The LumpenBlog!

We Go Up to Enforce the Man-Slave Code

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 12:00:00 EST

by Desmond Cork

Hey cats. Well maybe you remember? Or maybe you could read about it here where I tell how Mrs. Liang — my next door neighbor who's short but has this happening rack? How Mrs. Liang came into my apartment and instead of wearing shiny stuff and making me do stuff on her like normal?

Instead she was wearing kind of a fluffy dress (still with these little deer boots that make a guy kind of jolt in his sevens or in his levi's if he's on a scholarship) and she looked all shredded and she was asking me for my help and not the kind of usual help with a body part? But the kind of help you might ask a stranger for if he looked helpy and you were looking for where you parked but couldn't remember.

I said ok I'll help so we got into a cab and drove to the jailhouse here in Belverton so we could pick up Mr. Liang Mrs. Liang's husband who just got out of jail by blowing the warden (no kidding cats he blew the warden). He was in jail because he tapped his toe at a senator or because he sold fake copies of the Moniker's Tales or something else I don't remember but like I said you can read about it here.

Anyway when we were in the cab coming from the jailhouse Mr. Liang looked pretty beat cats. Like his hair was all down in his face and his eyes kept closing longer than a blink but he still had time to make fun of me. First he was mad because I was there and then he said I couldn't help Mrs. Liang because I'm too addicted to the taste of pure babe namely the taste of Mrs. Liang. So then he started to laugh and she started to laugh and it got kind of lonely cats.

But when Mrs. Liang saw that I wasn't feeling so hot about it she reached over and grabbed my hand and said, "awwwwww Dessy we just playing."

And Mr. Liang who was still laughing said, "Oh yes. We playing. Nothing personal asstard." Then he laughed again really loud like he wanted to make sure I got it.

I kind of sniffled I think and then Mrs. Liang said, "Oh yes, the taste of pure babe. That is why we are all here."

I was pretty grateful she said that 'cause at least it made Mr. Liang stop laughing.

"I believe that my cousin April has resorted to force to make a man her slave. The Code says you may only make a man your slave by making him crave your taste."

Then Mr. Liang moaned a little. "The Code," he said and like I said he was kind of moaning. "Not the froochi Code again. Goddammit Amy" — Mrs. Liang's first name is Amy cats — "not again with the froochi Code!"

"Code enforcement is how they call a bitch," Mrs. Liang sighed. "But we must do it. I do not have to tell you what evil the world has been spared because of the Code."

Mr. Liang made a little sound in the dark that might have been a chuckle? Or it might have been a sob.

"We cannot depend upon the government to do this for us," she said some more. "We are like those little volunteer fire brigades they had in those small wural towns. Ruwal towns. RUR-UHL towns. In those small towns where the big strong girls belonged to the volunteer fire brigade and pulled the hair out of the scrawny bitches who set the fires."

Mrs. Liang kept talking about ye olde volunteer fire brigade cats but I couldn't really hear 'cause I was like staring out the window and sometimes that's cool 'cause out car windows is a whole other world cats and someday I might write an ebook about it.

See the road outside suddenly changed and it was dark all the lights from Belverton were gone now 'cause the cab kept going up this road that went into the woods and the trees closed in all around the road that the cab was on.

And the road kept going up and up and the trees and the rocks and things looked kind of like it looks at the start of that old Clint movie where some hot babe who's into him is narfing off all the other hot babes who are into him and at the start of the movie the camera is just sort of flying along following this road as it goes along this shore someplace.

The road we were on? It looked kind of like that cats except that there was no shore and we were going up and up instead like in Clint's movies where they're pretty much staying flat.

Mr. Liang was sort of still moaning about ye olde code and Mrs. Liang wasn't saying anything back and then she says to me that the reason she needs me to come along is that she needs a big strong man on her team.

Cool yeah?

She said that then she put her arms around my arm where my muscle would be if I pumped the way a babe might do with her boy when they went into a diner after doing something late.

Then she said. "You have stamina. Not like Mr. Liang, who needs a nap after blowing one jailkeeper."

Mr. Liang sort of moaned but it was also sort of like a growl, yeah? Like he thought he might ralph on the cab floor any second.

"It is not my fault!" he moaned. Or maybe it was a growl. "It is the American system of so-called justice."

It was quiet for a second then he says: "I will content myself with being the brains of this operation."

There was this long pause cats and I could feel Mrs. Liang who was holding my hand? I could feel her squeeze it hard cats like she was wanting to break my fingers for a sec. Then she let go of the hand and it disappeared in the dark.

"Now," said Mr. Liang in his low growly voice, "what do we think will gratify April, hm? What will she take in exchange for not breaking the Code? We need to make her an off—"

And like right then he stopped talking cats and from his side of the cab I could hear this like gruesome little squeak and gurgle, yeah? And then Mrs. Liang did this little chuckle.

"All right," says Mr. Liang, and then he goes into this coughing fit cats like he just swallowed a bug.

"I will not be the brains," he says. "I will be the consultant? I will consult? Is that the right thing to say? Hm? The right thing? Are you happy with that?"

"Quite," says Mrs. Liang and she takes my hand again cats and rubs her thumb against my fingers like a girlfriend. "Just remember to keep it that way. Me thinking, Dessy lifting and maybe pushing, and you ... consulting."

"You know ..." says Mr. Liang, "I would not permit you to speak to me with such fructose if I was drunk or I had my gun. You know that, do you not?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Liang. "But you are neither drunk nor armed. You are just an old man who needs a nap."

There was a long pause cats then Mr. Liang said: "And an excedrin."

It was quiet for a minute cats while I looked outside to see the Clinty road going up the mountain and pretty soon I hear this snoring from the other side of the cab and Mrs. Liang goes "Shhhhh ..." in my ear. So I guess Mr. Liang was getting the ol' nap after all cats.

So Mrs. Liang takes my hand and moves it over to her thigh and I guess in the dark she kind of already moved her dress up? Yeah? So the skin was like right there and ready.

"I dunno Mrs. L," I said. "If we're gonna John Wayne the ol' April babe? Yuh? I'm thinkin maybe I shouldn't get drunk on your stuff."

Mrs. Liang didn't say anything but she kind of moved my hand higher up on her thigh which by the way has this muscle in it from these exercises she does that can really be hard on a dude's neck sometimes.

"Why're we huntin down the April babe anyhow?" I asked sort of to take my mind off the ol' muscle-thigh. "How'd she break the code and I mean is she like breaking it right this sec?"

Mrs. Liang put my hand back on my own leg. It was tray quiet por minuto cats while we listened to Mr. Liang snore and smelled ye ol' cab driver who maybe was on his third shift sans bath.

Then Mrs. Liang says, "Sometimes a girl goes rogue. And then it's up to the Code-loving, or Code-admiring ladies to take her down like a tramp virgin."

Whoa.

"The worst case on the official record," said Mrs. Liang, "was the time this woman named Moira Ridley made a local film student her pleasure slave by forcing him to listen to Bobby Van sing Question Me an Answer repeatedly. For three hours."

"So Mrs. Liang," I said, "I guess you're saying that having some cat listen to songs is using force?"

"Not any songs. Bacharach and David songs. Question Me an Answer, The World is a Circle, Close to You."

"Huh, well, okay, so like not to put those cats down or anything but I'm a rock scholar and even I never heard of their tunes. Are they techno?"

Then she sort of hissed cats or maybe you would think it's a hiss because you don't know her but like I do know her? So I know it's a laugh.

"Well, April improved on that technique," she said. "We managed to keep it out of the official record, but April experimented on homeless men who fell into her trap by asking for something 'hot to eat.' She discovered she could reproduce the Van/Bacharach/David Effect by forcing them to listen to James Taylor sing Christmas carols for just half an hour."

She gasped a little cats because I think she could feel me flinch. Then she said: "It was how she first got interested in working at Starbucks."

"She works at Starbucks as like one of those barristers?"

"She's lucky she can work anywhere at all. The judge has only allowed her to go out without the ankle monitor for about a year now. You see she's still ... what do you call it here ... awaiting trial on kidnapping charges. Although I have to say I am very disappointed in how long her case is taking to come up."

She stopped like it was my turn to talk cats which I hate when I can't think of stuff so I just said, "Kidnapping. Holy."

"And the judge ..." she said, "the judge is mysteriously mouse-like around April, you know?"

"Whoa. You think that means she, you know, you think —"

"Mmmm-hmmmmm ... that is why he is always so minty and cologned in the courtroom. That is why he keeps calling her Mistress Defendant."

Then Mr. Liang who was like happily snoring away in the other part of the cab snorts and kind of mumbles, "No bush! No bush April!" Which I guess means he knows her cats because I noticed the same thing about her that time we played North Drive.

Then he started snoring again and Mrs. Liang giggled. But I was hot on the ol' kidnapping thing.

"So this April what'd she do Mrs. L? Did she like take some tyke from a mall?"

"Do not be an ass," Mrs. Liang said - which is okay cats cause I'm pretty sure she meant the donkey kind of ass — "A few years ago pictures surfaced on the Internet. Pictures of an accountant handcuffed beneath her desk. The FBI got a warrant and raided while he was on his leash in the men's room."

See cats I'm starting to get this thought that this April is pretty dead dangerous.

"She used to work in HR," Mrs. Liang said.

Then her hand grabbed my chin and turned my face to her.

"There are other things you must know about April before we confront her, Desmond. First, she is the mother of all lies. And she will mix the truth with lies to confuse us. You must not listen to her, do you hear me, boy?"

And it didn't end there, cats. Mrs. Liang had a butt-load of other stuff to tell and it all came out like the list of shows on FEARNet.

I guess or according to Mrs. Liang this April always wears leather under her clothes with a little piece cut out where the crotch is supposed to go.

She's on that SuicideGirl's site with the nickname Pyt Belle, and the thing? Like the main thing she wants to achieve in her life is to go pink which I'm not really sure what that means except it sounds girly and she also wants to have a dude harem in her basement.

And um. Oh yeah back in the 90s (or 1999) she was arrested for running this man-fighting ring.

"Man-fighting Mrs. L?"

"In basements all across northern California."

"So why are we up to this like this confronting part now, yeah?"

"What are you talking about, love-toy?"

"I mean if she's been doing this for years then like why are we coming down on her now?"

"Hm!" Mrs. Liang said, like she didn't think I could think of things like that. "Well, April swore to me that she was giving up the use of force and would from now on obey the Code, but after our little game of North Drive it seemed to me she almost confess to wanting to take a poor man by force and lock him in her home."

That seemed about right cats cause like if you remember that time we played North Drive you might also remember how much April was into that website InHomePrisons.com.

Mrs. Liang kept talking cats. "Right after that day I hacked into April's gmail account."

"You can do that?"
"It's easy. Her password for everything is 'grrrrl74.' I found some incriminating correspondence between April and a Starbucks colleague named Shakima."

Right then the cab stopped and we all kind of jumped a little bit forward the way things jump when a car stops.

"Wubba," said Mr. Liang.

"We're here," said the cabbie. "You want me to pull up the drive?"

"No, no," said Mrs. Liang.

"No?" said Mr. Liang kind of looking at Mrs. Liang but nobody was really paying attention except me.

"Stay here at the curb," Mrs. Liang said. "We'll walk up the drive. If she sees a strange car pull in she may just go into her panic room."

I was pretty sure she was right cats because they made a movie once called Panic Room? And that's what the lady did in it.
Copyright 2007 Dan Roentsch

Sex in the hip, modern sense

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 12:00:00 EST

by Barry Fest

Hello my darling darlings. (I apologize for the wanton, profligate, nay promiscuous familiarity, but I have been affecting iconoclasm of late and am now given to routine sarcasm.)

If you have been following my story, then you know that for the past year or so I have been in exile from my home. The imposer of said exile is my wife, Dr. Wharton-Stone.

(Writing that last sentence has reminded me that I need to call her. I have been apprised casually -- by our mutual friend and accountant, Chili Nigro -- that Dr. Wharton-Stone and her entourage were leaving town to escape the chilly Belverton Autumn, and I thought I might get a few nostalgic nights' sleep in my own bed.)

I have been making shift abode-wise here, in my office at the Belverton University Press, where I toil in the daytime as executive editor. Also during said exile, I have been the object of desire of one Racine, the Belverton University Dean of Intercourse. A provocative woman who has made my libido her own, personal toy. I have been devising a fictive work - an alibi, if you will - for an erotic conjunction with said Dean. My plan is a simple one: gratify my desire in the flowering pink dermis of Dean Racine, and lie about it to my wife.

To make this lie the very best fictive work possible, I have enlisted the aid of Mike, a 55 year-old Starbucks barista and former New York literary agent. Mike has given me a great deal of his time, but recently we have been on the "outs," particularly after I revealed to him my plan to tell my wife the alibi myself. Mike is opposed on principle to the self-telling of fictive works, and has insisted that I submit my effort to professional lie-tellers in the Belverton area.

I have elected not to do so, owing to the time it would take and the notorious insistence of professional lie-tellers on giving notes to the authors of fictive works.

But Mike was adamant. "Why Junior, I wouldn't pay four bits for a self-told fictive work," he grumped at our last meeting.

Whilst musing over this dilemma in the solitude of my office, I found myself the object of an attack by none other than the Texan president of these Gorgeous States. Somehow, the president caught wind of my intention to cheat and lie about it, and denounced me in a national press conference to stunned reporters who -- in spite of the scientifically-proven popularity of this blog -- reacted as if they had never heard my name. A moment later I was visited by two FBI agents - the avuncular, male Cubby and the cold-eyed female Slund.

Both wore sensible shoes.

When last I wrote, Cubby and Slund were seated in front of my desk, grilling me. Slund, smoking a long series of unfiltered cigarettes, and Cubby, smiling and attempting to convince me that physical affection is a poor foundation upon which to build a male-female "relationship." (I believe that is still the vogue term).

Slund, breast-festooned but belligerent, now joined Cubby in his paean to the platonic.

"But getting back to the point," she said, apparently recalling me from some airy tangent of my creation or theirs, "have you had any non-erotic experiences? With this Dean of Intercourse, I mean. She wasn't born a Dean of Intercourse. She must have been a real person with real feelings at some point. Say, from birth until she found herself unable to fit in, and learned that boys would pay more attention if she brought them a superficial kind of joy."

She drew on her cigarette, as if it were my turn to speak. But it was a ruse. No sooner had I opened my mouth to reply than she continued.

"What about the crossword puzzle fantasy Agent Cubby described?" she asked. "Or the beach fantasy? Have you ever taken the time to walk on the beach with a lady, holding hands? Perhaps some children run by giggling and flying a kite, A kite with a streaming paper tail. And the two of you just watch them. Happy, but with a teary kind of wonder at the miracle of life and sunshine."

I opened my mouth to reply again, and again I was too slow.

"Because, you know," she said, "children are the future of our nation."

"It takes a village to raise a child," injected Cubby.

"An entire village," added Slund.

These words conjured a startling image in my mind; an image of a horde of hicks pointing sagely at a green slate held by a toddler in baggy short pants. I was tempted to dwell upon it, but I resisted and focused instead on answering Agent Slund's question.

"Hmm ..." I said, as is my wont in a ponder, "I don't believe I ever have indulged the puzzle fantasy ... or the beach one ... or the villagers one ..."

"Whoops!" said Cubby. "The village with the child isn't exactly a fantasy. It's more of a ..."

"Pragmatic expectation," finished Slund.

"We really think you should give one of those fantasies a shot," smiled Cubby. "That or a similar non-tactile fantasy would really help us close the book on this little fix you've gotten yourself into."

"Really? Wholly non-tact-"

"And that's the message we've been assigned to bring you," he said. "It's what the president wants you to know. Lookit. We all know marriages break up sometimes. A good, wholesome person like yourself runs into a secular progressive with an eye for the genitalia and bang! Next thing you know you've had a weekend of drunken humping. Let's do a thought experiment. Now, in this experiment a guy a lot like you - working hard, no recent hugs from Mrs. Fest - goes off to Vegas, gets drunk, and gets married to a showgirl in one of those little vanity churches. Filthy, from a Saddleback Church point-of-view, but the way this guy sees it, he's being perfectly loving and caring. Hey. We get it. It's not like this is Northern Ireland."

I was trying to picture what he meant by that when he continued.

"And as for non-tactile ... well, let's say that you meet the right woman, you do some puzzle fantasy, some beach fantasy, and maybe you hold hands."

"Hold - um ... "

"Hands can be erotic," he asserted with a gravity so sudden I could not help but doubt its sincerity.

"Let's face it, Fest," said Slund, staring at the empty space three inches in front of the top edge of my desk, "you know as well as we do that this is in your own best interest."

"It is?"

"Of course," she said, sucking her cigarette slowly and looking no higher than my tie. "One day you'll be confined to an iron lung or hospital bed."

"Happens to everyone," chimed in Cubby. "And when it does you don't want to have to give up sex, do you?"

"Sex?"

"Sex in the hip, modern sense," said Cubby. "The sense where there's no touching. That's why we think you should come up with a skin-independent strategy for romance now, Barry. Think about it - " he leaned forward suddenly. "Let's say you're giving the Dean of Intercourse these hourlong orgasms all the cougars are wanting now that they've dumped the first husband. Let's say you're giving them to her on a regular schedule, so they don't interfere with her other empowerment activities. And let's say she loves your technique, and you love it that she loves it, and all is happy here in Campusville. Then just when you're thinking nothing can go wrong, boom! You get hit by a crane or your elevator crashes and you end up in traction. No more hourlong consortiums for the Dean of Intercourse, unless ..."

"Unless?"

"Unless she can find some young teacher here at the university, or some staff physician - maybe yours - to take your place in the cougar-thrilling department. But, but, you're right, she'll at least be there when you've recovered enough to get back in the saddle. Unless ... "

"You get the point, don't you, Fest?" asked Slund. "Start planning for your future as an invalid. Start preparing for it now and maybe you can save yourself some humiliation and heartache while you lie there with nothing better to do than stare at a gameshow and blow your nose and remember the little squeals you'll never hear again."

"But doesn't it seem," I began, "Doesn't it seem, in that situation, that I would have no choice at all?"

"The puzzle, Barry!" Cubby exhorted. "Get that crossword-puzzle routine down and as long as you're conscious, you'll have it to remember and re-enact."

"Permit me to interject," I said. "You said before ... I know you said that according to the crossword puzzle narrative I'm allowed to bite her gently on the neck."

"That's right."

"How would I manage such a maneuver in an iron lung?"

Slund waved the smoke away from her face. "So she has to push the mirror away and bend over," she coughed. "Use your imagination."

"Actually, it's ideal," smiled Cubby. "You can't do a crossword puzzle all by yourself if you're convalescing - "

"Well - "

"Big convalescing," Cubby amended. "Like if you have third degree burns over more than eighty percent of your body from trying to swim across lava, or if both your arms and all your fingers have been crushed in a vicious mugging. You can't work the pencil yourself, so your better half works it for you. Like in the old days."

"Hm," I said. "That plan sounds rather worked-out. As if you'd thought of every intricacy in advance."

"Well," said Cubby, with more mirth than a smile might evidence but less than a laugh might, "this has come up a lot in the last eight years, Barry. A lot more than you might think."

"That's right, Fest," lectured Slund. "There's nothing about the second-hand yuppie fantasy that says the bed you do the crossword puzzle in can't be a hospital bed."

"Whoa," said Cubby, losing his smile and turning again to Slund. "There it is again. The snide tone."

"Snide?"

"Yeah. What's with the 'second-hand' stuff, Slundy? It's like suddenly you don't want to believe in the crossword puzzle fantasy anymore."

"I want to believe! It's you who's behaving as if something's wrong with second-hand items," said Slund. "Personally, I love used things."

She looked over to me as if seeking an endorsement. I could feel my head bobbing up and down.

"Indeed," I said. "How can one know if an item is any good unless it has been owned first by someone else? It is the very ideology of antiquing."

Slund widened her eyes at Cubby while stabbing an index finger in my direction. "Exactly!" she exclaimed.

I felt a sense of winning, victory, nay triumph at this sudden alliance forged with Bad Cop. But an alliance with Bad Cop has its disadvantages; viz., the irritation of Good Cop.

"Well, Barry," said the chastened Cubby. "You should know that the fictive work you've been writing and re-writing and probably even rehearsing ..." he paused here for a moment to search my face with his eyes," ... that fictive work is out, even if you self-tell."

Self-tell?

Those last words were rivets in my consciousness. Only slowly did it occur to me why. Yes, the words "fictive work" and "self-tell" seemed distinctly, positively, nay outrageously out-of-place in the argot of the two federales. But these were not unfamiliar terms of art to me. I had heard the terminology before, and often, from Mike the Barista. Mike, the former literary agent and my former collaborator cum editor.

They were preparing to leave. Cubby flipped his notebook shut and tucked it into his jacket. Slund ground the last half-inch of her cigarette into my Persianesque rug and reached for the flat valise beneath her chair.

I could resist no longer. As they rose to go, the man inside me, the Americano, the scion of generations of Fests who had proclaimed "don't tread on me," or, to be precise, don't tread on me often, felt rise an animating ire.

It made me stand. It made me speak.

"H-halt," I stammered. I was shaking with my own gall. The two agents turned to me.

"Malt what?" asked Slund.

"You said 'self-tell,'" I said to Cubby. He looked vacant.

His eyes scanned my face and then stopped abruptly, as if he could see his secrets -- or one of them -- written on my lower eyelids.

He no longer smiled.

"What is that supposed to mean, Mr. Fest?" interrupted Slund. "What are you inferring from those remarks?" She twisted her head on its axis and looked at Cubby without moving her eyes. "From those careless remarks?"

I was suffering the courage of the already-damned. "What I infer," I braved, bolded, nay couraged, "is that you two agents of the federal government have been surveiling this very office. Or perhaps even Starbucks. Perhaps," I mused, "you surveil all Starbucks."

Cubby began to sputter. He started to speak, then at the last moment turned to Slund, who fixed him with her button-eyes gaze. Yes, fixed him, snugly, the way a harpoon might fix a tuna. Cubby swallowed and shrugged.

Slund turned to me. "Watch the tone, skel," she said. "We can still run you in."

I swallowed. "Run me -- ?"

"Don't worry, Barry," said Cubby. He had his old smile back, which I confess I found reassuring after the skel-talk of his partner. "We're not bugging your office or Starbucks or anyplace else. For one thing, it's against the law, and for another, well ..."

"You're dull," said Slund.

"Sorry," said Cubby. "Agents don't like to talk about it much, but when it comes to taking a surveillance assignment we're pretty picky about who it is we have to listen to for hours on end, and, well, after you've listened to a bunch of guys talk about whacking out another bunch of guys, listening to you talk for months about some lie you want to tell your wife so you can have sex with a colleague is ... well ..."

"It's dull," said Slund.

"All that happened, Barry, is that somebody came forward," said Cubby. "Not a bad person. Not a rat fink. Just a concerned citizen. Nobody we had to, you know --"

"Beat with a rubber hose," injected Slund.

"Just somebody the President knew from the old days, somebody who'd worked with him on his memoirs of owning a baseball team. The President heard his story -- your story -- and took a special interest. And now that you've been warned -"

"- You've been warned," finished Slund. "Don't make us come back here with the local authorities."

Cubby stuck out his hand for me to shake, as if putting the period on the end of Slund's threat. I shook it resignedly, already wondering whom I might know who knew in turn the president of these Robust States.

I considered offering my hand to Agent Slund, but as I made a nascent motion to do so she fixed me again with a forbidding stare, dropping my hand to my side like the shards of an exploded skeet.

They left. I followed them to the door, half expecting the fraternal Cubby to turn to me one last time and smile, but it was not to be. All I had was the backs of their heads all the way down the deserted hallway to the front door.

I stepped back into my office. The deserted hallway. I looked at my watch. Five minutes past six. I sat down in the comfortable chair, still warm from throbbing bottom of Agent Slund.

I could not quell my fulminating thoughts; speculations on the identity of the so-called "concerned citizen" who, as the street-smart pundits phrase it, ratted me out to the man. Of course, it did not escape my considerations that Slund and Cubby were dissembling; that they had, in fact, used nanotechnology (or something else beyond the ken of intellectuals) to eavesdrop on every university press in America.

I frowned. My rectum clenched like a pugilist's fist. If they were lying about eavesdropping, then, perhaps, it was all a lie. Perhaps, far from finding my amorous adventures dull, they found them arousing, exciting, nay intriguing. Perhaps ...

I sighed.

Of course the FBI was not surveilling my office. Who else, besides myself and Mike and the Dean of Intercourse -- the ravishing, anti-establishment Racine -- even knew of the plan? Aside from all of the people who read this blog, that is. Does the FBI read this blog? And if it does, why would Cubby confect a "concerned citizen" with which to mislead me?

Perhaps ... I thought ... Perhaps I am mistaken. A number of our conversations were had in the very commerce-tumescent Starbucks that employs Mike, and where he is surrounded by his fellow baristas, students pretending to be freelance writers, and loud men on cellphones. What about that girl ... what is her name? April. Yes, April. The barista with the sadistic laugh and the predatory appetite for sexual gratification?

No, she couldn't be a concerned citizen.

Let's see. Someone who helped the President with his memoirs. Who --

Forgive me if my deliberations seem to have been unbearably long for what must have been for you, the reader of this text, an almost immediate surmise; to wit, that the traitor in my company was none other than my confidante, Mike the Barista! Mike! My friend, my ... dare I think it ... my less-educated, same-sex soul-mate?

But as I relived our last tete-a-tete, I recalled a certain, shall we say, judgmentalism leaping from Mike's tone and temperament. A kind of distancing, as they say in horserace politics. He clearly did not approve of my contemplated shennanigans, even as he was attempting to help me make them real.

The epiphany roiled me. I balled my hand into a thing that could punch. I looked down at the arm to which that hand was attached and I knew that, were it not for the adiposity of my dermis, I would have seen veins dilate. And with that knowledge came the mental image of Mike's strangulation at the hands of beefy Sicilians.

I am a civilized man, but the image left me warm as Xmas.
Copyright 2007 Dan Roentsch

The boy-loving hussy

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:00:00 EST

by Nefertiti Snorkjutt

Well, all-, hm. Well, we got to Memphis's Motel Sugartime at last, after a rather, well, crazy adventure trying to pick up our luggage. I was a little rough with Ervin, on account of his being, um, drowsy as we climbed into the back of our cab.

"Hands off, Snorkjutt!" he howled at least twice.

A tight slap across the mouth told him his personal space was mine until further notice.

Now he's asleep, cuffed to his little bed (we sometimes play "Midnight Run" while on the road), and I'm sitting here at the little desk in my shiny-strapped jammies, uploading the fourth and final piece of my script for Perp & Vic: Men are Bastards Unit, the most successful cop show in the history of television I almost said, um, you know, the heck with it but then I realized that if I could just get this one last piece up to the, um, well, posted it would be the first time I managed to put a whole episode on the Internet and not just an excerpt, you know?

I got a text message from my agent - Allison Muffplug - saying she hoped I wasn't planning to do that, since she stumbled across my first three uploads and was a little, um, concerned, I guess you could say.

This was the message that I got on my little flippy-texty phone:

hey
hope allz well
saw p&v epzod on net
waddup widdat?
:-)

I was slightly annoyed and it had been three days since the last time I had been pl-, well, gratified by a groveling man with no options left, so I sent her this back:

f off biotch
:-)

Later, after Ervin staggered up off his knees and collapsed on his bed, I noticed I'd gotten this from Allison:

np
but no more
k?

I was feeling, well, yummy is I guess the right word, as I was still on my back with my legs up, so I just ignored that message. I'm posting this last part of the episode, and if the producers don't like it they can, well, sue me, you know?

Right after they do something else for me. Something warm. And flicky.

Well, as you may recall, our two, um, heroes - Parkdrive and Redhook - were investigating misogyny at Planned Parenthood, when they found there (at the, um, planned `hood premises) a boy! That's right. A boy at Planned Parenthood, trying to, um, I suppose you would say secure a note on PP letterhead saying he had gotten some scrumptious mouth sex from a lady science teacher but that he did not enjoy it.

Well.

When Parkdrive and Redhook heard that story they hauled in the fifteen year-old (and so spankable!) boy and interrogated him and his parents in one of the, um, rooms they have with the mirror and the table that the police all have on this and every other cop show ever written, except for the ones that take place in that Florida city, um, Miami, where it is more like an interrogation salon.

Parkdrive and Redhook were somewhat outraged at the parents, since the parents are ... what am I calling them? Oh yes, Huckadroids for Huckabee, and they believe some rather incredible things, you know? Which I won't go into, since I am not at all judgmental if you don't count sneering at fatties.

So here we go with the last part of the episode, where Parkdrive and Redhook hunt down the scrumptious-mouthed science teacher with plump lips, a round bottom, and a bare back.

Parkdrive and Redhook are in this really, um, busy part of headquarters where they have their desks with two other cops who are, well, one of them is kind of a smart-aleck and the other one is kind of hip, but neither of them gets any kind of sex that would be worth waking up for, if you know what I mean. Since they are ignorant of what a really good time is like we can be pretty sure they are what the church people call "moral." Anyway, the hip one is DETECTIVE CURT ROJACK, 29, and the smart-aleck is DETECTIVE CINDY FELKER, 33 and built for, um, action, I guess.

FELKER: Hey Rojack, stop jonesin' for last night's weed and pass me a pen, ya freakin' freak.

ROJACK: You suggestin' an officer of the law would spend time jonesin' for weed?

FELKER: No, I'm sayin' that an officer of the law might consider passin' me a freakin' pen before I decide to frank his hoolie, capice?

The sound kind of goes, well, down on these two and we move in closer on Parkdrive and Redhook who are doing work and aren't just horsing around.

REDHOOK: What's the matter, Parkdrive? You look like you're about to cry.

PARKDRIVE: It's just ... I'm thinking about poor Marty.

REDHOOK: Yeah.

PARKDRIVE: I know what you said about his having a chance to be normal, but when a fifteen year-old boy gets the slurpy jam-jam from a woman he trusted to, well, not touch his skin ...

REDHOOK: Yeah. Makes me sick. You know we'll see him down here someday, acting all pervy.

PARKDRIVE: A perp.

REDHOOK: Yeah.

PARKDRIVE: A pervy perp.

REDHOOK: Jesus, Parkdrive. It isn't funny.

PARKDRIVE: I know that.

REDHOOK: Hey Felker!

FELKER: Now what, `Hook? Can't you see I'm about to frank Rojack's -

REDHOOK: Enough hoolie talk, Felker. Parkdrive and I have a name for the Probable Future Offenders Database.

FELKER: Where the freak have you been, Redhook? They trashed PFOD six months ago!

Redhook walks over to Felker.

REDHOOK: Why? What happened?

FELKER: It was hacked by a SuicideGirl named PowWow. She just kept writing "buttwash" where everybody's middle name was supposed to be. You know, so Jim Sanders Janutty became ...

PARKDRIVE (appearing beside Redhook): Jim "Buttwash" Janutty?

REDHOOK: That is so juvenile. If you're going to hack a database to change people's names why can't you change them to, I don't know -

PARKDRIVE: Tolstoy?

REDHOOK: Yeah. Is it so much to ask? A little taste?

FELKER: Whatevuh. Now imagine that happening over and over again for a thousand names.

REDHOOK: Making it impossible to tell these bogus Buttwashes from future offenders really named Buttwash.

PARKDRIVE: Diabolical. So have they tracked this PowWow down?

ROJACK: Yeah. We got a PowWow Taskforce. Ain'tcha heard?

FELKER: He lives.

REDHOOK: Whatcha working on, Rojack?

ROJACK: Just lookin' through the FBI's Slut Database.

REDHOOK: Yeah?

PARKDRIVE: What's that all about?

ROJACK: Just lookin' up your science teacher friend. What's her name?

REDHOOK: Joan. Jane?

PARKDRIVE: No, Jean. Jean Peteyboy.

FELKER: Peteyboy? That's a name? Sounds like a nickname for a Little League outfield who's cute but doesn't hustle.

ROJACK: This Jean Peteyboy. She did what?

PARKDRIVE: She statutorily raped a fifteen year-old boy.

FELKER: What'd she do on him?

REDHOOK: The slurpy jam-jam.

FELKER (sobers up fast): Freakin' A.

ROJACK: Yeah, right. This fifteen year-old boy she statutorily slurpied. Did she also statutorily force him to go around grinning for two days after?

REDHOOK: Hey Rojack. That's not funny.

PARKDRIVE: You wouldn't say that if you met him, Rojack. He's a little muffin.

ROJACK: Well, your little muffin just fingered a repeat offender.

PARKDRIVE: How can you say that, Rojack?

REDHOOK: You better be able to back that up.

ROJACK (sighs): He accused a repeat offender.

PARKDRIVE: Peteyboy is in the database?

ROJACK: Yup. And this ain't her first time on the basepaths.

REDHOOK: It never is.

ROJACK: She lives in Weehucka, New Jersey. Last year she was the costumer of the Weehucka Rotary Club's production of Oliver! Seems there was an inseam incident.

PARKDRIVE: Pretty slick ...

ROJACK: And get this. Her husband is on the job.

PARKDRIVE: He's a cop?

ROJACK: In Weehucka.

REDHOOK: Whoops. The Weehucka PD is pretty in-bred. No way they give up the wife of one of their own. Not willingly, anyway.

FELKER: Maybe not if he still likes her, but hey, maybe he's gettin' tired of her showin' the slurpy jam-jam to little munchkins.

PARKDRIVE: Muffins.

ROJACK: Could be gettin' rid of this slut is just what this cop is jonesin' for.

FELKER: Yeah, like that cop out in Illinois who thinks he's the center square because his wives keep croakin'.

REDHOOK: Looks like the trail just heated up, Parkdrive!

PARKDRIVE: Next stop: Weehucka.

Parkdrive and Redhook turn to go.

ROJACK: Hey Parkdrive.

They turn to Rojack.

ROJACK (casually): You know the age of consent in Italy is fourteen? In Spain it's thirteen.

Parkdrive's face turns completely, well, white. She mumbles something that sounds like, "Gurgening...ning?" before Redhook pulls her out of the room.

Rojack grins.

FELKER: You son of a bridge.

ROJACK: What?

FELKER: Why the freak did you tell her that?

ROJACK: You mean "why other than because it's true"?

FELKER: Hey dipstick. It's true there's no Santa but you don't go tellin' a five year-old.

ROJACK (half to himself): Maybe you don't.

NOW WE ARE, UM, WELL, THE CAMERA IS IN THE CAR WITH PARKDRIVE AND REDHOOK AS THEY DRIVE OUT TO THE NEW JERSEY PL-, WELL, WEEHUCKA.

Redhook is driving, and, um, Parkdrive is sitting on the, um, passenger, in the passenger seat, that is, and looking out of her window in a quite forlorn way. She is rather sad and disturbed.

REDHOOK: What's up Parkdrive?

Parkdrive just keeps looking, well, sullen.

REDHOOK (continued): C'mon, we're about to cuff this hussy. Brighten up.

PARKDRIVE: I just can't stop thinking about those poor Spanish kids, Redhook.

REDHOOK: Yeah. Freakin' conquistadors. I got a good mind to fly to Madrid and kick the first ten asses I see.

PARKDRIVE (near tears): They're not all black-haired. Did you know that `Hook?

REDHOOK: Huh?

PARKDRIVE: In Andalusia they have gorgeous little blonde Spainchildren. Ninos they call them, or ninolios. -- Nintendos?

REDHOOK: I think I heard "nanotchka" once. Does that sound right?

PARKDRIVE: It's a beautiful language. And ... when I think about what's happening to them, the ninalitas, and how they'll all grow up to be traumatized, jaded perps ...

REDHOOK: Their lives changed forever at the age of thirteen by Senor Pointypants.

PARKDRIVE: What do we do, Redhook?

REDHOOK: Well, let's get Jean Peteyboy behind bars. Then maybe we can get some leave time and go to Spain.

Parkdrive brightens.

PARKDRIVE: You mean it?

REDHOOK: Sure.

PARKDRIVE: But Spain's way out of our jurisdiction. What would we do there?

REDHOOK: Consult.

ALL RIGHT, NOW WE ARE IN THE HEADQUARTERS OF THE WEEHUCKA POLICE DEPARTMENT A FEW, WELL, SEVERAL MINUTES LATER

It looks just like one of those, um, what are they called ... jailhouses? Yes. Jailhouses from that Andy of Mayberry show from, oh, ages ago. Anyway, there's this desk there and behind the desk is this wonderful little Irish cop SEAN "SARGE" McBELTANE, 55. Sarge is morbidly obese, but nothing says comic relief like a fatty in uniform. Parkdrive and Redhook are in front of the desk looking at him like they just said something.

SARGE: Ah yes, little Jeany Peteyboy, wife of the illustrious and oft-married Stew Peteyboy, a cop after me own hearrrt. Fourth wife, I think. Hm. Let me check his wifesheet.

He reaches under the desk and looks through some, oh, I don't know, some things that we can't see anyway because the camera doesn't go back there and look. He comes up again with this manila folder and opens it.

SARGE (reads): I was rrright!

He trills the "r" like a cute little Irishman would.

SARGE (continued): Jeanie and Stew. Begorrah, Stewie's been married fourrr times, and it's three strikes and yer out, I always hearrrd, but Stewie loves the ...

PARKDRIVE: Spit it out, Sarge.

SARGE: I was going to say that Stewie loves the ladies, but truth be told he hates the ladies.

PARKDRIVE: A misogynist!

SARGE: With a capital "M". He's the hero of every cop on the forrrce.

PARKDRIVE (to Redhook): Looks like we got here just in time.

REDHOOK: Careful, Parkdrive, he's not the one we're after.

PARKDRIVE: I can't believe we're tracking down a victim of misogyny. We're the Men Are Bastards Unit, Redhook! This situation is so ... counterintuitive.

REDHOOK: It can't be helped. This Jean Peteyboy showed the slurpy jam-jam to a fifteen year-old toddler. She warped him good, Parkdrive. Think of what he'll be as an adult!

PARKDRIVE: Yeah. Staring at ladies' mouths, memorizing, while they just want to talk good, clean cinematic theory to him.

REDHOOK: Or Scandinavian porcelain.

PARKDRIVE: Or church.

REDHOOK: We have to put this trollop somewhere far away, so when a little boy grows up he can look at a babe and think, "she's a lot like a summer's day, except more lovely and more temperate."

PARKDRIVE (sighs): I know.

REDHOOK: So Sarge, if this Peteyboy hates women so much, why does he keep marrying them?

SARGE: The ladies love him. It's a fact. There's just something about a fat man with a rrrunny nose that they can't keep their mitts off.

PARKDRIVE: Let's see that wifesheet.

She grabs the wifesheet from Sarge and reads.

PARKDRIVE (continued): Hm. Says here that Stewie's first wife left him after watching him win a barbecue-eating contest. Seems he weighs three hundred pounds and competes with his shirt off. Here's a picture.

Redhook gasps.

REDHOOK: That's a human being?

SARGE (looks): That it is, lad, and a damn good cop.

REDHOOK: Looks like a stack of pancakes covered with molasses.

PARKDRIVE: It says here his second wife died when she accidentally electrocuted herself by dropping a microwave in her bath.

REDHOOK: Hey Sarge, you guys didn't think that death was a little suspicious?

SARGE: You never had a warm biscuit in the tub?

REDHOOK: No, but ... sounds tasty.

PARKDRIVE: They found his third wife, Milly, tied and hanging upside down in a tank filled with water. -- It was ruled an accidental drowning.

REDHOOK: Hey Sarge, not for nothing, but how does that get ruled "accidental"?

SARGE: Same thing happened to Houdini. Nobody accused his cop husband of drowning him for the insurrrance.

REDHOOK: Good point.

PARKDRIVE (still reading the, um, wifesheet): And his fourth wife, Jean, went missing in August of 2008.

REDHOOK: Hey wait a minute. It's only July of 2008.

PARKDRIVE: Whoa. What up with that, Sarge?

SARGE: That's why it's in pencil. Stewie keeps pushing the date back. Must be he can't bear to part with her cookin'.

NOW WE ARE IN THE CAR AGAIN A COUPLE OF, UM, OH, SEVERAL MINUTES LATER. OR MAYBE ONLY SECONDS.

The siren is wail-, well, making that loudish sound it makes and I guess you could say Parkdrive and Redhook are riding ... oh, intently is I guess the right word. They are looking forward a bit more than the first time and they seem, well, anxious.

REDHOOK: We haven't got a moment to lose, Parkdrive.

PARKDRIVE: I'm not really sure why. In fact, Redhook ...

REDHOOK: Tell me, Parkdrive.

PARKDRIVE: I'm not even sure who the bad guy is anymore. Is it Jean Peteyboy for the slurpy jam-jam? Or is it Stew Peteyboy for offing his wives?

REDHOOK: You really don't know?

PARKDRIVE: Sorry, I ... I guess I lost track.

REDHOOK: Well, on the one hand, you have a man who murders people. He should definitely be stopped.

PARKDRIVE: No kidding.

REDHOOK: On the other hand, you've got a twenty-three year-old sociopath answering to no one but herself while she pursues her own pleasure. -- And that is a moral outrage!

PARKDRIVE: Still ...

REDHOOK: Yeah, I know. Let's make a deal. We'll burst into the house and rescue the one that's tied up and tackle the one that's smirking.

PARKDRIVE: I guess that'll do.

NOW WE ARE INSIDE A HOUSE. OKAY, I GUESS I CAN TELL YOU IT'S JEAN PETEYBOY'S HOUSE BECAUSE YOU'RE GOING TO LEAR-, WELL, FIND OUT IN A SECOND ANYWAY.

There is a screen door and Parkdrive and Redhook are standing on the outside looking in through it.

REDHOOK: Anybody home?!

PARKDRIVE: Jean? Stew? It's the NYPD, just like on television. We'd like to ask you some questions.

VOICE OF JEAN: I am in thee kitchen! Thee door is open so ... (sing-song) Come on in, stuh-rangers!

Parkdrive and Redhook open the door and walk in. As they do, we can hear the sound of the water running in the kitchen. Maybe we should have heard that before? Hm? But anyway, we hear it now.

REDHOOK: Somebody's pretty trusting, letting strangers just walk in like this.

PARKDRIVE: Unless that somebody likes setting traps for strangers.

REDHOOK: Roger that.

They follow the sound of the running water to the kitchen. When they enter the kitchen they find JEAN PETEYBOY, 23, at the sink doing the, um, well, the dishes. She has something, well, nothing on, actually, except for an apron and a pair of high heeled shoes. Since her back is to them, the effect is, well, I guess you can imagine. Her back is laid bare, as are her bottomular, or, well, anal virtues.

REDHOOK: Jean?

She turns to them, smiling.

PARKDRIVE: We got a smirk!

They pull their weapons and square off on her with both hands on the gun, the way cops have on every cop show since Adam-12.

REDHOOK: Drop the dish, Jean!

She does. It shatters in the sink.

JEAN: What is this all about, you sweet coppers you?

PARKDRIVE: Don't "sweet copper" me, Miss Chugalug!

From offsta-, well, screen, I suppose, comes a whimpering, male voice.

VOICE OF STEW: Help! Someone!

REDHOOK: Oh my god!

PARKDRIVE: Who've you got tied up back there, Jean?!

JEAN: He ain't tied up, you. He is just sitting there, doing thee little punishment I gave to him.

REDHOOK: Who's just sitting there?

PARKDRIVE: And why are you punishing him?!

JEAN: It is my husband, Mr. Stew. I found out he was planning to dispense with me in a oh-so-physical way and put my body in a blue barrel, so I got thee jump on him and gave him a, well, humiliating chore.

She giggles. Parkdrive goes over and grabs her by the, um, arm and shoves her into the hallway.

PARKDRIVE: Take us to him, sweet cheeks.

JEAN: Ooo. You are a rough one!

They walk down the hallway.

REDHOOK: Keep whimpering, Stew!

They follow the sound of blubbering to an, um, well, a bedroom.

NOW WE ARE IN THE BEDROOM.

Redhook enters first, still with his gun out in that careful way with the two hands on the butt. Parkdrive follows with her gun in one hand and pulling Jean along with the other.

It is a, um, typical, I guess, typical bedroom with a lamp table next to it and some drapes and a big double bed. I guess the only, well, what you might call out of place item is a big, plastic blue barrel next to the bed.

Sitting on the bed is the naked Stew Peteyboy, and, um, well, 300 pounds of naked fatty may re-, well, you may have to give an advisory about disturbing images before you show it.

REDHOOK: What's the chainsaw for?

Oh yes, there is a chainsaw on top of the blue barrel.

JEAN: That is in case he gets any buh-right ideas about running.

PARKDRIVE: What's he doing with those long needles?

JEAN: Those are knitting needles. I decided to make him knit a little windsock for his schnitzel. A thimble would more than cover the poor thing, but a windsock will take longer to knit.

REDHOOK (swallows hard): The horror ...

PARKDRIVE: I don't get it, Redhook. What's so bad about knitting a cock sock?

REDHOOK: Think about it, Parkdrive. This time of evening, after a hard day on the job, a guy could be out with his pards, having a beer and some donuts, maybe showing how he can gross out a waittress with a pork pie, or bragging about the last time he bent his wife over the sofa. But ... Stew can't do any of those things. Because he has to sit here and knit a little hat for his man gland.

PARKDRIVE (trembling): The horror ...

Jean giggles.

STEW: Help me!

NOW IT IS A FEW MINUTES LATER AND WE ARE IN THE YARD IN FRONT OF THE PETEYBOY HOUSE.

There are some squad cars there and, um, Stew? Stew is sitting on the front steps wrapped in a blanket while two other officers stare at him and shake their heads.

At their car, Parkdrive and Redhook are, um, shackl-, well, handcuffing Jean.

PARKDRIVE: You're under arrest for indecent exposure, depravitizing a cute little muffin by means of ladymouth --

REDHOOK: -- Not to mention traumatizing him with your gorgeous gape --

PARKDRIVE: -- and conduct unbecoming a Huckadroid.

JEAN: A Huckadroid? I ain't a Huckadroid.

PARKDRIVE: Shut up, alt bitch.

She shoves Jean into the back seat of the, um, car in that way that cops have by, you know, pushing down on the top of her head. Parkdrive then slams the door shut.

REDHOOK: Let's book this slattern. Then you know what I say?

PARKDRIVE: What?

REDHOOK: I say we hop the red-eye to Spain and show some caballeros what moral outrage looks like in Payless shoes.

Parkdrive just stares at him, doe-eyed.

REDHOOK (continued): What is it, Parkdrive?

PARKDRIVE: It's ... it's like I'm seeing you for the first time.

Redhook grins as they get in the car.

THE END

Well, here's to my historic, um, upload of my first full episode. I had some demons to work out, and I think this script did the, well, the trick.
Copyright 2007 Dan Roentsch

The Slurpy Jam-Jam

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 12:00:00 EST

by Nefertiti Snorkjutt

The plane is circling that airport at Memphis, Tennessee, where Ervin and I will no doubt continue our adventures in pursuit of the, well, evil Mickey Snaketail. What was the name of that-, oh yes, the pilot just said the name of the airport for me: Memphis International Airport.

(So many countries can afford planes now. - And some of them fly to Memphis!)

Well, I can't tell you how thrilled I am to be about to awaken Ervin with a curious noise, but first I thought I'd post Part III of my tele-, well, script that I wrote for the most successful cop show on television, Perp & Vic: Men Are Bastards Unit.

As you may recall, our two cops - the female de, um, tective named Parkdrive, and the male detective, Redhook - had just found, well caught a young boy named Marty at Planned Parenthood! The boy was there to get an, um, slip, well, note from the Planned 'hood ladies saying that he had gotten some sex of the mouthular variety from his lady science teacher, but that he did not enjoy the sexing. Did not, you know?

So. Um. When we left off the two detectives were about to take Marty down to police headquarters and take his statement. They were also going to call in his parents, so they could appri-, well, info-, well, tell them that a round-bottomed science teacher had recently relieved their fifteen year-old boy of a specific kind of tension.

Parkdrive, Redhook, and Marty are in an interrogation room at police headquarters. There is that big one-way mirror on one wall and, um, a door and a big table for bad cop to pound on.

Right this moment Marty is seated at the table and Parkdrive and Redhook are standing nearby and drinking coffee.

PARKDRIVE: Coffee Marty?

MARTY: N-no ...

Redhook moves into Marty's personal space.

REDHOOK: Got a problem with coffee, Marty?

MARTY: Are you going to ask me questions or something?

PARKDRIVE: We're waiting for your folks, Marty. You don't mind telling your folks about how you broke Jesus' heart with the science teacher, do you?

MARTY: No! You can't tell them!

Parkdrive and Redhook laugh avunc-, well, good-naturedly.

REDHOOK: Don't worry, Marty, we told them how it was all the teacher's fault and that you didn't like it. We promised them.

MARTY: Really?

PARKDRIVE: We were very convincing. And your mom was pretty quick to believe.

REDHOOK: Oh yeah, she was quick. But I don't know about your old man, Marty. He seemed to suspect you might like it.

Parkdrive sits in a chair beside Marty.

PARKDRIVE: How about that, Marty? Sounds like your Dad knows you pretty well.

MARTY: No! He's wrong ... honest. It made me feel all gross and sloppy ...

REDHOOK: Afterward.

MARTY: Huh?

REDHOOK: You felt all gross and sloppy afterward.

MARTY: Y-yeah ...

PARKDRIVE: What about while it was going on, Marty? How'd you feel then? Gross?

REDHOOK: Or was it more like, "Oh. Mama. Gimme, gimme, gimme!"

At that moment, CAPTAIN FRUND enters with Marty's parents, HESTER LACRAM, 43, and MUNCE LACRAM, 48. Hester is an obese, round, well, blob of a female wearing a pants suit with a round button on the lapel. One of those, um, closeups on the pin? One of those closeups on the pin could show that it says, "Hucka-Oh!" Munce has a flag lapel pin and a spot of ketchup on the corner of his lip.

Hester sees Marty and goes to him with, well, enthusiasm.

HESTER: Marty!

MARTY: Mommy!

CAPTAIN FRUND (to Parkdrive and Redhook): I'll leave you here with Mr. and Mrs. LaCram.
(confidentially)
And try not to eat their biscuits this time. All right Redhook?

REDHOOK (still dealing with a painful memory): Jesus ...

PARKDRIVE: Captain ...

FRUND (to Parkdrive): And you. You better start thinking about what's right for us older cops and not just your hot-headed partner here.

REDHOOK: But --

FRUND: Stow it, 'Hook. While you're trying to set me straight there's a science teacher out there showing teenage boys the slurpy jam-jam. Now let's see if you can't get some answers out of these LaCrams.

He abruptly turns and leaves.

Parkdrive and Redhook approach the LaCrams. They are seated next to each other at the interrogation table in three chairs: Hester in the middle, with Marty on one side and Munce on the other. Hester holds Marty's head to her, well, bosom with one hand while wiping the ketchup off Munce's lip with a piece of tissue paper in the other hand. Munce sees Parkdrive staring at him and pulls away from his wife.

MUNCE (nervous laugh): Ketchup.

PARKDRIVE (disgusted): Yeah. So why is it wifey's job to squirrel it off your lips?

Munce shakes his head because that question was, well, something quite, um, heathen to ask, I suppose is the right word. Heathen, you know?

MUNCE: Don't you read your Bible?

PARKDRIVE: I know a guy who reads it. That ... that's the book where the men wear robes, right? And some of them fish?

REDHOOK: What's your point, LaCram?

MUNCE: It's just that if you knew your scripture you'd know it's the wife's duty to submit graciously to her husband.

PARKDRIVE: Submit ... what?!

HESTER: He's right. That's what General Huckabee says.

MUNCE: Governor Huckabee.

Pause.

MUNCE (continued): I said, "Governor Huckabee." Ya hear? Wife?

HESTER (graciously): Yes, husband.

PARKDRIVE: Why you - ! I gotta good mind to eat your biscuits!

Redhook pulls Parkdrive aside.

REDHOOK (to the LaCrams): Excuse us.

PARKDRIVE: Why're you holding me back?!

REDHOOK: Look, Parkdrive, I'm thinking we should take this one case at a time. Get the science teacher off her knees first, then come back and bust this Huckadroid. Besides, it is governor.

Parkdrive fumes.

PARKDRIVE: I'll bet he enjoys her up the tailpipe!

Redhook coughs and looks at his shoes.

PARKDRIVE (calming down): But ... you're right, Redhook. One case at a time.

She goes back to the LaCrams.

PARKDRIVE (continued): Hi. Sorry for the outburst. I was just thinking that I don't have a husband to submit to ... graciously ... and I so want one.

Munce looks surprised.

HESTER(smiling): I knew it was something like that.

REDHOOK: Marty here tells us that you're Huckadroids.

MUNCE: For Huckabee.

REDHOOK: Yeah, well, the boy seems to be under the impression that you'll physically harm him if you think he enjoyed the sex.

PARKDRIVE: He said you'd pound him to liver. Is that how you get your children to respect you, LaCram? By pounding them to liver?

MUNCE (who has been staring at Marty): He better notta liked it.

PARKDRIVE: Well, how could a young, pure teen under the age of consent possibly like being woman-handled by someone eight years his senior?

REDHOOK: A science teacher with plump lips and a round bottom.

HESTER (clutching Marty ever closer to her, well, her bosom): Oh my God! Marty ... Marty ... did she say anything about evolution while she was doing the evil?

MARTY: N-no.

HESTER: Marty, look at me. Now you tell your mother. Did she say anything about how old the planet is? Marty!

MUNCE (to Redhook): Still. Plump lips and round butts don't seduce people. People seduce people.

REDHOOK: Well put.

Hester kisses the top of Marty's head.

HESTER: Mommy knows that Marty wouldn't like it. Would he? Mommy knows that Marty doesn't think about other girls!

MARTY: N-no! I promise!

HESTER: Do you love Mommy, Marty?

MARTY: Yes!

HESTER: Why does Marty love Mommy, hm? Tell me. Why does Marty love Mommy?

MARTY: Because ... because she's a BBW?

She kisses his forehead.

HESTER: And when Marty grows up he's going to want to snuckle with what kind of girl? Hm?

MARTY: A BBW?

She kisses his forehead again.

HESTER: Now you come home with Mommy, Marty. She'll make you a big bowl of milk stew.

MARTY: Oh ... Mommy!

He buries his face with aband-, well, with what you might call wild passion into Hester's cleavage.

She bites her lower lip.

MUNCE: Marty!

Marty leaps back in his chair.

REDHOOK: Listen, maybe you folks don't know this, and we're definitely here to help all we can ...

PARKDRIVE: Well ...

REDHOOK: Yeah, we're ... not actually here to help that much unless you have a sex crime to report, but you're going to need help, Marty.

MUNCE: He is?

MARTY: I am?

PARKDRIVE: That's right. Your life as a normal kid, and your future life as a normal adult? Well ...

She braces herself to tell him.

PARKDRIVE(continued): ... it's pretty much over, Marty.

HESTER: Oh my god, what are you saying?!

REDHOOK: Sorry, but that's where it stands. You see, Marty told us when we picked him up that this science teacher with the, um, the ...

MUNCE: The round bottom and the plump lips. We heard you the first time.

REDHOOK: Yeah, she pretty much came onto Marty in a blouse with a low neck in the back, exposing her vertebrae.

PARKDRIVE: You know, the little blocks that make up the spine.

MUNCE: We know what vertebraes is. We been to high school.

HESTER: Please! Munce! Let them talk!

REDHOOK: You see, the sexology experts tell us that when a boy is exposed to something like that it fuses with his sexuality.

PARKDRIVE: By the time he's twenty-two he won't be able to get an erection without thinking about some spine somewhere.

HESTER: Oh god! Munce, she said, "erection"!

MUNCE (to Parkdrive): Why, you filthy-mouthed bitch ...

REDHOOK: Whoa. What did you call my partner?

MUNCE: We're getting out of here!

REDHOOK: Not so fast, LaCram!

PARKDRIVE: Yeah, where ya goin', LaCram? Got a wife and kid you'd like to pound to liver?

PARKDRIVE: Here. Check this out.

He goes to a, um, cabinet. Oh yes, did I mention there is a metal cabinet in the room? He goes to a cabinet and reaches into it and removes with something of a flour-, well, ta-da motion, a very thick book with yellow binding.

He throws the book down on top of the table in front of Marty.

PARKDRIVE: It's a compendium.

REDHOOK: We call it that, down here at the station, but what it is really is a big list of names of therapists. You'll be needing them.

Hester breaks dow-, well, I suppose you could say she bursts into tears.

HESTER: No ... no ...

MUNCE (leafing through the book): He has to see all these doctors?!

REDHOOK: We're only trying to help, LaCram. We don't want Marty to end up in Bellevue someday.

HESTER: Bellevue!

PARKDRIVE: Or worse. Down here. As a perp.

Hester lets ou-, well, emits a loud wail.

REDHOOK (sits on the table next to Marty): It's going to be a long haul, kid, but with a lot of work and the right kind of help, you'll be able to grow up and have a family and look completely normal to your wife and kids and neighbors.

PARKDRIVE: That's true Marty, you could hide your sickness from all of them if you really try. And maybe someday, when forty winters have beseiged thy brow -

REDHOOK: - and dug deep trenches in thy beauty's field -

MUNCE: What?!

PARKDRIVE: Maybe then, when you have enough years behind you, pretending to be clean, maybe then you'll be able to convince even yourself that you're a regular guy, and not some sick fuck waiting to happen.

REDHOOK: And if it's any consolation, we're going to make sure this science bitch spends the next twenty years in the clink.

MARTY: Oh my God ... I want ... spine!

Hester wails even louder.

MUNCE: Shut up!

Hester stops crying and the whole, um, yes, the whole room gets quiet. Munce has one of these, you know, maniacal grins on his face.

MUNCE (to Marty): So ... ya like spine, do ya kid?

PARKDRIVE: Um, will you excuse us a minute, folks? I need to confer with my partner.

She goes for the door. Redhook looks, well he looks confused for a moment, then he looks all quite, well, stern again and follows Parkdrive out into the hallway.

NOW WE ARE OUT IN THE HALLWAY AND THE CAMERA IS ON, WELL, PARKDRIVE AND REDHOOK ARE THE ONLY ONES IN THE HALLWAY

PARKDRIVE: Oh my God, Redhook, can you believe that?

REDHOOK: I know. I thought I was going to puke any second.

PARKDRIVE: And tonight that monster is going to have the two of them alone in his house!

REDHOOK: His? Oh. I thought you were talking about the BBW with the open blouse.

Well, that's unfortunately all I have time to, well, cut-and-, um, you know, copy into the little blog window. The plane is about to land and soon I will hopefully have a chance at last to rescue my beloved Slappy Goering, former congressman, former presidential candidate, and a former comedian who is also deep.

Ah well ... back to the, um, well ... real world, I suppose you could call it.
Copyright 2007 Dan Roentsch

A Huckadroid. For Huckabee

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 12:00:00 EST

by Nefertiti Snorkjutt

Well, I, um, I have to type quietly here because it's nighttime on the airplane and Ervin is back asleep. You should see his adorable little head.

So here - as promised - is more of the episode of Perp & Vic: Men Are Bastards Unit that I began last time. If you recall, the two detectives who make up the MBU - Parkdrive, the strong woman with the square jaw and uncertain hairstyle, and Redhook, her reformed-misogynist partner - had just run-, well, clashed with a seventeen year-old girl at Planned Parenthood, and just as they were about to grill her they noticed that there was a young man, or, I suppose, boy with blonde hair with gel in it. He is fifteen years old and his name is Marty.

I mean, really, a boy at Planned Parenthood? What could possibly be the reason? Perhaps he is looking for his Mummy. And I - I, hm, I suppose it could be likely that he is at the Planned `Hood to solicit young girls on the severe rebound. At any rate, that was how I made the pot boil, or cliff hang ... whatever. That's how I left it. Here's some more of the story.

PARKDRIVE (alarmed) : It looks like a boy at Planned Parenthood.

Redhook removes his gun cautiously from its holster and approaches Marty.

Marty doesn't see Redhook edging toward him along the side of the wall, with Parkdrive just behind.

Marty just talks to the girls - TAWANA 18, and GRAY GUTS 19, a goth - behind the information desk.

MARTY: Is there ...?

GRAY GUTS: Is there what, meat rod?

MARTY: Um, is there some way I could get like a note on Planned Parenthood stationery or something?

TAWANA: Depends on what you want this note to say, gel-head.

Marty sniffles and rubs his nose.

TAWANA: Oh my God! Guts, he's crying! What's the matter, sugar? Some road dog in a flannel hat been touchin' you in the pointy place?

MARTY: I just need a note from Planned Parenthood or some other official sex place that says I had some sex but that I didn't like it.

Redhook signals Parkdrive to get ready to spring into action.

GRAY GUTS: You had sex but didn't like it?

TAWANA: You ain't doin' it right, sugar.

MARTY: See my dad smelled it on me? Like, he could smell the girl's sex parts on me `cause I like didn't wash off because I didn't really think parents would know what those parts smell like. And so they made me sit at the kitchen table? And my mom all cried and my dad's face got all red and he told me that like yeah, he pretty much knew I just finished having a babe on my face. I told him and my mom that okay I had some sex with this Unitarian but I didn't like it and they sort of believed me? But they told me to get a note from Planned Parenthood just to be safe.

GRAY GUTS: Huh?

TAWANA: You supposed to get a note. From Planned Parenthood. Saying you got some juice on you. But you didn't have no fun.

MARTY: That would be so righteous.

TAWANA: Yeah. Your father, what is he, in the navy? Something? Army?

MARTY (proudly): Oh no. See, my folks are Huckadroids for Huckabee. So am I. And we're proud. We believe that the procreation muscle is for marriage, that wives should submit graciously to their husbands, and that the Earth is just a little older than John McCain.

GRAY GUTS: Come on. You did like having that sex, didn't you? I mean, are you asking us to write down a lie?

MARTY: No, I hated it!

Gray Guts and Tawana laugh.

MARTY: No, really, see ... see she made me do it! See, she's like way older than me? God doesn't like it when grown-ups make teenagers feel all, you know, grabby.

TAWANA: Bull. You know that virgin Mary? They say she couldn't of been more than fourteen, fifteen when she got all grabby with God.

GRAY GUTS: Whoa. So God is like a sexual predator?

TAWANA: Damn straight. You know they be showin' him off on NBC in cuffs with a buncha condoms in his truck. God pull that shit in America they will put his ass in a database.

Redhook and Parkdrive leap out of their, well, crouching positions and level their guns at Gray Guts, Tawana, and Marty.

REDHOOK: Hands where we can see `em, skels!

PARKDRIVE: You heard him ladies. You too, blonde chops. Get your hands out.

Tawana, Gray Guts, and Marty put their hands in plain sight. Redhook pats them down.

PARKDRIVE (to Marty): Now what's this I hear about you moistening the thighs of some libido-free teenage girl?

MARTY: Me -- I --

PARKDRIVE: What's your name, kid?

MARTY: M-M-Marty ...

REDHOOK: How old are you?

MARTY: Fifteen.

Parkdrive's demeanor changes. She becomes, well, I guess she becomes tender.

PARKDRIVE: You're a victim!

MARTY: I knew it!

PARKDRIVE: Give me your little blonde head ...

She pulls Marty's face into her bosom.

PARKDRIVE: Is that better?

REDHOOK: Who was it that did this to you, son?

PARKDRIVE: Was she a non-minor or a minor at least two years older than you at the time of the assault?

Marty lifts his head up.

MARTY: Huh?

PARKDRIVE: Was she seventeen or older?

Marty pulls away. He screw-, well, makes a face like he is about to cry. He blubbers something unintelligible.

REDHOOK: Calm down, son. Take it at your own speed. These things can't hurt you anymore.

PARKDRIVE: That's right, Marty. Just tell the nice officers. We'll make it all better.

MARTY: Okay, um, you promise you won't tell my folks?

Redhook hides a hand behind him and crosses his fingers.

REDHOOK: Of course, Marty. Now give.

MARTY: It was ... my science teacher!

PARKDRIVE: Not again!

REDHOOK: What is it with teachers these days?

PARKDRIVE: What did she do, Marty?

MARTY: Well, see, first she wore in ... she's always wearing in these tight kind of shirts that open up in the back so you can see the little blocks of her spine ...

REDHOOK: Oh yeah. Vertebrae. - And no bra strap?

MARTY: Nope.

REDHOOK (to Parkdrive): That's one count of entrapment right there.

MARTY: And usually you can see all the little vertebrae blocks if her red hair isn't in the way, which it sometimes is `cuz it's long. And the dresses she wears? They tuck in at the top of her legs because she has this really round butt and the dresses hug it really tight.

PARKDRIVE: Okay, so what did this red-haired science teacher with the curvilinear rectum allegedly do to you?

MARTY: She said she was going to come to my house after school because I needed like a tutor? And she said, "Better pick a time when your folks ain't home. We don't want to bug them with science moans, do we?"

REDHOOK: That is one cool calculation.

PARKDRIVE: What happened when this ain't-saying child-molester got to your house, Marty?

MARTY: She sat down next to me on my bed and said, "Ain't it great to take a load off?" Then she started playing with my belt buckle, and saying she was doing a experiment.

REDHOOK: "A" experiment? Those were her words? A experiment?

MARTY: Yeah.

PARKDRIVE: Illiterate bitch.

REDHOOK: What happened next, Marty?

MARTY: Then she touched me in a place and asked me if that got me hot. So she's like touching me here and here and then ... and then ...

REDHOOK: Just say it, Marty.

MARTY: She put her chest things in my face!

He starts to cry.

MARTY: I was begging her, "Please stop! Please! My parents are Huckadroids for Huckabee! They'll pound me to liver!" So then she said we had to hurry or I'd be poisoned.

PARKDRIVE: Poisoned! You didn't believe her, did you, Marty?

MARTY: I didn't want to, honest I didn't! But she said, "Just look at it, all swollen up like that, somebody's got to get that poison out of you! Somebody with nice, plump lips and red gums!" And she ... oh my god! She - ! No! Please! I can't repeat it! And the whole time she's ... doing it all I can think is, "Oh my god, I've been poisoned! Somebody help me get rid of this poison!"

REDHOOK: So did she get it all out or what?

PARKDRIVE: Redhook!

REDHOOK: It's important, Parkdrive.

MARTY: It was awful. She started slow and kept going until I like exploded!

REDHOOK: That's the usual m.o.

Parkdrive looks deep into Marty's eyes.

PARKDRIVE: Marty, look at me.

MARTY: O-okay.

PARKDRIVE: You really didn't like it, right? I mean, you really, really didn't like it?

Marty's blood drains out of his head and he, well, he's completely white, like a ghost, and I suppose you could say he starts to sob. Parkdrive is touched.

REDHOOK: What did I tell you about boys under eighteen, Parkdrive?

PARKDRIVE: That - that they don't have ... urges yet?

REDHOOK: Just like girls under eighteen.

He smiles smugly.

PARKDRIVE: Sorry, Redhook. I always wanted to believe you. Honest.

REDHOOK: We better take this downtown, Marty. Now look, we're going to call up your folks and let them know you've been traumatized, but don't worry, we'll make sure they don't pound you into liver. Even if they are huckaroids.

MARTY (sniffles): Huckadroids.

I suppose that will have to do for now. The exciting conclusion to this episode will be-, well, I'll post it next time. Right now I have that issue with the spiral or radial or carpal somethings and my wrists, well, really hurt. Hmm. I know. I'll wake up Ervin and get him to do some typing for me.
Copyright 2007 Dan Roentsch

Real Penises Don't Taste Like Cherry Syrup

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 12:00:00 EST

by Nefertiti Snorkjutt

At last Ervin and I are on our well, way to Memphis, Tennessee, after having spent the last several months thinking we wanted to go to (soooooo embarrassing to admit) Memphis, Egypt.

Oh, I, well, I don't want to discuss it really because it's water under the thing with the bridgey parts, and because we didn't really end up in Egypt and because now I get to visit Graceland, you know, where Elvis used to set himself down and jaw a spell. Or something that country boys like the Elvis king used to do when he was still on our physical plane of skin, ropes, and tight little shorts.

But I'm getting off the subject. At any, well, rate, Ervin and I are in a jet plane right this second and we are on our way to Memphis after narrowly escaping the corner of St. Marks and Third in New York City, where Ervin had to rescue me after I was forced into a lesbian marriage at the point of a raygun!

While we were boarding the plane for Memphis, I was beeped by my agent - Allison Muffplug (I write teleplays in my spare time) - and she reminded me that I owe her a script for the television program Perp & Vic: Men are Bastards Unit.

(Perp & Vic:MBU is a spin-off of Perp & Vic, the most successful cop entertainment franchise since Keystone sank into the Atlantic taking the Kops with it, before re-emerging decades later as the Grand Comanche Casino.)

At first I was a little irri-, well, annoyed at the distraction, but, you know, the flight to Memphis is a long one, and Ervin - still exhausted from the work of freeing me from sapphic matrimony - was napping and drooling and, well, utterly unfit to cower erotically or even, well flirtatiously, so really, what else was there to do but write an episode for a television drama?

And really, I do get into the whole scripty thing quite wholeheartedly. Writing purges my demons, if you can imagine me having demons I want to get rid of, and the producers always let me publish excerpts here for Perp & Vic fans.

DETECTIVE PARKDRIVE, 33, a square-jawed modern woman with an uncertain hairstyle, yet who fairly drips strength, independence, and pride, and her male partner, DETECTIVE REDHOOK, 38, a reformed misogynist with a vicious temper and brutal, big fists for pounding out men who cross Parkdrive, are at a local abortion clinic trying to find some vics so they can hopefully start catching some perps.
REDHOOK: So why did the captain send us - the two detectives comprising the entire Men Are Bastards Unit - down here to the local abortion clinic to scare up customers?

PARKDRIVE: Because the captain - your long-time friend, former partner, and confidante, who lost his wife to a Soho headshot photographer with a loft - wants us to make sure that certain men are not hiding acts of misogyny, which in the year 2007 alone accounted for a staggering seventy-nine percent of unplanned pregnancies and another nineteen percent of pregnancies planned by men with their own agendas.

REDHOOK: So what do you think, Parkdrive? See any likely victims of misogyny around here?
Parkdrive rolls her eyes.
PARKDRIVE: Only a man could ask that question.
They approach CASSY BLORK, 17, a brunette girl with braces. Cassy is seated on the edge of a bed with a lollipop sticking out of her mouth.

Parkdrive kneels in front of Cassy and becomes, well, "gentle" is I suppose the best word.
PARKDRIVE: Hi, honey. My name is Detective Parkdrive and the man looking at my bottom is Detective Redhook. What's your name?
Cassy takes the lollipop out of her mouth.
CASSY: Cassy Blork.

PARKDRIVE: Oh my god, is that lollipop shaped like a penis?

CASSY: Yup.

REDHOOK (kneeling, takes Cassy by the shoulders): Look at me, Cassy. Now I want you to tell me who's making you suck that thing.

CASSY: Nobody.

PARKDRIVE: Then why are you doing it?

CASSY: `Cuz ... I like it?

REDHOOK: How old are you, sweetie?

CASSY: Seventeen.

PARKDRIVE: Cassy, honey, I don't want to alarm you but don't you know you that you have a full year before you're allowed to stop being sarcastic about penises?

CASSY: Who says?

REDHOOK: The State of New York, sweetie. Don't you know anything about the law?
Cassy shakes her head.
PARKDRIVE: Ya know, Cassy, real penises don't taste like cherry syrup.
Cassy grins knowingly.

Parkdrive and Redhook exchange looks of horror.

They stand and speak confidentially.
REDHOOK (sardonically): Our nation's children.

PARKDRIVE: Yeah. Where's this kid's parents, that's what I want to know.

REDHOOK: Well, I'm pretty sure we can get the lollipop company for reckless amusement of a minor, felonious simulation of fellatio, and candy fraud.

PARKDRIVE: Candy fraud feels like a stretch. Let's see if we can't at least bust the boyfriend.
She turns to Cassy. She kneels again and is I guess very tender. Yes.
PARKDRIVE: Hi sugar. Hey, do you mind telling us about the abortion you just had?

CASSY: Okay.

REDHOOK: What we mean ...
He too kneels down and remembers to be very tender.
REDHOOK: ... what we mean is, you know that to have an abortion you first have to have sex right?
Cassy looks at them for a moment before loudly slurping her lollipop.
REDHOOK: We have to ask you some questions about the person who did the sex on you, okay honey-bunny? Now, you can tell us to stop any time you feel uncomfortable and we will.

CASSY: Oh brother ...

PARKDRIVE: What we really need to know though, honey, is did that man force you to let him have the sex on you?

CASSY: Nope.

PARKDRIVE: Okay. Okay, well, let me ask you this: was it sex that you really, really wanted badly?

CASSY: Um ...

PARKDRIVE: And was it as good as the bastard said it would be, or did he defraud you?

CASSY: It was pretty good. Better than this lollicock.

PARKDRIVE: No think, Cassy, ask yourself, "When I look back on it, was there anything this bastard could have done to make me feel more empowered as a woman?"

CASSY (giggles): You mean like did he give me the right to vote or something?
Parkdrive is not amused.
PARKDRIVE: Cassy, I don't mean to be blunt, but ... you don't feel disappointed at all? That's what you're saying? You saw stars burst and then you skipped home afterwards laughing and living in your fantasy with this wonderful male person who has no flaws?

CASSY: Nope.

PARKDRIVE: Then ... then tell me, Cassy.

CASSY: I already was home.
Parkdrive grabs Cassy by her shirt, balling it up in her fists, and lifts her off the bed.
PARKDRIVE: What are you, some kind of slut?! PRESS CHARGES BITCH!!
Redhook pulls Parkdrive off before she can slap sense into Cassy. He pulls her aside.
REDHOOK: Whoa, whoa, Parkdrive, keep it under control.
Parkdrive's eyes flash white heat and steel for a moment.
PARKDRIVE: Hands off, butt-slurp!

REDHOOK (stung): Butt ... slurp?
Parkdrive regains her composure.
PARKDRIVE: Sorry. It's just ... just that it never stops, Redhook. Vics covering for perps, I mean.

REDHOOK: Well, the good news is that she told us she was already home when it happened.

PARKDRIVE: How is that good news?

REDHOOK: She's seventeen. Home is probably her parents' house. I say we nail the skel for trespassing.

PARKDRIVE: Nice one.

REDHOOK: Let's get his address from Cassy and get some uni's over to his house before he - Hey wait a minute, Parkdrive. What's going on over there?
He points to a blonde boy with gel in his hair. It is MARTY LACRAM, 15. Marty looks like he may burst into tears any minute, and his demeanor never gets any brighter.

He is at the information desk asking questions of the girls on the staff.
PARKDRIVE (alarmed): It looks like a boy at Planned Parenthood.
Redhook removes his gun cautiously from its holster and approaches the boy.

All well, right. I suppose that's enough for now. I'll post more of the episode in the next iss-, well, entry. Right now the little steward man is serving dinner and I need to wake Ervin out of his sl-, well, na-, well, snooze.
Copyright 2007 Dan Roentsch

The Two Liangs

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 12:00:00 EST

by Desmond Cork

Hey cats.  Well Mrs. Liang came in right after I got done telling that Blam-Blam babe about what Bowie meant by Total Blam-Blam.  You could find out for yourself if you have a library card at the Johnny Thunders Memorial library in Belverton or maybe you could just read what I told her last time.

So anyway like I said Mrs. Liang came in and if you know anything about Mrs. Liang then what you know?  It's that she's short but has this happening rack.  And she's also like always got stuff for me to do that after I've done it for half an hour or so makes her shudder and say things like, \"Ah-huh! Ah!\" that isn't really words but that she really likes saying.

And this stuff that she has me do?  It usually starts out with her wearing those high heels and sort of arching her back in that way that she has that makes me forget about things like how much money did I spend so far today or have I had too many cups of coffee.

So she didn't just come in?  I sort of let her in because she sounded all cry-ey and not like that other kind of Mrs. Liang where she's all like giggly and putting her finger on the part that she wants.  Yeah?

Right now she looked kind of shredded cats.  I mean first her eyes were all browy and pushed together in this little arch that made her look all worried and oh yeah she was wearing a dress cats.  And not one of those rubber ones either but the kind that are like made of cloth and sort of wrap around her legs really tight which even though you can still see the muscles in her butt?  It wasn't shiny cats.

And if it isn't shiny it means that Mrs. Liang got dressed using a whole different part of her brain.

Oh and her hair was pulled back in this little tiny bun like she was looking at a doorknob when she did it up.

So because of the bunny hair and the unshiny dress that wasn't made of rubber I pretty much knew Mrs. Liang wanted me to pay attention to her face and maybe even her way that she talked.

\"Dessy, you have to help me,\" she said.

She just stood there in the door cats.  I think I was holding it open?  Or maybe she was already in it's kind of a blur, yeah?

\"Mr. Liang is back in Belverton and we have to go get him out jail,\" she said.

That made me nervous cats.

\"Gee Mrs. Liang,\" I said, \"you really think I oughta be seeing Mr.   Liang?  I mean the last time he almost punched me out, yeah?\"

\"Oh he drunk that time,\" she said then her face got all pouty and hurty.  \"You help me no?\"

She said it like a little girl cats and one that doesn't speak English too good either.  So I pretty much had it figured that Mrs. Liang had something up her sleeve because sometimes that's when she starts saying English like she just started taking lessons.

\"Um well so I guess Mr.   Liang is in jail?\"

\"Yes.  You go with me.  Get him out.  You big and strong!\"

\"Geez, Mrs. Liang.  I'm actually kind of weak and skinny and you know if Mr.   Liang wanted to he could -\"

\"Oh, you come with me!\" she yelled.  She reached up for where my tie would have been if I ever wore a tie and she started to pull but it was all air cats.  Then she turned around and got me by my hair and pulled me out of the apartment.

\"You no argue!\" she yelled again and it was just in time for me to remember to slam my door shut in case one of those rogue type people came by and decided to help themself to my stuff.

On the way down in the elevator she said, \"We get cab yes?  In cab we talk.  You know April?  We talk about April?\"

I'm just looking at her all squinty cats because I know she knows all the words and bigger ones but she's just not saying them.

\"Whoa,\" I said after I thought about it a sec.  \"The April babe who played North Drive that time?\"

\"Si, senor!\"

Whoa.  Mexican.  I was tray confused now cats.

When we got outside we went to the corner and Mrs. Liang started looking up and down for cabs.

\"So what up with Mr.   Liang?\" I asked her while she was twisting her head.  \"What's he in the ol' hoosegow for?\"

I think she was going to tell me but right then one of the cabs that went by went past us a ways then stopped.  We were walking up to it when these other two people?  Well the girl of them ran out to the curb just as a cab was coming by and this girl and her boyfriend or brother or guy who thinks he might get her one day if he just hangs around long enough got to it first.

Mrs. Liang was really mad cats and she ran over to the cab before the girl could get in and grabbed her by the back of her low-rise jeans and threw her in the dirt and pinned her.  The girl was yelling and then Mrs. Liang slapped her hard on the mouth and said, \"Cab-stealing slut! You like taste dirt?  Huh?  Hussy suck gravel?  Mmmmm.  Suck gravel hussy!\"

I just looked at the dude the girl was with cause we were both watching these babes tussle.

\"She's right dude,\" I said.  \"That cab is ours.  \"

\"Yeah .  .  .   \" he said and he just kept staring at Mrs. Liang who like I said is short but has this happening rack like he didn't want to miss what happened next.

\"Ya want the cab or what?\" said the driver who was I guessed a little miffed at all the commo.

\"Yes! Yes!\" shouted Mrs. Liang.  \"Dessy you jump in cab!\"

\"On it Mrs. L!\" I said and I liked doored into the cab.

Mrs. Liang said a couple more things to the cab-stealing babe that I can't print here on account of it might make our nation's children think about soft places on babes instead of baseball and algebra and Jesus which is what I guess they should be thinking about.  So let's just say that Mrs. Liang called the ol' cab-stealing babe some things like you know a stupid Blam! Blam-Blam!

Yeah?

So after she gets done with the babe she gets up and comes to the cab and when she walks past the dude the babe is with?  She pinches him on the butt for maybe later.

See Mrs. Liang wants what she wants.

So she gets in the ol' cab next to me and tells the driver to get on off to the jail where Mr.   Liang is all hostagistic and she reaches over and touches my hand.

\"I need your help, Dessy,\" she says.

I tried to look in her eyes cats but it was dark.

\"Well yeah Mrs. Liang,\" I said.  \"I'm here yeah?  Hey what's Mr.   Liang in jail for anyway?\"

She took her hand away and looked kind of out the window.

\"Oh, he can take care of himself,\" she said.  \"He was arrested fifteen years ago for fraud.  He dupe a Belverton University professor out of his copies of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales - first editions, signed by the Canterbury himself - when he was picked up for speeding along the highway with a few of his wives.  \"

I was still trying to figure out the Canterbury part cats and I wasn't even on the wives part but Mrs. Liang explained it anyway.

\"He used to be a Mormon like the ones they have on HBO.  \"

Whoa.  Mormons on HBO.  Which is sort of why I have cable?  But I guess I've been missing that one.

\"So I guess he's in kind of trouble then, yeah Mrs. L?  Are you gonna like bail him out?\"

She looked at me cats.  At least that's what I think it was because like I said it was dark so all I could see was that her face was pointing sort of at me.

\"He's skipping out again,\" she said.

\"Whoa.  He can do that?\"

\"Oh yes.  The man in charge of the jail - the warden or the sheriff or something - is someone Mr.   Liang recognize from a bathroom stall incident in Salt Lake City.  \"

\"So is this guy gay or something?  And Mr.   Liang has it on him?  And he's threatening to out the guy if he doesn't let him skip?\"

There was this pause.  Mrs. Liang looked down sort of at the floor.

\"No,\" she said.  \"He blew him.\"

(Sorry tykes.  )

There was this pause cats and then wham! We were at the jailhouse.  Mrs. Liang had the cab driver sort of wait at this side door where there wasn't any light and when the door opened there wasn't any light on the inside either cats.  It was tray creepy.

Then bing! There was Mr.   Liang in the doorway like somebody faded him in or he was one of those beings from a dimension where they fade in.  Mrs. Liang got out of the car and went to Mr.   Liang who was walking kind of funny and over the sound of the cab motor that I guess you could say was purring if you picture a really old cat trying to get a nap?  Well over that sound I could sort of hear this voice from the door say, \"I am not gay.  I never have been gay.  \"

Mr.   Liang sort of grunted and got in the cab next to me.  He gave me this look like he was surprised I was there but he mainly just looked pretty shook up.  His hair was all in his face and like it hadn't been washed for a day and maybe had like that Brylcreem in it that they used to wear at Beaver's high school.  He was carrying his jacket in his hands like maybe he had some cuffs on and he was trying to hide them but when the car started up again I got a good look at his wrists and nope no cuffs.

He turned to Mrs. Liang who was on the other side.  \"Why you bring him along?\" he asked.  He meant me cats.

\"Because I want you to behave yourself,\" Mrs. Liang said.

Mr.   Liang kind of grunted again.  \"He will not make me behave,\" he said.

\"And, well, I want you both to help me .  .  .  \"

\"How can you expect this boy to help you, hah?\" asked Mr.   Liang.  \"He cannot even keep you from sitting on his face.  \"

\"Whoa,\" I said.  \"I could probably stop her?  But like I'm addicted to the taste of pure babe so it's really hard to quit.  You know what it's like Mr.   Liang?  Sometimes the craving for the taste just won't go away and then you're all ready to have a short Asian lady jump up on your face like she does.  \"

He sort of chuckled here cats.  Then he said to Mrs. Liang: \"You should charge him money then.  Hard cash for his fix of babe.  \"

He said it in this kind of way that people have when they mock a person which I thought was tray strange for a cat who just got out of jail by taking a taste of pure dude.

Then Mrs. Liang started laughing cats.  Then Mr.   Liang laughed harder.  They were both laughing really hard?  But I couldn't really see what was so funny and all that talk about the taste of pure babe had me craving it right that second.  And the two Liangs?  I think they could tell.

It was pretty lonely for a few minutes there cats.
Copyright 2007 Dan Roentsch

The Clitoris Has a Hood!

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EST

by Barry Fest

Felicitations, friends.   I come to you with the unfamiliar ire of the tax-paying persecuted.   I, who once gave nary a care to the destination of my precious tax centimes, trusting, as was my wont, the noble intentions of those blessed with the political genius necessary to attain public office.

Perhaps I should take up where I left off.   If you have been following along then you are already aware that I, the executive editor of the Belverton University Press, have been writing a fictive work - an alibi, if you will - to tell my wife, Dr. Wharton-Stone, in the event of her discovering a long-awaited and painfully-deferred tryst of the usual trysting nature between myself and Belverton University's Dean of Intercourse, the ravishing Racine.

I have been mentored in the crafting of my alibi by Mike, a former New York City literary agent and current barista at my favorite Starbucks.

My alibi had been polished to a squint-inducing luster, and my rendezvous with the lust-inducing Racine had been set.   But then the president — and I mean the president of the very States we deem United — held a news conference in which he exposed my scheme to the eyes and ears of the nation.

How did the president learn of my machinations?   Why did he think them a threat to the nation's matrimonial security?   Why did he — or one of his adjuncts — send two FBI agents to interview me?

I was in the course of discovering the answers to these questions as the FBI agents — aforementioned — sat in my office.   I do not believe it too great an indulgence to describe what happened to me as a "grilling," although the male agent — the avuncular Agent Cubby — was what my maternal grandmother would have described as "all smiles."

Perhaps my reservations were due to the impassive, yet attractive female agent, Agent Slund.   Slund wore her red hair to her shoulders and a black suit with some sort of cleavage-boosting mechanism beneath.   She stared at me the stare of a dead shark and blew cigarette smoke in my face at several intervals.

And I could not help wondering what it was she kept in the large, flat valise beneath her chair.

I sat behind my desk and they in front, the smiling Cubby taking notes whilst the staring Slund stared, both attempting to convince me that an assignation of the variety I sought with the Dean of Intercourse was unAmerican, uncivilized, and virtually against the law.

Which I already suspected.

"What about the crossword-puzzle fantasy, Barry?" asked Cubby.   "There's plenty of the smiley kind of warm romance in it, but none of the viscosity that ends up happening when you rub each other's skin.   The Upper West Side chicks dig it, and they'll let you bite them a little on the neck maybe while you're doing it."

"The crossword-puzzle fantasy?" I asked.   "And the nibble on la nuque is, I presume -"

"As far as you get, Fest," said Slund, an unlit cigarette erect between the fore and third fingers of her right hand, which she held beside her mouth.   "There's no kink to the crossword-puzzle fantasy.   The Journal of the American Psychiatric Association tested it for seven years on perverts."

She stared at me a cobalt stare.

"No, no," said Cubby.   "There's nothing kinky about the crossword-puzzle fantasy.   You know how women're always saying, 'be my friend first and maybe after we can touch each other on the nerve-endy parts'?"

"Well, I suppose, but the Dean of Intercourse is rather —"

"We mean normal women, Fest," said Slund.   "The kind that make you sing for your supper."   Her forefinger rapped savagely the now-lit cigarette, knocking sparks onto the naked top of my mahogany desk.   Already I could distinguish little ember-burns amid the general filth of burnt leaf and paper.

"Right," said Cubby.   "Normal women love the crossword-puzzle fantasy.   That's why they encourage it over at Health and Human Resources.   Wait.   I think we have a pamphlet here."

He reached for the valise beneath Slund's chair.

"Services," she said soporifically, her eyes fixed on the tip of my nose, as on a kaleidoscope.

"Huh?" said Cubby.

She broke her gaze to answer him.   "It's Health and Human Services, not Resources," she said blandly.

"Oh," said Cubby, forgetting the valise and straightening himself again in his chair.   He smoothed his crumpled tie.   "Then the heck with it.   I'm sure there's a pdf of the pamphlet.   I'll email it to you."

He turned to Slund.   "Maybe I'm thinking of Human Resources at the FBI?"

She rolled her eyes and let smoke ease across her red tongue and out between her mauve lips.   "Maybe you're thinking of your mother's sweet jugs," she said.

Cubby stared at her and gulped.

For only a moment the oddity that Slund and Cubby were close enough to know each other's mothers struck me, but then I was back on point.

"So is this crossword-puzzle fantasy long?" I asked.

"No, no," smiled Cubby.   "It's simple.   See, all you do in that one is, okay, it's Sunday morning, right?"

"Not Monday, Fest.    Sunday," warned Slund.

"And maybe you have bagels or share a bagel," Cubby went on.   "You share a bagel with what the New York Jews call a 'shmeer,' which is something like a smudge of cream cheese."

"Mmmmm," said Slund.   "Yummy."

Her sarcasm was undeniable.

"And okay," continued Cubby, "let's say you're having this bagel with the shmeer on a small white plate with paraffin paper from the bagel store and she starts to erase one of your tentative answers and you ... and you ..."

Slund blew smoke here, punctuating Cubby's rhapsody and distracting him only a little.

"You bite her on the neck!   Just a tiny love-bite!" cried the ebullient Cubby.   He looked from my face to Slund's and back again.

"She giggles," said Slund in a monotone.   She tapped an ash to the floor.

"Right!" said Cubby.   "There's a lot of giggling in the crossword-puzzle fantasy.   Lots of   cerebral giggling, the type you professors like.   You know the kind I mean."

"Oh, Jesus," said Slund, just loud enough to hear.

Cubby ignored the ejaculation.   "The kind of giggling that tells you and your lady-friend and whoever else might be listening that you're mature enough to sit on a bed and do something spiritual."

"And crossword puzzles," said Slund, moving the minimum number of muscles in her face necessary to the activation of her mouth, "are far more spiritual than erotic passion, don't you know."

"And that," said Cubby, "is the crossword-puzzle fantasy."

"A nice, second-hand, yuppie fiction," added Slund.

"Whoa," said Cubby.   He turned to Slund with what seemed a slightly sad look, and yet he never lost his smile.   "You say that like it's bad."

Slund turned her head slightly, minutely, nay tinily to face her accuser.   "I'm bad cop," she said.

"But not to me, Slundy, I'm your partner."

Slund sat for a moment, still as the sphinx.

Cubby raised his eyebrows, smiled, and turned back to me.   "The crossword puzzle thing would take you right off the Bureau radar, Mr. Fest.   I don't think I'm telling tales out of school when I say that."

He looked over at Slund, whose eyes were now fixed on one of the diamond patterns on his tie.

After what seemed like a very long time, Slund turned back to me and, with great deliberation, blew a smoke ring.

"The point," she said, "is to give women something to think about besides those hour-long orgasms they're all wanting now.   And if she does something unspeakable" - she tapped an ash off the end of her cancer lance - "like ask you to give her a ride on a leg-splitting rail, you can always tell her that after a long day of federal investigating you'd rather feed your mollies."

Cubby smiled at his partner, then looked at me.   "I'm afraid Agent Slund and I disagree over the popularity of those alleged orgasms," he said.   "You know how hard it is to stay with an hour-long project when the project just stares at you and rolls its eyes."

Slund's eyes widened slightly.   "The project might do more than stare if the person doing the project knew how to pull back the clitoral hood," she said.

I confess I was stunned.   "The clitoris has a hood?" I asked.

Cubby chuckled.   "Whatever it has, even the women who want the hour-long orgasms - if you ask them - I think they'll tell you that they pretty much want to have them with men who can later on discuss porcelain miniatures or which adaptation of Lolita works best, Stanley Kubrik's or Adrian Lyne's."

"Right," said Slund.   "You have to have down the porcelain miniatures and deconstruction of the cinema.   That's so much more stable and long-lasting than a mutual interest butt-play."

"Damn straight," said Cubby, "if you'll excuse my French.   It's grown up, wouldn't you say, Mr. Fest?"

"Porcelain miniatures?" I asked, trying - and failing - to filter my incredulity.

"That's just an example," he said.   "Like the crossword puzzle.   It would also work if you were the kind of guy who just likes to walk barefoot on the beach in those classy cargo shorts, holding your partner's hand, maybe pointing at a flickering star now and then and saying something deep about mortality."

"It doesn't have to be original," interjected Slund.

Cubby leaned over and smiled at me a fraternal smile.   "Hell, is it ever?" he asked.

"Hmm," I said.   "Permit me if you will to play the devil's advocate."

Cubby leaned back.   His adam's apple bobbed once.

"Let's just say - and remember, I'm just, as I said, the Devil's Advocate - that you have a woman who says she doesn't like all of that, shall we say, civilized social intercourse - " I was thinking of Mike the barista's fellatrix ex-wife Bonnie, here "- and instead prefers - or avers she prefers - the taste of a good ... man?"

Slund's lips turned up in an undeniable - albeit brief - smile.   She tapped her cigarette ash to my office carpet, turned to Cubby, and arched her brow.

"It's Bureau policy not to discuss those women, Mr. Fest," said Cubby.   "They will be handled by a joint task force of the National Organization for Women and the Presbyterian Church."
Copyright 2007 Dan Roentsch

The Gay Marriage Undoer

Sun, 08 Jul 2007 19:00:00 EST

by Nefertiti Snorkjutt

All, well, right.  When last I left off I was in flagrante delic—, well, delicious with one Bunny, my newlywed wife — and if you haven’t been reading along to keep up with how that happened then, well, I’m sorry but I’m afraid I don’t have time to ...  oh, here goes!

Ervin and I were on our way to Memphis, Egypt, to catch the evil Mickey Snaketail who has kidnapped my beloved Slappy Goering, the once and future presidential candidate and a former comedian who is also deep.

We were way, well, laid in New York City at the infamous junction of St.  Mark’s Place and Third, where men and women are forced into gay marriage by the infamous Assemblyman from the Nth District of Manhattan, Cecil B.  DeFlicka.   And I was trapped there and married to this, well, woman who is now my wife named Bunny!

Ervin escaped, I suppose luckily, and when last I posted here in this blog space Bunny and I were in a basement, and this basement was itself alongside the basement of the legendary punk café, CCAJ & OCTFAAG (CCAJ for short).   The basement Bunny and I were in was lined with posters of demons and Republicans, and the eyes of these demons and Republicans have been cut out, so that frat boys from NYU hiding in the basement of CCAJ can watch the connubial, well, proceedings of any newlywed lesbians who happen to be, oh my, I suppose the right word is honeymooning in that basement with the pictures of the demons and Republicans and the little army cot with the headboard.

And right now the honeymooning, well, she-lovers were me and Bunny.   And the frat boys —including one lad named Thumper who kept banging the walls — were applauding, the rude little beasts!

But I was hardly in any position to notice, I suppose is the right word.   Position, I mean.   I was too distracted by the rather, well, frantic attentions being paid the nerve-endier parts of my scrumptious (if I do say so myself) physique by the luscious (how I love that word!) Bunny.   It was as if every one of my stiff, little neurons was tickled and set a-tingle, or .  .  .or maybe it was just that I could feel every tiny hair on my body stand up, blink, look around, and drool.

Then, of a sudden, I mean, you know, all of a sudden, there was a rustling from the frat boy side of the wall and then a sound like some young man saying, "Uhhhhh!" — the universal punched-in-the-belly sound — and then someone shouting, "Cut it out, Thumper!   Gross!"

But I could barely pay attention to those goings-on.   Bunny was that en, well, grossing, if you know what I mean.   It was the wettest night on record for me, and now I know what Desmond Cork has been talking about with that "taste of pure babe" and how "cats" get addicted to it, although I am hardly, well, a cat.

And you know Bunny was like a ravenous animal, I mean, yes! I mean, I was, you know, shouting out things like, "Oh, Bunny!" and "Bunster!" and on that last one she looked up at me and growled, "Oh yeah!   Call me Bunster!" and her tongue lolled out and flicked, red as, well, red as the tongues of the demons on the wall posters.   And it made me think, if this is what Hell is like, well, I could camp there for an eon or two!

But then I thought, you know, I could think still, and I thought, you know, that this was the first time I had been able to enjoy myself in that particular, wettening way without the need to dominate a man!   Oh my god, for the first time since, Idon’t know, oh yes, since I was thirteen and I Krazy-glued Ken’s face into Barbie’s buttocks.

While I was thinking these, you know, thoughts, I began to notice that Bunny was slowing down — and not in the good way, you know? She was distracted — we both were distracted by the sound of yelling from the frat boy side of the wall.   A lot of screaming and shouting and the sound of knuckles breaking cartilage … oh my, and the sound of a familiar voice!   Familiar to me, anyway.

"Outta the way, porky!" shouted the voice.   "You pasty-ass lardbutts oughtta spend more time in the gym!"

Then Bunny stopped completely and we both, well, sat up as something immense-sounding began to pound against the wall from the other side.   The wall shuddered, yes, and then shuddered again, then the faces of the demons and Republicans on the walls around us began to distort as they got ready to cave into plaster crumples and dust.

A few slams later and the paper tore as the walls crumbled down.   And there stood Ervin, my Ervin, my own private detective Ervin, with his little blonde crewcut amid the swirls of plaster dust.   He was carrying a blue battering ram in his hand with a little"NYPD" on the side.

When he caught me looking at it, he held it up and shouted, "Thank God for souvenir stores!"

"Why are you here?!" demanded Bunny, a strange growl in her voice.

"To rescue Snorkjutt, ya dumb broad!" cried Ervin.

And she lunged at him.   I mean, it was as, well, if she had known what he was going to say!   By the time he got to the "br" sound in "broad" she was on him, nails out!   It was so quick that for a moment, well, just a moment, I thought he said "dumb bra," which reminded me that my nipples were still feeling the cellar air.

But before she could tear his sk—, well, flesh, the crafty little gumshoe reached into that utility belt he brought with him and pulled out a crucifix!   Only in the middle of this, you know, cross, instead of the usual little man with the prickly hairdo there was a cameo of Anita Bryant in a cowboy hat and looking very put out to be nailed to something.

I thought that, you know, Bunny, being a proud woman and strong (which was something I could tell immediately from the way she snuffled in my pubic hair) would just slap that, um, figurine out of the little Van Helsingesque crewcutted hair-slicking private dick’s hand, but no!   She did not!

Instead she backed into the corner like a shamed wolf (I’ve never seen a shamed wolf but I’m sure that’s what she looked like) and hissed like a cat in the corner (I have seen a cat in a corner).

"Madre de Dios!" she hissed.   It was very, well, strange.

Ervin looked over at me while he stiff-armed the crucifix in Bunny’s direction.

"C’mon, Snorkjutt!" he howled.   "Let’s blow this taco stand!"

I looked at him.   My legs tried, well, my legs and my buttocks tried to stand up and go with him but I couldn’t.   There were, hm, ethics (oh my) in my way.

"I, you know, I'd love to go, Ervin," I said.   I looked at him really hard, because I wanted him to understand, and when you look at a person really hard how can they not see what you’re thinking and that you’re a very earnest and sincere person?

"I’d love toooooo," I said.   "I’d love to go and rescue Slappy, like we planned, but … well, I’m a married woman now.   I have responsibilities."

"Shit, Snorkjutt!" he howled.   "Ya drank the Kool-Aid!"

"Yes," I said.   "And it was slickery going down."

"Hell!" he wailed.   "Yer gonna get tired of fem tongues, Snorkjutt!   Tired as shit!   Men are more — hell!  — men are more filling!   One of these days yer gonna be lyin’ there next to this broad and yer gonna want something with a pulse between those walls!"

He had, well, he had a point.  "Yes … um, I mean, y—"

"We have strap-ons!" Bunny screamed back with that low rasp still in her voice.   Her canine teeth seemed noticeably longer.   "And morlocks are working on a pulse even now!   And once they come up with it …" she began to laugh here "… we’ll be unstoppable.   Why, we already have strap-ons in the shape of the penises of all forty-three presidents of the United States except boney-face!"

"You can make anything you want in a lab!" shouted Ervin.   "Anything ya can touch, that is!" He fixed me with a little-doggie gaze.   "But nothin’ cowers like a man, Snorkjutt … " he said with seduction on his squirmy lips.

And on hear—, well, when I heard those words I was snapped back to heterosexuality like a rock in the slingshot of the evil little boy who murdered Shrek in that Bible story.

Men.   Cowering.   I, well, I melted.

"But what about the marriage?" I asked.   "I have, well, obligations."

"Traitor!" rasped Bunny from the corner.   She leaped onto the cot beside me, her eyes glowing and her hair hanging.   "Well, it won’t be any easy divorce, sister," she said.   "No two weeks in Reno and hasta la concubine!   No deck chair dance with the pinhead there!"

She chuckled the chuckle of that little girl in the movie about the vomiting demon.   "The legal authority for St.  Marks gay marriages is DeFlicka!   He’ll never let you out of this!   HaHaHaHaHaHaHa!!!!!"

It really was, well, it honestly was a hideous laugh.

"Back off, Ellen DeGeneris!" Ervin commanded.   He threw the crucifix down on the cot, but before Bunny could lunge for his face he reached into his utility belt and pulled out a little black gun with a black saucer on the end.   Like an ear.

"Oh my God!" said Bunny.  She was cowering again.   "It’s a ...  a ...  "

"It’s a gay marriage undoer!" howled the gloat—, well, triumphant Ervin.

He stood back and aimed it in the direction of the two of us.   "I now pronounce you Minx and Melinda!" he said, and pulled the trigger.

"Minx and Melinda?" asked Bunny.   "Who the hell are they?!"

"Two straight single chicks, ya moron!"

I felt, well, it seemed as if all the lust had left me.   I felt wet and, well, cold.   It was, oh, how do you say it? It seemed so ...  icky.   Another woman’s tongue.  On, well, me.   The only word, well, the only way of saying what I felt was, well, yuck, I suppose.   I began to wonder ...  where did I leave my Ben Wa balls?

I turned around to Bunny and gave her a creepy look.   Yes.

"It’ll wear off!" she said when she saw me looking at her.   "Those cheap gay marriage undoers never take!"

"That is so 90’s!" cried Ervin.   "This raygun was made by the same company that made DeFlicka’s!"

Bunny looked suddenly sad.  She sank back and the gleam in her eyes, well, de-gleamed.   "Not ...  Apple?"

"It's an iGun!"

Bunny was crushed.   I mean, well, yes, crushed.   There was no more fight left in her gay little frame.   She sat on the cot and looked as put out as Anita Bryant on the cross.

"So long, Nef ..." she said.   I’m afraid it was quite sad.

"So long, Bunny.   No hard feelings?"

She lay back on the cot and a short, well, laugh shook it’s way out of her face.   "Yeah, right.   No hard feelings."

It was def—, well, undeniably sarcasm, but Ervin was pulling me away, so I couldn’t, well, pound the sarcasm out of her, which is something I had in mind.   I mean, taking advantage of me like that!

But it felt so nice.

No time to think, though, because the next thing I well, knew, was that we were plunging through the hole in the wall Ervin had made earlier with his NYPD souvenir.   There was a small corridor with plaster everywhere and another naked bulb hanging by its cord from the ceiling.   Lots of exposed wood and fiberglass and then ...  we were out!

Well, not quite out.  We were out of the corridor, I suppose is the right way to say it, and in the cellar bar next door.  Short-haired, busty waitresses carrying trays and wearing t-shirts that read CCAJ & OCTFAAG on the front.   A boy with metrosexual hair and an open fly sipped beer at the bar.   When his eyes landed on Ervin he flinched and jumped aside.

"Outta the way, Thumpy!" Ervin howled, and pulled me past.

When we got to the front door we still had a flight of cement stairs to go up in the blazing sunlight.  The crowd behind us cheered and applauded as we left.   The door slammed behind us and I blinked my irises or retinas or whatever those eye-thingies are that have to adjust to light so your eyes don’t hurt in the sun.

When we reached the sidewalk, Ervin thrust a pair of sunglasses into my hand.   He had put on a pair himself and he looked rather, well, cool.

Even though we were out on the side—, well, pavement and no one was chasing us he — I mean, you know, Ervin — kept pulling me.

"What, I mean, let me go!" I said.

"We gotta get to the airport, Snorkjutt!" he cried.

"But our flight isn’t ‘til tomorrow!"

"Things have changed!" he raved.   "Ya know that waiter that was hittin’ on me back at the ale house?!"

"Yeah, um y—"

"I showed him the postcard with Mickey Snaketail and Slappy Goering on it!   Ya know how on the back it says, ‘The City of Memphis’?!"

"Well, I, of cour—"

"The waiter says that isn’t Memphis, Egypt at all!   He says it’s Memphis, Tennessee!"

"But, oh my, what about the—"

"Statue of Ptah at the Necropolis?!   It’s really a statue of Elvis at Graceland!"

He was running now.  Ahead of me, the little man, and I had never recovered my Ben Wa balls and I was a bit on the seething side but —

"So when do we, I mean—"

"JFK in two hours, Snorkjutt!   Follow me!"

"But!   Stop it!   I!  Ervin!" I shouted.   "At least tell me which president was boney face!"

But he was already down in the little, um, subway, you know, hole.
Copyright 2007 Dan Roentsch