A Menagerie of Metaphors

By Al Lucas

Paul has changed his name to Pau, opting for some flair in a bland name. He initially courts Mime, an AA member and former ballerina by choregraphing a ballet for her. It turns out to be a puppet show with her pulling the strings. But the real love of his life turns out to be Maynot,, the shrewd publicist, who screws him of his savings from his lifetime devotion of writing. She also begets him a child who manages to kill himself. It turns out Pau dies too and as a result is at a lost for words.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9781312046238

Al Lucas

This is the original 1st person version called High Steppin' off da Crack, first submitted as a 3rd person account under the name of simply Hi' Steppin' years ago. This 1st person version is more in keeping with an autobiographical style while still using fictional names as characters and was created before the 3rd person version, but lost, only to be found later after the 3rd person publication. It opens with an emaciated man standing on the day of 9/11 in the VA lobby, awaiting hospitalization for crack usage. One bizarre incident after another occurs leaving his sanity no longer in question. Being a Vietnam-era vet, he is screened and then followed up by two psychiatrists of Oriental persuasion who treat him rather realistically, to his chagrin. He is discharged with a nursing plan to attend Avon Park, a renowned dual diagnosis center in Sebring, FL, but first must go to SafePlace, a transitional housing facility in Tampa to protect him from the dealers while he awaits an opening in Avon. First, however, Paul decides to go home and have one more bout with crack, to get the high he never had, using his car as leverage. It doesn't work out so well. He thus attends SafePlace without a car. It should be noted, he has read to one of the psychiatrists his ongoing novel and continues to read or have read to any and all its contents. One person, a roommate, at SafePlace is so moved, he blows his brains out. At Avon, he is assigned a class coordinator, Manfred Mundane, an ex-military pilot, who is unsympathetic about Paul's writing skills. Getting kicked out for bumming cigarettes, Paul comes home with new verve. He will in fact attend AA and does. He fights his way out of bankruptcy and foreclosure blindly with no help from family or friends and miraculously incurs twelve years of clean time. The book ends with a surprise, reserved for the reader. It should also be noted, the narrative weaves between Paul's acid days in Morocco and his current plight. His journal is in the past tense; the book's outcome, in the present with both coming to an end in Paul's bedroom where reality merges in a sexual farce.

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A Menagerie of Metaphors

A new novella by Al Lucas

Copyright © 2023 Al Lucas

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN: 978-1-312-04623-8

Imprint: Lulu.com

The Step Series:

The First Step, Hi’ Steppin’

The Second Step, A Step Down

The Third Step: The Smoking Gun and the Coughing Nails, a Real Read Herring.

The Fourth Step, Running on a Big Dream.

The Fifth Step, The Last Job, To Sweep the Heavens.

The Bon Mot Series:

Mister Bon Mot and the Election of 2016

Mister Bon Mot and The Meanings of Wife

Also:

Pan and the Pandemic

Al

Force Feed, Colors of the Cerebrum

?@intellience.com

Dwindling Supply, the Art of Aging

A Baby Formula with the Silken Approach

The Midterms

The Underlying Meaning of it All

An Old Refrain Played by the Book

The Mind and the Mojo

Visit: https://lucaslore.com

Table of Contents

1: Birds      6

2: Classic Citizenry      7

3: Poor Pau      10

4: The Ballet Itself      12

5: Two Meetings, Morning and Night      13

6: Surrender      16

7: Val      19

8: Maynot      20

9: Cate      22

10: Hockey      24

11: The Game is up      26

12: Mother      28

13: The Undercurrents      30

14: Theory      31

15: The Germ      34

16: AA      36

17: The Work Ethic      38

18: The Command Center      41

19: The Convoy      44

20: The Treatment Team      46

21: Pete      49

22: The Drama King      51

23: Courting Maynot      55

24: The Call      57

25: Rejuvenation      58

26: Beijing      60

27: Home      62

28: The Baby Boy      63

29: Reassessment      65

30: A New Alcoholic in the Family      69

31: Her Too      71

32: Jamaica      73

33: Infection      75

34: Estate Planning      79

35: Inventory      80

36: The Principles of the Program      82

37: Home Values      86

38: Hatefulness      88

39: A Controversy      91

40: The 5G Stream      94

41: Karma      96

42: The Son      98

43: Keep Coming Back      100

44: Reunion      102

1: Birds

The parrot has a large beak and a nose for little birds, but there was one bird special to Pau and that was Mime, the pirouetting, en pointe, tutus wearing former ballerina, now AA member, who insisted the show must go on no matter how worn out the performer.  Pau thought of himself as a parrot by choice. His beak breathed hot air for Mime. He wished to write a ballet for his love that would rival The Nutcracker or Romeo and Juliet to be called the Parrot and the Parakeet.

You see Pau had been going to AA for twenty years and was chairman of the famed Good Start Meeting in Tampa, FL.. Mime, rather quiet, polite and thoughtful posed a problem. She was a recent arrival.  How to get into her pants. Or her Cooper. Or her beachfront home.

As a writer, his strategy was to write the play that would star Mime and perhaps rid her of her professed alcoholism. She was such a doll; he didn’t want to break it. Maybe she could drink successfully and they could play around twitteringly like birds of a feather.

So, the stage was set.

2: Classic Citizenry

The first order of business was a plot. A parrot needs a bevy of birds, smaller and with a lesser life span, such that he, the lead bird, might experience true bird brain and colorfully be happy for the rest of his life. Something had to be done with the arrangements. Both the parrot and his bird of choice needed first to be rescued by the Big Bird, Himself. Thus a reasonable adoption fee for the caged animals so as to make the show affordable was the mandate.

Which brings us to Southern Mexico, where the federales had captured a Macaw and had tortured the poor thing  relentlessly in a sort of gamesmanship of poor taste. At night they shot pellets of food at the parrot making it dodge them and then grab for the food.

It was there that Pau first captured the notion of the parrot metaphor in the first place.  A then peace corp volunteer, he caught up with the criminally minded torturers and offered to buy the bird at cost. The jerks had grown tired of birdshot and gave him the bird, not before confiscating his passport.   

Pau took the Macaw and went to the American Embassy in order to escape Mexico.

The ambassador, Mr. Cockatiel, was sympathetic and expedited his departure back to Tampa on Bird Air.

Pau got drunk the flight over and had an epiphany. He would pour himself a sour play like a martini drink with real class. Something about the Macaw fascinated him little knowing that twenty years later he would meet a bird like ballerina whereupon he would have to deploy all his resources to capture her, if not for real, in his play. The title was the Parrot and the Parakeet and would be a high level romance between two alcoholics. 

But he got bushwhacked. The weak nature of his spirituality whether dissipated by alcohol or just his bloody thirst for his sweet parakeet was limp producing. So if he was going to get her he had to get himself into shape. He had the hots while big bird hunters, stronger males, did the bushwhacking. So profound was their interference that Pau gave up on winning her upfront and opted for a cast of characters, much like Shakespeare did, and have his love immortalized.

As of this writing, another cast of characters were outdoing themselves by counterfeiting fake electors in several swing states for the expressed purpose of denying President O’Bun his hard earned victory. O’Bun and VP Chewy were largely ineffective the first one hundred days because of the electorate's belief that they were imposters. Moreover, the economy of the world was smitten by a plague and life consisted of shutdowns and repeated infections, leading to more antipathy.

Everyone was sick. But Pau wondered how sick? How had a populace become so sick? Hadn’t the Founding Fathers put in place an immortal document meant to govern forever? But hadn’t money made the rule of law, the Constitution, a farce?

Shouldn’t the poor be