Sex, Death, and Other People's Money
Mike Golden
February 2006
February 2006
There are no miracles in the street.
Yet I believe!
How can that be?
Perhaps statistics. I'm not sure, but just like a ventriloquist's dummy you can make them say anything you want. For instance:
"Did you know that 4 out of 10 people are going to get it, and when they get it they're going to give it to at least 4.5 other people, who are going to give it to at least 5.5 other people?" That's what Surf says.
I don't understand the .5, which makes me one out of the two out of the original six who haven't got it yet but are doomed to have serious psycho ethno-eco-geo-socio-political problems. I have too much anxiety and too much desire at the same time.
"In reality," Surf says, "you can't cope!" Which is true, so I turn my back on the obvious and like a zombie cakewalk backwards into the void. Which is when I catch me a vision.
No, not KONG climbing up onto the red, blue and green X of the Empire's newest, highest, most spectacularly expensive edifice ever designed to take away mortal breath, but back down here on lonely earth, The Three Sisters of Apocalypse, Faith, Hope & Charity wave as they dart out of a the gale, into a sleazy low rent Blarney Shock.
The boys gather up all hopes, dreams and wishes from the night when I point back in the direction we came, but naturally, once through the doors there is no Faith, Hope & Charity in the bar. Just Sex, Death & Other People's Money.
Beautiful beyond imagination, but not what I was looking for this time around. Yet there's no denying this is a fantasy my problem can dance to.
"Hello delicious one," Sex calls to The Kid.
"Me?" He blushes as she tickles his chin with four inch nails glistening with purple lacquer.
"Vagina Dentatta," Surf whispers to me, and Death shoots a wad of neon bile across the mainstream to the jukebox, then smiles, thinking maybe blood, maybe sacrifice in the name of something more holy than the goof up on the X, overlooking her emptiness.
Music comes out of the jukebox, and Other People's Money sings to me, "I am the Queen, Queen of the Universe, Queen who encompasses the Universe. . .Enter my King, and spend your days in my fucking lap."
Bark now, Kid, and talk of Love, that fourth sister, fifth Marx brother, last opening in the wall of self. So he does.
Cuts right through. Starts hopping up and down like he found the vein. "She likes me! Did ya hear that? She likes me!" Then turns and starts kissing her fingers. "You do like me? You're not just saying what you're saying just to say it, are you?" Then slurping, like a suckling on a good tit, drops to his knees waiting for a pet.
Almost pompously, Surf regurgitates a line I know he copped from the editorial of last month's Psychotic Today: "Remember," he plagiarizes, "nothing is worthy except your perception!" Before he can go on. Death reaches over and grabs him, unzips his brain and begins fondling his ticket. The eye bulges out of his head, as he gasps, "Remember. . .nothing. . ."
Then Death sucks.
Looking back, I wondered if looking back was an indulgence the market would bear. With time as an enemy, Other People's Money had a hard-on for a baby. Earlier, years younger, before we grew blood, there was sweetness, but now I am a stranger. Intensity without intimacy is only tension.
Surf's jaw locks then, frozen in pleasure from his holy scream.
The Kid knows nothing of terror, of course. Just wants to wag his tail and savor the sweet scent of cunt.
"Love," Surf groans, "is a conceit, not a curiosity, above and beyond the call of contingency."
In the land of the celibate, philosophy flourishes, while on the other side of the fence wild things run free. In the background, the sound of soul climbs out of the jukebox as Other People's Money starts shaking her boogie and singing, "Does Papa want a brand new muse?" Have I seen this one before?
In the original, Colbert did it to Gable with just one bat of the eyes, but these days not even a Louisville Slugger will work. They say, even flowers kill. It's still the same dream that made a fool out of Swinburne and a liar out of poor Ibsen, but now even that is too much to comprehend.
"There is never enough," Other People's Money sings. "Too much is not enough."
It takes all my strength to turn away from her and face the bar. Stare blankly at the bartender's jowls chewing his cud.
A snake disguised as a witness, he draws me a long cool one and winks. But before I can even reach for it, Surf whirls out of the jaws of Death and blows the head off.
"Oh gimme ti-yi-yuppie, gimme ti-yi more," he sings, then kneels next to The Kid in the sawdust and begins praying.
I won't hurt you," Death whispers.
In distant ports heroes take their cues and march, howling up at full moons for a new mythology. "Oh give us back our balls!" they chant. "Give us back the rumba."
And then we dance.
Oh, how we dance.
Each and every one of us. The moment we aim at something we have already missed it.
One | Two