The Cerebral Catalyst

Back inside those headphones, hearing SWITCHED-ON BACH, springs of dusty couch in leaky parlor digging ribs, all the change in the universe to spare, coming on to mushrooms, amphetamine, hash… in came Mike the Sailor – five-feet six-inch warhead of 160 pounds of incoming, me the sole soul awake in a hippie house of nine pelvises.

“Hey, Dick!” he grinned drunkenly, eyes rolling my face into focus. “This the party?”

“No,” I wanted to say, but was too high to verbalize, “the party is in Dick’s brain,” although apparently I did slur part of the sally, as Mike leaned over the dilapidated cocktail table and rapped twice smartly on my forehead.

“What is the password?” I carefully articulated, although couldn’t hear myself outside the headphones and the blaring electronic Bach.

“Eat,” he enunciated, “shit.”

WHERE SHEEP MAY SAFELY GRAZE sputtered to a pinball climax, as I dizzily nodded assent.

“My divorce finalized midnight.” The grin broadened. “Less party!”

“No,” I kept nodding yes, “more.”

Into my nose ascended the scent of Mike – ethanol reek treble the usual.

Then he asked, as he always did, for the girls. Four girls lived in the house, and five boys; I the odd boy out, the only one in the bunch not coupled up.

The girls were where they always were this time of night – upstairs snoozing in the arms of their likewise unconscious lovers, all eight having just within the hour fucked their nineteen-year-old brains out. All of which I conveyed mutely with a thumb jerked at the ceiling. The Sailor, at forty-five a recently retired petty officer, rubbed hands together and said, “Less go get ‘em!”

Removed headphones. Dumped them on the cushion beside me. Listened a moment to a few midnight cars ricochet down the freeway. Contemplated the miracle of minuscule rent in a condemned clapboard perched above fifteen lanes of interstate. Then told Mike it was no use – they were all used up. Into each and every one a fresh wad had just been shot.

“Sloppy seconds,” he belched, “my middle name.”

Frowned at my shoe tongues; following loops of double-knotted laces, cleared my throat, spoke, “There’s nothing here tonight for you to drink, Mike.”

“Think I need liquor to fuck?”

“No,” I looked up into the sea-worthless red eyes, “but I think you are too drunk tonight to do anything BUT lick ‘er.”

The pupils constricted, ready to anger; then relaxed, as he caught the wit of the taunt. Struggled to baker the dozens: “Pity poor skunk’s asshole stuck your tongue in lass night.”

I wasn’t going to get rid of Mike that easy. Decided to fall back on the proton beam tucked away inside the pineal, inches behind my third eye.

“Jess wait’ll ole… gets a loada… wait’ll ole what’s-her-name’s little…”

“Jessica?” Last visit Jessica’s legs had hypnotized the Sailor.

His eyes lit up: “Wait’ll JESSICA’s little man inna boat gets a loada MY dinghy. She still dickin what’s-his-face?”

JESU, JOY OF MAN’S DESIRING crepitated distantly from the phones empty of my head; unpinning pineal concentration.

Stood in the prow of a long boat the sixty-six-inch man licked lips in anticipation of yet more liquor.

“Nothing…” hunched up in a corner of the ceiling, I looked down at a mortal named me mutter, “nothing here to drink, Mike.”

“You already said that. Don’t need booze… need PUSSY! Why else you think I ever walk in on you hippie jackoffs?”

“I’m not a hippie,” the mortal said to nothing. “I’m a freak.”

“So what if you’re queer? I’m divorced. Next week report State job get on track double dip. Now go wake up get down here summa that tang.”

A dreamlet let, like letting blood, me through the ceiling. Smelled Peggy snoring on her period. Menses gobbing Jack’s dick, mutually streaking their thighs. A voice in the dark bedroom said, “They’re bleeding.”

“Get me one that ain’t!”

In the ensuing silence man persisted tinnily desiring Jesus. Lightning forked my skull, thunder shook my frame. Everything coming on at once, ducked my head to weather the storm.

“You’re just sayin' that, ain’t you? ‘Sides, I happen to LIKE raspberry highway. I’m a sailor – see; exswab, any rate; been out on the ocean defending our country from slopes. You want all them fuckin' zipperheads paddlin' over here? Well, you got me to thank they ain’t. Now how about you hightail upstairs, fetch me some tang?”

“Tang of a bastard file,” I thought; or thought I thought.

“What’d you say?”

I looked up into Mike’s tiny close-set eyes. A slightly heavyset man with a large flabby face that would do a pig proud.

“Tang is for astronauts,” I smiled.

“You fuckin' hippie,” he squinted. “You’re high on dope, ain’t you?”

“Tang Dynasty.” I struck a kitchen match, held it to the miniature pinecone hid in a cave at the navel of my brain. Like a magnifier focusing the sun on a pinhead the pineal glowed. “Tang of a tart.”

“Fuckin' hippie.’Scuse me, FREAK. Maybe you could put them gartersnake lips to good use. Since all the cunt in the house is too bloody, fuckedout, dopedup, whatever – how bout you suck my dick, DICK?”

“Tang is a kind of kelp, too.”

“That might be. But cunt is cunt. Now,” without taking his eyes off mine he fumbled with his pants, “open up, cuntmouth.”

A gun port opened. The cannon of my third eye protruded. I touched the dying match to the breech-loader’s fuse.

“You know the difference between a freak and a hippie, Mike?”

Drool slipped from a corner of his mouth. He frowned down at his crotch, negotiated a four-inch hollywood loaf through the teeth of his opened zipper.

I leaned forward, explaining to the semi-erect unit, “Hippies are soft, pliant, easygoing.” I noticed between the knuckles of his stroking fist a gold wedding band. “A freak, on the other hand,” I moved a hand forward as if to cup his balls, lowered my forehead and fired pointblank into his pizzle, “has got BITE!”

My jaw snapped a hair’s-breadth from his gristle; opened; clicked shut – closer yet – again.

Narrowly not tripping over the cocktail table, mouth agape, windmilling about the living room the Sailor finally, more by accident than less, threaded his camel through the door back out onto the front porch where ten minutes before he had gleefully not wiped his boots, or maybe just forgot.

Slipped phones back over head. Or maybe never took them off. Playing again was AIR ON A G STRING, which I had mistaken – ten minutes prior – for WHERE SHEEP MAY SAFELY GRAZE; because I had then been rushing up to that corner in the ceiling where short Mike whispers tall tales.

Heard even above the whiny electronic clatter, an eighteen-wheeler, like a Tyrannosaur roaring up from the slime, downshifted. Remembered, closing eyes, Jessica had earlier confided in me that the girls had now been living together long enough under the same roof to bleed together.

“Why are you telling me this?” I almost said, but didn’t, because Jessica two beats later smiled a quiet smile that answered my unvoiced question: “To make sure an unattached freak doesn’t forget to think about tang.”

I didn’t. Neither did Wendy Carlos, needling his synthesizer through my skull.

______________________________________
Willie Smith is deeply ashamed of being human. His work celebrates this horror.

posted 05.13.08.

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