Short Fiction

Old School

I think bullying was INVENTED at the Catholic school I attended. Let’s just call it “Our Lady of Eternal Guilt and Suffering”. The priests bullied the nuns, who bullied the kids, who bullied each other. Monsignor Barry bullied everyone. God forbid, you should draw the short straw and get THAT guy for confession. “Bless me Father for I have sinned. It has been one week since my last confession. I argued with my brother twice and, uh… I thought impure thoughts once.” Actually, I thought impure thoughts CONSTANTLY – 24/7/365 days a year – mainly about Mary Olson – and I don’t think there was a 13-year-old boy in my school who didn’t. “Impure thoughts??? I KNEW it. You’ll grow hair on your palms, go blind and burn for eternity in Hell for this! For your penance, my son, you must prostrate yourself at the foot of the altar, say 100 Our Fathers, 50 Hail Marys, 1000 Rosaries, and have yourself flogged on the way out the door.” Our Lady of Eternal Guilt and Suffering felt about as close as you could get to reform school without actually being shipped out to juvie or military academy. Desperate parents sent their problem children there to straighten up. Consequentially, there was a motley assortment of every badass greaser and hood for miles around; and they bullied everything that moved. I had so many alternate routes home through backyards and over fences that it was like escape to freedom through the Underground Railroad. Of course, sometimes, the only response to a bully was a bigger bully. Enter Mr. Gundersen, the 8th grade lay teacher at Our Lady of Eternal Guilt and Suffering. He was hulking man of Swedish descent and the butt of more than a few unkind “big, dumb Swede” remarks. A middle-aged bachelor who still lived with his mother, his daily uniform was an ill-fitting navy blue suit, white shirt, tie, what must have been size 15 shoes and a perennial 5 o’clock shadow. Mr. Gundersen coached football, basketball and track. Acting as ad hoc Dean of Students whose mission it was to scare the absolute bejesus out of everyone, he was more like a hit man who could be called in at a moment’s notice to administer a hallway tune-up against the lockers to any of the 8^th grade boys who were singled out as being disruptive or defiant. However, he was the only teacher who was physically intimidating enough to act as judge, jury and executioner, as well as Defender of the Faith and Protector of the Meek and Mild, and the rest of our sorry lot against the greasers and hoods. Even then, his tactics were dubious, but in THIS day and age, he’d be doing a stretch of hard time for child abuse. However, in the fashion of all petty tyrants, he did manage to maintain some kind of despotic law and order.

November 17, 2011 4

The door was ajar so they didn’t use force to enter the house. However, the stealth of their entry was compromised when one of them tripped on the deep pile, orange, shag carpet and pitched headlong into a beanbag chair. They fanned out through the house. A purple lava lamp cast an eerie glow on the living room ceiling, which was flocked with popcorn-textured paint. Slivers of light from a disco ball danced across iridescent baby blue and pink wallpaper.

An eight-track tape deck blasted through giant speakers. Insipid guitar riffs from a late 70’s, skinny tie New Wave band seared his brain. “Turn that shit off!” said the Inspector, “It’s making me nauseous. Get some lights on in here, I can’t see a thing.” Someone flipped a switch and black light created a blinding sheen of fluorescent colors on soft porn music posters, featuring all-girl bands from the 80’s. “My God, there’s no end to it. I took this guy for a disco freak. This just keeps getting worse!”

“He’s not in the house…looks like he skipped out in his father’s Oldsmobile right before we got here.” They looked through the bedroom, searching for items listed on the warrant. A plastic ukulele hung on the wall. A mood ring, pocket protector and heart-shaped, rose-colored glasses lay on the nightstand. There was a Polaroid photo of the suspect striking an iconic John Travolta Saturday Nite Fever pose. He sported a perm, mutton chop sideburns and glasses with thick, black rectangular frames; and wore a skintight polyester, floral body shirt that ended several inches above his flabby waist and exposed navel. A wide tie printed with images of smiley face musical notes adorned his hairy chest. Diplomas from Clown College and the Mime Academy hung on the wall. “The diploma from Clown College explains the shoes and wig collection. This mime thing is a shock to me though. He really didn’t have a reputation as a quiet guy. I’ll bet he drove people nuts with that “trapped in a box” routine.”

Whistling an old Bee Gee’s tune, the Inspector opened the closet door, revealing the contents. They stumbled back with a collective gasp. “This guy’s a real perv. This kind of sicko deviance just makes me want to puke! Look at all this stuff. He’s got a regular arsenal here!”

The closet overflowed with a cornucopia of tragic fashion choices, cheesy fabrics and garish accessories. It burst forth a dizzying array of body shirts, long pointy collars, Nehru jackets, bell bottoms, clashing patterns, sansabelt golf slacks, bolo ties, white belts, beige shoes, velcro fasteners, florid blazers and a vulgar bathrobe from a seedy casino in Atlantic City. There were scarves in loud paisley prints, polka dot ties and a powder blue tuxedo. The crown jewel of the collection was a lime green mohair leisure suit with white piping. It was a gruesome monument to poor taste and depravity.

His dresser drawers were crammed with white tube socks, striped hankies, floral print boxer shorts and sleeveless, “wife-beater” tee shirts. There was a small collection of plastic mesh-backed, one-size-fits-all baseball style caps hanging on hooks. It was a motley assortment from truck stops, NASCAR races and strip clubs.

“Mind if I smoke?” asked the rookie officer. The Inspector was taken aback. “Are you out of your mind? There’s enough cheap polyester in this place to blow us all sky high if there’s even a spark!”

A voice called from the other room. “We may have a haz mat situation in here – the fridge is filled with peach flavored wine coolers!” The Inspector replied dismissively. “Save it for the boys in Bunko down at HQ, we’re the Fashion Police. That other shit ain’t our game.” The rookie looked at the gruff and jaded Inspector with awe and respect. “That dude is one hard boiled dick!” he whispered to his partner. “He should be. He’s been at it since the Fashionistas overthrew the government in the last coup.” “OK boys,” said the Inspector, “we got work to do…start baggin’ and taggin’ and get these vinyl records down to the lab. He won’t get far in his father’s Oldsmobile.”

The Dead Goat Society

I’ll never forget that last night. We were playing in a club called The Dead Goat Saloon in Salt Lake City. It was located in an alley just a block away from the Mormon Tabernacle, which presented a startling juxtaposition. Technically, there are no public bars allowed in Salt Lake City. They skirt around that by calling them private clubs. Patrons join by enrolling and paying a membership fee, which is basically a glorified cover charge, good for one night. However, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee the patrons of these “private clubs” will behave with any more civility or sophistication than they would in a rough and tumble dive. The bouncer said we were the last live band after a 30-year run. They were closing up shop and reopening as a strip club, another surprising choice, given the cozy proximity of the Mormon Tabernacle.

It seemed fitting that we were the last live band, since we had played our first gig there years ago. We had opened for a well-known artist, and the night had been such a success that we had even changed the name of our band from Elvis on Velvet to The Dead Goat Society, in honor of the stuffed white goat that guarded the entry to that dark, tomb-like club. Our other name had been misleading anyway. People expected an Elvis tribute band, when in fact; we didn’t play any Elvis whatsoever.

The interior of the saloon was dimly lit and cavernous. Narrow, arched hallways opened into different rooms, giving it a distinctive catacombs-like vibe. The whole place had something of an illicit and conspiratorial air about it anyway, and this just added to it. It kind of felt like you were in the French Resistance or something. Portraits of a hundred dead bluesmen covered brick walls. With Jaegermeister on tap, the place was legendary as a saloon that had seen its share of drunken brawls. Chairs were weighted down with steel plate so they couldn’t be picked up and hurled as weapons, and surly looking bouncers lurked around the periphery of the barroom.

We were just finishing the sound check, when some biker, already totally trashed, started boogying like he was Lord of the Dance. He looked every bit the pirate with his do-rag, gold hoop earring, tattoos, beard, and leathers; but the real kicker was his eye patch. That really topped off the look. He lurched around the dance floor before crashing into a table, knocking over glasses and a pitcher full of beer and fell down drunk.

Someone commandeered a microphone and sang Happy Birthday as a couple did a slow bump and grind strip tease, tossing their clothes around the room. A lacy, black brassiere ended up draped over the headstock of my Les Paul, just as we tore into the Hound Dog Taylor classic, Give Me Back My Wig. Our harmonica player wailed over the guitars. Someone let loose with a blood curdling rebel yell, and a woman tore off her shirt, and climbed astride her boyfriend’s shoulders, waving her arms wildly over her head. She looked like she had been a regular there since the early days, and years of hard living, wild partying and gravity had taken a toll, if you know what I mean. This worked the already rowdy crowd into a frenzy, and everybody started hooting and hollering and dancing wildly. It was quickly shaping up to be one hell of a night. I took a slug of beer and wondered if it might be a while before we played again in this town. I thought that maybe tomorrow might be a good time for me to finally go hear the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and I started plotting a way to load the goat into the van along with our gear.