Everything That Was: based upon a lie...

By Conon Parks, Chris Sempek and Mike MacNeil

From the shockwaves of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 comes a tense journey-from Everything That Was and the aftermath and tragic consequences of blundering foreign policy decisions upon us all.

Many of the usual and curious cast of characters-Senor Agape, Walter Curmudgeon, and Andre Jones-stumble upon various dire and violent scenes as th

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brave Dog Dead Dog Art Works
• Release date: Jun 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9780997516357

Conon Parks

While C. Parks is chairman of the Arkansas Federation of Young Republican and a member of the Republican State Committee of Arkansas, he is also acting treasurer and vice president for the Committee for Salvation. His book will not be popular with some Republicans because it is not a partisan diatribe. The author has a degree in philosophy. With the proceeds and donations from this book the author hopes to recoup all his losses.

Book preview

1 TIME HAS COME TODAY

There is no such things as facts, only versions.

OLD JAMAICAN ADAGE

Walter sits fretting at the Bronx library all dirty brown bricks and yellow plaster: the semi-professional student is going on where it all begins to where it all ends in what we call civilization—back to Hobbes. Walter just can’t get enough of this guy. He reads: dissolute condition of masterless men, without subjection to Lawes, and a coercive Power to tye their hands from rapine, and revenge…no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; and which is worse of all, continual feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short. Walter’s thesis is on the Leviathan by Hobbes—Thomas Hobbes. It is for a political science class he is taking at NYCC in Queens where he has enrolled with his Pell grant and a million prizes. He learns that Leviathan is a Hebrew word for sea monster and is mentioned in the Bible. Walter scribbles in his notebook: The natural condition of mankind—this State of Nature is what would exist if there is no government, no civilization, no laws and no common power to restrain human nature. This State of Nature is a war of all against all in which human beings constantly seek to destroy each other in an incessant pursuit of power. Tribe against tribe, gang against gang—warriors, victims, soldiers, raiders, collateral damage, refugees, orphans…a Dark Ages—incited by the distorted theory and practice of the Oligarchical high-tech collectivists: no Pax Romana aqui…and eventually victims against victims—essentially; where logic and proportion don’t exist. Nothing but randomness…sounds pretty bad as the partygoers stagger along with the evacuees… and that is how Walter ends his academic writing and notes from the underground.

Looking out the grimy window at a clear early morning—not too muggy yet…he sees someone has draped out the brownstone tenement window a black POW/MIA flag. It waves slowly, listlessly in a puff of breeze. Walter contemplates the meaning of the flag…we are all just victims here…as the millennium has happened and Y2K is over, but we are still waiting for Nostradamus—how many could there be? Bad timing, bad, bad luck and victims of circumstance…are they still in tiger pens in Laos with their heads just above the water of the Mekong River? Is the Hilton still open for business in Hanoi? Or does the pygmy dictator in North Korea still hold a few sad souls as playing cards in this game of thrones? Maybe there are still a couple of holdovers left in Stalin’s gulag in Siberia from WWII? Could there even be one or two alive from the war we fought with the White Russians against the Bolsheviks? And of course, Walter considers, lest we forget our trading partners the Chi-Coms—could be thousands taken at Inchon warehoused away in Manchuria. We just don’t know. If Chuck Norris couldn’t find them…well maybe John McCain can. Walter feels the State of Nature all around him since he arrived in New York City four months ago in pursuit of the elusive Judy Jane who has been working as an advocate in a battered women’s domestic violence shelter in Brooklyn. He has not seen her since the days of rage in Seattle when the WTO hit the town and the world woke up—a little. Judy Judy—how could you treat me this way? Walter wonders. Walter looks out again, with broke heart, through the dingy window, ever since she went away, out across at the L train going by heading to Manhattan…as the Towers loom standing steadfastly; he stares at a colorfully tagged graffiti-laden brick and concrete wall and written upon the weathered wall is a poem titled…

Walter worked at digesting the message…he remembers reading about it—a visage smudged upon window by the soap residue as people amassed by the thousands to lay witness to the miracle. Walter had just arrived in the City when this phenomenon occurred. He considers he may want to hang a holy picture. He puts down his pen and wonders what was he, Walter, writing about—really? Sex? Chicks thought you were sensitive if you were a writer/musician/artist kind of guy and being a card-carrying liberal—they dug it, a lot of them, and they might give you some—being liberal, if you don’t have any money…and Walter has no money, no belongings—he digresses. Who was this poet/junky artiste’ that made his mark and message on this wall? Basquiat was dead…Jim Carroll? Patti Smith? Tom Hobbes? Maybe some bad brains or bad religion…could it be—like an agnostic front? Below the poem, Walter could barely discern the nomenclature of the heavily religious piece of work—‘Larry Heartless’ and thought, though he, Walter, was a professed atheist, he still sought a guide to recognizing his saints. But now Walter needed to get to his job to cover the potatoes. It was all just a token away; just had to try and get on the right train and try not to get mugged and/or get his ass kicked on the way. Don’t be a victim his mind told him. Then he thought, maybe he should go back to Detroit—get back to those solid Midwest values. Back to Mac, to be drinking at the Old Miami and living in the root cellar of the four story building of John L. King Books, working in property management.

He recalls back to those times even before Detroit…to the days of WTO rage in Seattle and the art gallery and Mac ambling around in a red and yellow sweat shirt featuring a large round headed bulldog with a pointed crown hat, running towards the viewer with barred fangs and University of Parris Island beneath its gaping, slavering visage. Of course, the sleeves are chopped off and Mac’s forearms are big, venous and thick wristed…bigger than his upper arms in fact and why Mac’s nickname amongst close associates was Popeye. The better to twist the pencil necks of supercilious art critics perhaps. Mac says it’s from ceaseless self-abuse during his military experience, Combat jacks, says he dismissively. Everybody does it, get off a mission, there’s line around the four-holer latrines longer than for a Star Wars premier.

This is a direct contradiction of his claims of having been a supply clerk and sanitary NCO, whose main duties were the cleansing and keeping inventory of the mattress covers and bedding, but when confronted with the obvious gaps in the narrative accuracy, would shrug and say that once in a while, particularly back in PI, folks might make off with pillow cases and this was aggressively pursued and as Mac would retell these takes in his ceaseless socio-anthropological pursuits with such graphic details that many listeners might blanch. Monsieur Maurice, of course, does not engage himself in such quests unless he is appropriately attired and so his tightly fitting Algerian World Cup jersey is immaculate and impeccably fitted, offset by his speedo which features the logo of the Belgian para-commandos embroidered upon the frontal portion, Mac nods knowingly, Thick packaging to mask lack of content. Thus keeping the embers of their everlasting love and hate relationship warm.

Walter has his Black Flag t-shirt all blasted and ripped on and wearing a pair of cargo pocketed shorts in a subdued desert camo pattern with multiple cargo pockets holding copious flasks of the horrific Korean Soju liquor that Mac has provided so very thoughtfully for this community event. Walter has tried a taste and nearly lost his cookies.

Vile corrosive for the hardened. Mac shrugs. Ever been to Korea? This is their spirit values in a bottle—Korean cachaça. Ha!

Walter vows to never touch it again unless maybe with Mountain Dew or Faygo red pop soda. Maybe. Maurice drinks it and hands it back without expression or comment. Walter has seen both of them drink impossible mixtures of wicked toxins and has never seen either of them register any expression except a sort of blank indifference to the fare. Maybe they have their own stomach pumping apparatus next to their beds. Nothing in his own divinity schooling at the abbey has prepared him for the company of his present situation, the band of HAPPY brothers yea. With the right kind of eyes he can envision Maurice lifting the cross high proclaiming Christian love and brotherhood to the scantily clad natives of some island archipelago and Mac in body armor cocking his crossbow or priming his arquebus for the inevitable hearts and minds to follow. Some struggles are eternal and perhaps the spirits that wage them are as well. Maybe Walter you should just mellow out a bit. Excessive thought can be detrimental to orderly progression of affairs. Comprenez? Do we have an understanding? Mac inquires.

Walter is a little uneasy sharing his concerns with Senor Aga’pe. It all seems to require the shedding of one’s raiment at some point. Striving is the process and Walter isn’t really all into this process thing as his time bent beneath the mentorship of Maurice and Mac have left his forthright and God fearing spirituality in the dust of desolation. He needs a vision, he feels broken inside and irretrievably soiled. The horror, the horror, he thinks trembling in his own heart of darkness. He hears the gasping, huffing and moaning as Mac is interviewing yet another sweet faced art major coed for a possible opening featuring her work in this mad travesty of a gallery.

He curls up covering his ears with the sweat matted pillow: remembering then and remembering now, what Mac said, Oh, muy deloroso, the price is paid, no matter what the endeavor. Courage, Love, Truth, or Decency are rewarded with Death, of course. It’s the common penny—don’t y’know. Ultimately every swinging Richard and every squishy quaff must pony up that penny, no exceptions treacherous swine! My casual take is, well…just a fact o’life, so get them juicy parts whilst you can my brother. Not to regret what you’ve done, but what you haven’t is mere self-serving twaddle—git some! Pull your sorry self up, up, by those jock straps and get cracking boy! Love, Hate, it’s all of a piece. The opposite of Love is indifference. This is easily proven by watching old guys trying to hit on young girls. Maybe that’s something better re-categorized, well, it is called statutory rape maybe? Ah words, words! Can be wings or whips or chains or tight fitting garments of vinyl, or equestrian accessorizing with the French maid’s feather duster up one’s culo. Probably got to pay extra for that. Money! It’s all the worship of Mammon that will get you your guilty pleasures surer than shit.

Junkiedom—U.S.A.

At a welfare hotel in the Bronx, the morning humidity is starting to pick up, the sound of a garbage truck echoes, time has come today, a dude is thinking as he flashes back, having just gotten released from the Tombs jail. Dreary and suffocating, it was a lot of baloney and cheese sandwiches, but he had done well in the cigarette trade and had managed to stay out of the fights. His mind contemplates how the mistakes were made…he didn’t believe in accidents, but mostly his mind tells him he needed to get some shit. Or get off it. He is pretty, but in a manly way…not West Village-like. The sweat is pouring out of him as he shaves his head—the tattoos on his forearms were fading. The sound in his head is like a rusted machine. There is blood on his hands. He is legend. Nothing is fixed. Nothing is solved. Blame it on the human heart he thinks: hating love. They don’t call him Larry Heartless for nothing. Fucking hardcore. All part of the scene—his scene. Maybe he should go to Europe. But he don’t have no money. This is England! he shouts at the fractured broken old mirror and smashes it a couple of times, but goddam hands are like a little girl’s! Slaps on a little Brut from the little green bottle, grabs some spray cans, and puts on his black motorcycle jacket on and walks out to catch the subway train. Maybe Bags could help him. Or Nitro. Fuckin’ Hilly still owes him from the club—not payin’ his musicians, Frank’s too busy at his Uncle Arcetti’s Italian butcher shop with his sociopathic cousins the Arcetti, twins, Romulus and Remus, dope testers and just fresh off a feature on Oprah and Frank’s a psycho anyway, but Savior Jones with Sister Salvation would have what he wants, what he needs. Get that stamped shit, not all cut, stepped on too much: China White. Just got to keep clear of them Country Boys. Larry McCoy peers out over the street with a thousand yard stare. Just as he turns the corner a dweeb comes plowing into him. Larry raises his fist to strike him, but immediately sees the fear in in the dweeb’s googly eyes.

Hey what the fuck!? You fuckity-fuk! Watch where you’re going? Next time I’ll kill you! Or stab you in the eye!

The guy scrambles off hurriedly with anxiety and relief, trench coat a dragging…sparse light brown beard scraggly. Larry always felt sorry for guys who wore glasses, besides the guy looks like a homeless dude…but I’ll swear I’ll stab him in the eye if I run into him again, the fucking poor… If I stay in New York much longer I’m going to become a serial killer; but just kill the bad guys. Walter keeps running for his life and like a coyote, he does not look back. Not in New Jack City. And somewhere in the neighborhood, someone is playing way up loud…the Chamber Brothers’—Time Has Come Today and Larry hears it too and flashes back to getting released out of jail that morning with the handcuffs on and parading through the Tombs…and no one was there to greet him, but with his shadow always to walk beside him—he walks a lonely road some of us have never heard of. Amongst the ghosts of the Dead Rabbits. And the Westies—some of his kin, all mostly gone now. Nothing but a few skins left.

young hearts can go their way…I have no place to stay...I’m thinking about the subway…my love has blown away…my tears have come and gone…oh, Lord I got to run…I got no home no, I have no home…I’ve been crushed by tumbling tide…the rules have changed today…now the time has come there are things to realize…time has come today…time has come today

And it keeps playing…and Larry thinkin’ of his self like Mighty Mouse or Quick-Draw McGraw, constantly testing himself against the elements like a holiday in Sparta, and says aloud: People get ready…

New Jersey:

Matty is just finishing up loading one, the last one, then he’ll be ready to start the new day. He fires it up and sucks the smoke, filling his lungs to capacity, holding it in, beginning to snort through his nose as his eyes watered up and his throat burned, releasing, exhaling the smoke. Ah, he felt better now. He looks at the work order firing up a cigarette, he blows a couple of smoke rings flitting through the pages. Load up the gear and material and head to the City, pay the goddamn tolls, and pick up the fucking new guy in Queens. Three calls to make today: one spray for bugs, one rot fix and one rat patrol. Enough to cut some vig to his bookie—maybe keep them off his ass for a while. He grabs his briefcase.

The late summer morning humidity is kicking in. The sweat is pouring out of him. The sun is going to kill us—he thinks. He gets in the van, takes a snoot of some Columbian energy powder and drives to Queens cursing the traffic and tolls the whole way. Better get me some Ritalin. Must be the season of the witch he thinks.

Oh my god! There’s the fucking new guy! Wearing a fucking tie-dyed Eddie Vedder t-shirt! No! No! That’s not going to work! He’s going to have to get that fucking thing off…man, what if somebody sees me with this dweeb and his Eddie Vedder t-shirt? he pulls up to the corner, Hey man, where’d you get that uniform?

Walter is stunned, with Kurt Cobain on his brain, and has no idea what the abiding dude is talking about as he looks around to the whereabouts of his uniform.

The tie-dyed Eddie Vedder/Pearl Jam t-shirt, dude—not going to work…not going to work. Take it off, as Matty tosses Walter a grubby wife-beater that Matty has found underneath the seat that he’s uses occasionally as an oil rag.

Wha-aht!? Are you crazy?

Get in the van. We got a hard hot day FNG. Bets are on, ponies are runnin’ and I don’t need any bullshit. Any complaints, put it on the ‘hurt feelings list’ and—lower your expectations!

Looking at the mirror in the bathroom. J.J. McKay is combing his hair a hundred ways. Splashes on some aftershave. Old Spice. Trying to lose a few pounds. Got a wedding in a couple of months. Awaiting bride back in Oregon. She’s an accountant. Farm girl...the county dairy princess. Got this new job and promotion with Smith and Barney. Stock broker. Young and ambitious. Going to make some money. Got a great view of the City from his Tower office. Feels a little bad about having to kick Jimmy out of his apartment last week. But he shows up without shoes, barefoot and smelling like fish. And this is no shit… J.J. asks him, What happened to your shoes Jimmy?

I was crashed in Central Park last night and I woke up and they were gone.

But of course, that made perfect sense to McKay, "Yeah Jimmy you just get off a ship straight out of the Aleutians and you arrive in New York and you take a little nap in Central Park for the night. Laying your shoes right beside you. Yeah, I get it. I can dig it—why don’t you take a shower…there’s a fresh towel hanging on the door.