‘Spaced… the Final Frontier: These are the Voyages of the Starship Enter-her-slowly-never-mind-the-prize’ Episode 1

Episode 1 – Do you know who Mr. Bojangles is?

Have you ever hurt? Really hurt. Hurt so hard… it hurt. Yes, you have. You just don’t want to remember. 

Have you ever hurt someone? Mussed up their essence or raped their soul? Yes, you have. You just don’t want to ever ever forget to not remember. 

Confused? Too stoned? Are you too fucking high son? Are you floating… drifting away… leave the chaos behind son. It’s fine. It’ll still be here when you get back. Growing colder and harder and lumpier as it awaits your eternal return. 

Did you push her too hard? Didn’t mean to… you keep telling yourself that every single time you remember. Those times you forget to forget. You didn’t mean to. Of course not. But you still pushed too hard. 

Fell. Hurt. Blood. Tears. I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. Please forgive me, please. I’m sorry I was such a fucking idiot. 

Yes, leave the chaos behind son. It enjoys the wait. You’re such a fucking idiot.  Boo fucking hoo. And hoo enjoys it. 

No, it’s not a question son. Jesus! Come here. Sit down. Lean back. Rest that tired head against the cold stone wall. A question son has a strange curve at the end of it. Curves up. Curves down. Almost completes a circle… but there is a gap, and the gap in the curve is the question. 

Here’s a question son, do you know who Mr. Bojangles is? 

Mr. Bojangles used to sit in a cell just like this in New Orleans. He was the first man to call me son. My mother was a whore and my daddy was the sperm of some drunken fuck that managed to scrounge together two dollars for two minutes of shoving it into her against a broken brick wall in some stinking alley with two inches of shit and piss seeping in through their broken shoes. She dropped me out of her womb looked at me for two minutes and fucked off forever. So many fucking twos. Yes, son that’s why they call me Twos Fernandez. Twos all I have. Ha, ha, ha. Two fucking balls of brass and steel. A great matching pair! Don’t worry son. I won’t bugger you. You’re not my type.   

Mr. Bojangles, now there was a man if ever I knew one and one is all I’ve ever known. We used to sit and talk of life. We used to laugh. We used to cry. Joy and suffering son, our constant companions. Mr. Bojangles taught me that. And he was an idiot. Dostoevsky should have met Mr. Bojangles. Not that sniveling pathetic drone he wrote. Mr. Bojangles, the idiot. It fits. But he was never such a fucking idiot like you son. Oh no, Mr. Bojangles danced.  

Don’t get me wrong son, he was reckless… yes, of course he was reckless. But so meticulously careful in his recklessness. So precise. He harmed no one. No man. No woman. No puppy fucking dog. Leave it son. Don’t draw that picture in your head. Some things can still be unnatural. 

Mr. Bojangles did not even harm Mr. Bojangles. This was New Orleans son. America. And even in this crotch city the cell was warmer than the cold dark night outside. There was a blanket! A pillow! Hot food! And we got to dance.  This was all part of the great cycle of Mr. Bojangle’s life. He needed prison to stay alive.  He had to withdraw before he started again. Every single time. He didn’t want to die. He just wanted to keep dying, over and over and over again, for as long as he could.   

My first day there he sat across from me on his bunk. Legs folded like a god damned man from the Ganges with his palms pressed together. He looked past me and was faraway. Thin. Fit-thin. Old-fit-thin. He looked thirty four and sixty five. I could just about take him in a fight. I do this every time son. Size up every man I share a cell with. I hate getting buggered. I’m sure you understand. And there are some mean sex starved crazy sons of bitches out there in this mad forgotten world who would even bugger me. Their souls emptied out a long time ago son, their skins just barely hold together the rampaging demons inside. 

I sat back and touched my broken nose. It still bled. My head throbbed. My knuckles sore. My stomach sick. Mr. Bojangles spoke his first words to me. 

There is a needle under your bunk he said still looking faraway. I have watched it for seven days beckoning the dust. It lies there dead, plastic and rust, cold. Put your head between your legs son. Put your head between your legs and look at life that was once dead and now is about to live again. I put my head between my legs and saw a used syringe with a rusting needle. The blood rushed to my brain and I started to think upside down about what he had said when wrinkled  nimble fingers came spidering in and cracked fingernails tapped at the plastic tube. Tap, tap, and another tap. Its not broken! He cried. I wondered at the mastery of such a delicate touch. Then gently he rolled it towards his nose now snuffling between my bare calloused feet. We bumped heads. Empty sounds. He didn’t flinch. His eyes were set upon their task. Examine the needle. Examine the chamber of painful pleasure. Is there ever any other kind? 

I rubbed at the surfacing bump on my forehead and kept my eyes closed to help magic away the pain. It hurt. I opened my eyes and Mr. Bojangles was still on his knees, crouched in reverence before his promise of the dragon. My tired red eyes fell on his thinning scraggly grey pate. 6 6 6 was tattooed on to his scalp at the base of his skull. 

My mouth dried with fear son and I wished that I had never been born. Again. 

He looked up and smiled at me with broken teeth. Three months they’ve had me inside son. Three months. Do you know what that does to an old dragon worshipper like me? It kills me son. It kills me so dead that this dead is all I’m going to get. I can’t even get deader. Sometimes getting deader and deader and deader is the most divine experience you could ever have son. You feel closer to god. So close you can feel his breath upon your cheek and the cool caressing wind of angel wings, the touch of their gentle hands upon your body. It makes me hard just thinking about it son. 

This is a shit death son. These three months of dying have been robbed of all its pleasure. 

I couldn’t breathe. I closed my eyes again trying to will away the vision of this beast before me, and when they forced themselves open in fear of the devil feeding on my liver, Mr. Bojangles was once again seated like a god man in meditation, except this time his eyes were not lost faraway. They were fixed downward on the dirty plastic and rusty pin reverently placed upon his crossed palms.   

To be continued… next installment Sunday 9^th August.

~ by grassrooted on August 1, 2010.