Are you a writer? No, I am a character. (1 Viewer)

[hrjorgan]

I am a character in a novel about a curmudgeon who hooks up with a window dancer with literary aspirations. On a tour of Los Angeles literary landmarks she notices a busker playing ukulele. He has a tablet computer with blue tooth speakers--his back up band. She has a ukulele that she sometimes breaks out in her cam shows. She knows about 2 chords: Fm and C7. The busker is playing a song using mainly those 2 chords along with a couple others she doesn't know.
"Well, he took up with a Salvation Army Band girl, played dirty water on a swordfish trombone. Went to sleep at the bottom of 10 Killer Lake and said, 'gee, but it's great to be home'."
He and his dog, a chihuahua mix with choppy Rod Stewart hair, are wearing matching Fedoras, the dog's with ear holes. This could be a meet cute, except that she is the only cute thing for miles. The dog is just about the ugliest thing imaginable, and the busker isn't winning any beauty contests. For a minute she thinks she sees a flash of recognition in his eyes but it fades away like a window shade pulled down. Close call, as she sometimes encounters 'fans' out in the so-called 'real world' and without the protective window of her computer screen that isn't something she relishes.

 

[zobraks]

 

[mjp]

I was going to say the same thing, but I didn't want to seem unwelcoming.

Because, you know, I'm very welcoming. I'm kind of famous for that.

 

[skiroomalum]

Using the Tom Waits lyrics seems a bit lazy.

 

[bospress.net]

I. Am. Confused.

 

[5:28am]

There's a plot if you read it backwards.

 

[mjp]

I. Am. Confused.

Since our previous resident interpreter has left the building, allow me to translate:

hr jorgan makes his living as a street musician. He met his girlfriend, who makes her living as an Internet "cam whore," on a street corner when she pulled out her ukulele to jam along with him on a song with a simple chord progression. hr feels she is out of his league, so he is grateful that they are together.

You're welcome.

 

[Ken Gardner]

I am confused too

 

[hrjorgan]

I prefer the term window dancer to cam whore. Or laptop dancer. In peep shows there was an actual window and the panel would roll down so you could see the dancers. The customers were called coin droppers and the coin operated slots took quarters. Later, they updated so they would take bills, but they wouldn't give you change. If you needed change you had to ask for it from the guys who worked at the front desk. We called them cum moppers. Often they would be the boyfriends of the window dancers, if they weren't lesbians as a lot of them were. Awkward encounters occurred with frequency between the coin droppers and the cum moppers. Especially if you asked about that certain someone who was their mutual girlfriend in a manner of speaking. Though a lot of the customers and employees of such establishments as The Lusty Lady were college students society took a dim view of them. I told a painter friend about my forbidden love and he was inspired to depict it in a painting called Quarter Pounder With Cheese. Another poet friend of mine who had been a monk in a Tibetian Monestary said it reminded him of zen koans about the hungry ghost.

 

[mjp]

You didn't describe a peep show performer, you described a cam whore. For someone with such a zen for unrelated detail you aren't very specific.

 

[skiroomalum]

I think the term "cum moppers" is both offensive and inaccurate. That noble and near-extinct breed were almost always referred to as "swabbies."