When you didn’t come home from work, I called your office. When I got the answering service, I called your friends.

But your friends didn’t answer.

Then I went to the corner pub to see if maybe you had stopped off for a whiskey sour.

But you weren’t there.

I searched all night, peering into roadside ditches and stirring the lake with my toe to see if your body would bubble to the surface.

But you weren’t submerged in earth or water.

I searched all night, inside ripe dumpsters and halfway houses, under the bridge and behind the porn shop.

But you weren’t cavorting with the winos.

And then I saw your car parked outside of his apartment. Should have checked there first, I always knew you were a whore.

It wasn’t so bad at the orphanage after Sister Nutbuster’s interest in birds piqued upon receiving a sign from God.

She had always paused to admire squawking woodcocks and bobbing robins, even as a small leg-braced girl, but now that she knew their feathers were saturated with the holy spirit, she spent hours at a time in the courtyard foraging for loose plumage to rub over her pius undercarriage.

This meant less time for Sister Nutbuster to crack the grubby orphans on their ruddy bottoms for sneezing, missing a bead on the rosary, and communicating with Satan through cracks in the bathroom tile.

Eventually, avian mania reached its apex when God told Sister Nutbuster to steal the money from the chicken pox vaccination fund and build a lavish aviary, one with gilded gazebos and fountains bloated with holy water and fenced with statues of big-titted Greek broads.

Trayvon, a ten-year-old orphan whose broom closet bedroom was stationed next to the aviary, really reaped the rewards from Sister Nutbuster’s obsession. At first, the incessant chirping made it hard to sleep; but after a few days, the birds began telling him important facts like how to build a bomb using pulpit dust and communion wafers. They even cooed lullabies to him every night in the style of Gwar.

For the first time since he was dumped on the front steps of the orphanage, Trayvon felt content, like he finally had a family. He also felt high, and was sure that the angels themselves had stopped by while he was sleeping to sprinkle him with powder from their wings.

A few weeks later, Trayvon expired from bird flu.

The adults on the street got all atwitter anytime he stepped out of his house.

“There he is, it’s Filthy Frank,” they’d whisper in clandestine tones, the women instinctively shielding their breasts with folded arms.

But the kids, they didn’t get it.

“Frank doesn’t look filthy to me,” the Steeple’s son said one day.

“I know! My arms and hands have layers of grit on top of streaks of dried mucous, and no one calls ME filthy,” the ripe son of the Mooneys added.

But what the neighborhood kids were too young to realize was that there are several definitions of “filthy.” And Frank was the sort of “filthy” who invented variations of the Dirty Sanchez while on a bathroom break at the Adult Bookstore and waved to their mommies in special ways when no one was looking.

The day was sunny, with a breeze just strong enough to blow back long locks and whip skirts around knee caps.
Monty and his mother were out in the park, eating mustard and lemon curd sandwiches and flicking raisins to the stray children lingering near a see-saw.

Monty loved his mother.  He thought she was the epitome of femininity, with her tautly coiled pin-curls, high-heels that made her legs soar to the heavens like a pair of nylon’d beanstalks, and perfectly starched floral a-line dresses. He loved bringing home kids from school so they could see how much better his mother was, with well-placed smudges of flour layered delicately upon her rouge cheekbones,  reminding everyone that she was the state champion in zucchini bread-baking while the rest of the mommies could barely toast a slice of bread without exploding their crack den. Monty would  secretly smirk knowing those downtrodden kids would go home later to their river rat mommies who barked out obscenities in a smoker’s croak and left dime store lipstick prints on their chipped mugs of Sanka.

“Go get the frisbee from the car, Monty!” his mother sang out, smoothing out the back of her tulip’d skirt as she stood.

Just then, a vigorous gust of wind blew through the meadow, pummeling his mother’s skirt into her face.

The kids by the see-saw burst into a taunting orchestra as Monty learned that his mother was not quite a woman after all.

While Chooch runs around trying to slaughter cats and making up shiny swear words that probably would move our Lord Jesus Christ to tears, I paint these bitches all night long. It’s the closest thing to catharticism I’ve found, short of retreating to an Indian reservation and getting my opium fix while being swaddled in a Navaho blanket.

Bathroom slang, bringing peace up in this bitch since This Month of ’09.

And the glowing reviews have been pouring in!

Jen Shitcan from Missouri has been heard saying, “Shiiit, I was so sick of my bitch ass husband bringing his broads home from the bar and asking me where the can was so they can empty their Diva Cup.  Now they just look for the sign and I don’t gotta be bustin’ caps no more.”

Isaac Outhouse from the wiilderness sent a telegram saying, “Sign good. Rust proof.”

Peter Pisser from a place with a large blind population sent a box of chocolates with a note saying, “Works good. Except my one blind friend still needs help finding the commode. Make one in braille, you should.”

And Alyson from Waltham, MA was so thrilled to have her friends stop crapping in her potted plants that she left this flowery feedback: Thanks so much!! I absolutely love it!! My house plants thank you from the bottom of their rooty hearts. It’s the perfect size, too!

Possibly only one of those are real.

In the town of Snuffilmburg, everyone lives in small huts which squat low to the ground. Frederico never gave this a second thought until his girlfriend admitted to be running around behind his back with the fire-domed Sylvan; and this revelation fanned some latent desire Frederico held inside to fling himself off a rooftop.

Frederico just could not understand — Sylvan had the physique of ten lumpy pillows and all the humor of a still-born lamb. And the more he thought about this, the more delicious his suicide agenda became.

Hitching a ride with a blue-beehived truckette named Myrtle, Frederico arrived in Big City three hours later, twirling a Slim Jim between his lips. (Thanks, Myrtle.)

Looking up and all around, Frederico saw before him a panoply of shimmering roof tops, and also thousands of glistening windows from which he could defenestrate if he so chose.

Then he turned around and saw a marquee, surrounded by a parade of chasing lights, boasting a 2:00pm viewing of Boobies Without Pasties II.

“Well, I guess I could postpone my death for an hour or two,” Frederico murmured as he felt up his pockets for a few wadded bills.

It has been three years and Frederico is now the proprietor of his own adult theater. He has since outgrown that old dream of his.

When you invited me to your party, I had no idea what to do. Everyone knows you have it all: flashy car, secret cave full of jewels, world’s most extensive collection of ’70s superstar ‘staches, and a flourishing ant farm.

So on my way to your party, I thought about all these things that you have. I thought about the inevitable Cartier watch you’ll get from your parents, the mink coat from your grandmother, and the 40-carat ring from your boyfriend.

I could have picked you some fresh flowers, but you have your own florist. I could have written you a poem, but entire tomes of flowering prose have been published in your honor. I could have given you my heart, but I did that for your thirteenth birthday. So I pulled this star down from the sky. I hope you like it because it burned the shit out of my hands.

When Nedermier saw his ex-girlfriend at the Noodle Barn, feeding her new boyfriend lo mein off her acrylic nails, he felt a strong antipathy toward them both.

————-

My Vocab Series kind of caught on, so I started making some on the wooden plaques I’ve been using for the bathroom marker series. I like them because they’re small and compact and can be hung in odd areas where a regular canvas would be too bulky to fit. And besides, they’re really fun to make, which is good since I have all the time in the world now.

The day Cletus was kicked out of his home, he only
had a sack of lint, a dulcimer, and his signature big
floppy grin to his name.

Cletus soon found out that was enough.

Using the sack of lint as a pillow, he sprawled out
on a park bench. Plucking lethargically at his half-
busted dulcimer, he noticed that he had attracted an
audience. A blue jay perched quizzically on the
telephone wires above him.

“What song is that?” the bird chirped.

“I don’t know, just something I made up,” Cletus
answered through the corners of his sprawling smile.

“Are you available for bar mitzvahs?” the bird
asked with a cocked head.

And that is how Cletus found himself providing music
for a roomful of undulating yarmulkes while keeping
himself from living as a hobo under a bridge.

————————————————–

Out of everything I’ve ever painted, Cletus makes me most happy, so I recreated him on an 8×8 canvas. Hello, I want to smile and pass out gumdrops to orphans every time I look at him. That is so not characteristic of me.

I am Roberto. I am twenty five plus the number of chili dogs you can conceivably eat before getting the runs. I’m an average guy. I like to watch football in my underoos. I snack on beer nuts and Slim-Jims. I know how to change a tire and unclog a drain. I try not to fart in public and only two of my shirts have pit stains. I even volunteer as an usher at my church and I pick flowers for my grandmother.

Here are some things people are saying about me:

Neighbor Phil: Roberto has the decency to fetch the morning paper in a robe, unlike Cornelius down in #4 who flashes all the school children with his pasty, pimply buttocks.

The cashier at Pickle Palace: Roberto has a fine palate for pickled pabulum.

Cubicle mate Swanson: I have a cubicle mate? I hadn’t noticed; I listen to my iPod all day.

Ex-girlfriend Fran: Oh he’s a real gentleman alright. He let me keep that fabulous strand of herpes he passed along to me. Asshole.

But I have a secret. I’m not the nice guy everyone thinks I am. I steal from the collection basket every Sunday to fund my peep show addiction. I can’t get enough. Sweaty, bouyant breasts pressed against a pane of bulletproof glass, red spotlights providing a heavenly vignette? Come on now. When sinning feels so good, why would I want to stop?

Remember when we kicked around dirt under the Death Tree in that cemetery, thinking up slogans for suicide greeting cards and chasing people away with our immaturity?

Remember when we went to that diner and you planned your waffle order specifically so that I could have it when I realized it was better than mine?

The time we drove around listening to The Cure and you saved all your ecru jelly beans for me, even though those ones were your favorite too, do you remember that?

And remember, friend, when we went on that trip and you saved me from that hook-handed trucker who tried to kill me behind a rest stop vending machine? And then you pilfered a stash of brochures without me seeing, because you remembered my tourist literature collection.

Remember when I got you that medallion of your favorite band and painted you a picture of our friendship for that one birthday of yours, because I didn’t have the money to buy you big expensive electronical gifts like she did?

And then you started keeping secrets, engaging in clandestine relationships with that diseased ginger harlot from your past, taking hours to return my texts, and blowing off my knife-throwing party because you had to “drive to Oklahoma.” I’m sure you remember THAT.

How did we get so far apart?

Ever since Smooshy was a little boy, he had been fascinated by rainbows. He drew rainbows everywhere he could: the bathroom stalls at school (this gave him quite the reputation); on Uncle Barfbag’s bald pate; and, later in life, on the tailbones of strippers in the champagne room.

Perhaps Smooshy was so entranced by rainbows because he had never seen one. There was this one time, back in ’67, when his sister tried to point one out to him from the car’s back window as their parents drove them to a traditional summer cock fight, but Smooshy had fallen asleep (more like passed out from the noxious fumes of his Mother’s bottled drug store scent) and didn’t open his eyes in time.

And Smooshy had no chance of seeing a rainbow any time in the past eight years, either, seeing as though he was in prison for impersonating a gynecologist.

But these days, Smooshy is a free man. His first week out of prison, he sat outside on a park bench every day until the sun went down, hoping for a miracle.

On the seventh day, a bird landed above him on a telephone wire and goes, “Look, son. You ain’t never gonna see no rainbow in this city, not through all this damn smog. You’re better off watching a goddamn Skittles commercial.”

And that’s how Smooshy LaBoosh came to possess the largest collection of Skittles memorabilia this side of Appalachia.

Ever since Merry was a small gal, she had a soul-arresting kinship for unicorns. Rather than go to school dances, she would spend hours on the window seat of her bedroom, sketching pages of the majestic animals.

Merry knew that, in her dream land, unicorns were the most regal creature one could aspire to be. Without that glistening spire, you were nothing better than a meager horse. Everyone knew that horses were left to haul plows in the fields while unicorns were fed candied apples by princesses and galloped across rainbows to other lands where slot machines hit the jackpot every time, growing marijuana was not illegal, and everyone sang like angels. (Just not Jessica Simpson. She will never sing like an angel. God, I hate her.)

After her 567th viewing of Legend, Merry could bear it no longer. Standing before her bedroom vanity, she punched straight through the mirror and watched numbly as the glass spiderwebbed. Oblivious to the blood dripping like sanguine jewels from her knuckles, she bent down and snatched up a piece of mirror that had landed softly at her feet. Honing the jagged shard into the shape of a perfect cone, and adrenaline pumping harder now than the time she watched her first porno, Merry struck the fat edge into her pate. It didn’t take at first, her flesh tougher to pierce than she imagined. Grounding herself into the carpet, she fought against the double vision, hauling off and bashing the glass into her head with all her might.

Her mother found her three hours later, dead on the bedroom floor and, with arms akimbo, she sighed,  “Well, Merry always did want to be a unicorn.”

———————————

This was inspired by my friend Merry, who I can totally picture doing something like this.

Finn is a man of habit.

Every Monday he can be found at the corner deli, ordering five pounds of blood pudding and pig knuckles.

And even though he always orders the same thing, Finn never fails to go through the motions of someone with an unmade mind, causing the line behind him to snake out the door.

Each Tuesday, you’d be hard-pressed to find him anywhere but the local record shop, buying up the latest polka albums released that day.

Wednesday was laundry day, and you could find Finn starching stacks of long johns and jock straps.

He always uses the second to the last washer on the left-hand side at Worshell’s Wash House. If it was being utilized, he simply wrenches open the door and tosses some stranger’s  partially laundered clothing into a heap on the cracked linoleum floor.

“Been using that one too long to stop now,” he once said when asked what the fuck his problem was.

Thursdays, well, no one knows what Finn does on Thursdays. But anyone will tell you that it’s the only day smoke comes out his chimney.

And Friday. Every Friday, Finn returns home from work just a few minutes earlier than any other day and he peers into the small hole he drilled outside his bedroom wall, where he unfailingly catches a glimpse of his strumpet of a wife servicing the milk man. Story goes, Finn never busts in on them, but instead, silently backs away into the kitchen, where he gouges out the naughty-seein’ eye with a barbeque spear.

“It must be Friday,” we say, when we see Finn stumbling through town, half-blind and dripping with bloody eye jizz.

At first there was two birds on the wire above me. But let me start from the beginnin’ ya‘ll.

Ma forgot to pack my lunch that day, after a late night gettin’ sauced on rotgut, and I had to sit in the cafeteria and watch all them kids eat their crabapplesauce and chomp on maggot-laden hamslices and it was horrible,  just plain awful, ya’ll, to have to sit there and watch the whole school, the entire student body, chowing on their delicious hot lunches while I had nothing to my name. I had to sit there and pretend like I was too busy reading my finger-twirlin’ horoscope to spoon anything more than a packet of sweetener down my gullet.

I was starved, ya’ll, ready to eat my arm to my elbow, no salt, no Ketchup, just plain naked flesh melting in my mouth.

But I did not do that, ya’ll, no this boy abstained from auto-cannibalism. Instead, I played games with my watch, countin’ down the minutes til Gangly Georgette’d be on her knees in the cubby with Eddie Dandruff; then I’d be knewin’ it was time to do the old skedaddle and soon after that  I’d be jumping off the school bus and sliding
down the gorge to our cabin where I’d slurp down a can of jack mackerel like it was a moss-covered oyster, the likes of which we ain’t ever be affordin’, not with Pa blowing his paychecks on the poker machines and manicures.

When the bell blew, I ran outside to wait for the bus. My hunger was makin’ me feel like I was bein’ eatin’ from the inside out, ya’ll. This sickening, rolling pang washed over me like the time I spied on Ma and Pa intercoursin’ in the wash house, and I could no longer stand to go for one more second without some kind of vittle in my maw.

At first there was two birds on the wire above me. Now there’s bein’ only one, ya’ll.