<\/p>\n
Published Jan. 2003<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Oscar bin Laden: Archives and discussion at http:\/\/www.greatsociety.org\/forums\/index.php?topic=1241.0<\/p>\n
—–<\/p>\n
\n
Werdna hooked his thumbs in his suspenders and wandered over to where x10 and Leff sat with their attorney, Gordon J. Cancun.<\/p>\n
“Your honor!” Werdna drawled, spinning around to face the judge.\u00a0 “These miscreants have accused mah client, Nacho Sasha, of gross negligence in social obligation.\u00a0 Yet ah will prove here today that it’s their attitude and their words what cause unrest in this here sphere of influence!”<\/p>\n
Werdna actually said “spear” and “affluence,” but no one seemed to notice.<\/p>\n
“What we got here is a simple misconception,” Werdna continued, lighting a giant Cuban cigar and motioning for the cup of mulled wine which my hideously deformed manservant had ready.<\/p>\n
“Excuse me, suh!” the Judge barked, “There will be no smokin’ in mah courtroom!”<\/p>\n
Werdna seemed surprised.\u00a0 He took the cigar out of his mouth and gazed at it for nearly a minute.\u00a0 Finally, he gently put out the fire on the edge of the Louisiana State law book he’d had my Manservant carry around for three days and slipped the cigar back into his shirt pocket. \u00a0“Forgive me, your honor, ah do so forget myself on these here hot days.”\u00a0 he turned to my manservant, “Best be a good nigra and get me some iced tea instead.”<\/p>\n
There was a horrified hush that fell across the courtroom and Werdna put a hand to his mouth, “Dearie me, that’s what I get fuh visiting mah daddy for three weeks.”\u00a0 He turned to my bewildered manservant,\u00a0 “And you ain’t even colored!”<\/p>\n
The judge pounded his gavel, “That’s quite enough, suh!”<\/p>\n
I suppose I should begin at the beginning, if only to offer an apology for the rampaging racism, sexism and whatever other -isms I am guilty of so often.\u00a0 Or so often guilty of\u2026?\u00a0 No, don’t end with of.\u00a0 But it sounds right.\u00a0 Well, anyway, who cares what it sounds like?\u00a0 Am I a professional writer?\u00a0 Well, yes, but, also, no.<\/p>\n
Texas Billionaire Oscar bin Laden had bought some property near Bayou Teche, roughly two hours outside of New Orleans.\u00a0 It was a hideaway, a palace, a Xanadu wonderland.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He said he had an indoor pool strewn with rosepetals and filled with hired teenagers dressed as mermaids and, if we wanted, he would buy everyone plane tickets and pay for lost wages.\u00a0 An all expense paid trip to the swamps of Louisiana in August was too much to turn down.\u00a0 Oh, well, now that I write that it seems flawed\u2026a trip to Guatemala North in August is actually the last thing a lunatic felon would do, but that didn’t really seem important at the time.<\/p>\n
Oscar was more than generous and hell-bent on the idea of a reunion.\u00a0 When I arrived at the airport with my hideously deformed manservant and my good friend James, Oscar’s cronies were waiting for us in the taxi lane.\u00a0 They were driving a grey panel van with the windows painted black, which wasn\u2019t particulary unusual.\u00a0 We sat in the seatless cargo area for two and a half hours, legs crunched up to our chests since the van was full of homemade explosives, prayer shawls and a crate\u00a0 with radiation symbols and “Federal Government Property — Do Not Remove” written on the heavy, leaded sides.<\/p>\n
Ali and the boys spent much of the trip shouting out the window at SUV’s, mostly in Arabic.\u00a0 Once they were out of New Orleans and tracking across the countryside, however, they started throwing grenades at animals along the roadside.\u00a0 They pulled over at a drive-up Daiquiri window and muttered threats under their breath while I ordered three Daiquiris to go.\u00a0 That\u2019s one for me and two for James.\u00a0 After that, things loosened up a bit.\u00a0 Well, James and I loosened up a bit.\u00a0 I tied a wet towel around my head and, when we pulled up into Oscar’s circular driveway, I burst out of the rear doors shouting “Allah Akbar!” and ran towards Oscar with two sticks of dynamite in my hands.\u00a0 That was worth a laugh and we retired to the gallery for Dixie beer and coffee.<\/p>\n
Rotting Corpse and Werdna arrived by taxi, having taken the Sunset Limited to New Iberia.\u00a0 They seemed a little worse for wear after the train ride and made a bee line for the Dixie beer, which my manservant was dutifully icing down.<\/p>\n
Jezebel arrived closer to noon, driving herself as she so often did these days.\u00a0 She stepped out of the car wearing a skirt well above the knee and a pair of knee-high, leather boots.\u00a0 She was braless under her spaghetti-strap top and she absently rubbed her nipples as she sat down next to Oscar.<\/p>\n
The surprise guest was Jacob D’Artagnan, from whom I had stolen the fictional time travel device in “Nacho Sasha and the Knights of Saint John.”\u00a0 He walked up to the gallery, stared long and hard into my eyes, then stepped into the house without a word.\u00a0 I heard the TV click on to a soccer game.<\/p>\n
Oscar stood up and clapped his hands together, “We are all here!\u00a0 Let us head inside for food and drinks.”<\/p>\n
The lunch table had been prepared by Ali and the boys in what appeared to be an homage to the Temple of Doom.\u00a0 Oscar cut open a boiled snake and began eating what looked to be the innards of a pumpkin.\u00a0 Ali and the boys sat on the floor and rubbed jellied rice on their faces.\u00a0 They all stopped when RC made a comment about barbarians and, after a bit of an argument with Ali regarding the nature of barbarism, Oscar was able to diffuse the situation with a bottle of antique scotch “pried from the grip of a white devil.”\u00a0 We drank in silence and I did everything I could to get a hand on Jezebel’s inner thigh and convince her to engage in a purely sexual relationship with me.\u00a0 She has these fine blonde hairs on her legs and, honestly, I just want to tear her apart and then pack what\u2019s left in my freezer.\u00a0 She\u2019s one of those chicks where you look in her eyes and your brain says, \u201cPut penis in her \u2013 NOW!\u00a0 No major functions will be addressed until you complete this task.\u00a0 This is brain, signing out.\u00a0 Rawr, rawr, rawr\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Suddenly, D’Artagnan appeared to be choking on his food.\u00a0 When he stood, he tilted slightly and fell to the floor — the blade of a vicious-looking knife protruding from his back.<\/p>\n
Someone screamed.\u00a0 Ali and the boys whipped out Chinese made AK-47’s and fired them into the ceiling.\u00a0 Oscar picked up his cell phone and said, “Strike now!\u00a0 Now!\u00a0 Bring them to their knees!”<\/p>\n
For a moment, we thought he was talking about us, but a news flash on the TV about a plane full of nuns and boy scouts exploding put us at ease.\u00a0 Oscar had jumped the gun\u2026again.<\/p>\n
James poured himself some scotch, then walked over to D’Artagnan and put his hand on the man’s throat.\u00a0 “Dead as a man who just found someone else’s condom in his toilet.” He said.<\/p>\n
“Oh well!” I said, knocking back my scotch like a drowning man swallows minnows.<\/p>\n
Oscar, standing at the head of the table with wild eyes and that nervous twitch in his right hand going at top speed, gritted his teeth and said, “Who dares spill blood at my table!”\u00a0 he leapt up into his chair and began shouting in Arabic at the ceiling.\u00a0 Ali and the boys, guns ready, fanned out into the house.\u00a0 They went to each room, filled the closets with bullets, rolled flash charges under the beds and then marched into the basement.\u00a0 A muffled explosion shook pictures from the walls and rattled the chandelier, then Ali and the boys ascended the stairs along with a plume of black smoke and stood at attention beside the table.<\/p>\n
“Have you found the man who spills blood at my feast?” Oscar asked.<\/p>\n
“What if it was a woman?” Jezebel asked.<\/p>\n
“Be silent until you are spoken to!\u00a0 And cover your body, harlot!”<\/p>\n
“Oh no,” James muttered, “No matter what, don’t cover your body.\u00a0 In fact, can I just hold one of your nipples in my mouth for the remainder of the evening?”<\/p>\n
“Is that a man in the trees?” RC was gazing out the window at the dark swamp, the flooded gums and cypress stretching back into the criss-crossing channels around the Teche.<\/p>\n
Werdna joined him at the window, “Or\u2026a woman.”<\/p>\n
We all crowded around and caught a glimpse of a shadowy, black clad shape skirting into the swamp.<\/p>\n
“After her my monkeys!” Oscar shouted.\u00a0 Ali and the boys all leapt onto a nearby windowsill and launched themselves into the afternoon sun.<\/p>\n
Birds launched, screaming, into the sky as Ali and the boys hit the swamp and faded into the trees.<\/p>\n
The afternoon faded into a humid summer evening, the security lights glowing in a thick, wet haze that seemed to roll in from the ancient cypress trees.\u00a0 At full dark, I was on the gallery with James and Jezebel, trying to talk her into a night of kidney-shifting action.\u00a0 She eventually grew tired of my advances and retreated inside, with James following closely.\u00a0 He opened the screen for her and put his hand solidly on her rump as she passed through.<\/p>\n
Alone with a Dixie beer in each hand, I watched the moon rise and listened to the strangely kazoo-like shriek of a nutria.<\/p>\n
Halfway into the second Dixie, I felt a prickling across my scalp and turned to the far, shadowed corner of the gallery.\u00a0 I can’t describe the terror I felt when I saw the creature that stood there.\u00a0 It was, without a doubt, the Blaze Creek Witch\u2026or a close cousin.\u00a0 The horrible, shadowed thing launched at me and I stepped aside.\u00a0 It flew through the screen and, for an awful moment, it was standing in full light from a brass lamp mounted in the foyer.\u00a0 The thing lashed out, smashed the lamp against the wall and moved deeper into the house.\u00a0 In the shadowed half light, I saw my manservant charge madly and grasp the thing around the waist.\u00a0 Then Rotting Corpse launched in with fists flying.\u00a0 The thing fell to the floor just as Ali and the boys rushed past me.<\/p>\n
But they weren’t coming to help.\u00a0 Behind them, a myriad of lights bobbed along the byway.\u00a0 Blues and reds.<\/p>\n
“Federals,” I hissed.<\/p>\n
“Revenuers!” James shouted, hurtling the scotch bottle into the swamp.<\/p>\n
“Allah save me!” Oscar shouted, leaping over the metal railing of the gallery and charging into the trees.\u00a0 Ali and the boys, and the Blaze Creek Witch, all followed suit.\u00a0 Stunned, the rest of us stood in place as the police and FBI surrounded the house.<\/p>\n
Werdna, who had somehow ended up in the branches of a cypress tree with a nude Jezebel, watched as the cops took us into custody, then cupped his sex in his hand, shifted and entered Jezebel.\u00a0 She had been clawing at him and urgently begging for more during the entire spectacle.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
Werdna spun around, thumbs still hooked in his suspenders.\u00a0 He stared hard at Leff, then turned back to the witness stand where x10 sat with defiant eyes.\u00a0 “So you and your atavistic friend set up the entire meeting.”<\/p>\n
“We sold Oscar the house, yes.” X10 answered, “And we called the police after everyone had arrived.”\u00a0 She looked at Werdna, “In fact, weren’t you invited?”<\/p>\n
He waved a dismissive hand, “It’s fah too late for your absurd accusations.\u00a0 What purpose did this charade serve?”<\/p>\n
He said porpoise and pronounced charade phonetically, but no one seemed to notice.<\/p>\n
X10 looked at me and I felt my blood run to cold.\u00a0 “To destroy him.\u00a0 To tear down his out of control ego, to humble his manic, oppressive attitude.\u00a0 He’s hurt his friends, betrayed the readers at Dirtyfreaks and, worst of all, he’s a bad writer.”<\/p>\n
Werdna turned to me and raised an eyebrow.<\/p>\n
“And he’s a fucktard,” x10 added under her breath.<\/p>\n
Werdna was silent for a long moment.\u00a0 Long enough, in fact, that the judge asked him if he had finished with the witness.<\/p>\n
“Ah do have a reservation, your honor.”\u00a0 Werdna said, at last.<\/p>\n
“And what is your reservation, suh?”<\/p>\n
Werdna snapped his suspenders and clasped his hands behind his back, “Ah do fear, suh, that ah must agree with the vitriolic and irrationally resentful young lady.\u00a0 While she is a bottom feeder of the worst type and, mayhaps, treacherous and diabolic, ah find it only ethical that ah admit that Mr. Sasha is, indeed, a twisted sack of manic megalomania and a writer of the lowest quality, pushing inane and juvenile ramblings upon an unsuspecting and otherwise innocent audience.”<\/p>\n
“You’re fucking fired!” I snarled.<\/p>\n
“Regardless,” Werdna continued, “he has also brought entertainment to his longtime fans and, when it comes down to tha wire, he is capable of loyal friendship.\u00a0 It is, indeed, a sorry state of affairs when friends blame other friends for their own shortcomings and insecurities, is it not Miss x10?<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite Nacho’s shortcomings, which you and Leff have been intimately familiar with for quite some time, can you name one incident where he intentionally set out to harm you?”<\/p>\n
X10 started to speak, then looked down at her hands.<\/p>\n
“There it is, suh!\u00a0 While mah client may well be a sexual deviant and, perhaps, a serious public nuisance capable, at times, of psychosis and cruel social neglect, he does not go out of his way to harm others.\u00a0 Except for Jezebel, but she’s a hot piece of ass and loves taking it hard.”\u00a0 Werdna guffawed along with seven members of the jury, the judge, two bailiffs and a mousy man in the audience.<\/p>\n
The judge nodded, “Well argued, suh!\u00a0 This case is dismissed,” he pointed his gavel at Leff and x10, who had returned to her seat.\u00a0 “Remove these two chronically depressed naysayers and send them to a vegetarian farm in the Yankee-controlled Western states!\u00a0 May they learn the errors of their ways and not take the troubles of the world too seriously.”<\/p>\n
Afterwards, Werdna and I sat on the steps of the courthouse, our shirts soaked with sweat by the oppressive southern heat.<\/p>\n
“Thanks, man.” I muttered.<\/p>\n
“Those two were bad for you from the get-go, little cowboy.\u00a0 Everyone said so.\u00a0 You always let it get to the point of unreasonable drama, though.”<\/p>\n
“I guess.”<\/p>\n
“You know your friends, partner.\u00a0 You feel it.\u00a0 Why force friendship?\u00a0 Why stay loyal to people who, in your heart, you know are bad?”<\/p>\n
“I’ve known Leff for so long\u2026God, we’re banking 15 years.”<\/p>\n
Werdna waved his hands, “It don’t matter, Nacho.\u00a0 I’ve known certain family members my whole life and I’d still cross the street if I saw them coming my way.\u00a0 If a friend goes bad, you try to help them.\u00a0 If they don’t want help, or can’t be helped, you got to cut them loose.\u00a0 People are strange creatures.\u00a0 We can all be so empty of emotion, so irrational in thought.\u00a0 When the bad times hit, we want others to come inside with us and burn.”<\/p>\n
“Misery loves company\u2026?”<\/p>\n
“It’s more a question of blame.\u00a0\u00a0 The hardest thing a person can do is look in the mirror and say, ‘I’ve done this wrong, I’ve made a bad decision.’ The greatest question anyone can ask is ‘why.’\u00a0 Why did this happen to my world?\u00a0 Why do I feel these things I feel?<\/p>\n
“There’s an easy way to find answers and there’s a hard way.”<\/p>\n
“The easy way is to blame others?”<\/p>\n
Werdna patted my back, “You sure ain’t innocent, but you are a scapegoat.\u00a0 Someday you all may be able to apologize to each other but, today, you know the golden rule.”<\/p>\n
“Fuck them.”<\/p>\n
“Oll Korrect, partner, Oll Korrect.”<\/p>\n
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