Saturday, January 12, 2013

58TH BINGO BOY episode 1/12/13

Bingo Boy - post 58

They had these real comfy, pillow-top mattresses from Kensington Furniture on Tilton Road. Everybody from 'The Downbeach' gets their stuff from them. Marge saw a commercial on TV. She and Jimmy called them up. Got a few other 'pieces' too. That's what they call them. They call them pieces. Didn't buy no doo-dads (Ricky calls them tchotskies) for the kids rooms. Gonna let them do that themselves. Little Chrissie says Marge has to dress better too. Not more expensive. That isn't it. Just more low key. Marge knows. She's seen magazines. She used to watch Martha Stewart.. Tomorrow they're gonna go look for stuff. Got a KNIT WIT store on the avenue. And I don't mean like Frankford Avenue where the bingo joint used to be. I mean Ventnor Avenue and that's a whole other thing. They got red brick sidewalks and fancy, black iron street lamps with hangin' plants all over 'em... even in winter time too. I like being a disembodied ghost/spirit narrator 'round here. And no, I ain't Gloria. She off wanderin' the sea floor for a little while. Dead folks like to do that, since breathin' don't pose no problem. Vampires like to do it too, 'cause they just breathe outta habit. But we ain't got no vampires in this story... just us... just the ghost narrators. Gloria enjoys findin' stuff. She likes discovering things... like a three hundred pound grouper (big, carp-like fish) what got a decomposin' Japanese fella in its belly. Don't know how he got in there. Seem his ghost is somewhere else. But she see him, 'cause she stick her head inside the fish. ghost/spirits can do that. Then she find a shitty diaper. Ocean got lots a shitty diapers. Folks is always changin' babies. And what are they gonna do? They just wrap it up and set it free. Lot a people think the crabs'd eat it. But they like dead cats and white folks a whole lot better. Good, dead, white lady like a feast.

I would tell you my name, but I do not know it. Maybe I don't want a know it. Don't know how long I been dead either. My bones is still wedged in deep under the Boardwalk. Not here. Not in Margate. Ain't got no boardwalk in Margate. I wedged in a few miles up the beach, in Atlantic City. Folks stroll over me most every night. I say - Howdy do?.... Sometime I float up under a lady's dress, but I jus' do it sometimes...

I'm in Margate, 'cause the wind blew me here. Ghost/spirits can do that. We jus' rise up in the air and catch a breeze. I like it here. Drift in and out a whole bunch a nice houses. Half a them all closed up for the winter. Sometimes I visit with what ghosts they got inside. Me an' an' old man what live by the bay ( he not all-the-way dead yet, but he will be) play games. We play 'movie stars' initials.' He tell me to go to hell, 'cause I always win. I say - How you know I not already there?... But that jus' make him madder and he tell me to go to hell some more... Most mortal human beans can't see me, but he can. Dogs can too. So can cats, but they too stuck up to admit it.

You see, when folks go 'guhk' ('dies' I mean) they gives 'em a job. I a night-guard. I watch folks... livin ' folks. Not every night, jus' when I got too. Gloria help when she feel like. I watching the new folks what bought Gloria's house. She think they a little bit common... nice, but common. Me, I don't judge people like that. Got one cute baby boy, though. He like when I sing songs at night. He like 'Old Susanna' and 'Banjo On My Knee.'... Some babies can't see no ghost, but some can. He one a the kind what can... An' he don't think a me as no ghost, jus' a regular person what lost his whole body. He not prejudiced that way. We say the word 'ghost.' We use it too, but we don't like it. 

Feel like somebody gonna try somethin'. Somebody wanna hurt 'em, or steal from 'em, or something like that. We feel things. It like 'lectricity.... Sometime it jus' tingle..... 

But sometime it hurt.....

An' this feel like one a the hurtin' times...

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