Hocking Gobs of Phlegm

With a Queen of Heart embedded up a symbolic sleeve of the poorly written pages of thematic arts, uttered in the black hills of controversial words, echoing the need for a home and spiritual eyes, Mikey lost his way and walked the streets of Hollywood. He spat in the milk of growing children and pulled his pud in front of nursing mothers, who sat out front of Starbucks sipping organic soy lattes.

Mikey had one ambition and one ambition only, he was writing a book titled, “The Adventures In The Unleashing of Conventional Modes of Perception & Behavior,” only he had no intention of ever putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboards. No, Mikey was the living pages of the title of his book, and it all started with a commercial and a bowl of cereal called LIFE that he was manipulated into peddling onto the rest of the world. When Mikey was old enough to develop some awareness of himself he discovered that his life began with him being the cute and cuddly kid who hated everything and wouldn’t try anything, yet he had to drink endless amounts of milk and shovel corn crisp day in and day out, while sub-mental kids spurred him on, saying, “Let’s get Mikey to try it, he hates everything,” after which they cheered, “He likes it! He likes it!” But Mikey didn’t hate everything he just hated everyone; nevertheless, he tried just about everything and now he had matured into a cynical masturbator and a phlegmatic.

As a child Mikey was forced to drink so much milk that he embodied a never ending factory of phlegm, and he hated milk, as well as LIFE cereal, neither of which were delicious nor nutritious. He was constantly hocking loogies. And when he felt the urge, which was more often than not, it was no big deal for him to whip out his wang and blast a wad of jizz on some unsuspecting passerby or on some mannequin displayed out in front of the GAP, J. Crew, Ann Taylor or any other business establishment. I mean, he just gooed his spooge anywhere and anytime.

Mikey refused to accept the line that was drawn between the public and private sphere. He urinated on dogs and in lady’s purses (actually he pissed on whoever and whatever). He shit in mailboxes and on ATM machines, wiped his ass with cats, farted in the mouths of decrepit old people, knocked cripples down and out of his way, insulted and mocked the mentally challenged, slashed the tires of low-riding gang-bangers, punched business men in the face, ripped the underwear off of college students by giving them a rough wedgy, rebuked drug dealers and pimps while being a drug user and a whore monger himself. Mikey blew his nose on the pages of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, he reviled Woodie Guthrie, Bob Dylan, The Beatles and anyone who could capture the spirit of humanity in song, he did all of this and terribly more. But what he did most was hock gobs of phlegm and chronically masturbated.

The first time I met Mikey I was having a bite to eat and a drink at the Pig and Whistle off of Hollywood Boulevard between Las Palmas and Highland. Mikey walked right up to my table, dropped his shorts, took a big shit directly on my mushroom burger and spit in my beer. And it served me right for eating in the fucking stink-hole of a place.

Now some tough guy might challenge me, asking, “Why didn’t you stop the fucker or kick his ass?”

Well, I’d like to see someone not look stupidly surprised and shocked when some unsuspected freak flops a load on your food while you’re reading the newspaper and enjoying a cigarette in between bites and drinks. There was no time. It was like, “What the fuck, there’s a turd on my burger and a loogie in my beer.” I mean Mikey was the Pig and he went whistling down the street after he pulled some bald guy’s wig off his head and wiped his ass with it after he shit on my mushroom burger. The sheer nerve and the audacious spirit of the guy was awe inspiring. He left a stench that lingered the distance between La Brea and Vine. It made no difference what he wiped his ass with as long as it remained wiped. That was his only concern, and he didn’t lose any brain cells trying to succumb to conventional or acceptable forms of material, like toilet paper, when it came to wiping his ass. He was a strict utilitarian.

Mothers crossed busy boulevards and avenues to avoid walking on the same side of the street as Mikey. When the news papers published that Mikey grabbed a swaddled infant out of her walker-crib and wiped his ass with the newly-budding baby Hollywood Boulevard went up in arms. Mikey argued in court that it was Hollywood herself that supported, even encouraged, his obscene behavior. According to the tabloids Little Mikey killed himself by ingesting too many Pop-Rocks while downing mass quantities of RC-Cola. “I’m not even here. I don’t exist. You killed me, judge,” he told the Honorable Magistrate. And as stupid and as asinine of an argument as it was, the fact of the matter remained, in a city like Hollywood, Mikey was, for all intents and purposes, dead: the little boy that America grew up with and ate breakfast with every morning was indeed dead. And the only way Mikey could affirm his existence was to use a runt’s face to wipe his ass because Mikey had grown tired of people trying to convince him that he was no longer among the living. Hollywood even produced a watered down version of the adult Mikey (played by Michael J. Fox), depicted as a well-mannered slob, who stumbles into becoming a foster parent. Mikey contended that it was the press and concerned parents who initiated the rumor of his death. “Someone with a lot of money wished to wipe out Pop-Rocks’ profits, labeling them as dangerous when enhanced by RC-Cola, as this person wished to protect the pill-popping, speed-freak industry, which lived up in the Hills.”

Mikey’s trial was the headliner to a bill that included Isaac’s fight with the City of Los Angeles. Issac was a black Jewish cabbalist, and could numerologically pinpoint who a person was and what a person would become. He also claimed to be one of the original GAP Band members, but was screwed out of his money and his job. He wasn’t too pleased about being jilted. Isaac was also a regular at the Brass Monkey karaoke bar. I never saw the cat do karaoke, in fact I suspect he avoided it, but he could be found shit faced and acting up by 4:00 pm at the Monkey.

Isaac came into the courtroom, wearing torn-up pants and a dirty, white T-shirt. He was shoeless and had a potato sack overflowing with cotton slung over his back with a plastic ball-and-chain shackled to his ankle, shouting, “MASSER, why you always trying to keep the black man down?”

The press never got a whiff of Isaac’s performance. But if you were there you were among God’s true stars of Hollywood. The judged dismissed the case the moment Isaac came through the doors. He didn’t even require him to pay the petty ten dollar charge for simply being granted the privilege to stand and be judge by an Honorable Magistrate.

Isaac had been booked, charged and released for ripping up a citation issued him for jay-walking and throwing the shredded ticket in the cop’s face, shouting, “I’m a fifty-five-year-old man, if I don’t know how to walk across the street safely you should lock me up, mother fucker! And I’d like to see you try. I’m a master numerologist. I’ll fuck-up your celestial noodles!” (And Isaac could, but he never could figure out how the GAP Band screwed him out of his money.) The Popo thought Isaac was threatening to kick him in the balls, so he arrested Isaac for terrorist’s threats.

Mikey came into the courtroom wearing a six-hundred dollar pair of Romeo Gigli spectacles, a tailored white dress shirt and soiled boxer shorts, which depicted a stencil of Jake La Mada’s busted-up face on the crouch. Mikey’s extra-large balls could be seen periodically sagging just below his shorts, resembling a wad of chewed-up bubble gum. His feet were shod with florescent green flip-flops and his head was wrapped in a beach towel. He pleaded, “Not Guilty.” The judged refused to issue Mikey a trial date but called him into his chambers, after which the case was dismissed when Mikey gave his word to never again wipe his ass with a child or any other featherless, two-legged creature. The mother of the child went bat-shit crazy, shouting that the judge was biased because Mikey had been a childhood star. It took every ounce of self-control that Mikey had to not grab the distraught mother and wipe his ass with her, but he gave his word, and whatever Mikey was he was no liar.

I followed Mikey out of the courthouse and onto the subway. He got off on Hollywood and Vine and then walked over to the abandoned World of Books store, where he and the one-legged Vietnam Vet, who daily polished the stars (one of which was Jimi Hendrix’s) out front of the no longer existing World of Books book store. The two of them discussed how Mikey’s case went that morning, and then they transitioned into a violent and bitter rant against the new developments of Hollywood Boulevard. They were about to head over to Grauman’s Chinese Theater to defecate on John Wayne’s and Bogart’s hand and shoe prints but I talked Mikey into having a drink with me.

The Spot Lite was the hangout for convicted criminals, who happened to be transvestites, queers, and powerful prison queens, who could start full-blown prison wars. Mikey frequented the place, in fact, he would only have a drink with me if I agreed to buy him no more than two drinks at the Spot Lite. I had never been in the joint, but I had walked by it numerous times throughout my life. On more than one occasion I witnessed a burly transvestite pounding the shit out of some loud mouth, corn-fed redneck. I had also seen two, bearded transvestites bashing each other’s head on the pavement, into parked cars and against a steel garbage bin. These fellas were as tough as they were charming. I had also been catcalled a few times by a transvestite smoking outside the Spot Lite, and I was always able to deflect the gesture with a little flirtation of my own or pleasantly ignore it, but I sure as hell wasn’t indifferent; rather, I was slightly terrified by the place. Once, I’d even seen a prison-bus stop in front of the Spot Lite and drop off a number of transvestites and queers.

The place was dark and damp. The vinyl barstools were cracked and crusty. The walls were black and sticky. Jimmy Boyd’s Jelly On My Head was playing at a pleasant volume through the jukebox. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dehipZ850O0&feature=related)

Mikey ordered a glass of Lagavulin Scotch from his private stash, which the Spot Lite kept for him behind the bar and only charged him five dollars a glass. He kept a bottle there attempting to acquiesce to his doctor’s orders, who demanded that he stop drinking. Once a month he would buy a bottle of the Scotch, walk over to the Spot Lite and hand it to the bartender, who would open it for him, pour him a glass, charge him the additional five dollars and then place the rest of the bottle on the top shelf behind the Jim Beam. Mikey had one glass of Lagavulin every four days but today he wanted two. I ordered the only top shelf Bourbon the Spot Lite offered, Jim Beam.

“So, what the fuck do you want?” Mikey asked me.

“I’m not quite sure,” I answered stupidly. “Last month, at the Pig and Whistle, you shit on my mushroom burger and spit in my beer.”

“Yeah, so what, you shouldn’t have been eating at the fucking cunt-hole of a place. You’re not a sensitive twat are you? I’d wipe my ass with you right here and now if I hadn’t given my word to the judge this morning. Piss me off and I’ll have one of these butch skag-draggers turn you into a sailor’s cup of tea as they cornhole your saddle. Hey, Lonnie, come over here. I want to introduce you to someone.”

“Fuck you, Mikey, can’t you see I’m busy,” Lonnie shouted as the she-male was bent over the pool table, attempting a three-ball-combo in the side pocket, with his sundress hiked up to his waist, and his sweaty ass hairs dangling out of his ruffled panties, which were stretched tight around his fat ass.

The jukebox switched to John Rox’s I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yywq7a6Hvho), sung by the child star, Gayla Peevey, who became a whisker on the Easter Bunnies chin, hiding eggs from children, and never growing larger than Thumbelina’s toe .

The Spot Lite was getting moist and ornery.

“No, you’re quite right. I thought the same thing myself: the burger stunk, the beer was shit and it was all well over-priced,” I nervously but whole heartedly agreed.

“Like a fucking Hollywood film or Bore-ack My Bottom’s bailout.”

After a long silence Mikey asked, “So you don’t know why you asked me for a drink?”

“Well, I guess I’d like to know what sort of women find you a attractive, I mean…”

“Take a look around this place. It’s fair to say that the omens have foreshadowed bad fucks for Little Mikey. There ain’t no Haley’s Comet blazing a path in my sky,” Mikey answered. Then he wrung his drink and asked me to order him another one.

A buffed-out Austrian transvestite, who didn’t make the cut for the Viennese Boy’s Choir answered a call from Warner Brothers, but found himself in an entirely different line of work than he expected, was going around the bar showing off his scrog scrapbook, which depicted the she-male getting screwed by politicians and Hollywood producers. He was singing and whistling, “I only cost a nickel and if that’s too much for you, take me for a penny and I’ll thank you kindly.”

“I’m sick of the Hollywood prattle, where permeability saturates morality and is hypocritically regarded over aggressive penetration,” Mikey muttered irritably, as his eyes turned gargoyle green. He spit a loogie over the bar and onto the cash register. Miley was visibly growing more-and-more agitated, quoting Mark Twain, A monotonous career of violence and bloodshed, then he pounded his second drink.

I didn’t understand what he was getting at.

All of a sudden Mikey jumped on top of the bar, ripped the towel off his head, tugged down his Jake La Mada boxer shorts and flopped a turd right on the bar.

“God-damn-it Mikey, not again!” Ernie, the bartender rebuked him.

“My freedom demands it this time, Ernie, so fuck-off!” Mikey shouted, flipping everyone the bird (like Flipper the Dolphin), bulging his eyes and smacking his butt cheeks, as he pissed in the bar-well. Then he dove on a man, who strangely resembled the famous Hollywood Producer I had recognized at Mikey’s courtroom hearing. The Hollywood Producer looked more amorous than frightened. Mikey unashamedly shit-fucked the man, who unashamedly offered up his rump for all to take more than a gander; and there was indeed “quite” a number of “quite” large and greasy tranies pounding their meat across his face.

The tapestry devil was doing a pirouette, fanning flagrant fellatios. Then I saw something that baffled me all together: the judge, who presided over Mikey’s case, had slipped into the Spot Lite undetected and was now jacking-off in a dark corner wearing a Mickey Mouse hat.

I snuck out of this bestial ballroom, which was reminiscent of a Greek Philosopher’s after party, as the jukebox dropped another Jimmy Boyd 45: There’s A Little Train Chuggin’ In My Heart (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwCBm7rpZio&NR=1)

copyright 2010 Jim Lopez

First Published in PARAPHILIA MAGAZINE Issue Seven

THE MONGREL GUN SLINGERS

The last time Georgia (a Yankee Doodle, donkey milking skag dragger) escorted a college girl (who had been featured in an episode of Girls Gone Wild and had trouble pronouncing her vowels) to an abortion he drove her to a Methodist Church, walked her up to the pulpit, made her say her prayers and then pushed her down a flight of stairs. That was a week ago, but now he and I were sitting in a cantina, listening to romantic songs in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

Rumors were circulating that the Mongrel Gun Slingers had crossed the border and were now themselves in Cuernavaca. It was said that they had massacred a patrol of Border Control Officers and a number of cartel members in Ciudad Juarez. The Mongrel Gun Slingers were the Darkness in the heart of Light. They were the arm of justice, ruled by one law: the prayers that cried out for vengeance loosed the Mongrel Gun Slingers into this world. I didn’t think much about the rumors but Georgia couldn’t stop talking about the Mongrel Gun Slingers. He had some deep, disgusting desire to go out with a bang and get tag-teamed by them and, well, Georgia was getting closer to his dream.

I shook my dick, zipped up my fly and walked back into the cantina to order another Havana tres aῆos rum when I saw the Mongrel Gun Slingers for the first time. I didn’t know exactly who they were, but I felt an eerie crawl down my spine as I stood next to a large women sitting next to a large man at the bar. No one had ever lived to tell what the Mongrel Gun Slingers looked like for certain, but a few who lied dying on gurneys whispered that the Mongrel Gun Slingers were hermaphrodites, that they were the Fifth and Sixth Horsemen left out of the Ultimate Apocalypse and forced to be the hand of tragedy in all the ‘Penultimate’ Apocalypses throughout the ages, and no ancient scribes had dared to write about them in public scrolls; however, I had come across a manuscript while screwing a Jewish girl from Beverly Hills (who was attending the Kennedy School of Government) in the basement stacks of Widner Library.

A copy of a pamphlet titled, “A Short and Unauthorized Account of the Burning of the Alexandrian Library” by a Bonetavio Puccini had been rattled out the shelves and fell between my pelvic thrust and this Jewish American Princes’ ass. It was four pages in length and contained a drawing, which depicted the initials MGS carved into a fallen pillar next to the smoldering rubble of the Library of Alexandria. Supposedly a Sumerian had cursed Alexander the Great’s general, Ptolemy I Soter, for killing his family and stealing his secret cuneiform tablets, so the Mongrel Gun Slingers crawled out of a Wormhole and sacked the Library of Alexandria. When I mentioned the pamphlet to a Jesuit at Weston Theological Seminary he dismissed it as a myth, a hoax, a sort of bogie-man story told to peasants by the Church to keep those who were marked for slavery illiterate and submissive. But the Mongrel Gun Slingers were no myth. They were real Chupacabras and I was standing right next to them.

The Mongrel Gun Slingers were the devils of the Shakin’ Quakers. They were the corporeal image of Animal Magnetism. The Ouija Board would not even speak with them and when they made their presence known they were the only ones left standing. Now what did that mean for me? Was this my last drink, my last few minutes of life? Not only did the Mongrels kill, but they engaged in the oldest and most feared form of warfare: they fucked their victims. Was I about to end up a raped carcass, left mutilated, and soaked in the love juice of the Hermaphroditic Fifth and Sixth Horseman, who were too vicious, brutal and obscure to be mentioned in literature?

I had been unemployed before being unemployed was popular, and I had grown quite irritable with the fraudulent and hypocritical unemployment statistic that were spun by the United States. You see the United States does not count everyone who is out of work; rather, it only considers those who are "eligible" for unemployment. There are more people out of work than there are those who are qualified to register for unemployment and I intended to kill someone worth killing, but the Mongrels would beat me to the blade. Jeffrey Skilling, Enron’s x-CEO, had defrauded the State of California and ripped off thousands of retirement funds from hardworking Americans, and he had just been released on early parole from prison. He and his wife, Rebecca Carter, were vacationing in Cuernavaca and I was going to kill him.

I paid the barmaid and walked over to Georgia, placed his drink down in front of him and sat with my back towards the Mongrel Gun Slingers.

“Georgia, you see those two biggies sitting at the bar?”

“Honey, I had my eye on them since they walked in while you were tugging your pud in the alley.”

“Well, I’m not certain, but I suspect they’re the Mongrel Gun Slingers.”

“Really,” Georgia said, leaning forward, seductively whispering and sipping his rum through a straw, “I sure hope so.”

“We better get out of here.”

“No, honey, we’re not going anywhere.”

“We’re sure as hell not going anywhere if we stay here any longer,” I said with a quivering, hushed tone.

“Baby, don’t worry, Georgia’s here to protect you.”

“What the fuck are talking you about you dozy queer. They’re going to kill everyone in the place.”

“Now, now Jimmy, don’t exaggerate. If you’ve never hurt anyone so badly that he nor she pleaded to God in Precatory Prayer you’ll be fine,” Georgia said eyeing the Mongrels, sucking on his straw. This overweight transvestite was flirting with the Mongrel Gun Slingers.

“Are fucking out of your mind? Have you gone mad? Precatory! What the fuck are you talking about? We have to get out of here.” I took a big swig, my heart pounding so hard I could have been impaled on a stalk of sugar cane. Georgia had studied Patristics and Byzantine History at Gregorian University in Rome, and he received a perverted education from the priests. Now this Transvestite Princess was thinking about getting throated and crowned by these two ‘mythical’ lunatics. But as I mentioned before, the Mongrel Gun Slingers were no myth. They were sitting right behind me drinking Havana rum.

“Honey, didn’t you study the book of Psalms in Seminary?”

“What? Yeah, I fucking did, and I know what a goddamn Precatory Psalm is. It’s when some jilted fuck cries out, asking God to torture, maim and kill some vicious bastard who has it coming. But I don’t give a shit. I want to get the hell out of here, now.”

“Isn’t that Jeffrey Skilling and his wife, Rebecca Carter?” Georgia asked, pointing with his lips.

I turned around and sure enough there was Skilling waving the barmaid over with a CitiBank Titanium Visa Card.

“I’m going to ram that fucking Titanium card down his throat,” I said forgetting the Mongrel Gun Slingers, slamming the rest of my drink.

“Go get ‘em, honey. I’m here.”

The vein for murder was pumping blood so fast through my heart that I was experiencing True Rage for the first time. I walked up behind Skilling, grabbed his Titanium card out of his hand, pulled his head back and was about to shove my fist down his trachea when I felt a hand twirl me around. It was the ‘female’ Mongrel staring at me with twinkling black eyes. She lifted me off my feet and sent me skidding across the floor only to be halted by the boot of the ‘male’ Mongrel, who heeled me right in the back of the head. “Excuse me, but this is God’s business not yours,” he said with a voice that resounded like a bolt of lightning thrown from the hand of Zeus. He lifted me off the floor, shoved my face in his armpit, which didn’t smell as bad as I thought an Apocalyptic Horseman’s pits ought to smell, and commanded, “You mustn’t watch,” ringing my head tighter into his armpit. But Georgia was watching and he gave me a blow by blow account like a queer Howard Cosell, sucking down Cuban rum with an umbrella garnish. “The Mongrel just pulled an HK USP .40 millimeter out her panties. I love those panties, Big Lady,” Georgia said complimenting the ‘female’ Mongrel and then continued, “Skilling isn’t looking too happy. Ooo.”

I heard a bang and yanked my head out of the Mongrel’s armpit. My head was bleeding into my eyes but I could see clearly. The ‘female’ Mongrel had stuffed the barrel of that HK so far down Skilling’s throat that she blasted his tongue and pieces of bone and various fragment of organs and tissues out of Skilling’s ass, who was now lying in a lump of his own dismembered body parts, blood and feces.

Rebecca, Skilling’s wife, went screaming across the cantina. The ‘male’ Mongrel grabbed hold of her, bashed her head on the bar, and shoved his enormous cock right through her. He didn’t even bother to raise her dress or pull down her panties before he raped her. Rebecca’s dress and panties wrapped around that Mongrel’s member like an alter-boy’s lips wraps around an ice-cream cone before a priest shoves the boy’s face into the cream behind the confession booth. Rebecca screamed so hard that one of her eyeballs popped out of her head. Then the Mongrel blew a load with such veracious force that it blew off the top of Rebecca’s head and plastered it to the ceiling.

The ‘female’ Mongrel was simultaneously fucking a Federale and two of Arturo Beltrán Leyva’s men (Leyva, one of Mexico’s most violent drug lords, had himself been recently killed on December 16, 2009 by Mexican Special Forces). These three men had murdered the mother, the mother’s son and daughter, and the mother’s sister on the same day (December 21, 2009) that that poor mother was burying her other son, who was a Special Forces soldier who had been killed during the Leyva show down. Well, now these three men were getting raped by the ‘female’ Mongrel, who was looking more and more like a burly Mexican dismantling a roof with a pitchfork. The Mongrel had both tools to execute the hand of justice. She was stuffing one guy’s face so deep into her snatch that he started to resemble the tail of a shrimp in a taco covered in cream cheese and guacamole. That was the Federale, who was kicking a little bit and was about to expire. The ‘female’ Mongrel was also giving one of Leyva’s men a colonoscopy with a cock that actually roared and had teeth around its urethra. That guy was just limp and dead, while this dragon-like dick was tearing up his rectum and blowing fire through his innards. Leyva’s other guy was having his dick sucked so hard that his face was caving in. Then his head just disappeared into his neck, which was followed by his shoulders, chests, stomach, waist, hips, legs and feet. His whole body was sucked into his cock. Then the ‘female’ Mongrel chewed it up and spit it out on the wall.

Meanwhile, the ‘male’ Mongrel, (I describe him as ‘male’ even though I wasn’t sure if he was a male, I mean he didn’t reveal his pussy or use it to kill anyone, but after what I had just seen of the ‘female’ Mongrel I suspected the rumor was true—the Mongrel Gun Slingers were hermaphrodites), was shooting people in the face as his cod dangled in plain view with Rebecca’s other eyeball glued to the end of it. Then the ‘female’ Mongrel (who was half-naked) joined the ‘male’ Mongrel (who by the way had a double Havana rum in one hand and a John Moses Browning commemorative .45 millimeter in the other) and started shooting people in the face as well. They killed everyone in the cantina except Georgia, me and the beautiful Mexican barmaid, who was so freighted that she jumped into my arms. I held her waiting for the Mongrel Gun Slingers to rape the two of us or shoot us in the face. Georgia was calmly sitting at his table gingerly chewing his straw as he sipped his rum.

When the Mongrel’s were done, so I was hoping, they walked over to the bar. The ‘male’ Mongrel reached over the counter, grabbed a bottle of Havana cinco aῆos rum and poured two glasses. The ‘female’ Mongrel was composing herself in a presentable fashion. Then they lit a couple of cigarettes and peaceful drank their rum.

Georgia pursed his lips in frustrated disappointment. “Is that all you two Herms have for us this evening,” Georgia huffed like Tinker Bell pissed-off at Peter Pan. “This momentary measure of mercy better wind up with me in the arms of a coup de main. Are you two Mongrel Gun Slingers going to come over here and fuck me, or do I need to call a bellhop to carry my luggage up to my room?” Georgia asked with a touch of demand in his tone and a whole lot of sass.

I didn’t quite understand the metaphor, but I think Georgia was looking for absolution from some sins.

The Mongrels just sat ignoring Georgia, drinking and smoking like a couple of hard-working, unappreciated plebeians who missed happy hour. The Mexican barmaid and I were holding onto each other like a couple of huddling, uncertain characters in a Hieronymus Bosch painting.

“Ewwhoo, pppp, mmwaa, aren’t you two the Mongrel Gun Slingers?” Georgia persisted, kissy-catcalling the Mongrel Gun Slingers. “I’m ready to go to hell now.”

The Mongrel Gun Slingers continued to dismiss Georgia, who was growing impatient, so he shimmied his fat ass out of his chair, sashayed across the room and leaned into the bar between both Hermaphroditic Mongrel Gun Slingers. “I said I’m ready to get fucked and go to hell now,” Georgia repeated, pouring another round of rum for himself and the Mongrels, who seemed pleased by his gesture.

The barmaid tugged herself out of my stiff arms, walked around the bar, and reached for a rustic bottle of Tequila that sat on the top shelf. I followed her and sat at the end of the bar far from the Mongrels and Georgia. She placed a couple of shot glasses down between us and poured two stiff drinks. We leaned into and over the bar (the barmaid on the server’s side, I on the patron’s side), and stared deeply into each other’s eyes, our breaths intermingling before we sucked down the cactus juice. Then she poured us another round.

“Do you know why we haven’t killed you yet?” the ‘male’ Mongrel asked me.

The barmaid and I slammed our shots, peering into one another’s soul. I was rapidly falling in love with this beautiful, green-eyed Mexican barmaid.

“We asked you a question,” the ‘female’ Mongrel annunciated with a hallow voice that echoed.

The barmaid and I ignored the Mongrel Gun Slingers. I’d say we did so out of fright and wonder. What were the odds that Chaotic Chance would grace the two of us with romance in this bloody mess? And what did the Mongrels mean by “yet?”

“Isn’t love precious,” the ‘male’ Mongrel commented to the ‘female’ Mongrel.

“I want to get fucked and go to hell right now!” Georgia demanded, poking the Mongrels with his umbrella garnish. “Now, come on, do me now!” Georgia was losing his queenie composure, morphing into a spoiled girl who was denied her sweets.

“No one has ever cared enough about you to consider your actions worth a damn,” the ‘female’ Mongrel said to me. “And you little green-eyed lady, you don’t get out enough,” the ‘male’ Mongrel said to the barmaid. Then the two of them walked out of the cantina with Georgia storming after them, “Fuck me now, damn-it! Fuck me now! I want to go to hell!”

The barmaid and I followed them into the drizzling rain. A Wormhole opened up in the sky. The Mongrel Gun Slingers leaped in like super heroes. Georgia dove head first. And the three of them disappeared. I noticed a soggy, paper rose in the gutter, so I picked up and handed it to the beautiful Mexican barmaid. Then the two of us strolled hand-in-hand through the muddy, cracked cobbled streets making our way to the Motel Canario. And as the clouds began to disperse and the crescent moon shined bright in the black sky we could hear, in the faint and distant yet ever-so-close parallel universe, Georgia not whistling Dixie but nagging, “I want to get fucked and go to hell, right now!”

copyright 2010 Jim Lopez

First published in PARAPHILIA MAGAZINE Issue Six

The Ontological Friendship of Surrealism

When two people come together and form a Friendship, this Friendship evolves into a separate entity and takes on a life of its own, which is oftentimes more influential than the two individuals who have conceived it; this relationship exists within the realm of the Ontological. The relationship abides in the memory of those who bore it, as well as of those who witnessed it. The essence of Friendship is imbued with an individual existence that is separate from the two or more individuals who create the relationship. Therefore, it is possible to argue that the existence of the Ontological may be revealed through the incorporeal, yet perceivable nature of Friendship.

Maurice Blanchot, in his The Infinite Conversation, identifies the essential quality of the existence of Surrealism to be rooted in Friendship as the Other. Surrealism does not exist due to the created artifacts of each individual artist; rather Surrealism is the two or more who are gathered together in the name of Friendship.

“Surrealism—we cannot sense its destination otherwise—is and has always been a collective experience…making surrealism each one’s Other, and in the attraction of this Other taken as a living presence-absence (a beyond the day at the horizon of a space unknown and without a beyond), of living it with friendship in the most rigorous sense of the exacting term: making the surrealist affirmation, in other words, a presence or a work of friendship.

“…Were the surrealists, then, no more than a group of friends?...Surrealism is always a third party in friendship; an absent third term through which passes and through which issues the relation of tension and passion that effaces characters as it gives rise to and motivates initiatives and attractions. ”

Surrealism came into significant fruition only through the expressed participation of each individual artist engaging the group as a whole. From the onset, a variety of collective experiments were undertaken by the Surrealist. The grounds for which were made evident when the Surrealists crafted a poster comprised of 16 portraits, one of each artist with his eyes closed, encircling a painting of a female nude by René Magritte.

A possible interpretation of this poster is that the Surrealists are in a hypnotic trance, communicating with the ontosophia –a term coined in 1647 by German philosopher and theologian, Johannes Clauberg-- designating the existence of being only through the continuous conscious existence of an Ontic Being, where thoughts are often forced upon human beings.

Regardless of whether the Surrealists believed in an Ontological/Divine Being or not was irrelevant to their practice of creating occult techniques, in which external supernatural forces--possible evidence of the Ontological Friendship--influenced and guided the conscious development of their artistic crafts; by which was disclosed in their grand creation, the Surrealist's Friendship. The Surrealists’ prevailing designs were due to their participation with one another, and were ultimately manifested in the Ontological Friendship that wielded influence, through the whisper of the ontosophia, over the conscious expression of each individual artist within the artifact of the collective work. But the group could not maintain itself in the faces of success and fame; thus the suicide of Surrealism, but not the suicide of the Surrealism’s Friendship that resides within the magnetic memory field of the Ontic Reality. André Breton, by systematically excommunicating each member and ultimately concluding with himself, euthanized Surrealism in the natural world. And yet Surrealism continues though not in a new expression, but rather in our memories of their relationship with one another, which created the Third Being known as Surrealism. And it was this Surrealism that signified each individual member as a Surrealist, finding their significance in the collective Friendship; while the artifacts of prose, poetry, paintings, photographs, and sculptures were merely an expression of Surrealism; whereas, the actual existence of Surrealism was solely made evident in the Ontological Friendship of those artists engaging each other within the collective body and spirit forming a unified, singular entity separated from each member of the Surrealist, who by the very act and nature of their coming together created the Ontological Being known as Surrealism.

It, therefore, may be argued that Surrealism and Ontology are intricately connected, and that the bond of their affiliation is rooted in the Being of Friendship.

Localizing the free mandate of friendship within the Ontological. (Photography by Jim Lopez)

The following photographs depict two clothed men and a Third Being representing Friendship.

Photograph #1 portrays one of the men handing a toy rocket to the other. The toy rocket symbolizes the relationship and its propulsion into the unknown.

In the remaining photographs the incorpreal Friendship is given an unclothed body solely to illustrate the existence of the Third Being, who is the Friendship.

Jim,

I like the general direction in which you're headed here. For the most part I am in agreement with the general hypothesis; it seems entirely feasible and indeed realistic to me to suggest that the Surrealists' friendship resulted in the existence of an ontological entity which has since transcended the concerns of those particular figures to become an being to be encountered and communicated with via "the magnetic field of the the ontic reality". As you point out, the entity of Surrealism is something which claims our collective psyche with an identifiable shape and texture of its own, wholly irrespective of the artists involved and work produced under its influence. Also, the evidence of unconscious contemporary Surrealists who do not discover their own links to Surrealism until at an advanced stage in their lives/careers is considerable, and might be taken as further evidence.

I consider myself of this mode for a start - I knew virtually nothing of Surrealism until independent studies of my own, post-high school, at which point I recognised the connection I already shared with those artists - that I was arguably expressing the experience of witnessing the ontological entity borne by the Surrealist friendship.
I also remember, some 25 years or so ago, David Lynch professing that he knew next to nothing about Surrealism prior to his filmmaking and only much later did he appreciate the relationship he shared with those artists - one perhaps forged by the ontological Surrealist being itself.

There are a few difficulties in defining this however; Surrealism was/is a movement based on the expression of the subconscious and, as such, there's no reason to be surprised that artists who pursue that impulse almost invariably produce work which is at leat quasi-surrealist in nature. Is there solid enough reason to think that any ontological being might claim a monopoly on these modes of expression? Or is human subconsious homogenous enough to ensure such accord without its influence? (I know this is moving slightly away from the main thrust of the piece, but if one's concern is to prove "that the existence of the Ontological may be revealed through the incorporeal, yet perceivable nature of Friendship" then the proof of those perceptions and the extent of them in a larger cultural context are worth examining).

I think you've argued the case here exceptionally well, but it does strike me that the statement "Surrealism and Ontology are intricately connected" may require some backup. I actually agree with the statement, but I'm wondering how one might prove or illustrate it in more concrete terms.

For instance, are there reasons why Surrealism bears a connection to the ontological in a way in which the products of other Friendships do not? To take an almost diametrically opposed example, is there any reason why the Friendship represented by the inner circle of the Nazi Party might not have resulted in a similar connection - a (heaven forbid) Fascist Ontological Being transcendent of the concerns and activities of Hitler and his co-conspirators? Could it be that the rigid, authoritarian nature of that kind of ideology negates such a connection to the ontological, or is that a facile assumption?

In other words: what specifically gave the Surrealists the advantage (if indeed they had one) in forging this ontological connection?
These are questions worth considering.

Bringing it down to our own sphere of experience: Are we currently forging an Ontological connection via Paraphilia? Could there be a Paraphilia Friendship Entity; a unified, singular being distinct from the individual contributors? It already seems quite logical to think so. Perhaps a little further inquiry into what kind of Friendships provide the most fertile ontological soil (and as such, why Surrealism presents such a fine example) might be in order.

Craig Woods