# Old Stories - #32



## The Cack (Dec 25, 2011)

*Travelogue #9 #9 #9 #9 #9 #9 #etc.*

*Wild Bill and the Japanese Phenomenon*

Eugene, Oregon, without college students, is desolate. With a few dollars procured from a random guy who asked me about a stabbing, then thrusting $10 in my face, I sought out some place to relax from the constant _Go!Go!Go! _of travel. This karaoke bar would have to do.

If no one has ever told you, karaoke is one of the most depressing forms of entertainment. The singing? At its best, it can only be as good as the original, never exceeding. And usually, its pretty terrible. Even the un-cleared backing tracks of "Light My Fire" sound hackneyed. How bad do you want to be a star? Is this as close as people feel they should get to being celebrities? Or, rockstars? Or...

Within 5 minutes, I picked up the entire social dynamic: the staff who would rather not be working, the work crew out to fraternize, the double date with fat guy third (fifth) wheel, the girls chatting up the bouncers, single male losers at the bar, and--of course--the crazy bum. Considering it was close to the 1st of the month, the bar only tolerated the crazy bum because of his monetary contributions.

Me? I sat alone, so I was part of the loser dynamic, but I'll be damned if I sit at the bar just to get face-time with someone else's date while they blow $40 of recession-era currency to enhance their hangovers. Unfortunately, my solitude always attracts others like oxygen attracts hydrogen atoms--THEY COME TO ME. The crazy bum zeroed in on me after his dancing (alone) on the dancefloor to someone's rendition of an esoteric rockabilly song. His rhythm was off. But, its karaoke. These are not the people whom you write biographies about.

He introduced himself to me by nearly knocking my drink over. "Name's Bill. Wild Bill." Nice to meet you, Wild Bill. He was toothless, wearing a NASCAR-esque hat, a sports jersey, and a pair of jeans. With his greyed mustache, he could have been any libertine you know from downtown squares, picking up loose cigarette butts and muttering "yup" at the passing, unfeeling world. To me, he was Wild Bill, and Wild Bill was from New Jersey. His voice was gone, like a lungbuttery Howling Wolf. At each "act", he jeered with a superior air:

"Just you wait, wait until you see what I do. I'm doing Dylan."

"Which one?"

"'Tangled Up in Blue'."

Not only was he lungbuttered, but he was from New Joy-sey. The act became more pronounced as he became more drunk, and by his second beer, he bought me a Pabst with $3 of SSI. After he sequestered himself out for a smoke break, he was announced to stage by the blase karaoke engineer. 

"Next up is.. Wild Bill."

WB passed by me as I was waiting for my free beer, saying "watch this!". I watched.

The track, of course, wasa bad approximation of Dylan, sounding like a studio musician in the worst way. Wild Bill bumped up and down in place to a beat all his own, and then came the cue for the first verse.

"Early one morning, I was, ummm, somethin'. Uh, she was lookin' at me, and I... ummm... okay... hey."

Wild Bill had disintegrated within 5 seconds of his on-stage debut. No one laughed but me. Everyone else thought it was tragic. He yelled at the engineer--"start it over. I wasn't ready!" She complied. The cue came up again:

"Early one morning, I was laying bed I she though, uh, AAAAHHHHH, FUCK, uhmmmmm... Hey, everyone. How're you doing?"

By now, his face had turned into a shit-eating grin, his bounce was less frequent, and he had seemed to shrink from the stage. Every few seconds, he tried to pick some verses from the teleprompter, his figure bending over to facilitate his feeble squint, colored lights behind him droning on in fluorescent hues that his performance couldn't satisfy. Some people started to laugh, the bartender was bored, and it was Sunday. 

Unfortunately, "Tangled Up in Blue" is a six-minute song. The engineer was merciless--we had to sit through Wild Bill's nervous monologue, repeatedly asking the audience how they were, or relying on his own "I'm Wild Bill" proclamation. But six minutes, and it was over.

His figure was downtrodden, and the sports jersey he wore seemed to melt off his body in shame. I gestured with my beer, thanking him and saying with mock-incredulousness, "Bill! What happened!?"

"I couldn't see the screen. I don't have my glasses. I... Ah, these people..." 

Bill switched his tactics from "fuck 'em" to "that's the way it goes" (more in line with "Tangled Up in Blue"), and left the karaoke bar. For some reason, I remained staring out from the bar. A young guy with an unnatural beard walked up with a saunter-less gait. We exchanged hello's while I did my best interpretation of Will Bill's performance (there's a Tom Waits I keep in the back of my throat for occasions like this). Miraculously, he asked what I was having. "Umm, a Pabst".

Young beardo was lit--and unnaturally happy. "Do you want a shot?"

I feigned resistance--of course I wanted a shot. "Bartender, can you add a Pabst and a shot to my tab?" I thanked him, making minimal conversation to show that he wouldn't buy my friendship that easily, and we briefly mused the merits of Wild Bill's performance. Young beardo returned to the safety of his assembled friends while a coworker sang "Your Song" to another for her 21st birthday. Then, the blackout set in, with the following scenes only being memorable:

1) Cursing the bartender for preying on my drunkeness by not handing back the correct change, five dollars, when I purchased another Pabst Blue Ribbon pint
2) Covering myself with cardboard in a cubby hole while I cursed these junky-hippies whom I rode with from Olympia to Portland. They stole my sleeping bag while in a state of exaggerated THC-induced laziness

In the morning, I found my $5 in another pocket but I still kind of hated the bartender.

*Showing Jonathan How to Make Love on the Sidewalk*

Jonathan, when I first met him, was sitting on Telegraph. His hair was arranged in tiny dreadlocks and his cheeks were dotted with little red dots of acne. His meek approach to begging. Poor misled youth, the coming future was certain when he'd recount at thirty years of age, "yeah, I was so fucking stupid when I was younger. I didn't know anything." He seemed pleasant enough until the next time I had seen him at the drop-in center off of Bancroft, but that was one day later in Berkeley. His "earnings" for the day were pitiful--maybe $1 in assorted change. So, I showed him a grifter trick:

With change arranged on the sidewalk, spell out L-O-V-E. It helps to have pennies. Success can be had if you have simply the L and the O. Then, when people pass by--preferably soft touches like couples or women--ask them in a sweet tone "do you want to make love on the sidewalk?" Its outlandish. It works. You can also use F-U-C-K, or if you have any creativity, say that you're trying to spell out "The Catcher in the Rye" letter-by-letter to get off the street. Or not. 

Frankly, the problem with this method, though novel, is that you can only get change--not dollar bills. Hell, some bums reject pennies outright. And if they do, then you can see where your money's really going. I can't remember a dealer ever accepting a jar of pennies.

The next day, Jonathan told me that he had been traveling for two years. He was a ward of the state. An orphan, and his hair suggested that he was a child of a Samoan and a black man. Or, who knows? Regardless, he was 7 months shy of being 21. As for ambitions, it was next town, next town, next town. He spoke of the police disdainfully, always clamping down on "flying" his sign. Then again, what do you expect. Luckily for him, if he chooses to go to college, its on the government's dime. Kind of like spanging from the government! 


*Smiling girls of San Francisco*

Let it be known that the Castro district of San Francisco is the place to pick up women. If you (a man, I suppose) can stand all the men asking about your penile size or longingly staring at your chest hair for a slice of hope, a sliver of ejaculation to come, the Astroglide on the phallus and subsequent frothy smear; yes, if you can stand that, just remember that lots of women go there to simply avoid being hit on by men in other party districts. Even in Dolores Park, beautiful women gave little unwashed me the Come Chase Me eyes more often than I've ever had in my life...


*Road Dog?*

So much for road doggin' it with this one gutter punk who sang "Midnight Special". When I found him the following day in the same spot on Telegraph, he was laying on his back on his pack on the sidewalk in front of the rave/hip-hop club. People milled about, not noticing his sleeping figure, completely fucked up from the scattered bottles-in-paper-bags. He looked like a turtle. His bearded face was frozen in pain. When I mustered up the courage to wake him, he was gone. Instead, I played music with another youth named Mike and a transient drug dealer with two teeth.

 No, they wouldn't make good road dogs, either.


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