Obit Lit

ROBERTS-BLUE-BARNETT
YOU-SLAY’EM-WE-LAY’EM 
FUNERAL HOME

“First you dream—
then you die”
—Cornell Woolrich

Denise Thanatogenos spoke the Tongue of Emporia so very fluently & eloquently, my dears—

So exquisitely so that her elegant rather tacky Prairie Twang beguiled even the most innocent passengers sitting next to her in her jet plane journey high above the dreary plains...

As they were having cocktails flying high over the lovely Fly Over State of Kansas far down below.

Yes, lovely Kansas the Fly Over State…

Way down there—miles and miles far below.

Kansas more a sullen moody pouting state of mind than a mere state of the union.

After all, who’d wanna live down there anyway—moiling about hopelessly amidst all those disgusting Red State Repulsive Right Wing Ratty Republicans?

Down there in that Kansas churning drought Dust Bowl Hellhole—with its simply atrocious Tacky Tornadoes, Stifling Heat and Abject Poverty?

Ratting around down there in all that simply hideous New Depression poverty and abject obsequious Hostess Twinkie Squalor? 

It was bad enough that Denise Thanatogenos had been born way down there—in that sullen Fly Over Sunflower State…

Acquiring its typical all-too-familiar ignorant Midwestern nasal twang—having been dumped there at birth like Dorothy’s shabby farmhouse rudely and unceremoniously plopped down there in that dismal despicable Kansas shithole

After that simply awful Wizard of Oz tumultuous Wizard of Oz Thirties misadventure?

And let me assure you, honey, beyond any doubt,  after it’s all been said and done—that there is absolutely no wonderful beautiful Treasure at the End of the Fucking Rainbow down there either. 

The Emporia Guzzlette

Let’s skip the police reports—and all that. Let’s just say that Denise Thanatogenos acquired her popular personality at Emporia High School and easy lay at the College of Despicablehood Emporia (now defunct) way back when.

Yes, Denise Thanatogenos presented herself to the hot young C of E collegiate men from back East— tres stylishly coiffeured in the latest dark lace negligees and nightgowns displayed in the Newman’s Department Store and Poole’s windows. 

But her true spirit was somewhere else—it came from whiffs of decadence from the rotting Orchards of the Hesperidins. There in the decadent vice-ridden local taverns and bars—emanating country music into the night.

An invisible umbilical cord of small town shady taverns (drinking and pimping) reached out to her—seducing Denise with the same seductive Siren calls from the local white trash bars of Emporia that had lured her mother into sheer and utter down-and-out Hank Williams country boy tragic romance.

As Denise grew up the only language of the heart she got to know in Emporia—was the honky-tonk Saturday Night blues of Hank Williams singing all those melancholy country music laments late at night. After all, wasn't that’s what dreary-deary Kansas was known for?

Songs like “Your Cheatin’ Heart”—Denise’s favorite Hank Williams country music song on the jukebox back then. It didn’t take long, my dears, for her to realize that cheatin’ hearts ruled the world......

Future Farmers of America

It was Denise’s exposure to country boy romance—that almost did her in. Those cheatin’ hearts of cute FFA boys did her in every time—getting them off in Chevy pick-ups out under the Kansas stars. Country music on the radio—naked in the pickup. 

They claimed they loved her—but afterwards they dumped her. Once they got what they wanted—Denise only wanted some more. It was slam, bam, thank you man—but sometimes she got seconds.

The same with greasy ducktails—slim blue jean hips and tawdry Elvis the Pelvis goodlooking guys. She was obsessed with them—but they treated her like a piece of cheap trailer trash after a quickie.

Not that she blamed them—in fact she liked it when they treated her like trash. She was just like pretty red-headed Mommy Dearest—the live wire of the VFW on Saturday nights.

RFD Romance

Moody RFD boys of town—they hung around back then at The Ship’s Lounge. Down south of the tracks—in the Mexican part of town. Next to Reeble’s Memorial Tombstone Joint—with all that fine mortuary statuary littering the front lawn on display.

Across the street the garish red brick façade—of the ancient Reeble’s Grocery Store. Now a physical fitness center—but its stark gothic Kansas architecture back then stuck out like a rough-trade reminder of what it must have been like when Emporia was just a primitive Cowtown down there by the Santa Fe tracks.

The men, the gone now WWII and Korean War crowd—drank their sorrows away after work at The Ship’s Lounge. Many of them divorced and lonely—dead beat dads with nothing else to do. 

Drinking late with their buddies—suitably somber and depressed by the approaching grim Gothic Americana Grim Reaper. The Olpe boys were there—and some FFA farmboy types.

Denise preferred the Ship’s Lounge—to the watering holes up by campus. The college and frat boys were still so young and naïve—they weren’t so tombstone obsessed like south of the tracks. 

Denise dredged the bottom of the barrel—she ignored the guys from Kansas City who went to KSTC—she preferred the more experienced and knowing local RFD desperadoes. 

Denise preferred the tall moody lanky ones—the young petulant Olpe loners who shied away from everybody at school. 

The Strong City studs who made her wanna gag. They were the ones that always fought it—but when they did let go it was something else. 

There was this country boy hard-to-get pent-up insouciance—it was so awfully heartbreakingly exquisite when they banged their heads against the gun-rack.