Interesting People on the Fringe: This Week - Wayne-O!

He's a windowglass....maaaaaaaaaaan!

Oh, Wayne-O, where art thou?

This week's interesting acquaintance would probably have made it into the friends category, thus avoiding this blogging tribute, save for the fact that I haven't heard from him in years. Wayne Jacobson, a gangly blonde, laid-back dude known to all that loved him as Wayne-O, was a comrade in deviance at Fortress Immacula back in 1987-88, and a regular visitor during my exile on Main Street. Wayne-O was the Drugmaster, a true master of intoxicants, in the scheme of the Beatles' Dr. Robert. "If you're down, he'll pick you up, Dr. Robert. Take a drink from his special cup, Dr. Robert!" Wayne-O could actually have been called the Master of the Fortress, too, even more so than Stingray, since it was through Wayne that we all came to live in the place, after the evacuation of his brother, Jake, and Jake's girlfriend, Jo. The Fortress, located at 2104 Jensen Avenue in Ames, Iowa, was true suburban living at its finest, complete with an uncivilized backyard, two fireplaces, a loaded bong and asshole neighbors. All this and more for 100 bucks a month. What more could you want? I believe there was some kind of party at the Fortress each and every day during its heyday.

In some ways, Wayne-O reminded me of a late 1970's swinger. Big aviator shades, bitchin' Camaro, an address book featuring a variety of ladies' bosoms -- he had it together. The Playboy Advisor. And, amazingly enough, he had an assortment of women he picked up from the waitress and customer pool at Top of the Town, where he tended bar. Wayne-O often enjoyed a good buzz, as was evident by the enlightened, peaceful grin across his face. Sometimes I thought that Wayne would just disappear like the Cheshire cat, leaving only the apparition of his smile floating in space. Wayne once showed me his stash of one pound of prime Cannabis sativa, at which point I said that I would find him and kill him if I ever was rousted from my bed by feds at three in the morning.

Wayne wasn't often keen in playing the kind of reindeer games that we played at the Fortress, such as the classic, Take the Pain. Take the Pain was a game based on a quote from Oliver Stone's Platoon. The game was lead by Stingray, the benevolent dictator, who dealt out a measured dosage of pain to the participants, be it electrostatic shock to the teeth or a good, old-fashioned, welt-inducing whipping. The key to the game, however, was that Stingray always showed his benevolence by giving the most pain to himself. Wayne never wanted to participate, but as they say in Guadalajara, "You'll get yours, Gringo!" A couple of years later during one of our classic festivals on Main, we managed to restrain Wayne-O for a solid rap across the belly with the Victoriaville hockey stick staff. *Crack!* Take the pain! The windowglass man was shattered, and, I kind of think, shocked at how far we would go. I didn't see him much after that.

Wayne, also known by his regime moniker, Ishmael Gimlet, ended up getting married to Suzanne, an Italian chick who used to work at the Drake Diner. I don't know whether Wayne-O knew it or not, but Stingray himself and yours truly had also sampled the wares here, so we could have given him a heads-up, so to speak, of what he was getting into. La donna trascurata! Oh well, he knows now. The last I heard, he was living somewhere in the Xarlon Metroplex, working as an engineer.

Wayne-O, wherever you are...Skål!