Mamlet

1.

He wanted to conquer nations, to be remembered as a king, a grand figure in the history of Western Civilization. Lofty goal but he honestly believed he could pull it off. He had been surrounded by genius all of his life, it was only a matter of time before his superior nature emerged.

But for now he was busy trying to find his way home through a demented jungle of Edgar Allen Poe’s complete works. It was a chamber of many doors, behind each one a different path he could choose. But his decision would change the course of history. Every choice, any choice would be of his choosing. It didn’t make things any easier.

He eventually chose to fall with the house of Usher, that grand and noble house. It’s comings, goings, legends and mythology, it’s denizens and the account of their lives so vividly conjured through the pen of Poe. Yet he remembers none of it. Nada. It had just been too many years since he had last scanned it. He couldn’t remember a goddamn thing.

As his memory was being refreshed, locked between the pages of a nice green volume of literature on my bookshelf, he had a glorious thought. “What”, thought he, “would it be like to wake up one day and find ourselves in the world and the artistic vision of that gifted Frenchman Salvador Dali?” As he pondered this question he looked to his left and noticed that the clock on the wall was melting.

“How very odd,” thought he once again. “What strange creatures stalk the land and fill the sky with their black crow darkness swirling ‘round.”

It would appear that he crawled out of Usher’s timeless confines to slither into Dali-wood. As to his motives for doing so, the author cannot reveal, even if he were to know them. Which I’m not saying he does. But if anyone did it would obviously be me, right? And I just don’t know. That’s my bottom line.

So. The “real” world coagulated like blood and vinegar in a Mason jar. Nothing was where it should have been. It boggled the mind. It begged description. Faces like jelly. One of those things. With putrid carcasses and elephant heads tethered to the earth by hemp rope, strong and tight, harnessing it’s helium from it’s urge to flight. The situation is under control. That was the message they should have been sending. But they had seen it, too, and they felt pity for the man with the grasshopper fastened to his neck Who is eating who, you want to know? The answer, my friends, will elude the human race for eons to come.

It must have been 30-40 hours after Henry Mamlet passed out in Dali-wood. He’d entered the state of Nirvana. It was with fierce force of will that he tore himself away from it to spend another few weeks on this greedy planet. All the messed up clocks, all the drug references. The brilliance from a mind that must have been constantly possessed of such bizarre thoughts as to make the towne foole seem a saint. “Goodbye, strange abode. So long, dream-like landscapes that twist my senses. Your surreal atmosphere will be missed as will be the days when LSD was legal.

2.

“Hey, babe! I’m Creamy Slut Pie! Thanks for calling the Creamy Pie erotic phone sex service, where it’s been our pleasure to please you for the last 20 years. I’m assuming that you got our phone number from the back of a wrinkled and torn copy of Hustler magazine. If so, it would stand to reason that you are old enough to be engaging in this sort of lascivious, desperate telephone conversation. Am I correct in my observation?”

“You are correct. I am old enough to utilize your valuable service, though many would say that I’m too old to do these things. Think me a loser, if you must, as long as you give me what I paid for, it that understood?”

“Easy, soldier. No need for you to bust a gasket. You’re gonna need all your gaskets soon enough. Pick your battles, Gomer Pyle. I get that you’re old enough. I never doubted it for even a moment. We have to say that stuff, you know, the lawyers tryin’ to cover their basses, see?”

“Ok, I’m alright. I may have over-reacted. I’m sorry if I did, but you need to understand something about me. When I was a small child I used to swing dead cats in the air, then let ’em go to see how far they would fly in their rigor mortis hardened conditions. We’d find planks of two-by-four lumber and beat the lifeless body with them. I only did it because I was scared. Scared to death. Scared of death. This feline, whose heart had stopped beating at some point in the last seven days, left behind a body that provided a great deal of boyhood pleasure to someone you never even knew. A legacy. A token shell left behind, as if the cat-heaven bound kitty had sacrificed it for some cause only known by Cats.”

“Well, okay, Mr….” she said as if inquiring, lost for a name she’d just heard not two minutes ago.

“Mamlet, ma’am,/ Henry Mamlet.”

“Now that’s one hell of a name you got there, Hank.”

“Don’t call me Hank,” he sinisterly intoned.

“Well, why-ever-not? Hank’s as good as anything else. And it’s one less syllable. Rolls of the tongue a little easier. Makes you sound tougher than you really are. Has that “good old boy” tang to it. You have no idea how far you can go on that schtick. Hank,” she said,” now there’s a name for a REAL MAN. I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t want to be referred to with such a regal nickname as…oh, my, how I love to say it…Hank! Hank! Hank! Hank!”

“I told you not to call me Hank. I wasn’t shitting you. I don’t give two shits and a holler for your invaluable opinion about what constitutes the realness of a man. What a worn out old bed rag you must be, laughing behind my back and telling the other prostitutes that I’m not the breed they want to tangle with. Just don’t call me Hank. I’ll thank you if you don’t refer to me as Hank for the entire duration of our relationship, be it confined to the upcoming phone sex session or, by some twitch of fate find ourselves exploring the nether regions of forever together.”

“Sounds interesting, Hank. Now what can I do for you? Have you ever called us before?”

“No, this is actually not the first time. I wanted to call a few times. Even dialed the number and heard the phone pick up. But I never had the guts to stay on the line. I felt I would make a fool of myself.”

“You ARE a pussy, Mamlet,” said Creamy Slut Pie, representing the infamous Creamy Pie phone sex emporium. “So why did you stick around this time? Why didn’t you wimp out then, you weak scum.”

“I just don’t care anymore. Tell the whole world that I’m a lonely creep so desperate for companionship that I’ve found the logical end with a telephone receiver stuck to my ear and a greasy Hustler in my left hand. Tell ’em I don’t even masturbate while they try so hard to arouse me. As they pretend they’ve been waiting on my call for the last week. Their heavy breathing and well choreographed grunts of lust have absolutely no effect on me whatsoever. I may kill myself next week, so I didn’t want to die without having phone sex at least once in their lives.

*******IF I MAY HAVE YOUR ATTENTION*********

In an attempt to promote this work of fiction I have decided that it might be good idea to launch a campaign on behalf of the phone sex union to start a trend in which the following phrase is to be capitalized on:

“I DON’T WANT TO DIE WITHOUT HAVING HAD PHONE SEX AT LEAST ONCE IN MY LIFE”

…and maybe print of some tee-shirts, spread the gospel, what do you say? “Phone sex: I’ve made peace with my Maker” or even “Phone Sex: Reach out and touch someone, for once in your life” or “I’ll die a happy man! How ‘bout you?”…unlimited, people I am not lying.

Exploit this fashionable new trend I am starting. Spread the word. One time in a lifetime, whether it be filled with wealth and prosperity or burdened by poorness, disease, and haste, doing the one thing we’ve always known we’ve wanted to do: make a call to Creamy Pie’s. Do do it, damnit! Creamy Slut Pie was not shitting when she insinuated earlier that all men who are afraid to use their services without hesitation are pussies.

Which doesn’t really make a damn one way or the other as far as this is concerned. Because all I want you to do is start a trend. I want you to author a new fad. I want you to get out there and hustle like the John Paul George and Ringo. I want the fruits of your labor to benefit my own financial gains. It won’t be hard. Just say to your co-worker or fellow church goer, “Yo, Granny. You had yo phone sex yet? Better hit it up, baby, cause it don’t look like your liable to have much time left.

Start that trend, I re-iterate. Lets make this pithy tale fly on it’s psychedelic ride to mass recognition and acknowledgment of the author’s genius.

Remember…Phone sex. I wanna do it just one time before I die.

Solid…

Gold.