excerpts from the unauthorized, unpublished and almost entirely fictional biography of Fatuis Fortuna

For your consideration here are some excerpts from the unauthorized, unpublished and almost entirely fictional biography of Fatuis Fortuna.



This is a bit tricky, so bear with me.

All characters, events, and technologies appearing in this work or related works appearing on this blog with the designation: Retractus lipia Exponere dentis Felis Coprophagous are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Furthermore, I can neither confirm or deny that what you are about to read may be a matter of either national or global security.

This article is Classified: Retractus lipia Exponere dentis Felis Coprophagous

Naturally, it began on a Monday morning. I was comfortably parked in front of my laptop. The fan is on me and I am wearing what I usualy wear on Monday , a pair of my best boxers and what was once 5 o'clock shadow on my jaws a day or two ago.

I had just recieved an email from one of the angels who took human form to (among other great and wonderful things) watch out for my silly ass.

It was clear, nearly three lustrums ago, at the end of our one and only date that Gnadige Frau and I are “blood related”. Even so still, she is absolutely one of the great loves of my life. Gnadige Frau and her kind and gracious spouse have been acting as a mail drop for the odds and ends of official correspondence I sometimes get.

About a month or more ago I received a spam-a-gram from a poetry contest heralding the fame and glory that could be mine (if I were to submit a winning poem.)

I had started to send them one of Uncle George's favorites about an old man from Nantucket.

On a whim I submitted one of my bits of doggerel for their consideration.
In her email, Gnadige Frau, informed me that an envelope from the contest had arrived.

I consider her to be more the genuine wordsmith of the two of us. Regretfully, I have failed to coax or coerce her to seek to publish any of her personal writing. My certain bias aside, I have frequently been moved by the simple eloquence of both her prose and her poetry.

Meanwhile, my writing, like my fighting and love making would be more euphemistically (sic) described as rambunctious.

Gnadige Frau had naturally opened the envelope for me. It contained a letter informing me of being a semi finalist in the contest as well as a proof of my submission and a release form.

I am not at all clear what being a semi finalist in this contest actually means.

I suspect "Semi finalist" is probably marketing gibberish for a Sweepstakes-esque scam to get one to enroll in the J. Alfred Prufrock Correspondence School of Full Contact Professional Poetry.*

*(Located just next door to The Waste Land Sanitarium for the Politically Insane, open to members of both parties and the voting public)


What the hell?

There was a flash of light and I’m suddenly no longer in my room in Paradise.

Where am I?

I’m half blind from the flash. I hear music.

The words sound familiar, “Miracles will happen as we trip. But were never gonna survive, unless” Hey that’s Seal. Crazy. Good song. What the hell?

OK I am sitting in a chair. I rub my eyes; vision clearing up. God’s teeth it is cold in here.

I am sitting on one of those cheap brown metal folding cafeteria chairs. I’m in the middle of a herd of chairs being taken down by a tall muscular kid, maybe 19 to 22, hard to tell. Looks about 6’ 2”, probably 190, dark brown skin, thin mustache, short cut hair, neat. He's wearing black leather work shoes, black slacks and black shirt with a gold vest with something-‘INN” stitched on the vest pocket.

Ok, between the kid’s vest and the chairs I appear to be in a rather low-rent hotel conference room.

Low rent or not, some one’s got the a/c cranked! I rub my forearms with my hands to get the circulation going. I watch as the kid folds up another chair and stacks it on a long metal dolly.

There are two long tables in the front of the room end to end. A wide white plastic banner hangs from the front of the tables. In bold red white and blue lettering spells out the words Start Living Your AMERICAN DREAM TODAY!!! On one end of the right table is a boom box which is playing the Seal song.

OK, be cool, take a breath. I’m probably just dreaming this. I ‘m going to wake up and realize that I brought home a bar girl and she slipped me a Mickey. If that’s true, the laptop is probably history. Ok, well that sucks but it’s better than not dreaming this.

I hear the sound of conversation behind me. Maybe it isn’t what I think. Maybe I'm in a bar sleeping off the Mickey.

Slowly I turn to my left. Oh shit. It’s them! Who the hell am I looking at? The back of the room is full of them. Who ever they are. I scan the room. Must be fifty White guys here. Damn.

I turn back to my right and rub my eyes again. Maybe the flash of light damaged my eyes. Once more I look at the banner. I find it troubling but I see it clearly. I glance over at the kid. Cool.

I turn to my right and look again. They are still there and very much White. A whole bunch of them. Really white. What's with all of the Golf shirts and DayTimers? Clusters, groups and pairs. Guys with a skin tone I have never seen before.

It’s certainly true that every thing is relative. I’m old enough to remember being confused by strange “flesh” color crayons that magically turned into “peach” after 1962.*

* (editors note: The really "funny" part of that story is that I don't remember being born before the middle to late 60's and even as bright as I like to pretend I am I was past Kindergarten when I remember looking at that crayon and it not making sense to me, which would make it closer to 72. Still, I have been led to believe that the maker of the crayons changed them back in 62. I guess I must have had a box of surplus crayons. Jim Crow who?)

These guys were white. When I say white I don’t mean the range of extremely pale going beyond nice beige like myself “white”, used to describe people labeled as Caucasian. They didn’t look like anybody I’ve seen called albino, either.

It was if they had been painted with a powder coat white. That white. I mean Scary-White.

Wait, it can’t just be white guys. Ok, there’s me, the kid picking up chairs, and… ummm...ok. Where are my other brothers of color? No Hispanics? No Asians? No Persians? Not even one swarthy Mediterranean? Just me, the kid and a bunch of Scary-White guys. Nice.

The kid isn’t freaking out. Maybe something is wrong with my eyes.

I’ll go with that and wait before I consider if I’m finally having that psychotic breakdown every one is expecting me to have. I can wait a while before I wake up barefoot wearing the jacket with wraparound sleeves.

Ok fine, good plan. Make sure I’m cool with the kid. Me and the kid will watch each other’s back. I’ll help him break down the rest of these chairs and we’ll slip out of here no one the wiser. If any one asks I’ll just look down and apologize that I haven’t gotten my vest yet, my first day. White people always go for that one.

Hey wait a minute; all the white white guys must have really rattled me. I just noticed there’s no one of the female persuasion here either. This is really bad. No sassy sista’s, no caliente chica’s, no lovely Thia girls, not even a bitter white women? Not even a Scary-White woman.

Where the hell am I? Some preppie closeted gay Aryan-nation-meets-Stephen Covey version of heaven?

Need to figure this out, enough with the sick jokes. Or is it a joke? Forget the Scary-White skin; something has been making me nervous before I saw them. The banner was troubling, but that's probably related to having read Chomsky and R.A. Wilson.

Don’t think. Look, listen, smell.

I’m in front of a pack of white white guys all smiling smiles at each other like they are carefully practicing to instill confidence and trust.

Men in their mid to late 20’s with the slightly over moussed hair. Dockers or black Versace Jeans, Golf shirt and Nikes, a waft of Chaps or Obsession.

Men in their early to mid 40’s, with a few grey hairs that the dye had missed or sporting their best comb over. Dockers or black Levi Jeans, Golf shirt and Adidas or Sebago boat shoes. The presence of Old Spice or the stink that will never die, Polo.

Their voices giddy their eyes wide and pupils dialated with the influence of either a recent hit of cocaine or Tony Robbins

Some boldly wearing man purses, all with those damn Day Timers.

If not for the Scary-White guys, I would think I was at one of those Get-rich-by-selling-shit seminars some when in the 90’s. The Seal song fits perfectly. The 90’s, ha! Now that is crazy.

The kid must have gone over by the boom box, switched it over to radio. The volume has turned down some. It' s loud enough for me to hear Cindy,Maxine, Dawn and Terry tell me in their beautiful voices that I was “Never gonna get it”. James Brown’s “Payback” rift coming through loud and clear.

I paused for a moment to mutter a choice curse for William and his fucking razor. OK Brother Ockham, set aside that the music is from the early 90s, they're all wearing pretty much the same clothes from the mid to late 90’s, like they're wearing uniforms or costumes? Just where exactly are these Scary-White freaks from? The planet Saltine? Lex parsimoniae, my ass!

Time to move before they notice me. I walk down the row of chairs to the kid. I grab a chair and break it down and stack it on the dolly. As I move past the kid I can smell a faint residual scent of what I am silently praying in the name of Thomas Chong was not burning rope.

The kid looks up at me and I don’t see his eyes dilated or out of focus. He stands straight up, poised, calm, and un-medicated.

Is he palming some Visine? He's good.

I smile my carefully practiced smile to hide the fear spreading out from the pit of my stomach. Doesn’t he realize I’m not one of them? Damn it man!

He looks at me, as if waiting for me to speak. Fine, I move closer.

In a low voice I say to him “Hey man, you know where I can pick up a couple of White Owls?”

He’s looking at me blankly, with a confused expression. I catch a flash of awareness in his eyes, assessing me, suspicious?

In a clear deep voice, without discernable accent he replies “I beg your pardon sir; I’m not familiar with... what is it...White Owls?”

His eyes are bright and polite. For a second I think I see a flash of flat hardness just beneath the surface. His eyes don’t appear to leave my face but I feel the scan all the same.

What the fuck? I drop my head and run my left hand across my brow. Hey, who cut my hair? I focus down at my feet. No way! Sebago boat shoes!

As I stifle the expletive in my throat I feel a tap on my shoulder and the words reach my ears, “Say there friend, what did you think of the business plan?”

I freeze. I’m looking back up at the kid. The kid looks at me politely. Playing the game he thinks I’m playing, which is …? Oh shit. I remember the boat shoes. I look down at my pants. Dockers! He thinks I’m one of them. I am so screwed!

I hear the guy behind me clear his throat and tap my shoulder again. “Is everything OK friend?”

OK, I can handle this. Think. I start coughing, bringing my right fist up to cover my mouth and cock my arm incase I have to…what? Deck him? Get yourself under control! Don’t make eye contact. Don’t shake hands. For godssakes don’t tell him your name.

I continue coughing as I turn around. The man I have turned to is one of the more plump 40-somethings. White as a cue ball. He looks at me with an expression by which I am not entirely sure he means to show concern or constipation.

I keep my cough going; I nod my head and shrug my shoulders and point at my throat and then the distant door.

I walk past him and try to avoid as many of the rest as I can. I cut my coughing down to more restrained sputtering as I navigate a semi circle or five of them. They are trying to pass business cards. I glance at the exchange; expecting to see at least two of the blatantly ostentatious flavor and one of the obviously “I-did-this-at-home on my inkjet”. Nope, regular all-purpose professional standard business cards. Not even one with an odd ball font.

Several of the 40-somethings and one or two of 20-somethings are standing in front of various displays; scattered dry erase boards, and a few of those giant pads of paper on easels.

They’re taking turns drawing circles with spokes attached to more circles in the shape that they are now all saying is not a “pyramid”. They make air quotes with their index and middle fingers before and after they say pyramid. They practice sadly shaking their heads and smiling wisely at each other.

They take turns telling each other that they are Multi-Di-Marketing entrepreneurs. This is no Ponzi scheme friend. “Who’s Ponzi? You mean the guy on Happy Days? Aaaaaa” they say, laughing too loudly.

I keep hearing them end sentences with the word friend, as if it was a verbal punctuation mark.

Multi-Di-Marketing? What the fuck?

This is making my brain hurt. I realize that I have stopped only a few yards from the door. I shake myself and move to make a break for it just as one of them walks up and places a shiny plastic card into my hand.

"You don't want to leave with out your card, friend", he smiles at me and walks on.

The card feels ice cold on my palm. I glance down, and see what looks not quite like an American flag on one side. The back of the card is so cold it feels like it’s giving me a freezer burn. I flip if over and see only a blank shiny white back. I carefully slide it, cold side out, into the hip pocket of my Dockers.

As I step past the last two nearest the door I see one of them holding open a copy of the Robb Report. They’re both looking down at the glossy pages. I step though the door as I hear one of them ask the other if he’s going to buy a Patek Philippe or a Vacheron Constantin with the money they’ll make giving away soul cards in thier spare time. They both laugh too loudly.

Soul cards? Where the hell am I?


To be continued....