Friday, October 9

Once, when I first got on permanent with IBM, Brenda and I and the boys
went on vacation to Ochopee, Florida, and stayed at the Golden Lion Motor Inn
on the Tamiami Trail. We went out to the Ranger Station, we drove the Loop Road,
we ate in the Rod and Gun Club in Everglades City, with the mounted tarpon on
the pecky-cypress walls. They took a Gulf credit card. We walked out on the boardwalk
at Fackahatchee Strand and saw a bee-tree. Beowulf is from bee-wolf, or bear.
"Anglo-Saxon Rhythms in Screed." Jack Remick. Seattle: 1981. Unpublished.
Mosquitoes that could fuck a cow standing flat-footed. We took the Wooten's Airboat
and the Wooten's Swamp Buggy tour. We rented canoes and paddled across
Chockoloskee Bay. We saw Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C.
on the motel television. I looked like Chris Cooper in Adaptation
and Brenda looked like Meryl Streep. Swiss Family
Correspondence Novel. David Zack and Bleeto
at the Immortality Centre in Tepoztlan, Mexico.
I asked IBM to let me write books like he wrote for my job.
Associate Information Developer. The IBM PC. I called the PC
Big Red. I said PC didn't stand for personal computer, it stood for
pubococcygeus, the muscle women contract when they squeeze their pussies shut.
I called Big Red Vagina Dentata, the Snapping Pussy of Doom. Did you hear the one
about the woman who went drift fishing with 27 guys the other night? All she got was
a red snapper. Guess what IBM said. I called a concrete lawn jockey in his racing silks
"The Spinning Fatalist." Civil rights, women's lib, gay pride, the DC-10.
Beware when you're gettin' all you want. A fattenin' hog
ain't in luck. I wore bib overalls, red, horsehide brogans,
a jipijapa hat, a feed-sack shirt, and went to Ethnic Heritage Day
as a Florida cracker. I took a banana pudding with a yard-egg meringue
from Brenda's backyard chickens as my Ethnic Heritage dish.
"Country," I said. "My wife wore flour-sack drawers
so long she had dumplings in her crack."
The black experience citizens looked at me like
I was balmy, daft. Stone fucking crazy.
Didn't I know I was supposed to be
ashamed to be white. I wasn't white, I was a cracker.
Captain Charlie was standing on my neck too.
Do you think I am him? He doesn't. He is
an equal opportunity employer.
You're on top right now, baby, but don't nothin' stay the same.
Every once in a while, baby, Lady Luck deals another hand.