"Big Game"
In the outback, matters are always simpler with the slow course of life that pumps through the inhabitants' veins. You could look at it with almost a bit of lump-in-your-throat nostalgia for that bit of America left behind by the so-called "smart things", like flightier, more putrid consciences graduating from the sludgier echelons of "that oil refinery of life" like an endearing grin of frittering neurosis "that can't sit still" and see life "for what it is".
(Two "stinky puffs" of blue-state refinement)
There will never be a stand-in for "the feeling" of going into a "Westenaire"-style grocery stop that looks like a convenience store and buying cosmically off-brand snacks, usually featuring cowboys and pigs and cows with slurping tongues, an "mmnnnn, good" expression that belies mountains of sugar n' starch in some kind of manufacturing town out in the middle of Indiana, and fat grandmas wandering around with blown-up, flabby arms living in trailers with screeching neighbor kids running around, gnawin' on popsicles that smell like antifreeze, later turning out to have carcinogenic chemicals in the food dyes. And then some well-wisher paves the road with a tar that turns out to be cut with dioxin, crows fly up from the air to get away from the toxic fumes, everyone is evacuated, and the town becomes a godforsaken chemical waste dump where inhabitants are compensated 68¢ on the dollar, "take it or leave it".
Or there was Aldi's-- "the poor man's grocery store"-- rumbling around the cracked parking lot full of pot-holes in an old dented station-wagon with a warm soda in your hand, and something told you that half-assed reform, full of "yes we can!" platitudes like raking in everyone up to a silver-plated standard like a "glorping" net of denial, rhetorical feints, and holding up one's hands as a "non-threatening gesture" as the mob threw rocks and broken bottles in the dark, shadowed right-wing prison yard of life-- wasn't gonna "chin the bar" but hang there tortured and ridiculous-looking like your author as a fat, lordly 10 year-old grueling like slaughtered beef on a fitness test in gym as the coach crossed an "X" under "needs improvement".
The larger a silly, liberal politician looms over everything like a swelling, bloated balloon-- like a smiling "Barney" head, the "dinosaur" of "big government" that gets men stewing like burbling crude, than the uglier it gets like a mushroom cloud disintegrating the store-house of i-Phones and i-Pods that they couldn't afford. The very sound of it rubbed men the wrong way, like snarling bob-cats and coyotes baring their rotted gums.
A little "i" with its cute dot like a one-inch winkie.
Pod, pod, pod.
Pea-pod. Tad-pole.
Man becoming infantile AND LOSING HIS GRIP.
The beauty of a feudal, hierarchal society. . . . . is that you keep some people out. A military base in the south-land where a shaven sentry named "Snopes", looking on with sleepy, knowing eyes and a smiling "Huckleberry Hound" expression stops you at the check-point, exchanges a few words about girls "and chasing tail", then salutes and waves your jeep "on through".
Eating a banana or cornbread like "primal man", "jungle man", Tarzan. . . . . king of the forest but it was always understood that the system "was bigger than you", that the coach or sergeant could always have you run more laps, do more "close-order" drill.
That the nail which sticks out "gets hammered down".
And there in the locker, the men mull on about "that cornbread", and how indeed how if wasn't for that extra bit of fuel they probably couldn't have made that 15-mile run in full gear. A shudder goes through them, thinking what would happen "if they couldn't chin the bar". It would be like a hound-dog that had been gut-shot, crawling the distance anyway or havin' to go back to its lair to recover. . . . . losing face in front of the team, the coach, the unit.
Cougars n' cowboys, flyin' fur, fording the swollen river as nature answers with a dark rumble and your heart threatens to leap out of your throat.
That's what life was about. . . . .
And there I was, taking a shaky, existential long-shot as a 14 year-old freshman sending a popular senior a Valentine cookiegram. Going after "the big game", in other words. Instead of a cupid piercing her heart with a beautiful arrow, swift and sure, it was more like I was a duck-hunter who plinked her in the butt with a bb-gun, hidden behind some blinds.
She was not amused.
Face "the slayer" by bulking yourself up to the point where you can meet the chin-up bar squarely, and not throw broken-bottles that belies your tooth-pick arms, and poor, blatting aim. . . . . overcompensating for it with bitterness the rest of your life for what you could not, and perhaps still can not do. It's far better for one's health. You think?
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"You want a-nuther song? Well I ain't plain' one mutherfuckin' note until someone comes up here and puts sum money in my god-damned tip-jar! You know I only came here for one purpose. . . . . to take yor fuckin' cash! Why, I could make more profit puttin' out my meth-head neighbor's asshole and ringin' a bell, hollerin' 'Man for sale! Man for sale!'
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(Rheeee of Crickets)
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("I heard that, Missy!")
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