uk.is.ss.rs” and those spurious invitations to click on strange links, prefaced with broken English or foreign email message characters won’t stop some from turning into buyers.
But the internet has done over and above what we could expect. We can communicate in real time with someone in Los Angeles or the Ukraine for free from just about anywhere in the world. We can amass followings, form societies, start petitions, and build decadent communities in cyberspace—usually for free. The internet has made unions possible that will have an evolutionary impact, the likes of which we can't perceive. So many people are together now that otherwise would never have met each other. We've come a long way since having to send a snail-mail application for membership form that we found in the back of our favorite special interest magazine like we did in the 80s and early 90s.
But therein is the problem with the internet. Right after the charm wears off of saying “hi” to brother and sister in South Carolina or Missouri via webcam, and right after the arduous but rewarding task of teaching grandma how to use WebTV so that even technologically retarded 70-year-olds can send and receive emails, what is the next most promising use for the internet? PORN! Porn. It's sticky keys instead of sticky pages nowadays. Just as in working the bars, all we can think about on the internet is the “junk” of genitalia.
Nature doesn’t change, so that shouldn't surprise us, but what does surprise us but shouldn't is the anonymity that the net provides and how it fucks with our heads. With a simple few clicks of a mouse or the accidental clicking of a pop-up ad, every housewife stepping out on her husband can find 100,000 different ways to pull it off without getting caught. Every sexual deviant with a fetish for the next-door neighbor's Cocker Spaniel can go online and find a society where his messed-up type are accepted and sympathized with. Every quiet, glasses-wearing nerd with a fetish for ejaculating on kneecaps while holding a Barbie doll in his right hand can find more than a few candidate partners.
Unpleasant as it is to think about, every fecalpheliac who desires to consume the chocolate chunks of his/her lover in a mall food court while dressed in drag can meet up and fulfill the desires of his/her heart. Thumbs up for freedom of speech and unity! Thumbs up for bridging that gap of distance and turning this mud-ball into an interactive communication sphere! Thumbs down for those of us who expect normalcy. Ok, forget normalcy. How about just honesty?
That's why the internet must be policed; because the dishonest, lying, cheating, fucking scumbag phonies out there have allowed it to get to their heads that they can be whoever or whatever they want. They can live like shape-shifters in whatever form they desire, be it a 70th-level Paladin or a Don Juan guy, with long, flowing, black hair – created from photoshopped and stolen pics – who is looking to move back to the states from France and settle down after a successful, 13-year career as a nude beach photographer, photographing some of the most beautiful women in the world.
In reality, he's a fat guy 26-year-old with greasy hair. He lives in his mother’s basement and plays on his Mac. He won’t even give a shit about how his lying about his identity will affect him when he goes to meet for the first time the person he deceived. His head is too into the game to give a fuck. He’s a chronic masturbator charlatan who’s too lazy even to cognitively process the fact that he’s a lying cheese-dick who is tearing a hole in people’s emotions. He’s too lazy or just too full of Cheetos.
You’ve heard the saying, but if you haven’t, here it is…
If only the truth was in agreement with this declaration. In reality, not enough is being done. I was contacted last year while perusing a certain chatroom. Out of the blue, I got a message from a “Meagan16” who said to me: “Wanna chat? I hope you don’t mind I’m just 16. Does that matter to you?” My reply after saying yes: “You are going to have to do better than that if you want to catch the pervos.” Bloink! The person logged out. Guess its time to start over with a smarter game-plan and a new username, huh, “Meagan”?
Daniel O’Brien, the 32-year-old man who plotted to abduct and molest a 12-year-old girl in Littleton, Mass. who ran away with him, did so: “to kiss her, lick her and suck her and get her to love [me] and have babies together.” This guy was a friend of a friend of mine. We were both in shock when the news broke of how he was arrested at a bus station while trying to run away with the child. I never actually met the guy, but I remember the long chats he and my friend would carry on with into the long hours of the night. I’m telling you, you are never prepared when you find out that you don’t really know somebody!
But abuses on the internet are an escalation of what happens in the typical bar scene: dinner and drinks or dinner and a movie—then what? We fuck. We defecate too, but who wants to focus on that…who but our fecalpheliac friends we mentioned earlier? Everything we do in life is to get to the procreating part. Nothing is exempted from that. That should bother the most and least religious of us.
First, it should bother the pious because religion gives you guidelines in using whatever acts as your dick-hardening Viagra. Religion tells you: “It’s ok to get off, just wait till you’re married so your horny, cumming ass won’t be fucking everything that’s not nailed down and producing kids without a known father. And don’t poke someone else’s wife so that the husband you wronged will not have reason to kill your ‘young, dumb, and full of cum’ stupid self.”
The scriptures imply – sort of – that masturbation is sin, but nowhere do they state it. The reason—religion was a tool to control in early societies what would naturally happen that could present problems for society at large, not to oppose nature (at least, that was not the intent). Every wise man who had a part in writing and editing Leviticus and Numbers whipped his skippy, probably not long before or after writing: “When any man hath a running issue out of his flesh, because of his issue he is unclean.” (Leviticus 15:2)
Secondly, religion gives one more thing—it actually gives an orgasm. The Christian spiritual fetish is: “He died for my sins and he didn’t have to” = tears, quivering lips, organ music playing, hands in the air = endorphins released = orgasm. It’s a different kind, but no less appealing or strong. The high it gives is no different than cocaine or booze or that hypnotizing new picture of some Lithuanian model with unusual hair. Something about her has made you soar for two straight nights. It’s all about the rush, the panting and elevated breathing levels, the feeling that the way things are is the way they must be, SO SAITH GOD!
Like most priests, the lot of us can’t go without getting our big “O”s, physical or mental (religious). We humbly confess our desperation: “We got needs!” We say so and we move on with no crisis of conscience. Religion provides one of these Os. This has some crazy implications for the religious; when you yield to the genetics-born temptation to poke your spouse, you are obeying God, and at the same time, your genetics. Must be God working through the flesh (for once, even though the scripture always repudiates the idea).
Before you got ready for church this or last Sunday, that 25-minute, closed-door, quiet bedroom encounter with your helpmeet, when Zachary and Devon were put to sleep, was already decreed—not by a deity, but by your genetics. Marriage is not “honorable in all.” It just has to work for society to propagate and function, so religion steps in to regulate it. Those evil little dickhead-helmet-wearing men within your genes have already decreed, and you are following their commands perfectly. At the end of the day, it’s the Viagra we want, the Viagra we need, the Viagra we must have.
(JH)
Spam – particularly Viagra or ExtenZe advertisements from online pharmacies foreign and domestic – has become a thing I expect to see. If I got up to check my email and did not find these unwanted manhood-making advertisements, I'd feel like I'm in a parallel universe of some kind. They are always there and they read to the affect of...
“Strengthen your tool,” “wow her with your new member,” “make your manhood manlier,” “international potency pharmacy,” “add inches to your cock,” etc.
Yahoo spam-blocking sucks. No matter how many messages of this sort I mark as spam, more still show up in the inbox. The system never learns how to handle them with what has come to be called “spoofmail,” which is where you find messages to you that appear to have come from you or as a reply back to you. Pretty malicious tactics when you think about it. Google is much better in preventing this unwanted onslaught of garbage. I talk from experience.
As unwelcome as these bulk spam attempts are, they are a good indicator of the obsessive nature of humankind and why our lives become as plugged up and complicated as they do. Life itself is a Viagra advertisement. No longer do orgasmic-ally challenged men and women have to watch an infomercial and call the 800-number on the bottom of the screen. They get the info right in their inboxes, whether they want it or not. The shame of confessing that your needle isn’t up to its task is a thing of the past. Your secret is safe with the seller—right up until they decide to sell your personal info and set it free into the vastness of the Spamiverse for others to stuff up your inbox with “special offers.”
As cheap as email advertising is, just one positive response (a sale) makes the 275,000+ auto deletions and spam-blocks worth it. Those bogus email address extensions, like “.com.uk.is.ss.rs” and those spurious invitations to click on strange links, prefaced with broken English or foreign email message characters won’t stop some from turning into buyers.
But the internet has done over and above what we could expect. We can communicate in real time with someone in Los Angeles or the Ukraine for free from just about anywhere in the world. We can amass followings, form societies, start petitions, and build decadent communities in cyberspace—usually for free. The internet has made unions possible that will have an evolutionary impact, the likes of which we can't perceive. So many people are together now that otherwise would never have met each other. We've come a long way since having to send a snail-mail application for membership form that we found in the back of our favorite special interest magazine like we did in the 80s and early 90s.
But therein is the problem with the internet. Right after the charm wears off of saying “hi” to brother and sister in South Carolina or Missouri via webcam, and right after the arduous but rewarding task of teaching grandma how to use WebTV so that even technologically retarded 70-year-olds can send and receive emails, what is the next most promising use for the internet? PORN! Porn. It's sticky keys instead of sticky pages nowadays. Just as in working the bars, all we can think about on the internet is the “junk” of genitalia.
Nature doesn’t change, so that shouldn't surprise us, but what does surprise us but shouldn't is the anonymity that the net provides and how it fucks with our heads. With a simple few clicks of a mouse or the accidental clicking of a pop-up ad, every housewife stepping out on her husband can find 100,000 different ways to pull it off without getting caught. Every sexual deviant with a fetish for the next-door neighbor's Cocker Spaniel can go online and find a society where his messed-up type are accepted and sympathized with. Every quiet, glasses-wearing nerd with a fetish for ejaculating on kneecaps while holding a Barbie doll in his right hand can find more than a few candidate partners.
Unpleasant as it is to think about, every fecalpheliac who desires to consume the chocolate chunks of his/her lover in a mall food court while dressed in drag can meet up and fulfill the desires of his/her heart. Thumbs up for freedom of speech and unity! Thumbs up for bridging that gap of distance and turning this mud-ball into an interactive communication sphere! Thumbs down for those of us who expect normalcy. Ok, forget normalcy. How about just honesty?
That's why the internet must be policed; because the dishonest, lying, cheating, fucking scumbag phonies out there have allowed it to get to their heads that they can be whoever or whatever they want. They can live like shape-shifters in whatever form they desire, be it a 70th-level Paladin or a Don Juan guy, with long, flowing, black hair – created from photoshopped and stolen pics – who is looking to move back to the states from France and settle down after a successful, 13-year career as a nude beach photographer, photographing some of the most beautiful women in the world.
In reality, he's a fat guy 26-year-old with greasy hair. He lives in his mother’s basement and plays on his Mac. He won’t even give a shit about how his lying about his identity will affect him when he goes to meet for the first time the person he deceived. His head is too into the game to give a fuck. He’s a chronic masturbator charlatan who’s too lazy even to cognitively process the fact that he’s a lying cheese-dick who is tearing a hole in people’s emotions. He’s too lazy or just too full of Cheetos.
You’ve heard the saying, but if you haven’t, here it is…
“The internet: where the men are men, where the women are men, and where the children are federal agents.”
If only the truth was in agreement with this declaration. In reality, not enough is being done. I was contacted last year while perusing a certain chatroom. Out of the blue, I got a message from a “Meagan16” who said to me: “Wanna chat? I hope you don’t mind I’m just 16. Does that matter to you?” My reply after saying yes: “You are going to have to do better than that if you want to catch the pervos.” Bloink! The person logged out. Guess its time to start over with a smarter game-plan and a new username, huh, “Meagan”?
Daniel O’Brien, the 32-year-old man who plotted to abduct and molest a 12-year-old girl in Littleton, Mass. who ran away with him, did so: “to kiss her, lick her and suck her and get her to love [me] and have babies together.” This guy was a friend of a friend of mine. We were both in shock when the news broke of how he was arrested at a bus station while trying to run away with the child. I never actually met the guy, but I remember the long chats he and my friend would carry on with into the long hours of the night. I’m telling you, you are never prepared when you find out that you don’t really know somebody!
But abuses on the internet are an escalation of what happens in the typical bar scene: dinner and drinks or dinner and a movie—then what? We fuck. We defecate too, but who wants to focus on that…who but our fecalpheliac friends we mentioned earlier? Everything we do in life is to get to the procreating part. Nothing is exempted from that. That should bother the most and least religious of us.
First, it should bother the pious because religion gives you guidelines in using whatever acts as your dick-hardening Viagra. Religion tells you: “It’s ok to get off, just wait till you’re married so your horny, cumming ass won’t be fucking everything that’s not nailed down and producing kids without a known father. And don’t poke someone else’s wife so that the husband you wronged will not have reason to kill your ‘young, dumb, and full of cum’ stupid self.”
The scriptures imply – sort of – that masturbation is sin, but nowhere do they state it. The reason—religion was a tool to control in early societies what would naturally happen that could present problems for society at large, not to oppose nature (at least, that was not the intent). Every wise man who had a part in writing and editing Leviticus and Numbers whipped his skippy, probably not long before or after writing: “When any man hath a running issue out of his flesh, because of his issue he is unclean.” (Leviticus 15:2)
Secondly, religion gives one more thing—it actually gives an orgasm. The Christian spiritual fetish is: “He died for my sins and he didn’t have to” = tears, quivering lips, organ music playing, hands in the air = endorphins released = orgasm. It’s a different kind, but no less appealing or strong. The high it gives is no different than cocaine or booze or that hypnotizing new picture of some Lithuanian model with unusual hair. Something about her has made you soar for two straight nights. It’s all about the rush, the panting and elevated breathing levels, the feeling that the way things are is the way they must be, SO SAITH GOD!
Like most priests, the lot of us can’t go without getting our big “O”s, physical or mental (religious). We humbly confess our desperation: “We got needs!” We say so and we move on with no crisis of conscience. Religion provides one of these Os. This has some crazy implications for the religious; when you yield to the genetics-born temptation to poke your spouse, you are obeying God, and at the same time, your genetics. Must be God working through the flesh (for once, even though the scripture always repudiates the idea).
Before you got ready for church this or last Sunday, that 25-minute, closed-door, quiet bedroom encounter with your helpmeet, when Zachary and Devon were put to sleep, was already decreed—not by a deity, but by your genetics. Marriage is not “honorable in all.” It just has to work for society to propagate and function, so religion steps in to regulate it. Those evil little dickhead-helmet-wearing men within your genes have already decreed, and you are following their commands perfectly. At the end of the day, it’s the Viagra we want, the Viagra we need, the Viagra we must have.
(JH)
Margery Pippin’s Son and the Value of Life at Conception
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
As newlyweds of only three months, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Pippin turned in for bed for the night in their lovely home. It was here in Atlanta, Georgia that the couple met, attended church, fell in love, and eventually got married.
One night, Margery Pippin clasped her hands in prayer and urgently asked to speak with the Lord. Though her requests were declined many times, one special night the Lord saw fit to manifest Himself to her…
God: “I am the God you serve. I am here, Margery.”
Margery: “Oh Lord, is it really you?”
God: “Yes, Mary. It is I, your Savior and King. You have found favor as a chosen vessel to speak with Me. Your righteousness and faithfulness has been established before Me. Ask of Me what you will.”
Margery: “My spirit yearns to know what great things you have in store for me and my family. Just a glimpse of what is to come would be a great gift from You, oh Lord.”
God: “I will grant you what you ask.”
…
Margery: “What is this I am now seeing, Lord? I am seeing a dark-skinned man on an airplane. This nice, balding man looks Middle Eastern, but he is sitting beside me and acting as though he is with me. He is talking to me. What does this mean, Lord?”
God: “The vision is many years in the future. The dark-skinned man you are seeing is your future son, a great man who will be a vessel of light unto Me as you are. He will do many great things and lead many unto salvation as you have.”
Margery: “I don’t understand, Lord. My husband Edward is white like I am. How can we have a Middle Eastern son? Do we adopt? Does this mean Edward will die or, heaven forbid, lose interest in me and desert me and I will marry a Middle Eastern man?”
God: “Surely you have noticed in our conservation that I’ve only mentioned you as My faithful servant. But I am God and must leave an element of mystery in your life, so I must command you to just trust Me on this one.”
Margery: “Okay, Lord, I trust you on the matter of Edward’s fate, although it disturbs me. But I must ask, how do I have a non-white son?”
God: “A few years from now, you will be violently raped in a parking garage, and you will conceive seed by the rapist. Because you know that life is sacred, you will not abort the child. You will bring him to term because you know the value of life at conception. And though it will be painful for the first few years to look into this precious child’s face and be reminded of that horrible encounter with the child’s wicked father, you will find him precious in your sight as you are in My sight.”
Margery: “….Uh…why? Why must things happen this way? Aren’t there better ways? You are God. You can do anything or arrange anything to happen any number of ways. And when will this happen? Does it happen at day or night? What parking garage? What city? Please, please tell me more!”
God: “Enough! I will reveal to you no more! You must follow in My path and not look to second-guest or prevent My Will now that you know it. It is not for man to guess the times or the seasons that the Father hath put in His own power, but to be faithful. Will you be faithful, Margery?”
Margery: “Ye, Ye…Yes…of course, Lord.”
God: “I already knew that, too, or I wouldn’t have revealed these things to you. But stay away from coat hangers just the same. And there is a man I want you to hook up with; his name is Eric Rudolph. Seek him out and learn his ways, for he doeth My Will.
Blessings shall come your way, My holy child, for being a righteous and pure earthen vessel. May your righteousness be a cloak and a shield – not from the perils of this world – but from temptation and pride. Go your way, but do My Will.
(JH)
One night, Margery Pippin clasped her hands in prayer and urgently asked to speak with the Lord. Though her requests were declined many times, one special night the Lord saw fit to manifest Himself to her…
God: “I am the God you serve. I am here, Margery.”
Margery: “Oh Lord, is it really you?”
God: “Yes, Mary. It is I, your Savior and King. You have found favor as a chosen vessel to speak with Me. Your righteousness and faithfulness has been established before Me. Ask of Me what you will.”
Margery: “My spirit yearns to know what great things you have in store for me and my family. Just a glimpse of what is to come would be a great gift from You, oh Lord.”
God: “I will grant you what you ask.”
…
Margery: “What is this I am now seeing, Lord? I am seeing a dark-skinned man on an airplane. This nice, balding man looks Middle Eastern, but he is sitting beside me and acting as though he is with me. He is talking to me. What does this mean, Lord?”
God: “The vision is many years in the future. The dark-skinned man you are seeing is your future son, a great man who will be a vessel of light unto Me as you are. He will do many great things and lead many unto salvation as you have.”
Margery: “I don’t understand, Lord. My husband Edward is white like I am. How can we have a Middle Eastern son? Do we adopt? Does this mean Edward will die or, heaven forbid, lose interest in me and desert me and I will marry a Middle Eastern man?”
God: “Surely you have noticed in our conservation that I’ve only mentioned you as My faithful servant. But I am God and must leave an element of mystery in your life, so I must command you to just trust Me on this one.”
Margery: “Okay, Lord, I trust you on the matter of Edward’s fate, although it disturbs me. But I must ask, how do I have a non-white son?”
God: “A few years from now, you will be violently raped in a parking garage, and you will conceive seed by the rapist. Because you know that life is sacred, you will not abort the child. You will bring him to term because you know the value of life at conception. And though it will be painful for the first few years to look into this precious child’s face and be reminded of that horrible encounter with the child’s wicked father, you will find him precious in your sight as you are in My sight.”
Margery: “….Uh…why? Why must things happen this way? Aren’t there better ways? You are God. You can do anything or arrange anything to happen any number of ways. And when will this happen? Does it happen at day or night? What parking garage? What city? Please, please tell me more!”
God: “Enough! I will reveal to you no more! You must follow in My path and not look to second-guest or prevent My Will now that you know it. It is not for man to guess the times or the seasons that the Father hath put in His own power, but to be faithful. Will you be faithful, Margery?”
Margery: “Ye, Ye…Yes…of course, Lord.”
God: “I already knew that, too, or I wouldn’t have revealed these things to you. But stay away from coat hangers just the same. And there is a man I want you to hook up with; his name is Eric Rudolph. Seek him out and learn his ways, for he doeth My Will.
Blessings shall come your way, My holy child, for being a righteous and pure earthen vessel. May your righteousness be a cloak and a shield – not from the perils of this world – but from temptation and pride. Go your way, but do My Will.
(JH)
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