Greendik--Frustration Is Felt By All--Some times more some times less is done about it.

GREENDIK: A STORY BY WILLIAM M. NEAL

"Since we weren't here at the beginning, we might as well be here at the end."
--John Boyer, ARTIST.

I was laying on my back in my bedroom the other night after a full day of contemplation and doing some more, I decided finally, to call a friend in the porno business to see if she had that job we had been talking about all month that I was very reluctant to take. She couldn't talk. She was too excited.
"She's getting married", her friend picked up the phone and said to me. "Isn't it great?" her assistant screamed in my ear. "Yeah, sure. I guess." came my feeble response. I was in shock. I hung up quietly. They wouldn't notice, too scatter-brained. It's all too sudden for them, I thought. It'll never work. But then, I've never been married, so who am I to say? I live alone or try to and I just can't seem to get my shit together. Dammit, once again, all my plans washed away like so much snow in the rain. Oh well. I'll have to come up with something else to pay the rent. I was holding out on the porno gig for as long as I could. With a wedding on, that stopped everything. The moving to the city, everything.
I got to wondering...drifting off...staring at the blown stucco-like acoustic ceiling nonsense, I started making out faces in the chaotically placed material. I didn't know what to do. Leave town and work for a paper that could be sold at any moment in too many states too far away?
Suddenly this long, horn faced vision came to me. Yes. Who? What? What was that? I saw Satan and he spoke to me. "You are the one. You are the one who shall lead my people into hell." He said: "Here!" And then the long, goat/horse/old man face I conjured up in the ceiling noise abatement stuff was replaced with the most horrific hallucination I have ever seen. A ginormous festering green donkey's dick. "Here," He said. "Suck on this and you will be anointed." I'd be dead, I thought.
I got off that bed of contemplation slothful sin so damn fast. I never exited the sleeping slumber spot so quick in all my life. My heart was racing. I needed a swim. I got in the pool and thrashed around.
Dammit. Gat-dammit. What the HELL is going on here? Who am I? What am I? What is it with all this apocalyptic visitation crap? Might as well be here at the end, indeed! Who knew? Who knew? Am I here again? Reincarnation? Was I here before? What is all this nonsense? This isn't the story I had to tell. It's totally different from my original notes. The papers I have laying about me have the most heinous lies...disgusting rumors...I don't know where to begin. I thought I could write it all down simple as pie. The clean stuff. Tell them the nice one here. But nonesuch.
Last night after the vision, I got to pen and paper as fast as I could. What kind of allegory or what as that would this tale be able to relate? Some kind of sacrifice? Martyrology? Me? Heavens no. But, what was I to do? What was to be done?
I needed help, but had no where to run. No one would help me with this nonsense. They'd lock me up. Bad-assed, moterfinger music on full blast to drown out my nervousness and shaking. I felt like the bottom was going to fall out. All along the way of the freeway to my previous town's home. Los Angeles, out from behind the Orange Curtain once again. Shit. What up with that ugly vision? Who came up with that hackneyed crap?
There was no one there in the car but the music, and me in my 1988 Chevy, no levee to drive to. Besides, Don McLean has already tried that. Drinking rye whisky or whiskey and rye. The song doesn’t make sense. (I know exactly what I'm saying here.) He sang "they were drinking whiskey and rye." Well, you don't drink whiskey and rye. You drink rye whiskey. And if you are British, you drop the "E" in whiskey. This is the point I'm trying to make, to get you to understand by those comments. I need to clear out the pipes of my mind here at the same time. Clear the pipes. Yeah right. Porno reference. Get laid. Everyone's answer for everything. Sure. The beginning of the end really. They say your sex life ends at marriage. But enough of that.
I'm driving on the freeway, not of love and it's not in a pink Cadillac. It's a maroon sedan that's actually a single person vehicle. If any one sits in the shot gun position parallel to me, they get the headliner falling from the ceiling on their noggin. If any one sits in either of the back seats their feet get blood poisoning from no circulation. There's no room. I can't move my seat up any more forward. The thing tilts back permanently, but cannot move forward. It's got nothing to adjust it with. I have to have the seat rail all the way back, because I need room to drive. Else the steering wheel is in my face.
On the road again. I no longer have to wait. Music may be my only friend...but until the end...I'm going to have to quiet down here. Slow up. Slow up. Why won't every one slow up, or down?
Every one's pitching and swerving around me. I'm doing the speed limit and conditions are too dangerous for anything else. Much less even this from time to time. It's way crowded. Folks race by. Yes, it's like I'm standing still. They're going to get every one killed. There's no room for that kind of foolishness. Why doesn't every one see this? Conditions won't allow that speed for much longer. Every one's cranked and running up on every one else's ass. Stop it. STOP IT! Gad, if ever there was a time to be telepathic, it is NOW! Please, help me. Help me help me help me. Like that lost astronaut in the video game floating weightless in space. Drifting off. Unattached. Lost. Damn, what a pathetic wanker. Me I mean.
What do I want here? What do I think I need? A job? A license to steal? What?
I'm on my way to Los Angeles, and quite possibly it's the last time. I'm going to see a man about a dog, and I'm going to take that dog with me to Omaha, Nebraska, and begin a new life in an Airstream trailer at the end of an abandoned (by everyone but me,) dirt road. I'm tired of this divorced life of Orange County/L.A. County. Flip Flop. Flip Flop. Sick and tired of it. I deserve better and I know it. Just don't know what to do to implement something better. Don't know how to go about it. I'm no actor, for gosh sakes. I'm no writer. That much is true. What can I do? Work my ass off so hard for the Post Office at 8 bucks an hour and for what? What? It's screwed. Very dumb. No one's surviving any more. We're all dying. Doesn't matter what you do. It's not meant to last, but so what? I need something to do. NOW!
I'm not talented enough to do things every one else does. Maybe I should just quit. I research it and look at the people doing it, see what they do, and they're miserable. It's nothing work. On the phone all day yelling at people. 16 hour plus days. For the glory of what? All so you can say you hang out with the bitchen people? Got a crew jacket? F-that! That's no good.
I want to work and feel good about doing something. Is it too late? It's never too late they say. Yeah, the same they which in another voice contradict an earlier statement they make. "Be all you can be." "Obey your thirst." Then it's "Sit down, you're rocking the boat." "If you can't get along, move along." F-that. I am. I am here. I'm here for a reason. Maybe not what I think. Maybe not for sucking green donkey dicks, some kind of heinous euphemism for doing nasty stupid insane things one has to do to get by, but maybe...Perhaps I should make a deal with the devil. Suck his dick. But I don't believe in that kind of crap, so that won't work.
I didn't really see a big green donkey's dick hanging out the ceiling. (Just the face.) I just made that up. (And the voices.) Have to save face here. Won't even admit to the faces on the ceiling I saw as a kid when I was ill. No, I didn't. Not even in my worst drug addled youthful enthusiasm. I was never there. It didn't happen. I'm a liar and I'll tell you truthfully, that it never happened. This never even occurred. This life didn't exist. You do believe me, don't you?