We’d only been dating here and there for about a month or
so, so it wasn’t like you’d call it horseshit or nothing. And what’s worse is
human shit, really, if you really want to like know from my personalized
experience. But we go about it all, and call bullshit when we should be saying
that it’s a bunch of h.s. or c.s., like, you know, cow shit. But anyways. Fuck
all that. People? People fucked up. That’s one thing for sure. Can’t emphasize
that one enough. People’ll do all kinds of stupid shit, horse or cow or bull,
but, you know, like, human’s still the worst. That’s all the for-sures in town,
man. I do know some things, right? Any-fucking-how, I tell you, this lady’s
been doused with a carafe of the brown liquor cure, and she’s ranting on like
some begrudged and loopy and deranged crackhead-of-a-broken-tooth-spitter. And
me? I gots to take it as it comes, you know. Like I’m the one who’s resting
easy in all of it, just dipping my toes in for a test of the waters, you know.
Like, you know, we’ve been dating what? A month? Fucking less than like 5
weekends? Something like that. Just here and there. Just chowing down on
whatever pie’s dangling down for me. I’m in it just for a taste, you know? I
got other things to like sate my appetite and all. Shit. But this lady’s on a
damn chapel pew with a few more than a few in her gut, and so it’s I who has
got to like rearrange my mettle to sidestep the bitch, with or without the
appeal of the choir, or the pleading of all the fucking fifths in the world
about it. Well, turns out she’s on that Leavenworth stuff. The whole 14 blocks
knows, and then some. The howling is Muzak to my ears. And me? I ride elevators
all the time. Ask any See You Next Tuesday around. And all the giantess
man-whores along Larkin know the tune I’m scratching out in the ponderosas. I
gots my two-toned ways of blending with the scenery, see? And this cranky
lady’s gone blotto, and she’s leaping up on hoods of parked cars all along
Ellis, shouting devil-knows-what at taxis and buses and whatever dregs of
society’s passing on by at like 11 in the pm of a weekday. She’s high-pitching
stuff like, “Shutshutshutshut the fuckfuckfuck up!” as she’s leaping on and off
hoods and zigzagging her way through the street. She’s even giving fire
hydrants a piece of it, like “You little fat fuck of a fuck! You ain’t shit
without water! You just some out-of-work shortstop with no range! Fuck you!”
Well, me, I gots my high hat on for the birds and the devil, whichever comes
first, like chimneys for doves or minks in the cellar. All that avian and,
like, rodent shit to clean up. Think about it. Shit. That’s about all I do.
Shit. Like I says. People fucked up. That’s a good one to know about. But this
tipsy chick’s blaring like a car alarm, and I’m the only one around to keep her
toeing some sort of damn line, or at least make a grab-ass attempt at it. Now
I’m wishing for a there instead of more heres. But that says it, really, like,
don’t it? We all get afraid to let our devils leave ‘cause our angels maybe
might get on up and leave us too. Lord on low knows hers were a goner that
night. I grabbed her good and hard, tore her down from her makeshift soapbox of
a busted Cadillac. I tell her, “So. Is this that whole ‘What’s-a-gal-to-fucking-do?’
crap?” She says to me, she says, “Not this again.” Then she rattles out a smoke
from somewhere hiding away in her shedding stole that she’s like wrapped around
her waist now, and she blares out, “This!” And she cold-motherfucking-cocks me.
I’m batty with it. I go down like Tyson in Tokyo. I’m seriously fucking reeling
along on Ellis there, drinking gutter water for dessert. She gets me good and
solid on the jaw. It’s so fucked I can’t believe it. And this crazy bitch is
off to the races. I can hear her fucking heels clicking all wild on the
concrete like somebody’s gone and thrown a bunch of marbles to the sidewalk
from four floors up. I’m just dazed and trying to hold steady. All my pastures
are ruined with cow shit. But I remember then that I sort of pulled myself
together there under a streetlight, which was glowing down on me in all sorts
of bad shape. And my eyes seemed like they belonged to someone else’s head. I
thought I’d return them if I could. Shit. They never did me no good at all. She
was gone. Maybe for good. And I thought, ‘That’s good. That’s finally just
good.’ So, I picked up all the pieces of being me and stumbled and labored my
way into Jonell’s there on Jones. There wasn’t much of a crowd. Just a few
drunks and some cheap whores with awful smiles and worse makeup. I sits myself
down there at the end of that horseshoe bar there, and I order a whisky ginger
from the too-happy Korean lady behind it. She’s fucking giddy with my order. So
I drink it down and get another, and then, you know, another too. The juke's making its stupid sounds, all that thumping-bass garbage they put on it. I’m sitting
there all woebegone and shit-faced, and I think, ‘This. This. This is all that
is. Me here. She gone. Smoke’s lost from the engine, lady. I’m stalled and
beat.’ But I didn’t have no lady to call mine. I didn’t have a damn thing
except this this. Whatever this was or is or…shit, whatever the human shit, I
don’t know. I’ve stepped in my share, sure, but who hasn’t? I drank down my
drinks, one after the next, and started to not care about anything, even my own
self. Then I gets to thinking things like this: ‘It ain’t what you got; it’s
what you make.’ Nobody was bothering me just then for a while of it, so I kept
right on with that stuff. Whisky-kissed. Troubled and undone. I’m all out of
tune, you know? Is the something wrong what's wrong with me or with everybody else? I don't know. Raised on the weak stuff. It all gets to suit me. It really
does. Just a tip’s stick and a jiving around move with all the wicked and the
worried in the world. No more fire escapes. No more trash trucks to wake me up
before the sun. No more girl to drive me to do horrible things. Shit. I’m all
out of being done. Like some horse-shit sucker making the sound of my name, it
proves me just enough guilty of being me to keep going on. Shit. The gun’s gone
from the hips, fuckers. People all kinds of fucked up. I’m through.
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