Zombie Spaceship Wasteland (17 page)

Printed a recipe for Welsh rarebit, then decided not to make it

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Reed isn’t the guy’s name. I’m also changing the name of his club, which had one of the worst names of a comedy club I’ve ever heard and is now closed. Keep this in mind when you read the name I give it in this chapter—the real name was worse than the one I made up. I’ve changed Reed’s name on the vague worry he might read this and sue me—a remote possibility, since shortly after my stint at his horrible club he organized a benefit show for a local motorcycle club; a member’s daughter was battling cancer or leukemia or something. He then used the money raised to pay off a massive coke debt and flee to Hawaii. or someplace. No one’s sure. If you’re not the type to read footnotes, or you are and you think I’ve given away some deft comedic twist by revealing that Reed was the human equivalent of a spoiled pork sandwich, I’m going to say pretty much the same thing at the end of the paragraph this footnote interrupted.

^†
see?

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He actually said this.

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Drunks were kings in comedy clubs during the boom years. During the postboom years—1993 being the absolute nadir, if I remember— drunks were gods. or—who were the fathers of the gods? Titans. They were fucking titans.

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it looked like he’d eaten an unripe banana.

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That’s what always stayed with me, growing up in the suburbs—any outdoor activity can be viewed from dozens of curtained windows, like royalty peeping out from behind theater box curtains at random amusements. But I also always thought, “You don’t know what innocuous action, taken out of context, might affect the life of someone watching you.”

As a horrifying example, this story:

A friend of mine had a paper route all through the eighties. it ranged wide and it ranged far—at one point, as far from his house as he could get in our neighborhood. So one icy morning, he’s at the farthest point and is seized by an impending avalanche shit. It’s coming, and right soon, and it’s five in the morning and there’s no toilet in sight.

There’s nothing he can do. in the gray morning, he quickly drops his pants and defecates on a stranger’s lawn.

Who was in that house? Hopefully happy, sleeping people. But what if, in the depths of winter, there’d been some desperate soul who’d been awake all night, pondering his sorry lot in life, and had decided, around 3:47 a.m., “I’m going to throw open the curtains at dawn and decide whether to go on or end this pathetic charade here and now.” Come five a.m., he peers out on God’s creation, sees the paperboy shitting on the lawn, and hangs himself with a jump rope in the basement. Worst Beckett play ever.

The song-story tradition of North America’s “hobos” (a slang term that combines the words “hope” and “bowl of beans given to me for free by a woman who then initiated intercourse”) is rich and worthy of deep study. The above lyrics, recorded by traveling archivists, are a sterling example.

Clemm sings of a “Squirrel House Christmas,” which is a hobo-only holiday during which a group of hobos— or a single tramp—would ingest his body weight in alcohol and attempt to climb a tree (“squirrel house”) and throw pinecones at pedestrians (“Christmasing”). The vivid description of Clemm’s reproductive organ as being composed of cigarettes has a playful origin, since many hobos would trade a glimpse of another hobo’s penis for a single cigarette. Since Clemm uses the plural term for “cigarette,” he is boasting that he either

If
b
is the actual truth, then Clemm is further insinuating that his penis is free of the usual “summer plums” (chancres), “tuft tigers” (pubic lice), or “yipe stripes” (bruises brought about by beatings from railyard bulls or, more often than not, punching one’s own penis from sheer boredom).

“Eight dead wives” is not as morbid or violent a term as it first appears.

A “live wife” is a slang term for any debt owed to a fellow hobo. Since many hobos were forced to repay debts with sexual favors (“wifing”), Clemm is saying that he’s paid off eight recent debts (“eight dead wives”) and is feeling victorious (“my ass is full of soup”).

Compare the rollicking lyrics of “Squirrel House Christmas” with the more elliptical, tone-poem quality of “Toenail” Timmy Trimblish’s “Springtime”:

Whereas Clemm’s song is comical and boasting in nature, Toenail evokes a thoughtful, reflective quality.

Spring is a time of renewal in nature, and that goes doubly for hobos. One of the first signs of spring is bees, traveling from flower to flower as they gather nectar and unwittingly pollinate a summer’s worth of blooms. It is a sight that inspires poetic reveries—dreamy, hopeful inner vistas that remind us we are all, great and small, connected to the diurnal cycle.

“Bug-dicking” is a hobo term for this process. Note this excerpt from the rarely performed play
Shoebox Serenade:

LITTLE GIRL:
Look at the bumblebee on the pretty flower!

“Oatmeal pants” is a clever bit of “hobo code” and actually means “short-sleeved shirt.” Hobos were forever afraid of people asking precisely what they had in their pants, so they’d refer to any trousers they might be wearing as a “coconut shirt” (“coconut” = “white”) and any shirt as “pants.” “Oatmeal” is hobo rhyming slang for the color blue.
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Thus the lyric “oatmeal pants” is a way of saying, “I’m wearing a blue shirt, and there’s no reason for you to take any interest in what may or may not be in my trousers.”

“Salami whore’s twat box” needs no explanation.

“Fill it up with ants” is a term meaning “get some soup started” or, more generally, “begin preparations for dinner.” Trimblish has secured the company of a young lady and is about to make some dinner—possibly barley or millet in warm water, a celebratory dish for hobos. One can imagine Trimblish’s quiet joy as he fills an empty fireman’s helmet with sun-warmed water from a poorly guarded dog dish, slowly digging the millet or barley grains from his pocket (his “coconut shirt” subterfuge has paid off!) while, nearby, his companion gnaws lustily on her salami with her remaining strong molars. Hobos could be crass, but they never lacked sentiment.

“Dead mouse pecker puppet” also needs little explanation, except in the way of social function. Once the deboned and scraped-clean mouse carcass was fitted over a hobo’s reproductive member, he would entertain other hobos with “puppet theater”—usually retelling various hobo folktales. The “mouse puppet” would play various roles, such as:

Performing the same known-by-all folktales for other hobos (who would often interject random, personal embellishments or, more often than not, try to box the mouse puppet) could become tiresome. Where to find a new, unversed audience who could delight in these whimsical tales with the innocence of a child? Where could a large group of people be found gathered together? The answer can be found in the lyric “Wave it at a church.”

“Pickle berries” are pencil erasers.

Stuff I did on the Internet while writing this chapter:

Typed “Ilkey Moor” into Google and found a picture of what might be a goblin