Ocean Beach Bathroom Observations by: Pantifesto's Porntastic Phunhouse/FM

Ocean Beach. San Diego, CA, Amerika: 10:00am
* * * * * * * *

The Subjects are deposited at the corner of Newport and Cable Street, after dropping acid 10,000 feet in the air over the Chihuahua desert a couple of hours earlier... Voltaire St. is somewhere in the close vicinity. All signs point to east of their location, but they're holding onto gravity by the grains of sand on the sidewalk and the shifty eyes of encroaching pelicans, who only want the weed.

The first stop is the bathroom and the epiphany afterwards, proceeds as follows:

"I'm usually apalled by the amount of filth in there. Today, there is ample toilet paper in the stalls because it's early in the morning and all the street people ain't washed with the entirety of the pink soap in the dispenser yet."

When they finally make it to the beach itself, Subject A writes something down about the woman closest to Subject B's proximity:

Lady in a pink
skirt with your
cat at the beach your
cat on a leash
don't want no
bath in the
ladies room at
the lifeguard station

Subject B is amused by the anecdote, hysterically amused in fact, but is distracted somewhat by a full bladder and the violet reflection emitting from the sun, or the waves, or the sand, or Subject B's photoreceptor cells, which Subject B is convinced have betrayed Subject B in every sense of the word.


Subject B talks about the early 90's hit: The Wizard, starring Fred Savage, Christian Slater, and some autistic kid who never made it farther than "California...California." because that's all the little shit ever talked about...

Subject B can hold it no longer, and treks off to the Lifeguard Station, feeling like a saturated Rimbaud with one leg. Subject B releases.

Meanwhile, Subject A has become fascinated with the catwoman, the cat's bathing rituals and the cat frolicking aimlessly in the sand dunes, AS FAR AS ITS LEASH WILL ALLOW. Catwoman, has turned on her i-pod, wears no headphones, and dances with the cat, AS FAR AS ITS LEASH WILL ALLOW.

The monologue goes accordingly:

Lady with your
cat on the leash
with your chunky
ass in a
yellow sunset bikini

I ain't tryin to
hear no Korn
song right now
put your pink
skirt back
on & quit tryin
to sing it to
me silently.


Subject B returns from Lifeguard Station after crying profusely at the urinal and urinating for what seemed like 2 years, but in all actuality was only 20 minutes.

Subject B relates the experience to Subject A, via telepathy, hand gestures and simultaneous verbal communication techniques. The technique is not lost upon Subject A, who has become incredibly attuned to the little revelations one experiences when frequenting the semi-sanitary bathroom stalls. Subject B saw no such thing. Subject B, peed into a hole in the wall with a bowl of water at his feet. Subject B thinks of Henry Miller's recollections on French Urinals in The Black Spring, specifically A Saturday Afternoon:

Subject B thinks of his own life:

"with intense blues and luminous greens, the life of sin and grace and repentance, a life of high yellows and golden browns, of winestained robes and salmon-colored streams"
(H.M.)

"So I finish up, and I turn around and this guy has obviously been standing behind me for the entire 20 minutes, and I got tears staining my cheeks, which I feel like everyone can see even with these sunglasses on. So I go to the sink to wash my hands and there's no soap, or the soap dispenser has evaporated. I don't know, but I'm standing there, my hands are already under the faucet, the place is crowded with tweekers or what I perceive are tweekers, and the only thing I can think to do is sprinkle my eyes with penis water, and split real quick... For a moment, I almost screamed out: You've left me no choice San Diego! You drove me to this!"

Subject A is equally amused by Subject B's bathroom anecdote, which has peaked Subject A's interest once more.

Subject A makes off for the Lifeguard Station, and Subject B wonders if she really has to go that much or is it more or less for the experience and the observations...Subject A admits to nothing, for the moment, but later confides that yes, Subject A did have a full bladder, but Subject A was mesmerized by her previous findings and felt compelled to return to the scene of the crime, so to speak.

The relevance of the evidence was uncanny and well documented:

"Looks like someone shit on the wall in there. The Lifeguards go in and throw cat litter where it had dribbled down...I feel like Dexter, examining the blood splatter pattern of a mutilated corpse...Somebody drew an arrow pointing to the mess and asked: Does it take a real concentrated effort to shit like that on the wall?"

The mystery is never solved. The catwoman has disappeared. The waves have finally broken back, the surfers are leaving and the orange juice is completely gone.

Subject B asks Subject A:

"You down for some fish tacos?"

All signs point to yes...emphatically so.

The acid is still pulsing through their bloodstreams when they get back on the plane, a mere 4 hours later. Albuquerque is colder than usual, as they make their final descent before landing...

With All The Slimy Bases Covered A Review of : Tales From A French Envelope (Catfish McDaris & Craig Scott) By: Frankie Metro

… If money is an iguana eating a jackalope, as Catfish Mcdaris suggests in the short prose piece: Jackalope Condoms, then free books are either named Ana or Jack, and have furry horns sprouting from their scaley spines. Allow me first off, to thank Craig Scott for the new bundle of joy I received in the mail today. Children like this live in the French Envelope Catfish & Craig left out to dry in the deserts of the Independent Press Community.

Warning: Don’t approach this book looking for new spiritual landscapes or cognitive plateaus. Instead, floss your gums regularly, start now if you have to, and be open to a series of prods and pokes.

As you progress, there is a pungent smell of burning meat, or a burning sensation, possibly in the pubic zone if you’re that type of person, that follows you around the house, even after you put the book down. Sometimes the meat is sweetly rancid:

Deep & Deeper
(C.M.)

“The Commanche was fanning that burning meat and chanting. Before long I felt this strange sensation. You know how your hemmorhoids burn, after too many hot peppers? That’s about as close as I can come to an explanation…”

Sometimes the burning is painfully familiar:

Fuck You
(C.S.)

I’m a suicide.
You’re my letter.

You don’t care for responsibility.
You never inform the authorities
of my death.
You meet some douchebag in a bar and
elope to Vegas.

My bones mail you
my middle finger.

Catfish McDaris’ poem:

Willy Gets Chilly

is like a stash of retrospection, finally discovered bobbing along in the reservoir of your toilet, or a dopemine rush that’s justified, tried and true.

Creepy Uncle Willy was the last resort,
but my parents had to go to a funeral,
getting into my pajamas, I noticed girlie
books in the bathroom, I was soon
walking the monkey, Uncle Willy yelled

You naughty boy, now I’m going to spank you…

Blood exploded from his nose & his eyeballs
rolled white like hard boiled eggs, the cops
came & called my folks…

Everyone’s heard the creepy Uncle story; some have written the creepy Uncle poem; (C.M.) exorcises the creepy Uncle demons:

…the preacher asked if anyone
wanted to say a few words, I stood & said
he was right, it did hurt him more than me.


Page 43’s poem:

Godzilla Doesn’t Play Butler
(C.M.)

makes the completely ludicrous seem completely feasible, and not only that but also tactfully orchestrated:

I took off all my
clothes & stroked
my lizard until it
resembled Godzilla
stomping Tokyo

Walking into the living
room I set the cake
on the coffee table
I heard a woman
say “Damn”

I asked “Anyone
want meat with
their cake?” a few
hands went up…

while Catfish’s: Tiger Skin Blues is a place where the only difference between magic squirrels and tree rats is the size of your twig & berries:

“Cruz’s heart was broken into a million pieces. Her tears could’ve filled the Gulf of México. Antonio couldn’t survive on ordinary cat food; he hit his eighth life quick. Cruz had him made into a rug and there she slept, until she died of boredom and a lonely heart.”

Ah, Southwest Catfish Cassady & The Bob Dylan Pig Truck Blues…Catfish seems to always be in a race with death; not the death of the body, but the death of the self-image, immersing himself in pig shit and hot sauce on occassion, and hauling ass to Tucumcari or bust.


Taking Down The Shakedown
(C.M.)

is vigilante justice/México City standoffs on public transit/bagmen/cold earth/a hot day/and no supervision:

The México City pickpockets
worked the luxury buses in
wolf packs, razor blades
concealed between fingers

Swift dips of eagle talons
into purses & wallets,
handing off to second men
the watchers ever vigilant…

On page 55, you find that

There’s No Cure For True Love
(C.M.)

and this is an adverse reaction to domestication; an unspayed, unneutered, ill-tempered jackalope, with two hyper-active sex organs, who cares nothing about the topic:

“You ask what would reduce a man to such worm like behavior? Did she have beauty, intelligence, a great body, a pleasant personality? No, an emphatic no, to any of those good qualities. She was a cunt in every sense of the word. She squandered his hard earned money, cheated with every man stupid enough to screw her. She had body odor and bad breath…”

When you’re finally:

Face To Face

with his contribution to this book, the color coated, hairy flavored slime trail it’s left on your tongue is hard to describe, but in the company of Catfish, you find out Jeffrey Dahmer’s been standing across the page, and you’ve traveled just a stanza or one paragraph too far down a dark alley.
* * *

You turn the corner, and Craig Scott’s portion starts off like a free dance at the strip-bar, followed by a private show wth no panties or bra.

The poem:

Bachelor Party Guidelines

reads as a continuously revised string of advice, completely unheeded of course, but unabashedly acknowledged all the same:

You can impregnate,
but make sure it doesn’t
come to term.

You can bring it to term,
but don’t claim it
as your own.

You can claim it as your own,
but don’t spend any time
with it…


The Other
(C.S.)

is a full scale model of the late Todd Moore in drag, a hairy kneed poem with silk stockings and a .38 Snub-Nose…holy, ripped, ready for action:

Don
was too
busy
staring
at Petal’s
tits
to notice
her pulling
the 38
snub
out from
under
the pillow.
One was
half
the size of
the other.
Her nipples
got hard
when she
shot him
in the
balls

Craig seems to pry his characters from the steel reinforced confines of oversized tuna cans in some instances; cans containing wet pink flesh, cans with serrated chew marks on the label, cans with chunks of stem cells… chaotic, suck-fucking hybrids that blame their idle hands, which never fully developed.

He sleeps with would-be assassins when The End is near:

“My left eye feels like a balloon filling with water. We fight and fuck and ignore the cat vomit in the bed…”

giving them the choice of either the crow’s nest or the wet spot in the bed.

By the time you’re left with the question:

Why
(pg. 156)

she is the only answer you have left:

why is it
she’s had tits since 12
known how to suck a dick since 13
how to eat pussy since 9…

why is it
you haven’t known her forever
but yet you have

She is tucked neatly at the slimy base of a French Envelope. There is still time to save her, before the glue really dries…

Missing Merlot

I'm completely baffled as to when, or how...well, maybe not so much how, but when, mind you, we stopped seeing eye to eye. But, this is a horrible way to start things off. Yes, a horrible introduction to what could possibly be a long winded explanation. Someone in the background, may even alert you to the tidbit that:

"Sometimes if you take a lighter to the end of it, the flame makes it flow better."

But, we haven't really begun. You don't even know these people yet. Neither do I for that matter. So, the ending is completely irrelevant at this juncture.

Paulo and Marissa do not even know themselves in all honesty. At least, they are unaware of how their personalities, which purely revolve around elements of their tumutltous marriage-their lavish expense accounts and exploits within the confines of their fully-comped suites at the Wyndham Hotel and Resort or their vile senses of humor and subtle swinger innuendos-affect those around them.

As far as first impressions are concerned, Paulo ÿ Marissa will shower their guests with over-zealous gifts and cheer. All the wine corks are popped. All the food is cooked and shared. All the sheeshah and sativa...smoked openly amongst new and old friends alike. All is offered under the pretext that nothing is deprived or expected, save for the occasional endurance of their behavior.

'Mî cåsa és su cåstîllo!'

It's soon revealed, and truthfully I had my suspicions from the start, that there are always ulterior motives in such arrangements. In fact, through exposure to such conditions-where the wine is opened, but you/I will soon be suspected of stealing a bottle or two without just cause...where all the food is cooked and shared, only to be weighed, denied and hidden somewhere down the road...where the sheeshah and sativa are smoked openly, until imaginary tabs begin to tally unbeknownst to you/I-then you begin to wonder if all human inter-relations do not come with some hidden agenda attached there with...

like a purple-heart for being injured in battle.

You begin to wonder if the source for all decency, compassion and understanding is not directly associated with a lack of conviction, subversive investigation and ultimately, a timely execution.

"But it's okay. We don't have to get along." Paulo said, hunched over the kitchen counter like an obese citadel. "We don't have to feel comfortable around each other-because we're giving you and Lisa two hours to pack your shit and get out."

There was no change in his inflection. His beady eyes did their best to look in any direction but straightforward as he spoke.

"Are you for real man? It's like that all of a sudden?" I asked, calmly rolling my cigarette on the patio, the sliding-glass door the only barrier between two reinforced egos...wide open.

"Well, we can't trust you guys at the house while we're not here. So, you got until I go to bed so we won't have anymore issues like-"

"Dude! We didn't take your fucking wine bottles okay?" I interrupted, paying close scrutiny to my left hand which had begun to shake slightly. "We drink for free at the Slice Parlor; and we drink beer. Fuck! When's the last time you even seen us drink wine 'cept for when your family was here a couple of months ago?"

"We never said you guys stole them." Paulo's chest began to take in a heavy gust of dog-piss-error as he stepped out onto the patio. "But I saw Lisa's MAC charger plugged in next to the wine rack the night before they came up missing. So-"

"That doesn't mean shit and you know it!" I said. "You motherfuckers misplace shit around here all the time!"

Paulo lifted the top of the grill and furiously poked at the charbroiled chicken he had left to the flame out of carelessness.

"Well, you guys got all torn up and defensive when I asked if you had seen them."

"Yea! Because you called minutes before I walked into work...talking about how you may have to kick everyone out of the house. I mean, how did Edwin (another roommate) react when you asked him about it?"

Paulo sunk into one of the iron-mesh chairs. A cloud of dust and arrogance sprung from his ass. "He didn't take it like you guys did. I'll say that much."

"Well," I replied. "I have to be honest-" As I began, Marissa, who before this moment had been looming at the end of the couch inside, and who had kept a busy ear to the conversation's unraveling, suddenly stepped outside to stand behind her husband's left, crooked shoulder, as a sign, I am assuming, of solidarity in their hasty decision. I continued on, unphased by the display of unison. "I've been harboring some shit against you for a while now. I don't know what Edwin's (who is blacker than an onset cavity) feelings are on the matter, but, I did not appreciate you yelling:

'Where the niggers at? I'm hunting for niggers!'

when I was half-asleep in my room a couple of weeks ago. That was a really fucked up thing to say to us and you never apologized to me, or him, for acting like a drunken, retarded bigot."

Marissa rubbed his shoulders while Paulo glanced over his back and into the East mountains of Albuquerque that lay quiet in the distance. "Dude. It's my house." He caressed Marissa's hand, who still refused to make eye contact with me herself. "I can say whatever the fuck I want."

"I understand that...but if you're going to say that stuff, maybe you shouldn't invite two African-Americans to live in your house, or, if you do, be more aware of how your spontaneous racial epitaphs-"

"Wow! Spontaneous racial epigrams! Breaking out the big words on us 'illiterate' types eh?" Paulo stood forcibly from his seat. "Look Anton, I don't see what the big deal is. I mean, fuck dude, I call my dogs (two poodles and a miniature Yorkie named Joker) niggers all the time man!" Marissa looked me dead in the eye at this, as a crocodile's smile finally revealed itself. "Sides...Why are we even talking right now? I don't see the point. You're wasting precious time that you could use to pack right now."

Paulo went for the door as I jumped up and cut him off at the pass, giving him my back to consider. "Plunge the knife deeper." I said, as I made my way for the room. "Fucking Judas!" I knew right away, he would not understand the Biblical reference.



But then, there were many things that Paulo misunderstood and of course, as often is the case, his stupidity was not all of his own measure, but more or less a by-product of his superfluous upbringing. Once, he had recanted a story from his youth, where he was accosted by the A.P.D. for methamphetamine possession and distribution within 1,000 yards of a local school district. The charges were very severe and in a bout with desperation while incarcerated, he turned to the only person he felt he could rely upon, his father, who had reasonable connections within the judicial system.

"I'll get you out of this one. But I want you to stop fucking around and get your shit straight...or you're cut off. You hear me?"

Of course, Paulo agreed to the terms of his tenative release and as the years passed , tucked safely beneath the wings of famîliå and influence, turned his talents as a meth dealer into hard-nosed sales tactics at a print shop in Albuquerque. Unfortunately, the experience did little for his overall intelligence and made him even more obsessed with the American dollar-its subsequent influence and the almost euphoric sensation he received from constantly counting the odds and ends...