The May Hole

A Spring Celebration That Didn’t Go As Planned

This is an interactive blog, but it doesn’t often seem that way because if you don’t inter, I don’t act.

You must know that the couch is a wonderful place. And now, with the wonders of technology, I can watch a Yankee game and read Medium at the same time while lying on my back. Just a decade ago, there was no Medium and to watch a Yankee game I had to sit up on the couch and look at the TV. Things were tougher then, but, then again, so were we.

I used to report on the May Day celebration here at the Mill. This year I skipped it, but just yesterday while I was playing the “spelling bee” game on the New York Times web site, our new summer intern, named Clarissa, came into the office and asked me if we should write up the events of May 1st.

“No,” I said.

“You’re not going to?” She asked, “Have you stopped writing or something? Are you pouting? Even this post seems stunted. You are four paragraphs into the introduction of a new intern and you haven’t yet described me physically. What’s up with that? You always describe the interns physcially.”

“It leads to trouble,” I said. “All I’m going to tell our readers is that you are as different from me physically as a person can be.”

“I’m fine with that,” said Clarissa, “Everyone will know that’s a good thing.”

“Maybe we should call you ‘the inverse’,” I said.

“Maybe you should just call me ‘Clarissa’.” She paused for a moment. “Why aren’t you going to write up the May Day Celebration? You know people are asking for it?”

“People are asking for it? Nonsense,” I said. “What people are asking for it?”

“Mac McCarty.”

“Mac McCarty isn’t ‘people’,” I replied, “Mac McCarty is Mac McCarty. He is one of a kind. If I had a thousand Mac McCartys I would be the King of Medium, but there is only one Mac McCarty, unfortunately, and the reason we don’t publish stories about the May Day Celebration is because those things never got any clicks. Even when we were outside the paywall those posts bombed.”

“We’re behind the paywall?” Clarissa asked. She looked shocked. I would describe the expression on her face to you but it would be really hard to do without mentioning the incredible youthfulness of her skin. “I thought we were never going to ‘sell out’ and go behind the paywall.”

“That’s not what I said,” I replied, “In that post I said that we would stay outside the paywall ‘in perpetuity.’ The phrase ‘in perpetuity’ doesn’t mean what you think it means. You can ask any lawyer.”

Clarissa held out her iPad and pointed to the Open the Chumbox post. “It doesn’t say ‘in perpetuity’. The listicle in the article is titled ‘Ten Reasons Why Mr. Mildew Omnimedia Won’t Be Moving Behind the Paywall’.”

“That’s an old article,” I said. “Nobody reads old articles on Medium.”

“Why don’t you write a new one?”

“You mean, just re-purpose the old content by printing it again now?”

“Well,” she said, “ I would change it enough that it is not the exact same post.”

“That’s genius,” I said, “Tell me why you are here again? Why is someone like you spending your summer as an intern here at the Mill?”

At this question Clarissa’s face changed. Since you don’t know what she looked like before, it’s even harder to describe the alteration of her visage, but let’s just say she started looking “scary”.

“You were right when you called me ‘the inverse,’” She said.

Newer readers don’t know about my meta-fictional “abilities”. I can talk to animals, I can read auras, I can summon celebrities, and I can extend my powers in any way I need to in order to keep the dreck rolling. I can tell you that it was clear that the intern before me was both a meta-fictional and metaphysical being.

Knowing that the fantasy dreck might start rising around us and could lead to her whipping out a sword or something, I wanted to cut to the chase and quickly expose our relationship through blunt dialog, so I said, “Oh, you’re like a contrary. You really are my opposite. You were attracted to this spot because we have been canceling each other out.”

“Yes,” she said while locking her eyes on me and nodding. Her nods were cool, not jowly like mine. “That’s accurate to say, but why did you have to say it so inelegantly? No wonder nobody reads this blog.”

“I think I should explain it even more clearly,” I said, “It is my understanding, and hopefully now the reader’s, that you can’t really start ‘being’ until you somehow cancel me out. You have to get rid of me, or maybe change me into someone not myself.”

“Exactly,” she said.

“It’s going to be a fun summer!” I said.

Report on the May Day Celebration

I had set an agenda like the one I did in 2016.

But when I woke up on the morning of May 1st I knew the whole thing was fucked up already. As I looked out of my bedroom window in the Old Building, across the Piñata Court, past the cod-head splitter, I could see that on the front lawn someone had cut down the May Pole. It looked like it had been hacked down with a machete. There was black smoke climbing into the morning air from some place up by the crossroads.

I put on my shoes, coat, and hat. I filled my flask, folded the racing form and put it in my pocket, checked to make sure I had a Slim Jim and a pack of Nabs (I never leave the house without a pack of Nabs). I blessed myself with toilet water and recited the first fourteen lines of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales… what?… no… this is not “OCD”… everybody thinks everything nowadays is “OCD”. What I’m doing is ritualized behavior. It’s different from OCD… not much different… but different enough that it is not OCD.

I walked outside and up the hill. Six women, all members of the local chapter of the Society for the Preservation of Neo-Classical Victorianisms were standing around a hole they had dug next to the crossroads. The black smoke was coming out of the hole.

“What’s going on,” I asked, “Why do I get the sinking suspicion that what is burning in that hole of yours are the remnants of our May Pole?”

“Maybe you were tipped off by the fact that the rest of the May Pole is sitting over there,” said a woman, gesturing with her thumb towards the hacked mast sitting in the grass nearby.

“Well, this kind of fucks up the May Pole Celebration, doesn’t it?” I said, “I guess I should just go cancel the kielbasa, beer, and pudding that I ordered.”

“What was the pudding for?” Asked a woman named Mary, who works down at the bank.

“One of the Gretchen Sisters was going to pop out of a pudding in the evening.”

Both Gretchen sisters were part of the group of six. They looked at each other.”

“I was going to ask one of you.” I said, “There was a small ‘honorarium’ attached.” The Gretchen sisters are always hard up for money because they smoke Gauloises and Export ‘A’s, which cost a fortune.

“Nobody wants your kielbasa, beer, or May Pole, Gutbloom,” said Astrid, the queen of the Society for the Preservation of Neo-Classical Victorianisms. “Your celebrations are all the same. People are bored, then they are drunk, then there are fights.”

“Isn’t that what a celebration is?” I asked.

“No, things could be a lot better. That’s why we decided to go with a chthonic celebration this year. We’re sick of your poles, so we decided to go with holes.”

“I guess that explains the pig,” I said, because a woman named Elizabeth, who is one of the librarians down at the Frost Free Library, had her pet pig with her.

“Nobody is going to understand that pig comment,” said one of the Gretchen sisters. “Stop rushing and write the fucking post.”

“Pigs are chthonic animals because they root around in the earth and smell things underground,” I said with a sigh. Then I looked at Elizabeth. “Crones sometimes keep them and feed them milk until they become total pains in the ass.”

“Technically,” she said, “I’m not a crone. I’m still a matron, Gutbloom, so fuck you very much.”

“Astrid,” I asked, “Can a solid regime of SSRIs and reading Lisa Renee’s whole series really delay crone-dom, or do you just become a happy crone, but a crone none-the-less?”

“You’re really being a dick, Gutbloom,” both of the Gretchen sisters said in unison. When they talk in unison they aren’t fucking around. “Why are you bothering us?”

“Because you cut down my May Pole,” I said.

“Oh, the pole again,” said Astrid. “He can’t live without his pole being the center of attention.”

They were all angry. I could see that. Elizabeth was already whispering instructions for the pig to eat my cannabis garden as soon as the seedlings sprouted. I decided to try to join them.

“So what are you doing?” I asked, “You’ve got fire in the hole. Now what are you going to do? Dance around it, pour in libations? Maybe drop in a couple of puppies for Hecate?”

“No puppies,” said one of the Gretchen sisters.

I made an exaggerated frowny face. Nobody laughed. “Look,” I said, “Everyone who was going to watch the May Pole Celebration would be willing to come watch this. I could put the keg right over there.” I pointed to a spot near the discarded May Pole. “Maybe some of you might go into an ecstatic trance… that would be good… and then if I could get the Swede to bring the pudding up in the back of his truck…”

Astrid held up her hand and shouted, “Enough! Nobody cares what you do, Gutbloom, just don’t get in the way of our ceremony. We have an earth to renew. Now, ladies, light your candles.”

They all lit their candles. Then they formed a circle around the hole and started to chant something. This might be paranoid on my part, but I think they were chanting “increase the library fines of Gutbloom, increase the library fines of Gutbloom”. Then they all took out rubber snakes. Snakes are chthonic animals too because they come from the ground and have deep and ancient knowledge of the earth. To my horror, all six women dropped their rubber snakes into the pit. The black smoke got blacker. I caught a whiff. It was acrid, bitter.

“That smells like shit,” I said out loud. Nobody replied.

I started walking down the hill. As I did I began planning how I could move the party up to the crossroads. Then it occurred to me that maybe I should leave those women alone. They seemed happy by themselves up there. Me and my friends would probably just ruin their good time.

“So what if there is no May Pole this year,” I thought. “We can still drink beer and eat pudding. That’s not so bad, is it?”