A JOKE

So that's it. Like I said before, it ends in the middle. Once again, I'd like to thank those of you who have read these blogs- Luckymike and Christmo all the way through. I hope the combination of the two have given you some idea of who and what I'm all about. It's been a whole lot of fun for me. Now I'm going to take a break from the blabbing and go back to carpentry. Gotta make some money. A lot has happened in the almost five years since 9/11/2001. Friendly and i didn't last long in our now "War time" romance. I went broke. I got money again. I learned to play guitar, quit karate and even moved back to Brooklyn for a while. Oh, and Jeeves got breasts. I wish he had a blog. My next blog is holylgm.blogspot.com- pictures and songs. Hope you like it.
Let me leave you with a joke. "How is Kentucky Fried Chicken like sex? First you get a little leg. Then you get a little thigh. Then there's nothing left to do but put the greasy bone in the box."


THE END

GUIDE JOURNAL- LAST DAY

7:00am-"Christie." It's Artie. Where the fuck did he come from? The last thing I remember is stumbling off to bed around midnight, after falling asleep on the couch. Little brother Duke had sent me some "animal porn" (our code for pot) in the mail and i was banged out. After three weeks of drought I can see. PRAISE THE LORD, I CAN SEE! I get up. Make coffee.
7:30am- Art says he came in around 10:30 last night and I never woke up. I swear my asshole hurts. "What you do to me while I was passed out?" I ask. Art just smiles slyly. What happens in Glen Wild stays....
8:30am- Drive to Mongaup and hunt a place where we saw a monster last year. The can of bug spray does spray. Art punctures the can with his knife and we slather up. The mosquitos are already swarming.
9:30am- Hear some hens, but never see them. I think I hear a jake gobble but I'm not sure. I carry the pistol, and leave the shotgun at home. I just hope Art gets one.
11:00am- Move to another spot. See a hen along side the road. Art pleads with me to let him shoot her. NO way motherfucker. We pull over and call, waiting out the last hour. No luck.
12:00am- Whistle blows. End of season.

9/10

That morning i got up bright and early. Coffee. Listened to NPR. Hot and humid. They were predicting heavy thunderstorms later in the day. I went to Walmart and bought new underwear and white t-shirts. Then i went to Wurstboro and got a haircut, came home trimmed my beard and put on the $900 custom leather pants Friendly had given me back in the winter, while things were still hot between us. I hadn't taken a shower in a couple of days, knowing how much the girl dug the stank. If I was to win her back, I had to think outside of the box- so to speak.
1:00pm- Drive into city. Now, every time I crested the mountain I couldn't help seeing that insurance salesman laying dead in the road, forms stuck to his bloody face. Drive on pass, saying a little prayer. Made it into town in record time. No traffic.
3:30pm- Meet Friendly at E13 and Ave. B. We go in Cafe Bistro for a drink. It's tense at first. This is the first time I've seen her since I dropped her off at the bus station on her birthday, my gut filled with undigested steak.
3:45pm. Doesn't take long for things to thaw and immediately heat up. Never underestimate the power of smell. (note: this only works with phermonal sympathetics) With the wrong partner you get nothing but turned up nose.
4:30pm. Take it to the car and there's a sureptitious afternoon downpour, allowing us to go to the back seat and in no time have the windows so fogged the outside world disappears. She DOES have a big "C" tattooed on her lower back and thankfully no 666 labia ink. Take my word for it. The thunderstorm lasts only so long and we go back to the bar for some food and more drinks.
6:00pm- Decide to wander the EV, checking out record stores and ending up down by CBGBs.
7:00pm- The skys open up and again and we get soaked. We duck in a doorway and make out on someone's front stoop on E6th. The cameras should be running....it's sooooo romantic.
8:00pm- Have another quick drink and head back to the car. Both of us are soaked to the bone and there's a heavy thunderstorm bearing down on the city. I lose track how many times we screw in the back seat. We have the place to ourselves. Once in a while I can see the shadow of an umbrella float by.
10:00pm- I start up the car and AC. It's sweltering. Friendly cracks the window and sticks her sweaty head outside. Her hair is plaster across her forehead and i can see lightning reflected in her eyes, as one strike hits the power station up on 14th.
1:00am- We wake up naked, stuck to each other in the back of the car. The rain has let up. I have to work in the morning and it's a two hour drive home. She has to get back to Jeeves. I take Friendly to the L and head up the West side highway for the GWB.
3:05am- Make it home in one piece. Friendly and I had talked very little. She said she'd call in the morning and we'd figure out where to take it from here. The one thing that was for certain was that we'd started it all up again. I felt on top of the world. Fuck Jeeves and fuck work tomorrow. I'm sleeping in.

9/11
A little after 8:00am- The phone rings. "Ahhhhh." I say out loud, still half asleep. I know it's Friendly. "Hellooooooooo." I say. "Good. You're home!" the voice says. It's the old man calling from the lake. "Yeah. I took off today." I say wearily, disappointed it's not my girl. " Well NY's a mess. Some little plane just hit the World Trade Center." I can hear the TV in the background."What kind of plane?" I ask, trying to shake the cobwebs. "OH MY GOD!" the old man crys, as the second plane hit the towers.

GUIDE JOURNAL- DAY 30

4:30am- Alarm goes off. Get up. Make coffee. 67 degrees. Humid. Last night I got a messege from some strange woman asking me to pick Artie up down at the river to hunt in the morning and that his truck was broken down. NPR news. The troubles in East Timor.
5:00am- Pick up Artie. Bring him a mason jar full of coffee. I'm a good guide.
5:15am- Hunt just above his fishing camp. The mosquitos are insane. In no time we are covered in itchy welts. No gobbles.
6:00am- Drive to sewer plant. Walk road and call. It stinks enough to gag you. Nothing.
6:30am- Drive to my place. No bug spray, but I have hand lotion, which works just as good. Go to a third spot and still no birds. The cycles may be over. It's too hot to hunt anyway.
7:30am- Drive back to river and try again to jump Art's truck, to no avail. Go to Walmart and Artie buys a new battery.
8:30am- Art picks up fish and drops off my borrowed gun. He can't shut the ignition off without the battery going dead again. I think it's the alternator. When Art leaves i write blog and start making phone calls for the NYC clients. The Stone Ridge job has begun. Turkey season is over tomorrow. End Day 30.

GIRLS WITH GUNS

On Sunday I slept late. After two months of fitful sleep, a strange calm descended upon me. I had been invited by a local women's NRA chapter to cover an event they were having out near the PA line later that afternoon. My column was still running in The River Reporter and i had developed a few fans. The organiser of the female gun enthusiasts had called me repeatedly and I felt obliged to make an effort to find the place. I called Friendly and got her voice mail. I didn't bother to leave a message. No sense in running the risk of Jeeves lurking in the shadows. Let her come to me. It's always about the hunt.
The weather was perfect, warm and clear. The leaves hadn't begun to change, yet the smells reminded one that bow season was right around the corner. The acorns continued to fall on the roof, but now it was just a gentle breeze shaking them loose. The squirrels were gone. The depression, that weighed so heavily just a few days ago, seemed to have vanished. How could this woman have such an effect on me? I turned the radio on and daydreamed, trying to make out the directions along the Delaware river.
Two hours later I still couldn't find the place. Every time I stopped to ask someone about the gathering they gave me conflicting directions. I was just about to give up when I spotted a hand painted plywood sign- NRA and a yellow arrow pointing down a dirt road. I pulled up to a big meeting house and two rough looking women, smoking cigarettes, eyed me warily. I introduced myself and they told me I'd missed the event. One had a big .357 wheel gun on her hip and the other a single barrel 12 ga. cradled in her arm. I made my apologies and got the hell out of there. "Men. Can't find their ass with both hands." I heard one say. I had bad experiences with armed women. The estrogen was palpable.
Back at the shack there was another message from Friendly. "Hi love. Can't wait to see you tomorrow." My spirits rose. Maybe my timing was perfect. Maybe she had finally resolved to split from Jeeves. Maybe everything was going to be OK. Maybe?

GUIDE JOURNAL- DAY 29

5:00am- "Christie! We're late!" It's Artie yelling from the bottom of the loft ladder. He showed up last night, gave me a valium and i forgot to set the alarm. It's already light out. 65 degrees and sunny. Gonna be a hot one. Get in car and drive to diner.
5:30am- Stop at Quickway Diner for egg sandwiches and coffee. Three girls, still drunk from the night before, are dancing in the parking lot. It's a holiday weekend.
6:00am- Pull in Dark's place in Pine Bush. Split up and both call. Nothing gobbles. Don't even hear or see a hen. The mosquitos and flies are eating me up.
7:00 am- Drive to Montgomery and hunt various spots. Nothing. Can hear the drums of a Memorial Day parade way off through the woods.
9:00am- Drive back to Sullivan County. We've hit Ulster and Orange counties so far. Pass Bird and Itchy walking the dog at Wolf Lake. Buy beer for later.
10:30am- Pass a girl sun bathing in a very skimpy bikini on the way to one of our spots. This is almost as good as hearing one gobble. Bikinis are a raw sight in this neck of the woods. Hunt the rest of the morning fending off insects. Hear and see nothing.
12:00am- Jump start Art's car. Write blog. For those of you that are interested this blog will end on Wed. May 31,2006. Fear not. I've already started a new one. I promise I'll tell you where it is. End day 29.

DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON

By the next day i felt like new man. I went right from the dark stagnant waters of the tunnel of love, onto the brightly lit ferris wheel without a second thought. Hell, i still had some ride tickets left in my pocket and it looked like the midway was still open. Cotton candy anyone?
I had a previous invite to go into the city to hang with some friends on Saturday. Perry, Mark and John (those guys from Houston) were in town and we were to meet up for drinks at the Fish. It was a beautiful warm afternoon and just as i crested the moutain above Wurtsboro i caught sight of some papers fluttering across the West bound lane. Then i saw the car, a newish silver SUV over on it's side, wheels still spinning. The driver was face up in the middle of the road. I pulled over and ran across the road to the guy. He wasn't moving. An insurance form was stuck to his bloody face. I pulled it off and laid my finger tips against his neck, just like they had shown me in hunting guide's class. I swear i felt a pulse. By then there was a Hasidic guy in an orange vest over my shoulder. " I think he's still alive." I said. He bent down and felt for a pulse and shook his head. Must have been my own beating heart I felt through my finger tips.
Ten minutes later i was back on the road, like nothing had happened. The cops had shown and there was no reason to stay. It was surreal. Once in town I told the story and no paid the least amount of attention. All talk was of these Austrian artists who had been part of the World Trade Center studio program and had taken out a window surreptitiously and built a gang plank out the window on the 90th floor. Then one of them stood out on the plank while a hired helicopter flew around the towers photographing the work. The reporter who broke the story in the Times a week before
was at the table and everyone was snubbing her. Some big cheeze from the Port Authority had read the story and now the gallery was being sued. "There's an opening for the Austrian's on the 11th." Perry said. I said I had to be back in town for work on Tues., so would definitely make it.
When I got back home at 4:00am there were three messages on the machine from Friendly. "Christie? You there? Meoooooow!" Beep. "Hellooooooo. Where aaaaaare you? My pussy needs petting. Ooooooooo." Beep. "Can't wait to see you on Monday." OK. I admit it was a trap. So what. I couldn't wait to feel those steel jaws clamped against my ankle.

GUIDE JOURNAL- DAY 28

4:00 am.- Alarm goes off. Get up. Last night Artie left me a bunch of phone messages about his truck breaking down, and work, etc. He said he'd meet me at the Quickway Diner at 4:30 am. I wasn't holding my breath.
4:30am- Pull in Quickway Diner. Two cars in parking lot, niether of which are Artie's. Buy coffee and drive to Dark's to hunt alone.
4:55am- Just getting light. Hens are cackling close by, as i load gun and sneak in woods. Sit quietly without calling. Wait to hear a gobble.
5:30am- Two birds fly from the roost, but still no gobbles. Where are those toms?
5:54am- Move to another spot and spook two more birds off the roost. Can't tell whether they are toms or hens. Most likely there are hens.
6:15am- Catch sight of something moving 100 yards through the woods. It's a big dark grey coyote. I make a call and he comes towards me. Just as he passes a big deadfall i get on him and fire. He spins and comes right at me teeth barred. I shoot again and miss. He turns and I roll him with the third shot. He drops, but gets right back up. i have to reload. In the process i lose sight of him and never see him again. I feel terrible. I know i hit him hard, but there's no blood trail and there's posted signs everywhere. I give up and drive home. Should've stayed in bed. End- Day 28.

SEVEN SEPTEMBER

I remember it was a Friday. I woke up in bad shape. It seemed like everything was falling apart. I could barely function. The folks were over at the lake, enjoying a beautiful, calm, warm morning when i showed up. The old man was watching CNN and Star was puttering around in the kitchen. I sat in the chair next to the TV, facing the elder. He was watching that stupid stock ticker, getting the figures on....then out of nowhere i started to sob uncontrolably. As wonderful and supportive as they both were, they didn't do well when faced with a half hysterical middle aged son falling apart next to the morning stock ticker. Who does?
I don't know why I felt it necessary to even be there, but I did. They did their best with me, but i could tell I was just making things worse. It was one thing to crumble in the privacy of my own shack, another to place my psychosis at the feet of the elders. I didn't stay long. When i got home i knew what i had to do. I called Friendly's cell. I took the chance and she picked up. "Hey you." she said in a cheery, chipper voice. "Let me pull over I'm in the car." Then I did a repeat performance of the drooling, sobbing mess i had become. To my surprise she was empathetic and calmed me down. It easily could have gone the other way. We talked. I started to breathe again.
"We should meet. I hate to see you like this." she said. Yeah. Yeah. I know you think it's a trap, but sometimes you just have to go with your gut. We made a date to meet in the EV on Monday afternoon. I had to do something...anything to shake myself out of the depression. Maybe just one more face to face would do it. I made myself something to eat and sat out in the screened porch, staring at the ASSHOLENEIGHBOR'S fence, writing in my journal: "So Baby- I'm writing this on Sept. 7, 2001, hoping there will be no more developments between now and Monday......"

GUIDE JOURNAL- DAY 26 & 27

DAY 26

7:00am- Get up. Drive to Exxon for coffee. 50 degrees. Sunny. NPR news- Skilling and Lay convicted in Eron trial. Recently watched "Smartest Guys in the Room." I highly recomend it. Still no word from Artie. Write blog. Pratice guitar and new song.
9:30am- Drive to lake to help Bird hook up water. The elder used to do this, but his health is failing and the task has now fallen to me. I'm a shitty plumber and every time I fix one thing two other things break.
12:00am- Go to Dutch's for lunch and three beers each. Want to take a nap but have to dig under the house to fix a broken pipe. Thunderstorms make it difficult to figure out what's leaking and what's just rain. I'm covered in mud.
5:00pm- Finally get water working. GNJohn, Slick, Kara, and two German friends , up for a day of fly fishing, show up for more drinks and dinner.
11:00 pm- Everyone leaves and I turn on the TV. I'm really drunk and decide to sleep at the lake. A show is on that sells really bad paintings. There's a hot girl standing next to this goofy artist, oooing and ahhhhing over the crappy work. I can't help myself. I call the number on the screen. "Hello. Yes. Would you like to bid on the painting?" the woman asks me. There's a picture of Elvis on the screen. The hot girl bends over. In my best drunk drawl I tell her how much I like the girl. "No. She's not for sale." the woman informs me. "But I want to bid on her." I insist. "Sir." The woman reiterates "The girl is not for sale." I'm not taking no for an answer. "But I really like her. She's puuurty. Can you have her bend over again? Puleeeze..." The woman hangs up. I take my pants off and stumble up to bed. End Day 26

DAY 27

8:30am- Wake up when Bird's truck pulls in the drive. I can't find my pants. He starts raking leaves and orders me to clean the mess from the previous night. Drive to Exxon for coffee and home to write blog. I need a shower. If I don't hear from Art I'm hunting those birds tomorrow. My head is splitting. Look in my pocket and find the website to that bad painting show from last night- Finearttreasures.net. Check out the babe. I think I'm in love. End Day 27

DON'T FENCE ME IN

By Labor Day dead squirrels littered the landscape. Red squirrels, grey squirrels, flying squirrels- all fell from that tree. Any time, day or night, if I heard an acorn fall, or that incessant chattering (that sounded so similar to Jeeves' accent)....well lets just say I was running out of shells. The gun was always loaded.
During the day I wrote...pitiful love songs. I was too depressed to work. Mr. Asser kept calling to get me to come back, but I kept putting him off. I couldn't face the grind. One of my ex students from the OSSS wanted to get married in the church, so for a little while i busied myself with that. I hoped it would shake be out of my funk, but it had the opposite effect. All the hugging and kissing and coochy-coo just made me feel worse. "Do you take- blah, blah, blah...." I smoked. I drank. I snorted. I popped...and still felt like shit. Nothing was lifting the oppressive fog. Then another acorn would hit the roof. Gunfire echoed across the valley.
Then, one hot morning an especially cagey grey squirrel shot across the high branches of the oak. I missed. BANG! Missed again. On the fourth shot he fell dead at my feet. A couple of minutes later there was a knock at my door. It was my ASSHOLENEIGHBORS. "DO YOU HAVE A SHOTGUN?" I thought he asked if I wanted a shotgun. "What kind?" I asked. "What?" he looked puzzled and angry. "Did you just shoot?" I told him I did. "WELL, WE WERE SWIMMING IN THE POOL AND SHOT HIT THE WATER! WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?" I guess that squirrel had led me out on a limb. I didn't tell him what i was shooting at and made some excuse about the wind blowing the shot. It was all bullshit. Thank God I hadn't hit any of his kids. The next week the chainlink fence went up. Finally the squirrels went silent. My property now looked like a minimum security work farm. The depression deepened.

LET'S GET SMALL

I live in a tiny hamlet, so when I started going to a shrink I had to listen to my Dr. complain about her clients: mean wife beaters with orders of protection in place, doormat drunks, poor souls trapped in a double wide, with a bunch of grubby rugrats in shitty diapers, who couldn't stop crying. At first I was lumped in with the rest- a recently divorced, clean shaven, hypomanic, bi-polar, manic depressive, with suicidal tendencies. After a couple of years of therapy I let my hair and beard grow back, started drinking and smoking again, and got in this thing with Friendly. I felt 100% better. I began to get my old sense of the absurd back. She said i was a breath of fresh air. "Tell me again how she wanted to get her pussy tattooed." the Doc. pleaded. Who was shrinking who here?
My 49th birthday in late August came and went without much notice. Then, the next day I got a phone call. "Hey you." It was Friendly. She no sooner got on the phone than i heard Jeeves in the background. "Sorry." she said, "Can I call you back?" Somethings hadn't changed. We finally had the chance to talk calmly. It was as close to closure as we were going to get. I told her I had started karate and had stopped seeing a shrink. "She should've been paying me." I said. She told me she got a tattoo (on her lower back) of a big C- "for Christmo." she said. We hung up with mutual "I love yous."
For a little while I felt better. It had been a tough summer. After Friendly left, Monkey Balls also decided it was time to split. I think I was bummming him out. I was totally alone and wallowing in it. I went back and forth on Prozac and practiced my karate moves. The big oak that shaded my house was loaded with acorns and the squirrels had taken up residence. Each morning, at the crack dawn, the acorns rained down onto my roof like machine gun fire. My nerves were becoming more and more frazzled. Then one morning I'd had enough. I loaded up the 20 ga. The bloodbath began.

GUIDE JOURNAL- DAY 25

8:00am- Get up. Make coffee. Out of half and half. Drink coffee black, and write blog. 45 degrees and sunny. Yahoo news: Cate Blanchet is playing Bob Dylan in a biopic and Joan Baez is living in a tree in LA.
9:00 am- Take a shower and a giant blood engourged tick falls out from between my toes. We're just visiting their world. I realize this is boring, but you just have to be patient. If all went well in court Artie will be back to hunt the weekend and we'll finish out the season with a flury of activity.
9:30 am- Go back to work in the church. WFMU is on the radio. Do laundry. The flies have returned with the warm weather and one keeps buzzing my head as i work.
10:00am. Hang laundry on the line to dry and feed cats. Find a desecated rat on porch. Toss it in the weeds. Feel my life is meaningless and boring. Maybe it's the lyme disease returning? Go to post office and get mail. Bills and credit card offers. This confirms my earlier notion that it's all so useless. FMU DJ plays an old Karen Black song. There's a lyric in it about me, prodding me to get off my ass and move on down the road. I think it's called ALASKA. I feel better. End Day 25.

LEAGUE OF SCUMBAG GENTLEMEN

The day after that phone message i started writing songs in ernest. I know this because at the time i kept a timeline journal of this particular period in my life. I quote:
"...hope this resolve (for her) to be single will release us from the bullshit. Wait for phone call. Begin writing songs in ernest." Two weeks went by with no word. I didn't want to push her and wanted to give her space to deal with Jeeves. After one particularly bad night I crack and leave a message on her cell. The call is not returned. Send letter and casette of new songs in the mail. No response.
A week later and I'm falling apart. I begin to worry that maybe something went awry. All the talk of Voodoo hitmen, 666 labia tattoos and Jeeves' nasty streak start to sink in again. She could be hurt....or worse. I start tripping. i leave a flurry of anguished messages on her cell and still get no response. Finally I can't take it anymore. I call the home phone. Jeeves answers.
"Hellooo." There's that accent. I try to stay calm and ask to talk to Friendly.
"You have a lot of gall calling my house. I thought she told you she didn't want to talk to you again?" I bite my lip and ask if she's OK?
"Of course. We are better than ever. We've been at the beach.....discussing you as a matter of fact." The guy is so full of himself i can't stand it. The calm vanishes. I let go with both barrels, laying out the entire affair.
"Well." he says, as i take a breath. "I hope you feel better. You certainly are no gentleman."
I say i love his wife and......He snickers and tells me to disappear. I tell him if she tells me too, I will. He gloats at my heartbreak. Guess I can't blame him.
"I'll have her call you." he sneers, and hangs up.
When friendly finally calls she sounds blase' and disaffected by the whole thing. She tells me she decided two weeks ago to go back to Jeeves and couldn't face telling me. She hoped i would get the hint. She sounds high. In a monotone she says "You must have known this could end badly." I flip and tell her i never want to see her again. I almost got my wish.