Listen, before you go any further, you should know that Tales of the Birdman is intended for mature audiences only. The views expressed within do not reflect the views of WordPress, Shiny Red Nothing, or myself. Read at your own risk and enjoy. Life’s too short to be offended.
Tales of the Birdman by Wayne Bird
II: Hotels, Drains, and Ships That Sail
4: The Birdman vs March Of The Penguins
Bruce and I broke down somewhere in Indiana, lost and drunk on Thanksgiving day afternoon. There was no help to be found, so we went sled riding. My cell phone could catch no signal, and there was no way I was getting back into Bruce’s car. I had been watching the red glow of the Brake Light on the dash as he took the country roads at sixty, cruise control set, clutching my vintage Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom lunchbox thermos (full of gin)- sometimes with both hands. You should know that Bruce has no use of his legs and drives his car using a hand-brake and hand-accelerator.
We were laughing about the movie I had bought for my parents, March Of The Penguins, and the improbability of it being good, when we realized that we were on our way to a head-on collision. Both lanes coming around the bin up ahead were occupied by cars, speeding alongside each other. Things did not go in slow motion, and I remained calm, though I knew we might have been about to die. The white car in the oppisite lane slowed and the red car in ours sped up and maneuvered around us.
There was silence before Bruce said, “They were racing.” “They were racing,” I said. “I didn’t panic, though. I just hit the brakes and stayed on course.” I noticed the thermos was at his feet, all of it’s contents emptied onto the driverside floor. “If I would’ve swerved left, we would have collided head-on and we would have wrecked with both of those cars or have gone over the hill and down into the cemetary there. If I would’ve swerved right, it would have been into the ditch- that creek. I just slowed down and stayed course. We took them head on.”
By this point, I was shaking and sweating, panic having was amazed by Bruce’s zenlike calm. “We almost died,” I said. “I almost die every day,” he deadpanned. “We need break
“Let’s stop and I’ll put some in.” “I don’t have any.” “Let’s stop at a gas station.” “Where’s a gas station?”
set in late. I fluid.”
“I don’t know where we are.” I find the map gin soaked at Bruce’s feet but know it doesn’t really matter. We had been lost for hours and were too fucked up to care. Plus, I didn’t really want to see my family anyway.
Bruce started to giggle and I couldn’t see his eyes because of the cheap wrap-around sunglasses he was wearing. I was suspicious.
“What are you thankful for, Wayne?” We are at the top of a giant hill. He began to roll down the windows and said, “It’s like a roller coaster!” and the next thing I know we’re barrelling down the hill at eighty miles an hour, Bruce laughing hysterically, gin chilling at his feet, screaming, “WHAT ARE YOU THANKFUL FOR, WAYNE?”
Seatbelts. Jaws of life. Morphine. “Tell me,” he says as we are driving up the next hill. He rolls up the
windows and cranks up the heat. “I’m thankful that your heater works and that we can stop at the church
at the top of this hill and maybe call Triple A.” “Okay,” he says, “I’m drunk anyways. Where’s the gin?” I remind him that it’s pooled at his boots as he pulls into the narrow
driveway that parrallels the church. The building is a fairly large, white, old fashioned country church, complete with steeple. At least a third of the paint is chipped, wood exposed, camoflauging the church against the backdrop of hills, snow, and dead trees. The driveway dove steeply, down and around the church to the parking lot. Bruce rode the brakes down, but they were pretty much gone and we slid right out of the parking lot and onto the hill that rolled down for about an acre where woods began. Luckily, a tree stopped us from getting more than a few feet out onto the snow covered grass.
Bruce looked at me and grabbed my arm. His glasses had fallen from his head where a smile was growing on his face, wild like his eyes. “I am invincible, and you will be whenever you are with me.”
We rode sleds that were left behind the church at the bottom of the path children had drafted into the hill, between the church and it’s driveway. The real fun would have been taking the hill that we had almost gone down in the car, but I couldn’t imagine dragging Bruce back up and didn’t want to do it alone.
“I’ll do it,” he assured me, thermos refilled. He yelled various dog names at the woods below, which were beginning to accept the sun where they bordered- shades of orange and pink cast across the horizon and it’s clouds, reflecting on the snow covered trees below. “But if I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it right. If I’m going down that hill, I want wild dogs or coyotes or some shit there to greet me and claim me for Thanksgiving Dinner.”
Instead, we rode the hill alongside the church, me dragging Bruce in his red-plastic-disk-sled up the hill over and over again, telling him about what super powers I would have if I could have super powers. Bruce told me that he didn’t have time for nonsense like super powers, but then again, he did want to sleep with every girl he ever saw. I asked him if Dorothy, his social worker, the woman he has claimed to be his personal Succubus, would come to him if he wanted sex right now. He says she would, but even succubi deserve to have a Thanksgiving off.
The sun went down and after a time, I became exhausted and too drunk to drag Bruce around. He wasn’t cooperating anymore, anyways. So we went back to the car and cranked the heat. No cars drove passed us. If any had passed while we were riding sleds, we hadn’t noticed.
“I haven’t been sledding in twenty years, man,” Bruce said, long after I thought he had fallen asleep.
“It’s been a while,” I agree.
“I’m just gonna let the car run out of gas, man. There’s not much left. If no one comes by morning, you’ll have to walk back to that farm a half mile back or so.”
“Okay.”
Before we fall asleep he asks me what VD, my girlfriend, was doing for the holiday. I admit that we had broken up, and I tell him the truth about her and he is shocked.
You should know that no one could have been more shocked than me.
— –
In the morning, we were woken by a kindly preacher and an asshole tow- truck driver. The preacher didn’t seem to mind that the car smelled of gin and pot, or that we had wrecked into a tree behind his church, or that we tore up the yard riding sleds. He was just sincerely glad that we were alright. “Thank God,” Bruce says, showing me his teeth. The tow-truck had us out of the yard in minutes, and damage to both car and tree appeared minimal. Brake fluid was found in the backseat of the car, and Bruce assured me that it would be enough to get us home. I slept the whole way.
— –
Antartica looks beautiful and eery. It’s desolate and nothing should live there, but life does persist and does what it is we all do best in life: go out of our way to get some ass.
I watch the Emporer Penguin males huddle close together, sheltering their eggs from the winds in a large mass of warm bodies, snow and ice battering the group. I pull my favorite blue blanket up to my chin and am glad to be home, on my couch, and alone. Bruce and I had had White Castles and shared a forty ounce bottle of Little Kings for Thanksgiving Dinner at two in the afternoon, and that was fine by me. I knew what to expect from my family, and I knew what was bubbling under the surface and looming overhead.
Christmas.
But for now, I put it out of my mind, and watch my movie in my dark little apartment. I am alive, and I am Thankful for that.
I wonder about the filmmakers of MOTP and what they must have endured to make that movie. They battled the coldest temperatures on Earth right alongside those Penguins, and what they captured is beautiful and even moving. The landscape is unforgiving and harsh, improbable and alien. The Penguins act in unison and carry out an ancient ritual before the cameras, and I want to drink with those Frenchmen and hear their harrowing stories.
You should know that they suffered it all for the same reason the Penguins did. They wanted to score.
Of course, the world gets a beautiful film, and we all learn a little and get the thrill of watching Penguins court and mate (are they mating? I think they’re mating!), but the fact of the matter is that those filmmakers made that movie to impress chicks so that they could get laid and propogate our species. Isn’t that why we do everything we do? Instict.
I don’t know.
Mostly, I find myself wondering, if I were a Penguin, after marching seventy miles, would the one chick that was attracted to me invariably be the most fucked up Penguin I have ever met? The kind that attempts to steal an egg from another expecting couple after her own egg has been frozen? The kind that would teach me to carry the precious orb above my claws and under my warm little belly, only to abandon us after leaving with the other female Penguins to march back to the ocean for food? Will that make me fall in love with her?
The phone rings and it is Dorothy. She and Bruce will be accompanying me when I drive back to Indiana for Christmas. It doesn’t matter that they are not invited, Bruce has convinced her that I could use their support.
I could.
After we hang up, I close my eyes and dream of dragging Bruce on his red- plastic-disc-sled across the frozen tundra alongside the marching Emporor Penguins. Bruce is sipping gin from my vintage Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom lunchbox thermos and telling me about how, when we finally stop, he’s gonna have to give Dorothy a call. All of a sudden, he commands me to stop and removes his sunglasses to look me in the eyes. He shows me his teeth andsays, “When you are with me, you are invincible.”
Shiny Red Nothing 