Richard sits. He smokes cigarettes. One after the other. He likes to smoke. He smokes, sits, and thinks, and drinks eight cups of coffee daily. He likes coffee. He likes the way two percent milk, unlike cream, brings out the nutty flavor of Colombian coffee without making it thick and heavy. He doesnt like black coffee. It gives him a disturbingly threatening feeling in the pit of his stomach kind of like he's going to throw up and then his day will be ruined again.
Richard sits and smokes, and thinks, and drinks coffee with two percent milk in it.
Richard likes his apartment. His apartment has become a mess. But he likes his apartment a mess right now. Because...
In his apartment there is a world map on the wall, a picture, computer generated, of the great metaphysicist Roger Bacon, below that a portrait of Richard done in pencil, below that a four-dimensional mathematical picture of relative space, and below that another portrait of him with a baseball cap and beard done in magic marker. Throughout his apartment are astrology posters and above his bed is a map of the heavens with the constellations of the Northern Hemisphere. Behind where he sits and smokes is a Buddhist portrait-poster of Padma Sambhava, the great Buddhist monk who wrote the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Richard also has a library of magic books in his apartment containing the Key of Solomon written by King Solomon, the biblical Hebrew king, Francis Barrett's The Magus, and numerous other astrology and Kabbalah books of synchronicity and the powers that be. All around these drawings and posters and books are spider webs sown by one particular spider which inhabited his apartment about a year ago.
Richard likes the webs and the ancient look of his apartment. In fact the entire apartment has been sown with webs by this single enormous spider.
Richard had begun to notice the elusive, but singular enormous single spider residing in his apartment, but didn't want to kill it for fear of heavenly retribution he sensed and besides he had roaches which he also didn't want to kill because in his mind he had respect for all life and a thorough disgust for whatever pain life had to offer. And there was always pain.
The elusive spider was seen by Richard one day in his bathroom and seemed to recognize Richard as it paused for a moment, took note of him while he noisily walked up to the toilet, but then, just as suddenly and mysteriously took instant fright, climbed one of it’s webs, darted away and hid.
This perplexed Richard. The spider seemed to be playing a game with Richard. It was a game of hide and seek.
As the days went on, the spider gradually, by weaving one web after another and staying out of sight of the man it knew about and trusted with it's life, filled every niche and cranny of Richard’s apartment with webs.
Months passed.
In all the weaving of the webs, which absolutely wrapped Richard in their spidery net, there was not one morsel which became entrapped and preyed upon for food except Richard himself.
One night, when apparently the spider had completed the webs and was about to abandon Richard's apartment, Richard, sleeping, sensed it weaving a web from the ceiling above his bed down towards the foot of his bed.
The spider knew him and he knew the spider. He awakened with a start, yelled at the elusive predator as if in fear for his life, and the frightened spider, which Richard couldn't see, had entangled him in it's predatory web, and had given him the distinctive feeling it knew him and knew Richard to be at peace with it, scrambled back up the web to the ceiling and was never seen in Richard's apartment again.
Richard likes to talk out loud to the powers that be. He believes some human power was in touch with the spider, wove him in it's intricate web playing hide and seek with him, and was predatorially imbuing his apartment with it's ancient, very old look and feel.
About the time this particular spider began engaging and enwebbing Richard, Richard became engaged fitfully with a woman who reminded him in her hide and seek game, her fear of Richard, the trust she seemed to have in him, and finally her predatory inclinations towards him, of this peculiar jittery little web weaver.
Richard met Jeanine bartending at a local bar, the State Street Brats, about three years ago. He had many magic books which involved themselves either with Godly or occult inclinations towards the powers that be: one of them, of course being God. Richard had always wondered who does the women with all their frills, ambiance, and non-committal natures, if God was only a man. And who, of course, were Christ, the Virgin Mary, and finally this mysterious out-of-place man, Joseph, who had to marry, in the spirit, husband, and father both Jesus and the Virgin Mary. Richard had heard about reincarnation early on in his mysterious life and had become curious about the powers that be.
Enter Jeanine. Richard had lived in Madison almost half his life either locked up in a mental hospital outside of town or within the city of Madison itself. Ten years ago, before he was incarcerated, he went out drinking at State Street Brats when it was called the Brat Haus.
One day Richard went into State Street Brats to have a beer and came upon a red-headed lady who served him some Leinie's Red Lager, and acted particularly aware of herself, so much so that Richard asked her if her hair was really red. She replied it was. He then asked her if she was Irish, for she wouldn't look him in the eye, was continually, nervously looking in the direction of the juke box, and appeared to have an irateness about her which made him think she might be Irish. She said no, she was French and her name was Jeanine Jacques. Richard then asked if it was spelled "J-A-K-E-S" and had her spell her last name for him. She departed mysteriously with no further adieu. Richard was lonely after being locked away, found her attractive in a mysterious sort of way, and decided to drink his beer at State Street Brats because they served Leinie's Red, his favorite sweet beer.
The following week, on Tuesday again, Richard walked into State Street Brats and sat down on the side of the bar which Jeanine worked and she served him a Leinie's Red.
After a couple of beers served by Jeanine and thinking he wanted to speak with her, Richard asked if she worked weekends. She said she worked Friday night, to which he asked if he could come in and talk to her at about 7pm. She said yes. He didn’t know that she had a boyfriend and in a way kind of assumed she was free and was entertaining an interest in him. Richard planned to be at State Street Brats 7pm on Friday.
A man had just made friends with Richard all by himself. His name was Mike Capalis. Richard didn't really like the man, he was very pushy, and Richard viewed Mike's entrance into his life very invasive. Mike asked Richard on Wednesday if he would like to go to Visions, a bar with semi-nude female dancers on Friday night in a very pushy and invasive way almost as if he were trying to steal Richard from Jeanine. Richard told Mike about his date to see Jeanine, but Mike continued and continued to put pressure on Richard to go to Visions that Friday. Richard, assuming Jeanine would forgive him, relented to these pressure tactics and made plans to go to Visions with Mike.
Friday night came and Richard waited for Michael to arrive at his apartment, but Michael didn't show. Saturday came and Michael showed then. They both went to Visions, but it mysteriously occurred to Richard that the intrusive Michael resembled the Shroud of Turin, probably was a reincarnation of Christ, and was particularly attempting to interfere in Richard's attempt to get to know Jeanine. Why this occurred to him Richard knew not.
The following Tuesday Richard went again to State Street Brats and sat at Jeanine’s end of the bar.
It had occurred to Richard that he wanted to write on his synthesizer in his apartment a theme related to or about Jeanine and Jeanine's personality. It was also occurring to Richard that she meant something to him reincarnationally, that she was a reincarnation of an Irish romantic heroine, Deidre, that he was a reincarnation of the Irish hero Naoise, that Jeanine was once in love with Richard, left a king's court for him, the king tricked them by offering a pardon for Naoise, but had Naoise executed in order to steal Deirdre. Deirdre's heart supposedly was broken and as the legend would have it, she purportedly committed suicide in her agony for the dead Naoise.
Richard was pondering writing her theme on violins and looking her direction when whips suddenly appeared to be singing around her, she became uncomfortable, stomped over to him, and told him other guys look at her and she doesn't like it. He said, "You mean other guys do this to you?" She abruptly turned around and stomped away.
Richard was wondering why the sudden change in her attitude towards him and why she was so self-conscious because he didn't see her as being overwhelmingly attractive. He just thought she was pretty. He went home that night somewhat disturbed and wrote her a theme on violin synthesizer, was amazed how quickly it came, and how much it simply rendered her personality.
The Rose Bowl was approaching and Richard was becoming overwhelmed with this peculiar reincarnational thrust to his thinking. For many years he had wondered if Dan Fogelberg, the rock-and-roll-symphony writer, composer, and singer, wasn't a reincarnation of King Arthur's Lancelot. Dan Fogelberg was playing the Coliseum on Thursday and it was again Tuesday, the day Jeanine worked, and Richard was headed for State Street Brats. It had occurred to him that he would ask her out to the Fogelberg Concert, let her know his fondness for her, and discuss the options regarding their potential love lives. There had been other reincarnated women in Richard's life and he wasn't going to press for Jeanine. But he was going to ask her out.
When Richard got to State Street Brats, he found Jeanine and a young man sitting where he usually sat, on Jeanine's side of the bar, and sat across the bar from her, facing her, where he couldn't see the man..
He ordered a Leinie's Red and observed Jeanine nervously eating food, turning to uninterestedly talk to the man, and intensely staring in Richard's direction, not taking her eyes off Richard except to occasionally turn in the direction of the young man. This staring behavior lasted for about half-an-hour and bothered Richard intensely along with the facts that the reincarnational material was coming to him, he had written her theme on violins, and she seemed to be standing him off in a paranoid fashion. Richard couldn't understand this and felt she at least could hear him out, they could at least be friends, and maybe with the information he was going to give her about reincarnation and the UFO or starship sighted over his parents house when he was a young boy, she could help him find another young lady and these reincarnational and UFO things could be resolved. Jeanine was a journalism major. He hadn't done anything to deserve this kind of strange, staring behavior from her.
The strange, staring behavior upset and angered him so much that he began to gesture with his arms and hands towards the heavens and then to her. She responded by imitating his gesture towards herself, kind of looking like a ballerina.
He stopped gesturing, thought she understood him, and she walked out, waving sadly in his direction with who he thought was her boyfriend.
Richard was left standing alone at the bar.
He thought about it awhile, becoming more and more incensed, and then suddenly yelled fairly loudly, "Stupid fucking bitch!*#!" After this outburst, he immediately realized he had lost it and repeated the phrase in a questioning tone. The barmaid walked up to him and kicked him out for the evening. Richard, before leaving, said to her, "I really have a heart of gold," in a gentle, positive, apologetic voice and departed.
Richard walked home alone that night.
When Richard got home to his apartment, he thought deeply about the reincarnational things which were coming to him around this Jeanine and decided he had better apologize to her in a letter for his outburst and write as much about the U.F.O. over his parents house when he was a young boy, the reincarnational material he had been receiving, and his fondness for her. Richard mailed the letter to the Wisconsin State Journal, where she worked part time, the following day.
He waited two weeks...
On Tuesday he journeyed down to the block where State Street Brats was located, but went into the Flamingo Tavern to think about his approach to Jeanine. He had a sneaking suspicion that Jeanine knew he was coming and possibly might be setting him up.
After about half-an-hour, Richard got up and headed across the street to State Street Brats, very aware of his position.
When he walked in, he noticed Jeanine putting up Christmas lights in the window and staring hypnotically at a red bulb. This scared Richard a little. He immediately sensed that someone was going to try and head him off in his attempt to apologize to Jeanine, so he rushed up behind her, did a quick scan of the back of her head, and said, "Excuse me..." Jeanine did a Natalie Merchant spin and directly looked into Richard's eyes. They just gazed into each other's eyes for about three minutes, when Jeanine suddenly became uncomfortable and turned toward the wall looking like she sensed their bond and was evaluating this gentleman whom she didn't know.
Richard asked her if she had gotten the letters which he mailed to the Wisconsin State Journal. She said no. He then told her he had called there the night before at about 8pm. She said she didn't work until 8:30pm. Then suddenly she began to stare into Richard's eyes again, this time for a few more minutes, silently. Richard decided he had done enough looking, looked embarrassed at his feet, and apologized for his outburst. Jeanine was looking at her feet and so was Richard.
Then suddenly, a young man came up behind Richard, grabbed him by the arm, and conducted him out. When he got outside, there was another young man waiting for him. Before he turned to the young man, he looked into the window at Jeanine and thought to her, "Small tears??" She immediately started crying very powerfully. He turned to the young man who he recognized as being different than the man with Jeanine the night of her staring. The young man said that he didn't think Richard should come back. Richard was upset and thought to him, "You were Jesus' son in Ireland!" Richard went home alone.
Towards December, before the Rose bowl, Richard went to Rock Island, a dance bar, across the street from where Jeanine lived. He had thought he was telepathic and that Jeanine could read his mind anywhere he was. He thought that she might come to Rock Island with her boyfriend and if he showed, he would probably be angry at Richard, and that Richard and/or God would put the sun out. Jeanine and boyfriend didn't show.
Richard went home and figured that probably Jeanine and her boyfriend were making love while he thought to himself. He waited and thought to himself about his circumstances for another two hours, until 3:30 am. and then called her apartment. Jeanine answered the phone on the first ring. He said, "Hello?" She said, "Hello?" He said, "Hello?" She said, "Hello?" Then she suddenly got irate and said angrily, "Who are you!*&#?!" He angrily said, "Well, who the hell are you??!!!!**###!!!??" She angrily said again, "Who are you??!*&#??" He then said somewhat angrily, "What are you doing, up at 3:30 in the morning????" He immediately hung up. He went to bed alone.
A few days later Richard was sitting in his apartment and thinking to himself about Jeanine and writing her a whole bunch of letters explaining his position, seeing it was his suspicion that she was the last of the reincarnated women he had met in his life. He also sent her the Phil Collins album entitled "Hello, I must be going..." This album had an angry song on it towards a woman saying, "You said you would, you wouldn't, now why did you lie??" After this song, Phil did a rendition of "You can't hurry love..." He didn’t know where to go or who to depend on anymore.
When he was out at the Mental Hospital, he couldn't play piano because of the one of the drugs they were giving him. The doctor gave him no choice but to take a 'drug holiday' and be cold turkeyed off all of the drugs they now had him on. And he was on many. He decided to go to maximum security and ride it out. He knew he was badly addicted.
The first day there, a different doctor agreed with Richard that he should be taken off slowly and carefully like Richard had said, but the doctor lied and Richard was immediately cold turkeyed off the drug. For weeks he had a Playboy, imagined that as he was sleeping, his consciousness was being taken out of his body and deposited into the body of a sexual beast who had clits all over his body which stimulated the women's clits and turned them into blind sex-slaves of this beast. For weeks, Richard would masturbate ten times a day and shoot to a ten foot ceiling spreading his sperm until it dripped from the ceiling. He lay in bed, was crawling with sexual desire, and thought how unfortunate. He also thought about the U.F.O. books he had read and figured these bug-eyed aliens had mirrors and magnetic boots in a pod which traveled erratically around the sun that scientists had named the Phoenix.
After about a month, he began to come down. Richard figured he had ridden it out and from there on in it was uphill all the way. Then a meeting was called. At this meeting, about ten people sat and stared at Richard suspiciously and asked meaningless questions which made Richard feel uncomfortable. When they asked him what he was thinking about he told them the truth about the aliens he had read about. Nothing unusual. They immediately put him back on the full dose of medications unnecessarily and Richard has been impotent since.
Also, when Richard was cold turkeyed off the drugs, he went into the day room and came across a magazine which interested him with a painting on the cover of the Buddhist god Yama brandishing a skull whip and looking completely delirious. When he looked at the painting a strange prickling began to coarse through his feet and it occurred to him that he was being skull-whipped through the bottoms of his feet. Actually this is no worse than burning down a small grove of trees cell-by-cell. The consciousness in cells writhes in pain also. But it was theoretically happening to his head and coarsing through his feet. This frightened Richard so much that he woke up screaming and with the force of it threw himself out of bed onto the granite floor and banged his head. He shrugged his shoulders and went back to sleep. This happened twice.
Richard went to sleep after he saw the painting on the top Tibetan Buddhist temple and woke up in the morning to a screaming little girl's voice in the ceiling corner of his room. This perplexed Richard. He knew his circumstances had become frightening, but he didn't see much sense in screaming about it. He ignored it. Spoke to it. It spoke to him. And he talked it down. It could see through his eyes the cards in his hand, so he knew it at least had a perceptive consciousness. He was put back on another ward. These coarsings through his feet continue. He is very afraid, and Jeanine has inadvertently left him here. He didn't know where to go or who to turn to anymore...
He thought that he might be God, but actually thought all things were God, even the microbes. When it occurred to him that he might personally be a victim of God's wrath, he thought something as horrendous as this couldn't possibly be consciously conducted at him. Besides, what had he done to deserve so much pain in life. But the thought occurred to him that if he were God he would steal Jeanine's existence at the end of her present life for leaving him here and not being a good Samaritan. He thought about calling her, but decided no. Then he began to hear an inner voice which didn't come from him. He thought it to be God. The voice suggested that Richard call her and tell her that he would give her two options, either he would kill her now, or at the end of her present life she would no longer be existent. He argued with the inner voice saying "No!" over and over again. Suddenly it said, "Now!" Richard immediately got up and dialed her number and told her exactly what the inner voice, who he thought to be God, had said he should say. He slumped miserably back into his chair.
A few days later he called her again, said her name in French, asking if that was her. She immediately hung up.
He immediately sent her again the letter he had originally sent her, plus a few others, one describing how he was telling God to put out the sun, and how she would no longer be existent after her present life if she didn't come back and talk to him.
Two days before the Rose bowl game, he was arrested and taken out to the Mental Hospital. He saw part of the game on maximum security. He was very disappointed with the ethical things which were occurring, either in her name or her boyfriend's name.
While he was out to Mendota, he came across a book called Roxanna with what looked like a painting of Jeanine on the cover. It was the authentic story of a Virgin Island buccaneer named Dirk Courtney and a woman named Roxanna Marshall. According to this book, Dirk was enslaved by a British merchant named Edmund Raynal. Dirk finally escaped and became a buccaneer. One day when out at sea, they came across Raynal's ship, boarded it, Dirk challenged Raynal to a duel, and Raynal was killed. Later on Raynal's wife, Roxanna Marshall, bought a pardon for Dirk. There may have been a romance going on. Richard immediately, but tentatively began to think of himself as Dirk and Jeanine as Roxanna. Richard luckily was released. Jeanine was going to testify against him, but he stayed three weeks so that he would be released instead. Otherwise he would have never gotten out. He went home to his apartment.
He wrote Jeanine a brief letter explaining he was not going to bother her anymore and that he was very disappointed in her behaviors.
Months went by...
In May, before he was supposed to go to court, he had every confidence that the charge of disorderly conduct would be overthrown. He assumed that even in the phone calls, he hadn't said he would kill her. He had only given her a choice to die now or have her life extinguished at the end of her life.
In March, he had been at the Caribou, a local tavern, to do his laundry, but while he was talking to a man there it suddenly occurred to him that Jeanine was getting razor wire whipped on her breasts. This was insane, but the thought persisted. He went home.