Weirdo TWO: Allen Ginsberg, PI

Not all weirdos are foam-lipped, nystagmic nutcases. Some of them are charming, gregarious types with haloes around their heads. Ginsberg was definitely the latter kind, despite everything he'd been through. I didn't go looking for Al G. He came looking for me. Or rather, he contacted me through Chip Dooley, founder and editor of Alien Wreckage, a monthly print magazine dedicated to serious explorations of the paranormal.

Chip admires my sedulous pursuit of weirdos and their narratives. Surrealist subversion, he calls it. An incipient weirdo insurgency aimed at the squares, at all the assholes in suits fucking up the planet. He also digs the fact that I'm a former serial flogger who slaughtered over two hundred child abusers in less than six years. I find his admiration just a tad disturbing but he doesn't so it's fine.

He also finds charming my addiction to cherry-flavored edible panties. He feeds my addiction by having a package delivered to my door every month. Once every week he shows up at my cabin in duck-hunting gear and we share a panty over breakfast. Chip is a proud Irishman who never fails to quicken my pulse with stories of the potato famine and the Irish freedom struggle. He also has the largest skull I've ever seen on a human.

Macrocephalic Reticulans were legion on the Mother Ship. I saw some monster skulls up there but none as large as the one Chip owns. Sometimes I wonder if he's an alien-human hybrid. Hyrbidity would explain the size of his skull. It would also explain his possum-skin testicle truss and his absurdly noisy blinking. Chip is one of the noisiest blinkers around, a sure indication of alien strains in his DNA.

A letter arrived at my cabin one day, a white envelope delivered by a midget in a gray confederate uniform. The midget cantered up on a piebald shetland pony and cantered off after tossing the letter on my doorstep. I recognized Chip's idiot scrawl on the envelope. Chip is one of the smartest, most literate dudes around but he handwrites like a genetically enhanced hamster with a taste for dimestore rotgut.

You've got to go meet Al Ginsberg, the letter read. The man is an amateur private dick in a town named Snowdrop and he has a story to tell, a real humdinger. Best of all, he's named after my favorite poet Allen Ginsberg. Did I ever mention I memorized Howl back when I was at Harvard? I still remember most of it, pretty hard to forget. Who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war. Great lines, boy.

I didn't think about it for too long. I hit the road a day later in my beatup station wagon. Chip's letter had included directions but I didn't need them. I'd been to Snowdrop before and I found it without difficulty on a fine winter morning in the year 2004. It was a pretty little town, very lush despite the season, with hills ranged around. It looked different from other small towns I'd seen in the South. It also felt different. I figured maybe it was my imagination but it wasn't.

I asked around and got directions to Ginsberg's house. It was a nice place up on the hillside, a wood and glass structure his old man built. I found Ginsberg lounging in his unfenced front yard. He looked like he'd been waiting for me. He greeted me warmly and I liked him right off. He was a big guy with shaggy blond hair and blue eyes that smiled even when his lips didn't. He wore white baggy pants, a white sports coat, a powder blue shirt and a black bowtie. The threads looked shabby but they suited him somehow.

After the usual pleasantries he fixed me a mug of hot chocolate and we repaired to a second floor loft with a large patio. The patio commanded a fine prospect with Snowdrop showing quaint and evergreen in the valley below. But Ginsberg didn't give me time to admire the view. He was eager to talk and he started in on his story almost without preamble. I had my tape machine out and running and that bothered him at first but he adjusted soon enough.

A blue-eyed feline appeared minutes into Ginsberg's monologue, a well-fed chocolate-point Siamese. I learned later that it was Ginsberg's beloved cat Little Boy. I also learned that Little Boy had played a significant role in Ginsberg's demented four-day saga. Chip Dooley had promised a real humdinger and that's what I got. Allen G really did have a story to tell, a damn good one. He insisted his story was true but he wasn't sure of its implications.

Weirdos tend to be painfully earnest but Ginsberg was skeptical, even ironic. I believed him nonetheless and he seemed relieved by that. I think you did save the world from a bunch of mutant Texans from Uranus, I said. And I think you really are who they say you are. He thought about that for a minute and said: I don't WANT to be who they say I am. I liked things just the way they were. Still, damned if this ain't a weight off my shoulders. I can't thank you enough.

I hung with him for the better part of the afternoon running over his story and exploring the woods around his house. He didn't want to see me go but I did nearabout sundown. Come visit me sometime, I said. You're a man I can talk to and I think we have plenty to talk about. Glad to hear it, he said with a grin. Chip told me where you live. I'll find you. He hasn't found me yet, but I have a feeling he will. Even world-saving avatars need someone to talk to. Things can get pretty lonely when you're battling hideously malformed dream assassins from a hostile planet.