HOTEL CALIFORNIA
Dear Z
You’re absolutely right. I have been working way too hard; I need to lay off the cheap crank, take a few Xanax, and get a good night’s sleep. That sounds real nice: crisp, clean sheets, fluffy pillows, put the cats out, earplugs, eye mask, hot mug of Nyquil PM. Don’t worry, Z. You sounded worried. Don’t! I absolutely realize – ha ha ha, what a crazy thought – that there is no message being relayed to me through the lyrics of "Hotel California."
It’s funny, now that the “crisis” is over, I can talk about it rationally. You know I’ve traveled all over the world. But I’ve never yet, not one single time, been able to get out of a country without hearing that I cannot murder the beast with my steely knife! That just doesn’t make sense to me. I mean, I can cut through a can of chili con carne with that puppy.
From Calcutta to Fez, Quito to Rangoon, no matter how fast I ran or where I hid, I couldn’t outrun that accursed song.
Nothing but a wacky series of coincidences; I know that now. Deep down, I’ve always known it.
But, ok, so here’s my question: how the fuck do I kill the fucking beast? Because it is coming, oh yes indeedy, it’s coming all right. It’s dancing a funky chicken right to my patio door.
Ding dong: candy gram.
Could be anyone: the boogeyman can take any appearance, even your little Polly’s! I’ll have to trust my intuition to make a pre-emptive first strike.
I hear that hellish jingle everywhere now: the chipmunks chittering on the birdfeeder, the daddy long legs whispering in the hairballs under the couch, the shrews singing in their dark, moist holes. You’d start getting a bit weirded out too, right? It’s not just me.
Maybe, one needs …….armor-piercing dum dums, dipped in holy water and carved with Elvic runes. All very doable. There’s nothing in that simpering song that says “It” can’t be blown away by magic dum-dum bullets.
Yes! Hee hee! I think so, yes. I’ve got my thinking cap on now. After I make the arrangements -- there's no time to waste now -- then I’ll get some sleep.
Go ahead and drop the kids off at 6. I’ve got all 4 of the Alien DVDs to keep them entertained.
DEAR LEONID STILTSKIN
Dear Leonid Stiltskin
Thank you for your letter about my most recent collection of essays. You make some good points, and I appreciate your close attention to the usual swarm of erroneous facts and conflicting details.
Talk about incomprehensible, you might want to pick up my first book, "Brussels Sprouts: Tiny Cabbages of Malignant Mystery and Power." I blow the lid off the tinned pap the government has been feeding us like pabulum.
Sixth Sense Shyamalan wants the movie rights to Book 3 ("Really Big Lima Beans"), but he’s too scared to make it. Tough guy Bruce Willis put his hands over his ears, and shrieked “La La La! I can’t hear you!” Of course, he’s only half the man he used to be without Demi. (Apropos of which, I have some advice for beautiful women contemplating boob jobs: Don’t! You should hear the groans of dismay at porn screenings when another set of concrete tits show up. Do you hear what I’m saying here, girls? Since you didn’t identify your sex, I don’t know if this applies to you or not, Leonid Stiltskin).
Then, in the unbelievably gruesome but uplifting finale in Book 7, "The Canning," I put the lid back on. You’ll want me to. You’ll beg me to! You’ll weep in gratitude. As a registered “Panky Pal,” living safely under the “Panky Umbrella of Protection,” you will receive timely newsletters and pay me a percentage of all your income and assets.
Order blank and application enclosed.
Thank you again for your letter, Leonid Stiltskin. I look forward to hearing from you again soon.
Sincerely,
Henry E. Panky, Associate of Arts (candidate)
GROUNDHOG DAY
Dear Z
Your response about potsticker stuffings (how should I know if they’re pork? It’s a secret recipe like Coca Cola and A1 Sauce) tells me that you haven’t fully embraced fatalism, and that makes me wildly scared for you. One can get hurt so badly when there’s the illusion of control. I want to grab your head, twist my fingers deeply into your curls, and crush your face to my bony paps, while I stare stricken into the middle distance.
In the next scene, I see us dancing wildly to antic Jewish-Italian klezmer music, clacking marionettes tied together like a donkey train, being dragged herky-jerky to a putrescent open grave or perhaps a conceptual art opening, while in the courtyards perfectly lovely Raphaelite Madonnas, barely teenagers, play jacks with their laughing bambini, our shadows jerking on their walls.
Yes, it’s a bit of a Seventh Seal rip-off, so what? I have the perfect title: Spumoni!
Do you and Sue have any plans for Groundhog Day? I’m sleepless with worry about how it’s going to turn out, would love some company. Call me!
GRAMMY AWARD
Dear Z
Do you remember the 1991 Grammy Awards Show where Bob Dylan received the Lifetime Achievement Award? The maestro and his band played an apparently tuneless and totally indecipherable song, later identified by Bletchley cryptologists as “Masters of War,” though frankly, for all I could understand, they might as well have been the Gypsy Kings howling “My Way” in Esperanto. Anyway, after this lovely ditty, Bob accepted his trophy with obvious bemusement – he was at long last joining the pantheon of such greats as Toto, Mariah Carey and Milli Vanilli, even if through the back door of a “special” award – and then somewhat reluctantly mumbled into the microphone the following Talmudic koan bequeathed to him by his father:
“Son … You know, it is possible to become so defiled in this world that your own mother and father will abandon you … And if that happens, God will always believe in your own ability to mend your own ways.”
Sometimes, Z, that sunny bit of carefree optimism is the only thing that keeps me stumbling forward to the water hole shimmering in the distance. Who knows how far I could have gone if my parents had given me a pep talk like that?
But getting back to that shimmering water hole, did you or did you not score the Ecstasy? I find out that you’re holding out on me – like last time, muchacho – and I’ll break your legs.
NIP & TUG
Dear Z
Jeannine keeps bringing up the idea of selling one of my two livers to provide “a safety net during this period of economic uncertainty,” and, more specifically, to pay for her annual yoga retreat in Bali. With the advances in medical technology, the procedure is evidently no more complicated than cutting an abalone out of its shell: one scoop of the carpet knife, a quick tug and it’s out. One barely has time to scream through the leather belt in one's mouth. And with the purchase of a large life insurance policy, she points out, it becomes a “no-lose proposition” financially.
There’s also a bonanza of good karma involved: not only will I be prolonging the life of some rich, elderly alcoholic for a few years, but Mr. Depak Chapatti, Jeannine’s perfect guru, says the Tantric group-sex practice of her yoga-snorkeling school in Indonesia will help promote world peace (which I more or less support). Last but not least, liver prices are at an all-time high -- though we need to move quickly before the market is flooded with cheaper Brazilian livers, interest rates rise and the “liver bubble” bursts.
Of course, I keep niggling over the details. “Dumpling bottom?” I ask, “The Britannica says I only have the one liver.” But, apparently, the encyclopedia is getting the livers mixed up with the kidney and lung, which makes sense, since they’re all jumbled up together like in one of those abominable organ-meat “pies” the Brits love so much. Jeannine promises that the next time they open someone up on ER or CSI, she’ll point out the various parts as they’re pulled out of the thoracic cavity to become slippery hacky sacks or mini-basketballs for the staff. (“Only three seconds left. The Bulls are down by two. The spleen goes to Jordan: he feints, he pumps, he scores on an incredible fade-away jumper from the three-point line! Oh no! The crowd is going wild!”) J says the morbid humor is merely a defense mechanism, and that I shouldn’t take it personally during my operation.
“But, love puppet, um, isn’t this illegal?” Nope, not in the rebel-held zone of Sierra Leone, it isn't. And anyway, am I going to let a bunch of right-wing fundamentalists dictate what I can and cannot do with my own body? If I roll over on this, I’ll be subverting Roe vs. Wade, not to mention the right to practice casual sodomy with the anonymous buffalo-people we meet through the Craigslist Personals. And I don’t want that, do I? Of course I don’t. So hush now and Mama will make her big, brave boy his favorite fish sticks and mashed potato buds for dinner.
Jeannine’s been fairly patient during my learning curve, but at some point enough is enough, and now, at the least quizzical hitch of my eyebrow, she tucks her fists into her armpits and lurches around the living room, flapping her “wings,” jerking her neck like a chicken, and making “buck buck-buck-buck” noises. She took Rhetoric at Berkeley, so I’m not going to win in any toe to toe battle of intellects with her.
Anyway, Z, while I'm there, I'm hoping to score some authentic African juju thingee -- a freeze-dried pygmy arm or rhinoceros pizzle -- that we can pop between two pieces of Wonder Bread and slip into the office fridge next to Langostino's cottage cheese. That could be the straw which snaps The Fatman's mind once and for all -- which would open up his window-side cubicle for someone more deserving, eh Bubu?
SEA ELEPHANT
Dear B
Last Saturday, you asked me how you looked in your new bikini thong and I’ve spent a long, lonely time thinking about my answer. Because you deserve the truth from your substitute mail delivery professional (only until my book gets published. Then I’m outta here!).
The fact is, B, you’ve grown as big as a sea elephant. At the beach, as you tottered like Jabba the Hut with another load of double Coney dogs and gallon gulps, I almost cried out in anguish when you blotted out the sun of the innocent children with their buckets and scoops. You eat like something on the Discovery channel, a hyena perhaps: I don’t want to look, but can’t seem to look away. It devastates one’s fragile hope of a benign Supreme Being. Now that little Petey is seventeen, I’m not sure you need to “eat for two,” as you so coyly titter. Maybe I’m wrong. Lord knows, I’m no child-care expert.
I wonder: have you considered stomach stapling? Nowadays, it’s as easy as getting a mole removed: in and out, local anesthesia, drive yourself home, and no visible signs except the eighteen inch belly scar. Then, eat a caper, a garbanzo or raisinette, sigh, push back your chair, slap your belly, because you are stuffed! Whoo boy, totally full, uncomfortable even. “Ma, you’ve done it again!”
Sure, for a few months, you’ll have giant flaps of skin hanging off and resemble a six-foot Shar-Pei in harem pants. But then – bingo! – the smutty, curvy slattern of eighteen years ago would be back! And, if you’re interested, we could reprise our interlude on the day of your and Joe’s wedding – I felt like Sonny Corleone taking you against that wall, wedding dress thrown over your head. Remember, B? Good memories -- those are our real treasures, right?
Sincerely,
Henry E. Panky, USPS, Route 902
BACK TO WORK
Dear Z
I guess I’m going to have to go back to work. When I ask my friends what they thought of my “manuscript,” they say, “Oh yes, I got it,” blinking rapidly, with tight, bright, poly-grip smiles.
So, anyway: work. I’d like to say that I’m raring to go.
I’m raring to go!
Each morning, I perform a regimen of self-enhancing, confidence-building exercises. I drink a triple cappuccino and then shout, “Yes, I can!” while marching around the garage. Pumping my fists in the air, banging on the hood of the car. Every now and then, I open the garage door and lunge out with a menacing look on my face and an old-fashioned squeeze horn – Honk! Honk! – like Harpo’s. You’d be surprised at how frightened passers-by can get, even big guys. Then I pop back in my hole before they can properly react and punish me.
Let’s make plans later in the week.
Yes I can!
REAL FAN LETTERS TO HENRY
TO: Henry E. Panky
FROM: brumhandel@upyerass
u suck fagot
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TO: brumhandel@upyerass
FROM: Henry E. Panky
My dearest brumhandel
First of all, valued reader, I apologize for the delay in responding, but it was not for want of trying! You see, the Mailer Daemon rejected your email address as incomplete: you fucked up! LOL (laugh out loud). But don’t worry about it! I do the same thing all the time! We’re both wacky, well-meaning nougie-heads over-excited at the prospect of making new friends. That’s no crime. Not yet anyway! ROTFL (rolling on the floor laughing).
However, I did want to continue the dialogue so intriguingly begun by your generous, though somewhat enigmatic, communiqué, and from the lilting rhythms of your syntax, it occurred to me that you might be part of the current administration – the Justice Department perhaps. So I added a dot gov to your address and sent my reply winging off like a white dove soaring into the summer sky. Alas, the gentleman at the Office of the Vice President was not you. No luck with other address variations either - though these attempts happily introduced me to a frisky, internet community who wear leather hoods in otherwise frank and no-nonsense photographs. Good folk: completely unpretentious, and serious about the right to bear arms.
Still, being no closer to you, I became discouraged and suicidal. And then – Wake up, Henry! – I realized you were obviously a regular visitor to the website, and I could post my reply here:
My dearest brumhandel
Nice hearing from you, podner!
Sincerely,
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TO: Henry E. Panky
FROM: biteme@yourenotfunnyjustafag
You stink as a humorist. GO KILL YOURSELF!!!
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TO: biteme@yourenotfunnyjustafag
FROM: Henry E. Panky
brumhandel, is that you, you loveable, old dinkey donkey? Are you trying to trick me with the all caps, the triple-syllabic word and the alternative homosexuality reference? Well, I’m not buying it! I sniffed you out!
You know, mon ami, with a website like mine, one opens one’s email very carefully – breath indrawn, cold stone in the belly, a rictus of fear upon the face, eyes squinted half-shut and peeking through one’s fingers like during a Jennifer Lopez movie preview – trying to decipher from the slightest clues: what’s in this one? Hate? Bile? A letter from Uncle Benny?
And then, surprise and delight! The sun comes up, the bluebirds break into song, I taste a glutinous sweetness at the back of my throat: I’ve got mail! From you.
It makes all the work and loneliness worthwhile.
brumhandel, compadre, enough of this elaborate courting ritual! I can wait no longer. I want to hear your voice and your giggle; I want to bathe in your breath, to pinch your cheeks and steal your nose, and snatch a little grab-ass, just like crusty Uncle Benny used to do so playfully.
When next you write, I’ll expect to see a phone number. Or else!
Sincerely,
ps: if this wasn’t brumhandel, please delete the above and substitute the following:
“Nice hearing from you, podner!”
