THE DEVIL'S WORK

The moment I met Michael Lucas I felt a brotherly kinship to him. He's one of the funniest people I've ever met, which puts him alongside Miss Vaginal Creme Davis. Their style of humor is somewhat different, but they share an innate ability to amuse off the cuff, never affected, but seldom out of character. Of course in Miss Davis' case, the characters are multiple. I haven't seen Mike for a few years, but you can imagine my excitement when I discovered he had published a novel via the display at St. Mark's Bookshop. I've known he was a writer since I met him, and used to read him in Maximum Rock and Roll, but this was the first I'd heard of him authoring a full tome. Topping it off was the wonderfully crude retro cover art that references luche libre wrestling. Mike's sardonic sense of humor and incredibly astute social insights are intact in this thoroughly enjoyable read. The tale is set in the 90's and concerns a film school grad who gets a job delivering modern furniture to a mostly insufferable shi shi clientele. His boss is a clueless queen and his partner in schlepping is a daft Englishman. I know that Mike was (might still be) a furniture mover, and wonder how much of the autobiographical bits extend to the extraneous characters. One choice moment is when our protagonist encounters a young coed from school, now a committed junkie. She pretentiously name-drops Burroughs, to which the main character asks "Edgar Rice?" It's a 'can't put it down' sort of read, with a dark overtone and depressing ending. Overall, it's a hilarious and biting commentary on how inane life can be. I know Mike is rather obsessed with South American garage music and pop culture in general, so the allusions to Mexican wrestling made perfect sense. The wry descriptions of San Fransisco in the 90's, especially the 'hipster' scene, brought on euphoric laughter. Mike published this on his own press, Rudos and Rubes. Rudos are the bad guys in Mexican wrestling. I believe Black Shadow and Blue Demon were both rudos, although Blue Demon might have switched sides at some point. A rube is defined as an "Awkward and unsophisticated' person. That of course maintains Mike's scathing sense of irony, since obviously us Rudos and Rubes readers are highly sophisticated.