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III Tony "Apocalypse" Dingman
I didn't see Richard again until that summer. His leaving was always
mysterious to me, whether he went to San Francisco, Tokyo, Europe or just
on tour. Except for Shiina Takako, his Japanese "sister," I didn't know
much about the friends he had in other places, and he only brought them up
occasionally. He told a couple wild stories about Dennis Hopper and later,
after his divorce, talked about Don Carpenter, Terry Gardiner (the Wild
Legislator" from Ketchikan, Alaska) and some big guy in California who was
going to break his leg if he ever got married again. So when Richard
showed up with Tony one summer evening, I got a pretty good impression of
what kind of people Richard hung out with. "I'd like you to meet Tony,"
said Richard. "He was an assistant director for "Apocalypse Now. If you
look closely the next time you see the movie, you'll notice his head among
several others scattered across Colonel Kurtz's front yard." Tony had had
to sit in a pit for several hours so that only his head showed. He said he
didn't enjoy that much because there were bugs in the pit, and it was
awfully hot. No way to spend an afternoon in the tropics. Tony had been
class president in his high school in California, though that was a long
time ago. Tony, Richard, Aki, Judy, and I spent several evenings eating
out, shopping at the Bozeman Safeway, drinking , and driving around town
yelling unko (which means shit in Japanese) out the car window. Tony
delighted in doing things like getting a running start down an aisle at
Safeway and sliding into a potato display yelling, "Look, an Irish
manger!" Richard obviously condoned this behavior, but I'm not sure
(looking back on it now) that Aki was too crazy about it. After that
summer, Tony vanished. I asked Richard about him several times, but he
didn't say much--never anything bad--just nothing much.
Gorgo's Brautigan Stories Index
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