The Adventures of Christof
Episode 1:
Kucinich and I
Episode 1:
Kucinich and I
Let this be a cautionary tale for those that believe the chicken came before the egg. And for those that believe eggs over easy in a diner south of Morgan County, Tennessee is a poor meal in a bad place for souls to sober and for thoughts to hide. This all began with a man named Buxton Bill (real name: Bill Buxton [real, real name: William Perry Buxton]) who always wore a plaid shirt with overalls. See, Buxton Bill was the mayor of Ogden Nashville (named for the poet). Though Ogden Nashville was really just three houses that were all owned by Buxton Bill in the city of Cleveland. The three houses were green, red, and orange. The green house was for fucking, the red house was for drinking, and the orange house for savings and loans.
Why I was in Cleveland is hardly important and frankly none of your business. Why I was in the orange house was because I needed $532 to pay for a stain glass window the size of a Buick and twice as pretty, which had been broken by myself and my too-easy-to-slip-off shoes the prior Tuesday.
I was at the counter filling out the who, the where, and the what of me, when to my surprise Democratic Candidate Dennis Kucinich came through the door, pistols blazing.
Now, anyone who knows anything knows that Dennis Kucinich was born in Cleveland and was elected mayor in 1977.
I dropped the forms and ran to his side to say, "Oh my God, is it really you, Democratic Candidate Dennis Kucinich?"
Democratic Candidate Dennis Kucinich replied, "Yes, it is me, Democratic Candidate Dennis Kucinich."
Before I could ask for his autograph, Kucinich raised his Smith and Wesson and blew the counter clerk away.
Before I could ask what drove Kucinich to do such a thing, Buxton Bill himself burst in from the back room, a half-gutted fish in one hand and a steak knife in the other.
Before I could gasp, Buxton Bill slapped the fish down on the counter and barked, "I knew it was you, Democratic Candidate Dennis Kucinich!"
Before I could run out the door, Kucinich grabbed me by the collar and pressed the barrel to my throat.
Before I could widen my eyes in shock, Buxton Bill said, "You wouldn't."
"Oh, yes, I would."
"You don't have the mustard to do it."
In the twitch of an eye, Buxton Bill threw the steak knife, but to the disadvantage of Buxton Bill, his arm had been caught on a rusty nail in a bait shop the prior Sunday which prompted him to get a tetanus shot the following Monday which caused his arm to not maneuver precisely the way his brain had commanded, and the steak knife went sailing through the window into the harsh daylight of mid-afternoon.
With a belly laugh to end all belly laughs, Kucinich shot the half-gutted fish that lay inert on the countertop, which was needless to say redundant. This was all just before he was out the door and on a motorcycle. Buxton Bill ran out of the orange house and hollered after him, "This isn't over, Democratic Candidate Dennis Kucinich!"
Six weeks and two days passed, when a knock knock knock on my door woke me up round 7:49 a.m. in a seedy motel in New York. I sat up in my bed stained with sweat, sperm, blood and cherry vodka. The whore next to me didn't rise, not even when I said, "Who is it?"
"It's me, Democratic Candidate Dennis Kucinich. Let me in, quick!"
When I unlocked the door, sure enough, Kucinich came running in with nothing on but his Fruit of the Loom covering up what God gave him.
"I'm gonna use your shower. Don't answer the phone. Don't open the door."
He slid his briefs off to reveal nine inches of democratic power and all I could do was stare.
"This is cool with you, right, Christof?"
"Sure. But how did you find me, Democratic Candidate Dennis Kucinich?"
"I've been following you since you saved my ass in Ogden Nashville."
"You followed me for six weeks, all the way to the big apple?"
"The biggest, Christof. Hanging on the rotten branch of this world that is slowly being chipped away by woodpeckers who are its very inhabitants."
He went into the bathroom and walked out smelling fresh like Irish Spring twenty-two minutes later.
"Who's the broad? We may have to bump her off."
"I think she's already dead."
"Good. That will save us some time."
Dennis Kucinich and I walked out of the motel room an hour later, me in bright green swimming shorts and my signature blue blazer, Kucinich in the whore's red dress, the both of us carrying her motionless, naked body. We tossed her in a dumpster, and when we heard the thud, it was followed by a "Where the hell am I?"
Kucinich started running, but I stopped him, and said, "Shouldn't we do something?"
He opened the dumpster a crack and whispered, "Vote Kucinich!"
Out of New York, and out of control, the two of us were sailing the skies in a boosted hot air balloon. I knew Kucinich was a quick-thinker, but what I didn't know was that he is the fasted and most successful hot air balloon thief the world has yet to see.
"Where are we going, Denny?"
He didn't move. All he did was stare into the sunset.
"Why are we on the run, Denny?"
His gaze marched on toward the horizon.
"But, Denny, I don't understand. What are we after?"
And without turning to me, the man spoke, "Freedom, Christof. Freedom and truth."
I can't be sure, but I think I saw a single tear roll down his rough and tumble exterior.
I didn't ask him anything else that day. I just stared in awe at nature's transition from day to night, as we landed the hot air balloon on the roof of a steak house in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
"Didn't you say we were going to stay out of major cities?"
"First off, my little Italian friend, the day I consider Pittsburgh a major city is the day I consider Mary Louise Schneider anything more than a good wet fuck. Second off-"
"Who is Mary Louise Schneider?"
"The best wet fuck from Dallas, Texas to Dallas, Oregon. Now, second off-"
"I was born in Dallas, Oregon."
A hard slap came down upon my virgin cheek. The mean face Kucinich was giving me subsided to his normal disposition.
"I didn't want to do that. But this is important. I was trying to tell you we aren't in Pittsburgh for no reason, son. I owe an old friend something."
"What do you owe him?"
"The beating of a lifetime."
When we entered through the heavy front doors and watched as everyone jammed there mouths with bloody hunks of dead cow, then Kucinich turned to me, "Do you like steak?"
"I'm a vegetarian."
"Good, I want you to use that. Make sure none of these overweight men, women, and children make it past you when they rush the door. No one leaves. Everyone watches."
I gave a nod and observed as he pulled out his trusty Smith and Wesson and shot twice at the ceiling. Immediately people started eating faster and sticking half-eaten t-bones in their purses before getting up and running for the door. For me. I kept them in while staring at the blood that dripped from their chins and stained the collars of their shirts.
I didn't think I could hold my arms out to block the double doors any longer, so I was glad to see everyone turn around as someone came sliding down a fire pole from the upstairs office. It was none other than the overall-covered Buxton Bill, a steak knife in his hand and a half-gutted rabbit in his teeth. When he saw who had fired the shots, he spit the remains of the rabbit at Kucinich's feet.
"Again, I knew it was you, Democratic Candidate Dennis Kucinich!"
"Does that mean, again, you are going to throw your knife out the window?"
I started laughing and said, "Yeah, you tell him, DK!"
"No. This time I'm gonna use it gut you proper and hang your pretty little head above my bed!"
I stopped laughing.
"You have so much to learn, Baby B."
Buxton's maniacal grin dissolved instantly.
"Don't call me 'Baby B.'"
Kucinich dropped the other four bullets from his pistol and slowly walked toward Buxton Bill.
"Baby B., this is where it ends."
With each step of Kucinich's boots against the wooden planks of the floor, the steak house seemed to grow a little more silent.
"I told you not to call me that!"
The good people of the steak house and I watched as tears formed in Buxton Bill's eyes, but he still held the steak knife firm, ready to stab. Then it happened, and it happened so fast.
Kucinich gave Buxton Bill a pistol-whip across the face. And then another, and another until he curled up in a ball and embraced his tears. Kucinich leaned in toward the weeping mess of a man on the floor and whispered something in his ear that made Buxton Bill cry louder, then he gave him one last pistol-whip for good measure before we left.
When we were on the road, croaching in the flatbed of someone's truck, I asked, "What did you tell him?"
"That's between me and Baby B."
"Oh, Democratic Candidate Dennis Kucinich, you're incorrigible!"
Kucinich and I were on the road for the following month and a half. We crossed more states than most men do in a lifetime. We righted more wrongs than any other democratic candidate ever will. We did more lines of speed than any repo-man does in a given year. I have seen more duels at high noon and knife fights at sundown with Kucinich at my side, fighting for freedom and truth, than I could ever hope to see for the rest of my days.
And here I sit, at the end of our journey, alone in a diner south of Morgan County, Tennessee, with a slice of strawberry rhubarb pie and eggs over easy filling the loneliness I feel now that Kucinich has left to make the world a better place. And he couldn't take me with him. I understood, but didn't want to. He picked up the bill for my pie and eggs and kissed me on the forehead before he left.
Some men say Democratic Candidate Dennis Kucinich is an extremist, a radical, a feisty little liberal who can't make it. What ever he may be, all I can say is I loved him more than I loved my late great uncle Wally and more than I love my wife, Karen. And until the day I see his sweet face again, I will still be in the diner where last I saw him - maybe not physically, but the heart of this writer, for what it's worth, is still sitting in the corner booth of one of the greatest stories ever told.