Forward to Glory Read online

  To Butterbugs, such a crash site appeared fine, just fine. Blissful, really. A small corner behind a Poäng chair was all he needed…

  ‘Well, now!’ continued perky Neal, former batboy, still lugging for the team, ‘Let’s just see what we can do for ya, today!’ Then he guided him to a nearby desk-chair before handing him a sheaf of forms. ‘Yeah, I know, another application form!’ Then, feigning a spoiled kid’s whiny voice, ‘Wah! Not another formmmm…! Aaaahhhhhh!’ Then, back to normal, ‘Here ya go, today. It’ll go by before you know it. Really! Ya know? Everybody gets completely wigged out by the paperwork-out ’n’ stuff, but all they pretty much need to know is your major. Isn’t that crazy? I had a student come in three days ago and he didn’t even know what his major was, which was kinda hard to believe, cuz he was a fifth year fellow. I just told him to put down ‘General Studies’, and they accepted him! He’s now got a sixth floor view of the Bel-Air Country Club! You know, this guy – he’s called Wingo – he’s interested in being an actor, and the guy next to him’s dad is some big VP at Columbia Pictures, and he said he’d arrange a screen test for him! How about that? That’s what we like to see today, huh? That’s the Jugghead life! The U just wants ta fill these rooms pronto so’s they can prove to Arnie, or who-ever’s in Sacramento today, that they need the capital funds to build more dorms. You know? So hey, let’s do our part as old Bruins and fill the jug – Jugg Hall, that is! – for the home team today!’

  Properly dazed, Butterbugs considered the paperworkout in front of him.

  ‘Jubilee! Jody! Jemymah! Hi! Hi! Hi! Back in time and ready for the big sign-up today, huh? Be right with you!’ Then, with a sneaky look and a terrible German accent, ‘Iss yor papehs in orrdah?’ followed by a big collegiate grin ’n’ laugh.

  ‘Yes, Neal!’ ‘Yes, Neal!’ ‘Yes, Neal!’ the three naiads, freshly arrived, chirped in turn.

  ‘Girls? Meet your new neighbor! We got him! He’s the first one of the afternoon. He’ll be on your floor!’

  He gestured to Butterbugs, buried in forms, searching for the one germane question, looking for all the world like the class rebel that most everyone regards as a troublemaker but who makes girls’ hearts flutter.

  Jubilee, Jody and Jemymah regarded him, and communally decided he wasn’t the type of class rebel that made their hearts flutter. Their smiles at Neal turned to upside down U-shapes: their one-stop review of Butterbugs.

  Jubilee raised her buffed arms to adjust her afro, then realized there wasn’t much point and got all mocking/funky.

  ‘Are you shittin’ us? He ain’t got no soul for me to con-trol…!’

  ‘Now then Miss Julie-Jubilee…!’ Neal wagged his finger playfully.

  ‘Oh, Neal, where did you get that one? Ewwww…,’ trilled Jody, crinkling her nose.

  ‘Just walked in, Jody-pony! Say, come to think of it, he does look a little… you know, a different sort, today.’

  Butterbugs stole a sidelong glance at Jody. So cute, but what a bitch!

  Jemymah was no better, not necessarily in the looks department, but in flinging fecal matter: ‘Where did HE go to school, huh? You know, Terrorist School? Ha, ha, haa!’

  Neal winced. ‘Ouch today, Jemmy! OWWW!!’

  Jubilee stood tall, hands on Afro-Amazonian hips.

  ‘’You actually think you can compete? My analysis concludes otherwise!’

  Jemymah dared to steer her penny loafers around back of Butterbugs and pulled out one of his naturally oily hairs.

  ‘Yuck! Feels like serial killer hair! He, he, hee!’

  She wiped her fingers on her tummy, the curves of which showed through her pedal pushers, and she firmed up her Daisy Mae knot that kept her cleavage safe. Butterbugs did indeed eye her, but out of shame rather than anger.

  Then Jody, bolstered by safety in numbers, dared to face him up close, head on. She squatted down, made bumping and grinding motions, scowled, puckered her lips, moaned, then shook her head.

  ‘Too bad, baby. Too bad…’

  Turning about, she thrust her bottom at him.

  ‘Then kiss my little round ass!’ she cooed, snottily.

  The trio then stood arm in arm, cheerfully celebrating their sarcastic mirth.

  ‘You girls are funny! And naughty!’ Neal chuckled.

  He wasn’t smiling at Butterbugs anymore, though.

  ‘So, yeah, what’s with your… appearance, my friend? You look kinda green, today.’

  Butterbugs peered nervously at the others, then at the mess of papers on the laminate panel. Then he edged out of the classroom chair and stood up to full height, without stooping his shoulders. The environmental pollution that was upon him became fully apparent. The girls almost gasped.

  ‘What the – Maybe you’re just not a Jugghead after all, today! Maybe – just maybe, you’re – you’re not even a Bruin! What’s with you, anyway?’ questioned Neal.

  ‘You would not find me suitable,’ said Butterbugs, and shuffled out of the room.

  ‘You brats!’ scolded Neal, ‘You made me lose one from my quota!’

  ‘Oh pish, he was a loser!’ scoffed Jemymah.

  ‘Nowhere near cool!’ sneered Jubilee.

  ‘What care I?’ Neal replied, arms outstretched.

  Jody tarried at the door, looking after him, and in her most private thoughts, had to admit, ‘He has quality…’

  And there was indeed, a fluttering somewhere far within.

  The other two also looked after him, and they too indulged in admiration, but could not speak it.

  Neal, frustrated and disbelieving his failure, gathered up the paper trail and glanced at the only line his prospective client had filled in.

  ‘Drama’ was scribbled out. ‘Social Work’ replaced it.

  ‘Social Work as his major?! What the – Doesn’t sound like a team player to me! No way a Jugghead… Oh well… Good riddance, today!’

  2.

  Pæan In Vitriox Boulevard

  He wasn’t actually in Vitriox Boulevard, though he wished he were.

  Why?

  Because, in order to honor the stalwarts of that time, that distant time – those who had had the success he desired – that conspicuous cast of illustrious precursors to his assured glory, there could be no doubt about the validity of his intentions. From the cement-cum-asphalt driveway in the Court of Campo Santo Loquasto Manor then, Butterbugs fabricated a loftier Court of Honor. In his mind, if nothing else, a venue for paying tribute to those who had gone before.

  There, standing there, was Butterbugs, in a state of mind unidentifiable at this time. But there he was, witnessing. His observations, valid or not, were nevertheless his own.

  It was the height of the season, and just without, on the Road to Venice, babes in skimpy bikinis promenaded along the Bund of Venetian delights. In sheer flesh impact, this concourse certainly rivaled the similarly-named Bund of Shanghai, the Strøjet of Copenhagen, and, of course, the Pine Cone Alley of his hometown of Carstairs (where the only flesh was dead-end rubbish, cast out by adjacent occupants…).

  Show-off darlings, with all their attendants, from Arnie-style, Slyish, Dieselian muscle-bound-but-happy boy-toys, to dumpy dykos in black t-shirts, to outdated rollerbladers who stubbornly stuck to their missions, unto the rattly corrugated gates of Sir Dennis Hopper’s compound, there was an endless parade of spanglers, twinkies, winkies, beef-boys, bum-boys, third-sexers, cheesy birds, attitude-sistahs, cis-trans-booms, big-haired bimbotrons, nerdsexuals, foxy something-or-others, Tina-La-Tina wannabes, You-Crane blondes ready to wed tonight, and mail-order-catalog-eligible scratching-post chicks. Plus, glitter-people so droolingly yummy that any burnout with a spare shopping bag would have filled it many times over with self-loathing, combined with voyeuristic emissions of Onanism, weighing so much they’d require a sleigh-ride home for private consummation screen-side, while aging Mom was out for an evening stroll, taking in Vons, Fatburger, and Pep Boys.

  Not so many homies & hoodies, as this turf b
ling-blanged way, way, too, too much.

  All the engineering, physics, visionary planning, universal consciousness, judicious investment and advanced computorial schematics that went into making such a promenade possible – wasted! Too stupid even for the failure of drugs, these children of Selfism were not even aware of what their surrender to the sensation of the Obvious Objects of Desire really meant.

  On the fine, fine lines of strutting femme and femme-fatalean finery that stepped, usually in high-heeled locomotion, down the daily constitutional were stretched the yawning ideals of those who waited and wanted. Surely, by means of their heroic exhibitionism, the star-makers would find them. After all, they were doing their part: showing up.

  Walter Pater was right! For thinking persons, the candied delight of seeing one’s heart’s desire on display was the impossible summit achieved: the joined nexus of Ideas with Sensations. A terminal degree was easily scored by a simple process. Posing as witness, or, in a best-case scenario, being a bona fide believer in this, the Imperishable Necessity, as practiced by those who dreamt of fulfilling their most high-powered yearnings.

  Meanwhile, the æsthetics of immediacy commanded the attention of all who witnessed.

  High-stepping sincerity, simplicity, glorious visionary splendors. The midriff factor; sculpted torsos, bellies as flat or as mellifluously contoured as gentle glacial till, in all innocence, appeared for a premiere of experimental exhibition; bronzed topography leading from rare (but not here!) outie belly button roundabouts to faint traces of un-self-perceived hairlines extending down to pubic deforestation, or, upwards, past the tony butterfly tattoos of prancing ponies or heart-shaped valentines dedicated to the Pierrot of the moment, to unconscionably natural boobs, all caressed in shortie camisole nurturing, or hottie-small bub-nubbins with puffy/erect nipples proclaiming individuality under the Venetian sun, where, if not within lyrical innocence under poplars or aspens or cottonwoods in a far-distant and oh-so-innocent Huck Finn environ of rustic discovery, then here, in blatant LA, where an unabashed parade of attributes was not only safe and neuter, it was downright encouraged in the name of standard self-expression. Piercing, ear-lobing, tattoos like coloring-book failures, brandings with ersatz Asiatic ciphers (spelling ‘Fuck Me!’ more often than Dalai Lamaisms), forked tongues, and many other desperate attention-getters: all passé (though popular)!

  Here, sensibly, pure honesty prevailed. The believable display of those who had come out of gentle desire to proclaim themselves. For it was a benevolent atmosphere, where those who believed came to portray themselves to their own kind.

  Out on the plains of the promenade, which seemed to stretch for as many miles as it would take to become a star (if a Long March was really what it took), all were equal in wonderfulness, but only if a consistency in standards was maintained. Competition could be stiff. Wobbly bits were, in their acme, firm and enviable. For women, wobbly meant controlled and visible; for men, wobbly meant honestly minimal in the name of more distracting mass; tumescence could be revealed, all in good time. Whatever the case, any show of creativity should be hospitably received, as certain as a naïve scene from a teen-generated extravaganza of naturalistic impulse. Those were standards to live by, to become a star by.

  In these parts, every day was Burning Man, so to speak. The theatrics were just as vital, just as surging, but without the deserty expense and restricted admission. If one was to be burned, sunblock was always available.

  So, while the G-rated parade proceeded without, there were others along its course who were occupied with more cerebral – (if ‘animalistic’ may be precluded here) – instincts.

  It was a bizarre time for Butterbugs. He had long slipped away from the Misty Princess influence of Heatherette, and the erstwhile heart-whispers of that Aspiring Stripper With A Heart of Gold who was beloved Shawna Lee.

  Nothing – and no one – had replaced them. He was self-absorption personified.

  Food was running low again. A flame burned in his belly, signifying nothing but want. Works created for merit, the building of a temple, a pagoda, a stupa, efforts of devotion, sincerity; these were as nothing against the reality of the moment. But he had tried. Pleasing higher powers seemed reasonable and honorable. If he was subservient, the forces that be – if they were actually worth believing – would surely take notice and put their chips on his number.

  The rite had begun. In complete earnestness, he placed a bundle of lemon grass on the flat stone of a bulk incense burner and tried to clap his hands with only one hand. Several attempts led him to believe he was inadequate.

  After the ritual, which apparently was as futile as Robespierre’s weird staging of the Rite to the Supreme Being, Butterbugs looked at the flea-laden ground, and realized it was official: he was on Hard Times. This was funny because, despite the long strange journey of late, he had been in denial.

  Now it was Monday morning.

  The party was over.

  3.

  Acts Of Desperation, Acts Of Conscience

  Was Butterbugs at all tempted by the Dark Side of Hollywood?

  Well, was he?

  Or did ‘temptation’, in the classic sense, even enter into it? A sort of anonymous acceptance of the Side’s existence was necessitated by a set of experiences that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that such a Side did in fact exist, with metaphysical certitude, and indeed, it flourished not a heartbeat away from the conventional infrastructure of the city.

  What, pray, was the Side, anyway?

  The sun shines only half the time, so what was the other half, but Dark?

  The innocuous civic fixtures which surround the citizen on all angles, such as wholesome street signs, thoroughgoing sidewalks and curbs, sodium-tinted streetlamps (of lollipop or even Peyton Place configuration – you know, backlot globes in public candelabras of utmost propriety), and coolly-illuminated horizontal signs with white text on green background, marking the likes of Sweetzer Blvd and its countless mates, as well as the smoothly-paved and excellently-maintained street surfaces themselves, seemed to mask the surety of the eccentric corruption just at hand.

  Inside the countless vehicles occupying this matrix of streets, behind the usually closed doors, and well in back of private hedges, lattices, rat cages, loose-boxes, and fences that provided screens of discretion, there, in back of it all – backstage (which was where anyone with any sense in LA would enact their own personal variations of what they wanted their Dark Sides to be) – was the ripe but essential truth that was the exhibition of the community’s true soul.

  In these times, innate Dark Sides merged with the generic, until a tremendously high percentage of the citizenry elected to contribute their creative say and deeds to the collective corruption kettle. True, LA was corrupt. From the start, right up to the unfinished present. True, most of the corruption and naughtiness were either conceived or enacted in private (sacred privacy!), but not always. The streets, and the sidewalks of the streets, were at once a setting and a green room for a certain school of acting-out life’s drama, and wherein a special kind of danger lay.

  It was because of this easy setting that Butterbugs did indeed explore and experiment with his own exploratory version of the Side. Because, quite frankly, there was no getting around it – he was desperate. He found himself in the kind of dire situation that he had dreaded all along. He couldn’t drive (tank on empty: so said the dipstick he fashioned out of a diseased palm frond and Burkmart straws, in lieu of a withered and shorted-out gas gauge needle), so he took to drifting the streets, halfheartedly looking for ‘opportunities’.

  He found them.

  Opportunities there were, all right. Especially those to enact Dr. Hunter S. Thompson’s theses on fear and loathing. They were there, right on the sidewalks, so remote and unbelievable from the protected bubbles that floated by in vehicular suspension. As long as he was on the streets and vulnerable, how could there not be an encounter with both?

  Fear is inherent. Loathing is l
earned.

  For the better part of a day he was harassed by a street loony, some guy in a sort of snow-bunny parka, colored Sunday-school blue, whose heavily bearded mug hid a brain that had been damaged by some horrible car accident. A former legal computer whiz who remembered that he was a legal computer whiz, he poured his stream-of-consciousness tale of woe onto Butterbugs like creosote.

  There was little mercy to be found along the high-rise telephone pole routes they trod, and little mercy from his new hanger-on. It made for an antithesis of companionship. In his mind, Butterbugs christened him ‘Pester’ John.

  Made dim by the Pester’s onslaught, Butterbugs simply kept going, getting an earful of pain and self-pity from one who would plainly never be delivered from his burden. Some shrewdness returned, however. When encountering a concrete abutment that supported a flyover, Butterbugs took a sharp right and careered down the resulting lane, thus ditching, for all time, Pester John.

  The next day, he was plagued once more by a burnout in a parka. No hood this time. Why-o, why-o did all these shit-fly-like wackos have this thing about parkas? (Sort of like anorak creeps in Britain…?). Even on the monoxide-chipped streets of LA, Butterbugs could detect a strong wet underwear bouquet from this goofball, who jabbered on about the personal nightmare of persecution.

  ‘But I am a Jew! And nobody likes me! I even got deported from Israel! You know what that’s like? You couldn’t possibly know. You couldn’t ever possibly care. Maybe. I mean, would you? Ever?’

  He rattled on and on, without even one stolen supper-club line of note.