Performance

He drove up in a rented car, half the size of the one he had back home, and his wife got in. Then he headed toward the bank. He’d had several tacos with a very picante salsa and a couple of beers for lunch while she had insisted on eating steak and potatoes in the hotel dining room. They were on vacation, for chrissakes! Now, she was wearing too much make-up and an orange blouse with sunflowers on it. Obviously, she’d wanted to stay behind so she could change her outfit yet again. Visiting places with her got up that way made him feel so much like some stupid tourist. Thank god she had no itinerary planned for today. At the corner he had to stop for a light.

“Can I have a cigarette?” George asked.

Brenda pulled out two, lit them and handed him one. “You know, we really should cut down,” she said.

In the intersection, a bare-chested young man in dirty pants laid down a cloth-wrapped bundle and opened it. He quickly arranged his props.

“Oh no,” she said, “Please don’t.”

“He’s going to do it.”

“I just ate my lunch.”

The young man spread several pieces of broken glass on the cloth and, for just a few seconds, lay face-downward, his ribs on top of the shards. Then he stood up again. The shiny brown skin of his chest was unmarked in any way.

Next, he picked up two rods each about half a meter in length. At first, George thought he was going to light them and perform the fire-breathing stunt. Brenda had translated an article from the local newspaper about the Mexican government trying to get the fire-breathers off the street and into rehabilitation centers. The kerosene they held in their mouths to do the trick burned the insides of the mouth and throat, affected their brains, and their career-expectancies were nine months to a year at most. But this kid surprised him.

As he inserted one rod for what seemed half its length up into his right nostril, Brenda looked up the street in another direction. She tossed her cigarette out the window.

“God, that’s gross,” George said, “He looks like some kind of surreal walrus.”

“Oh, don’t tell me,” she said, “I don’t want to know.”

“Have you got a peso?” George asked.

“You want to pay him for doing that?” As she turned around to see if she had any coins in her pocket, she must have caught sight of the youth removing the second rod because she flinched. She asked how it was possible to put something that far up one’s nose. He thought she was about to upchuck that expensive steak. Looking away again, she handed him some money and said, “People should pay him not to do it.”

“I think that’s the point,” George said. He handed a coin to the performer. The light changed and he drove on.

“Why couldn’t he just dress up like one of the clowns and juggle or do somersaults?” Brenda asked.

“Maybe he’d find that too demeaning,” George said, “At least he’s doing something for the money. Not like most of the homeless people back home in New York, who just sit in the street and beg.”

“What about the window-wipers on the Bowery?”

“I always give them something. They do me a service.”

“Yes, they smear your windshield with a dirty rag. And you know they’re only going to buy wine with the money,” Brenda said. “These boys are more likely doing this for food for their families.” She patted her permed hair in that way he found irritating.

“Hey, what a man does with the money he earns makes no never mind to me,” George said, “So long as he does something to earn it. Here’s the bank. Stay in the car and I’ll run in and make a withdrawal.”

“Take out enough so I can stop at the artisan’s place later. I promised my brother and Alison I’d bring them some souvenirs.”

“You just don’t get it, do you?” George said, closing the rental-car door with extra force. Did she even listen to him anymore when he spoke, he wondered.

“Oh, I understand you, George. You have your priorities and I have mine,” she said, “Besides, I need something to keep me occupied while you spend all afternoon and evening on the toilet.”

The Versatile Blogger Award

MuDJoB has won a Versatile Blogger Award!

What a treat!
If you Google the Versatile Blogger Award, you get approximately half a million results as of 1 Aug 2010!



The 4 "rules" (with my responses) that accompany the award are:

1. Thank the person who loved you enough to bestow this gift.

• I thank Salvatore Buttaci for adding MuDJoB to his award list.  You can find Sal's terrific poetry and fiction at various places online, and in print.
  Check out his Amazon.com page.

2. Share seven things about yourself.

1. I was born and grew up in NYC, and now reside South of the Border.
2. To the best of my ability, I teach ESL to young people.
3. I write all the time, and have been doing so for over thirty years.
4. Although, I have been affiliated with several writing sites over the years, I recently discovered dream sites on which to express myself, including Rob McEvily's Six Sentences and Blake Cooper's Thinking Ten among others.
5. I've used online resources such as Issuu to "publish" work of mine and that of students, and am tickled pink to find we're being read all over the world.
6. I try my best to be forthright, honest, and sincere with others, and try to write daily.
7. I am very grateful to my many peers, and the people I've met in my travels who have extended a hand of friendship. This world is nothing without friendship.

3. Bestow this honor onto 10 newly discovered or followed bloggers–in no particular order–who are fantastic in some way.
  Here are a dozen bloggers (among many) that I think deserve this award:

• Anthony Venutolo
• Coraline J. Thompson
• Teresa Cortez
• Gita Smith
• Bolton Carley
• Joe Gensle
• Elliott Cox
• Adam Byatt
• Paul de Denus
• Jared Culpepper
• Peter McNiff
• Quin Browne

There are several equally fantastic bloggers I would like to include. For starters, I would like to include all the writers who have participated here at MuDJoB, but have limited myself to a dozen, and considering the names previously mentioned by Sal (who also bent the "rules" a bit), and that each of the above should be gifting at least 10 bloggers, I'm fairly certain if I've not included you here, you will shortly be recognized. So many great writers, so few awards to bestow! What's an admiring blogger to do? Ha. Spread the wealth, won't you?

4. Drop by and let your fellow bloggers know you admire them.

The Versatile Blogger award is peer-driven and such recognition does a great deal to connect and support our on-line community of writers. It has been my pleasure to be a recepient and now a bestower. All my best wishes to those I was granted space to name, to the many that are great, but just couldn't fit this time, and to those whose writing I have yet to encounter.