6/13/2006
Psycho magnet
Yesterday, I was drinking ice tea in my yard with one of my painter friends, Jay Brown, when a white Toyota pulled up, backfiring and belching smoke, and a toad belly white fat drunk woman in a skimpy bikini, rolls of gelatinous flab overhanging the strings that revealed her flabby flanks got out of the passenger side, asked if this was the famous recording studio specializing in harmonica and said she was there to audition.
By the time all this had been determined, her significant other had gotten out of the driver’s side and was leaning on the car, weaving slightly, shirtless, the part of his evil face not covered in dirty beard and mustache pitted like a plaster satyr attacked by malicious children with BB guns.
I had no idea and less curiosity what the hell she thought she was auditioning for. We’re a studio; we take money to record what people who want to give us money want to record. We don’t instigate. Therefore, I pretended the tea in my glass was whiskey and told the lardy trull that I’d been drinking and was in no shape to audition anyone.
She insisted, so I got up and headed for the backyard to get a couple more chairs. She headed toward the house. I headed her off, saying the engineer was in the middle of a maintenance routine and shouldn’t be disturbed. She said she needed to use the head. I ushered her and her poster child for racism, ignorance and minor felony asshole boyfriend into the house, and he promoted her to me and my roommate Lee, who was sitting in the living room doing nothing, as usual.
As she came out of the bathroom, ol’ Lemuel was telling us she’d played with Randy Travis. She modestly demurred, saying she’d met him at a bar and played for him, but not actually played with him. Hezekiah was one of those extreme rednecks who ain’t gonna be corrected by no woman. His eyes flared with rage and he ordered her to get in the car with him. “Git in. I’m gonna talk ter yeouw.”
She, with some fear, plucked a rusty, blown out old Marine Band out of her greasy shoulder bag, which she’d dropped in the grass, and began a terribly amateurish version of “When Things Go Wrong With You, It Hurts Me, Too,” the classic recording of which was done by Elmore James around 1954. As if to test the theory implicit in the lyrics, Zeke jumped out of the car, which he’d been revving, putting us all in a toxic fog of oil smoke, ran to her, grabbed her by the hair and threw her roughly into the passenger side of the car. She started yelling, “Call the police,” as he scooped up her bag, leaving an empty, crumpled anti-fungal ointment tube, two used Kleenex tissues and a Kotex in my yard.
I walked to the back of the car and got their license plate number as they took off, then went inside and dialed 911 to tell the police about domestic violence and abduction in progress. I would have intervened more directly, but I had the distinct impression that she would have jumped between us to defend her man had I tried. It was one of those thoroughly dysfunctional couples that give white trash such a bad name.
Jay looked at me and asked how I had done that; how I had made some completely bizarre and gratuitous scenario unfold before our eyes and why that sort of thing always happens to me and only me. At that point, I took the tea glasses back in the house and came back out with the brandy decanter and two Jefferson cups.
By the time all this had been determined, her significant other had gotten out of the driver’s side and was leaning on the car, weaving slightly, shirtless, the part of his evil face not covered in dirty beard and mustache pitted like a plaster satyr attacked by malicious children with BB guns.
I had no idea and less curiosity what the hell she thought she was auditioning for. We’re a studio; we take money to record what people who want to give us money want to record. We don’t instigate. Therefore, I pretended the tea in my glass was whiskey and told the lardy trull that I’d been drinking and was in no shape to audition anyone.
She insisted, so I got up and headed for the backyard to get a couple more chairs. She headed toward the house. I headed her off, saying the engineer was in the middle of a maintenance routine and shouldn’t be disturbed. She said she needed to use the head. I ushered her and her poster child for racism, ignorance and minor felony asshole boyfriend into the house, and he promoted her to me and my roommate Lee, who was sitting in the living room doing nothing, as usual.
As she came out of the bathroom, ol’ Lemuel was telling us she’d played with Randy Travis. She modestly demurred, saying she’d met him at a bar and played for him, but not actually played with him. Hezekiah was one of those extreme rednecks who ain’t gonna be corrected by no woman. His eyes flared with rage and he ordered her to get in the car with him. “Git in. I’m gonna talk ter yeouw.”
She, with some fear, plucked a rusty, blown out old Marine Band out of her greasy shoulder bag, which she’d dropped in the grass, and began a terribly amateurish version of “When Things Go Wrong With You, It Hurts Me, Too,” the classic recording of which was done by Elmore James around 1954. As if to test the theory implicit in the lyrics, Zeke jumped out of the car, which he’d been revving, putting us all in a toxic fog of oil smoke, ran to her, grabbed her by the hair and threw her roughly into the passenger side of the car. She started yelling, “Call the police,” as he scooped up her bag, leaving an empty, crumpled anti-fungal ointment tube, two used Kleenex tissues and a Kotex in my yard.
I walked to the back of the car and got their license plate number as they took off, then went inside and dialed 911 to tell the police about domestic violence and abduction in progress. I would have intervened more directly, but I had the distinct impression that she would have jumped between us to defend her man had I tried. It was one of those thoroughly dysfunctional couples that give white trash such a bad name.
Jay looked at me and asked how I had done that; how I had made some completely bizarre and gratuitous scenario unfold before our eyes and why that sort of thing always happens to me and only me. At that point, I took the tea glasses back in the house and came back out with the brandy decanter and two Jefferson cups.
