The Left Column

Politics for Poets

How about a story?

The following is an excerpt from Midnight Laundry, by Bill Perilli

The night she resigned

The night that Cathy resigned she had to do some laundry. It had been cold that week, so she had to have more layers on the bus. Someone had spilled a soda on her. So she had to wash some things a few days before she would have otherwise. And that meant that she had to also carry all of the clothes in a sack down the long stairs out the front door; across the porch; down the front porch stairs; along the driveway and the flower beds, past bloom; through the mulched part; and then out onto the sidewalk for a long walk down the giant hill; all the way down past like thirty five different door steps, all of them covered in pollen.

It was a hard trip down there to that laundromat and she didn't want to make it but . . . she had to. So she did.

And in the morning, if it's hot, there will be steam coming off of things as the dew gets annihilated by the sudden burst from The Sun. Sun was already coming in through the giant windows in the apartment. She heard the guy upstairs get up, fuss and stomp, make his breakfast, take a shower, go to work.

It was one morning in the Winter, last January. She would listen, well, hear, not trying to, but it was there, always, the rhythm of him, the stranger, effecting her, no way to get away from it. He got up. He stomped. He doesn't know that he stomps. He doesn't hear himself. He's probably hung over. But he's gotta get up, do his thing, stomp into the bathroom, make the eggs. Sometimes she hears it cooking. Or it seems to her that she hears it cooking. He gets up really early so sometimes it is still a dream for her, nothing that she needs to remember later in the day though that might help her get to some new decisions about life that might put her in a better place, she thinks sometimes, like on the bus, the world must pass, it would be off to work, collect your check. Take the elevator there, no big stairs to climb, up and down, shelp it here, hoist it there, haul it up on top of the laundry machine. In her dream she is bathed in sunlight that pours through Venetian blinds that cover over the giant front glass window, larger than trees, at the front of the Eagle Delicious Laundromat, down in the Circle where she used to live. In her dream it is those Rock-n-Roll Brighton years, before David was killed in the plane crash (her first love), and she was a young hipster again, grooving the street, with all of the right friends. You work in a law office you get to know people. She knew a few. She'd done some things.

She'd done some things. It was not nice what she had done. Some mean old Weston bitch, really from Chile, stalked her into a bathroom at the Statehouse and told her she had better "stay away from mi hombre", slapped her on her who-ha right there in the woman's room at the state house. It was caught on camera and showed up on the Internet causing quite a sensation and caused a scandal because, even though you couldn't see who the women were, and you couldn't really tell where it was unless you knew where it was . . . where it was . . . if fact was very clear to those who knew them which was pretty-much everyone who worked there because through the door you could see Mista Speaka, that giant Bass Monitor that had been hauled into the State House that day on account of a Rock concert given by a local band that is widely famous. Mista Speaka is a prop with it's torso being a the high powered bass cone, a 300 watt pass through amplifier, some umbillicals that look like arms but were actually vacuum hoses and were designed, as part of the stage show, to reach into pockets of the players (you had to watch the bit to see it, you have to read the play to know whats in it, the play is the thing). Mista Speaka does this funny bit (it's all radio controlled) where he is there to 'clean up' politics. And then the MC says "He'll clean up, alright". A humorous beat, drummer notes it (he's big guy, looks like he was tooting up, sharing favors, yumming it up in the city at night, he's high on something or manic, who can tell, wild eye that he is).

The whole Mista Speaka routine was ribald and over the top. At some point the vacuum cleaner goes on and sucks off the scant pants and top of one of the actresses which was considered scandalous to do at a State House event. And yet they all stood there and clapped and cheered when it happened. The poor actress had to rush out of the building in panties and a bra. It was all hushed up and she was taken care of by . . . the women in the police office who got her to say things, accuse people of stuff, which was all hushed up for appropriate payoffs. And, of course, Cathy was a ring leader in this kind of a shake down. "Mista Speaka. Mista Speaka. All of this was sexual harassment, and you are all a bunch of lechers which you can just see by watching the video of the event!" shouted one of the political opposition on a day in May, some weeks after this travesty of performance had happened. The clip of it on Internet-TV played like part of a Bennie Hill episode, complete with the overdub of a blow-whistle when the top and pants were sucked off of the 'intern' by Mista Speaka.1

You can almost hear the drunken solans yelling "serve'em up.", which became the habit of one of the more truculent members from a shore district. He was later indited for taboo-porn but then it came out that the pictures were actually just photo-shop of one of his cousins that he did for an 'art project', is what the judge is said to have said. (a cash transaction?)

Another judge, the cousin of the truculent taboo breaker, was at the same prison where they kept the cousin. That judge was scared to see his nephew at the Junction (a prison), the place he served his sentence. And so that judge did crazy shit to seem insane so as to get transferred somewhere away from his nephew. The judge wanted to get the advertising executives in, too, the ones too whom he sold the pictures. It was a lewd thing, that I won't describe, that he did to the photo. Once, in court, he was seen in a flopswet when he was told that his nephew was in the building. Some of his cousins, who were bailiffs, etc, in the same court, were thinking of some off-the-clock justice for their strange third cousin from the shore district who was, even to them, as on the dole that they are, a lower form of life, someone worthy of a beat down.

But that was the bit, and you can see the prop, that was part of the act, in the video of the politician and the other politician's wife fighting.

So that also dated the clip for those in the know (plus you could hear St_v_teeyllar in the background crooning in his trademark howls.)

The scandal progressed quickly and it resulted in some unsolved and intermittent justice. The people who work in-dar were worried, being so important. You really ought to know who they are, well, at least if you are there in the commonwealth's house. And thus it is important to recognize the power of intermittent justice when such slights are perceived by those in the know and able to affect whatever the hell they want to have happen. Don't spy on them.

So even though it had been Cathy's thing to do blackmail, she didn't like having it happen to her. It was before the accident, which made things worse for her, because then it was easy pills which she could sell on Savin Bower Road (where there really should not be a bike path) outside the thrift shop. Trade it for an EZ-Me. So she kept up the rouse of chronic pain, and it worked for her, except that now she was addicted to the extra money, and just how easy it was to swipe . . . money with a swipe card. And no one ever asked her for an ID. (she is said to have had a bunch of those little cards, none of them with her picture on them).

But if there were a more notorious time of life, and if you were really into blackmail, you'd figure out how to draw a little bit more out, make them draw you another line before you really need it, so you can suck it right up and save it for later, they don't need to know. Later can be right away, just down the stairs, around the knoll (Beacon Hill was constructed on a knoll), over to a watch shop. Swipe swipe swipe. Thank you. No questions. Five different cards? She printed them out to look like a Rodium Passpair Card (a very very schwanked-up card, very pricey) but the receipt still said Department of Recreational Transition (or whatever the name of that agency was at the time). She didn't look at the receipt. Nor did the clerks, they just liked getting money for selling things for what they are worth, never mater that the existence of some luxury items constitutes a form of money laundering.

Well, Digger Roo, the neew-sty journalist was also in to recycling and had invented a trashing mining robot which went around, and it was really just a cell phone attached to legs that walked around from trashcan to trashcan, Diggger Roo was a student at one of the local colleges, and, even though he was connected to great corrupt pools of family wealth back in his slave-shop country (which his family farms for the power-monkeys) he is also a very brilliant man and he discovered that he could copy something that was crafted first as a website, and then, making a shim (in Perl script, pretty stupid choice so says Rentalleis, this is a digression into software pilfering, when this little vignette is about how hard poor Cathy the blackmailing 'law clerk' had it once she really did need the pain pills because the moral depravity of what she had done, and what she had failed to do, and the lack of any sense of true remorse had finally brought her . . . I give away the ending before the the beginning if I go on with this divigation)

In any case Cathy is in the midst of a dream. And in the dream it is back in the day at the State House where she used to work, but had to resign this very week, on account of the videos of her using multiple EZ-Me cards at various places in the Orlando area, frequenting pawn shops, yumming it up at the Cocoa Beach pier pulling hundred dollar bills out of her bra and tossing them over the side to the surfers in the large ocean, causing quite a stir.

If she hadn't have had three of the pills that day she wouldn't have been down there at the pier with the 23 year Darin (who really wasn't interested, she should have read the signs). And this character, I suppose, could be played by many different actress's, but I would hope that they would wear a body suit to look the part and not gain the weight that she had, at the time, out there at the end of the fish pier, being a naughty girl and . . . with a fisherman at 1:30 in the morning where she was not supposed to be.

Inconsequential: she is spending hundred dollar bills at an arcade in Orlando. She has on this flowing sequined drape around, like Stevie Nicks from a mid 1980's video, only triple plus size. Ridiculous innuendo: video shows her yumming her way through a party crowd at one of the major resorts, still in that flowing gown. She is clutching double hot-dogs. They were the healthy-kind, or at least billed that way, and called 'hart smart' on a little sign with a picture of a love-heart, not a human one.

And that she had paid for various watches, chains, and amulets with EZ-me cards that looked like Ddubbious Rodium Passportte Cards (a very high-scale type) They still dispensed that receipt that said, at the top, Depart of Transsportaattaa Dependance, or whatever the name of that agency is).

Cha Chaing through the marrnga line at an Orlando wedding tossing around silver dimes from a roll, shiny though 50 years old, roll costs a hundred dollars? It isn't my money anyway? Should the people dance and be merry? It is a wedding, by the way? Blessings to the bride and groom! It's not good to throw uncooked rice if there are birds that are going to get at it, so she has heard (but is that just an urban myth?). So if she couldn't throw rice why not silver dimes?

Maxwell saw what the crazy cousin was doing. A spinster from Brookline? She looks like she is going to a dance contest, over done even for a Florida wedding. No one really remembers her, or can recall who she is related to. But she is flooding out like the river of charity, giving out gold coins to the bridal party. Hundred dollar bills for the boys with the groom. She might have paid one of them even more, but he doesn't kiss and tell. Maxwell, a noisy and bored man, noted the encounter and posted even more pictures of this bad behavior to his twit-post account (TM).

Slide show of Cathy cha cha chaing her way, like Mae West on a tear, through the bunny-hop line, an old gentle, very dapper, with a giant white beard and a very expense cut (but it might have been a lease) in his lapel expresses a look of increasingly startled delight as Cathy approaches him, grabs his hand, and lets him swing her around through the crowd. You can almost hear the sound of the Marriachi band. It's like stills from a Spanish Dancer portfolio from the 1950's that was sold to tourists. You can see horns, coming up from the side, like it was all too well framed to be real, has to be inauthentic, doesn't it, a put on? CAthy Wel-chingastona-Rossler must have been staging all of this as an elaborate rouse, but it was due to Peggy, the talented choreographer who was hired by the Wellstone family to plan the photo-pile that would be part of the bridal scrap book that would be meticulously crafted, many many hours spent on it, glomming over the huge horde of images, and then, constructed with expensive acid free stock and inserted into allegedly acid-free sleeves (but can you ever believe what it is billed to be when it says 'made in [slave shop country]'?).

Then that scrap book will be meticulously ignored by anyone other than the bride until the point of . . . some breech of faith? some place of neglect: neglect of love and civic duty? Too much rum and yum and not enough give to live? Too many cakes for the jakes? Not enough snakes for the lakes? (snakes are good for lakes, they eat things that otherwise might grow up mean). This is what Cathy's dream is now ( a cheep way to get back to the story, berate me for this oh ye fictional critics) and then it morphs suddenly (oh, how cheep a transition) into a . . . .

vignette of the front of the laundromat. It is down the hill, farther down, but not at the lowest part (in this dream there is no lowest part, the city is an infinity of many hills, all of them with expensive levels of importance, any door could be the entrance to some new Heaven. If only anyone would let her in)

In the dream the city is in full bloom. Cathy floats, like she is filled with power, a parade float, down, with all of her laundry and she is inside of the laundromat waiting for the clothes to dry and then . . . he walks in, the guy from upstairs, and he is wearing those big clomping boots and she stands there coquettishly. He approaches her. Her yearning calls him to her. The embrace is blissful.

The stomp. He is home. He isn't supposed to be home. It is supposed to be later. He has gone to work. Someone is in his room, and there isn't supposed to be. How does she know this? She knows his schedule.

So she jars herself awake. Ah, thankfully she has lost some weight since. The time at the rehab did help her. And she did understand now the sense of longing that drove her off on her yum-quests out dancing like a Wicca princess at a rock-video shoot.

The day the news hit, the photos of her in Orlando on a binge, she had to take the walk of shame out the door of the State House back to the subway station. She had been called in to explain herself, and her lawyer was there to take the microphone for her. "Ms Caschette-Sooner will not be taking any questions at this time. If any more pictures of her show up at the Doperlly(TM), then please be advised that the Riggirtoni family has a standing order from a Federal judge to take it down."

"Attorney Rextor, Attorney Rextor." eager beaver report calls out "Will Ms. Cashette-Sooner be taking any more dance lessons?"

"There will be no more questions at this time."

"Mr. Rextor, is it true that the only thing that stopped her three month romp in Orlando was getting arrested on the Coco Beach pier?"

"No more questions."

"For lewd and lasciviousness."

"My client . . . has an illness."

"Mr. Rextor, is the governor expecting Caschette-Sooner to pay any of the money back?"

After that there had been no more questions. They just let her walk. And no one from the states attorney office was going to do anything to her. Crazy? Call her crazy, she doesn't care. She's still got that card printer, and that magic box that makes it seem to have money on it. And no one from those offices is ever going to touch her or make her stop.. Because she is truly needy. Always was.

Can't find the love of a good man? Blackmail a bad one.

She snaps out of it. The buzzer rings. It is her load.

She walks over to the machine, takes the laundry out of it, and brings it over to a dryer. But she has no quarters. Ah, lucky her, the dryers here also work with tokens that you get from a card reader. You can use a debit card. You can use a credit card. The EZ-Me card works too.

The receipt she gets says: 'Departmentos of Candy Sistance, not to be deposited in a soda bottle', some kind of a joke?

show of hands for who that
love the police!

🖐Love🖑
🖑Cops🖐

I also made some logos for Amillia Publishing 
company. How about some interesting frames of animation?

What they claim is good
 for 'the environment' 
   really sucks 
  for the forest.

    
    
🖐Love🖑
🖑Cops🖐

Watch This

show of hands for who that
love the police!
🖐Love🖑
🖑Cops🖐

🔫 🚀 🚙🚤🚣c🍀⚜⏲⏱⏰🚣🚣🚣
🚣🚣🚣  🚀  🚀🔨🔨🔨⏲⏱⏰🚣🚣
🔨 🚙 🔨🔨🔨🔨🔨🔨🔨⏲⏱⏰🚣🚣
⏲⏱⏰🚣🚣⏲⏱⏰🚣🚣⏲⏱⏰🚣🚣


even Know-it-all-will-tell-yaa:
When people complaign about the words 
you use often they don't really want to 
hear what you have to say.

spinfont unicode-isms
🍀 Praise God! 🍀
🍀⏲⏱⏰⏲⏱🔫⏰⏰⏲⏱🔫⏰⏰🍀
🎠 
🎠 
🎠 
🔫 
🔨🔨 

Delete and repeat, delete.

will? Maybe I've not ordered the elements properly. Well that little snippit doesn't work that well but t

 
🖐

sub 🖐🖑 🖑🖐

Here is today's pretty poem:

  

Little bit of song . . .

    

🖐🖑
🖑🖐
   
 🖐🖑

🖐🖑 🖑🖐

 ♥♥?



🖐🖑
🖑🖐


glossry of what's next
 ♥♥? : 

Be nice to yourself and others. What other choice?

Wake up!

  Praise God!

♥♥ Praise ♥♥ the ♥♥ Lord ♥♥ because ♥♥ He's ♥♥ Wonderful ♥♥ and ♥♥ Awesome ♥♥!!

end of column