Oshkosh did not inspire. But, strangely, Atlanta did. Here's how.
I've never really thought about gun violence before, but what I want to do is rush a TSA rep, seize his gun, shove it in my mouth and yank the trigger. I hope they carry big guns, like 45s, so I can get a big arc of blood and brains behind me. A cone of skull fragments and gray matter and purple clots around seventeen feet long and nine feet wide at its largest point. I want to do this as close as i can to the security checkpoint. But a better scenario has my death ritual taking place in the queue for customer service. That site of extreme disregard. That dantesque endpoint of nullity, frustration and rage. When the brain-snot flies, this shall be a fitting arena. They say the forty-five is a loud gun, and I hope they're right. I want to wake people up and get blood on their shirts. Up to now I've been more interested in hostage situations. A siege sort of mentality. No more. What I seek is a humongous explosion and a spraying of blood and bits. Like lump crabmeat infused with melted purple crayons all over people's faces. A pornographic shit-mess. I can't feel otherwise. Two days of actual and potential air travel, along with its ancillary terminal attendance and the raft of lies I've endured have brought me to a place I never thought I'd be. As miserable as I've ever been I'd never dreamed of suicide, but now I'm sweating I want to do it so bad, and I want to do it all over the representative at the customer service desk of AirTran Airways at Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia. Mayhaps then AirTran will wither upon its sick, dead vine and people might once again consider walking from Greenville to Macon. Rather than sit in this God-Damned hellhole of an air terminal. People might once again start buying mules and keep closer to home. Maiden aunts might be of more use and people might have more children for fear of the diptheria. A more agrarian society. I frankly don't care. What I want is to violently and hellishly end my life with a huge explosion at Hartsfield International Airport and set my brains free to soak the ceiling tiles near gate C-4. Never have I considered the pointlessness of life and of consciousness until my term here began. It is a sickening and soul-destroying scene and I enjoy only the bitter sadness of that man who may never again know his home. I am glad we have no children. They would never learn to trust a father who is always glances away to the ceiling to check the status of a phantom flight. There would be no understanding in those eyes. Daddy is a sick, paranoid man who imagines himself as the agent of some sort of Oddessy where perhaps if one were allowed to drink on sunday, one might see things differently.
When I am gone place the Coca-Cola logo on my headstone, together with the Dead Kennedys' insignia. Rub some stale chicken wings into the freshly-turned earth with your foot. Be sure that the Beach Boys are playing loud and that a folding table filled with an assortment of loaded handguns is nearby, for I would hate for anyone to miss the spirit of the thing. Shoot six saddled white horses in the brains and refer their owners to customer service. Do this in My memory and address all refusals with an elbow to the nostril. My sister Mary is duty bound to throw a party, even though she is a teetotaler. Nonetheless she understands these things well and will probably surprise you with her sense of the apropos, and the bizarre. There shall be zebra and hippo rides at the wake, along with an adrenochrome and jimson weed booth. Her husband is in the service and has a well-honed sense of the bizarre, so expect mustard gas and mortar rounds. In his carefree youth he worked as a butcher. Bring game. Like I said. Anything Goes.
Bullshit. Now four hours until I'm denied the next plane. Phone out of gas and the charger is in the checked baggage.
I tried sleeping in a quiet spot that soon became a deplaning zone. The woman who yesterday told me the wrong gate for my connection to new orleans has been replaced with a reptilian bitch who told me to get my legs out of the way of the deplaning passengers. Only my Dadaesque fatigue kept me from kneeing this person in the solar plexus and extracting vomit and bile from her wizened throat. I should have stood next to her and reminded each of the deplaning passengers that this representative from the airline might be lying to them, carelessly, maliciously, stupidly or otherwise. "C-4?", I might echo..."Actually it's X-98!!! This woman here said that the flight to Charlotte is departing from gate B-9, but I can tell you for a fact that it is leaving from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral later this fall". If I jumped in the air and landed on her chest with my right knee over and over for three or so minutes would I work through this terrible anger and unspeakable frustration? Probably not. And I'd get blood and matter all over the only pair of pants I have right now. If I were to go to the wishing well right now, which is only over at terminal T, I'd throw a bad check for thirty dollars in the hole to be transported to East Texas, where they have the decency and honesty to transport those they hold in contempt from a chain suspended from the back of their pickups. James Byrd truly suffered in his final, apocalyptic undoing. But I envy the feeling of awful clarity he must have felt as the chain-link noose went around his neck. I like to think he looked at those pink devils in the eye and said something like "At last! Some honesty!" And this was a man known as "The best trumpeter in Texas".
Oh Jeez! An hour and a half until my next standby flight. Better go start asking questions. A business such as this cannot be left to its practitioners.