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It was Monday morning, and the cat and I were staring sulkily upward into the moon-sized crater in the ceiling of my loft. Indubitably, it had been the result of the constant pounding on the floor above by Winnie Katz and her lesbian dance class. The previous morning, after attending services at the Church of St. Mattress, I'd finally gotten Rambam on the blower and he'd promised to call Joe the Hyena to round up several handpicked members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Rambam also promised that he and the workmen would show up this morning at eight o'clock sharp. It was now ten-fifteen and there was no one in the loft but me and the cat.
"It's a shame what's happened to the glorious tradition of unions in this country," I said to the cat. "We've gone from legendary leaders like Joe Hill to modern-day mob leaders like Joe the Hyena. Of course, without Joe the Hyena we wouldn't be currently receiving the help we're currently not receiving. What would Woody Guthrie or Tom Joad have to say about all this? At least we can thank the Baby Jesus that lesbians don't have unions. We'd never get this damn ceiling paid for."
The cat absorbed my comments in a state of stoic silence. The cat was a Republican and had never cared a flea about the problems of the working man or woman in America. I, on the other paw, had a great deal of sympathy for the plight of the working person. It couldn't be said that I had a great deal of empathy, however, seeing as I'd never worked a day in my fife unless, of course, you wanted to count my two years in the Peace Corps, where I labored rather fruitlessly in the jungle teaching people who'd been farming successfully for over two thousand years how to improve their agricultural methods. The only things that came out of all the time and effort I expended there were a large harvest of tedium, a tattoo, a handful of friends I'll probably never see again, two blowpipes gathering cobwebs on the wall, and an occasional late-night craving for monkey brains. Some would say that's pretty good for eleven cents an hour.
"Monkey brains" I said to the cat, as I drew my second cup of espresso, "are considered quite a delicacy by the Punan tribe of Borneo"
The cat wrinkled her nose slightly in a moue of distaste. She followed this patrician behavior with a barely audiblemewof distaste. Like many cats, and many Republicans, she was extremely ethnocentric. Her attitude toward the Punan tribe of Borneo might be effectively summed up as: "Let them eat monkey brains"
Just to irritate the cat, I stayed on the subject a little longer than was probably necessary. I lit a cigar and, with a certain professorial detachment, watched the fragrant blue smoke billow upward into what used to be my ceiling. Then I continued, undeterred, with my anthropology lecture, which I could tell was starting to make the cat want to climb a wall. If the truth be known, it wasn't all that exciting from my side of the lectern either, but if you're waiting for Rambam and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers you've got to pass the time somehow or you'll inevitably become highly agitato, then you'll snap your wig, then you'll hang yourself from the nearest passing shower rod, then you won't ever have any problems with your ceiling again because your floor will be the sky.
"The Punan tribe of Borneo are nomadic pygmies" I continued, "who by this time have no doubt been displaced by some totally unnecessary government dam or have ceased to exist entirely because some Japanese lumber conglomerate has cut down all the trees. No trees, no monkeys, no brains, no Punans. The only anthropological relics of their existence, indeed, may be these two blowpipes one sees exhibited upon this wall."
As I turned to direct the cat's gaze to the wall in question I observed a rather curious scenario. There were not only no trees, no monkeys, no brains, and no Punans. There was also no longer any cat.
Fighting down a mild panic, I had just begun to start searching for the cat when a noise that sounded like a foghorn from a large ship at sea drifted ominously into the loft. I walked over to the kitchen window and shoveled a glimpse four stories down at Vandam Street. It was pretty foggy out there and I couldn't see the ship. No trees, no monkeys, no brains, no Punans, no cat, no ship, no ceiling. Have a nice day.
The foghorn sounded again, and this time I flung open the window to the arctic void that was New York City in February and noticed a rather nondescript van parked on the sidewalk somewhere in the middle of a necklace of garbage trucks. The van began spitting out several little stick men and one of them appeared to be beseeching me from the street.
"Throw down that fuckin' puppet head!" shouted Rambam. "I'm freezin' my ass off down here!"
I wandered over to the refrigerator and plucked from the top of it the last cheerful face in the city. The face belonged to a little wooden puppet head, and nobody knew where the puppet itself was now. Very possibly its strings were currently being pulled by a crippled ballet dancer on the seventh ring of Saturn. But as far as the head was concerned, it was still smiling, even with the key to the building wedged firmly in its mouth and a brightly colored parachute attached from the place where its neck would've met its body. I threw the little head out the window and watched it float gracefully down into Rambam's rapacious hands. 'Men I closed the window before my own neck froze off my body and somebody tied a brightly colored parachute to my scrotum.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are" I chanted loudly, or I'll puff on your whiskers with my big cigar."
The cat and I did not enjoy a particularly healthy or mature relationship, and certainly the cat did not come out from wherever the hell she was. In a state of high exasperation I gazed up at the ceiling, and that brought me back to the situation at hand. This was hardly the time for a game of cat and mouse. Winnie Katz and her lesbian dance class had done severe damage to the ceiling of the loft and, to add insult to injury, Winnie had refused to take any responsibility or to help pay for the necessary work required to fix it.
"One man's floor is another man's ceiling," I'd told her rationally over the blower.
"It's oneperson'sfloor, cowboy," she'd said. "And there's nothing wrong with my floor. Your ceiling is structurally weak."
"Right:' I'd said. "And how many lesbians do you think can dance on the head of a pin?"
"I wonder how many can dance on top of your pinhead?"she'd said, and hung up the blower.
No doubt, I'd sort out the cat and the lesbian situation later, I figured. I could hear Rambam and the workmen coming up the stairs, and with any luck they'd be on the job soon. The ceiling did look structurally weak, actually, and besides, staring at that yawning chasm was beginning to give me an empty feeling. Like I'd been living on this planet for fifty-three years and all I had to show for it was a hole in the ceiling.
"Joe sends his best:' said Rambam, walking in the door with the puppet head in his hand. "He also sends Vinnie and Gepetto."
"Jesus Christ!" said Vinnie, as I started to introduce myself. "Who the hell lives up there? A fucking elephant trainer?"
"A lesbian dance class," I said.
"Dat explains it," said Vinnie. "What time is it?"
"Ten-thirty," I said. "But it's no problem. We've got all day -- "
"All day?" said Vinnie. "You gotta be kiddin' Dis could take all week'
"Sorry we're late, by the way," said Gepetto. "We had to stop by da fish market to -- uh -- take care of a little business dis morning Shit, man, dis looks like a big job. Could cost a bundle'
"Joe told me he'd give Kinky the Israeli Discount," said Rambam.
"I know," said Gepetto, "but he didn't know da hole in da ceiling was big enough to hide Jimmy Hoffa'
"I'll talk to Joe again" said Rambam. "Right now I've got to run. I've got to pick up a delivery of sock puppets at the airport. You guys might as well get started, and I'll check back later. In the meantime, ask Kinky if there's anything you need'
"Hey, Kinky," said Vinnie, as Rambam started down the stairs, "dere is one thing we might need"
"What is it, Vinnie?" I said.
"Mustard" said Vinnie. "It's lunchtime."
Copyright © 1999 by Kinky Friedman
Excerpted from Spanking Watson by Kinky Friedman
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
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