Overheard Starbuck

"One Tuesday in June she had a mystical experience. She got to see her future. She spent time with an older woman who was the epitome of eveything she was working towards. It was a singular experience--a sign--as if the fates had picked her out and gave her a whole day to get acquainted with the person she will someday be. She felt the oddly familiar gentle yet insistent touch of time close in around her as she saw that all her childhood daydreams might very well come true.
One might ask why did she then within the week quit her prized internship, have one of her friends house-sit her apartment and take her dog for an extended vacation: 'to see the buffalo herds on the high plain outside the Black Hills of South Dakota' or so she claimed?"
---"Was it a sign? Was she a special person singled out for greatness?"
"Of course she's special. ... As for being singled out for greatness, it may be too early to tell but a surer sign of fate directing the course of her life might've been not having the foresight of seeing her future self in that older woman?"

"They 'monitor' the police and the police don't mind? The police don't 'monitor' them or tell them to back off?"

"I can picture her or one of her clones reading my blog. She's in her thirties or older. Perhaps she's not quite twenty years old. She's a Christian or a Jew but never an other. Although in California, parts of Up-state New York, Vermont and the Pacific Northwest she could be an other. She may be married or not; she may be a mother or not, but she looks like somebody's daughter. She'll always look like some man's daughter. She's the keeper of the secrets, the one that keeps things right.
When she was a little girl her Daddy asked her to keep a secret and she did! As she grew there may have been times when she was asked to keep the secrets of her Daddy's friends too, or not. Keeping secrets was important.. and fun! She got gifts for being a good girl.
When she was a young woman away at school, she learned everyone had secrets to be kept; even clubs, organizations and institutions. And helping the right people keep their secrets was just something she knew how to do. She couldn't explain it but there it was.
She's so finely tuned she can sense the questioning stare of someone who should know better but doesn't, as well as the yearning burning eyes of any one among the unwashed masses murdering each other to get a glimpse of the gate in the wall of the castle where her nightly banquet is set.
When she hears or reads an impertinent question barbed like a hook that once set and reeled-in would bring to the surface a secret from the world she's sworn to protect--the world she's devoted her life to keep pure and inviolate--she becomes annoyed. And when she's annoyed women's legs around the country close like scissors and the men who watch fight each other like dogs to prove who's the best to make things right again. Of course they never know what displeased her or if it was a question or something else again, but they will drain every lake, pond and moat and scour the earth to find and punish those who're responsible. She and the secrets are that important.
Questions are like knives: you can poke, slash, stab, cut, butcher, dissect or perform surgery with them."
---"What a load of crap."
"You don't see aspects of paganism at work in most institutions then?"

"I'm gonna call INS on you!" (shouted at man walking out the door)

"I don't like soccer."

"They were lucky men. As their obsessions or addictions turned them into facsimiles of their former selves; frightened their family and friends and grieved their wives, girlfriends and mothers, the organization recognized the changes and promoted them to jobs which found best use for the forces at work inside them and upon them.
If they were forced to be truthful, they'ld say they were miserable but they had little incentive to change, to question or explain, to stop. They were well-paid and successful--at the top of their game. The company like clockwork acknowledged good work with letters of praise and generous bonuses of cash, coupons, women and the latest consumer electronics. They had all the right things, things they never imagined they'ld have: secure in the eye of the storm their lives had become."

"I had this dream about reading a printed page of instructions for medicine or an electronic device. I can see only about a dozen words: the others are blurred or out of focus. I then dream that I'm hearing myself read as if every word on the page was printed clearly, in English and part of my vocabulary. While reading I notice I never hear any of the few words I was at first sure I could pick out. The page still appears blurred and unreadable but there I am 'reading' it with ease.
The dream ends with me feeling I've learned something new and useful--that I've been informed. While knowing what I thought I was reading , what makes me feel informed, isn't anywhere on the page. I woke-up feeling good."
---"God that was awful. Why can't you dream about celebrities appearing at your front door wrapped in nothing but a black satin sheet worn as a burkka but open in the front, like everybody else? ...You're as dull as you look."

"That neighbor of mine who claims people are using aerosol pesticides on him and his family says that the number of bursts from passing cars directed at his windows and doors noticeably increase on Wednesdays and remain about the same through Sunday. Suggesting to him that most of the people using these weapons have a five-day work week starting on Wednesdays. Or they make-up a percentage of the total population, so that as traffic increases their numbers increase. They're not limited to, for example, a battalion sized force in control of a certain section. Where traffic congestion would sometimes cause them to be less vigilant. Or maybe there're special activities in town or nearby that brings these people past his home. Bar-hopping for example. Perhaps they're mostly weekend warriors who enjoy taking side trips to harass those who have the gall to stay put and try to make a life after being ordered to run."
---"I like your friend's wacko attempts to make the craziest ideas sound logical. Psychotropic drugs and the neo-compassionate conservatives' thirty years war on crime have all but put an end to the producers of and interest in insane ramblings. 'Zero-tolerance' and all that. ..Wiped-out a whole literary genre along with a once suitable subject matter for painting and performance art--no loss there. Successful people, patrons of the arts, people who buy books--people who have lives--have no time for stories like his. ...Oh, I forgot how semi-automatic weapons used on unsuspecting crowds by America's disgruntled lone-gunmen and disturbed teens may've also changed our ideas about mentally ill people with their notebooks, drawings, crazy theories and eccentric behavior. No one's buying that kind of brut art anymore."

"She's not spending enough time on her eyes."
---"Her lips look ok."
"I don't like that color on her."

"He's a wealthy man with a penthouse suite a ten minute walk from his downtown offices, a home in Vail and a ranch in Costa Rica where he breeds dogs for racing. He has children younger then his granchildren. He's working-on his third wife and second transplanted heart. A self-made man who didn't have 'the legs' to make the A-team; he used his partial athletic scholarship to help earn a degree."
---"Business?"
"Engineering. He builds police stations, courthouses and jails."
---"And you know all this because?"
"I heard him speak at a dinner in his honor. His 'Rabbit Foundation' donated trampolines and gymnastic equipment to the highschool."
---"'Rabbit Foundation'"?

"Remember nobody there wants to hear anything you have to say and whatever you do say is of no consequence whatsoever or wrong . You've been invited as a favor to C.. So don't break anything or otherwise cause a scene... relax, have a good time, enjoy yourself."

"If she was less of an authoritarian, less of a bigot and knee-jerk neo-fascist would she have room in her heart for me?"
---"Sounds like it's pretty crowded in there already . 'Spite makes right' is all the fashion now, she'll never be lonely. So what's in it for you? ...You'll have to remove the gag sooner or later."

"As the pain increased and his movement was further restricted he took it out on his tools, the furniture and the other inanimate everyday things that conspired to add to his misery. He was frightened. Frightened that it would only get worse; frightened at the way he was behaving--how easily he went from man to monster.
If there were animals or people around --underfoot-- would he take it out on them too? Could 'that guy' really be so near at hand?"

"She's very intelligent: she's studying fashion."

"'See you at the studio'?"
---"'The studio' is what he calls his one room apartment."
"Oh, for a moment I thought..."
---"He does fool around alot with his video camera."

"Isn't it strange how the recent murders of women by their boyfriends or husbands resemble the drug-crazed killings of the hippies and underclasses popularized in true crime stories?"
---"That wrestler's murder-suicide was blamed on steroids."
"A professional wrestler on drugs? Say it ain't so. ...Considering steroids side-effects it's incredible that so few wrestlers are killers."
---What about the others?"
"Why did they snap?"
---"I kinda get it when druggies go nuts."
It's some kind of explanation anyway. I prefer bad genes or childhood head injuries. ..You're assuming the others weren't taking drugs?"
---"Wouldn't the news've reported it?"
"I don't know, maybe they're better stories without mentioning drugs?"
--"What if more then a few of these killers were prescribed one of the new PTSD drugs that treat anxiety by helping soldiers forget about the women and children they killed or the carnage they witnessed? Something that's designed to shade damaged psyches from the glare of blame, guilt, self-recrimination and the fear of nothing but more of the same tomorrow?"
"I like it when you go clinical."
---"Shut up.--For individuals with sociopathic tendencies these new drugs might exacerbate their already exaggerated sense of themselves as the source of light and value. There're the killings --horrible outbursts of uncontrollable anger--that're thanks to the meds instantly remembered as necessary and right. As just another event undercontrol and required? 'So what's next on today's to-do list?'"
"It's not drug abuse, if drugs with few obvious side-effects are taken by millions of Americans for depression, anxiety and sleeplessness? But steroids with their limited market appeal and grotesque side-effects can't help but be abused?"
---"Steroid monsters versus paxil's napping pussycats, what looks more like drug abuse to you?"

"It's a shame opiates are so cheap."
---"It's a shame opiates are so illegal."
"Yeah like heroin addicts don't get anxious and go nuts?"
---"Not if they have the drugs they need."

"She could be 'that girl': that exciting, desirable, truly alive goddess only with them. They showed her: they gave her a room--the space--and the permission."
---"And more?"
"Could there be anything more?"

"One evening I found myself trying to connect the night I slept with her with something, anything, in the rented room I was staying: the color of the walls, the tilt of the dresser, the stains on the ceiling, the doorknobs, the murmuring radio from the room above, the broken light-fixture, the way the headlights of the passing cars washed across the far wall, the rancid smell of oil from the Chinese take-out next door, the cricket in the corner, the shadows in the mirror. I hadn't thought about her for years.
I couldn't get her to stay just a little bit longer."

"He's good with animals: dogs seem to like him."
---"I bet they find him fascinating."
"He wants to marry and raise a family."
---"He's been comped at every casino he's played."
"He's saving to buy a little house in the suburbs with a big back yard."
---"Club girls say he's lots of fun and a real nice guy."
"He could be the one."
---"Don't make me get those radical feminists to do their coma-cure on you."
"You don't want me to be happy."
---"They take you to an undisclosed location where for two or three weeks they monitor you in an induced coma--your brain's supposed to reset itself or something-- while private investigators watch your boyfriend and find out if he's been lying to you and how he spends his time and money."
"You're jealous."

"Looking at my inescapable life with its grudging acts of loving kindness, resentful insights and hallucinatory moments of genius I can see what runny shits even the most talented, attractive, religious or awakened human beings must be."
---"'Blood's thicker than the mud'."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
---"Your rant reminded me of an old 'Sly and the Family Stone' song, 'It's a Family Affair'."
"You promised you'ld stop with the song lyrics."
---"It has this rhythm track that sounds like a coffee percolator. ..It's amazing... 'One child grows up to be somebody who loves to learn--percolate, percolate-- Another child grows up to be somebody who just loves to burn...'"
"It's not fair."
---"'Mom loves them both...'--percolate, percolate--it sort of fits.--Without love aren't we all just blood-filled mud bags? With love there's a chance we might effervesce into inspired mud, conscious blood?"
"You're not even trying."
---"You want another? I'm buying."

"When she didn't expect it, pain moved in: quickly taking over her days and nights, her whole apartment. The doctors performed their approved tests. The pain got worse. It was many weeks before she could attempt to arrange the unmade bed her body had become. She hoped against hope she'ld find among its wrinkles, knots and stains some joyful crumbs from her past plumped dreams and drowsy life."
---"Well did she? Huh? Did she?"

"Who's she? She seems full of herself."
---"She's a universal placebo. ...'Membership has its privileges.' ..She's not required to think, or talk. She's what she does, not who she is." (smiles)
"Is that a job? Her religion? ...A hobby?
---If you're hungry, angry, worried, lost, unemployed, grieving, homeless, elated, bored, ignored, doubtful, celebrating, distracted, outraged, excited, dying, etc.---she'll straighten you out quick."
"She's some kind of therapist then?"
---"No greater love--And totally anonymous."
"Sounds kinda sleazy."
---"You don't know anything! People kill and die for her, jag-off."

"'You can never have too much DNA.'"
---"Quentin Tarantino?"
"I think it was Julia Roberts in that movie in which she plays a movie star."

"Good soldier; good security guard."
---"That's what they say."

"She doesn't want it bad enough. ..She won't even consider implants."
---"Tick-tock, tick-tock."

"What about all the murdered or missing pregnant women in the news lately?"
---"Oh yeah. It's a freakin' epidemic".
"Isn't it a hate-crime to injure a fetus?"
---"I don't know. --I'm wondering why now? What's making those men go crazy?"
"You mean like where were they last year?"
---"Or five months ago!"
"Gambling debts and the new bankruptcy regulations? Christian family-values backlash? Compassionate conservative cruelty? Brain viruses from third world immigrants? The biological imperative at work?"
---"Is it possible humans have a 'killer lemmings' switch? --What's evolution, what's our DNA trying to tell us?"
"We should ask our local sociobiologist."
---"I can't afford the suggested tithe or the traditional blesed pocket protector."
"They don't take phone or email inquiries?"
---"What do you think? --That's how they get you."

"Their weapons are for our protection."

"I was unable to convince him that refusing the women, men or children they provide would be viewed as an overt threat and require his name be added to a watch-list shared by dozens of law enforcement and intelligence agencies and bureaus."
---"You'll make the call then?"

"You know my theory that President Bush is a submissive and his wife Laura is a dominatrix?"
---"Aaah..."
"And that over these past six years most of his political appointees, Christian and Jewish alike, are members of various BDSM clubs?"
---"Um..."
"Well recently I began to wonder if having these cultists in charge of the most powerful military on earth has emboldened sadists all over America. One of their own's running things... Is it possible that many more missing men, women and children then before the Bushies took the White House are bound and gagged in suburban dungeons or working as drugged slaves in the best homes, on farms and for churches? It's their golden age. And maybe, just maybe vast sections of urban and rural highways have become their hunting grounds or an 'underground railroad' in reverse."
---"Geez, look at the time--I gotta run. ...'Call you."

"Sir! Please Sir! Can I have another, Sir!" (in unison)