The Labyrinth 2.0

What brutal sprawls of twisted deathmaze encroach on our precious isle of Manhattan!  What beast-infested nooks and crannies where taxis dare not roam!  What great food-trapping beards that outgristle and outgrease any post-coital Minotaur!  What cheap and chokesome wat’ry beers!  What uninspired zombie throngs that barely conceal contempt for opening bands that aren’t half bad!  What bony, unwashed sternums unearthed by plunging V-neck collars!     

Sign marking the condemned’s entrance to their existential Inferno

To think, that even I, Caligula, could find myself in that phantom world of non-dreams and overshopping at Trader Joe’s, merely by falling asleep on the B train en route to Urban Outfitters, is too hellish an ordeal to dwell on. The human disease, thy name is Brooklyn. I shall have to put the episode behind me if I stand any chance of recovery. But the memories of clove-breath and misappropriations of irony, the gnarled syntax and pizza parlor stabbings, will haunt me for a lifetime, nay, into the afterlife.  

To say nothing of the short stories that hold together about as well as a fistful of diarrhea.  

—Caligula

Caligula’s Dreamlog #5: The Nightmare

Ordinarily, waking to the drab world around us is a bothersome chore—how horrible it is when one’s bladder brings about the end of sleep at noon and demands access to one’s carved marble water closet—but this morning I could have kissed even the toilet lid with gratitude.  And I did, because I woke up with my face in it, right as this nightmare reached its happy conclusion:

THE DREAM

It begins, innocently enough, with me using pliers to extract my own teeth while the Supreme Court hands down a delightful decision: no death penalty for child rape.  So far, so good.  Hordes of beautiful trusting children start filing into the murky basement the justices and I have selected for this gleefully macabre affair: time to celebrate the rule of law!  

I dig the pliers into my gums to pull out a bloody tooth and make the children cower in reverent fear, but what’s this?  I pull out a piece of candy instead.  A laughing child snatches it away.  I try again: more candy. Soon the children are clamoring all about me, and individually wrapped candies are pouring out of every orifice I hold dear (all of them).  I try to beat the ragamuffins off, but every would-be blow turns into a hug by accident.  They love it, and smother me with that love.

“Scalia!” I cry out to the bench, which seems to grow ever more distant in the brightening room.  “Help!  You owe me!”  Scalia also looks concerned with this state of affairs, as the murky basement has finished turning into—gods preserve me—a Whole Foods supermarket, with hippies wearing nothing but hemp vests streaming through the aisles, studying the nutritional information labels on every item they consider.  But even as the other judges fade from sight, Scalia tramples over the children to hand me a beautiful gleaming handgun before falling off the dogpile and turning into a …it gives me an awful warmth to say it…

…a unicorn.

OH, FUCK

Sobbing, I fire the gun repeatedly, but it’s already too late: the once proud weapon is just a rainbow in my fist that emits only sunflowers and Mozart sonatas.  All the pristine civilization man has achieved in spite of my work raises me above the children and hippies, and I soar, riding clouds of of high culture, love, peace, innocence, respect, and compassion, never to find my way back to the nadirs of humanity I had so proudly pioneered.

ANALYSIS

Judge Antonin Scalia is all that stands between us and a nightmare world of pure harmony.

—Caligula

 

The Reverse Dear-John

Dear “Kristen”—

No, the title of this post is not a reference to one of the many positions you and ex-governor Eliot Spitzer lovelessly copulated in.  Or at least I don’t mean it that way.  

I’m breaking this thing off.

That’s right.  You squandered your gift.  You had all the makings of the Top 40 pop star I’d been waiting for my whole adult life, a diva that could make me molt with nothing but her sultry voice, an oversexed club beat and ugly—gloriously ugly—synthesizer riffs.  And you threw it all away.  Instead of being a record industry whore, you were a regular whore.  Instead of reminding us “What We Want” and to “Move Ya Body,” you chose to be a jizz jar at the VIP club.  Well, you forgot who the real VIPs are: the fans.

How can I think of peace when those fingers have been in a governor’s asshole?

Oh, I defended you when the news first broke and threatened to overshadow your singing career.  I said when the dust settled, you’d be touring with Kanye and the Dixie Chicks and get around to responding to my MySpace messages.  But the weeks went by, and I got knocked off your top friends list.  I couldn’t afford tickets to “Glow In The Dark,” but I know you sure as hell didn’t make a guest appearance.  And I won’t let you hurt me any longer.

You could have been a goddess, girl.  But the world will always remember the day Eliot Spitzer fell as the the day the music died.

—Nero