FatKidsLie

“Hey mom! Remember that time that I was 7 and you brought me to BURNING MAN? That was the first time I saw adult penis!” was the quote of the hour. From my nephew. To my sister, Miriam.

Miriam is the one that used to live in my attic and got accused of hiding weed in a coffee pot, if you can recall. So she’s already a bad dude.

What had happened is that she was told by a friend (of questionable reputation and judgment) of a “music and arts festival” in the middle of the desert. So she and her friend (of questionable reputation and judgment) rented a car, drove down to burning man, and went in with her kid.

And it went downhill from there.

Burning man is the sort of thing that would make a Sodomite blush. Or so I hear. I wouldn’t go to there because I’ve got other priorities than smoking weed and having sex with hippie chicks. I generally don’t have sex with hippie chicks because “free love” usually means that the girls have hairy legs and toes and also buck teeth. And while you shouldn’t ever question anything that’s “free” there are some things that aren’t worth even that price. And hairy-leg-chick sex is one of those things….

According to my nephew, 13 years ago at Burning Man he saw:

• A man shoot heroin up inside his penis hole.
• Two men, one cup
• A dude rocking out to the music in his head, throw up into a Big Gulp cup, and then drink it back down
• A dude and a chick wearing animal mascot heads. And nothing else. They were just walking around all dirty and gross and holding hands. I guess that’s A definition of love….

My sister was smart enough not to let her son shower by himself. But for some reason not smart enough to get the fuck out of there. It scared him for life. I’m surprised that he doesn’t sleep on a bed of skulls or something.

When I was a zit-covered tween in the early 1990’s I discovered music. More importantly I discovered music CLUBS. To remind everyone what those are, those were groups that you got CDs (the 1990‘s equivalent to iTunes or whatever. I’m not too sure how kids listen to music nowadays since I’m an old codger with hairy knuckles and an ever growing bald spot) for a really low price, providing that you purchased 5 more at the regularly extortionistic price. I think the best deal was like, 12 for a penny.

These clubs always had their “Membership Applications” as loose cards in the middles of magazines. Along with perfume & cologne sample strips. You filled them out and dropped them in the mail box. That was it. The postage was pre-paid.

The trick though was to not buy the extra CDs. Or at least ONLY buy those. You see, they also would send you random CDs that were “Geared to your taste”… which is odd because I always got Bobby Brown and Ace of Base disks, even though I ordered Aerosmith and Tom Petty and Lemonheads…. So I’m pretty sure that their music-similarity algorithm was fucked, to say the least. If you didn’t send back the randomly issued disks then they’d assume you wanted them and just charge you for them.

And if you did send them back? They’d never get there.

Yeah, it was a scam. So I felt that it was my duty to scam the scammers with a scam of my own.

I started ordering CDs under assumed names. Mainly super heros’ secret identities. I was “Scott Summers” (Cyclops), “Bruce Banner” (The Hulk), “Benjamin Jacob Grimm” (The Thing) and even “Hal Jordan” (Green Lantern). My Disk Connection was Marvelous (See what I did there? no? fine….). I kept getting tons of CDs every month, and then I’d never pay for them! I was really into it, and then I decided to try out totally made-up names.

We started to get packages for “Seymore Butts”, “Connie Lingus” and my favorite: “Harold J. Cox”. I can’t believe that this worked for so long, with so many different names going to the same address. I guess since this was before the current modern age of computers that red-flagging an application was more difficult. They probably used trailer-park high school dropouts to process the cards for $3.15/hr and at that point, why would they care if the company gets raped by a 12 year old?

It all came crashing down one day when my mom calls me down to answer the phone. The girl at the end asks for “Hugh G. Rection” and I hang up the phone. You see this was the 3rd time my mom got an apparent prank phone call (this was before caller ID and star-69 so prank calling was a pretty common occurrence) asking for “Harry Dicks” or “Dick Buttsman” or “Amanda Hugenkiss”.

For some reason that I cannot fathom she knew I was involved. And knew it was bad. Having me answer that call was her way of saying “I don’t know what you’re up to, but I know you’re up to something. Do NOT make me find out.” So I stopped sending in those cards and eventually the clubs stopped sending me collections notices so I figured that was that.

I figured right. I win.

I’ve been meaning to write about this for weeks but I keep getting caught up on doing school work and cleaning up my apartment and walking my dog and earning enough money to buy malt liquor to dull the pain and shame of my life.

Anyway, there’s a lady that walks around at night playing a saw. Yes. A saw.

Like the kind that lumberjacks use.

… I think I’ve gotta move out of this neighborhood.

I’m assuming that she’s in a band. Or something. because there’s a guy that walks around with her playing bongos and singing opera with her.

The first time I saw her was coming out of the coffee shop across the street when it was closing for the night. She was in a floral mumu, hair-curlers and galoshes. He was wearing a tuxedo and a straw hat. They played a wonderful adaptation of David Bowie’s Man Who Sold The World. But i think he was singing in Esperanto.

The other night it was warm out, but not warm enough for the air conditioner. I was awoken to the sound of the screechy saw, and a harmonica. They then started playing a medley of 1980’s Saturday morning cartoon songs. I watched them as they entered the hipster bar on the corner. They couldn’t have been in there more than one minute before i heard them arguing with the bouncer.

I asked around and, the bartender told me that she got into a fight with the DJ that was playing that night. She wanted the stage and when he wouldn’t relinquish the floor, she started cutting his cables with her saw.

The other day I was working late, getting home at 1am. I saw her sitting on a park bench by the baptist church’s parking lot. Playing a sad sad song. Humming to herself. Not even in the same tune that she was playing in. Her bandmate/husband/brother (maybe one of those, or a combination of those who knows) was sleeping on the other bench next to her. He woke up, looked at me and threw a bottle of Aunt Jemima’s pancake syrup at me.

As i ran away I saw him pouring a sort of borderline of syrup on the ground. The next day I saw that he poured syrup all over the benches. Just like how a dog or a cat marks their territory.

I haven’t seen them in a while. Most of the crazies in my neighborhood stick around, and I can sort of get an idea of where they live or spend their days when they’re not being your average street creepies. These people? Not so much.

They change outfits, even though they keep with the same uniforms: I’ve counted at least 7 different Mumus, 4 different galoshes and 9 different straw hats, so I’m fairly certain that they’re not homeless. I think that there’s a possibility that they are guerilla street performers. Or maybe time travelers.

But I miss them. They were a crazy noisebrigade mariachi couple. With maple syrup defense systems.