Based on a true story with liberties taken.
The phone rang in its off-pitch timbre from the olive green rotary housing.
It had been a very hot, hard summer. It would be great to get back to Vermont and get away from Athens. It hadn’t been a good year. The frayed sense of patience between them had all but dried up. The dream of living, teaching, and raising the kids abroad had been a glowing success. But the rift had grown too large, too expansive to continually bridge.
The same phone had rung two months earlier. DR KAROTONIS called to ask them to his office immediately. He had by pure accident discovered and confirmed that Junior’s lifelong asthma and breathing issues were rooted in something rather terrible and ominous. He had spent years looking at Junior’s X-RAY’s backward. It was a ridiculous and gut-wrenching realization. Junior had an extremely rare genetic condition.
Junior had been born with his anatomy developed in pure inverse. The positive and negative polarity of his DNA had been touched by a rouge chromosome that flipped a switch and formed his entire form backward.
The MOM had taken the news horribly. She was CRUSHED knowing that her son had syllia in his throat pointing inward. His heart was on the left side of his chest. He would be sterile and never sire SPAWN…. The long-term prospects weren’t much better. One in five million people who share this condition usually died before 50.
The DAD groaned a full-body roar and reached for the pack of KOOL MENTHOL cigarettes sitting next to the ringing phone.
It was his daughter's ballet teacher. She was stuck in Cyprus because of a ferry issue. She was calling to inform him that the GIRL’s final dance recital would be on Friday the 3rd.
Goddamit he thought to himself. The four tickets back to the States were already booked and now he’d have to shell out the 800 bucks to change the flights.
No problem, no problem, he grumbled and hung up.
He immediately called TWA and changed the flight from Friday to Saturday.
TWA FLIGHT 847 from ATHEN TO NYC
Leaving the flat and loading the shipping container had gone off without a hitch. The recital had been a bittersweet triumph. They all appeared as angels on the stage. Frozen in a
CRYSTALINE moment in time. Everyone was floored by the performance but heartbroken to say goodbye to her family of friends. Thus unfolds the childhood of EXPATs..
No one spoke in the car to the airport. The MOM and DAD had a row prior to throwing the keys through the mail slot and completely closing the door on that chapter of their lives.
They agreed to try harder and make a new go of things on the flight back. The whole terminal was pandemonium when they boarded but they were able to beat the phalanx of departing flights that morning. They would land 16 hours later at JFK to a terrifying realization.
DAN RATHER greeted the nation as he did every evening. Turning to the breaking news of a HIJACKED TWA flight from ATHENS to JFK.
A family of four from VERMONT was on board. Frantically the images rushed in of the hooded men with AK-47s on the tarmac. RONALD REAGAN expressed his concerns and prayers for the safe return of these American teachers and their two young children held in the bondage of International terrorism.
When the DAD approached the customs agent, he gasped and yelled for the supervisor. TROY came lumbering from the east side of the terminal to see what the HUB BUBB was about. To his shock and amazement, the family had changed flights and avoided the trauma of being victims of the HIJACKING.
The MOM set off the metal detector and dumped out her bag begrudgingly. TROY summoned the DOGS. They all had a laugh as one of them chewed the shit out of her diaphragm.
Years later the MOM would go on holiday in Ukraine. She took the train East to St. Petersburg the morning CHORNOBYL melted down. She missed the initial deadly radioactive blanket, raining death on thousands. She did however continue to carry a very hot reading on any X RAY or GIGER counter.
She would pass of cancer in 2008.
DAN RATHER addressed the nation once more that night to proclaim that the ballet recital had saved the family’s life. MIKHAIL BARYSHNIKOV chimed in with GREGORY HINES promoting their new film WHITE NIGHTS. They proudly proclaimed that the power of BALLET can bridge cultural and ideological gaps, saving lives from gun-wielding agents of chaos.
The family returned to their home at the base of the cup de sac. The greenhouse still smelled of basil and cilantro.
Many moons passed as the NPR played on the HI-FI. The family would only stay in the states for a year before moving to teach in the HAGUE.
JUNIOR’s best friend came to visit him in the Spring before graduation. He’d been quite ILL with MONO and continued to be a ragging maladjusted teenage degenerate. Out of ironic desperation, his parents shipped their pubescent psychonaut to the MECCA of legal debauchery. They hoped that seeing his long-lost best friend who’d come of age in the NETHERLANDS would oblige him to not quit in the final moments of high school.
KURT COBAIN had just passed. Junior played the GRISMOND and GARCIA album of DAWG-GRASS fusion in the BMW as the rain fell in buckets across the boundless seas of TULIPS.
They would immediately proceed to CREMERS on PRINESETRAAT.
Eating DRY cleaned LSD smuggled in a TOP MAN blazer seam from the UK. Smoking neon green nuggets of skunk from a cheesy plastic bong. Falling nuts over noggin, knocking out only to come to later. The pure magical mystery of tripping balls entering the VAN GOH museum. They would declare a blood oath to stay up and continue their adventures promptly after graduation.
It’s crucial to note the extreme turn down the left-hand path they would both take.
Junior returned to his childhood home only to TOIL for an eccentric alcoholic CHRISTMAS tree farmer. The friend worked the fields at an organic vegetable farm. Brilliant young minds relegated to back-breaking, soulless labor. Ensnared in a vicious cycle of excess and exertion.
Eventually, they would have a falling out and not see each other in the flesh for many moons. Too many bad trips in poor contexts.
The DAD continued roasting KOOLS while blasting to BACH and PAGANINI around the HAGUE. His son and daughter despised each other. Both were so brilliant and brutally opposed to the other's existence.
Teaching science was his passion and he was damn good at it. He would do so until his passing of lung cancer in 2019.
Junior and the girl would tally forward to degrees, jobs, and lives. The girl edited and produced comic books in ASTORIA. Eventually settling in MAINE to work and live out her days as a reformed HARDCORE CHICK.
Junior would live as he’d grown up as an EXPAT. He was the managing editor at a dual-language publication based in CHINA. His brilliance and rare sense of humor were legendary. The sands of time flowed slow and droll as the days and space between the friends elapsed effortlessly.
Fate would intervene in the most mercurial way.
The friend had been working on container ships. The life of a merchant sailor suited him well. Traveling the world seeing the sun rise and kiss the horizon every day. Steaming closer or further from the port.
It had been a standard passage and sailing from JAKARTA. The crew was given extra pay for the quick turnaround. At approximately 0330 a small sleek boat would quietly slip into sleeping GIBRALTAR's wake.
The men all passed the foil around once more as they began their approach. The engine screamed as they slid behind the stern of the mighty vessel. SING grabbed the hook and cast it to the heavens as he’d done a thousand times. SUN, CODY, and BAM exploded up the line toward the deck. Once all five men were on deck they immediately broke in all directions.
FONG sprinted to the bridge.
The first MATE was keeping the watch on the bridge in the dead of night alone. The MATE screamed a blood-curdling cry of terror as they crashed the bridge. There would be no conversation. The crew was rounded up and led to the mess. No one had been beaten or manhandled. Most of the crew had been fast asleep as they steamed through the strait.
FONG was furious. The captain was nowhere to be found. Captain SALAMONA had taken refuge below deck in engineering. He’s heard the commotion and was extremely furious about this unwarranted molestation of the voyage.. He’d picked up two cars and some other loose 40-high cubes loaded with amphetamine, porn, wine, and olive oil from Morocco. MISS PEPPERPOT had given him an amazing deal on the first press straight from the port.
These dick-face pirates were not going to just flip his whole program upside down. He’d managed to retrieve his MOSBERG and DESERT EAGLE from his quarters, then strapped on his fanny pack full of bullets and drugs. He scampered quickly and quietly to his favorite speed-smoking HIDY place.
FONG yelled into the hatch of the bulkhead leading to the roaring engine room.
The 220,000 horsepower COILS responded in turn. Cap’n wasn’t coming out. He clutched the cool grip of the shotty and peeked up. He could feel the clanking of feet but the engine was too deafeningly loud to ascertain where they were coming.
Suddenly they were upon him. FONG popped his pistol twice and CAP’n slipped left, under the compressor. The CAP’n returned fire and put a sizeable, messy hole in BAM, who flopped over like a side of beef hitting the floor off the hook. FONG turned and the CAP’n pulled the hammer again catching him square in the rucksack. He had three grenades and a block C4 that all exploded instantly when the buckshot hit. Due in large part to the general lack of quality in the fabrication of fragment ordinance.
The arc and sound were deafening rising over the purring of the turbines as huge pieces of gangway careened into the rotors. The motor began to choke. The machine would fail in minutes and violently explode. The Cap’n was creamed by the shrapnel and died almost instantly. As his life flashed before his eyes and thoughts turned to a young lady’s backside he once plundered. A full grin washed over his maw as the explosion consumed them all.
In that same moment, SING heard the sound. The friend stood up and they all looked at each other. No one said a word. Everyone pushed instantly through the hatch and nearly fell face first, charging up the steel stairs. On the deck, they could hear the horrible roar below.
SING and CODY grabbed the friend and charged to the rope. They said:
CLIMB DOWN OR YOU WILL DIE.
The friend descended the line very quickly and found himself on the deck of a tiny sliver of a ship one, one hundredth the size of the GIBRALTAR. The mighty ship was currently churning and banging like a BRONTOSAURUS that’s eaten a sack of land mines.
Their hearts all pounded as they skipped away from the horrible crackling and popping of containers exploding into each other. The engine block seized and a deafening clap cracked across the ocean's surface. The hull began to split, eventually jack-knifing into the water. The friend and the MEN spend away smoking cigarettes, trying to conceive the next step.
When they docked on a slip in MASAKAMBING everyone got off and proceeded directly to the brothel. The men all sat against the wall berating and yelling at all of the inquiring women. Between constant sips off the dragon's tail, howling like wild dogs.
Something extremely wrong had just happened. A full container ship has sunk and disappeared in the strait. Lloyds would send out a crack team in hours to start the dig. Running amok from island to island, tossing out money looking for leads. They all had to leave. NOW.
Over the course of several days, it was determined that they would all split up.
By pure coincidence, the friend had been talking on GCHAT with JUNIOR. They’d planned on meeting up in MACAU when his contract was done in the spring.
Junior picked up the phone and heard the friend's voice. It sounded RAGGED. Like a steak, drug behind a BIG WHEEL, up and down the driveway, then snuck back onto the grill. Serving the unwitting guests literal street beef.
It had been a lifetime since they’d soured in different times. It had been a dream they shared to meet as men and have a BEER. To catch up and break bread on the salacious tales of woe neither had told the other. The many colorful pieces that had paved the path back to them meeting face to face.
The friend said he was in Manila and would be flying to MACAU on Sunday. Junior asked the friend if he was still on the ship. The phone clicked off and he went back to sleep.
The cat looked out the window at a spider crawling up the glass window pane. The spider was bulbous and old. Lumbering. Junior awoke sometime later to a text and shooed off the bimbo he’d mistakenly brought home from the club. He’d taken to pregaming any evening out with a tall gigger of cool blue cough syrup the lady on the corner had been selling him for months.
Junior put on a tailored blazer and hard black GUCCI loafers. He fed his cat then poured up a proper gigger of sudo-antifreeze. Sipping it calmed him down.
His phone buzzed again and he hopped in a cab to the CASINO ESTORIL. The friend and his mates were playing craps., JUNIOR went to the counter and procured a thousand bucks in chips. He then made a b-line to the table underneath the sexy animatronic GODZILLA as he had been instructed. The friend put down his drink and embraced him. They both gasped and sat down.
The night wore into the morning. Many powders and beverages were passed and consumed joyously by all. SING had been on the fence about coming but decided it made more sense to follow this loud mouth IRISH sailor to meet his eccentric EXPAT brother in CHINA..
THEY WERE ALL COMPLETELY FUCKED.
The boss had already proclaimed a full-bore head hunt to round up the BAFFOONS who had sunk a goddamn container ship and all the booty. The friend was in a far worse spot. The news had already pronounced him dead and buried with the ship. But alas he would not be sleeping with Captain SALAMONA in Dave’s Jones locker.
The sun was rising and old folks were starting to pour in holding hot stinky bowls of noodles.
SING knew it was time to make a move..
Unbeknownst to the friends something sinister lay in wait.
SING had heard the story from the friend about Junior. About how he had a peculiar propensity for avoiding calamity and a heart that pounded on the LEFT side of his chest.
SING announced that they were taking the crew to a penthouse across town.
The friend and junior climbed into the suburban. Everyone was still completely PISS DRUNK and looking like those who’d seen things they couldn’t unsee. SING flicked his SEVEN STAR into the gutter as they rounded the corner.
They pulled up to the curb and were greeted by four men in suits. Something instantly seemed wrong. SING stepped out and pointed at the yanks and muttered something in CANTONESE..
The men yolked them both up and walked slowly to the palatial entrance of the high-rise apartment building. Jutting up like a middle finger against the backdrop of the bay and decrepit temple.
The doors open and they entered with SING.
The friend yelled in rage at Sing asking what the fuck was happening. SING didn’t say a word and raised his finger to his lips so as to hush them all.
The door slid open to the white marble foyer with a huge LOUIS VITTON chest that sat alone greeting them. They heard the voice. It told them to come in and have a DRINK..
They passed the case and entered a well-lit wood-paneled salon overlooking the bay. A kind lady placed an old fashion in his hand. They were asked to wait for the HOST to join them. Everyone found a place on the ginormous leather sofa that snaked around the room. Cigarettes and coffee were served as well.
A voice crackled over the HI-FI in CANTONESE.. Everyone left. Junior and the friend sat listening to the footsteps clack in syncopation as the HOST approached.
Then the HOST entered from behind a cloth drape behind the bar. His thick grey hair and imperial-length fingernails cascaded as he thrust his hand to engage the parlay.
Welcome my friends. I’m quite certain you’re both wondering what’s brought you here to my audacious home.
I’m a man of unspeakable wealth. I’ve collected so many things. Beautiful things made by hands and hearts that know nothing but a passion to push objects into the wild. To live and become ART. But what is behind it all? What extends beyond the boundaries of the work that’s made by these mortal hands? I traveled a twisted and despicable path and have seen things no one could ever unsee.
This is what brings me to you JUNIOR.
I’m a man who is always hearing stories. Sometimes these stories can lead a curious person like myself to find something profound. I heard a story recently. About a pale face YANK who was magically made bacKwards.
Why do you think I would find this story interesting Junior? What reason could I have for wanting desperately to meet a man with an anomalous anatomy such as yourself?
Well, allow me to illuminate you with my most exalted and cherished possessions. The friends stood up. Hand in hand they passed through an ornate door. They found themselves in a long corridor with high vaulted ceilings. Dim lights lit the floor casting glimpses of the smooth shiny cases that lined the hall.
The HOST clapped his mighty paws and the lights popped on.
Looking back at them was a true rouges gallery of the human anomalous cast in the CRYSTALINE resin..
The creatures who were once living breathing humans were on display celebrating their grotesque and malformed bodies liberated of flesh and left fallow to bone and muscle.
ONE CANNOT UNSEE SUCH THINGS.
Junior was very drunk from the whiskey, coffee, cough syrup, quaaludes, cocaine, and poppers that ragged through his frame.
The HOST approached Junior and took both of his hands into his.
You are the key Junior. You will become my most exhausted possession.
What is art, Junior? Is it a painting in a museum behind glass or a pillar crafted in the Parthenon?
So many times the fates were kind and ultimately delivered you to me. So many times you and that sublime body were spared from untold calamity. So many steps you took to finally stand before me now.
Junior’s eyes were glazed over with a CHESHIRE grin. His eyes appeared to be navigating a sand storm. He said nothing but kept smiling.
The HOST looked deep into his eyes and saw a ghost looking back at him.
Junior! I want you to understand what’s about to happen to you.
The HOST removed a flat piece of slate and placed it before Junior. He pulled out a golf ball size rock of cocaine and tossed it on the slab. He reached into a drawer and lifted up a stainless hammer. He waved it around the room wildly building up the searing tension.
This is my COKE HAMMER., BEHOLD!!!
The friends looked at each other.
The HOST had stealthily exposed himself as the friends stared in sheer awe of the COKE HAMMER in his vile clutches. The HOST now looked like a caged, rabbit animal clutching his throbbing JOHNSON in one hand and the most glorious hammer ever held by a man in the other.
He let out a low guttural tone and then bashed the shit out of the rock. It was rather messy but no one was complaining. The HOST calmed down significantly after burying his face in the BOLIVIAN mess that he had made on the slate. Pulling his powder-kissed face from the pile belted out something in LATIN.
OPERARIOS MORI OPUS VIVIT (THE WORKERS DIE BUT THE WORK LIVES ON)
He slumped himself comfortably into his patten leather throne that perfectly matched the leather straps he had installed as panels around the entirety of his domain.
Let me tell you about a man I know. He’s a stout man I call TEFLON. He works with his hands and heart and brain in a manner that is poetry to me. This man executed the wrapping of this very room of leather in which you now sit. However, this humble genius was once very unlucky. Fate dealt him pancreatic cancer. Everyone including himself sincerely believed he was going to die. But he did not die. The force was so unimaginably strong in him that it was able to conquer the pestilence wrought upon him.. Ninety-five percent of people on his path return to force. But not TEFLON. He fought the demon that grew inside his body into submission. This man conquered death and now continues his passionate odyssey in leather through this savage wilderness.
ART IS THE ROARING BEAST I WISH TO TAME
The HOST looked at them both intently.
Junior appeared to have entered a K HOLE-like state of joyful intoxication rendering him cognitively infantile.
The friend's eyes were wide open though. He had not started the journey sipping cough syrup.
The HOST looked the friend directly in his eyes
. Your friend is a very, very special piece of art you see. He is the GOD particle. What do any of our lives matter? Is the most ambitious thing that you’ve ever done less impressive than the most meager accomplishments of those you rever? How many people leave a legacy?
Why do we care about art?
Is it something we make or does it make us?
Why do we run in circles endlessly suffering, chasing the cheese in the maze? What are the choices that we make as artists? How many steps did you take to come to this place? Do you think that your genius friend will live to be an old man? How long do any of us have prior to the breath that flicks the wick? Not even the PHARAOHS could create art of the highest level that ultimately would not lose reverence.
I can say with absolute certainty that if I was the proud owner of the pyramids I would trade them in a heartbeat for JUNIOR.
You’re friend probably thought that he would once again dodge the bullet. If he’d change flights and miss terrorists. If he’d not been mad over anything so long ago that no one remembered what was sour. But alas, he too will pass into the void and live in our hearts and heads as we all do. They all float down here in the clear CRYSTLINE resin. They gaze back at me reminding me that there is still ART in this godforsaken rock on which we spin.
The HOST let out a full-body sigh and disappeared with Junior through a door at the end of the corridor.
The friend looked at SING. Hatred and vitriol filled his heart. But deep down he knew full well that nothing would be settled in the HOST’s home.
They all knocked back their drinks and proceeded to the lift. Back out on the street, it was morning and the hum of the hive was in full vibration. The friend looked up to the top of the tower.
Junior had been drinking cough syrup, chain-smoking, wasting away before the screen, and lying with foul hussies just pissing his already bleak prospects down the drain.
SING looked smug and put his arm around the friend. He told him how sorry he was and how he would make this square with him. He handed him a large LOUIS VITTON track sack and offered him a SEVEN STAR.
The day was hot and dry. The air felt dense with human essence and commerce. The friend clutched the sack and said goodbye to SING. He put up his left hand and pulled a scooter to drift him off quickly to the airport.
Perhaps the friend had not been a friend to Junior. He’d left his childhood friend who proclaimed himself a WANG scholar many times over to die at the hands of a madman wielding a COKE HAMMER.
The terrorists would go home and Dan Rather would forget all about the family from HARDWICK. The doctor who first looked at his X-RAY SPECS backward would regale friends and colleagues of JUNIOR’s peculiar anatomical malformity.
Junior was the most remarkable man. The HOST with brutal certainty encapsulated him forever in CRYSTALINE resin. His story would never ever be spoken as those who collect such things would go to no end attempting to acquire this monolith of genetics. Junior was cast to glow in the eyes of those who would never tell his tale again.
The HOST would die and leave his collection to inspire the BODY WORLD global phenomenon. The family had managed to dodge many syncretic moments that would have been perilous.
They didn’t die at the hands of early 80’s men wielding assist rifles thanks to the magic of ballet.
DEDICATED THE LIFE AND MEMORY OF
TUWAYNE URL GRAVY FORESTER 1976-2023
LANCE RAMBO DE LOS REYES 1977-2021
