Daily Dose #66 (08/09/11)

I AM THE HUMAN MEAT

(A Lake Boy Tale)

HALLOWEEN 1975


My adolescent rebellion was in full flower by the age of fifteen. I had become the antithesis of all that surrounded me:Re-invented as an anarchist and junior Anti-Christ in training.

Who knows how one gets to this point? Nature? Nurture? Raging Hormones? All I know is that "not giving a tumbling fuck" about ANYTHING was always me first move in any situation, and had to be immediately clarified, right up front.

Danger, was indeed my business. And complete anti-social behavior was the conduit and delivery system.

Inspired by Dadaist Happenings, my little circle of ne'er do wells (and ne'er do well experimentalist wannabees) devised a little recurrent happening of our own.

Dubbing ourselves "The Tiger Sextette", we would crash a classroom, gym class, grocery store or any other locale that would have an incredulous surprised audience.

We would then proceed to dance lasciviously, thrusting our collective pelvii, and look absolutely ridiculous as we bumped and grinded for about 30 seconds, and then run out of the joint laughing like six insane screaming hyenas. A total exercise in Surrealism.

It being the mid nineteen seventies, being properly stoned was ritual preparation for these little theatrical commando raids. I suppose it was the "flash mob" happening of its day. We were just having fun.

On this Halloween, it was decided by The Sextette that we would crash Under The Stone, our own little rock club ratheskellar in our sleepy little town of Skaneateles NY. C.R.A.C., a kickin funk band was playing that night, so an appropriate soundtrack to the shenanigans wasn't going to be a problem.

The plan?

1. Get as high and or as drunk as possible
2. Crash the club and the dance floor
3. Run out, or get thrown out. Either outcome was acceptable.

We were all fifteen years old, after all. Well below the legal limit to be in a drinking emporium.

Since this nefarious plan of mischief was devised after school on Halloween Day, a costume had to be improvised, and my inspiration was a 5,000 foot roll of industrial grade shrink wrap in my basement at 12 Gayle Road.

I would transform myself into the human meat! Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius.

I pedalled my bicycle down to the P & C, and bought the most exotic and disgusting cuts of meat I could find: Tongue, Tripe, and Pigs Feet, with a healthy supply of more traditional cuts of beef.


I then enlisted the help of the girl next door for the next phase of my creative Halloween costumed expression. With an indelible purple marker, I had her section off every part of my naked body with dotted lines, and then label the "cuts": Rump Roast, Flank Steak, Top Round, Etc, my body functioning as a butchering diagram for cannibals.

She then took the the industrial grade roll of shrink wrap and wrapped my from neck to toe, in a single unbroken wrap job.

In the middle of this operation, still half naked, my Mother came home from school. She was working on completing her four year RN degree that marriage and kids had interrupted nineteen years previously.

She begged me to reconsider my costume, and even offered a complete nursing uniform to go to the party in full nursing drag. But I could not be swayed. That meat cost a lot of money.

I attached all the bloody meat to a pristine lab coat of my Mother's with safety pins, and completed this horrific ensemble by topping it off with a white hard hat.

As the rest of the fellows collected in the back woods behind Walser's house on Lakeview Circle, we knew it was going to be a night to remember.

The first step was to get properly primed, and we did so with gusto with about an ounce of weed and a bottle of Jack Daniel's that we drained in about a half hour, as we huffed and puffed away.

Careening around Pluto without brakes, we made our covert trek into town, showed up at the door, and weren't even carded. The ridiculous nature of my meat suit gave us automatic entry. "It's Showtime, Ladies and Gentleman"

We immediately crashed the dance floor, to what we were anticipating was going to be the collective shock and horrified awe of a packed club of adults, and be immediately tossed out on our collective keysters.

But Lo, this did not happen. We were applauded, and lauded with free drinks all night. We were teenaged rock stars dancing the night away with real live older women dressed in their once a year, costumed expression of their inner slut.


It was a throwdown to end all previous throwdowns. A real live Bacchanal, and a teenaged dream come true.

Unfortunately there was a critical flaw in the conception of my costume. The industrial grade Saran Wrap sealed my entire body. As the temperature rose, and the alcohol factor increased, I reached the peak of heat prostration and hypothermia.

I had built up quite a tolerance of binge substance abuse by the tender age of fifteen, but this was even beyond my Herculean abilities to handle.

The meat coat was jettisoned sometime in the proceedings, and the sweat slick building up inside the wrapping started to cause it to lose its grip on my skin.

That's the last true cognitive memory I have of the evening. The rest is anecdotal.

Somehow, at around 4am and way past curfew, I found myself at the front door of 12 Gayle Road. Was I driven and delivered? Did I walk up from town? Who knew, because I was in no shape to know.

Coatless, and more importantly without house keys, there was no alternative but to ring the door bell, wake up Mom, and face the music. I was completely butt naked.

I leaned on the door bell and then promptly passed out against the front door.

As my Mother tells the tale, when she opened the door I fell into the house face first, breaking my nose. As she gazed incredulously at my naked ass and the faded purple cuts of meat decorations that had been applied to it only just hours before, a single twisted rope of Saran Wrap was attached to my left ankle. It ran down our walkway, down the entire length of Gayle Road, down the access road to the lake, and finally ended disappearing down the shore line headed in the direction of downtown.

Id like to say that passing out in front of my Mother was a singular occurrence in those days, but it wasn't. There were a few times when she would awake to the sounds of me aspirating my own vomit.

I was on a mission to join the 27 club, and I was ahead of schedule, being the motivated little whippersnapper I was. I was always a "Go Big, or Go Home" personality type, even at fifteen.

2008

I relocated to the town of my birth in the summer, emigrating for good from New Orleans.


It was nice to be home. I needed to get reset, and you can only do that at home. It was the first time that I spent any length of time in Skaneateles since 1978, a repatriated exile, and returned prodigal son.

But a funny thing started to happen. As I was introduced to total strangers, invariably the same question would arise:

"George Rossi....Oh Yeah, You're The Human Meat Guy, aren't you?"

I would like to be remembered and recalled for some of my successes, triumphs, and good deeds done over the past 35 years, but in my hometown? I'm still "The Human Meat" guy.

I've come to accept this gracefully. We are the sum total of the choices we make, and unfortunately, the salacious bad ones have much more sticking power in a tiny town.

We write our own narratives to some degree, and sometimes we inspire the motivated to write it for us, whether its actually based in any type of reality based truth or not. In the end, you have to own what you have done, good, bad, or indifferent.

So when asked if indeed I am "The Human Meat Guy", I smile, extend my hand and say, "Yes I am. Its a pleasure to meet you"

AUTHOR'S NOTE

As of this writing, The Dose has received over 20,400 legitimate page views in 65 daily injections. All I have asked of the general readership is that if you enjoyed what you just read, hit that little share button on the top right column of this site, or copy the blog address down, paste it in an email, and give a friend a taste.

The Dose's original intent and design was for it to be passed along and shared; sort of hoping that we could form a bond and a shared sense of responsibility between the content creation and its users active participation.

Unfortunately, my personal assessment is that its starting to look like a failed experiment.

It isn't without its harvestable aspects in the face of failure, and I don't regret the amount of time I spent writing 66 posts at all. I have learned so much by disciplining myself to produce quality writing to the best of my ability for 65 conescutive days. I can look myself in the mirror and honestly say that I gave my all, every little last particle of me. I did not phone it in, or take whoever might be reading The Dose for granted in anyway. I stayed true to principle.

I'm truly grateful to those of you that have read, and perhaps even been inspired by the Blog-O-Thon's content and message. I'm also especially grateful to the folks that took it upon themselves to realize their implied responsibility by enjoying the content, and then taking the time to hip their friends and family to the Blog-O-Thon.

Circumstances beyond my control have led me to a place where I can no longer devote the time to producing a quality reading experience for you daily.

Those circumstances were the result of broken promises made to me, and the collateral damge is that I no longer can keep my promise to you... everything, IS connected.

That isn't an excuse though. We are what we eat, and we are the choices we make. I sincerely apologize for breaking my promise, and seeming unaccountable.

Those circumstances coupled, with a rather tepid response of reader participation have led to this unfortunate resolution.

That's cool. I'm a big boy, and I can handle it. "I judge my forward progress and successes by the crushingly epic nature of my failures..."

If you are on facebook, I also started a page called "Little Georgie's Blog-O-Thon". Just search it, it will pop up. That will be the final publicly published Master Index for all of the past Dose Output, and any that might happen in the future.

The "Last Dispensary" as it were.

I love you all.

Easy,

Geo

"You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied, but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earthbound, mired in the muck of mediocrity.

I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.

The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right"



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COLONEL BEAUREGARD "IRON THIGHS" JEFFERSON, A.K.A. "THE MANAGEMENT"