Fin...
Here is the revised draft of my latest story
1
I’m currently downing my 19th bowl of Raisin Bran in the past six days. That’s Raisin Bran 3 meals a day for what threatens to be a week solid. My roommate spent all of our food money at Costco on a 121-pack of Post Raisin Bran, which lies split open on the floor of our living room. I cursed him endlessly for his purchase of Post Raisin Bran and not Kellogg, which is obviously the superior bran. His argument that Post contained Sun-Maid Raisins pales in comparison to the inescapable truth that Kellogg’s has the “Two Scoops” sun mascot, which is far more aesthetically pleasing. The 11 x 11 set of boxes has been reduced by about a third since the initial purchase, and, seeing as my next payday isn’t for another week, we must continue eating this swill without the aid of milk. You either eat it dry or douse it in tap water, which aids only in digestibility and not in flavor. On the plus side, the high quantity of fiber in the bran has made my bowel movements extraordinarily smooth and precise; you could set a railway time table to the consistency of my restroom visits. However, I fear that this bran-based diet is simply flowing through my body, denying it of precious proteins and vitamins. If I contract scurvy at any time during the next 30 days I’ll sue the Costco Corporation for a bloody mint. You know you’ve hit rock bottom when you’re hoping to become violently ill and Vitamin C deficient.
The house we rented for the summer would be quite choice if it had a hot water heater or an air conditioner. As it is we take freezing cold showers and sit on the couch watching the droplets of water sizzle on our bodies and evaporate in the cruel July heat. When agreeing to come to Iowa for the summer, I was under the impression that Midwestern summers were at least tolerable. Back then my mental rolodex wasn’t privy to the concept of humidity and the difference between the “temperature” and “what it feels like.” The hottest it’s gotten this summer is 95 degrees, but on that day it “felt” like it was 110. The humidity is so thick in this God-forsaken plain state that you have to wade around while you walk, pushing aside clumps of air as you meander down the sidewalk. It’s a rare occasion when you can stand outside for over 10 minutes without collapsing from heat exhaustion. At least it’s rare for me, but the bran-diet might have something to do with that too.
The most clothing I ever wear here is a pair of Bermuda shorts and a wife-beater. Normally I just lie around in my boxers covered in sweat, but jaunts into the outside world require a bit more coverage. I’m philosophically opposed to the wife-beater on the basis of its misogynistic overtones and white-trash associations, but damn if they don’t cool you off better than any piece of clothing I can find. Since I don’t have to go into town for at least another three hours to begin my night shift at Beaners, one of the few Midwestern coffee chains not to be royally bitch-slapped by our imperialist coffee-mongers in the great Northwest, I’m still clad only in a pair of plaid boxers. Every day I wake up expecting to get a call from my manager telling me that either a) I’ve been fired, b) The Grinnell, Iowa location of Beaners is being turned into a Wal-Mart, or c) Beaners has been bought out by Starbucks and all employees must now memorize a 175-page drink-list & etiquette manual, except for Arlo, who has been deemed unworthy of the title of “Barista” by Starbucks management. How Beaners has stayed open with a name like Beaners is beyond me. I know it’s referring to coffee beans, but it could just as easily refer to the janitorial staff. What, you think there aren’t any Mexicans in rural Iowa? Well, Grinnell has exactly one illegal Mexican immigrant, Raul, and he has chosen Beaners as his place of employment. I can’t tell whether this is genuine irony or the Alanis Morisette version, but either way it’s funny as hell. That’d be like the only Italian guy in a community busing tables at a Star Wars-themed, Olive Garden knockoff restaurant called “Dagobah”. On a more serious note, I’ve always been concerned with racism in popular feature films, and have many times wondered whether the planet of Dagobah in the Star Wars films was an underhanded shot at the Italian-American community. However, after much discussion I’ve decided to let George Lucas off the hook. The man wears far too much flannel to be any sort of white supremacist or fascist. If you look at militaristic, oppressive groups of society from the past 100 or so years you will see a direct correlation between fashion and action. The Nazi S.S., Mussolini’s minions, Communist Russia post-Lenin, the Ku Klux Klan: all of these organizations use heavily starched uniforms that are unpleasant for the wearer. It’s my own stipulation that part of the rage fomented by these groups was a direct result of the stiffness of their clothing. Any man who wears a versatile and loose-fitting material like flannel couldn’t possibly be a fascist.
The front door swung open and my roommate dragged himself into the kitchen. From my supine position on the floor of the living room I could see Lucas fishing through our barren refrigerator, an act that reminded me of his earlier frugal incompetence. Without getting up I shouted at him, “Lucas, will you shag ass in here before I have a complete breakdown. Any more of this fucking bran and I’ll cut out my tongue.” Lucas did indeed shag ass and was soon standing over me holding a brown paper bag, which he dropped at my side. “Here you are my good sire,” Lucas exclaimed in an understated, but nevertheless atrocious, upper-class British accent, “Just what the doctor would never have ordered, unless the doctor worked in Beverly Hills and went through rehab like it was a Wendy’s.” I barely acknowledged Lucas’s attempt at humor in my frenzied desire to rip open the bag and admire its contents. I mumbled for a couple seconds, asking myself how the hell a crumpled brown-paper bag could look so bloody luminous. While I was tearing open the paper I tried to make a little small talk: “Where did you get this stuff anyway? I though the town was dry.”
“The town was dry you fuck-nut, I had to drive to Chicago to get it. That’s why I haven’t been home since Thursday, or did you not notice?”
“I noticed well enough, but I thought you were just out turning your dick black with that diseased harlot of yours, Lucille, or something or other…” Lucas was a bit put off by my insinuation that his girlfriend was a VD merchant and his face took on the color of an not-yet-ripe plum.
“Her name’s Deirdre and she’s not a fucking harlot,” Lucas boomed.
“But she is diseased.” After this comment of mine Lucas’ temperament, which before was riding a white-cap sized wave of rage, calmed considerable when confronted with an inescapable, argument-ending truth.
“Ok, Deirdre has a cold sore, but that doesn’t mean she’s diseased. Hell, my mother got cold sores from time to time.” One should never mention their mother during a debate centered around Herpes. It’s a commandment-breaker (I think) and if you are in the company of the morally stunted and immature it could get ugly.
“Well, then your mother’s a tramp too,” I said quite matter-of-factly. “And what the hell kind of a name for a hooker is Deirdre anyway? Sounds like the name of some damned Ingrid Bergman character.”
“She’s not a hooker Godammit! And Deirdre was her dead grandmother’s name so just shut the hell up and thank Deirdre for the goods.”
“Wait a minute, your little guttersnipe drove you to Chicago for this?”
“You better fucking believe it.” As I twirled the two little silver vials between my fingers, I decided it was high time to let sleeping dogs lie and to change my opinion of Lucas’ fuckbuddy.
“Well, then. I believe a toast to young Deirdre is in order. Hell, I can’t say Deirdre with a straight face, I feel like I’m in a bad Tennessee Williams play. Umm, I’ll call her Dee-Dee. That’ll do nicely; a toast to Dee-Dee and her gas money.” I raised up the 2001 Super Bowl Champion Baltimore Ravens commemorative glass that I got with my subscription to Sports Illustrated and took a sip of the tepid water sloshing inside. When I looked back at Lucas he had a slightly pained look on his face.
“Arlo, I split the gas money with her to make it even.” Son of a bitch, there always has to be a catch doesn’t there.
“Damn it all, that money’s communal. Do you know what that means you ass-wipe? Communal, as in that shit’s mine too and wasn’t meant to be given up to some floozy that has your Calvin’s in a twist.”
Lucas began to backtrack and had to cough out his words as quickly as possible: “If I didn’t give her the money then we’d be stuck with nothing.” I slowly got off the floor, using the couch to support my back until I was standing upright.
“Alright, but I expect to see Dee-Dee naked by the end of the week.” The plum color came back to Lucas’ face and this time it was quite ripe.
“What?!”
“You heard me; my part of the payment. Reparations if you will, for the insufferable solitude I had to endure while you two were gallivanting around the Windy City.”
“How does Dee-Dee getting buck naked for you constitute reparations?”
“I don’t make the rules, I simply follow like a sheep to slaughter. If you want I could be naked too and get a bit of a nudist colony vibe going here.” This idea didn’t exactly strike Lucas’ fancy and he quickly changed the subject.
“Just keep your pants on and cook this shit up.”
“I can’t keep my pants on if I’m not wearing any you beast. And may I once again point out that I am acting the part of the cart-mule in this operation. One day I’m just going to keel over from exhaustion and you’ll kick me like a KGB goon in a gulag. Then what’ll you do you oppressive mongrel?
“Will you shut the fuck up and turn the burner on before I whelp you.”
“Yes sir Mr. Goerring.” I walked into the kitchen knowing that, all jocularity side, Lucas probably had it in him to whelp me and that I wouldn’t do anything to stop him.
2
The vial slid out of the bag and spiraled around on some linoleum floor tiles, the pale brown fluid swishing around its insides. Make sure to turn on the burner to 350 and bend over to pick up the goods and then place them on the kitchen counter next to the pig-shaped, his and hers salt and pepper shakers; don’t want Lucas getting $100 of unadulterated escapism stuck on the sole of his Wolverine work boots. Bottom drawer: cast-iron soup toureen with the red handle; Medicine cabinet: double-ply gauze, cotton balls, and Hydrogen Peroxide. Head over to the knife block for the paring knife. No, put the toureen on the burner first, empty out the vial into it, then get the paring knife. The viscosity of the liquid is sickening, slowly oozing down the vial and dripping drop by drop into the toureen. Each droplet hangs onto the lip of the vial expanding ever-so-slowly as gravity impregnates it with more fluid, causing what looks like Worcester sauce to spill into the pan. With each new drop a phosphorescent plume of blue smoke rises towards the kitchen ceiling, causing a thick haze to form in the room like the kitchen’s private ozone layer. I pop out the bottom of the vial and blow into it, getting every last millimeter of juice into the toureen: Life is a terrible thing to waste, but if must be wasted it should be done with consummate professionalism and efficiency.
Now for the paring knife, stained a burnt brown, blade and handle held together with electrical tape as a result of years of improper and unconventional use. The liquid had begun to expand in the toureen, the heat causing enzymes to burst, allowing the water to seep out and swish around the bottom of the toureen. In the center lay a single jet black blob more akin to magma then any liquid that comes to mind. I put on the oven mitt and slowly drain the water out of the toureen and into the sink, holding in the fruits of my labor with a metal spatula. No use trying needles and surgical tubing. There hasn’t been a clean vein in this house since the Clinton administration, hence, the paring knife. Rolling my right jean leg up to the kneecap, I douse the knife with hydrogen peroxide. Gauze and cotton balls at the ready, knife in hand, and delicious blackness simmering on the stove.
One stroke, the back of my calf spurts red all over the stove-front before gauze is applied. I make sure the spatula is heavy with it, rip off the gauze and paste the stuff on my leg like a plumber caulking a bathtub. All I feel is heat. Heat coursing through my leg, up my thigh, taking a slight detour at my crotch, and then straight up to the brain. I am a human thermometer with mercury rising all through my tendons and veins. The blood from my calf swirls with the drug, but no colors change. The emptiness of the drug acts as a black hole, sucking up anything it comes in contact with, be it the blood from my leg or the fluid in my skull.
Time to lie down for a second; we’ll turn off the burner eventually. Lucas is standing over me looking down so that his face appears inverted. My voice tells him the stuff is ready, but my ears don’t hear it; my life is a movie on mute. Lucas violently dunks the knife in the Hydrogen Peroxide to cleanse it, contaminating the peroxide with viscous globs of blood that float on the surface. I’ll have to get a new bottle later on. Lucas opted to use his forehead in lieu of the calf muscle. I should have thought of that too; more direct access. He doesn’t bother to clean the spatula, just shoves the stuff right in his profusely bleeding ajna chakra and fills his skull with cotton balls, forgoing the gauze in favor of a blue and purple paisley bandana. Lucas too slumps to the floor and his eyes begin fluttering. The drug now has its own gravitational pull towards the back of Lucas’ head, sucking cotton balls and the paisley bandana inside his forehead. His third eye is now a charred crater the size of a golf ball, Schlesinger 7 I think.
My veins have rebelled against my right calf and have organized a mass suicide, ripping their fibers from my bone in protest. Some of the veins fail in their attempt and get snared by my blood-drenched shin hairs, but most make it off the side and take root in the linoleum. The veins become like the base of the ancient giving tree, making my leg the trunk in the process. Unable to move my right leg, I pivoted around on it and switched off the burner with a flailing hand whose arc causes me to sprawl face down on the linoleum.
When I lifted my head I saw Lucas grinding his teeth madly against the metal spatula as the hole in his head grew bigger. Every single throbbing capillary could be seen slowly engulfing the whites of his eyes. His body, rocking back and forth to the rhythm of his head, was drenched in a sweat that had coated him like wood varnish. All the sweat from his scalp and forehead began to pour into his chakra crater, creating a saltwater pool above his brow. We both fell onto our sides facing one another, glazed expressions gracing our respective visages. As Lucas began to open his mouth, a small crack at the bottom of his forehead pool began expanding down his face cutting through nose cartilage and jawbones in accelerated decay. After the crack had spread all across his face, the left side of what used to be Lucas’ nose fell to the floor. He tried placing it back on, but that only added to the deterioration causing the other side of his nose to drop. It was a sadistic game of Mister Potato Head and I gleefully scooped up his writhing lips and placed them on his chest. The sight of a mouth attempting to talk with a nipple in its center is enough to make your normal junky lose focus, lose control; but I left the amateur ranks years ago and can handle such egregious breeches of rational action.
However, no man alive can withstand his best friend’s face splitting in two to reveal a hovel of maggots, fruit flies, and various unwanted cephalopods; and I am alive. After Lucas peeled off the last of his facial tissue I lost control and made a break for the door, but my leg was still planted to the ground. I reached up to grab the paring knife and began wildly swinging it at my calf muscles, trying to clip any rogue veins. As soon as Lucas passed out, all of his facial vermin made a mad dash for me and I spent the next 30 minutes swatting at them with the soup toureen…
3
*Ding.* With the sound of the bell from above the Steak & Shake doorway I snapped awake like one of Pavlov’s mutts, drooling from the corners of my mouth. The black and white checked floor was swirled in my mind to create a grayish whirlpool at my feet. I felt like I was looking down at a monochrome barber’s pole and stumbled over to the waiting area next to the register. The sparkling red, booth-style seats were covered in a layer of polyurethane to provide me, the diner, with the least comfort possible while retaining the overall décor of the place. I had the feeling they would’ve put a splintered wooden bench in had it fit the restaurant’s theme. I actually think that is the furniture used at Cracker Barrel.
Lucas grabbed me by the arm and led me into the dining hall to my apparent dismay. I say apparent because I have no idea what I actually felt like at that moment. My only emotional barometer was the tinted black glass of the restaurant into which I stared while walking over to our table. My reflection conveyed a sense of discomfort, but for all I know I had reached a state of euphoria that would make the Dalai Lama weep with jealousy. When you take this shit you become unable to discern what and how you feel, or even why you’re feeling that way at all. To say this is the drug’s appeal would be to understate the matter. After we sat down at our table I brought out the pack of American Spirits that I had nicked from one of the burnt-out hippies that frequent Beaners. There used to be some kind of free-love commune about 15 miles down the interstate and when it disbanded, Grinnell found itself inundated with aged hippies. One of these 50-something guys will invariably bust through the doors at least once a week stoned out of his mind and sit down to order some coffee. The moat recent hippie, a guy who demanded that we serve him his iced mocha in a porcelain mug that he brought from home boasting “World’s Greatest Uncle” on it’s side, didn’t even need any coaxing to break him of his smokes. Normally I have to at least ask if I can bum a cigarette before I squirrel away the tobacco for personal use, but this guy just dropped them. He sat down with his iced mocha and began rustling inside his jean shorts for his pack of American Spirits. As I was walking over towards him he fished the pack out and held it up against his mouth, the knuckle of his right pointer finger pressed against the bottom of his nose, and just let them drop to the ground. Ten minutes later he simply got up and took his mug away with him, leaving me with 14 un-smoked fags.
I brought a cigarette to my lips and lit it, letting my inventory of smokes dwindle to thirteen. Thirteen being such an unlucky number, I instantly thrust another cigarette into Lucas’ mouth and lit that, content with the untold number of bad omens I had just avoided. As soon as I had taken my first real drag (the first puff doesn’t count because you’re too busy fiddling with the lighter and making sure it’s properly lit) the waitress waddled over towards our booth and began screeching in some sort of gibberish that sounded Arabic in origin. The woman, May as her nametag would lead us to believe, was a frighteningly large black woman. As hyperbolic as that description sounds, May’ girth was truly horrific, especially for a man in my condition. I can at least say that she was fair in her distribution of rage, scaring the both of us into an equal state of paranoia and panic. After May was done with me she turned around to screech at Lucas and give him an equal share of the horror. I swear I heard her belch out the phrase, “Mistah Kurtz, he dead,” but I think that can be chalked up to the drugs entering the right wing of my brain where the library is located. I’m just thankful the juice made a beeline for Conrad, building on the savage environs of the Steak & Shake. Had I heard the voice of Heathcliffe from Wuthering Heights emanating from that woman’s mouth I would have been in for a real bad trip.
In the middle of her tirade, May accidentally stepped over an air-conditioning grate that billowed cold air up her skirt. This was most assuredly one of the first signs of the apocalypse; any sight that repulsive had to have been sent by the Antichrist, or at least the spirit of Judas Iscariot. Even the quickest of glances showed that this woman hadn’t shaved her legs in weeks, a sort of advanced, prickly stubble running everywhere. I felt like I was looking at two giant honey-baked hams that had been dyed a dark brown and slathered with hair. It was The Seven Year Itch gone terribly, terribly wrong. I was holding up well considering the circumstances, but Lucas wasn’t fairing as well. Our plus-sized aggressor had thrown him for a loop and, to be quite blunt, Lucas was tripping balls. He couldn’t stop staring at the disgusting spectacle that was May’s legs, a gesture that May was none to pleased with. She frantically pushed down her skirt and escalated her berating of Lucas to the brink of physical violence. Sensing danger and knowing that Lucas was beyond repair, I knew I had to do something drastically disturbing. When May cocked her hand back to smack the unholy hell out of Lucas, I extinguished my cigarette on the laminated menu and held the butt in front of my face between my thumb and forefinger. The stench of burnt laminate got May’s attention, at which point I did the only thing I could do: I ate the butt. To rave like a lunatic is commonplace and something May was surely used to dealing with. However, there are very few people in this world that can cope with an act of lunacy. It’s the next step and May was most assuredly not ready to take that step. As I chewed the burnt tobacco shavings and sucked the filter down my gullet, I stared at my charred menu while May began frantically pacing back and forth. Still not looking at May, I ordered my meal, asking for a banana milkshake, two Frisco melts, and onion rings. May informed me that they didn’t serve Frisco melts. I informed May that she was wrong and they did in fact serve Frisco melts but she was just too pigheaded to realize it. Lucas ordered a crock of baked beans and some cottage cheese, but was in no state to convey such an order verbally so I translated for him. May walked away a broken woman and upon reaching the kitchen area dipped her left hand in a vat of boiling vegetable oil. The old axiom, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen” applied in both the metaphoric and literal senses for May, as she ran screaming through a plate-glass window at the front of the restaurant.
Fifteen minutes later another waitress brought out my milkshake and onion rings along with two bacon cheeseburgers. Apparently May hadn’t told her about the Frisco melts, but my hunger had passed I was no longer in the mood for confrontation. Lucas was repulsed by the presentation of the cottage cheese and demanded that more pineapples be added to it. After the waitress had gone back to fetch Lucas his extra garnish of fruit I suggested that we shag ass. I downed my milkshake and Lucas picked up his baked beans. He was very taken by the burnt brown porcelain crock and insisted that he could only eat the beans in this specific container. However, being the consummate gentleman, Lucas opted not to take any silverware with him. “Don’t worry about it man,” he groaned. “I’ll just snag some plastic ones from the checkout counter.”
4
The coin slots on the metro were all busted after some disgruntled bus driver filled them all in with quickrete during a labor strike a few years back. The city council never caved in and after about six months of public transport stagnation the drivers limped backed to their buses for the same meager pay. The organizers of the strike failed to realize the fundamental fact that their only bargaining chip, the cessation of the entire metro system, didn’t concern the local government. These men didn’t rely on the bus to go to city hall every morning, but pulled up in all manner of Beamers, Benzes, and chauffeured town cars. This left the transportation union clinging to the slim hope that city council would be so distraught by the droves of folk having to walk mini-marathons every morning to get to work that they would be driven by their conscience to raise wages and help their constituency. But a politician with a conscience is about as rare as a shooting star and just as fleeting. Gordon Gecko’s axiom that “greed is good” applies to Pennsylvania Avenue as much as it does to Wall Street, and anyone who thinks the green-eyed monster was subdued after the death of Reaganomics and the free-wheelin’ eighties is either monumentally ignorant or naïve beyond repair. Long story short: no pay raise, no sympathy, and back to work.
Since city council decided there were insufficient funds in the city coffers for any bus repairs, all the coin slots remained sealed shut. I tossed my 35 cents into the empty Big Gulp that now served as a makeshift collection bucket, while Lucas pitched in 18 cents and his plastic silverware as collateral. It wasn’t as if the driver gave a damn what we paid with. He didn’t work on commission and still had to drive this piece of shit for another 5 hours until his shift ended. The man’s face was drained of all fluid, the craters of his sunken cheeks big enough to hold a pair of golf balls and his wispy gray hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. His pockmarked face hadn’t moved an inch since we climbed on and I doubt very much if he’d been able to visibly emote for years. Each depressed circle on his face had been formed over decades as tears slowly eroded the terrain of his skin, leaving his tear ducts bone dry and his cheeks looking like the moon underneath the lens of a telescope.
I sat down at the very back of the bus, the hard plastic seats searing my coccyx with a cold that felt like dry ice on my ass. As abrasive as the seat was, it was a great relief simply to be sitting again and I tried to push the discomfort away by sinking down so that my head was resting against the back of the seat. Lucas had avoided the dilemma entirely by setting up shop underneath the seats, lying splayed out on the floor with the crock of baked beans balanced precariously on his chest. Since he had given his plastic spoon to the bus driver’s collection plate, Lucas was forced to slurp down the baked beans from the lip of the crock like he was drinking out of a child’s sippy-cup. When the bus took a corner too fast the crock was tipped over and Lucas’s face and chest were covered in lukewarm baked beans. Lucas began spitting bean fragments wildly and turned to me, screaming, “It’s no good man. It’s no good anymore.” I asked him what wasn’t good anymore and he stared blankly at me for a few seconds before responding, “change of plans buddy. We gotta go skins.” With this Lucas bolted up, neglecting to remember where he was lying down, and crashed his forehead into the back of one of the seats. Lucas began frantically rubbing his head: “Fuckin’ shit man. Somebody should remodel these fucking things...They’re a danger to, like, the fuckin public AT LARGE man! These things are deadly man.” After this sage wisdom Lucas rolled into the center aisle and, with a measure of difficulty, pulled his bean-soaked shirt over his head. He stayed half-naked in the center of the aisle for the remainder of our ride.
With no one else on the bus, a prolonged silence descended upon us, the low rumbling of the engine providing an ambient white noise in the background. A glance out of my window towards the sky revealed nothing but a murky purple night. The decades of smog had billowed to the earth’s ceiling and taken roost, blocking the stars from view. The only constellations to be found were on the street lights and lamp posts. Without my glasses on the lights exploded into starbursts as we passed by, leaving green and yellow tails of bright air in our wake. This was my night sky, with no big dipper and Orion’s Belt thrown to the floor. The homeless huddled together underneath bridges and back alley awnings in a congregation of poverty, the stench of despair hovering about them like a cloud of Pigpen’s dust. Their cardboard signs lay face down, stacked on the pavement bleeding ink as they became soaked with stagnant rainwater. Part of me envied the bums for the freedom they had. At least when you’re outcast from society you’re never held to account. No one expects anything from you at the very bottom of the pyramid, bearing the brunt of the cruelty that others spend their entire lives trying to brush away. To look at Lucas, lying half-naked and passed out in the aisle of a metro bus, baked bean juice dribbling down his chin and pooling in his clavicle; this all reeked of failure and tragedy.
We are the great American middle class, highly educated and increasingly obsolete. My father never went to college and worked his whole life so that his sons could get the higher education that he never had. By the time the money had been saved and tuition paid, that education was as ubiquitous as water and the diploma just as valuable. And so we were set on a path that expects so much from so many and which was bound to disappoint from the start. No matter how many people save for an education and graduate from university there is the inescapable truth that somebody has to follow humanity with a broom to sweep up all the shit we leave behind us. For me to work at a coffee shop is to squander the life I was given, but for the homeless man that same job allows him to exceed any expectation society had formed. Four years of my life and $80,000 in tuition all for one piece of paper that brands me a slacker for the rest of my life. I can feel myself again and need to stop the bus.
5
Courtney’s house is always open, like a 24-hour mini-daguerreotype of the playboy grotto. Her parents were, if not mayflower material, some of the oldest, stuffiest money in town. Courtney’s blood flowed a deep azure blue inside her veins and the “summer apartment” that her parents provided was fitted accordingly. The request from a girl with a 1.3 GPA to do a summer research project at Grinnell failed to raise any red flags with her bumbling bobo parents, who were too involved with their agendas of social inbreeding to notice. I went to her house because she had air-conditioning, a heated underground pool, a practically inexhaustible supply of liquor, and a pair of tits that defied gravity. When Lucas and I stumbled onto the back patio everything was motionless except for a barely audible whirring from the pool’s heating system. The only thing that could be seen was the pool, shaped like a Picasso doodling of a kidney and illuminated from within by tens of underwater flashlights that caused the pool to glow like a chest of gold doubloons does in the movies. We climbed down the steps to the pool and I stripped down to my boxers and waded in; Lucas was intent to remain clothed and reclining on a padded lawn chair. It was only after I had gotten in that I realized I’d forgotten to take my socks off and had to wrestle with them underwater to get the soaked cotton off my feet.
As I was putting my drenched socks on the concrete lip of the pool, Courtney came down the stairs. She was wearing a jingoistic red, white, and blue two-piece that was made with about 8 square inches of fabric, Courtney not being a fan of leaving things to the imagination. She carried with her a small inflatable raft loaded with a fifth of Cuervo, two shot glasses, some salt, and a quartered lime. Laying the raft down on the pavement, she climbed down into the pool and took up residence in an inflatable deck chair floating beside her. Courtney paddled down towards the shallow end with her right hand and dragged the raft of liquor behind her with the left. I took a seat on the entrance steps to the pool as Courtney sprinkled salt onto my shoulder and lapped it up before shoving a lime wedge in my mouth like a roast pig, downing two shots of tequila, and assaulting the lime in my mouth with her tongue. Pulling away, she tried to give me a come-hither look, but being rather trashed she only succeeded in looking skanky. I was in no mood to trade body shots and Courtney’s advances only further decreased any sexual impulse I had. When Courtney drifted close enough to me I snatched her little booze barge, shoved a handful of salt into my mouth, up-ended the bottle of Cuervo, and dismounted by eating a quarter of a lime whole. After this fantastic display of athletic prowess, the only sensible thing to do was to let my body fall forward into the pool and stare at the bottom. The chlorine stung my eyes and blurred my vision as I concentrated on the slanted white cement, looking through the incandescent blue ripples of light floating past my face.
Courtney disrupted my repose by dragging my torso onto her floating deck chair and held me until we drifted to the side. I had a good deal of trouble getting out of the pool and after about 2 minutes of Courtney inadvertently ripping my stomach to shreds on the concrete lip I ambled down to the shallow end and went up the steps. I looked over at Lucas, who was still lying on the lawn chair, but was now clothed only in an oversized red Hula shirt that went past his knees. Before I knew it I was being led up the stairs and through blessedly air conditioned rooms cluttered with avant-garde blown glass and Neo-Cubist paintings that covered entire walls. I collapsed face down on the bed and turned over to be greeted by a ceiling covered in glow-in-the-dark stars that acted as a rudimentary black-light suitable for an 11-year old who dreams of going to Space Camp. I feel somebody crawl towards me and begin licking the inside of my ear. I swat at the tongue with my hand like it was a mosquito or fly. Courtney’s tongue is no longer a sensual organ, but simply a piece of rigid muscle cruelly anchored in her mouth, dying to burst out. Pretty soon I think I black out and all I can feel is this pressure cascading over different parts of my body: my neck, chest, lips, back. I don’t see anything and I rarely even move. I can feel Courtney tugging off my jeans and trying to take off my shirt. Since I refuse to move she has to prop me up on the headboard to lift the shirt over my head. As I hear Courtney breathing heavily in an attempt to disrobe without getting out of bed, I slide down the headboard and land on the floor with the crown of my head, slowly slumping to the ground with a motion that reminded me of the droves of prepubescent teens trying somersaults during 5th grade gym class. As Courtney pulls me back up to the bed, the only thing that I can really sense is the smell of sweat filling the room. This isn’t a normal sweat that comes from your glands, but is a body sweat that oozes out your pores and cleanses your body in a film of calcified salt. I feel sticky and wretched and in desperate need of a shower. I begin to get nauseous and wonder where the best place to throw up in Courtney’s room is.
I open my eyes and see a bright red 3:47 flashing in front of my eyes. I turn over and the bed is laid bare. From inside her bathroom I can hear Courtney scratching at the porcelain walls and screeching at nothing. No use trying to help, as I plan on joining her just shortly. I walk into the kitchen and the pot is still simmering on the stove. Lucas is lying on a chez-lounge staring at the blank TV screen intently. “You taking it easy in there pal?” I ask him. He grins a little and almost whispers, “Don’t you know it, man.” I walk over to the stove and look back as I’m picking up the crusty knife: “We won’t be too long. She’s got roast beef in the fridge for sandwiches.” With that I sat down on the floor and bit my tongue.
Still don't have a title...that'll come later.
1
I’m currently downing my 19th bowl of Raisin Bran in the past six days. That’s Raisin Bran 3 meals a day for what threatens to be a week solid. My roommate spent all of our food money at Costco on a 121-pack of Post Raisin Bran, which lies split open on the floor of our living room. I cursed him endlessly for his purchase of Post Raisin Bran and not Kellogg, which is obviously the superior bran. His argument that Post contained Sun-Maid Raisins pales in comparison to the inescapable truth that Kellogg’s has the “Two Scoops” sun mascot, which is far more aesthetically pleasing. The 11 x 11 set of boxes has been reduced by about a third since the initial purchase, and, seeing as my next payday isn’t for another week, we must continue eating this swill without the aid of milk. You either eat it dry or douse it in tap water, which aids only in digestibility and not in flavor. On the plus side, the high quantity of fiber in the bran has made my bowel movements extraordinarily smooth and precise; you could set a railway time table to the consistency of my restroom visits. However, I fear that this bran-based diet is simply flowing through my body, denying it of precious proteins and vitamins. If I contract scurvy at any time during the next 30 days I’ll sue the Costco Corporation for a bloody mint. You know you’ve hit rock bottom when you’re hoping to become violently ill and Vitamin C deficient.
The house we rented for the summer would be quite choice if it had a hot water heater or an air conditioner. As it is we take freezing cold showers and sit on the couch watching the droplets of water sizzle on our bodies and evaporate in the cruel July heat. When agreeing to come to Iowa for the summer, I was under the impression that Midwestern summers were at least tolerable. Back then my mental rolodex wasn’t privy to the concept of humidity and the difference between the “temperature” and “what it feels like.” The hottest it’s gotten this summer is 95 degrees, but on that day it “felt” like it was 110. The humidity is so thick in this God-forsaken plain state that you have to wade around while you walk, pushing aside clumps of air as you meander down the sidewalk. It’s a rare occasion when you can stand outside for over 10 minutes without collapsing from heat exhaustion. At least it’s rare for me, but the bran-diet might have something to do with that too.
The most clothing I ever wear here is a pair of Bermuda shorts and a wife-beater. Normally I just lie around in my boxers covered in sweat, but jaunts into the outside world require a bit more coverage. I’m philosophically opposed to the wife-beater on the basis of its misogynistic overtones and white-trash associations, but damn if they don’t cool you off better than any piece of clothing I can find. Since I don’t have to go into town for at least another three hours to begin my night shift at Beaners, one of the few Midwestern coffee chains not to be royally bitch-slapped by our imperialist coffee-mongers in the great Northwest, I’m still clad only in a pair of plaid boxers. Every day I wake up expecting to get a call from my manager telling me that either a) I’ve been fired, b) The Grinnell, Iowa location of Beaners is being turned into a Wal-Mart, or c) Beaners has been bought out by Starbucks and all employees must now memorize a 175-page drink-list & etiquette manual, except for Arlo, who has been deemed unworthy of the title of “Barista” by Starbucks management. How Beaners has stayed open with a name like Beaners is beyond me. I know it’s referring to coffee beans, but it could just as easily refer to the janitorial staff. What, you think there aren’t any Mexicans in rural Iowa? Well, Grinnell has exactly one illegal Mexican immigrant, Raul, and he has chosen Beaners as his place of employment. I can’t tell whether this is genuine irony or the Alanis Morisette version, but either way it’s funny as hell. That’d be like the only Italian guy in a community busing tables at a Star Wars-themed, Olive Garden knockoff restaurant called “Dagobah”. On a more serious note, I’ve always been concerned with racism in popular feature films, and have many times wondered whether the planet of Dagobah in the Star Wars films was an underhanded shot at the Italian-American community. However, after much discussion I’ve decided to let George Lucas off the hook. The man wears far too much flannel to be any sort of white supremacist or fascist. If you look at militaristic, oppressive groups of society from the past 100 or so years you will see a direct correlation between fashion and action. The Nazi S.S., Mussolini’s minions, Communist Russia post-Lenin, the Ku Klux Klan: all of these organizations use heavily starched uniforms that are unpleasant for the wearer. It’s my own stipulation that part of the rage fomented by these groups was a direct result of the stiffness of their clothing. Any man who wears a versatile and loose-fitting material like flannel couldn’t possibly be a fascist.
The front door swung open and my roommate dragged himself into the kitchen. From my supine position on the floor of the living room I could see Lucas fishing through our barren refrigerator, an act that reminded me of his earlier frugal incompetence. Without getting up I shouted at him, “Lucas, will you shag ass in here before I have a complete breakdown. Any more of this fucking bran and I’ll cut out my tongue.” Lucas did indeed shag ass and was soon standing over me holding a brown paper bag, which he dropped at my side. “Here you are my good sire,” Lucas exclaimed in an understated, but nevertheless atrocious, upper-class British accent, “Just what the doctor would never have ordered, unless the doctor worked in Beverly Hills and went through rehab like it was a Wendy’s.” I barely acknowledged Lucas’s attempt at humor in my frenzied desire to rip open the bag and admire its contents. I mumbled for a couple seconds, asking myself how the hell a crumpled brown-paper bag could look so bloody luminous. While I was tearing open the paper I tried to make a little small talk: “Where did you get this stuff anyway? I though the town was dry.”
“The town was dry you fuck-nut, I had to drive to Chicago to get it. That’s why I haven’t been home since Thursday, or did you not notice?”
“I noticed well enough, but I thought you were just out turning your dick black with that diseased harlot of yours, Lucille, or something or other…” Lucas was a bit put off by my insinuation that his girlfriend was a VD merchant and his face took on the color of an not-yet-ripe plum.
“Her name’s Deirdre and she’s not a fucking harlot,” Lucas boomed.
“But she is diseased.” After this comment of mine Lucas’ temperament, which before was riding a white-cap sized wave of rage, calmed considerable when confronted with an inescapable, argument-ending truth.
“Ok, Deirdre has a cold sore, but that doesn’t mean she’s diseased. Hell, my mother got cold sores from time to time.” One should never mention their mother during a debate centered around Herpes. It’s a commandment-breaker (I think) and if you are in the company of the morally stunted and immature it could get ugly.
“Well, then your mother’s a tramp too,” I said quite matter-of-factly. “And what the hell kind of a name for a hooker is Deirdre anyway? Sounds like the name of some damned Ingrid Bergman character.”
“She’s not a hooker Godammit! And Deirdre was her dead grandmother’s name so just shut the hell up and thank Deirdre for the goods.”
“Wait a minute, your little guttersnipe drove you to Chicago for this?”
“You better fucking believe it.” As I twirled the two little silver vials between my fingers, I decided it was high time to let sleeping dogs lie and to change my opinion of Lucas’ fuckbuddy.
“Well, then. I believe a toast to young Deirdre is in order. Hell, I can’t say Deirdre with a straight face, I feel like I’m in a bad Tennessee Williams play. Umm, I’ll call her Dee-Dee. That’ll do nicely; a toast to Dee-Dee and her gas money.” I raised up the 2001 Super Bowl Champion Baltimore Ravens commemorative glass that I got with my subscription to Sports Illustrated and took a sip of the tepid water sloshing inside. When I looked back at Lucas he had a slightly pained look on his face.
“Arlo, I split the gas money with her to make it even.” Son of a bitch, there always has to be a catch doesn’t there.
“Damn it all, that money’s communal. Do you know what that means you ass-wipe? Communal, as in that shit’s mine too and wasn’t meant to be given up to some floozy that has your Calvin’s in a twist.”
Lucas began to backtrack and had to cough out his words as quickly as possible: “If I didn’t give her the money then we’d be stuck with nothing.” I slowly got off the floor, using the couch to support my back until I was standing upright.
“Alright, but I expect to see Dee-Dee naked by the end of the week.” The plum color came back to Lucas’ face and this time it was quite ripe.
“What?!”
“You heard me; my part of the payment. Reparations if you will, for the insufferable solitude I had to endure while you two were gallivanting around the Windy City.”
“How does Dee-Dee getting buck naked for you constitute reparations?”
“I don’t make the rules, I simply follow like a sheep to slaughter. If you want I could be naked too and get a bit of a nudist colony vibe going here.” This idea didn’t exactly strike Lucas’ fancy and he quickly changed the subject.
“Just keep your pants on and cook this shit up.”
“I can’t keep my pants on if I’m not wearing any you beast. And may I once again point out that I am acting the part of the cart-mule in this operation. One day I’m just going to keel over from exhaustion and you’ll kick me like a KGB goon in a gulag. Then what’ll you do you oppressive mongrel?
“Will you shut the fuck up and turn the burner on before I whelp you.”
“Yes sir Mr. Goerring.” I walked into the kitchen knowing that, all jocularity side, Lucas probably had it in him to whelp me and that I wouldn’t do anything to stop him.
2
The vial slid out of the bag and spiraled around on some linoleum floor tiles, the pale brown fluid swishing around its insides. Make sure to turn on the burner to 350 and bend over to pick up the goods and then place them on the kitchen counter next to the pig-shaped, his and hers salt and pepper shakers; don’t want Lucas getting $100 of unadulterated escapism stuck on the sole of his Wolverine work boots. Bottom drawer: cast-iron soup toureen with the red handle; Medicine cabinet: double-ply gauze, cotton balls, and Hydrogen Peroxide. Head over to the knife block for the paring knife. No, put the toureen on the burner first, empty out the vial into it, then get the paring knife. The viscosity of the liquid is sickening, slowly oozing down the vial and dripping drop by drop into the toureen. Each droplet hangs onto the lip of the vial expanding ever-so-slowly as gravity impregnates it with more fluid, causing what looks like Worcester sauce to spill into the pan. With each new drop a phosphorescent plume of blue smoke rises towards the kitchen ceiling, causing a thick haze to form in the room like the kitchen’s private ozone layer. I pop out the bottom of the vial and blow into it, getting every last millimeter of juice into the toureen: Life is a terrible thing to waste, but if must be wasted it should be done with consummate professionalism and efficiency.
Now for the paring knife, stained a burnt brown, blade and handle held together with electrical tape as a result of years of improper and unconventional use. The liquid had begun to expand in the toureen, the heat causing enzymes to burst, allowing the water to seep out and swish around the bottom of the toureen. In the center lay a single jet black blob more akin to magma then any liquid that comes to mind. I put on the oven mitt and slowly drain the water out of the toureen and into the sink, holding in the fruits of my labor with a metal spatula. No use trying needles and surgical tubing. There hasn’t been a clean vein in this house since the Clinton administration, hence, the paring knife. Rolling my right jean leg up to the kneecap, I douse the knife with hydrogen peroxide. Gauze and cotton balls at the ready, knife in hand, and delicious blackness simmering on the stove.
One stroke, the back of my calf spurts red all over the stove-front before gauze is applied. I make sure the spatula is heavy with it, rip off the gauze and paste the stuff on my leg like a plumber caulking a bathtub. All I feel is heat. Heat coursing through my leg, up my thigh, taking a slight detour at my crotch, and then straight up to the brain. I am a human thermometer with mercury rising all through my tendons and veins. The blood from my calf swirls with the drug, but no colors change. The emptiness of the drug acts as a black hole, sucking up anything it comes in contact with, be it the blood from my leg or the fluid in my skull.
Time to lie down for a second; we’ll turn off the burner eventually. Lucas is standing over me looking down so that his face appears inverted. My voice tells him the stuff is ready, but my ears don’t hear it; my life is a movie on mute. Lucas violently dunks the knife in the Hydrogen Peroxide to cleanse it, contaminating the peroxide with viscous globs of blood that float on the surface. I’ll have to get a new bottle later on. Lucas opted to use his forehead in lieu of the calf muscle. I should have thought of that too; more direct access. He doesn’t bother to clean the spatula, just shoves the stuff right in his profusely bleeding ajna chakra and fills his skull with cotton balls, forgoing the gauze in favor of a blue and purple paisley bandana. Lucas too slumps to the floor and his eyes begin fluttering. The drug now has its own gravitational pull towards the back of Lucas’ head, sucking cotton balls and the paisley bandana inside his forehead. His third eye is now a charred crater the size of a golf ball, Schlesinger 7 I think.
My veins have rebelled against my right calf and have organized a mass suicide, ripping their fibers from my bone in protest. Some of the veins fail in their attempt and get snared by my blood-drenched shin hairs, but most make it off the side and take root in the linoleum. The veins become like the base of the ancient giving tree, making my leg the trunk in the process. Unable to move my right leg, I pivoted around on it and switched off the burner with a flailing hand whose arc causes me to sprawl face down on the linoleum.
When I lifted my head I saw Lucas grinding his teeth madly against the metal spatula as the hole in his head grew bigger. Every single throbbing capillary could be seen slowly engulfing the whites of his eyes. His body, rocking back and forth to the rhythm of his head, was drenched in a sweat that had coated him like wood varnish. All the sweat from his scalp and forehead began to pour into his chakra crater, creating a saltwater pool above his brow. We both fell onto our sides facing one another, glazed expressions gracing our respective visages. As Lucas began to open his mouth, a small crack at the bottom of his forehead pool began expanding down his face cutting through nose cartilage and jawbones in accelerated decay. After the crack had spread all across his face, the left side of what used to be Lucas’ nose fell to the floor. He tried placing it back on, but that only added to the deterioration causing the other side of his nose to drop. It was a sadistic game of Mister Potato Head and I gleefully scooped up his writhing lips and placed them on his chest. The sight of a mouth attempting to talk with a nipple in its center is enough to make your normal junky lose focus, lose control; but I left the amateur ranks years ago and can handle such egregious breeches of rational action.
However, no man alive can withstand his best friend’s face splitting in two to reveal a hovel of maggots, fruit flies, and various unwanted cephalopods; and I am alive. After Lucas peeled off the last of his facial tissue I lost control and made a break for the door, but my leg was still planted to the ground. I reached up to grab the paring knife and began wildly swinging it at my calf muscles, trying to clip any rogue veins. As soon as Lucas passed out, all of his facial vermin made a mad dash for me and I spent the next 30 minutes swatting at them with the soup toureen…
3
*Ding.* With the sound of the bell from above the Steak & Shake doorway I snapped awake like one of Pavlov’s mutts, drooling from the corners of my mouth. The black and white checked floor was swirled in my mind to create a grayish whirlpool at my feet. I felt like I was looking down at a monochrome barber’s pole and stumbled over to the waiting area next to the register. The sparkling red, booth-style seats were covered in a layer of polyurethane to provide me, the diner, with the least comfort possible while retaining the overall décor of the place. I had the feeling they would’ve put a splintered wooden bench in had it fit the restaurant’s theme. I actually think that is the furniture used at Cracker Barrel.
Lucas grabbed me by the arm and led me into the dining hall to my apparent dismay. I say apparent because I have no idea what I actually felt like at that moment. My only emotional barometer was the tinted black glass of the restaurant into which I stared while walking over to our table. My reflection conveyed a sense of discomfort, but for all I know I had reached a state of euphoria that would make the Dalai Lama weep with jealousy. When you take this shit you become unable to discern what and how you feel, or even why you’re feeling that way at all. To say this is the drug’s appeal would be to understate the matter. After we sat down at our table I brought out the pack of American Spirits that I had nicked from one of the burnt-out hippies that frequent Beaners. There used to be some kind of free-love commune about 15 miles down the interstate and when it disbanded, Grinnell found itself inundated with aged hippies. One of these 50-something guys will invariably bust through the doors at least once a week stoned out of his mind and sit down to order some coffee. The moat recent hippie, a guy who demanded that we serve him his iced mocha in a porcelain mug that he brought from home boasting “World’s Greatest Uncle” on it’s side, didn’t even need any coaxing to break him of his smokes. Normally I have to at least ask if I can bum a cigarette before I squirrel away the tobacco for personal use, but this guy just dropped them. He sat down with his iced mocha and began rustling inside his jean shorts for his pack of American Spirits. As I was walking over towards him he fished the pack out and held it up against his mouth, the knuckle of his right pointer finger pressed against the bottom of his nose, and just let them drop to the ground. Ten minutes later he simply got up and took his mug away with him, leaving me with 14 un-smoked fags.
I brought a cigarette to my lips and lit it, letting my inventory of smokes dwindle to thirteen. Thirteen being such an unlucky number, I instantly thrust another cigarette into Lucas’ mouth and lit that, content with the untold number of bad omens I had just avoided. As soon as I had taken my first real drag (the first puff doesn’t count because you’re too busy fiddling with the lighter and making sure it’s properly lit) the waitress waddled over towards our booth and began screeching in some sort of gibberish that sounded Arabic in origin. The woman, May as her nametag would lead us to believe, was a frighteningly large black woman. As hyperbolic as that description sounds, May’ girth was truly horrific, especially for a man in my condition. I can at least say that she was fair in her distribution of rage, scaring the both of us into an equal state of paranoia and panic. After May was done with me she turned around to screech at Lucas and give him an equal share of the horror. I swear I heard her belch out the phrase, “Mistah Kurtz, he dead,” but I think that can be chalked up to the drugs entering the right wing of my brain where the library is located. I’m just thankful the juice made a beeline for Conrad, building on the savage environs of the Steak & Shake. Had I heard the voice of Heathcliffe from Wuthering Heights emanating from that woman’s mouth I would have been in for a real bad trip.
In the middle of her tirade, May accidentally stepped over an air-conditioning grate that billowed cold air up her skirt. This was most assuredly one of the first signs of the apocalypse; any sight that repulsive had to have been sent by the Antichrist, or at least the spirit of Judas Iscariot. Even the quickest of glances showed that this woman hadn’t shaved her legs in weeks, a sort of advanced, prickly stubble running everywhere. I felt like I was looking at two giant honey-baked hams that had been dyed a dark brown and slathered with hair. It was The Seven Year Itch gone terribly, terribly wrong. I was holding up well considering the circumstances, but Lucas wasn’t fairing as well. Our plus-sized aggressor had thrown him for a loop and, to be quite blunt, Lucas was tripping balls. He couldn’t stop staring at the disgusting spectacle that was May’s legs, a gesture that May was none to pleased with. She frantically pushed down her skirt and escalated her berating of Lucas to the brink of physical violence. Sensing danger and knowing that Lucas was beyond repair, I knew I had to do something drastically disturbing. When May cocked her hand back to smack the unholy hell out of Lucas, I extinguished my cigarette on the laminated menu and held the butt in front of my face between my thumb and forefinger. The stench of burnt laminate got May’s attention, at which point I did the only thing I could do: I ate the butt. To rave like a lunatic is commonplace and something May was surely used to dealing with. However, there are very few people in this world that can cope with an act of lunacy. It’s the next step and May was most assuredly not ready to take that step. As I chewed the burnt tobacco shavings and sucked the filter down my gullet, I stared at my charred menu while May began frantically pacing back and forth. Still not looking at May, I ordered my meal, asking for a banana milkshake, two Frisco melts, and onion rings. May informed me that they didn’t serve Frisco melts. I informed May that she was wrong and they did in fact serve Frisco melts but she was just too pigheaded to realize it. Lucas ordered a crock of baked beans and some cottage cheese, but was in no state to convey such an order verbally so I translated for him. May walked away a broken woman and upon reaching the kitchen area dipped her left hand in a vat of boiling vegetable oil. The old axiom, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen” applied in both the metaphoric and literal senses for May, as she ran screaming through a plate-glass window at the front of the restaurant.
Fifteen minutes later another waitress brought out my milkshake and onion rings along with two bacon cheeseburgers. Apparently May hadn’t told her about the Frisco melts, but my hunger had passed I was no longer in the mood for confrontation. Lucas was repulsed by the presentation of the cottage cheese and demanded that more pineapples be added to it. After the waitress had gone back to fetch Lucas his extra garnish of fruit I suggested that we shag ass. I downed my milkshake and Lucas picked up his baked beans. He was very taken by the burnt brown porcelain crock and insisted that he could only eat the beans in this specific container. However, being the consummate gentleman, Lucas opted not to take any silverware with him. “Don’t worry about it man,” he groaned. “I’ll just snag some plastic ones from the checkout counter.”
4
The coin slots on the metro were all busted after some disgruntled bus driver filled them all in with quickrete during a labor strike a few years back. The city council never caved in and after about six months of public transport stagnation the drivers limped backed to their buses for the same meager pay. The organizers of the strike failed to realize the fundamental fact that their only bargaining chip, the cessation of the entire metro system, didn’t concern the local government. These men didn’t rely on the bus to go to city hall every morning, but pulled up in all manner of Beamers, Benzes, and chauffeured town cars. This left the transportation union clinging to the slim hope that city council would be so distraught by the droves of folk having to walk mini-marathons every morning to get to work that they would be driven by their conscience to raise wages and help their constituency. But a politician with a conscience is about as rare as a shooting star and just as fleeting. Gordon Gecko’s axiom that “greed is good” applies to Pennsylvania Avenue as much as it does to Wall Street, and anyone who thinks the green-eyed monster was subdued after the death of Reaganomics and the free-wheelin’ eighties is either monumentally ignorant or naïve beyond repair. Long story short: no pay raise, no sympathy, and back to work.
Since city council decided there were insufficient funds in the city coffers for any bus repairs, all the coin slots remained sealed shut. I tossed my 35 cents into the empty Big Gulp that now served as a makeshift collection bucket, while Lucas pitched in 18 cents and his plastic silverware as collateral. It wasn’t as if the driver gave a damn what we paid with. He didn’t work on commission and still had to drive this piece of shit for another 5 hours until his shift ended. The man’s face was drained of all fluid, the craters of his sunken cheeks big enough to hold a pair of golf balls and his wispy gray hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. His pockmarked face hadn’t moved an inch since we climbed on and I doubt very much if he’d been able to visibly emote for years. Each depressed circle on his face had been formed over decades as tears slowly eroded the terrain of his skin, leaving his tear ducts bone dry and his cheeks looking like the moon underneath the lens of a telescope.
I sat down at the very back of the bus, the hard plastic seats searing my coccyx with a cold that felt like dry ice on my ass. As abrasive as the seat was, it was a great relief simply to be sitting again and I tried to push the discomfort away by sinking down so that my head was resting against the back of the seat. Lucas had avoided the dilemma entirely by setting up shop underneath the seats, lying splayed out on the floor with the crock of baked beans balanced precariously on his chest. Since he had given his plastic spoon to the bus driver’s collection plate, Lucas was forced to slurp down the baked beans from the lip of the crock like he was drinking out of a child’s sippy-cup. When the bus took a corner too fast the crock was tipped over and Lucas’s face and chest were covered in lukewarm baked beans. Lucas began spitting bean fragments wildly and turned to me, screaming, “It’s no good man. It’s no good anymore.” I asked him what wasn’t good anymore and he stared blankly at me for a few seconds before responding, “change of plans buddy. We gotta go skins.” With this Lucas bolted up, neglecting to remember where he was lying down, and crashed his forehead into the back of one of the seats. Lucas began frantically rubbing his head: “Fuckin’ shit man. Somebody should remodel these fucking things...They’re a danger to, like, the fuckin public AT LARGE man! These things are deadly man.” After this sage wisdom Lucas rolled into the center aisle and, with a measure of difficulty, pulled his bean-soaked shirt over his head. He stayed half-naked in the center of the aisle for the remainder of our ride.
With no one else on the bus, a prolonged silence descended upon us, the low rumbling of the engine providing an ambient white noise in the background. A glance out of my window towards the sky revealed nothing but a murky purple night. The decades of smog had billowed to the earth’s ceiling and taken roost, blocking the stars from view. The only constellations to be found were on the street lights and lamp posts. Without my glasses on the lights exploded into starbursts as we passed by, leaving green and yellow tails of bright air in our wake. This was my night sky, with no big dipper and Orion’s Belt thrown to the floor. The homeless huddled together underneath bridges and back alley awnings in a congregation of poverty, the stench of despair hovering about them like a cloud of Pigpen’s dust. Their cardboard signs lay face down, stacked on the pavement bleeding ink as they became soaked with stagnant rainwater. Part of me envied the bums for the freedom they had. At least when you’re outcast from society you’re never held to account. No one expects anything from you at the very bottom of the pyramid, bearing the brunt of the cruelty that others spend their entire lives trying to brush away. To look at Lucas, lying half-naked and passed out in the aisle of a metro bus, baked bean juice dribbling down his chin and pooling in his clavicle; this all reeked of failure and tragedy.
We are the great American middle class, highly educated and increasingly obsolete. My father never went to college and worked his whole life so that his sons could get the higher education that he never had. By the time the money had been saved and tuition paid, that education was as ubiquitous as water and the diploma just as valuable. And so we were set on a path that expects so much from so many and which was bound to disappoint from the start. No matter how many people save for an education and graduate from university there is the inescapable truth that somebody has to follow humanity with a broom to sweep up all the shit we leave behind us. For me to work at a coffee shop is to squander the life I was given, but for the homeless man that same job allows him to exceed any expectation society had formed. Four years of my life and $80,000 in tuition all for one piece of paper that brands me a slacker for the rest of my life. I can feel myself again and need to stop the bus.
5
Courtney’s house is always open, like a 24-hour mini-daguerreotype of the playboy grotto. Her parents were, if not mayflower material, some of the oldest, stuffiest money in town. Courtney’s blood flowed a deep azure blue inside her veins and the “summer apartment” that her parents provided was fitted accordingly. The request from a girl with a 1.3 GPA to do a summer research project at Grinnell failed to raise any red flags with her bumbling bobo parents, who were too involved with their agendas of social inbreeding to notice. I went to her house because she had air-conditioning, a heated underground pool, a practically inexhaustible supply of liquor, and a pair of tits that defied gravity. When Lucas and I stumbled onto the back patio everything was motionless except for a barely audible whirring from the pool’s heating system. The only thing that could be seen was the pool, shaped like a Picasso doodling of a kidney and illuminated from within by tens of underwater flashlights that caused the pool to glow like a chest of gold doubloons does in the movies. We climbed down the steps to the pool and I stripped down to my boxers and waded in; Lucas was intent to remain clothed and reclining on a padded lawn chair. It was only after I had gotten in that I realized I’d forgotten to take my socks off and had to wrestle with them underwater to get the soaked cotton off my feet.
As I was putting my drenched socks on the concrete lip of the pool, Courtney came down the stairs. She was wearing a jingoistic red, white, and blue two-piece that was made with about 8 square inches of fabric, Courtney not being a fan of leaving things to the imagination. She carried with her a small inflatable raft loaded with a fifth of Cuervo, two shot glasses, some salt, and a quartered lime. Laying the raft down on the pavement, she climbed down into the pool and took up residence in an inflatable deck chair floating beside her. Courtney paddled down towards the shallow end with her right hand and dragged the raft of liquor behind her with the left. I took a seat on the entrance steps to the pool as Courtney sprinkled salt onto my shoulder and lapped it up before shoving a lime wedge in my mouth like a roast pig, downing two shots of tequila, and assaulting the lime in my mouth with her tongue. Pulling away, she tried to give me a come-hither look, but being rather trashed she only succeeded in looking skanky. I was in no mood to trade body shots and Courtney’s advances only further decreased any sexual impulse I had. When Courtney drifted close enough to me I snatched her little booze barge, shoved a handful of salt into my mouth, up-ended the bottle of Cuervo, and dismounted by eating a quarter of a lime whole. After this fantastic display of athletic prowess, the only sensible thing to do was to let my body fall forward into the pool and stare at the bottom. The chlorine stung my eyes and blurred my vision as I concentrated on the slanted white cement, looking through the incandescent blue ripples of light floating past my face.
Courtney disrupted my repose by dragging my torso onto her floating deck chair and held me until we drifted to the side. I had a good deal of trouble getting out of the pool and after about 2 minutes of Courtney inadvertently ripping my stomach to shreds on the concrete lip I ambled down to the shallow end and went up the steps. I looked over at Lucas, who was still lying on the lawn chair, but was now clothed only in an oversized red Hula shirt that went past his knees. Before I knew it I was being led up the stairs and through blessedly air conditioned rooms cluttered with avant-garde blown glass and Neo-Cubist paintings that covered entire walls. I collapsed face down on the bed and turned over to be greeted by a ceiling covered in glow-in-the-dark stars that acted as a rudimentary black-light suitable for an 11-year old who dreams of going to Space Camp. I feel somebody crawl towards me and begin licking the inside of my ear. I swat at the tongue with my hand like it was a mosquito or fly. Courtney’s tongue is no longer a sensual organ, but simply a piece of rigid muscle cruelly anchored in her mouth, dying to burst out. Pretty soon I think I black out and all I can feel is this pressure cascading over different parts of my body: my neck, chest, lips, back. I don’t see anything and I rarely even move. I can feel Courtney tugging off my jeans and trying to take off my shirt. Since I refuse to move she has to prop me up on the headboard to lift the shirt over my head. As I hear Courtney breathing heavily in an attempt to disrobe without getting out of bed, I slide down the headboard and land on the floor with the crown of my head, slowly slumping to the ground with a motion that reminded me of the droves of prepubescent teens trying somersaults during 5th grade gym class. As Courtney pulls me back up to the bed, the only thing that I can really sense is the smell of sweat filling the room. This isn’t a normal sweat that comes from your glands, but is a body sweat that oozes out your pores and cleanses your body in a film of calcified salt. I feel sticky and wretched and in desperate need of a shower. I begin to get nauseous and wonder where the best place to throw up in Courtney’s room is.
I open my eyes and see a bright red 3:47 flashing in front of my eyes. I turn over and the bed is laid bare. From inside her bathroom I can hear Courtney scratching at the porcelain walls and screeching at nothing. No use trying to help, as I plan on joining her just shortly. I walk into the kitchen and the pot is still simmering on the stove. Lucas is lying on a chez-lounge staring at the blank TV screen intently. “You taking it easy in there pal?” I ask him. He grins a little and almost whispers, “Don’t you know it, man.” I walk over to the stove and look back as I’m picking up the crusty knife: “We won’t be too long. She’s got roast beef in the fridge for sandwiches.” With that I sat down on the floor and bit my tongue.
Still don't have a title...that'll come later.