Getting My Goat

When an old friend and street preacher from New Orleans called just before Hurricane Katrina hit, I offered to help in any way I could. I let him live on my ranch, wear my clothes, drink my beer, and yap endlessly on my phone. But after two years of hospitality, I did what any other gracious host would do: I tried to get rid of him.

by Kinky Friedman

September 2007

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I hated to be an insensitive host, but I needed the phone as well. Cousin Nancy (of Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch) and I had been working frantically to save 24 greyhounds trapped in a New Orleans attic by rising floodwaters. Now Goat began a frenetic series of calls to Dr. John, Levon Helm, the Neville Brothers, and many other musical luminaries, telling them Kinky was bringing 24 greyhounds out of New Orleans. As Goat yapped on and on, I confess to have been basking somewhat in the sunlight of my good works. The truth, unfortunately, did not reveal itself for several more days, when Goat turned to me in my favorite Billy Joe Shaver T-shirt and asked, “When are the greyhounds getting here?”

“We’re working on it,” I said. “Cousin Nancy’s gotta make room at the rescue ranch for twenty-four more dogs.”

“The greyhounds are dogs?” said Goat, removing my reading glasses from his nose in astonishment.

“Yes, Goat,” I said patiently. “The greyhounds are dogs.”

“Jesus with jugs,” said Goat. “I thought they were buses.”

Things went downhill from there. The care and feeding of Goat became more all-consuming, tedious, and expensive with each passing week. Not that Goat wasn’t a soulful, talented, well-intentioned man, not to mention a man of the cloth. It was just that the cloth, in his case, was a little coarse. It was not unusual for him to drink a case of beer a day. At dinner parties and restaurants he would sometimes take his teeth out and make loud, obnoxious spitting and snartin’ noises into his hands, creating a New Orleans beatbox. He often would endlessly describe sexual desires toward women in television commercials, declaring them “table” or “not table” and always providing running commentary on all bodily functions in colorful, though somewhat graphic, language, such as “letting the possum out.”

Don’t get me wrong. Despite some rather glaring personality and hygiene drawbacks, there were, as well, many spiritual and charmingly human aspects of this modern-day holy man. First of all, he did not proselytize. This can be important when you’re a Jew and you have a street preacher living with you. The reverend, indeed, proved himself to be not only eccentric but refreshingly ecumenical as well. During Thanksgiving, for instance, Goat opened the proceedings with what he called the Cowboy Prayer, i.e., “Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, hold this horse while I get on.” As an afterthought, the Native American essence of the man also manifested itself. Goat’s Indian Thanksgiving prayer went as follows: “Thanks for nothing.”

When Goat was not on the phone at my desk, he busied himself sitting in my chair, wearing a terrific Hawaiian shirt I’d forgotten I had, drinking beer, and watching the History Channel with almost pathological persistence. He moved so little, I worried, in fact, that Goat might himself evolve into a historical artifact. I had never personally been responsible for the health, education, and welfare of an evacuee, and given that he might well have been traumatized by the experience, I still did not see how the therapy of sleeping, drinking beer, and watching the History Channel was ever going to get Goat off his ass and back to New Orleans. It was time for tough love.

I assigned Goat the daunting task of being the nanny for my five dogs, the Friedmans. Some say the Friedmans are spoiled rotten, difficult, demanding dogs, but this is not precisely true. They are merely older dogs who, like older people, have become set in their ways. Soon the Friedmans could be seen following Goat like a flock over the hills and valleys of the ranch. Perky, Mr. Magoo, Brownie, Chumley, and Fly all seemed to be quite fond of Goat and to accept him, more or less, as their spiritual leader. Goat himself fed this religious fervor by dressing the part. Wearing my black Willie Nelson sweatshirt with the hood over his head and carrying a large staff, he looked like a cross between a biblical shepherd and the grim reaper.

Using his New Orleans background, Goat soon began cooking for the Friedmans as well. He named one dish that really seemed to catch on the Triple Dragon. It consisted of bacon, chicken livers, and chicken gizzards. It wasn’t long before the Friedmans, normally a rather cliquish clan, had welcomed Goat into the family. The one holdout was Mr. Magoo, who, while he was fond of Goat, would never permit him to sleep in my bed when I was on the road.

It was during this time of harmony and bonding that the fate monkeys struck again. Goat, who now was “wee-wee-weeing,” to use his term, and letting the possum out approximately every five minutes, received yet another blow to his fragile physical constitution. Goat came out of the guesthouse one morning singing, “It’s a double possum morning, Baby left me without warning sometime in the night.” His mood seemed upbeat and positive. When I returned from town later in the day, he appeared almost as depressed as I had been since his arrival. He informed me that, during his fitful slumbers the previous night, a spider, apparently, had bitten him where the sun never shines.

This amused me greatly, which only plunged my evacuee into deeper, darker depression. He took his Indian knife and cut up half of my aloe plants and applied the natural elixir directly to the spider bite. This Native American remedy soothed the wound but apparently only temporarily. Goat then proceeded to pillage what was left of my Jameson Irish Whiskey, applying equal portions both rectally and by mouth. He claimed that the healing process had begun, but in the morning I noticed the level of my Listerine bottle had dropped precipitously and the cap was loose, causing me to spill the rest of it all over myself and the floor and causing me, as well, to curse my evacuee, who’d just rounded the corner carrying a large flagon of Kona coffee and leaving, I noticed, a very small amount in the pot. His spider bite was doing much better, he reported.

Any house pest will get on your nerves after two years. Particularly if the person has been a victim of what must certainly be considered one of our country’s greatest modern tragedies. My evacuee indubitably did his best, not only cooking for the Friedmans but also serving up great New Orleans-style meals for both of us. He labored in the important task of West Coast Under-Assistant Hummingbird Man, helping his host with his only hobby, feeding the hummingbirds. You can’t ask much more of your fellow man.

It wasn’t Goat’s fault that many times when I looked at him, I saw before my very eyes myself, a clever form of identity theft. He would sit in my chair, drink my whiskey, smoke my cigars, watch my TV, wear my clothes, answer my phone, all the while talking about or performing bodily functions at rapidly increasing intervals. As for me, I would play a little desultory eight ball by myself and watch my life pass before my eyes. Having a man of the cloth living with you for a two-year stint, a man who drinks ten times as much as you, a man who incessantly vocalizes his sexual desires concerning Angelina Jolie, a man who often speaks in the argot of the gutter, can be an unnerving and eye-opening experience. But the same man recently buried a dead hummingbird with a full traditional ceremony poignant enough to possibly bring a tear to the eye of any abiding Christian or Native American, and, in this case, one Jewish cowboy.

Then came the day, early in the summer of the second year, when Goat received an offer he couldn’t refuse. He had been invited back to New Orleans by Xavier University to teach a course on—what else?—the Black Mardi Gras Indians.

Goat is gone now, and I must say, I almost miss him. And I do sometimes wonder what might have happened if things had been the other way around. I do know that ours is a friendship that has been tested by time, adversity, and the fate monkeys. There may, however, be yet one more test to come.

In October Goat and I are planning a book tour together. He’ll be promoting his new novel, a dark, disturbing book about Hollywood and witchcraft called Shallow Graves (available on Amazon.com). I’ll be flogging my latest masterpiece, a dark, disturbing book titled You Can Lead a Politician to Water, But You Can’t Make Him Think.

Will it be like old times when Goat and I get back together? Who knows? All I’ve learned is that it’s okay to think you’re a cowboy just as long as you don’t run into someone who thinks he’s an Indian.

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