The Badgering Voice

Taking a break from the Haiku follies to post chapter 3 of my novel-in-progress, a labyrinthine work that no one will ever read, save my friend Julie in Chicago, who reads it out of obligatory 20-year-friendship pity.


THE REST OF IT GOES HERE

100,000 words










Shut This Toilet Down!
A Dark Farce
by
M. C. Guimond












M. C. Guimond
1117 SW Alder, #208
Portland, OR 97205
(503)274-0258
mikegport@hotmail.com

Guimond/LIVIN’ IN THE LAST DAYS










PART 1--PARADIGM RUT
CHAPTER 3--THE BADGERING VOICE

For me, in the final analysis, higher learning amounted
to explaining and proving my ridiculousness.
--Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Gilbert St. Claire ambled through the Park Blocks, bored as hell, brooding about
passing time, the excretory nature of place, and the need to piss. Counting his steps.
One . . . two . . . three . . . The wind kicked up the fallen leaves: the ambers, oranges,
burgundies. Scuttling, tumbling like dung beetles across the pavement. Autumn’s death
echoes. Plant kingdom’s rigor mortis. Something unhinged, creaked open in Gilbert’s
consciousness. Unwelcome visitant like uncivilized bowels, never to be mentioned in
public. In private, he had named it as Eve had the animals. Curled and cowered beneath
boyish bed sheets, he had named it, the badgering voice.

Guimond/LIVIN’ IN THE LAST DAYS

Beautiful day, isn’t it?
Pointless! Portland’s a shit-hole. Billy talked me into it. Should’ve visited
before moving here. Goddamn it! Gilbert veered from the wide paved walkway onto the
grass and stumbled against an upraised clump, causing his glasses to slide down his
narrow perspiring nose before halting at the tip. Goddamn it!
If you want to be miserable, I can’t help you. So Oregon hasn’t turned out to be the
bohemian utopia you’d dreamed it would be. You know, wherever you go you take your--
Stuff the clichés! There is nothing I want to do. Nothing. Not even drinking.
Wandering around aimless and poor, I’ve lost the taste for it. Gotta get under eight
dollars a day. It’s the only way to keep my shitty digs. Almost last week. $8.53. Rent’s
$475. Then there’s electricity. Ten bucks if I live like lunch meat. Gilbert stooped down
and picked up a dry burgundy maple leaf, and crushed it in his fist. He unclenched, shook
his hand of the leavings, rubbed it with the other, blew upon it, but burgundy bits remained
glued to his palm-sweat. His scalp itched. Gilbert removed his baseball cap and scratched
at the shaved-naked crown. Good thing the food’s free at work. Sandwich shop perk.
Ain’t you workin’ full-time, cheap ass?
Gilbert’s urge to urinate had abated but the telltale bladder ache remained as a
throbbing sign of disease. Nine . . . ten . . . eleven . . . Look, I know what I’m doing,
voice! What would you know about budgets in your safe and contained grey-matter
world? It’s fuckin’ tight, trust me. I gotta keep track of every goddamn penny. Now--
where was I? Oh, vices. Smokes and beer. Five bucks a day. Goddamn it!
Ain’t you ever gonna be strong enough to give that shit up? Have you ever thought about

Guimond/LIVIN’ IN THE LAST DAYS

all the cash you’d save if you quit smoking and drinking? And what you could do with it?
The Portland State University sign lay ahead, anchored into the grass south of
Market Street. A dozen pigeons lined the waist-high length of it, bobbing and purring at
Gilbert’s approach. But Gilbert didn’t notice. All the cash I’d save? Really? How orig-
inal and kind of you to point that out. Now get out of my head! I’ve got work to do.
Work? This lame attempt to give yourself credit for fiscal responsibility? Don’t confuse
your mental masturbation games with work. Squirt! Squirt! Mustard or cum, it’s what you do best.
And I’m in your head to stay, buddy. Here for your own good. Believe it!
Yeah, yeah. Fuck! Need the social fix of the coffee shop. Another buck. Paper
towels can do triple duty: mouth wipin’, ass wipin’, and coffee filterin’. Now I’m--
Oh, my God, that’s pathetic! Please don’t tell your mother! She’d be devastated.
Eighteen . . . Nineteen . . . Gilbert lit a cigarette in mid stride, left of the university
sign. Each pigeon, with spasmodic fervor, launched off onto its own path into the grey
heights, only to be sucked in, after mere seconds of such sky tentacling into the great
collective stream of selfsame cohorts, soon gone to God knows where. Gilbert stepped
through a grey blizzard of feathers. Goddamn, pigeons! They own this fuckin’ city!
Forget the pigeons, man! Buy some toilet paper!
You ever hear of the word, “frugal”?!
I know all the words you know, brother. And more. I‘m an unabridged helpmate.
Well, that’s what I’m bein’--frugal! Now take a hike. Let’s see? Gilbert puffed
away like it was the last smoke on earth, ignoring the students blurring past him on
either side of the pavement. Have I covered everything? No. Toothpaste, deodorant,

Guimond/LIVIN’ IN THE LAST DAYS

bread, peanut butter. His stomach gurgled like a hungry ghost. Maybe I can see a movie
next week if I don’t eat out on my days off? He rubbed his taut belly; his fingertips wan-
dered onto the ribcage and tapped at the arcs of bone, each protruding sharp beneath the
sweatshirt. Twenty-three . . . Rachel looked so pretty today in her fishnet stockings and
black corset. Her blood-hued lipstick, her glistening harlot-curl smile. Do I have the
balls? Girls giggling on a bench with school books piled high between them. Gilbert
snuck a peek as he passed. No. I don’t feel good enough to ask her out. Not yet.
Dude, she’s what? Nineteen? A freshman in college! You’re old enough to be--
Stop the fuckin’ clichés! I’m only thirty-five and can pass for a college kid myself.
Christ, I still get carded. Our age difference wouldn’t raise an--Gilbert ground out the
remaining tobacco of his spent cigarette and flicked the filter into a trash bin as he
stomped onward. Fuck you! My ex-wife was only--
Sure you wanna go there?
No! Rachel’s different. She liked my writing. Her face smolders with
intelligence. It’s in the eyes. A mature fire.
She’s pretending. Just being polite and shit. She has a different life. She’s doing things.
And do you really believe that her normal parents would approve of a poor, aging, wannabe writer
who makes sandwiches for a living, hanging out with their daughter? Doesn’t look good, Perv.
She’s not for you.
Gilbert nodded, and lit another smoke. She’s alive and I don’t even know who I
am. Twenty-eight . . . twenty-nine . . .
Counting kinda slow there. I think you’ve missed a couple hundred steps.

Guimond/LIVIN’ IN THE LAST DAYS

Shut up! I know which steps to count, and which steps in life to--Oh shit! Gilbert
spun around on the pivot of one foot to avoid smacking into a girl student, sitting cross-
legged and reading on the grass. He lost his balance upon landing, reeling backwards
while mumbling, “I’m sorry,” his left foot finding purchase at last in a fresh-coiled mound
of dog shit as his right foot skidded on the grass, stretching his legs in a painful near-splits
posture, causing him to fall forward, catching the turf with splayed hands. From this pos-
ition, Gilbert was at eye-level with the girl. She kept her eyes on the textbook. Modern
Theories in Astrophysics. Gilbert straightened himself, and rubbed his soiled shoe clean
the best he could in the leaf-strewn grass. How fitting, he thought, giving the girl a
cursory farewell glance. You’re also not for me. We’d never connect beyond the usual
platitudes and silliness. He thought of differentness. Something’s wrong with me. I’ve
hitched a ride on some misfit wavelength.
I’ll say!
Clam it, voice! It’s like I’ve been thrust upon an alien world and the atmosphere,
though breathable, is toxic to my soul. I’m dysfunctional here. Have my brethren
abandoned me? Maybe they attempted a rescue. Tried like hell but the operation failed.
Grandiose delusions! Childish fantasies! Didn’t mommy and daddy love you enough?
Yes they did, asshole! Leave them be. They’re not charged with giving my life a
purpose. They have their own lives, and I am not their fault.
W. W. M. D?
What bullshit is this?
What would Mayor do? He’s your best friend, isn’t he?

Guimond/LIVIN’ IN THE LAST DAYS

Gilbert sucked in a chest full of cool air, closed his eyes, and exaggerated the
exhalation till his lungs were empty, and aching for the next breath. He summoned an
image of Brandon, his misanthropic buddy and building-mate, sighing pompously with
witch-frazzled hair framing his dour visage, hunched over the latest interlibrary-loaned
kook book, a bottle of bad wine on the table, and drooling as fumes of cooking pizza fill
the room. He does what he does. We’re bonded by boredom. He can’t give me a
purpose either.
I’ll accept these admissions of personal responsibility as progress, but as always you
exhaust me. Please say that you won‘t be needing my services for a while.
Services! Gilbert spat, shaking his head as the sun plodded through a rare cleavage
of clouds towards its daily evening fate of being eaten by the well-to-do west hills. Far off
porch lights sparked like fat diamonds on the gold-digging fingers of evening. Upper crust
suns illuminating the pine trees. Mansions on stilts. What fairy-tale bullshit, Gilbert
thought, mesmerized, contemptuous. It won’t be dark for another hour. You spoiled
bitches are so afraid. You’ll be sorry when the big one hits the Portland fault line.
You’ll all be fuckin’ sorry. With effort Gilbert pried his eyes off the westward glittering.
The banterer was silent within him. Services?
The scuttling, mindless tumble of leaves. Giggling, shouting, faint in all directions.
Gilbert’s feet crunched onward but his ears had tuned to his own urgent frequencies. The
world was a radio spitting static that he had muted. His bladder twitched, clenched, went
bananas. Services! Fuck off! Ain’t there a goddamn toilet in this town!