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by Willie Smith
The other day I entered my local library looking for a little pornography. I’m addicted to porn but hate
to pay for it; especially when my unemployment benefits have been, not so recently as all that,
exhausted.
I sidled over to the magazine shelves, hoping for a hot issue of People, or perhaps a Life special on
the history of the brassiere. Instead happened onto last month’s Lowrider. Never before noticed
Lowrider in the collection. Likely the library’s lip service to politically correct automotive sleaze.
Whatever the motive – political, mechanical, or just a few dollars too many in the departmental
budget – I was of course hypnotized by the scantily-clad jezebel on the cover.
Grabbed up the thick slick; also the current issue of Discover, so as to have a scientific periodical
with which to mask the smut. Slinked off to a corner table. Glanced around to ascertain my behavior
was going unnoticed; as indeed it was. Then sat down with my back to the wall to ferret out pinups
hid among the voluminous pages of lowslung internal combustion glitz.
Fortyfive minutes of meticulous turning of the 228 pages contained between the brazen cover and
the camshaft extravaganza on the back yielded no less than sixteen women all under the age of
thirty, quite pretty, thoroughly well proportioned and wearing a grand total of twelve bikini tops and
ten thong bottoms. Models with missing tops and/or bottoms were strategically positioned so as to
hold the overall body count on the threshold of PG-14.
The ladies, of course, were in lust only with the vehicles – the customized Impalas, the spiffy
Specials, the chopped up roadsters, the lowdown spifflicated wagons, the chrome drunk flivvers.
(Porn is, however, not about identification; but the loss thereof – the drowning of ego in a sea of
lubricity). They leaned – pouting into the camera, bust brushing a windshield. Spreadeagled on the
hood so the ornament doubled as a G-string. Or grinned up from checking out a wheel – mammaries
adangle, ass aimed like a howitzer into the next county.
And about wheels it is. Row upon row of gleaming, scintillating wheels. Page after page of arrays of
uniquely crafted and individually designed chromium wheel after chromium wheel. After a while, after
two pinups interspersed between twenty pages of advertisements for fifty different wheels on each
page, I began to thrill not only to the sight of sculpted cylindrical chrome, but also to the titles the
marketers bestow upon each distinctive design:
Desperado… Fusion… Flash… Crystal… Ricochet… Laser… Alligator… Ego… Torque…
Because I am not only a pervert, but something of a smalltime poet as well, and perhaps also
because I don’t drive and have never owned a car, I soon found myself engrossed in stringing
together the tags of these magnificently tooled monuments to circularity, these blinding jewels
essential for parading around town:
Roulette pistol eclipse transformer nitro radius crystal.
Hypnotic spider kamikaze Jupiter launch.
Exploit blade rush ego juice ricochet sublime.
Bounce inspire lucre spank. Turbo spinner phoenix bellflower.
Firestar monster infinity tempter zebra showstopper.
Taboo torque seduction dynasty messiah.
Calypso ozone boomerang.
Elusive stiletto blitz.
Desperado fusion matrix phantom.
Onyx alligator iris virus fat boy wasp hog chopper.
Rapacious illusion rewind ecstasy revolt.
Firestar infinity zebra inspire volt spank.
Excalibur clover polaris lucre flash.
Wheels to Mars, wheels to the stars, wheels to whatever triple-X action one might encounter in any
extra-galactic alien bar.
Humanity has endured to date three pivotal discoveries: fire, the wheel and zero meaning nothing in
this place. These superfluously fiery wheels unite all three. Especially as I – myself a nothing in this
place – contemplate these revolutions of bling, which can also be purchased – for a few extra
shekels – gold plated, silver plated, hyperblack and/or plated in genuine platinum simulation…
I looked up. Gazed across the Wednesday morning library. Felt the wall at my back; the wallet flat in
my hip pocket.
Yes, I’m out of work. Addicted to prurience. No guns, no kids, no bumper on which to stick my
philosophy, not even a hubcap. Now squandering time with nouns meant to hawk schlock to
enthusiasts only marginally in quest of skin.
Yes, my life in this America is worthless, meaningless, devoid of fulfillment, of intent, of direction. But
here – at the points of the needles that assault my eye – I see sewn into the imagination enough fluff
to inflate with macho the party balloons of nihilism.
There is today so little to believe. Physics confesses confusion. Math admits incompleteness.
Happiness is a millionaire on TV selling a book.
But everyone – from the successful automotive hobbyist right on down to the most miserable of
unemployed lecherous poets – is in desperate need of something, often anything, on which to fixate.
BIO NOTES:
Willie Smith is deeply ashamed of being human. His work
celebrates this horror. He has probably reached the last fibonacci
number of his life and likely will not hang around too much longer. He would
consider it an honor should you be so kind as to read his material while he is
still alive. If you are so foolish as to want to spend money, visit
oneleggedcowpress for his DADA AFTER MATH.
Free stuff is at various other web sites. The chef recommends SUBMACHINEGUN
CONSCIOUSNESS at semantikon.com, various stories at corpse.org, sticky, gooey
sickening little poems at sites like myfavoritebullet.com, zygoteinmycoffee,
thievesjargon, bloodcookies, fifthstreetreview, etc.