Dairy of a Madman

They call them WORKS of art for a reason, and frankly, three years after I started it, the work just ain’t forthcoming. So here, then, is the first piece (of what may end up being all) of what I’ve pieced together for a story called Perspectives. Because I’m really proud of bits and pieces of what came out when the muse was still in town, and I think those bits are worthy of sharing.

It is cacophony at its most beautiful, this place. Jarring chainsaw guitars and guttural vocals assault you from the speakers mounted in every corner. The crack of pool balls makes you wince every time you’re not listening to the airy hiss of a freshly opened beer bottle. There’s laughter, of course – the hoarse cackling of old men telling jokes about homosexuals and stories about the ball and chain. Every so often (quite often, honestly), a profanity becomes a louder string of profanity, which then mutates into the sharp room silencer of broken glass on the bar or a table, which in turn becomes the growling scream of police sirens and ambulances and lawyers rubbing their cricket legs together while they count your hard-earned cash and listen to you swear that you were only there for one stupid drink before you went home to the screaming kids and the screaming cow of a wife.

This is one of those moments. Witness the life span:

The birth is a slow and beautiful thing, a masse shot from an expensive hand-made cue. The cue ball shoots hard to the left and, suddenly becoming aware of its rotation and the laws of physics, straightens its path and rolls forward. It traces a slow and lazy arc around the fifteen ball, ignoring the nine and the eleven, and taps the eight, menacing black eight, the hard crack of rock on rock. In a magical transfer of power, the cue stops moving with a sigh, and the eight assumes its path, forward four inches and into the corner pocket, moving across a six-year-old beer stain without a care in the world.

The tall man leaning against the broken pinball machine utters a word under his breath. The winning player whips his head hard toward the tall man, a glint of yellow fluorescent bouncing off of his head as he turns. “What’d you say?”

The tall man grins slightly as he raises his eyes from the newly occupied pocket to meet the lazy eye of the bald man. He repeats the word, louder, a dash of anger in his voice: “Bullshit.”

The doctor slaps the baby, and the moment takes its first breath.

Adolescence and the teen years fly by like they always do. There are words, words that make parents wince and shrug and point at in-laws as the source of learning. There are lies and accusations and threats of punishment. There are nervous breaths and first steps and the pain of teething.

Baby’s first fuck you.

It is in those wonderful steps into adulthood that the moment reveals its true potential, that real snowflake uniqueness that all moments have. There’s something special about the blur of the expensive hand-made cue as it moves from floor toward the tall man’s jaw, about the tall man leaning quickly to one side to avoid the stick, long dirty hair brushing the impromptu weapon as it moves on its way. It’s a slow-motion special, a frozen in memory special — a real Polaroid moment. The butt of the cue continues upward, inertia claiming its ground, and the bearer of the cue falters, arms swinging farther than intended. The tall man snaps immediately back to the ready, poker faced behind blonde wisps.

He’s been waiting for this moment all his life.

At the very least, he’s been waiting since he got cut off at the bar.

If the moment had parents, they would bristle with absurd pride at the connection of fist and throat, gaudily ringed fingers searching for and finding the pronounced Adam’s apple. They would cheer as the moment walked the stage of graduation, hands clapping moronically as gaunt fingers slammed a bald head once, twice, three times into stained green felt, and then a fourth into the recently replaced glass top of the broken pinball machine.

Blood on the pool table marks this day on the calendar. All the tables get together after hours and compare stories.

The moment’s adulthood and middle-age and elder years pass in a blur, as they all do. The best times of its short-life are behind, after all, all over but the funeral and the taxes. More blood, urine from a bladder that loses control, teeth spit out through bitter lips, hearing loss from the kick to the temple and the good eye swollen shut.

Old age can suck. But old age can bring acceptance of dusk, of the coming of night, and the moment feels its time coming to a close. The bald kid with the lazy eye and the neglectful stepfather who fed him beer at ten to forge a bond – he’s on the ground, not moving as much as twitching. The tall man with the acne scars and the bad tattoos and the trail of broken hearts and collarbones a mile long, that man stands and stares at the pulp at his feet. And the crowd has grown quiet, except for the speed metal symphony and one girl crying, sobbing, whimpering.

You might think the silence is shock. You’d be wrong, though, but you’re forgiven for that; you’ve just forgotten where you are.

No, this isn’t shock. This is respect, recognition of the passing of a moment.

Gently into the good night it goes, pausing at the door to say hello to the burly policemen, mindful of sudden moves. Those mace cans are filled with nasty stuff.

Also, because this is based on a real incident in my bar. So, needless to say, ©2005 Insomniactive Productions, and if you copy this without my permission or steal it and claim it as your own, I will release the marmosets on your smallest child.

Unless you’re Warren Ellis or Chuck Palahniuk, in which case, a signed copy of my work as yours will suffice.