Sex, Death, and Other People's Money

Mike Golden

February 2006

"Vulgar contrast grossly perceived." That was to be the vision to ride into the future, according to the famous auteur plugging his latest spine chilling, heart warming boxoffice saga of gaga on the tube. This here excursion of three stray dogs lookin' to hide out of the holy night is something else: Silent, clandestine, completely indulgent, yet valid, unlike flogging your hype. When it's over we rock, not roll into some new born fantasy of what the future's going to be like. The Kid, Surf and me, the past is hot on our heels.

In the now it's a ghost town. Filled mostly with viruses.

Last night, blessed be His name, I thought I might find a miracle out there among the trees and one hundred percent Vermont maple syrup bein' peddled in the streets. But no, I've seen too many movies. Brought Capra into my Achilles heels and cried out, "Lookahere boys, this year we're not gonna do no blue Christmas!"

In short, the three of us bravely agreed to banish loneliness from the face of our topography. We made this pseudo Samurai pledge to go our separate ways all through the day preceding, the night, then come together as the chimes crossed in celebration, and in the process, tamp out insipidity and drown sentimentality in the gulf of memories of rotten holidays past. That may not be much but I had nothing better and no expectations, and a bad idea whose time has come is a bad idea whose time has come. Nevertheless. . .

Irresistible urges pulsate through the vacuum. Dreams of compulsion fill the stocking. On the wall, above the fireplace, dead words are mounted in lieu of action. We are all waiting for something better to come along. Commitment is to something better coming along.

It's new blood. Brothers for the ride. But then sometimes a man's got to do what a man's got to do all by himself. So listen.

My job is listening. I don't make sense of it anymore. That's a compulsion I can't afford. Think I'm Hickey in The Iceman Cometh. Over and over, all in different rhythms, I have to stop when I catch myself listening to riders who only read their lines.

On the eve before, for instance, there was a new woman. Crazy, vulnerable, brilliant, sexy, writing on the wall, you know, the type that thrives on living out The Laws of Manifestation. And no doubt I had been summoned. The old woman got me that way too. Conjured me up in a New York minute, out of the fog.

The new one's psychic, of course. A wine editor to boot. You don't even have to ask questions. Or hold up the glass for a refill. Depending on her point of view, it's always half-full or it's always half-empty, and each bottle has its own story, its own history.

Her LOVE LIFE-101, for instance. I haven't heard it before, but I've been in the movie. She's got two lovers. One 10 years older, another 10 years younger. Lover number Older can give her stability, security and sesquipedalian pleasures far be it from me to deny her. Lover number Younger boffs like a dog with itching powder on his pecker, plus, he can still be trained. Animasgodzillahead no doubt. What should she do? How can she choose? Curtain number Older or Curtain number Younger?

I feel my Hickey coming on. Historically, men have been known to go crazy over good strange. Sometimes even bad. Only amateurs take the reverberations lightly. Pros get $100 an hour and up just for listening, then segue free of involvement.

But this is not complaint. Just amazed experiential observation. Which brings me to the second point before I get to the first. What happens when the objects of spells change without telling the spells? Are we talking new genres here? Symbolic mutation or mutated symbolism? (We'll skip the nature of thought, but use it later in the Media Kit.) It may be buggering, but there's no other way to explore the territory. And after all, are we not Space Rangers?

I'm not preachin' (though God knows I dig the energy), but just between you and me we're destined to invent a new brain! Probably before I even learn to use the old one. But that's progress. Or aggravated obsolescence, if yours is working at the moment.

Tonight the streets are quiet, almost brutal in their early morning promise. As the temperature drops the raving moves inside for the duration. No more lower east side slum Goddesses. Just slumming goddesses hungry for an appetizing fix, then quickly back to the cave-palace from which they've slithered. If honor were recognized on a Chinese calendar, this would be The Year of the Flea.

Still looking for miracles I spot Surf and The Kid waiting for me under a poster of MR. POTATO HEAD on 14th Street and Third Avenue, just as fluffy white globs start falling from the heavens. Potato Head's wearing a condom. Or a body-bag. But whatever you want to call it, celibacy's the new hot cult. Sperm only a rumor outside the dream state. The last time I tried to take the problem in hand it refused to cooperate unless I came up with a fantasy it could dance to.

In the old days, there was nothing truer than the love of a dog, unless it was the love of an 18 year-old heiress, but we, all of us still with half a brain, are contaminated by the possibilities. There's nothing sadder than the idea you have to be happy when you're not. I tried it once. Even believed it for awhile. But it wasn't the moment, it was accumulation. I just happened to be there at the time.

Which brings us back to now.

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