The Knight and the Acolyte Book 10 Chapter 2 The Princess s Bard
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The Rambling Bard free porn video
The roommate is up before I am, watching morning television, a cigarette hanging from his chapped pink lips as he loads the dishwasher. We’re not supposed to smoke in the apartment but he does anyway. I join him on enough occasions that I’m guilty of breaking the rule instead of bending it.
Almost a year now he’s been this slouched, hairy, somnolent, depressed man living in my home, barking at the cat in the middle of the night, loud enough to wake me and our upstairs neighbors. The building superintendent knows me better so I receive the complaints and pass them along with humble quiet non-confrontational.
‘Hey, man… uh you think maybe you could talk to your doctor about switching your meds again?’
‘Why?’
I haven’t the heart to say anything hurtful. ‘You’re just more irritable lately, you know?’
He doesn’t know. When he explodes it is from some deep part of his angry self that he doesn’t appear aware of. He leaves the room without promises to keep a lid on it. I share a look with the cat. We don’t like each other, the cat and me. But we share a common dread of the roommate. In a glance my attempt to quell the turmoil is acknowledged by the small black and tan feline. The glance seems in essence to say, ‘Thank you for trying.’ It is brief before the cat forgets entirely what’s been going on and goes to play with a ratty bit of shoelace tied to a drinking straw.
Today is a day for writing. I grab a pad and jot down ideas in my room, ignoring the horrible odor emanating from the other room around mid-afternoon. He burns one too often for my or anybody’s taste. He claims it mellows him. It doesn’t, he’s made worse because of the paranoia. I can’t think with the smell and when blocked I reach for a book from one of my disorganized stacks.
I gave up buying shelves when I was 18. I have two, loaded to capacity, some of the shelves buckling under the weight. Paperbacks are jumbled with hardbacks, inexpensive and expensive volumes mix together in untidy heaps. Condition matters little to me in my organization. New books are stacked with the poorly bound and rotting ones. Today I’m writing sci-fi, so I pick a Richard Matheson book from the pile and flip through the acknowledgements to the first chapter, ‘PART ONE: January 1976…’
Its interesting reading books about the future written in the past, Orwell’s 1984, Matheson’s I Am Legend, 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s fun to get into a book that is 100% bullshit and imagine what the original readers thought of these grim looks at their future which is rapidly becoming our past.
I often wonder about the great literary minds of the past and present. I imagine them crouched over their typewriters and I wonder, if any, what habits they enjoyed while whittling away at their various opuses. Did they have a hard scotch, refracting yellow light from the window onto their shirtsleeve? Did Capote ever enjoy a Hershey bar or Mark Twain a scoop of ice cream or a slice of cantaloupe? Or where they too focused, too driven to even light a cigarette, pare a fingernail, twirl a curl of their hair (if they had any)… Did they write like men and women possessed by some unseen, unheard, unmerciful devil of devoted creativity? Were Eliot, Thearou, Kerouac, and Keats machines, scribbling word games into sentences into paragraphs into keystones and watermarks of literary achievement?
I often cut open an orange or an apple while pausing over my keyboard, there are spatters of dried citrus guts wedged between the keys, stains from coffee cups and squat little glasses doodling circular patterns all over my desk and I wonder… Is what separates the mediocre from the extraordinary the simple act of pitting an avocado or picking at a bit of leftover dinner with a toothpick?
Did any of them ever try to think up proper dialogue during sex?
Often I find myself trying to hold on a little longer and nothing works better than trying to figure out the exact phraseology a 95-year-old woman would use to describe to her 70-year-old daughter the method and stamina required to be the most sexually desired woman at the Shady Pine nursing home… if you think that’s disgusting, try maintaining an erection while thinking about it. It’ll take hours to satisfy your lover with those saggy wrinkled caricatures running through you’re greasy little noggin.
Don’t get me wrong. If you happen to be a 95-year-old woman reading this, God bless you, you’re probably very attractive. I’m merely saying that I will probably not be in the mood for your particular brand of afternoon delight for at least another several decades. I look forward to that time when I, a 95-year-old man, find myself slapping my liver-spotted bag of bones against any set of thighs still capable for opening to me. If I’m going out, I’m going out having screwed as hard and often as the proposed deity gave me dexterity to do so.
Go baby, go!
But I digress, we were talking about literary greats and what they were doing while composing their masterpieces.
Whenever I read ‘Kubla Khan,’ or ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ I find myself imagining Coleridge strung out on opium or Tennyson combing his long wild beard like a baboon at the local zoo. After thumbing through a few chapters of Salem’s Lot, I think of Stephen King picking his nose. When Kay Scarpetta wraps up another mystery I think of Patricia Cromwell ordering figurines from the home shopping network. And then, when the point culminant of The Importance of Being Earnest was forming in his brain, I think of Oscar Wilde eating oysters with lemon and crackers thinking about British mangina. I guess I think of these images, these Greats in their human moments, because it makes me feel more like I could get along with them should I ever be invited to a cocktail party in the afterlife. I’d hate to be the only Shmoe in a room full of ‘enlightened’ people, walking though the room chugging a Bud and spattering bits of chili-cheese dog down the front of my heavenly issued white shirt as they sip at ’69 Bolognese or sift fine brandies.
I clip my toenails and shave, I take shit breaks and snack breaks and breaks to go to the bank and deposit what little money I made from vacuuming between the cushions of my couch. And the thought that I am not alone in my human actions, the thought that Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, any one of the Bronte sisters, Jane Austin, or William Carlos Williams had occasion to cut a fart, belch the alphabet, and pick at an uncomfortable arrangement in their undergarments, the thought that they were human, not demigods of eras past, invigorates me and breaks my fever.
Though they had high minds they were sometimes as simple and easy going as any man jack of our animal race.
I know none of these people ever made any claims to divinity, but through the persistence of their literatures they have gleaned the veneration of the academic mob. The number of professors that hold the new works of novices up to the old works of the long dead, the long dying, or the flavors of the month revolts me.
How dare you, they seem to say… how dare you, sir, write anything that isn’t like anything ever written before! Don’t you know that a great man (a genius that has yet to be surpassed) once said that there is nothing new under the sun?
Yes, teacher, I am aware , but didn’t this genius also have a less than successful marital record, problems with alcohol and depression… in fact, didn’t he commit suicide?
This is a comfort to me, for if a flawed human being can become something so notable and noble in the eyes of a reading public that their imperfections are overlooked and the immortal words they wrote for the world t make up the foundation of their immortalities, then anyone, even the lowest low-life with the most extreme bad habits can, through the free and unrestrained expression of his mind, become a bard for this age and many ages to come. Any fool can be a genius in the eyes of histo
ry if his words shine bright enough to blind the world to his faux pas and miseries.
I live in Lawrence, Kansas. A small liberal oasis where Burroughs came to die less than an hour’s drive from where Truman Capote spent a lot of time interviewing Perry Edward Smith in a little prison sell… In Cold Blood was handed to me by my father when I was 14-years-old.
‘Here,’ he said, the book was not very attractive to look at, a picture of a lone farm house on a grey day. ‘It’s good,’ he said, nodding as if to tell me that the water wouldn’t be nearly as cold once I plunged in all the way.
It was six years before I actually discovered I liked Capote. My mother had forced me to watch old romance comedies from an early age, and when I found out that one of the few I actually liked, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, had in fact been a book before it was a movie, I picked up a copy in the University library and finished it in less than three hours.
That’s how books should be read, I recall thinking, putting it in the return slot before making the trek home in the frozen November sunshine, one sit-down and you’re done.
My grandfather had always been a big fan of short stories, he despised reading his stories in shifts. ‘Give me one good one that takes an hour,’ he said, when I’d told him I was beginning to write in my spare time. ‘If a writer is good he can make me like him in 30 pages or less.’
I never understood how I could love a man so much who couldn’t get enough Hank Williams and Willie Nelson. Because my grandfather liked them I’ve secretly begun to like them as well. It makes me feel guilty of being hickish and a closet country-bumpkin. I strive so hard to listen to Mingus and Monk, I can really get into Brubeck and Frank Sinatra… music of four decades ago. They play it in coffee shops now, where people don’t listen to anything but themselves.
I was raised by intelligent people. White collar, college educated parents. Intellectuals? I doubt by New York or West Coast standards.
They choose to live quietly as staunch republicans in a state where some crazy asshole waves bigoted signs over the graves of people who’ve tragically succumbed to death via the AIDS virus or service of their nation… How could intellectuals choose to live in these conditions? The smell has extinguished but I feel the oppression of my room, too familiar, too safe. I grab a jacket from the closet and fish my keys out of the bowl by the front door. I never bother to say goodbye, nor do I leave a note about where I’m going. He doesn’t worry about me, I don’t worry about him. We are guys who pretty much like the idea of disappearing without a trace.
If one of us doesn’t come home for two days it’s assumed he’s gone home to the folks, shacked up temporarily with some liberal-minded female bartender, or run off to live in his car by the river. If one of us freezes to death in winter, gets gutted over his sneakers, or surrenders to alcohol poisoning… the other will be the last to know.
How we manage to pay rent on time is an enigma to me. It’s not that we can’t make the money, it’s just that we are both lethargic when it comes to grown-up responsibilities and could give a damn about keeping track of the impending dates of financial obligations. But still the first of the month arrives and by simple luck one or the other of us kicks the other, waves a check book and the rent is paid along with the various bills for water, sewage, electricity, cable, and individual magazine subscriptions.
I take Playboy, the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly… I’m sent complimentary copies of the Boston Review for a reason I’ve never bothered to investigate in the two years since the arrival of the first issue.
He gets Vibe, Wired, and picks up occasional issues of American Rifleman Magazine. As far as I know we don’t have a rifle in the apartment, but he reads his magazines with enthusiasm and seldom troubles me about what’s in mine. The Playboy’s I leave out for him as a friendly courtesy to show I know he hasn’t been on a successful date in a while.
I don’t know if he gets the message, but he definitely leafs through them. I arrange them chronologically and they’re constantly out of order.
The bar, where I go to think, is hit and miss when it comes to action. Some nights it’s quiet and good for solitude. I get scotches on such evenings… I actually like scotch for thinking. It keeps imagination grounded with sharp bitter stings of reality. Other nights, usually near the end of the working week, it is a crowded and loud place. Music blares and a companion is required to make the evening bearable. I usually call my friend Freddy, a shortish, blondish, assholish, athletic type that makes me look taller and more reserved than I actually am.
He’s better looking than me, but I’m usually not about meeting women when I’m drinking. I flirt only when I’m sober. Sharp wits are required for the sport of flirting, or else a guy can end up against the ropes with the referee counting 10 before the number one registers.
When I’m drunk, flirting is a spectator’s sport, second only to boxing. Freddy is my own personal featherweight champion. No matter his opponent, he is fierce and merciless, taking careful measure of body language, evading questions, throwing tough combinations of compliments and lies. He is technically single in the same manner that Oswald could technically have done the whole business in Dallas alone.
In the way that a woman can claim a boyfriend at any given time in her life, Freddy can claim solidarity and bachelorhood with such grace that even he thinks it’s true sometimes.
Whenever his phone rings, I have to guess by his tone and manner to whom he speaks. Long explanations mean it’s his mother, short brief answers mean it’s an underage buddy wanting him to buy a handle of cheap vodka, whiney wry quips mixed with complements mean it’s a girl whom I’ve probably met but who’s name I’ll have to ask if he wants me to drive him somewhere to meet her.
He doesn’t have a car. He’s usually willing to go anywhere and do anything so long as he can get out of his dorm room. He’s a year older and a decade behind in gaining his financial and emotional independence from his family.
It’s a quiet night, I buy a pack of light smokes from the bartender, give him a five for the scotch which I take with soda on the rocks for a change. Outside I find a heat lamp and snuggle up striking a match to start the smoke going. Like New York and Los Angeles, the smokers are banished to the outdoors to indulge their slow methodical suicides. It would be a nice night without the cold bitch of a wind.
I should quit. It’s not worth risking my health to smoke and the weather is a big deterrent six months out of the year. Added to that, I’ve begun dating a health-nut. I’ve been lying to her about not smoking… I’m beginning to like her enough now that I’m feeling guilty.
She is a fascinating girl, my Lucy. A vegetarian of sorts, by this I mean, to say that she eats fish and on occasion, chicken… by Kansas standards this makes her a vegetarian. The number one product of this sunflower state is USDA Choice dead cow. Anyone who fails to eat cow is a traitor. It’s like driving a Civic in Detroit. Here, New York strips are called KC strips and are usually three times the size of any sane portion of red meat. Potatoes are usually baked on the side or piled high in French fried fashion with a hearty salad smothered in ranch and two to three schooners of beer to help wash down the portion.
In some towns a cigarette is allowed with the meal, not the town I live in, but in most others there is a clinging to what I’ve lovingly dubbed the hedonistic diet. Marlboros are considered the cherry on top of the death sundae. If not Marlboros, my chosen brand of Camels will suffice. I’ve quit before, but it’s never taken hold for more than a few weeks at best. I can’t think whether it’s an addiction to the nicotine or a need to have a
n excuse to escape outside once in a while.
I hear the door to the smoking porch slide open and shut, a group of friends, giggly and stumbling over the single step from the inside to the outside, open and split a pack amongst them, talking about one mutual friend, who is not here, trying to fuck another mutual friend, who is here. All but one of them laughs at the thought. A wind blows frigid over everyone’s spine, collars fly up and eyes squint, collectively we all curse and they return indoors abandoning their individual coffin nails after only a few puffs each. I just hold my hands up to the heater and play the tough soldier at Valley Forge.
Inside, the music playing is crap.
Scotch, puff, scotch, puff, puff, shiver, scotch… Dark, loneliness… I really hate the cold now and the cigarette is mostly done.
Inside, warm by a fraction more, I walk about the compartmentalized saloon. There is a room with high tables, a room with chess sets and games of dominos. One room has men gathered around women gathered around a fire, chatter of voices, flapping of lips, slurps of third and fourth drinks, crackle of fire underneath.
The fire is the kind with fake wood, made from a polymer Teflon that neither burns, nor scorches, nor melts.
Interesting faces here and there, I make up names and stories for the strangers which are many. That’s why I like this bar, the high overhead of clientele. Only a hand full of regulars who keep to themselves, the rest… they are always fresh blood, people passing through town, people new to town, people recently driven to drink.
Why do they come? Is one of them fascinated by the ants that populate the floor and climb up the drink glasses? Does that girl like the music? Does that guy like the way this particular bartender mixes his Martini? Is that group here with the band? The old man in the corner, is he jilted and plotting?
Subconsciously, I’m sure I’m glad I didn’t call Freddy to come along tonight. It’s not his type of crowd, small as it is. I’ve known him three years and until just recently I hadn’t realized how close a friend I have become to him. He’s made confessions, dark and scary confessions that would worry me if I didn’t know him confidentially.
He’s one of the few men I’ve met who’ve been comfortable with crying in front of me, even if the tears only appeared once during a heavy drunk. There were no hugs involved, only words of encouragement and chastisements for bad thoughts. I drove him to his dorm where he stumbled out with a wave, swearing me to secrecy. ‘Don’t tell anyone what I said,’ he said, half begging half threatening.
Secrets are safe with me.
He is the third generation of his family to carry the name Frederick. He will never be a Frederick, he knows this fact as do I. He will die in his bed at a ripe age, his grandchildren and great grandchildren lamenting the passing of dear, Grandpa Freddy.
He strikes me as one who is unsure of ever finding happiness but predestined to end up with the loving wife, the picture perfect children, and the 401k plan that will make his retirement a montage of auto repair, high school graduations, weddings, and family vacations to points highly recommended by the department of fish and game (all set to ancient recordings of the Kingsmen and Johnny Cash with some alternative pop music thrown in for the occasional surprise).
Though a tomcat, a lecherous young man, I’m certain he will find roots and sprout into a grand oak tree with branches heavy and vast, a man worthy of office, of honor, of note in family histories.
A finer model for a character in a story about growing up and growing old could not be found.
My notebook has stayed in my pocket the whole evening, last call is being called and I tab out before I have the impulse to order one last scotch.
Roots are a wonderful concept for humans. A sense of purpose accompanies roots, gives a taste of meaning to life that otherwise might be found in blind faith in God and heaven.
Bree
- 13.03.2022
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