Johnny Wraith Stories

“A table will be 5 minutes – booth will be 10.”

“We’ll wait for a booth.”

We were in line at Jimbo’s restaurant, Ronald and me, waiting for breakfast on a Sunday morning, a necessary ritual to curing a bad hangover and the 3 packs of cigarettes we’d put in our lungs. The night before we’d stayed up late dancing with nasty women at a honky-tonk where they played the country music too loud. My ears were still ringing and I think the thumping bass had given me heart palpitations, or maybe I was just hung-over and it was just too much booze. And now, because all the seats in the waiting area were filled – the seats you sit in while waiting to be seated and we had a 10 minute wait along with about 20 others in the herd – we stood next to the to the rows and rows of pies on display behind the glass and the register. The pies looked good. One was chocolate with layers of strawberry filling, another an angel food cake with a light glaze, another was cheesecake, and hell, some were called “Erupting Volcanoes,” “Chocolate Heart Attacks,” shit like that and more. And like I said, the pies looked good behind the glass, though the morning sunlight highlighted all the fingerprints and slobber the screaming children of the morning’s breakfast had left behind, smudges of pancake syrup and bacon grease, snotty noses and spit. The little bastards with tummies stuffed with pork and sugar still aren’t satisfied after being ballooned-full like a French goose intended for pate, though the other children are starving in China (Hell, I think they eat all right in China these days now that McDonald’s is there, right? Aren’t there 1.7 billion of them now? But about the starving in China thing – that’s what they said when I was a fucking kid. These days I think North Korea is where the eating is rough, or sparse rather. I heard they only get a meal or less a month now, and that’s if they eat their children. Like I said, that’s what I heard: cannibals inhabit some of those North Korean villages. So, in North Korea, I guess you’re a lucky kid if your parents don’t eat you. The test of your utter happiness isn’t whether you get to have pie after a gluttonous Sunday breakfast, but whether or not you’re turning on a spit above a fire. Nevertheless, maybe being a kid in the U.S.A. on a Sunday is just as bad as being a starving kid in a North Korean village. You know why? Sometimes mommy and daddy make you go to church before you get to go to Jimbo’s and stuff your belly with 32 pounds of toast and jelly, fried pork fat and all that, maybe even pie. Go to church or live amongst cannibals? Both situations are laden with pain, though one is physical and the other spiritual) Like gnats to flypaper, once mommy or daddy pays the bill and the family is trying to get out of the place, their greedy little eyes light up and their tiny bodies leap onto the glass, as if pulled in by a powerful magnetic force. Pies! Fucking Pies! PIE!

“MOMMY, MOMMY, I WANT PIE!”

“No darling, you just ate. You don’t want to get fat like your cousin Bobby, do you? He’s only in second grade, and just look at him.”

“MOMMY, MOMMY, I WANT PIE!”

You know the routine. No matter what mommy says, a battle ensues. After 10 minutes of hopeless, boring dialogue between adult and child, screaming and yelling, Bobby’s cousin is dragged out of Jimbo’s restaurant hollering at the top of his lungs and kicking like an old mule on his way to the glue factory. Only brute force will suffice. 5 pieces of bacon, a short stack, a butter ball as big as an apple with syrup smeared all over it all, deep-fried greasy hash browns loaded with salt and soaking in lard, scrambled eggs likewise salted and fried, 3 glasses of Pepsi in a 36 ounce plastic cup…  It isn’t fucking enough, the famine of spirit and all. Bobby’s cousin still isn’t satisfied. Maybe he is too empty from church. He just has to have some fucking pie. The noise of his raging and howling and flailing subsides when his tiny body is finally dragged through Jimbo’s entryway, yanked past the smudged glass, and the swinging doors stammer shut. Let a few more flies in! Then there is silence. How strange it is the transition to silence is unnoticed. Nobody, no one waiting for breakfast and no one, nobody in the dining area even flinches. Did it only hurt my fucking ears? They must still be sensitive from last night’s thumping bass, bass so loud it had actually put tiny ripples in my beer. When I’d held my mug steady and looked down in it, and the light from the disco ball refracted my way through the fog of cigarette smoke, I could see the fluid taking motion as it was struck with the thumping sound. Well, one other Jimbo’s patron happens to notice Bobby’s cousin’s antics. He’s looking over his shoulder, chuckling and shaking his head.

“Geesh,” Ronald mutters. “Kids these days.”

“Last night’s music is still hurting your ears?”

“That and 6 pitchers of beer, and the cigarettes didn’t help.”

“Yeah, and you can’t really dance off booze, but it is good exercise. When I dance drunk I always wake up the next morning with sore muscles. I think it has to do with working harder to keep balance.”

“I’d have to agree. One night I walked 5 miles after putting away more than a dozen 151 and cokes. The next day I could barely stand. Felt like I’d run a marathon.”

“Oh shit, look over there! That screaming kid.”

“Geesh.”

On the other side of Jimbo’s, through a glass window in the dining area, we could see Bobby’s cousin fighting with his parents as they tried to stuff him into the family SUV. Hanging onto the doorframe he was still yelling and kicking, refusing to get in and put on his seat belt. We couldn’t hear him anymore, but his bright red face and wide open mouth gave us an idea what he was screaming:

“I WANT PIE!”

“Geesh.”

Perhaps such antics are expected of children these days, after all, just try backhanding a brat and it will be only minutes before some fat, middle-aged lesbian from Child Protective Services shows up at your front door. New Politics. Things just ain’t how they used to be. Remember how the cops used to escort you home after they pulled you over for weaving across the yellow lines?

“Sir, have you been drinking?”

“Hic! Yep. Hic!”

“I’m going to have to escort you home before you hurt yourself.”

“Hic! Tank ya ociffer.”

“No problem. Next time call a cab.”

Nowadays they drag you out of the car, cuff you, rough you up and throw your ass straight into jail. New Politics. Men are no longer men, the children get to scream for pie without sanction, No Smoking signs are everywhere, and things are just generally more fucked up than before. Is it I? Maybe I don’t fit in anymore. I just stood still while the world changed into something better, more profound, filled with greater goodness and love? I thought we were making progress, but perhaps I have been wearing blinders. After all, we’re kicking ass in Iraq, sending the Enemy Infidels to Hades by the hundreds each day, women and children included. That’s a good thing because those fuckers are more messed up than Christians. Any son of a bitch stupid enough to strap on bombs and go strolling into a café just to blow himself and 50 people having coffee with croissants to smithereens comes from a culture too dangerous for the modern age, right? Somehow I wonder if the fat middle-aged lesbian Child Protective Services workers don’t see it this way. After all, they are responsible for all the No Smoking signs that plague America today. At least in Iraq our men can still be men, and they get to smoke cigarettes wherever they go, even throw the butts down wherever they want. For now, and maybe evermore, I’ll just sit here at home with the girls and complain.

If you think this insane diatribe of mine doesn’t apply to you, you’re dead wrong. And if you aren’t there yet, you’re headed for it. This is the natural order of things, inescapable. Marriage, children, and ultimate fulfillment. On any given Sunday morning after church, you’re likely (or soon to be) dining at Jimbo’s with your family. Making an exit from the place is never easy. Filled with bacon, lard, grease, butter and jam, your kids always kick and scream for the pie behind the glass, never allowing you to pass without conflict. It is the Good Ol’ Sunday breakfast ritual painted into the American psyche by the demons of Norman Rockwell. Jesus smiles upon you with pearly-white teeth, or is he snarling? You’re driving the latest SUV. It shines because you spent all Saturday polishing it, down to spraying the Armor All all over the dash and tires. It has a car seat or two in the back, and last but not least, you have one of those funny “this is my family represented by stick figures” stickers on the back window and all of them are smiling. One tall stick man for dad, a stick woman wearing a dress is mom, a stick figure for each of the kids, the girls have pony tails and the boys baseball hats, and four-legged figures represent the dog or cat in the house, and the ones with fins are the family fish. They are all smiling really big smiles. Everyone is so happy.  Brother, father, sister, mommy, doggie, kitty, fishy too, represented in skeletal form, smiling line drawings, less than hollow beings. Wish fulfillment: a fad that will dissolve into History hand-in-hand with the Pet Rock. A shallow concept filled with hope because the system is broken but no one can see or hear it unless his ears are still ringing from the loud bass of the dancing music that lasted all night long at the local honky-tonk. And isn’t it funny, or shall I say peculiar? All the dancers on the dance floor are really there for one thing: to marry, breed, drive the family around in an SUV from church to Jimbo’s on Sundays. Everyone, even the fish, will be shown in the stick figure sticker on back. Life starts at the honky-tonk and ends at Jimbo’s.

Said another way, in my anecdotal and less than scientific experience of the freeways, parking lots, and streets of America, I’ve come across many SUVs with the famed stick figure stickers on their back windows. And I’ll be damned if I’ve ever compared the actual flesh-and-blood passengers with the stickers representing them and found any similarity in attitude. Like I said, each of the stick figures is happy, overjoyed, filled with the lightness of joyful life. The faces on the flesh-and-blood bodies the sticks represent are usually gloomy, saddened, unfulfilled, darkened, silent, or motionless. Or there is conflict:

“LEAVE YOUR BROTHER ALONE!”

“SAY YOU’RE SORRY!”

“MOMMY, I DON’T WANT TO!”

“WHEN WE GET HOME YOU ARE GOING STRAIGHT TO TIME OUT!”

Nevertheless, like I said, if you aren’t a member of an SUV Stick Figure Family, don’t worry. You are just going through a phase and you’ll get there eventually. The odds are in your favor. Whether you’re a hung-over college student, a girlfriend or boyfriend, an ex con, a hooligan, a mother fucker, a loser, a gambler, a hooker, a John, a cop, a soldier, a lost soul, a dropout, or a philosopher, you still have a chance to change your ways and will most likely see the light, especially if you start going to church. Keep the faith, and you will have a stick figure sticker on the back of your vehicle one day. If you are gay, never fear. You can just put one of those rainbow stickers on the back of your car. It’s the same thing as the stick figure sticker, really. And if you are an old, gray-hair, you don’t need to listen to me. You’ve already been there in one way or another, and for the first time in your life you’re breathing more easily, even if you are rolling around with an oxygen tank.

Lots of ranting, I know, and I’ve likely said a few things that will get me prosecuted under some of the new hate speech laws, but you know, it has all been tongue-in-cheek, a parody, a making light of things. Free Speech! I’m just trying to prove a point via the use of stereotypes and harsh language so my message of love might be better conveyed. It is so that your hearts and minds will be nourished.

In any event, nothing really matters because we are all flesh in a state of decay. You and I will survive until we die, just like the rest of us. If you are lucky, you’ll leave something behind, whatever the fuck that might be. And isn’t it funny how Michelangelo left David behind, in Florence, Italy, but really, who was Michelangelo? Does anyone fucking know? Was he really a vegetarian? Who the fuck knows? Poor bastard. He’s fucking dead. But have you been to Florence, Italy? Have you looked with your own, real eyes, from only an arms-reach away, upon the carved-in-marble, vascular hands of David? What have your eyes taken in? Have you seen the stone born into flesh? What have you really seen? And what have you offered for the eyes of generations to come? Anything but smiling stick figures on the back window of an SUV, a life lived on cell phones and emails and New Politics that make our men women? Death of the imagination and dreams, it all ending at Jimbo’s when hope was still had at the local honky-tonk until 3am in years gone away? Is it enough? Mount one another and then live for the sake of endless, trivial motion aimed for your being forgotten forever, for this is your avenue to paradise. You will live upon the wings of eternity while I blow you kisses from Hades, wallowing in the hatred and insanity that has kept my memory alive. I think it all went downhill for me either upon having my first taste of whiskey, sticking it into pussy, or reading the dismal The World as Will and Idea. Please ignore all that I have said above, for I’ve put forth these terrible words while in a state of absolute sobriety. All my other writings were straight from intoxicated hands. That’s why this is the first time you haven’t been able to read me through to the end. You’re either bored or enraged by this point.

I suppose Ronald and me most closely resembled the hung-over college students, though we are likely 20 years too old – 20 years too mortified and leather-faced with age to truly qualify as hung-over college students. After all, we’ve been out of school for quite a while. At least we stood for what we were, even if there was no label for us. Not a stick figure out there offered a smile that wasn’t really ours. When we smiled, we really smiled, but usually our smiles don’t last long before exploding into laughter.

“Johnny, table for 2.”

And then we were seated, escorted past the “Wait to be Seated Sign,” led to a to a red, vinyl-coated booth with cushions filled with yellowing, soft foam poking out of the seams. But we couldn’t just plop our asses down behind the chipped, Formica table, for the tattooed busboy with matted, curly hair and body odor was still sopping off the table and seats with a soaking, dirty rag, leaving streaks of moisture, crumbs, and the unknown particles of Sunday breakfast there to dry. Nevertheless, when the busboy and his tub of filthy, clattering dishes and dripping rags left the scene, I bent my knees and slid into the booth, and so did Ronald. I felt the crumbs under my ass right before the wetness of the rag streaks bit through my shorts.

Ronald grinned like a stick figure. “You just get water up your ass too?”

“Yep.”

The waitress handed us our greasy, laminated menus.

We snatched them up and unfolded.

“What can I get you boys to drink?”

“I’ll have the all-you-can-drink-champagne.”

The waitress. That waitress. Her arms were already akimbo. She was chomping her gum and smirking. Her full round tits belied the lines in her face and her bad teeth, yellow, gapped, and her full, round tits! They just proudly stood out in space, THERE, intentionally, as if tempting our faces with the large thumb-sized nipples trying to bite through all the fabric. At such moments a man gets a glimpse of his self-destruction. He is compelled by the fantasy of just ripping her shirt apart, latching onto a nipple, working her panties down, driving it into the wetness, and ejaculating. An old face and bad teeth don’t dissuade him when she has nice tits. Such lustful promptings lead to stick figure stickers on the back of his well-polished SUV. Hypnotism, take a nipple and suckle, for I am the goddess of love, god of war, plague of destruction and rejoicing, lust, want, wont, hope, orgasm, swallowing, sucking, g-spot, dirty fingers, hysterical laughter, cigarettes, shots of Jack Daniels, unconsciousness. 

“Sorry sugar, we don’t have champagne. Wish I could get you some.”

“I’ll have a House Chardonnay.”

“Johnny, It’s only 9:30am!” Laughed Ronald.

“Chardonnay it is. Guess last night’s party isn’t over yet.”

“No kidding. I’ll have an apple juice.”

“Large or small? Large is only 20 cents more.”

“In that case, I’ll spend the extra 20 cents!”

“Know what you want to eat?”

“I’ll have 3 poached eggs.”

“I’ll have the Big Rambler Special.”

And so we ate, and I drank…

“Ronald, you going to eat the rest of you bacon?”

“Nope. Have it.”

“How about that extra plate of hash browns?”

“They’re yours.”

“I’ll have another House Chardonnay!”

“Another?”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t that your 5^th?”

“I’m not counting.”

“Think you should slow down, Sugar?”

“No.”

“Customer’s always wins.”

“Johnny, you’re about to fall out of your booth. You aren’t going to be able to walk out of here.”

“’FUCK YOU!’ I’m having breakfast.”

“Sugar? Another one?”

“No. He’s had enough. Geesh.”

“Fuck You Ronald! I’ll have ONE MORE!”

“Geesh…”

“Coming up!”

FUCK.

MICHAELANGELO.

We are all stick figures, smiling, saving up for the big down payment on our SUV’s, car seats, keep pumping, fucking, no, not fucking, just pumping, wanting, destroying ourselves as fast as our flesh rots. Arthur Shoppenhaur, Nietzsche, Deconstruction, Mother Fucker, Kill, Tear, Eat, Suffer, Destroy, Shit, Piss, pull down your panties and stick your ass in my face, baby. I love you and want to marry you. I’ll be a good HUSBAND. Smiling fucking sticker faces. Sons and daughters of corruption, pain, vice, and loss.

So I finished my poached eggs, ate the rest of Ronald’s plate, and ordered a big piece of “Chocolate Heart Attack.”

I do not pray.

I live each day.

And suffer the laughter.

No stick figure can portray.

Amen and amen.

“I’ll have 3 poached eggs.”

“I’ll have a piece of pie.”

And I did walk out of the place with a belly full of it all, slightly staggering, but with lots of swagger.

“Sorry I yelled at you Ronald.”

“That’s alright. You had too much to drink.”

“Lets go get some cigarettes.”