The Louisiana Bar & Grill

Broadway, Greenwich Village

Earth A

Joe Rice, DaDamerican stirred his Coke without ice with his straw. He looked around the table. Accompanying him were Battling Beatnik, pre-eminent writers and poets, and most of Greenwich’s metahuman community. One prominent figure was missing. It was his funeral service from which they had just returned. The Howler, AKA Allen Ginsberg was no more. Considered the cornerstone of the Greenwich super crowd, he died not in battle with some dastardly villain, not in an attempt to save an innocent’s life, but in a different battle altogether. Terminal liver cancer had taken his life.

DaDamerican felt so young and inexperienced. He and BB were probably the greenest in a group that had veterans like William S. Burroughs and the Silver Streak on the other end. These two had known Allen and each other since the beginnings of their careers. DaDamerican was always honored to be around them. And when he got to meet The Howler, he could barely speak.

Burroughs grinned. There was a light in his eyes, perhaps even brighter than the one in Ginsberg’s. Feistier, maybe. "People, your emotion is touching, but Allen would be the first to kick your [posterior]s out of this funk! Nothing long with feelings of loss, but moping around doesn’t help anybody! Least of all Allen!"

"William’s right," Silver Streak said. "we’re just sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves." He raised his glass of wine. "To The Howler! To Allen!" The rest of the group raised their glasses and clinked them together.

Green of the spoke up. "Without him, I don’t think the Rainbow Squad would be here today. He was a real inspiration to us." His colleagues nodded somberly.

The usually silent Checkmate spoke up. "Once …" he said hesitantly, "he beat me at chess. He …was a great man."

One by one, each person present gave his own little tribute to their fallen comrade. Pan and Tink, the Peacekeeper, Post-Modern Man, the original Captain Mod and his current successor, the Beastie Boys …it was a virtual who’s who of the Village heroes. Eventually, all eyes turned to DaDamerican.

He cleared his throat. "I thought I’d know what to say …obviously I was wrong." Some of the older ones chuckled. "I’m new here, I know. Allen was an inspiration to me, too. As a hero, a poet, and a human being. First time I actually saw him in person was at a poetry reading this year. He reminded me of Yoda …so small but so—I don’t know—wise yet mischievous. Later that night, we teamed up against a gang harassing some homeless folks. And he still had it. He was a marvel out there. I was about a fifth as old as he, but he was out there, doing three times as much as me. I’m going to miss him—I regret not knowing him better. But I hope he’s found some spiritual reward wherever he is. He deserves it."

******Later******

The assemblage drifted out of the restaurant, saying their good-byes. Battling Beatnik and DaDamerican stopped out on Broadway. "Sure you don’t want to stay here? I can put you up in my dorm room."

"Don’t worry about it, DaDaman. Me and my chopper got a date with the road." DaDamerican looked at the sidewalk. There was BB’s celebrated bike. He didn’t remember that being there before. An instant later, the Beatnik was on it. "Stay in touch, eh?"

"Yeah. I will." DaDamerican watched his Ashland comrade drive off. He smirked to himself. "Damn, but that boy is cool." He walked back down to his dorm. He had laundry to do.

******Later Still******

Joe’s in civvies now. Baggy blue jeans, light blue Beck T-shirt, and red Chuck Taylors. He sits outside the Weinstein laundry room. All those dryers make it too hot. So he sits in his uncomfortable purple plastic chair, reading Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami. He checks his watch. Ten minutes until the Simpsons. Again, he glances in the laundry room. His dryers have stopped. He goes across the hall to the TV room. A bunch of gang-banger wannabees are watching the tube.

"Whatchu guys watchin’?" he asks.

One, with curly black hair and a sideways-cocked visor slurs something like "ballgame."

"Ah," Joe feels self-conscious about his desire to see the Simpsons over a sporting event. "Um, who’s playing?"

The visor boy looks annoyed. "The Bulls," he says. Joe realizes it wasn’t "ballgame" but "Bull’s game." He explains his mistake to a blank face.

"Who they playing?"

"Orlando."

"They’re winning, right?"

"Yeah."

"Ah, OK. Thanks." Joe walks back to the laundry room and puts his three loads precariously into his basket. Goes to the elevator, which takes him back above ground to the fourth floor. One of his room-mates is doing something over the Internet about the Heaven’s Gate cult. He switches to Fox, and inwardly groans as one of those out-takes shows is on. He folds his laundry and puts it away. Brant, from down the hall, comes in to watch.

******Even Later******

Joe sighs, realizing X-Files is a re-run. He turns off the tube and slips the new Pavement album on his computer. He e-mails Trampolina, Infinite Mike, El Wood, Bassmaster, Pookie, and his writing teacher from last semester. He checks the bulletin boards he frequents. Then he opens the story he started the night before, and begins to write, He walked back down to his dorm. He had laundry to do . . .

After a while, he gets this grand idea about making his story meta-textual and self-referential by having the "Joe" in his story write the story he was writing. Unsure how it would go over, he spells out his subtle move in the next paragraph.

He switches from Pavement to Blur. Looks outside his window. Nothing awry. The nights had been rather calm of late. He hadn’t gone out in costume for about a week. He took a sip of the lemonade he got from the cafeteria last night. It wasn’t good then, and it hadn’t gotten any better. He continued writing, recording his actions. Is my life too boring for a story? he thinks. Maybe I should add a fight scene. DaDamerican kicks the idiots in the TV room in the rear. DaDamerican goes to the Pond and has an adventure with Willie and JYu. They barely escape with their lives, but oh, what a tale they could tell. And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Telling stories. Without storytelling where would man be? Probably in a cave playing with his own crap. Joe got excited as "Song 2" came on. The power of the ROCK exhilarated him. He even spelled "exhilarated" right the first time. He made a mental note to tell Kung Fu that this would be a fun song to cover. His mind went back to telling stories. That’s what he really loved. That’s why he writes. That’s why he applied to film school. That’s why he loves talking about most. Stories. He makes some up. Some he lives. Makes it all worthwhile, if it makes a good story. And he felt he had a lot of good stories built up, both from experience (getting trapped in a junkyard with Beatnik, Kung Fu, and some junkyard dogs; being in Bassmaster’s car, wearing all-black, a motorcycle helmet, and an extension cord for a belt when cops pulled them over, and later that night, taking a crap on an abandoned sidewalk) and in his imagination (the secret society whose field agents are either females or insane males who seek to destroy oppression and order; the tale of the time Two Face’s coin kept coming out "good").

He sighed. He was tiring of this introspective, post-modern gibberish. He decided to add some action. Just then, he heard some screams outside his window. A vicious street-gang had cornered a group of his fellow students at NYU. Effortlessly, he tossed his outer clothing off, revealing his costume. He leapt out his window and grabbed the flagpole beside it. He spun himself around, and flipped to the ground. He ran to Washington Square Park, from where he heard the screams. There was the confrontation. He cleared his throat.