By

Weldon H. Sandusky

V

MEMORY: HOLLYWOOD

  Like some great hidden war everyone plays on pixel dots on screens shot by photons from electronic signals sent from transmitters around the world -- the Church and State as co-conspirators masked their innocence from earliest time: In re Jesus Christ. Through Hitler, Hiroshima and Vietnam, Napoleon raring up on his twenty-hand horse, Davy Crocket swinging to the last an empty musket, El Cid taking an arrow, Weldon, pacing the floor in Dallas far from the gas station takes his place—Waterloo, the Alamo—the final standoff.

              

…     It’s  FRIDAY night and he and his ten year old son, like garrulous terrified commanders, strategically cope with the non-appearance of “Mom” –Peggy –the ageless woman, tempestuous, beguiling, and, perhaps, adulterous! In his heart, Weldon, no ZONKO, no laugh, but the roll of a coming gigantic moon tear knows it’s over—suspicion has over ten years amounted again to probable cause and without listing the three or five other times of estranged conspiracy, without deriving the benefit of legal counsel, he (his son beginning to quietly whimper) fumbles at numbers on the phone, paces the little house with adrenaline spiked steps and then stares down an empty street for the car.

 …   The weekend—Saturday and Sunday—will be tuff, but—“TONIGHT MY DARLING” singers sing—the silly little Generals are only two duped stooges in a game conniving and to coin the word again—conspiratorial!!!

“Dad!” his son, Stephen calls. “Dad!” His son again calls to deaf ears, a face lined with terror and fear, a mouth full of cigarettes, and, a stomach ready for alcohol upon the realization, so said knowledge, logical deduction, conclusion of law, etc. : MOM’S NOT COMING HOME!!!!

    “STEVE!”

    “DAD!”

    The two command only silence … an entire nation of heroes waiting their turn, ad infinitum.

    “Ah, she’ll probably be here.” His son pretends to dial a number. Like all great men, father and son hold their honor and their pride in the outstanding balance of love.

    Weldon dashes to the door! “ Sandy.” Bill Trumble, a neighbor, calls.

    “Ah, hello Steve.” Bill glances at Weldon’s son.

    “Hi.” Steve plays cool.

    “Bill, I need your car!” Weldon looks down quickly, knowing already the answer.

    A kind of battle plan dissolves into a wild cab ride, alcohol purchase, and, two last nights together—hazy memories of a fart joke, ZONKO!!

 

    On Monday morning, having seen Peggy’s new lover, Weldon, with no I.D., no money, and, no son, borrows one-hundred dollars and flies to L.A….Hollywood, only a short drive, the sudden flip of a switch.  His son maybe that night cried—they all must—laughing with her new man, his new Dad, on the other hand.

    “Howdy, name’s Sanklee,” says Weldon arriving in L.A. A haggard, filthy woman nods and finishes cleaning the airport bathroom. Disposed of a leak, and, perhaps, twenty dollars, Sanklee heads for Hollywood. She sanitizes the urinal and mutters something like, “cheap bastard!”

   

VI

THE LAW AND THE EVENT: HOLLYWOOD

    Not like being a gas station night man, which, he is to become, or a student, which he was, Weldon views himself as a freeman. He flags a cab, showman-like, and, says, “Hollywood,” parting with his last twenty dollars. Like some great non-entity, the world slides past the cab window, Weldon, both looking and, he believes, being looked at. No chains of marriage, no shadows of doubt, no reason to look back, no reason to peer into the future—the cab veers in and out of traffic, the pretend star in the back seat trying to appear forlorn, not exactly plastic, but, honestly hurt, James “Deandian.”

    “Anywhere in particular, sir?” the cab driver asks.

    Caught off-guard, Weldon, at last, utters, “Ah, the corner of Hollywood and Vine, please.”

    The cab arrives, Hollywood is Hollywood, the cement is hard, the air is exhaust-filled; and, Weldon is just now from telephone commander to Hollywood stand beginning to become aware of the facts of his case. No clear direction, he decides he must raise an issue, ignite Hollywood with his dilemma, excite the girls, amaze crowds with grace, snub bankers, scoff at attorneys and attract (on the side) prospective producers. They don’t know him, of course, he concludes out of some innocent paranoia, and, though his ship is landed, they are merely playing coy, hard to get, “stand-offish,” cold.  As his well-concocted emotions settle in, his act becomes more positive—secure in believing that, pardon a look into the future, (ZONKO!), he is himself, no bit part, no major character, no stock, straw-figure, himself, whoever that is—more than likely, the thought flashes by—a failure.

 

    What support,  he thinks, as, to be sure, street bums, Dickens like, all emerge, penniless, prying about the streets of Hollywood. Christian, Babylon babes wrapped in cheap designer rags start to trickle in and out of nowhere; one approaching the now almost suspended Weldon having himself taken a stand by the famous corner drugstore. She nods in an endless chain of nods, starlit, starlight, in a town that, despite its hills full of mansions and streets full of ‘limos,’ is from Weldon’s perspective a ghetto—dangerous, detective, Batman, suspense and crime filled.

   “You act like you know me,” Weldon blurts out too late to the disappeared girl now newspaperman offering him a fresh copy of the L.A. Times.

    “No,” says Weldon and he begins to march off Chaplinesque somewhere indistinct but less vague, than, shall we say, the home he once had in Dallas, Texas.

VII

MEMORY: HOLLYWOOD

    As though some kind of refugee from the constitutionality of the home, the sanctity of marriage, the necessity of education…it is as if the all new FREEMAN, Weldon, is driven by a destiny—rude and crumbling; however, a destiny—a purpose: wiring his mother in Dallas for money, eating at missions for the poor, “pimping” as a prospective gigolo, acquiring a one-room accommodation in a Hollywood rooming house, consuming pint after pint of cheap wine, walking up and down the streets of Hollywood, throughout L.A., Orange County, Corona del Mar—all the while, walking… walking… walking… walking—sometimes as many as twenty to twenty-five miles—a mere day’s worth of  STAR, chosen one, FREEMAN; an expression of feelings dark and hateful and unnoticed by the people of Los Angeles at large. A guitar is purchased! Paper to draw on, colored pens, some white baggy pants, a few cans of food, chips—a sign larger than WELCOME called  failure. But, is that not himself, Weldon thinks, almost out loud!

    “Hi!” He nods at his neighbor, Doretha, a woman from Colombia with huge plump tits and short and tight: reels of film spinning, x-rated, in Weldon’s mind, yet like fire and death and destruction, SEX, he has come to realize is like a trap, a prison, a death-bell, tolling not far away.  Doretha stands in the door…

    “I notice guitar,” she at last indicates, strumming her hand against the air of the rooming house hallway.

    “Yea, I kind of play.”

    Weldon plugs an almost Sanklee just beginning to emerge while Doretha is hot, luscious, unnamed—both ‘discoverees’ continuing some story they know as well is wrong and with that finally parting, similarly, with nods and affirmation—bottles of anointing oil only waiting on the one hand and on the other bottles full of blood laughing as it were at them and Hollywood in general. She suggests passage into her room and Weldon likewise into his. She declines; and, he does too, each laughing at the overnight murals he’s painted on paper hung on his walls—tall, space, alien people, an ‘audience’ for his solitary serenades she has no doubt overheard. With an almost abrupt “bye”, she takes the line from the seeming stock dummy, Weldon, saying, “Adios,” then, closing the door.

B

    A year almost passes thus—marked by forays into L.A., and, towards the end, (a  bus  back to Dallas, and,  “Mama” ). Weldon, to avoid walking eight miles to a downtown mission to eat, eats from Dempsey dumpsters behind restaurants in Hollywood. He hocks the guitar, pays his last rent, and, after a few days, awaits the inevitable. FAILURE. Jesus among the Jews. A mock epic with a cast of bums and losers and  ‘limos’ that,-------Zonko------go by like that.

    Legal-like, Weldon, will sit on the bus—Mexicans, incapacitated individuals, a man whose ass weighs four-hundred pounds and takes two seats,  a driver who knows who they all are and punches a hole in their tickets; and, “Thanks,” says Sanklee-Weldon-loser, and, boarding, turns to see a man vomit on the rear wheel.

   

VIII

THE GAS STATION

    The gas station is now under closed circuit surveillance—the Government hoping to catch Weldon, conspiring. Ruger’s right hand man is Gary P.

    Weldon thinks now in nighttime acts without words as though the Hollywood year, the front yard and the mental institutes have paid off. He gestures:
   “Twenty, on pump Three,” says a fat man in a kind of commando jeep.  “Marlboro Light,” says a woman looking Mary-like with scarf and caped shoulders. A line of customers at the 10:00 o’clock shift change has formed, Weldon strumming the TGR 15 cash register keys adroitly and able at the same time to counter unprovoked aggression or even, then, quickly, switch to the offensive, offering a smile or wink or for the video cameras maintained by Exxon or for anyone, for that matter, a demeanor of gray ambiguity.

    “Five,” and, “…some “Lights,”  a local student says, exasperatedly, in  a hurry, Weldon, gesturing, as well, quick,  and with a tone of voice, gay, high-pitched, dead and machine-like.

    Gary P. and Rueger, Weldon hopes, like all ‘audiences’, are being conditioned, trained, as it were, paying for the intelligence they engage in. Customers, spies, purveyors, agents, cameras and cars all get the same…

    “Can I help you?”  he asks, an almost until now hidden Mexican clutching a candy bar and soda and, then, muttering, “Cam-el, real one, p-lcice-pelease-po-lice,…”

    “$7.02,” says Mr. Kool, Weldon, Wel-Done, Wal-don, ‘007’ –the night man. No more psychoses, no more mental institute behavior, schizoid euphoria, abject depression, soap opera crying.  Weldon neither drinks…

    “Can I help you?”

    “$10.00.”

    “Thank you. Have a good night.”

Nor lusts…

    “Can I help you…” nor does he do anything he, Weldon, himself, the co-defendant conspirators, Church and Government and anyone an accessory before or after the fact of the ‘PEOPLE’ might find incriminating.

    Gary P. and Rueger are now quiet, and, like the night man, alone across the street, a widescreen running silently in a flag-draped room with as coffee table, chairs and phone—the gas station, the bathroom, two o’clock AM, stocking the cooler—ZONKO—“Breathe deep ‘homos’…”

    “Steve!!!!!”—nodding, half-asleep.

    “The CONSPIRATOR!” Telephones, satellites, “PBX’s”, chips, the entire electrical world awaits more…amidst sounds of soda pop cases being moved, bottles sliding down their plastic aisles.

    Then “ You know, I know, you know. Rip…Zonk…Breathe deep. Come to him-use ‘la fuerza’, use the force, come to Franco.”

    www. Francolopez. Com…is at last identified by FBI.  Rueger grabs the phone.

“We got an address on the domain. Code Hound Dog.”

    “Hold please.” It’s the FBI in Dallas.

    “Gary!”

    Rueger ‘mouses’ his monitor.

    “Thanks.” Gary P. says, while meanwhile back in the cooler across the street, the cooler door opens and shuts whisking ‘stinky fumes’ for Homos to catch.

     “Hydrogenas!” “Nagasakalitos.  Atomicas. Breathe Deep!” Weldon, cracking up, says.

    ‘Nationwide’—N.W. www.44.111.com. Gary P. hurriedly moves his cursor. They want to pinpoint-identify, as many illegal primary and secondary transmitters as possible.

    Suddenly, from the cooler, with a pirate’s eye patch and bandanna emerges a roaring, emotional Weldon appearing to search the station for suspect homosexuals-‘Conspiratores!”  He yells. “Conspirators!!”

    “We’re helpless, Steve,” says Gary P.

    “Get it all on film!” he replies.

    “What about privacy?”

    “He’s in a public place,” Steve quips.

 

   Belatedly, now, tidying the fountain area, Weldon waits on a pickup truck, urinates, watches a ‘limo’ fill-up, the driver first inserting a credit card, and, then, squeezing off a full tank, then, as quick as before, Weldon ignites into an imaginary sword fight against a bevy of suspect conspirators, dislodging one’s baseball cap with his imaginary BicPen sword.

    The Nation is ecstatic in Martian invasion emotion. Many, indeed, report actually being ‘homoed’—Des Moines, Houston, San Francisco. Government wiretaps can’t handle some of the incredibly fast processors as then-now-where-“Zonko!” “Blast!” “Zoom!” series of outrageous Mexican farts are being manipulated by the night man Weldon knowing full well the Government will cover it all up and Hollywood will attribute it to the Public Domain—unfixed rumor of non-licensed material.

    The beauty of it all—the perfect crime: caught between Mental Illness and success. How sweet!     

 

[to be Continued in Issue Twenty]

---

Weldon graduated from Texas Tech University in 1968-a B.A. in English. He then got an M.A. in English from the University of Wisconsin and a law degree (J.D. l975) from the same school. Divorce followed as did commitment to, first, the private psychiatric hospital, Timberlawn, in Dallas, and , later, the State Mental Asylum in Terrell, Texas. Mr. Sandusky petitioned for habeas corpus claiming a conspiracy to unlawfully commit him existed in violation of his constitutional rights.
Upon release, Weldon got a job at Exxon/Mobil where he worked twenty years as a cashier-nightman. During August, 2005 he underwent open heart surgery at St. Paul’s Hospital in Dallas and have since been declared totally disabled. He has coronary heart disease.