SURABYA, JOHNNY

Surabaya, Johnny

a caprice, with a frosting of German Anti-Semitism

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“My theory is, your hatred of Brecht,” he said, “is the infantile disease of Communism.”
“Oh go on,” I said. “You said you loved me for it even after I allegedly arranged his little accident. You said I’d earned the right after ten years of cleaning his cage. He flung his feces in my face one feeding time too often. Even the jury saw that.”
“Yeah, Molly, but something changed you in prison. That adorable gal with the tight Gretchen honeymuff that I kissed goodbye came out something weird and accursed, addicted to Thorazine and always a minute late with the morning blowjob. The joint did things to you, Molly. It changed your hair color and put a heartbroken scowl on your asshole an eternity of kisses could never wipe away.”
“I never sang like a canary when you strangled Horkheimer and Adorno. And when you made Ernst Bloch take it up the ass you think I was touching up my lip gloss in that lavatory at Four Seasons? I was in there crying the rest of my good eye out. Over you, Johnny. I cried you an Amazon tributary and the bitter tears of Petra von Kant until my heart broke like a shrivelled chimpanzee even the circus wouldn’t want. Take that damned pipe out of your mouth, you rat.”
“Well, anyway, that was my theory--”
“Guess I blew your little theory this time, Johnny.”
“If you ever blew a bigger theory than the one I got,” Johnny said, though I could see his tough guy facade was crumbling like a chunk of crystal meth somebody spilled a whiskey sour on, “they would’ve given you a tracheotomy. Haven’t noticed any scars around your windpipe lately.”
“There’s scars on people’s insides, Johnny. Scars nobody sees that run a lot deeper than whatever the fuck it is you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about ethics, baby. The kind they never taught you at the State University of Sybil Brand. The difference between killing for spite and wiping people out to make the world a better place. Between using the joy juice we were born with to perpetuate the species and using it as cheap foundation cream.”
“Go ahead Johnny. Make me feel like an animal just because I used a couple ounces of your precious baby batter to tighten up a couple pores that were hogging the limelight. And don’t do me the insult of pretending you don’t know why I had to slap on a little Johnny Jism that night instead of the unguents I’ve always relied on. Yeah, Johnny, I’d be curious as a pickled stillborn Siamese twin to find out what happened to that hundred pound cannister of Preparation H Cousin Bluehog sent by the FedEx for my birthday surprise.. And don’t tell me a hundred pound can of pile driver just walked off the property. I’d bet the farm if I paid a little visit to Jewel Mayhew some balmy evening up there in Hymietown I’d find your precious Miss Sugar Walls up to her recent breast augmentation in a turquoise Kohler tub full of a suspiciously viscous substance. Wouldn’t I, Johnny? Only thing is, maybe you’re right. Maybe the ten year vacation I got sent on up at Sybil Brand for popping the author of Mother Courage gave me a little more courage than a slob like you can handle. We both know it was you who fixed the brake lining on little Bertie Brecht’s Soviet Sloboda station wagon, not me. And I sat there rotting just because I knew the man I loved couldn’t face a ten year rap. I knew if he spent one night in the tank on a drunk and disorderly he’d be some ten year old rapper’s bitch the next morning when he came out. But me, Mr. Let’s Kill off the Frankfurt School. Mr. Let’s Reuinfy Germany and Take Control of NATO. I found me plenty of courage in the big house. Plenty enough to fill a metal can of hemmorhoid shrinker with a thirty minute fuse and enough fertilizer to take out the Albert Murrogh Federal Building all over again. So next time you find yourself sniffing around in Hymietown you won’t have to get too close to Jewel Mayhew’s trailer park to catch a whiff of her aroma. What time is it, Big John? Twelve o’clock? I figure by this time you can smell old Jewel all over Hymietown, and they’re probably picking up little bits of her all the way from Hymietown to Kikesville.
“And I figured something else out all those years I was dealing smackeroo out of the laundry room at Sybil Brand just to keep my precious Johnny in Reeboks and Tommy Hilfiger jock straps. You thought it was gonna me be driving that Sloboda back from the Berliner Ensemble that night cause Turdy Bertie had a little too much courtesy Stoli and you were standing right there when he handed me the keys and asked me to put his car in the Stasi Garage on Wolfgang von Goethestrasse and he’d pick it up the following a.m. Said he had a friend he was sleeping over with two streets from the theater. It took me nine years of a ten year stretch to put two and two together but then I remembered which Valentino from Upper Volta had a little love shack on Kaiser Wilhelm the Secondstrasse just around the corner from Bertie’s little Ensemble. None other than my own two-timing monkey bone Mr. Johnny H. Rotten. You and Mr. Big Time Marxist Leninist Playwrite were improvising your own little version of The Caucasian Chalk Circle all those nights when I was strolling the track under the U Bahn station at Victory of the People Platz to bring home the bacon that you never stopped eating until you teamed up with Jewel Mayhew. Except the version you two were putting together was called The Caucasian Who Smells Like Piss and Cigars Takes It Up the Hershey Highway from His Mandingo Boy Toy. Too bad Mr. One Too Many after Threepenny Opera changed his mind and decided he’d go for a little spin before stretching his famous anus on his Mandingo Buddy’s greased up flagpole. I never spilled on you, Johnny, just like you’re not gonna spill on me. Now that Jewel Mayhew’s scattered all over the Autobahn you won’t be putting in so much overtime at the bagel factory over by Lake Hebe Estates a/k/a Christkiller Trailer Park. You’ll be right here with me, Big John, keeping one hungry snatch full of African bratwurst after ten years of broom handles and Czechoslovakian flashlights unless you want a certain bag of fertilizer with your prints all over it to go to the coppers. You thought I sent you to the Agricultural Collective for that nitrogen so we could grow a few heirloom tomatoes in that little ten foot plot they gave me in the Freidrich Engels Vitamins Through Vegetables Growplatz so you’d always have your lettuce and tomato snack waiting for you at home after feeding your sausage to Jewel Mayhew. Well guess what Mr Hung Like the Horn of Africa, you can start putting bacon back in your BLT’s now that Lifted-Titty Mayhew has one fake melon getting squashed on the Autobahn and the other sack of silicone hanging from a linden tree somewhere in the Federal Republic. You can even start eating shellfish again now that Kosher Cunt’s up in Mahagonny Heaven keeping her cooze wet with your one of your other honey’s Cuban stogies. You can start right now with a clam I been saving you ever since they put me away for a crime I never did. If I was you I’d get to work on that clam right this minute and plan on working on it every day for a long long time because your prints are all over that fertilizer. Take that pipe out of your mouth, you rat.