Two posts in one!

Ok, the most important issue of the day today, obviously, is:

1) IT'S DAVID BOWIE'S BIRTHDAY!! He is 62 years old. As most of you probably know, I have a serious obsession with the man. I can't explain why or how it developed, but I think it has something to do with my love of the movie Labyrinth from a very early age, which introduced me to his sparkly nature, his awesomely sexy accent, and the gigantic... er... talent... that is displayed when he wears very tight pants. As I got older I started to listen to his music and realized that he does indeed rock my world in every possible way. The man has been ten years ahead of the curve musically since the late sixties, pioneered the glam rock movement, and I'm pretty sure actually is an alien living among us. He married supermodel Iman, who I think is also an alien, and their super-perfect babies will rule the earth someday, I'm sure.

He is older than my parents. But I would still say yes if he asked me to marry him, or spend the night with him, or let him eat sushi off my body, or... well... anything. That would be after I either wet myself or just made a fool of myself generally by blathering stupidly about the weather for twenty minutes or some-such, just because he had spoken to me. Yes, I may have a problem, but at least I am honest about it.

So, everyone, please go home tonight and listen to your favorite Bowie song, and lift a glass to the man that has had more influence on modern music than most of us realize, who was sexy enough to be probably the only man ever caught naked in bed with Mick Jagger, who can wear tights and sparkly eye makeup and still be sexy, and who could probably turn you into a bowl full of jelly with one piercing, two-toned look from his creepy/sexy eyes, and who, weirdly enough, has not yet made it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (Madonna has, and although I like Madonna, I think she should have told them she refused to accept her spot there until they put him in. Cause, I mean, she'd be nowhere without him... But that's another blog.)


2) And the second thing I want to bring up here is not quite as important to me at the moment, but will probably be a bigger eveny than Bowie's 62nd birthday in the long run. The iPod people will soon market the iBreath. A breathalyzer for your iPod. (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-idrunk19-2008dec19,0,3073178.story)
This seems like a good idea on a very, very altruistic level. The guy who thought up the idea, Don Bassler, calls it a safety device that "may save lives." He told the LA times that "the hope is that the iPod's cool factor will take away some of the stigma of acting responsibly and using a breathalyzer," which is all well and good. But...

Well...

Let's be honest with ourselves here. Who uses iPods the most? Who are the most tech-savvy people out there? What group of people finds out about new gadgets and must have them as soon as possible? And who goes to parties and follows peer pressure to drink heavily to the point of critical intoxication? Who are generally inexperienced and naive enough to think that they can handle anything and that nothing bad can ever happen to them? The answer to all these questions is the same: image-conscious high school and college students who have lots of their parents' money to spend.

Given what we know about the implied target demographic for the iBreath, then, what is the likelihood of that demographic using this device for good instead of for getting as wasted as possible? Sure, there will undoubtedly be a few responsible honor students out there who keep the iBreath safely in their pockets or by their steering wheels, but the majority of drunken high school and college students I've known in my day would be much, MUCH more likely to sit in a circle chugging jungle juice and seeing who can blow the highest reading before passing out, vomiting, or having their stomachs pumped. (For an in-depth description of the evils of hand-held breathalyzer devices in the past, please refer to Tucker Maxx and his "Famous Sushi Pants" story: http://www.tuckermax.com/archives/entries/the_famous_sushi_pants_story.phtml)

Thank goodness others have followed the same reasoning as myself: "Laura Dean-Mooney, national president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said she worried that young people would use the breathalyzer for drinking games." I'm not alone in my fears, then, but when was the last time that MADD actually had an effect on the youth drinking culture?

All I can say is, I'm worried, people. As if the iPod and the iPhone weren't already sinister first waves of a frightening trend away from human interaction and the use of the brain that will inevitably lead to our downfall when robots take over the world with their superior ability to follow orders unscrupulously and their inability to make errors (so what if I'm conservative about technology?), now we're all going to become DRUNKEN drooling morons who can't leave the house without being plugged in to fifteen gadgets. We're making ourselves easier targets for the robots here, people.

That is, of course, unless we allow the Bowie Alien Child to rule us all, in which case I'm sure we'll be in good hands. Judging from the formidable might of the Bowie-Iman alliance already, their offspring will probably have the necessary technology and genius, and of course the sparkles, necessary to defeat the robots.

Oh my GOD. I just re-read what I've been writing. I'll stop now.

It hurts me when I look at pictures of the reservation.

Pictures of my time there, and visits back, my one and only visit back, bring me a lot of real physical pain. I feel I wasn't there long enough to establish the connection from myself outward to the community and the children that I wanted to forge, even though the experience of living there and all that came with it has taken up residence in my heart and will never leave. I feel that I used the reservation for my own purposes, that the people there saw me for what I inevitably was: a tourist with time to kill. But in my deepest parts I know that my time there was immeasurably more than that - I simply have no way to assert it. Were I to go back to visit now there would few who would remember me - I was too shy and too confused to know how to become a part of them all, while they became a part of me forever.
A one-sided love affair. I hope someday I can change that and go back. God I need a sweat.

THe Old House by the Highway, pt. 6

We left the hospital the next morning around seven. I was in a full leg cast and had been given crutches, which would take me a while to figure out. I had been given a strong dose of serious pain medication and was grateful for the fog of indifference it had lowered over me regarding the night's evens. Monica hadn't said much beyond asking what had happened. I'd told her I'd fallen through the banister and had seen the goat again, and that seemed to be as much as she needed to hear. She'd just nodded and said, “I knew it,” then turned back to her magazine as the doctor came in. I was glad she'd let the issue go for the time being – I was in too much pain to have explained much more. I knew she would have believed me, but I think my silence told her just as much as the whole story could have.

We pulled up to the house and I started to ready my crutches. “No,” she said, putting a hand lightly on my arm. “I'll just be a minute. Stay here and rest.”

I just nodded and let her go, too drugged to care much and relieved in my own cloudy way that I didn't have to go into the house. I may have fallen asleep, but it didn't seem very long before Monica emerged from the house with two duffel bags. She threw them into the backseat of the car, then dug into her pocket. She pulled out the hoof we'd found in the garden and had been keeping on the mantel. It seemed like years ago that we'd found it.

I watched her as she walked down to the highway, waited a few minutes, then ran across the four lanes in one dash. She stopped for a moment, looking at the hoof she held in her hand, then threw it far out into the river.

She came back to the car. “I've been wanting to get rid of that thing ever since we brought it in,” she said. “Gave me the creeps.”

She turned around and unzipped one of the pockets on the duffel bag behind her, then turned back around with a business card in hand. I craned my neck to look at it, but gave up when a nerve went shooting down my neck toward my leg. She tucked it into the dashboard in front of the odometer. “You get some more rest,” she said, and turned the car back on.

“Where are we going?” I mumbled.

“To get some answers,” she said. “Then to a hotel.”

I just nodded and let myself fall back into a blissfully dreamless sleep.

When I woke up again, we were parked outside an unfamiliar ranch style house. A large van sat next to us in the driveway. “J&J Plumbing,” it read along the side. The wording rang a distant bell, but my medication didn't really let me recognize it.

Monica was at my door, opening it and helping me onto my crutches. I got myself upright somehow and began the slow process of moving myself forward, following her up a slight incline toward a well-maintained yard. As I got going, though, some of the painkiller-and-sleep haze started to wear off and the name on the truck struck a chord in me. “We're at Justin's?” I asked blearily.

Monica nodded. “This sonofabitch knows more than he's telling. I'm asking him about the goats.”

She helped me hobble my way up the front walk, then rang the doorbell. There was no immediate answer, so Monica – always the insistent one – knocked on the door. It took a few minutes, but finally Justin, clad in morning stubble and a bathrobe, with a cup of coffee in his hand, answered the door. He looked at us through the screen door, puzzlement and wariness mixing on his face. “Well hi, folks. Didn't think I'd be seeing you again so soon. What can I do for you?”

Monica smiled, but her voice was hard. “Can we come in, please, Justin? We need to talk to you about last night.”

He hesitated, glancing nervously over his shoulder. “Last night? I… uh... Was I drunker than I remember?”

Monica smiled again and opened the screen door. “No, not at all. Nothing like that. But we do need to talk.”

He looked over his shoulder again, then shrugged and opened the door for us. Monica thanked him and as I hobbled by I smiled resignedly. Justin’s eyebrows rose as he realized I was on crutches. “Oh my god, I'm sorry,” he said as I passed into the well-kept living room. “I didn't see that... Are you ok there, Ed? What the hell happened to you?”

Monica closed the door behind her. “That's what we're here to talk about. Could we sit down somewhere?”

“Sure, sure,” he said, his bemusement growing as he looked from her to me and back. “Why don't we go into the kitchen and I'll get you two some coffee. You look like you've had a long night.”

He led the way and I settled into a roomy wicker-backed chair at a large kitchen table. The room was decorated with pictures and ornaments of chickens. I was vaguely grateful they weren't some other barnyard animal. The sound of a running shower came from somewhere down the hall.

Ed settled into the chair at the head of the table after handing us two brimming cups of delicious smelling coffee. The scent of it kicked my brain another gear toward functionality. I took a sip.

Monica looked at hers for a moment, then straight at Justin. “Justin,” she said sternly. “Ed fell down the basement stairs last night when the banister broke. He landed on a pipe and broke his leg.”

Justin nodded soberly. “Well I'm mighty sorry to hear that,” he said, shaking his head. “Those stairs are tricky, I’ll give you that.” I could hear that he meant it, but there was an edge to his voice. I think he was afraid we'd ask him to compensate us for the medical expenses, since he'd installed the banister.

Monica smiled. “Well we’re certainly not blaming you,” she said warmly. “It could have happened to anyone. But we do need you to be honest with us about something.”

Ed looked down into his coffee, as if he knew what was coming.

“What happened in that basement, Justin? There is something not right happening down there and we need to know what it is. It’s not just the smell anymore and I think you know what we mean.” When he was silent for a moment, she continued: “Ed wouldn’t have been going down there in the first place if it was just the smell bothering him.”

Justin nodded, gathering himself before he looked up and spoke directly to me. “I should've told you folks, I suppose,” he began slowly. “But, frankly, I'm something of a skeptic, and I guess I was just hoping it wouldn't ever become... an issue.” He looked at Monica, then took a sip.

“My father,” he continued, “was real eccentric, like I told you last night. And, like I said, as he got older, he started keeping animals as pets that should never have been let in that house. He had pigeon roosts and chicken coops inside, some wallows for pot-bellied pigs out back. I told you about his fox. He had a donkey or two out there from time to time, even some giant godawful lizards. I don't even know what all he had most of the time ‘cause the place smelled awful, and with my allergies I could hardly be there ten minutes without sneezing my head off.”

He took another sip.

“Well, one day I went over there and he had a new 'pet.' A big old billy goat he called Rex. He was just in love with that thing, Lord knows why. The animal smelled terrible, just crapped anywhere it felt like it, and chewed on everything in the house. Just a lousy animal. But Dad had a soft spot for it. Kept it at his side all the damn time. Let it go anywhere it wanted.” He shook his head. “The next time I went over there was a few months later, and, well, he'd started up a whole herd of goats! A whole damn flock of 'em. Must have ten, fifteen goats roaming through his house.” He chuckled derisively, then looked at me.

“I mean, can you imagine? An old man, in his seventies, living in a house with a pack of goats! And the damn things are dumb as a box of nails – can't walk down stairs but they can damn well walk up 'em. And here's my old man, who thinks they're the be-all, end-all of domestic pets, and he’s carrying eighty, ninety-pound animals down flights of stairs when they get themselves stuck at the top.” He took a long sip. “I told him, I said, 'Dad, you can't keep doing this. Those animals would be better served living outside where there ain't any stairs.’ I said, ‘You're gonna fall down one of these days and break your damn neck.' I offered to build a shed outside for them to sleep in, but he wouldn't hear of it. Said something about how his babies were worth the risk. I just left. Couldn't stomach the thought of my father living like that. Had to get away, you know?”

He looked down into his coffee again, as if the scene were playing out on its surface, then started speaking again, softly. “Well,” he said, “it didn't take long for the locals to give him that nickname I told you about, and damned if I didn't join in. Some things are tough to face like a man. I should've gone over there and built him a shack for the damn things whether he liked it or not, forced him to listen to me, but it seemed like his dignity was already near gone. I didn't want to go bossing him around, taking the last of it away, you know?”

I nodded when he looked up, but he looked away again, out through the glass doors onto a patio where a large grill shone in the morning light. “After a few weeks I went back over there to check on the old man, and... I couldn't find him anywhere. Him and his goats, just nowhere to be found. The chickens were there, and the dogs and the cats sniffing at 'em like they hadn't been fed in ages. But no goats and no ‘Old Goat Man.’ But his old station wagon was there. I let myself into the house and... well... you know that smell you were telling me about. I hope to hell it ain't ever been as bad for you folks as it was when I walked in there. Smelled like animals and their shit and something rotten. I went down there and...”

He sighed and looked back at us, his eyes filled with sorrow. “There was my old man, dead in the corner. His leg was broken.” He nodded at me. “Just like yours. The bone was sticking up through his skin and all that. And he was... he was gone, must have fallen down there and couldn't get back up and wasted away, or maybe hit his head, too. Probably carrying a goddamn goat down there for something. And all those goddamn goats were down there with him. Stupid bastards followed him down the stairs, except of course they can't walk down stairs. So they' all fell. And they all broke their damn legs, too, falling down the stairs. So none of 'em could get the hell back up! And they...” He shut his eyes against the tears. “By the time I got there they'd started...”

I held up my hand to stop him. I knew what he was about to say and I didn’t need to hear it. But he shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut. “They’d already gotten to eating him. My old man. Goats'll eat just about anything if they get the notion... and not just that, but they got the taste of meat and it looked like they started going after each other down there, too.” He opened his eyes again. “It was like something out of a horror movie, I tell you. All these dead goats laying around, and my old man, stripped down to bones in some places, with the live ones mostly limping around like zombies, all covered in blood...”

He stopped talking and swallowed, then took a few bracing gulps of his coffee. He looked back at Monica and me. “I should've known better, really, than to try to cover it up. I had a closed-casket funeral for him, told everyone he'd died in a farming accident and left it at that. Nobody except me and the coroner and undertaker knew what'd happened. I got all those goats and carcasses out of there, and I just hoped if I fixed the place up, there'd be no need to tell anyone. Just get it off my hands, you know. It's a nice house, structurally, and all.” He paused. “I should've known something like that would leave a mark on a place. You can't expect that kind of thing to just go away. But I've never been one to believe in ghost stories and all, so I just hoped... I should have at least put a new basement in, with a decent floor and lighting, but I just... I couldn't bring myself to go down there any more than I had to. I just left it.”

He looked right at me. “I'm awfully sorry, Ed,” he said. “I should've known better.”

I just nodded. It all made so much sense when it was said aloud. I'd been right all along but hadn't been able to voice it. Monica put her hand over mine on the table.

* * *

We sold the house shortly thereafter and were able to negotiate to be released from the mortgage. We moved back to the city, our experience with rural life having scarred us both for good.

We never found out if he told the next buyers about what had happened to his father or to us, but when we came back to check that everything was out, a cement floor had been poured in the basement and a new wall was being put up over the old stones.

It still smelled terrible.


THE END!

The Old House by the Highway, pt. 5

I froze, my mind hitting a brick wall of terror for a moment before I closed my eyes and tried to breathe evenly, willing myself to calm down and for the animal to disappear along with my fear. It probably was all in my head, I remember thinking over and over. Not real. Not real. But when I opened my eyes again, it hadn't moved, and it hadn't disappeared. In the darkness, I saw its short, tufted tail flick from side to side as it tilted its head and sniffed at me. The stink was overwhelming. A piece of flesh fell to the ground, fur coated in charnel.

Suddenly my brain snapped into action, propelling me forward down the stairs in a quick change of heart. I was suddenly furious. This four-footed tyrant had been ruling my life in my own damn house, and I didn’t care whether he was really there or not. “You son of a bitch!” I shouted, hurtling myself down the stairs with one arm raised, fist pumping. “You goddamn goat! Get the hell out of my house!” In my rage I misjudged the distance to the next step and slipped. I found myself falling backward, twisting as I fell, and then landed hard on my butt on the stairs. I grimaced, turning my face away from the goat for just and an instant as I tried leverage myself up using the banister. There was a splintering sound, and the banister gave way beneath my hand as I realized in horror that I was going with it. Into the darkness and the stench and the sinister sounds of movement with no source. I heard the goat on the stairs bleat, and then my vision went white with pain as my shin landed on something hard that did not give way beneath my weight. My right foot went numb while the rest of my leg exploded in agony. I yelped and struggled to push myself into a sitting position. My leg was throbbing, screaming in pain, I was seeing a succession of stars and fireworks with each heartbeat. I touched the shin lightly with my hand, which came away wet with blood. I retched but stopped myself from vomiting, and tried to move my foot but felt nothing below the searing pain in my shin. It seemed I had broken my leg.

I sat still for a while, the pain and shock finally receding to a point from which I could try to get my bearings. I could see the light from the kitchen far away overhead and the outline of the staircase below it; I'd fallen almost straight down from the steps and landed directly to the right of the staircase. From memory I realized there was some metal piping running along the side of the staircase over here – I must have landed on it with my now-shattered shin. I'd have to get myself around to the bottom of the stairs and drag myself using the remaining intact banister. I didn't want to call Monica – if that goat was still around here somewhere she might very well pass out at the sight of it and fall down the stairs herself. I'd wait till I'd gotten myself up to the first floor.

Just then I felt something touch me gently on the shoulder. I whipped my head around in the darkness, my eyes finally adjusting, and came face to face with the goat. I felt my heart jump into my mouth, but somehow stifled a scream that would have brought Monica running. I tried to scramble away, but my leg reminded me in no uncertain terms that I was not going anywhere just yet. The goat balked at my movement and let loose a frightened “Baa,” but didn’t move away from me. He was literally only inches from my face, those bizarre eyes staring intensely into mine, his rotten breath fanning my face around his bloody prize. I stared back, my mind racing but unable to think of any escape over the agony in my leg.

After a few minutes, however, my brain slowly came around to observing the goat I was staring at. It was not the same goat. It was much smaller – its eyes were on a level with mine as I sat, panting, on the floor. And it wasn't spotted. I couldn't tell its color in the dark, but I could tell that there were no horns on its narrow head, and its fur was dark. Its nostrils flared as we regarded each other, then it turned abruptly and trotted off into the darkness. 2 goats. God, they were in cahoots down here. I shivered with pain and fear as I peered into the blackness where the second goat had disappeared.

I followed its vague form in the darkness until it moved through the rectangle of light falling from the open door at the top of the staircase, then gagged as I saw a gaping wound in the animal's side, near its hind leg. A huge red gash was hanging open, tattered flesh flapping around its glistening edges. Its sides and legs were smeared with blood. And, I realized as it moved back into the shadows, the thing was only using three of its legs... its back left leg hung useless from an obvious break just below the knee... had it fallen down the stairs too?

I continued to watch it as it made its way to a dark corner where, as my eyes adjusted, I realized with horror that there were more goats lurking back there, all in a group as if they were huddled around something. Their tails were twitching and their heads lowered, as if around a trough of food. I peered into the darkness, knowing instinctively that I didn't want to discover what they were doing, but I was unable to look away. The returning member of the group shoved its way into the fray, pushing out several others, which stood back and stared at each other stupidly, then turned slowly toward me with vague curiosity.

Through the gloom I could see that their hides were ripped open as well, in different spots and to different degrees, but even in the dark I could see blood and gore spilling from holes in their sides, necks, even faces. They all carried pieces of flesh in their mouth, their muzzles covered in blood, and many some had broken legs. I felt my brain getting fuzzy, approaching a state of fear and sensory overload – a scream was rising up my throat and I was hardly feeling any pain from my leg, so great was my desire to run. I forced myself to look away from the slowly limping goats, focusing as well as I could on getting up the stairs. I didn't want to know what they were all crowding around in that corner or why they were all bleeding. I just wanted to get the hell out of there.

Knowing I should try to find a way to brace my leg, but too terrified to look around for the broken piece of banister or take the time to rip up my shirt, I began frantically dragging myself backward toward the base of the stairs. The pain was overwhelming as my leg trailed behind me, every clot of dirt or bump in the floor sending me into new reaches of agony, but I kept moving. I was trying to keep my head turned to look over my shoulder and avoid another unexpected run-in with an animal, but in my peripheral vision, the sight of the churning, twitching mass of bloodied goats in the corner drove me onward. The few that had turned toward me seemed to have lost interest and turned back toward the fray, and I could only hope that I could get to the stairs without attracting their attention again.

I had almost reached the stairs when I dragged my leg over an unexpected stone in the dirt floor. It bumped directly against my wound and I let out an involuntary gasp, then stopped still. They'd heard me, and for some reason this time they were interested. All motion in the corner stopped for a split second, then the bodies of the animals all seemed to turn in one motion, broken legs and open wounds all pushing into one another, smearing blood on fur, ears flopping, hooves stamping. This time I couldn't hold back a cry of fear, no longer caring what Monica saw if she could only get me out of the basement. With an act of sheer will, I flipped myself over, my leg sending splinters of white-hot pain through my body, and pulled myself up onto the fist step with my arms.

A few of the large, more curious goats stepped forward tentatively, their muzzles dripping gore from whatever poor thing they were eating. In the background I saw a large, horned animal whirl suddenly around on a smaller one and bite it hard, then pull away and actually rip a piece of its ear off before stepping toward me, chewing contentedly as the other stood strangely still and kept silent. There were at least six of them moving slowly toward me, nostrils flaring and lips twitching, dripping blood from their wounded hides and hideous mouths alike, all quietly breathing out that horrible stinking breath.

I closed my eyes and pulled myself up to the second step, exhausted but determined. The largest of the goats stepped onto the first step a few feet below me, dragging one broken back leg behind it in a limping, zombie-like motion. It belched, then sniffed at my left shoe lazily. I scrambled backward, the step above me grinding into my back as I tried to force myself up. I realized I was talking out loud as the goat slowly and casually followed my broken leg, which was still mostly on the ground as I struggled slowly upward. “Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod...” I was repeating.

The goat began to nibble at the laces of my shoe and I felt my mind buckle. I let loose and screamed, praying silently for Monica to come rescue me. If I had been able to move my foot I would have kicked the animals away, but I was immobile and the blood dripping down my leg seemed to draw the animal on. I finally got myself to the third stair and saw my foot start to rise above the ground level. From somewhere very far away I heard Monica's footsteps coming down the stairs from the second floor.

The first goat was following me steadily, gnawing on my shoelace, and its friends were following it, two on the stair behind it sniffing the air. They moved slowly and steadily, my foot out of their reach at last. I grasped onto the frantic thought that maybe, with their broken legs, they wouldn’t be able to mount the stairs to follow me. I was still talking: “Ooooohmygodohmygodohmygod....” I tried to look away from the gore-covered animals, into the darkness of the basement, but immediately regretted the decision. They had all finally moved away from what they had been eating, enough that I could make out a vague shape in the dark corner. It was a human form there in the darkness, glistening with blood, quiet and still in the dark. It had to be...

I felt my head begin to swim, and the stars of pain I'd been seeing became clumps. I tried to pull myself up another step, but knew I was too weak. My vision began to fail and I realized vaguely that I was passing out from terror and loss of blood. The biggest goat jumped forward somehow onto the stairs and began to sniff the dribble of blood on my shin. My head dropped back onto the step behind it...

And then there was Monica behind me, her arms wrapping themselves around my chest. She was talking but I just let myself fall into her embrace. Somehow she got me up the stairs and closed the door behind us.