“You want me to drive, Artie?” I ask as we walk over to his car.
“What?” he shouts, gripping his cane with one hand, adjusting his hearing aid with the other. “Can’t hear a fucking thing with this goddamn thing,” he growls, “I hadda take it back three times already, goddamm it!”
I repeat my offer to drive us to the restaurant. “Naw, I can make it,” he says, adding “You can park the car for me when we get there,” he concedes. “I don’t see so good in the dark…”
Great! I think as we get into his car in the dark driveway.
As we speed along the Ventura freeway in his fully loaded Toyota Prius, Artie’s hand seems to take on a life of its own, playing with the radio dial in a most extraordinary way, working the radio like some bizarre psychedellic musical instrument, and suddenly my ears are assaulted with a loud surreal cocophany of hiphop gangsta rap and evangelical radio preachers and Mexican news broadcasts and fast food chicken ads and folk songs and frenetic techno music. It’s as if the old man is in a fucking trance of some sort. Fuck… If that ghostly white hand of his wasn’t continually fiddling with the radio dial, I’d think he’d fucking fallen asleep at the wheel as the car careens dangerously across the blurry white lines at 90 miles an hour, and I feel like I’m a helpless little kid again, sitting on Mr. Magoo’s Wild Ride at Disneyland. Fuck. And now he’s listening to the nigga station, word up, yo, word to ya motha yo yo yo baby, with his head cocked to one side like a stoned out parrot and I sit there beside him, feeling my asshole pucker like a Sea Anemone caught in a swirling whirlpool of Mexican rap and horn-blaring Mariachi music, static, easy listening, opera, more static, Heavy Metal, opera again…
Fuck. I’m watching the highway, frozen silent in escalating waves of terror as he sideswipes careening 18 wheelers, narrowly avoiding instant annihilation for us both. Fuck, fuckin’ bastard’s 92 years old, every hour above ground’s a fuckin’ bonus hour for his worn-out ass, I’m thinking, what about me? I’m just gettin started here, selfiish prick. God don’t lemme die here with this demented old crow, not now, not today….
Finally he looks up from the radio like a sleepy old cocker spaniel and explains that he’s looking for a news station. “Riders on The Storm” is playing… Into this life we’re born, into this world we’re thrown… and then suddenly we’re speeding down the off-ramp and we’re gonna make it one more time, another day for us both, another dinner with this narcissistic old mummy, my father, where I’m gonna have to get the hundred dollar check at some expensive fancy suburban restaurant again, cuz Artie magnanimously picks up the check only when he drives us over to that cheap greasy Chinese joint next to the taco stand in the strip mall, fuckin old Jew bastard.
Thank you, Jesus, I think as we pull to a screeching halt in front of the Dolce Vitta Trattoria. Artie snatches his silver and ivory tipped mahogany cane up from the floor, nearly bopping me on the chin with it as he unfolds himself out of the driver’s seat, cussing and complaining, one pissed off cantankerous old bone at a time.
Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2010.
Ha ha ha! Awesome!…
Can’t wait for this book to come out. Let us know when it hits the shelves– or amazon. I hafta have this.
I can see your images so clear. And I hear Artie clearly amplified. I called him on his ARTICO music publishing number one Sunday a year before he died about my great-uncle John Bartee. An Arranger/ Composer in 37/38 band and composer of the 3 Afro-Cuban numbers in 49. I know he was dealing with age & the shit it does to your mind & body. But, Damn… he did have the gift to make an asshole pucker. I can see why he became such a great marksman… sooner or later somebody gets pissed back at you. I got a feeling there is a lot of payback happening on the other side. That KARMA its a Bitch.
The writing is great. I’ll have to check out Love Songs to the Dead. It would be great if you and your friend Johnny brought that Film Project back to life. If you script it with the same honesty your words hold, that old fart would get a new generation of groupies.
GROUPIES… ignorant fans… Now that would really piss him off…