Write on, Right on, Write on writers ... Equal opportunity has arrived

The great thing about living in the post 9/11 world is that you no longer have to fear obscurity. Rest assured that somebody, somewhere, will read whatever you write. It doesn’t matter if it’s the next great American novel or if it's so damn boring that your friends have to scroll past your posts in order to stave off another suicide attempt; either way, somebody will read it. There once was a time when even the best of writers couldn’t get anybody to read their stuff. But now everybody has equal opportunity. Every thing anybody writes will be read: it’ll probably by some poor sot working the midnight shift in a ran down, three story row house in the worst end of Chicago that’s being used as a covert operation by a shady company that secured a Pentagon contract to screen certain criteria of internet bloggers and facebook posts, but rest assured it will be read. Prior to 9/11, you could write about your secret desires to draw pictures of the Prophet Mohammad with a broom stick size dildo stuck up his ass and all it did was reinforce the fact that your mother repeatedly warned you that you might be a pervert as you were struggling through those years of budding hormones. But if you share your perverted, racist, sick wacko shit today, somewhere, somebody is going to have to read it and decide whether or not to send the FBI knocking on your door, or some crazy, ideological rag-head fanatic claiming allegiance to the latest psycho crazed Islamic cult will send 10,000 jihadist to assassinate your stupid ass; but either way, it will be read. So, if you want recognition as a writer, just go ahead, let the world know all the sick thoughts that swim through that cesspool mind of yours and before long, you’ll either be on the world news as the latest fool that has been martyred for freedom by some soon-to-be forgotten group of jihadist or you'll have a free computer in the prison library to practice your craft and a certified security guard to edit every damn word you write. But at least in this day and age you have a guaranteed readership. So write on brother, rant on sister.

The Coca-Cola Queen: A Musician’s Life

God, I’ve fucking had it. I’ve played every jip-joint dive for a thousand mile radius. I’m sick and damn tired of working my ass off, practicing all goddamn week just so I can play every weekend night in some smoke-filled bar with a bunch of fucking drunks who just want to dance and get their hands in somebody’s pants right in front of the stage. Back in the seventies, I played the big stages, toured with recording artists and had roadies. Now I’m in my fucking mid-fifties and I have to lug my own equipment into some bar for every gig, set it up, play the show, then break it down, wait around to get paid, get home at four in the fucking morning, drink a couple glasses of wine, maybe a scotch, watch the sun come up, take an Ambien and finally go to sleep before I have to get up and do it all again. It’s a pathetic life, it a musician’s life. That’s what we fucking do. And when you bitch and moan about it, everybody tells you, “Ah Man, but you know you love it. You can’t stop playing. It’s in your blood.”

Bla Bla Bla. Blood my ass. If it’s in my blood then I’ve got blood poisoning. I’m fucking tired. I’ve done this shit since I was twelve years old and now I’m staring at sixty in a few years. I don’t want to be playing jip-joints and listening to drunks tell me that I’ve got what it takes to “make it” when I’m sixty fucking years old.

So this is it. Fuck it. I quit.

My wife’s got a good job. Of course she’s got a job. You can’t be a working musician if you’re not hooked up with somebody who’s responsible. Okay, so that’s not always the case. There are those lucky, or doomed, bastards who have a steady road gig out of Nashville, LA, or New York, but they’re hardly ever home. What kind of life is that? I guess it’s the kind I wanted when I was a teenager and in my twenties, back when I thought I’d always have roadies, when I thought I’d be flying in 747’s or riding in a plush bus to my next gig. But now I just want to be home.

I always wanted to write, maybe I could try that, but the only stories I know are those about crazy girls like the one in Ft. Smith, Arkansas. She asked me over to her house, which turned out to be a goddamned Coca-Cola “creepy” doll museum. Weirdest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. There were dolls of every size, shape and color of skin; they were on top of the refrigerator, on the couch, in the floor, on the table, and they were all dressed in red outfits with Coca-Cola logos on them. Some had it on their caps, some on their lapels, some on the sleeves. There were dolls of China girls, gas station attendants, singers, belly dancers, clowns, stewardesses, waitresses, even jugglers, and of course the juggler’s balls were red with the Coca-Cola emblem on them. The balls were suspended above the juggler’s hands on a circular wire that was barely visible. She spent what seemed like an eternity, going into great detail about the different places she searched for two years to find the right sort of wire, and even drove all the way to Little Rock to get it because she wanted to make sure it was, “just right.” It was three-thirty in the morning and I listened to stories about how she made each and every doll. I started worrying she was going to poison me with Atlanta’s favorite recipe, then stuff me in a Coca-Cola colored casket and hide me away in her secret Coca-Cola cellar.

Finally, she asked me to her bedroom. Yeah, you guessed it - Coca-Cola bed sheets, pillowcases, dresser, and dolls all over the bed. This girl was freaking me out. But then she started kissing me, and pulling me onto the bed, so I went with it. Dolls were rolling off onto the floor, she’s unbuttoning her blouse at the same time she’s unzipping my pants. Next thing I know I’m on top her of her. Her bra was red and laced with Coca-Cola logos. She’d pulled her red skirt up around her waist. I glanced down, and of course, her panties matched her bra. As most men would do in that situation, I started to pull her panties down, but she stopped me. She reached over, opened a beside-table drawer and pulled out a condom and a pair of men’s red briefs with Coca-Cola logos on them. “You’ve got to wear these,” she said, in a hushed voice, as if this was some sort of initiation. It was obvious we were getting ready to do some sacred Coca-Cola sexual ceremonial; or even worse, sacrifice something to the Coca-Cola gods. I just hoped and prayed that something wasn’t going to be me. It was freaky.

“But how are we going to do it if I’m wearing underwear?” I asked.

“There’s a flap in the front of them, and mine, too.”

She giggled, opened her legs wide, and pointed to her panties. Covering her sacred spot was a cloth that looked just like a Coca-Cola bottle top. “It unsnaps.” She licked my cheek with her tongue, bit my ear and whispered. “You’ve got to pop the top if you want a drink.”

Whew! And I’m thinking this is one crazy girl.

She hands me the condom and explains that it looks like a Coca-Cola bottle once it’s put on. I leaned over on my elbow, took a deep breath and wondered, “What the fuck am I doing here?”

I was afraid to just tell her I had to leave. I was seriously scared of what she might do. This girl had “crazy” written all over her. So, I started thinking fast. She seemed like the sentimental sort, she was certainly nostalgic about Coca-Cola, so I assumed she’d value someone being true to what they believed in. “I really want to make love to you,” I said. “But I feel so guilty.” I proceeded to tell her I was in love with a girl back home, and that I swore to myself that I would be true to her. I went into a long story of how I had cheated on my first wife and ruined the marriage. “I swore if I ever found someone else, I’d stay faithful,” I said, trying to sound like a Catholic at confession “And that’s what I’ve done until tonight, but I like you and I wanted to spend some time with you. But I know I’m gonna feel guilty if we do something.”

It worked.

She put her arms around me, hugged me tight and said, “I knew you were a good guy. That’s why I wanted you. But I couldn’t live with myself if I caused you to break a vow. Love is sacred.”

And I’m still thinking, I’ve got to get the hell out of here.

We moved the conversation to her kitchen and drank coffee from Coca-Cola cups. After a long while, I coaxed her outside, saying I wanted to see her yard. Blades of blue light sliced the darkness and I could now see the bleak row houses that lined the street. A neighbor wearing a work uniform came out of his house and walked briskly toward his car. The Coca-Cola Queen waved, said hello and tried to start a conversation. But her neighbor would have none of it. He glanced at me, looked away for a second and then stared me straight in the eye. He jerked his jaw, clenched his teeth and gave me the warning look that guys give to one another on the battlefield of life that silently says, “Buddy, I hope you know what the hell you’re doing.” As he got in his car I told her I had to go. She obliged and drove me back to my hotel, where she gave me a Coca-Cola lapel pin. “To remember me by,” she said. 

The check out time was noon. I was dog-ass tired when the band pulled out of Ft. Smith driving to our next show in New Orleans. To be truthful, I was wondering why I didn’t have sex with the Coca-Cola Queen. She seemed innocent after all, just a little kooky. But hell, out on the road we’re all a little kooky. Besides, I was raised on Coke; we always had a refrigerator full of them. And thankfully, I grew up on the early Sixties, long before the days of over-zealous parents who monitor their children’s sugar intake. Over indulgence didn't hurt me then, so a little craziness with the Coca-Cola Queen might not have been so bad. That was life on the road, dozens, if not hundreds, of strange encounters with lonely women in the wee-hours of the morning. So I’m glad I quit. But I do remember her every time I open my dresser drawer and see the Coca-Cola lapel pin stashed away with other keepsakes and mementoes. But I don’t know if anybody would want to read about the Coca-Cola Queen: does anyone really care about lonely people in the wee-hours of the morning?

So I’ve still got to decide what to do now that I’ve quit. Guess I'll have a JD and Coke and think about it for a while. 

                                                Bernard Mitchell Plumlee © 2016

Should've been done long ago

It's a shame that nine lives had to be sacrificed for people to finally face up to the fact that flying the Confederate flag empowers racists who think the South fought for a "noble" cause. There was nothing noble or Holy about a group of people who fought to subjugate an entire race of men to slavery, torture and servitude.    

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage [There is a pleasure in the pathless woods]

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
   There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
   There is society where none intrudes,
   By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
   I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
   From these our interviews, in which I steal
   From all I may be, or have been before,
   To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.

   Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean--roll!
   Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
   Man marks the earth with ruin--his control
   Stops with the shore;--upon the watery plain
   The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
   A shadow of man’s ravage, save his own,
   When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
   He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

   His steps are not upon thy paths,--thy fields
   Are not a spoil for him,--thou dost arise
   And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
   For earth’s destruction thou dost all despise,
   Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
   And send’st him, shivering in thy playful spray
   And howling, to his gods, where haply lies
   His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to earth: —there let him lay.                                               

                              Lord Byron, 1788 - 1824

Harvest

I committed my first sin in a church. But in my defense, I must proclaim that had I not been exposed to such a rigid environment that demanded unnatural conformity from a toddler, the said event might well have never happened. And the fact that the awareness of transgression awoke in me during a worship service makes me highly suspicious the self righteous were at least in part responsible for my illicit behavior. So this leads me to the conclusion that author of sin is in fact religion itself.

I’m not sure if I was old enough to walk when I entered into the world of ill repute, but without a doubt, I had mastered the art of crawling. My initiation into the immoral occurred at Cedar Hill Baptist Church, a white wood-framed house of worship that to this day still stands atop a hill overlooking rolling fields of rich Kentucky bottomland. My dad grew not far from that sacred spot that put me on the road to ruin. He was certainly not a churchgoer by anyone’s account. His interests in spirituality were limited to spirits of the liquid form, preferably whiskey. Nor was my mother a fan of churches. Her family had a small business, and she was left unimpressed by the fact that the faithful often tried to renegotiate their bill after the work was done. One of her favorite sayings was, “I wouldn’t trust a preacher or a deacon any further than I could throw ‘em.”

So I don’t know for sure why they attended church on the day I officially became a sinner. But judging from all the stories my mother used tell about my father’s drinking and carousing, I assume she was praying a little religion might settle him down a bit. My mother always found it hard to believe that I could even remember the event at all, seeing as how I was not much more than an infant at the time. But it is as clear to me today as it was that fateful night I sat on the floor beneath a wooden pew near the back of Cedar Hill Baptist Church. I nestled in, as children do, and hid directly under the seat, my mother’s feet in front of me, making a cave of sorts to protect me from the strange surroundings. The constant chatter of conversation gave way to the roar of what I now know was a preacher blasting out a sermon. This foreign world quickly became very boring, so I explored my new surroundings.

There wasn’t much to see in my immediate vicinity, so I peered off into the distance. That’s when I saw my first object of lust: a man’s brown fedora hat. It was lying on the floor next to the feet of its owner, who was sitting in a pew in front of the church. I don’t know why, but I had to have that hat. There was nothing special about it at all, especially in that day and age. It was typical attire for men in the late 1950s. But once I set my eyes upon it, I could think of nothing else.

Between my objective and me was a jagged path of dangling legs hanging from under the pews like bowling pins, several purses and sweaters and jackets were strewn about. I waited and listened to the roar of the speaker, and the echoing shouts of the congregation. When they grew to an ear screeching volume, I glanced up at my mother. Much to my liking, her eyes were fixed straight ahead. I shot out on all fours from under the pew; I weaved and bobbed between people’s feet and purses and garments. In no more than five seconds flat, I descended upon my destination. Without the slightest bit of hesitation, I snatched that hat and made my way back through the appendage jungle.

I curled quietly once again beneath the pew, safely behind my mother’s nylon covered legs. I held the hat before me, admiring its soft luster. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I put it on my head; it fell over my eyes. Its velvet like material felt warm and closed off the world around me. Everything became quiet, dark, still and serene. I could’ve stayed there forever, comforted in the bosom of my sin. But sin is only fun for a season, and then the harvest comes.

Without warning, my mother jerked the hat from my head. A hushed rustle of whispers filled the room. I leaned out and looked up. Everyone seated in front of us had swiveled around in the pew and starred down at me. The preacher’s shouts were oblivious to them now; I was the center of attention. And I did the same thing Adam did after he tasted the forbidden fruit and God came looking for him: I snuck back beneath my mother’s legs and hid under that pew. But with one quick swipe of the hand, my father grabbed me up and threw me over his shoulder.

My mother used to love to tell the story of how I stretched forth my arms toward the congregation and screamed, “Help.” My plea was answered with roars of laughter as my father carried me out the front door to execute judgment on a poor sinner such as I. 

                                        Copyright © 2001 Bernard Mitchell Plumlee, Jr.

The End of Easter

I had no idea Easter was approaching until I saw a facebook post about Good Friday. That was last week. Today is Monday; Easter came and went without much fan fair at all in my home yesterday.

Easter did not come and go so quietly when I was a child. It meant my sister and I waking up and finding Easter baskets beside our beds. My mother always made sure mine included a chocolate bunny because she knew I loved anything and everything chocolate. After we pillaged our plastic covered baskets full of enamel eroding, sugar-filled sweets, we went to the front yard and hunted for well-hidden Easter eggs. It was all very festive. My mother made a really big deal out of it, but she made a really big deal out of every holiday, even President's Day, and every birthday was celebrated with all the jubilee of the Fourth of July, with cakes, candles, flashing cameras, decorations and even occasional fireworks and then the grand finale concluded at a restaurant where my mother always recruited the waiters and staff to sing, Happy Birthday, to the guest of honor.

So Easter wasn't all that big a deal in comparison to other holidays and birthdays. We never attended church. As a matter of fact, I was in my mid-twenties before I learned that Easter had anything to do with church, or that church and anything to do with Easter. My wife at that time had seen fit to reform me of my pagan upbringing and promptly woke me early one Sunday morning with the surprise announcement that "we" were going to church. It wasn't Easter, it was about two or three months before; but she, with the help of the Good Lord, I assume, saw to it that my churchgoing became a weekly event.

And when Easter rolled around, I even talked a friend of mine into attending church services, too. He came to our house so he could ride with us. Before we left, we sit in the living room and talked. He said he had grown up in church but had not gone in quite sometime. Out of curiosity, I asked him why churches celebrated Easter. He chuckled and laughed, thinking I had made a joke. But then I asked again, "No seriously, why is Easter such a big deal to churches?"

He stared at me in disbelief, his mouth agape. "You really don't know, do you?" Then he proceeded to tell me that churches celebrate the resurrection of Christ on Easter Sunday.

I felt really stupid. It was one of my best Forrest Gump moments.

The years passed, I raised two children with annual Easter baskets, egg hunts and church services. Then I got divorced, my children became adults and now have children of their own. Somewhere along the way I realized that my first wife, the taskmaster who had made me get up on Sunday mornings and go to church, was gone; I no longer had to adhere such a strange tradition, not on Easter or any other time. I should probably add that I always thought Easter services were a bit strange. I was never comfortable attending them. They seemed like such a gimmick, a put on. And even the pastor always preached about the "Sunday morning glories" who only blossomed twice a year, at Christmas and Easter. In others words, he politely called them hypocrites when they were not there to add money to his purse.

I've been remarried now for nearly two decades. My wife and I attended church for a while; I suppose there was a time when it was beneficial for us. But there was a lot bad that came from it, too. Maybe we were both becoming adults together and seeing the church charades for what they actually are, but that's another story that'd be best covered in another blog, or a book. I dare say, it would be a scandalous book.

But getting back to my Easter story, it's been several years now since I attended a church. And I really have no recollection of the last Easter service I sat through. And I felt no need or desire to go yesterday, but I did think about my grandkids, and how I didn't get them a basket with a chocolate bunny, and how I wasn't there to watch them hunt for eggs. I felt a bit guilty about that. Childhood only lasts for so long and then the magic is gone forever. My mother tried her best to hold on to that magic. She never attended Easter services that I know of. All that grown-up pomp and pageantry and women desperately trying to out-fashion one another were far too removed from glistening child-eyed wonderment for her.

But I've got to admit that even the secular celebration of Easter seemed odd to me when I was a little boy. I remember distinctly asking my mother several times who Peter Cottontail was, and being even more confused by her rabbling answer. So there is no conclusion to what I'm writing about here, no right or wrong as to whether or not I should've gone to church yesterday or been there with my grandkids to hunt Easter eggs, assuming that they did. I'd like for them to keep the magic of childhood alive in their hearts as long as they can. If it takes believing in Peter Cottontail hopping down the bunny trail to make their hearts thump a little faster, then so be it. But it is a bit sad that Easter felt just like any other day to me yesterday. So maybe this is a confession of sorts. It felt akin to a funeral as I lay in bed last night and realized my childhood days are gone forever. And I couldn't help but wonder if I'd been better off to have followed my mother's example and never attended Easter services or joined a church. Even on into her 70s, her eyes still glistened every time she spoke about the Easter Bunny. I think she believed in him with all her heart.

I wish I could.

Questions

Can the dead see their tombstones? 

Do they look up through the miry clay

And see the marble and granite 

above where they lay? 

Does the stone hold them down,

or is just the calm or  turmoil or torment 

that keeps them in the ground? 

Do they know where they lay?

Can they feel?

Is anything real to them?

We'll all know the answers soon enough

but maybe we'll forget the questions

Hopefully they won't matter.

                                               Mitchell Plumlee (c) 2015