Umbrellas for Bombholes, Fraud and a Perfectly Good Excuse to Pretend to Hate Americans

It was a flatish town that resembled certain postcards I have seen of some old parts of New Orleans but maybe mixed with a little bit more Spanish style architecture that I visited oh so recently. The skies were gray and dramatic, except every once in a while, little bursts of filtered sunshine would muscle their way and peek through thin spots in the bellowing clouds overhead causing the wet roads and buildings to shine and sparkle in a clean, purple and orange light.

It was raining off and on so I spent a while wandering though the little town's steets and alleys pondering all the various styles of umbrellas and why it was that so many umbrellas were so boring and typically black when a myriad of other options should and could easily be made available. As sometimes happens, as soon as I began contemplating the various umbrella possibilities, I began noticing a whole bunch of different styles all around me. Big umbrellas that were designed to look like over grown hats of all different styles popped out of nowhere. There was a big one that looked like a big fuzzy cotton ball, one that looked like a gigantic stove pipe top hat, another was an over blown replica of a newspaper boy's hat, lots of girls had giant umbrellas that looked like big Easter bonnets.

"Duh" I thought, "Of course umbrellas should look like giant hats. Why the fuck didn't I think of that?"

It was surprising to me that all of these various examples of amusing umbrella design already existed when just minutes earlier it seemed the whole world was flooded with traditional boring black umbrellas. Interesting what happens if you just open your eyes and look.

My visit revolved around one Mexican villa style mansion. My host was an impeccably groomed, upper class bleach blonde woman with a chisled powdered face who might remind someone of a 50 year old Gwen Stefani but with a cosmopolitan Italian accent and spunk more reminiscent of Bette Davis or some other spitfire long-filter-cigarette-holding dame from the past. The tour of the house revealed room upon undiscovered room all seemingly remodeled in a fashion by which nearly every era of interior design could be spotted somewhere.

At one point during my visit, the small town was bomarded by air in what, by the reactions of the locals, must have been an all too common event, for no one scurried or screamed. It was so ho hum that barely an attitude or comportment was shifted. After the air raid was over people mulled about, curiously inspecting the damage. The attitude by all, including myself seemed more one of discovery and wonderment than of dismay, regret or horror as one would think it would be after having been bombed by some unknown enemy in the sky. I was impressed by their positive outlook. It's was almost as if it were a holiday of sorts.

In the mansion hosting me, a small impromptu tour began as the holes pierced by the unexploded bombs drew light and attention to neglected rooms and layers of remodel long forgotten. One downstairs kitchen had a big crater that went right through the floor and into the ground where the unexploded bomb had buried it's pointy head in the dirt. My host mused:

"Well look at that, I haven't seen those alphabet tiles in years."

She was talking about piles of shiny, multicolored glazed Mexican tiles that had been dislodged from a long covered layer of the ceiling and scattered face up all over the bombed out floor. They were quite shiny indeed, and each one bore one letter of the alphabet. I too was excited and interested to see all the various layers revealed by the home piercing, hole punching, unexploded bombs. Room upon room was inspected. The bomb holes in the ceilings brought light and trickling water into rooms that were once just dry, static, dark and boring. I spent a long time entertaining myself meandering through the myriad of hallways, nooks and corridors exploring the new visual pathways created by the bombs when they ripped through ceilings and floors. I'd peer through one such newly pierced tunnel to see a face of another curious visitor peering back at me from three floors below. We'd sometimes wave to each other and acknowledge what a wonderous spectacle we mutually enjoyed. As the rain would intensify from a drizzle to a down pour, the house would become a fascinating gallery of beautiful waterfalls flowing over broken tables, tilted chairs, cracked toilets, overturned sofas, muddy beds and all sorts of things one finds in a recently bombed out ecclectic spanish mansion. Everyone seemed to enjoy it. I know I did.

It occurred to me that the best viewpoint would probably be from the roof and as I arrived there it was apparent that I wasn't the only one with the bright idea. As I carefully made my way across the wet, slippery, moss covered, sparcely tiled and quite unstable bombed out roof it became clear to me that it wasn't such a good idea as the structure of the roof was quite wobbly and with all the other idiot people also prancing about the roof, it was like trying to step from one slippery see-saw to the next, never quite knowing when someone else would step on the other end of your see-saw sending you flying. I quickly made my way to flatter, more stable surfaces.

I heard a man scream from about a hundred feet away and I turned just in time to see Jarrod Jennings, one of my long lost childhood friends, grasping at the edge of another slanted and slippery surface. He put up a good struggle for ten seconds or so but he was unable to hold on and I saw him slide off the edge like an egg out of a teflon pan. I heard him yell as he fell what I could only imagine had to be a great distance since I was standing on a three story building and he was eye level with me.

I made my way to the bottom to see if I could find my poor friend but having descended through the curly maze of spiral stairways and hallways, it was somewhat difficult to gauge any sort of direction let alone the exact location of his fall. I soon stumbled upon a hunched over mustachioed man wearing a cliché tan raincoat who I surmised must have been an inspector sent out to examine the scene of the horrible accident. I asked him if he was looking for the man who fell off the roof and I explained to him that the man was my friend Jarrod and I'd witnessed his fall and pointed to where I thought I had seen him holding on for dear life. The inspector turned to me and snidely informed me that my friend faked his fall for some reason obviously involving foul play and baltant fraud. I thought this was an absolutely ridiculous idea but upon further inspection of the area where I had seen him, I could see that the distance was only a few measley feet but obscured from view. The inspector was right. I could even see the escape route. It was along wooden, puddle laden tunnel leading to the other side of town. I chose not to follow it.

I had no interest in finding my friend, I knew that eventually he'd find me and explain what kind of scam he had going and maybe he'd even let me in on it if loot was involved. I excused myself because I didn't want to help the dickhead inspector pin fraud upon my uni-browed buddy.

I strolled down the street and all the conversation was about the obnoxious fraud perpetrated by my pal. At one point I maneuvered into position alongside a group of sharply dressed black people who were loudly proclaiming a guilty verdict and talking shit about my friend. I interrupted them and I said "My friend Jarrod is a good dude. I have loaned him money many times and he has always paid me back". Of course that was a complete lie, I never loaned him shit.

A few minutes later I found myself sitting at a round outdoor table with one of those attached umbrellas sticking out of the middle. My old friend Gayle was there in all her young pseudo lesbian gothiness. She was with another girl and she was really barking up her tree. She kept leaning over to the other girl whispering suggestive things, attempting to arouse and convince her into some sexual exploits. It was quickly apparent to me that her prey was merely a fake dyke because she was stoking my leg beneath the table. We exchanged glances of secrecy about the whole thing. It was obvious that neither of us wanted to crush poor Gayle's hopes of getting laid. I sat and listened to Gayle attempting to convince, at times nearly pleading with the other woman to have sex with her while I enjoyed an over the pants hand job from that very same woman. Yes, it's possible to feel pity and be aroused at the same time.

During this conversation between the two women, I occupied myself with the task of ripping apart some sort of wooden framing debris I picked up on the street. I was working on getting the joints to come loose which were held together with staples. I twisted and bent each corner until they came loose and the original cuts and glue at the joints were revealed leaving two bent staple legs dangling out like the legs of murdered insects. The sex conversation between the women continued, I wasn't paying much attention to what they were saying because it was much more fun just pretending to be preoccupied with my little demolition project while being secretly jerked off under the table. To buy more time, I decided to see if I could take my demolition project in reverse. I lined up the bent staple legs with the holes which contained them previously and slowly tried to work them back into place. The woman giving me the rub down turned to me and said something but I didn't hear what it was due to the concentration needed to complete the task at hand:

"Huh? Sorry, what did you say? "

"You hate Americans right?" She asked.

I turned back to my project and focused on the two little staple legs which had magically transformed into tiny electrodes and I lined them up and said: "Yeah, I hate Americans" just as I slowly jabbed the two tiny electrodes into the bare flesh of my leg releasing one small droplet of dark blood each.