M in Padukah

When I first put the gaze on him, I thought he was a poser. Well-built with expensive bicyle gear. I thought: a hipster slumming it, eh? Fancyish bike, riding around, wild eyed. Pulls up to the bar. I'd been there for a couple hours with an ex-con psychiatrist with his own vocabulary, and an introverted country boy aspiring musician. They were black guys, not that it makes a difference.

They were great in their own right, but they didn't need help like Matthew. They had roofs over their heads. Drinkin' (to take the edge off) smokin' (ditto). He was talking a mile a minute, not quite making sense, like a wounded animal writhing in agony, begging for help, for a year on the wrong side of Ohio. Der Verschollene – one of millions of veterans of foreign dirty wars. Reminded me of one of my 3 Hoosier spirit animals...

Nobody got drunk. Some people were getting really high, but in good enough spirits, given the circumstances of life down there. The deindustrialized husk that dances to the tune of the Epstein Class, but not for much longer, Greenblatt.

[You and yours in Mills' Power Elite are on thin ice. Everybody knows the score when it comes to neoliberal capitalism and our foreign genocidal adventurism. The United Colors of Benetton Liberal Elite – the filth of the planet.

Out here, in flyover country – I prefer where the Chomskyian critique rings with fewer neologisms in the Hinterlands – we've got the number of the diversity urban elite PMC motherfuckas. The bureacrats mailing it in with their pension legacy costs. The bribers of the shitbird pols. The Kid Fuckers.

Comin' ta getcha said the Godfather of Soul. Tar brush, feather and a rail, cocksuckas. We're gonna lean into it, with elbow grease and clenched fists, ya fucken faggits [sic]] Through a change of mind, of soul of consciousness – pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will!

But when you yourself are formidable, you don't mind criminals and DF / Unit vets [sic], with other things under their hat. Where you get to bookah bookah Bolshies, Hadjis, whoever they tell you to grease, Gooks too, back in the day. Don't forget the Red Man, constituent part of the 'Vanishing Race'. Don't remember how we got acquainted, sussed out he's homeless, invited him to crash on the sofa at Harrahs. Music can be important. Played 'Brothers in Arms'...

This song was chosen by Michael Mann for a poignant episode of Miami Vice (more high brow stuff on that show than most – dirty wars in Latin America, not Iraq and Iran...) He talked about his commanding officer, who must have cared for him, but wrote him off? I don't know and he didn't quite say. Family. Wives. Children – that was most scrambled. But I knew I got off light. He said one day he'd be president, because his father groomed him for it. Stranger things will happen one day. Possibly soon. Like the song opens with...

Maybe that's what touched the right chord. The black fellas were busy playing pool well, and we sucked at it, so we retired nearer the speakers. The Ex-con, whose name I do not remember at the moment, no. The Psych – the Autodidact with dreds. He was feelin' it – I told him his affect was ineffectual. He knew, but couldn't dial it back yet. Know your audience, then deploy surgical techniques, segmented approaches, so on and so forth, whatever it is.

The Autodidact was amazing, but he too, like Matthew, was badly traumatized and lecturing the bartender, after he'd menaced some fat gay shitbird in a cowboy hat. That shitbird lingered. I never spoke a word to him, enough side eye got him skeedaddling. Bad juju for him in that bar, that night, but things change, people leave, blow out of town and into another.

The bartender smoked with us. Overcharged for mixed drinks (too much effort) and undercharged for pitchers (easy pour). $8.75 for a pitcher of Bud, cash only, no tabs. Huh.

I too shared my epistles on this trip, but were more sub rosa, emphatic, but not too frightening. Making the point with my eyes and swagger rather than a raised voice. More can be done with controlled fury, as the Indios in Peru recognized in Werner v. Klaus. The introverted young musician country boy got tipsy for the first time and wanted to approach a girl. Later informed him to skulk around libraries rather than bars if romance is in the offing for a sensitive young black fella, or any nice fella, really.

I guess M's dad and step dad, if I have that right, fucked him. One way or another. Familiar territory, but i digested that, puked it up, and now I'm playing with it like a bored dawg contemplating offal. He was pretty shook up, but I assessed him eventually at 80 to 90% there, so I persevered and trusted him to spend the night on the couch at a casino.

We got 2 sixers of Corona. Went down to the overgrown and fuct river, undeveloped as it might detract from extraction. I think I had 2 or 3, my man polished off the rest and I began intimating that I'd heard what I wanted to hear. He said 'yes, sir' a couple times. Structure is important. I wasn't telling him what to do, I was suggesting that he not disturb my sleep, which is logical to just about anybody. And then the wives. They fed on him and it was His Officer Duty to offer of himself as the host, which is some kind of twisted German-American foolishness.

Long story short. Next morning, my 'generosity' (or was it grandiosity?) struck the wrong cord and M yanked the phone out of my hand and threatened to throw it and me out of the car. I put on a more elaborate cry fest than necessary, but it guilted him back to civility eventually. Having asserted dominance, and having elicited some Mephistophilean 'yes sirs' from me, we unwound with ciggies and breakfast with two other homeless denizens of the previous evening.

And this is where the Faulknerian element came to pass. It wasn't about M, actually, it was about a gentle old fella from the Midwest by way of the military from California. Homeless and wise – often a combo. He was going home again, family lived out in Palm Desert.

He called himself Pimp Daddy. He was old and white. But what he procured was free food everywhere he went, due to his service, and the deaths of family members, probably. He had a bus ticket to ride. His friend (not his girlfriend) said: 'He always talks about that ticket, but I've never seen it'.

So, I asked to see it. He didn't have it on him. He was gonna get it this Sunday, the day of departure, he said. I think that was true. The moment I got to the bar, he held his hand out to me to shake it. He was always touching me, like he knew something I didn't.

I touched the ex-con similarly. He responded with: 'You have touched me 14 times'. It wasn't gay. I was invading his space. And I apologized and explained and it was all good. He tore off and I have no photographic evidence. I may add photos once I get informed consent...

We never did find the chess pieces. I would have expected to lose, but I'd laid the groundwork for overconfidence, telling him: 'You're going to kill me'. And he said, in so many words: 'Yeah'. But I know hypermodern theory, and he doesn't. Might not have made a difference, but you never know.

As for M, we parted because I'd had enough and it was time to get up that river anyhow. I usually do so at dawn and it was going on 10. Got a text from him yesterday. He's back at the right end of Ohio. At least that's what he said. I believe him, but I too verify before I trust.

I wish him more than all the best in his future endeavors. If he's like me trauma and suffering will make him much, much stronger. Because human empathy could be the greatest yet unleashed force on this planet.

Yessiree Bob.