No one must know my terrible secret... House of Noh!
Thursday, March 03, 2005
I think I’m really good at it. So I’m sort of broken-hearted that nobody ever lets me help put their flyers up. Maybe it’s just me being paranoid, but I’m starting to think people don’t mention their flyer-posting activities when they’re around me because they know I’ll insist on helping. This is a shame because I’m really good at putting up flyers. And I enjoy it. I have experience too. In college I had an awesome performance center job and one of the responsibilities was walking through the tiny, picturesque downtown next to the college and asking local stores to display flyers advertising upcoming shows at the performance center. Matt G. was an old pro at it. My first few times out he showed me the ropes. One day we walked the town distributing flyers for a ballet company that was coming to town. We stopped by the old hardware store and put up a flyer in their window, then we stopped by the old tyme barbershop and put a flyer in their window, and then we stopped by the department store and put a flyer up. But when we got to the pet store called Reptile World, Matt G. made as if to pass it by. “Hey, what about Reptile World?” I wanted to know. Necessary background information about Reptile World: It was in a tiny store front but the store went way back. There were all sorts of aquarium parts and hamster cages and mixed in between them were cages with live animals and tropical fish in stinky, algae-filled buckets and whatnot. The place was filthy and merchandise was stacked haphazardly. If you found your way to the back there was a huge rodent breeding facility pasted with signs that said, “Not for sale!” The proprietor bred his rodents at maximum output, so much so that the air was always a few degrees hotter in that area of the store and the air was humid with urine soaked pine chips. It was like a mammalian compost pile filled with wriggling, eyeless, baby pinky mice. There were very few reptiles in the store. You might be wondering, why call it Reptile World if there aren’t many reptiles for sale? It turns out that the proprietor operated a grey-market lizard zoo deep in the basement of the store. That’s what he was supporting with all the rodent breeding. For $1.50 per person the proprietor would unfasten a moth-eaten velvet rope behind the counter across the stairs leading to the basement. The stairwell was totally dark, as was the basement, but then he’d flip one of those huge, evil villain knife switches and a bunch of florescents would flicker on below. As soon as the lights went on the snakes came awake and you could hear the rattling of the rattlesnakes, even from the top of the stairs. Some of my friends wouldn’t go down there, even after they paid their $1.50. The reptile guy was always like. “No refunds!” In addition to the rattlesnakes there were huge boas and pythons, alligators, crocodiles, poisonous frogs, coral snakes, one very depressed fanged featherless bird, a motley crew of iguanas rescued from abandoned trailer homes missing various limbs, a small kimono dragon, cobras, spitting cobras, flying cobras, hissing cobras – pretty much any scary kind of reptile. There was sort of a circle route through the reptile cages. The only ones that had plexiglass cage-fronts were the spitting cobras and the plexiglass was all stained with cobra spit. The rest of the snakes and crap were kept in what looked like chickenwire rabbit hutches. There was only about two and a half feet between the cages and when I walked between them the snakes would strike against the chickenwire along both sides of the aisle, rattling the flimsy looking cages and their loose wooden latches. As I toured the reptile zoo escaped crickets would hop out of the way in front of me on the damp, pocked concrete floor. I don’t know if it was an accident or not, but one time I was down in the reptile zoo alone and the reptile guy turned out the lights. I’ve never experienced such blackness as I did in that damp, humid, poisonous reptile filled basement. I just had to stand there and yell frantically for the reptile guy to turn the lights back on because the snakes were still all worked up and rattling and I knew that if I accidentally brushed up against the chickenwire a snake could bite me through it. I’m afraid it would be an unfair exaggeration if I typed that when the lights finally came back on and I dashed up the stairs I saw that the Reptile World proprietor’s pants were tented with a huge, forked, erection. But anyway, I was a philosophy major and Reptile World was a valuable resource I used to stay practical as I developed my environmental ethic - “I don’t care if that diamond back has a right to exist or not, if it gets out of its cage and comes after me I’m going to go all ape-shit clubbing it with this giant rawhide dog-chew!” Okay, so back to flyering. Matt G. didn’t want to ask the guy to hang a flyer in his shop. I took his reticence to be the result of his terror for poisonous reptiles. I was like, “you flyer-poster coward!” In retrospect however I realize that he probably didn’t see a flyer in the window of a grey-market lizard dump as a positive endorsement for a ballet company. But whatever. I grabbed a flyer and our roll of clear tape and ran into the shop. The lizard proprietor gave me lots of pushback re: displaying our flyer. I wouldn’t take no for an answer. But he wouldn’t listen to reason. Eventually I was like, “Enough talk!” and I started taping the poster up inside the window to face the street. It came out sort of cock-eyed because I had to keep watching the reptile guy over my shoulder just in case he got too menacing while I was taping. Matt G. watched the confrontation through the front window, from the sidewalk. He had a terrified look on his face. I thought there’d be trouble, but after I got a few corners taped down the reptile guy gave up. Whenever I give my cat a bath, I’m there on my knees beside the tub holding Mr. K in the water and he’s trying to leap out and squirming but eventually he gets all wet and just sort of stands in the tub, puts his cat paws on my chest, and rests his furry little cat chin on my shoulder and meows piteously but quietly in my ear while I give him the old lather, rinse, repeat. The reptile guy was exactly like that, once I had a few corners taped down. All signs of resistance left his face and his shoulders sagged. He was like, “Oh well, I guess you got that flyer taped up there now. I guess I’ll just have to live with it.” And long after the ballet company had come to town, months after they’d left actually, that poster still hung in his window all crooked and sun-yellowed. I always pointed it out to people when we passed the shop. “You see that flyer? Well, do you?! I’m responsible for that! That was all me! I’m the best flyer-poster ever!” So anyway, I guess my point is that I take a lot of pride in my flyer-posting ability. If it was a more lionized activity than it is right now, like it deserves to be, I’d ask my friends before we hung out with a woman I wanted to impress to steer the conversation around to flyer hanging. But unfortunately it’s not that lionized, so instead I ask my friends to talk about how good I am at peeing into empty bottles. I haven’t spilled a drop in years!!
Brian
3:20 PM
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E-mail: Brian7Morris "at" hotmail.com
