Scream Engine

... in which Ashley wants to sing along.

Since doing a twenty-year stretch in rural South Carolina, sequestered from the Banksy tags and yoga mats of big city life, my return to relative metropolism has required a bit of adjustment. Things have changed since I’ve been on the farm. Those street corner urinals no longer have payphones in them. The cars are more flammable. Everyone is smoking beepers instead of cigarettes. And the homeless have gotten incredibly mouthy.

I don’t mean to suggest that the homeless – or “the underhoused,” as I believe they are now called – should keep their yaps shut. If anything, given the state of economic disrepair of the United States in particular, I advocate a higher volume of collective screeching from those tent city denizens, carried by satellite feed into the pro shops and cruise ships of the overfed. And they should loudly loot the Costcos and feed the landlords to hungry polar bears … but now is not the time for my campaign platform.

What I mean is that much of the unhomed community has gone ranty. I’m seeing folks on the street every day, spewing a stream of invective at everyone and no one in particular. Angry shouting, seemingly uncontrollable. I watched yesterday as one street-patrolling screamer let loose with fiery condemnations of all of humanity, stomped to the kiosk window, ordered a beer between curses, and continued his profane monologue through the crosswalk. I’ve seen members of the wailing set greet each other in the park, furiously barking unrelated tirades, all while exchanging the handshakes and shoulder hugs of brotherhood. A huddle of exploding Samuel L. Jacksons happily reunited.

One suspects fragile mental health is afflicting these neighbors of mine, but of course, any syndrome so consistent in the urban jungle has drugs as its source. Meth? PCP? One of those newfangled bath salt fentanyl Tide pods you hear about? I admit my firsthand knowledge of street drugs stops with powder cocaine of a 1988 vintage, which didn’t necessarily make one angry, but could, from my experience, cause otherwise rational youngsters to talk excitedly about Oingo Boingo for several hours.

Whatever these pedestrians are huffing seems to uncork something more primal: daddy issues, mommy issues, Sister Mary Catherine issues – perhaps a lifetime’s parade of injustices and humiliations that led the poor bellowing bastard here, yelling at lampposts and taxicabs. Wasn’t this the theory behind good old Primal Therapy, that me-decade psychiatric trend that encouraged hollering patients to attack their therapists and Yoko Ono to sing that way? There’s trauma stuck in the gullet, and it’s gonna take more than the Heimlich to get it out.

I’m projecting, of course. As a chronic chronicler of the human comedy in the first-person tradition, there is little in the general zeitgeist that I cannot make about me in some way. But I think it’s a fair enough truism to suggest that a repressed rage lives in all of us and that perhaps the unexploded life is not worth living. When all of our trials and tribunals are behind us, and we’re reviewing the tapestry of life over our final sunsets, we will always regret not having told that bitch to eat shit.

You know the one.

Years ago, I had an intriguing message on my answering machine. Not a voicemail, mind you, but a good, old-fashioned magnetic recording on a miniature cassette that I can treasure forever. It was a message from my brother, who had obviously called me by accident while driving – a butt-dial. He could be heard on the message violently reprimanding our father, a familiar refrain. He was chewing the old man out for asking stupid questions, giving idiotic advice, questioning his judgment, and inflicting general agitation. This was followed by the sound of my brother contentedly singing to himself. Our father had not been in the car.

Who am I to judge? How often have I indulged in one-man arguments with ex-girlfriends, long-dead vice-principals, or even him, my brother, in the privacy of my own Honda?  How often have I debated William F. Buckley about NAFTA in the shower? How many heated critiques of Spielberg movies have I delivered to terrified Spaniels? How many indignant rebuttals and self-righteous defenses have I recited to a sink full of dirty dishes? I double-check to make sure Siri isn’t listening.

My status as a language-challenged expat has only intensified my quest for jabber. The English-speaking Germans in my vicinity are kind enough to indulge my chitchat, but they don’t understand the jokes, don’t get the references to Jimmy Hoffa or Jimmie Walker, miss the witty twisting of Shakespeare quotes*, and aren’t up to speed on CB radio jargon. So, I stick with a basic hello/goodbye/nice-shoes/have-a-nice-day repertoire in either language. I am even careful to address neighborhood dogs and cats in German. This leaves me with a lot of unused monologue on my cue cards, which is usually ventilated on the sly, hoping no one will notice the unstable American quarreling with invisible enemies.

And yes, I do sometimes wear silent headphones, cord conspicuously dangling, so my unconscious rambling may appear to have a living recipient, with whom witnesses can sympathize.

How long before I’m one of them? Certainly, my winding up living on the streets has been the foregone conclusion of the council elders since I was a toddler. I’d like to think I might scrape by drawing a few sidewalk caricatures in a pinch, but I doubt I can attract customers if I’m shrieking about chemtrails.

The progress of my mental state may be cause for real concern, given the collective diagnostic I’ve been sharing in writing all these years. But I can’t help looking forward to it. It just looks so freeing, letting loose with that eruption of venomous epithets at cars and trucks, shoppers and cops, finally snapping like a rain-drenched Howard Beale and lambasting the viewership. I can imagine myself making the rounds in the city center, bursting with rage over insults and hardships I’ve suffered since childhood, barbarically yawping at every tinpot authority, from highway patrolman to hall monitor, who ever dared muzzle my frenzy, finally unleashing inextinguishable tantrums of pure fury, violently roaring for the rest of my days.

Hopefully, my friends and family will sympathize, “Well, as long as he's happy.”

- A.H.

* As a native English speaker, it is disorienting, to say the least, to live in a country where no one gives a damn about William Shakespeare. But to be fair, my knowledge of Goethe doesn’t extend beyond the Sid & Marty Krofft adaptation of Faust, and even that I just made up.

(And let’s not forget Ashley’s website, jam-packed with portraits and other drawings, his highly-affordable prints and books currently available, his eagerness for your portrait commission, and his contact email, thrdgll@gmail.com, where he longs to hear from you.)