Joe Lansdale - The Complete Drive-In

Me.

I wanted to mention that me part again.

But now and then, when you’re raving in a near hypoglycemic semi-comatose state, you want to stand back and leave the me, the I, the yourownself out of the picture.

You can’t do it.

You think you can, but you can’t.

No matter what you think, or try to think, or try to do, it’s always about, guess who?

You.

Or, to be more exact. Me.

Me. Me. Me.

But I said that already. Hypoglycemic or not. It’s always about me.

I’m merely telling you what Republicans already know. To hell with everyone else as long as I got mine.

What I’d give for a steak.

From a cow, of course.

Besides, hell, I didn’t die. Everything I’ve written down so far, except the part about me dying, is the truth, no shit, as if there’s anyone here to argue with me (well, there’s myself, but I’m not up to it today).

Oh, all right. There’s another part that’s a lie. But we’ll hold off on that and come at it a short time later.

I guess, I should confess to you, Oh Journal, Keeper of the Goddamn Truth, that maybe I wish I had died. I’ve thought about dying. You know. A do-it-yourself job, but, baby, it ain’t in me.

I like living too much.

Even if you can’t call this living, it’s the excuse for living I’m living, and I don’t know no other way to do than to keep on trucking.

Which brings up something.

Trucking.

Gonna be doin’ me some.

Tomorrow (and I’ll have to decide when tomorrow comes, ‘cause, baby, in here, who really knows), but tomorrow there will be time to evaluate, lay some stock, and maybe some pipe if any female that isn’t scary looking is willing! And with any volunteers I get! I’m jiving on out of here, bouncy-assin’ in a big ole ride, head in’ for – well, that part ought not to be discussed or considered or contemplated or too far planned.

Because, I’m not sure there’s anywhere to go.

P.S.

I really didn’t emerge from a bus after having banged two hot women with my snake flapping and my lips jackin’ with, “Yippie-Ki-Pussy!”

But, I wish I had.

Actually, I complained of my back.

I avoid sex now.

Mostly.

I mean to anyway.

Sometimes you can make a woman pregnant and not know it. Not know if it was you, I mean. There are so many sharing in the festivities, you see. And then, if the women get pregnant, well, there are the babies.

And, of course, so many are eating their young, and though it has begun to have its appeal (so soft, so pink, so bakeable-though most go in for raw, as fire is difficult to create), we are trying to keep some semblance of civilization.

Or at least I am, goddamnit.

So, our declaration is simple.

No eating babies.

Raw, anyway.

Keep your top button buttoned.

And pee at the far end of the fence. Over where it already stinks.

That night (and it has been night for a long time, I am sure; well, pretty sure) it rained goo.

Black goo.

This was nothing different. It did this frequently. Most likely it was from the sewer dump deposited by whoever was in the heavens above.

Aliens, it was believed. Up there behind the night, behind the clouds, ass cracks perched for delivery.

Least that was my theory, backed up by certain events.

But I’ve written about those events already. Of the Popcorn King and the long road to nowhere, the dinosaurs, and Popalong Cassidy, of the beautiful Grace who took up with the goofball Steve (how could she even consider such after having such a manly stud muffin as myself?), and of poor Crier, dickless (actually, he carried it in his pocket) and dead, toted off and eaten, his dismembered dick as well. Perhaps the critter that got him used the dried up dick to pick his teeth. On this world, in this world, wherever this world was, you thought about things like that because you had a lot of time to think.

I sit here and think about the children born here, many of them fathered by the Popcorn King. They look like the Popcorn King. Two bodies welded together, one on the other’s shoulders to make a single unit. Unlike the King, they are covered in eyes that look like the eyes that were on the corn the King threw up. Each eye blinks at a different time.

They are sexless. Smooth as Barbie dolls without the attractive build. No ass cracks either. Here’s the scoop. They don’t shit. They eat, but they don’t shit. Their pores ooze something that substitutes for that. They stink, by the way. But, I suppose you have guessed that.

Whoever you is.

They used to be kind of sweet. As they’ve grown older, they’ve banded together. There are few left, actually. Most have gone off into the forest to survive on their own. When they reached what I suppose could be called adulthood, they lost interest in us.

A side note. They can move small things with their minds.

Creepy, baby.

Speaking of children,

I had one. Grace, who went off with Steve, she was carrying my child. Or so she said. The baby was born dead. Good thing, really. Steve and Grace ate it. Being the father and all, they offered me the placenta.

I passed.

I regret that now and again when I’m hungry.

But you have to draw the line somewhere.

Bad things. Bad past. Bad memories.

Oh, and my buddy Bob died. Just up and died. No reason that we could see. Maybe some kind of disease. Maybe a flawed heart. I don’t know, but one day he’s fine, and the next day, not so much. His body disappeared quickly. Rumor is, someone, or several someone’s ate it. I may have been one of the ones. I don’t know. Really. If I did such a thing, I’ve blocked it out. I liked Bob… I mean when he was alive. But, hey, you can get so hungry sometimes, and I’m sure if it had been me, he wouldn’t have wanted me to go to waste.

So, I’m not saying I took a chew, but I’m not sayin’ I didn’t.

But enough of the bad memories.

There’s always the new stuff to worry about.

I’d like to have less new stuff.

Jesus. I’d like to go home.

All this, it’s one hell of a tale, my friends, a whale of tale, and a ho, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum, which I don’t have. But, the writing. I got that. It helps me focus, except when it doesn’t.

Course, my writing all this down is most likely a waste. Who will ever read any of it, anyway?

I’m sitting up watching Chainsaw like I might even like it. Sitting here in the driver’s seat of the bus, my diary on the dash, me with a dying ink pen that has “Get Your Car Lubed at Willies” printed on it, writing to the light from the drive-in as flashed to me between plops of alien shit, or whatever it is. My left hand is in my pants, and I’m cupping my balls like they’re a sweaty, hairy teddy bear. They comfort me.

But, I really think I will catch the rhythm of this stuff, the plopping of the shit I mean, and when I do (Listen to the Rhythm of the Falling Shit), I’ll go to the back of the bus and lie down, and I’ll really sleep, listening to the cadence of the falling crap, lulling me into slumber, pulling me happily down into the arms of Hypnos and Morpheus.

I read that in a book once, those sleepy gods of Greece.

Yeah, sleepy time, baby.

Really.

I hope.

I wonder about the bus I live in. I think about driving it down the single highway again, setting out once more, but what’s the use?

I did that in another vehicle once.

It didn’t work out.

I done said that. Shit. I’m so tired I don’t know what I have said or haven’t said, or even if I remember how to say it. I sometimes struggle with my letters. You know, like, which way do the B’s bumps go? To the left or the right?

This place changes you. Doodles with your mind.