Since Larkin’s incredible scenario of June 11th (the last time our auras clashed) I’ve been carrying around a folded printout of my email to Twin Peaks Tavern, asking them to welcome him back. (See my blog entry previous to this, called “Hug of the Century,” linked above…the email is at the very end.) It’s a great letter, and optimizes the odds in Larkin’s favor. Though since I am convinced this is a joke being played upon me by many members of the Castro scene, Twin Peaks will soon have him back, anywayz…with “moi,” The Most Welcome Guest Of All. I do suspect they’ve already made copies of my email, and are passing it around the bar, having a good guffaw, as they no doubt did with my postcard flurry two years back. And I’m sure Larkin is there, too, tickled pink (or whatever color a Reptilian Starship Commander’s scales turn to, when he’s highly amused).
{{ By now you’ve concluded that I’m pissing-in-my-pants eager to get that copy of the email to Larkin ASAP, even though I haven’t spoken such in this report you’re now reading. Until this, my eighth sentence. Yes, My Excrescent Reader, I’m securing the letter to my person or backpack (or, occasionally, a tote bag) every time I step out, awaiting the moment My Perplexing Plesiosaur appears before me once again, like a vision from Triassic Eden. And that moment just occurred short minutes ago: 9:05 PM, as precisely as I can guess. After running upstairs then bumping into my neighbor Michael and chatting him up about Larkin for a spell, and finally entering my room and looking at the Sony clock radio’s digital display: 9:14. }}
It has been almost three weeks since I emailed that request, just four or five days longer than the time I’ve been carrying that printout! But this evening, This Frabjous Evening, no sooner had I exited through the front gate, than here he comes barreling down the sidewalk. Hunched up and all slinky like and kinda shabbily clothed, tonight…I guess he was in one of those “incognito” (or “shadow chameleon”) moods. Especially as regards yours truly, for whom he desires not to notice his presence, quite often. Yet, frankly: deep within that widdle heart, I’m sure he craves the opposite. I’ve never seen him with a ruddy face before…though I’ve certainly seem him hostile more than just this one time! It honestly isn’t part of the look I’ve come to adore in all his varied expressions. Don’t know why, but it jars me.
So there he was, looming large in my reality, then passing by as swiftly as possible…though the partying throngs scattered about as they lingered between bars and clubs, made for a slow passage. I was momentarily stunned by his ghostly tentacles (like some deceased cephalopod come to haunt me), but I was by now immune to his venomous discharge. Thus I speedily recovered with more than enough split seconds to call loudly from behind:
“That was quite a spectacular roasting you gave me the other night!” Sucking in my breath to exhale the second part like a demon exorcised, I embellished: “You deserve an Oscar!”
Larkin had barely progressed more than twenty feet beyond where I first sighted him, the clots of revelers were that thick. Yet (with hindsight) I can’t help but believe he intentionally slowed down to grant me just enough time to blurt out my prepared bon mot, before drifting beyond my orbit.
I still had yet to hand him the copy of My Papal Dispensation, and he was about to cross 16th Street!
I managed to encroach amid the dense throng another few steps, then bellow these words towards Larkin who now stood balancing his feet on the curb, eager to distance himself as soon as the light changed. Or perhaps waiting patiently for me to speak my last three lines:
“Hey, I got a gift for you! It’s a printout of the email I sent to…”
It was a brief scene he had scripted this time around, and my dialogue a mere five sentences. In fact, I was the only character with any spoken words at all, if you don’t count the outdoor revelers whose voices were blurred background ambience, anyway. I knelt down halfway to retrieve the baggie-sealed envelope from my tote, while I arched my neck upwards to project my voice over and beyond the fluctuating wall of flesh:
“…I sent to Twin Peaks Tavern…”
I stopped, realizing that the light had just turned green, and the crowd was now surging forward, along with Larkin. So I quickly stood erect once more, this time with The Exculpatory Missive in hand, waving it at a receding Larkin who refused to glance back. I boomed forcefully above the din of traffic and laughter:
“…asking them to welcome you back!”
By now Larkin was more than halfway across to Noe Street, and I had barely progressed another yard. But my lungs are strong, my words carry far, and surely he heard:
“I hope it works!”
I stood watching as he reached the corner where Noe, 16th and Market intersect on the northwest point, expecting him to vanish in another moment. Suddenly he paused, turned around to look directly back to where I was standing by the bus shelter, still waving. I smiled with unbridled joy while he stared back, either poker faced or peeved…it was too far to tell. Though his button eyes ran a straight target to my own. Just as suddenly, after maybe three seconds of unabashed glaring, he turned away and took several steps before (guess what?)…
He did an about face and ogled me again! (Is “ogle” the right word here? I sure hope so!) Though he still was not too distant to hear me speak if I belted out my words like a platoon sergeant, I simply waved once more, and smiled. Finally, he turned away and disappered around the corner, and I rushed home to write it all down. That’s when I bumped into my neighbor Michael, on the carpeted stairway.
{{ FYI, My Drupaceous Reader, I write down every encounter with Larkin, as a matter of record. For his spirit is momentous, as is our association…at least in my universe. Everything’s an adventure of the highest order with My Brassy Brachiosaurus, and I just can’t keep my quill resting in the well, thanks to his inspiration. Imagine having someone in your life who always makes you feel like the luckiest sentient being in all possible universes. I rest my case. }}
“Michael! Michael! I just saw Larkin!”
Standing midstairs, Michael turned back towards me and grinned, waiting for me to share new information that he could take to Starship Central next time they beam him up (which is in a day or two, so, really really really soon). So I emit data…that is: I blabber on.
“Larkin did this and I did that, then I did this and Larkin didn’t do that, then he did both this and that simultaneously, so I was stuck holding the Old Maid card as usual, because I, in non-response, did neither this nor that…I did other! What choice did I have?”
Though I took all of several minutes just to tell Michael what it took me only those two sentences above to write down, and he had to go to work. Even though I had him in stitches. Well, at least I kick-started his night with a burst of sunshine and positivity…in my own, weird, gay-gothic cyberpunk sci-fi way.
I finally ascended hovel (that’s what I lovingly call my SRO, the SRO I’ve been living in since January first, 1983: “hovel” instead of “home”), and the first thing I do is check the time. Nine fourteen. I then seat myself before my Lenovo 100-S notebook, which found a new home barely two months back, perched upon my octagonal cabinet. Which is maybe 25, 26, 27 inches high, with just enough room atop to include a mouse and a dinner plate or bowl. As I began to type out a report of the preceding ten minutes (that is: “my latest Larkin encounter”), the visage of Larkin’s two rosy cheeks floated into my thoughts.
“He’s never had rag-doll cheeks before,” I mused. “It is so not Larkin!”
An icy shudder gripped my spine, then ran up and down in sickening waves, as realization struck me like a horse!
“That may not have been Larkin!”
What with being stoned out of my cranium on some quality strain I just purchased from mask-vendor Billy two mornings ago, and how this encounter was more like a blur, it went so fast. Did I really mistake another dude of the same, general morphology and facial cues, for Larkin? Was it actually wishful thinking so potent, I stepped into a parallel world of my own making, for a scant 48 seconds?
And if it wasn’t him, what the fuk was he thinking, glaring back at me–not once, but twice–glaring back at me from across a pedestrian-packed crosswalk?
Those damned apple cheeks! I get it: he’s throwing me off the track by putting some makeup on his face, like a drag queen. Rouge! Setting me up to begin doubting that was him, as memory of the episode sinks deeper into my twin hemispheres. After further pondering, I began to feel relieved as I reminded myself that Larkin glancing back at me–not once, but twice mind you–was his signal to reassure me that, yes, this is, indeed, My Larkin. For he has done this before, in previous adventures. He wouldn’t have stopped and gazed back at me two times (the second, to drive the message home), unless he already surmised that doubts would come to surface.
My relief was, alas, short lived. For a new doubt arose in my psyche, in the image of an irate stranger looking back at me, wondering if he should return to smack me around. An angel must’ve been watching over me (if my conjecture that he’s not Larkin, is true), for he thought strongly of assaulting me, twice, before something turned him away.
Or perhaps it’s all Larkin, for his shamanic sorcery is stupendously powerful, and infinitely clever. Surely more than up to the challenge of shifting his appearance in subtle ways, and controlling his behavior in a certain manner, as to make me think of the “stranger” theory in the first place! I’d know his voice anywhere, which makes it crystal clear as to why he didn’t utter so much as a syllable. Yet a stranger probably would…so this is a second clue that this rogue is, indeed, Mr. Kelsey. Then again, on the other hand…?
Thus, I’m stuck in some sort of temporal purgatory, still wondering if that really was He Who Lights My Path With Rays of Emerald, or not.
ADDENDUM
Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2017 00:16:47
Subject: A Peek Preview: RAYS OF EMERALD!
From: Zeke Krahlin
To: Eleanor Cooney
I started to type an email to you, but then decided to make it into a
story first. So, know this is to you, though it’s already a completed
tale. So you get to read it first! (It’s brief, just 3-1/3
pages…but I’m so PROUD of it, you’ll see why.) It’s in a temporary
folder for now. I still need to find some cute images for it, before
uploading it to my blog account.
http://gay-bible.org/temp/RAYS-OF-EMERALD.htm
—
Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2017 22:47:01
Subject: Re: A Peek Preview: RAYS OF EMERALD!
From: Zeke Krahlin
To: Eleanor Cooney
On Fri, Jul 7, 2017 at 10:12 PM, Eleanor Cooney wrote:
{{ Quite a story! }}
Thank you…lotsa fun comin’ up with unique metaphors. A bit of Lewis Carrol in there, and Lovecraft, and Jurassic Park: I’m sure you got ’em all. I had planned to lay out the whole dialogue I had with Michael while on the stairs: many interesting ideas were expressed. But the story came together without that, I knew it was perfect at a certain point…and I just had to let go.
{{ So, in retrospect, what do you think? Was it Larkin, or a doppelganger? Or both? }}
Oh, I’m sure it was Larkin. Just like him to suddenly appear so I could tell him about that email, if I couldn’t actually hand him the printout. He had kept me waiting o’erlong (almost two weeks). But when he really busts his gonads to evoke an extra-extra-special encounter, he then allows more than the usual time to pass, before we meet once more. That is so I can spend sufficient days to savor the delicious scenario, like sampling a fine chocolate truffle that you swirl about on your tongue in such a way as to delay its mournful dissolution.
And so like him to put that mysterious twist into the encounter, making me seriously ponder if it was someone else…whom I weirded out as a consequence. And that is why he did not speak…his voice would’ve blown his cover right off the lid. I’m wondering if some, or much, of the crowd that night were hired actors who followed Larkin’s script to create this latest mini-adventure. I suspect so, seeing as there’s way too much synchronicity /not/ to be contrived by human intent. Ergo I also wonder about all our previous magical encounters…were there actors helping shape the scenario?
Larkin /playing/ his doppelganger. Clever.
Speaking of the idea that Larkin may work with actors to create some of these adventures:
Back in the days of the ol’ Hole in the Wall Saloon, Larkin had his own following, “groupies.” They’d either show up with him leading the pack, or show up on their own and wait for him to make his appearance a short while later. Well, one afternoon I experienced a multi-doppelganger right out of one of the most popular episodes in that old sitcom, “Cheers.”
This is the one where the episode opens with lookalikes of all the regular actors…who looked kinda like them, but you could tell they were fakes. Norm was replaced by another, as were all the main stars. It was very funny. Instead of “Hi, Norm” when his doppelganger stepped in, they said, “Hi, Fred” (or whatever name they used; I forgot).
Well the same thing happened to me at The Hole! In steps this tall, handsome lanky dude the same height as Larkin, and looking like his brother! All the groupies were also doppelgangers of Larkin’s own followers. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing! Even the bartender, Gary, was replaced by a replica.
This lasted about 45 minutes, then they all swarmed on outta there. I had no one to share this bizarre event with, to ask about. Nor did anyone approach me that same day or any day after, to reveal the hilarious scheme.
Now, Eleanor, how could something like that just happen outta the blue? Of course it didn’t, it was scripted and rehearsed by those hired to perform. Which also suggests that the LGBT community (or a significant portion thereof) regards me highly…or they wouldn’t go through such an amazing dupe.
– Zeke
ZekeBlog 2.0 