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Friday, February 18, 2011







Friday, April 16, 2010

NEW JESUS CHRIST THE NJ YEARS SNEAK PREVIEW! - CHAPTERS 5-11

The skies over the San Juan Islands were as clear as the picture on a high-definition television.  As Tallmadge eased the pastel green Cessna to an altitude low enough to permit a bird’s eye view, Lennie could see a large school of dolphin gracefully arcing over the waves, gulls flying in formation directly above the dolphins, and the ferry boat Yakima, whooshing its way through choppy seas toward Shaw Island.  Snapshots like these reminded Leibowitz why he’d left New Jersey for the Pacific Northwest more than 30 years ago. 
Chapter 5
Dr. Whim
After Dr. Wimberley W. Stout had dabbled in the occult, obtained a PhD in archeology from a diploma mill he created and operated from a wireless Internet access point on top one of the highest peaks in the Appalachian Mountains, he was ready to move on to the next phase of his life.   After a failed attempt to patent a design for a paprika-flavored condom that would make a woman choke during oral sex (the fact that few people wear condoms when they’re about get a blowjob hadn’t occurred to Dr. Whim) — Stout decided to turn his self-described massive intellect to religious skullduggery.  




 A tall, solidly built man with a large, bald oval-shaped skull that would have been the spitting image of the head of a penis, had it not been graced by a wispy moustache that might have been hand-drawn by a makeup pencil, the fake doctor had found the Pacific Northwest fertile ground for freaks like him.  And the wannabe academician knew that the Waste Dump Jesus presented a 24-karat opportunity to end a lifetime of failure and obscurity.

Bald Knob, West Virginia
From his perch on the summit of Bald Knob, 4842 feet above sea level, Old Jamie had found it mighty inconvenient to have to go into Durbin, West Virginia and rub shoulders with all the ski freaks, just so he could go to Billie Camerman’s house to stock up on some of her homemade coffee liqueur that tasted a lot like that Mexican stuff in the fancy bottle.
He’d go into town a few times a week during the summer, and bring back several one-gallon jugs of the home brew during each trip.  Bald Knob was often a cold, wet foreboding place, with annual precipitation of 60 inches and more than 12 feet of snow.  Temperatures reached as low as 40 below zero during the long winter, which sometimes ran from early October through early May.  Old Jamie would drink Billie’s liqueur the way most folks drank water.
The 150-proof brew that warmed Old Jamie’s gullet during Bald Knob’s frigid winters, had become his only vice since he’d given up the rough and tumble world of prison sex.  The minute the gates of Sing Sing Prison had swung open to Old Jamie after 5 years of confinement in a cell that was no bigger than an office cubicle, the rotund felon kissed that life goodbye.  He quickly found gainful employment tending Doc Wimberley’s Internet access point (and diploma mill) high atop cold, foreboding Snyder Knob.  
“What’s it like to rub bungs with a guy?” was the first question Wimberley Stout had asked at the job interview. 
“If you’re aiming to find that out from this old boy, you might as well kiss that ugly turd-faced head of yours goodbye, cause I’m gonna knock it from  your shoulders,” Old Jamie said while using his booger-stained middle finger to pick some dog food bits from between his few remaining teeth.
“Why the hell does it smell like dog food in here?” was question number two.
Curiously, the doctor didn’t fear Old Jamie one bit, despite the fact that OJ weighed about 450 pounds soaking wet (and he was always soaking wet because he never stopped sweating, even when the temperature was 15 degrees and the wicked wind was howling).
“I don’t think you can compee-hend just how fast this fat old boy can move, Dr. Whim.” Old Jamie said.
“You want a job or not, hotshot?”
Met with a glower and a yawn, Dr. Wimberley Stout took Old Jamie’s silence as a “yes.”

Chapter 6
Dwight Beckley
Dwight had to do a couple of double-takes at the caller ID, which read FORT STOCKTON, TEXAS, before he picked up the call from Lennie Leibowitz.  
“Lennie?”
“Shhhh.  Don’t say anything more.  I don’t have time to reminisce, Dwight. I’m going to send snail mail to your office.  In it, you’ll find everything you need to know.
“After 35 years – a letter?  What’s this all about? ”
“Read the letter, Dwight.”

Click.
 The men whose paths crossed on an Interstate highway in New Mexico, then led them to a jail cell in Fort Stockton, Texas, had never spoken since -- until Leibowitz’ puzzling phone call.  Over the years, Beckley had resisted the temptation to call his famous former cellmate dozens of times, but was sure that Lennie wouldn’t remember him.  Lennie had also wanted to look Dwight up, but didn’t give the notion much freight until the Internet came into play, making it possible to quickly find almost anyone. 
Lennie had a hunch that the personable and resourceful Beckley had made a good life for himself.  So he wasn’t surprised to discover that Dwight had replaced the legendary Red Adair as the world’s foremost oil-well firefighter.  Unlike Adair, Beckley hadn’t taken a hands-on approach to the daunting task of controlling raging oil-fed fires that were almost impossible to stanch. 
As CEO of Earlwell Extinguishment Enterprises, Beckley had teams of ex-roughnecks, petroleum engineers, scientists, and bean counters to take care of day-to-day matters.  Dwight spent his time courting clients and politicians, while surreptitiously spearheading an enormous agenda of charitable endeavors, all undertaken anonymously.  Beckley’s foundations attempted to relieve a stunning variety of human miseries, fulfilling the benefactor’s lifelong quest to do a little bit of good in the world.  For every dollar Dwight Beckley earned, he gave 75 cents to causes he believed in.  The quarters that he kept for himself and his family added up to many millions of dollars.

Chapter 7
Orcas Island, Washington 
August 12
th approximately 4 a.m.
While awaiting the arrival of the Waste Dump Jesus, Lennie scrawled a short to-do list on a yellow legal pad, a sure sign that his most recent southward emotional spiral had begun to creep northward, as he looked outward from his glass-walled writer’s studio toward Puget Sound, then upward at the August sky; still blue even though it was 9:30 p.m.
  1. Get laid
  2. Start exercising
  3. Feed the damn cat
  4. Save the old man
  5. Mail the letter to Beckley
Although often imprisoned by depression, Lennie always rose to the occasion when under the influence of a particularly dire circumstance.  He theorized that fear or anger triggered enough of an adrenaline rush to jump-start in his brain the outflow of that happy juice known as serotonin.   Otherwise, he’d never been able to “snap out of it,” an expression Lennie and almost everyone who had experienced depression had come to loathe. 
“Snap out of your fucking wheelchair, you goddamned dwarf,” Lennie had said 3 years ago in response to his bookie and good friend, Snugs Harper; drawing only a smirk from the diminutive paraplegic who’d grown tired of Leibowitz’ frequently dark moods.
Harper learned his lesson. He never told Lennie to snap out of it again.  In fact, Snugs kissed the 30-year friendship goodbye that day, having drawn enough foul words from Lennie over the years to last the rest of his lifetime.  

  1.  Apologize to Snugs
Lennie’s list would have been much longer, but if he was to make it to Snoqualmie Pass in time to prepare his cabin for the old man’s arrival, he’d better get his butt to the Orcas Island Airport where his 4-seat Cessna and pilot Russ Tallmadge were ready for takeoff.  Tallmadge had been Lennie’s pilot, chauffeur and personal assistant since Leibowitz had won fame & fortune as a best-selling author and motivational speaker.  Although he kept up his medical certifications by enrolling in as many online Continuing Medical Education courses as he could, Lennie practiced medicine only when friends and relatives needed his attention
 Just a couple years out of residency, Lennie had written an absurd book as a dare after he’d lost his shirt in a poker game, along with his gold Rolex watch and the deed to a shabby little condo he owned in South Florida.  
“You’re always talking about that great American novel you’re gonna write, doc,” the holder of the winning hand declared. “Write me a book in 72 hours, and if it makes me laugh I’ll give you back the watch.”
 The product of Lennie Leibowitz’ labors, The Human Intestines: An Allegory of the Universe, eventually sold more than 15-million copies worldwide and was printed in 27 different languages.  Sales of the parody of New Age wisdom crossed virtually every demographic over the age of 14.  Many New Agers, who took the book as gospel from a very wise and funny man, quoted Lennie’s words with as much passion as Bible thumpers cite arcane passages from the New Testament.  In fact, “The Human Intestines," came to be known as The New Age Testament.
Chapter 8
Getting Laid
To a wealthy widower with an athletic body and occasional charm, getting laid wasn’t much different from playing a game of darts.  Aim at the target and register the score.  At age 58, hitting a bull’s eye was out of the question, so Lennie settled for the darts that landed around the periphery.    Just for the hell of it, he’d actually designed a dartboard whose concentric circles corresponded to the women he’d encountered over the years.  In the bull’s eye was a tiny photo of a woman named Jessica Sherry, whom he’d known and loved for more than 20 years.
 On those occasions when an errant dart landed in Jessica, he’d walk slowly to the board and pull the dart out.  He hadn’t felt like grabbing a dart for several months, but now that the whole Jesus thing was in play, his senses were sharp and his body restless for some activity.  He figured he had a couple of minutes to spare before heading out to the airport.  Lennie opened a desk drawer, grabbed a small mahogany box and set it on the desk.  Taking a deep breath, he opened the box and withdrew a hand-carved ivory dart with an 18-karat gold point and flung it backwards toward the dartboard that was 15 feet away, directly behind him.
A couple of minutes later he was on the phone:
“Jess…can you meet me at Snoqualmie?”
This time Lennie hadn’t pulled the dart out.

****
Chapter 9 Jess
Jess Sherry wouldn’t be caught dead in public without her platform shoes, because she’d always wanted to be 6’2, rather than the 5-foot, 11-inch runt of a family of clumsy giants, known in their Bishop, California neighborhood as the Stumbling Sequoias.  Jessica’s dad, Murray Sherry played semi-pro basketball for 15 years, tallying a total of 7 points in the 1000 games in which he appeared, being better known for throwing elbows than draining jump shots.
Dubbed “007” to match his scoring average, the 7-foot 3-inch Murray Sherry pulled a disappearing act in 1968, when Jessica was 3 years old.  He resurfaced in 1985, claiming he’d fallen under the hypnotic powers of a rowdy cult of  Zoroastrian midgets, who led him and 38 other tall people to Tonopah, Nevada. 
“All they wanted was my body, Mary.  And I was willing give them my soul,” Murray told Jessica’s mother as he begged her to take him back so they could resume their marital relations.
Mary didn’t buy Murray’s story, thinking it extremely unlikely that their lives hadn’t intersected in the 17 years he’d been away from home.  She loved to drive the 160 miles from Bishop to Tonopah’s tacky casino, and made the trip at least twice a month.  She figured it would have been pretty hard to hide a community of midgets and giants in such a small town.
A split-second after Murray mumbled his carefully rehearsed story of abduction and repeated sexual violation, Mary decked him with a leaping right cross to the Adam’s Apple and told him to take the next bus back to Tonopah.  Murray Sherry hasn’t been heard from since.
 Jessica’s six older brothers (Terry, Barry, Harry, Gary, Jerry, and Cary) all remained in the Eastern Sierra, each retiring after spending more than 30 years as a security guard for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.  They whiled away their careers standing watch over the DWP’s Owens Valley pumping stations, drawing the derision of many of the denizens of Inyo County, who didn’t take kindly to the City of Los Angeles plundering their most precious resource in order to quench the thirst of 20-million Angelinos living 275 miles to the southwest. 
As soon as Jessica graduated from Bishop High School, Mary spirited her away to Seattle in search of a better life, which both pursued zestfully; running a vintage clothing store in Fremont by day, while reaching the highest levels of academia taking evening classes at the University of Washington.  Twelve years after moving to Seattle, Drs. Mary and Jessica Sherry, PhD, became tenured professors at U-Dub’s world-famous Department of English Literature.

**
It didn’t take Jess long to get dressed and ready– she always raced to Lennie’s side whenever he beckoned, although she hated herself for it.  So she was surprised when Lennie called again less than 20 minutes later. 
“Where are you?”
“I’m on the West Seattle Bridge”
“Fine.”
“Lennie, have I ever been late?”
“Sorry babe.  There’s a lot riding on all this.”
“I know, Lennie.  I know.”
“See you at the Pass at about 1:30?”
“I’ll be there by Noon, honey.  Have a safe flight.”
“You wanna be talking to Russ about that.”
The skies over the San Juan Islands were as clear as the picture on a high-definition television.  As Tallmadge eased the pastel green Cessna to an altitude low enough to permit a bird’s eye view, Lennie could see a large school of dolphin gracefully arcing over the waves, gulls flying in formation directly above the dolphins, and the ferry boat Yakima, whooshing its way through choppy seas toward Shaw Island.  Snapshots like these reminded Leibowitz why he’d left New Jersey for the Pacific Northwest more than 30 years ago. 

Chapter 10
The Pink Elephant
In the excitement of the moments, smack dab in the middle of the tectonic shift in Lennie’s life, sat a Pink Elephant who never left the room.  Surely Lennie wasn’t the only one who considered the possibility that the old man with the preternatural smile was demented beyond repair, yet another victim to the same relentless disease that had stolen Lennie’s father years before he’d gone to his grave.  
"Jess, you know that song by John Prine, about the old people?"
"Hello in There,” Jessica said.  “I know the stanzas you're thinking about.”

            Ya' know that old trees just grow stronger,
            And old rivers grow wilder ev'ry day.
            Old people just grow lonesome
            Waiting for someone to say, "Hello in there, hello."

            So if you're walking down the street sometime
            And spot some hollow ancient eyes,
            Please don't just pass 'em by and stare
            As if you didn't care, say, "Hello in there, hello."
"Exactly," Lennie said.
           
 Jessica eloquently chased the tears from Lennie’s eyes:
“Honey, his eyes radiate beauty.  His smile doesn’t merely beam; it sings a song that only he knows, but that he desperately needs to share.  He’s more alive than you and me. Lennie, maybe he just needs us to say hello in there.”

Friday, April 9, 2010

Sneak Preview! JESUS CHRIST THE NEW JERSEY YEARS -Chapters 1-4


Chapter One
WWJD  (What Would Jeb Do?)
If an entire lifetime could be redacted, Dr. Lennie Leibowitz would be holding a black magic marker instead of the Snub Nosed 38 he fondled gingerly in his left hand.


The fact that it was a squirt gun didn't make it any less deadly; to the retired proctologist with a vivid imagination, symbolism was far more powerful than a tangible truth. The way Lennie figured it, suicide would be redundant because he could hardly be any deader.
Little did Dr. Leibowitz know that atop a waste dump in Worbit Flats, New Jersey rose the answer to his prayers.
"Black Gold. Texas tea."
The lyrics to the Beverly Hillbillies theme song played in a loop inside his head.
"WWJD - What would Jed do?" Lennie's thought interrupted the chorus.


It was in the Texas oil fields 35 years before, where Lennie had left Dwight Beckley, a hitch-hiker he'd picked up in Las Cruces.
They parted ways in Fort Stockton after they'd paid their fines for possession of marijuana, and the blanket they’d stolen from a motel they'd pulled into because Lennie's shoe-shaped yellow Gremlin was nearly out of fuel, and all the gas stations in Fort Stockton had closed by mid-morning,
But for that damn oil shortage Lennie wouldn't have a criminal record, a source of immense pride.
"I don't like marijuana offenders," the bald headed judge drawled.
It was all Lennie could do to suppress a smile. The damn judge was the spitting image of Elmer Fudd.



Before Judge Fudd could draw another breath, the arresting officer chimed in:
"Your honor. I believe that this is a fine young man. I do not believe that he is a habitual marijuana offender. I urge you to be lenient."
Why the hell a black man like Dwight Beckley would be able to quote every line of dialog from every episode of the Beverly Hillbillies was beyond Lennie's comprehension, but 35 years later, he couldn't get it out of his head.
Chapter Two
Bubbling up from the Middlesex County environmental waste dump was something Dexter Dalrymple and Bubba McNertney had never expected to see. Over the years they’d taken home a toy rocking horse, an automobile distributor cap, Parker Brothers board games, and even a cigar store Indian sliced in half from the torso, now occupying a special place in the living room of the doublewide they shared on the outskirts of town.


 Taking their personal detritus to the dump and coming back with stuff that others had thrown away, had become a hobby for the two retired Worbit Flats Borough sanitation workers, inseparable since grade school, and now living in leisure as they entered their early 70s.
What they found this steamy August day made all the news engines, soared around the blogosphere, and landed gently in Lennie’s Gmail In-box – one of the multitude of dispatches he received daily from New York Times online.
“Man claiming to be Jesus Christ found buried, near-dead in a New Jersey waste dump.”
Nobody knew how the old guy had come to be buried beneath 58 pounds of rubble and goo, who or what put him there, and exactly how old he was, but doctors say he appeared to be in his early 60s and was in surprisingly good physical condition considering the circumstances, details of which might never be known. Dalrymple and McNertney had discovered some shifting dirt as the old man tried to wriggle free from the garbage. Once they’d freed the old guy from his makeshift grave, he greeted the two men with a smile and the now-famous words that he would repeat again and again:
“I am Jesus Christ. I have been buried for your sins. And if you’ve got change for a quarter, you’re in better shape than me.”
The story of the geezer, the malevolence of those who had buried him in the waste dump, and the overwhelming sweetness of the guy, who had nothing but smiles, hugs, and kisses for his rescuers, for the medical providers who brought him back to tip-top condition, and for the overwhelming sympathy shown from people all over the world – traveled through cyberspace at the latest 12G speeds.

Safely ensconced in a private room in Worbit Flats Memorial Hospital, the ersatz Jesus Christ simply smiled when told of his burgeoning fame:
“I am Jesus Christ. I have been buried for your sins. And if you’ve got change for a quarter, you’re in better shape than me.”
To keep reporters from flooding the hospital, Worbit Flats Memorial’s security staff guarded the old man zealously. Nevertheless, a Candy Striper managed to shoot a 22-second video of the kindly old fellow, transmitting his incandescent smile over the Internet. The rest is history. The video went viral. And before anyone could blink an eye, millions and millions of dollars, Euros, Yen, Shekels, and even some genuine American Confederacy currency, were working their way to the hospital via online transactions, snail mail, and more than 2 dozen UPS trucks filled with money and racing toward the hospital from every corner of the continent.
At a hastily convened press conference in the Worbit Flats War Memorial Armory, Mayor Hancock P. Brunette issued the following statement to 1497 reporters from all over the globe:
“Ladies and gentlemen. Unfortunately, we are unable to release any information about our treasured guest.”
Raising an electronic bullhorn above his head, the mayor responded to a cacophony of questions, none of which could be heard above the din, with a staccato string of eardrum-busting bleats until silence ensued:
“Ladies and gentlemen. Please. Please. I only have one statement. And I’m sure you’ve heard it before by now. Our guest has only one thing to say:
“I am Jesus Christ. I have been buried for your sins. And if you’ve got change for a quarter, you’re in better shape than me.”


Chapter 3
The Story of Worbit Flats
Back in 1778, an inebriated settler named Tobias Metuchen IV stumbled upon a couple of acres of swampland filled with bellowing bullfrogs. Suffering from sleep apnea generations before the malady had found a name and a diagnosis, Metuchen discovered that the only thing that could lull him to sleep besides whiskey was the incessant chorus of crooning bullfrogs.


 To the always exhausted Tobias Metuchen, the swampland was the next best thing to heaven, and he wasted no time staking his claim to the land. Feeling an almost bestial kinship towards the croaking amphibians, Tobias would let fly a few loud, “Worbits,” and like clockwork the bullfrogs would follow suit. Whenever Tobias would awaken from a long nap or a night’s sleep, he’d be covered from head to toe with the pulsating bodies of purring bullfrogs who must’ve thought that the snoring drunkard was a kindred spirit. So it only seemed natural to Metuchen to name the swampland Worbit Flats.
Chapter 4
The Smile
It so happened that Dr. Lennie Leibowitz was a wealthy man; rich beyond his wildest childhood dreams, and living proof that money could not buy happiness, because Lennie could not remember the last time he’d looked at life with child-like optimism. Yet, the minute he heard the news about the old man, his mind sprung into action.
The old man’s smile … it was infectious; the amount of warmth he radiated was indescribable and downright puzzling - incomprehensible, as matter of fact. Those who saw the 22- second video experienced something akin to a religious experience,
“Yeah, I saw that man smile and it melted my heart,” were the unlikely words of a veteran Brooklyn cabbie when interviewed on CNN.
And that smile made everyone feel just a little bit high. It was like seeing Louis Armstrong play the trumpet, watching a baby’s first steps, tasting a ripe, juicy Jersey tomato, and finding a parking spot 50 feet from the entrance to the Food Court – all rolled into one.


While billions of people around the world were captivated by the “Waste Dump Jesus,” as Fox News described him, an obscure cult of religious zealots, fed by the vitriol of Bill O’Reiley and Rush Limbaugh, quietly plotted the old man’s demise.
Fortunately, because he’d contributed 20-million dollars to one of the hospital’s foundations, and had a bounty of unscrupulous friends in high places, Lennie was able to act quickly on the old man’s behalf. Maybe he could save him before the maelstrom of the old man’s celebrity would swallow or even kill him.
Shortly after midnight on August 13th, the old man was spirited away in the guise of a corpse being transported from the morgue to a local memorial chapel. By 2AM he was onboard a prop jet, en route to SeaTac airport, bound for a rustic private compound located just a couple of miles east of Washington’s Snoqualmie Pass, where Lennie and a small team consisting of an internist, a nurse practitioner, and a massage therapist awaited the old man’s arrival.