to harangue them for information—but I am a resident of the community Al-Amin is credited with cleaning up, and I can tell you truthfully the man sucks as a housekeeper. First of all, leaving dead policemen lying around with their balls shot off is damn fucking messy. But besides that even, I have never once seen Al-Amin come by with his big broom to sweep up the dealers on Crack Corner down the street from my house, or to sweep up the pimps who peddle child prostitutes on Metropolitan Parkway, or even to help Honnie and Todd, who have been terrorized and shot at by the drug dealer next door since soon after they moved in. A lot of people in the neighborhood came forth to help them, to sit on their porch with them and hold vigil with them in a show of support. None of them were assault-rifle toting pillars, granted, but they did what they could. Where was Al-Amin then?
Maybe he was busy. I guess it takes time to stockpile weapons and plan a botched double cop killing, where you blast the balls off of one and leave the other lying there, looking at you, able to perfectly describe you plus the car you were driving. I guess it takes time to take stock in yourself, see that you have no balls, that you are just as nutless as the man you left dead in the street, then to run away and hide behind the faded faith of your neighbors.
Building Walls
I AM NOT DEAD , though there are ants in my bed, which blows my theory—I always thought you had to be dead before ants tried to eat you. I thought there was some kind of insect protocol when it came to insects and humans. Surely they don’t eat you alive , do they? Don’t forensic scientists use insect-feeding patterns as evidence to determine time of death?
I wouldn’t be wondering this if I didn’t live in a goddam peat bog. I swear, there must be a complete cosmic funnel through which all the spiders, ants, moths, and billion-legged robo-bugs in the world are sucked, and then there is my house, right under the butt end of the funnel, getting continuously crapped upon.
You’d think walls would make a difference, but they don’t. I had better protection when I was living in a tent, even though I never really lived in one except for that week I went whitewater rafting in Colorado. My little sister lived in a tent, though, actually lived there with her husband Eddie. She said it was nice, with interior tent walls that divided it into separate rooms.
When I think of my sister’s tent I think of Richard Burton in Cleopatra , when his army made “camp” before going into battle. Only Richard Burton’s tent was like a mansion, with massive candelabras and gilded doorframes. Doorframes , in a tent . There weren’t even doors, but there were red velvet drapes tied to the side with gold-tasseled cord. His bed, though, is what really cracked me up. It was an ornate, four-poster colossus, with about fifty pillows. That was a stupid-ass way to portray a Roman about to go into battle, but back when my sister told me she was living in a tent, I liked to think of the one Richard Burton had. “It’s nice,” she told me, and I really wanted to believe her.
Because what else was I gonna do? She was living in Zurich at the time, and I couldn’t fly there from California to save her, especially since she didn’t want to be saved. I’d already tried talking her out of marrying Eddie a year earlier, and all that did was build a wall between us. We’d started out living in Zurich together, along with my mother who’d been contracted to design weapons for the Swiss government. When the contract expired, I tried to get Kim to come home to the States with me, explaining, with all the gentleness of an angry bobcat, that she’d be a fool to stay. “Alcoholic walrus,” for example, is what I called the man she loved. I blamed him for everything, too. I especially blamed him for the tent.
I didn’t expect her to turn me down. Kim and I had been roommates in college. She kept the place
Maybe he was busy. I guess it takes time to stockpile weapons and plan a botched double cop killing, where you blast the balls off of one and leave the other lying there, looking at you, able to perfectly describe you plus the car you were driving. I guess it takes time to take stock in yourself, see that you have no balls, that you are just as nutless as the man you left dead in the street, then to run away and hide behind the faded faith of your neighbors.
Building Walls
I AM NOT DEAD , though there are ants in my bed, which blows my theory—I always thought you had to be dead before ants tried to eat you. I thought there was some kind of insect protocol when it came to insects and humans. Surely they don’t eat you alive , do they? Don’t forensic scientists use insect-feeding patterns as evidence to determine time of death?
I wouldn’t be wondering this if I didn’t live in a goddam peat bog. I swear, there must be a complete cosmic funnel through which all the spiders, ants, moths, and billion-legged robo-bugs in the world are sucked, and then there is my house, right under the butt end of the funnel, getting continuously crapped upon.
You’d think walls would make a difference, but they don’t. I had better protection when I was living in a tent, even though I never really lived in one except for that week I went whitewater rafting in Colorado. My little sister lived in a tent, though, actually lived there with her husband Eddie. She said it was nice, with interior tent walls that divided it into separate rooms.
When I think of my sister’s tent I think of Richard Burton in Cleopatra , when his army made “camp” before going into battle. Only Richard Burton’s tent was like a mansion, with massive candelabras and gilded doorframes. Doorframes , in a tent . There weren’t even doors, but there were red velvet drapes tied to the side with gold-tasseled cord. His bed, though, is what really cracked me up. It was an ornate, four-poster colossus, with about fifty pillows. That was a stupid-ass way to portray a Roman about to go into battle, but back when my sister told me she was living in a tent, I liked to think of the one Richard Burton had. “It’s nice,” she told me, and I really wanted to believe her.
Because what else was I gonna do? She was living in Zurich at the time, and I couldn’t fly there from California to save her, especially since she didn’t want to be saved. I’d already tried talking her out of marrying Eddie a year earlier, and all that did was build a wall between us. We’d started out living in Zurich together, along with my mother who’d been contracted to design weapons for the Swiss government. When the contract expired, I tried to get Kim to come home to the States with me, explaining, with all the gentleness of an angry bobcat, that she’d be a fool to stay. “Alcoholic walrus,” for example, is what I called the man she loved. I blamed him for everything, too. I especially blamed him for the tent.
I didn’t expect her to turn me down. Kim and I had been roommates in college. She kept the place
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