HOT RODS & TAIL PIPES

Warning: Objects in the rear view mirror may be grosser than they appear.

And some of them are downright damned disgusting.

He wanted to drive, though all and any in their right mind—yea, even those far from it—denied him with a quickness that vibrated the molecules around. He had a driver's license once; it was an error that the state would not make twice.

He once—yea, but once, and never more!—was blessed beyond his worth with "wheels," upon the sixteenth anniversary of God's failure to destroy him. This was courtesy of his generous and grievous mother—generous in that she birthed him, withstanding the temptation to dissolve his bug-like fetus, via drain cleaner or power wash, in her wretched, mousy, matriarchal spout…grievous in that any man, or any mortal, was ever—even drunkenly—in any way, drawn unto, into, and past, her misshapen, swollen trout-flaps, and the prickly, speckled, jointed stubs passing for implements of movement, which led unto and extended from its abomination—and far worse unto worry than can rightly be described, revealed unto revulsion when uncrossed.

She irked me a bit.

The boy had been given a sports car…for that same deluded mother—with her gathering army of moles, freckles, and liverspots, pendulous hog-busoms, sloped and bulbous rump, unsightly toothed and tentacled vagina that terrified every tampon sacrificed into the calloused sags and ridges of its hungry, drooling Sarlacc Pit as if flung into the icy vastness of deep space —would so misjudge her foul spawn's character, that she took out a fearsome, wallet-crippling bank loan (one she paid on, to the grave), to buy him a convertible—and a new one, worst of all.

And what did that sweaty little man-child do? He wrecked the poor, doomed vehicle mere weeks from its reception. Verily it is whispered, that in mere days, the convertible's flawless, clean and once-pristine top appeared to have been mauled by horny, horny hippos—and this on the way back through the myriad piercing thickets of the Congo, chased by angry Zulus wielding freshly-sharpened spears…only to be slashed, hacked, stabbed and vigorously molested by drunken, angry pirates off the coast—each of them bearing scimitars, scurvy, sodomy and the lash, and making fine use of it all, before the terrors of their hooks and wooden limbs could scarcely manifest, much less target the nearest orifice, weakest link or slowest cabin boy, in a fevered lust for rum and rape, and a chance to stretch this paragraph by three more quease-inducing lines.

The paint was scratched by sideswipes and wide turns, and keyed frequently by those he'd cut off in traffic, but was too daft to elude. The radio and tapedeck would be stolen scant weeks later—likely not by thieves for profit, but rather by electronics sympathizers who took pity on the sound system involved, that it might be taken to a shelter until it found a better home. The tires were crudely patched like his rigid, splotchy trousers. The windshield appeared to have caught an errant golf ball head on, in Daytona…more than once. The seats were warm with stink and unwashed loins; every square inch of their once-lush leather bucket seats was littered, if not heavily seasoned, salt-and-peppered, dusted like a crime-scene, and powdered like his mother's heaving nose with crumbs, flecks, speckles, clumps and clots…things once haphazardly consumed, things once living and once dead—things unknown and better left as such.

It was almost as bad as my bathroom.

But without as many errant, traveling cock hairs. And probably less junkie piss.

However, fate would finally have it—and later bat it back and forth like wounded prey—that before scant another human near his warped pubescent circle ever would lay eyes upon (or catch whiff of) that gift that kept on giving (to car insurance companies and scrap heaps city-wide), he'd finally rammed the damned thing into—and wrapped it well around—a large New Orleans palm tree, thought by many to have leapt out of the darkness, in a selfless act of martyrdom for us all.

Though blood was caked about the tires, and splattered 'cross the hood, no corpse or strewn remains were ever found. Sadly—as so described by terrified policemen, and disappointed onlookers hoping to see a rolling human head—the driver would survive, mostly unscratched, and largely unwashed…and certainly unworthy of that car his lesser-financed schoolmates might well have dashed his brains in for. (Wait…perhaps his amorphous beast-mother meant well, afterall! Ah! Bless her—she tried!)

And this is why—to this day—many of his own friends disbelieve that his teenage-era Dream Machine ever existed to begin: for none would see his chariot, before it met the gods, in the junkyard, at the crime scene, in the accident report and witness sketch.

But then, many of us never believed him when he swore that he'd passed puberty—for though he claimed to have grown pubic hair, there were none who'd look upon it. And though dental records might reveal the truth of his years, the truth of his dental hygiene revealed much worse. And the paternity test? None—not even his mother, the Gorgon—dares to mention those results; a Freedom Of Information Act request would lead only to a harshly-Xeroxed stack of blacked-out, thumb-smudged military papers, with references to cigar-shaped aeronautic anomalies, LSD and MK-ULTRA, Chaos Theory, BABALON, Kecksburg, Mayan Prophecy, and MJ-12, plus a scribbled-out apology from someone named "J. Parsons."

OK…I'm stretching it (a little). OK...I'm stretching it a lot.

But my point is that it's odd what things stand out amid your memories of others…the rare and special infamy of a good man on a bad day or a bad girl on a good amount of X…the strange things we remember—and stranger still, forget.

Especially at 4am, while you're waiting for the mescaline to wear off.

But I digress.

And now I'm going to stare into the fan.

***

Ultimately, it boils down to this and simmers evermore: what you've done in life can be marvelous and magickal, yet have no bearing in the least on how you are remembered. All the greatness and the profundity in a lifetime of achievements can be dwarfed, eclipsed and letterboxed by a single faux-pas, Mardi Gras, or ménage a trios. Perhaps I will make great and daring artistic strides in literature, or—long postmortem—influence some strange doomed generation…but ultimately, not one of those accomplishments would be conjured by my name in times to come, should the world choose only to recall—as my final, eternal epitaph—my having been found deceased without the benefit of pants...at home alone, and unnaturally posed…my genitals in one hand and a coke-straw in the other, weird porn blaring from my monitor, and the carpet smeared with Shiner Black and tears.

That's right, dear children: you could save the world from eldritch peril, and yet go down in the history books as the Kid Who Wrecked His Car, or the Bitch Who Blew The Cat, or the Old Man Jacking Off On Ferns, or the Dead Guy Without Pants.

We must strive to live in a state of cautious pursuit—our lust for life no less veined and throbbing, but clearly double-bagged and on the pill…which is to say that we should live as if each sordid, wretched moment is our last—and subsequently, the very one for which we're judged forever more. You'll probably be squatting on the john.

I, however, suspect I will be free to build new legends, future recollections, for quite some time…for as the night draws to a blurry slurring close, and morning slumps hungover toward the sink, I am moment for moment more and greatly confident in that my years shall be extended by the cruelty of Fate alone—indeed, that smug misanthropy of the Great Beyond gives me greatest peace: there'd be no irony in my demise, and only modest shame. I'm not yet worth its time.

There is nothing to quench Life's hearty thirst for sadism in destroying me just yet, as my life's work is not sufficiently far along to even register a snub—even by the arbitrary, menopausal quantum moodiness of Destiny itself—for what joy is there undoing what is not yet done? Furthermore, my self-esteem is not profound enough to entice the vicious humblings that Circumstance enjoys; nor am I renowned enough, or regarded quite so warmly, as to harvest any satisfying yield of the salty heartwrought tears that Fate routinely guzzles like cheap wine; further still, I'm not so certain that I've loved life quite enough to mourn the passing of my own…and above all—yea, greatest factor yet—I'm wearing pants.

The pants protect me.

It seems like reason speaking, but it's probably the drugs.

I ponder my legacy—or lack thereof—daily, and to much chagrin…and once again, end one more rant hoping that this last one won't be it.

But it's all just a reminder that the things which often make life fit to live, likewise also keep our last words out of print. It's a banana crudely stuffed into the tailpipe of our dreams: Perhaps at journey's end, it's well enough for some to be a memory at all. In this, we toast to Life and Death in equal measure...wild, Wild Turkey couldn't drag me away—but a nude and clearly scorned woman, wielding a shotgun and a rage-filled wounded heart will likely pull me from the game forevermore.

But hey—you should always die in a way that you could live with, no?

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