Friday, December 13, 2013

A Stripper Named Christmas


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.