(And Grisly Struggles over Price, Quality & Tastefulness)
It's oftentimes hard to believe that my brother and I sprung from the
same loins. But to truly understand the dynamic, you'd have to go back to the
films of John Hughes which starred none other than our favorite "big guy"
boogeying around in a Hawaiian shirt, John Candy. . . . .
In "Uncle Buck", a strait-laced suburban couple finds itself in an emergency situation and has to fly away on family business in the ungodly small hours. Jammed between the proverbial "rock & a hard place", they bite their finger-nails and call upon the sloppy "3-in-the-morning" candidate to stay over and watch their children for a week. He drives in from his chaotic, run-down apartment from the city, but he's hammering on the wrong door across the street and yelling
"HEY!". The husband, who resembles my brother, tries to call Buck over without waking the neighbors and causing a scene. There Buck lumbers up the driveway, making all sorts of noise as the dogs bark up & down the neighborhood, and stands in the doorway ushering forth all sorts of loud family greetings with his heavy luggage filling up lots of space while the husband is trying to quiet him down with brisk hello's-- looking subdued and depressed.As the quiet one, who watched the elder wander loud-mouthed off into the breach "and get shot to pieces" (-- probably while looking for a hotdog stand), Jesse was more one to fall into hobbies and collecting and science fiction/fantasy/comic book fandom like a "Praying Mantis" rubbing its pinchers together over a delectable treat inside its glass, indoors world under a reading lamp. As Michael hollered and broke things and quarreled with his mother downstairs, if not shaking his fist at the cat-- Jesse huddled up in his room and tried to "block it out" with so many abstracted themes down on the printed page.
Why go outside, when there was always another episode of "Star Trek" to rewatch? Another franchise-authorized novel to read? Inertia had him "staying put" and imagining there were vast "cities of mind" and untapped communities of fans beyond this wretched, sheltered existence that frustratingly enough, couldn't quite "explode outward" in one fantastic merging of light, speed, and soul. . . . . so in the meanwhile, he collected all the prized possessions he could "to prepare himself" for the journey, or at least to have a taste of it.
And what a taste it was, this putrid, lumpy stew of fandom. . . . .
He discovered for himself the bankruptcy of the whole Star Trek "enterprise"-- definitely not a Class-D "warp drive" starship-- at some hotel off some rainy expressway. It took about two visits before the full weight of "THE HORROR" sunk in.
Maybe it was the 500 pound wheelchair-bound woman in a red Starfleet uniform with an oxygen tank. Maybe it was the 80 year old in an "Original Series" miniskirt, who Jesse vaguely wanted to fuck until he saw the varicose veins and and caused his balls to shrink back into his body in a mingled shiver of loathing and shame. Or perhaps it was the doofuses dressed up as Klingons who Jesse & Dad later tracked into a Denny's, sitting there eating their pancakes & sausage like the Fundamentalist weirdos from "Clowns for Jesus" who'd honk their red nose and tell a little boy clinging to his father's pants-leg at the ice cream stand that he was going to hell if he didn't subscribe to a funky, rigid set of beliefs.
Though we might have been from
Missouri, we as St. Louisans were somewhat unfamiliar with the ways of "The
Red State World" once you got. . . . . out there.
Sometimes we boys would get our Dad
to take us down to the Pevely flea market, carrying a sense of divine mission
and certitude with the righteousness of our quest-- like either the Holy Men
riding into Bethlehem by long, dusty caravan or perky
humanoids
arriving from the planet Vulcan to collect rock samples with an expedition on this
strange, strange, rural spheroid. This, as we beheld the snaggle-toothed hawking
wares and starin' at us like lost "city chickens" wandering into a fox
coop. In any case, "the hunt"
was on for old Star Trek memorabilia, if not used Nintendo games-- a crusty hunk of outdated technology that fit
into your home console with the precise alignment of chips and plastic. No
cartridge, no connection, no bliss. The logic was iron-clad and unforgiving like
bowl weevils or drought or even a broken leg as you howled with the agony of
loss. We both hoped with our soft step, ultra-politeness, and
callow faith in the inherent "checks & balances" in the universe which
soothed like a healing salve that we'd be lucky that Sunday deep south in the
boonies, the Ozark hills rolling like the stanzas in a Jesse James
ballad and just as earthy.
Southbound 55 let off at the Festus
exit, a solid name as any from the gnarled Old Testament, where
Christian Fundamentalists roamed like misshapen trolls-- geeky and
petty and vindictive when you challenged their doubtful worldview of miracles
and mercy, if not 100% infallibility. Or if you poked holes in Ronald Reagan's
"annoited" place in their world-is-flat cosmos, as they crossed
their arms and shook their head like kids who didn't want to eat their
vegetables, but might stab you with a fork if you goaded them long enough. But down here, most folks were simply interested in
coyote-low commerce that took place around a giant, flimsy, corrugated building
that reminded one of a bazaar out of Arabia.
Vendors would look around confidentially and hold up "jewels" in order to
"make that connection" with the wayfaring stranger. We stumbled upon this old farmer who practically had a monopoly on all the
Nintendo equipment, and was mean and petty over his dominion.
"You name it, I
got it! 'Bomberjack', 'The Last Starfighter', 'Thundercade',
I have 'em all!". Non-negotiable prices, a putrid, fly-blown bargain that held the keys to a
teenager's happiness, a corner of America where everyone used the Bible as their
sole source of authority to all questions, yet were all emotionally 14 years old
and had the business canniness of pole-cats starin' on with green, crossed eyes
and lashin' out their paws with a yowl.
Jesse was having no better luck, encountering tables of
"pure crap". It was almost as if the vendors didn't know the difference, as
they sold their Elvis t-shirts, garish James Dean tapestries, and winking
"Bettie Boop" toilet seats.
At the Star Trek conventions, it was supposed to be
even worse. . . . . with booths run by merchants setting one to mind of petty,
pie-faced medieval usurers counting piles of coins and eating blood sausage with
a clasp-knife. But the "Trekkie" crowd was oblivious too,
listening to second or even third-string cast members recount their so-called
"spontaneous reminiscences" open-mouthed, even though they had seen the
person already tell the same story in the exact same way, if not
word-for-word a week before.
That's just "business". Once you get typecast
in that science fiction/fantasy/horror genre, you're in for life with all its
cynical machinations and idiotic fans. Why, the scene is so depressing, so
dead-end, a certain "Star Trek" actress tried to throw herself from a moving car
rather than sign more autographs on mass-printed black & white photo stock. God
have mercy on our souls. . . . .
And on my brother, when we took a trip up to Chicago.
The city was fresh and new, a glittering
metropolis of stone and glass and steel and dotted with trees throughout--
promising excitement and
adventure to a young man taking it all in like a dog panting happily as the
family station-wagon pulled up to this Midwestern theme park that made St. Louis
look like a ragged boot dirged up from the Mississippi.
And here we were,
getting "whipped along" by Jesse who was anxious "to witness",
like a shrine, "The Paramount Super Store" where they sold every single
Star Trek episode on home video and even had a museum devoted to the famed
series.
Dad took in the museum
with a sure sense of absurdity, and nodded at the paltriness as if he wasn't
terribly surprised. Things in this world took money and hard work, and in "the
sloping consensus of things" flash was fleeting-- especially when it came
down to something so hokey as Captain Kirk wrestling
with a man in a rubber lizard suit on some godforsaken planet that looked
remarkably like southern California shot on location.
An old world was dying in the thrashing throes of a hissy-fit. . . . . and in
its place was rising an edifice of reason and commonsense that knew to get
outside more often and leave the slime to the cloud-eyed who would never know
the difference. Because at long last, he did.
"We don't know any Vulcan girls around here, do we?"
"I have 'em all! I have 'em all!", he croaked,
addled and grotesque, like he had been kicked in the head by a horse as a child
and had to limp on in this life "with hard luck" as his yellowed,
corn-cob teeth stuck out at a crooked angle.
But what
we would find instead was nothing more than a bunch of rubber alien suits stood up
behind velvet ropes in a tube with a placard under each, full of pleasing
generalities for merely the average dunderheaded
dweeb with taped glasses "snorfling" around like a
hog at a science fiction convention. Jesse paced around the room, a vast circle
of tapes
where the cash register was the nexus, and couldn't believe his eyes, which were
welling up with the tears of corporate, money-grubbing betrayal. For so many
years, he had lived in slime-- waiting for "the next stop just over the hill"
and had found THIS where the sidewalk ended. 
Set phasers on "STUN". . . . . & aim for their groins!
*******************
"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!'
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(Rheeee of Crickets)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
("I heard that, Missy!")
© 2008 by Insufferable Industries
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