Wherein Our Protagonist meets girl, dates girl, marries girl, makes girl pretend to be sister, they become famous, he plays guitar and sings like he was possessed by the undead supernatural spirits of Roberts Johnson and Plant, respectively, while she plays drums, at which she is considered to be quite decent. This story has a happy ending, not the least of which when it is revealed that Robert Plant has made a miraculous recovery from being a zombie:

The White Stripes
Elephant
V2 Records
Rating: Eleven out of Four Stars. Seventeen thumbs up.

"I'm gonna live with the Cinammon Girl," he said. It was the first thing he'd said in weeks. His roommates were too stoned to notice, but had they been able to sense it, they would have felt perhaps what Ahab felt when he realized for the first of many, many times that although he had lived long, the fish would live longer, and because of that he had lived too long. "I could be happy," he muttered, "the rest of my life."

"Eternal life is now on my trail," he said dumbly. "Got my red glitter coffin, man; just need one last nail." And with this last his lips turned up into a grin or recognition, pleased with himself, pleased, at last, to be living the larger side of life, at least here in his dreams, and if these were not dreams, what could they be? And his roommates also would have noticed this change, had they been able, and it would not have seemed very odd to them that the young man was smiling and saying these words, but that he was talking at all. Had they been able to pinpoint it.

But it seemed like he was dancing, and making dance-like movements with his feet, above shuffling in the order of things, but no balletry this. This was sex movement, with sex intentions. There is really no polite way to say this. He fucked air; sweaty phantoms were humped within the twisty ravines of his mind, which was, and this is the really inexplicable part, starting to open up to old things made new again, and at the very least. I want the bad one, he said. I want the one with the bad stuff.

Moving freely now, not even dancing, just twitching like a paper skeleton, the air bobbing him here and here: "Oh my lord a oh my god ah my baby don't like it like that." Random fits of punching air previously seduced by beastly imagination, he cried: he cried. Tears were now streaming down his face as cried out to a mother who wasn't there, a lover not yet introduced. But, oh, this introduction.... "It was a baby boy, so we bought him a toy, a ray-gun, 1981, oh this is fun."

...and now he is moving down the stairs, coming fully awake. He is possessed of whatever this is now and he will go where it takes him. This is the choice he has made and there he goes. You can watch him stumbling down the street holding something red and white clutching it as if his entire life depended on it.

And now the house is still, less one occupant. Had his roommates been able to sense any of this, they would have noticed him leave but not having seen the look on his face not the reason he is never coming back. Had his roommates been able to sense any of this.

But no, his roommates had not been able to sense any of this; they were lulled and chopped and formed and entirely comfortable with their beliefs and a lustful stirring shall not move them. A Republican in my White House. A sports utility vehicle in my garage. A rap/metal fusion product in my compact disc player. They are hideous, and we mention them only to tint their passing with less than the expected regret, because it was at this moment that a passing airliner exploded overhead and the rearmost passenger section, rows 80-144 inclusive, fell as one piece onto the house, killing everyone and every thing inside of it.

And somewhere not very close but not too far away, not at all: Jack White is laughing and pointing at you and drawing up lines. You can dance if you want to.

oarsman@pigdog.org