Dan Leo's Blog, page 9

"This Living Hand"

 

"Miss Alcott?" said Milford.

She turned around on her barstool, a cigarette in her hand. Somewhere a jukebox was playing a gentle song.

"Oh, hello, Milford," she said.

"Thank you," he said.

"For what?"

"For remembering my name."

"Don't people normally remember your name?"

"No, they don't. They always call me Mugsford, or Billford, or Billfold, or –"

"And why do you think that is?"

"I suspect it has something to do with the amorphous nature of my personality."

"I saved you a seat."

She pointed with her cigarette at the unoccupied barstool on her right.

"Oh, thank you very much."

"Why don't you sit in it?"

"Oh, yes, of course."

And Milford managed to seat himself on the stool.

"I want to apologize for taking so long."

"And do you in fact apologize, or do you merely want to?"

"I do apologize. For, uh, taking so long."

"You weren't gone that long."

"I wasn't?"

"Five minutes perhaps."

"It felt like at least a half hour. No, it felt like a week. No, it felt like –"

"Well, Milford," said Miss Alcott, "I am far from being an expert in these matters, but perhaps the alcohol and marijuana and hashish and the Native Americans’ sacred mushrooms you have consumed this evening have affected your perceptions of time and that which we call, for want of a better word, reality."

"Oh," said Milford, "yes, I suppose that's possible, but, you see, I swear I had all these – these adventures just now."

"Pray expand."

"They all started with that men's room I went into –"

"The 'Pointers'?"

"Yes, exactly –"

"Which you entered so suddenly."

"Um, uh –"

"Because of, dare I venture, the protuberance in your inguinal area –" she glanced down at that sector of Milford's corporeal host –"a protuberance which I now see has subsided – or, should I rather say, because of your sense of discomfiture at the persistence of said protuberance?"

"Yes, I fully admit that the latter was the case."

"I suspected so. And upon further consideration I suspect that you went into the "Pointers" to relieve yourself of your shall we say engorgement?"

Milford sighed, sighing for the twelve-thousandth and twenty-second time since he had awoken, sighing, that morning in his bed, some fourteen hours previously, although it felt like fourteen months.

"I probably had that intention somewhere on my mind, yes," he admitted, "or in the muddled depths of my mind, although, actually –"

Milford paused. How much more humiliation could he stand? And a familiar voice in his head, said, "More, much more, infinitely more."

"Actually what," said Miss Alcott.

"Actually, I had nothing on my mind or in my mind at all, except for the insuperable desire to escape at once the embarrassment of hobbling miserably along beside you, with that, that –"

"Erection I believe is the least impolite term."

"Yes, it was just too, too –" humiliating prompted the voice in his skull, and so Milford said, "it was just too humiliating for me."

"I find that somehow touching," said Miss Alcott.

And she lifted her hand and touched his face.

"Please," said Milford, "I must ask you not to do that."

"Don't you like your face to be touched?"

"I like it very much, but, you see, it was your touching my face earlier that caused me to suffer that, that –"

"Erection."

"Yes, and I'm afraid that if you continue to do so then the erection – pardon me – will return."

"Oh, very well, I'll stop then," she said, and she drew her hand away."

"Thank you," said Milford.

She had withdrawn her delicate hand none too soon, because he felt the blood beginning to course into his organ of supposed masculinity, and if it became engorged again he didn't know what he would do.

There was a small stemmed glass on the bar in front of Miss Alcott, with a topaz liquid in it, and she lifted the glass and took a sip. Putting the glass down again on the bar, she turned to Milford and said:

"But has it occurred to you, dear boy, that I wouldn't mind if you suffered an erection again, and, indeed, that I might forsooth be quite pleased if you did."

"Okay, buddy," said the voice in Milford's head, "don't blow it now. For once in your pathetic life, don't fuck things up now."

"I don't want to fuck things up," said Milford.

"I beg your pardon," said Miss Alcott.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," said Milford. "I wasn't talking to you."

"Who were you talking to then?"

"A voice in my head."

"A voice in your head."

"Yes, it's my sort of doppelgänger – it's myself if I were not myself, but someone confident and bold and fearless. He calls himself Stoney."

"Stoney."

"Yes. I'm sorry, I didn't make it up. It's – it's not a name I would have chosen myself."

"I think you need a drink, Milford. Look." She pointed to another little stemmed glass there on the bartop before him. "I ordered you an Amontillado.

The liquid was topaz, or was it gold, burnt gold, the gold of the gods, of the glistening beckoning golden apples of the sun…

"Oh," said Milford. "I don't drink. Or I shouldn't drink. You see –"

"I should think, Milford," said Miss Alcott, "that after the marijuana and hashish, the sacred mushrooms, and not to mention the drinks you've already consumed this evening, that one small glass of Amontillado will not send you howling to perdition. And it might even help you to relax a little bit."

"Yes," said Milford, after a moment, "you're probably right."

"You know she's right," said the voice in his head.

"Tell me of these so-called 'adventures' you had," said Miss Alcott.

"Oh, the adventures," said Milford. 

"Yes," said Miss Alcott. "The adventures you had during those five minutes we were separated."

The strange and aggressively annoying men in the Pointers room. The fellow who had given him an epic novel consisting of a blank page with only a handwritten inscription. The midget at the urinals, aptly named Shorty, who had brilliantly suggested that Milford think of his mother the awful Mrs. Milford in order to deflate his erection. The endless journey down a dim corridor with the midget piggyback on his shoulders. The emerging into yet another barroom called The Man of Constant Sorrow, filled with people who looked like vegetables, the encounter with that other annoying man called Slacks, and yet another horrible journey down a dim corridor, and then that other bar filled with sad clowns, then still another long walk down dim corridors, and his meeting with his aforementioned dopplegänger, "Stoney"…

"Don't blow it," said the voice, the voice of Stoney. "Say something, before she thinks you're a total lunatic…" 

"Oh, never mind," said Milford. 

"Good lad," said the voice. "Women dig men who are a little wild, but not certifiably insane."

"Drink your Amontillado," said Miss Alcott, pointing to the small stemmed glass in front of Milford. 

Oh, well, this wouldn't be his first slip of the evening, and at the rate he was going, it might not be the last. 

He picked up the glass and downed it in one go.

"You're meant to sip a fine sherry like that," said Miss Alcott.

"I'm meant to do many things," said Milford, taking direct dictation from the double in his brain. "And I haven't done one of them yet."

Miss Alcott smiled.

Milford felt something on his leg, and he looked down to see what it was.

It was Miss Alcott's hand, her delicate hand, squeezing his thigh, with surprising strength.

"This is it, boy," said the voice in Milford's head, the voice of Stoney.

"This is my chance," thought Milford. 

"You're right," said Stoney, "it is your chance, and quite possibly your last one. Now do something." 

"What should I do?"

"Put your hand on hers, idiot," said the voice of Stoney.

Obediently, Milford put his hand – in the immortal words of the mortal Keats, "this living hand, now warm and capable of earnest grasping" – on Miss Alcott's hand.

"Forget the Keats and now give her hand a gentle squeeze," said Stoney's voice, or was it Milford's own voice?

He gave Miss Alcott's hand a gentle squeeze, and then looked shyly into her eyes. 

She did not seem displeased.  

A new song came on the jukebox.

Once he dressed in tweeds and drapes,

owned a Rolls Royce car;

now he seems quite out of place,

like a fallen star…

{Kindly go here to read the unexpurgated "adult comix" version in A Flophouse Is Not a Home, profusely illustrated by the illustrious rhoda penmarq…}

"The Finest Young Novelist of His Generation"

It was midnight in the bar called the Kettle of Fish, and the place was filled with smoke and the damned and the lost and the never to be found. 

A small jazz combo played against the back wall, and a knot of people shouted, "Go, man, go!" 

Outside on MacDougal street the snow still fell as it had been falling without surcease all day, covering the Village in pillowy and dreamlike whiteness and silence, but here inside everyone was drunk, not just the customers but also the musicians and waiters and bartenders, but especially the customers.

At the bar the famous poet Wallace Stevens stared into his Manhattan, and just to his right sat our friends Addison and Bubbles.  

"D'ya know, Bubbles," said Addison, in the 'thoughtful'

tone of voice he reserved for his deepest pronouncements, "do you want to know what my most intense desire in life is?"

"To get drunk every day?"

"Well, that, yes – I suppose it goes without saying – but, putting that noble desire aside, do you know what my real ambition is, I mean at bottom and in fine and ultimately?"

"To put people to sleep? You ought to market yourself, Haberman," said Bubbles. "You could be the new Seconal. Make people pay the big bucks to let you put them to sleep."

"Ha ha, no, but what I should most like in life is to be generally considered – and not just by the best critics, but by hoi polloi –"

"Hoy who?'

"It's Greek for, well, 'the many', that is to say the great churning mass of men."

"And dames too?"

"Yes, dames as well, of course. Where was I?"

"I'm sure I have no idea."

"Oh, I know, I was about to say that what I really and truly want more than anything is to be recognized not just by the literary and academic establishment, but by the common man –"

"And dame."

"Yes, by the common man and dame – recognized as the finest young novelist of my generation."

"Uh-huh."

"I ask you, is that too extravagant of a wish?"

"You don't look that young to me, Dennison."

"Oh, very well, let's say the finest youngish novelist of his generation."

"Depends on what you mean by youngish."

"Let's say finest young novelist under the age of forty."

"I could believe you're forty, even forty-two, maybe."

"Well, I'm not actually, in fact I am only –"

"Hey," said Bubbles, and she put her finger with its red-painted nail against Addison's lips. "I'm fucking with you, boss."

She swiped the finger downward and off of his stubbled chin (shaved only every other day or so, in aid of the thrifty conservation of razor blades).

"Oh. Ha ha," said Addison. "This is why I adore you, Bubbles. Such a devilish sense of humor."

"And you're a boring windbag, Hackerman."

"Yes, so I've been told before, many times, more times than I could possibly count."

"And yet you keep it up, spewing nonsense like a fountain in the park spews water, nonstop, at least until some park ranger guy turns it off after midnight."

"What a splendidly striking and, yes, apt image!"

"See, there you go. "

"Yes, there I went."

"You just don't care, do you?"

"Y'know, Bubbles, I don't think I ever thought about it before, but, yes, hang it all, I suppose I really don't care. I mean, you know, damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead, you may fire when ready, Gridley, because, nuts, and, surrender, hell, I have not yet begun to fight. That sort of thing."

"Finish that bourbon and coke."

Obediently Addison picked up his glass and drank the last of it.

"Ah, delicious. Shall we have another round?"

"No. Take me home now."

"Oh, yes, of course."

"I know my limit, and I passed it over an hour ago."

"I wish I could say the same."

"That you've passed your limit?"

"That I could ever know my limit. You see, for me my limit has always only ever been reached when I run out of money."

"You kill me, Patcherson."

"I hope in a pleasant way."

"Let's go."

"Of course."

"But listen."

"Yes?"

"Don't get your hopes up."

"My hopes are hopelessly up, always, dear Bubbles."

Bubbles climbed down from her stool without falling. 

Addison looked at his money on the bar top, scooped up the bills, but left the coins for the bartender. No matter how impoverished he might be, it was his policy always to leave at minimum a modest token of good will wherever he drank.

He got off his stool, and he swayed briefly but did not fall.

"I must be crazy," said Bubbles. "Even to spend time with an idiot like you."

"Yes, in a sense, I think you must be," said Addison.

At this moment they both turned and gazed across the room at the plate glass window looking out on the lamplit snow still falling thickly outside, and they experienced roughly the same second thoughts, which were that Bubbles lived only a couple of blocks away, but it was snowing, the snow was a foot deep or more on the sidewalks, and they would probably not find a cab, and in here it was warm and dry and cozy, and from deep in the memories of Addison's boyhood reading rose up those poignant last words of Captain Oates during the ill-fated Scott expedition to the South Pole: "I am just going outside and may be some time…" 

"Hey, buddy," said the big older man who had been sitting to the other side of Addison, and he put his hand on Addison's arm.

"Yes, sir," said Addison. 

The man looked familiar, but like whom?

"You take care of this lady," said the big man.

"Um," said Addison.

"She's too good for you."

"I know," said Addison.

"See here, chum, if it's not too presumptuous of me, and if you don't mind staying, I should consider it an honor to buy you both a drink."

"Oh," said Addison, who had never refused a drink in his life, and he wasn't about to start now. He turned to Bubbles. "Darling, this kind gentleman would like to buy us a drink."

Bubbles paused for a moment. 

The combo crashed and wailed, and someone yelled, "Go, daddy, go!" 

Voices laughed and shouted. 

"What the hell," said Bubbles. "I got the rest of my life to sleep."

She climbed back up on her stool.

"I'll take a Hennessy, pops," she said. "VSOP."

"Splendid," said the big man. 

Was it Wallace Stevens? thought Addison. He didn't think much of the man's poetry, but, boy oh boy, what a contact!

He climbed back up on his own stool, beaming with joy.

"What'll it be, pal?" said Wallace Stevens. "You want a Hennessy too?"

It had been at best half a decade since Addison had tasted a brandy other than Christian Brothers or E&J. 

"Why, yes, sir," he said, feeling his sails swell with a fresh full wind, the ship of his self bound boldly now for unknown shores, "I should think a Hennessy would make a delightful nightcap, thank you very much."

{Please go here to read the unexpurgated "adult comix" version in A Flophouse Is Not a Home, profusely illustrated by the illustrious rhoda penmarq…}

“Heaven in a Highball Glass”

In the meantime and just at this moment the fool people called Addison and the lady called Bubbles tumbled together out of the San Remo Café into the night thick with snow swirling down through the light of the corner streetlamp.

“Fucking hell,” said Bubbles, “look at this shit.”

“I adore the snow,” said Addison. “It reminds me of the Norman Rockwell Christmases I never had as a lad myself, and now I daresay, alas, I shall never have them.”

“Hold on just a minute, Patterson,” said Bubbles. 

They were standing wobbling together in the narrow rectangular shelter of the San Remo’s entrance area, and Bubbles put both of her ungloved hands on Addison's narrow shoulders. 

She stared into his oblivious eyes.

“If you want to kiss me I shan’t object,” said Addison.

“Kiss you?”

“Yes. I mean, gee, Bubbles, how many times have we shared each other’s company? I think it’s obvious by now that there is a mutual attraction.”

“Oh, is it obvious?”

“Yes, I should think so,” said Addison, pulling away her wrists with their remarkably strong hands so that he could more comfortably dig out his crumpled pack of Husky Boys. “Cigarette, darling?”

“What? No, I don’t want one of your Husky Boys. You know I smoke Philip Morrises.”

“Sorry. You don’t mind terribly if I light up, do you?”

“Go right ahead, Pattinson, and now there's something I want to ask you.”

“An open book am I,” said Addison, lighting up his Husky Boy with a match from one of the seven complimentary San Remo Café matchbooks he had helped himself to from a bowl on the bar top. "Ask away, ma cherie. I have no secrets, at least none worth keeping."

“What I want to ask you is this," said Bubbles. "How can you be so gay?”

“I beg your pardon, dearest Bubbles. I am not always gay. I too have my dark moments, nay, even dark hours or entire days. Why, not so very long ago, I was so overwhelmed by the misery of my life that I walked out to the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge and prepared myself to jump into the icy cold and oh so unforgiving East River.”

“Why didn’t you?” said Bubbles. She had replaced her left hand on Addison's right shoulder, while with her right hand she toyed with the loosened knot of his necktie, his old Andover "school tie", a stained and threadbare memento of those long ago days of youth when he still thought he might not be an utter failure his entire life.

“Well, you’re not going to believe this,” said Addison, and he took a drag of his Husky Boy. He exhaled the smoke into the snowy cold night air. “It was one of those horrible freezing gusty winter days, when the sky is a cloudless arctic blue, and all the hideousness of the city stands out in high relief.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, get to the point,” said Bubbles, tugging hard on his necktie.

“Yes, to the point, well, there I was, standing by the guard rail up at the middle of the bridge, and trying to summon up the courage to throw myself over, when suddenly this little old man appeared by my side.”

“A little man?”

“Yes, a shabby little chap who gave his sobriquet as 'Bowery Bert'. He informed me that he was the guardian angel of the Bowery, and so apparently he felt it incumbent upon his duties as regional guardian angel to have a word with me before I should leap over the rail to my doom.”

“And so this guardian angel talked you out of jumping.”

“In a sense. Because he reminded me of the little things in life I would miss."

"Like what?"

"Like a doughnut dipped into a hot cup of chicory coffee at the diner across the street from my humble abode. Ma's Diner it is called, and I should love to breakfast with you there someday –”

“Oh my fucking God.”

“Anyway, after we chatted for a bit, I gazed out over the river for a moment, and when I turned he had disappeared, and there I was, standing alone over the no longer quite so beckoning East River. But then a most extraordinary thing happened.”

“You walked back to the shore and got loaded?”

“Well, yes, but before that, what was extraordinary was that I suddenly flew off the bridge, but instead of falling I continued to fly, looking down on the river, and to the land to my right and left, and upon all the buildings and automobiles and tiny people, like the people on a toy train set, and I flew all the way out to Long Island Sound, and then, I don’t know why, but I suppose I just didn’t feel like flying out over the ocean just then, so I turned around in a graceful swoop and flew back down the river and back to the middle of the bridge. And then I walked to the shore and to the Bowery and to my local, Bob’s Bowery Bar, and, yes, I admit I got quite drunk, and quite gloriously so.”

“So,” said Bubbles, and she touched the stubble on the side of Addison’s chin. “You’re not only gay, you’re psychotic.”

Addison felt almost as of he could swoon at the touch of her cold fingers on his face. 

“See here, Bubbles,” he said. “My friend Milford gave me a twenty-dollar bill tonight.”

“What did you have to do for it.”

“Nothing, but what he wanted me to do with it was to ask you to give me a throw.”

“I only charge ten, you know that. I ain’t no grifter, except with these rich uptown swells that come down here slumming. But for regular joes I charge ten for a throw.”

“Well, I was going to save ten of the twenty perhaps for some other time.”

“Tell you what I’m gonna do, Patcherson. I’m gonna let you walk me home.”

“Oh, splendid.”

“Maybe we’ll stop over at the Kettle of Fish first, on account of I like the bourbon and cokes they make there.”

“Oh, are they good?”

“I recommend them. They use the coke you get from one of them soda guns, and there's just something about the way the soda gets mixed with the coke syrup, the bartender squirts some of that stuff over some Cream of Kentucky bourbon and ice, and it’s like heaven in a highball glass.”

“I should like to try one!”

“You can buy us a round, since you got that twenty burning a hole in your pocket.”

“Yes, but I really do want to save ten, just for, well, you know.”

“Tell you what, Hatcherson, you behave yourself, maybe you will get a throw tonight.”

“Now that would be heaven.”

“And maybe I won’t even charge you.”

He didn’t say so, but that, that would truly be heaven. A throw, and for free! Leaving him a whole twenty dollars to spend as he pleased!

“So,” said Addison, “shall we toddle on then, into the blizzard?”

“Yeah,” said Bubbles. “Let’s.”

And, putting her arm in his, she pulled him out from the shelter of the entranceway and into the not quite a blizzard, and led him trudging through the thickly fallen snow and around the corner up MacDougal Street, and they and the street looked for all the world like a Norman Rockwell painting for the Saturday Evening Post.

{Please go here to read the unexpurgated "adult comix" version in A Flophouse is Not a Home, profusely illustrated by rhoda penmarq…}

"A Man Called Stoney"

 

Milford wandered down the dim corridor and after a minute he came to the corner he had passed before. He turned left and continued, and after two minutes he came to the door on the right that led into the barroom known apparently as The Man of Constant Sorrow. He heard the muffled clamor of shouting and laughing voices, and of a man singing to the accompaniment of a banjo. 

Milford stood and listened.

Jump to the sound of the doom of the young,

leap to the music of the farmyard dung,

sing a song of the free and the brave,

but try for once if you can to behave…

Straight ahead the narrow corridor continued, on into darkness, and opposite the door was another dim narrow corridor, also extending into darkness. 

Which way to go?

“It doesn’t matter,” said that voice in his head.

“But it must matter,” said Milford, realizing he was speaking aloud.

“Who says it must matter?” said the voice, also now speaking aloud.

“But all our choices must matter,” said Milford.

“Poppycock,” said the voice, which seemed to come from behind him. 

Milford turned around, and there he saw what looked like himself, a slight young fellow in a peacoat and newsboy’s cap, with thick round glasses, and smoking a cigarette.

“Oh, no,” said Milford.

“Oh, yes,” said his double.

“Who are you?” asked Milford.

“I am the other you, the you that you would be were you not a simpleton.”

“Oh,” said Milford. 

“I am the you that you would be were you not to waste your whole pathetic life, past, present, and future.”

“I see.”

“In short I am the you that you will never be.”

Milford sighed, and looked away, but when he finished sighing and looked again, the confident-looking young fellow was still standing there, smoking his cigarette.

“What is your name?” asked Milford.

“Same as yours, of course, but my nickname, the name all my friends call me, is Stoney.”

“Stoney,” said Milford.

“Yes, I derived it from our middle name of Crackstone.”

“I wish I had thought of that.”

“You must admit it’s better than our given name of Marion.”

“Yes, much better.”

“And it doesn’t sound so, you should pardon the expression, ‘gay’, as calling yourself, tout simplement, ‘Milford’.”

“No one can ever remember my name anyway,” said Milford. “They always call me Mumford, or Milvoin, or Melville, or Melvin –”

“And do you know why that is?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Tell me.”

“Because I am so unmemorable and insignificant?”

“Bingo,” said the young man called Stoney. “But I am here to tell you something.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. I am here to tell you that you don’t have to be a pathetic twerp your whole life.”

“Really?”

“Yes. There’s hope for you yet.”

“Oh, thank God.”

“You don’t believe in God.”

“Oh, right. Well, thank whomever.”

“There’s no one to thank, except me.”

“Thank you.”

“Which is you.”

“So thank me?”

“Now you’re getting somewhere,” said Stoney.

“So now what do I do?”

“Don’t ask me. I can’t tell you what to do. It’s your life. Do what you want to do with it. But do you want my advice?”

“Yes, please.”

“Try to live your life in such a way that when you’re lying on your deathbed dying painfully of cancer that you won’t regret living your whole life like a fucking idiot and a fool.”

“Okay.”

“That’s a start.”

“Yes, it’s a start.”

The young man called Stoney dropped what was left of his cigarette to the floor, and ground it out with the sole of his workman’s brogan.

“All right, buddy, I could say a lot more, and maybe in the future I will, but I’m going to take off now.”

“Okay.”

“Later.”

And just like that Milford’s double Stoney disappeared, and the only sign that remained of his presence was the crushed cigarette butt on the floor.

That was weird, thought Milford. But now I am still left with the question, which way to go?

What had Stoney said?

“It doesn’t matter,” said the voice in his head, which he now recognized as Stoney’s voice.

And so he set forth down the dim corridor opposite the door from behind which came that muffled drunken clamor of laughing and shouting and the man’s voice singing along to a banjo.

Shake it up, shake it up, 

and kick up your heels,

sing a merry song 

about the way that you feels

The shouting and the laughing and the singing faded away as Milford walked along the dim corridor, and after a while there was only the sound of his heavy workman’s brogans on the floor.

The corridor came to an end at another dim corridor going to the left and to the right, and this time Milford turned right, without hesitation and without thinking about it. This corridor ended at yet another dim corridor going left and right, and this time he headed left.

After another minute, maybe two, although it felt longer, he came to a door, another door, under a light fixture in a wire cage. There was no sign on the door. 

Milford put his hand on the doorknob, and turned it, and the door opened inward.

Inside was another barroom, smoky and dim, and although Milford was young, this was nevertheless the ten-thousandth time he had entered a barroom in his life, each time hoping that this time it would be somehow less unpleasant than all the times before. 

Booths and tables filled with people, a jukebox playing, and to the right a bar filled with more people. 

The place smelled like all bars, of smoke and whiskey and beer, but behind it all was yet another almost palpable odor, a thick still musk like that of a church or a funeral parlour. 

Milford saw Louisa May Alcott sitting on a stool near the front of the bar, and, after only a moment’s pause, he headed on over.

{Please go here to read the “adult comix” version in A Flophouse Is Not a Home, profusely illustrated by the illustrious Rhoda Penmarq…}

“The Ballad of the Sad Clowns”

Milford floated and swam and bobbed through the mob of drunken people. Where did they all come from? Why were they here? Why were they not somewhere else? Why was he here?

Suddenly he stopped.

Was he heading in the right direction?

In a panic he looked ahead. Wasn’t there supposed to be an EXIT sign? Where was it? He swiveled his head on its narrow neck. Where was this supposed exit? Dear God (in whom he did not believe, now more than ever), he was lost again, lost, eternally, and he would never escape this place, and this was his hell, to be trapped here forever in this churning mass of presumed people, all of them shouting and laughing as a voice sang to a twanging and jangling banjo.

I’m your candy man
and I gots all that you wants
I’m your candy man
but don’t you eats me all at once



He turned in a circle, once, then twice, and he was halfway through a third turn when, thank God (in whom he now believed, if only for the moment) there it was, off to his left, just visible through the swirling thick clouds of smoke, an electric EXIT sign in red capital letters against a pale background.

And so, setting forth again, he took a step and then another, but why were there so many people in here? What was so great about this bar? He decided he would make better time if he flew up above, and so by an act of sheer willpower he rose up into the fogged air, bending forward so as not to bump his head against the stained and cracked ceiling, with its ancient moldings of vines and leaves, and then, churning his feet and waving his arms in a breast-stroke he swam through the clouds of smoke towards the EXIT sign. At last he reached it and the door beneath it, and he lowered his feet down to the floor. He reached his hand toward the doorknob and realized that a cigarette was held between its index and middle fingers. He transferred the cigarette to his lips and then put his hand on the knob and turned it.

The door opened, outward, and he stepped through, into a dim narrow corridor. Quickly he closed the door behind him, lest anyone should follow on his heels and perhaps try to drag him back inside.

Now what?

He removed the cigarette from his mouth. The corridor went to the left but also to the right, and there was another corridor directly ahead, going straight forward into darkness. He should have asked Shorty for directions, but it was too late now, because one thing he was sure of, but only that one thing, he wouldn’t go back through that door again, through the wood of which he could still hear the muffled clamor of drunkenness and allegedly folk music.

Right, left, or straight ahead?

What difference did it make?

An imp of perversity in his brain said, “Go left, young man!”

He headed to the left.

Where was he going, anyway? And then he remembered, he had agreed to meet Louisa May Alcott for a drink. But where? Had she said “the back bar”?

Sure enough, after only a minute, maybe two, the corridor made a turn to the right, and not too far ahead was another door, beneath a weak bare lightbulb above the lintel, and painted on the door was the face of a sad clown, and above the face were the words The Sad Clown.

Could this be the back room?

He opened the door.

It was another smoky barroom, but this one was shadowy and quiet, the only sounds the low murmuring of voices, the gentle tinkling of glassware, a jukebox playing a sad song.

A big man in a clown’s tattered suit and make-up sat on a stool to the right of the door. He had a bulbous fake red nose and a squashed hat with no top to it. In his mouth was an enormous cigar.

“First time here, buddy?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure I’m in the right place.”

“You look like you’re in the right place. You got I.D.?”

“I.D.?”

“Papers. I’m gonna have to see some identification before I let you in.”

“Would a library card do?”

“You in the union?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“An apprentice then.”

“No, I’m not an apprentice.”

“And yet you look like a clown.”

“I do?”

“Most assuredly. Look at you. The newsboy’s cap. The peacoat. The fisherman’s sweater. The dungarees and workman’s brogans. The milk-bottle thick eyeglasses. You look like a clown to me.”

“I’m not a clown.”

“You look like a sad clown to me, so I’ll let you in, provisionally. Just don’t make no trouble or I’ll have to throw you out.”

“I don’t want to make any trouble.”

“Then you’re welcome, my friend. To the fraternity of sad clowns.”

“But I’m telling you I’m not a sad clown.”

“You sure don’t look like a happy clown.”

“I’m not any sort of clown.”

A shorter and fatter man in a clown’s costume and maquillage came over. He didn’t have a  false nose, but he did have a huge red fright wig on, and a cigarette in a black holder in his white-gloved hands.

“We got a problem here, Zoots?”

“Feller says he ain’t neither a sad nor a happy clown.”

The little clown looked at Milford, up and down and up again.

“He looks like a sad clown to me.”

“That’s what I said,” said the big clown on the stool.

“So I reckon you work the vaudeville circuit?” the little clown said to Milford.

“What? No,” said Milford.

“My name’s Boots, by the way,” said the little clown. “And this big gorilla is called Zoots. What’s your moniker, pal?”

“I don’t expect you to remember it, but my name is Marion Milford, and, yes, I prefer to be called Milford.”

“Milford the Clown?”

“No, just Milford.”

“I ain’t one to give advice, but I ain’t so sure Milford is a great clown name. What about Simpy?”

“What?”

“Why don’t you call yourself Simpy. You look like a Simpy. Don’t he, Zoots?”

“Simpy’s a good name for him,” said Zoots.

“You want to be a good clown you got to have a good clown name,” said the little clown called Boots.

“I don’t want to be a clown,” said Milford. “I’m looking for a lady.”

“A lady clown?”

“No, just a lady. Louisa May Alcott.”

“Ain’t no ladies named Louisa May Alcott in here. Ain’t no ladies in here at all. Just clowns.”

“Sad clowns,” said Zoots.

“I didn’t know that,” said Milford.

“Can’t you read?” said Boots the Clown.

“Yes,” said Milford.

“What’s the sign on the door out there say?”

“The Sad Clown?”

“Exactemundo.”

“So it’s only sad clowns in here.”

“Smart boy,” said Boots.

“Real smart boy,” said Zoots.

“I’m sorry,” said Milford.

“I still say you look like a clown,” said Boots.

“A sad clown,” said Zoots.

“A very sad clown,” said Boots.

“Well, I’m sad, and I might be a clown,” said Milford, “but not in the professional sense.”

“Come on in, son,” said Boots. “Come join our glum brotherhood.”

“Listen,” said Milford, “I mean no offense, but I’ve made a mistake.”

“We all make mistakes,” said Boots. “Every clown in here has made mistakes.”

“Well, regardless,” said Milford, “I don’t really think I belong here.”

“Fair enough,” said Boots. “But let me ask you this. Where do you belong?”

Milford paused just for a moment before answering.

“Nowhere,” he said.

“In that case,” said Boots, “you’ve come to the right place. Give him a membership card, Zoots.”

If Milford had possessed the eye for detail of a true poet he would have noticed the small table next to the stool that Zoots sat on, which had a can of Rheingold on it, an ashtray, a long, heavy-looking flashlight, and a small stack of cards. Zoots picked up one of the cards and handed it to Milford.

Milford looked at the card, which had a picture of a sad clown’s face on it, and under the picture the words:

    This is to certify that

   __________________
    
is a member in good standing of
 
    the Sad Clown Society.


“Just put your name in the blank space there when you get a chance” said Zoots. “Just ‘Simpy’ will do. Dues are ten dollars for a lifetime membership, but with that you get drinks and beers for a nickel, a dime for top-shelf liquors and imported beers, plus free hot dogs with complimentary potato chips and your choice of condiments and ‘fixin’s’; I can personally recommend the ‘fatback ‘n’ beans’ and our proprietary barrel-cured sauerkraut. Please feel free to try our all-day breakfast for only fifty cent, as well as our daily-changing table d’hôte dinner special for only one dollar.”

“Well, that all seems very reasonable,” said Milford.

“Also, we never close.”

“Well, uh –”

“So, you know, just ten bucks. Payable in advance.”

Milford was afraid they wouldn’t let him leave unless he paid, so he put the card down on the little table while he dug out  his wallet, opened it, took out a ten-dollar bill and handed it to Zoots. The big clown picked up the flashlight, clicked it on, held the bill up and examined it in the harsh glare of the flashlight.

“It’s not counterfeit,” said Milford, putting his wallet away. “At least not to my knowledge it isn’t.”

“Looks legit,“ said Zoots. He clicked off the flashlight, stood it upside-down on the table, then folded up the ten and stuck it in a pocket of his ragged suit. “We get a lot of jokers trying to pass fugazis here, so I got to check.”

“Great,” said Boots. “Now that we got that all settled, let me escort you to the bar, Simpy. First drink’s on the house.”

“Look, I appreciate it,” said Milford, “but I really can’t stay. You see, I have to find this lady.”

“Why?” said Boots. “She’s only going to make you sad. Sadder, I should say.”

“Nevertheless, I told her I would meet her, and so I feel it is incumbent upon me to try to do so.”

“Okay then,” said Boots. “Go. Go find this ‘lady’. But listen. When she breaks your heart and then rips it out of your chest and throws it on the ground and dances the Black Bottom all over it, you come back here.”

“Okay,” said Milford.

“You come back here and join the rest of the sad clowns.”

“Possibly,” said Milford.

“He’ll be back,” said Zoots.

“I think you’re right, Zoots,” said Boots. “He’ll be back all right.”

Milford wondered if he should ask for directions to the back bar, but he decided not to.

“Well, thanks anyway,” he said.

“Good luck, Simpy,” said Boots.

“He’s gonna need it,” said Zoots.

“Goodnight,” said Milford.

“Wait,” said Zoots.

“Pardon me?”

“Ain’t you forgetting something?”

He pointed to the membership card that Milford had absent-mindedly laid on the table.

“Oh, right,” said Milford. He picked up the card. “Thanks for reminding me.”

“Hey, Simpy,” said Boots.

“Yes?”

“Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”

“What?”

“It’s a joke,” said Boots. 



“Ha ha,” said Zoots.


“Now that you’re one of us,” said Boots, “you got to get used to us clowning around.”

“It’s what we do,” said Zoots.

“Okay,” said Milford. “Well, uh –”

He turned around, put his hand on the doorknob, turned it, and went out. He closed the door behind him.

So, he had gone the wrong way.

Unless it had really been the right way.

He headed back down the corridor.

A burning sensation in his fingers alerted him to the fact that his Husky Boy had burned down to a tiny nubbin, and so he dropped it to the floor, and then ground it out with his sturdy workman’s brogan.

Perhaps that place had been the right one for him after all.

No matter, he could always go back.

He sighed, for the twelve-thousandth and twenty-first time since he had crawled his way from slumber so many hours and seeming months ago, and he continued on down the corridor. 



He suddenly became aware that he was still holding the sad clowns membership card. Should he throw it away? No, just to be on the safe side, he decided to keep it, and he took out his wallet again and slid the card in next to his library card.

{Please go here to read the unexpurgated “adult comix” version in A Flophouse Is Not a Home, profusely illustrated by the illustrious Rhoda Penmarq…}

“A Man Called Slacks”

 “Ain’t seen you in here before, son,” said a voice.

Was it the voice in his head again? Why must it torment him so?

“Go away!” yelped Milford.

“What?” said the voice, and suddenly Milford realized that the voice came not from within him but from without, specifically from his left, and he turned and saw a very thin man sitting on a barstool in a worn-out black frock coat and a crushed stovepipe hat.

“Oh, I’m very sorry,” said Milford. “I thought yours was a voice in my head.”

“I see,” said the man. His face was pale and unshaven and his eyes were hollow. “So may I take it that you suffer from lunacy?”

“Perhaps, but, you see I foolishly ate some mushrooms not long ago, and so now I am hearing voices.”

“Ah, mushrooms! Well, then, unbodied voices are to expected! Tell me, if it’s not too personal, have you had visual as well as auditory hallucinations?”

“Yes, when I first came in here a few minutes ago it seemed to me that all the people in here were made of vegetative matter.”

“I cured him of that,” butted in Shorty, from Milford’s right. “Got him to close his eyes and stare deeply into the abyss of existence and non-existence for a minute, and then when he opened his eyes again, he was all good, wasn’t you, Bumstead?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say I was ‘all’ good,” said Milford.

“But better,” said Shorty.

“Okay, yes, I was better,” said Milford.

“My name is Caesar Augustus McQuaid,” said the thin man, and he proffered a thin long hand to be shaken. “Put ‘er there, Bumstead.”

Milford looked at the hand. He didn’t want to shake it. It looked like one of the hands of his great-uncle Woolford Milford as he lay in his white velvet cushioned coffin, another victim of the bibulousness that ran rampant through both sides of his family. The nine-year-old Milford had reached in and curiously pressed a finger on the flesh of the white thin bony hand of his dead great uncle and it had felt cold and yet slightly spongey, and that night he experienced nightmares which had recurred regularly ever since.

“Take the man’s hand,” said Shorty. “Don’t be a asshole, Grumley.”

“Oh, sorry,” said Milford, and he took the man’s hand, and the hand squeezed his, hard. “Ow,” said Milford.

“Very pleased to meet you,” said the man, continuing to squeeze Milford’s hand in his, in what the authors of the mysteries Milford’s mother read (and which Milford himself sometimes surreptitiously read, in attempts to forget his life, albeit briefly) would call a vise-like grip.

“Ow,” said Milford again.

“Can you feel the supernal strength of my hand?” said the man.

“Ow, yes, ow,” said Milford.

“Not bad for a skinny guy, huh?”

“No, not bad, now will you let my own hand go? Ow.”

“Call me Slacks. My friends call me Slacks.”

“Okay, Slacks, now let my hand go, please, you’re hurting me.”

“Pain is good. It reminds you that you exist, even if you’re not alive in any profound sense.”

“I don’t care, now let go of my hand.”

“Say please. Don’t be rude.”

“Please let go of my hand.”

“Please let go of my hand, Slacks.”

“What?”

“You have to say, ‘Please let go of my hand, Slacks.’”

“Okay, please let go of my hand, Slacks.”

“Because my friends call me Slacks, and I’d like to think we could be friends.”

“Please let go of my hand, Slacks, Jesus Christ!”

At last the man released Milford’s hand, and Milford raised his own now-paralyzed hand and stared at it, trying to will its fingers to move.

“You say your name is Rumpstead?”

“No,” said Milford, blowing on his hand, feeling the blood slowly return to its veins. “My name is Milford, actually, not that I expect you to remember it.”

“Of course I’ll remember it, Milbourne.”

“His name ain’t Milbourne, Slacks,” Shorty butted in again. “It’s Milbert.”

“Sorry,” said Slacks. “Milfort it is then. You’re probably wondering how I acquired such strength in my grip.”

“Not really,” said Milford, patting his pockets in search of cigarettes.

“What I do is I squeeze tennis a tennis ball for an hour each day. You should try it.”

“Why?”

“So that you can have a manly grip like mine.”

“Millstone don’t care about shit like that,” said Shorty. “He’s a poet.”

“Ah, I thought so,” said the man called Slacks. “As soon as I saw that peacoat and that newsboy’s cap, not to mention the hearty ribbed fisherman’s sweater, the dungarees, and, yes, the workman’s brogans, I said to myself, here is a poet!”

Milford found the cigarettes in his inside peacoat pocket and brought them out.

“Might I have one of those Husky Boys.”

Milford offered him the pack and the man fingered out a  cigarette.

“I’ll take one of them Husky Boys too if you can spare it, Milvern,” said Shorty.

Milford turned and offered the pack to Shorty, and Shorty’s stubby fingers pulled one out.

Milford finally took out a cigarette for himself. Maybe it would help, it certainly wouldn’t hurt. At least not yet. He was still young after all, and cancer and emphysema might be years away in the future.

“Got a light?” said Slacks.

Milford put away the pack of Husky Boys, and with only minor difficulties he found his lighter, brought it out, and after six or seven clicks he got it to produce a flame, and he ignited the cigarette in the thin lips of Slacks and the one in the more protuberant lips of Shorty, and at last the one in his own relatively normal-sized lips.

“Ah,” said Slacks, “tobacco, ale, good fellowship. For what more can one ask? Tell me about your poetry, Quilford.”

“Pardon me?”

“Your poetry. I’m guessing you are a lyric poet.”

“I am a bad poet.”

“Ha ha. You jest.”

“No, I’m quite serious.”

“False modesty will get you nowhere, Pequod.”

“My name is Milford, and my modesty is not false. I have never written a decent line of poetry in my life.”

“Okay, fine, be like that. But I look at you, Rillford, and behind those milk-bottle glasses of yours I see the eyes of a great poet.”

“I’m afraid your own eyes deceive you,” said Milford.

“Spoken like a true poet. Finish that glass of ale and I shall buy you another.”

“I’ll take one too, Slacks,” said Shorty, “long as you’re buying.”

Milford picked up his stubby glass, put it to his lips, and poured its remaining contents into his mouth. Swallowing, he thought of the AA meeting he would go to tomorrow, if he were still alive tomorrow. What a tale he would tell to those boring fools in the basement of Old Saint Pat’s!

He laid the empty glass on the bar. He must get out of here.

“Good lad,” said the man called Slacks, and he quickly lifted the stubby glass in front of him and sucked the inch of yellow liquid in it into his own mouth. “I say, Joe!” he called to the fat bartender, putting his emptied glass on the bar top and shoving it forward. “Three more of the same over here!”

“Wait,” said Milford. “I don’t want one.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“Because I am an alcoholic, for one thing, because I am bored for another, because I am tired of no one remembering my name even one second after I’ve told them my name, which is Milford, not Rillford, or Milthorne, or Millstone, or Milfort, or Milbert, or Milbourne –”

“Jeeze,” said Slacks.

“Yeah, jeeze,” said Shorty, “lighten up, Milborg, we’re all trying just to have a civilized good time here.”

“Also,” said Milford, “I fear that if I stay here at this bar any longer I will lose my mind.”

“You got to face those kinds of fears,” said Slacks.

“Yeah, Slacks is right, Millstone,” said Shorty. “You don’t get nowhere by running away from your fears. You got to meet ‘em head on.”

“Crush them,” said Slacks.

“’Cause no matter where you go, you ain’t gonna escape yourself,” said Shorty.

“Nor yourselves, if’n you be one of them what they call schizos,” said Slacks.

“Three ales,” said the fat bartender, laying down three more of the stubby glasses. “Who’s buying.”

“That’s all right,” said Slacks, to Milford. “I insist.”

“What?” said Milford.

“You don’t have to buy this round.”

“I didn’t offer to.”

“I really insist.”

“I’m waiting,” said the bartender. “I ain’t got all night and I got other customers.”

“Just hold on a second here, Joe,” said Slacks. “Really, Quilboyne, you needn’t get this round. You can have the next shout.”

“Fifteen cent,” said the bartender.

“Take it out of there, Joe,” said Shorty, tapping the pile of bills and change in front of Milford.

The bartender picked up a dime and a nickel and went away.

“Wow, thanks, Quillman,” said Slacks. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I didn’t do anything,” said Milford. “And you know what? I’m leaving.”

“You can’t leave. You have a full glass of ale there.”

“You can have it.”

“I’ll take it,” said Shorty.

“How about if we share it,” said Slacks.

“Okay,” said Shorty. “That’s fair. But I get the first half, ‘cause I brung Milburton in here, and also so’s I don’t got to drink your backwash, no offense.”

“How do I get out of here?” said Milford.

“That’s a very good question,” said Slacks.

“Please answer it.”

“It depends on what you mean by out of here.”

“I just want to get out of this barroom.”

“Don’t we all?”

“Oh, Christ,” said Milford.

“You can go out the way we come in,” said Shorty, “through that door back there and back through that long dark corridor and back into the Pointers room and out the door there.”

“Oh, God,” said Milford. “Isn’t there a quicker way out?”

“Sure, just go down beyond the end of the bar there to the right and you’ll see a door that’s got a electric EXIT sign over it. Just go through that door.”

“Oh, thank God.”

“Don’t leave, Milliburton,” said Slacks, in a half-hearted sounding voice.

“He’s got a hot date with Lou Alcott,” said Shorty.

“That bitch?” said Slacks. “Ain’t she a dyke?”

“Apparently not,” said Shorty. “Or at least not a hunnert percent. Anyways, you know what these young bucks are like. They just want to get they ends wet and it don’t matter to them if a frail is a dyke or not.”

“Yeah,” said Slacks. “I remember them wild days of young manhood. Vaguely, but I remember. And I got my share. Maybe more than my share.”


“How many, Slacks?” said Shorty.

“Oh, I’d say at least a baker’s dozen, maybe nigh on to nineteen or twenty if you’re counting the stray dark alley gobbler or Baltimore handshake.”

“God love ya,” said Shorty.

“How many you reckon you’ve had, Shorty?” asked Slacks, politely.

“Seven hunnert and twenty-two, and that ain’t counting stray gobblers and Baltimore handshakes.”

“Holy shit.”

“What can I say, Slacks. Chicks dig me.”

“I should say so!”

“They think I’m cute. I just burrow on in there like a little puppy dog and they love it.”

“I’m sure they do, Shorty, I warrant they do. How many you had, Burgoyne?”

“What?” said Milford.

“How many babes you shared the act of darkness with?”

“I’m leaving now,” said Milford.

“So the answer is none?”

“Goodbye,” said Milford.


“Well, all I can do is wish you good luck, Quillman, and if I know Miss Louisa May Alcott, you’re going to need it.”



“Milford,” said Milford.

“Say what?”

“My name is Milford.”

“I know it is. Put ‘er there, Gilford,” said Slacks, and he offered his long thin hand again. Milford ignored it. He turned to Shorty.

“Thank you for talking me back from the abyss,” he said.

“Don’t mention it, Guilfoyle,” said Shorty. “And I hope you achieve la petite mort with Missy Lou.”

The tiny man offered his tiny pink hand hand, pink and hairless, the only kind of hand he had, and Milford hesitated for just a moment in revulsion, but then took it, gave it a brief shake, pulled his own hand away and turned and moved away from the bar, into the churning mass of shouting and laughing people. He realized as he did so that he was leaving nine dollars and change on the bar, but this was a small price to pay to get out of here, if he got out of here.

Above and through the noise of the barroom a man was still singing, to the accompaniment of a jangling banjo:

Well I went to the river
but I couldn’t get across
singing polly wolly doodle
all the day…






{Please go here to read the unbowdlerized “adult comix” version in A Flophouse Is Not a Home, profusely illustrated by the illustrious rhoda penmarq…}

"Immortals"

“Go ahead, Buford, get in there,” said Shorty. “You gotta be assertive if you want to get anywhere in this or any other goddam world.”

Milford saw a six-inch space between two men at the bar, and he moved into it, sidewise, with the tiny man still seated on his shoulders.

“Hey, bozo, you’re on my stool,” said Shorty, to a shabby man with a torn hat to the right. “Get off it.”

“I didn’t see your name on it.”

“I been sitting on that stool all night until I got up to take a slash just a couple minutes ago, and now I want it back.”

“Oh, all right, I’ll get up, but only because you’re a midget.”

“Midget is not a term we little people approve of.”

“How about shrimp?”

“We prefer the appellation ‘small people’.”

“Whatever, here’s your stool back, half-pint,” said the shabby man, and he got off the stool, picked up some change off the bar and his beer glass, and walked away.

“Yeah, you better walk away,” Shorty said loudly to the man’s back. “I may be a small person but I’ll still kick your ass.”

The man continued to walk away, into the crowd of shouting and laughing people.

“Ha ha,” said Shorty. “Look at him go, the pansy. Okay, you can let me down now, Stumpford, right on that stool.”

Milford reached up with both hands, taking the tiny fellow by the waist, and lifted him off his shoulders and down to the stool.

“Thanks, buddy, now shove the stool a little closer to the bar for me, will ya?”

It was a backless stool, and obediently Milford took hold of it, and awkwardly brought it closer to the bar. The little man put his forearms on the curved edge of the bar, and his head with its leather-billed blue cap was just above the level of the counter.

“Ah,” he said, “home sweet home.” He raised one small arm. “Hey, Joe!” he yelled at a fat bartender. “Two glasses of your finest house India Pale Ales!”

He turned to Milford. 

“I’m going to let you in on a trade secret,” he said. “We small people get away with murder. Everybody’s afraid to stand up to us, because they don’t want to get the reputation of being a bully and picking on shrimps like me. Someday I’m gonna mouth off at the wrong big guy, and he’s gonna squash me like a bug. You got any money.”

“What?”

“I said you got any money. Any spondulics. Cash. Bread. The do-re-mi.”

“Um, yes, I suppose I have some money.”

“Lend me a buck.”

“What?”

“I know I said I’d buy you an ale, but I can’t buy you one if you don’t lend me some money. I’ll take fifty cent if you got it.”

“You mean you don’t have any money?”

“That’s exactly what I mean, but if you lend me some then I’ll have some and I will be able to buy you an ale.”

“But wouldn’t that be just me buying the ale?”


“Not if it’s a loan. Just gimme a dime then, ‘cause a glass of ale here is only a nickel, so that’s one for each of us.”

“So you dragged me all the way back here just so you could get me to buy you a drink.”

“It’s only a ale, and it only costs a nickel for Christ’s sake.”

“But it’s the principle.”

“Fuck your principle. Are you gonna be that cheap, and after I helped you get rid of your raging hard-on by getting you to think about your mother? And when you was hallucinating just now and on the very verge of losing your marbles, who talked you back from the yawning black hole of the abyss?”

It was true, everything the little fellow was saying was true.

“Okay,” said Milford. “I’ll buy you an ale.”

“And yourself one, too.”

“I don’t want one.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

“Two ales,” said the fat bartender, loudly, and putting a short stubby glass filled with foam-topped yellow liquid before each of our heroes. “Put the money on the wood and make the betting good.”

“My father has this round,” said Shorty. “Pay the man, Chumford.”

Sighing (his twelve-thousandth and twenty-first sigh since awakening an eternity ago), Milford brought out his old Boy Scout wallet and opened it. Inside were a few tens and a couple of twenties. He took out a ten and handed it to the bartender, who held it up to the light of an electric chandelier overhead, and then went away.

“You didn’t tell me you was rich,” said Shorty.

“I’m not rich,” said Milford.

“You’re walking around with sixty bucks in your poke, don’t tell me you ain’t rich.”

“Oh, all right, I have a modest family income.”

“How much?”

“I fail to see how that is any of your business.”

“Touchy.”

“Look, can we just change the subject?”

“Just tell me how much your income is.”

“Well, if you absolutely must know, I have a trust fund for five hundred a month from my late father –”

“Jesus Christ! Half a grand a month? Boy oh boy what I could do with that kind of scratch.”



The bartender was back and he laid some bills and change on the bar-top, fanning out the paper money, and sprinkling the coins on top of it.

“Nine dollars and ninety cent,” said the man.

“Take a buck for yourself, Joe,” said Shorty.

“Hey, thanks, Shorty,” said the bartender. He took a dollar bill and went away.

“Always give the barkeep a good tip first time you come in a bar,” said Shorty. “Unlike stinginess, generosity always pays off in the long run. Speaking of which, be an ace and give me a ten-spot.”

“What?”

“Ten bucks.”

“I think you’re a sponger.”

“And you would be right in thinking so. Now fork it over.”

“Oh, all right, but only because you helped me with, uh –”

“Your raging hard-on, and your incipient attack of insanity.”

Milford still had the wallet in his hand, so he opened it up.

“Might as well make it a double-sawbuck,” said Shorty.

“You said ten a second ago.”

“Make it twenty, and we’ll call it a deal.”

What difference did it make?

None.



Milford took out a twenty and the little fellow reached up and grabbed it, then folded it up and stuck it in his trousers pocket.

“By the way,” he said, “I’m sorry I didn’t let you take the stool, but you understand that someone my heighth can’t exactly belly up to the bar on his own two feet.”

“I don’t mind standing,” said Milford, and he folded up his wallet and put it away.

“Lookit, Bedford, If you like you can take the stool if I can sit on your lap.”

“No thank you.”

“Just ‘cause you let a little man sit on your lap don’t make you a fairy.”

“I’m sure it doesn’t, but I’d rather stand, thank you.”

“Don’t say I didn’t offer.”

“I won’t.”

“If you do get tired of standing, just let me know.”

“I don’t intend to stay here long enough to get tired of standing.”

“Famous last words again,” said a voice.

“What?” said Milford.

“Whaddaya mean what?” said Shorty. “I didn’t say nothing. For once.”

“Never mind,” said Milford.

Yes, he was still hearing voices. Or a voice. Was it God? Was it Satan? Was it himself?

“Or all of the above,” said the voice.

“And now,” said Shorty, “we drink. Lift your glass, son.”

Milford lifted one of the stubby glasses, and Shorty lifted the other one.

“But before we drink, my friend, we toast. Would you like to propose one?”

“No,” said Milford. “I don’t even want to be here, and, as I said before, several times, I am an alcoholic, and therefore I shouldn’t even drink this ale.”

“Okay, so I shall make a toast.” Shorty cleared his throat, and then pronounced: “To the damned.”

“Okay,” said Milford.



“I ain’t finished,” said Shorty. “To the damned I say. But also to the twice, the thrice, and the quadruple damned, in other words those wretched souls consigned to hell only to find out that beyond that hell lies an infinity of hells that make each succeeding hell look like a madcap weekend in Atlantic City.”

“Um, okay –”

“To the unloved,” said Shorty. “And, yes, to the unloving.”

“Uh -”

“To the ignorant,” Shorty said, “and, yes, to the stupid.”


Shorty paused, but Milford suspected that the tiny man had not yet finished, even though he had already covered a lot of ground.

“Don’t look away,” said Shorty. “Look at me whilst I toast.”

Milford looked down into the small man’s eyes, with reluctance, but he looked into them, bloodshot, bleary, but strangely vibrant, or at least vibrant seeming.


“To those who live but do not live,” said Shorty. “To those who will die as absurdly as they lived.”

He’s talking about me, thought Milford. “Most likely he is,” said that other voice in his head.

“But most of all,” said Shorty, “to us.”

“To us?” said Milford.

“Yes, to us,” said Shorty. “To the immortals.”

“We’re immortal?”

“For the moment we are. And that’s all that matters. Now tilt that glass into your gaping maw, because it’s up the long ladder and down the short rope, to hell with King Billy and God bless the Pope.”

“I’m not Catholic.”

“Neither am I, now drink, my lad, pour the sacred liquid down your throat, and for once in your life, if for only the oncet, be, if not a fucking man, then at least a reasonable facsimile of one.”

“In other words,” said the voice, “like they say in AA, fake it till you make it.”

And for some reason, for a thousand reasons, Milford lifted the glass to his lips and poured the ale into his mouth. He had to admit it tasted good, if only for the moment, and for the moment the moment was all he had.

He laid the glass, now half-empty, on the bar top, and now he became aware of the man singing again, accompanied by a jangling banjo:



Don’t you trust them railroad men,
they’ll drink up your blood like wine,
and don’t you go down to Deep Ellum,
them womens there’ll make you whine…






{Please go here to read the unexpurgated “adult comix” version in A Flophouse Is Not a Home, profusely illustrated by the illustrious Rhoda Penmarq…}

"Nothing"

Through the thick swirling smog of smoke Milford marched with the tiny man called Shorty piggyback on his shoulders, through the jostling of men and women who now all seemed to have faces made of the flesh of mushrooms, through the sound of a voice singing:

I’ll say goodbye to Colorado
where I was born and hardly raised…

And suddenly he stopped.

“Why you stopping, Rilford? We’s almost there!”

“These people,” said Milford to the little man whose face loomed down to the side of his, “they are not human.”

“You noticed that, ha ha. That’s ‘cause they’s writers – yarn-spinners, troubadours, hack authors of broadsheets and feuilletons, scribblers of dime novels, and, yes, poets just like yourself!”

“No, I don’t mean they’re writers, I mean they are not human beings. They are like some horrible hybrid of vegetable and animal matter, and I am terrified.”

“Okay, listen, Pilford, you ate some mushrooms, right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s just the mushrooms making you see these good folk that way.”

“It is? I mean, they are? I mean, the what is the who is the why?”



“Hoo boy, do you need an ale.”

“I do? But as I told you, not that you were listening or even cared if you were, but I am an alcoholic. The worst thing I could do right now is to drink an ale, and I don’t know why I’m here.”

“You are here because the universe ordained that you should be here. Now get a grip on yourself. One thing about mushrooms, you got to ride ‘em out, just like anything else in life.”

“Ride them out?”

“Yes, it ain’t no different than from when you tie a good load on. You go crazy for a time, then eventually you pass out, you wake up, you feel like shit for a day or two, maybe three days if you really went on a bender, then one day you wake up smelling like a rose, full of the joy of life, ready for a plate of bacon and eggs and home fries and a pot of coffee and then you’re all good to go and start it up all over again.”

“So you’re saying this horror will pass?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“Oh, thank God.”

“Do me a favor, Bilford, just close your eyes for one second.”

“Why?”

“Don’t ask, just close them, and don’t open ‘em till I tell you to.”

“But you said to just close them for one second.”

“Okay, so I misspoke, now close your fucking eyes.”

“All right.”

And Milford closed his eyes.

“Now what do you see?”

“I see flashing bolts of lightning of red and orange against a black background, like the depths of, of –”

“Of interstellar space?”

“Yes.”



“Good. Now, look deeper and tell me, what else do you see?”

“I see flashes of my mother’s face, and of my aunts and great-aunts and grandmothers, grinning and laughing.”

“So you’ve reverted to the cradle. This is perfectly normal, and nothing to be alarmed about. Now, keeping your eyes tight shut, I want you to breathe in deeply through your nose and then slowly let it out through your mouth.”

“Okay,” said Milford, and he breathed in the thick smoky air and then slowly exhaled.

“Good,” said Shorty. “Now, still keeping your eyes shut, tell me what you see now.”

“Now I see only darkness, with tiny thin lines of scarlet zig-zagging.”

“Go on, look deeper, deeper, my son, and now tell me what you see.”

“Okay,” said Milford.


“Are you doing it?”



“Yes, I think so.”

“Good, now tell me what you see.”


“Now I see only darkness, no, wait, not even darkness, but nothing, nothing at all, not even the color black, just nothingness.”

“Excellent. This is good. You have finally reverted back to the nonexistence you enjoyed before your parents so dubiously conceived you. Indeed you are looking at the nothing you were, and also at the nothing you will one day ineluctably return to.”



“Great. Just great. I don’t see how this is helping.”

“Ne t’en fais pas, mon enfant. And now, still keeping your eyes tight shut, I want you to take another really, really deep breath, again through your nose.”

“Why?”

“Just fucking do it, okay? Eyes shut, really deep breath through your schnoz, filling your lungs. Take it in, hold it for as long as you can, then let it out really slow, but this time through your nose.”

“Well, all right.”

Keeping his eyes shut tight, seeing only nothing, Milford drew in a great breath through his nose, breathing in the smoke of cigarettes and cigars, and, yes, of marijuana and hashish, the odors of perfumes and colognes and aftershaves, of human sweat, of beer and rum and gin and whiskey, and he held it in.

“Okay, now let it out, slow, very slow, and through your nose.”

Slowly Milford exhaled, the various pungencies warming the cavities of his nostrils on their way out.

“Okay,” said the tiny man’s voice. “You can open them peepers now.”

Milford opened his eyes.

“Whatcha see now, buddy?”

Milford sighed, by his count this was his twelve-thousandth and twentieth sigh since he had awakened on the morning of this seemingly eternal day.

“I see a bunch of drunken people,” he said. “In a crowded smoky bar. And somebody is singing a song and playing a banjo.”

“But no more vegetable/animal hybrids?”

“No, just people.”

“Good, now let’s get over to that bar, because I for one am dying for a nice cool glass of ale.”

And once more, with the tiny man on his shoulders, Milford stepped forward through the mob of laughing and shouting people, and through the sound of a man singing:

Through this old world I’m bound to ramble
through ice and snow, sleet and rain…

And then they were at a crowded bar, filled with more of the laughing and shouting people.

“Just shove right in there, buddy. Don’t be shy.”

Milford hated to shove right in anywhere, and, anyway, he had never been anywhere that he didn’t want to leave as soon as he got there.

But what did he have to lose?



Nothing.

Only his sanity, which he had lost thousands of times before.





{Please go here to read the unexpurgated “adult comix” version in A Flophouse Is Not a Home, profusely illustrated by the illustrious Rhoda Penmarq…}

"A Man of Constant Sorrow”

Milford continued down the corridor with the tiny man on his shoulders. The dimness gradually grew less dim as they came to a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, and in the yellow light Milford saw that the walls were made of old-looking bare brick, apparently white-washed at some time or times in the past, but the wash had faded, revealing the brown of the brickwork and the grey of the mortar. The floor was made of soft dark wood, and the air was still and stale. Beyond lay only a deepening darkness.

Milford stopped. 



“I don’t see where this corridor is going,” he said.

“Just keep going, pal.”

“But it’s dark down there.”

“Yeah, it’s dark, but after a while you get to another door.”

“Look, sir –”

“Do I look like Sir Walter Scott? Call me Shorty.”

“Okay, look, Shorty, maybe it’s those mushrooms I ate, and also the marijuana and hashish I smoked, but I’m getting really scared, and I want to go back.”

“Don’t be a pussy, Quilford.”

“My name isn’t Quilford. It’s Milford. I know it doesn’t matter but my name is Milford.”

It seemed so odd to be talking to a midget he was carrying on his shoulders. He almost wished he could see the little man’s face, but then he was also glad that he couldn’t see his face.

The tiny man blew a cloud of smoke past Milford’s face.

“You got any more marijuana or hashish?”

“What? No.”

“What about them mushrooms? I wouldn’t mind some mushrooms.”

“No, I don’t have any more mushrooms, and you’re avoiding the subject.”

“Which was?”

“That I’m afraid and I want to go back.”

“Oh, right, you were being a pussy.”

“Oh, Christ, look – Shorty, right?”

“That’s what they call me.”

“Shorty, I’m going to lift you down, okay? And then you can go your way, and I’ll –”

“What a pussy. You must be a poet, right?”

“That’s neither here nor there. Now look, I’m going to lift you off –”

“Why are poets always such pussies? Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“I have never had a sense of adventure.”

“Pathetic. Look, just keep walking, will you?”

“How much farther is it?”

“Not far.”

Shorty tossed his stub of a cigarette to the floor. The butt was still burning, so Milford ground it out with his shoe.

“I really just want to go home,” he said.

“What about your date with Lou Alcott?”

“Oh, I forgot. Well, I’ll go back and meet her for a drink, just because I said I would, but then I just want to go home.”

“Walk.”

“Only if you promise me it’s not far.”

“It’s not far, now walk.”

And Milford resumed walking with the child-sized man on his shoulders. Now he knew what drug addicts were talking about when they referred to monkeys on their backs.

The corridor grew dimmer and then dark as he walked farther away from that one bare bulb. They came to a corner, just a barely visible dark line against a darker darkness.

“Turn right here,” said Shorty.

There wasn’t much choice except to turn right, unless he turned back, and so Milford turned the corner, and the corridor continued on from darkness to utter and complete blackness.

Milford stopped again.

“I’m not going down there, I’m sorry. It’s totally black down there.”

“Yeah, the light bulb went out and nobody changed it yet. It’s okay, just keep walking straight ahead, but watch your step.”

“What do you mean, watch my step?”

“I mean just be careful, don’t trip over your own feet and send me crashing to the floor.”

“I don’t like walking in the dark.”

“Oh, my fucking God what a cooze. Lookit, you got a match or a lighter?”

“Oh, yes! I do!”

“Then take it out and light it for Christ’s sake, you’re gonna be such a scaredy cat.”

Milford reached into the pocket of his dungarees, and thank God, it was still there, his faithful Ronson which his Aunt Bertie had given him for his graduation from Andover. He clicked it, and after only a few tries it lit up.

“Swell,” said Shorty. “You feel better now?”

“Slightly, yes.”

“Then mush.”

Milford continued into the thick blackness, holding the lighter and its precious flame out before him. After only another minute, although it felt like an hour, the lighter’s glow revealed another door.

“Okay, this is it,” said Shorty. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“It was pretty bad,” said Milford.

“Oh, my God in heaven, plus Jesus, Mary and St. Jude. Just open the door, okay? Turn the doorknob, it ain’t locked.”

Milford turned the knob and opened the door, revealing what seemed to be an anteroom, but at least there was a light in the ceiling.

“Go ahead, go in,” said Shorty.

Milford stepped in, and the door closed behind him.

About six feet ahead was yet another door with a hand-painted sign on it.


“The Man of Constant Sorrow”

Fine Food and Drinks

Try Our House Ale

Reasonable Prices and a Friendly Atmosphere

Live Entertainment

Ask About Our Vegetarian Options

We Never Close


Milford could hear the muffled sounds of music and the babble of voices.

“This is it?” said Milford.

“Yeah. You can put away your lighter now, you’re wasting the fuel.”

“Oh, okay.”

Milford obediently clicked off the flame and put the warm lighter back in his dungarees.

“Now go ahead,” said Shorty. “Just go right in.”

“Why do they call it The Man of Constant Sorrow?”

“Look, Guilford, it’s just a name, it don’t mean nothing, now go over and open the fucking door.”

“I’m an alcoholic, I’m not even supposed to go into bars.”

“Go over and open that door, for Christ’s sake and all the saints and angels in heaven.”

“I should go back.”

“Oh, okay, and who helped you get rid of that raging boner you had by getting you to think about your mother?”

Milford sighed, for the twelve-thousandth and eighteenth time that day.

“You did,” he said.

“Damn right I did. Now do me the favor, nay, the honor, and go over and open that goddam fucking door before I lose my patience and box your ears, and don’t think I won’t.”

Milford was afraid that the tiny fellow really would box his ears, and this fear outweighed his fear of the door and what lay behind it, and so he stepped forward, put his hand on the doorknob, turned it and opened the door.

Revealing yet another barroom, smoky, dim, filled with shouting and laughing people, or what might be people, they could be demons for all Milford knew, or the damned, or living ghosts.

“Nice place, huh?” said Shorty into Milford’s ear.

“It’s okay,” said Milford. 



What could you say, it was a bar, and all bars were the same, places where people went to escape the daily and nightly horror of their lives.

“Come on, cowboy,” said Shorty. “Giddy up. Head straight on to the bar there, and I hope you like a good India Pale Ale, ‘cause that’s what you’re gonna get here.”

Milford was beyond the point of saying he didn’t drink. It didn’t matter anymore. Not tonight. He would have one ale with the midget, and then he would escape.

Or he would try to escape.

“Famous last words.”

“What?” said Milford.

“I didn’t say nothing,” said Shorty.

So, thought Milford, it had come to this. He was walking into an unknown bar with a dwarf on his shoulders, and now he was hearing voices.

“Yes, it has come to this, now get over yourself, and walk over to the bar like a man.”

Milford sighed, for the twelve-thousandth and nineteenth time that day and night, and then forged forth into the crowd of laughing and shouting people.

Someone was singing. Suitably the singer sang:



I am a man of constant sorrow
I’ve seen trouble all my days…

{Kindly go here to read the unexpurgated “adult comix” version in A Flophouse Is Not a Home, profusely illustrated by the illustrious Rhoda Penmarq…}

"Never Mind"

At last Milford got his fly buttoned up, and the tiny man called Shorty reached up and tugged on his peacoat’s sleeve.

“Great, now let’s get them ales, pal.”

“Yo, youse two,” said the big guy who had been waiting behind them. He was an enormous bearded fellow with a pipe in his mouth and a hunting cap on his head, wearing a checked flannel shirt and blue jeans with suspenders. “Ain’t yez forgetting something?”

“What would that be, Paul Bunyan?” said Shorty. He still had his thick cigarette in his mouth, and he spoke without removing it.

“You take up both urinals for like fifteen minutes, and now you don’t even flush?”

“Okay, two things, Two Ton Tony,” said the tiny man. “One, my friend here didn’t even pee, so why should he flush?”

“Okay, so he’s off the hook, but what about you, short-change? God knows you pissed a gallon if you pissed a quart.”

“It is true, I did not flush the terlet,” said Shorty, “but that is because who knows what kinda germs is on that handle?”

“So just because the handle’s got germs on it you don’t flush it? That’s why you wash your fucking hands, shrimp. And anyways, there’s a technique. What you do is you depress the handle with the side of your hand with a hammer motion –” the man demonstrated the motion, “and then you only get the cooties on the side, which you then forthwith wash with soap and water.”

“Ah, but you forget, dear Gargantua,” said Shorty, “I am only three feet six inches in heighth, and so the only way I could depress the handle with the side of my hand with a hammering motion would be to leap up and try to hit it on my way down.”

“So why didn’t you do just that?”

“Why did I not do that, you ask?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m asking. Why didn’t you leap up and flush the terlet with the side of your hand in a hammering or chopping motion on your descent.”

“I’ll tell you why I didn’t do it.”

“Go ahead. Why?”

“I didn’t do it because I didn’t feel like jumping up like a idiot and rabbit-punching a terlet handle, that’s why.”

“It’s people like you that make the world a very unpleasant place,” said the big man, after a pause.

“Oh, fuck off, ya big bum. You were in such a hurry to use the pisser, why are you standing here jabbering?”



“Y’know, something, half-pint, you are lucky you are only three foot six.”

“Oh, yeah, why? ‘Cause if I was taller you would take a swing at me? Well, go ahead, tough guy, give it a try. I dare you.”

“Wait a minute,” said Milford at last, pushing the words out of his mouth as if they were made of great wads of soggy cotton. “Look, here.”

He reached over Shorty’s head and depressed the handle of the urinal the little fellow had used. A thin trickle of grey water came from a small black hole in the stained and cracked porcelain and weakly coursed down toward the swampy puddle at the base of the urinal, with its detritus of cigarette-and-cigar butts and wads of chewing gum.

“There,” said Milford. “I flushed it.”

“Okay, then,” said the big man. “That’s all I asked. At least you are a gentleman, sir.”

“Thank you,” said Milford.

“Unlike some people I could mention,” said the big man.

“Keep it up, pal,” said the little guy. “Just keep it up. ‘Cause you are just about one cooze-hair away from getting my fist up your fat ass.”

“Look, just get out of my way,” said the big man. “I’m about to piss myself.”

“Bet it wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Hey, sir,” said Milford to Shorty, touching his shoulder, “can we just go now?”

“Okay,” said the little man. “But only ‘cause you asked me. But you, King Kong,” he pointed his tiny index finger up at the big man, “you watch your step around me. ‘Cause you don’t know how close you just came to getting your balls bit off and spat back in your stupid face.”

“Aw, scram, willya, and let me take a slash.”

“Sure, I’ll scram, but only because my friend here ast me to.” He reached up again and grabbed Milford’s wrist. “Come on, pal, it stinks around here. Pull me up onto your shoulders, we’ll make better time.”

“What?”

“Just swing me up onto your shoulders, I don’t weigh much.”

“I feel weird doing that.”

“I feel weird every second of my life, now pull me up.”

“Oh, all right,” said Milford, and with surprising lack of difficulty he lifted his wrist up, the little fellow deftly swung his childlike legs on either side of Milford’s neck, and then placed his hands firmly on Milford’s collarbone.

“Okay, let’s go,” said the little man, and Milford began to forge through the monstrous milling mob toward the door he had come in through.

“No, not that way,” said the little guy. “Bear to the left.”

“But I want to get out of here,” said Milford.

“We’ll get out of here. Now bear to the left.” He guided Milford with his legs, as if he were a horse. “Outa our way, you rumdums,” he yelled at the thronging men, “comin’ through!”

“Where are we going?” said Milford.

“To get them ales,” said the tiny man on Milford’s shoulders. “Now go through this door here.”

Sure enough there was a door there, to the right of the toilet stalls.

“This door?” said Milford.

“That door. Open it up.”

“Wait. We forgot to wash our hands.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, do you really want to go back and wash your hands? Do you know how long that could take?”

“Possibly a long time?”



“Possibly a very long time. Like if this was a novel it might take us three more chapters just to make it back to this door is how long it might take, even longer, I don’t know. Maybe never. You really want to take that chance, just to wash your hands?”

“It just seems so unsanitary.”

“Sanitariness is overrated. You think the cavemen were sanitary? You think they washed their hands every time they pissed?”

“I don’t know.”

“I got news for you, they didn’t. Now open the fucking door.”

“Okay.”

Milford opened the door and saw a dimly lit narrow corridor, extending into darkness.

“Oh, no,” he said.

“Now what?”

“I’m afraid,” said Milford. “I just want to go back out the way I came in.”

“You’re hurting my feelings, buddy,” said the little man. “Because at least where I come from, way I was raised, a man offers to buy you a glass of ale and you refuse it that is the gravest insult. Possibly even more so than impugning the honor of one’s mother, or God forbid, your sister. What did you say your name was?”

“I don’t think I said, but my name is Milford.”

“Like your mother.”

“Yes, she’s Mrs. Milford, but I just go by Milford.”

“So your name is Milford Milford?”

“No,” said Milford, after a great sigh that almost dislodged the little fellow from his shoulders. “My name is Marion Milford. But I prefer to be called just Milford.”

“And I don’t blame you one bit. You remember my sobriquet?”

“Um, Short Stuff?”

“Close. Shorty. Which ain’t my real name either but it’s what I go by. So just call me Shorty because I don’t like my real name either, which is never mind.”

“Okay.”

“You ain’t gonna ask what my real name is?”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

“Go ahead, ask.”

“Okay, what’s your real name?”

“My name is Never Mind.”

“Your name is Never Mind?”

“Yes.”

“That’s very strange.”

“I’m fucking with you.”

“Oh.”

“My name is Odo.”

“Oh.”

“Odo Guggenheim.”

“Um.”

“Now do you know why I don’t mind going by Shorty?”

“Yes, I guess so.”

“We all got our crosses to bear, my friend. Like you’re bearing me right now. Now you gonna go down that corridor like a man, Tilford? If not you can just set me down right here and I’ll go all by myself. It’s your choice. And to tell the truth at this point I don’t even give a fuck if you’re gonna be such a pussy about it. Jesus Christ.”



“But, look, I just remembered I’m supposed to be having a drink with Louisa May Alcott.”


“One glass of ale,” said the tiny man into Milford’s right ear. “One quick one, and then you can go off to have your drink with Lou Alcott. Believe me, she’s not going to miss you for the time it takes you to down one lousy short ale.”

“Well –”

The tiny man dug his little heels into Milford’s ribs.


“Great, then let’s go,” he said. 

And Milford headed into the narrow dim corridor, with the tiny man on his shoulders.

Milford heard the door close behind him, and the babble of the monstrous men in the POINTERS room became muffled and distant, and the corridor grew darker.

“Just go straight down this hallway,” said Shorty, his cigarette dropping its ash down the front of Milford’s peacoat. “Nothing to be afraid of, buddy. Nothing at all.”


{Please go here to read the unexpurgated “adult comix” version in A Flophouse Is Not a Home, profusely illustrated by the illustrious rhoda penmarq…}