"Howard Waldrop - Do Ya, Do Ya, Wanna Dance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Waldrop Howard)

HOWARD WALDROP


Do Ya, Do Ya, Wanna
Dance?
Howard Waldrop is widely considered to be one of the best short-story
writers in the business, and his famous story "The Ugly Chickens" won
both the Nebula and the World Fantasy Awards in 1981. His work has
been gathered in two collections: Howard Who? and All About Strange
Monsters of the Recent Past: Neat Stories by Howard Waldrop, and
more collections are in the works. Waldrop is also the author of the novel
Them Bones, and, in collaboration with Jake Saunders, The Texas-Israeli
War: 1999. Another solo novel is coming up. He lives in Austin, Texas.
Here he gives us a hilarious, high-energy look back at the '60s, a look as
funny, poignant, and quirky as one would expect from Waldrop, who has
been called "the resident Weird Mind of his generation."




DO YA, DO-YA, WANNA DANCE?
Howard Waldrop


The light was so bad in the bar that everyone there looked like they had
been painted by Thomas Hart Benton, or carved from dirty bars of soap
with rusty spoons.
"Frank! Frank!" the patrons yelled, like for Norm on Cheers before they
canceled it.
"No need to stand," I said. I went to the table where Barb, Bob, and
Penny sat. Carole the waitress brought over a Ballantine Ale in a can, no
glass.
"How y'all?" I asked my three friends. I seemed not to have interrupted
a conversation.
"I feel like six pounds of monkey shit," said Bob, who had once been tall
and thin and was now tall and fat.
"My mother's at it again," said Penny. Her nails looked like they had
been done by Mungo of Hollywood, her eyes were like pissholes in a
snowbank.
"Jim went back to Angela," said Barb.
I stared down at the table with them for five or six minutes. The music
over the speakers was "Wonderful World, Beautiful People" by Johnny
Nash. We usually came to this bar because it had a good jukebox that
livelied us up.
"So," said Barb, looking up at me, "I hear you're going to be a tour
guide for the reunion."



There are terrible disasters in history, and there are always great