Untitled “exercise”

or

Drunk, and in charge of a Moleskine

Copyright © 2005 by Alan DeNiro, David Moles, Greg van Eekhout, Hal Duncan, Hannah Wolf-Bowen, Kat Beyer, Kristin Livdahl, Meghan McCarron and Sarah Prineas, although they would probably prefer not to be associated with it in any way.

Thanks to Kat for putting the quarter in.

Dragons don’t always like funk music — though some are true slaves to the boogie. If you’re looking for the deepest, truest and most committed fan of James Brown, however, look no further than Clarence, the funkiest dragon in town.

When Clarence wasn’t getting down, he could be found at his day job bagging groceries at the A&P. He spent his days reciting the exact litany of cities from “Sex Machine”; he had a theory about the members of the band, who was kissing James’ ass when they shouted “yeah!”, who was sick of James’s schtick.

James is a giant fucking PEACH. The Apollo blasts off, 1962 smolders in the Cuban missile crisis hanging over the ancient theatre named after a Dutch city. Nuclear dragons circle the Apollo. James is not afraid. Clarence has not even noticed; he has his headphones on, his music turned up, and he’s thinking of quitting his job, starting a band.

Unfortunately, at the first audition, the first guy to show up was a bass player named George, who wore a white T-shirt with a red cross on it and carried a long stick with a sharp metal thingy on the end.

“Slay,” he thought. “Slay that thudding, plodding, mud-handed truck-footed shit, rooted in tar, afraid of moving the hips. Slay that mullet-headed puritanism, fat dragon with smoky shit puffing from flared nostrils, old, covetous, inert.

“GET UP!” Clarence roared; and George shook it off — he dropped the pointed stick and hurriedly plugged in his bass.

“GET ON UP! I FEEL LIKE BEING A SEX MACHINE!”

So George began to discover, beat by beat and chord by chord and shout by shout, that even a saint can get up on it and get down.

In the audience, Unicorn Fred, A&R man for Rough Braid Records, nodded his head in time to the beat, his mane flicking like some heavy metal kid, long-hair, his horn bobbing up and down.

Nice, he thought. Real nice. That dragon is going to look real good on the album cover.

At least, if the dragon has tits.

(Mammary sensations in dragons were only created through an application of funk music pressurized against the back of the neck — we can’t assume that our intimacies are the same as dragons’.)

And then! Deep in a bass-playing funk, George ripped off his T-shirt and Lo! He revealed the intricate and hermetic tattoos of an ancient order of primordial funk, the secret inspiration of Sun-Ra and George Clinton.

Also, dragon tits is H-O-T-T!!!

The End