Chapter 8 - Beatified Car Crash

They are having a Karaoke jam here at the Starbucks in Plantation. A girl named Jen just got up and did her thing to Bono’s “Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” She is a perky neo hippy in gauze mauve, headband and all. Now Octavia just got through singing “I Believe I Can Fly” and I really believe the girl can! What a voice, better than the version I’ve heard on the radio by…? Powerful fucking voice. Like to hear her do Aretha. Anyway in the middle of Jen’s jam with Bono, thankfully drowned out so that it was just the ghost of his background track voice, she read us a poem. An airy, uplifting thing that floated above us all like her guaze dress. Thankfully it did not rhyme. At the end of it, the DJ, a very secure dude in black beret, not afraid of making fun of himself asked us to help her out with some old beatnick finger snaps. Questioning looks and handclapping while I yelled “Go!” a few times and people looked at me to see if I wanted her offstage. Oh well, I guess it’s a little before their times, certainly before mine. Spotlight on DJ now doing Steve Miller’s “The Joker” and he stops at the word I never new “And I speak of the …. of love…” and shrugs. I see on the screen pointed out our way that the word is apotheosis. Of course! All through high school I was saying pompetus, whatever that meant. Jen’s turn again. A country number. “I Hope You Dance.” I went out to see the wife braiding necklaces in the bullet and she says. “Is that the car wreck it sounds like.”

Ah yes, it is, a beautiful, beatific car wreck, onlookers looking on and coming in and milling about like spawning salmon. A real coffee shop feel. Now the DJ is playing Cher “Gypsys, Tramps and Thieves” and he sports a long black wig and tosses his hair just like a chunky, broad shouldered, short Cher with glasses. Octavia back at it. A big beautiful black woman.

As for the Swap Shop flea show today it went well in spite of being tucked way in the back. I set up before the sun got up and we made nearly a hundred bucks by 1:00 then it died and we took off to run some errands. Got some copper wire, brass and screen to mount in a frame and hang jewelry from. J had some great ideas for the booth to come, when we start doing the big craft and art shows.

Earlier I wondered if many people are as dissociative as me. I am liable to just go away at a mote of dust and have been this way since my dust mote watching days of childhood. I asked J about it and she said she has never met anyone like me in this way.

Hank does at least one thing a day that makes us laugh and today it was the way he ate a peanut butter sandwich I had made and forgot to eat. I had left it on the dash and as we were about to leave I turned and handed it to Lucky who just let it sit there. On my pillow. Peanut butter dreams tonight. I grabbed it before it made too much more of a mess and put it toward Hank and he opened his mouth wide and let me put the whole thing in there before he closed his mouth.

Time for bed at our Sams, nestled between the semi’s and rv’s. Okay for awhile.