— Fruit Salad —

It Will Always Be Burma to Me

In the deep days of my puissant youth, I was an accomplished stage actor. As I have detailed in Pickle This!, my presence on the stage is not only commanding, it is also at times commanded. I was four when I had done my first Othello and six when I had done my first Lear. At the age of eight, I tackled the role later made famous by Mel Gibson. I mean no offense to Mel Gibson. Mel Gibson is a dear friend of mine. In the days when we roamed the scorching Australian countryside, Mel Gibson and I would stalk and kill wild boars for sport, consuming all but the tusks. We’d take the extraneous tusks and throw them at the boorish elitists that sat in the boxes at the Sydney Opera House. At dawn, Mel Gibson and I would wander the beaches and urinate on the jellyfish. There’s nothing quite like the site of a peed-upon jellyfish. You can hear their muffled shrieks, as they absorb the uric acid. Mel Gibson and I would laugh and laugh. Also, we were drunk. But I digress.

The role of which I speak is, of course Hamlet, the melancholy Dane. And I am reminded of those days of wonderfully performed Shakespeare, as I am on the floor of a Burmese prison. I think it is called Myanmar now. I will have to ask Cuban Bob when I get home. I am naked, but that is just for fun. It is dark here, so very dark. There are noises in the distance but no one has come for me in hours. I write in my journal by the light that seeps in through the food hole. The light is milky white and blunted, much like the albino Burmese woman that I had sex with last night. She was passionate and stern, all at once demanding my touch then smacking me across the face. I basked in the warmth of her body and I woke up here. She was a villainous she-devil. I loved her deeply.

Footsteps. I am not scared. I have been in prisons far worse than here. I lived in Dayton, Ohio, for a year.

"Wolinetz!"

"I am."

"Wolinetz, we have been looking for you for some time. I see that you were easily brought to us by our ‘Burmese White’"

"My weakness for flesh is no secret. What do you want from me?"

The voice, which had been disembodied, was revealed to belong to a surly Burmese man with a wont for blood. He raised his hand to me and unleashed a vicious slap that moistened my eyes and shot pain through my head. I fell to my elbow and checked my nose for blood. There was none. I rule. The man helped me to my feet and stood before him. He had a grating presence, much like my ex-wife Carmen Electra’s parents.

He opened the door to my cell and I was thrust out the door. I was on stage. Thousands cheered my arrival. I waved to the adoring folks that had likely paid good money to see me. I would demand a cut of this money, of course, as well as some opium to hold me until I got back to the States. I turned to my captor and he nodded. He did not need to say anything. They had come to see me perform as the melancholy Dane. Where be your jibes now? Your flashes of merriment? They be here, amongst the people of Burma. For the moment, anyway.