Lerwid & Me.

 

One time--this was years ago--on a morning when I was attired in a brightly fubescent Collier shirt, I was granted a rare and precious audience with a party known to me only as Mr. Lerwid. He was curious about my participation in the local Youth Stringball League and whether I'd noticed anything in some of the young people which would otherwise fail to be mentioned. I opened up my case and removed a swifter monitoring device than some had thought current at the time. He expressed a modicum of dismay and requested that I retreat to just within earshot. As I departed toward a nearby lounge, out of the corner of my eye I spied one his hands--I believe the left one--make an evasive gesture before resuming its prior position near an unusual lamp.

As I moseyed along an accented corridor, my thoughts turned to a delightful episode that I'd seen on TV the night before. The less said about that the better. But I will say this, if you still haven't seen it, perhaps you should consider how you prioritize your viewing time. You can thank me later. Once I reached the lounge proper, I felt remarkably composed and realized that the personality I'd concocted out of 'whole cloth' could be a real asset on a par with a dazzling ability to convey a wholesome anecdote. As I sat and listened for any potentially fatal clues emanating from the office just beyond the atrophied brink, it occurred to me that most of this was the fault of someone with whom I'd engaged in a minor tiff. At the time I thought nothing of it, but I was plainly deeply mistaken. Once I'd removed my shoes an attendant approached and handed me a manilla envelope, a small glass ring and and empty almond package. When I looked up quizzically, he just snickered and left the area at once. I got the not-so-funny idea that they were just playing with me to check my reaction time. The joke was on them because by then it was already next Wednesday and I was about to depart for my annual hermitage in Brussels, Oregon. HA!

The next time I encountered Mr. Lerwid it was at the 1964 World's Fair in Flushing Queens, NY. He was sitting alone in a stall near an evacuated nursing home crying softly into a monogrammed hankie while humming what sounded like a sedimental ditty. I didn't want to interrupt his precious reverie and so retreated to a storage area in a local used car dealership. There I was introduced to my infant stepson for what seemed like the seventh or eighth time. I had the impulse to greet him by saying 'Hi Billie!' I squelched that idea because I knew for a fact that his name was 'Marvin'. Yes, you guessed it: he was named after Marvin Hamlisch. I think you can see why I was upset. At this point any normally senescent person would opine: 'It just goes to show you!'. And that person would be tragically correct, I'm afraid.

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The young lady in question has been requested to refrain from commenting on the following account. Can you blame her?

 

In the event that she is asked to gather our final things and lurk on one of the lower levels where a miniature finely woven brass basin holds a place of honor in the absence of former lurid affairs, I am warned once too often for my taste to take care that baked goods are supplied for the pleasure of our enemy. There is no position that I could take, either physical or psychological, that would allow me to ignore the directive, now that the very lives of community leaders hang in the balance; the time of playing with inflictable grains is at an impasse and all of us are bushed.

As I withdraw the remaining needle from its case and trace an intractable oval gently on her forehead to remind her of a time of fewer cares and stochastic obfuscations, there seems to be some trouble in the back where a bentument announces its disrepair with a yawning gap of function. She rides in the wagon that I've inserted into the pledator device and tries, without much success, to match her hair to the whispered lyrics of a song that we can hear from a neighbor's casual get-together. There is, however, an audible lump in my left clavicle. Each time she casually moves one of her hands in a display of rank defiance, I feel it right here where I've been sitting since I got home last year.

When I first met her in a State to the east of this one, she claimed to remember me as the person who once loaned her Uncle one of my spare winter jackets during a cold snap that had us breathing in a new direction. I told her then and I insist to her on this very day that I've never owned even one cold-weather outer garment, let alone had a spare, since I've spent my entire life until the previous month in Tampa Bay, Arizona and have the documents to prove it. She is unmoved. I stare past her into a trapezoidal seating area now filling up with smartly attired guests who ignore our every request for aid initiating a bon fire in a cup-shaped bantry pit over which we, for some reason, seem to have sole jurisdiction.

As a paltry dose of fluid finds its target in the waves of the mind, some honorable bureaucrats are encumbered by a feeling of wistfulness for a time when dully colored plastic placemats were all anyone could count on to bring a small bit of levity into a vain and pointless affair. Nevertheless, if our muted expressions of concern fail to do the trick once again, the host who has betrayed us to the authorities will be awarded a vintage spring-loaded ice-folding packet and sent on his way. You will know him by the way he hums in the dark. During daylight hours, though, you might notice him whistling. Or maybe not, since he does it very quietly. All we can ask is that you try to see if that will get you anywhere. Then you'll know.

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Restoration of Ordeur.

 

In our segment of the Lountical there's a standing order, to the effect that if one or more steadfast partially obscured membranes is to be braided within a stube tremple, then a graded innocuous torment will result in the extinguishment of any vapid fire that we insist on provoking in the mist. But, failing that--and this is how it always feels--the temperamentual signage posted at the Solid Partners' bondage site can be read in only one way. And that is to move extremely slowly in a westerly direction, all the while training one's gaze on a cubical hazelnut barnstorming league without which a random perch could have come undone years before now.

When we feel a textual wind in the space behind our ears, it will be seen as a time like any other, that is to say, if the prison within which our minds labor is for the first time to be identified and likewise if our tendencies to truncate the final syllables of inferior words in the presence of appalling supervisors, then the game we'd like to play will come to naught and our lineage will recoil in horror as any reasonable community members have a right to expect. The way we get them is to fabricate an artificial wampum bantry and place it just outside the reach of whatever prancing Hugenot will come-a-calling while we dither and delay any accountability and lounge to our heart's content by the pool of our own flagrant derision. It will grip them by their noses and not let go for Heck or a surfeit of liquids. A transom, in fact, you'll see.

But now, when our burden becomes a prissy night shade of dullness, the game our keeper plays is enough to wake several people's children on the wrong side of midnight. They might not be so understanding if we are forced to tell them what really happened on the night years ago when everyone tasted the same thing without warning or apology. The lengths to which some folks will go to avoid involvement in pageants of stridency is, quite frankly, baffling to persons of ablomative heritage. It seems like they've got a cusp on their shoulder which just won't let go. We could approach them with a solution, but all that would happen is that someone might get sick of waiting inside a car without access to barium. And that would be a shame. Because now the shemp is in the wind. And the wind is creating a new opportunity for folly. And 'folly' is my middle name. Except it's spelled 'F-A-L-L_E-Y-E'. And that's how you'll know me: by the tooth I keep in my shoe for a day just like this. Sorry, but that's all I'm permitted to recite at the moment, okay?

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A Statement of Personal Confidence.

 

Over and above the times I've been asked to lift three or four false boxes into place--and there were so many times I can barely keep track--I always knew I had it in me. And this was no trick. The emblems are sitting right there; you can see them for yourself--heck, you can even touch them! I was being taught the intricacies of the 'braiding problem'. But for my inability to hold my breath for more than three seconds while perched in a room, everyone in our group has been told repeatedly not to second guess internal weather and its intricacies, both physical AND emotional. For my own part, the erasures come quite naturally. In fact, it's the only time of day when the bleeding stops of its own accord. Beyond that, I feel as if someone has handed me some kind of invisible icon of innate sensibleness. But, at that very moment, a heartbreaking incident from the recent past reared its not-so-pretty head in the form of a rather non-inconspicuous wastrel who once accompanied my Father, the late Reverend Estes Persklin on a Mission stunt in Communist Romania in October 1983.

What happened was, this stooge, who goes by Ijin Fomerk, was set to adjust one of the rapidly disintegrating control mechanisms which are alleged to keep our team on the up-and-up. He insisted on adding certain invisible colors to the transition mix, thereby enabling passing units to make the leap without a telltale incident. I knew that he was redolent of fraudulent bookbinding and that his successor was even worse, if you can imagine that. During those years, I always liked to keep myself fully vetted in the eyes of indigenous ice-sampling rectors. It was something which I normally thought about while on the john. In this particular incident, I noticed someone in a nearby holding facility had made it his business to pretend that he was about to send me a lukewarm signal-of-intent. I made like the 'normie' altar boy I still am at heart and got in touch with his parents through an unmotivated third party. This is when all the 'trouble' started. Because no sooner had I clicked 'send' on the email than a very 'moist' nurse who'd been on-staff for barely a few seconds at best burst in and started giving me the royal 'what-for'. Thus you can see that I had very little choice. There was just no way that I could go on living this kind of a lie. It all came out. Everything. And now look at me. You don't want to know. Why is that?

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This is the only title which makes sense.

I've noticed a steadiness in her face. By all means, 'thinking twice' is not my forte. But when she seeks to enact a liveable tantrum, the feet which carry the body are mine no more. Even so, the pressure that her idle chatter exerts on the psychic resources of the 'common man' will go a long way to helping us find ourselves besieged anew. The parlor is where a tramp of her stature can safely ruminate while the fabric of space-time is folded in upon itself once again, rendering multiple banterings as just so much febrile slather. And this, for one so young, is quite the coup de grace. Tell him what it may and I will help you adjust to our newly released prayer schedule. This is what they won't tell you. I just did. Now you can try one yourself. Only if you feel well prepared should one so shocking reveal the abfactual troof.

The dream of a living mordant is more than your average sun-kissed Rector can ever hope to hold tightly inside a nuclear partition. The brim of our salvation is what will not be secured without the failing permission of a working class subaltern. In that footwear, anyone who strives for balance will seek a friend where no indolent shufflehound would ever think to look. But if I depart a lakeside bungalow and trick a fellow sufferer out of a cotton dollar, then shame on those who raised my standard in a ploy for isochondrial relief. These are the types of imbroglios which unaffiliated scientists always fail to consider. Their time is spent in a precious nightwad. And the circles they embellish are never more than a pantific mile in our Southerly finworm. As one who has guarded their in-laws during an electrical outage, I don't need any lessons from the fallen court. Any rope we find will seek its monitored fulfillment. Of this we seek no assurance. Without our love, the baby is a goner. Please pray for Marvin Butler.

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Patient News from the Lower Mid-Section.

 

Since the patient we've been caring for, despite our having been warned, has been observed switching items between members' wraps that are stored during the day in the cubbies next to her room, it was only fair to take matters into our own hands and put a stop to other things as well. Her hair is coming in very nicely now but try as we may it might never stand us in good stead to embark on a new project without the cooperation of her caretaker. This gentleman, even when seated, appears to try to treat one and all like just so many dime-a-dozen replacement parts in the human zoo that passes for our particular part of the coveted youth demographic.

When she uttered her first words in the hallway which borders the corridor everyone heaved a sigh of release. The rumor of her refusal to begin shouting was just that, a rumor. What wasn't a rumor was the way she tenderly played with a rare type of raisin which was spotted just out of sight in the boiler room where people routinely made calls to outlying areas under cover of darkness. Their faces would scream even as their mouths remained firmly shut.

In light of that it has to be said that even one suspicious noise would never be enough to rouse the crew down at Security. The 'blond behemoth' who called the shots down there thought he had a way with the ladies. But they just laughed in his immobile face, especially when he wore his Pleistocene T-shirt. It just gave them the creeps. Now they want to form some type of committee or club or something. It seems like all the young people are doing stuff like that these days.

When tendrils of acrid white smoke were observed emanating from under her special custom-made mattress our long-suffering Pekinese mascot turned several shades of magenta and bolted into the Dave room and needed to be intubated with a raspberry blond stewardess's lipstick canister. It's all we had left, given all the wartime tragisties. He made a full recovery in a matter of seconds.

Now the patient held all the cards. She ruled the roost. I bit my tongue to keep from laughing. My partner Jenny Randall kept her hand poised over the main power switch. Her little brother, Joe Sr., started twitching like the prick that he is. My landlord's lost wallet was found in the men's room of the Civil War Museum in Cleveland, Utah. All in all I think anyone would have to agree that it was a productive afternoon.

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This is not a joke.

An unretouched photograph of a true-life event.

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