A vendor at the corner of 3rd and Maryland, N.E., was shot six times in the head. There was no end of suspects. He had no vendor's license; he sold food well beyond the expiration date; he tried passing regular hot dogs off as "all-beef"; he never gave out napkins or straws; and he was a known drug pusher. Asa was consulted only when it was learned that the vendor carried a line of red-white-and-blue Popsicles.
"No doubt his murder has grave implications for the security of this great nation," Asa concluded when a count of the Popsicles revealed a gross missing.
"Any idea who's responsible?" asked the FBI agent called in to investigate.
"Clearly we're dealing with someone from a cold climate," Asa replied. "Either Siberia or Mongolia, I'd say."
"Perhaps a hot climate instead," a young rookie agent speculated.
Asa said nothing further, but when he arrived back home he telephoned the Bureau chief. "You have a madman working for you, and a potential subversive," Asa advised the Chief, a fine American whom he had consulted with on many occasions.
"What do you recommend, Asa?"
"I suspect that, under pressure, he would admit he's secretly working for the Congo or some other equatorial quasi-communist state," Asa conjectured. And, sure enough, this is exactly what happened once the young rookie was taken from the Bureau to the basement of the Heritage Foundation, where the fear of Jesus was put in him. (Thereafter, all anyone had to do was hold up a crucifix and he ran screaming from the room: though not actually screaming, for his voice box had been removed so he could not contradict patriotic Americans again.) But let's go to the newsroom for the all-important details of this story.
The Piss-Elegant Hour: the latest national, international and local news, all from a decidedly Gay Perspective, brought to you by Boyman, the fragrance that keeps them coming back again and again.
A handsome, brawny young man is sitting on a locker room bench, applying something to his pubic hair. His buddy, also young, handsome and brawny, comes up and watches. "Hey sexy, what are you doing?" the buddy says. "I'm dabbing on some cologne after my workout and shower, sexy," the young man on the bench answers. The buddy sniffs. "Hey, I like that, sexy! What is it?" "It's Boyman, sexy." "Hey, can I get a closer sniff, sexy?" "Sure, sexy - anytime!" As the buddy kneels and the locker room fades, a voice-over informs you that "Yes, you too can get a sniff - who knows? Maybe even a third or fourth. Boyman: the scent that offers 'Just a closer sniff of thee.' Boyman: not sold in sporting goods stores."
Now the newsroom appears. It is designed to simulate an elegant drawing room of the Empire period. The news desk is mock Chippendale, the chandelier Tiffany, the overstuffed chair Hanoverian, and the tapestry behind the desk is of an Italian reproduction. Gold lamé and rich vermilion are the principle colors. In walks the two anchors, from either side, each with great flourish: Pingo Pan, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Pixiness, a waif of a newsman, dressed in green leotards, vest and feathered cap; and Sir Rajmar de Kazbar, 5th Earl of the 4th Estate, attired in a long white silk robe with a blue satin cape and sporting a teeny tiara on his head. Pingo kisses Rajmar's hand, Rajmar curtsies, then they proceed to the news desk.
"Hi," each greets the audience in turn, after which Pingo Pan reports the top story of the hour.
"A young FBI rookie - who I'm told is hung like a horse - has just confessed to being a secret agent working for the government of Zaire - formerly the Belgian Congo. In his possession is a miniature of the shrunken head of Patrice Lumumba, and tattooed on his - I'm told - round and oh so firm left buttock is a likeness of Moise Tshombe. After his tri-mester of torture is completed, he will be released into the custody of the Heritage Foundation - lucky them!"
"In an unrelated incident," Sir Rajmar de Kazbar now let's you know, "a gross of red-white-and-blue Popsicles has turned up at a soup kitchen in Southeast DC. No one seems to know where they're from. But Soup Kitchen activist Regular Guye has speculated that they may have been left by a former Kitchenetee who has now become a notorious drug kingpin. The rabidly homophobic Mr. Guye is quoted as saying that as long as the suckers - ah, Popsicles - didn't come from Dupont Circle he could care less who's they are. Philistine!"
Perhaps a less biased report would have been in order: anyone who could call the venerable Heritage Foundation "lucky" to have a notorious subversive for a house guest can hardly be trusted to report the news accurately. At least this was what Asa conjectured when told of that shameful broadcast. He at once demanded a full FCC investigation which, sure enough, revealed a most interesting set of circumstances - so interesting, in fact, that we must go at once to another news broadcast (even before we show Asa bashing the skull of a terrorist). And, have no fear, this broadcast will be absolutely 100% all-American unbiased, because it's the Ultra-Conservative Extra Right-Wing Review, the weekly summary of all the news that's not fit to print but has to be told al the same if we're to make this world safe for democracy.
Aryan Tutefruite, the most famous right-wing journalist of the day, looks out at you from behind square-framed spectacles. To his right is an American flag, flanked by a shotgun, a cross and a stuffed eagle on a perch. He is known for his quick wit, his acerbic retorts and his madcap intellectual adventures. He once recited the entire US Constitution backwards, missing only one syllable. Now, he is informing you of a truly scandalous incident which mocks the very foundation of professional journalism - an incidence so shocking that a warning flashes across the screen advising women and small children to leave the room for the next moment or so, till the commercial appears, at which time a siren will signal them that it's safe to return.
"The Ulcon Network has just learned," Aryan is reporting, "that star member of the Piss-Elegant Hour, Pingo Pan, once worked as a go-go dancer in a sleazy homosexual striptease bar. He reportedly displayed his genitals - front and back - nightly before a crowd of known homosexuals, many of whom attempted to fondle them. He also reportedly performed a type of fellatio during which fellow performers inserted their penises into a plastic mold. It has been speculated that there may also have been sodomy involving high level members of the Marxist government of Angola. Pingo's co-anchor, his lordship Rajmar de Kazbar, told an executive of the Gay Broadcasts Coalition that he knew nothing of these unlawful activities. However, it was learned today that Rajmar is himself being investigated for a possible tryst with the cultural attaché of the Croatian legation. Both Pingo and Rajmar are under house arrest at their studios pending arraignment. Now this important message."
The siren rings; women and children may resume their viewing; and just in time to catch this evening's first commercial message.
A housewife ponders that great imponderable of her existence: her family's menu. "Now let me see," she is musing, "what shal it be on Monday? The filet mignon or the chicken Kiev? And how about Tuesday? The béarnaise or the hollandaise? Perhaps Wednesday the Peking duck? No, Thursday I want the duck l'orange. Oh dear, oh dear." While she puzzles over this dilemma, a voice over is good enough to elaborate.
"A rich housewife - a rich household? No. Certainly, rich food? Oh yes, most certainly. Because these are not ordinary dinners she's planning. Oh no: most extraordinary. These are dinners directly from the tables of some of the finest homes in America. These are dinners carefully selected and prepared from the leftovers of the rich and famous. These are Trickle-Down Dinners. After all, the rich, too, have table scraps; and now all the rich have pets to feed them to. So we've taken these 'scraps' - though 'scraps' never wore such names as these before: we've taken them; delicately processed them, one by one, ort by ort; packaged them in the most eye-catching, mouth-watering packaging you've ever seen; and quick-frozen them, to preserve all that natural richness and gourmet goodness. And we offer them to you, the average homemaker, at a price that's guaranteed to put a smile on your dinner plates. Just think: now you too can eat the foods your betters eat, and at a price even you can afford. Just one of the many blessings of capitalism. They get a tax break for their generosity, and you get a meal that was once fit for a king. Trickle-Down Dinners. In the dairy case of your supermarket. What was good enough for a Rockefeller is now good enough for you."
"This item just in to us," Aryan returns to update you on the day's events. "An unidentified man has been killed at the TDD Garbage Recycling Center on Goodhope Road. Police are not certain if he was a worker at the center or a visitor. Details are sketchy at this point, but apparently he fell into a piece of machinery. We don't yet know if the machinery was damaged. We'll have more as it becomes available."
"More as it becomes available": little does Aryan know just how crucial these details will be to the fate of the free world. And for once - for once - reality is a step ahead of the newsroom. Ava, at the very moment this item is being broadcast, is receiving a phone call from a most distraught housewife, who has a most distressing dilemma in her kitchen. So let's go at once to Ava's drawing room, where she is busy knitting while she answers the telephone. Her afghan, it might bear noting, has an American Eagle motif: she has heard that that blessed creature is endangered, and wishes to do what she can to help save it - without, of course, endangering any hunters' rights.
"Hello, this is Ava speaking," she answers the phone.
"Ava -oh thank God it's really you!" comes a frantic rejoinder. "I was so afraid I had another wrong number. This person answered who I could barely understand - he sounded Ethiopian or some such Hindu dialect. I have a problem I need your advice with."
"Do I know you?" a wary Ava asks.
"We met at a reception the First Lady held," the woman replies. "It's about my husband."
"Then perhaps he should call Asa."
"Oh Ava, he can't!" the woman explains. "My poor Turdy - Turdy Perkady - I'm Mrs. Perkady - he's dead! And that's why I'm calling. He fell into a food processor at the Recycling Center over on Goodhope Road."
"What was he doing there?" came Ava's studied reply.
"We were taking some old clothes to be recycled. He lost his footing and fell headlong into the giant processor they use to make - God knows what it is they make with it! Oh Ava, I'm simply beside myself. I had to take him home in a doggie bag. And since I didn't know what else to do with him, I put him in the freezer. I know when someone's cremated you put their ashes on the mantle - but where do you put them when they're pureed? I just don't know, Ava, I just don't know!"
"My dear," Ava advised Mrs. Perkady, "I would leave him right where he is."
"In the freezer?"
"Yes, exactly."
"Oh, but Ava, he takes up so much space! Turdy was a big man, Ava. I barely have room for my vegetables. You know I freeze them instead of canning them: they seem to keep better. I don't know where I'll put my corn, let alone my Brussel sprouts!"
"You eat a lot of vegetables?"
"Yes, all the time!"
"Perhaps a bigger freezer," Ava suggested.
"Oh, but do I dare? I hate so much buying yet another appliance."
"It's the only solution," Ava insists.
"Of course you're right, Ava. I just hate the added expense. But I'll do it. Yes I will: I'll do it! And thank you so very much for your kind help."
"You're quite welcome."
Ava returned to her afghan. When her husband came in, around supper time, she related the strange phone call to him. A couple of things about it seemed to disturb him.
"She specifically mentioned vegetables - no meat?"
"Unless you count Turdy."
"It sounds as if she might be a vegetarian," Asa conjectured.
"That was my impression," Ava concurred.
"Then she could be from a hippie commune. And she was reluctant to be a consumer of American appliances?"
"In so many words," Ava admitted.
"There could be some latent subversion there. This Perkady woman bears watching I think I'll have the CIA run a checkon her."
"And Turdy, too?"
"Wouldn't hurt. Only, if what I'm thinking is correct, he may not have fallen. He may have been pushed."
"You think someone tried to kill him?" asked Ava.
"Or else damage the mechanism of that piece of equipment."
"Why would anyone want to do that?"
"Terrorism," Asa replied.
"Terrorists - here? In America?" Ava asked, drawing her afghan closer.
"Unless I miss my guess," Asa said ominously, "we may soon stand face to face with pure evil."
"Pure evil" Asa said, and Asa should know: he's fought more subversives and terrorists than most people even imagined existed, so he knows better than any man alive what to look for. And where is he now, this ferretor out of evil? He is attending a reception at the Corcoran Gallery in downtown DC. And the "statement" he is making is making headlines all over the country. So let's to at once to the newsroom to hear all about it.
The time is ten. Time for the nightly Homophobic Newswatch, brought t you by the New Washington Times, the nation's leader in promoting the cause of homophobia. Tonight we feature part two of our special report: Real Men Don't Eat Men For Breakfast - They Shoot Them Before Sundown.
From behind his desk, anchor Jock "fag basher" Allman is all set with the latest he-man happenings. "At the Corcoran," he is letting you know, "where there were probably more fags than you could shake your dick at - pardon my French! At a reception, no less! A He-Man of the highest order left his mark forever on that effete den of delicacy and sensitivity. I'm talking Asa! There for the unveiling of some or another latest exhibit of unmanly nonsense, he spotted a bust of none other than Muammar Gaddafi, terrorist par excellence. And what did Asa do? He did what any real man would do: he took hold of the first little cutsey-poo bronze statuette he could find and smashed the skull of that terrorist's bust into a billion pieces of rubbish! Way to go, Asa! Just wish it had been the real thing. Makes you want to go out to Dupont Circle after the show and bash a few busts yourself, doesn't it? We'll be right back after this."
A very pious man appears. He is wearing blue jeans and a clean plaid shirt. He smiles at you. "I wear only the best," he lets you know. "Good upright moral clothes. Clothes that won't tempt you to sin, or be a temptation to others. Clothes that cover, not merely conceal. Clothes that make a man, or a woman a woman. I wear Jesus Jeans. Made of strong, reinforced denim; full cut to prevent that sinfully tight fit you get in ordinary jeans. So turn away from sin, from temptation, from the devil. Turn to God; and return to clean. Buy Jesus Jeans - with that extra little hold in the crotch and that little bit of salvation in every pair. Jesus Jeans. Made according to God's specifications. On sale now wherever fine religious articles are sold."
So Asa single-handedly busted a bust of Gaddafi - at the Corcoran, no less. But what were they doing there, Asa and the bust? Asa's reason was precisely because he had been warned what someone had managed to get into the Corcoran; the bust was smuggled out of Libya and brought to America by one Jeremiah "Popsicle" Pappaete, so nicknamed because of his incessant craving for red-white-and-blue Popsicles. His whereabouts remained a mystery until Asa finally succeeded in flooding the Libyan desert. For now, though, we must go to a special broadcast of Arts and Crafts in America, where a round robin discussion of Asa's actions is under way.
Leading the discussion is Manango Monongo, sculptor, poet and painter, whose brush strokes have been immortalized in cement. "What does one say of Art in the Age of Asa?" Manango is asking - and it's a question you as well as his guests ought to consider.
"We may safely say that the glamorization of international bandits is out," replied Gropetae Cheesecark, the very same musician whose Tunes for Tiny Tots recently won the National Pediatrics Association Award for Excellence.
"Agreed," agreed Pluminian Rosengildencrantz, whose Odes To A Failing Business garnered the coveted Chamber of Commerce Award for Excellence. "Gone are the days when just anyone or anything is a fit subject for art."
"Yes," interjected Ga Gaha, dancer and mime and three time winner of the Tobee, the Smithsonian Institute's Award for Excellence. "Nowadays, art must reflect more carefully the prevailing values of our society."
"And the political climate too!" insisted John Jones, noted set designer and director and winner of both the Democratic and Republican Party's Award for Excellence in Stagecraft.
"In the Age of Asa, which we have entered full swing," explained Major General Art Schmidt, invited to attend this forum because his name was so apropos, "a Muammar Gaddafi will no longer be allowed to be studied, copied or in any other way have his existence verified. In short, so long as Asa lives the devil is dead. And he can no longer have his due."
"'No longer have his due'": you heard it right here on TV, in living stereo (where available): so long as Asa lives, the devil cannot have his due. So you can imagine the national panic when it appeared that Asa had been killed - mowed down like some commoner in the streets. Fortunately it wasn't him but only look alike from Anacostia; but the incident, providing Asa, as it did, an opportunity to go under cover, provoked a wave of anxiety in inner government circles the likes of which had never been felt before. Nor was this the first time something like this had happened, for Asa had been reported killed by a madwoman back in Highland Park, Michigan, a few years ago.
It was a black, horrid, windswept night pregnant with raindrops and hailstones. Highland Park was under a winter storm warning; but being too warm for snow, God only knew what disaster would befall this quaint little enclave landlocked deep within Detroit. And the weather cockatoo, Kubalai Cohen, had just stormed off the set in a sunflower seed dispute with station manager Zippo Padus, so there was no one to make sense of the strange weather pattern or decipher these myriad fronts, or chatter out the alarm of impending doom.
Asa and Ava's black and white TV had been broken all winter; for nearly three months they had relied on the radio for their news, weather and sports. They had never seen Kubalai Cohen, so when they heard of his sudden departure they were unaware of his true identity.
"What do you make of that?" Ava asked. "He left over sunflowers?"
"It's a euphemism, Ava," Asa advised the little woman. "What they actually mean is poppies."
"Poppies?"
"That's right. The weatherman is a junkie. And, judging from the last name, I'd say a Jew as well."
"But Kubalai - that doesn't sound Jewish. It sounds African."
"There are Jews in Africa," Asa reminded Ava. "They were, after all, scattered to the four winds."
"I've always wondered about that," Ava confessed. "I know there's east and west: anyone with the slightest political inkling would know that. But what are the other two?"
"Well," Asa patiently explained, "there's north and there's south."
"Oh, said Ava. "They're directions too? I thought they were sides in the Civil War."
"They wear many hats," Asa pointed out.
And blow off many hats too, as it turned out. For the winds that the sky opened long enough to send swirling along Highland Park's streets were north-southerlies, the rarest of winds, and the fiercest. Windows were broken, trees uprooted, cars overturned; and a slow-witted vendor pushing his food and Popsicle cart along Main Street in anticipation of brisk business (he had taken the term "brisk" completely out of context) was borne aloft and carried all the way to Lake Michigan before being dropped into the icy water, crying out as he went under for the third time "Mother Nature doth murder my ass! Ahh!" The wind caught his words and magnified them in an air tunnel so that they were heard on the shoreline. But though they were heard, they were mangled; and the mangling brought a chill to all who heard them.
"Oh my God!" the listeners strolling along Lake Michigan's shoreline all gasped. "Asa's been killed!" "Murdered by some madwoman!" "His own mother!" "She'd have to be mad to kill her own son." "Or to give birth to him." (This last was said by a cynic later found guilty of subversion and flown in a cage to Siberia, where he was dropped onto a tundra.)
When the body was recovered, two weeks later, it was still intact, and still clutching a red-white-and-blue Popsicle. But it was not Asa; it was Jimmy "the Geek" Canner, an undercover drug pusher with the Detroit Mob. Soon after, the real Asa came forward, revealing for the first time the results of two weeks of intensive covert activity. Three hundred subversives were rounded up, branded "Consumers," and taken to an abandoned salt mine, where they were fed recycled garbage, which was lowered daily in dumbwaiters as part of a national taste test. The three survivors were given ten dollars each for their participation and deported to High Albania. Asa was given yet another key to Highland Park.
So Asa knows evil: don't anyone think otherwise. And now, if the report emanating from the Pig-Latin network is accurate, Asa is dead. Hiccox Jones of that prestigious network is giving you the oop-pay.
"Lash-fay! Lash-fay!" Hiccox is attempting to get your full attention lest you stray into the kitchen or bathroom. "A an-may as-way ound-fay loating-fay ace-fay own-day in the otomac-pay oday-tay. Ources-say ay-say the an-may as-way one-nay ther-oy han-tay Asa. Es-yay, hat-tay ight-ray: Asa!"
You heard it for yourselves: the man found floating face down in the Potomac was identified as none other than Asa. Some of the subtler details of the story may have gotten lost in the translation; but the gist remained intact: Asa is dead. That the man was naked, that his penis was half an inch long, that his left testicle hung lower his right: for these and other little telling touches you would have to have tuned in to the "Dirty Details Hour" on the X-rated cable network - that is if you stayed up till 2 A.M. But since most decent, God-fearing patriots do not, it would be senseless to give the report in its entirety; suffice it to say that the death was sex-related in some small way. In truth, the only thing of any significance in the entire report was the "red-white-and-blue Popsicle stuck up the man's ass."
Perhaps the President of the United States, working long into the night to keep this great land free, had mistakenly tuned in that noxious broadcast and, owing to the lateness of the hour, been unduly influenced by it; because when he called Ava to console her on the death of her dear husband, he referred to that great patriot as "Assie."
"Ava," came his deepest expression of sympathy, "the First Lady and I were so very very sorry to learn of the death of your husband. Assie was so good, so pure, so honorable and above all so patriotic a man that I'm lowering the flag in the Rose Garden to half-mast for thirty days. Then I might -"
"Mr. President," Ava interrupted, "before you say another word, there's someone here who's dying to speak to you. Just a moment, I'll put him on."
"Mr. President," came an eerily familiar voice over the telephone, "I believe I know what's going on."
A thunderstruck President could barely respond. "I only wish I did," he at last said. "Whoever you are, you sound for the world like Asa."
"Well put, Mr. President," came the reply. "because so long as there's breath in me I'll be 'for the world' - the free world, that is!"
"Asa: my God, is that you? You're not dead?"
"Yes, it's me; no, I'm not dead."
"Son of a bitch!" exclaimed the President of the United States.
"Mr. President," Asa - yes: it is indeed Asa, alive and well and living in hiding - Asa pointed out, "there's no need for profanity, nor any justification for it!"
At the mention of that word, Ava missed a stitch on the American Eagle's hump - a costly move, which later caused her entire afghan, devoted solely to preserving that wondrous bird from extinction, to unravel.
"Sorry," the President apologized for his untoward language. "I'm just glad Ava wasn't on the line, or she might have missed a stitch. How's her afghan coming?"
"Beautifully, Mr. President," replied Asa.
"That's good. So what have you been up to? Give me all the poop - ooh, sorry - it won't happen again."
"If it does, Mr. President, I'll have to hang up," Asa cautioned.
"Fair enough; I've been warned. So tell me: just what has been going on?"
"More than meets the eye, Mr. President," came Asa's profound reply. "For two whole weeks I've gone underground -"
"You were trapped in the metro? Just like the man in that old Kingston Trio song, eh?"
"Mr. President," Asa chided, "to associate anything deriving from something named after that Communist haven, Kingston, Jamaica, with me is an affront almost bordering on treason."
A shamefaced President apologized for his scurrilous remark, after which Asa proceeded to inform him, first, that he had been nowhere near the metro, since primarily lower class people rode public transportation - and the lower classes are always on the fringe of subversion; and, second, that except for the Union of South Africa the entire Dark Continent was morally and politically unfit to exist in the same world as the good old US of A.
"What do you recommend?" the President asked.
"Foreign aid."
Asa's reply shocked the President, who thought perhaps he had heard incorrectly. "Foreign aid?"
"A very special kind of aid," Asa elaborated. "The kind that when you bite into it, you will soon no longer be a threat to freedom or decency or patriotic Americans."
"'When you bite into it, you will soon no longer be a threat'": Asa's exact words. But what kind of aid is that? Whatever can he mean? To find out, we must discover just where Asa had been for the past two weeks, and what it was he learned - and, just as importantly, who it was the police fished out of the Anacostia - this Asa look alike with the diminutive endowments and the Popsicle a la derriere. Perhaps then Asa's arraignment on a charge of sodomy will begin to make sense.
A trail of paper and sticks led down to the Anacostia's muddy waters. A naked vendor lay face down on the fetid surface; green little pockets of slime beat against his bones, retreated, came again, to the deathly rhythm of slow paced currents. Tiny crustaceans nibbled at the raw flesh. Gulls hovered overhead, not quite willing to venture a morsel until the sea had opened the body some more. And a Popsicle stick protruded from the corpse's anus. Like a barge at leisure the body floated downstream, past the giant Pepco generator, past the stadium, beneath the Pennsylvania Avenue bridge, coming to rest beside an old bent tree in Southeast DC, where some homeless addicts washing their needles discovered it, poked at it, strip searched it (a futile task), and finally dismissed it as dead. By the time the police got to it, the entire underside had been picked clean. All the features had dissolved into the Anacostia; the penis and testicles were shriveled slivers of skin; the toes were stubs; the knees, round balls of calcium; the belly and chest of the man were strings of pulp which clung to the shore when the body was pulled from the river. No one alive could identify. The coroner had to cart it off in a Good Humor truck he commandeered to keep it cold; and he could tell from the autopsy was that the Popsicle stick, owing to the presence of FDC #5 Red and #8 Blue and #0 White in the anal canal, must have once held a three-flavor Popsicle; and that the probably cause of death was a bullet in the head. The death, in fact, would have been a total waste had Asa not been traversing Pennsylvania Avenue just when the coroner was speeding to his morgue.
The Good Humor truck came in one of running over Asa, who was quite disturbed that a vehicle used for business could be driven so carelessly; but upon learning it was a DC city official at the wheel, he breathed a deep sigh of relief.
"My apologies," said the coroner, "but, sir, you had one foot outside the crossing, so I'm not really in violtion of the pedestrian ordinance."
"No need to apologize," said Asa. "I don't accept that crazy ordinance anyway. It's unpatriotic to grant someone on foot the right of way over someone in an vehicle. Nevertheless, it was me and not some lower class individual; so I'll have to have the CIA do a background check on you: just a formality."
In chatting, Asa discovered who the driver of the truck was and what is mission was. "I have an idea," he said. "If you cooperate, I won't need to involve the CIA: your cooperation will fully demonstrate your loyalty to this great nation."
"Anything," the coroner replied. "Your wish is my command.."
"Report the vagrant as being me," said Asa.
"You? Buy way?" a stunned coroner asked.
"So I can go underground," Asa replied sardonically.
"You'll rob graves?" a confused coroner asked.
"Oh I won't rob them," Asa answered, "I'll do just the opposite. And I know just where to start."
And where he started was a little cafe at the southeast corner of Capitol Hill. Known for its African cuisine, its Jamaican rum and its Aborigine music, Roscoe Boita's Jabo's attracted a very large clientele of middle income black professionals. Quite understandably, Asa mistook them all for janitors, porters and shoe-shine boys. So when he saw the money they were spending on food and drink, he immediately realized that they were foreign operatives in the employ of various left-wing African and Caribbean states. But why Jabo's? What made him begin his search for subversives there?
Let's sit a moment with Asa and Ava in their Massachusetts Avenue parlor. The air freshener is on the mantle, the flag in the far right corner, the bible on the coffee table, and the "Made in America" label affixed to every item in the room. Asa and Ava are attending to the evening news on their TV. Suddenly a man in dread locks appears, and starts singing. Ava clutches her afghan, Asa turns livid. What follows is an advertisement for a Capitol Hill night spot: Jaabo's. The man in dread locks, speaking in a foreign sounding accent, halts his singing long enough to inform you, the viewer, who he is and what he's doing in the USA.
"Hullo, man," he says "my name it be Stool, and these gals behind me: they be the Stoolettes. We be from Jamaica, man, and we want you to come hear our sounds. For one week only, man, we be in town. On Capitol Hill, man. Nightly at the only place in America we be feeling at home. At my friend Roscoe Boita's place he be calling Jabo's. The food is Congolese, Mozambique, Angolan and Nigerian; the drink is Jamaican; the music be ours and Roscoe's regular band, the Green Ant Sleeping, from down under. So come see us, man. Come to Jabo's. And hear our hit sound "Shit Happens Man." Come to Jabo's. And you'll always come back for more."
"What were those horrible things on his head?" a visibly shaken Ava asked when the commercial faded to another one.
"Snakes," replied Asa.
"Aren't snakes deadly?" a shocked Ava asked.
"Oh yes, quite," came Asa's studied reply.
"Then why don't they do us a service and bite this Mr. Stool?"
"Voodoo," replied Asa. "he hypnotizes them. That's how he smuggles them into this country. I imagine if you examined them you'd find all manner of surveillance equipment lodged in their throats."
"Oh my God!" screamed Ava - not at the thought of snakes spying on the American people, but at what she saw next on TV, something so outrageous, so blatant in its anti-Americanism, so monstrous a distortion of truth and decency, so clear a threat to national security that even Asa blanched.
Molly Goldenrod delivered this piece of madness in her Consumer's Corner, a once-a-month feature of the nightly news. Molly had been around since the 60's, when her feature was the top-rated segment; now it was dead last, as consumers realized there were far more important things in life than their mere well-being. (The nightly What's Good For Business Report is the current ratings champion.) Molly looked tired that particular evening - a not insignificant observation in light of subsequent events (events which proved to Asa's satisfaction that she had been brainwashed in a hippie commune in 1969 and had been on drugs ever since. That she was a grandmother did not fool Asa one bit.)
"Consumers," Molly is attempting once again to brainwash you into believing American business would knowingly unload shoddy goods on the public. "Consumers take heed: TDD Inc., the parent company of Trickle-De-De, makers of Trickle-Down-Dinners, has been indicted on five thousand counts of fraud, corruption, racketeering and threatening the health of the American people with tainted food. This despite assurances by the FDA, the SEC, the FCC, the EPA and the TVA that no finer company anywhere exists. The Justice Department is attempting to quash the ten thousand page indictment. The American Psychological Association has been called in to evaluate the grand jury indictment. The gist of that indictment is that TDD has been using garbage and other waste matter collected in its huge landfill in Southeast DC in the preparation of its line of gourmet dinners for low and middle income Americans. Rumor is, even human tissue has been found in the sirloin tips. TDD CEO and Chairman, I. M. Rich, has declined comment but through a spokesperson has vowed to fight this troublesome nuisance all the way to the Kremlin if necessary. One is reluctant to say in response 'more power to him' for fear God may be listening. This is Molly, reminding you that you are what you eat. Good Night."
A horrified Ava is asking her husband what he makes of this monstrous report. "It's clear," he responds, "that this Molly Goldenrod woman is a dupe of some or another communist or terrorist government - most like one of the African nations anxious to palm its food off an an unsuspecting public by having legitimate American food processors slandered. But don't worry," he is assuring the little woman, "I think I have a handle on this thing already. I think I'll take a little trip to Mr. Boita's bistro."
"Be careful of the snakes!" Ava cautions.
"I've handled enough rats in my time," Asa quips, "that a few snakes shouldn't be a problem.
On the way to Jabo's, funny thing happened to Asa. He encountered a man he recognized from the CIA and, upon greeting him, was informed that the agent was trailing a Mrs. Turdy Perkady, who had just left the studio of the nightly news - the very one where Molly Goldenrod's Consumer Corner was video taped - and had gone directly, and hurriedly, to Jabo's, where she spoke briefly to Roscoe Boita then abruptly left. Immediately, it all fell into place, as simply, as irrevocably as Turdy Perkady fell headlong into the giant TDD processor at Goodhope Road. It was crystal clear to Asa that Turdy had indeed been pushed, but not by a terrorist; rather, by a terrorist's dupe: by Mrs. Perkady, who, together with Molly Goldenrod, had almost certainly resided in a hippie commune, probably in Woodstock, New York, and undoubtedly had gotten addicted to Acapulco Gold. And no doubt Roscoe Boita and this Stool character were her suppliers, as well as the leaders of the Caribbean/African terrorist ring that was at this very moment threatening the security of the Free World.
Once inside Jabo's - and it was a very harrowing experience, one that only a dedicated patriot absolutely certain of his mission and that God was on his side could have survived - Asa became more convinced than ever of his original supposition. For here were these bootblacks and garbage collectors spending the kind of money only white professionals could properly afford to spend; and here were Stool and the Stoolettes singing what could only have been the subversive cry of a terrorist committed to the complete overthrow of the United States of America.
"Shit, it happen, man...it happen man," they crooned. "There be no reason, there be no rhyme...it just happen all the time, man, happen all the time."
And in the corner, standing next to the bar, was none other than Roscoe Boita himself - eating a red-white-and-blue Popsicle: this was the clincher. Not a doubt remained in Asa's mind: he had stumbled upon a conspiracy to turn America into a satellite of Jamaica, the Congo, Mozambique and Angola. Thank God he had his wits about him or he might have failed to see the telephone in the hallway by the men's room. He made for it straightaway and dialed the CIA.
"Come at once," he advised the Chief. "That is, if the word 'freedom' still has any meaning! I'm at a sinister place called Jabo's in Southeast DC. You'll find it a nice place to visit, with an armed swat team; but you wouldn't want to live here, without a copy of the Daily Worker to read."
Inside of fifteen minutes the place was surrounded. "Come out with your hands up!" the Chief called on a bullhorn. Everyone came out dancing the High Arm Be-Bop and they were all mowed down for their insensitivity to the proper etiquette of arrest procedures, not to mention their open display of insolence. Roscoe Boita, who had remained behind to wipe off the bar, was booked on a charge of not attending his own arrest, along with the somewhat more serious charge of treason, sedition, trafficking in stolen goods (the Popsicle he was eating was linked to the gross taken from the murdered vendor on 3rd and Maryland NE), and importing dangerous animals (although the snakes Asa and Ava had so clearly seen on TV were never found). Unfortunately, Boita escaped before he could be tried, so his bartender was sentenced to die in his place. Asked by the Chief how he had pieced this conspiracy together, Asa (still underground) replied that not only had these black people spent more money than blacks in America could possibly ever hope to have, their eating habits at Jabo's had also clued him to their true identities. "Everyone knows," he pointed out, "that the typical diet of the American Negro consists of chitlings, grits, hamhocks, collard greens and chicken wings, with a side of watermelon. These people were eating filet mignon and breat of chicken Béarnaise - tastes they could only have acquired in the employ of foreign nationals.
"Good work," said the Chief, "now we can rest a little easier at night."
"Not quite yet," Asa cautioned. "There are a few loose ends I've got to tie up first."
"'A few loose ends...to tie up first.'" Asa's very words - perhaps spoken a mite to soon, though, if an item on the Jujitsu News was any indication. But let's go to the studio of Station WJUDO, where Kung-Fu Gaupan is kicking and chopping and screeching out the day's events. He is wearing his black belt and his brown belt, his green beret, his silver star, his purple heart, and his blue balls.
"Aiyeeee!" he is informing you, "two recent murders" - and he chop-chops to underscore the number - "have been linked to the troubles and woes" - here he kicks down the news desk - "of that mysterious giant, that shadowy corporate racketeer, that elusive conglomerate:" - he grabs the copy boy who is bringing him a news flash and flings him over his shoulder - "TDD, presently under indictment for distributing tainted food" - Kung-Fu karates the weatherman on the back of the neck, stunning him until this report is over - "Tennessee Dirt and Dung, as TDD Inc. was originally called, sits this evening under a cloud of suspicion surrounding the deaths of two DC street vendors. Originally they were believed to be the victims of a drug war; but now police speculate they were killed because each had mistakenly received a shipment of recycled garbage for TDD." At this point, Kung-Fu can no longer restrain his wrath. He goes after the makeup man, who is twirled around by his ponytail; then the cameraman, who is hurled across the stage; then the copywriter, who is impaled on his own pencil; finally attacking the director with a series of well-placed kicks and chops; after which he advises you, with a courteous bow, that he will return with more news after this important public service announcement.
A man in a clown suit is telling you something you really should be aware of. "An important event is happening right now, right in your own backyard," the clown says. A scene full of children flashes across the screen while the clown is speaking. "These children: the artists of the future perhaps? No: today's artists. The 'now artists,' the 'what's happening' artists. How can that be, you wonder? It looks like they're simply getting ready to have some gelatin dessert, right? Wrong. They're getting ready to produce works of art. In gelatin. That's right: gelatin. And what kind of art will it be? Jel Art. The latest rage in the art world - but don't take our word for it: ask your broker. He knows what's hot. And Jel Art is very hot. A full size work can bring as much as a small Rembrandt. That's right. Jel Art: kids creating masterpieces in gelatin. No muss, no fuss; no rhyme, no reason; no theme, no message; in fact, no messy content at all. Just pure form. In fourteen delicious nutritious flavors. Jel Art: what good art is all about."
So TDD is under a cloud of suspicion concerning the deaths of two DC street vendors: this will not sit well with Asa - nor with the President of the United States, who is on the guest list for TDD's annual Cleaning Up America dinner to be held in the Capitol Rotunda two weeks from today. So you can imagine the President's relief when he discovers that Asa is not at all dead but only undercover. (It should be pointed out that the News Media made a minor error in reporting one dead body as being the remains of two separate persons, namely Asa and a vendor from Anacostia. When the mistake was discovered, the body was exhumed at the request of the FBI to try and determine if it was perhaps a double spy; but this proved fruitless. And quite embarrassing, for the body somehow ended up, not back in its coffin, but at the landfill on Goodhope Road.)
But all this hullabaloo over a couple of insignificant vendors is distracting us from the "loose ends" Asa still has to tie up - not to mention the charge of sodomy leveled against him by the former bartender of Jabo's.
It was Asa's misfortune to be at the wrong place at a most importune moment. He was at the telephone in the hallway outside the men's room, calling the CIA to come arrest Roscoe Boita's patrons, when a host of young men doing the Powerful Peenie, a most provocative dance calculated to titillate the ladies, happened by. He ducked down when he saw them coming to avoid detection; but, unfortunately, from where the bartender was, he appeared to be on his knees just as the dancers unzipped their pants for their finale. And this bartender, subversive right to the very end, went to the electric chair calling Asa a sodomite. Naturally, the grand jury had to go through the motions of the indictment; but quickly quashed it, realizing full well the absolute obscenity of it. The very idea that Asa would or could do anything subversive - and sodomy had recently been added to the CIA's growing list of subversive activities - was itself subversive - and the jury well knew it.
As for the other matter - that of the "loose ends" - it involved the death of Turdy Perkady and the subsequent activities of his little widow. Asa, still undercover, and posing as a hippie, paid that woman a visit.
"Hey, what's happening?" he greeted the widow Perkady. "Like wow, man. Groovy. Cool. Wow."
She looked at him like he was crazy, and would have slammed the door in his face had he not blurted out - in his hippest jargon - some reference to Roscoe Boita.
"He sent you?" Mrs Perkady asked.
"That's cool, daddy-o, groovy, I'm hip," Asa replied.
"You're the one who going to bring back my Turdy?"
"Hey, like I'm what's happening, man."
Assuming that to be a "Yes," Mrs Perkady hastily explained that although she did not actually believe in voodoo, she was willing to try anything if it meant the return of her precious Turdy to the living.
"Groovy!" Asa assured the widow.
"You need a piece of his flesh?" she asked. "Or a shock of his hair? I hope not the hair because there's none left, except a few pubic hairs - will they do?"
"Like wow!" Asa responded.
"What does that mean:" an exasperated Mrs Perkady asked, "yes or now?"
"Like, groovy!" was all Asa replied.
Mrs Perkady burst into tears, and Asa realized he had hit home: overcome with memories of her days in Woodstock, the widow, being only a woman, could not contain her emotions. Asa made straightway for the telephone and called the FBI and CIA to come get her.
"What tipped you off?" the agents asked.
"The voodoo," Asa explained. "Any decent, patriotic American would have gone to a man of the cloth to pray for her dead husband - even to an astrologer or a palmist or a mind-reader before turning to some devil-worshipping African anti-religion. She had to be working with them to even know such things exist. Oh, and I think I'd pay a little visit to her old drug - and probably sex - buddy, this Molly Goldenbug woman. Something tells me they're in this together."
"Then that's good enough for us," the agents acknowledged. "You've never been wrong yet when it comes to sensing subversive plots."
"And, God willing, I never will," Asa responded.
A swat team was dispatched to the studio where Molly Goldenrod was taping her special on food additives. It was so clear to them that she was guilty as sin (otherwise why would they have been sent here by Asa) that they decided to simply torch her studio and be done with this last vestige of consumerism. The various additives she had assembled for testing caused the whole place to go up like a house of straw.
From there, the swat team hurried on to the studio where Pingo Pan and Lord Rajmar de Kazbar of the Piss-Elegant Hour were under house arrest. While this was still not part of their official assignment they felt certain that their charter permitted enough latitude to take care of this - or any leftover matter,.
They crept to the barred windows and began jeering and taunting the two newsmen within, after which they took out a round of plastic explosives and hurled them through the windows. But the windows weren't down: it only looked that way because Pingo and Rajmar, having nothing else to do, had scrubbed the windows almost to the vanishing point. Almost. But not quite. So the plastic bounced back into the swat tem and blew them ti bits, to a man. The loose ends were gathered into plastic bags and taken to the dump on Goodhope Road. Being eyewitness to the incident, and newsmen, Pingo and his Lordship were provided a special hook-up so they could report the incident.
"They were homophobic and Philistine, one and all," concluded Lord Rajmar.
"And judging from certain...unidentifiable objects...not very well endowed either," added Pingo Pan.
"'Not very well endowed'" Pingo Pan informed you - and these were members of the FBI crack swat team! What audacity! That alone should add a thousand years to his sentence, once an appropriate charge is found to indict him and his infamous cohort, Sir Rajmar de Kazbar. What an irony: these two scoundrels not yet covered by an indictment while a staunch patriot like Asa must suffer the indignity of being charged with sodomy!
God will get even with this nation if it doesn't mend its ways. Why, even now that precious symbol of our heritage, the American Eagle, is in imminent danger of extinction. The afghan Ava has worked so hard to knit is in tatters because of a slipped stitch; and hump she meant for the eagle to hid under is a frayed rag. And the little flag in the upper right hand corner is an unidentifiable blur of red, white and blue yarn. But, worst of all, the likeness of Asa just above the flag is hideously disproportionate to the actual man; indeed, its features are almost ghoulish now. Not to worry, though: even as your tears are being shed, Ava is readying her yarns and needles for yet another afghan. Asa, too, is readying the tools of his righteous trade for the next assault on freedom. You never know where it'll come from.