Laughing at the truth, cos Gough was tough til he hit the rough
Uncle Sam and John were quite enough . . .

Midnight Oil, "The Power and the Passion"

The Women Glow and Men Plunder

I love Citizen Jim, and I love seeing him, usually regardless of the time, the place or the circumstance.

But when I'm sitting at my computer, trying to get some writing done or downloading pornography off of bearfilms.com, it's the most annoying thing in the world for the screen to go fuzzy right before Jim's face appears on my monitor.

So it went on Tuesday night, right in the middle of "Does a Bear Woof in the Baths?" a finely acted, albeit short, film I was watching in order to "wind down" from a long, hard day at the newspaper office.

"I hate it when you do this. It gives me the creeps," I said as the image of two fat, hairy naked men smelling each other's arm pits dissolved and was replaced by Citizen Jim's face.

In addition to being annoying and intrusive, it is kind of spooky when this happens, since neither one of us has a web cam.

"I suppose you think this is FUNNY?" he said.

"What?" I asked. I peered at the screen. "Where are you?"

Usually he appeared like this on location from Walden Barn with Smokey the Cat yowling outside the closed door. Sometimes I could see and hear naked young women in the background, chasing each other with shiny baking pans held aloft, waiting for the moment when Jim would blow a whistle and they could start slathering one another with lemon pie filling and meringue.

"Don't play stupid with me. You know exactly where I am," he whispered. "Now where's that Aussie bastard you've got there with you? You let me talk to him!"

I was totally stumped. "Honestly, Precious Lamb, I don't under—"

I was cut off by the sound of a tapping on the glass of my front door. When the tapping turned to banging, I grew very concerned, for I knew Citizen Jim was nowhere near my home.

"What's going on?" Citizen Jim said. "What's that awful racket?"

"I have no idea," I said. "Let me go and see."

"You better come back, or the next time I'm there, I'll beat you unmerciful!"

A voice I'd never heard called out from below, "If you don't please open this door,
please . . . I shall . . ."

There was a pause. From the top of the stairs, I motioned with my hands for the unseen speaker to hurry it up. "I shall have to. Strike you. Yes! I will strike you! Just like Citizen Jim. Yes!"

By the time I got down the stairs and opened the door, my downstairs neighbors had tackled the owner of the voice in question and were yelling to me, "Call the cops! We'll hold him here. Hurry up!"

Whoever they had on the ground was sobbing wildly. "I'm no threat, not really! It was a bit of a joke, honestly. Just a harmless little prank. It's what I'm known for! Please! ARRRGGGGH! My hair piece!"

"Dan?" I asked. "Citizen Dan?"

"Yes!" he said, and burst into tears all over again.

"You know this feller?" my neighbor asked. "This ain't the one usually comes around here beatin' the shit out of you, is it?"

A bellowing came from upstairs: "You get your ass up here RIGHT NOW, or I'm gonna flip you like a potato cake!"

My neighbor grinned sheepishly. "Oh. I hear him, now. Sorry, buddy."

"Quite all right. It's fine. Just . . .Just let me up, please," Citizen Dan said, standing up and straightening his toupee, sniffing back the last of his tears.

"Citizen Dan!" I said again, smiling. "Come on in. What brings you to the neighborhood?"

He stared into space for a moment before a smile broke over his face, as if he'd just remembered something wonderful. "I paddled a kayak to California, then I hopped a train with some hobos and traveled as far as Missouri, where I . . . That's where I ran into Lulu Whipkey, and she rode me on the handlebars of her bicycle right here to your door!"

"Lulu Whipkey? You mean Lulu WHIPPY?" I asked.

Citizen Dan snapped his fingers. "Ah, shoot! I KNEW I'd get something wrong," he said.

Suddenly, everything in my brain froze. "Citizen Dan, if you're . . . Here," I said, pointing to the ground. "Then Citizen Jim—OH NO!"

I ran as fast as I could up the stairs and into my office.

"Where have you BEEN?" Citizen Jim shouted from my computer monitor. "God DAMN IT, Stimpy, if you—"

"Precious Lamb! You're in Australia, aren't you?" I asked the screen.

"I guess using your brain that much must've made you crap your pants? YES I'M IN AUSTRALIA!" he yelled. "You TRADED ME OUT for that goddamn Mister Smarty Pants, remember?"

Citizen Dan had tip-toed into my office and scared me to death when he whispered, right beside my ear, "Is that him? Really and truly?"

"I SEE YOU!" Citizen Jim yelled. "Come out from behind that woman and look at me—I need to talk to you!"

Citizen Dan cleared his throat and struck a Napoleanic pose, hand shoved inside his button down shirt. "I just want you to know what a huge, and I mean HUGE, fan I—"

"Cut the crap! Now listen to me, Sparky or I'm gonna smack the shit out of Chicken Sheets the next time I see her," Citizen Jim said.

"Right. Yes. Please continue," Citizen Dan said.

Jim looked at me. "By the way, I thought I'd let you know I met me a new Pete for our collection, Oily Pete. Some kind of lawyer down here, bald as a goddamn honeydew melon. But he's got the hook-up. I'm supposed to be going to a party with him tonight and I'm gonna meet me some Kylie Minogue," he said, then looked at Citizen Dan. "That's right, Sparky! Me and Kylie Minogue, we're gonna be doing the lo-co-motion, if you know what I'm sayin'—I ain't sayin' nothin'."

"Oh," Citizen Dan said, making a horrible face that I hoped Citizen Jim wouldn't notice.

"Chicken Sheets there, she hates her some Kylie Minogue. But that figures. She hates everything I love. Watch this," he said, turning his attention to me. "I'm having lunch with Colin Hay tomorrow."

"Oh, GOD!" I groaned, holding my stomach as it lurched and heaved inside me.

"Don't say another FUCKING WORD!" Jim screamed.

I took a deep breath and exhaled. "Hey, whatever floats your boat. Everyone has a weakness for some shitty 80s band or other," I said. I suddenly grew brave, knowing how far away Citizen Jim was. "You just happen to have an inordinate amount of things for shitty 80s bands."

"Watch it! I'll be coming back some day and you'll be so sorry," Citizen Jim said. He looked at Citizen Dan. "Look, if you're supposed to be my SWAP, Sparky, you better start right now and SLAP THE PISS out of Chicken Sheets!"

"I'll do my best, of course," Citizen Dan said. "But I'm sure can't even hope to be the abusive partner you are."

"You don't worry about that! I'll be back, soon as I get with Squirrely Shirley Hazzard and see can't she give my book to her agent," Jim said. "So don't get too comfortable. And if she tries to tell you she ever dated Gwen Stefani, just rap her on the teeth with a knotty stick and she'll put a lid on that shit right away."

I got close to the computer monitor. "I miss you! Please come back soon!"

"Yeah. Right. You keep telling yourself that," Citizen Jim said. "I'll tell Naomi Watts you said hello. HA!"

Citizen Jim's face faded and the big, fat hairy men appeared again, now in a very uncomfortable-looking and noisy sexual position with one other fat, hairy man.

Citizen Dan screamed, fainting at my feet.

Well, that's one thing he and Citizen Jim have in common, I thought, rolling Citizen Dan away from my desk and settling back down for a little bear-on-bear action before bed.

Read a random GC installment!

Complete Archive