A DAY OFF'S DREAM

"The Dream Police, they live inside of my head/the Dream Police, they come to me in my bed..."

It's a day off between dialysis treatments, so though I awoke early and had some breakfast, I bundled up again afterward managed another two hours of blissful sleep, which when added to the night's slumber, added up to nine hours of rest, recovery, and recharge. Anyway, after breakfast I went back to bed, awakened only by a redundant call to confirm tomorrow's 9am car service pickup. (It was redundant because I called them before I made breakfast, just to get it out of the way.) 

 

During my post-brekkie nap, I dreamed it was Black Friday, which I always avoid like the plague, and I was out on the street, staying away from shopping malls and such while they were thronged with crazed consumerist zombies. But when my avoidance of the crowds maddened by lust for deals was noticed, a group of enforcers on motorcycles menaced me and herded me toward a nearby mall whose crowds at the entrance looked like a reversal of the exodus scene from THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. And the riders all looked like the undead satanist biker gang from the movie PSYCHOMANIA (1973).

FUN WITH FISTULA MAINTENANCE

 

Yesterday's trip to the fistula maintenance center in Flatlands began with me waking at 6am and getting picked up at 6:45 by my favorite driver, a friendly guy in his late 60's who grew up "in Soviet Union" but speaks fluent moose-and-squirrel English. During the drive we chatted and caught up, with him regaling me with tales of his recent fishing excursion upstate (he's heavily into the relaxation and quiet of catch-and-release), reminiscences about his younger days when his wife was a party girl who would party hard for two straight days and come home a mess (he hates partying, so it was an odd match), and his complaints about how "women will drive you crazy." All of which was accented with a background soundtrack of an extended mix of Boney M's dance floor classic, "Rasputin." (I swear, you can't make this shit up. These native Russians are characters.)

 

We made it to the maintenance center just before 7:30, with my appointment/procedure scheduled for 8am, and when I arrived there was already a crowded waiting room. I got processed, had my vitals taken and my blood sugar checked, then they handed me a gown, cap, and booties ahead of me being admitted to the OR.

 

When you have a dialysis fistula in your arm, you must go in for a quarterly check of your fistula's flow to make sure it is free of clotting, and the way they do that is to numb your arm with a local and then go into the fistula with a fiber optic camera, aided by assorted scanners and wires hooked up to the patient (who is strapped down to the table). In my case, they numbed me and schlamped the camera in there for a look around, and they found no problems, so I was in and out of there quick, with a half-hour holdover for observation as the local wore off. But the one thing that sucks about this every time is that once the local wears off, the entry point into the fistula is sore and painful for the next several hours, a state bolstered by the tight bandaging with a special hard plug bound into the bandaging over the entry point.

 

As I was awake so early, I kept nearly nodding off all day, until I got home, after which I crashed for several hours. And I don't know if it was due to me not being allowed food or drink for something close to 12 hours before the procedure, but when I got home and finally was able to make and eat some breakfast, about twenty minutes after eating, I just hurled it all up. Attempts at eating even a light little something after that were met with more puking, so I just gave up for the day. When I eat breakfast, I should be fine, as breakfast is the one meal of the day where it's about a 95% chance that I will keep it down.

GETTIN' RIPPED

 

So, I just got back from a very late lunch at McDonald's (I crashed hard around noon and woke just before three), where I suffered a minor mishap. When I got my weekly fish sandwich, I went to take a seat at one of the round tables near the door. Those tables have actual chairs that one can pull out and position however they like, so I pulled out my chair and proceeded to sit down. Unfortunately the seat of my pants, the bit right at the bottom of the right butt cheek portion, got caught on the pronounced edge of the chair as I was lowering myself to sit, and as my body weight carried me down, the snagged rear of my pants ripped all the way from the ass crack to right above the right butt cheek pocket. Thankfully, my ability to remain calm and collected during a crisis kicked in, and I finished my meal without thinking about it. When I got home, I threw out the ripped pants and shifted their belt and contents to a fresh pair.

 

That said, it was fun riding home on the B63 bus with half of my ass hanging out.

REGARDING EBON AMAZONIA AND ANCILLARY WHITE-A-TIZING

   

The latest addition to my "to read" stack.

About an hour ago I was talking with Michele about our "to read" stacks, and I forgot to mention to her that I finally got my hands on this pulp era classic from the woman who 26 years later wrote the screenplay for THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, and am currently reading it. I set about writing her a note explaining the why of my interest in it, and that note instead blossomed to what you are now reading, so I share it with you as well as Michele.

I used to collect coffee table books of vintage sci-fi pulp magazine artwork, volumes that sprung from the 1970's nostalgia boom, and I have been fascinated and enthralled by this cover illustration since I was around ten or eleven, when I first saw it in its original context as the cover for an issue of PLANET STORIES.

The March, 1951 issue of PLANET STORIES, its cover adding further fuel to my developing interests and imagination

At the time I was really into the style and aesthetic of vintage pulp illustration, its elements heavily influencing my sci-fi and fantasy doodles to this day, and this one struck me with the dynamism of its central figure. Who was that fierce warrior? What was her story? For forty-some-odd years I had no answers, but the other day I was looking at the cover on the internet and the thought occurred to me that a sci-fi/fantasy author of Leigh Brackett's pedigree probably had much of her catalog still in print or available somewhere, so I did a bit of sleuthing and found out that it could be had in a slim indie press volume that collected three of her unrelated novellas. It was under ten bucks, so I snagged it as this month's treat to myself.

Upon getting into reading it, I found it to be quite good and briskly paced, with Brackett's self-admitted love of the writings of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard being unabashedly worn on her sleeve, as was evident from the style of storytelling and pacing, and the fact that the story's protagonist — who is not the titular Black Amazon — is an obvious gene splicing of Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, and Conan the Barbarian. That's a good thing, as the aforementioned authorial influences were two of the top tier writers of the pulp era, when they were writing while firing on all cylinders. 

I was surprised to discover that the novella is actually the fourth in a series about the sword-wielding guy in the lower corner of the cover illustration and that the Black Amazon is (thus far in my reading) somewhat disappointingly not the hero of the story, instead being a warlord and conquest-minded adversary for the actual protagonist. And while looking into whether or not I should read the rest of the series, I found it interesting that on every vintage pulp cover and in every magazine illustration or later reprint book that depicts the hero, John Eric Stark by name, well into the 1970's, he was never once illustrated as he was described. In the stories, due to his having grown up in the weird environmental conditions of a colonized Mercury, his skin is dark, described as almost ebony black, though ethnically he is of European Earth descent. Apparently, in those days it did not matter that he was not a negro, but he was close enough for rock and roll, and depicting a hero with black skin was just never gonna happen during the era between Pat Boone and the advent of Shaft. To the best of my knowledge, it was not until the '70's and '80's that sci-fi prose started featuring POC's as characters at all, let alone as heroes. 

Just one example of the illustrational white-a-tizing of the Stark character. (art by comics legend Jim Steranko) 

The more recent printings of Brackett's Stark stories, however, get his coloration right.

                                                         John Eric Stark, back and black.

Anyway, I was so enthralled by that old cover — an early example of media that fed directly into my adolescent fetish for strong, fierce females in armor —, I used to draw my own comics of what her adventures on Mars would be (comics that, if they still exist, are secreted away somewhere in my mother's files), and I may start sketching her again, though I will not adhere to the description in the novella. There she is described in more realistic and practical armor and a cloak, as she leads a nomadic tribe of brigands who survive in the snowy wastes in the upper northern regions of the planet, and it's clear that Brackett was pretty much dropping hostile Bedouins into the cold, so they had to wear gear that made sense for that environment. The version drew at age 11 looked a lot like the one in the vintage cover illustration, but drawing her today I would make the design of her armor a tad more modern/sleek and, since it's sci-fi/fantasy, I might add pauldrons to the shoulders which a modern illustrator of the bland, too-slick vintage-inspired cover did, to an effect that renders the figure stiff and un-dynamic, and maybe make her boots more like those of Wonder Woman in the movies, complete with greaves, but with visually obvious cushioned soles for the environment.

The modernized version of the classic illustration. Looking like something that would be found emblazoned on the side of a bitchin' van, this bears none of the dynamism and gestural character of its 1951 template.

That said, back to reading.

ME LITTLE DROOGIE

 A few years back, a kind friend who'd received a sudden windfall via a job promotion decided to surprise me with this high-end collector's doll of Alex from A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. I had wanted one, but its price of over $200 made it too rich for my blood. Anyway, I now have one, and it is lovely. That said, it will remain in its packaging until I live in a home where I have more space to properly display such treasures. 

Here's the doll, from box and packaging to posing on my kitchen counter top with accessories, the kitchen items serving to provide scale

Barbie's new boyfriend...NOT.

I wonder if one of the companies that makes assorted props and furniture for such high-end figures makes the naked lady tables from the Korova Milk Bar? If so, I must get one for Alex...

TO EVERYTHING, TURNER, TURNER, TURNER

Last week I spent a considerable amount of time rescuing old photos from my previous laptop, and while doing so I came across this classic document.

The guy is Bill Turner, asleep next to my long-gone greatest dog ever, Sammy. This pic was snapped sometime in 1979, in the family room of the first house my family lived in in Westport. Seen above Bill is the bottom portion of the infamous huge wooden silhouette of Africa that my dad bought in our San Francisco years during his flirtation with the Black Power movement — which is hilarious in retrospect, as, after my folks split up and divorced, he aggressively reinvented himself from the ground up as a dark chocolate white man — and the damned thing even had gigantic letters spelling out "AFRICA" burnt into the wood in U.S. Military font. It was so kitschy and garish, I would have kept it as a goof, but dad eventually took it and other such items out of the house when he finished stripping the house of everything he owned (and then some).

But I digress. This is about Bill Turner.

After my folks split up, my mother also began recreating herself. Now that she was out from under a loveless and awful 16-year relationship, part of her attempting to build herself anew after having lived her growing up years (and beyond) under the iron fist of her domineering Christian cultist mother, then enduring my father, included her taking her first tentative steps at finding a boyfriend, something she had not done since the late 1950's. She had been raised in a rigid Christian household, so her every activity was closely monitored by her mother and the other women of the James family matriarchy, even down to some of her relatives sneaking into her room to inspect her panties for evidence of sexual activity, and that was when she was a grown woman.

Needless to say, with that kind of shit going on, plus her time with dad, she had a very warped perception of men and dating. She was lonely, but her ideal man was an unachievable fantasy blend of Rhett Butler, Kenny Rogers, and Omar Sharif, only black, and he must always be the exemplar of the perfect southern gentleman. (A fantasy that she unfortunately tried to program me to be from an early age. Not in some incestuous way, but the way she treated me like she was grooming me as a chaste surrogate husband really did a number on my young head. Getting out of that house and going to college was the best thing that ever happened to me.) Nonetheless, she began to reach out to various black men she had met in various capacities, all from other towns since the number of single black men in Westport was practically nil. (Hell, the number of black people at all in Westport was practically nil.)

I believe my mom met Bill Turner sometime during 1978. Bill was a house painter of some small renown who did quality work for a reasonable rate, assisted by a sketchy white guy named Donald. He was nice enough, so mom briefly dated him. It didn't work out because my mom is very much a snob, and Bill, as she herself put it, just was not on her intellectual level. She was not wrong, but Bill was the salt of the earth, even if he did refer to a theme song as a "scheme song." Anyway, despite no longer being romantically involved, they stayed good friends, and he was her go-to guy for any house painting or simple home repairs.

Bill was over at the first house, and later the second house, quite often, and I think mom liked having him around so I would have something resembling a father figure and a positive male influence. I never thought of Bill fulfilling either of those roles, but I liked him a lot. He had a very earthy sense of humor and he was downright hilarious once he got going, with a favorite topic for him to take the piss out of being current Top 40 pop music. His derisive imitations of the songs that he hated made me laugh my ass off, especially his renditions of Billy Joel's "Big Shot" and "Pop Muzik" by M.  He would also sometimes sing a sarcastic version of Mel Tillis's "I'm Just A Coca-Cola Cowboy," as he found country music to be an endless goldmine of ludicrous songs. In fact, he may be the Patient Zero for my love of old school country, the dumber, the better. Unfortunately it is impossible to translate the nuances of Bill's vocal performance of the aforementioned hits in writing, but if you ask me nicely, I would be glad to perform my approximation of his dulcet tones over drinks.

Between the time when I was 13 through to the end of my 12th Grade year, mom would sometimes task Bill with what amounted to babysitting me, despite me being in my teens and being quite a responsible kid. (To call Mildred overprotective would be a monumental understatement.) That was fine by me because what she didn't know was that Bill was a high-functioning alcoholic who always had two cases of Bud in his truck, and that he and Donald drank all day while on the job. There were a number of times when Bill would have to run an errand while I was in his care, so we would hop in his truck and he would whip out a beer, always noting with a sly wink that I was not to tell my mother, after which he would crack open the can and guzzle like a wolf pup at its mother's teat. And since I kept schtum about his drinking, he would hand me a beer of my own, thus introducing me to the timeless joy of "the Connecticut road beer." Those of you out there who grew up in Fairfield County during my era know EXACTLY what I'm talking about. His truck also had a generous supply of some of the scurviest porno mags I have ever seen, really grungy stuff featuring models who looked like worn-out biker hags. I'm talking the kind of stuff that kids would find molding inside a tree stump deep in the woods, what a friend of mine calls "feral porn." Bill always blew it off by claiming they belonged to Donald, but yeah, whatever.

Bill remained an on and off presence until perhaps the early '90's, at which point I never saw him again and my mother never mentioned him. A few times I asked mom if she knew what became of him, but she says she doesn't know. She was raised in a home where the code of silence on family matters and history was strictly enforced, so for all I know she does know what became of him. If I were to put money on it, I could see him doing himself in with the drink. I hope not, because he was a solid dude.

IT'S A GAS(TROENTEROLOGY)

Today's followup with the gastroenterologist was interesting. Having looked over the results of the endoscopy and also giving my medical history of the the past two years a thorough going-over, Dr. Weisberg noted that late stage kidney failure and dialysis are known to wreak havoc on a patient's gut, and that is likely what has happened to me. We noted that since taking the meds prescribed after the endoscopy, my hiccuping has lessened a good deal, though the patterns of the vomiting are more or less unchanged, so that part continues to baffle.

The next step is to get me scheduled for an examination that will have me drink a fluid that is detectable during a live X-ray. thus allowing the doctors to watch and take note of how my body's mechanisms for swallowing, digesting, and purging function. After that, if more is required before things are solved, I will have to endured having a wire pushed up my nose and down into my stomach, with said wire attached to a sensor that will record all of my esophagus and stomach's goings-on over a period of 48 hours. That sounds highly unpleasant, so here's hoping that the first test yields workable results...

TODAY'S CAR SERVICE AWFULNESS

I got out of dialysis an hour ago, but I got stuck downstairs in my car while the driver waited to pick up another patient. As time dragged on, even the driver got sick of waiting, so he called the dispatcher to ask what the hell was up with the other patient. The exchange was in Russian, but I gleaned from the driver's reaction at its conclusion that he had been told to stay and wait.  The driver, whose command of English rated about a 3 out of 10, was also not happy that the other passen    ger's name was "Shalom," which led him to rant about the Chosen to the best of his ability. As it approached forty minutes of waiting, the driver noted that "It is hawleeday" and that once the other passenger finally got his ass down to the car, he could drop us off and go home, which he amusingly said as “I get to go homo.” He then stopped talking and watched wrestling footage of Ronda Rousey on his phone (which was fine by me, let me assure you).

When  Shalom finally showed up, he proved to be one of those oldish Orthodox guys who look like the result of a transporter accident involving Gandalf and The Shadow. Upon entering the car, he loudly gave the driver grief when asked to wear a seatbelt while taking the seat in front of me. Seated behind him as I was, the AC proved that he was a stranger to general personal hygiene, as the air conditioning blew his considerable B.O. up my nose for the next 35 minutes. And I was the only one in the car wearing a mask. Many of the Russian drivers refuse to wear masks unless they see an incoming passenger wearing one, while the Orthodox who go to the dialysis center regularly attempt to do battle with Olena and the other nurse-techs and always lose, eventually giving in when threatened with expulsion if they do not mask up.(massive eyeroll)

Anyway, I am finally home and about to dig into some hummus and Wheat Thins.

A SHAMEFUL CONFESSION

The Chinese-run Popeye's Chicken and Biscuits on 5th Avenue between 49th and 50th Streets in Brooklyn's Sunset Park. A haven for quality fast food chicken and the site of my utter debauchment.

During the week before last, when my systemic infection and agonizing UTI were finally fully vanquished, my appetite returned with a vengeance after a couple of weeks of barely eating (and being able to keep down what little I ate). Consequently, my body craved protein and comfort food, so, in a bid to sate both of those urges, I hopped the bus to the Chinese-run Popeye's in Sunset Park five days in a row. At each of those meals, I consumed a four-piece combo meal with biscuit and sides (sometimes two sides) and a large Dr. Pepper thinned with 1/6 seltzer from the self-serve drinks bar. Invariably the "all dark" order of two legs and two thighs, but as my system recuperated and my appetite became more voracious, I altered the order to four thighs, thus giving me more actual poultry protein (let's face it, there's nit much meat on a leg). Then, the following week, I went thrice more, placing the same order, sometimes tacking on an extra side of red beans and rice (delicious) along with my usual mashed potatoes and gravy.  And, because the staff knows and likes me (they immediately twigged to part of my nature upon seeing the black gi that I wear as a light windbreaker), they sometimes sneak me an extra thigh, which I consumed with delight. It was absolutely over the top, and after each time I ate one of those meals, I felt a profound sense of shame.

My usual for-piece "all dark," in the process of being utter demolished.

It would appear that I have burnt myself out from Popeye's for the foreseeable future, but I must nonetheless remain diligent, as access to that Mecca of stereotype fulfillment is but a meager bus fare away. Instead, as of yesterday I stocked my fridge with healthier alternatives, including Chinese beef and vegetable dumplings for steaming, and chicken leg quarters that I will season and cook with my usual slow-and-low technique, yielding butter-soft dark meat that is slathered with a tweaked mesquite glaze during the final two hours of the slow-cooking. It's delicious and better than Popeye's, plus to say nothing of healthier and cheaper. The edge that Popeye's has is its singular seasoning and excellent sides (which may be down to the Chinese Popeye's having a staff that actually gives a shit), but I will ignore my junkie-like cravings and instead concentrate on staying the course. I may hit Popeye's again around the end of the month, but now I have to discipline myself and only go there once or twice per month. I know me, so cutting it out entirely ain't gonna happen, but this recent exercise in excess was not a good look. Nor was it in any way good for me, other than comfort.

CRUISED BY POPEYE: THE SAGA CONTINUES

Gay Russian Popeye was at it again today, getting a tasty eyeful of your favorite caramel-hued geeky reprobate over four solid hours of staring. Now that I'm on to him, I took my post-treatment time to slowly pack my treatment bag, thus giving him a good look at more than me just trapped and immobile in a chair. As I strode to the post-dialysis weigh-in, I was in my socks, so I had a but of glide in my stride, and I affected the bearing of a warrior. Out of the corner of my eye, I noted Popeye's avid attention and smile, so on the way back to pick up my stuff, I feigned dropping something, so I could bend over and let him ogle the cakes.

That apparently made Popeye's day, and as I left I saw he had a huge, open-mouthed and toothless grin on his face. Unexpectedly, he bade me "Hev a goot veekend!!!" I wished him likewise and left.

Hey, I may not swing his way, but if the occasional voguing of my aging and not very Tom of Finland-esque physique and face give a lavender coffin-dodger something to make him happy, then who am I to deny him?

And it's sweet to occasionally be appreciated and ogled like a piece of meat in a safe way. In other words, I don't think Michele would mind. In fact, I think she might consider it an act of altruism.

MTA BLOWHARD OF THE WEEK

While on the B63 bus, my attention was caught by a fat goombah stereotype rocking a "RAISED NY" t-shirt and who was probably pushing seventy. When he entered the bus, he seemed to be directly addressing the driver, who, for his part of the equation, did not respond to the Italian-horn-wearer's gabbing. As he dropped his Metrocard into the reader, he stopped and stood at the driver's station and loudly rambled on with the following, quoted almost verbatim:

"Yeah, if anyone fucks with me, I'm gonna killem. That's what I told the guys on my street...Ya mess with me or my mom, I'll fuckin' kill ya. I'm like Rambo... Mess with my mother, who's all that I got, I'll cut off your head. I mean it, I'LL CUT OFF YOUR HEAD. And If I don't have a weapon on me, I'll come back with all the weapons I can buy. And I know where ta buyem, too. I have the money. And if you have money, you can buy anything you want..."

When it became clear that the driver was not going to engage, the guy sat down across from me and remained silent. That is, until about five minutes later, when he began telling all and sundry that he now gets half off on MTA fares. When no one responded or payed attention to him, he once more fell silent.

Was he a loony who was off his meds? Was he just one of the innumerable local blowhards? Who can say?