Sitting here watching Broken Flowers thinkin’ bout’ all the trillion trillion things happening right now as I write this the joy the suffering the way Obama looks at himself in the mirror shaving wonder how the hell he sleeps at night might we dance together today under the sunny skies of North Carolina my heart is singing and the thought of the thought of the thought of happiness of good friends of “Golden Days, Golden Days” then you know it’s up to me to take you away for a moment why don’t we do that…
A young woman walks into a Midwestern bar out of loneliness and a break from her smelly apartment. As she enters – the eighteen drunk, insensitive males look her up and down as if they were inspecting meat at a factory. The grunting can be heard a mile away and Cindy ponders the notion that his really big cock just got a little bit harder looking at her – is both repelling and enticing in the worst of ways. She can feel it, being subjected to this carnivore delight, the animalistic and primitive way guys rip the soul out of women and reduce them to ass and tits. They down another Bud and strut with the simple pride of being part of the man-clan. ” Fuck you if you don’t want in...”
“I believed in fairy tales,” she thinks to herself and goes to the bar to order a beer. Goddamit, a spider is on my back. And that spider knows what is coming. It bites her on the shoulder as a reminder of life’s pain, the unending cruelty of physical sensation going either direction, pleasure or agony.
“I believed in true love, a Prince to rescue me, God, everything.” The lustful eyes are saturating her, fucking her from the imaginations of lonely men just three feet away. Jesus, am I the only girl in here? FUCKING SPIDER!
The tattoo infested bartender looks up – terrified as what unfolds. The old red roof of Fred’s Beer Barn begins to rip apart as a distraction that simple men cannot fathom ignites upon the Nebraska night, carrying in its funnel a hundred corn plants and one pathetic scarecrow. The wind of the F-3 Tornado is like ten freight trains off the track and headed for a cliff, sucking up wood and steel and drunk, horny, overweight men into the night sky of Omaha. These “men” become boys quickly and shriek in terror as two of the regulars, Frank Simmons and Ted Slavinsky – are sucked up for a ride into oblivion they have only had nightmares of, despite holding onto wooden posts and their beer bottles, like a sacred ornament they will die to defend. Their overweight, beer and meat filled bodies are ripped to pieces as they see their wasted lives pass in front of their eyes in one American instant. Ted once had a thought that was truly original he believed, and the moment before the cyclone devours him, he realizes how stupid a thought it really was – to serve Beer in vending machines. It was a fuckin’ good idea at the time… He ponders quickly as the two hundred and fifty mile an hour wind rips his fat, worthless body to bloody pieces, smashing him repeatedly on the pavement in front of two schoolgirls. They no longer believe in Fairy Tales either.
And Cindy Sampson keeps drinking, taking in the shock and horror on a night she really just wanted to be held on. The men who moments ago were plotting ways to defile her body in unmentionable ways are taken away to certain death, and she thinks to herself that this tornado may make her a true believer in the Almighty after all. The bar area is miraculously not hit by the funnel and she looks and looks at the chaos and looks again, holding tight to her St. Pauli Girl and the notion that to die by a tornado is a glorious death and should be savored. This “Finger of God” may take us away to some other world, she thinks, a world no man could ever give me.
Maybe I should jump in the eye and see where it takes me – away from this mediocre life where the most exciting that that happens to me is ordering extra sour cream on my bean burrito at Taco Bell. I’m Cindy Sampson and I want a goddamn adventure!
Though it was not Cindy’s night to die, the singing goes on from cloud to cloud as the harmonies of Mozart and Mr. Vivaldi open up the glittering passageway to that far off place, but so close that you could whisper and infinite souls hear you through the madness. The voices of Cindy’s ancestors who followed the road of truth and fell short are waiting with all she ever thought, felt, dreamt, hoped for, and loved The twister is gone and people have gone with it. Fred’s Beer Barn has no roof now. The weather looks nice on the horizon. Cindy can now see a meteor shower light up the June skies over Tornado Alley.
