volume one IN THE D U D L E Y C L A R K - Ohio Vine Tours

WAILING WALL
is a downtown music store haunted and inhabited by freaks.
With its tattered, peeling posters that seem to come alive when
the wind off Puget Sound sweeps along the street, it’s not a place
for Straights. They have their own music stores. They can go to
malls, or drive to Capitol Hill where the fake freaks live. They
can walk along Broadway while clutching Barnes and Noble bags
close to their chests. They can grope their way from Starbucks
to Starbucks while dreaming of peaceful shopping in places with
cardboard standees of Eric Clapton and Sting—but they can
not come here. They can not come to the Wailing Wall. The
Wailing Wall is not for them. They do not belong. They are not
welcomed. Not that their money wouldn’t be taken. It would,
and their bodies deposited in one of the big, green dumpsters out
in the cobblestoned alley.
One more time—: the Wailing Wall is for freaks.
Got it?
Roy’s bald dome emerges from a Metro bus. He stands on
the sidewalk fiddling with his dilapidated Sony, changing tapes.
He always carries several in his pockets. He concentrates on this
activity as though nothing else in the world matters. (Doesn’t he
understand he is in the way? That people have to sidestep him
as he stands on the sidewalk like a statue? That men in Harris
Tweeds with shoulder-slung bags must alter their steps? That
women in high heels must circumnavigate his island in their
Stream? Doesn’t he care? Isn’t he in a hurry to get anywhere?
Doesn’t he have a job? A boss? Someone to answer to?)
Apparently not.
To change tapes, Roy has to do this: he has to peel back the
frayed duct tape that holds closed his Sony’s broken door. Then
ROY ROGERS IN THE 21ST CENTURY