I have three steakhouse gift cards to burn, and no one but myself to use them on.

I left my dad’s porns in a steakhouse trash can. That’s an opening line for the story, is it not? Hah.

Was thinking of the Othmar tale yesterday. It’s the one where I, as a forensic genealogist, find myself working for a death row serial killer who, over the years of his youth, murdered his family members one by one, to the bafflement of authorities. Through my contacts with this person I have no way of knowing his background until the FBI shows up at my door asking if I knew the calls I’d been receiving from someone calling himself Othmar were coming from a maximum security prison. I did not know but I suspected something was off about that whole correspondence.

In the end controversy revolves around whether Othmar, upon his state-sanctioned execution in Texas, should be buried in New York in the same plot as the family members he murdered. Logistically nothing can be done to stop it, since everything at the cemetery was prepaid and there was room available in the plot located at Calvary Cemetery near Borden Avenue. I even scouted out the exact plot, choosing one that had no headstone, and that was at a spot where you could see the payphone that used to be on the other side of the Long Island Expressway, outside the gas station. That phone plays a part in all this, inasmuch as I use the phone to call Othmar and because I made a few calls from that phone to record narratives of the tale. I don’t think I ever got the whole story recorded through that phone but I sure as hell tried.

Othmar, incidentally, is an entirely fictional byproduct of the mental machinations I grinded out while doing paid work as a cemetery photographer. The idea of a murderer being buried alongside his victims comes from the fact that among those interred at the mighty Johnston mausoleum is the pauper of the family, indeed the one who squandered the family fortune after the other brothers died. He died crazy and insane, to paraphrase the New York Times obituary, living in a barn charitably bequeathed to him on the property he lost to foreclosure.

Hell, maybe that’s the better story.

To keep it safe and sane the Othmar scenario could hinge on the Catholic’s concern about Controversy. I don’t think it is made clear in any official doctrine of the church what defines controversy, but the word comes up whenever a burial spot for the like of notorious mobsters or murderers is up for grabs. Not all cemeteries would welcome the likes of Othmar any more than they are willing to divulge exact locations of burial sites for people like Lee Harvey Oswald or Joseph McCarthy. It’s just not in their interest to attract the kind of vandalism and cultishness that such individuals inspire. Indeed, these days it has become the practice at the Lutheran Cemetery in Middle Village to refuse any inquiries regarding the burial site of Fred Trump, father of today’s controversial POTUS.

Or I could revisit the cremation salons story. I think that was mostly written, just waiting for beer-buzzed flourishes to lighten it up a bit.

You see I wake up every day thinking I have to write something new, as if I have not already written thousands upon thousands of words that are not ready to package and ship to whatever magazines or journals are out there. I don’t read or even familiarize myself with those type of publications as much as I used to, so I know less than ever what is out there. I just have to do what I sometimes do until I get lazy and/or bored. I have to read my own stuff. I do that out of a sense of obligation and duty, which is how it should be. That’s why they call it work.

Going to shit shower and shave. Morning!