The Day Daddio Died

I am asked ten times daily, it seems, what I am writing, and how this writing is going, and when this writing may be read.  For both the eager and the merely curious, I give you the prologue to my newest novel, although the rest will be made available in the orthodox alpha-to-omega format for which we will all have to wait.  There are, however, 130 scrubbed and polished pages more, and I spend between four and five hours daily ensuring that the tale be told as soon as possible, so abide, and do enjoy this with my happy, happy blessing.

 

 

The Day Daddio Died

 

PROLOGUE-

I do not know what they do to Daddio in the old warehouse, or how much they put him through before using him all up, but I know that afterward he is not as pretty as a tomato that someone is stepping on, and to tell the truth is much less pretty than same. I also know that he is in there under the indelicate ministrations of these importuning Fellas for days, plural, although probably most of the expert work on him occurs just before the grand finale, which finale is known to one and all and needs no expressing.

What does need expressing very much, however, is that it is nobody if it is not old Daddio himself at the first who is collecting the Cats against Rocky Carmichael, Dudley One-Gun McDunn, and the rest of the Fellas, and that furthermore he is the most benevolent gee I know for many hard years, and since so few individuals are ever remembering anything about him but the day he dies, please excuse that I do not begin the beginning without a short anecdote regarding Daddio’s character, after which I invite you to stay for the show or go as you please.

On this occasion I am with Daddio and Charlie Smooth enjoying coffee and cigarettes, sitting around Jinx’s newsstand doing nothing at all but a whole lot of nothing, when this Fella carrying a briefcase ambles by without so much as a what-do-you-hear, what-do-you-say. Naturally, this omission we consider uncouth, but Fellas are taking time to chat nine times out of never anyhow, being generally very interested in themselves, and besides there are hardly ever any Fellas around the feline parts of The City since being this far from downtown is often unhealthful for them, and especially when they are carrying their briefcases.

The reason for our prejudice against briefcases is that Fellas are typically carrying their business in them, which business may be burglary, kidnapping, extortion, or any such activity as the law condones when a Fella is having his briefcase in order. We Cats, therefore, take interest more than somewhat in any Fella on a midday stroll who seems to have business on his mind, and as anybody who knows a Fella can tell you, if ever a Fella is having anything on his mind, it is his business.

Well right away Charlie Smooth volunteers to conduct the usual diplomacy, but Daddio tells him no, and says he wants to see what sort of mischief is in this Fella’s briefcase, and for which hapless Cat or dweeb such heartache is intended besides. Furthermore, it is many weeks since he is having any lively conversation with a Fella, so it is doing him good. Daddio is a very enthusiastic conversationalist in these days.

Now you may think that it is a hundred-to-one that a Fella will notice such a character as Daddio hanging around Jinx’s newsstand and jawing with other prominent Cats such as the Smooth and myself, but remember that this is a very long time ago that I am talking about when we are no more prominent than a healthy thumb, so Daddio is able to tail the Fella for several blocks before the suit hears Daddio’s wallet chain jangling, decides that it jangles behind him for too long, and takes it on the lam down an alley before Daddio can catch up.

It is some time before Daddio finds this individual. He finds him having a conversation on the dingy stoop of one of the apartment buildings on the outskirts of town, where the local Cats and dweebs are having trouble with potatoes for their rent more than somewhat, and Daddio hides behind some aluminum garbage cans to eavesdrop. The Fella speaks with the sterile etiquette Fellas are always using whenever they are about to do something terrible to somebody, while the somebody of the hour, a mother-of-six sort of broad with misleading wrinkles that result perhaps from being the mother of six, clasps her hands together and implores the Fella to come back tomorrow, and stares with horror at the briefcase that rests on her stoop against the Fella’s leg. The Fella patiently explains to her the policies of doom while she wrings her hands. This goes on and on, until at last the Fella picks up his briefcase and commences to open it on her.

Now this is no such broad as Daddio is ever knowing in his young life, and for all he knows she is an addict, or a maniac, or any one of the multifarious colors of a modern miscreant, but it seems he hears enough of their discussion to decide he will put his person between the horrors in that briefcase and their would-be victim, because my old friend outs from behind the garbage and yells wait as the dame commences to wail, and the Fella turns to look, his finger on the trigger of the latch of his briefcase, and who does he see standing there but tall, skinny Daddio, not a day over nineteen.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” says Daddio.

But the Fella only smiles and says, “It’s all here in black and white, Cat.”

Daddio can see the Fella intends to spring the latch, so he makes a grab for him, but the Fella jumps off the stoop and splits down the street back into The City while the broad shrieks, and Daddio beats it for all he is worth, really breaks in his sneakers to cop the Fella and give him what-for.

The better part of a mile later, Daddio is dismayed that it takes him so long to catch up with the Fella, because as anyone can tell you, running from a Cat on damp pavement in loafers is not a little difficult, and quite some, but he is much more dismayed to catch up when the Fella surprises him around a corner and busts his noggin very nicely with the edge of the briefcase, knocking him into the street and out of one sneaker. Well what does this Fella do but haul off and take this sneaker, just in case Daddio should feel indignant at the way the Fella busts his noggin for him and wishes to return the favor, which of course, Daddio does very much, and one and all deem this sneaker caper very unprofessional.

The Fella is a memory, though, and Daddio spends the afternoon asking dweebs on the street whether they are seeing any Fellas running around with briefcases, to which these dweebs reply that lately there are more of them every day, but that they are as alike to one another as the bricks in the walls and very hard to tell apart, and anyone can see that Daddio is never finding his man. Then it occurs to him that the Fella is almost certainly returning to the broken-down broad, where there is now no one but no one to accost him. So with only a sock on his foot Daddio makes his way back to the outskirts just as quickly as a Cat missing a sneaker can make it anyplace, which is not so very quickly, and which involves broken glass besides.

Daddio gets there, though, and finds the door to the apartment open, the Fella long gone. In fact, Daddio finds that almost everything in the joint is long gone. The glass in the only window is long gone, and the boards in the floor are long gone, and the mortar between the bricks in the walls is crumbling and spare. He spies a hunk of moldy bread on a table in the corner of the room though, but even this pitiful lunch is no use, because taking up the rest of the floorspace are two blankets, and on these blankets are many papers with signatures on them, and on these papers beside an empty medicine bottle are the blue bodies of the broken-down broad and her tyke, not gone very long, but still long gone.

Later Daddio mentions that it is not being a mother of six what carves all these wrinkles into her forehead, but the trouble of feeding only one, and I watch him consider nightmares behind his eyes as he posits this notion.

Now of course this is a regrettable tale, to be sure, and I for one do not know how bad a day a broad must have before she is using up her one and only ever-loving, and herself to boot, but this is only a window on what is happening to Cats and Fellas, broads and dames alike before the day Daddio dies, and I can tell you that if this scenery presents just such a view of nature as you are likely to appreciate, then you are in luck, as there is plenty more where it is coming from.

 

Expect Little!

My mission to procure cigarettes and beer from the liquor store nearly ended in disaster one night last summer when a woman in a swell car almost ran me down.  She had responsibly checked for oncoming traffic — in the wrong direction — before executing her turn, and as she passed me our eyes met through the passenger window.  She looked at me as if to say, “oh! how long have you been there?” and I stood in the street, toes mere inches from her rolling tires, grinning back at her in frank amusement.

I should have been outraged.  I should have spit upon the hood of her car.  The thing is, I just didn’t feel any anger toward her at all.  I found it funny that she might have killed me outright and, altogether oblivious of her  manslaughter, simply gone on to shop at Target.

Was it remarkable that a person should make such a glaring error among the throngs of humans negotiating the myriad avenues and boulevards of Los Angeles County, thought I?  Oh, hardly.  In fact, only an idiot wouldn’t expect it.

Then suddenly, as I went on my way with a wide smile warming my face, I shrugged, and an epiphany descended upon me as if from heaven.

“Expect little,” I said aloud.

And I’ve been saying it every day since.

The obnoxious behavior of others is normal for human beings. Expect little.

Expect little is a prayer.  It soothes and calms.  It educates.  It’s an unlikely mantra which inculcates a sort of passive humility.

It may be a nice gesture to presume that everyone is endowed with friendliness, elementary skills and common sense, but it’s an unlikely supposition which can only lead to discontent.   One ought rather to expect little of others.  Hate becomes very difficult when people act in accordance with your already-low expectations of them.

It behooves us all to acquaint ourselves with the idea that humanity may not be cut out for greatness, not even in our own hackneyed estimation.

Expect little, friends, because the highest percentage of people is always more rude, stupid, and unkempt than the minority of well-mannered, intelligent, and hygienic people.  This is because exceptional characteristics are by definition above average — which is to say, that they are the exception, rather than the rule.  Expecting little from people allows you to be content with the way people actually are, and pleasantly surprised by above-average behavior, which is as it should be.

To expect excellence from people, on the other hand, is silly.  People have never been cool en masse, but mass media has programmed us to expect everyone to be beautiful, polite, and at least somewhat intelligent.  This is (ha, ha!) not the case.

Expecting excellence from people is not even respectful to them.  In fact, it’s condescending.  You aren’t so cool, yourself, you know, particularly from the perspectives of people who don’t live up to your high standards.  We — you and I — are not cool enough to expect good things from others.  We don’t even know what cool is, in the universal sense.

Let people be stupid.  Let them be themselves, for God’s sake (big G).  Let them be stupid today, because you’re probably going to do something stupid tomorrow.

Think you're especially brilliant? Wrong. Each of us is just as gloriously idiotic as the next. Embrace humanity.

Expect little, because you can quickly become depressed by the amount of people who fail to meet your expectations.  That’s not any good.  Discontent with others leads to treating people as though you do not like them around — which tends to convince people that you do not like them around.  Pretty soon, you find yourself without anybody around, and where do you suppose everyone has gone?  Why, into the next room, of course, where everyone is frowning in your direction and calling you an elitist asshole.

Of you, they would do better to expect little.

We don’t only have irrationally high expectations of people, though.  Occasionally, we even find ourselves angry with luck, itself, as if it were slacking or something, remiss in its duties, not paying close enough attention to us and producing the wrong kind of random event.   This is perhaps our most common madness.  Why should we expect good fortune from random chance?  Random chance is the one thing from which we shouldn’t expect anything at all!

The world’s smartest computer can’t make accurate predictions of what random chance will produce.  Why bother lamenting an unfortunate mishap as if shocked that it might inconvenience you?  Mishaps happen.  In fact, mishaps happen so regularly — and with such colorful variety — that we ought long ago to have stopped guessing what should or should not transpire within the course of a day.  However, the rusty computers between our ears are always half-dedicated to overestimating their ill-collected data and faulty projections.

You see, then, we even expect too much of ourselves.  We’re only human, friends.  Chase your dreams in earnest, quest valiantly for glory, and by-all-means be the change you wish to see in the world, as the neo-hippies say — but…

Expect little.

Luck of the draw got you down? Dice come up snake-eyes again? Take my word for it -- expect little.

Expect little!  Expect your neighbor to make too much noise.  Expect your boss to give you too much work.  Expect helicopter parenting, drunk driving, and repeat offending, often by the same culprits.  Expect your favorite band to use too much cowbell.

Expect people from poorly educated states in poorly educated countries to act poorly educated.  Expect people crammed into tight quarters with millions of others to develop hurtful prejudices.  Expect full-grown adults to parrot what they see in movies, in magazines, and in mainstream music, and expect their teenagers (raised likewise by televisions and gangsta rap) to be perfectly disrespectful.

Expect politicians to lie, and cheat, and steal, not to mention fornicate with people you’d rather they wouldn’t.  Expect people with guns (soldiers, cops, and criminals) to shoot people.  Expect druggies to do drugs and go about in public on drugs, and to act just as though they might be high on drugs.  Say to them when you see them shrinking from the demons down aisle nine at Rite-Aid, “Hello, druggie.  How do you do?”

Expect preachers to sin, marriages to fail, and sons and daughters to leave the family religion.  Expect athletes to take steroids, psychiatrists to prescribe poison, and models to mutilate themselves surgically.  Expect wonder.  Expect marvel.  Expect to be astonished at the spectacle in which every one of us plays a humble part.

In other words, expect people to act just as though they were human — but for your own sake as well as that of others, the next time your friend complains that a significant other has forgotten an anniversary, or that some ruthless businessman has destroyed the local economy, or that a hapless driver has run over his or her favorite author (ahem), just shrug your shoulders and smile sympathetically, offer a beer and say to your friend,

“Expect little.”

With a great big smile and my fingers crossed, I remain,

Yours Truly,

-BothEyesShut

Four Things You Are Not

Having spoken with several acquaintances about concerns they have in common, I feel that I must explain some things.

This will not take long.

I. You Are Not Dumb

I’ve never met a stupid human being.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I see people do stupid things all the time, but that doesn’t make anyone stupid. They’re mistaken, not stupid. There’s an enormous difference.

I make mistakes all the time, and I ain’t stupid. In fact, I may even be mistaken now. For all I know, I’ve been sharing oxygen with morons every day of my life. I don’t think so, though.

There’s no such thing as a stupid person, only stupid decisions. The stupidity of every act is determined by the trouble it causes. That’s the secret of Mrs. Gump’s wisdom, “Stupid is as stupid does.”

The way I look at it, everyone’s his or her own sort of genius, and everyone screws up in different ways to different degrees. Some of us have educations, some don’t, all of us pulling bonehead moves pretty much all the time…

It’s just that some of our screwups stand out more, is all.

The next time you feel bad because you don’t know the square root of zero or the political term for “asshole” or the approximate population of Paraguay, just remember how easily you buttoned your pants this morning, then try training a dolphin to do it.

Yeah, that’s right. Not so frickin’ smart now, are you, Flipper? Brains the size of cantaloupes, my ass.

We're all geniuses. Or, at least, we're each as brilliant as everyone else.

II. You Are Not Strange

Never have I met an entirely strange and bizarre person.

Every human feels set apart sometimes, different than and misunderstood by surrounding people, but nobody’s too different from anyone else. This is because we’ve only got so much to work with, our hands, eyes, brains, and all that.

For this reason our situations can’t vary too much — but our own interpretations of our circumstances, as well as the circumstances of others, can easily fool us into thinking that the beautiful, young and wealthy sleep like babies every night, carefree and serene, without a twinge of the various pains we regular people feel. However, it is arrogant and juvenile to presume oneself in a class apart. No matter how a person may dress, talk, walk, or whatever, one thing remains certain: there is no escaping humanity. Once a human, always a human, and this means being part of us.

You can’t be weird enough to out-weird humanity. You are never the only one. Like it or not, whether you’re stressed about paying for something, tore-up over an ex-lover, or mortified for having been caught masturbating, you’re just like everyone else.

You’re just like everyone else, and that’s really not so bad, because we’re all just like you, too.

If that depresses you, though, maybe because you’re one of those drama club people who’s been wearing wacky hats to garner attention since high school, or maybe because you always thought you were super-duper special, God’s special little chosen one (big G), then, go get a new haircut. That always makes me feel like a new man.

Nobody's much different from anyone else, really, but never underestimate the power of a new haircut to help you feel like an entirely unique person.

III. You Are Not Ugly

I have never met an ugly human being. Now, don’t get me wrong, I see people doing ugly things all the time, the sorts of things people do or say which make them less attractive to me, but I’ve never seen anyone without beauty.

Physically speaking, beauty is fairly simple to come by. Humanity has invented for itself all manner of cosmetics, clothes, soaps, styles, and even surgeries for the beautification of the human form, and versions of these are available to just about everyone. Not only this, but even the most cursory spin around the seedier side of the Internet can confirm that pretty much everyone is the sexiest person on earth to someone. Nothing so subjective deserves to be taken seriously.

The problem is, so many of you out there have let Hollywood convince you that you’re shambling, horrific wrecks, and now you’ve forgotten how nice you look with your hair the way you like it. You’ve forgotten how nice you look in that sweater your ex- bought you for Christmas. You’ve forgotten how to stand up straight and walk like you’ve got someplace to go, rather than sliding down the sidewalks of America like bewildered clumps of moss.

You aren’t ugly. You just look like you think you are. Show a little respect to your body, and I bet you get to use it a lot more for recreation.

IV. You Are Not Going to Hell

Most importantly (speaking of gods) neither you — nor anyone else — is going to hell.

I know this because no loving creator would ever make imperfect people, only to sit back and watch them burn throughout all eternity for having made imperfect decisions. Now, if we’re talking about a wicked, sadistic tyrant with a chip on his shoulder and an insatiable blood lust, then maybe hell exists after all, but so long as you believe in an all-understanding, ever-present god who emanates love throughout the universes, you’re forced to accept that you are not going to hell.

You may, however, be going to a cosmic video arcade, where all celestial matters are decided according to who achieves the high score on Frogger, Asteroids, and Donkey Kong.

Ancient Hebrew mysticism has revealed that the apocalypse will be triggered when Moses prevails over the Holy High Score of Pac-Man set by John the Baptist in 1150 A.D.

So please, fellow humans, take a look in the mirror and see nothing more or less than what you happen to be: a powerful, intelligent, intuitive body organ of the universe, humming and thrumming, capable of godlike wonders of creation and destruction, given to acts of compassion, gentility, and grace far beyond anything described in any holy book, yet also bearing the potential to invent horrors yet undreamed.

I don’t care who you are; I can’t but be in awe of you. You’re human, for god’s sake. You can read and write, concoct a casserole, develop an opinion of modern theatre, alter your brainwave patterns through self-medication, communicate terribly complex concepts, drive a car, teach children to sing, engage in genocide against insects, play badminton, knot a necktie, walk in high heels, hum a tune, organize a spitting contest, pen a poem, flirt, flaunt, fornicate — all this while considering the implications of your existence in space and time and your relationship to the universe which birthed you.

Just admit it. You’re far, far more than you take credit for (and modest, too!) and your worst opinion of yourself is a nightmare from which you may as well awaken, because your shortsighted opinion of yourself is just as much silliness as anything else humanity has come up with, such as duck-duck-goose, Sasquatch, chewing gum, Teletubbies, or the Presidential election.

I don’t know what else to say, except that it’s time I stopped having to explain this rudimentary nonsense to people. You’re cool, OK? If we could all stop acting like winners and losers in some crucial beauty pageant, some apocalyptic talent show, a whole lot of this global tension would disappear in a puff of goodwill and self-recognition.

Stop it. Just stop it. Relax. Be amused. No matter how seriously you take yourself, this life is hilarious.

With faith in my fellows and well-meaning impatience I remain,

Yours Truly,

-BothEyesShut