The Sky is Falling Part 2 continued from: Troglodytes.
The six-foot-two hairy Sasquatch lumbered into the house hiding among the shadows carrying a bloody hacksaw. The gruesome blood-stained Wookie looked like something straight out the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. James Moore’s jaw dropped when he spied the creature and the short hairs on the back of his neck stood up on end.
Looking over at me in terror, his eyes begged for an answer. I just shrugged my shoulders as if this was nothing out of the ordinary and lined up my cue-stick to take my next shot.
[Elliot and Dad in dining room with round "spheres" on the pool table]
James was frightened and confused—having no idea what he was in for when he came over to spend the night. He looked like the person who voluntarily checked themselves into an insane asylum and suddenly realized it was a horrible mistake with no way out. "There are no windows and no doors"
I had worked two weeks straight getting ready for this day and with Irene’s help on Fridays, the Formica top of kitchen table was unearthed and glistened and the piles of laundry as high as Mount Everest had been washed and put away.
I had things looking about as normal as people could who had an alligator in the backyard, a pigeon that lived on top of the refrigerator and owned a mutant attack rooster instead of a guard dog.
Venice dogs were real dogs: Pitbulls and German shepherds with torn ears and mutts that chewed bald patches on their butts left bare by gnawing teeth on a hunt for fleas.
My dog, Poochie, was a six-breed-beagle that snorted while relentlessly masticating the open sores of eczema on the exposed skin near her tail. The irritating noise of her nonstop chewing never ceased while we shot pool in the dining room.
[best dog ever]
I was afraid that when daylight-comes-tomorrow-morning it would reveal even more that I was embarrassed for James to see. We had rattlesnakes in the attic, chickens and guinea pigs running loose among the bamboo and an ever-multiplying population of rabbits in cages patrolled by a ginormous and disgusting oversexed rabbit with pink, hairless ball-sacs which dragged three inches behind the grotesque creature.
I thought maybe I could put a bag over his head, tie him up and carry him back across the Santa Monica border and drop him off there—not the rabbit—James!
The testosterone-supercharged rabbit humped every living creature in our backyard including the ancient 18-pound frog we had forever. I kept waiting for some missing link but never found a floppy-eared hairy frog. My bothers named the hideous hare after Hugh Heffner and at one point dressed the rabbit in a bow tie.
Whenever Hugh would mount my pet dog, Poochie didn’t seem to mind and let the sex-crazed beast of white fur do its disgusting thing.
I was grossed out, but the hippies thought it was totally cool. “Dude, far-out. Groovy.”
My mission for tonight was to protect the kid from Topanga from the ooze. (The ooze was some bad mojo that had been released from the pit of hell through a portal in our basement, back in the days when mom had séances and when the Ouiji Board spoke to my bothers that eventually led them to a secret room).
Tomorrow I would try to steer James clear of the Velociraptor-attack-rooster and the Father of All Rabbits.
I knew that once James had seen the rabbit there was no way of un-seeing it and considered the possible damage it could do to his young psyche–being immortally etched in gray cells of his photographic memory forever.
James was a nerd and I was a dweeb. He was a genius and I was on a quest for acceptance. We were not like Billy Lennon–he was the epitome of cool and was the Student Body President of Saint Monica's.
It's laughable how imature we were, James even mandated that we refer to the balls on the pool table as spheres. Embarrassed to talk about such things we couldn’t say, “are those your balls” or “my balls,” or “do you have the balls with stripes or are your balls the solid ones.” Instead, we had to say, “spheres,” as in, “You have the solid ‘spheres’ and I am going to hit the ‘7 sphere’ into the corner pocket.”
[1972 swim team]
[There I am on the blocks]
Tony walked straight into the living room adjacent to where we were playing pool. He knew we were watching him, but acted nonchalant—I had seen this exact theatrically performance a million times already—it was always for show.
My oldest brother loved the attention and his muscular reflection. The worst kind of torture for him was to completely ignore him. I pretended not to be aware of his presence though he was only ten feet away.
[Livingroom mirror over fireplace - dining room adjacent to left]
Act II. He romantically leaned into the mirror and obnoxiously began French kissing his image with wet slobbery sounds, louder than Poochie’s chewing.
Motioning to James with subtle facial communication not to pay attention he finally set his jaw back to where it belonged and was in a middle of a core melt-down unable to concentrate on his next shot.
Unfortunately, Act III always included some terrible form of retribution that usually included spit or electricity. What would Tony do to the kid from Topanga? I feared.
Pretending to be an accident, Tony hit James’ cue stick as he walked through the dining room sauntering out the back door scattering the “spheres” on the pool table.
That was it? We got off easy.
After rearranging all the spheres exactly where they had been (photographic memory—remember) James lined up his cue stick intently calculating the geometric angles for the best shot when he suddenly leaped into the air and let out a shriek!
Oh no, Tony let in a rattlesnake, I thought.
James looked down at his leg and screamed even louder, higher, shriller. It must have been worse than I originally thought, it had to be the dreaded Veloci-rooster or maybe even the alligator.
I leaned over the pool table and saw that the disgusting rabbit had latched onto his leg, as if on a conjugal visit. James was wearing shorts and it was full-on pink, sagging, scrotum-to-flesh contact.
Tony snapped a shot with his disposable 110 Instamatic while Big Foot and the rest of Dahlin brothers, who had been out back smoking something, came pouring in through the backdoor to watch ACT III.
Poor James.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I thought.
It was a long night. I told James never to cover his head with his sleeping bag and to leave his arms outside should he need to defend himself against some middle of the night hippie attack. I don’t think he ever slept.
The next day, the plan was to teach James how to ride one of the motorcycles and this is when he would discover the truth about the hacksaw wielding sasquatch.
[That’s for my next post]
Anyway, Cheryl was in love with me and I felt sorry for her because I still didn’t quite know the true meaning of the word.
Cheryl, the motorcycles, the mess, the ooze—all of it, would lead to a chain of events that I would regret for the rest of my life—and the shame I felt for not fighting back and how much I would despise the $286.00 award money.
Like Pinocchio, I desperately wanted to be a real boy.
I needed to be free from the tyranny of perfection and the insecurities of desperately needing to feel approval that I confused with acceptance.
Well anyway, things got worse before they got better (which is all part of the difficult journey--which is my story). It would take some time but eventually I would rise from the ashes!
