In The Kingdom of the Blind, The One-Eyed Man Has
To See Some Pretty Stupid Fucking Shit
I hadn’t been awake for more than five minutes. I’m trying to pour coffee into my Kill Bill coffee mug (a mug some folks would describe as vintage which blows my mind because, goddammit, I just watched that movie at the cinema when it premiered, and I swear to god it couldn’t have been more than a handful of years ago) when my eighty-year old, live-in father-in-law announces “138 over 74.”
It’s a sad fact of life, I can rub the sleep from my eyes, but I can’t erase the anger in my heart, or Milt’s continued presence in my line of sight. This being his house and all. He stands there, big fucking belly jutting in front of him like a beach ball. His Michigan T-shirt tucked into the elastic waist band of his gym shorts. Only that smug expression holding utter vacuity at bay.
Last week, Milt experienced what he calls a medical episode, and I call an adverse effect to the Wolverines playing like shit. Basically, his heart fluttered, perhaps even palpitated. Either way, he was rushed to the hospital where he was hooked up to an EKG monitor, fed watery mostaccioli, and had his kick ass Chrysler-provided health insurance transgressed with any number of exorbitant fees for a cardiac doctor to remind Milt he’s eighty-years-old, he can’t snap into a Slim Jim three times a day while binge-watching Reacher on Amazon for the twentieth time.
Now, Milt is constantly checking his blood pressure, his blood oxygen level, and his heart rate. And that’s well and fine. His new obsession is not my new obsession, and I don’t need him to continuously announce the results. There are no awards being handed out for jackass of the county. And if there were, he’d stand at the window with binoculars for three fucking hours waiting for the postman to stick it in his mailbox.
“145 over 80.”
“Milt, just stop. Let me know when it flatlines. Until then, seriously, pretend you have something to say about Michigan football and remember how little I give a fuck.”
“Blood oxygen levels at 93,” he chortles, oblivious to my dismay because he doesn’t actually listen to the words others are speaking; he just anticipates that brief moment of silence for him to shoehorn in his bullshit that no one wants to hear.
“Milt! I got the diabetes; you don’t hear me calling out my blood sugar levels all hours of the day. You know why? Because I don’t check the motherfucker. All those dumb bastards pricking their fingers, hoping that sweet tea doesn’t knock their numbers over 150. I don’t bother. It’s gonna be what it’s gonna be. And it is what it is because I just ate a bag of gummi bears larger than my fucking head. You always hear that advice, never eat anything bigger than your head. Well, I just did it, anyway. Fuck it. I don’t want to see eighty. Anyone else would be in a goddam diabetic coma, but, no, my body refuses to give me the easy way out. I gotta listen to your shit when all I want to do is sit on the front porch and maybe read ten pages of this Jeff Mariotte novel before you interrupt me again.”
“Heart rate holding steady at 65.”
And then he snaps into his breakfast Slim Jim. And not one of those little meat sticks, either. I don’t know where he keeps them, cause I sure can’t find any when I’m hungry. He sits in his catnapper with the Slim Jim curving out from his clenched fist like a long, slender giraffe dick. Damn thing has to be three feet long, arcing out not toward justice, but toward a irrevocably high cholesterol count that he mercifully neglects to monitor.
And since he does not check his cholesterol then it must not exist, like my A1C levels, or climate change, or repercussions for Republican misbehavior. It’s simply not there. Kinda like Tyler Robinson’s transgender boyfriend.
Which I suppose brings us to the crux of this column, cause let’s be real with each other, if nothing else, there’s a pretty good chance most anyone has clicked off by now, thinking this column is yet another bitchfest directed at my knuckleheaded father-in-law. I’m fucking positive anybody with Trump’s cock in their mouth never made it past the first sentence, so let’s talk about these text messages sent between the supposed sniper and his unnamed, unsubstantiated, supposedly transitioning, transgender boyfriend.
I just want to put this out there. God forbid I ever actually do any shady shit, and somebody looks back to the summer of ’93, the summer of short pants and flannel, and takes a long, hard look at my roommate. That poor bastard took his fashion cues from Mike Tramp. Remember that cat? The lead singer of White Lion. That guy just naturally looked on the verge of spontaneous gender transitioning. There is a photo that exists from a mutual friend’s wedding where my roommate is wearing white bleached jeans, a white button-down shirt beneath a white leather jacket with fringe on the sleeves. I’m standing next to him wearing all black as was my style during the first forty years of my life. We could have been mistaken for a very gay yin and yang. I begged my roommate to wear anything other than that get-up. The bride was supposed to wear white not just any virgin off the street. But he wouldn’t budge and the only other clothes I possessed were black, black, and more black. So, yeah, if Trump and his brigade of half-wits don’t like me poking holes in the thin veneer of the reality they seek to impose and want to hang some bullshit on me, that photo would go a long way toward making me look like a liberal.
I just have a real hard time buying into those texts that idiot kid supposedly sent. Some would argue that not all twenty-two-year-olds are half-retarded always talking about bussin’ and No Caps and things I’m not quite sure I understand with my small peepee energy. That’s fine. Please understand, I’m saying NOBODY texts like that. It reads like some Scooby-Doo villain spelling out his diabolical scheme within the last fifteen seconds of an especially juvenile episode. You would have thought Kash Patel got his bullet points gathered while eating White Castles with Henry Cho, but he was too goddam lazy to complete the assignment, so he just fed the whole fucking thing into a Great Value ChatGPT, and this is what it spit out. Jesus Christ, man, if these texts were a picture there’d be six fingered hands all over the place.
Sometimes, I think the sorry state of things, like Milt’s blood pressure, like my A1C levels, is best kept unknown, unknowable, until the last possible moment, when it just kills you. Before I sign off here, I’ll leave you with this. My son is twenty-two years old. Let me share with you the last ten texts I have received from him these last six months.,
“Aight. Chillin.”
“Sick.”
“Yea.”
“I’m awake.”
“Just gonna chill.”
“My car’s fucked.”
“Dunno. Won’t start.”
“Chicken nuggies from Wendys.”
“I say, my good sir, I hope prosperity continues to shine down on you and yours. I myself will continue to safeguard the Republic and champion the rights of the oppressed in the land of Roblox. I just have to drop another hundred bucks on a Vorporal sword to cleave my enemies in twain.”
“Sry. Thought I was txting my friend.”
Karl Koweski is a displaced Region Rat now living in rural Alabama. He writes when his pen allows it. He’s a husband to a lovely wife and father to some fantastic kids. He collects pop culture ephemera. On most days he prefers Flash Gordon to Luke Skywalker and Neil Diamond to Elvis Presley.
THE POLISH HAMMER POETRY CORNER is a weekly column, posted each Tuesday morning.
