Vessels2point0

Day later and Tyrone’s son from Kabul had come home to Burnside with a prosthetic foot and a spook for an eye and only just one.  The other had been pirated out its socket by a dry-wall-screw bomb hid by a ten-year old in a Pepsi machine and was now all eye-patched in padded black nylon for life. 

Tyrone sighed in the truck cab and said offhand, “He’s haunted.” 

He is hurt,” I agreed.

“Alien ghosts are haunting my son.” 

“You’re saying Afghanis, sir?”

“No.  No,” he corrected,  “aliens.” 

We were returning up the dirt road to the brick sweat lodge field; the other Bounders were scrunched behind us out back in the truck bed, choking on copper motes.  Before we’d picked the rest up from their host families, Tyrone had requested special I drive with him and his pooch in the front.  “It’s the aliens,” he said then.  “The ghosts of the alien gods.”

Well, okay, why the hell not was the thought.  Might as well go along for the ride.  And why shouldn’t alien ghosts and their gods be the ones responsible?  Diagnosis seemed good as any other shot in the dark.  “Well what do your people do?” I said. “Sir, in scenarios like your son’s?”

“Squaw dance,” Tyrone said, “mock battles.  That whole Enemy Way ceremony I mentioned to you earlier, doodle.  That’s what we’ve been prepping to do.  For three days he will visualize the Alien God Slayer.  He will identify with the Alien God Slayer.  For three days he will channel the slayer’s power.  We will cleanse him and celebrate him and welcome my son home with washed spirits.”

Once, months back, Shelley had posted an image of a severed hand sewn at the wrist into the plate between a woman’s breasts, and when she did, I could look at that beastly image without a wince, investigate it scientific even.  The hand was stuck there as though the fingers gestured a sorta come-hither what’s up; how’s it going I dared back with my eyes. 

Once I’d blogged film stills from a sexploitation in which a satanic empress super-slides in virgins’ still-hot blood; it was fun to watch during homework for pre-calc.  Once the initials of a boy I’d carved into my stretchmarked hip with the blade of Mom’s cork-screw key.  I’d ripped salvia from a water pipe shaped like the helmet of Marvin the Martian, felt the hit butterknife-slice through my rear brain, and all when I was meant to be in after-school jujitsu; and I didn’t go, I ditched, and that boy, I didn’t even like him, only the letters in his name. 

I was sixteen, and I knew a sick joke when I saw one, prided myself on being the one who cracked them, even if my own life was the cracker. 

Yeah, Pop stuffed Mom’s earthly possessions into the moonroof and with her mall-bought thongs doused in sure-fire charcoal briquettes, with one strategically aimed bottle rocket, yeah, dad fireworked the Jetta to Pomona and back; but even then, as they carted him off, I could still look him straight, stare even. 

Only the spook eye of Tyrone’s son and that stiff, plastic foot of his had ever shamed my head down like a cop ushering you into the plexiglass theater of his backseat.  

RuPaul greeted each person in the crowd, inside and outside the diner commenting on and complimenting various personal attributes. (One girl asked for a picture. “I’m short,” she said, standing next to him. “You’re not short. You’re perfect,” he replied.) Every few minutes he’d utter his “I am not running for president!” line. As he made his way down the counter, extending his hand to every patron, he reminded them, of course, that he is RuPaul, not, Ron Paul.

Standing along the wall, a 19-year-old boy from Boston wearing rhinestone-studded stilettos, a pearl necklace and earrings and a mink stole waited patiently to see his hero. His name? “Gee-Gee Louise,” he said, the “world’s only drag burlesque dancer.” “I’m technically a drag queen,” he said before getting his picture taken with RuPaul. “But I take my clothes off.”

Several feet away, an old man stood alone, watching the scene unfold from a safe distance. “I came to catch the flavor of the campaign,” he said. “I was thinking more along the lines of Rick Santorum.”

Eventually, RuPaul wrapped up inside and stepped back out into the frosty morning. “You betta vote!” he whooped at the cheering crowd. “Remember, this country was founded by a bunch of men wearing wigs!”

Yet, for entertainment’s sake, I planned a little test to verify that RuPaul is definitely not Ron Paul. He agreed to meet with me in Manchester’s Palace Theater, just a few blocks from the diner.

How do you feel about the printing of fiat money?

“Fiat? I do love that new J-LO car! I do love that.”

Where do you stand on the merits of lowering the marginal tax rate to boost growth?

“I usually stand on six-inch platforms. It’s actually not as tall as it looks.”

Who is more fabulous? The economist John Maynard Keynes or Frederich Hayek?

“You better work!”

What does that mean?

“That’s drag for no comment,” a camera guy said.

Any predictions for the New Hampshire primaries or the general election?

“I’m not really a psychic…I’m more of a psycho, really.”

I also listed the names of candidates and asked RuPaul to say what first popped into his head. Ron Paul “Hotness!” Rick Perry “Feeeeeverrrrr!” Newt Gingrich “Uh-huh! That’s right!”

topclassbitchfromthefuture:

I want to wear that horse bathing suit with cutoffs and a brown leather belt with a big gold cowboy buckle and a clear plastic top cut off right at my nipples and a pink wig that I rough chopped into a crooked bob and iridescent lucite stripper heels with gold coins in the coin slots and silver cream eyeshadow under my eyes and thick black fake eyelashes

that’s my instant thought