- Lanky Coconut Tree
- Apr 7, 2011
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An angry tree.
The angriest tree
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someone linked me to this work of art
Okay here we go, underflow's stories pt. 1 (this may have been posted earlier in the thread):
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Here's what happened to an acquaintance of mine a few years ago. She told me this over the phone after I mentioned the joose. I started taping the conversation with her consent after a lengthy preamble - she asked to clean up any direct references to people or locations, cause she promised the people involved never to make this public; one of the guys is still working.
The friend's from Ukraine, but after listening to the story again I'm not 100% sure this took place there, as she was moving about a bit at that time. She was trying to get press work as a free-lance journalist and had made a deal with an ambulance crew to accompany them at night in the roughest districts in return for a few hundred US dollars and a case of Jack Daniel's.
I transcribed and translated the talk from German dialect (we met when we were both living in the Rhineland-Palatinate region for a while), which neither of us masters completely, so there may be a few gaps in places due to line noise and language barriers. It's a pretty faithful transcription, but I did cut repetitions and interruptions. Sorry if it reads funny.
italics are mine:
"Okay, listen, I promised them not to use this (they gave me the money back and all) for obvious reasons, but I really regret it. I had to tell *** and *** 4 times and they wet themselves from laughing each time so I'm sure I could sell it."
"All right. So these guys were going to let me sit with them between 1am and 5am; they had this old Mercedes lorry with a big bench in the front. I thought it was an excuse for groping (oh sorry, hand slipped off the stick, blah blah), but X., the big guy (I guess at least 120kg) never shifted gears actually. Just did everything in second. In his words: combat driving."
"I got on just around the corner from what they called the multi-purpose emergency centre, and Y. joined us 2 streets further on. That guy looked exactly like that jealous guy in the Amelie Poulain film, with the laundry iron face. X. was like those american wrestlers with no brow and tiny ears; he said he was in the army but the way he hosed up later I wasn't so sure."
"They wanted to stop for a snack first, so we drove to this tiny park behind the ***. Y. downed 2 cans of cold beans in tomato sauce from an american(?) army ration - this guy is nuts about everything american; the bourbon was his idea and he told X. that it was irish brandy... X. ate a rabbit."
"I had to ask 10 times to show me the sick compartment in the back. It had like a big wooden medecine cupboard on one side panel and 2 spare wheels on the other. Just enough space for a stretcher (simple 2-pole and a cloth in some horrible red-brown-yellow), and shoved against the cab were 3 crates of booze and a huge bag full of needles and stuff. Oh, and a dead bird X. was going to eat later."
"You know I don't mind crazy as long as it's fun crazy. These guys were pretty fun crazy in my eyes, but you judge:"
"Just a few things X. said (before the other stuff happened):
- they don't see the moon in Australia cause it's on the other side of the Earth
- my mother was a woman
- the Beatles were okay until they did that disco stuff with the high voices
And Y.:
- I'm a Neil Diamond fan cause his albums came out on the best cassettes, transparent
- If you gently caress with a Neil Diamond fan he will kick you out of his heart without alimony
- Quacking Rouzy WANNA DIE, Quacking Rouzy WANNA DIE (singing along to Cracklin' Rosie)
"
"Y. fishes half a dozen pill bottles out of his banana bag (fanny pack). I'll give you the equivalent names, cause generics have different names here: Xanax, Prozac, Librium, Valium, and what you call the joose (Y. called it 'brainwipe' - 'Tipp-Ex for the brain'). He also had lots of laxatives, but I'll tell you that later. X. downs an entire bottle of *** (cheap Underberg knock-off - a kind of stomach soother, basically alcohol with a few herbs) and a handful of pills of his own, and we take off for our first call; radioed in 10 minutes earlier."
"Y. explains that he likes working with X. because the stretcher hardly tips when they do stairs; small guy on one end, big guy on the other. X. rams 2 kids on a moped. The boy is thrown forward in a neat arc, the girl receives the handlebars in her face. X. is belching like a maniac from the *** and I don't think he even noticed anything. Y. yells at him to stop the van and I run back to the kids with him. X. backs up, twists the moped some more, and nearly lands on the boy's head when he drops out of his seat. Then he grabs the girl, wipes her face in the snow, and empties a half bottle of Slivovitz into her mouth. Y. is still yelling at him, but busy finding a needle so that he can 'wipe the kids brain'. I had no idea what this stuff would do at this point like I said."
"Anyway, you're not going to believe this, but these guys just dumped both kids and the moped in a big rubbish bin a few streets further. X. still belching like a whale, engine screaming in second gear, Y. turns on his big portable tape player and starts the Quacking Rouzy stuff. I wonder if our actual patient (the one we were called for) is going to like this."
"You've never seen an apartment as filthy as this guy's place. He had a pig in there and 2 dogs, though they were all quiet and didn't bother us. There was this gunk on the floor that looked like a mix of dust, spilt food, booze, and (animal?) excrement. The guy had a fridge covered in Esso stickers and a sofa cut in 2 to make 2 chairs. X. had another bottle in his hand, so I thought he was going to put it into the patient again, but Y. pulled up liquid from it in a big syringe and he and X. took the guy's trousers (sweatpants actually used for doing lots of sweating in, I think - they were the same colour as the stretcher) off and stuck the syringe up his (the guy's) bum. I don't know if they actually diagnosed the man with anything, but I was behind on the stairs, cause I wasn't sure whether to get any deeper into the stink. Y. said this guy looked like a troublemaker (big guy, for sure), so he gave him a double dose of 'Tipp-Ex'. Why up the bum? Y. said it was to show who's boss..."
"This joose stuff takes a while to come on, no? Cause the man was still wiggling a lot and screaming things (he was screaming before we got there, I forgot to say) like 'put my pants on' and 'stay away from my rear end'. Also forgot to say I'd been hitting the Slivovitz a bit after the moped thing, so I was beginning to enjoy myself. I'd also taken a Valium when I left home to appear more professional. I didn't know it was going to be like this. Then X. starts going through the guy's things while Y. is cooking more bean rations of his on the stove, and lighting one cigarette after the other. He'd been popping big yellow pills since after our snack, so I think he was fairly out of it. X. finds a dress that almost fits him and the jokes about hefty women start. He puts it in his bag. So now we have theft on top of everything else. Oh, he also pinched a bunch of snowglobes; 'Rosebud, Rosebud!'"
"All right, so then this ruckus starts downstairs. First 3, then more guys come up and try to pick a fight with Y., who's squirting joose down the piglet's throat (using the same syringe that went up the guy's bum, poor piglet). Apparently he had business with one or some of them a while ago, and things turned sour. X. said something about those dopes not being able to distinguish morphine from ammonia water, cause that's what Y. had been selling them. He (X.) starts pushing the gang down the hallway and Y. drags the patient on the stretcher. The patient is out to lunch by now, big smile on his face too."
"I try not to get mixed up in all this and follow the parade down the stairs. When we get to the front door I see at least 8 guys and a horrible fat bloat of a woman jump from the back of the 'ambulance' (boozemobile) laughing their heads off. Things are getting nasty by the door and X. and Y. sort of run to the van and shove the patient in without looking. I could swear I heard this strange sucking sound when the stretcher went in, but I got so out of it later that I'm probably just wishing for nice details."
"We get in the cab as fast as we can and X. pulls out like a rocket. I think he actually shifted down to first, heh. You know that 3T Mercedes, right? There's just a small window between the cab and the back, and you can't open it. We just barrel down the alley and try to get on the main road and away from the vengeance brigade. Y. is blasting some Best Of Neil Diamond, and X. tries to balance a torch on his forehead - while driving at top speed, though second gear again."
"We get back at the centre and try to look sort of serious and busy, cause X. and I were now pretty woofed from the plum brandy. Y. had made himself a 'joose and coke' just before we arrived, but that wouldn't do much till later. Anyway, they pull open the doors and this stench comes wafting out. Those people I saw jumping off the back when we got downstairs? They'd shat all over the place and the patient had landed right in the mess when the boys dumped him on the floor instead of sliding the stretcher on the rails that were there for it. Have you ever wondered how much excrement about 10 people (or more, cause they may have been taking turns) with poor diets (the evidence was there) can produce in I'd say 12 minutes tops (from when the fight started)? A lot, believe me. We're talking volumes here, like someone opened a tap."
"Anyway, X. and Y. slide the stretcher out as is, and enter the centre's side doors. I almost didn't go in, but then I wouldn't have seen this biblical image of the crowds parting like the Red Sea on a smelly Moses's command. They parked the poor guy in the far corner of the hall, checked out with the administrator (they have to get the patient's insurance card and a signature) I don't know how, and we get out of there before anyone can ask questions. Imagine me with the silly giggles running after a (still) belching hulk and a wired maniac, both wiping their hands on anything they pass that looks like cloth. Including some poor old granny's hair..."
"Y. screaming mad about the mess, of course, so we're breaking our heads trying to think of a place where we can hose out the van. At this time I was feeling very weird from the Slivovitz plus joose. It was as if I was sitting piggyback on my own shoulders, observing what I said and did, which was all getting stranger and stranger. So I suggested we just drive the van in reverse into this prick's office garden, - the guy I told you about who tried to do a couch interview for a bloody researcher job - which has a pond in it. This we agree to do. Took a while to find it, during which Y. filled syringes with joose and coke and X. kept asking if we thought his lunch (the dead bird) would still be edible if he gave it a good once-over with the welding can (a spraycan with a valve for soldering metal, actually)."
"I seriously had these giggle fits that must be from the joose, cause alcohol doesn't really do much for me, and X. just kept on ripping these thunderous belches every 2 minutes or so. Drowned out even Neil Diamond. Of course, the way things were going, there are still people in the prick's office and X. tries to get us out of the little garden with the koi(?) pond. Doesn't work, so he opens another bottle of Slivovitz while Y. starts yapping about emergencies and we're on a mission and stuff. I thought he sounded pretty convincing, but then I noticed the fat woman's dress (that X. had taken from the piglet flat) was around his waist, and he'd taken his boots off."
"Long argument starts between X. and what turned out to be the watchman, his brother in law and 2 prostitutes. None of those 4 seemed very intelligent, to say the least, cause X. actually got them involved in finding a solution for cleaning our van and the gear instead of throwing us out on the spot. X. offers them a bottle of the unlabelled booze, Y. reaches over to fish the only clean one left from the sidepocket of the cabdoor, and squirts in a syringeful of joose & coke while the others aren't paying attention".
"Most of the rest is just flashes, but I do remember the lorry got clean somehow, and we took the watchman's brother in law back to the centre after Y. bet him his mouth couldn't hold a snowglobe. It could, but getting it out didn't work so well. The guy basically didn't know what he was doing anymore by this time, and X. told me a few days later that he was having doubts about Y., cause he had tried to make the guy pull his pants down and sit on another snowglobe while Y. was pushing on his shoulders from above. I believe him after the scene at the pig apartment"
"Anyway, that was the first night."
and part 2 (out of 4) of underflow's stories:
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This is the second night Zina (my Ukrainian friend's nickname) went out with the ambulance. Instead of typing X. and Y. I'll call them Xenu and Yoyo to make for easier reading. Btw, I passed on the reactions her talk got from some of you, and she's delighted - although I had to assure her several times that TCC isn't visible to outsiders. If she's anxious about it, it's because Xenu is still working, though not in the same district or for the same people.
italics are mine:
"It took days for that stuff (your 'joose') to wear off, and I didn't see why anyone would take it for pleasure. I mean, frequently. I'm not really a drug fiend as you know, but this really messes with your perception. I also felt sweaty and nauseous the next day, but that could have been the horrible booze. These guys may have made it themselves; I never asked."
Do you know where the phen came from, and is it a common recreational drug over there?
"I don't know where it came from, no. And I hadn't seen or heard of it before, actually. I was away for years though, so who knows. In the end alcohol is still the popular choice for most people, you know. It doesn't give you a good time if you take too much. Your judgment goes out the window and whatever happens seems fine. Without it, I would have run, seriously."
You took it again though, didn't you?
"Oh yes. Want me to go on..?"
I must urge you to do so in the interest of science.
"Uh huh. Okay, the next time was about a week later, I think. I was supposed to meet them where we had picked up Yoyo last time. Waited for half an hour, then heard a lorry come whining up the street, which almost gave me the giggles again (Pavlov). It was very clean this time, and Xenu had 3 or 4 of those smelly tree things hanging off the mirror. I asked him about stuff a bit while we were waiting for Yoyo. He told me they'd worked together before, in the meat industry(!), and that they were both farmboys originally. Yoyo did a sort of first-aid course with the same centre they were working for now, and got Xenu on board when the regular driver refused to go out into ***, at least at night. They give anyone who has some sort of association with the establishment a hard time there, and nights simply aren't safe there anyway. The van is actually Xenu's; he gets money from the centre for it."
"Yoyo told me something about Xenu too, but it was later. It's too funny, so listen: Xenu apparently wanted to be a motorcycle racer. By itself that's hilarious, cause given the size of the guy he'd basically absorb the bike the moment he'd sit on it. Well, maybe not the wheels. Anyway, he had this Suzuki bike with a huge sticker saying SUZUKI on the front flap thing they have for protection or speed, whatever - but he pronounces Suzuki as SUKUZI. So Yoyo keeps telling him that it's SU-ZU-KI until one day finally Xenu gets the idea and starts pronouncing it correctly. Shortly after that, Yoyo peels off the sticker while Xenu's on the bog, cuts it in 3, and puts it back; now saying SU-KU-ZI. Apparently took a few days, but when Xenu noticed what it said he had this surreal told-you-so talk with Yoyo, gently breaking it to him that, as evidently displayed on the sticker, it drat well was SU-KU-ZI after all. Yoyo said he just swallowed it, trying not to go hysterical. It's sorta cute, no?"
"I hadn't taken anything this time, just to make sure I'd have some reserves if this night was going to be as weird as the first. Xenu had this huge metal turreen under his seat with soup in it, so we had some and then he tells me he threw in some leftover pills from the night before in there, cause 'some guy at the centre told him molecular tension keeps things warm longer, and there were lots of molecules in medication'... You really wonder sometimes."
"Yoyo arrives in a hideous sports outfit and a utility belt. And the big black bag they had in the back last time. He says he had a toothache and took 14 pills. I asked him what sort and he just looked at me as if that was a strange question, so he either has some fave staple drug or goes by the rule that pills is pills and what does it matter what they are? I'm sure he'd taken joose though, cause he was forgetting his lit cigarettes again. Later even saw him put one back in the pack and not notice that his pocket was smoking. Xenu'd been staring at it with a puzzled look, and I was fascinated by the thought of that hideous polyester jacket igniting. Just to show you how things really don't matter when you have some joose in you."
"No call for a long time and Yoyo starts getting restless. We'd been sipping the brandy I'd brought them and the soup was definitely mellow soup, cause Zenu and I were okay with the Neil Diamond tapes and didn't mind Yoyo's horrible singing. I think they should pack Neil Diamond releases with a free joose pill, you know. Anyway, Yoyo starts hassling this guy on the street; not a streetsleeper, cause he was pretty well-dressed and shaven, but not too steady on his feet and giving us these growls from a few meters away. Sounded like a dog."
"So Yoyo gets out and discovers the guy is far taller than him, about a head at least, which makes him mad (he had this thing with people bigger than him - doesn't like it). I yelled at him to leave the guy alone, cause I'd seen police go by every few minutes, maybe a station nearby, and I wanted my money's worth instead of trying to get Yoyo out of custody for the rest of the night. You don't mess with the police here, you know. Anyway, that stopped him."
"Xenu turns up the radio over 'Sweet Caroline' (Yoyo's ghettoblaster is off-limits) and tells us we have a seizure. Off we go in second gear again, the lorry rattling through potholes (I bumped my head about 100 times in those 4 nights, and Yoyo fast-forwards to 'I am, I said', except he 'sings' it like 'I AM THE SAD, I AM A CRY'. This guy was really, really loud."
"Normal house, normal interior, abnormal patient. I don't know if you can have seizures while standing up, but this guy was having one. He had multiple coats on, and a chapska (fur toque?) over an army cap, was waving his arms like 2 asynchronous windmills and shouting that he wanted an x-ray, 'wanna x-ray wanna x-ray wanna x-ray' without interruption. Yoyo tells Xenu to choke the guy so he can give him a shot (I had this vision of a The Return Of The Pig Syringe movie poster, haha), but Xenu is too mellowed out; from the soup I reckoned. He (Xenu) actually receives a big blow to his nose from the guy's windmilling, and decides to sit down for the duration. I was too busy myself to be sure, but I think he caught a nap."
"So Yoyo gets really mad and says he's going to play darts with the guy's face if he doesn't stop - with syringe needles, I suppose. I thought I could help a bit here and started shouting at the guy he'd get his x-ray if he'll just shut up and stop moving. Then Yoyo starts sweet-talking him too, and the guy actually calms down some. While I stay just out of armslength Yoyo grabs the guy from behind and chokes him pretty hard; then gives him a shot right in the face (only part visible and not covered in layers of clothing). I tell the guy he needs to take his coats off for the x-ray (hoping Yoyo could then shoot him up in a more appropriate body part), but Yoyo pulls out this huge Rambo knife and starts slashing away at the guy's clothes. The 'wanna x-ray wanna x-ray wanna x-ray' starts again, so I start looking for some kind of medical equipment in Xenu's first-aid chest, hoping to fool him into shutting up. When I turn around the guy stands there waving his arms like mad in his once white underwear (please ask no details) with a huge heap of torn/slashed clothing at his feet (he was wearing those overshoes, like Wellies; looked ridiculous with the underwear); and Yoyo furiously pulling up liquid from that same bottle I'd seen him use last time. The soup worked for me too, so I yelled 'CHEESE' as I turned on Xenu's torch and Yoyo plugged the guy."
"We had to wait a bit for that one to take effect, but at least the shot in the face shut the guy up, and he was just gesticulating in slow motion now. Yoyo ditched the syringe in an open milk bottle in the fridge (he kept doing stuff like that - his idea of fun) and we both had some brandy from the guy's cupboard. Yoyo squirted joose in his, and I accepted just the last 2ml or so; really just because I wanted him to trust me. Anyway, the guy goes limp and it's inventory time again. Xenu is on his feet by now, going through the fridge one tier at a time - absolutely disgusting stuff in there, like liquid (beyond ripe) fruit and an oven dish that looked like a bedpan. Then there's a crash outside, cause Yoyo threw the TV out the window."
"Xenu just throws the guy over his shoulder (there's more money in it if they bring the patient in) and we dive down the stairs. This still wasn't the bad part of town, so police might come by if someone complained about raining furniture. Next thing I know is this incredible 'BOOOIIING' sound, which is from an old stand-alone bathtub (with lions' feet and all) Yoyo just chucked out the balcony window. Xenu doesn't even seem to notice and puts the guy, still in underwear only, on the front seat and starts the lorry. Only when he revs the engine does Yoyo come running down, carrying a case of balloons and a bloody megaphone of all things (our patient was in road construction), which we would regret very much later."
"I like to think that Xenu kept the guy in front cause he didn't want him to choke on his own tongue, but it could be just because there was too much junk in the back. The booze was gone, but I could see welding equipment. Anyway, there was very little space left, so I had to choose either Xenu's or Yoyo's lap while trying to stay as far away from the patient as possible - this guy reeked. Xenu seemed safer, even though he hadn't told me about the snowglobe thing yet, haha. Oh, and Yoyo was holding the megaphone's microphone next to the tape player, although thank God he pointed it out the window. Neil Diamond woke half the street and/or caused many a coitus interruptus. Did you see 'The Butterfly Effect..?'"
"We got underwear guy back to the centre and checked out his details. Nobody blinked an eye, btw. I was curious to find out whether the victim from a few nights before was still parked in the hall, cause I couldn't imagine anyone willingly touch a poo poo mummy like that. Poor guy. Then we drove close to the same spot we snacked last time, and Yoyo starts fooling around. He has his cap on and stops people to ask for the time. After they answer him and walk on he puts the megaphone an inch away from their heads and shouts 'THANK YOU' in the microphone. I saw at least one guy jump 2 meters. Xenu passes around cups and we all have soup. The funny thing is/was that once this joose is working, you think you're immune to everything. I also found the bathtub thing perfectly normal by this time. If they didn't want people to throw it off the balcony, why did they put it there in the first place, huh?"
Do you know how much you took?
"No, but it can't have been a lot, because I was conscious and remember everything (I think), whereas any patients or other unlucky bystanders certainly got knocked out big time from Yoyo's jooseplugs. I think the fact that I didn't mix it again with other stuff helped too."
"Anyway, we got another call. This time it was well within the super-bad neighborhoods, but a good bit away from where we were last time. The houses there are newish, but bad quality; and most people didn't even bother to cover the naked concrete block facades. Yoyo said he had a mate close by and wanted to go and say hello, so we were going to do that after checking on the patient. If just another Friday night zombie we'd keep him snug and warm in the back while Yoyo met his friend. There was definitely welding equipment in the back, btw. Xenu's."
"Xenu rings, knocks, yells; finally an old woman opens the door. She's shaking a bit, but seems okay otherwise. Yoyo comes up behind us with the bag and dragging the stretcher. When the woman sees the stretcher she becomes really agitated and starts this tirade in some kind of taiga talk, like Kyrgyz or similar. Yoyo just slips past us and her, and heads straight into the living room (these houses don't have halls), dumps the bag on the table and goes 'HELLOOOOOO' into his megaphone. Woman's eyes almost pop out of their sockets, she turns around and Yoyo sticks a syringe under her left armpit. Very nicely done too, like in a film."
"So what does this guy have in his utility belt now? A bag of syringes, a thermos with pills, the jar of joose, loads of balloons, a pair of bedroom slippers I suppose he took from our last housecall, and the megaphone microphone (it's attached to a curly cable that comes off the megaphone, which is slung over his back). If I rang an ambulance and this guy showed up, no way I'd let him in! Anyway, the woman's on the couch with Xenu taking blood pressure and Yoyo on fridge duty. The woman's speech is very slurred now, but she still seems agitated; she's really shaking. Suddenly it smells nice, cause Yoyo's making an omelet. Xenu's in a good mood tonight, almost gentle, but food is food and he leaves the woman with me. I don't feel very adequate, so (this is joose thinking again) I figure making myself one of those nurse's bonnets would be nice. I find a stack of paper napkins in the kitchen and hey presto, I'm a nurse. In the meantime Yoyo's been going through the woman's wallet and looked for other papers, but can't find her insurance card or whatever it is they need. Xenu goes back to the van and radioes the centre, only to find out we're in the wrong street. Oops."
"Naturally, we got out of there real quickly. I hope the woman had a good night's sleep, compliments of *** centre. The right address was close, and indeed very similar in name, so it was an honest mistake, even if it hadn't been made because of Yoyo's godforsaken Best Of Neil Diamond. Oh, btw; Yoyo's flat is supposed to be covered wall-to-wall floor-to-ceiling with Neil in his 1970s look with the tent shirts and stranglepants. And when he first brought him up, and I said something like 'could be worse, could be Barry Manilow', he was not amused - turns out it's his second choice. I just wish Neil and Barry could be made to spend an evening with their number one fan. He might joose them up and make them forget about music."
"The next stop was definitely the correct one, judging from the crowd outside. Well, about a dozen people actually. Yoyo storms in with all his gear while Xenu goes around the bushes for a wee - one has his priorities, I suppose. I decide to wait for him by a window, cause Yoyo's eyes are out of kilter and he's not talking much sense - as far as I can tell... Next thing is Yoyo blaring through his megaphone, so in we go to a scene of various dazed people in a sea of empty bottles and playing cards while Yoyo is sort of barking traffic directions at them, like 'PLEASE WALK PAST THE SOFA AND LINE UP AGAINST THE BUFFET' and 'YOU IN THE RED SHIRT GET MOVING BUT MIND YOUR SPEED'. That thing makes a terrible din, but with a little joose in you outside irritants become more like the weather - no use trying to do anything about it. After several 'I NEED A VOLUNTEER TO TELL ME THE WHEREABOUTS OF THE OR A PATIENT' some people (drunk beyond caring, apparently) point at a door and Yoyo charges in with 'I AM A FAID, ...A FIRD, ...A FRISTAID PLEASE STAY CALM THANK YOU'. Xenu was either completely bewildered or just surprised at being awake, cause the only thing he did was keep the people in line in front of some huge old piece of furniture with lots of religious stuff over it."
"When I went into the little room after Yoyo he was going through the pockets of an older guy who was draped face down on the bed. I asked Yoyo if he'd K.O.'ed the guy; he said he didn't know. Got the guy's papers, called Xenu in, and they carried him off, all proper procedure except for the fact that when the stretcher was hooked on the rails in the van the guy had a net full of thistles shoved into his face. Xenu's, for soup. Yoyo insisted on staying in the back with the patient, so we got to the centre without Rosies or Carolines, thank God."
"It must have been around 3am, which is the latest you'll find open bars on weekends, and Xenu decided it was time for coffee and dumplings. Yoyo had been blowing up balloons since the last patient and the back was full of them. We got to a place Xenu knew, which was just a house without any signs or indication there was a bar there. This still in a very bad part of town, but the punters were all well over middle age, with paunches and husband faces, really. The kind I suspect went out just for a kneetrembler behind the nightclubs, didn't get lucky, and ended up here. Xenu said it was the cheapest bar in the district. He knew the owner and they went to a table to talk about something in private - probably something to do with medicinal alcohol and kickbacks - but that was a mistake. Yoyo was behind the bar in seconds, mixing the weirdest drinks (he said he wanted a perfect grey cocktail to 'match his soul'(!) and spiking the vodka (there were 2 huge bottles behind the bar from which people were served in coffee mugs). I thought he was doing his complimentary surprise shots of joose again. Not so. I'm not going to say what it was over the phone, but it was very popular in the 60's..."
"I felt really apprehensive, cause I'm afraid of what you call the mindaltering stuff; plus this was definitely not within even the most elastic professional limits. Whatever the manner of treatment, everything they'd been putting into their patients was legal and they were technically authorised to administer it. I also feared he might have put it in the soup, or the brandy or whatever, you know. So I tried to catch Xenu's eye, so he could do something about it, but either my facial muscles must have been joosed or Xenu misunderstood or both, cause he went all winky winky and smoothing his (mostly non-existing) hair. Btw, the fact that Yoyo is a spitting image of that jealous ex-husband in Amelie Poulain makes a whole lot of this a lot funnier if you can image him like the lantern-jawed drug dwarf that he is/was."
"Anyway, Xenu finishes and gets ready for drinks and food, and Yoyo is off to the facilities with a jar of Nutella he took from behind the bar. I try to tell Xenu about the spiked vodka, but Yoyo's back with a roll of toilet paper and the Nutella and starts telling Xenu about how he just thought up this great joke where you dip both sides of a strand of toilet paper into the spread and then stick one end to the inside of a guy's jacket, from the back of course."
"The hilarity is supposed to come when the guy leaves or moves about and he has sodden toilet paper hanging from his trousers, or so it seems. I don't really like toilet humour as you know, and this was pretty childish, but when Yoyo has an idea you'd better just let him go through with it or end up joosed in an alley somewhere. What did make me laugh is he'd been explaining this to Xenu without lowering his voice whatsoever and then just worked his way down the bar, slipping the paper under their jackets, coats, etc. One guy wasn't wearing any, so he stuck it straight into the back of his trousers without the guy noticing anything. The sight of a bar full of careless wipers was pretty funny, I admit. I also imagined what it was going to be like in about half an hour or so, if you know what I mean. Anyway, Xenu had forgotten about the dumplings and just took out some bread and a (sealed!) bottle of vodka."
"Yoyo went in the back again, said he wanted to take a nap, so I tried to take advantage of the silence and ask Xenu for some generalities about the job; for padding out the article I was going to write, basically. Here's just a few things he said:
- you don't want to let Yoyo near people, really; or to animals and things
- I don't mind hospitals, but sick people shouldn't be outside
- we're professionals - we never hurt our patients beyond what's necessary
- I had a girlfriend once, but she wasn't home
- this is my 5th transmission; German manufacture is overrated
- I don't like pigmeat anymore and the thought comforts me
As I understand it, to him the job meant turning up in his van when the big hand said this and the little hand that, and do what Yoyo tells him. Yoyo seemed to have great faith in Xenu, however. Never said anything nasty about him or called him stupid to his face."
"I wish I'd gone home then, but we'd had more joose soup and I was lulled by the engine of the van idling - we'd parked by a closed fishstand to rest and have a snack. Anyway, we got a call for immediate assistance, again in the bad part of town. Yoyo had come back to the cab and emptied balloons in front of the megaphone's microphone, so we had a kind of fart siren (the van itself didn't have one) going FWEEEOOOOOP FWEEEOOOOOOP. He really did have a thing for toddler-level fun, but again, with the joose nothing is worth getting annoyed about."
"We arrived at a flat complex, not a soul in sight, pretty spooky. Xenu goes to find the lift and Yoyo and I share some brandy, cause it's raining now and generally miserable. We get to the patient's flat, door's already open, and find this big, big brawler of a guy waiting for us with a piece of plumbing pipe in his fist. Apparently his wife had called the centre by mistake; she really wanted the cops, but we didn't know that until later. Anyway, Xenu goes over and tries to take the pipe away from the guy. The guy hits him and Xenu goes down; second time tonight (though the smack from the windmilling guy was just a caress compared to this one). Yoyo yells at me to call the cops, but I don't see a telephone and I don't want to go back down to the van alone. I don't know who hit me then, cause Yoyo jumped the guy at about the same time, but I was really off the planet for a bit. So I sit up and it's rodeo time: Yoyo riding on the guy's back, trying to stuff his head in the horn of the megaphone (way too small, of course). The plumbing pipe's on the floor, but I've never hit anyone with an object and I'm sort of hesitating when Yoyo gives up on the stuffing and just shouts into the megaphone at full strength with the horn over the guy's right ear. You can't believe the din in that small flat, yet nobody came to inquire. Probably knew this guy was bad news."
"So there's nothing much left to do apart from putting knowledge gleaned from the first night in practice and I wriggle the joose jar from Yoyo's toolbelt while the guy revolves around his axis like that cartoon Tasmanian devil, howling against Yoyo's crazy screaming through the megaphone. Perhaps Neil Diamond would have come in handy here, haha. No syringes on Xenu and Yoyo's are inaccessible in all that madness, so I yell at Yoyo to try and force the guy's mouth open. Which he does, with that huge knife of his, using it as a wedge between the guy's clenched teeth. Doesn't work, so then he smacks him hard in the mouth with the top of the hilt and there's this explosion of blood and stuff, absolutely disgusting. Yoyo is yelling to put the jar in the guy's gullet and I sort of just aim for the general location and hold it there for a few seconds. Forgot to say that the liquid is a bit stingy, so the guy howls some more and tries to flatten Yoyo against a wall, but he's hanging on. Xenu is now getting up and very angry. He puts his head between his shoulders like a boxer you know, and lets loose this awful punch, right into the guy's solar plexus. The guy makes a kind of 'meep' sound real quietly and that was it. Since the boys are professionals, they pull his tongue forward and put him on his side, then Yoyo sits on him and asks for a beer. No beer, no nothing in the fridge, but a woman hiding in the bathroom. We can't get a word out of her (drunk), so Yoyo decides better safe than sorry and hands her a half glass of booze left in the kitchen; with a good gulp of the joose jar in it, of course. They're not sure whether to take him in, as a) he weighs a ton; b) he's not really sick or hurt. Well, now he is, but that's from us."
"We just got out of there and Xenu told the centre everything was okay, though I hope they didn't catch the sound of Yoyo doing the balloon siren again. I was bruised for days afterwards, I can tell you that. When I got home I noticed in the hall mirror I still had that paper napkin nurse's thing stuck in my hair and the collar of my coat was gone. The guy must have ripped it off. Anyway, I took some more joose and went to bed for a day or two."
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