30. the streets of excremento
Independence Day was only a few days away and the sound of exploding
bottle rockets and other flammable objects made life feel and sound
like a war zone. He groped for a pillow to cover his head to block
out the explosions that were occurring outside his bedroom window. In
the darkness of his pillow cave, he went looking for beauty in the
streets of sacramento, or for something that at least looked cool,
calm, and sane, but every block that he turned over in his mind was
ugly, melting and out of place.
Even the elm trees that had looked beautiful and green a few months
ago were now brown and full of disease. Every summer, little puce-
gutted bugs descended upon the majestic shade covering that lined the
downtown streets. The Dutch Elm Beetles attacked and devoured en
masse. Every year, the group of city workers in white outfits and
orange hats who only worked at night would inject strong chemicals
into the base of the deceased trees.
A lot a good, it does anyway, Denver thought, pulling on his semi-
erect penis. For the next two weeks I won’t be able to carry out
simple neighborhood errands without smashing thousands of the dead
little crunchy bugs under my feet. Soon, the sidewalks will be
covered with the worm-eaten dried up elm leaves producing the
unmistakable stench of decay of summers in sacramento.
He propped himself up in bed, took the last sip of his coffee and
reveled in his favorite activity, thinking. He had finished writing
in his diary but had remained in bed as long as he could before he
had to go to work.
He pulled back the bedroom curtain. A ray of light beamed itself to
the other side of the room, making everything look dirty. He became
fascinated by the tiny dust particles that were captured in the light
beam. They floated lazily on the currents of air and slowly attached
themselves to the first greasy surface with which they came into
contact. Hypnotized by the scientific phenomenon taking place before
his eyes, he drifted off into the creative annals of his mind.
“Ring my bell. Ring my bell. Ding-a-ling, a-ling, a-ling,” he quietly
sang. “I’m so bored with the USA. I am so bored with me. What am I
going to do? Nobody loves me. How am I going to get though? I am a
wheel and I go around and around. I am suffering from heavy P.M.S.”
Another round of explosives jolted Denver out of singing the blues
and he found himself staring at the fruit flies circling his bedroom
light fixture.
He took a peek out his bedroom window. Blue sky as usual, not a cloud
in place. The sky over sacramento looked as if someone had taken a
piece of craft paper and glued it up over the city as a permanent
joke. The cheery blue against the sea of sweating faces and aluminium
siding left Denver reliving bad summers past and knowing that for the
next couple of months he would be trailing through a sweltering world.
He thought about his upcoming show at the Benjamin Levy Gallery. He
would probably do an installation using yellow as its theme, or
reassemble his apartment at the gallery to expose his artistic
lifestyle to the public. The time had come to create a new
sensibility in this town. Sacramentans seemed to care more about
matching the colors of their carpeting and wall hangings than
supporting local artists and risking the humiliation of their friends
for making a frivolous purchase. Besides, Denver thought, they were
too busy driving to the mall in their Hummers or racing up and down
the rivers in their new speed boats, to be bothered to support local
culture, and consequently anybody else except themselves. Whatever
happened to socialness?
Denver jerked in bed as another round of ammunition went off. There’s
no rest for the wicked today, he thought and took a deep breath. The
sickly sweet odor of the Gardenia bush blooming outside his bedroom
window filled the room. The smell reminded him of the expensive
perfume that his boss Jeanie at Power wore, and a sickening aversion
to his worthless employment over came him.
I’ve got bills to pay and art supplies to buy. I’ve got to do my duty
for society, he thought, weakly justifying his reality for
employment. He glanced over at the orange-orb Timex. It read 16:73.
The LED readouts were malfunctioning. After all, he had found it
abandoned in the alley between 20th and N. He estimated the time to
be 11:39. He had forty-one minutes to get up, take a poop, bathe,
dress, grab something to eat and get to work at noon for the second
shift. He closed his diary lying on the bed next to him, placed it
between a light and a jar of sexual aids on the metal milk crates
that doubled as nightstand, and got out of bed.
He slipped into his urban uniform, which lay on the floor next to the
bed: a new version of his tee-shirt, the text from Peach translated
into German, and a pair of jeans. Maneuvering his way to the bathroom
through his disheveled two-room apartment with Murphy bed, he
remembered the dream he had had just before awaking.
As he stood at the bathroom sink taking a pee and brushing his teeth,
segments of the strange dream flashed back into his mind. His father
had taken him to the train station and he had already said good-bye
and had boarded. Just as the train started to pull out of the
station, he remembered something important that he needed to tell his
father. Just before he woke, he was caught in despair about whether
to jump off the train and run after his father or stay on and be with
his luggage.
He spat pink foam, rinsed his mouth and splashed cold water on his
face to remove the dark circles under his eyes that were beginning to
appear due to the stress of making a living and trying to remain on
the cutting edge of creativity.
Outside the apartment door, he waved to Judy, who was tending her
garden as usual, and unlocked his bike left attached to the porch
railing. Denver had, at numerous anti-constructivist, neo-errorist
performance actions, destroyed his driver’s license as the ultimate
symbol of man’s devastation wreaked upon Mother Earth. It was an idea
well before its time. Denver knew that the automobile was the
destructive force behind the environmental collapse. Man being his
ignorant self, believed in a concept of necessary evils and refused
to grasp the connection between his penis substitute and Mother
Earth. He continued to pee upon her, with corrosive consequences.
Denver preferred being driven instead.
As a struggling artist, he learned to be practical. His passion for
cycling fulfilled his transportation and exercise needs at the same
time. The extra oxygen pumped to the brain gave him the impetus to
imagine the consequences of being blessed by the Lottery God or to
conceptualize on art projects he would like to undertake.
He turned down an alley and saw a bum rummaging the morning away
through garbage dumpsters. He’s shakin’ it, thought Denver, envious
that they might find something special. Keep on shakin’ it. He nodded
as he rode past.
“There sure’s a lot of ugly trash out there.” He muttered as he
negotiated his way past an overturned metal garbage can and trash
dumpsters filled to capacity. There was one oozing black Hefty
plastic trash bag after another with a multitude of flies buzzing
around. There was a christmas tree now skeletal, dumped in a corner
near a fence, a soiled disposable diaper thrown on top and cigarette
butts lying nearby.
Denver had a sixth sense when it came to sniffing out gems amid
squalor. More often than rot, he felt pulled to certain spots that
would lead to bounty or at least to something that he could recycle
and use in his art work
He saw a Barbie figure with one leg and fried hair, lying in the
middle of the alley waiting to be run over. He thumped over Barbie
with his hot wheels. A few feet on, Denver braked, got off his bike,
went back, and picked up the disfigured plastic icon of beauty. He
fastened it to the front fender of his bike with rubber bands he had
been collecting on the handlebars for just such an occasion.
He rode past yet another abandoned couch upholstered in mock tweed,
providing an over night resting space for transients. It had indeed
been used the night before for there were discarded bean cans and a
bottle of Nighttrain fortified wine laying nearby.
Denver noticed a huge pile of dog shit deposited on a corner of an
abandoned television. He questioned the logistics of such a maneuver.
How the dog must’ve squatted in order to leave its feces so
precariously perched. A line of mysterious slow moving red and black
mosaic patterned triangular shaped bugs crept through the weeds that
managed to squeeze between the cracks in the concrete and crawled up
the television.
He cycled past a block of two story apartment buildings shaped like
shoeboxes on spindly iron toothpicks to provide parking underneath.
He stopped for a moment and remembered an acid trip where he had
marveled at the exact same apartment buildings’ simple construction
and clean architectural lines. “What was I thinking,” he asked out
loud and rode on.
The smell of blooming wisteria wafted in the air as he arrived at
Power Records on 16th and Z. He locked his bike to the wisteria
trellis attached to the building, knowing full well that if his boss
saw him she would scold him for not using the bike rack in the back.
He whistled the Jetson’s jingle as he entered the building just in
time to see his boss Jeanie scolding a fellow employee at the
entrance. He could hear her insults, as he walked past them, knowing
that at any moment the fragile employee would burst into tears.
Denver felt the tension in the air, smiled to the other employees
lurking among the records, and walked into the back storage room,
which doubled as an employee lounge. Jeanie was a slave-driving
bitch. She was the kind of person who never looked him in the eye
when speaking to him except when giving orders, and constantly nagged
him about his clothing style, always searching for stains, rips and
other imperfections.
His hatred for her temporarily strangled him and caused him to
hyperventilate. He could not imagine how she could love or be loved
by anyone. What a raving bitch, he thought, and punched his time card
to start work. She doesn’t have a pussy. She probably has the biggest
dick in the world and will beat anyone with it who is stupid enough
to get close. She is a raving tyrant who takes out her sexual
frustration on hopelessly normal, active fuckers like me. His
thoughts consoled him.
Why am I here? What am I doing here? he asked himself, leaning on the
time clock. I do not belong in this miserable environment. The
Jeanies of the world are brainless idiots. I do not deserve to be
treated like a worthless amoeba. Twenty hours a week for almost a
year, and for what?
His thoughts turned to his fellow employee, Will Buck, who he was
about to replace. What had started out for him as a summer job after
coming back from the war had ended up as a go nowhere career. Will
Buck was stuck doing the same thing, day in and day out, selling the
wheels of popular culture to the mindless throngs of brainwashed
consumers.
Will Buck was a typical tanned, middle-aged, balding individual who
had landed the easy life the hard way. A stint in the military was
where he lost two of his fingers from a mishap with a hand grenade.
Discharged and with some benefits, he wound up in sacramento and got
a job at Power Records. As everyone who is part of downtown
sacramento’s bohemian life admits, it was a convenient yet a demeaning
form of employment.
“Here I go again,” he said and pushed open the door to leave the back
room.
He nodded to Dean, who was refilling CD’s in their proper places.
“Oh, hi Denver. How’s it going?”
“Okay.” He dared not ask Dean the same, who had probably had a
morning fuck and was feeling great.
“You still wearing that T-shirt?”
“It’s the german copy.”
“Really? How many languages did you translate it into?”
“Five. French, german, russian, spanish and mandarin. I’ve been
selling them.”
“You’re still not over it.”
“If you give me a chance to communicate outside the working arena
maybe we can heal. Let’s go for a walk somewhere with Peach.”
“I don’t have a problem.”
“I am your problem. Do you think this is normal the way we deal with
each other?” Denver suddenly saw his shift supervisor Stephanie and
used the opportunity to end the mindless tête-à-tête. “Think about it
a moment,” he said and walked away.
He called out her name and waved a friendly hello. Stephanie only
nodded and turned away, not even smiling. It was a minor neo-
erroristic action. Denver was able to infuriate his supervisor with
the same kind of team spirit that both she and Jeanie preached at the
monthly work seminars. But he was sure that one day soon, Jeanie
would out Stephanie as a militant lesbian, and it would do her good.
Lesbian is not a dirty word. How dare she make it into one, Denver
mused.
Stephanie Savage gives homosexuality a bad name. Frustrated as hell,
unable to openly express her sexual identity for fear of society’s
moral wrath, she has, in response, developed a sick psyche, which is
the cause of her anger and general all around mutant qualities. She
models her life on her oppressors’ material standards in order to be
assimilated and prove that she is one of them. Unfortunately, this
only backfires and causes more frustration than acceptance.
The only difference is her penchant for pussy, Denver reasoned.
Instead of celebrating her difference, she’s bent out of shape and
full of anger at the human race. Why, I can’t even call her lesbian
and she is, damn it.
A young ex-marine, Stephanie had fought herself up the corporate
ladder of the local record industry and Denver learned early in the
game to stay out of her line of fire. He often tried to use the
premise of working conditions to strike up a conversation, but
Stephanie possessed one of those gratingly precise voices that was
meant for giving orders, which was what she did best. Even ’Hello’,
sounded like a command when coming from the thin-lipped Stephanie
Savage.
Denver checked in at his station, relieving Will Buck of his duties,
and strapped himself into the production line. For the next couple of
hours, before his mandatory fifteen-minute break, he would assist at
the check out counter, answer questions about music, and keep an eye
out for shoplifters
“Denver.” He turned around, shocked by the intensity with which his
name was called.
“I saw your show at End Art. I don’t like what you do and I don’t
understand it,” she said point blank.
“Stephanie,” he paused and sighed, “To each their own.”
“My cousin does better work than you and she’s in pre-school,” she
snapped.
“Good.” He took a deep breath and forced a smile. “Then tell her to
try to make a living out of it. She’s got talent.”
“What good is it?” Stephanie barked.
“Look Stephanie, just because you don’t understand it, doesn’t mean
it doesn’t have a right to exist.”
“Who buys shit like that anyway?” she commanded to know.
Denver turned on Stephanie with all the fury of a junkyard dog. “Okay,
Lesbian! I’ve had enough of your belittlement. You are one fucked-up
bitch. I’ve had it with your barrage of bigoted comments.” He pointed
his index finger at her. “Look girlfriend …”
“I am not your girlfriend,” she hissed.
“Oh yes, you are. Even if I don’t like to admit it, but we all come
from the same exploding pussy. It’s in our genes.” He rammed his
hands in his pockets. “We’re supposed to be on the same side,
fighting the enemy. Only you have accepted him into your heart.”
“I do not know what you are talking about.”
“I have come a long way accepting your world, you don’t even try to
accept my world.”
“I don’t share any genes with you homeless types.” Her face could
freeze the blood of an iguana.
“What! You putting me in the same bag as the homeless? Even if I am
homeless, what does it matter? We homeless artists do it for
ourselves. We plant our gardens and watch them grow. Unfortunately,
people like you are always mowin’ the lawn, preventing our gardens
from growin’, callin’ them subversive. Why can’t you just accept that
not everyone believes in the california dream. Not everyone is cut
out for cutthroat capitalism. Some are into heroin, some live on
reservations, others sleep in boxes. I create.”
“Not with my money, I pay taxes.”
“Look bitch.” He shouted. “I’ve given up trying to convince you
mother fuckers, with your Sac State business school and military
training, about the grace and dignity of art.” Denver puffed his
words, waving his hand in front of him. “It has been bred out of your
species. I, as a lucky one, I have held onto some grace, but I am
cursed with ignoramuses like you all around me. I am tired of letting
my pussy hang out on the side walk, trying to make people pay five
dollars to lick it, in order to pay my rent.”
“It’s you homeless artists types, who should all be rounded up and
shot.” She had the last word, turned heel and walked away in search
of another employee to reprimand.
“Heil peace, Miss SS!” Denver yelled back, raising his right arm high.
“Excuse me. Can you tell me where I can find the new song?” a
customer asked and started to sing, “Want to be a butterfly, flying
free at the zoo. I want to fly, fly away and get away, ’way from you.”
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