The Twilight of the Bums (4 page)

Now the knuckles are fighting again, the action is approaching its denouement, the kids are shouting, some mimicking the glorious French language, and then there is one more blast from the water barrel of heaven and just as suddenly a hot sun reappears in the sky, and the whole sudden gathering takes flight, rising as on wings, and flying, flying, away and away, the story left there perfectly unfinished, the way God Itself leaves things, sometimes …

No reason why news of the end of the body should be received with anything but acceptance, but for the two bums the news hit hard, especially since they were just at the beginning of their new life in the desert.

The dark hair lovely complexion lady physician in the white coat snapped the x-rays onto the display, and in a gesture that both bums read with private alarm, took off her white coat (although this alarm was confused by the consequent revelation of her body, her generous breasts in a soft semi-transparent brassière, her unspeakable hips). But her act was clearly related to the news, which was not good. She picked up the pointer with the soft rubberish tip, moving from one area of complication to another.

The upshot was the two bums were granted the usual final six months. They looked at each other, then at the lady doctor. They were both thinking the same thought: the two-men-one-girl-thought. The triangle thought. What the hell! Six months is a lifetime if one knows how to take advantage of the unexpected.

1.     A friend will never tell you that your fly is unzipped.

2.     Anything divisible is the enemy of friendship.

3.     When a friend tells you what you would rather not hear, don't blame him or her, just tell him or her to shut up.

4.     Friendship is not a category.

5.     If you fuck your friend your friendship is fucked.

6.     He-friend? She-friend? Empty categories.

7.     The wine in the broken jug that has been glued back together always tastes better; likewise with friendship.

8.     A friend lets you crack open his or her fortune cookie.

9.     Friends are nuts.

10.   One of the good things about friends is that they come when called. The other good thing is that they leave.

11.   One of the pleasures of friendship is to be in the state of missing that person.

12.   Making lists of the qualities of friendship is like eating salted peanuts.

The two old friends are living proof of the old Polish proverb that a good friend will wipe his shoes on you.

One time the Mick fobbed off a lovely looking chick on the Frog telling him what a great lay she was when in reality her cunt was cement.

Another time the Frog told the Mick he had met this lovely and ready virgin who was asking for immediate defloration and that he wanted him to do it to her, but when the Mick's anxious cock approached the virgin's sweet cunt it discovered that it was not, as announced by the Frog, an unexplored path in a virgin jungle but rather a well traveled superhighway where many good cocks had already crashed.

One day the two old shoeless bums came into town with a plan for making a few bucks, getting some shoes, a meal, and maybe a 2-for-1 lay at the local brothel if there was one. It was cold & snowy, lucky they each had greatcoats in pretty good condition. So at the town gate they split up, one going north & the other south. At the north bar Old Bum One slammed down his fist on the table & said he was in town to kill his enemy at noon on Main Street. At the south bar Old Bum Two shouted the same threat, looking down at his coat as if to suggest he carried a weapon. As you can imagine, this news traveled about town at the speed of excitement. When was the last time, if ever, that the town had witnessed a shoot-out? And so as noon approached the entire population of the town assembled on Main Street. Everybody was there, the old, the young, the crippled, the rich, the poor, the unemployed, the bosses, as well as the town politicians, and even the blacks from the ghetto.

When it was past noon, and the old shoeless bums had not yet arrived for the big shoot-out, the people started getting restless. One could hear rumbling in the crowd. The town sheriff dispatched one of his deputies to find out where the two bums were, that's what he called them,
bums!
Soon the deputy came back. He looked horrified. He had located the two shoeless bums at the local brothel, both fucking the same girl at the same time, one frontward the other backward, yes that's what the deputy reported, one into the front the other into the rear at the same time. They had her sandwiched. Then the deputy added, from the look of them two bums, there'll be no big shoot-out today, and probably not for the rest of the week.

There was on that gloomy day only one woman left in the world with sufficient inner resistance to stiffen male power to a structure sufficient for her use to ensure the continuity of the species.

There were also on that day only two nameless bums left, two good-for-nothing thieving trash-hackers fucking worthless drunks suspended on their crosses.

And so on that gloomy day the woman of great resistance drove her donkey cart up to Golgotha, the place of skulls and olive trees, to inspect the men slowly crucifying in the heat of mid-day.

Noticing the dust on the trail Bum One said from his high perch: I see something coming. Bum Two lifted his head, and through the dust cloud he saw the outline of the donkey cart. It's a little early isn't it? he said, thinking it was the cart from the mortuary on its way to collect their corpses.

History does not record what happened that day on Golgotha when the woman of great resistance climbed up the cross, but perhaps one can get a clue from the words Saint Augustine scribbled in his Confessions:

Do not despair, one of the thieves was saved
.

Do not presume, one of the thieves was fucked
.

Once upon a time, and what a scary time it was, the two friends got lost in the woods and were just about starved when a fairy princess leapt out of a pond and offered herself to the men, who were still quite young, little more than boys really. Necessity offering no other option, they ate the princess on the spot, as bid, and were restored enough to make their way out of the woods to a human settlement. Many years passed and the boymen all but forgot the princess who had saved their lives until one day the two friends, now old men, were fishing in a pond when a frog leapt out of the water. Oh what a big fat frog, one of the friends cried out. Hey, why don't we have frog legs for lunch, said the other friend. So they caught the frog, proceeded to dismember it, cooked the legs on their portable camping stove, and soon delighted in the savory flesh, not realizing that only a kiss from them would have transformed the frog into a beautiful fairy princess.

In the long run in the scheme of things what kinds of things do you want a woman to do for you? He asked his friend.

And the friend replied, as things stand now with the old bones weeping and the muscles creaking I would like a woman to kneel before me and tie my shoe laces.