by Jonathan Shaw

Read Part 1

       Back in his room, Ted lit a cigarette and sat on the radiator till the heat got uncomfortable on his balls. Bored now, he cracked a beer and looked at the TV Guide… Nothing on for a while still. He was really waiting for the Late Show and a good old science fiction thriller called “The Creature From Planet X”. 

     That wasn’t for an hour or so, so he flipped the TV back on and sat there automatically fooling around with his gun. 

     Let’s Make a Deal  was still on. Shit. Rather than switching the channel or turning it off, Ted just sat there, his attention listlessly riveted to the screen. A commercial passed and the last quarter of the show came on but the spell remained unbroken… Ted’s eyes followed the frantic gestures of a fat middle-aged housewife dressed up in a baby suit as Monty Hall moved up the aisle toward her.

       ”OOOH, MONTY, OVER HERE, OVER HERE!” came the shrill squawk of the nasty old woman’s voice from off camera.    

       Unruffled, Monty Hall approached the squirming menopausal baby-suiter.

       ”What a cute outfit!”  He exclaimed, his unctuous slickness stifling the very air Ted was breathing. Shit. 

       “And what is your name, dear?” Monty asked, holding his microphone in her hideous bloated face.

       The fat bitch could hardly keep it together. “Joanie Bender!” She squeaked, squirming nervously. “I’m from Pittsburgh…”

       ”I’ll bet you are, fatso,” Ted mumbled distractedly.

       ”Well Mrs. Bender from Pittsburgh,” Monty chimed, his attitude too lamely sincere to be quite sarcastic, “You are one of the lucky contestants who is going to get a crack at today’s BIG DEAL, with a big cash value of $8,255.21! What do you think of that?!”

       ”Oh yes, Yes, YES, YES!!” croaked the fatty matron.

       ”Well, then,” Monty Hall continued in the most confidential of tones as though it was some big fucking secret, “Behind one of those curtains in front of you is today’s BIG, BIG DEAL… Behind the other two are… Pot Luck. If you choose the right curtain, you can be our BIG WINNER… But first I’m going to make you an offer where you can’t lose! I’ll give you a chance to make an easy five hundred dollars, Mrs. Bender… lf you’ll call the whole deal off.” 

       Monty waved the crisp green pieces of paper in front of her chubby face.

       She seemed to hesitate for a moment before turning all red and damn near choking, drooling like a hungry old bulldog.

       “l’ll stick to the curtain,” she blurted out.

       ”I’ll bet you just could stick to it too, cuntface,” Ted growled disgustedly, popping open another can of beer.

       ”She’ll stick to the curtain!” Monty Hall announced grandly. There was a dramatic pause while an organ tittered off in the background. Shit… Ted looked at his watch. Then he downed the beer in one long gulp. He burped loudly and watched on, feeling that dull Rheingold sparkle lighting up in the middle of him like tiny fireworks.

       “Well then, Mrs. Bender, are you ready to go for the BIG prize?”

       Excitement seemed to leave her speechless for a beat. Then she blurted out, “YES!”

       To a dramatic drum roll, Monty spoke evenly.

       “And which curtain do you choose, Mrs. Bender? Curtain number one, number two, or curtain number three?”

       It was a pitiful sight. Her crummy fat face twitched, shifted, tilted and melted right on the screen as the camera closed in tight. Ted nearly cringed in disgust… How the fuck do people like that have the balls to show their ugly mug in public, much less go on the fucking tv in front of everybody? Shit…

       She finally summoned enough composure to stammer, “Curtain three…”

        A hush fell over the audience. Monty continued dramatically.

       ”Before we see what you have chosen behind curtain number three, l will give you one more chance to change your mind… To the tune of one thousand dollars.”

       That really threw the old cow for a loop. Her face just fell apart with indecision like some grotesque plastic doll under a blowtorch. Monty waved more crisp bills. Shouts came from the audience… “Take it!’” “Stick to the curtain!”   

       “Shove it!” Ted hissed and cracked open another beer.

       Just when her face looked about ready to crack in half under the strain, her voice wobbled like a mangy old dying canary. Suddenly she croaked out, “I’ll stick to the curtain.”

       Monty tried to look surprised. 

       “She’ll stick to the curtain… Okay. Joe, roll back the curtain and let’s see what Mrs. Bender has turned down one thousand dollars for.”

       Ted winced. The curtain rolled aside and an unseen announcer’s voice echoed off screen.

       “Mrs. Bender has won two hundred cases of new Jiffy Kleen Kar car wax, made from a new specially designed Space Age formula to keep your…”

        There was a resounding ‘Awwww’ from the audience of canned sardines. Mrs. Bender’s face took on the corpse-like sheen of a dead tuna… Then suddenly the piled up boxes of car wax slid aside and the announcer’s voice continued, “…new Lincoln Continental Deluxe Special bright and sparkling in the fun-filled years to come!”

       A roar came from the audience. Music played, trumpets sounded. The fucking organ twittered… Monty Hall smiled triumphantly and made some more unctuous comments which were completely lost on the fat old lady who was now spinning, sweating, writhing, choking and jumping up and down like a bloated old bullfrog struck by lightning. It was obscene… Ted couldn’t believe the corrupt indignity he’d just witnessed. Rage smothered him like a fat old child molester’s pillow… 

      Before he knew what was happening his sweaty finger had already tightened on the trigger, and BOOM! the gun leapt back bruising his shoulder and sending a thousand frozen images of the fatty decadent face on the screen scattering all over his little bedroom in small fragments of splintered plastic and glass. 

       Then everything was quiet… All he knew was the wierd ringing in his ear and the echo of the last words that had leapt from his mouth… 

       Here’s ya fuckin’ prize ya ol’ pissbag!!

       Ted couldn’t quite believe what had just happened… But the proof was there all around him, bits of shattered glass, plastic and wood all over the room, smoke issuing from a heap of rubble that had once been the television, spots of blood on his hands and face and on the barrel of the smoking gun he was still holding. Tiny glass shrapnel all around. The room smelled of chemical smoke and gunpowder. Like the factory he worked at. Like the Fourth of July…

       But Ted was more than just shell shocked. As the reality of it began to take hold, a strange feeling of well-being and power welled up in his gut. Ted started to laugh… 

       You could say something just snapped…

       Whatever crazy fuzzy thoughts Ted was trying to manage were suddenly interrupted by loud disturbed voices, frantic movements from the front of the house… Angry, defensive feelings swarmed around his gut like wasps. He was all messed up and confused now, his stomach churning with adrenaline. Ted wished desperately not to be bothered by anybody while he attempted to regain some sort of control.

       But he was bothered… When he heard those bearlike grunts and loud footsteps lumbering down the hall towards his room, he stood up and held his gun pointed at the door protectively… As the knob turned, he just squeezed the trigger again and fired three quick shots. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! 

       The weight of his father’s body opened the door the rest of the way as he came swinging into the room, still gripping the door knob and making gurgling death noises. As his chin dropped to his chest, his knees buckled and alot of blood splashed out of his mouth all over the rug. Ted had never seen so much blood. Ted grimaced and blew the top of his father’s skull away. Then everything seemed to go red…

       The twitching stopped. The body lay still in the doorway like a cow in the slaughterhouse. Ted looked around in wild animal panic. The room was covered with shattered glass and blood. Ted added to the mess by kneeling down and spewing a couple of six packs of Reingold out of his throat in one long convulsive gush.

       When he felt steady enough to stand again, he stepped shakily over his father’s lifeless body. He walked down the hall. Still holding his gun as he staggered toward the sounds of his mother’s gasping hysteria.

       His voice sounded strange to him, far away as he croaked out strange words. 

      “Ma, get out of here, go get help… Get help! I shot Pop! Go get help! Go! Go!”

       His mother didn’t seem to have heard him. She just lay huddled on the hallway floor sobbing in laconic little gasps. Ted had never seen his mother in such a state before. It was haunting. He imagined it haunting him for a long time to come…. He found his finger back on the trigger again. Hesitating, he pointed the gun at his mother, hesitating minutes, hours, eternities, trembling all over… His trembling finger squeezed the trigger. The loud report from the gun was like a two by four shoved down his throat. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! 

       It brought an end to everything, his trembling, his mother, his consciousness…

Up Next: Part III- The final showdown. Somewhere in America, what will become of our protagonist, Ted, as he scrambles to wipe the blood from his hands and the kitchen floor? Tune in tomorrow and find out, only on Scabvendor.

(copyright Jonathan Shaw 2009)

by Jonathan Shaw.

SOMEWHERE IN AMERICA. 1971.

Friday night. With his parents out there in the living room, Ted sat before the television in his room in the back of the house. He’d been watching some old Humphrey Bogart movie called “San Quentin,” and playing with his gun for the last hour and a half.
Ted liked to watch those old black and white movies when there was nothing to do… Usually there was nothing to do. All his old friends were out dating pretty college girls or studying for finals or whatever… Ted could give a shit for any of that shit. He could have gone out but he didn’t really feel like going out. He’d already blown the last of his paycheck on some fat chick he met in a bar uptown….
That old bitch could drink! By the time they were done partying she’d put down damn near a whole fifth of bourbon all to herself… Not even counting what he’d bought her at the bar before his money ran out and she kept buying him beer till they went back to her motel room to keep going with her bottle.
Ted shivered a bit inside as he thought about her fat lips running over his face like slugs while he gave it to her… Ugggh… He cracked another beer and downed it in one go. He burped loudly and lit a cigarette.
The fat chick was the night before last and he was still recovering from it… Ted never really felt right if he didn’t get at least a day’s rest after a heavy night’s drinking like that…
Anyway there were a couple of good movies scheduled for the all nighter tonight…
Ted had never wanted to ‘get a college education’ or ‘make something of himself’ or any of that shit that some people do… So he just fucked off from job to job and blew his paychecks at the bars around town and lived there with his parents. Mostly, whenever he wasn’t out drinking, Ted really liked to sit at home and drink beer alone and watch the old movies on TV.
Friday nights were the worst. The bars were always packed with stupid bright eyed people who acted all drunk and retarded and always laughed way too loud. Ted usually just stayed home and watched tv and played with his gun on Friday nights.
Ted really liked his gun. He wasn’t all obsessive about it like some people are, but he was fond of it. It gave him a sense of power to just hold it and look at it sometimes. The feeling of the gun in his hands, the way the cold metal parts felt to his fingers…
He’d only shot it once… He’d taken it out in the backyard when his folks were away and blew a milk bottle all to shit. Minutes later the cops came around and warned him that it was against the law to fire a rifle within the city limits, and that if he ever did it again he’d get alot more than a warning… When they left, he put it up in his room and never took it out of the house again.
Anyway, since that episode he never felt the desire to fire it again. It was enough to just look at it, to know it was there. And whenever he held it now his mind always recalled its loud report, that hard jolt at his shoulder, the shattering fragments of glass… And a slight constriction of the stomach.
It was some big ass gun for a guy who didn’t do much shooting, who was even a little scared of its power… An old World War II British Enfield 303. It had bullets about the size of your index finger which could tear a hole the size of a baseball in a guy. The magazine held about ten of these; alot of potential for destruction.
Ted knew all this, and it frightened him a little.
Ever since he was a boy he was always a little scared of guns. But fascinated too… His mother always used to tell him how terrible guns were, how evil… Even when he played with a toy six shooter or cap pistol as a kid, he could always expect to hear the same old long-winded, boring lecture crap about it.
So when he brought home “that damned Tommy Gun” as she called it, the old lady had nearly shit. She told him to get that thing out of the house. He refused. And for the next couple of weeks both of his folks were in an uproar about it. His father had even threatened to kick him out. He’d been kicked out a few times before over the years, mostly for stuff he did when he drank too much, so it was really nothing new.
It had been pretty easy for Ted to sway his father’s worries about him having the gun by citing local burglaries and the growing crime rate and all that shit on the tv news… But his mother’s final words on the subject were that it was “a tool of the devil”…
Anyway, that had all been over a year ago. And once it all blew over it was never mentioned again and that was that. But his mother always seemed a little distant since then. Shit. He thought his mother was totally ridiculous for her fear of that gun. It’s not like he went out and bought it deliberately or anything anyway… It was given to him by a guy at work who owed him twenty-five bucks and couldn’t hang on to his paycheck further than the nearest titty bar or crap game… He was lucky to get anything out of the guy. He’d even thrown in a couple of boxes of ammo for it, which supposedly cost seven bucks a box… It had turned out to be a pretty good deal for twenty-five bucks.
When Ted first got the gun he would sit back in his chair and fantasize sometimes… A guy he knew back at school’s father had caught a nigger prowling in their back yard once. He’d held a shotgun to his head and made him lie down on his stomach while his wife called the cops. They even gave him a little cop plaque thing, some kind of citation for outstanding bravery or concern for public welfare or whatever… Ted used to look at his wall and picture a little cop plaque like that hanging there.
One night right after he got the gun Ted had a dream in which he shot Jeff Spencer… Nailed him good. Pumped him full of lead. He woke up in the morning feeling sick and oddly guilty… Jeff Spencer had been his best friend as a kid but he hadn’t seen him for over a year now… The last time he saw him, Jeff was walking down the street by the park holding hands with Ted’s old girlfriend, Jenny.
Ted and Jenny had gone together since the seventh grade and even talked about getting married… Jeff had been away working in a logging camp out west. He used to write to Ted all the time telling him how great it was out there in Northern California or wherever and trying to persuade him to come out and work there too. All that rugged adventure sounded pretty good to Ted. He was really tempted to just pack up a backpack and go out on the road there too. The only thing that kept him from going was Jenny… She was the only thing worth staying around for. So he’d stayed… When Jeff came back, Ted and Jenny were having another big fight and he hadn’t talked to her for a week.
Before Ted knew it was happening, Jeff was screwing Jenny and that was that… He never spoke to either of them again… He hated them both at first, especially Jeff. But soon enough his pain hardened into a kind of numb, beery indifference… That dream had really shook him up.
The Humphrey Bogart movie was over… Ted got up and went to the kitchen for another beer. He was down to his last one, so he went back in his room, put on his shoes and coat and picked up some change from the dresser. His parents were still out there watching tv in the living room… Lets Make a Deal. They watched that same stupid shit every night. Sometimes his parents really bugged the shit out of him. He hated that shit.

A cold wind was blowing when he opened the back door and stepped outside. A hard layer of snow covered the ground. It had been a really cold winter. Ted couldn’t wait till it was over. He really hated the winter, and sometimes he missed the feel of Jenny’s warm skin against him when the wind blew and hissed outside the frosted windows of his room. Especially when he was really drunk and feeling lonely… He sniffed and spat as he walked down the driveway. He wasn’t dressed warm enough but the store was just down the block… As he walked along the empty street he really looked forward to summer… He’d already decided he was going to pack up and hitchhike out to California in June and stay with some relatives. They said he would be welcome and he’d been thinking about it for a good little while now… He thought of palm trees and blond haired girls in the sun. Just like on tv…
Some kids hanging around the door of the pool hall nodded to Ted as he walked by. He nodded a silent greeting back without stopping. Shitheads… He walked up to the corner store.
The old clerk looked up and smiled as Ted opened the door. The store was warm. Ted walked over to the cooler, got a six pack of Rheingold and set it down on the counter.
“That be it, son?” the old clerk said.
“Gimme a pack of Winstons… Cold as shit out there, man!”
The old man grinned. “Colder than a witch’s tit in a brass brasierre, boy!” he said, punching the cash register efficiently.
“That’s gonna be a dollar eighty nine,” the old man said.
Ted counted out the change and put it on the counter. He picked up the brown bag and looked at the door, hesitating for a moment.
“Well, ‘night,” he said, pulling the door open.
“Night, son.”

Up next on Part Two: Somewhere in America, our protagonist Ted is growing increasingly aware of the trifectum of restless, irritable and discontent overwhelming his corpus. As his eyes and ears are invaded by fatty Midwestern game show matrons, see what can happen when decent people just SNAP!!

All this and more tomorrow!

(copyright Jonathan Shaw 2009)

I write it to get it out of me. I don’t write it to remember it.
-Kathy Acker

one house: three women and one cat

they all have left their memories
upon my shelves
at one time
or another–
one took instant decaffeinated
one took fresh ground
one took vodka
or whatever she could get
they all took my love with a
tear chaser
the cat took tuna

they all left their memories
in my bed–
one smelled like perfume
one smelled like sweaty lovemaking
one smelled like vodka and
ashes
they all smelled
like women on
appropriate
occasions
the cat smelled like fish

they all were my lovers
all but the cat
who confined herself to
stalking my feet in the
kitchen like a primeval
demon
they all said they loved me
all but the cat
who is the only
one
who stuck around

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2009.

Here is a short piece from 1969, from an upcoming Collection of newly edited essays, poems and short stories by Jonathan Shaw. Stay tuned for more, which we will be posting as we dig them up from the catacombs.

PITTSBURGH ZOO-

The rains fell with blue force outside the aquarium. Down the street, Jeff and Howard were driving at breakneck speed through Mrs. Bender’s living room, chasing a spider whose web still danced like snow in the attic.

“I remember the old days when this hotel was really fashionable,” said someone.

“Yeah,” came the answer of a forlorn wind, toppling trees and crewcuts in the night. “This place has seen better days, that’s the truth… When Eisenhower visited here, this place really came to life.”

“Yeah, the old Eisenhower days,” someone said. ”All that stuff. Those big gala receptions in the lobby, and all the young women would come cheer and fling their Tampax after him like flowers when they wheeled him to the elevator in that big bathtub.”

“Oh my God, yes!” Howled the wind. “That great red, white and blue
bathtub of his, filled with his hairless chest and Coca Cola and air bubbles…”

“And remember the somnambulant pilgrimages?” someone said. “The newspaper tried to keep it hushed up, but everybody knew there was something fishy going on. Late at night when everyone was sleeping, scores of housewives would slide out of bed and crawl out of the house sighing and moaning. And they would slither along, dragging themselves along by their hands under the full moon and across the golf course towards the hotel like zombies, wearing nothing but silk negligees and leopard skin panties… and little red, white and blue buttons pinned to their bleeding breasts that said ‘I LIKE IKE…’ Remember? And in the morning there would be that big trail of slime across the green, as though a giant snail had passed over it… Boy! That sure was something…”

“Yeah,” said the forlorn wind, “I remember those days, but it all seems a little vague now come to think of it… I wish I had a foghorn inside to keep all these memories from colliding into each other all the time…”

“A foghorn in Pittsburgh?” the trees snapped back.
Crewcut lads marched down the street with briefcases.
“GOOD LUCK!” they sneered.

In the morning the newspapers shouted, “THREE TON SPIDER RUNS AMOK!”
Some people couldn’t believe it.

Back at the zoo, the fish cried until their white bellies floated on the water’s surface like apples at a fair.
Nobody came to see.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 1969, 2009.

NEW YEARS — 1975

Oh I’ll run from the house of madness

on a rainy night

and down the slippery pavement

laughing tears

streaming with the rain

god damn

I’ll geta bottle and shake

my wet body on strange

doorsteps

like a dog

drip drip drip

and i won’t be dead

yeh!

there’ll be music on a hill

and i’ll sit to watch the sunrise

as jewel lights fade

and people dream beneath my

gaze

the bottle will be almost gone

and there’ll be

new places to go

yeh!

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2009.