“‘But true love,’ he said, ‘godddamn true love is taking it out of you ass and sticking it in your mouth.'” – A Feast of Snakes

“Jeeeezzzussss” – Me, upon reading that.

I was 19 when I first read A Feast of Snakes by Harry Crews.  Needless to say, it left an impression on me.  I’d read Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and Robert Penn Warren in survey courses and high school; this was a different beast. And one I could see almost everyday growing up in Virginia.

Joe Lon Mackey, the protagonist of A Feast of Snakes, was a type of person, I encountered while growing up.  Guys that had a moment of glory and then it all went to shit.  All that’s left is burnt out dreams, drugs, alcohol, and pleasures that never quite last.  I knew plenty of men and women like that growing up and still do.  None of them have gone out quite as spectacularly (Joe Lon shoots up the place before the snake festival attendees throw him in a vat of rattlesnakes), but that’s just a question of degree.

I grew up in Blacksburg, Winchester, and Roanoke, VA before heading off to George Mason University in Fairfax.   Consequently I knew a lot of aspirational people, but I also knew a large number of working class folks.  I suppose some of them would be called rednecks, (depending on their lack of malevolence, I’d call them good ole boys).

Existential dread might not be the phrase they’d use when coping with life’s woes; but that’s what it was.  And a lot of the time coping translates to getting fucked up and fucking shit up despite the fact you’re generally fucking yourself up even more.  That’s where I came from and that’s where Harry Crews came from.

A Feast of Snakes is located in a small Georgia town and primarily revolves around a illiterate former high school football hero who now tends to rattlesnakes and the yearly rattlesnake festival.  Everyone else has moved on.  He’s got a couple of kids by a women he barely can stand while his high school girl has gone on to college.  There’s a lot of good southern stuff in it.  You got your dead mom.  You got your castration.  You got your ancient world sacrifice metaphor.  It’s good shit.

The quote above that I pulled is great for shock value.  In the scent, Joe Lon is pounding away on his ex in his family’s doublewide while his wife is being distracted by a baton twirl off outside.  She’s probably only a few feet away while Joe Lon fucks Berenice as hard as he can before taking her in the ass. And after that is when we get that money quote.  And Berenice is fine with the whole ATM thing.  My middle class self says, “But…but…but…the germs!”

Now, it’s a pretty hot sex scene in some ways, but considering the other graphic sex scene involves a guy thinking about Treblinka to stop from cumming, I doubt it’s just about the sex.  Joe Lon’s fucking Berenice while thinking about how his mother committed suicide after his father abducted her from her lover.  He’s thinking about how fucked up his life is after high school football didn’t take him anywhere.  How fucked up it is to be banging his ex while his wife and babies are outside.  So, is there true love?  Is there a better life for us all?

Back in the dark days of 1986, yours truly was a scrawny punk who desperately wanted to play on the football team.  I wrestled in junior high and high school, ran track, lifted weights; but at the end of the day I still weighed 105 pounds if I was lucky.  So, I ended up being an equipment manager for the football team at Cave Spring High.

Now, Cave Spring High was the worst football team in the Roanoke Valley.  Apparently, that’s changed.  Those fucks.  Anyway, there was a defensive lineman named Kevin and he was a baaaaaad motherfucker.  He had a blue 1981 Camaro Z28 and was the shit.  He drive around with Quiet Riot, Crue, and Ratt blasting out of that fucker.  He was The Shit.

More than anything, I wanted to be The Shit.  I ingratiated myself to this guy to the point where I’d get the occasional lift after practice.  Typically, he had a bottle of JD and a girl in the car with him.  Man, I thought, this fucker has got it made.

Now, Kevin was kinda a badass, but he was also an asshole. He was cruel and I know he smacked around a couple of his girlfriends.  I didn’t now this at the time, but heard about it after he dropped out of high school when he turned 17 and started working construction.  But he roamed the halls and the football field like a blue light special Colossus.  And what did it get him?  Did those brief moments make up for the rest of his life?  I don’t know, but we all wanted to be that guy heading down the road in that fast car.  We never thought about the cost.