Let’s Get Crazy
Ed Bowers
I was eating in a cheap restaurant and reading the newspaper the other day when I happened upon an article about a man from Japan who went over to Thailand, or some other country, and made the acquaintance of a woman who was an art student, and then stabbed her to death. My food had not yet arrived, so I concentrated on the little bowl of soup that came with the entrée, then returned to my article.
It seems that the man was not content with stabbing the woman to death, but then went on to eat her. When the authorities apprehended him, they put him in jail. But his father was an extremely wealthy and influential Japanese corporate executive, and pulled strings to have his son extradited to Japan, where he spent fifteen months in a mental hospital and then was released with no strings attached. I found this amusingly ironic, since I know a lot of people who have spent fifteen years in jail for committing victimless crimes whose sole motive was so that they could survive. But the story continued as my food arrived.
When the corporate executive’s son got out of the mental hospital, he wrote a book about eating the woman he’d killed. He said that the taste of her body was more exquisitely delicious than anything he’d ever eaten before, and could only be compared to the flavor and texture of raw tuna. After the book was published, it became a best seller, and the author went on to write five more pot boilers that went off the charts in popularity. He then procured a job with a magazine writing restaurant reviews, and is considered the golden boy of the avant garde art crowd in Japan.
I have to had it to Japan. It’s such a little country, but its polite humility when confronted with a super power, allows them to bow in respect, and take America’s lead every time. What we have here is an international short person complex, where the little country is inspired to show the big one that it can surpass it in all categories of human endeavor, be it for good or evil. I finished my food and left the newspaper on the table.
Later that evening, I was drinking at a bar, when an American Indian alcoholic prostitute I’ve known for years, walked up to me, kissed me on the ear, and again asked me to take her home, so that she could have a base of operations to work out of, while she plyed her trade on the street. This woman, who is nothing but trouble, suddenly looked good to me.
“Listen,” I said to her, “I am a writer, and since I’m in San Francisco, I am forced to read my material in public exhibitions that have been designed to be as annoying as possible. I’d prefer that people would just stay home and read my stuff, but publishing being the way it is, and people not having the time, or perhaps even the ability to read anymore, I must make a public jackass out of myself in order to communicate my work, so I have an idea. You and I go into the avant garde art business together. I advertise a poetry reading where, while I read my work, you give head to every man and woman in the place. Given the sexual maturity of this city, which is on the level of the thirteen tear old boy who sniffs glue as a hobby, and blows up frogs for fun, we should get about five hundred people at each reading. Now this is the good part. We charge them two hundred dollars a piece to get it. Then after the reading is finished, I take a machete, and chop off one of your fingers, cook it in a microwave over with a little butter and garlic, and eat it in front of a sexually satiated audience. We do this show ten times,until we run out of fingers. It is then that we go on to your toes, and do ten more shows. You do have ten toes don’t you? The overhead on this, if you’ll excuse the expression, will be minimal, and by the time you run out of fingers and toes, and your mouth feels as if it has been forced to play the harmonics for a hundred years, we will both be rich and can retire as famous artists. But we have to take a non-nuptial agreement, that is one of us dies before the other, the money goes to the surviving party. Given the fact that you are insistent upon pursuing the role of a typical American Indian suicide, and that I have not seen you sober one day in four years, except once when you confessed to me all the lies you’ve ever told, with your new found wealth, you’ll probably drink yourself to death in six months. But it’s all good, because I will take our money and continue to spread the poetic movement we started throughout the world, in your name. I’ll even write a book about you, and the taste of your fingers and toes.”
She stared at me, then said, “A lot of people around here think that you’re on LSD, and now I know you are.”
“On the contrary,” I replied, “I don’t even smoke pot anymore, because it causes me not to be able to remember my dreams. Reality, however, is constantly interfering with me, in ways that drugs never did. Now why don’t you just go over to the lonely guy sitting at the end of the bar, and ask him for a date, and while you’re at it, inquire as to whether he would like to hear a poem while he is getting jacked off.”
I went back to my drink, and the American Indian alcoholic left to ply her trade. I haven’t seen her around lately. Too bad she didn’t take me up on my offer. But then, there are winners and losers in this world, and the losers never take advantage of a winning proposition when they see it.
