In the Shower

There are three voices in my head that take turns narrating my life: Tom Waits, Sam Elliott, and Werner Herzog. Of those three, Herzog is usually the default voice. In any case, he inspired me to write some Werner Herzog erotica. The story won the 2016 Ultimate Bizarro Showdown, but I didnt get to read the whole thing because I'm an idiot and started cracking jokes as soon as I was in front of the microphone. So, here is the whole thing. Hope you love it. It's sexy and shit.

In the Shower: the first Werner Herzog erotica ever

In the shower, Johnny stood with his hands at the back of his head, like someone just arrested. His mind was full of images of prison shankings, crying men, and big bulliesturning the asses of fresh inmates into entertainment centers. Then his girlfriend, Marie, pulled the curtain aside and stepped into the shower. 

“How you doing, sweetie?” she asked. 
“Thinking.”

"About what?” she asked, taking a step forward and pressing her perky breasts against his chest, her nipples digging ever so gently into his skin. 

“Life on our planet has been a constant series of cataclysmic events, and we are more suitable for extinction than a trilobite or a reptile. So we will vanish. There's no doubt in my heart.”

“Don’t be silly,” Marie said, running her hand down his abdomen and twirling her fingers around his wild, unkempt bush of jet-black pubic hair, which always reminded him of a lost lumberjack found in an abandoned mine after six years in the wilderness, his psyche fractured, his ability to speak impaired by insanity, his teeth rotten into black stumps, his breath a fetid miasma combining the smells of fresh fecal matter from the bowels of an alcoholic truck driver and the decomposing flesh of a mangy possum. 

“Wanna have some fun in the shower and then get something to eat?” 

“I despise formal restaurants. I find all of that formality to be very base and vile. I would much rather eat potato chips on the sidewalk.”

Marie grabbed a bar of soap and started lathering Johnny up. She worked her way down to his hardening member and took it in her soft, wet hands. After a while he shut his eyes, and Marie, wielding her fingernails now and staring at his face, helped him out with two practiced hands, one squeezing the family jewels and the other stroking him up and down. 

“You like that, baby?”

“Sure, but what are you trying to accomplish?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, her hands suddenly less sure of themselves. 

“If you do not have an absolutely clear vision of something, where you can follow the light to the end of the tunnel, then it doesn't matter whether you're bold or cowardly, or whether you're stupid or intelligent. Doesn't get you anywhere.”

Marie kept up what she was doing, gently squeezing Johnny’s balls, but a sliver of doubt had been wedged between her intent and herself. She felt a bit lost. 

“Why do you always say things like that, baby?”

“I know you don’t like to hear these things, but facts sometimes have a strange and bizarre power that makes their inherent truth seem unbelievable.”

Marie knew where this was going. The conversation that loomed in front of her was beast murdering the blossoming wetness between her legs. 

“You need to enjoy this moment, Johnny,” she said, punctuating her words with another gentle squeeze to his genitals. “Life is too short to be so sad and serious all the time!” 

“I need to have these conversations with you, Marie. The nothingness that surrounds us it too loud and only these thoughts make me feel a bit safer. You know civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness. You jerking me off won’t change that.” 

“I think you need help,” she whispered, her breath as hot as the steam from the shower. 

He reached down and roughly grabbed Marie between the legs. She felt his long, bony finger slip inside her womanhood. His thumb slid into the crack of her bottom and lifted her like a bowling ball or a six-pack. Nah, make that a feather. Yeah, that works better. Oh, wait, the fourth wall. Shit. Oh, man, this is so meta. Anyway, she blushed, her mind suddenly racing with phallic imagery. She felt his mancock stiffen further in her hands, it was long and impressive. Yeah, I said mancock. Single words. I’ll take all the awards right now, motherfuckers. 

“I believe the magic is happening, sweetie,” she said, breathing a little bit like Britney Spears on…basically every fucking song. 

“I believe the common denominator of the universe is not harmony; but chaos, hostility and murder,” he replied. 

“I need to feel your steely manhood like a thunderbolt of pleasures in the pink center of my being!” moaned Marie. 

Johnny penetrated her with his engorged member, leaned into side of her face, and asked her: “What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.”

“Oh, tiny baby Jesus, please pleasure me with that wonderful cock of yours, my love!” Marie screamed. 

Johnny keep thrusting into her core and said: “Look into the eyes of a chicken and you will see real stupidity. It is a kind of bottomless stupidity, a fiendish stupidity. They are the most horrifying, cannibalistic and nightmarish creatures in the world.” 

Then, just as they were both about to climax, the fucking void swallowed them both and no one cried about it or thought about them ever again in this cruel, overturned piss pot of a world full of dying people, hungry children, and horrific crimes. But hey, at least they went out fucking, right? 

Friday Night

It's relatively early on a Friday night and I'm cruisin' around Austin taking swigs from a bottle of cheap wine after yet another job interview fiasco. All of us are a few bad decisions away from being winos, so keep your judging to a minimum, jack. Anyway, I'm out here looking for ghosts and answers, fishing for options and trying to find the corpse of opportunity in some fucking gutter. I'm out here because I'm too restless to stay home and too damn broke to go anywhere. As far as interstitial spaces go, this one is on the awful side of the spectrum.

I'm listening to Nighthawks at the Diner and thinking that folks like Tom Waits, Nick Cave, and Leonard Cohen, who fucking died yesterday because Death sometimes makes horrible mistakes, made me want to write more than many famous authors ever did. "Yeah, I know, things are tough all over," says Tom. You got that fucking right, man.

I want to scream into void and punch a wall, but years of doing that have taught me that the result is a sore throat and busted knuckles. I can't afford pills or weed or a bottle of something better, so I have to inhale all this truth and deal with it without a single balm, without a bit of a filter, without a damn layer of merciful cushioning. Then I turn the radio a little louder and realize that politics and anger are noise that interrupt my usual mellow. They're like huge bees fucking up my picnic. I have a stack of novels at home and a whispering creek right outside my door. In my head I have a woman, a narrative, and a thirst for revolution. If I let them sing to me, something akin to a miracle could happen.

I look out the window and take in the city. There's a man dressed like Zorro at a bus stop. A few blocks later, a dude in a yellow wig is holding a flag and a "Vote for Bernie!" sign. At a red light on Burnet, I see an obese woman screaming at someone I can't see on the sidewalk. Just because I can't see whatever or whoever she's screaming at doesn't mean that he/she/it is not there. I find myself hoping she wins the argument. The light changes and once again, like a thousand times before, I fall in love with this city. Yeah, she has tried to kill me a few times, but true love is all about forgiveness.

Suddenly I accept it all. Tomorrow I will still be poor and the next book will still be waiting for me to write it and Trump will still be our next president despite our protests and there will still be a need for love and revolution and comprehension and empathy and people will still be upset about everything and arguing online and kids will go hungry in every country and someone will check out via a bullet to the brain and someone will kiss another human for the first time and a baby will be born and change a few lives the instant he or she appears and someone will listen to some of the songs that I keep in my head and the buzzing of a tattoo machine will turn blank skin into art and someone will devour delicious chicken tacos and someone will bleed and someone will say fuck as they twist open a bottle of aspirin and someone will get mad at a movie and someone will buy a book someone else wrote and someone will be in a car accident and and someone will have a great birthday and someone else will eat a piece of their cake and someone will look at a stranger in a public space and imagine a perfect future with them before swallowing it all and not saying a word and someone will be happy that it's Saturday and someone will drink alone in a dirty sofa and remember that thing that destroyed their life and someone will decide to go on a diet and someone will hug a loved one and someone will make an important phone call as butterflies fill their stomach with uncomfortable fluttering and someone will do their best to fight injustice and the world will be a little better because they gave a shit about it and someone will dream about taking a trip to Africa and someone will listen to Fela Kuti and someone will wake up next to a stranger an think fuuuuuuuuuuck before looking around for their shit and bailing and someone will project their insecurities on someone else and someone will hop on a plane with a rucksack full of dreams and someone will learn to forgive and someone will stab someone else for reasons that may or may not make the stabbing a righteous thing and someone will make their mom happy and someone will walk their dog and someone will peel an orange and smell its wonderful aroma and someone will put a gun in their mouth and then remove it without pulling the damn trigger and someone will see a child smile at a dog and someone will realize how fucking awesome it is to watch birds flying into the horizon and someone will dip their toes in the ocean and someone will remember an ex with nothing but love or hatred or respect or lust and someone will have a great conversation with a stranger and the world will keep spinning and I will keep living because that's the only thing we can do.

Then Tom sings and I listen and it all makes sense. You have to learn to love the world even when it's ugly and you don't understand it. You have to love the world as you stand up for what's right and stomp on the skulls of fucking Nazis. You have to love the anger you feel and the things that are wrong and you have to love your ability to fight for change.

I turn around in the parking lot of a grocery store and head back home as I sing along these words for you: 

"Nobody, nobody
Will love you the way that I could
Cause nobody, nobody's that strong
Cause nobody is that strong"