The Puppeteer Trilogy - Mike Marino (guided reading books txt) 📗

with one hand and make Busby Berkeley have an orgasm with a display of flawless manly choreography ...one, two, three kick...all backed by a legendary backline of high kicking long legs with thunder packed thighs.

 

As 8 P.M. rolled around, the lights dimmed to a level that would mask a groin grope under the table except T Rex and Kathleen could imagine this crowd masturbating to a couple of hand puppets or a marionette dressed up as Marlene Dietrich with top hat and tails..

All Hail Ethel Merman, and when Warner Bros. cartoon characters break out into song singing.."this is it, the night of nights..." grab your best pair of fishnet tights...and let loose a vocal volley...remember...don't ask..don't tell...but above all never mind what others may think of you and your manhood...just smile and keep a stiff upper lip...and be tall and proud as you show off your truly limp wrist!!! It's Showtime Gang...one..two..three...kick...one...two...three...kick!

Chapter Seven

 

The drag queen puppet show was more boffo than T Rex Fitzgerald could have hope for. In fact, it was a turning point in his career as well as for Kathleen Morphine. Neither one of them were aware of the fact that Harry S. Truman Capote, local art critic for the Bostonian Arts Magazine was invited, and was in attendance that evening thoroughly enjoying the comic opera of hand puppet parody, marionette merriment  and dummy debauchery. He was also aware of a young woman with a Nikon camera shooting frame after frame of the production as well as candids of the undercurrent of the gay bar scene. Dancing, kissing, and fondling. Romance in the form of sheer lust was rampant in the club that evening...It was a two for one sale!

 

After the performance, to huge applause, whistles and blown kisses Mr. Capote invited Kathleen and T Rex to his front row table.

 

“Bravo, Bravo!. Marvy performance and I would like to do two articles. One on the puppet politics of assailing the vanilla fortress of Parochial prudishness and one on you, Ms. Morphine. I’m sure your photos have captured the very essence of the performance and the performance of the patrons in an environment of, shall we say, dangerous sexual liaisons, even in this day and age?”

 

Both Kathleen and T. Rex were surprised and excited of the prospect of magazine coverage. This could launch both of their careers into orbit in the right artistic circles...meaning galleries, playwriting, and of course access to the patrons of the arts with and eye for talent and large checkbooks.

 

“I, we are flattered Mr. Capote, an yes, will cooperate in way we can. Thank you!” T Rex effused.

 

Mr. Capote sat back in his chair and lit a cigarette at the end of long holder that gave a feminine air to this ego driven enigma. Hopefully he won’t ask for a hand puppet hand job to seal the deal! Senor Wences would be the logical choice in such matters and that prospect  was not an option.

 

The next few minutes were filled with Capotisms and observations of the art world and how the  two of them were changing that.

 

“Most art and art shows are as a flat as a  two day old beer in a mug sitting next to a jumble of wet cigarettes  fermenting in an ashtray in some dingy dive. Most of your mental dictionaries  spell art "prissy" and "sissy"? Now you gave it balls. Man-up! You know damn well the heavy-metal mucho machismo macho-machino Diego Rivera could kick whitebread milktoast Monet’s lite-rock soft-pastel ass in a fair fight!’

T Rex had an instant vision as he was being transported on a magic carpet ride of Mr. Capote and his -isms of an evening with imposters and impossible poseurs at the galleria; joining hands with the incurable curators who act as secretive as ever; stealing and smuggling art and antiquities from the back alleys of Tangier and Cairo while the writer smoked from a long stemmed hash pipe  dreaming of lit-fame and big chunky bricks of "dumb blonde" hashish, getting more and more stoned while the art critics search for a Mary Martin lostboy or sweet Sal Mineo lost girl in all of Neverland behind it’s massive great walls of art everywhere, along with painters and pirates inhaling pixie dust, and there's a full jammin' needle loaded with kreative karma to ease the pain of the summertime art-fix cold turkey blues.

 

Kathleen Morphine was also on a magic carpet ride of visions of the future, her future and he place in the vain avant garde vanguard  of the art community. She would soon be camping it up with Warhol himself no doubt. She could be a Chelsea girl….or even Nico!!

Andy the Hipster painted icons, pop cans and soup cans, all the while camping it up with Campbells and mincing gaily daily while working on marvelous Marilyn enjoying more than the allotted 15 minutes of fame he proclaimed as 8 Elvises escaped from the velvet painting and blazed a trail to the Velvet Underground leaving in its wake a pile of Joe Delassandro's trash to be devoured by hungry Chelsea girls taking their own Warholic walk on the wild side...do do do do do do do...Surrounded by Sugar Punk Fairies and Little Joes from Miami, F.L.A. who never once gave it away to Lou hiding in the reeds, while Narcotic Nico sang like a muse  while J.J Cale regrouped while Lou laid his head on Andy's Chest and dreamed of Valerie Solanas with a loaded sex pistol in hand firing wildly in the Factory at anything that moved. Annie Oakley on meth looking to blast a hole in the canvas of pop culture.

Now it was Kathleen’s turn. She could feel it. The creative juices of dykes who arrived by
bike, intellectual drag queens, street people, the wealthy from the world of art and Hollywood, writers, drunks, junkies, who wandered in and out of lucidity among the collective mass of societies sub strata of masturbation and creativity, and creative masturbation. You need to have your card punched to gain entree to this wonderland world of art and Alice. It was Schindlers A-List without the Nazi's!

 

 

Chapter Eight

 

The street blues coming from outside her minimalist St. Antoine Street apartment were addicting amd intoxicating. The whole apartment had been converted to a loft dance studio graced only by a small couch and table, a mattress, a few chairs hauled from the Salvation army while the walls were a gallery of famous ballerinas and Nureyev. Modern dance icons Isadora Duncan and Twyla Tharp also found pictorial sanctuary on the lofts wall of fame.

 

Alexia Dyslexia was fast becoming more than curious about the street music, the musicians who were creating it and why did her whole body want to flow with it as opposed to classic ballet movements that all of a sudden seemed rigid and regimented.

 

The old Martin guitar in the hands of One Legged Slim performed flawless musical mojo mirroring what a glissandro might emit as it danced and caressed the gentle strings of a harp. Loose Shoes McGovern, more than a mere keyboardist had complete mastery of the keys, a captain of his ship, a true Ahab in search of the Great White Whale. The homemade steel drums under the spell of the old nameless blind Chinaman kept the beat and cadence and drove the other instruments along a coordinated cattle drive of instrumentation longhorns destined for the meat packing plants of Chicago.

 

Today, Alexia noticed the addition of a plaintiff saxophone wailing it’s lonesome let’s get mugged in a back alley sexual saxy voice added to the mixture by a new cat in town….Gator James.

 

It was time to meet the band.

 

She watched and listened intently. They were as absorbed in the musical moment as she was when dancing. Kind of a zen in the moment kind of spirituality only true artists can feel. Enraptured? Yeah, I guess that would be the word to best describe that form of artistic incarceration of the moment.

 

When they took a break she introduced herself and why she wanted to met them. Simple enough..to blend ballet with street blues. Can it be done? Was it possible? Was it improbable? Would the ballet gods and goddesses destroy the earth if it was attempted.

 

Loose Shoes McGovern spoke first after all had nodded in the affirmative that it might indeed be possible. “We can always give it a try,” he spoke calmly with a gentle hard to place southern accent, probably from Georgia.

 

The band packed up and pickled up their instruments and followed Alexia into the apartment building to her apartment. The loft was bright and large, plenty large to spread out the instruments as Alexia put Swan Lake on the turntable so the band such as it was could get the “feel” of ballet.

 

Before long One Legged Slim was laying down a common blues chord but also added a ninth and thirteenth chord to give that extra flavor and to add a little bit of jazz flavor.

Loose Shoes began banging the ivories with the simple twelve-bar blues used in blues and rock and roll. Gator James inserted a dose of C Minor sax appeal while the unnamed blind Chinaman layered it all with a semi reggae beat.

 

Tchaikovsky had been transformed and now Swan Lake was ready to shake it’s money maker. It was uncanny. It was Swan Lake yet it wasn’t Swan Lake it was Swan Lake on cocaine!

 

Alexia began to dance to a new beat, ballet had met the blues head on. Her movements were even more fluid now. Freedom had been reached through this hybrid bastard child of dance and theater.

 

She could see performance now not as something imprisoned in form over substance.

She would mark her territory of style and freedom of expression that would be as flamboyant and even risque as a frisky drag queen in a dazzling feather boa.

Her penchant for the elegant beauty of the ballet now ran at a full gallup as a revolutionary gamut of free expression.

 

She might afterall realize her ultimate dream to be an A List, a rock star in sheer tunic who could tease her audience with her grace and style and captivated the male species with her beauty, as well as attracting a side order of faithful lesbian groupies who would wanted to camp it up in her camp. Perks!

 

In the local art circles of Boston it was no secret. On the sexual frontier She could not only turn a man into a quivering mass of jello with her