The Meadow Annual Literary Arts Journal 2018

My Other Bruce Steve Couglin “Yippie-ki-yay, Mother Fucker.” —Bruce Willis You were a different kind of Bruce. Not Springsteen in a pristine white t-shirt singing about working-class struggles, the soft intimacy of his vocals in “Factory” encouraging me to memorize each poetic word but the Supreme Tough Guy in Die Hard—John McClane, off-duty police officer— walking in bare feet across bullet shattered glass because no true American would let Hans Gruber and his henchmen take over a state-of-the-art skyscraper. If it wasn’t you I saw at The Candle Pin bowling alley it was a world of men aspiring to be you—men with tattoos bulging and dancing on their biceps; men whose girlfriends hollered each time their guy scored a thundering strike; men like you willing to toss dead bodies out the 36th-story window to send Hans an undeniable message. How could Springsteen—the sincere, reflective artist—impress Melissa Cook in eleventh-grade home economics? But when I tried spinning a ball of pizza dough on my middle finger there was a sense of your hip masculinity hovering between us. Like all my friends I memorized the scene when you, hiding on the 27th-floor, challenge Hans over walkie-talkie with a completely cool, cowboy inspired, “Yippie-ki-yay, Mother Fucker.” That phrase blossomed into a world The Meadow 15