Heavy. It was heavy. That was the first
thing I could think of. "This is fucking iron,
and it's fucking heavy." Manhole cover. I thought
of the sound of cars, sure. Of course I did. I had
visions of one coming over head, like in a movie,
I'd duck out of the way, watch it go over me, FX shot
of the undercarriage. It would be great. I always
think I'm living a movie. Max's movie was "Goonies."
Mine, was undefined. My movie was a song. A Harvey
Danger song:
"Paranoia, paranoia, evrybody's
coming to get me, just say you never met
me. I'm runnin underground with the moles, diggin
holes."
Of course I am. I'm the Molehunter,
after all. Funny enough, to start with it had nothing
to do with going underground. Back in another lifetime
when I was bored and more bored I'd helped track down
a porno perv old man at the local University called
the Moleman because of his huge cheek moles. So I
was the Molehunter. Entirely new connotation now,
hanging 80 feet up in a smooth wet concrete shaft.
We're 100 years past Freud. Does anyone
really need to state the obvious? No? Didn't think
so.
Why was my movie a song? Well, I like
songs better than movies. How's that for a starter.
I like the visuals of a good flick. I love the story.
I love the entire thing. But when it comes right down
to it, it better be one fuck of a story for me to
sit there for two hours or more. With a great song,
in four minutes I can get the best stories ever told,
*and* I can fucking dance. So how's that for reasons.
I walk around thinking that I'm in a
movie though. I'll be on the street with the sun shining
over me, I've just left some girl behind, or she's
left me behind. Sometimes I'm happy about it, and
I was just waiting for her to get it over with so
I wouldn't have to; other times, yeah. But there it
is. You're leaving, you're being left, you're living.
Right now, what I'd left was safe solid
earth. Again: it was heavy.
I gave the good heave-ho with my back.
The iron was ripping into my shirt.Better than my
skin. I'd have to throw the shirt out later that night.
It was torn to no use. Grit was sifting down on my
head as I shifted the thing, dirt pounded into the
cracked ring by who knows how many feet (not tires,
I hoped) for decades.
Whooooooooooosh
whooooooooooooosh
whooooooooooooosh
cars, all to my left. What direction
was what? No idea. Didn't matter. Street must be over
there. I must be under sidewalk.
This one is louder.
Louser. This shouldn't be louder. They
should be the same. Bad muffler? Rice burner? What's
happening here? Coming closer faster.
Streetlight! I've got streetlight! Amber
streetlight. Success. We're out. It's been how fucking
long, I could burrow down there forever but eventually
it's time to come back to the world. Success. Exit.
BANGGGGGGGGGGGGG!
I drop the lid and tuck my head down
in pure instinct. I'm like an animal, motherfucker,
pure animal, I've never been less human since I developed
opposable thumbs a few months into gestation. I'm
monkey man, you better believe it. Molehunter, bullshit,
every hunter becomes the hunted. Man used to believe
he wouldn't become the hunted, but you know why he
thought that? Because he overestimates himself. He
overestimates his perception of the world. Sure, once
we have the right tools in hand we're safe from the
animals. We're never safe from each other's tools.
We're always the hunted. More than any animal on this
good green earth we're being hunted day and night,
by each other.
This time, the tool is an automobile.
My head drops just soon enough to stay attached to
my neck. It ouldn't like getting detached from my
neck, or losing the crown of its skull or getting
dented. My head is sensitive, like me. My head doesn't
like losing parts of itself.
THUD
THUD
Twice, sharp, loud, like nothing I've
ever heard before. I've shot off more shotgun rounds
than most tinpot soldiers, I survived Motorhead in
concert. I've heard loud. This is something else entirely,
the sound of 1000 or 1500 or 2000 pounds of steel
SLAMMING SLAMMING into an iron plate two inches over
your head. What's keeping that fucking thing from
falling right in on you? Huh? Not much. A lip of concrete.
That's it. I've never heard of a car taking out a
manhole cover, punching it through to the underground
where it'd fall and fall and spin like a nickel at
the bottom.
I've never heard of it, but clinging to wet concrete
walls two inches below one, I can't imagine that it
won't.
I'm shaking for ten, twenty, minutes.
I can't stop shaking. It's like a crash after a speed
binge, I know everything's fine, I know it's all over.
My rebellious body doesn't give a fuck what I know.
It's in an uneasy partnership with my brain in the
best of times, and usually, it just fucking checks
out. Boom. Leave a tip for housekeeping, you cheap
sumbitch.
Yeah.
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