You're Wrong
An Irregular Column
by Mykel Board
If The Beatles were making music now, they'd be thrown in jail. I mean “She was just seventeen. You know what I mean.” That's pedophilia! --Peter Crowley
It's a season for nostalgia... for reunions... for old photos. The Mudd Club will have its reunion in October. PIL just finished its latest tour... Johnny Rotten the only original member. Other bands tour with one or two more obscure members, the rest dead or feuding. Some pick-up bass player who spent ten minutes with SUICIDAL YOUTH, now leads the SUICIDAL YOUTH REUNION tour.
And the audiences? If it's not old men, the remains of their gray hair scooped together in a pathetic ponytail. It's old women, obscenely trying to stuff themselves into too tight pants, their too-tight t-shirts bulging over their not-tight-enough bellies. Those bellies poke six inches beyond the flabbed-out tits hanging loosely over them.
I used to find these reunion shows as pathetic as you do. A bunch of old farts hiring some new farts to support something that should have died decades ago. Ok, I thought, you were great in the 80s, but you don't make it now. Move aside and let the newest punkrockers move in. Have the good taste to die... Now!
Then there's the fear of youth in the modern world, at least in America. You have prove your age to buy a bottle of beer. Consensual sex is rape if you're too young for government approval.
In the 70s, The Blessed was a kiddie punk band whose 13-year old members played together at Max's Kansas City. They were cute and punk at the same time. Billy, the singer, looked like an adolescent Stiv Bators. I often fantasized about things with these guys that, in 21st century America, are probably illegal to fantasize about. No wonder old farts think they're the shit. Young farts are illegal.
CUT TO 2010. DELANCY STREET. THE BASEMENT OF THE DELANCY STREET BAR:
It's the Max's Kansas City reunion. The second night of a three-night stint. As I go in, I wish for Photoshop glasses. I'd set them to reverse time so when I looked at people, I'd see them like they were thirty years ago. Wrinkles removed. Bellies tightened. Hair restored both in quantity and color.
Do I know you? runs through my mind as I peer at everyone, wondering if, at some time, I shared body fluids with them.
“Hey Mykel,” comes a voice next to me. I look over at this middle-aged guy, somewhat rounded, wearing the kind of baseball hat those of us who have “nothing to hide” hide it with.
He can tell I don't recognize him.
“It's Billy,” he says. “From The Blessed. Remember me?”
My heart sinks.
Somewhere in a drawer at home I have a t-shirt. It's a drawing of a woman holding a baby. A word balloon comes out of her mouth. He's so cute. It's too bad he'll grow up to be a man. My thoughts exactly... except in retrospect. It's too late. He's grown up.
Billy and I talk for awhile. He tells me he's living in New Jersey now and has plans for new music. He wants to do something else. He's not 13 anymore.
You're telling me! I don't say. Then I think, I'm not 13 either. Or 30. Or 40. Or 50...
Despite the growing up, it's good to see Billy. And to see the others I used to know in a different form. I wonder why it's such a tragedy that we grow up and grow old. I wonder if it's life's tragedy or one of our own creation.
Then, I see Teddy.
I recognize him immediately. It's the old Teddy. The guitar player from Just Pants, Max's house band. Boy did I have a crush on him in those days. It was him and Tish, one of the singers of THE SICK FUCKS.
[Aside: The Sick Fucks played tonight. That's why I'm here. Both girl singers look real good for their years. A little jowly, a TINY bit turkey necked, but still, after all those years and drugs. They're sexy enough to jerk off to. Especially in their nuns-in-nylons costumes. Oh yeah!]
Teddy isn't wearing the years very well. He's allowed his remaining fringe of gray hair to grow long-- Benjamin Franklin like. His formerly skinny body droops. It's as if, in the contest between gravity and the connective tissue that holds skin to bone, the tissue just gave up.
His belly bulges downward over his belt, like it's trying to hide his cock. His chin doubles... triples... beneath his neck. His formerly tight smooth cheeks now sag into bulldog jowls. His eyes show their whites as the bags beneath them pull the lower lids into a fleshy mess. A wart pokes from his jaw where his chin used to be.
“Mykel,” he says unselfconsciously, “you look the same as 30 years ago. Well, less hair, I guess. But who doesn't? How'd you avoid gray beard?”
“Just For Men,” I answer.
He laughs like I'm kidding.
We talk for awhile. But we don't talk like old men. We don't discuss our prostates. We don't lament about those were the days. We don't talk about punk rockers who kicked the bucket while they were still good-looking.
Our talk is the talk of people living. Of people drinking, fucking, going to clubs, listening to Cojoba and World War Nine. Of getting drunk, getting in trouble, running from cops, causing trouble. It's a terrific talk.
“You wanna come over for a drink after the show?” he asks me.
“That would be great,” I tell him.
The show itself is terrific. Besides the Sick Fucks, are The Bullys, who I associate with The Continental more than Max's. Wow. Ruby and the Rednecks play, with Ruby bravely singing from a walker, wheeled on stage. It's more like a victory flag than a prop for a cripple. Amazing!
Like I said, the Sick Fucks were masturbatorily good. As was Walter Lure who did Heartbreakers/Johnny Thunders songs, backed by a band of young Japanese guys. Peter Crowley, Max's main man back in the day, put together a masterful show... on its own... not (just?) as a piece of nostalgia. When it's over, I go to Teddy's place.
His apartment is on Bedford, in the West Village. It must be rent-controlled. A huge place... right near Houston Street. A sunken living room. A bedroom off to the side. A kitchen as big as my entire apartment.
It's to the living room we go. There is a couch in that room. Black and white, like fake cowhide... ripped right off your local milking cow. In fact, the whole room is black and white cow. The wallpaper. The lamp shades. The carpet, for God's sake. The lava lamp on the coffee table is NOT black and white, but its cow-spot-shaped bubbles fit perfectly with the rest of the décor.
The woman on the couch, however, does not fit perfectly with the décor. She's lounging like a sultress on the cover of a romance novel. Her arm rests along the back of the couch. Her tilted body radiates come and get me.
Her jowls, bushy gray hair, and flaccid breasts, however, do NOT radiate come and get me... at least that's what I'm thinking when I see her.
She wears, I donno what to call it. It's black, shiny, some kind of plastic material. It hugs her bulging belly, and flattens her mammarian paucity even further. Through it all, though, there's something familiar about her. As if we'd met before. Again, I long for my Photoshop glasses.
“Mykel,” says Teddy, “this is my wife, Edith... Edith, this is...”
“I know,” she says, “we... er... had a relation... Before you were around, Teddy.”
I smile, still unable to place her... or our relation. It's all too obvious that I don't have a clue.
“You don't remember do you?” she asks. “It was the bathroom at Max's. End stall. You asked me, Can I just watch? I like to watch girls. Will you squat on the seat for me?”
It vaguely comes back to me.
“And then...” she continues and stops. She makes a fist with one hand and raises just the pinkie. “See?” she says, “I remember you.”
“Me too,” says Teddy. Pushing me gently to the couch. He leans over me, pressing a hand on each of my shoulders. His face approaches mine, the jangling jowls slowly disappearing on either side of my peripheral vision. His lips press against mine. His tongue pushes its way into my mouth. A hand... Teddy's? Edith's? wiggles like a five-legged spider on my crotch.
The sounds of zippers unzipping break the silence of the room.
We're naked, on the floor. My mouth follows the flab of skin from under Teddy's neck, down to his chest. Gray chest hair covers skin folds that droop from his beneath his arms and down his side. Like one of those Chinese dogs... Sharpees, I think they're called.
I run my tongue under each fold, savoring the sweet smell of sweat... lighter than most... from the dry skin flaking under my mouth. Then I lick over his bulging stomach, past a hairless wart-- just like the one on his face. I nosh the fine gray hairs that act as a downward trail for my tongue.
Edith is between my legs now. Slowly nibbling her way from my knee up to the good part. Teddy's tongue probes my navel as his hand pumps my spouted little sprout.
Wait! He says, lifting his head up and looking at me.
His cheeks puff like a sax player's. His mouth moves as if he were using his tongue to dislodge an errant piece of chocolate mousse. In fact, he is dislodging his teeth.
First the top set. Then the bottom. He carefully removes the dentures and places them on the coffee table. The moving blue light from the lava lamp plays eerily over the whiteness of the false teeth.
He returns to my navel then licks southward sucking my suddenly limp limpness between his gums. It feels like sideways labia. It feels like... It feels damn good.
Teddy runs his gums up and down my again stiff Vienna sausage. Edith has pulled one of my hairy... no both... of my hairy hangers into her mouth.
As she sucks, she rotates her body... crawling upward so her knees are just above my head. I get the hint.
Where I expect tuna, I get sawdust. A dry smell. Like an old leather couch. I press my face deeper into the gap. Using my nose to separate the labia, I lick up and out. I bring my hands behind her, to press her into my munching mouth. My hands lose themselves in the loose flesh of her ass. My middle finger strikes a hemorrhoid, wiggles it playfully, then presses inward.
Ouch!
Edith reacts by biting down on my aching testicles. But the pain isn't bad pain. It's just what I need to push me... ahhh... ahhh. Ahhhh!
Who cares if the Beatles are illegal in 2010. Just change the lyrics.
She was just sevenTY, you know her and me. The way she felt was way beyond compaaaarrrrre! So how could I fuck with another oooooooooo When I saw her layin' there.
ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or website viewers (www.mykelboard.com) will get live links and a chance to post comments on the column]
-->Corporations United dept: Citizen's United is the ironically named group that filed the Supreme Court case. You know, the one that said corporations are people with the same "free speech" rights as real people. In their latest strike for freedom, C.U. has been trying to force the "Wisconsin Democracy Campaign" to change its Facebook name. They don't like: Citizens United Against Citizens United. So much for free speech.
-->Is there anything else tobacco companies can do for their image dept: Human Rights Watch has found that Philip Morris buys tobacco from Kazakh farmers that use child labor. They have documented 72 cases of children working in tobacco fields. According to the group, in a day, workers absorb the amount of nicotine equal to thirty-six cigarettes. And, unlike here in New York, they don't have to pay $12 a pack to do it.
-->If that's a pickle in your pocket, why's it glowing dept: Nukewatch Quarterly reports that the Studsvik Memphis Nuclear Processing Facility will pay $650,000 to 23 black employees who protested being exposed to "far more radiation than their white counterparts." The workers complained that the company manipulated the black workers' radiation monitors. Those monitors would then falsely indicate lower levels of radiation than was actually the case.
-->No inmate left behind dept: According to The Nation, BP has recruited prison labor to clean up the oil spill. Businesses in Louisiana earn a tax credit for every inmate hired. So why not make some money on slave labor? Guess what color most of those prisoners are.... And oil? It's much more toxic that tobacco.
Was someone complaining about Kazakhstan? We have Kazakhstan right here in Louisiana... and Tennessee. Who needs kids when you've got Negroes to do the dangerous work?
-->Wal-Mart does it again dept: A Wal-Mart employee was stripped of his responsibilities and forced to wear a yellow vest after telling his manager he was gay. The employee says his boss asked him if he was gay in front of four of his co-workers and then, presumably, when he answered yes, "alienated him from the other workers." To be fair, there are other factors involved in this case. But this is WAL-MART! Do we want to be fair?
-->The Progressive reports that the Pentagon is investigating Defense Department officials and contractors who have purchased and downloaded kiddie porn. What's the danger to our national security?
"It puts us at risk of blackmail and threats."
Now, is it the PORN that does that, or the laws against it? Hmmm.
Reminds me of Obama's refusal to release the Gitmo torture pictures because "they will incite anti-American feelings." Yo Barak! It's not the pictures that incite. It's the torture!
-->More on Arizona dept: Jan Brewer, the horror governess of Arizona, has appointed a tourism task force to "address concerns about the state's recent immigration law." The new PR campaign will promote the state as a "safe and welcoming destination."
Safe and welcoming? For whom? I guess it depends on your accent or skin color. I'm bringing my passport, just in case.
-->Out of the frying pan dept: I'm writing this at the end of September. In November, I'll be breaking my Boycott Arizona pledge by doing a reading in Tucson. I'm doing it with a FUCK ARIZONA t-shirt or maybe one that says Habla Español o muerte.
I feel a bit guilty about this, though I expect there will be as many Mexicans (Yeah!)in the audience as Arizonans. And I'm also sure NONE of these Arizonans supported the racial laws.
After Tucson, I'm going to Tijuana and the Mexican side of the border areas to pay my dues for reading in Arizona. Here's what the US government says:
Much of the country’s narcotics-related violence has occurred in the northern border region. For example, since 2006, three times as many people have been murdered in Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, than in any other city in Mexico. More than half of all Americans killed in Mexico in 2009 were killed in the border cities of Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana.
-->Just as I was finishing up this column, the news comes that a Princeton university student jumped off a bridge because he was spycammed in dorm homosex. Liberals are calling for blood I won't comment on it here, because my thoughts would take a whole column... they will... next month.
