Chapter 3
| The Story | The Authors |
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| Twice the legal speed limit! It was the straw that broke the camel named Officer Hickey's back and it was at that very moment that the madness began to take over. At first, Matthew Hickey could feel the madness inside him, welling up and taking over, but he just couldn't fight it anymore. He would never again be the dutiful son, the upright citizen or the dedicated peace officer he once was. He went on a rampage that night, such as their peaceful little town hadn't seen since Jebediah Smith was laid off from the post office. | |
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He started to cry due to fear, and the whole town beggd for him to stop the rampage of tears. | |
| He cried and he cried until his tears ran out and when that was done he began to pout. He stomped and kicked and whined like a toddler until someone spoke up to stop him, | |
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"settle down young-un," said the weathered old prospector from the top of his
mule. "I says there's gold in them thar hills and we gwyne find it soon."
With that finally said and out in the open, wind-dancer wiped his eyes and drew his arm across his nose. "Yes," he said calmly. The wind-dancer picked up his pick ax and began to shake a maracca over it. 'Nice samba beat," said the prospector. A very nice beat indeed. The prospector had not heard music for many moons, in fact not since Teletubbies made their debut on American television. the shake shake shake of the maracca echoed through the canyon, rhythmically pulsing between the high walls of the canyon into the throat of the mine. The prospector began clicking his heels and snapping his fingers. The mule stood still, learing at the ballet unfolding. The wind began to pick up speed as the wind dancer's music wafted through the canyon. | |
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These previous musings, random as they might seem to the unknowing looker-in-upon-Officer-Hickey's-thoughts, will infact do extremely well to illustrate the fissures in that tortured, pie-a-la-mode-bloated soul... For, time and again, his fantasies of revenge, domination and brutality were undermined by his genuine desire for sensitivity, mysticism, and yearning to commune deeply with nature, tattered copies of Iron John and Fire in the Belly clutched firmly in hairy paw — in short, within the apelike policeman squirmed a lithe, gossamer-winged wind dancer who knew the Elfquest sagas by heart and longed to twirl in mad supinity amongst the loftiest and most serpentine of zephyrs, and to hear the winding tales which came out in the hoary Viking gutturals of old Boreas, whitebearded god of the north wind. Oh, how he pined! And now — with mother gone ("That old bag," hissed Matt's inner wind-dancer, ringing its taloned finger along the edge of a crystal goblet given her by Baba Yaga, the Witch — while the rest of Matt screamed "NO no no it's not possible I could think such a thought!" and he stepped on the gas in hot pursuit of Jeremy) with his mother gone there was no one else to have to hide it from at home! He could climb to the gabled roofs and conjure pixies and hamadryads with his spirit-drum! He could sing along with Ultravox's "Reap the Wild Wind" every single night of the week ala Tom Cruise! He could pirouette at the tip of an ancient scarab-topped lightning-rod and exchange eldritch unpleasantries with the paracelsic salamanders, those lava-blooded denizens of the Plane of Absolute Fire... | |
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What irony, then, that his quarry (sirens spinning, wailing in mad pursuit)
would be none other than that same Jeremy Crink who'd first introduced the
future Officer Hickey to Dungeons & Dragons, back in junior high school
on rainy Saturday afternoons with the grey exterior gloom spilling in through
tiny high windows to co-mingle with the fake-woodgrain interior gloom of the
basement "Rec Room" of somebody's house (Roger Weaver's house was the best
because his mother bought the best snacks; Danny Grigorovich's a close second
because his mother, newly divorced, was rediscovering her sexuality at the
lovely ripe age of 36, and liked to test it out on Danny's friends — much to
Danny's consternation — a reedy, chain-smoking questionmark of a woman in
polyester hip-huggers and Jackie-O hairdo) —
AH, those basements, he remembered. And it was Jeremy Crink who held court as their resident "Dungeon Master," doling out the increasingly menacing foes to Matthew Hickey's wind-dancer who, with a couple of elves (Danny "Fire Orchid" Grigorovich and William "Mist Yodeler" Grant) and a useless cleric (Roger "Flatulissimax" Weaver) were crossing the dark land of Krysko to recover the purloined Fairy Jewels. | |
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It went on that way, merrily merrily merrily unchanging, Saturdays, schoolday
afternoons, the five of them with occasional additions, Jon "Willy the
Kid-Loving Wizard" Delgado, and more notably, Mike Cummings, who arrived
replete with his older brother's collection of Hustler and Oui
magazines, who played with them as a mercenary Zombie for a few months, never
quite fitting in, and in time such queries as "So I get to, like, eat human
flesh, and all, after I, like, kill these evil (faux) foe-dudes?" were replaced
by, "So this is, like, all there is to this? I thought you dudes did something
interesting?"
In time this attitude to came to define the growing rift in their company... Danny Grigorovich (backed, strangely, by Dungeon-Master Jeremy) threw a hissy-fit ("That stuff'll turn you into a girl!") when Cummings ("Dude, just, like, chillez-vous!") pulled out a pot pipe one rainy afternoon and calmly began to stuff the bowl with a budlet of impossibly-Alice-in-Wonderland-smelling sinsemilla... When he left, while Hickey (inner wind-dancer allthewhile screaming odiferous curses at him ("rotten-egg-and-skunk-cabbage olfactory factory! Reek of a fart filtered through thrice-used bathwater!")) did and said nothing, looking dumbly back and forth between face and face and face, cleric Roger and elf William suddenly found excuse to leave, too (homework) and ran down the rainy street until they caught up with Cummings, who got them nearly as lala'd as they'd ever been thus far in their lives... Afterwards they went back to Roger's basement and noodled around on the musical instruments down there, and thus was Rocket Science born... But wait, I'm going too fast here: any real history lies in the details — its genius is only truly revealed in such minutiae as a piece of lint on a collar, a multiply-laundered ticket-stub (from an event as ill-remembered as the 1983 appearance of the Angry Samoans at the Channel in Boston, MA, where opening band SSDecontrol augmented their signature rave-up "Boston Police" by throwing a real pig's head into the thrash-pit (small bloody flaphs and gunks of which came flying back up onto the stage for the remainder of the evening) an innocuous stick of stale Teaberry chewing-gum — details only — the rest is cliche and clcihe only, misleading the detective or historian or pilgrim away from the personal, into the already-known, the uniform alleyways of the Overmind... Beware such cues, dear reader... For 'dear readers' are their absolute favorite food... | |
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In the beginning it was only a gag, then — how to fill up those Saturdays and afternoons, formerly filled up by les Dungeones et les Dragons, with something a bit less — oh — constrained by Form, so to speak, now that Jeremy and Danny had excommunicated them form the D+D cell for "aggregious lack of chivalry" — both could play some guitar, and Roger's bass lines were melodious enough to let William start experimenting with angular guitar lines that cross-hatched the melody and ran iron-tipped fingers up its spine, while Mikey Cummings (who'd known even at the tender age of nine that there was nothing like a band for getting girls, and consequently started drum lessons) layed down a savage tribal beat in much the manner of the Stooges' Scott Asheton. There remained then only the problem of a singer, for none of the three lads felt confident enough in his own abilities as a vocalist to volunteer for the job (though Weaver, it must be said, was ironically to go on to world fame as Steve Perry's replacement lead singer for international rock stars Journey on their 2007 comeback tour of Japan and the Manchurian annexes) — so for the first three months they confined themselves to chugging through ever-tighter versions of "Interstellar Overdrive," "Attack of the Teddybears," "Pipeline," and a wide selction from the Ventures catalog, and it was one such practice-afternoon, amidst the hittery-skittery breakdown of "War of the Satellites," that a familiarly bearlike form appeared out of the drizzly Saturday gloom in darkblue relief in the maw of the open garage door. "Yo, it's the Hickster!" said Roger. "Why us?" mouthed William silently, rolling his eyes at the ceiling. "Uh, hi guys," said Hickey, shrugging inanely. "Jeremy and Danny kicked me out, too. They said I wasn't, uh, whatwasit?, uh, suh-fish-ent-ly dedicated to the Cause." "Oh, great, D and D's a motherfucking cause now!" sneered Weaver. "By the time we're old enough to vote it'll be a tripartite system: Democrat, Republican, and Orc! What a fucking joke..." "Is this what you guys have been doing since you left?" "Sure, man. Sure. Jammin'" "Hey, it's the Hicksterer!" chimed in Mike Cummings. "How you been at, dude? Gettin' any?" "Nah. Been doin' nothing." "Well, whyn't you come be our singer, dude? That way we can get gigs! And gigs mean chicks! Pussy, gentlemen, pussy!" Hickey shrugged his OK, noncomittal as ever (although underneath lay the secret seed that some force in him was orchestrating all of this with calculated praetorian strategy). Roger Weaver and William Grant just groaned, inwardly, and launched into what was to to be only the first of many versions of their rendition of the Rotters' masterpiece "Sit On My Face, Stevie Nicks," to which Hickey thankfully knew (most of) the words by heart, gyrating his chubby hips and pelvis with undisguised sexual innuendo against the homemade mike stand. And it was only the beginning... | |
| Two months later they played their first Saturday night dance in the gymnasium of Chiswick Memorial High School, chugging and noodling through such classics as "Roadrunner," "Yummy Yummy Yummy," "Fire in the Swimming Girl," "Mr. Brocolli," "We Sell Soul" and the full head-on assault of a "Sheer Heart Attack/Bohemian Rhapsody" medley featuring the bespectacled Willian Grant nimbly switching from Voxx Jaguar to Mellotron mid-song (the frug-ing crowd's attention diverted by Matthew Hickey's daring falsetto) followed by a livid take on "Venus in Furs" replete with Hickey, stripped a pair of grimy sweatpants, performing Gerard Malanga's infamous 'whip dance' to the horror, delight, or consternation of all present, depending on who you asked in the hallway the following Monday... | |
| And then they all lived happily ever after. | |
| then he said that you are so money and you dont even know it!! | |
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So Hickey — suddenly, quite out of the blue, was, socially, somebody,
for the first time in his life, and to say his newfound fame went to his head
would be an understatement akin to calling Mike Tyson a mild-mannered
gentleman.
He developed a taste for speed — benzedrine and crystal meth — and in no time (this was before the truly adverse psychochemical effects began in the form of those bizarre premonitions and hallucinations which would so shape his destiny in his later high school years) he had shed the last of his baby fat. Where once had hulked an awkward, doughy pudge of a crewcut Mama's boy, there now stood a lean, sinewy rock and roll dynamo, boasting an eagle's nest of dreadlocks, crazy-eyed with chemical thunderstorms howling down the rails of his bloodstream, sweating bufotinous sweat like a Haitian toad (flecks of it left bleach-spots next day on the clothes of the crowd, and strange white places underneath where their flesh went numb for weeks), clutching the mike stand for dear life as the band behind him ripped through their triple-fast speedcore version of Ozzy's "Crazy Train," then segued into the number for which they were fast becoming legendary, the Hickey-Weaver-penned "Saturday A.M. Fever," for which Hickey would slip offstage to trade his drenched leathers for a tattered bathrobe which had fit him when he was eight or nine, but now of course was hopelessly undersized. He returned to the stage and (conveying a deep sense of intimacy toward each member of the crowd — which was what people found so haunting — while behind him the band taught a simple blues riff the complex arts of Punjabi contortionism) took the microphone, squatted down at the front of the stage, and began to croon his postmodern morality play, this tale of sadness and dissipation which never failed to bring the house down. | |
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Well you can tell by the way I use my robe [he sang, softly, yet more forcefull than Mario Lanza! Read on, reader-onner, and mark what flows from these blackly bubbling creeks of evil] I'm the master of my abode My housemates and their Friday night dates Know what in the morning awaits I said it's alright, don't be shy My bathrobe ain't got no fly So as I squat, you'll understand The precise details of my gland Whether you're squat or lean or tall Gonna show you my balls, show you my balls See 'em dangle smelly beneath my hairy belly Gonna show you my balls, show you my balls Ah, ah, ah, ah, show you my balls, show you my balls Ah, ah, ah, ah, show you my baw-aw-awwwwwwwww-awlls Onstage, of course, the shameless Hickey was pantomiming this exactly, the threadbare hanging upon to reveal the Hickster family jewels. | |
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EEEEEeeeeeeeeuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhwwwwwww. The sound system ground to a halt.
People stopped their gyrating and looked around as if expecting the lights to
go out as well. The hickster took note of his position and suddenly began to
feel self conscious as a wave of ridiculousness began to swell in the back of
his head ready to flow into his frontal lobes. He looked back toward the sound
system to find Assistant Adjunct Vice Principal in charge of Social Affairs
Hadley standing with the freshly plucked power cord in his hand and a deeply
engrained smirk of abhorance.
"We'll have none of that!" yelled Hadley. "Jerome I want you to take this young man into custody for performing a lewd act as a minor in front of minors!" "But Sir I don't know if that's...." "Silence! Do as I say! He needs to learn his lesson. Let his father come pick him up from the station. See if that teaches him." | |
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"Wait, you don't need to call my father. I've learned my lesson already. I
swear, I'll never do it again!" but Hickey's pleas fell on deaf ears. Hadley
nodded to Jerome, his current lackey du jour, who slapped the cuffs on Hickey
and dragged him out to his squad car. The band, having lost their charismatic
lead singer, decided to pack it in. The crowd, having paid 5 hard earned
dollars to see the Hickster's balls, felt as cheated as they did when the Sex
Pistols quit playing and began to pelt the band with beer bottles. The band
members fortunately only sustained minor injuries but were so disillusioned by
the incident that they never picked up their instruments again. Meanwhile, down at the station house, Matthew Hickey awaited his father's arrival with his head hung low. It wasn't just the shame of explaining what he'd done to his father, it was knowing that he would cause his father, who was the Chief of Police, great public embarrassment. When Chief Hickey finally arrived at the station, he was visibly enraged. So angry was he, that for a full half hour he could not speak. He could only pace back and forth, clenching and unclenching his meaty, caloused fists. Then he stopped in front of Matthew and glaring down at him he said, "Twenty-five years on the force and never did I once imagine that my own son could - cough - would - gasp - erp!" the senior Hickey clutched his chest and stumbled backward. "Erp!" was the last thing he said before he fell to the floor and died. | |
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But because of the great love that God had for the father, He, God resserrected the father. In order for the father to correct the son of his wrong doings. | |
| Unfortunately, though, as much as Matthew Hickey prayed and wished for it to be true, there would be no miracles today. | |
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It seemed, however, that a pattern emerged that night (though it would take another twenty-three years, the last two of them under the firm yet gentle care of cross-dressing psychoanalyst named Dr. Gruberthon, for Matthew Hickey to come to a full undertsanding of these things) which was to dominate Matthew's existence for the foreseeable future. Unspeakably traumatized by what he saw as his own complicity in his father's premature death (when in fact, oversalted pork by-products, bourbon, cigars, and a permanently angry streak of barely-concealed anti-Negro bigotry in a town which had grown to nearly half black, were the real culprits) the poor youth was forced to act his guilt out again and again by donning the ever-threadbarer robe and exposing his testicles to the public. | |