I wrote this story for the website,
If you take a jar of green, Spanish olives, empty out the liquid and replace it with Coca Cola it causes a chemical reaction in the natural occurring polyphenol of the olives. If one then ingests the liquid at the right time at a subduction zone it allows you to travel in time, between various physic polarities. I was at just such a subduction zone in a bowling alley in North Dakota when I ingested 30 milliliters of mutated polyphenol in the handicapped stall of the ladies restroom.
The time rift that opened up beneath in ladies room fluctuated between The 1973 Daytona 500 and The Burning Man Festival of 1996. They were psychic polarities that had several common participants, one of which happened to be my father, country and western singer Marty Robbins. Dad was actually racing in the Daytona 500 in 73’ and sadly he was also at Burning Man in 1996 as a disembodied spirit that haunted a guy named Paul. Dad had passed away in 1982. The other common participant in this mystery along with Dad and Paul was an unknown cloaked figure.
The only connection I could find between Paul and my Dad was that Pauls father and mine were both in the music business. The only reason I knew this was some article I’d found in the library about Paul’s father being sued by a band he produced in the late 60’s called Avant Guard. Maybe Dad had something to do with it I didn’t know. All I really knew was that the cloaked figure had told me in a dream that my Dad’s soul was bound to Paul Gerson by musical karma and “until Paul’s tears fell to the earth like many waters.” Dad would be in bondage. The problem was that whenever Paul began to cry, time stopped and the cloaked figure gathered all of his tears so that not one fell onto the earth. My goal was to stop the cloaked figure so that Paul’s tears would finally reach the earth and Dad would be free.
I started in 1973 at the Daytona 500, supposedly that was the first incident. I looked around all day for Paul but never found anyone who fit his description. So I watched my dad’s race and had a couple glasses of suds before making my way back across the infield to the rift. I was just about there when everything began to vibrate and I recognized time had stopped. Then I saw it, the cloaked figure. He was behind a small boy with a skinned knee who was crying to a woman. The cloaked figure was milking the boys tears into a small brown container. The little kid was Paul! Being a time traveller I wasn’t frozen and ran towards the cloaked figure, but the figure held up a peace sign and in flipping it around, he disappeared into thin air. Time started up again and the boy was as dry eyed as an albino rabbit.
Dammit! I missed it. So to Burning man I went. Paul was about 30 years old and dressed as a clown when I caught up with him on the playa. He’d been dancing for several hours with some gorgeous topless girl who was covered in glitter and wore a pink wig. When they finally took a break for some water Paul moved in for a kiss but the girl recoiled and told him she had a boyfriend. Paul was devastated. He sat down, his chest heaving, his body begining to shake along with everything else. I now knew that time was about to freeze, only this time I was ready. The cloaked figure appeared out of nowhere behind Paul and preceded to milk his tears. I lunged for him and tackled the figure to the ground. I ripped off his hood and it was “Chuck Woolery?! He laughed and held up a what looked like a toy stagecoach only upon closer inspection it turn out to be a cologne bottle from the 1970’s.
“Do you know what this is?” said Woolery raising an eyebrow.
“A cologne bottle?” I hiss.
”Yes,” he nods, “but this cologne bottle is not full of cologne. Its full of clown tears,” Woolery roars. “Paul Geson’s clown tears! The tears of a clown!”
Woolery throws the bottle at me it lands at my feet I turn to grab it and Woolery is behind me in a flash and enters me in one deft movement. Instinctively I smash the bottle over his head but he doesn’t miss a stroke. He takes me from behind like a possessed demon. They don’t tell you when you’re young, but clown tears and game show host blood is a surprisingly decent lubricant, though the whole affair was still quite uncomfortable.
“Why!!!” I scream at Woolery.
“I’m surprised you haven’t put two and two together, Woolery smirks, ”and realized that I was the lead singer of Avant Garde and later a country and western singer. Paul’s father kept me from becoming a pop star by ruining my band and Marty Robbins bumped me from the Grand old Opery in 76’ running my big chance to make an impression on the country music scene.”
“Fuck explanations!” I holler “Why are you taking me from behind, is what I wanna know!”
“Oh, this just the icing on the cake.” Woolery chuckles.
I did feel some relief when I looked on the ground and saw the smashed cologne bottle in a small puddle of clown tears. At least my father was finally free. But why is it that the sons always pay the dearest for the sins of the father?
Sonny - Miami Beach, FL
Ed. note Chuck Woolery really was the singer in a psychedelic band called Avant Garde that had a hit called Naturally Stoned in 1968 and clown tears and gameshow host blood, really do make a good lubricant.
