Sometimes a good day is sleeping in, making and eating a good breakfast, sipping coffee and getting high, lighting incense and playing music way too loud, leisurely cleaning the house, taking hot showers, and slowly fucking before taking a nap.
Waking up should feel weird.
I watch the boy across the street ride his skateboard. He does a horrible job. Every day it’s the same thing. He rides it, very slowly and cautiously, down to the end of the driveway and stops. He kicks it around and maneuvers it with his feet.
I can’t take it anymore.
I stroll over to the boy and snatch the skateboard away.
“Let me show you how it’s done,” I say, even though I don’t have a clue as to how one rides a skateboard. Nevertheless, I put my all into it. I start way back at his garage and take off, full speed, for the road. I get to the end of the driveway and try to flip it back around so I’m facing the garage. Of course, something goes terribly awry.
I fall off and crack my head on the cement, losing consciousness for a few seconds.
I regain my vision. The boy is hovering over top of me.
“I’m in pretty bad shape,” I moan. “Maybe you should call the ambulance.”
“There’s no need for that,” the boy says. “I’m a doctor.”
“Knock it off. My skull feels cracked and I can’t move my left arm.”
“Really,” he says. “It’s no problem.”
He reaches down and pulls my head and arm from my body, tossing them nonchalantly to the side.
“Just hold on now,” he says, noticing my panic.
Within a few minutes, I have a fresh head and arm. I stand up. I feel great.
“That’s amazing,” I say. “How’d you do that?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
“Was it some kind of magic?”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” he says. He picks the skateboard up from the road and rides it slowly back up to the garage. From the garage he calls, “You run on back home now.”
I do what he says.
I look up and the Chancellor is standing in my doorway once again. Filling the doorway. This is the fifth night he has put in an appearance and I already know how the evening is going to turn out. He trundles into my room, modeling a pair of skin-tight black leather pants, cellulite jiggling wildly as he turns in robust circles of pride. The twin loaves of fat-filled flesh above the waistband bob rhythmically. Aw hell, I wish he’d leave me the fuck alone. Of course he’s going to ask me how he looks, modestly referring to himself as a fat cow, trying to evoke pity, conjure up a compliment. Then he’s going to drag me away from my writing to go watch the hangings at the Dangle Bar, laughing as the accused ejaculate all over the stage the moment the rope snaps their necks, taking enormous gulps of his Bavarian ale and hollering for them to bring out the next one, his gaseous breath blowing off the clinging flecks of foam from his mustache. He’ll turn to me and tell me how some of the hanged are fags, he just knows it. Or he’ll shout, “Don’t he look like somebody who masturbates?!” Yes, of course, whatever, Chancellor, can’t you just leave me alone? I have some writing to do. Feeling a little tipsy, think I’ll just—No, no, you sit right down here. Free drinks! No free thinks! Then we stagger out of the bar and I’m too drunk to even get it up but he insists on buying us whores. The only good thing is that he usually gives me the more attractive one because he likes to watch us while he fucks his. Even though I don’t want to let him watch, don’t even want to be anywhere near him, his power is such that I have to acquiesce. He is the Chancellor. Then we’ll go back to the hotel and he’ll make me read him stories until he falls asleep, which sometimes takes hours. He prefers Bible stories and any children’s books that in some way or the other involve the mother as an integral part of the plot. He’s developed an extensive guideline for this. Then he’ll sleep, occasionally crying out for me to come ‘rub salve on his feet.’ But tonight, to my dismay, he collapses in mid-pirouette. I roll him out of the room and continue writing.
My second published book, Jack and Mr. Grin, is now back in print for the first time in years. I pulled this and all my other Eraserhead Press and Lazy Fascist Press books from print back around 2018 after I realized they hadn’t paid me in like a year. No reason. No apology. Lesson learned. Anyway, I was never happy with the original publication so it’s nice to see this edition come out looking the way I want it to and edited the way … well, edited period.
As always, thanks to the handful of you that have stuck around over the years. I truly can’t express how much it means to me.
Jack Orange is a twentysomething guy who works at a place called The Tent packing dirt in boxes and shipping them off to exotic, unheard-of locales. He thinks about his girlfriend, Gina Black, and the ring he hopes to surprise her with. But when he returns home one day, Gina isn’t there. He receives a strange call from a man who sounds like he’s smiling—Mr. Grin. He says he has Gina. He gives Jack twenty-four hours to find her.
What follows is Jack’s bizarre journey through an increasingly warped and surreal landscape where an otherworldly force burns brands into those he comes in contact with, trains appear out of thin air, rooms turn themselves inside out and computers are powered by birds. And if he does find Gina, how will he ever survive a grueling battle to the death with Mr. Grin?
Gladys goes downstairs and aggressively taps on her husband’s shoulder. Her husband’s name is Hank.
“You gotta go upstairs and talk to that boy,” she says.
“What’s the little jackass done now?” Hank asks.
“Why, I left him alone for two minutes and he done cut off his balls and glued them to his forehead.”
“For Christ’s sake,” Hanks says. “Let me get my pants on.”
He puts his pants on and heads for the stairs. Gladys calls out from behind him. “And remember to call him Snake or he won’t answer ya!”
Hank gets upstairs and opens the door to the boy’s room. The boy, “Snake,” lies on the bed, wistfully staring out the window, his balls glistening on his forehead. Hank snaps. He rushes over to the bed and begins shaking the boy.
“You listen here,” he says. “If you think you can get away with murder just ’cause you got them damn leg braces, then you got another thing comin’. Get them balls off your head.”
“I can’t,” Snake says.
“Well you better find a way.”
“You try it. They’re glued.”
Hank angrily reaches out and clutches one of the testicles in his fingers. The thing won’t come loose. It just squishes there between his fingers.
“That does it,” Hank says.
He yanks Snake off the bed and throws him to the floor, the boy’s leg braces clattering.
“Get your pants down. I’m givin’ you the spankin’ you deserve.”
The boy moans pathetically and frantically tries to crawl to his bathroom.
Gladys comes into the room before Hank has a chance to spank Snake.
“Hank! You cut that out!” she yells.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he says. He kneels by the bed and begins to pray.
Snake makes it into the bathroom. He finds a razor and slashes at his wrists. The blood courses out and Snake discovers he can now walk without the aid of the braces. With blood-covered hands, he removes the braces and tosses them into the bathtub. He throws open the door to his bedroom and charges across the room, launching himself through the glass in his window. He plummets to the ground outside. His parents call the ambulance but a hearse shows up instead. Which is appropriate because Snake is dead. He lies in a crumpled heap on the front lawn. A huge man gets out of the hearse.
The man is a gravedigger.
He takes an enormous shovel from the back of the hearse and proceeds to dig a hole in the front yard. Once the hole is deep enough, he nudges Snake into it with his foot.
Snake’s parents stand on the front lawn, crying as the gravedigger finishes filling in the grave. After tamping down the dirt, the gravedigger tips his hat to Snake’s parents and gets back into his car. Hank and Gladys go back inside the house to begin anew.
