underbellyreports
Reports from the underbelly
By Mickie D, a louisville author.
CHAPTER 1 SUGAR MAMS
GOD BLESS THOSE WHO HAVE
RUN BEYOND THEIR STRENGTH
AND LIVE LIFE
AS BEST THEY CAN
SO FAR FROM HEAVEN’S SHORE
Down here among the bottom dwellers, men have no reservations about finding women better than themselves to live with. Like when Austin showed up driving a 2000 red Camaro. No one around Old Louisville had seen him for a year and everybody at Dan's figured he had moved back to Texas. Instead, he said he had a sugar mama in Tennessee he was staying with and she had bought him this 2000 red Camaro. Those of us who are older and wiser knew what that meant. His old lady was letting him drive her car, as long
as he did his little factory job and paid the monthly and the insurance. As soon as she got tired of his antics she'd take the car back to be used as bait for the next boy floating by.
It's like when you see an old man living under a bridge and he's got this dog that follows him everywhere. Any bum can buy a dog and any woman can buy a boy.
It's comforting to own a boy. When you sit down at Dan's by the pool table and ask your boy for a cigarette and he puts it between his lips and lights it, sucks a couple of draws to make sure it's glowing bright and then hands it to you. It's a status kind of thing.
The higher ups think it's a sex thing, but it's not. I knew one lady who was 76 and her boy was 44. They may have been doing the bumpadee every night, but chances are they hadn't done it in weeks. But that's OK. It's comforting to own a boy when you're too old to believe in fairy tales anymore. It's like love only better because you don't cry as often when you own a boy.
Me and my boy and two cats live in Old Louisville, a safe
haven four blocks wide and five
blocks long, close to downtown. I want to be sure you understand exactly where I'm talking about, in case you decide to visit.
Two blocks in either direction could put you at risk. Old Louisville proper runs from West 2nd street to West 6th street and from Saint Catherine on the north, on south to Hill Street.
CHAPTER 2
TRAVELLING
My boy and I love to travel. Just last night we were west of Louisville about two hours at some comedy club. It was like a whole beatnik scene daddio. So we're at this little table and I look down and I've completely forgotten my pants and panties. Freak out man. Fortunately I notice that my black tee shirt is long enough to cover everything important, so I get up to go to the bathroom, but it just has a shower curtain drawn around the toilet. I'm so afraid someone will walk in. When I looked in my purse, I had a spare set of panties, thank goodness.
I found my boy and told him we had to leave now, driving east on I64, to be back by dawn. Some guy on stage told the funniest joke I had ever heard as we were leaving, but I don't remember it now.
CHAPTER 3
DAN'S BAR (AND GRILL)
Dan's bar sits about dead center in Old Louisville and is more of an Irish Pub than a pick-up bar.
LEO's Bar Guide says:
A small neighborhood place in the Old Louisville area and is among the friendliest bars around. Excellent jukebox! (Morphine, Sinatra, Al Green). Two pool tables and two dart boards. With 10 being "Bring a toothbrush and fresh undies," Dan's fated a 4 Go for the food, stay for the food.
You can pick up a girl at Dan's, but most ladies are in a relationship. No one gets married ever. OK, Confederate Bob did, but he didn't marry one of us. He went outside our circle and married someone he had just known for two weeks and now we don't see him that much. Maybe once you get past 32 that is the only way to get married, fast and blind.
Here’s the secret: everyone at a bar is broken. If you know them long enough and well enough, there will be something that takes them askew as it were and makes them unacceptable as a marriage partner.
The fly in the ointment is like the size of an ostrich. I fit into that category without a doubt. God help any man who would take me on, because I know too much. I know men don't change, for instance. If you meet him at a bar, you'll be looking for him there the rest of your life. If he's "between jobs", he'll be mooching off you till you drive him away with a gun. And no man at a bar can ever get it up regular. Period. End of story.
CHAPTER 4 KOLE'S
Me and him were out taking his Nintendo 64 to be pawned this morning, so we passed through Koles about 11:00. Even at that time of the day there were a dozen people there, drinking drafts one slow sip at a time.
If you want proof of why ugly people shouldn't breed, Koles has to be exhibit A. And the women are as ugly as the men. The owners pay ugly women with bad wigs to sit in there and encourage the men to drink more and play the jukebox and like that. I've never actually seen money exchange hands, but I've heard it said a few times.
After midnight you find the freaks there. One armed guys, and midgets, for real. It's like a drunken circus or a bad rerun of Jerry Springer. Of course you've got your terminal alcoholics and junkies. There's always somebody selling shaving cream or razors or earrings or CD walkmans. Anything they can steal and unload fast and quick. At some point the bartender will rush out and tell them to clear out.
But on a busy night, these guys might get to bother people for ten minutes, long enough to finance and dime bag.
Even if the women are ugly, everybody needs somebody once in a while. Just throw a flag over her head and fuck her for Old Glory. My third husband use to say that, but he was so impotent after we broke up, that he had to keep going to doctors to try and figure out why his wing ding didn't dong anymore. The doctors gave him pills to lower his blood pressure, and stress tests, but I figured the women he dated were so ugly that his dick would refuse to do battle, not for Old Glory or even a warm bed and a free meal.
CHAPTER 5
TIFFANY’S
In all fairness to Kole’s and its circus clientele, the bar has only three neighboring businesses: Tiffany’s; Girls, Girls, Girls; and Blue Movies.
Me and him went to Tiffany’s once and were drinking three dollar beers and watching the tittie show and there was this white woman at the end of the bar who wearing a silk evening gown with huge breasts almost falling out. So he goes up and puts a dollar bill down her front and gets a little feel and she tells him thanks and it’s $36.50 for a couch dance. She looks like Anna Nicole Smith, so maybe she’s worth 36.50 instead of the usual 10 or 15 bucks. The thing that made me laugh was how did she figure 36.50 instead of 30 dollars or 35? Was the extra 6.50 for taxes or something? I laughed when he told me the price and Anna Nicole got insulted and discouraged and called someone on the payphone and said she was taking a taxi to the next place because she was tired of this dive. Yeah, right, whatever. Maybe she really was worth 36.50 for a tittie dance, but when you can get a blowjob for twenty, it’s difficult to justify it.
CHAPTER 6
DIM SUM IN NEW ORLEANS
The other night my boy and I were travelling and we ended up in the French Quarter in New Orleans. I had this craving for Chinese, of course, so we found this tiny Chinese restaurant that serves Dim Sum on Saturday mornings. We put our name in at the bar and they said they’d beep us when they had seating available. We went out into this lush tropical garden out back. It was so nice to be back in New Orleans and away from all the snow, and I started teasing Scotty and doing kung fu. I could smell the earthy fragrance of fresh dirt right after it rains. I pretended to give him a side kick to the ribs and then we had to leave without even eating so we could make it back home before dawn.
“They tell me, ‘If you find a slave asleep, don’t wake him up; he may be dreaming of freedom.’
And I reply, ‘If you find a slave asleep, wake him and talk to him of freedom.’ KAHLIL GIBRAN
CHAPTER 7
EVERYBODY LOVES SCOTTY
Everybody loves Scotty. You can’t help it. As long as there’s beer and smoke he’s an attentive audience. And he loves to tell stories. He told this story tonight at Dan’s about his mother. Once upon a time she went to Florida and went out on a raft at the beach. She fell asleep and the tide pushed her out to sea. Before she could be eaten by killer whales (Ken and Bobb the Hair Guy say there are no killer whales in Florida, in fact killer whales are really killer sharks) Sue was awakened by leaping dolphins who created little waves which pushed her back to the beach. He credits the dolphins with keeping her alive, thereby Scotty was born. Son of the dolphins, child of the sea. Who wouldn’t love this guy?
We were all rolling about his dolphin story but right now people in Little Havana in Miami are saying Elian Gonzales was rescued in the same manner by dolphins pushing his raft to shore. Weird.
A story about Scotty: When we had the whole Y2K scare, I gave Scotty forty bucks and told him to pick up some canned goods. He bought a can of beef stew, two cans of tuna, Spam, and fourteen cans of cat food. Is this a humanitarian or what? The SPCA’s shining star. I kind of followed his reasoning. You keep feeding the cat and if times get desperate, you eat it. Good thinking.
SCOTTY’S SNOW STORY
When Scotty and I first started living together, I was renting an “efficiency” apartment in the carriage house of the Cardinal Apts at 3rd and Kentucky. Scotty was so wild at first that I don’t know how we stuck together. Maybe the fact that it was December and there was snow on the ground helped. So Scotty comes home one frosty night at 2 a.m., tore up from the floor up and wanting funds to go out again. Of course my response was, “No, and Hell No”.
He gets absolutely livid and I have no idea what he’s going to do next. He goes over to a small box and he gets money out and throws it at me saying he was keeping the money for Christmas, but he doesn’t need any fucking money that I gave him. I like this. I like men throwing money at me. He takes off his watch and tosses it onto the bed. “I don’t need anything that you ever gave me”, he says as he continues to strip down, discarding his shirt and shoes, socks and jeans. So he tells me now, as he’s standing there in his boxers in front of the gas heater, “If you don’t tell me you love me right now, I’m going to take off my underwear and run away and you’ll never see me again.”
I’m always sober when people around me say stupid stuff like this, which is why I couldn’t help laughing.
“You think this is funny? Well, I’m going to count to three and if you don’t tell me you love me by the time I get to three, I’m going to run away, for real.” He throws his boxers at me, counts “One, two..”
When he gets to “three” I take two steps to the door, open it, and Scotty runs outside, naked as a jaybird, into the snow, and the blackness of a December A.M. He turns to me slowly and says, “Something got turned around here. Can I come back inside?”
Whenever he really gets me mad, I picture him holding his jewels, in the snow, alone, in the dark, asking to come back inside. Scenes like that keep things in perspective.
CHAPTER 8
THORIN AND COMPANY
“There it is: dwarves are not heroes, but calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money, some are tricky and treacherous and pretty bad lots; some are not, but are decent enough people like Thorin and Company, if you don’t expect too much.” JRR TOLKIEN, The Hobbit
Female Lead: Jean Michele Zollman True Lathom Dutcher
Co-stars: Jonathan – My first born son, he’s a car salesman and very good at it. He’s also a promising young actor, his finest role being playing crazy enough to get out of the Army.
“We like you son, but we can’t trust you with a gun”. Those hand, those hands, they’re everywhere, but they’ll never catch me because I’M TOO QUICK!”
Jennifer Victoria Eden – (also known to some as Miss Boogie) 19 years old, a freshman at IU in Bloomington.
Norman – age 16, a child of the cosmos like myself. He can tell the future through dreams and is The Black Sheep and the Chief Catcher in the Rye.
Alex – tiny grandson, reincarnated spirit of my dad.
CHAPTER 9
Extras, Listed Alphabetical
1. A is for Andy – who works at Appliance Park, and lives with Laura and use to live with Julia who now lives with Darryl, whom she met on the internet. June 25, 2000.
2. Bill is for Bill, who is the cook sometimes and Dan the Man’s brother. Was in Vietnam for too long.
3. Bob, Confederate Bob, also known as “What about Bob”
4. Bobb, the hair guy, does hair styling for like Actor’s Theater.
5. Bonnie – mother to Lynn and Sharon, partner to Buddy. Slings chili for a living.
6. Cadillac ken – very politically correct. Great hair, excepts when he decides to cut it off because he
Feels like it.
7. Cheryl – girlfriend of Dave. Has a distinctive laugh.
8. Chris – of Chris and Mark who works at D’Nallys where I eat breakfast whenever I have the money (#3: ham with eggs, scrambled, biscuits, hashbrowns and coffee. $4.29)
9. Dan the Man, owner of Dan’s also known as the Chief.
10. Danny the cook
11. Dave – one of the original General Club members.
12. Dottie – General Manager, a.k.a. the GM, always lively, spunky.
13. Don – who I know from Labor Ready.
14. Frankie – Lady who lives next to Dan’s and wanders through occasionally.
15. Frankenstein Chris – so called because he made such a great Mary Shelly character two Halloweens ago. He wears his hair in a crew cut.
16. Helen of Mitch and Helen : Mitch of Helen and Mitch
17. James the cook (there’s lots of cooks who pass through).
18. Julia – who use to date Andy, see above. Works for a lawyer. Can find out if you have a warrant on you.
19. Kenny – retired, worked 12 hours every day for 25 years at some factory.
20. Laura – Knows all about sports, even more than the guys.
21. Louie-Louii – Know his way around a pool table, even when drunk.
22. Marc of Marc and Chris – Works for Bell South. Has brother who is CEO of something. Ask him.
23. Mark – who hangs out at the Tavern.
24. Mitch – of Mitch and Helen. Lays carpet with Louie-Louii. Wants to marry Helen.
25. Rusty – enough said.
26. Sal – wears Indian moccasins, he’s Indian.
27. Scotty – the man I live with. Everybody loves Scotty.
28. William – Big Dog. Found
er of the General’s Club, I think he’s General Eisenhower. PS, I’m General Electric.
CHAPTER 10
MATCH UP
Listed below are oddities about people listed above, so you can match them up:
A. Has a girlfriend who drug him out of the bar and beat him up on Ormsby. He’s much better behaved now.
B. Likes to be spanked with a rubber hose he keeps in his freezer.
C. Was in the service and sometimes gets really paranoid and thinks people are gooks out to get him.
D. Runs around on his girlfriend. His baby may really be someone else’s.
E. Has really short legs.
F. Absolutely obsessed with an ex. Cannot talk of anything else.
G. Sells a lot of weed and cocaine.
H. Can get it up anytime, anywhere, anyone. A fucking great fuck.
I. Snorts cocaine.
J. The Bickersons. Keep working at it. I love you guys.
K. Very in touch with his feminine side.
L. Tell scooter I said hello.
M. Has wet dreams about Alec Trebeck – you know, the guy on Jeopardy.
N. Absolutely totally socially inept – He thinks he’s a player, I think he’s a dinosaur.
O. Has had sex with most of the female help, but always ready for one more worthless fling.
P. Has fantasies about young boys.
Q. Has hit his mate.
R. Totally Alcoholic.
S. Uses whips and chains on someone else on list.
T. Likes whips and chains used on him.
U. Had a daughter when he was close to 50.
V. Central Park bathrooms. Say no more, say no more.
W. Likes dyed blonde hair on old women who use too much make-up.
X. Has a picture of his ex-wife fucking a great dane, and I don’t mean a man from Denmark either.
Y. Figures all women should have blonde hair.
Z. Has ongoing love affair with his right hand.
AA. Did you notice I didn’t put myself on either list?
CHAPTER 12
CENTRAL PARK
Right dead in the middle of Old Louisville is Central Park, designed in 1884 for the Great Southern Exposition. During that show, 4600 light bulbs were turned on to the amazement of all assembled. There was a grand promenade that stretched from Park Street, past the outdoor amphitheater, up the hill to the iron lions and rambling buildings, across Magnolia into St James Courtyard, past more iron lions, through
the fountain, ending at Hill Street.
During the 1970's, Central Park became a pickup spot for gays and there were a series of homosexual killings that happened with the boy hustlers at the park. So the city set up a police substation right there in the rambling buildings at the top of the hill. And the killings stopped. I know of someone, a repressed homosexual, who moved from Louisville to Atlanta during that time period, Atlanta being the location for the infamous gay killings of the late 1970's. Merely a coincidence I'm sure, but just something that sticks to the back of one's mind.
Of course you've got the homeless and the cruisers that hang in the Park, but it's been pretty much quiet since the cops moved in. Polite white audiences attend the Louisville Shakespeare Festival for a few weeks each summer. It's odd seeing so many white people all in one place, with their tan shorts and beige dress shirts, buying little T-shirts to "Keep Will Free".
The only permanent residents of the park are the squirrels. Each family has their own territory, centering around three main nut trees; one at the entrance at 4th and Magnolia, another on the north side of the amphitheater, and the last just in back of the substation by the swing sets. When I first moved into Old Louisville, all the squirrels were gray, save one or two red ones. Now about every fourth one has a dramatic red tail, which is displayed with flair when humans pass by. Along with nut trees, the park also has a small children's spray fountain which operates during the summer, providing water for its residents even during the worst droughts. There's no river or stream nearby, so I don't know where they get their water the rest of the time. It seems like such a fragile arrangement, since the spray fountain isn't used that much by the children, and I'm concerned the city may one day just turn it off, unawares of the dire consequences such action may have on the Park's permanent residents.
There are gray squirrels who live across the streets surrounding the park, and make their way into the park each day; some via the telephone wires which transverse the streets. Others stay at ground level, racing the traffic, making sure the fastest or the smartest survive.
I had this one squirrel who was a gray and had an ugly scar on his side, where a car had bumped him. As I approached the curb to cross towards the park, he raced out of his tree and sat on the curb beside me. When I walked across the street, he bounded along beside me till safe within the great lawn. The ability of life to adapt never ceases to amaze me. P.S. May the 26th of 1999 I saw an albino squirrel by Masterson's with white fur and pink eyes.
CHAPTER 13
THE WOMAN WHO WANTS TO KILL ME
I want to tell you right up front about this nutcase who wants to kill me. For real and for true – kill me.
She’s already tried twice. She figures that my boyfriend chose me over her three years ago, and I guess she’s right. But she also figures that if I were dead, he’d go back to her, which is so not true, but she believes it would happen because she’s a nutcase.
HER NAME IS DONNA COYLE
And she’s 44 years old, she lives at – well I don’t know. She told the cops she lives at 1222 S. Shelby Street, but I went there and it’s a bank parking lot. She lives somewhere with her three sons. She drives a white Chevrolet pickup truck 1987 License Tag 9087FX.
Scott La Rock dated this fatal attraction three years ago for one month, THREE YEARS AGO FOR ONE MONTH!
Two Sundays ago me and him decided to walk to the Winn Dixie at 4th and Oak and somewhere in the middle of the 1300 block of S. 3rd we heard this freak scream “You whore bastard”. It always takes me a minute to figure out what’s happening, so we looked and saw this witch on her broomstick headed south, while we were walking north. We get to 3rd and Ormsby and there she is again, having toured the block. “My brothers are going to stomp you,” screams this apparition of hell from her window as she flies past. Scotty raises his fist screaming, “ I’ll stomp on you bitch.” We head west on Oak Street and people begin to gawk as she stops her batmobile in the middle of the street to bellow at us. Finally, we make it to the parking lot of Winn Dixie and I figure she’ll just give up and go back to Camp Street, since there’s so many people around. It’s Sunday about 11:00 am and there’s mothers with their kids and the black men who pretend they’re security guards checking out people coming and going. So we’re just about to step up on the curb by the pop machines when here she comes, racing out of nowhere and mothers are pulling their kids out of the way and everyone is screaming. I kick her left bumper as she goes past and shake my fist in the middle of the driving lane telling the bitch to stop.
The good thing is I don’t carry a gun with me, because if I did I would have drawn my gun out of impulse and fired at her, and who’s gonna end up in big trouble? Me. Me who almost got hit. Me who has put up with her shit for three fucking years, and I never even met her, I never even had a beer with her or nothing. It’s hard to hate someone you wouldn’t recognize on the street. It’s like hating the Gross National Product. But if I ever get run over by a white pickup truck with a canopy on back, and I’m lying there on the sidewalk with my guts splattered all over the curb, you have testimony in my own hand – Donna Coyle did it.
CHAPTER 14 IMPRESSIONIST
I was travelling last night as part of the Queen’s court. My family had money, so I bought my way in, although most of the ladies belonged there by merit of their blood relationship to royalty. The advantages of travelling with the Queen’s court are the music, the art, and the royal parties.
Last night I was led back through a series of rooms to meet Vincent Van Gogh. He was trying to sell some ideas for paintings to my cousins. I asked him if he considered himself an impressionist. He had been looking over a table filled with sketches and canvasses and he immediately drew himself up and became outraged. “How dare you call me this? Where did you hear this term?”
I assured him the term was not meant as an insult, and that Monet considered himself an impressionist. Whereupon he threw his hands into the air and exclaimed, “How dare you compare me to any other artist. I am unlike any of these imposters!”
At this point Vincent was escorted to another room to have an audience with Queen, and I found myself back in my carriage house.
CHAPTER 15
OLD LOUISVILLE
I saw a map of Old Louisville on a sweatshirt that showed my hood starting at Broadway on the North – but I don’t buy that. Our hood is made up of the original mansions built by the millionaires who didn’t want to live right downtown before the turn of the century. St. James Court was the first Louisville suburb. These houses were built for millionaire’s families when they had ten kids apiece. Stone, brick, stained glass, fireplaces, hardwood floors, and oak staircases. All the stuff left behind by the rich before they swept even further out with their Caddies and their BMWs. Much as rats swarm into boxes left behind by people, the bottom dwellers have split up these relics into apartments and live there for cheap. My place is down the sidewalk past Magnolia Street, past the horse hitching post, up the concrete stairs, between the English countryside stone porches, past the 22 room Victorian mansion, into the tulip and iris filled backyard, over the brick walkway, back, back, back to the carriage house.
A carriage house was the servant’s quarters way back when. The horses were downstairs in the stables and if there was a fire, the slaves would run downstairs to put out the fire and save their homes (and thereby the horses). The landlady keeps her car downstairs and here I am up on the top, just me and the ghosts. In all fairness, the ghosts have been quiet for about two months, so maybe they’re satisfied with the living arrangements at this point. Before that I’d be reading and a book would fly off the bookshelf and land in the middle of the floor. They absolutely hated tapered candles and would take them out of the candleholders at night, and place them lying on the kitchen table, side by side.
One time I left the apartment and came right back because I had forgotten something and the ghost had lined up my beeper, two books and a candle, right down the center of the entrance hall. I hadn’t even had time to walk all the way to the bottom of the stairs. Of course there were mysterious footsteps. It kind of came to a head when I checked under my kitchen sink to get a bucket and lying right beside the bucket was a ten-inch butcher knife. It just materialized there like an admission of guilt or a finger pointing. I cleaned it up and had it sharpened at I use it now on Thanksgiving. It may have been used in a murder, but it slices turkey great too. After that, I think the spooks just gave up, because the neighbors say the footsteps and wall banging still start up after I leave for work, but it’s quiet at least while I’m home.
Dagonhart’s Elf Story
This is a story about when Dagonhart and Sal the Injun moved, because I need to have 58 pages in this book, not just 56. Anyway, I think it’s funny.
So Dagonheart and Louie-Louii and Cadillac and I are all playing pool on a Sunday night when Chevy notices that Dagonhart’s knitted cap looks like a Kiebler Elf’s hat and he says so. Everyone looks at Dagonhart and it really does look like an elf’s hat so we all point and laugh, and even Dagonhart laughs. Everyone is just so tore up from the floor up because we’ve been shooting pool for five hours and drinking hard. We’re all just playing like children, dear God, just playing as if there’s no tomorrow, no yesterday, there’s just this moment in time and we’re living in a bubble in eternity.
“Well, who wants to see my Elfin Magic?” volunteers Dagonheart.
“You can keep your Elfin Magic to yourself, please,” I say with pretended distain.
“And we don’t want to see your cookies or wafers either, if you please,” chimes in Cadillac through a bourbon and coke haze.
Dagonheart crosses his arms and says, “Don’t make me pull out my Magic Wand!”
“Don’t make me call out the hobbits and the gnomes!” retorts Cadillac.
I look Dagonhart over head to toe. “You’re awfully BIG for an ELF, aren’t you?” which is followed by an explosion of jolly laughter.
“Why, Katrina,” says Dagonhart, “How many elves have you been with?” Funny, funny, funny.
Dagonhart takes his elf hat off and looks at it. “I think it shrunk because I washed it too many times,” he says.
I wade right in, I can’t help myself. “Oh, is that what happened to your dick too?”
“Michele,” he says getting a little mad, “You’re dead meat!”
“Why, Dagonhart,” I say, “That’s also what I heard about your dick!”
Like I said at the beginning, Dagonhart and Injun Sal was buying everybody drinks for helping them move, so here is Dagonhart’s bar tab.
DAN’S BAR AND GRILL
HOME OF THE PRIMO BAMBINO
ORDER 3 9/10/01
33 GIN & TONIC 66.00 SUBTOTAL 106.25
15 CAN BEER 26.25 TAX 1 .36
2 DRAFT 2.00 TOTAL 106.61
1 HAM SAND 2.50 CASH 106.61
2 CHEAP CIGS 6.00
THANK YOU!
CHAPTER 16
THE BEST OF OLD LOUISVILLE
The LEO newspaper has a yearly write-in survey called the best of Louisville. They ask subscribers about the best restaurants, hotels, etc. The uppers love lists. So I include a best of list for the rest of us:
THE BEST FREE BREAKFAST: Saturday from 8am to 10am at the West Side Church at 4th and Magnolia. Usually you have on the menu: biscuits, sausage, scrambled eggs, grits, hash browns hot and fresh out of the kitchen. In the dining room you’ll have a table filled with coffee, milk, grapes, apples, oranges, grapefruit, and a variety of cereals and sweet rolls. The best thing about this breakfast is everybody shows up. People you heard died will use their bus tickets and come on down. It’s like a bottom dweller’s Thanksgiving. The down side is that everybody shows up and fights tend to break out. I once asked a bitch to “step outside” myself, and I’m a pacifist.
BEST FREE LUNCH: Hour of Power at 6th and M streets. Hot meal 11:30 to 1 pm with lots of bread and sweet rolls to take home – bring your own sack. Of course you have to listen to the praise choruses from people singing on a
microphone. But they only have a piano to back them up, so it’s not too intrusive. Down side: deer meat lasagna. Not a good thing – just leave your tray and come back tomorrow if this happens.
BEST FREE SUPPER: Obviously Salvation Army homeless shelter at Brook and Liberty Streets. Very organized with their seating arrangements (they have been in this business longer than anybody, there was a brass band at the Miracle of the Fishes and the Loafs.) Thursday at 6pm is fried chicken with all the trimmings including coffee or Kool-Aid.
BEST PUBLIC BATHROOM: Most accessible is Winn Dixie on 4th and Oak, between the meat section and the beer department. Nicest public bathroom is at the Salvation Army Thrift Store at 4th and Industrial Parkway. It’s absolutely spacious and always neat as a pin.
BEST THRIFT STORE: Follows directly, Salvation Army Thrift Store. Low prices, lots of sales, new stuff added daily, clean.
BEST SACK OF FREE FOOD: Toss up between the Kling Center at Ormsby and 2nd, and Walnut Street Baptist Church. The Kling center is a once a month thing, while Walnut Street is a twice a month thing with canned and frozen food, so use both.
CHAPTER 17
THE LAUNDROMAT
I work at this Laundromat – Dry Cleaners on 4th and St. Catherine. The owner is partially deaf, she is also tiny. Her husband died just over a year ago, of cancer. The manager is called Bonnie, but if someone calls for (her real name) we’re suppose to insist she doesn’t work there and she died and we have never heard of her. God bless her, I love a manager fast enough to out dance her creditors. Bonnie is black and light-skinned, as the blacks say, and they say that a lot. I know who they’re talking about now, because shade is so important to blacks. With my race, you’re either black or white, degrees are not so important.
The large, dark-skinned woman is Charlotte, pronounced “Shar-let-ta”. She use to work nights before I got the shift, 2pm till 10pm. Charlotte works simply to make as much money as she possibly can. I love a co-worker whose motives are so pure.
FORMAL CAST OF CHARACTERS – LAUNDROMAT
Emma – assembly
Jean – counter help, a little forgetful, older lady.
Pat – occasional help.
Alice – Saturday help
Debbie – shirt laundry
Herman – old man, dry cleaning presser.
Trish – woman dry cleaning presser.
Candy – seamstress
Bobby – Security guard, handyman, a man of quiet substance.
Linda – the co-owner.
PS – it’s black, white, white, white, white, black, black, black, black, and white. I like a nice mix.
PS one more time. September 20, 2000 Bonnie is gone. I guess she couldn’t out dance her creditors fast enough.
I worry sometimes when I reach into the drawer to get change for a $10 bill, and I draw out exactly 40 quarters, over and over again. It’s like that guy in Shakespeare who keeps flipping a coin, and it always ends up “tails”. It might be a sign that some drastic change is in the future.
CHAPTER 18
ME! MICHELE!
I noticed yesterday while re-reading , that I neglected to include myself as a Laundromat employee. In fact, I’m leaving myself out a lot. I’m writing this book because I’m important: ME. My world is what goes on between my ears. My world is how I perceive everything. If I were dead or brain dead, my world would cease to exist.
Reality is always attempting to squash the ME. In Medieval times, the Church said God was all-important and the me was nothing. During the industrial revolution, the Me was simply a cog in the machine, a robot which ran off organic fuel instead of coal.” In this consumer age, the Me is not important, only what Me can produce or consume.
But I am important and I am here and I am the only thing that ultimately matters to me. ME. ME. ME.
And so I’m writing, even if I’m the only one who ever reads this because I exist.
CHAPTER 19
GYPSIES TRAMPS AND THIEVES
There's this quip in the paper about "Woman, 10pm Central Park grabbed in privates by man who asked her for a light." OK, so where's the news? What was your first clue? When a man shouts at you "Ya gotta light?" the appropriate responses are:
1. NO
2. Say nothing
3. You must have mistaken me for your bitch
Walk on and walk fast. Here's the secret: No man ever needs help from a woman, not ever. A man can always take care of himself. If you do "help" a man, he'll curse you behind your back at best and curse you to your face at worst.
If a man shouts, "Where's Brook street" from his car, interpret that as "I've got my dick in my hand, come take a look." Respond appropriately with middle finger and a "fuck you".
A man is holding a sign that says, "Will work for food." Interpret that as "Take me to your house so I can case the joint and rob the place when you're gone."
Some guy is coming towards you, walking past he says, "Ya gotta cigarette I can buy for a quarter?" I once tried this at high noon on Oak Street with Scotty.
Scotty gave this guy a cig so the guy says, Ya gotta light?" Scotty gives him a light. This guy says "Hey man, I'm hungry ya gotta dollar and thirty seven cents I could borrow?" See, that's the thing that cracked me up. $1.37. It's usually "some change", followed closely by "Has your woman got some change." So Scott gives him like two quarters and the guy says, "You live around here?" That was enough - point proved. No man ever needs help from a woman. Not ever.
TRUTH #36: It's often very difficult for the subconscious mind to exorcise the idea of Hell.
TRUTH #37: Whatever history and philosophical system we build for ourselves is the truth for us.
TRUTH #104: It’s a good thing that yesterday is a time and not a place, or else some people would be willing to give up all they have just to travel there to relive one golden day.
CHAPTER 21
MOVIES I LOVE
1. LIFEFORCE – about vampires from space, the 1980 version.
2. HAROLD AND MAUDE – Cat Steven’s tunes before he became Muhammad Ala Muslim Whatever Muhammad Blah Blah Blah.
3. JACOB’S LADDER – Tim Robbins anti-war masterpiece. So mind blowing you don’t know what’s happening until the last five minutes and some people never get it.
4. THE SIXTH SENSE – ditto # 3. I saw this one in the theater, got the punch line early and sat there waiting breathless for 60 people to catch up. Two minutes later they started whispering “He’s _______” (I leave out the plot twist for people who haven’t seen it). It’s the story of my life, waiting for people to understand it’s not about money, or big houses, or a really good job. It’s not about making sure that evil people get punished and good people get rewarded. It’s about growing the fuck up and being kind to one another because treating someone badly doesn’t make sense. As part of that, you need to be kind to yourself, because continuing to abuse and cripple yourself doesn’t make sense either. No Martyrs No Abusers No Whiners No Avengers No Good Girls No Bad Boys No Hypocrites No Evil People
5. THE BLUES BROTHERS – John Belushi before he exploded his brain, on a mission from God.
6. AMADEUS – Incredible film about Mozart, his music, and living life with wild abandon. The act of creation being a natural outcome, a by-product, an overflow of the joy and misery of life pouring forth from one man’s soul. Genius expresses itself on paper, on canvas, in music because trying to imprison it inside one’s mind would be impossible. The giggle at the end tells it all.
7. WHAT DREAMS MAY COME – I would like to believe that if I were lost in a Hell of my own making that someone would come to rescue me. I also like the message that love is more than being strong, that being with someone you love can be a stronger force than all the intelligence and morality that one can muster.
CHAPTER 22
OLD FOLK’S HOME
And so I was at an old folk’s home. It was Casino night and as I walked among the tables I considered playing a hand or two of 21 myself. “How much to play a hand?” I asked an older gentleman seated at a green covered table. “Sixty dollars per game,” he said quietly.
I was taken aback. The people here were not wealthy, they were old and of simple means. As I wandered among the tables I wondered how they justified continuing to play. “Is it possible,” I asked, “to make so much in one game as to make such a risk acceptable?”
An old man turned quietly in his blue plastic chair to face me. “We’re not playing to win one game at a time,” he explained. “The grand jackpot is 500,000 dollars, and that’s what draws us back time and time again. The risk is great, but the reward is far greater.”
He turned towards the table to resume playing.
And I understood about love.
CHAPTER 23
FREAKS
Every section of town probably has its freaks and our landmark freak is named Janice. She is just as much a part of Old Louisville as the fountain and lions in Saint James Court. On sunny days she’ll be sitting between the Old Louisville Bed and Breakfast and the second to the last house just before Magnolia Street. I shouldn’t even have to describe her because just on look and you’ll know her. Whoopie Goldberg had this comedy routine about a twelve year old black girl who got a long blonde wig and pretended she had beautiful long blonde hair. Janice’s wig goes all the way down to her skinny little butt. She’ll sit on the sidewalk and shake her head from side to side to keep her long blonde hair out of her eyes. I don’t put much stock in nut checks but she’s got my vote to keep getting one. I don’t even mind if they take her nut check directly out of my taxes, for real and for true.
The crowd at the bar argue about whether she’s a guy or a girl, but I know she’s a girl because she fucked the guy who use to live in the apartment below me. The lease was in his wife’s name, and she took this trip to Florida for two weeks to visit her sister or whatever. So it’s like 10pm and I’m sitting watching the news when I hear this little voice squeaking, “Doug, Doug, are you home Doug?” I go to the window and in the moonlight I can see it’s Janice hiding in back of some bushes in the yard. I can see her really well because I’m up above the shrubbery looking down. What a hoot. She calls out a little louder, “Psst Doug! Can I come in?” Then she looks up and sees me watching her. “Is Doug home?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” says I, and I should be polite and go back to watching TV, but you know how I am. Janice gets out from behind the shrubs, goes onto his patio, jumps onto his walkway and taps on his door.
That’s the secret about men and women: Me will fuck anything, and women will fall in love with anything.
I forget whom I was talking with later on, but they said Doug had done the wrong thing to fuck with Janice. A man in the neighborhood had fucked Janice for five bucks and Janice started following him around and calling him at work. You don’t pay a hooker for sex, you really pay a hooker to go away after sex, but Janice wouldn’t go away. I couldn’t wait to see Doug’s wife find out and them finally break up, but the week after his wife got back from Florida, they packed up in the middle of the night and just blew away.
I heard Janice talking to her welfare worker once, out on the sidewalk. Janice was telling her how much better she is doing now. Kind of makes you wonder where she started.
P.S. There’s a Freudian slip left in the above document because my daughter read it and thought it was hilarious.
CHAPTER 24
FULL MOON SUNDAY
So we're sitting around Dan's about 3:30 P.M. Sunday afternoon when Mitch and Helen comes in. Mitch has a big gash on his head and he explains he spent a week in Philadelphia and he got done with his seminar early and he tried to come home but a severe thunderstorm prevented takeoff. So Mitch went to the lounge and consumed alcoholic beverages till dawn. He starts to head up an escalator holding a bag and a suitcase and falls head first onto those metal spikes on the edge of the moving stairs. It left four gashes in his forehead that looked like a tiger's claw.
I'm sitting at the bar with Helen when Ken shoots straight up to me, because he wants to surprise me because he shaved his head. But Louie-Louii had already told me, so I played it off real smooth. I rubbed Ken's naked head that was already stubbly and he bowed towards me and showed me his 666 tattoo, which he got after he started believing in God last year. Everybody was asking Ken why he shaved his head, so Ken hung up a sign saying,
"BECAUSE I FELT LIKE IT KEN"
So Mr. B comes in, who got married after knowing Mrs. T for just two weeks, and he asks me four times, "How does it feel when a man invades your private spaces? Do you feel violated or do you scream like a pig?" I tell him he's a sick asshole, which he is. But he's laughing like wild every time he says it, and I'm saying to myself, "Why does Mr. B hate women so much and why does Mrs. T, his bride of ten months, put up with his stinking mouth?" I expect that Scotty or Mitch will come to my rescue, but the music is so fucking loud, they don't hear anything, so I go into the bathroom.
When I come back out, Mr. B is gone. We look out the window ten minutes later and Mr. B is riding around the block in Madam X's convertible. Madam X sells a lot of weed, so Louie Louii goes over to Madam X's apartment and comes back and says Mr.B is over there sitting on the patio. Ken goes over and then Scotty.
So in walks Mrs. T, Mr. B's wife, and boy is she angry. She is so mad that I see her expression when she starts to the room and I head up to the end of the bar, away from the gang and away from the door. Mrs. T demands to know where her husband is, we all know he's at Madam X’s, but everybody plays stupid, (easy for us to do) and then Mr. Bb (the H. G) starts talking to her and she starts giggling like a schoolgirl. They go over to a booth and start talking. Ain't love a wonderful thing. I ask if anyone wants to bet on what'll happen when he husband comes back. Nobody wants to take my bet, and they all say I'm a troublemaker. So what was their first clue.
I'm hungry, so I go home and have a leftover pork chop, some mexicorn and some Velveeta shells and cheese. I'm watching TV and then I'm asleep and then it's 8:30 pm and I have three questions left unanswered:
#1. What happened with Mrs. T and her husband and Mr. Bb?
#2. Is Mr. S going to show up on my doorstep and want to spend the night?
#3. What's going to happen when Mr. A gets out of jail, because he got pulled over Friday night for DUI?
And I go down to Dan's just because I'm nose-y. For real. For absolutely no other reason. Not for a beer, not to beat the heat, not for anything except I want to know the answers to these three questions.
It's beautiful outside, it's almost dusk, about 75 degrees, the full moon is just over the housetops, a gray cat watches as I pass by, the only sound is cars going swish-swish down 3rd street. I walk through the door and there's Mr. Bb (the HG) holding Mr. B's wife in front of the men's bathroom. They are kissing each other right there under the TV, because everybody is sitting at the bar, with their backs turned, pretending they don't see. So I get a coke, walk over to a booth, sit down, and openly watch them necking. It's a public place, it's a public display of affection, and I’m the public, so I figure it's like the floorshow.
Scotty joins me reluctantly, and says Mr. A and Ms L. broke up, because Mr. A called his ex-girlfriend to get him out of jail instead of Ms. L so my three questions were answered and I walked home, satisfied.
CHAPTER 25
EASTER
I went to mother’s house for an Easter Egg hunt with my son Jon and grandson Alex, and decided that my relationships with men might not be so far out of whack, compared with other relationships I saw there. In particular, I’m thinking of my sister’s marriage of three hundred years to my brother-in-law, Bill. As soon as they got out of their red mini-van, they went to opposite ends of the one-acre lot. She stayed inside, he stayed outside and never the twain did meet. She had the girls with her; he had the boy with him. It’s been over twenty years since I saw them even hold hands, so God forbid they should talk to each other. Do the kids really think this is a normal marriage? I’ll bet you could go over holiday pics for the last ten years and never find them in the same 3 x 5. Unless it was posed. “Ok, Bill, you and Gail get closer together. That’s good, now smile.”
I asked Jon about it and he said they stay married because Gail beats him up if he threatens to leave. He said he was joking, but I’d believe it in a heartbeat. She’s always been so mad at the world. Her kids are real quiet and well mannered all the time. Sh-h-h quiet, that’s good, now smile.
My family doesn’t know this, nobody does really, but I have seizures, Petite Mall. The first time I remember having one was when Gail was getting beaten to a pulp by my dad when we were teenagers. He called her his little spitfire. He said he would beat the devil out of her. So when mother went back to work, Gail and dad and me and Cliff and Dale got to spend a lot of time together after we got off school. So this particular time, Dad told Gail to do something and Gail didn’t do it right or whatever, and Dad grabbed her by the hair and threw her on the kitchen floor and got on top of her in front of the patio doors. He was sitting there with his butt on her stomach and his legs were holding her arms pinned to her side when I heard the commotion and walked into the kitchen from the living room.
“I’ll teach you, you Satan, you spitfire”, he was screaming. “So who’s so big now?”
Gail glanced up at me and then dad looked at me and I started to back out of the room. I don’t know where the boys were, but I knew I’d be next. The two of them locked eyes again. She kept wriggling trying to get away, so he grabbed her hair and pulled her face close to his and spit on her face.
You could see her soul jump out of her body, she hated him so much. She was screaming words like, “I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you.”
I backed into the living room and felt it coming on. So I lay down on the couch with their hollering running through me like electricity. And I couldn’t move. I literally couldn’t move. My arms and my legs felt like Earth’s gravity had just increased one hundred times, and I couldn’t lift them at all. And the right side of my skull went numb and I tried to say something but everything was coming into my brain in one-syllable words like a three-year-old. And then nothing, complete blackout. No sound, no light, no touch, simply an absence of life.
Then everyone was gone from the kitchen. Dad was watching TV upstairs in his bedroom. Gail was locked in her room and my brothers were outside, playing.
Of course, I’m the only one in my family who ever went into therapy. I’m the only one who ever needed mental help. I’m the only one who knows why Gail’s kids are so quiet, and why she and her husband don’t talk but they’re still together after 20 fucking years. I’m not real fond of family get togethers.
THERE’S AN ELEPHANT IN THE KITCHEN
AND HE’S STANDING ON
THE BIRTHDAY CAKE
AND NOBODY SEES IT BUT ME
BECAUSE
I’M THE FUCKING ONE WHO’S NUTS!
I’m just not fond of family get togethers. That’s nice, now everyone smile. Easter.
CHAPTER 26
ELEPHANTS
The coolest thing about bottom dwellers is that we’ve got a whole herd of elephants in the middle of the bar when we get together. And we know each other’s elephants by name. Like Mel, whose elephants are named “Suicide” and “Abandonment”, as in “My mother killed herself eleven years ago this March.” Or Helen’s pachyderm named “Domestic Abuse” as in “ Men in my life have beat me up.” There are no fairy castles here, no home in the burbs, no image to maintain. Just people drinking themselves into oblivion, dancing with their elephants until those pesky pachyderms shrink and shrink and they’re small enough to put into a pocket at midnight, so they can be carried home.
After we punch out at work, we’ll find our elephants happily waiting for us in the middle of a pool table or in the booth in the back in the dark, sitting beside someone perfectly inappropriate for us.
CHAPTER 27
BANKING
This really isn’t about banking, it’s about aliens, and not
Mexicans either. At some point or another, 80% of bottom dwellers will tell you they’ve seen a UFO. They’ve approached me before, trying to convince me UFOs really exist. It’s like this religious belief that most bottom dwellers share but no one talks about unless it’s three in the morning and the smoke is running low. Bottom dwellers will go on for an hour, emphatically trying to convince anyone in the room that aliens exist. The testimony goes something like this: I was down on
A. Rough River
B. Blue River
C. The Farm
Camping with:
1. A friend
2. My brother
3. A lover
And we were sitting:
D. In a car
E. On a picnic table
F. By a window
When this light appeared in the sky and just floated there for a while and then shot over here and floated for awhile and shot back over where we were.
I believe they’ve seen something for real. I believe they’ve seen UFOs, not because of what they say, but because of my own experiences as an abductee. There I’ve said it. Fuck it.
I don’t really see it as a mean thing they do to me, I just somehow got enrolled in a repetitious experiment with beings that humans aren’t familiar with.
It’s a matter of opportunity, I think, because while I’ve been living in the city, these visits have stopped. The last time I remember being taken was in Bellingham, WA. I was trying to sleep when I heard the humming the engines make. I tried screaming at Dave to wake him up, but he was totally knocked out. Then someone touched me on the shoulder. The events of the rest of that night came to me in flashbacks. I was taken by the little gray ones outside past our cars, down this little gravel road towards the ship, which I saw as a pulsating
light. A large triangle headed alien joined us once we got into the trees; he was wearing a green plaid sports jacket. The jacket was god awful ugly. He asked me telepathically, “How
Do you like my new jacket?” He was laughing, he was trying to make this easier for me, as we had seen each other many times throughout my life. We started to approach the curve, heading towards the ship, and then I blanked out.
The next morning, the electrical system in the Ford Falcon was fucked up. The stove’s electrical system had shut itself down and the light bulb in the oven didn’t work anymore.
After numerous such experiences, I, as a true member of bottom dwellers, definitely believe in UFOs. P.S. – I think they’re time travelers, not space travelers. I almost forgot to tell you this really important thing. While I was living in Seattle I was kind of going crazy over this whole UFO thing. I was afraid I was completely losing my marbles. I was watching this TV show about people claiming to have been abducted, when someone showed sketches of the aliens they had seen. Of course they had pictures of the grays: the small ones with big eyes like in Whitney Scriber’s “Communion”. Then this guy holds up a sketch of my triangle-faced guy in four different – are you ready for this? – in four different sport coats! The sport coat in the right hand lower corner was
the green plaid god-awful ugly sport coat he was wearing when he visited me. From that moment on I was at peace with the whole thing.
CHAPTER 28
HAVE YOU EVER DONE IT…
In a cave in the pitch-black?
In a canoe at sunrise in the middle of a lake?
While driving on a highway with a truck driver watching?
In a log cabin while it rains in the forest outside?
In a tent while another lover listens in his tent, not five feet away?
On a rock beside a river in broad daylight?
On the grand lawn of a National Park at 2 a.m.
Beside a stream at an outdoor concert while the band played on?
In a booth inside an adult bookstore?
In the parking lot of a strip club?
In a van beside the Grand Canyon at daybreak?
Between dock buildings beside the Mississippi during Mardi Gras?
One mile up in the bathroom of an airplane? - Neither have I, yuck!
Here's your claim to fame: Please insert (good word) your most adventurous sexual encounter here, seal this form in an envelope, tear off the top of your head and send it to Saturn.
A. In back of an elementary school on a Saturday afternoon.
B. In Cave Hill Cemetery at midnight.
C. In back of an elementary school on a Sunday afternoon.
D. On a blanket, on a glacier, in August.
E. On top of ___________________
F. Between _____________________
G. With two other _________________
HAVE YOU SEEN MY PRIDE AND JOY?
UNDERSTANDING MEN
I finally figured men out. If your man is not within arms length, you just think to yourself: what is the best thing he could be doing, while out of your sight.
A. He’s helping out his ailing mother by putting her air conditioner in her kitchen window.
B. He really is visiting a buddy at his home and they really are playing WWF video games.
C. He’s helping his sister and her husband move across town.
WELL…HE’S NOT DOING ANY OF THOSE THINGS!!
Now think of the evilist, vilest, most back stabbing thing he could possibly be doing. For instance: He met his old girlfriend, who went back to being a hooker, at a bus stop. And right now, he’s spending half of the rent money that you left in the cook book so his old skank will suck his dick for half an hour. Yep! That’s it! That’s what he’s doing!
And now you understand about men tool.
THE END
I know a book is suppose to have an end: something that happens which put a finish to the story like “and they all lived happily ever after” or “and he died”. I don’t really have that kind of ending, so I’ll tell you about someone I know who died. Charlie Wilson was the ultimate bottom dweller. He lived in my apartment just before me. We knew each other through Labor World temporary services on Preston Highway, the ultimate bottom dwellers job site. Work for a day; get paid for a day. Charlie Wilson got caught up with other bottom dwellers. He eventually ended up with three other people crashing in his apartment. That was four people trying to raise $285 a month for rent. They couldn’t do it. If one bottom dweller is having trouble staying afloat, four bottom dwellers will sink like a rock, no survivors. So he got kicked out and I was living in the big house across the yard from Charlie’s carriage house and I inherited the apartment. Advancement by assassination being the order of the day. One of his friends even asked me if she could just stay with me for couple of weeks until she could get something together. This after her
not paying rent for four months. I said no and she called me a
bitch and said she was gonna die, and then she moved in with her sister. It’s like Big Dog William said, “I don’t need anyone to live with me, I can starve to death all by myself.”
So a friend of Charlie Wilson’s got a divorce and let Charlie move into his house until it could be sold. So Charlie and Tom and Ron and Ron’s kids moved into this guy’s house. I heard Charlie Wilson got drunk as usual and got beat up and robbed downtown. I saw his shiner. Bottom dweller sinking.
Charlie Wilson always wanted to get back with his ex-wife and son, who lived in Salem, Indiana. He wanted to write them a letter and tell them but he was illiterate. I told him I would write the letter for him, but he was worried about getting a return letter from his ex, and him not knowing what it said. I told him that I would read it for him, but he didn’t trust me that much. He said the letter would be personal.
Charlie Wilson always had a habit of making complete strangers mad at him when he got drunk. We’d be walking along and he’d call some guy “ugly” or “stupid” and pretend like he was trying to start a fight. I’d say, “Please excuse him, he’s just drunk.” I never thought that much about
it because bottom dwellers live forever. Charlie Wilson was drunk one day, got a stranger mad, the man threw him off a moving bus, which ran over him.
Charlie Wilson remained in a coma for about a year. He never woke up. He never knew that his ex-wife and son came down form Salem, Indiana and took him home and cared for him until he died. I’ve always thought he would like to have known that. I’m sure he knows it now. I don’t know why, but I’m crying. Maybe that’s a happy ending for a bottom dweller. Maybe that’s all a bottom dweller can expect.
This morning, early, Scotty and I were in San Francisco’s Chinatown. We were waiting in the foyer of an oriental restaurant to pay the bill for a wonderful Chinese meal, when a waiter approached us and presented us with a large box of antique dishes. He explained they were going to be thrown out, but we could take them with us if we liked. Inside the box were Victorian serving bowls, three footed compotes, and silverware. I was wondering if I was capable of carrying such treasures up and down the hills of Chinatown, when my daughter came out into the hall and said she’d help me carry the dishes. As I was waking up, I smiled to myself and thought, “What a pleasant dream it’s all been, what a very pleasant dream indeed.”
Booklets by Michele Dutcher:
Reports From the Underbelly: 60 pages 2001 - copies 5 bucks flat
Articles: Sugar Mams, Freaks, Full Moon Sunday, Extras Listed
Men - As If I Have a Clue: 60 pages, 2002 - copies $5.00 American
Articles: Cold Weather Love, Driving With Dougie, Friendship Inc
Trafficking in ABSOLUTes: 60 pages, 2003 - copies $5.00 US or $134 Canadian
Articles: (A; The; An) Laura's Karaoke Story, Swarming Lesbians
Cheap Beer, Loud Music, Young Men: 60 pages, 2004 - 5 bucks period, fuck the Canadians - everyone else does. (The Money Man, Flash or Cash, Barfly Barbie)
Over Herd: 60 pages, 2005 - copies $5.00 U.S. (Miss Margo's Summer Shorts, Bye Bye Blondie, Dan the Man's Big Balls, A Texan's Mystery Woman)
Saint James Sampler: 60 pages, 2001 to 2005 copies $4.93 (Collection of stories they're still talking about, from all of the above booklets)
A Little Strange, On the Side: 60 pages, 2005 copies $5.00 U.S. or 23 cents Martian Hiureltues
(Science Fiction Stories - Time Sphere, Spaceship Building for Dummies)
Michele's great American novel - A Fisherman's Guide to Bottom Dwellers - available for $113.78 OR six hours of REALLY great sex (only men thirty and under need apply except for Nicholas Cage and Keanu Reeves, side effects of reading these books may include nose pimples, heart palpitations, and anal leakage. If erection lasts longer than four hours, please seek immediate medical help - hello-o-o nurse!)
To order contact me at: micheledutcher@yahoo.com
APPLICATION TO BECOME MICHELE'S 5TH EX-HUSBAND
_______________ _______________ 0 Jr 0 Sr 0 The Third
Last name First name
Car: __________________ _______________ ____________
Model Make Year
Savings Account #______________ Balance $___________.00
Checking Account # ____________ Balance $___________.00
Still in THE WILL 0 Yes 0 No 0 No, but will try harder
Prenuptual agreement required 0 Yes 0 No 0 Here, baby, just take all my money.
Length of endowment _____ inches ______ feet (If measured in feet, please see Michele for immediate personal interview)
Sexual orientation:0 Straight 0 Bi 0 Tri (...anything once) 0 Curious (yellow) 0 I forget 0 Sheep 0 Plush Toys
__ Rent house __ Own home __ Sponging off girlfriend
0 Wife's maiden name (careful now, trick question) _________
Job title: __________________ Hours per week: ______________
# of years with firm ____________ 0 Own the firm
Please mark any of the following statements that apply:
__ "I'll pay you $5,000 to shag me to death." Cash in advance, no checks.
__ "If you marry me, I won't be mad when you divorce me".
__ "I'm a SNAG - Sensitive New Age Guy
Afterthoughts: Educational degrees ___________
