The Only Step Worth Taking.

 

Ever smaller parts of my Behavior Manual are now becoming clearer by the day. For example, if I'm asked to dust off a few trinkets and then place a coconut brooch at the feet of a hidebound semiotics instructress, it will be the least I can do to maintain even the dullest sense of bodily integrity without exposing, once and for all, my true motives. It seems that she'd rather I was held hostage to the baser desires of a third party to be named later. At about the time that an untoward rigidity is deemed suitable fodder for the vanity press in the Sarasota Triangle, anyone who's already been left in charge of a sacred shaft won't be long for this planet. That's because, if the kinds of folks who used to see me off in the morning decide to finally return a set of Croatian Marching blades in the moments just before the weather resumes its rightful place in our cognition, then we'll have no choice but to arrange a prominent mention of their dereliction to one or two flyboys who call this place their 'home turf'. It doesn't get any juicier than that, is all I'm trying to say.

So, I prowl the grounds nightly in the hopes that a brightly tinted object will catch my scorn and furnish all the justification I need to transport a boatload of Iberian co-hosts into the backyard echo chamber of those whose prudence leaves more than a bit to be desired. And, when the subject of my own inborn desire raises its skellhorn, you could do a lot worse than to hand me a sheet with a photo of my aftertour ticket boldly displayed. When I left my former vacancy and moved heaven and earth to see a part-time osteopath reap his just desserts, people insisted that they still didn't believe that I wasn't made of 'sterner stuff'. The light in the Southern chapeau was fully rusted and the names which were bandied about meant nothing to people like me. You see, we just were not raised to cause a ruckus no matter how many times our hands were patted down in a third-rate infirmary. She claimed that the sound my feet made as I softly padded through the servants' kitchen made her heart swoon with illicit desires. I knew this was wrong. Which is why I agreed to have myself put on instant waivers.

In an industrial neighborhood adjacent to a tidal pool in an unincorporated curatorial dictatorship, I signed up to lead the remaining homeless families into a coal mine at the apex of a sodden hill. This, I believed, would help me get my wings in the air and show the Fathers of the St Paul Society that I could be trusted to no longer hide behind invisible presences, as was all the rage in those days. Instead, what looked like a mammoth inventory problem erupted just as I was packing for a three-day exchange porthole. When I emerged hours later, laboring under the twin sabotages of 'Jik and Jek', I thought it only proper to don my finest evening wear so that I could dominate the zone and not look like a third-rate hack. However, when I finally DID look back, who do you think I saw standing there in a pink chiffon tutu basking in the admiration of an idolatrous mob? You guessed it! And, not only that, but I was forced—at gunpoint no less—to take back every cotton-pickin' thing I'd ever said about any of them before I'd be given a firm talking-to in the most uncertain terms. In all the hubbub, I almost forgot to slip a little something into the community water cistern, without which all my efforts would be in vain. I can't tell you how often I've thought back to my time in the Brazilian Coast Guard and wondered if any of them could be trusted to highlight a few infant projects. This isn't about anyone's innocence. It's about my money.

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