The other day I was enjoying crab cakes of excellent quality at my favorite restaurant, Faidley's here in old Baltimore, and I started hallucinating. I don't believe it had anything to do with the products pioneered by John W. Faildey, Sr. over a hundred years ago. I think it had more to do with a general losing of my shit combined with being tired and lacking in sex with human partners for close to seven years.
The hallucination began with imagining my old friend Mr. Stebble, who I've known since youth in Baltimore and not before, coming across the room as I was eating my last delicious Faidley's crab cake of the afternoon. Suddenly I began to hear very light, mystical music like one might hear in a quality pornographic film in which the actors and actresses are treated with a modicum of dignity instead of simply bent over and hammered for an hour or so. At that point I realized Mr. Stebble was wearing white clown make-up on his face, additionally sporting heavy mascara and black lipstick, and a tight red jumpsuit made of a material not unlike popular 1980s fabric called velour.
For a moment or more than a moment I looked at him and tried to imagine whether this was real or an apparition of some kind like experienced by high Demi Moore in the film Ghost. And then I realized that Mr. Stebble is currently in Connecticut, another of the original thirteen colonies located further north than Maryland. I also realized he is recording with his band, which I think is actually just him in a basement with a bunch of instruments he knows how to play, called Mystics Anonymous.
It became clear to me that I might be as high as Demi Moore was in the film Ghost or her former lover Bruce Willis was in that film where he talks to a dead kid and then finds out he is also dead in an upsetting turn of events that leaves the viewer wondering whether they are dead by the end of the film. As I considered these things, Mr. Stebble came closer, although he never sat at my table and he did not respond to my offer to order him some of John W. Faidley, Sr.'s famous lump crab cakes while telling him I have met and gone to a swimming related fundraising event with current Faidley's owners Bill and Nancy Devine, who despite the friendship forged on that day and by years of my patronizing their fine restaurant, have indicated they want to have nothing to do with me on a personal basis.
Mr. Stebble left the restaurant and began to wander Baltimore's world famous Lexington Market which is something lacking in less better cities such as Philadelphia or Boston. I understand Philly (as it is known in colloquial vernacular) promotes greasy steak subs with liquified cheese on them and Boston likes to make you eat a lot of gas-producing beans, but Baltimore is all about the crab cakes, baby. How can you go wrong there? We are also close enough to the nation's capital to help with taxes but far enough away to keep you safe from child molesting and pocket picking politicians. If you think your political friends in Washington don't engage in one or both of these activities, you were born yesterday. Just listen to the Beatles' song "Yesterday" for heaps of proof regarding this.
So, as I continued to wander world famous Lexington Market, following the trail of the mysterious Mr. Stebble character who could not have been Mr. Stebble for real due to hallucinations and him being in a basement recording Mystics Anonymous music, I started to look back at my history of head injuries and food poisoning incidents, as well as the experience I had a couple years ago when people with really bad influenza were haunting my beloved Baltimore. I tried to find a perspective in which my sighting of this visionary character could be explained. I was left without one as I watched Mr. Stebble climb into a blue mailbox of the kind used for many decades to send letters from a random location on the street, popular for so long they were even seen in episodes of the popular television program Ozzie and Harriett which I am collecting all the episodes of on DVD for reasons other than counting blue mailboxes for mailing out of letters.
Now let me tell you people, including those of you who grouse about everything in today's streamlined, kick ass society where nonconformity is no longer tolerated and will soon be dealt with by the National Guard under orders from our wise president and his excellent cronies, I waited for seven hours, missing the remedial science classes I was scheduled to teach in the Greater Baltimore School System, until the time at which the mailman came and opened the mailbox to remove the letters that were being mailed. I watched several responsibly paid bills and love letters placed in the box, but at no time did the spooky Mr. Stebble emerge. When the mailman used a special key to open the mailbox, there was no Mr. Stebble inside. I told the mailman that I had seen my friend Mr. Stebble, who was more likely in Connecticut and not in Baltimore at all, get into the mailbox by climbing in through the sending out gizmo at the entrance to the mailbox and that he had not emerged and politely asked the mailman if he thought I might be turning into Demi Moore in the film Ghost. Instead of answering me, the mailman quickened his pace, hurriedly scooped out the letters and questionable packages from the mailbox and ran back to his truck with them all in a little white postal tub. He started the engine and started driving down the road, at which point one of the packages, put into the mailbox by a terrorist because of liberals in our country, exploded and killed him and his truck. Many love letters and responsibly paid bills were destroyed, causing honest American citizens who pay their bills on time to receive harrassing phone calls from collectors.
I went home and watched several episodes from the second thrilling season of Ozzie and Harriett and did not report anything.