Bluffing & Vodka

It's been ten days since our last post, Paul. Perhaps we now declare our noble expariment a failure, the way Truman declared America's grand expariment in democracy a failure and replaced it with an imperialistic police-action state.

Well, I am back in civilization. In fact, I'm in New York City which is better than civilization. I leave for Job Corps on Tuesday. But my year-to-date round up is looking mighty fine. So far this year I have

• taken a very long train ride.
• visited the Drag Queen Capitol of the Midwest in Des Moines, Iowa and ordered a White Russian in a lesbian bar on the same block, answering the age-old question, 'is it possible for a minor to be served booze at both gay bars in Des Moines, Iowa?' Yes, it is.
• worked in the kitchen of a hotel in upstate New York dedicated to serving the vacation needs of Hassidic Jews.
• read several books by Gore Vidal; and several books by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., J.D. Robb, Edgar Box and other people who - with the exception of Edgar Box - are not Gore Vidal.
• spent an afternoon with Beth Broderick, aka Aunt Zelda on year Sabrina, the Teenage Witch.
• deflowered a 17 year old virgin.
• seen Bubba Ho-Tep, a film which advanced the art form and is about Elvis and J.F.K. living in an east-Texas nursing home whose residents are being killed by a 4,000 year old Egyptian mummy. Ossie Davis plays J.F.K.
• eaten lunch in Central Park.

So I'm good. Really good.

[Found scribbled on a piece of
scrap paper early this morning.]

It is sometime after sunset. I have no accurate clock and my coworker Sly is literally too stoned to eat peanuts.

I got back to the staff cabin with fresh books from the library in town and barely had time to sit down before Sly burst in and began a conversation that veered wildy in unintelligible directions because Sly is, as I said, extremely stoned. When he asked me, "Do you recollect what I'm saying?" and I did not recall what he had been saying, I simply moved my mouth without speaking. He grinned and announced, "That's what I'm talking about!" He was captivated when I repeatedly flipped a coin and in stitches when I—get this—opened a door. This blows away all of Mikey the flaky bisexual's MacGyver bongs put together.

It cannot be screwing up his sense of time because there is no need for one of those here. A combination of complete timelessness in the woods outside and omnipresent cable television inside has severed whatever connection we may have had with the passing of days in the so-called real world.

I gave Sly some peanuts, and he told me, "I love peanuts. I really do." Even if he lacked the hand-eye coordination to successful bring the peanuts to his mouth, I believe that Sly does, sincerely and deeply, love those peanuts.