i was gutted to the core by the piercing blades of directionless hedonism, and now i'm scooping my dirtied innards off the pavement as the people look onward
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i was gutted to the core by the piercing blades of directionless hedonism, and now i'm scooping my dirtied innards off the pavement as the people look onward
#29
…so is she….
…so is she…
…she…
…She nestles me and arouses me out of my slumber each and every day and without Her, I would commit seppuku on the banks of the nearest public swimming pool, Mishima style, and Karen would shriek in horror as she tried to shield her children from the monstrosity and grotesqueness of the scene, and little Jimmy would continue to eat his PB&J with the crust trimmed off that Karen had packed him that morning, and I would likely sentence that poor child to a lifetime of therapy sessions and principal’s office visits because I decided to lose my mind one day; poor Jimmy, poor poor Jimmy.
I respect the sun, but alas, She doesn’t respect me, and although I do not worship Her like an ancient Egyptian or esoteric health guru, one can come to appreciate Her pervertedness each and every morning as She pokes her infinite eyes through the cracks in your blinds; a peeping tom for all of humanity, inevitable, She is, as She shows up no matter what, and the day She répondez s'il vous plaît with a “No” is the day we all simultaneously kick the bucket. Pardon my French.
She peeks through the blinds on this autumnal Saturday morning, just like my friend did years ago after I had stuck around at girl’s house instead of leaving with everyone else, and he had suspected adultery, because unbeknownst to him, I had lopped off my relationship with - ah, you know what, I’ll save it for the expository novel! But I digress; today, she is whispering sweet nothings in my ear, telling me to hop in my domestically-manufactured automobile and head to the nearest Sheetz for an energy drink because the usual drip coffee is not going to cut it today, and she is right, and she is usually right, but I still make the drip coffee for when I return from the trip to the convenience store, as I need something light to cool down from the riding the lightning that is White Monster. So after putting on some clothes I suspect are clean, but have no real way of telling if they are clean, as the washer and dryer are an evil technology meant to enslave me to the burden of modernity, I descend the stairs from my flat to the covered parking garage, flick the ignition in the Ford, and zoom across town to the station. It is quite wonderful to see no souls on the road at this hour of the weekend; it allows me to drive fast and run red lights, which I do not recommend, unless you have studied traffic patterns and hideaway spots for lazy cops munching on Krispy Kreme donuts while running radar. Although by my estimations, I will have approximately 5-7 seconds to disappear should a cop see me, because I know damn well the cup of coffee he has sitting in his center console will have no lid on it, because it was too hot to drink with the lid trapping the never-ending thermal energy inside the styrofoam cup, so he will have to fumble around with the plastic lid in order to prevent scolding hot liquid from spilling on his manhood and effectively ending his potential lineage of future city cops, and in that time so generously allotted to me by God, I will have zoomed away on the side streets, gone like Kansas’s Dust in the Wind, and he will return to his hideaway cove empty handed and without a speeding ticket booked for the day.
In fact, according to my half-baked internet research, a non-zero percentage of people who ever attempt to run from the police end up getting away; if you are a gambler, you will fancy these odds. Of course, a non-zero percentage of people who attempt to run from the police end up getting away because the EMS has to scrape their lifeless bodies off a chain link fence; you can’t arrest a dead person, although I’m sure some blue bloods have tried throughout the course of history. Morbid. My own father has his own running from the cops story, and he has always avoided talking about it with my brothers and I in an attempt to deter us from following in his footsteps; survivor bias is a strange phenomenon after all, and familial sins are not easily atoned for. We will get it out of him some day though, with the help of my mother; we will get it out of him, because if nothing else, it is useful information, and familial sins are not easily atoned for.
(If you are a cop, please guide your mouse to the top left corner of this browser and click the red X symbol, and then go drink enough moonshine to kill a 14th century Mongol calvary unit so you forget you ever read this essay. Nah, I’m just kidding. All are welcome here. But seriously, are you a cop? Do your parents know you’re a cop?)
So there is little to no fear in my mind that morning as the house music blares from the drawn windows and the brake pedal goes dormant despite the red bulbs flashing at me from above. As much as I despise our culture constructed around cars, there are few feelings as liberating as the one felt when the weather is pleasant and the roads are vacant. Men are simple creatures, and we want nothing in this futile life but to cruise around backroads doing 110 while blaring synthwave.
Despite there being ample parking in the lot, I decide to park my vehicle at one of the pumps, which I admit is a scumbag move, although there is no reason to feel bad, as no one except for myself and the lone cashier are present at the station at this hour. A famous Twitter personality once said there are
No
Atheists
In
The
Open
Ocean
And I would tend to agree; likewise, there are no atheists at the gas station between the hours of 10 PM and 7 AM, because during those fateful hours, God’s most vile demons are released from the depths of the cracked concrete and into our world of mortals, where they torment you if you are even to look at them funny as they plop the case of Modelo and bag of Hot Fries on the peeling linoleum counter.
The air is calming, the birds are chirping, and Dire Straits’ “Walk of Life” is playing on the intercom, and I am lucky to catch the notorious synthesizer intro (which was inspired by an accordion, which reminds me of my late grandfather, who used to pay homage to his eastern European roots by listening to Saturday morning polka on the local radio station), as I strut through the doors and into the wall of piping cold air conditioning. Fitting, as I indeed am doing the proverbial walk of life – no, I meant the song is fitting because I am in dire straights. What’s the difference anyway - Mark Knopfler married three different times, he understands.
There is an energy drink meme floating around in the ether of the internet that matches certain brands of energy drinks to medieval professions, and I believe there is a degree of accuracy to said meme; the man who drinks a sugar free Red Bull is not in the same headspace as the man who guzzles a Rockstar, in fact, one might argue that they are living in two separate fabrics of the same world, and despite the nearly identical ingredients across all concoctions, there are noticeable intangible differences – if you are an academic, you might drink one to three eight ounce cans of sugar free Red Bull before your Organic Chemistry exams, such as my friend did during his days of undergrad, which I suspect was just a method of cooling down from the dosage of amphetamine salts coursing through his veins; after all, if you need to sober up at a bar before the drive home, ask the barmaid to pour you a pint. Conversely, if you engage in a trade, or manual labor in general, you might drink a bushel of Rockstar Energy drinks throughout the day; one at the crack of dawn, to go with your morning Newport; one during your first smoke break of the day, accompanying another Newport; one more at lunch, to wash down your Bologna and Dorito sandwich, garnished with a crushed Newport; one more during your afternoon smoke break, with an entire pack of blended Newports sprinkled in the top of the can; another Rockstar whilst operating the Kubota Excavator and nearly missing a clean decapitation of your coworker, who stood up one second after you swung the hydraulic arm directly over the ditch where he was working; a penultimate Rockstar during the drive home, mixed in a half drank malt liquor Bottle, with Linkin Park’s Meteora playing on the Ford F150 bluetooth system to prepare yourself for a night of sports gambling and domestic violence; and finally, a seventh Rockstar Energy, consumed as a sleepy time drink to prepare you for a ten thousand, four hundred and thirty third consecutive night of interrupted sleep because your upstairs neighbors are once again cooking meth and fucking on the piss stained mattress that lays upon the floor because bed frames are nonexistent in poverty-stricken neighborhoods.
But I stroll past both the Red Bull and Rockstar in the refrigerators, and instead fixate my eyes on the Swiss army knife of caffeinated beverages; it glistens in the incandescent overhead lights, her perfectly pale can and subliminal messaging font shining bright like Sirius in the murky night sky - White Monster.
All while this is happening, I feel the white hot laser eyes of the dreamboat of a clerk penetrating my the posterior section of my thoracic cavity and vaporizing my heart; after all, I’m the only living soul in the store, and she has nothing better to do during her shift than to watch outfit of the day Tik Toks whilst snacking on a bag of Rold Gold twists, lightly salted edition, because she is watching her sodium levels; why she is watching her sodium levels is beyond my comprehension, as she is 95 pounds soaking wet and would blow away in a gentle summer breeze – perhaps she is a health nut, you know, the kind who spends way too much time on Bodybuilding dot com threads or holistic Instagram accounts (which are usually run by ran-through (pun-intended) reformed former sluts turned new age women of God). Whatever, at least she is crazy. I managed to catch a glimpse of her when I strolled through the sliding hydraulic doors (which is the second time I’ve used hydraulic and I’m no engineer, but I’ll see if I can shoehorn it in once more), and she appeared to be a looker – slender, but not in an anorexic way, frail arms, a boyish haircut that somehow made her look more feminine because it was an ideal haircut for her head shape and facial bone structure, no makeup, only mascara, because she didn’t want customers to think she had a resting bitch face, feline eyes, the ones that feign a combination of unwavering affection and unbrindled savagery, as if she would nestle her weary head in the nook of your arm and coldly tell you that she’s already plotted the murder and subsequent disposal of your body in the nearest river. She currently goes to the large state university in town out of spite, despite her intentions to attend a small, liberal arts college juxtaposed in a historically blue-collar town, where she would study contemporary art and explore her sexuality, but now, she forces herself to dress slutty and drink warm vodka at Sig Ep parties. Her mom is a bored housewife, her dad a senior manager at a regional bank, where he oversees the commercial lending operation, making sure to charge 2000 basis points more than national average on small business loans as a way of eating into profits and ensuring that service workers make 9 dollars an hour instead of 12. She has a younger brother, who is hypermasculine and quirky, and she loves him despite his inability to recognize the naivety of his privileged success both on the lacrosse field and in the classroom.
She is staring at me, and although my back is to the register, I can feel her glare, and now I’ve gotten nervous to the point where I must do something rash in order to unravel the feeling of unease in the pit of my stomach, such as asking her to marry me or at the very least commit a semi-violent crime on a deserving individual, like the guy who just drunk drove his car into the steakhouse downtown and forced the place to close for 2-3 months. I hastily grab two White Monsters, one for now, which I will crack open and guzzle on my short walk to the register and have her scan the empty can, the other one I will save for later and insert my house key in the bottom of the can to create a mouth-sized hole, and stroll to the register for her to check me out, and also scan my items and place them in a bag.
How about a pack of Spirits Gold, and while you’re at it, why don’t you show me your tits!
She audibly giggled, but didn’t seem offended, and continued her action of locating the requested pack of cancer sticks and placing them on the counter after scanning them into the gas station inventory management system, which would retrieve the price based on the specific barcode that was printed on the box.
I only show my pierced tits to guys who smoke Spirit Blues.
Knew it! And I usually did smoke Spirit Blues! But I liked the comment, I liked the jest, the camaraderie, the playful banter, and I could already see our future, now:
Like many a surrounding house, our seaside cottage too had a name, and her name in particular was “Magnolia”, which was an ode not to a distant great-aunt or to the species of flowering Angiosperm itself, but rather to the name of hole #5 at Augusta National Golf Club, Magnolia, which I always found interesting, as hole #5 is not the most famous or picturesque hole on the property, but rather the most difficult hole year in and year out. Sure enough, you could find dozens of pieces of golf memorabilia scattered throughout the halls of the house, and oft I would stop and stare at those historical photos of Bobby Jones and Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods cementing their legacy on golf’s greatest stage.
Her grandfather was a self-described fanatic of the idyllic game, and perhaps the only thing the old stubborn dog and I had in common was deep found love for hitting a dimpled white ball around an otherwise meadow with occasional strips and circles of manicured poa annua that formed fairways and greens. He seemed to shake the decrepitness and Boomer angst when out on the course, and although he didn’t swing it hard or fast anymore, you could tell that in his heyday, he was a grinder out there, hustling arrogant businessmen out of their commission checks, and if I learned a single life lesson from the old man, it was that you are never out of the hole, no matter how far into the bushes you hit it. There is always a way to make par, to scramble and grit your teeth and put yourself back on your two feet after you knocked yourself over.
So despite rarely getting along, I was saddened to hear about her grandfather’s passing two years ago, and even more surprised that he had left behind the cottage to his first-born daughter, who I now call my wife and mother of two small, angelic children. Generous he was, and oft my mind pondered this glorious gift, and today was no exception, as my two feet once again found their favorite spot on the rooftop deck of the seaside abode, the Southwest Corner overlooking an unnamed, private beach on the southern coast of North Carolina. A Northerner transplanted into a Southern haven, my fascination at the crashing afternoon waves ceased to fade, even after all those days prior of watching intently, and in this moment, and every moment ere and aft, I was peaceful, and then I was pensive, and finally I was gracious. In a few hours, my wife and I, the one I so clumsily met in a gas station some quarter of a score ago, would be wandering down Mulberry Street until we reached Vine, where we would cross the street, make a left, and meander for about two and a half blocks, until we reached the gated community where the Riley’s lived, where we would have a few cocktails, Dinner at Mosey’s, and then a nightcap at….
….No, no, no. Too idyllic. Too optimistic. Too Edenic. We live in Hell after all, and this girl is operating a gondola on the River Styx. Let’s try again, I have a better idea:
…and while you’re at it, why don’t you show me your tits!
She audibly giggled, but didn’t seem offended, and continued her action of locating the requested pack of cancer sticks and placing them on the counter after scanning them into the gas station inventory management system, which would retrieve the price based on the specific barcode that was printed on the box.
You know what I always hated about show and tell in elementary school? There was only showing and no…touching.
She tugged upward on the bottom of her spaghetti strap, one that was likely purchased from the pre-teen section at Walmart, and tossed the box of smokes on the counter as she glared intently with lustful eyes, ones that would cast a thousand ships and turn Medusa herself to stone.
I chuckled and pocketed the smokes, after first cracking the fresh box open and sparking one up with a lighter from the rack displayed next to the register, a trick I learned from the father of an old friend of mine, who once pulled the same antic in a Citgo after bowling a 223 at Colony.
Where’d you get them pierced? Up the road at Esmee’s? You know you shouldn’t touch that place with a thrice disinfected four-hundred-foot pole. Seems like once a week someone’s walking out there with staphylococcus. That’s the bacteria that causes staph infections, you know, the skin lesions and abscesses and whatnot. Might even cause sepsis or a heart attack. Not a microscopic critter to be messed with. They teach you this in Bio 101 sweets? Or has old University gone soft?
She rolled her eyes and half-turned those spindly shoulders away from me as she took a drag from her e-cigarette, mango flavored. It was necessary to flex a scholastic muscle on these bimbos every once in a blue moon. They couldn’t take the lethal dose of misogyny and testosterone. It would push her to the brink of either uncontrollable horniness or homicidal thoughts, both which were desirable. Remember, it’s not creepy if you’re attractive.
Yes, silly, they teach you about staph. And no, I didn’t get my nipples pierced at Esmee’s. And I have to say, I’m quite offended you think even I’d stoop to those levels of trashiness. I may have been born in a mobile home bathroom, but nobility of my royal ancestors courses deep through my veins!
Ha! The only time your ancestors sniffed a castle was when they were dumping the shit in the King’s chamber pot in the ditch next to your zero-room shanty. But you’re right, I’m sure old great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandma and her dusty old cunt was queen of the rats. Don’t fool yourself sweets, you belong on a street corner. In fact, I’m sure you’d be trotting up and down High in thigh high leather boots and a busted lip if it weren’t for the insidious generosity of your employer, lapping you up from the bottom of the dive bar urinal you called home in the East Side Trailer Park, giving you a real chance to make a name for yourself in the drug trade, all while paying for a useless nursing degree. Your boss has an oddly specific taste in female acquaintances, er, I mean whores – broken, dirt poor, slutty, sweet, malleable, more daddy issues than a paternity testing center. Charming fellow, isn’t he? By the way, how is Doctor Chambers doing eh? Still moving weight out of that shithole of a classroom of his? Or did he finally upgrade to something more discreet? Ah, what does it matter. University is balls deep in his pocket along with the rest of the junkies in this Godforsaken town.
She started to mumble a retort, or maybe an answer to my inundating rhetorical questions, but I cut her off before she could speak a single sound from those luscious Botox filled dick sucking lips.
I already know how this was going to play out sweets. You got a nice rack on that stickly, scrawny, instant Ramen and Juul nourished body of yours, that’s for sure. It’s quite impressive how a skinny skank like you is able to maintain a voluptuous D cup. Most girls I’ve seen would be envious of your metabolic predispositions – instead of the cake going straight to your thighs or belly, it just fills out the bazookas. Impressive, very nice.
And I know you were going to seduce me with those piercings, one that an old man in a metal detector could sense from five hundred miles away. And in my early days in this line of work, you may have just gotten a horny greenhorn like I once was, who would’ve porked anything with a pulse.
But over the years, as my libido has shrunk, my wits have grown, and I know damn well your old savvy boss there had you coat those nipple piercings with Batrachotoxin, which of course is the neurotoxin that our good friends Poison Dart Frogs down in Amazonia secrete as a way to defend themselves. I mean how else are they gonna keep safe? They’re frogs for God’s sake! Little slimy sacks of amphibious meat. But boy, do they pack a punch. One lick is enough to kill a grown man twenty times over. One lick. And I bet that’s what you were counting on there toots, just one lick….
….You can go ahead and scan this one too. I set the unopened can on the counter for her to scan, and then slapped the other can down on the counter, empty and dripping from the top. She laughed in my face.
Thirsty, huh?
You have no idea.
Anything else?
Yeah… let me get a pack of Spirit… Blues. Yeah Blues this time. Last time I asked for Golds, something terrible happened for me.
Oh yeah? What happened?
I had a dream.
I pulled out a $20 and gently placed it in her outstretched, lusciously moisturized hands.
Keep it.
Oh, thank y-
Have a nice day.
You too.
As I walked out of Sheetz, I could not help but notice how doggone tired I was, dragged through a thousand years worth of sleepless nights, and I longed for the moment I would return home to not even my bed, but my couch would suffice on this occasion, as I just needed 30 minutes of peace. I would even drive slow and safe on the way back, give the city cops a break, enjoy the sereneness of the open road…
An all too familiar buzz rattled my left front pant pocket, and I whipped out my cellular device in a tizzy to check the caller ID. Kyle. I answered.
Yo, where you at? We’re picking you up in 10.
She walked out with empty arms
Machine gun in her hand
She is good and she is bad
No one understands
Onward,
Tony
Humble Wordsmith
Writer Boy
Hydraulics Expert
Ghost in the Shadows of the Aisles of the Convenience Store