Fingerprints of Armless Mike Paperback - 2017

After the intense, hard fought battle of Full Moon Over America, I needed something lighter, more amusing. I was, at that time, involved with a young lady who was part of the horsey set. I attended lavish parties in immodest mansions attended by some of the flushest folks in the country. Trust me, they were not all snobs. But one or two, especially those whose greenbacks were more recently acquired, usually through the shysterism of Wall Street, liked to put on the dog. I found it all highly entertaining. Then one sultry summer evening I met the tobacco heiress who lived in grand style. Not a single day in her life had she done a lick of work or achieved anything of import, but oh my goodness how self-righteous and full of hot air was that old dame. Iron Kate was born. Don't get me wrong, I like money. My family had some. I've had some a couple times in my march through adulthood. I can consume non essentials with the best of them. But I've also born witness to the comical phenomenon of humans who think their stool doesn't stink simply because they have a wallet stuffed with Fat Jack. Fingerprints of Armless Mike is only concerned with the well-heeled in a superficial way. It's mostly about Mike, another of my alter egos, but also, in my eyes, an American Everyman. Mike, at the onset, is a simple, happy guy who likes nothing better than a good time, a grand adventure, a pretty girl on his arm. But America, in the end, is all about the Money. The Cold Hard Cash. The Oil of the Palm. Either you have it or you want it. There's no in between. And so Mike, who had never really spent much time thinking about money, and even less time pursuing it, suddenly finds himself surrounded by the stuff. And he realizes his bride, the girl he loves, is awash in Greenbacks. She might say otherwise but she lives and breaths Federal Reserve Notes. Sarah was born into money and without it she will cease to exist. All this soon dawns on Mike, and so he does what American men have been doing since the dawn of the Great Age of Consumerism: he concocts a plan to get his piece of the pie. Sure, Mike's solution is rather desperate, to say nothing of illegal, but doesn't a sense of desperation dominate the vocational choices of most of us? A cautionary tale, Fingerprints of Armless Mike, now more than twenty years in my rearview mirror, was maybe my first attempt to make sense of what it might mean to actually pursue a life worth living.