#34: RAT VANO

Throw em a bone

I dreamed of a rat last night. It wasn’t your run of the mill rat. It had a cocaine coat, twice as thick as a normal one and blue eyes looking right through me. It looked like some kind of polar rat and I wanted to get closer to it to stroke it’s soft back but it scurried away through a miniature gate at the bottom of a big white wall.

I woke up and thought it would be fun to record punk versions of all my songs and call it RAT VANO and put a big badly drawn rat on the cover and donate all the royalties to some kind of Rat Rescue organization.

Sam Vano Q4-2025 royalties for indication

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When I was nine I had my first girlfriend. She’d come over to my place sometimes and we’d hide in the bathroom and kiss each other on the mouth until my brothers would inevitably catch us and then we’d run back to her place down the street where there was only the refrigerator humming and rats chirping. She had two of them living in a big tall cage. I forget their names but one was white with a few black spots and the other was old and dying of cancer, a tumor like a hazelnut inbetween his front paws. I hoped we’d go up to her room for more of the same but she always insisted on playing with the rats first. She’d take them out of the cage and place one on my shoulder and one on hers. I think she always gave me the cancer one because he was less jumpy and would just sit there, trembling on my right shoulder waiting for it to be over so he could go back to his corner in the cage and die and just be done with it all. I remember always being afraid he’d piss or shit on my back but he spared me, the old chum. The white rat would be off running all over the back of the couch like a deranged sailor, back and forth and over her lap and eventually onto the floor and then she’d have to lure it back from under the couch with bits of ham and one time even a piece of Manchego. Lucky rat.

Tonight I felt restless after dinner so I walked along the canals. On my way back I passed the Wertheimpark, a small park that closes after sundown. As I walked on the outside past the tall fence, I heard movements in the shrubbery. I guessed it was probably a pigeon getting settled for a quiet night in but hoped it was a rat. I recently read that in every big city you’re always within a meter of one, so by that logic my chances were pretty high. Turns out I was in luck; there were two rats tumbling about in the bushes. I stopped to see if I could spot them and suddenly one came flying out, chasing the other all around the little park. I tried to stay close behind and sometimes they’d stop, half-alarmed, and then carry on. One took the lead and darted back and forth between the patches of daffodils and then as if by the flip of a switch they changed and the chaser was chased. At one point they did three perfect circles around a big plane tree. Then it seemed like one of them fried its motherboard or had some other kind of internal malfunction because it stayed frozen halfway through the fourth lap for two minutes. The other one lost interest and noticed me creeping by the fence. He ran ahead a bit further in the direction of the fence, seemingly to get a closer look at me. Once he reached the fence he stuck his head through and I quietly took a few steps closer, expecting him to make a run for it and my National Geographic wet dream to be over. But he stayed put the closer I got. I stepped right up to his little head, my shadow hanging over him and my hand passively reaching out as if I was saying Hey old boy remember me? I took you out of the cage and then put you back in. Then the frozen rat rebooted and sped past him and the game was on again.

I’ve seen elephants drink from the river and hippos make love in the bay and now I’ve seen this.

Rats. They live in the filth between the fish and the fruit and fuck and swim in the city water because the beach is too far and it’s such a nice day. Clean themselves after a long day and play in the park when there’s nobody there and chew the fat off the bone and find a nice warm place to sleep and raise the young ones in. Spread the plague and think ‘Wherever I am there’s always one a meter away’. Chirp when they’re happy and scream when they’re scared and get their guts spilled all over the goddamn road and then maybe go someplace else.