The Colonel

She got her directions from a KFC billboard. She would journey into a stark wilderness of abstinence. She would care for the needy with unfettered love, compassion and kindness. She would lay bare her will before the cutting, holy blade of a righteous God. And, oh yeah, there would be chicken. Lots and lots of chicken.

Even more bizarre than that moment of transcendent lucidity and beauty – standing among dozens of the colonel’s greasy buckets – flanked on all sides by the city’s diseased and dismissed – was the occasion of our first meeting. A moment both hard to imagine, and painfully hard to forget.

My buddy David, a burgeoning indie film maker had undertaken the impossible task of raising $150,000 for the purpose of making a cinematic masterpiece not unlike Lawrence of Arabia. Only David’s story was about a Catholic priest from New Jersey, on sabbatical in Italy, where he gets mistaken for a mob hit-man. Wanted to call it The Good Father. Sounds rife with dramatic potential, right? A celluloid gold mine he would later call it. Well…David never made that picture. He went on to raise $16,000 – which severely challenged his creative wherewithal. He ended up shooting a very different film – you know the one – misunderstood indie youth having random, witty indie conversations in their local indie coffee shop – probably someplace in the pacific northwest – girls and guys discussing God and sex and politics with no cause, no outcome and no change, except for the pacification of indieness – remember it now? If not, you can rent it at our local Blockbuster. Might be hard to find it elsewhere. He kept the name the same. It didn’t really fit, but it’s probably the best thing about the damn movie.

Anyway, this fundraiser – the one for The Good Father - is where I first saw Dawn. She was the evening’s entertainment. Now, before you get the wrong idea, let me clarify: she was David’s creative ploy, solicited to pry – in an ingenious and innovative new way – money from the greedy little hands of his father’s rich friends. (Her and all the free booze.) It was Dawn’s job to present a compelling, powerhouse mime/interpretive dance, encapsulating all the movie’s major plot points, in an effort to cajole these potential investors.

In my opinion, David should have taken a little wiser initiative. Maybe worked up a flashy promotional video, or had the actors play an actual scene from the script or something. These are things that seem, to me, more palatable, for the purpose of encouraging financial support. An abstract art form, like interpretive dance, did not seem a logical choice. At least not for a bunch of thick-necked, over-stimulated, under-sexed, wealthy meatheads, knocking back Jameson like it was water. Although I don’t condone the sexual exploitation of women in any way, shape or form, maybe a stripper would have secured him the $150,000. Instead, he hired Dawn from the Salvation Army Corp downtown, and paid her a measly $30 to act the fool.

Her normal duties at the Corp had her working with at-risk youth and the homeless, teaching them health education and self respect through the use of creative arts. This evening, she got to prance around in a tight black leotard and white face, trying her best to display the “essence” of David’s inane screenplay. He prepped her in the hallway about 20 minutes before she began her enactment. And then…

Let’s just say, I didn’t catch much of David’s feeble plot line in all that frenetic energy that shot out of her body during that very long, very mortifying, 11 minute theatrical assault. I mean, I felt bad. Really bad. For her. For me. Granted, I wasn’t as verbal as some of the “what the fucks” coming out of the meatheads surrounding me. But still…

In the midst of that “epic” display – probably somewhere towards the end of it – even in all the shame and embarrassment, there was something – I admit – that intrigued me. Who was this pail painted-face girl? And why – though she looked oddly like John Lithgow – was I drawn to her?

She was standing next to the bar – clutching the faux pine paneling like a drunkard, but she was only drinking apple juice. Much apple juice. From shot glasses. There were around 20 stacked up on the table beside her. No one was talking to her. That hurt me. I figured the least I could do was attempt to encourage her with something positive about her…”performance”. She seemed like a sad clown. All tall and gangly with a blonde sheepdog mop that hung in her white painted face.

I didn’t even get a chance to speak. She looked at me, and I was sucked in. Two eyes were like a million. Hurting and caring simultaneously. She spoke. Her voice betrayed the pain behind the pale:

“I know you.”

It was confusing. I was overwhelmingly emotional all at once. A power drawing me in. Further and further. I couldn’t even question her. Her words were life itself. In this completely absurd and fucked up Fellini film going on around me. All these drunken meatheads belching and belaboring, short of breath. And her. All this social sodomy. This animal circus with billowing cigar smoke. And her.

The die seemed cast for me already. I answered the only way I could:

“I know.”

She told me to follow her outside. Next thing I know, we are standing alongside her station wagon, under the viaduct, passing out legs and breasts to the city’s hungry masses. Minutes quickly became hours and David’s stupid fundraising episode was soon just a painful means to a beautiful end.

All the chicken was gone and I licked the greasy residuals of our labors off my fingers. “Damn, this is good.” As I made this bold statement, I actually meant the secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices. But then she looked at me again – holding one last piece of extra crispy, in her slender hands – and I knew my sentiment covered so much more ground.

It was a night like no other. An ineffable paradise of denying self. Granted, there would come a time several months later when I would become so frustrated with Dawn that I would offer up the completely selfish ultimatum: “I would gladly give up all this shit, for a simple, uncomplicated conversation, a cup of coffee and a cigarette!”
But that night…that night, I was happy to serve in the presence of one of God’s most faithful and humble servants. What the fuck did I know?