By Patrick Patterson-Carroll
The phone is ringing. Shit. Strange is expecting a call from a possible future employer and I'm supposed to pretend that I run a small mom and pop pizza shop; as a reference. Or something. The details were never clear, so the assumption is that he expects me to come up with something believable. Because the truth is that he is an employer's worst nightmare. He's flighty. He quits jobs and doesn't say shit to the people in charge. Leaves other hapless paeans in his wake; hanging, as it were. When questioned, he simply shrugs and calls himself a proletarian nomad.
Dilemma. Why? Because I'm beating my fucking meat, that's why. I stop and reach for my phone. The display is a number that is not logged in my SIM card. It suddenly stops ringing. The display reads that I have a missed call. No shit.
I regain my masturbatory mindset, gradually pacing myself back into a good frictional momentum, pumping my fist into my crotch quickly while the images on my laptop monitor provide me with the appropriate visual stimuli.
When I finally spill some seed into my hand, the phone rings again. I reach across my body with my left hand for the phone. My arm, however, isn't that long, so I have to slightly dip myself into the crevice of the couch made by the convergence of cushions in order to pick up the phone, which itself is resting in the fault line created by the middle cushion and the far right cushion. I can feel the semen that has oozed between the head of my cock and fingers getting cold.
Looking at the display, I see that it's the same number as before. This person is unrelenting. I press the green 'go' button and put the phone to my ear. "This is Benny Salvatore; Benny and Vinny's Pizza, whadduya want?” There is a silence here. Then:
“Hello... um... I’m calling regarding an applicant. Um... an Adam Rodriguez.”
“Oh yeah? Haven’t seen him in a month.”
“Well, I’m a manager at Profit Bar. We like to screen our applicants for references. What can you say about Mr. Rodriguez?”
“Who?”
“Uh... Adam Rodriguez.”
“Oh. Called himself Strange. Good guy. Can‘t usually trust Mexicans, so that‘s saying something. My brother Vinny hated him, though. His friends were obnoxious drunk fuckers, always come in and hit on all the lady patrons. But he worked harder than anyone, and if my brother wasn’t such a pussy, the kid’d still be working for us.”
“Oh. Well... um... thanks a lot... Mr. ... ?”
“Salvatore.”
The guy hangs up and between a dial tone and the cold, disgusting bodily excretion seemingly gluing together my flaccid cock and my fist, I feel very silly. I can’t believe I actually did the Italian American accent. I know it probably sounded fake and awful, but fuck it, I think I scared that guy shitless.
I go into the bathroom and wash my hands and my dick and begin searching for clothes that smell clean. My Nirvana shirt is on the floor. I pick it up and smell it. Nothing discernibly foul, and from looks, besides a few wrinkles, it’s good. I pull it on and then cover the lower half of my body with a horrendously ripped up pair of jeans.
While doing vanity exercises in front of my bathroom mirror, I feel the sudden urge to laugh at myself. In the past, girls have accused me of being more obsessed with my appearance than their younger teenage sisters. I laugh and say aloud to myself that they were right.
I hear the front door open. It’s Strange. He calls out. “Marco!” “Polo!” I echo back.
I see his head peek into the bathroom. He asks me what’s up. I tell him he got a call from Profit Bar. He smiles. I follow him into the living room. He says he has good news. I see a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of vodka on the table. Both 750 ml. The whiskey is Jameson. The vodka is something that I know he picked up for less than 10$.
“Well. My mom is throwing me some money. Grudgingly. So I can get a place.”
“Awesome,” I say.
“Yes. I feel kind of dirty. Like a middle class suburban bitch.”
“Anyone would take the money. Guilt free. They’re liars if they scream otherwise. Hell, even I can admit that my dad will probably drop me a few pounds this week.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Help me find a place around here. No Upper E shit, though. It’s only $500.”
We decide to “think efficiency.” Yes. It’s like living in a closet, but it’s better than sleeping in parks or beneath underpasses. “I might do that just for inspiration,” he says, laughing. We sit on the right and left cushions of the couch, staring into the wall ahead. He says that I should do something with my empty, boring wall.
"What? Knock it out? No thanks. I'd rather get drunk and pretend there's shit on the walls than have to look directly out into that nightmarish still life called ‘the porch‘ by management even though it is undoubtedly a courtyard."
"All I'm saying," Strange says, cracking open the bottle of vodka. "Is that arty renditions of naked women might spruce shit up some."
“That explains why your place was always so boner inducing despite the lack of promise...” I trail off.
Thoughts are conjuring themselves in my mind. I laugh. We both laugh. Drinking, passing back and forth the bottled spirits. But then I tell him that the truth is that that kind of stimulation is bad for me. Yes. It’s enough that I jerk off to internet porn as much as I do. I mean, shit. I can’t even operate without the imagery provided by my open laptop.
The days of rubbing one out in the shower or laying in bed, legs akimbo, blowing loads onto my stomach or fucking seldom worn dress socks are quite past me. There is a challenge-- a certain sacrament-- in having to push some buttons and wait for a wireless network I can surf and wank to ejaculatory glory. Walls adorned with fleshy feminine shapes would give me an ease of mental access that left zero room for ritual.
Strange lights a cigarette and leers at me a little. He laughs uncomfortably. We both do. All is quiet. The white wall ahead watches over our gluttonous imbibing, over my revealing revelation.
And amidst the quietude of the abated mirth-- discomfited as it was-- and through a gulp of whiskey straight from the bottle, I say, "So yeah, the Profit Bar called about references for 'Adam Rodriguez.' I pretended to be this transplanted New Yorker named Benny Salvatore. I think I scared the guy, but he might call, so just a heads up."
"Ha, he bought it?"
"Yeah. I even added that bigoted Italian American thing. You know, where they hate immigrants and minorities and shit."
“Cool.”
I ask him if he got anywhere with Vanessa. He says no. Not at all. I say that I had a dream that they were fucking in a VW. “She has a Kia Rio,” he says. “They started out making bikes,” I say, getting up. I go into my room and shuffle through a pile of books. I pick up Strange’s book.
He turns to watch me bring the book around the table and plop myself into the cushions of the couch. I grab the whiskey, throw back a gulp or two and then flip through the book. The cover is somewhat bent because it was jammed, sandwich-like, between two other books. Something called, A Freudian Interpretation of Dreams and Debord’s Panegyric. The only thing I remember about the former was a six page explanation about the significance of a silken white glove in dreams. Hint: it’s sexual. Debord’s book is a postmodern memoir of sorts. I remember some stuff about how he likes women. Other than that, all I can say is that the pictures are cool.
“What are you doing?”
“There’s a passage in your book that my dream reminded me of,” I say.
Of course, there was nothing exact about the relation between my dream and his book, except that in both cases there is this weird tunneling through of the REM wall that separates actual sleep from the environs in which said sleep takes place. There is certainly a scientific phrase for this phenomena, but fuck if I know what it is.
Anyway, when Strange took off with Vanessa, the idea of them walking to her car made me dream of walking. The previously built up sexual tension without release set up the vaginal and sexual imagery; a manifestation of a theoretical continuation due largely to my failure, in reality, to perform ’neath and ’twixt the sheets.
In the book, there’s a bit, which I begin reading aloud to him, where the narrator is dreaming through a haze of a malt liquor and marijuana that his female roommate is sitting naked, sweating, talking to him about her mother who has a parrot that says things like “fuck me! fuck me real hard!” and he questions her as to whether or not she taught the parrot to say it as a practical joke on her mother and she says, “are you kidding? I’m too much of a stoner to take the necessary time for that. My mom fucks all the teenage acne-faced boys in the neighborhood.” The narrator of course stirs himself awake, his underwear heavy against his flesh with perspiration, and realizes that his roommate is fucking her boyfriend in the adjoining room, screaming “fuck me! fuck me real hard!”
“My question, dear Adam, is where the fuck did the parrot come from?” I ask, laughingly, closing the book and swigging on the bottle of whiskey.
“When I was writing it I had this great tat mag that had a pullout section dedicated to tattoos of exotic animals, and this very beautiful girl had a huge tattoo of a macaw on her back. Amazing coloring. It seemed like something funny and interesting at the time.”
We sit around and continue to drink. It’s dark outside. Strange pulls out a piece of paper and hands it to me. I look at it. It’s a phone number. “Vanessa?” Yes. Vanessa. I crumple up the paper and toss it into the kitchen.
Inundated by a wave of spontaneity, he asks me if I want to walk down to Lower Greenville. I think about it briefly. We’re obviously more than a little drunk (hence the rashness). I say yes. Fuck it! Let’s do it. I stand to my feet, salute Strange, and take another nip of whiskey. Both bottles are dangerously low on liquids.
Even in our soused stupor, we realize that we’ll have to empty our pockets to see for ourselves that between us (remember I am flat broke) we have about $1.69, which isn’t enough to buy shit. At least not at bars on Lower Greenville.
Placing ourselves gently, in concurrent motion, back onto the couch, we sip at the remnants of the bottles, Strange with the vodka, and me with the whiskey. Then we swap.
“Well,” I start. “We’re already pretty lit, wouldn’t you say?” He nods. “Well then, lets just head out and see where the night takes us.”
“Could be promising,” he adds, belching loudly.
Outside the air is neither humid nor arid. This balance is somewhat staggering because it has been hot and dry of late. A beautiful, timely surprise really, especially with the warmth in our guts and heat on our faces due to the alcohol consumption. There is a breeze roving over from what feels like a northwesterly direction. It feels amazing. We begin our stumble through the parking lot toward Munger Ave.
Thoughtlessly, we drop trou in the alley and release some fluids against the newly erected wooden fence. No one sees us and we continue northbound on Munger. Strange starts talking about some of his ideas in relation to my blog. He wants us to collaborate on a massive happening campaign involving city council members, black dildos and jail time, if necessary.
“Think of it. Like... live art.”
“Spontaneous!” I shout.
“Kind of. I mean, it’s planned.”
“Calculated.”
“Yes! I mean, fuck city council. Look at our black leaders. Look at them! They throw around allegations of racism like they’re paid to do it, and then they run out any and everyone who might be willing to help the predominantly black neighborhoods that they represent yet don’t even live in! They do more harm than good.”
We cross Swiss Ave.. Without bothering to question or assume a position of “devil’s advocacy,“ I allow Strange to continue his drunken inveighing unabated as we pass the quiet mansions on the corners. It’s about giving voice to voiceless people, he insists. Because they vote for the representation who they assume, due to racial similarity (which is an interesting fallacy; hear: What’s Beef? by Black Star [Kweli and Mos Def]), will represent them justly and fight for their best interests, and what they get out of it is fuck all.
“So here, here’s your black dildo Mr. Councilman. You like to fuck your own constituents, here! Here’s an object with which to actually do it!”
This unusual grammatical precision, combined with uncharacteristically coherent annunciation makes me laugh. Normally he's very disjoint and unfocused in his drunken proclamations. As most are-- more so than most. In extreme cases, his language will devolve into grunting and other slurs of the tongue. But right now, as we trek toward Lower Greenville, penniless yet excitable, he's the most articulate I've ever known him to be in this state. Or maybe it's simply the fact of my own state, which is quite similar, commenting on his, filling in the blanks. Articulating automatically that which is in fact, not articulate at all.
We stop at the light on Live Oak and Munger and I start laughing for no particular reason. I feel light headed and nothing seems to have any weight about it. No solid, tangible qualities. This compels me to muse about the red hand commanding us to not walk. That we should just fuckin' cross because it's not like the red hand is really an authority. It is an inanimate object which must defer its very existence to our animate dominion.
“Now,” I reason. “One can argue that the hand is a symbol, suggestive of the authority of our governing body, which has so decreed that the only way for our streets to function is to force everyone to take turns getting from one point to another and to defy said decree can lead to many an unfortunate result. Like getting ticketed or being hit by a car, etc..”
Strange looks at me and the light goes green. We step into the street with faltering steps. “All that talking while you could’ve been walking,” he says, shaking his head.
“And why didn’t you go ahead and cross?”
“Because I wanted to hear your drunken bullshit. It’s only fair. You listened to mine.”
“That’s very sweet of you.”
“You’re the cautious one. I just walk. Those lights and signs are suggestions to me at all times. Not just when I’m drunk. You preach to the choir.”
“We do that all time with each other. Things like this, we fuckin’ agree.”
Lower Greenville, from this distance, seems fairly dead. With this in mind it should also be noted that it’s a Sunday night. We’ve crossed over to the east, northbound traffic side of Munger. There’s a big church to our right. Some mornings homeless folk can be found sleeping in the stairwells and in the grass near the back of the church. On the other side of the street is a quiet park with benches and picnic tables and 90’s style playground (plastic) equipment. During the day, it’s a family friendly gathering place. At night, old men partake in brown bag dinners on the benches. This is Strange’s vocabulary. He admits he has himself been guilty of this (see: routine). After work he'd pick up a forty across the street at the Valero and stop at the park en route to this apartment on Swiss. The one he’d roomed in with Danger.
Munger has turned into Greenville Ave. and we’re coming up on a deserted strip of former bars and clubs that now seem little more than obstructions due to the great difficulty of walking the sidewalks that border them. Ferns, pines and other flora protrude in vivid color, with the slight suggestion of something approaching zest, into the walkway, daring passersby to brave the gauntlet. After all, to get across to Lower Greenville, it’s impossible to avoid. Unless one drives or jaywalks.
We do neither. Nor. At least not normally.
The reason the northbound traffic side is easier is because of the nature of the intersection ahead. Ross and Greenville Aves. both fork at odd angles; Ross peals slightly southeastward while Greenville goes northeast. This leaves a blind spot on the corner of the southbound traffic side of the intersection.
There is a white sign with a crude pictograph representing a peripatetic human of some sort surrounded like a child in a bubble by a red circle with a line (of same color) slicing through the human depiction-- the universal symbol of negation-- on the north side of Ross in front of a small taco stand. No Pedestrian Crossing.
We are now crossing Ross onto Lower Greenville. Passing a tattoo parlor, Strange fumbles with his cell phone. He punches a button and puts it to his ear. He’s trying to reach Danger, I assume.
For some reason I’m thinking of Kundera’s euphoniously titled Unbearable Lightness of Being. Saying it over and over in my head. I like it. It sounds elegiac. Poetic. I’ve never read the damn thing, but the title alone is enough to merit a read one of these days. And I laugh. I’m laughing because the “lightness of being” I am currently experiencing is anything but unbearable. It is euphoric.
The Euphoric Lightness of Being.
I say it aloud as we approach Revolution ‘59. New Edition’s Candy Girl can be heard distinctively as people pass through the doors and onto the sidewalk or vice-versa: from the sidewalk up to the bar. For the longest I had assumed that it was a Jackson 5 tune. The guy outside the door asks us for our ID’s. We oblige and without incident or even comment, are ushered in.
“This is my kind of place,” Strange shouts to me over the music. It’s empty, but revolutionary paraphernalia abounds. The prevalent ubiquity of Ernesto “Che” Guevara-Lynch manifests itself rather forcefully and prosaically; the famous mural made t-shirt design for young pretenders everywhere to express their suburban/urban haute discontent. Hell Yeah (Pimp the System) by Dead Prez kicks in and I begin to nod my head with the beat as M-1 and stic.man begin invoking ‘hoods and cities in much the same manner epic poets of yore would invoke muses.
“I like this song,” I say. “But there’s a reason this place is empty.” I point to the sign.
Revolutionary Specials:
Draughts (Dom.)-- $4.50
Draughts (Foreign)-- $6.50
Bottles-- $3.50
Well drinks-- $4.50
Strange gives the sign a glance and then walks up to the bar. I follow. The tender has an undie mag. splayed out on the counter before him. He’s chewing gum and there’s a sharpened pencil tucked between his head and the soft fold of his right ear. From the looks of the magazine, he’s been giving the models moustaches and shit.
“What’s with the prices?” Strange strains his voice over the music.
“The prices?”
“Yeah. The prices. Who can afford this?”
The guy just looks at him. “I don’t fuckin’ know, man. I don’t set the prices, I just charge them.”
“And what kind of tips do you stand to garner?” I slur.
“Huh?”
“Nothing,” I shout.
The guy looks at me and then at Strange and then points to me. “I’m not serving him. He’s drunk off his ass.” I am not bothering to defend myself. I start for the door. Yes, I’m feeling it. The whiskey. The beer. Taking its toll. “The only thing revolutionary about those specials is how fucking expensive they are!” I shout. Strange grabs me and we head for the exit.
“Yo! Yo Strange!” I blather as we crash out the door together. “What is big, dumb, and less punk than Punky Brewster?”
He laughs. I stumble and point to Steve, who I see across the street. “That gargantuan motherfucker right there! Hey Steve! Steve! Stevie! Hey man, don’t hurt me, alright. I’m afraid of the pain. That, and if you slug me in the gut, I swear I’ll puke all over your pansy ass shoes.”
“He’s a dumb fuck, Steve, but don’t hit him,” Strange says.
“Wait a minute,” I say, really feeling the liquor hit my brain. “Hey Steve, man. I’m sorry, but I was thinking about Kundera earlier and... ever read that guy? Me neither, but I was inspired to write a story. Yeah, it’s called “The Unbearable Stench of Steve the Closeted Homosexual.”
He laughs. “You’re real funny, man. Look, I could beat you six ways to Sunday, but it won’t change the fact that you’re a broke fucking loser that needs to learn some self composure.”
“Composure? Oh, look at this Adam. Look! This fucking guy! Where’d you learn to talk like that Steve? Hey, I got a book for you to read...”
Strange smacks me.
“Shut the fuck up, man!”
I wake up at the bar where Danger works. Steve is smiling at me. I look at my phone. The digital clock in the corner of the tiny glowing screen says 12:53. I groan and ask Steve what happened. He leans in and tells me that he didn’t beat me up or I’d be in a hospital having my stomach pumped to retrieve my own teeth. I rub my head and fake a laugh. I tell him that I’m drunk as shit. He puts a beer in front of me. Says I’m on Danger’s tab.
“Can I get a shot of whiskey after this?”
“Don’t push your luck.”
I sit back in my chair and sip the beer. It’s a light beer of some sort and tastes like shit. Just as I begin to wonder where Strange has gotten off to, I get a text. In typical Strange fashion, it’s brief.
With a cute pnk girl. See ya tomorrow.
Seeing Danger for the first time in a few weeks, all I could think was to ask if he had any white pony. As we’re exchanging pleasantries, I out with it, and he looks at me very seriously and says, “No fucking way would I ever sell to you.” I laugh and thank him for the drinks. He says “no problem, brother. Any time,” and quickly cuts over to a girl he knows. Or doesn’t know.
The MILF looking lady nursing a neon colored cocktail next to me has a cig in her mouth and is looking through her purse for a lighter. I unsteadily flash mine in front of her. She inserts the tip of the cancer stick into the orange part of the flame and makes an audible sucking noise as she takes in the fume. In this process, her cheeks deflate against the bone structure of her face. I ask her if I can have one and she shoves her pack against my elbow, now digging into the counter.
Lighting my cigarette, I attempt to start conversation with her, but she tells me there’s a group waiting for her, and picks up her purse and cocktail and slides off the chair. Fuck it, I say to myself and knock back the rest of the beer.
©Patrick Patterson-Carroll (2009)
