• Excerpt •

LUSTER
Get up.  Time to rock it like a honeysuckle meter
maid.  Time to face the nightmare day.  A lot of
assholes depend on you.
Here begins my nightmare day.  I am a
twenty-four-year-old commissary runner at the
dog-racing track.  It is my duty to make sure that all
the concession stands have enough alcohol and
cigarettes.  It is not a gratifying job, and I do not
get along well with my co-workers.  I have been
clinically diagnosed with a busted ass, and at the end
of the day, when I punch the clock, I want to punch
the clock.
Of course, I am just biding my time until I become big
and famous.  Some call what I am doing now “paying my
dues.”  Others call it “building character.”  I call
it “suffering.”  My dream is to one day not suffer as
much as I suffer now.  I hope to be a rock star, a
famous orator, a television personality on the Labor
Day telethon, a poet, a philosopher king, a leader of
men, and/or a rock star supreme.  I want to rock it
like Chuck Norris on the tilt-a-whirl.
Dressed in my personalized work shirt, I walk through
our decrepit living room where a few of my brothers
lie around naked on the floor.  Despite my talking
aloud to myself, they do not awaken. Jerome still
seems to be passed out where I left him last night
after he was done threatening to blow my brain into
the hereafter.  

Alone, I wait for the bus, trying not to notice that
everything around me is dying the mildew death, the
great cracked concrete standstill that is the case in
the Midwest, a land that doesn’t know whether to stay
or grow, a realm that calls it quits after a Wal-Mart,
a Red Lobster, and a winning basketball team, an
undecided, unambitious region that ultimately ends up
a halfway house for humanity, full of pointless towns
and hindered sons. A god needs to drop a bomb here to
improve it.
Sometimes I awake to an awful noise, and I find myself
hoping that I am hearing a nuclear bomb falling on my
town, on this neighborhood. I either want all of the
world or nothing.  Until my future arrives, I have to
settle for neither.  And that awful noise always ends
up being gangsta rap bursting from one of my brothers’
car speakers.

PASSENGER
That crazy black bastard with the hair is talking to
himself again.  He’s been doing this for years, so he
don’t scare us no more.  Used to, he’d have a whole
big section of the bus to hisself ’cause we thought he
was dangerous.  But now, we’ll sit close to him and
don’t even look at him when he’s talking like that.
It just took some getting used to, and now I think the
bus would seem empty without that big black voice of
his.  Every once in a while, he’ll say something real
interesting, but most of the time, he don’t make
sense, like now.    
“William Blake wrote, ‘Without contraries is no
progression.’ I hold this to be true, and it may offer
some insight into the magnificent splendor that is
me.”
He’s always quoting people I never heard of.  Probably
rappers or basketball players or something.  Whatever
it is, it’s stuff that has no place on a Monday
morning on a southbound bus in a small Kentucky town
like this here.

LUSTER
One half of me is a proud escapee from the science of
life.  I cut loose from the George Strait jacket.  I
am physically incapable of blushing.  I am not subject
to linear thought.  I think in poetry.  I prefer the
backseat to shotgun.  I apologize to insects before I
kill their asses.  I cannot swim, nor do I feel the
need to learn.
The other half of me falls victim to the typical
urges, hopes, and dreams of the humanoids.  I want to
be rich.  I want to be big and famous.  And above all,
I want to love and be loved.  In these ways, I am a
slave like all the rest.  I want to rock it like a
slut with bad shoes.  I want to be thigh-high in Ted
Nugent nostalgia.
Like most men, I think about sex every six seconds.
But unlike most men, every seventh second I think
about how the girl would look wearing the burlap
pantsuit that my show business money afforded her.
Without these pre-programmed urges combined with my
weird-boy flair, I would stagnate.  I would be
condemned to living in the third world planet I call
home forevermore.  Without these contraries, Luster
Johnson could not progress.
I believe that my funk-ass uniqueness is a virtue that
will ultimately allow me to slip through some crack
somewhere in order to achieve the fame, riches, and
dream woman that elude so many others.  I believe that
my dreams will come true and everything will
eventually fall into place for me. Once I have the
fame and riches that allow a human to be taken
seriously, then and only then will I be able to exert
my inter-galactic clout in an effort to change the
spin of the Earth on the axis that represses, a spin
for the better, Lady Sajak.  This is me being an
idealist.
Robert Penn Warren wrote, “If you are an idealist, it
does not matter what you do or what goes on around you
because it isn’t real anyway.”  I could not agree
more.
I do not consider the humanoids to really be there.
They are merely holographic projections of what they
think they are supposed to be.  You are what you
pretend to be.  And even though they are not really
there, the humanoids manage to be the bane of my
existence.  And yet I do not like to see another human
cry.  And I want them to love me.

Off the bus and into work, my tightly tied shoes drag
me through the petty wage days, starting me all over
again at the end of a line of clock-punchers.  One by
one, we volunteer for another nightmare day.
Love me.  Love me tenderly.  I want to be loved.
Perhaps my overwhelming need for love stems from
growing up as the middle child in a house with 12
brothers (all named Jerome).  Maybe I needed more
attention and affection.  Maybe I want to rock you
like a mild thunderstorm.
No one has ever fallen in love with me.  I think this
is because I am so fucking weird.  The truth is, I
have nothing in common with anyone.

I now push a cart full of beer cases through the area
underneath the grandstands while many of the
spectators squeal above.  This duty is somewhat
difficult because so many idiot patrons get in my way.
Most of these patrons are dirty men and look
depressed because they are losing their money.  When
they do win here, they are losing.  No matter how much
money they get, it will never be enough.  You simply
cannot win betting on bitches.  You simply cannot win,
and there is always a camera on you.
“Hey, man, you can just put that beer in the back of
my truck,” says a patron.
I hear this or a variation of this comment at least
ten times a day.  I stopped making any sort of
response years ago.  These men, along with their
fathers and sons, mothers, wives, and daughters, are
all hooked up to the same giant mechanical brain.
This brain hovers above the stratosphere in the big
black sky and has nothing to do with God.  It is
man-made.  From it hang billions of wires that are
skinnier than rat hair.  Most people (id est—the
humanoids) cannot see these wires.  But on a clear
day, if I squint hard enough, I can see all the wires
playing Dr. Tangle and entering the base of everyone’s
brains at the back of their necks.  I cut mine long
ago, and it was a painless procedure, seriously.  
Nevertheless, I would like to think that I serve a
worthwhile purpose at this racetrack.  My beer will
make some sad men happy, if only for the few fleeting
moments of artificial happiness that a buzz provides.
But in reality, the alcohol I supply to these patrons
is not intended to make them happy so much as it is to
impair their wagering sensibility.  I help loosen
their wallets by subtly drowning out their memory of
how badly they suck.      
When one of these sad men bets a twenty-dollar exacta
on the two and five dogs, the mutual clerk types it in
the United Tote machine, which prints out a little
ticket.  If his bitches do not win (which will be the
case), then this man just paid twenty dollars for a
little white piece of paper, a two-minute scrap of
hope. The money their own nightmare days afforded them
is being spent on nothing.  Oh, but everything makes
perfect sense as long as I keep squinting.
“My truck’s parked right out front, buddy.”

BOSS
Just how he looks is bad enough—a big, tall black guy
with that big, Jeri-curled hair and those gay white
dress shoes.  But then he’s gotta be talking crazy
talk to himself, talking one minute about how he hates
everybody and can’t stand being around ’em and the
next how he loves everybody and wants to save ’em all.
He ain’t right.  Here he goes again.
“I am a child in my romanticism.  I am a flipper baby
in my idealism.  And admittedly, I cannot look an
adult in the eye without laughing.  But all things
considered, I am fortunate.  Studies show that
considering my personal background, family history,
and the habitat in which I grew up, I should be in
jail or dead by now.  Dead or in jail is the condition
of most of my brothers, the normal ones of the family.
I should be in jail or dead, but instead I get the
beer to the dog-track patrons and look forward to my
future.  As I said, without contraries, there is no
progression.”
“You’re really gonna have to stop talking to yourself
like that,” I says.  “I’ve had reports of you scaring
some customers.  And by the way, I’ve been walking
alongside you for ten minutes, you crackhead.”
“Joe is a redneck.  It says so on his truck,” says
Johnson.  “But Joe does not have to advertise his
social status on his vehicle.  Even if he rode a moped
and walked around with nothing but his Kentucky cap
on, his position as pure white trash would be evident
just from the empty look on his face, the same look
that eighty-five percent of the people in this town
possess.  Roger that.”
“Shut the fuck up, Johnson,” I tell him.  Shit, that
boy pisses me off, but he’s a hell of a worker-- I’ll
give him that.  And for some reason, there’s something
comforting about having him work for me.  Plus, he’s
been here longer than me even—nearly ten years.
“Hey, man, you can just put that beer in the back of
my truck,” says a patron.  I smile and laugh.  I
wouldn’t mind getting that beer in the back of my own
truck, to be perfectly honest.
“Joe, I am just trying to get through the nightmare
day,” says Johnson.  “If I had someone to talk to, I
would talk to them.  For instance, let me talk to you,
Joe.  Let me ask you: Do you have any dreams?”
“No.”
“I do.  I want to rock it for the sake of goulash on
the conch shell caviar table of life.  I am playing
for keeps, but not in the geometric sense of the
word.”
Johnson laughs at himself in that big, annoying laugh
of his.
“Shit, boy. I sure would like to be on whatever
you’re on,” I tell him.
“I hate it when people say things like that.”
“Shit.  Come on, boy.  It’s only fair that I’d think
you was on drugs by the way you act.”
“Hey, man, I’m parked right outside,” says another
patron.  I just kind of laugh politely since I heard a
similar joke a minute ago.  Johnson shakes his head.
“I guess you would find it unfathomable if I told you
that I have never done drugs in my lifetime,” says
Johnson.
“No, I couldn’t fathom that.  Not with how you are.
And specially not after hearing your brothers are drug
dealers.”
Another customer spots the beer being pushed by.
“Hey, man, my truck--”
“Shut the fuck up!” yells Luster at the customer.
“You people act as if you have never seen beer before!
I appreciate your attempts at reaching out with
humor.  I really do.  But you are not being original!
You people are stale.  You people are stale!”
“Johnson!  Shut up!” I says.  “I’m sorry, sir.  He’s
on drugs.”