Chapter 1 - The First Chapter
I had just finished crying when the phone rang. It was Carl. I said, "Who the hell is Carl?" He said, "You know, Carl, your best friend." Then I remembered Carl. He was a total dick.
"You going to the poetry festivities tonight?" he asked the person on the other end of the line, which I could only assume was me. (The narrator.)
"I hadn't thought of it," I said, rubbing my eyes with my eyelids. "I've been crying."
"Crying, eh?" Carl said. "Well I think you should go; I mean they're giving you that award, aren't they? How would you feel if you were giving the United Poetry Association of Upper Northeastern Toledo an award and they hadn't even thought of attending?"
Without even letting me answer he said, "You bet your ass you'd be upset." Carl had a damned filthy mouth.
"Well, I'll consider it," I said, making no promises. "I promise you that."
"See that you do, or I'll kill you," he said and broke into shrieking laughter.
"Say, what would I be giving them an award for?" I asked.
"I hadn't thought of that," he admitted. (Carl was always admitting things, though he hated to admit it. I got him to admit it once, but later he admitted he was lying.) "Nevertheless, go or I will kill you." He then hung up. That was another thing he was always doing. He was always hanging up the phone.
The poetry reading at The Wearhaus wasn't for five hours and thirty-nine minutes, so I dripped into my favorite overstuft chair, curled into an adorable fetal position and settled into another good, long cry.
Several hours later I woke to the sound of firemen blasting my kitchen with a torrent of clear liquid from outside my house. The liquid smelled like water. Real firemen -- had to be.
I walked outside through the hole they'd blasted in my wall.
"Jesus Christ! Someone was in there!" one of them shouted, though there was no need to shout, besides all the tremendous noise.
"Yeah, I must have set fire to my kitchen at some point," I told the chief. "Being a poet, I'm a bit scatter-brained. Sorry about that."
"Oh my God, is it really you?" the chief asked. "Luke Lappmilk?!? You're my son's favorite poet! He's read everything you've ever written! Both books!"
The chief turned to his men, who were stealing my television, "Hey guys! This here's Luke Lappmilk! THE Luke Lappmilk!" The men looked very, very, very impressed -- most people do when they come face-to-face with a bonafide famous regional poet. "This is THE Luke Lappmilk's TV!" they cheered as they loaded it into the back of their truck. "My wife's gonna freak when she sees this!"
I signed some autographs for the men. They were all very nice. I even signed some of my dishware for them, though most of them just wiped it off and stacked the dishes in my cabinet, which was being loaded into a trailer they'd rushed to the scene.
After they left I walked back through the hole. The phone was ringing. (It had a way of doing that, usually when someone wanted to talk to me.) I picked it up. "Luke, it's your parole officer. I hear there's been a fire at your place. Are you alive?"
I checked my pulse and answered cautiously, "Yes." He grunted.
"Are you burned at all? Possibly horribly?" he asked.
"No," I said, though I couldn't be sure. "Might be some internal burning. No time for that now, though. I have to get ready... Wait a minute, I don't have a parole officer! Who is this?"
He'd hung up, the clever bastard. That's the ultimate comeback.
I checked my caller ID. It was a long string of numbers (ten or so, I couldn't be sure). Undecipherable. This guy was good.
I went upstairs and took off several of the layers I was wearing, which smelt of burnt kitchen. Now down to my best tux, I called for a cab and had the cabbie drive me to my car. The cabbie asked why I was wearing a tux. That led to another good cry. Can't a man wear a tux without getting the third degree from the woman who's driving him to his car? This world is so full of injustice and sucks.
I walked out of the cab without paying and she let me get away with it after a brief but particularly brutal stab in my neck with her keys. As I collected myself off of the pavement, I was reminded of that age-old joke: What's black and white and red all over? An award-winning poet in a tuxedo.
I stepped into my car, flicked on the radio, lit a cigarette, took a long, heavy drag and coughed myself silly for the next five minutes. Helluva time to try your first cigarette. I used the burning tip to cauterize a wound that was pumping blood all over the windshield and then turned off the radio and stepped out of the car, which I'd left in the parking lot of The Wearhaus.
A sign outside the door said "Clothesed." Pretty clever, I had to admit. During the day, The Wearhaus served as a clothes outlet store that sold garments turned away by the Salvation Army. You'd be surprised how affordable a pair of socks is after they've been spray-painted gold and stuffed down the throat of a dead cat. During the night The Wearhaus served as the cultural center of Upper Northeastern Toledo -- the self-labeled Poetry Capital of Toledo, Ohio.
Tonight was the annual awards night, and served as the pinnacle of the year for poets all across this particular part of Toledo, and they were honoring yours truly. Whoever that was. It was a big deal event, or so I'd been told by the organizer -- Carl. That son of a bitch.
"Tonight we are here to honor Upper Northeastern Toledo's rising star of the poetry world: Rick Luke Duke Montelbank Lappmilk, author of the finest collection of poems ever assembled recently -- 'Meat Glue.'" The emcee, Carl, had delivered on his promise. He hadn't killed me. In fact, he'd embraced me warmly when I entered, and continued that embrace into the bathroom where he'd tried to jab a needle full of Mountain Dew in my spine.
I walked onto the stage and addressed the audience. I thought I'd start with a joke. "Can someone hand me a new microphone, this one wants to kill itself. No wait -- that's me!"
The place went crazy, or it would have had anyone else been there besides Carl. Upper Northeastern Toledo isn't a very cultural town anymore. Not since we issued that fatwah. The place went quiet. Just then I heard an enormous BANG and felt my award rip through my leg. Usually when I hand someone an award I try to keep the hand-off below the speed of sound. But to each his own. Who am I to dump on the traditions of the Northeastern Toledo United Poetry Association? I'm just one man.
I'd lost a lot of blood, though. Whole lot. Most of it, actually. Where the hell was Carl? He'd love this.
Just then a police officer leapt up from behind a stack of used diapers and demanded to know, "What in the Hell was that? I'm trying to nap! Christ!"
I heard a side door slam open and saw an obvious silhouette of Carl rushing through the opening. The cop pulled on his pants and chased after him, but Carl was too quick. That was another thing Carl was always doing, running away when cops were chasing him.
The blood loss was too much for me to handle emotionally, so I stumbled painfully over to a pile of Buffalo Bills Superbowl Champions! T-shirts and collapsed. I wanted to cry, but I didn't have the energy. It was awfully cold, too. But that's Upper Northeastern Toledo for you. Always cold when you're down to two pints of blood.
I love this town. It has this certain charm that you just can't ignore because it's got a knife to your throat. I think that's why I stay here. I could have moved to New York or Los Angeles a long time ago and made it big, but here in Upper Northeastern Toledo we got something special. A federal government quarantine.
I gracefully fell into unconsciousness, which is a lot like consciousness only with thousands of dead grandmas, fiery plane crash wreckage and heavy petting with my old gym teacher.
Chapter Two
