Autdtraumagique

Autdtraumagique
By Mark Lax

Clouds rained frogs nowhere. I scanned the headlines of all two hundred newspapers I receive and spotted not a single man biting a dog, no little girls lifting cars to save their drunken fathers. And the results from the Bangladesh National Cricket team test was what could be expected. There were no issues and I could start my ten day vacation in peace.

The time had come to take up surfing. I have been interested in this activity since it first came to my awareness in the late 1920s. Sadly, each and every time I set out to surf, some new fad takes me away. I don’t suppose the sport of Auto Polo really ever had a chance, but I spent two vacations mastering that. Now that they don’t make cars with running boards it’s strictly out of the question. I could see its limitations at the time, of course: the whole game was played at five miles an hour, which still led to more injuries than mortals can stomach. It wasn’t that much fun to watch, either. From there I went to barnstorming, buffalo hunting and bungee jumping, just to list my distractions in alphabetical order after Auto Polo. This time it is surfing. This time for sure.

I even told the current wife about it. She would react, but she’s on the cell phone. Always. Very important real estate franchising deals buzzing on in her ear nearly all of her waking moments. I know that there have not always been people like this. So busy, so connected all the time, but mostly alone and talking to literally no one all day, nearly every day. When I first met her I thought she was under a spell. I simply had to have her, just to recount her, since I am sure no living being will ever be like this again. It’s like barnstorming, like Auto Polo. It’s not for long, so enjoy her while she exists.

For her part I think she thinks that I am some sort of high powered executron. I certainly can manifest the wealth. Like her, I am busy and do travel often. And how many other ones like her can there be here in Cheyenne? I was so close to being perfect for her, she just had to have me. For bonus points, I can stay home and watch the dogs while she is away.
I told her I was in anomaly control. I redistribute anomalies—to foil the plans of the just and unjust alike. I prove that probability has a downside. She took that as either ‘computer something’ or ‘actuary.’ What she doesn’t get is that I don’t actually use the computers, but rather rely exclusively on newspapers. She thinks I am a luddite. Which is true. I have only lately warmed up to television.

When I told her I was going to be away for ten days surfing, she hit the mute on her cell and said “Loki?” Not even a question, just my name as a question. Then she went on with her call. She says my name, Loki, as if it were Jack, Jim or John. Perhaps she figures that I was raised by hippies, which seems plausible given our time frame. I don’t think she knows what Loki is or what Loki does.

At any rate, my going out of town at this time is a bit of a bother, since she is going out of town also and also for ten days. It means we have to put up the dogs at a shelter for ten days and they will be very mad at mommy and daddy when we get back.

Strike that. They will be very mad at mommy and eat her shoes and pee on her spot on the couch. My stuff they will leave alone. Unlike mommy, the dogs know what Loki is and what Loki does and stay clear of my things. The dogs have promised me that they will behave at the shelter. Or there will be no Valhalla for them. I tell my wife that as we are getting into the car to take her to the airport.

“I guess you know how to talk to the dogs,” she says, having concluded one call and about to start another.

I explain “It’s all in tone of voice.”

“You’re going to call me when you get there, right?” she asks.

“Surfing? Yes,” I answer.

And it does occur to her that she hasn’t asked where or with whom I am doing this surfing. But this is concern. This is affection. It’s what she has to give and in the manner that she can. Touching, really. Or so I think so.

She is so precious. Such an odd portion of the floating world. She hunts with her voice, chasing down figments of collective imagination. Her instincts are honed, measuring need, availability, urgency, commitment and capability. When she is not with the contraption pressed to her face, she is in transit to meetings where nouns go searching for verbs. Everything is dependent upon the convergence of other people’s desires. If she is off a slight on timing, all of her efforts are for nothing. I know the need it speaks to in her and I do not dispute the craft nor the industry. The methods are dismal, though. The calls. The guessing. And when it all falls down hill, because it can at any moment, there always must be more to replace it since the landing of any one objective is unlikely--and even if it is not, there is always a need for more. It’s like running a whaling fleet, except that you man all boats, the price of blubber is never set and the whale is invisible even when caught.

We air kiss and she leaves, trailing a rolling bag. I pull the Saab away. Once past the view of Jerry Olson Field’s last video camera, the car disappears only to manifest a blink later in my driveway. I appear in our ranch’s back yard, midway to the garage at the back of the lot. It’s a story and a half, slightly taller than the house. The person I bought the house from was a politician. He used to keep his parade float in it.

We have another garage attached to the house. It’s heated and filled with exercise equipment. The garage in the back is a place my wife has never been to. Her cell phone kicks out within ten feet of it. I swear it’s not intentional.

The two doors break open and away at my approach. Inside the garage, hanging a foot in air, is my fifteen foot longboat, complete with sail and oars. The eyes of the ram’s head at her prow glow blue. Ever present winter dusts kick up all around her hull.

The craft is quite laden now, this being the end of the quarter. Lining her interior are sheepskin covered packages which take up the up the places where oarsmen might row. The packages are translucent, some containing animated fogs others, churning day glow bile.

The rest of these moments are spent with my clipboards, trying to remember if I have packed everything, and if I haven’t packed it, where it is. I seem to have everything. No inventory laid over. I am set and set myself down at the tiller.

Then I wait for my wife’s plane to clear. 6:00 AM, right on time. She is headed to Denver and then New Jersey. I want to get back by the time she lands in Denver.

I am about to ground all flights out of the Cheyenne Regional Airport. That is why I wait, to make sure hers has gone. I wish her all the luck I can. Let the world cower at my love’s feet.

At 6:10 a dot appears on radar, ascending but with no lateral movement. It is there for five minutes. The Wyoming Air National Guard confirms this with Regional’s central tower. They ground all take offs. Soon the dot is gone. And then they write reports which can go with the other reports they have written. Not once has someone phoned a house in this neighborhood to have a pair of eyes look up from the back yard.

It’s Cheyenne. Nothing to see in the air but beautiful blue sky. Out of this sky I descend to Asgard, which I do not miss, with its perpetual winter fjords, incessant yodeling and horn blowing. No radar here, but not a soul looking up, either.

Down and into the barn, a noiseless progression greeted by nothing and observed by only me. The barn is a giant’s rib cage, covered in all hues of furs. It has no floor, just packed snow. The interior is the blank side of pelts shrouding an empty cavity. Light is mysteriously abundant, but from no source.

No one here. They knew I was coming, too. I am never late. I can’t wait for them, either.
Dressed in my Thermaware car jacket, blue jeans and Keds, I cross the narrow street to the clerk’s office, a round wooden hut with a chimney at its center. I knock on the door and then I enter.

“No dogs?” she more or less asks. The woman inside is statuesque in every sense of the word. Her golden locks flow out of her iron skull cap. There are skull caps on her breasts. (It’s the same thing as on her head, just in different positions.) Her waist and hips are wrapped in rough leather and held up by will alone. I don’t know if she was wearing boots. I didn’t look at her feet.

“No. No dogs. Not this time,” I say.

She frowns. Strip away the iron clad D cups, milky skin, ocean hue eyes and cherry lips and a Valkyrie is patronage worker. Just like at the Department of Motor Vehicles. There’s no real motivating her and if she wants to waste my time, she can do it. The doggie inquiry is a bad sign. She continues “What type of dogs are those?”

As if this is going to mean anything to her, I say “A Malamute and a Jack Russell Terrier.”

“The dog’s names?”

“Fluffy and Mister Snookums.”

She smiles. She has absolutely no idea what I just said. This doesn’t stop her from asking “Where are the dogs now?”

“At the dog hotel,” I say, sensing now that this is going to take forever. I would give you this woman’s name, but it runs about twenty-four letters. I am pretty good with the milk language, but after twelve letters even I zone out. Literally translated, it is Swan On A Winter Dusk With White Feathers Shedding Warm Light. Let’s call her Ms. Swan for short. And it is a Ms. Swan.

“Hotel?—“

“—I have a total bumper crop in the hold. We really do have to get to the inventory. Or I am going to be taking up way too much of your time.”

Maybe it will work if she thinks I am doing her a favor? It seems to. She reaches for a book on the counter and flips open the pages. I head for the door and then pause. She does look up. She does follow.

We are in the middle of the street when she halts, asking “What is this hotel for dogs?”

“They have structured play time and can socialize. It’s a lot of fun. For the dogs.”

“The dogs like this?”

Lying to a Valkyrie is very bad mojo. Best bet is to go with an incomplete answer and hope that her gnat-like attention span won’t allow a follow up. “Mister Snookums does.”
(He enjoys the possibility of dry humping. End of sentence. )

I am almost to the barn. Ms. Swan has halted and is not moving. She is looking down at her book. “You are very far over from last quarter.”

“Last quarter you told me I was way under. This jackal headed exchange student One Eye brought in is screwing everything up. I know Ragnarok was getting old, but this Maat thing is impossible.”

Worse. Now she’s heading back into her hut. “You need to refund. The Orange County.”

“Look, if we amortize Orange County into the future, no bad financial thing will ever happen again. And it’s a little too late for that. We’ve been over this. I had to bankrupt Orange County. It was a parley card that would have made a Las Vegas casino blush. It’s not my fault the money vanished completely. I didn’t invent derivatives.”

(I didn’t either. But it was a neat trick.)

I might as well be talking to a freaking stone. All she knows is that the richest county in the richest state of the richest country went belly up. I really didn’t help it. That much.

Ms. Swan comes back out with a palm sized bottle which she hands to me. I know what it is, but I can’t recall it exactly at the time. The fluid inside is thick and purple with bubbles like Prell. It’s a lot of it. A killer dose.

“Let us take a look at what you have this time. Maybe this is refund enough, no?” she says, heading for the barn.

“I have the usual,” I say, trailing after her. “Unearned smiles, public displays of couth, religious tolerance…”

I would add unpracticed wit, but I want to get out of here. Provoking her will get me nowhere. I look at the bottle. It comes to me. “Cosmic Awareness?”

“Five ounces. Fast acting concentrate,” she says, undoing the sheepskin from the first line of packages.

For just a moment the Bangladesh National Cricket Team has a fighting chance in their test against Australia.

Then Ms. Swan says “No more the sports. Pfft.”

This woman can bench press a bus. She can outrace thunder. But ask her what a valid sport is and she will answer ‘Rhythmic Gymnastics.’ Or Figure Skating. I refuse to side on those. Ditto the abundant singing contests. And the only dance contest I am going to rig is one where participants dance till they drop—drop dead.

I protest “Sports are the easiest way I have of making my point. Just the NFL playoffs alone—“

“—No sports. Enough with the Yankees.”

“If I didn’t rig it, he would win every year.”

“Something important,” she says with a ‘that is final’ inflection.

Do I want to surf or don’t I? I want to surf. This closes the books. Thor doesn’t surf. Odin won’t surf. Tyr might surf. I will surf. This will get done.

May I say right here that I blew it. I was entirely aware of Roberto Sanchez’s plan to use his tax refund to buy a big screen TV, even though he and his wife had agreed to spend the money on school clothes for the kids. It was on my clipboard. I had it circled in red. I had it marked ‘hot’. I didn’t look at the clipboard. No one is perfect. Entirely my bad.

Instead of the clipboard, I went to my filing system. This is comprised of index cards filed behind categories which I have listed in order of occurrence pertaining to various topics. When prompted by a mandate such as this one, I rely on this key word mechanism to guide the direction of my immediate actions.

Strike that. Did I mention that I wanted to go surfing? I have this shoe box full of index cards with key words written on them which are filed under random headings. Each key word references a collection of loose leaf notes stored somewhere in a Piggly Wiggly grocery sack, most of which I made while blind drunk. Under the category of Cosmic Awareness there was one card. The three key words read:

Three Hour Speech.

I have no idea what it means. I whisper it into the sail of my boat and its starts the descent to Midgard, Midrash, Midlothian, Middlesex , Midwherever. Just through the clouds, I dial my honey. She is in Denver. Her laptop cannot access the camera at the dog hotel. I assure her that it will once she gets out of the airport. Our connection is spotty. I tell her the problem is on my end and that I will phone again shortly.

Below me is a patch of green on a seeming bluff surrounded by a sprawl of brown and grey tin buildings. Many very impressive structures are on the bluff, with columns and statues of grim faced, beret clad figures. The bluff is partitioned off from the mass of tin shacks by a fence covered with razor wire. Concrete shacks on three story pylons are at each of the fence’s corners.

My brown Piggly Wiggly sack has shaken forth the right brief. It is written on the back of lithographed instructions detailing care for my Auto Polo mallet, a thing long gone into the Topeka muck. I do not believe the words on the back are in any way contemporaneous with the mallet, however.

“The Three Hour Speech is an affliction usually perpetrated by post Hitler-era dictators, the national organizers of trade associations for macroeconomic commodities and certain pastors previously affiliated with Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God. Its form was first standardized by Raul Castro and then perfected by his brother, Fidel. The speech has three parts, the third of which contains the Autdtraumagique: the place wherein application of Cosmic Awareness to the speaker will do the universe the most good.”

Question: Does this mean I have at least two hours shot to hell? (Not Hel, who is a relatively nice person.) Answer: You betcha.

Our setting is the interior of a cement aircraft hangar. You may note that I neglected to describe an airport or even airstrip upon my dropping in. Not a mistake on my part. The airport never quite got beyond the ‘having the construction materials stolen’ phase. Many of the shacks outside the fences date back to that time. Normally this space is reserved for two 1970s era French Mirage Jet Fighters which do not, in point of fact, fly. They have been removed from the hangar for the evening and are rotting into the ground outside for a change.

Lining the walls of the small hangar are unfolded wooden grandstands, the kind used in the first world for seating folks at school sports games. The people here are standing in these stands as opposed to sitting. Beyond the stands there are two lines of unadorned folding chairs. There is no stage, only an oval of blank flooring and a mobile podium at the front of the chairs.

All some four hundred people in attendance here are dressed in brown business suits with white dress shirts and narrow black ties. (J.C. Penny $125.00.) Even the women. (J.C. Penny $250.00.) It’s eighty. It’s humid. The arrays of half burnt out kleeg lights shining down from the ceiling aren’t helping things any.

The people in the chairs are older or less firm of body. They do not seem to be any more important than those in the stands. In any case, none of them have been asked to speak, either.

All the talking will be done by Big Gumby. (Thank Odin for small favors. The last thing a three hour speech needs is a warm up act.) Our man is slight and short. His jet black, greasy yet somehow fly-away infested hair, is parted on the side. The brown suit he wears is slightly better pressed than the rest. (Sears $300.00.) His Tom Selleck mustache is much better trimmed than the rest, especially the women’s.

He doesn’t mess around and gets straight to a paint by numbers rendition of “Our Triumph Over The Obvious.” (He did briefly have someone take roll.) Everyone remains standing. They will stand for all three hours. It is apparently a defense against nodding off or wetting oneself.

It’s like an opera. Strike that. Some opera is actually good. It’s like the freaking Ring Cycle, which is never good. The first part of the speech is called “Our Triumph Over The Obvious.” In this the Big Gumby explains that he and his enterprise are not dead yet. It’s kind of existential. The Iranian model of this is a one hour chant of ‘Death to America’ followed by historical denial. Many other places, this is a chance for a riff against the IMF, World Bank or WTO. Someone will not give you money or wants you to pay back the money you have already utterly squandered, generally on hydroelectric projects. Back in the day it was all about embargoes and attempting to redefine the term ‘Human Rights.’

Big Gumby begins by detailing progress in completely humiliating his country’s indigenous peoples. Thus far he is damn proud to have moved these people out of the jungle and into concentration camps. Now if he could only make their young folks proper soldiers and prostitutes. He does not trust any of the young men, and until he does, he is going to have the entire camp woke up at dawn. They will drill in circles until dusk with wooden guns. The young girls, whom he has had spirited off to Asian brothels, have proven very inept at practicing birth control. But, he stresses, this has had a positive side effect. Many of the products of these mistakes may conceivably pass as Asian or European. Mexican lawyers have been contacted to facilitate the selling of these children to first world plutocrats. In all of this he is very chipper, almost triumphant.

Mind you, all in attendance are committed social activist types. We even have women dressed as Groucho Marx here. Yet none of them blink when he mentions the forced assimilation of the indigenous people. It seems a matter of settled fact that these people are useful only as troops or servants. That he has no problem with the IMF or WTO is primarily because no one would think of giving him money.

Money is, however, primary on his mind. After musing about perhaps selling the somewhat white or Asian looking children of indigenous women on the internet, he drifts into an extemporaneous jag on an alcohol confiscation program. Note to organizers: beer does not burn, so stop using it to pad your quota. I have no idea what this means at the time, but everyone else does.

Part two of the speech, which I wish he would get to, is called “Blame The Farmers.” Pretty self explanatory. The best classical version of this was performed by the President of Ghana, who blamed the farmers for not making use of the tractors he had bought them, even though he had neglected to buy those things that trail behind the tractors. In Saddam Hussein’s virtuoso variant, he ordered the execution of one third of the audience attending the speech.

Our guy starts going on about how they have to import rice and beans, noting that before the revolution they used to export it. That’s an aside. It doesn’t really seem to bother him. He also rattles off a few words about giant spiders on a banana boat and how this shouldn’t be viewed as entirely his problem. As a sop to the people of the port, which seems to be in another country, he offers to send a note of consolation to the families of the dead sailors.

Then he gets down to brass tacks and does the “Blame The Farmers” rant straight from the book. In doing this he clears up the alcohol confiscation mystery I was having.
It seems that other than tarantula infested bunches of bananas and, potentially, children, his sole other cash crop is coca leaves. He has made the manifestly poor decision to nationalize the drug plantations. This led to political hacks doing what they do when handed farms: anything but farm. All this shoots to heck his long term plan to refine the coca leaves into cocaine, which is why he was confiscating alcohol to begin with. Not that he’s suspending the alcohol confiscation program. Oh hell, no.

I am now decanting the Cosmic Awareness and letting it breathe. (It’s either Cosmic Awareness or Lectricshave in Extra Virgin Olive Oil. I hope Ms. Swan didn’t screw up.)
Even this guy has to be getting to part three by now.

This particular Big Gumby shot his way into power thirty years ago. Glorious forces of his revolution drove unarmed women and children before them as they converged on this very complex. Oppressive capital-fascists then in residence here were hesitant about firing in their direction. Big Gumby not only had no problem using unarmed women and children as shields, but also shot through them. Despite this ruthlessness, Big Gumby has been deposed in bloodless coups twice since. Currently, a majority of people with guns in this country want him to lead it.

The third part is the “One Man Call and Response.” At some time during this portion of the speech Big Gumby will invariably mouth the words “So I ask myself.” This is the Autdtraumagique: my cue to douse the bugger.

And I had better make this good. Somehow this has to outweigh the acceptance speech Roberto Sanchez’s son Paco will give upon receiving his Nobel Prize: forever hence known for the phrase “I had to wear my sister’s underwear to school.” The big screen TV was disabled in a quite predictable water balloon accident. Repairs for such had a cascading and devastating impact on the Sanchez’s finances. I still may have time to rectify this. I hope. But this was my best chance. God of organization, I am not.

Paco’s speech could have, should have, been inspirational—the type of thing that sends kids from the barrios straight to Radio Shack. That’s really what anomaly control is all about. Instead, it sort of uninspired, causing some science prone barrio types to stay in the alleys, playing with broken glass and drinking forties.

The way I look at it, the guy who wins the Nobel Prize for inventing anti gravity should either thank his dad, or just thank the committee, and sit down. He shouldn’t be so filled with venom that he has to spout off “My dad was such an idiot he bankrupted the family fixing his big screen TV and I had to wear my sister’s underwear to school because we had no money” the first time a group of cameras are pointed in his direction. Paco just said the first thing that came to mind. Totally my bad. Or it will be.

(Not that there’s anything really all that right about compelling a physicist to speak in the first place! What do they expect him to say? Do they expect it to be good? Even Big Gumby here can’t make his speeches good--and that’s all he does for a living.)

Two hours even. He hasn’t said “So I ask myself” yet. For reasons that only people who feel entitled to give three hour speeches know, the sole person they can confidently ask advice of, is themselves. No one else is qualified. The current league champion, Hugo Chavez, has added the rhetorical flourish of formally answering himself, often saying “So I answer myself.”

The actual content of this, the concluding portion of this three hour one-way, varies depending on how badly the Big Gumby has to relieve himself. In general, this portion is the entirety of every speech Barack Obama has ever given: all a big ‘Yes We Can’ or, in the average Big Gumby parlance, ‘Yes I Can.’

Nearing three hours. He is not giving back the booze he confiscated. Back on this. Not even thinking about it. He won’t even ask the secret police what they did with it. Apparently, keeping the secret police sauced up is in everyone’s interest. Or perhaps he is simply making it clear that he doesn’t have it.

“Let me tell you something,” he starts, which causes the Cosmic Awareness to tingle. “Let me tell you why I am the only person in this country with a career. The rest of you have jobs. You aspire to have ambition, which would require work for those few of you prone to it. Someone must have the passion and the caring to tell you where the answers are. This is my duty, my calling.”

Oh please no. This is not the place for the ‘Heavy is the Head that Wears the Crown’ part. That should have been in part one, if it was to be anywhere.

“I wake up every morning and I ask myself questions. I am very deliberate and passionate about this. I say to myself, every day…”

Ok. Don’t have to say it twice. I got him good. Right between the eyes.

I wasn’t sure it worked. He didn’t break stride or blink. He just carried on in that rooster-like way of his.

Not that I was expecting Socrates. Without missing a beat he projected this emphatic question: “Why are all the women in this room so butt ugly?”

Odin’s blood! I was invisible, not intangible. He didn’t even give me time to dive under the chairs! I stopped counting the shots that rang out.

Poking my mind’s eye was that I had just discovered the one thing someone should never say.

Or, at the very least, not say in a sweltering aircraft hangar while in the presence of armed women in J.C. Penny suits.

After five shots, I knew he wasn’t getting back up. After fifteen shots, he stopped talking.

Big Gumby grabbed the podium and started spinning like a lawn sprinkler. “Sure! This you can do, you Che Guevara wannabes. You can’t even grow pot. And it’s a weed! Che Guevara was a sissy! A sissy!! You’re stupid, all of you. You’re stupid if you think this is important! This all was supposed to be important. Or fun. This isn’t fun, anymore. Everyone I meet is just like you.”

Sometimes a change in crooks is all the progress you can hope for. I was feeling fairly satisfied with myself.

Then I remembered the clipboard. And Paco Sanchez. No doubt about it: I had doused the wrong self-absorbed Latino.

Oh well. Surf’s up!