Melvin
Melvin was a local poet and a boring one like most. He would read his sad bullshit poems and stories in the back corner of the coffee house where they had the AA meetings and poetry readings while the other boring poets and drunks threw back stale donuts and coffee and stared off into space. Sometimes one or two of them would applaud weakly or offer a word or two of encouragement or constructive criticism with all of the zeal of a couple of flies fucking.
Everything changed when he worked up the guts to read a story from his younger years where he was driving around Las Vegas in a convertible drunk with a hooker who was so high on speed that she was scraping her shoes on the stars. When he got to the part where he considered himself an engineering genius because he was able to figure out how to piss with an electric buzzing prostate massager up his ass people starting throwing their donuts. Some got up and left all in a silly little huff. Others heckled him including one that offered “well if this is poetry I’m a supermodel.” Finally, a reaction. He was beginning to think they were corpses.
After a few weeks had passed, Melvin got the idea to up the ante and start hanging local politicians from the windmills down by the lakefront and call it art. He figured that worst case scenario he would get arrested and make the news. Fifteen minutes of fame just like Warhol talked about. But then again Warhol was a quack. Melvin once dreamed about fucking Warhol in his ears. They were tight and soupy.
His art project was lauded as cutting edge, the next big thing. He wound up on the cover of the little local arts variety paper. He walked by the same coffee joint and this time the poet who was most definitely not a supermodel came out and asked Melvin to autograph her copy of the paper.
Melvin took the paper from her without saying a word and went home to his crummy apartment. He sat down on the shitter and took a large, steaming oatmeal and beer crap. He then reached for the paper and wiped his ass with his own face.
