Thu, 19 May 2005

Froggie Went A-Drinkin’
The funny thing is, just a few nights ago I had a dream with peeple I knew in it as well. It’s not a rare thing to have individual peeple pop up w/o reason in dreams of mine (at least, the few that I can remember after I wake up); you’ve been in a couple, but this one was mostly (for some inexplicable reason) Hank and David Moses. David, looking for all the world like a young John Barth, was searching in the other room for something, possibly a book, while Hank was trying out acrobatic neo-bennihanna cooking techniques involving peppers and strange purple fruit. I, meanwhile, am sitting on the couch, thinking that the surroundings kinda look like Heath and Amy’s old place, except different, like it’s up in the trees, but I’m not sure about any of that because it was night, and it couldn’t have been too far off the ground because here comes a frog riding on the back of a sleek black cat with brambles and briars in its hair, who begins communicating to the frog in low purrs, furthering my long-held suspicion that cats are a form of alien intelligence. The frog gets off and starts walking around on his two hind legs, which I believe is anatomically impossible and so I ask him how it is he can walk around like that, being utterly oblivious of the strangeness of asking a walking frog anything.

“The power of likker, boy!” says Frog, who proceeds to pull out a thimble filled with some kind of green-blue hooch and takes a big ol’ swallow, nearly knocking him back on his warty ass.

“Well now, hey, frog, how’s about you pull up a chair and make yourself comfortable?” says Hank, always the perfect southern gentleman.

“Well now and I guess I don’t mind taking a load off, mister Hank, what kinda action you got going on in the frying pan?”

“Aw, this? This ain’t nothing, just some things I picked up at the market and I got the idea to mix ‘em together rather than go to the store for a real meal, you’re more than welcome to help yourself.”

At which point David comes out from the back room, no book (or anything else, for that matter) in hand, and, positively delighted to see the frog, busts out a fat-ass grin and pulls up the chair next to him, asking him how’s his kids been, and for some reason beyond me I suddenly get some kinda psychic backstory that David had a thing for one of frog’s daughters, which either means frog has some human in his lineage somewhere or I’ve severely underappreciated David’s penchant for cross-speciesism.

“They’re good as ever, the kids are just right as rain and all but the little woman, she’s, well, she’s got this idea in her head that she needs to get the girls married off before too long so she’s been putting out ads, putting up flyers, I mean to tell you you get that woman started on something and it’s wild horses stopping it, but the girls, I mean, they ain’t but maybe 26 at the oldest, with Cathy, and Julie ain’t even through with her schoolin’ at the college yet, I mean, they got all kinds of time.”

Now David gets this look in his eye like maybe an entry window just popped open, and Hank apparently sees this coming and, playing it awfully smooth, starts pouring Frog another thimbleful of the booze and asking “Well, now, maybe you don’t wanna be too hasty on that, how’s about if Cathy met herself a nice, upstanding man, I mean Julie needs herself some more time but Cathy, she’s about ready to meet someone nice, someone with a future in the arts.”

“You reckon?”

“Absadamnlutely. Look at it like this, you get her married to a nice upstanding gentleman, and not no dingus from the want ads but someone decent and smart, and then you get the wife off your back and get Cathy taken care of and get to throw a big-ass party with all kindsa booze, I mean, that’s a win-win situation, if you hear what I’m sayin’.”

David’s practically bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet by this time, and is about ready to blurt out his marital intentions right there, but Frog says “Y’know, mister Hank, you talk right sensible for a cobble-chef, in fact, I’m fixin’ to get ready to go out and find that girl a right proper man, just as soon as I have me one more sip of my medicine, if you don’t mind pouring me another one, up to the rim, I’m a big boy, oh that’s the stuff…”

So while Frog contented himself with the healing powers of alcohol, Hank and Dave came into the other room, where I had been watching this exchange kinda blankly, and the three of us conferred and agreed that David was a suitable spouse for Cathy, who I still didn’t know if she was frog, human, or other, but I got the impression she was practically an angel descended from heaven to grace god’s green earth, this girl apparently was as groovy as a Victoria 78, she was the shit.

“Mister Frog, I got a proposition for you, and I think you’re gonna like the sound of this…” beamed Hank, in a triumphant voice, and though the rest of the dream is a blur. I’m fairly sure David ended up with Cathy the possibly-frog princess, Hank got loaded and made a downright touching speech at the reception, and I got arrested for drunk and disorderly.
(12:07.05.19.2005) [/alpha] #