Okay-- i haven't warned in a while, and i'm pretty sure no one reads this. But here's the warning: This is the product of writing from 5AM-7AM without a wink of sleep thanks to Bob Dylan and Robert Downey Jr. There is more than likely a billion errors and what have you. This is a part one of who knows. There may never be a part two. Please read it, and express your feelings as desired. I haven't had a good comment in a while, and i really haven't posted anything in a while. So here's what i did this morning. Enjoy.
Story begins....
NOW:
For the sake state of Massachusetts, men’s names will be changed. I ain’t never told a true story, so don’t hold me to any one word or sentence that might be strange or curious. In observation alone, I’ve seen that not one thing in this life is ever a straight line. It’s zigzags, it’s crosses, it’s a dot on the i. It’s breathing monitor in the hospital that goes beep beep beep over the static buzz of television and other technologies.
This year the mayor was elected in a landslide. He stood mighty tall inside that Gazebo where he gave his winning speech, like it was a medal. The man himself looked liked the monopoly guy all he was missing was the monocle and a good chunk of money. The monkey that man was. Gerald Grey. All in all he was a player, as are and were all politicians before him and all those who will come long after him. The gazebo was a running down old thing, like a marriage thirty years later. Like the dinosaurs, no one around here even knew what a gazebo was ever erected for. They asked the similar questions about daylight savings, and earl gray tea. How the fuck should I know, I tell them.
A little white man dressed in all black swings around the front of Gerard, excuse me, Gerald, and sticks a microphone in front of his face. The viewing party applauds and cheers and would have thrown confetti if it were in the budget. Monopoly man clears his throat into the metal and a wave of silence calms the crowd. To say the speech was poor would insinuate I could have done it better, which I’m not so sure of, but I would bet fifteen or twenty dollars I would have.
“People of this fine city,” the crowd raved again (this was happening all through the speech sometimes where it need not be, and that was well and okay, but just wrap your head around the fact that the man spoke briefly and yet still made a thirty minute acceptance. “You have shouted out my name, and I am the mayor of this fine town!” Rave, rant, cheer. “My son told me this morning, Dad, if you win today, spend a tax dollar on me.” Laughter. “I told him, Lawrence, boy, son, if I get elected I’ll be spending only tax dollars.” Laughter. “That’s the way government service works. The people pay me, among hundreds of others, to do a service. A service that, in my opinion was not fulfilled by whats-his-name Malloy.” RANT, Rave Cheer. Repeat. Now how do I skip to the important part. I swear the man had a hard on for his kids, it’s all he ever talked about. He had six children all together from two separate marriages.
The latter four were aged sixteen to seven. The oldest two behaved in such a way it was incredible to be able to say the family name without puking, or spitting blood, or contracting some kind of pissing disease. They were the type of sons that had their father been running for president they may have been killed as to forget they were lowlife and create an image of a sympathetic yet strong candidate instead of that of a failed parent. Their names: Bread, and Butter. I’m kidding, I can come up with a better name for that. But imagine you just picked up a story called Bread and Butter?
Their names: Sean and Thomas Grey. In the grand scheme of lowlifes these guys were light weights. Their names would never be entered into the ring with John Wayne Gacy, or the Zodiac Killer. These guys weren’t the most fucked up pricks on the planet. In general, you could see them as a side effect of a broken home or a cracked foundation on the most general of social structures. They had never seen a life sentence nor had they done anything that would merit such a first place badge on death row. These guys did their time and got out. With or without daddy’s political hand tearing calendar years off their sentences. Monopoly man never did it for the satisfaction of helping his oldest and forgotten sons, he did it to keep old Mary-Lynn Ex-Grey from crying in his gazebo at his acceptance speech.
Instead of ever addressing his first try at a family, he instead used Mary-Lynn. She would be on stage next to his wife and the kids he always thought of as his “real kids” and then everything looked strong. The illusion was that he and Mary were still so close despite their fallout and it was none of their wrongdoing that caused their sons’ wrong turns. And here she was again, some forty feet in front of me standing in an old lady business dress, if you’d call it that, that all the politicians wives wear. His current wife is wearing a red one, Mary is wearing a blue one. It would have been better had Gerald wore a white suit. The white suit of God between red-ex and current wife blue. They could have been a human Twister mat.
The mayor spoke on, “As mayor, I will fight for the people. I will take your collective voices and use them to form one coherent voice for all of this town’s citizens.” Rant Rave And…
Someone calls out “What will you do about your sons?”
“Who said that?”
A hand raises in the crowd.
“Thomas?”
“I was wondering when you were gonna point me out.” Thomas stood in a red leather jacket and dark sunglasses. The way wannabe movie stars look when they arrive in LA. He chewed gum like a cow does grass, and shaved as little as possible to keep a fresh looking shadow on him. He wanted to be desired, but everyone knew what he was.
“Thomas, this isn’t the time,” replied Monopoly Man.
Lucky for me I was at the Gazebo to see all this happen in real time.
A little back story on Thomas. Thomas was just under a full year younger than his brother Sean. Growing up, Thomas wanted to be John Lennon and universally adored (as I mentioned before with his red leather and shades), he picked up a guitar strummed a few hours and never figured quite how it worked. He tried protesting the things he thought John would protest, and wondered how he would ever be so loved and unique if he was marching, or picketing with a hundred or a thousand other people. He realized that there’s no ‘I’ in protest, and so it didn’t feel so radical.
From what I hear he also sat in bed for quite a while to see if anyone gave a shit enough to try and get him out.
After protesting failed, he tried acting. He stood on stage in high school as Guard number 3 in some third rate off-Broadway piece of crap. Guard 3 had a mere Two sentences of dialogue. Onstage he said the first sentence and punted the leading man in the cock and last I heard that unlucky bastard had to have a testicle retrieval operation because the god damn thing was lodged somewhere in his stomach. And that, my friends, was in front of the two hundred or so people who showed up for the thing. I believe after that year the Principle dropped his “Cuts cause hurt feelings” stance and let the drama club stop making up new characters to fulfill every auditioner.
In his next to last effort to becoming Mr. Lennon he dated an Asian chick. Sorry, Asian-American chick by the name of Sarah Leonard, sounds oriental by that name. After two years and a battle scar (we’ll get to that later), they called it quits. The only thing left for poor Thomas Grey to do was get rich or get shot. Over the next few months he robbed independent liquor stores, independent food markets, independent video stores – all of which was because he said the independent stores were low on security and were easy to take from – people on the train, people on the bus, people in houses, people’s houses, crack dens, whore houses, street dealers, street walkers, the church and petty thieves like himself. No one was safe from Thomas Grey, and I’ll repeat this line later only to make an exclusion. He did enough to make everyone hate him from the dirt poor to the filthy rich, from the liars to the honest, from the orthodox to the atheist. If there was anything that everyone who ever met or encountered Thomas Grey agreed on, it was that the man had to be stopped. And surely he was. But like I said, No One was safe from Thomas Grey. BUT (contradiction) his older brother Sean.
Sean was your basic run of the mill failure. High school drop out, cut ties with all girlfriends and anyone else who might have something useful to say about him. He kept his head down when it meant keeping out of prison. He was a liar and a thief like his brother, but in all his failure, was still smarter than that motherfucker. Sean knew to cover his tracks, he knew to wear masks on camera, or a fake moustache and glasses, or something when being filmed. He knew about the wonderful uses of gloves when breaking into a house. He knew how to bypass security systems, or at least he thought he did. Unlike his brother, Sean didn’t want to be John Lennon, he didn’t want people to look at him and recognize him as Thomas so badly wanted. He wanted to be invisible.
As mentioned just a moment ago, Sean was keen on cutting ties if it meant one less person he met might be questioned. I mean, he kept them all in the dark and worked alone for the same purpose, but he didn’t want anyone to be able to hurt an alibi if the shit hit the fan and god forbid he be caught. So, for Thomas, thirteen weeks and not a phone call meant that someone may have forgotten him, so he made sure to pay his brother a visit. This would be the first time the Grey brothers would be called a team, despite never even pitching ideas about how to steal or whatever.
So the message here is, when you want to be noticed as Thomas Lennon Grey did odds are good walking down a street you’ve robbed three or four houses on, isn’t you’re best idea. He was going to see Sean. So when the housewife neighbor called the police about the man who groped her when she walked down the stairs to find him robbing her. And of course mentioning his location and his being a cocksucker, the police show up where for once the boys weren’t scheming and Sean carrying cocaine in his back pocket slipped there by Tom when he saw the great bright red and blues through the window. In this exchange alone, they proved they were good at something, even if that something was breaking the law.
This was the first time the boys went to jail and Thomas, being a good sport admitted that he paid for half the cocaine found on his brother. But I don’t think we’re ready for a prison story just yet.
When the boys got out they met for the first time their four half brothers and sisters who never not even until present day, here at this gazebo speech, that these two men daddy was always bending over backward for was their own. Or half their own anyway.
“I got out of prison, Gerry” Thomas tells his father on stage.
“Ignore this man, please, if there’s anything I can do to lead the people, my first round of advice is to ignore this man.”
Ignore Me, Thomas thought.
Mayor Grey went on with his speech from before. “As I was saying, as mayor I will speak in one coherent voice and make sure you are all heard.” The crowd doesn’t not rant. Nor does it rave. Not this time. Not as they were supposed to. It was clockwork, these cheers and applause. This time the clock stopped. That’s when the Monopoly Man spots his son again. His son who would not be ignored, now naked and holding his cock like a pistol with a cigarette hanging from the left side of this mouth and playfully holding everyone hostage saying, “I’ma shoot. You wanna get shotted son” In his best southern accent. “You wanna see your little boy get shot. Cause I could shoot him in front of you, ma’am.”
As the police tackled this offender from behind, it was like his cock was cocked. Because as he was pointing his ‘gun’ at that woman’s eight year old son, mixed with the shock and muscle contraction of being tackled out of eyesight, as if in slow motion, his gun went off and that eight year old boy got a urine bullet to his blonde head.
Added that day was Public Urination, and what would originally be called sexual assault and would later, thanks to the Mayor, be charged as Accidental Bathroom Activities on a Minor, to Thomas’ record of what can only be called fuckeduppedness.
I remember quite clearly that as he went down still pissing, he said something like “Does urine kill crabs? Don’t worry, my crabs won’t turn this grass into crab grass. I got crabs in prison.”
This is Fucked Up.
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