I was living in a trailer park three miles left of nowhere and down the road from pigeon shit. All was lovely in those days with the blooms of stifling madness and gut wrenching attempts at compatibility in full season.
It was a tiny tin can asylum; the carpet a dated mauve shag with a dusty, pissed on stench to it. It rippled down the narrow hallway cordoned by flimsy bowed particleboard walls and abruptly ended where linoleum covered the floorboards of last ditched dreams. At the end of the hall was a bathroom complete with plastic yellow sink top and toilet that was constantly backed up. No shitting. No bullshit. Everything about the deprivation was old, outdated, deteriorated. But it was sturdy and settled in; it was home and it kept my feet warm during the months when the bitter Midwest winter would descend upon the dirt lot and taunt me mercilessly, shaking the rusted rivets of the makeshift metal fortress with its sinister wind whistle that intruded through the crack in the living room windowless repercussion I baptized “life.”
Back in those days, humanity smelled like rotten cheese; everybody was into fucking everybody over. “I can’t take it anymore,” I said to my wife one day. “I’m going to get drunk and kill myself by walking straight up to the first sonuvabitch I see and engaging them in conversation.”
“How is that going to kill you, you schmuck?” she sneered in her usual, condescending tone.
“Shut up, bitch”! I barked angrily. “I didn’t say start!” She didn’t understand that we had begun killing ourselves a long time ago; we had begun spreading the poison through our mere breath. I felt the death breath of mankind slowly consuming me.
* * *
“Take it to the back, Eddie!” Louie shouted from behind the bar as I walked in, the rancor of sunlight halted in its tracks as the steel door slammed behind me. “How ya doin’ Lloyd, yew ol’ shit fer brains?”
“Pretty run down and running deeper,” I muttered. “Another fight?”
“Ya, Eddie’s bin at it all day. Don’t know what his problem is this time. Think the wife might have left again. He’s a nut job.”
I nodded. “Scotch and water.”
The bar was half full or half empty depending on your optimism. The worst are the barstool philosophers – a cantankerous bunch seem fashioned in the mold of Irish village drunkards with the charisma of goldfish shit. A breed born to lose with all the trappings of petrified, washed up has-beens and never-will-bees. And yet they seem to possess a keen insight into where the hell we all are and where we’re headed and what we need to do to get our asses out of it; who know full well that none of us are gonna do a goddamned thing to rectify the situation of our own sad existence except corrupt it even more with drink. Cheers … to God’s own forgotten.
Choosing to leave them all pathetically pontificating from their oscillating thrones, I grabbed a table in the darkest corner I could find and struck out to annihilate my sobriety with a vengeance. A love affair too abusive to stay in, that’s what the world and I shared. I slammed the backwash of somebody’s unfinished beer left on the table; it slid down my throat and into my rotten stomach like black sludge prompting me to order another scotch and water.
She came outta nowhere – the holy shit terror every woman comes from who takes up practicing existence on this godforsaken prison planet. She spoke her name; I don’t remember. Her breath stunk mundanity.
“Buy you a drink?” she asked.
“JB and water.”
“You look mad,” she said.
“I am, and worthless to boot.” How bright the fake moon shines in dim-lit corners of forgotten intentions. She sat down across from me, spreading her legs under the table just far enough for me to smell her lingering availability.
Everything depends on everything else; babies cry for tits and tits cry for attention and her tits were full and round and boasted nipples the size of silver dollars shining spectacularly from under her seamless halter-top.
“Are you staring at my tits?” she admonished like an undersexed schoolteacher asking for the answer to four plus fuck.
“No,” I responded undeterred. “I’m wondering how in the hell those two midgets stuffed inside your shirt take a piss.” She threw her stupid head back and let out a “nails-down-the-chalkboard-holy-fucking shit-is-that-your-real-laugh” laugh. She ordered another round.
“I’ve seen you in here before, y’know,” she accused. “You’re Lloyd Durley, the guy who writes all that shit about the end of the world those cheesy tabloid-loving idiots thumb through while standing in the grocery store checkout line.”
“Here it comes,” I thought.
“Y’know, I only live about five blocks from here. My old man’s outta town and I get pretty lonely when he’s not around. You mind keeping me company tonight?” The invite reeked desperation.
“Does your old man drink?” I slurred.
“Corona.”
“Expensive piss water. It’ll do.”
We staggered out into the night busy desperation where the madness was waiting like an old friend. The streetlights’ hallow glow illuminated the diseased masses stumbling through the neon corridors like a surgeon’s headlamp irradiating the body of patients with some kind of incurable sickness brought on by living in the same miserable depression for far too long.
She went down fast when we hit the door; I almost tripped over her as she fought with my zipper. I began fumbling through kitchen drawers searching in vain for a bottle opener while she clumsily explored my boxer shorts in search of my one-eyed shaft of salvation.
I like my beer cold and my women hot and got just about both when she passed out on me in mid-suck. Attempts to manually move her mouth up and down proved futile, so I left her lying on the kitchen floor and moved into the living room, my pants still around my ankles. There was psychotic laughter coming from somewhere down the darkened hallway.
My mind on stall, I rummaged around looking for the power button on the Sony surround sound five-disc CD player complete with remote.
“Hell, whatever happened to 78s?” I thought.
Liberace. Bullshit. Garth Brooks. Bullshit. Stan Getz. Bull … Yeah, Stan Getz. Intensely profound for a woman who spends most of her days trying to figure out ways to spend most of her nights on her knees. I fucked around with the buttons until the music rang out pure and sweet. I laid my head on the back of the sofa and slowly sipped my Corona.
“Stan Getz me and I get Stan Getz,” I murmured. The room went black.
When I woke the sun had not yet risen. I stumbled to my feet and shuffled into the kitchen. She was still lying there on the floor; her smoky stockings were wrapped tightly around her deliciously curvaceous legs. She fidgeted only slightly when lifted up her skirt. The straps on the side of her stockings clung to the side of her skirt with plastic claws that resisted my tugs like a nanny-made chastity belt.
“Going slow sucks,” I convinced myself tearing the fasteners from their grip. She wasn’t wearing any panties and her box was neatly trimmed. Her lifted skirt lay in the shape of a crumpled accordion on her stomach. I began lifting her halter toward her head. Even though she wore no bra I imagined that, if she had, it would be fire engine red; my back was against the wall.
“Time to get in this shit like dirt to a zit,” I whispered savagely diving headfirst between her thighs. Glory to God in the highest! Peace and good God was she solid! Exploring her body with my tongue, I made a game out of trying to lick the alphabet within the salty wooden taste of her sweat.
She let out a soft, inebriated moan. She was coming around. Her eyes fluttered rapidly, then opened wide attempting to focus on their surroundings. I stood abruptly. Not noticing me before her gaze now fixed on me; her face crinkled in bewildered contortion, her expression a coursework of fearful confusion. When she finally realized the situation her expression did an about face.
“What the fuck do yew think yer doing, asshole?!?” she screamed kicking me square in the nuts. The blinding white light of impact was instant and intense. I fell at her side in the fetal position. “What do you think this is, huh? Some kind of all you can eat buffet?”
“With crabs that size I thought it was more a seafood platter,” I grunted.
“You’re a dingy old fucker. I should have known you’d try something like this,” she brandished in disgust kicking me in the small of my back with the tip of her stiletto. She wobbled to her feet. “How far did you get, huh? I’m not free y’know!”
I groaned, one hand cupping my balls with the other rubbing my freshly bruised back. “From what I saw, you should pay me,” I grimaced, the pain of a small chuckle renewing the excruciating surge of discomfort throughout my body.
She stepped over my listless body and reached for the cupboard drawer. Pulling out a meat cleaver she howled, “I’m gonna cut off your balls, old man!” She ran towards me – eyes focused and determined – with the meat cleaver in full swing. I grabbed the phone cord lying next to me and tripped her before she could reach me. She fell forward slicing her arm open with the blade.
“You sonuvabitch! Look what you’ve done! I’m bleeding like a stuck pig!” she squealed. “Don’t just stand there! Call 911!”
I rose awkwardly, pulling my pants up gingerly over my aching scrotum. “You pulled the phone out of the wall when you tripped,” I said. “I’ll have to go down to the corner and use the pay phone.”
“Well hurry up, you fucking rapist!” she wailed, tears streaming down her cheeks. I nodded, zipped up my pants and headed for the front door.
The dawn air was already balmy and stagnant. It would be another scorcher. I buttoned up my shirt and headed down the sidewalk toward home.
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