This is a story that I must tell
About a jive ass bitch who put me in jail
While I sat in my cell funky and blue
I decided to drop that nasty bitch a line or two…
Dear Bitch…
Rudy Ray Moore
If you ever see a man in a white lab coat, clip on Van Dyke beard and a meerschaum pipe dangling from his lower lip getting
hot keppy from some zaftig respondent the fact that he is intently checking
boxes on a university requisitioned clip board is a testament not to the
exigencies of going middle age crazy, but to his overflowing spirit of inquiry.
I assure you madam that the man in question is not some philandering
guttersnipe, but a true man of science willing to be fluffed for the sake of
Mankind and will hopefully invent a pill that converts his Wheatina to half the
calories, half the sodium and if things go as planned a hint of peach.
A clever ruse you say, Skepticles? Do you
sense a MacGuffin in our protagonist’s scenario? Is the jig up for our man
because we know he is hiding something? Is the real red herring his portrayal
of Joe Everyman at the existential crossroad or does it belong to the role of
the zaftig respondent who’s clearly a Yidlach from the suburbs and would never
fellate our man even if it would result in the triumph of world peace. It
is clear Herr Doctor is grappling with sinister forces. Why else would he
concoct a Goldbergian contraption of deceit just to get some sooky-sooky out of
wedlock? Could it be something deeper that is propelling him to these depths?
Perhaps we are witnessing the ultimate cage match between Apollo and Dionysius?
Apollo, the peoples champ, Dionysius the creative, rogue, improviser in a one
fall, no time limit struggle for our hero’s raison d’etre. Or could it be the
jive ass bitch Mr. Moore so contemptuously refers to in the opening verse? Who
is this bitch that makes mortals assume the position, conquerors surf in its
viscous wake, action heroes shit the bed and the morally wanton wear a drool
cup? The Bitch in question is none other than that Jones crushing, marrow
sucking, ho, Old Age. A bitch so unrelenting that men are forced to deny it
with a lethal cocktail of cheap roadsters and bad toupees. And if you’ve ever
seen my advancing decrepitude you’ll know who contrived this little piece of
bunko in the first place. What a bitch!
Mix flat feet,
nearsightedness, a general yellowing of the extremities, inchoate scaliness,
unpredictable flatulence, sporadic tumescence, nascent liver spots and a
sharpened sense of existential dread, and you have a recipe for doing a
cannonball off of the Smithfield Street Bridge. My recent promotion to the rank
of senior has skewed my sensibilities to the point that when the clerk at the
7-11 tells me to have a good one I’m thinking bowel movement. For I am a man
who has just turned 60 and boy is my prostate tired! Couple that with the stacks
of entreaties that appear at my door from the American Association of Retired
Persons and you would think I’m ready for early check in at Forest Lawn. I’ll
never forget that fateful day rolling out of bed and immediately pulling a
hamstring…in my cock! And no, Ben-Gay is not an aphrodisiac. But 60 is sobering
as my wife reminded me recently as I lay in bed after doing my manly chores “Honey
I just found a couple of gray pubic hairs.” If that’s not a rally killer I don’t
know what is. That’s why I use Just For Men. In 5 minutes I’m back on the set.
Also never ever
think watching you and your betrothed knock boots is a good idea unless a
lobotomy or the burning of retinas is planned afterward. I assure you it is a
sight that only sadistic dictators from 3rd world countries would
enjoy. It was our usual Saturday night. I had just washed down a fistful of
Viagra I scored from my Mexican dealer Dirty Sanchez. He’s a former gigolo with
a shit eating grin, but his real talent is having Poke at 3 o’clock in the
morning especially when you’re drooling over some little hard belly you just
picked up at the Toot and Scoot and your Johnson needs a little cantilevering.
Or so I like to fantasize about when I’m sucking carbon monoxide fumes in the
alimentary canal known as The Liberty Tunnel. Anyway wifey strolls into the den
in her sexiest all access nightie. Busty Midget Cockriders is on the tube and I’m settling in for a
night of middle age grab-ass. We’re going at it pretty good. My eyes are closed
so I can pretend that I’m 25 again balling like the headliner in a Tijuana
after hours joint. Ten minutes later my 60-year-old synapses are not firing like
they used to and my mind begins to wander. Suddenly I’m furious with my broker
for not getting me out of some very leaky tax shelters. Five more minutes pass
and now I’m pushing a dresser across the floor in my mother in law’s living
room. Not that I’m having any trouble moving the dresser which is an antique
and will be bequiefed to us after that battle-ax takes the permanent cure, but
it is a tad heavy so I open my eyes to see if my cousin Stu is around to help.
Instead of Stu I see reflected in the bedroom door mirror something that looks
like two blobs fighting to the death or a couple of freight trains performing
sixty-nine. Could this actually be me the once young and virile player who made
all the bitches moan and groan summarily reduced to a pasty-faced, slack-jawed,
fur matted gob? Death, be my name!
How do we deal with the inevitable, the
ephemeral and the evanescent? The flesh will always fail us and yet we spend
most of our days trying to triumph over it. The fact that someday we will be no
more, that oblivion is our last stop, fetishizes this quest for physical
perfection. It is a fact our minds cannot wrap around and we over compensate
for it by worshipping the thinnest patina of human existence. An epidemic of
plastic surgery, tattooing, piercing, liposuction and breast implantation are
clear indicators of a culture not willing to embrace this salient fact. We are
so worried of our eventual return to nothingness that we erect totems to
nothingness to stanch this great fear. Howard Stern and Reality TV have
fomented this puerile infatuation with the physical. For years Stern has
championed breast implant surgeries with such unbridled idolatry it is no
wonder we see high school hotties saving their milk money for a new pair.
“I want to look like Ke$ha!” cried the Sorry
Somnambulist on the reality show “I Want to Have A Famous Face”. Do we really
need two let alone one talentless blob claiming to be Ke$ha? And yet the show never goes wanting for
sad sacks desperate to create a culturally accepted look for themselves. How
strange is it that most of us have no interest in interior makeovers for
sculpting our outward appearance has always been the staple of a capitalist
system that lends little credence to the other? Is it perhaps that the rewards
are too puny to be bothered with? Modern Life has become the great enabler.
You see this disintegration everywhere. Wit
has given way to the scatology of modern pop culture. Serious discourse has
died and been replaced by the blathering of self-aggrandizing nitwits. Popular
music is as disposable as Tic Tacs. Movies are either remakes or sequels. All
of this sameness reduces a culture to a bunch of baby sparrows craning their
necks to receive a sadly reconstituted worm. We don’t care what it is as long
as we are fed something. There was a time when great thinkers could draw a
crowd like today’s pop icons. William James would speak at Chautauqua Institute
in the early 20th century often drawing crowds of 1500 to listen to
him speak on the quirky subject of Pragmatism. The speeches were collated into
a book of the same name. Often obtuse even to the seasoned reader can you imagine
paying money to hear him speak live?
At my 60th birthday party my 25-year-old
daughter tells me that she is embarrassed by my youthful exuberance. My 21-year-old son musters a hug
reminiscent of the kind you give a relative reeking of impending death. My wife
pats me on the head while surreptitiously removing a fifty from my wallet. My
mother feigns pride in her son just before she begs him to clip the yellowed,
thickened nails on her arthritic feet. I can still see the nail from the big
toe sailing across the room, jettisoned by the blades of the shears the camera
following it in one long tracking shot. The flying shard cuts the air like a
whirring Chinese star hitting the far bedroom wall and sliding down behind the
bureau to the wooden planks below settling forever into a forgotten ball of
hair and dust. What a bitch.
Jeff Schneider is currently
working on a diaper-changing table for seniors.
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