Sally Anne Has a Cat Named Hector (a 30:30 Report)

Someone turn that racket down. Pleeze. They sure don’t keep it down out here in the neighborhoods, not by the lake they don’t. It’s a good thing I got this boom box balancing up on my left shoulder, Rascals slipping out from the woofers. Which, that reminds me, you see that chick Davy’s been hitting on? Jesus, we all running down the road, and back in the apartment, fifth floor, we got Rockford Files on the tube, still have five slices of Pepperoni in the box, I can dig for the next hour if I give myself over to it my chin in my hands and staring, all Buddha-like, glaring down at those slices, cheese all drooling over the cardboard where the heat had its way.

Meanwhile, out the end of Glen Charlie Road that Herkovitz boy got himself jammed up with the authorities yes one more time, we get pulled over on the way out to 28 and they bring up three cruisers to deal with the four of us, like we got a riot in the works, though if given the second chance I’d of bolted out across the meadow and into the woods, we got the trout farm back there and they got a bunch of trails around that Humvee, which that didn’t happen and two hours later we’re all cleared by the powers that be and I’m back at Sally Anne’s, and though she is down to Baltimore for a weekend conference, whereby I had the clear to head down to the pond with Herkovitz and Sylvia, now I got the place to myself, not counting Hector — Sally Anne’s cat with whom I am quite tight and he gets all purr-y and friendly and rubbing up the leg thing most especially when I dish the wet stuff into his monogrammed bowl.

Oh, the life of a cat and that’s a big ten four when they got the collar on. Then we have a plan for an air hockey marathon down the Willows later, well, Sunday late morning we will convene, something like five of us, and it’s going to be air hockey all day Bro, meaning a massive supply of quarters we will pool together, and that young boy from Georgia will provide the video equipment because we do have our YouTube channel and it’ll be upload time as the weekend winds down meaning that the work week  – for those who believe in that kind of thing – is going to burst open gangbusters with our digital delights, and I happen to know for a certainty that Jessica is heading down to the office supply store to pick up a dozen reams of paper as our mid-week plan is to crank out like three new zines which we’ll be handing out free to the people pushing their weary asses together when the factory whistle blows at the South Street end of automotive row, doesn’t every city have one of them, all cars all day long, remember that Cal Worthington cat back in the Southland, when was that the sixties?

It’s hard to keep track, but I was able to keep a record of all the pull ups and drop by’s at the old sorority place in the village by the lake and sure they cleared out that national organization but an enterprising young thing named Cookie managed to pull together a big down payment back at the mortgage company and now the house, which being an old sister house has something like a dozen rooms, they all share baths, one each floor but so what, the rent’s cheap, the cops don’t come around and all those execs from South Street and even the boonies show up with gifts of wine coolers and savings bonds. And one of the coolest things is when you climb out the third-floor window and squirm around the gable and look west to the neighbor’s living room, all lit up, they must have tapes of full seasons because you can sit there for hours sipping wine someone handed you out onto the ledge and quietly puff cigarettes and look at like 16 episodes of Father Knows Best and Donna Reed and The Nelsons and all those good clean shows some of us grew up on, you know, like rank them with a 75, easy to dance to, got a good beat, and speaking of beat it was only last weekend, man, it seems longer than that, me and Hank and Haze dropped a couple of beauties each and did the 30-hour stretch of writing our latest sci-fi prognostications and simplifications and extrapolations and we banged out enough copy for about 20 amazing story zines down the road, it’s all on a thumb drive now back in the top middle drawer of my auntie’s main desk in the office, which is a place I forever have access to,

And sometimes, and I don’t usually share this information, but sometimes I head over there by myself, I borrow Kevin’s Volvo if he’s crashing early for the night, and I tool over with a couple of quarts of Schlitz beers and use my key to the auntie’s office and sink down into her leather chair, and yes I do push myself around on its wheels if the spirit overtakes me, but I go there and work on what I refer to as my journal, and I could have capitalized that or put quote marks around it – “THE JOURNAL” – because it is a big deal and I have been in touch with a downtown publishing company that Kevin’s ex Allison worked at a couple years ago which is when we made these good contacts, which that means I borrow the Volvo and let myself into the empty office, no one there weekends, and I’ve got beers and sometimes, in fact often, I stop at Little Larry’s Submarine Emporium and pick up a couple foot long Italian cold cut subs and maybe three packages of Grandma’s Chocolate Chip cookies and I just string it out, baby, when I have made that kind of commitment I am in it for the long run, which like I said will be something like 30 hours of non-stop journaling and I usually have some Sylvia Plath with me on those occasions and a couple of times I actually stop at Sally Anne’s, and she’s home usually when this happens, and ask to borrow Hector for company, us being all tight and everything and as I have an extra can of cat food in my back pack and there are can openers at the pub comp for those staff folks and their lunches etc….

And it’s me and Hector and the beers and subs and a ream of fresh paper and all the ideas I’ve been storing up since the last time and no place to go and shimmering in the isolation and when I  give it all, why even the girls in the house by the lake get into like a group circle with candles going and share a few stories. Which it’s always a sweet thing when everyone wins.