The Unwelcome Guest Plus Nin and Nan by Eckhard Gerdes Read Free Book Online Page B

marquee: "Lubjec Live!" He was singing pop songs and playing guitar in a seedy redneck bar in Macon, Georgia. He covered his balding head with an oil-stained seed company baseball cap, wore rubber flipflops, and stomped his flipflops as he sang lovely country and pop standards like "Either a Redneck or a Deadneck," "I’ll Push you Down into Low Places," "Oh Why Oh Why Ohio?" and the sure-to-get-’em hootin’ crowdpleaser "My Baby’s Been Knocked Up, So I’m Gonna Steal Me 800 Bucks."
    The whole fucking bar starting singing the song, and then, on cue, they all turned to me like zombies and when they sang "800 Bucks," they held their hands out and started walking towards me.
    "I’ll be your friend," said one. "Give me 800 bucks." "I’ll be your friend," said another. "Give me 800 bucks." I didn’t know these people at all, but I had once loaned
    Lubjec 800 dollars for a demo he was going to cut with a band. Ironically, he used it, instead, to cut his unborn son out of his girlfriend’s womb. Just like the song. And then the band broke up, and he never repaid me. He wouldn’t even return my calls. Nor did he continue to pursue my friendship.
    When he saw me walking in, he must have told these zombies I was an easy mark. If you’re ever in Macon, be careful. The zombies live in the sewers, and Lubjec’s people are the gatekeepers. Don’t plumb to their depths.
    Now that I think about it, I wish I had given them all 800 bucks so that they could have eliminated an entire generation of themselves. Someone needs to break the chain of two-faced back-stabbing thieving conniving sneaky manipulating weasels most of them are, spewing, "Oh, ain’t you just so nice" in your face while they hold their pointed tails and pitchforks behind their backs where you can’t see. Lubjec’s their new hope, or was at least. They killed off Otis Redding and Duane Allman and Berry Oakley. They ran Little Richard out on a rail. They threw James Brown in jail. And then, all of a sudden, booming international music metropolis Macon, who’d hosted Cher and Iron Butterfly and Martin Mull and dozens of other internationally known artists, given them homes and recording contracts and made them stars, was suddenly empty. Real estate tycoons brought in cherry trees and paid for huge birthday parties for themselves in the city streets, but ruses and rubes couldn’t replace what had been lost. Macon lost rock and roll and became a city of beasts that fuck themselves. And they have barbed pricks like raccoons, so you can hear them scream. And the screaming sounds like 5000 Chuckie dolls all singing in unison, "Whatcha gonna be, either a redneck or a deadneck? Yew got no other option round here. You gonna be a redneck or a flyspeck? If yer the ladder, stay out of my beer."
    Twang twang twang twang. Scream!
You’d think they’d go through a ton of Excedrin in Macon—I did—but apparently they have no actual use for it there.
Amid the exhaustingly sweet-glazed billboards between there and here are interjected proclamations of transcendence: Biblical warnings, certainly, but others much subtler: "The last umbrella you’ll ever own," for example.
Why? Will the rain cease to fall? Will I drop dead when I open it? Unwilling to broadcast my ignorance. I try to avoid what I can. I imagine these transcendent proclamations a type of alien creature sent to disrupt our freeways. The proclamations begin to address this concern: Remove the feathers from your eyes! Use these coins instead. They grow into enormous unstable currencies. Don’t end it with humor, no matter how the highway howls. The rain falls only on the highway. Climb the hills. Look out on the land. When it looks back, you’ve reached your destination. Don’t be late for the time-share presentation! Employment is shifting away from the highway and heading for the caves. Blast ’em open! Why not? Your head is your leader. The leader wants more coins!
Chevy Chase picked up the beers and Dan