"King of the Planets"

As Bobby likes to observe like an unhappy patron in a restaurant, jamming his finger down for emphasis like a customer sending back a charred, shriveled steak: "the mental health system is FUCKED". It's a kind of adapted helplessness, like a column of honking cars lined on the toll bridge of that good ole' golden brick road leading to health, wealth, and a rainbow of mythical happiness that probably you and I will never know so long as there's such a thing as death & taxes. Don't forget sweat, friction, boredom, and sleepiness that drags at the heels of mice & men's best laid plans and denies us seating at the steak house of the gods.

And not forgetting also that you reap what you sow on this rocky, hardscrabble earth. . . . . that if you want a better steak house, you'd better go off build it. Or understand its rueful bargain-basement implication as you hitch up your sweatpants and waddle away in disgust-- you get what you pay for.

Bobby understands this and doesn't, and talks the ear off of anyone who will listen about all the shitty things that have ever held him back, not to mention poor service at the counter. Most people listen for a while, get overwhelmed, then leave with the manic deluge trailing after their retreating back as they make their eventual break-away like a comet escaping from the gravitational pull of a bloated gas giant. Jupiter, king of the planets-- named for a jolly, grand, laughing god with a lust for life. That would describe Hayes perfectly.

Others stick around, and I can't exactly vouchsafe for the quality of those whom do.

If you get what you pay for, then Scott & Janeane were like two slugs plucked off a sewer lid, gathered there to catch the heat of the rising steam. Maybe they're not swift enough to flee the drag of long-winded inertia that even the forces of light-- of helpful intentions-- can't escape. . . . .

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They were a stubby, retarded couple that only came out of the apartment at night like salamanders from a dark, moist cave of trickling water-- like deformed, half-grown tadpoles that stared on through their slit eyes and listened attentively, like children.

Scott used to be involved in a Satanist club-- witches and warlocks staring on dim-eyed and heavy-browed with absolutely no kind of positive orientation-- and went around and beat people up over real or imagined offenses. They were an off-shoot of the bikers except they didn't have bikes. One time, a member was thinking about leaving the so-called pagans and Scott barged into his room, painted in black with a giant pentagram on the ceiling, and split a live cat right over the victim's head so the guts came dribbling down in a shower of evil.

The man screamed and never turned witness. . . . .

But these days Scott mostly stuck to rummaging around the complex dumpster, diving around inside and looking for old tin cans to sell and occasionally freaking out the neighbors. His wife, Janeane stood by and stood guard. She was grubby too, and had her tubes tied so she couldn't get pregnant. She spent her afternoons down at the sheltered work shop for $2/hour and gave 50¢ blow-jobs to her fellow misfits for cans of soda. Six guys at a time would line up, and she'd get her share of flavors-- all the colors of the rainbow as she swirled her tongue around like the stubbiest porno star east of the Rockies.

They spent all their money on macaroni n' cheese, Coca-Cola, and pet food for their apartment of hoarded creatures. . . . . up to the point when their toenails fell out, because they became so malnourished with a sure lack of proper nutrition. One time Bobby and I had a full head-on view of them throwing up in the parking lot, with heave after lurching heave until their bodies quit rebelling against this dietary insult. Then they came back out and dumped kitty litter on it to hide the smell, like dragging a bludgeoned body back into the house.

The system was full of dark secrets that were aloud to go unchecked, to fester like meat in a dumpster. But one thing they wouldn't do is take baths. . . . . even in the height of sweaty summertime. They only resumed when the social workers threatened to throw them into a group home because they were no longer taking care of themselves nor fit to live in society.

Hayes wanted to set me up with Janeane behind Scott's back, throw a sheet over the bed and "have at it" as he winked like a horny old sailor. I'd better hold my hopes out for Winona. . . . . and pray at the foot of temples not named after gods sipping wine on rocking chairs on Mount Hayes.