THE PIGS OF DEADWOOD
"Washee, washee; eatee, eatee"
E.B. Farnum, "Deadwood"
In virtually every episode of the HBO Wild West series, “Deadwood,” there’s a recurring scene in which the town’s principal hotelkeeper, E.B. Farnum, wheelbarrows his dirty sheets and the recently deceased bodies of his clientele over to the establishment of the local Chinese Laundry. The hotelier, who resembles a cross between a mistreated schnauzer and a grizzled, slack-faced groundhog, points to the rancid linens and politely says (presumably in idiomatic Cantonese, because the historical detail in this series is exquisite), “Washee, washee.” Next, fastidiously lifting the soiled bedclothes between thumb and forefinger, he indicates with raised eyebrows first the gray-faced, glassy-eyed, poxed or perforated corpse underneath, and then, with a slight jerk of the head, Mr. Wu’s humongous hogs wallowing like emperors in their wet sty, and delicately suggests, “Eatee, eatee.” The stylishly pig-tailed entrepreneur squints his eyes into enigmatic slits, crosses his arms over his greasy vest, stares with infinite distaste at the shabby white man and grunts, reluctantly but affirmatively: Mr. Wu believes in premium service in all aspects of his conglomerate (wash & fold, piggetry, narcotics and lacquerware knickknacks). Transaction concluded, Mr. Farnum the satisfied customer minces through the muck of Main Street over to the Gem Saloon to snuffle and slobber with great gusto over the worn, flabby-bosomed, but golden-hearted whores.
I’ve only seen the initial five DVDs of Season One, covering a real-time period of approximately seven days in the life of the frontier town of Deadwood, but by my informal count something over fourteen hundred men, women, young adults and children have so far been heaved, flopped or slid into the pig pen. (This does not include the two or three citizens of particular distinction—such as Wild Bill Hickok—who warranted a Boot-Hill burial with all the trimmings.) Admittedly, the hotelier is not Mr. Wu’s only customer: the two larger saloons and the CIA also conduct a fair volume of discreet business.
With each succeeding show, I half expect to see the lounging pigs whimsically swollen to the size of elephants, bursting irresistibly through the slats of their simple sty--like in that classic children’s book about the goldfish fed too many dried worm flakes by the overeager child: before you know it, it's bigger than a house!
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MY DREAM
Since I was in the Ecuadorian Galapagos, I spread my hands and spoke gently to the furious iguanas in the elegant tongue of Borges and Garcia Marquez: “Vengo a ustedes con las palabras de la paz y la amor.” ("I come to you with words of peace and love.") Simple words, words that when spoken in English are all of one syllable, words that can change the future for our children—or, actually, your children, since I’ve had a vasectomy.
"Behold! He is the preacher in the wilderness!" Dieter the German exclaimed.
When we—our small group of rough-hewn American and European eco-tourists—had stumbled upon these magnificent reptiles, their studded and ridged heads were already bobbing up and down in uncontrolled rage; their ordinarily saggy, chin sacks were engorged and pulsing in anger; their tails thrashed and their beady eyes traced a fiery line that almost crackled in the bright equatorial air. Their raucous voices (if they have voices: my memory is a little hazy on this point) crowed with murderous lust. I had no inkling what grievance, righteous or trivial, had brought these noble, antediluvian creatures to such a doleful pass: perhaps a disagreement over intelligent design or maybe one had eaten the finger-sized younglings of the other. Someone had to knock their spiny heads together, make them talk it out and lance the abscess of insecurity that sabotages so many heartfelt attempts to communicate. Either I intervened immediately or became just another complacent spectator to the horrendous carnage drenching our sad world in gouts of hot, frothy, viscous blood.
No one would have blamed me for thinking, “This isn’t my problem. It’s always been this way in the dark, humid, third-world cracks of the planet.” How easy and convenient to de-humanize the iguanas: “They’re not like white suburban Americans. They like to laze and fight and bone each other in the scorching sun. They’re not ready for democracy.” I might have simply snapped a photo of Inka in her cut-offs and halter top, squatting between them to give the camera a thumbs-up, and then proceeded blithely on, chatting gaily, to the breeding grounds where giant tortoises lumbered up upon one another’s shells in an altogether more life-affirming passion.
But that wasn't an option. Because, you see, I have a dream of a dewy, new world in which ALL the nasty, scuttling critters--scorpions, centipedes, rats, the pundits of Fox Network News--get up on their hind legs to dance ring-around-the-rosy...and sing "Imagine". So, I tore my eyes off Inka's warm, rosy parts and stepped into the breathless chasm of impending violence. I spoke much as St. Francis had once preached to the licentious sparrows of Assisi or as Secretary Rumsfeld once remonstrated with the freedom-and-loot-loving Baghdadis. Peace...love. And though I can’t claim the moral eloquence of those great men, it yet flatters me to believe that on the very cusp of mindless bloodshed, these quick-tempered lizards paused and listened to me every bit as attentively.
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MY LIFE AS A REALTOR
“To business that we love we rise betime,
And go to’t with delight.”
William Shakespeare
I twirled upon the squalid, malodorous carpeting and pirouetted down dark, shabby hallways. I chirped, sighed and exclaimed over the fetid, two-bedroom Russian Hill love shack: “Oh, this is so magical. If you don’t buy it, I swear I’m going to buy it myself!” I gestured in wonder at the cracked, grubby windows with their dank, airshaft views: “Oooh...natural light!” I threw open noisome closets to gasp at their dwarfish dimensions: “A wine cellar, home office or gymnasium, or perhaps [coy smile of innuendo at my sixty-something clients] … a nursery for that last-minute love-child!” With an insouciant snap of the fingers, I banished the 19th-century kitchen and ripe, fly-blown bathroom, the sloping floors, the low, stained ceilings, the rodent droppings heaped like tiny cannonballs on grimy pantry shelves. Turning to my dazed clients, who had sold their 8-bedroom, heartland estate for $361,000 to move to our Xanadu by the Bay, I crowed, “It’s a priceless bit of San Francisco history! A fresh coat of paint, a jug of Tidy Bowl, a dozen rat traps and a hogshead of potpourri: you’ll double your money in six months!”
I grinned fiercely and hopped up and down, “And we’ve got a rare opportunity, because the previous owner's body wasn’t discovered for almost a year—which gives the heebie-jeebies to some of our more—how shall we say?—superstitious buyers.” Wink, wink, sly grin, suggestive pink wiggle of the tongue tip, nose tap and whisper: “Bad feng shui, you know.” Unable to control my ebullience at their extravagant good fortune, I circled around them in an ecstatic jig, tugging at their sleeves: “Let’s write the first offer at 2.5 million!”
Then, deposit check in hand, I climbed back into my car with the magnetic signs on the doors: “Henry Panky Moves It For 4%!”
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MORNING DRIVE TIME
“Give me your arm, old Toad;
Help me down Cemetery Road ”
Philip Larkin, "Toads Revisited"
If you’re like me, panic attacks have taken much of the innocent joie du vivre out of rush-hour traffic. Choogling across the Golden Gate Bridge, surrounded by the hallucinogenic swirl of twisted, empurpled faces telegraphing their rage, terror, defeat, money frenzy and/or imbecility, each moving at dismemberment-dealing velocities inside mountainous tons of steel—I’ve found that this can rattle the fragile sense of one’s serene and luminous Buddha-nature. Of course, you try to ignore the mime of syphilitic dementia playing out in your rear view mirror: the driver behind you is shrieking and frothing, pounding his steering wheel and juggling Starbucks, croissantwich, cell phone and hand gun—two inches from the plastic bumper of your tinny, airbag-less ‘92 Corolla. You repress the visceral image of your body sheared off at the waist should you tap the brakes; you sing out gaily, “La, la, la, I can’t see you!” You chant your serenity prayer to build a psychic “cone of silence” between you and the swarming forces of chaos. Perhaps you even "whistle a happy tune" to demonstrate your lighthearted nonchalance. But your breath becomes a quick and shallow wheeze, and little peeps of inchoate hysteria begin to bubble and pop upon your tremulous lips; your eyes start to roll like a heifer’s on the long, overcrowded ramp to the abattoir. And you begin to mutter, moo, plead, whine, rage, and cry out for Mammy—just like all the other drivers on the road … becoming the unhinged maniac in the rear view mirror of the driver ahead of you.
May the circle be unbroken.
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SURGEON WITH A RUSTY KNIFE
In the gloomy, night-time “operating theatre” behind Paolo’s Bifstek Sanwich stand, I pour the rich Kirkland-brand Marinara over the operating area—usually a belly or sternum—already grease-penciled with big arrows and scribbled notations, “Cut here!” and “You’ve gone too far!” The lucky patient, mind sharpened by horror and unclouded by anesthesia, is strapped down and trussed up, with a well-chewed foot of garden hose jammed securely between the teeth to stifle the inevitable litany of regrets. I stretch my lips into my best approximation of compassion, grant a last playful wink into the rolling eyes, and bend down to whisper, “Be here now!”
My assistant, Mr. Muffaletta, switches on the dry-ice machine, shouts “Aiyee, Aiyee!” and beats the drum fiercely: boom-boom, boom-boom! With a dramatic flourish and a bloodcurdling shriek, I plunge home the carpet knife!
In the abrupt, pregnant silence, I lick my lips anxiously and make meaningful eye contact with the audience, each of whom have paid ten cents to witness this most compelling of reality shows. My assistant switches on the instrumental Pan-pipe CD of Cat Stevens' greatest hits to ease the emotional strain down a notch. Then, leaning over the afflicted with great deliberation, I proceed to make extended slurping, snorting, choking and gobbling noises until someone can’t take it any longer and shouts, “No, Padrone! In the name of all that is good and holy, STOP!” On cue, I lurch upright, moaning like a zombie, mouth and eyes bulging, throat rippling peristaltically, perhaps a small, goose-pimply flap of boiled chicken skin peeping out the corner of my mouth. I look at them and they look at me. (The patient makes urgent small-animal squeaks and squeals through the garden hose.) Aghast, the crowd mutters and shuffles back. Finally when it seems the tension can grow no greater, I jackknife forward to disgorge the ripe malignancy (pig heart, sheep kidney: whatever offal Paolo has left over from the day's lunch trade) wet and smoking, into the ready bucket with a gratifying thud! Sometimes, if the crowd is particularly good, I might pull a couple yards of intestine slowly out my puckered lips. (My eyes grow huge: Sweet Maria! How much is in there?)
[Only if the energy surcharge has been paid in advance, will I apply the home-made defibrillator paddles which Jeannine uses to awaken me in the morning when she's feeling dissatisfied with our relationship.]
To the oohs and ahhs of the crowd, Mr. Muffaletta hoists the sloshing slop-bucket high into the air; I break into my end-zone dance, and Creedence’s “Born on the Bayou” comes booming out the speakers. (I love the line about the hound dogs chasing down the hoodoos: having been bedeviled by hoodoos all my life, I say, Hunt the fuckers down!) The crowd roars and stamps its feet, tears dripping down their credulous faces.
Another medical miracle by Dr. Henry E. Panky, Associate of Arts (candidate)! Mr. Muffaletta minces eagerly toward the lucky convalescent with the carpet stapler for the post-op work.
"Thank you very much. Yes, it was very tricky, touch and go there for a while, but I’m pleased. I think—I’m 55 to 60% positive—that we got most of it." The family kisses my marinara-stained hands, forks over the fee--usually in chickens or guinea pigs--and drags off the dumbfounded victim, I mean, grateful patient. “By tomorrow, the day after tomorrow at the latest,” I yodel after them, “the earwax build-up will be totally gone!”
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“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness”
Allen Ginsberg, "Howl"
I had just finished pulling off the forty-seven voicemail messages which had arrived in the thirty minutes since I left my driveway, when the message light started blinking once again—and started me softly blubbering in my cubicle. My voicemail and email boxes were ever replenishing—like locusts, tadpoles or ear hairs—and when I took Jeannine out to a romantic pirogi dinner, or sat down to relax with the latest human-bug-squid superhero movie, or stretched myself, sweating and grunting, into the next twisted asana at the Saturday morning yoga class, all I could think about was that Sisyphean accumulation of needs, demands and threats. The longer I waited, the more there would be.
By Henry E. Panky
Grab a Club, Dear Friend,
& Dance with Me Around the Mysterious Space Obelisk
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