Mad Mark: "Mad in pursuit, and in possession so"

.22 Target Rifle

(Image Borrowed from Paladin Armory)

Another bit of evidence that contributed to my thinking that drugs are "a swallowed bait, / On purpose laid to make the taker mad," was Mad Mark's behavior at a party.

Some of you will recognize the allusion to Shakespeare's "Sonnet 129," which is ostensibly about lust but which the online writer "Mad in Pursuit" suggests is also:

... about any restless, addictive behavior. It's when you get a jones for something you know you're better off without. When you jump in the car at 3 A.M. to buy a pack of cigarettes. When you drink that third cosmopolitan, knowing you'll be sick as a dog in the morning. When one piece of fudge is too much and the whole pan is not enough. You know that the wiggling worm is attached to a hook, but you bite anyway.

We've each experienced this, I suppose, but you're perhaps wondering about the 'Mad Mark' referred to above. That's the nickname that I've decided to use for the Mark who appeared in yesterday's entry.

Why 'Mad'?

Because he proved himself both crazy and aggressive one time at a party in a farmhouse at the end of some back-country dirt road way off in the Ozark woods.

Several friends and I were sitting on a sofa listening to Frank Zappa's Apostrophe (') (1974), an album belonging to Mark, who had slipped off into another room, apparently to satisfy his drug lust. Just as Fido in "Stink-Foot" was saying:

The crux of the biscuit
Is the Apostrophe(')

Mark walked back into the living room carrying a .22 rifle, pointed it at us, pulled the trigger, and laughed at our instant of stunned silence. None of us stayed a moment longer to find out if he was aiming to load that rifle before playing his game again.

After that experience, I had nothing more to do with Mad Mark.