The Life and Times

of Innis E. Coxman

or

Between Shit

and Syphilis

By R. P. Lester

This is a work of fiction.

All depictions of people, locales, and situations are

either a product of the author’s

imagination or are used fictitiously.

Keeping in the spirit of entertainment, please,

nobody get their panties in a bunch over such

a trifle of a book.

Copyright © 2014 by R. P. Lester

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

without the express written permission of the author

except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in the United States of America

Cover by Bespoke Book Covers

First Printing, 2014

ISBN-13: 978-1490461380

ISBN-10: 1490461388

For J. and C.—winners of the endurance race.

Thanks for putting up with me.

I love both of you very much.

“When you reach your mid-thirties,

you tend to slow down.”

Jan the Actress

From Edward Bunker’s Animal Factory

Introduction

Who the Fuck Are You?

Chapter One

Like Father, Like Son

Gunslinger

To Fall From Grace

Coxman’s Log: 11:36 PM

Chapter Two

Those Who Left Me Weeping in the Fetal Position

Black Magic Woman

Lifestyles of the Bitch and Shameless

Love Means Never Having to Say “You’re Crazy”

Coxman’s Log: 7:36 PM

Chapter Three

The Drugs Never Have You (Until You Try to Quit)

The Proof is in the Pudding

Rushin’ Roulette

Coxman’s Log: 5:07 PM

Chapter Four

(Man, I Need a Boost.) Hey You! You’re Fired!

Giving the Dog a Bone

Wade in the Water

Coxman’s Log: 4:00 AM

Chapter Five

To Unnerve and Neglect

Do Unto Others Unless You’re in Charge

Seek and Ye Shall Find

Coxman’s Log: 4:11 PM

Chapter Six

Another Day, Another Dollar (That’s Not Yours)

That’s Your Problem

Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You

Coxman’s Log: 1:29 PM

So Here We Are

Introduction

Who the Fuck Are You?

Let me tell you who the fuck I am.

I’ve been called impossible. Some have labeled me an asshole. Either way, my birth certificate says that you should address me as Innis E. Coxman.

My parents named me Innis because it sounds close to “penis” and my father thought it would be funny. The “E” stands for Emma because deep down I suspect they hated me. As well as being a surname, Coxman proved to be indicative of future talents.

I came howling into the world when I was ripped from my mother’s stomach in an emergency C-section. My head was reportedly too massive to pass through her vagina and my cynicism was giving her abdominal cramps. They did everything but go in with a journeyman plumber to excavate my chubby body. I’m firmly convinced that’s the reason for an egg-shaped skull with scars I can’t explain. Afterward, Mama spent two months in the hospital fighting death from sepsis. I’ve never forgiven myself. Later in life, she confided that she was bewitched by the purple elephants whizzing around her portly frame and that my birth was rather hazy (man, they’d give drugs to anybody for the smallest ailments back in the 70s).

Now granted, there’s not a lot I vividly recall from that day—I was new and searching for the coffeepot. But I distinctly remember a smack on the rump to make sure I wasn’t dead followed by the doctor calling me fat.

By all accounts his exact words were, “Shit! Weigh that boy! He’s a big one!” Not even five seconds into the atmosphere and already I’ve got some quack giving me a complex about my weight as I was compared to a prize tuna.

That little Cuban prick.

For many years I felt I owed him a few slaps for the one he gave me all those moons ago, though my anger subsided when I was older and discovered that he and his family were here illegally.

Jackpot.

I’ll never forget the crying pleas of despair as he, his wife, and their eight children were rudely forced onto a boat for their deportation back to Cuba.

Say hello to Fidel for me, fat boy.

***

I’m from Louisiana. Born and bred. I grew up on everything from gumbo to steak & gravy to microwave pizza to jambalaya to Hot Pockets to chicken & dumplings with cornbread and just about everything in between. It’s an alright place I guess, but I don’t live there anymore. I got out when I had the chance. The only things that state really gave me were a lot of bad memories I’m still trying to shake as I approach my 40s, a ton of hard-earned life-lessons from an assortment of cruel “teachers,” and a drug habit that ran into a double-digit time frame.

I grew up like most kids, I suppose. There were birthday parties I don’t remember, drunken family gatherings that never should’ve happened, random assaults at school, Christmases with gifts scattered about the living room, and bouts of doubt and self-loathing nurtured by low self-esteem. All the goodies that bear rehashing in a monograph of malfunction.

I’ve started this book on four separate occasions, wading three chapters deep on my first attempt, two-and-a-half on the second, nearly flinging myself from a cliff on the third. They were complete wastes of time and paper. Or maybe not, depending on one’s view. After all, were it not for the combined weight of that hellish trinity I may have never been forced to see what I truly needed to convey with these keys: how it really was. Finally, it dawned on me what I had to do.

I threw my hands in the air and said, “Fuck it.”

This is the truth, warts and all, the hurtful and the funny, with the innocent and the guilty grabbing equal billing on the marquee, without embellishment or safety nets for anyone.

Myself included.

I don’t know what will come of this book, but I hope it doesn’t meet the fate of so many printings from the past—having some babyface like Leonardo Dicaprio butchering my beloved memoirs like college coeds in a shitty B-horror movie.

(Shoving my personal feelings aside, you can’t help but admire a man who advocates so strongly for his people. What’s Eating Gilbert Grape is an underrated classic and portraying himself in a role of mental retardation proves that the feeble-minded can accomplish just about anything.)

***

Let me address any curiosity you may have about your author:

I don’t have a doctorate in some field of intellectual prowess, nor do I claim to be a deep thinker crushed by the weight of his own existence. I’ve never even stepped foot in a college classroom. Hell, I barely managed to graduate high school. If it weren’t for a certain teacher passing me in Advanced Math my senior year I’d still be earning my diploma (how you doing, Coach? {How the fuck did I wind up in Advanced Math, anyway?}). I merely have a moderate wealth of life experience coupled with a twisted view of the world we live in.

And I’ve always loved writing and music.

The two women in my life look to me with total adoration, but make no mistake—the pedestal upon which both my woman and daughter have placed me is made of Ritz crackers and will someday crumble into a sea of Cheez Whiz.

I am an utter dick, pure and simple.

My little girl loves me more than makeup and thinks that I am Zeus (who am I to destroy childlike wonder?). I would fight to the death for her and she knows it. Separately and together, she and I have been through more adversity in the last eleven years than I care to share with you. I won’t talk about her too much in this memoir except for when she’s pertinent to the story. I’ll let you in on a smidge, but I’m sure you understand that some things are private. What I will say is that we have a bond that won’t ever be broken and leave it at that.

I have a girlfriend whom I love very much. In addition to putting up with my flaws and pendulous shifts in attitude, she adores me and thinks I walk on water. She’s going to despise me when I tell her it’s plexiglass.

***

I cried when I left my mother for the first time.

She worked as a teacher for thirty years, slugging it out in the ghetto trying to show the neighborhood youth that there were other ways to get ahead in the world besides selling crack and sexual favor. Then, as thanks for her years of guidance and public subjugation, she developed cancer and died only to be buried with a wig in a pink, satin-lined coffin.

That’s all you get to know about her.

So then.....

I cried when I was eighteen and left my mother for the first time. I cried again three years later when she left me for the last time.

***

It seems that getting divorced runs in the Coxman bloodline like plaque psoriasis. I got divorced once to prove I wouldn’t tolerate rudeness, but why speak too much on it now? It would spoil my Lancelot façade and you’ll read all about that in a bit. Besides, I’m not the lead horse in that race. As much as I would love to be the first to thrust my snout over the finish line, my father and sister have five sets apiece.

About my sister: she lived with us briefly when I was a toddler. She’s from my father’s first marriage and we barely know each other. She blossomed in one state while I languished in another. Culling memories for this book has made me see that many events I experienced could’ve been avoided had her tutelage been available. But I’m not laying guilt trips, however it may seem. It truly doesn’t matter anymore. Coming up alone as I did without the coaching of my older sibling caused me to be one stupid, selfish, spoiled motherfucker with very few lasting friendships. But as I sit here in the body of a man recalling the flashbacks of a boy, I was all the better for it, for perhaps I would still be stupid, selfish, and spoiled.

That’s the first time I’ve ever seen or spoken those words and I find them liberating.

The only friend I could ever count on was Fred, my loyal, faithful goat. When I was a small child, my parents and I went on vacation to the Rocky Mountains and discovered him after returning from a hiking trip. He was rubbing his white fur against our camper trying to molt. My father shooed him away, but later that night he tried to break into our RV foraging for asparagus and ass. My mother gave him a can of green beans in an attempt to placate his needs, though he wouldn’t go away. Pops turned a Remington .270 on him and was going to blow his liver into the landscape when Mama dissuaded him. Once my father discovered that Fred wasn’t a pagan god come to kill us, he fell in love with his beard and we took him in as our own.

Fred died when I was in my late 20s, living well beyond the expectancy of goats in the wild. I buried him with aluminum cans and his favorite toy.

I miss him.

***

But I’m getting head from you Shit. Guess now’s as good a time as any to talk about this.

My fingers are fiercely independent, as you can plainly see. My advanced apologies. I’ve done my best to correct any sarcasm displayed by my phalanges, but you’ll still see this occur from time to time. Deal with it.

But I’m getting ahead of you. All will be explained and documented, because this is my story. We’re going at my pace, in my voice.

You’re just along for the ride, good people.

We’re going to have some fun, crack on a few celebrities who have it coming, and show deference to the ones who deserve it. There are going to be some laughs and a few low points, too. Then again, life is full of laughs and low points. It isn’t one big high.

I ought to know. I tried.

Eventually, there’s a gritty comedown.

Stick with me or don’t. The choice is yours. If you bail on me, no hard feelings because you’re not the first. If you’re hardcore, you’ll know it; you’ll be reading until the end. And those are the only readers I really want to share my story with. The ones still standing, blood streaming from the face, asking for more after all the punches have been thrown, wobbling with a stiff middle finger in the air.

Birds of a feather, goddammit.

The truth is, I have no illusions or lofty expectations about my tale. One hundred copies of this book may never see the light of a library, never blaze through a Kindle, or bask under the warm glow of a student’s desk lamp. My tale of redemption and maturity may go as unnoticed as broccoli stalks at a fat camp. And that would truly lick the dog’s balls.

Because hell yes I hope to have these sins being read all over the world. Essentially, that’s what they are. A sweeping collection of my sins, juvenility, and debauchery along with the transgressions of many coconspirators. I hope to sell so many copies of this memoir that I can finally buy Tuna Helper instead of Sea Assistor because the off-brand is bullshit.

No, I’m not a New York Times bestselling author with a Pulitzer to my credit, nor do I have maids dusting off my antique porn collection. But I love books, I love them when they’re based on something true, and I love them best when the characters are flawed. I sure as hell hope you do, too.

***

(Names of individuals have been changed to protect the parties involved to protect the families of these guilty cocksuckers.)

Innis E. Coxman

February, 2014

Chapter One

Like Father, Like Son

A sticky leech named Tyler Durden once said, “Our fathers were our models for God. If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God?”

The first part of this rationale suggests that God is an educated hick with liquor, a cache of firearms, and an open ticket to Vegas for whenever an impromptu remarriage is desired. The second half suggests that He is the sort to trade Mama for a life of sexual promiscuity and untreated internal rage.

It would seem that my “God” is an emotionally retarded trollop.

***

Old Man.

Pop.

Daddy.

El Gran Padre.

The one whose sense of justice is a strip of leather from the Big & Tall section of Sears.

Your father.

He was the mentor for life’s lessons, your guide through troubled waters, and the hand of discipline when he had to be. With a kind word or an evil eye, he could fill you with pride about a good report card or reduce you to a dirty pervert for jerking off in the backseat on a long trip. Whatever your relationship with the man who sired you into this world, you can’t deny he looked out for you.

For you ladies: didn’t he do everything in his power to protect you? Who else was going to drag your cheating husband to the basement where his screams didn't matter?

To all the men: wasn’t he full of fatherly advice? Just think how long it would've taken you to find a stash spot for Fat Fucking Farmgirls.

And when it was time to dole out punishment, who forced you to perfect the two-handed ass shield when he whipped you for photographing your sister’s friends in the shower?

That’s right, your father.

***

So your pops is that impish rogue who shot at the neighbor’s cat. A wild and wacky guy who’s pulled knives on Jehovah’s Witnesses. That scamp who told the cop to blow him instead of “Thanks for the warning.” And the zany character who advised your principal that he was going to skullfuck him if he didn’t revoke your suspension (it’s a distinct possibility that this is all just my father). He’s an individual. A staunch nonconformist. Someone who strayed from the herd a long time ago. A man who follows the beat of his own dysrhythmic drummer no matter where that shitty tune may lead.

With an outlook as soiled as a young man’s bedsheets.

I don’t know about you, but my pops is one of the craziest motherfuckers to ever punch a stranger as they stood in front of a Starbucks doing nothing but drinking their terrible coffee. He’s as looney as Paris Hilton at a job fair. This is the same guy who accused the mailman of fucking his wife when he asked my pops to sign for a package.

I knew that hapless bastard.

He had delivered in our neighborhood for years and I saw him frequently.

Needless to say, from that point on the mailman greeted me with downcast eyes whenever I saw him. If I was, say, in the yard mowing our corner lot with the damn push mower instead of the riding mower because my father said it “built character,” he would turn his head and look the other way when I waved. If I met him at the mailbox for our delivery, he would shove the stack of bills and advertisements in my hand without so much as a grunt.

The sad part was that I didn’t know why any of this had taken place until years later. (His daughter and I dated for a little bit after high school. She told me about it after I’d stuck it in her wucket a few times.)

As my world view expanded, I became embroiled in my own complications with the fairer sex. During these periods of depression, I would sometimes reflect back on my father’s third marriage to my first stepmother and wonder what really happened way back then. One night when I was licking my wounds from a battle with a particularly promiscuous shrew, it struck me like a bolt of lightning:

Considering all that wound up happening with that wife, it was totally possible she was fucking the mailman.

***

Don’t get me wrong, good people, my father’s a decent man. He’s just a hard man. What exemplifies this quality the most are the quirks of his generosity:

If you’re shirtless, he won’t give you the one off his back, but he’ll buy you one and tell you to fuck off, his well of charity having been thoroughly sucked dry.

As a small child riding with him in the car, I’d sometimes look up from the passenger seat and wonder about the scars on his face—the one over his right eye, the one on his left cheek, and a few others that have now melded into the wrinkles of a man approaching his 70s. One morning on the way to school I asked him about them. He said they were from a few fists, some beer bottles in raggedy bars, and the occasional knife. (It’s funny—as I sit here with patches of grey in the beard hiding various facial scars of my own, I’ll be damned if they aren’t from similar run-ins with the crème de la crème of my generation.)

***

My father’s capacity for righting a wrong is notable in the sense that it tends to scare the living shit out of everyone within spitting distance. One of the most vivid memories I have from my childhood is when he exhibited this trait in a monolith department store. For the sake of avoiding a lawsuit, we’ll call the place Balfart.

He’d gotten me a toy for Christmas. I believe it was a fire truck or Tonka truck, something about eight inches long and metal with wheels. It proved to be unsound, though I don’t remember exactly how. He went to right this corporate injustice by returning the item and brought me along. I remember the conversation like it happened yesterday:

“Yes, sir, I got this for my son for Christmas and it’s broken. It came out the box that way. I’d like to return it, please. I have the receipt right here.”

“I’m sorry, sir. This was a sale item and we can’t take returns on sales.”

“Okay. Well, can I exchange it for another one, please? I see you have a stack of ‘em on display over there.” There was a pile of them on a table near the front door. Marked at the regular price, of course.

“I’m sorry, sir. We can’t do an exchange or return on a sale item.”

“So there’s nothing you can do? I can’t even exchange this item for one that’s not a broken piece of shit? I’ll pay you the difference.”

“No, sir. I’m sorry. There’s absolutely nothing I can do.” This was the store manager by the way, so it’s not as if there was a Higher Power to consult.

I saw the blood rush to my father’s face, an early indicator that someone was about to leave through the front door. Whether it was us walking out or the manager sailing through the glass was still up for debate.

My father then placed both hands on either side of this metal hunk of defection and snapped it in two right in front of the manager. Wheels, springs, bits of plastic, and—I reiterate, metal—flew in all directions, hitting the manager in the face and falling on the counter that separated him from certain extinction. My father brushed his hands on his slacks, never breaking eye contact.

“There. Now it’s your problem. Have a good day.” We walked out, got in his truck and left. He never darkened that store’s doorway again.

This was well before the blanket popularity of in-store and outside security cameras. Anybody who wanted to identify him would be forced to limit their eyewitness accounts to “the tall guy wearing a white t-shirt speed-walking to the parking lot with a fat kid running to catch up.” As we were on the main drag in front of the store, we passed a couple of cops pulling into the lot with their lights on. Pops smirked and lit a Winston, then turned up Johnny Cash to provide the soundtrack to his satisfaction.

***

Success for my pops came hard, rough as Russian toilet paper. He literally and figuratively fought for everything he attained, growing up poor in the woods, taking shits in an outhouse, with countless nights of eating nothing but boiled potatoes split between five other siblings. When the war in Vietnam hit home, he was drafted to serve. The singular ability that kept him from being shipped overseas was the fact that he knew how to run a printing press. He was sent to Oklahoma where his skills were put to use, thereby avoiding obliteration by a fifteen-year old Vietnamese kid who’d been fighting since the day he was born.

Think of that: if it hadn’t been for his mechanical abilities, H. F. Coxman would’ve been sent to a foreign country with a farewell and a middle finger to fight in one of the most unpopular wars in modern history. He could’ve died in a jungle, labeled an MIA or a POW, never coming home to an honorable discharge to meet and marry my mother.

And the world would’ve been deprived of the genius you hold in your hands.

I have much respect for my pops, if for no other reason than sludging through and doing it his way. With the help of the G. I. Bill, working at side jobs, my mother’s support, and meeting the right people, he became a college graduate who went on to form his own law practice architectural firm emu farm fuck that. I'm not telling you what he does. Just know that after years of taking orders from others, Pops eventually became the one who could bring the hammer down.

***

Sure, I recall mistakes that were made while I was growing up, but whatever, man. How many mistakes have I made with my kid? (Plenty. That’s the answer.) None of it matters now. It’s all dead snips of a faded past. H. F. Coxman always took care of me, made sure I had what I needed, and was able to provide luxuries like running water and food. But he’s always been just a little batshit left of center, and I couldn’t begin to explain how some of his actions have forced me to reexamine whether or not the man should undergo some sort of forced psychoanalysis.

Well, yes I can explain, actually. I was under the impression that’s what we were doing here.

It’s a rhetorical statement, smartass. Read on.

Gunslinger

I was twelve years old when I saw my father shoot a man. Three times, no less. Sadly, I didn’t have a damn thing to do with it and had to watch from the confines of his Lincoln. He ensured that I was immune from the bedlam, protecting me from the comical 80s fight scene due to unfold by ordering me back to his car so I couldn’t assist with my slingshot.

I’ve never forgiven him for that shit.

***

My parents' relationship had gone the route of so many marital unions (re: fucked like a drunk sorority girl), complete with the money-sucking marriage counselors and attempted vehicular homicide. When they’d finally agreed on a divorce, theirs was no different than any other swan song between two rational adults. It was complete with finger-pointing, empty threats, and both accusing the other of being a big crybaby meanie-mouth poopie pants (I learned early that monetary disagreements can have a profound effect on one’s maturity).

Things took a nosedive when my pops did the most logical thing a businessman with a functional cock can do: he started dicking his secretary. Not that it was a big deal, mind you. He was in the middle of a separation and it’s a natural progression for any man, particularly one of means.

But this lady had a skeleton in her closet. A secret my pops didn’t know about until it was right on top of him and almost too late. Strangely, she held it closer to the vest than that picture of her gargling a nutsack at the office Christmas party (the photo was used as the cover for the company’s captivating pamphlet Sexual Harassment in the Workplace: Ain’t it a Mouthful?). She had an abusive ex-husband named John Sweetbuck who lurked in the shadows, making a mockery of the authority vested in him, and aching for the day he could get his hands around her throat for some all-important reconciliation.

***

Sweetbuck had been a cop since his mid-20s, graduating first in his class, and being the first rookie in his department to earn accommodations. After some time on patrol, his was also the first questionable shooting in over ten years.

It happened behind an Awffle Spouse restaurant as he was receiving payment from a heroin mover. John had planned on killing the guy afterward, a Puerto Rican named Esteban whom he’d arrested for possession a few weeks earlier. He knew you couldn’t stamp out all crime all the time, but he couldn’t abide smack, not after watching his little brother get hooked. It was part of the reason he’d spent five years as a cop. He tolerated the weed and coke dealers, but he attacked heroin suppliers with a vengeance.

He’d demanded a large payoff to insure “misplaced evidence” in Esteban’s case. John knew it was the only money he was ever going to see from him. The envelope no sooner hit the vinyl of his ‘76 Hornet than he produced a semi-auto from his waistband, firing two jacketed .380s into the Puerto Rican’s chest.

The detectives assigned to the shooting didn’t believe Sweetbuck’s version of events. He said the dealer had tailed him, getting out of his car when he arrived and threatening to kill the officer for the arrest. Said he’d been forced to pull his off-duty Walther in self-defense. There were too many holes in his statement, however, the biggest of which was why John had parked behind the restaurant to begin with. Whenever the detectives revisited the point, John maintained that it’d been too crowded in the front lot and he didn’t want his Hornet getting scratched. Restaurant staff said yes, they were always full at dusk. That evening had been no different.

The detectives called bullshit. John’s car was seven years old, its Bayshore Blue paint job already marred from shopping carts and weather. A normal person wouldn’t even care about parking it in a hailstorm, much less the cracked blacktop of an Awffle Spouse. They suspected a ripoff, but they couldn’t find any evidence to contradict John’s story. Besides, the .32 revolver found in Esteban’s hand was hard to refute. (Sweetbuck had grabbed that piece from a multiple-murder scene where he was the first responding officer. It’d been in a victim’s hand unfired. He knew it would come in handy as a throwdown.) The investigation was closed. John was allowed to return to work, though a cloud of suspicion hung over his head like a cabbage fart.

***

Sweetbuck operated more discreetly after that, collecting cash from drug pushers in exchange for the privilege to operate, so long as they never dabbled in H. As part of the arrangement, they’d funnel information about other dealers vying for control. John would pop them to minimize competition and keep the money flowing his way. After a jacket filled with a history of good busts, he became the youngest officer in his city to make detective.

The bump in rank meant he could ditch the alley meetings with low-level runners and demand audiences from the higher-ups. He began shaking hands that brought a change in his financial situation—the frequency of payoffs tapered, but the envelopes got thicker. Complicity in the rackets became so profitable, in fact, that he could afford to hire a live-in maid.

***

Labianna St. Jaxum was originally from Minneapolis, the only daughter of a prominent tax attorney whose specialty was teaching big corporations how to fleece the federal government. He’d funded her first year in the South on the contingency that she get a job or an education once the free ride was over, giving the twenty-year old ample time to weigh her options for the future. She’d been a fuck-up since high school graduation and her father thought maybe this was what she needed—a new life in a new town without old temptations to steal her promise. Instead of seeking employment or a trade school, however, she spent the year barreling through her monthly stipends, purchasing expensive jewelry, full-body massages, clothing from high-end department stores, and trips with pretty boys charged to Daddy’s name.

Labi, as she’d been known her whole life, was a rich man’s daughter, accustomed to nice cars and no-limit credit cards; annual vacations to Europe, Aruba, and tropical isles most people only get to see in books; cashmere sweaters with her initials embroidered in the collar; a walk-in closet full of shoes that hit the ground twice before being discarded; and a chinchilla cardigan given to the Salvation Army after three trips to the dry cleaners.

Four seasons came and went. Labi was shocked when her father actually cut her off.

The easy life became a memory. No more twenty-two karat bangles and necklaces encrusted with baguettes; they went to the pawn shops. No more dinners in French restaurants with unpronounceable names; if she closed her eyes tight enough, the canned chicken and Ramen became an expensive Chinese dish. No more Cristal in bars with plush velour furniture and expectant businessmen hoping to get inside her silk panties; Miller High Life on a Lay-z-Boy with the guitarist from downstairs would have to do. And no more red Mercedes to scoot around in; her father had taken it back, arranging for its delivery to Minneapolis. He wired her enough money to buy an old Toyota, sniffed a line, and called it a day.

***

Having been cut off from the family tit, Labianna realized she needed a job. No skills meant bleak prospects, and the only employment she could secure was at a maid’s service that offered daily, weekly, and live-in contracts to clients.

With the pecking order reversed, Labi got beaked for the first time in her life. Even after several years of mopping marble floors like the ones she’d taken for granted back home, the ‘83 Cavalier was falling apart and her checking account was in the red—overdrafted by two-hundred-and-fifty-eight dollars and thirty-seven cents, to be exact. When the maid service offered her a new position working in the home of a city detective, she willingly accepted, having been served eviction papers on her efficiency apartment the day before. Labi packed what items she couldn’t sell and drove out to an address in an affluent suburb.

***

John’s place was exceptionally nice for a policeman, reminding her of the upbringing in Minnesota. She wouldn’t ask about a client’s financial business in a million years, but she had sense enough to know that your average cop, even a first grade detective, didn’t live in a genuine stacked-stone, three-bedroom home with glazed terracotta floors; a foyer containing two country arm chairs flanking a marble table with hand-carved scrolling on the legs; a living room furnished with couches cloaked in fine Italian leather; paintings with platinum frames hung on red stucco walls, all originals by well-known contemporary artists; a striking white chenille chaise lounge sitting next to a Paris ottoman covered in soft linen; a spotless china set in an antique mahogany cabinet, meticulously displayed on the glass shelves; or a satinwood bedroom suite that couldn’t possibly be more than a year old.

She turned a blind eye: I don’t care if he’s dirty or moonlights in gay porn. A renovated pool house beats the shit out of a cramped Cavalier.

Labi saw that his social life was virtually nil, with John never entertaining friends or coworkers. In the morning, he’d dress in tailored suits and glistening dress shoes, get behind the wheel of his late-model Stingray, and go to work. In the evenings when John came home, his dinner was usually in a brown paper bag that leaked more oil than Labi’s car. Either that, or waiting to be retrieved from the freezer. John would then sit by himself in the living room and watch ESPN for hours on the obnoxiously huge big-screen. He even picked up and washed the dishes before going to bed, leaving little for her to do the next day except some laundry and a bit of dusting.

She noticed something else about his life that got her wheels turning: the fact that he never brought home a woman.

***

Seven months had passed since Labi began working for John and she’d seen him eat nothing but takeout and TV dinners. It was 6:30 on a Friday evening when she made him one of the few dishes she knew how to prepare: Swedish meatballs over egg noodles. Her mother had cooked the same recipe to ensnare her father many years before, and if a bit of native Midwestern cuisine could save her from a life of serfdom, it was the ploy she was going to use.

“Mr. Sweetbuck, I don’t mean to get personal, but why don’t you date? I’ve been working here for the better part of a year and I haven’t seen pictures of anyone special, much less heard you talk of a relationship.”

The question came from the large single-basin in the kitchen, Labi’s arms elbow-deep in brown dish water. The frozen stare from the man at the table said she’d crossed the line. She suddenly envisioned herself jobless for prying into a client’s life, homeless and living in the backseat of her shitbox with weeks of unwashed clothing and photo albums. She’d known the risk in her plan, but decided it was worth it if it restored her to the life she once knew.

After a few tense seconds, John burst into laughter and wiped his mouth with a designer napkin embroidered with roses. He set it to the side of his empty plate and reclined with a full belly, throwing his arm over the back of the chair with a smile. A life below the Mason-Dixon had given him an effectual Southern drawl.

“Well, work takes up most of my time, Miss St. Jaxum. At the end of the day, I just don’t have the energy to spend romancin’ a woman.”

She dropped the grin before looking up. “Well, I was wondering because—and I hope you don’t mind me saying so—it just seems like an awful waste for this beautiful home to have one person living here.” She kept pushing the envelope, hoping that every comment wasn’t the one that turned her to giving handjobs in the park.

Sweetbuck knew what she was doing and didn’t care. He’d been smitten with Labi since the day she arrived. Like many men, soft, blonde curls turned his mind into mush. Labi’s fell gracefully down the sides of her porcelain complexion as she scoured the pots and pans.

“I know what ya mean. I’ve often thought the same thang, but most of the women I meet are put off by my work. The thought of datin’ someone who may or may not come home shies ‘em away. They don’t wanna get attached. I gave up lookin’ for someone a long time ago.”

“Well, I understand that, Mr. Sweetbuck, but that’s what you do. You protect people, catch the bad guys, and seek justice for those who need it. You’re an everyday hero! Forgive me for saying, but I think a lot of women would be proud to have a man who spends his days keeping the rest of us safe.” She brushed the sweaty locks from her face, marveling at the weight of her own bullshit.

John could smell the pile from the dining room. The scent enchanted him. “Thank you, Miss St. Jaxum. I appreciate the compliment. I just wish more women felt that way. If I could find the right person, maybe I’d have somebody to share all this with.”

She smiled sweetly. “Please, as long as I’ve been here, I don’t think it would be unprofessional for you to call me Labi, Mr. Sweetbuck.”

“Only if ya call me John.”

Hook, line and sinker.

***

John and Labi were married four months later. Within a few weeks it was revealed why there were no women sniffing around: the smallest disagreements brought smacks across her pretty face.

It was a relatively small town. When the abuse began, Labi asked around about him, something she didn’t think to do before the wedding because there’d been no reason to. If she had, she would’ve uncovered that he was a woman-beating bastard who’d avoided arrest due to his job. His past loves said he’d threatened to ruin their lives, or worse, if they opened their mouths.

In the first year, he sent her to two different hospitals on five separate occasions with broken ribs and fractured orbital sockets. Her stories about uncooperative stairs and doors that swung by themselves were becoming old hat to emergency room staff. Every time she arrived, there were scars from injuries she hadn’t reported.

She formulated a plan to leave Sweetbuck. Her only concern was John locating her through the maid service. In between split lips and caved cheek bones, she’d found time to take a computer course twice a week in the evenings. John’s possessive nature was such that she had to lie concerning her whereabouts. One of the few friends he let her have was in college at the time, providing Labi a perfect alibi; acting as her “study” partner, she used those nights to cover her time spent in class. She completed the course and left him one day while he was at work.

Within a month, she was hired at my father’s firm. After she and Sweetbuck divorced, she began seeing Pops during my parents’ separation. She never told him about John, the abuse, none of it. One night, John tried to terrorize my father the same way he’d done with women for years. Thing is, though, if you try to fuck my pops, he’s the kind to fuck back.

Let me weave you a tale of three clowns who tried to take out Tommy Two-Guns, as my father signs his tax returns because Hardwang Fuckemall Coxman takes too long to write.....

***

My pops was living in an apartment across town from the house that was no longer his my mother’s place while they fought over extremely important community property. And me, when time allowed. It was summer and I’d gone to spend a few weeks with him. He and Labi were living together, and the three of us had gone to see John Candy’s hilarious badge of honor The Great Outdoors. It was 9 PM when we arrived back at his complex. All I wanted to do was sit on my pudgy ass and watch TV, my usual form of amusement after leaving a movie theater. Little did I know the night’s entertainment had yet to begin.

Swooping into the lot, we saw a white Crown Victoria with tinted windows in my father’s assigned spot. It gleamed from the lamp post in the parking island. The darkened rear glass had a bumper sticker reading “Don’t Be a Litterbug” on the bottom of the passenger side. I could see Pops’ ears growing red-hot from my position in the back seat. We sat at an angle as he voiced reasonable opposition toward the unauthorized vehicle.

“What in the fuck is that cocksucker doing in my space? I pay a lotta money for this place and I’ll be damned if some asshole is going to come and park in my space!”

“Oh, H. F., just park somewhere else. They’re probably visiting somebody in another apartment and didn’t know about the assigned spots. It’ll be gone tonight or in the morning.”

“I don’t give a shit, Labi. The signs with ‘Tenant Parking’ written on ‘em should’ve been reason enough for this idiot to not park in an assigned space.” My father squinted and looked hard at the vehicle. “Kinda looks like a detective’s car.”

I asked if I could slash their tires with the lock-blade I’d gotten for my birthday. The way I saw it, how better to show an impolite toolbag that you disagree with his actions? The worst outcome would be the owner seeing me destroy his property and I’d get to practice my thrust and parry before Pops handed him his balls. I didn’t see a downside.

I bandied about the backseat like I did when I’d seen my first skin flick, thrilled with the possibility of finally getting to inaugurate my new knife. My dreams of juvenile mischief were foiled when Pops gave an emphatic “No” and shot me the evil eye.

Labianna neglected to mention the initials “U” and “P” she’d seen on the license plate. (I don’t know about other cities, but where I’m from, “U. P.” on the plates mean “Undercover Police.” Kind of negates the whole point of driving an unmarked fucking police car, if you ask me.)

My father parked in another space and we began walking to his building. We were almost to the front lobby when three visibly drunk men stumbled out. They made a beeline straight for us. All three were wearing jeans and those stupid Lacoste shirts with the alligator on the left breast.

“John! What are you doing here?!" It was Sweetbuck and two other detectives smelling of trouble and cheap liquor. Labi was caught off guard by her ex-husband and went pale.

John was as jubilant as a mayor in a crackhouse. “Heeeey, Labi! Comin’ home from an evenin’ on the town, eh? We didn’t want anythang important. Just came by to say hi!” He winked at my father, pointing at Labianna’s crotch. “Careful with those lips, Hardwang. They can get as ripe as a wet gym sock!”

Pops glared at her. “Labi, who the fuck is this?”

She looked at the ground like a whipped dog. “H. F., this is my ex-husband, John Sweetbuck. He’s a detective for the city. That’s his car parked in your space.” My father’s paws tightened at the deception. If he’d known Labi had a psychotic ex who doubled as a police officer, he would’ve never gotten involved.

“Yeah! I heard you were datin’ somebody, Labi. Thought I’d come check out the new man.” John turned to my father. “How ya doin’, Hardwang? Good to finally meet ya! Hope ya don’t mind, but I ran your name and got your address. I wanted to come over and congratulate ya on such a fine catch. Ya shouldn’t put your name on your space, though. Makes it easy for anyone to find out which one’s yours!”

Without missing a beat, “Well, if I’d known it was gonna be you parking there, John, I’da rolled out the red asscheeks for ya to kiss.” He turned to me. “Innis, go sit in the car.” I didn't argue with him. He had a weird sparkle in his eye and the vein in the middle of his forehead was thumping. I went to the Lincoln and rolled down the window. The only thing I could do was watch from the back seat as John continued to taunt the both of them. His friends laughed from the sidelines.

Out of nowhere, John threw a sluggish haymaker that still makes me embarrassed for him to this day. The Thunderbird had made him as nimble as a paraplegic in a sex swing. My father ducked, letting his drunken bodyweight fall him to the ground like a bag of failure. One of John’s cop buddies heffalumped his fat ass over to the melee and tried to avenge his friend’s dignity. Grabbing a heavy tree limb off the ground, he took a swing at my pops and missed. He swung again, and this time Pops caught the limb and ripped it out of his hands. He beat Jabba until his sputtering pleas for mercy were silent. As the man was on his right side, I watched him lift his arm in protest, right before I heard the crack of a newly fractured skull. Pops turned his attention to the third guy who stood with an open mouth and heavy underwear. He invited him to the party with a motion of his hands, but the third cop wisely tucked his nuts between his cheeks and sprinted into the night.

It was as if Bruce Lee had fought two invalids.

By this time, John was back on his feet and hurling anti-Semitic slurs at Pops and Labi with all the wit you’d expect from a lush. “What ya got there, hose nose? Where’s your Star of David? ‘The Star of David.’ Ha! More like the Star of Dick! You money grubbin’ bastards! How did it feel when your people nailed Joseph to the cross, motherfucker?!”

Aside from being a poor theologian, John’s insults had little effect on either one of them; Pops is a Baptist and Labi was a Godless tramp.

No matter. John was about to end them both with his off-duty pistol. He bent to retrieve a revolver from his boot.

Glee flashed across my father’s face as he instinctively reached for his waistband.

***

John saw a bright FLASH! out of the corner of his eye. He was whisked back to the Awffle Spouse parking lot, reliving the incident in vivid detail. This time, it was different—the dealer had pulled a gun first. John felt he was in a floating state, caught somewhere between the living world and the land of the dead. He saw Esteban appearing before him, coming to collect his soul on the Devil’s behalf.

In the middle of his reverie, there was another bright FLASH! exploding in his face. This time, John was certain it was his karma, reliving the murder of a man for a fistful of tainted money. The long-dead Puerto Rican had returned in the black cloth of the damned to drag Sweetbuck to his personal flames. He knew what horrors awaited him for all the evil he’d done—the killing of an unarmed man, accepting graft from drug dealers to squash their rivals, playing Judas to the oaths he’d sworn to live by. Deeds that bought an eternity of being ripped apart by winged devils.

***

No, it wasn’t any of that shit. It was only Pops firing two rounds from his .357 snub. John’s thoughts of a cosmic payback were just that—delusions from a lead-induced blackout.

I watched with wide eyes as John got to his feet, fighting through the pain of two unforeseen holes in the gut. He vomited the rotgut alcohol down the front of his designer shirt. The bile splashed over his chest and the bullet wounds in his stomach. His gator probably drowned. As he righted himself and craned his nose upward, he caught the scent of barbecue. Maybe burgers. Maybe t-bone steaks roasting over glowing embers of freshly scattered maple chips from a hibachi on a tenant’s back patio.

But again, no. It was his own flesh sizzling from the double-tap of a well-aimed Smith & Wesson.

As John stood drenched in blood and partially-digested Thunderbird, my father gently talked some sense into him. “Goddammit, you crooked sonofabitch! Stay down! You’re hurt! You’re hurt bad! I don’t wanna kill your stupid ass, but I’ll fill you full of holes, motherfucker!”

John staggered toward Pops with a little bit of fight left in him, teetering like an extra from an underfunded zombie movie. When he was a few feet away, he leaped!

My father fired a shot to the belly that knocked him to the grass with a sickening thud.

Seeing that it was over, Pops stuck his weapon in the right hip of his waistband. He asked Labianna for her compact. She was stiff from the action that had taken place in front of her and didn’t move.

“Labi! Gimme your fuckin’ mirror!” My father’s booming voice snapped her out of it and she complied. Once he had it, he walked over to John and held the mirror under his nose. It turned foggy with the air of bad judgment. He reached down to John’s ankle holster and took out his .38, jamming it in his pants next to his .357.

Tommy Two-Guns had reigned victorious.

Pops stood up with flair in his six-four frame. He was The Duke. He was Jack Palance. He was Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and Billy the Kid all rolled into one modern day badass. He reached into his front shirt pocket. Grabbed a pack of Winston Lights and pulled one out with his teeth. He struck a match, lit it, and took a drag. With the exhaling breath, he looked down at John to sum up the entire fiasco:

“Yep, life’s rough! For stupid people it’s even rougher!”

***

Some meddling fucking neighbor A good Samaritan had called nine-one-one after the first shot. Emergency officials arrived to find a holey John and a bloody hunk of shit unconscious on the ground. Unable to fathom why John kept screaming about an Awffle Spouse parking lot, the paramedics shrugged and tossed them both in the ambulance. They later testified in court that he’d admitted to murdering some drug dealer through his ravings in the back of their rig.

After a few questions as to what happened, the police caught up with the third gentleman a few blocks away at a strip club called The Sticky Stick. They found him in the men’s room washing out his boxer shorts. When he was Mirandized, he confessed to their half-baked plan of overtaking my pops at his apartment.

Sweetbuck and Goodyear survived their injuries and the trio were charged with aggravated assault, conspiracy, and stalking. Pops had a friend on the department who told him that Internal Affairs had been on to John for over a year. They’d been building a case against him that included wiretaps, video recordings, and surveillance photos. This incident was the final nail in his coffin. The three detectives were stripped of their badges as well as their reputations. John’s two cohorts received sentences for their role in the ambush. John shouldered those allegations plus the malfeasance charges and the murder indictment for slaying the Puerto Rican six years earlier.

In one of the most freakishly appropriate twists of fate to ever fall in someone’s lap, John was sent to the same state penitentiary as Esteban’s brother. The last anyone heard of Sweetbuck, he was lovingly known as “Sweet Butt” in the cell blocks.

My father was cleared of any wrongdoing the night of the attack. In an off-the-record conversation with the district attorney, he was admonished for not just killing all three when he had the chance.

Pops tried to put the situation behind him and go on with life at the apartments. It proved to be a challenge. His reputation for bloodlust circulated the complex like crabs on a porn shoot. Some offers for murder contracts from unhappy wives played on his need for violence and he was forced to move out, lest he succumb to temptation.

But to this day, you can hear the legend of Hardwang Fuckemall Coxman echo through the breezeways like late-night gunfire.

***

After my parents divorced and the media circus died down, Pops and Labi were married, despite the trickery over her past. Against all odds, they lived happily together, until the day came when she developed an affliction known to husbands the world over as cheating-bitchitis.

It’s a disease that advances slowly in the female, usually visible to everyone around her male except him. It begins with subtle hints to the men she sees on a daily basis, letting them know her libido is hot and ready for action. In Labi’s case, the progression was no different.

The first to notice any symptoms was the mailman.

To Fall From Grace

The worst beating I ever got from my father was the one I made him work for. It involved a few laps around the house with a chase through the neighborhood. What I had done was deplorable and if he wanted to give me that ass whipping, he was going to earn it, by God. Hurdling fences, skirting a double-dutch mob, and punting a Schnauzer from my path were key to avoiding capture. But it wasn’t a question of if I was getting pinched, just when. I held my own for many blocks but eventually fell victim to his tenacity.

Now to be fair, I deserved stripes on my ass for what I did; my hatred of another boy at school had been festering for ages and a day of reckoning was finally upon him. And while we can hypothesize for eons about who was really to blame—me or the other guy—it doesn’t matter anymore. We’re mature adults who've grown beyond petty tripe. It’s now just an amusing anecdote from my junior year of high school that I can whimsically reflect upon when I’ve had too much to drink.

But the more I write about this, the more I can safely say that it was all Douglas Kuntinflapp’s fault.

***

Douglas Kuntinflapp was class president, star pitcher, captain of the football team, and all-around cockhole to anyone sans uterus. If he couldn’t give you a finger-bang you were beaten and bullied, hence the girls adored him while the boys prayed for a meteor spearing his heart. A blonde, blue-eyed sadist who never wore the same shirt twice, the girls succumbed to his charm and fawned over his Aryan good looks. The faculty followed suit; he was given quarter for failed exams and missing homework on a daily basis. The administration saw it as a small price for multiple state championships.

Coming from a privileged background, Douglas was used to preferential treatment. His father was a successful criminal attorney who specialized in high-profile cases, traversing the country and defending CEOs and drug lords alike. Mother was a member of The Junior League whose prescription overdoses were handled by an on-call physician.

Douglas’ athletic prowess and economic status bought him impunity for every boy he pummeled in gym class. His cackle could be heard all the way to the locker room. He was a slug of many talents, the most adorable of which was finding your deepest vulnerability and taunting you with it. In my case, it was my parents’ divorce. Douglas had been vexing me ever since he’d found out about it my freshmen year. (You would think the hilarity of my broken home would’ve waned over the intermittent two years. You’d think HAHAHA! wrong.)

He’d go around chanting witty insults like a third grader: “Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah! Your parents are divorced! Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah…..(?)…..they’re not to-ge-ther!” Eventually his atrocious rhyming pissed me off more than anything.

It was decided amongst a ring of math nerds that I would quarterback Douglas’ demise. I spent weeks plotting his undoing and whittled it down to a few possibilities:

There was the go-to “bucket of sewage sitting on a slightly open door waiting for Douglas to enter,” the standard “kick to the balls when Douglas rounded a corner,” or my personal favorite, “drag Douglas to the locker room with a plastic bag taped over his head and slam his dick with a toilet lid.”

Any one has proven effective in academia for centuries.

Ruination of this prick required a different sort of blow, however, one that would permanently teach him respect. He had been a stain on the mattress for way too long and it was time to scrub him clean. In the end, his chosen flop was easy to formulate, for I had a finger on the pulse of his perversions.

I knew that Douglas was a peeping Tom.

***

Lunchtime found Douglas on his perch. There was a women's bathroom located by the basketball courts nestled in a corner of school property. A thicket of blackberry bushes behind the structure had made it an unappealing hangout for the masses.

This was his theater.

Access to the ladder was easy. He had caught Mrs. Suckston hoovering the janitor a few weeks prior and was given a key to the work closets in exchange for silence (my high school was ran by Pee Wee Herman).

The bathrooms were built like the ones you’d find at a camp or an interstate rest stop. The wall stopped a few inches short of the ceiling and he peered over the edge. Leering at the girls from atop his metal stilts, Douglas unbuckled his jeans and let them fall to his knees. The faint whimpers of pleasure soon eeked from his throat as he fingered his skinflute, feverishly pumping for that sticky payoff. His load was coming any time now, and the wetter a girl’s fart, the closer his eruption:

Almost there.....Oh God.....yes.....yes!.....FUUUUUCK!

I jettisoned from my hiding spot in the bushes, ramming the ladder like a bull and slamming Douglas into the wall so hard they both ricocheted downward in a majestic arch. He crash-landed and cried like a sex offender on his first night in jail, squealing as his constituency raced over from the main building to see their president with his pants around his ankles. Murmurs began circulating about his appearance as cheerleaders from the bathroom circled him like buzzards:

“What were you doing here, Douglas?”

“Why were you on top of that ladder, Douglas?”

“Why is your dick out of your pants, Douglas?!!”

Good luck explaining that, cocksmoker.

Having tied a knot in his beatfest, I fired up a Newport and began trekking to the main building. That’s when I heard a teacher scream the words that stopped me in my tracks:

“Oh my God! He cut his finger off!”

I spun around and told that bitch that liars go to Hell. I didn’t want to believe her. But her statement was confirmed when I saw blood pouring from the stump where his finger used to live.

This wasn’t in my blueprints.

A fucking psychic couldn’t have seen it coming: Douglas fell in such harmony that he was still clutching a ladder leg with his right hand. It snapped shut when he landed and cut off his goddamn pinky finger like a deli slicer! Cheerleaders passed out from the sight of his lone digit on the ground. My exhilaration plummeted with his erection. He flopped with agony as someone rushed to the principal’s office to call for an ambulance.

And my father.

***

I dove through the Vadgastank’s rose bushes with military precision. The thorns were of minor irritation, though their new razor wire ripped into my flesh like a scythe. Shaking free of the snags, I shot up and jerked my head this way and that. A heavy presence loomed on my neck. I slowly turned around expecting the hands of madness to encircle me.

It was my own shadow.

I gathered my nerves and blurred through Mrs. Vadgastank’s backyard, jumping her topless body as she tanned by the pool. Whizzing over her busty figure, I proffered sexy salutations:

“Hello, Saggy Tits!” The plastic surgeon hadn't done shit for those milkflaps.

There was no time to lose. My life hung in the balance and the string was unraveling.

What’s gonna happen to my weed when I die? Kind bud is expensive. I can't just let that shit go to was-

I couldn't afford to think about that. I had to keep running.

Running kept me alive.

Running kept me safe.

The Hellhound was close at hand.

***

My father picked me up from school after getting the phone call he’d always dreamed of—the one informing him that I was responsible for maiming another student and that the heft of my actions had failed to impress.

A pervert got his finger amputated as he spied on chicks during the most private activity known to man. I couldn’t even shit concern, much less fake it.

Of course, Pops couldn’t grasp this logic. He couldn't view my courageous act for what it was: a heroic gesture that stifled a loose sexual cannon and quenched my thirst for vengeance. In his mind, I’d hoisted unprovoked violence on another human being.

He parked his new Cadillac in the driveway and killed the engine. We shared an uneasy quiet as the shiny dice dangling from his rearview mirror shot dancing beams of light on the upholstery. I’d always wondered what a “deafening silence” sounded like. I found it to be thunderous.

After a few pensive moments, he turned to me and said in a guttural voice, “Just run.”

Who was I to argue with such sound advice?

***

Pops was gaining as I hauled ass toward the Quieftons’ gazebo. Standing in their pagoda bent over with my hands on my knees, I panted and marveled at his endurance.

"Motherfucker!" I gasped out loud. "How can a three-hundred-pound smoker move so fast?!" It seemed that I had underestimated him.

As I cowered in the Quieftons’ summer house, I quickly tallied my odds and concocted a plausible theorem: Pops was older and more accepting of failure, whereas I was young and motivated to lose my virginity someday.

Survival was possible.

I heard him approaching with quaking steps and hurled over the railing, straight into Mr. Quiefton’s attack dogs that he used in his security business. My Adidas hit the dirt and I looked up to find four hungry Rottweilers staring back at me in a dog pen only twenty feet in diameter. At least I think that was the breed. The shoulder width and muscle structure gave the appearance of two-thirds Rottweiler and one-thirds holy shiiiiiiiit! Their naps had been interrupted, the rumbles coming from their throats revealing immense displeasure with my intrusion. Had I known there were bloodthirsty canines blocking my escape route, I would’ve let my father’s insanity take its course. They growled and bared fangs, waiting for me to run so they could snack on my nuts. Giving up seemed like my only option. I reconciled myself to becoming Alpo.

Just when I felt the last rays of my sun sinking below the treeline forever, I spotted a rolled-up newspaper a couple of feet from me that’d been hurled into their backyard because the paperboy threw like a bitch. I knelt down and snatched it up, hoping to have some defense when the land sharks pounced.

I quickly discovered that those “ferocious attack dogs” Mr. Quiefton had bragged about for so many years were a bunch of dyed-in-the-wool pussies, man.

Sometime after this incident, I found out that Mr. Quiefton had trained them with something as unsophisticated as Rolling Stone magazine. They couldn’t tell the difference between that and an ordinary newspaper. They instantly heeled, bowing their enormous heads to the soil, whimpering and lying on their bellies with total submission. After the realization that I wasn’t going to die a humiliating death—not right then anyway—I crawfished toward the gate with the newsrag still clutched in my sweaty hand. I flipped the latch on the other side, tiptoeing across the threshold while keeping my bulging eyes focused on them, locking it when I was safe.

***

I emerged from Mrs. Quiefton’s trimmed hedges and viewed my surroundings like a paranoid squirrel. Their house was a couple blocks over from ours. I didn’t see my father’s frothing chops anywhere. The only notable activities were some children playing basketball in a driveway across the street, and Walford, the twelve-year old special kid, pissing on a fire hydrant. Everything appeared to be normal.

Racking my brain for a plan, I concluded that the best course of action was to give Pops some time to process the day’s information.

My plan necessitated that I avoid him like the plague.

I decided to double back and grab my bike that I’d bypassed during my dash from the Caddy. I had left it lying in our backyard due to the not-insignificant issue of Pops trying to tear me a new asshole. As I walked, I stayed ever-vigilant for an angry wad of malice and navy slacks to come lunging at me from the bushes of a neighbor’s front yard. The fact I was in the middle of the street in broad daylight didn’t make me feel any safer.

Pops will strangle you on the pitcher’s mound of Yankee Stadium during the World Series. He doesn’t give a shit.

I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary when I approached our front lawn. Standing on the street by the mailbox, I viewed the telltale signs of a man in the throes of acute psychosis. Pops was more pissed at me than I’d realized; he’d left behind his briefcase and fedora.

He never went anywhere without those.

I crept to the gate flanking the left side of our house. Nothing in the backyard except our brick storage shed and Fred asleep on his air mattress. I picked up my Beach Cruiser, rolling the balloon tires along the grass back to the front yard, peeking around the corner as I did so.

Still, nothing.

I heard birds chirping, kids laughing, and the groans of Mrs. Vadgastank’s husband from next door as she gave him a blowjob beside the pool. Typical, run-of-the-mill stuff. I gradually began to relax, a warm sense of tranquility enveloping me like fat titties from a hot shower. Walking through our manicured lawn to the street, I pondered my father’s reaction. A piece of me began to see his side of things.

“I think it’s going to be okay,” I said out loud. “Pops just needs to let his anger subside. After all, how would I feel if I had gotten a phone call like that about my kid? He was shocked. That’s it.”

The hunt was over. My life was not going to be snuffed out like a Pall Mall in a smoky bar. I was going to live and occasionally have women deny my sexual advances. Everything was looking up.

I came to the curb and placed two wheels on the street. Grinning with confidence, I began pedaling to my friend Robbie's house on the other side of the neighborhood. I wanted to smoke a bowl and I wasn’t going inside to retrieve my stash. Pops could’ve been in the living room eating a plate of Valium with a side of bottle. If you think I was going to fuck up that tranquilizer, well you’re just-

CRAAAAAAAAAAASH!

See? This is why I don’t get happy about shit prematurely.

***

Pops exploded through the wooden fence on the four-wheeler we kept in the brick shed, screaming like a madman with his eyes billowing out of his skull and holding a riding crop. Splintered pickets blew everywhere as he raced toward me like a rabid jockey on his metal steed.

Where in the hell he got a riding crop still eludes me to this day.

His slacks were still in place, but he was wearing only a white undershirt, his pinstripe dress shirt having been removed and wrapped around his head like a nomad’s turban in the Mojave. Before he reached the curb, he made a sharp turn into the middle of the yard and cut donuts the size of crop circles, screaming, “WOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!” so loud I could hear it over the engine.

I stood slack-jawed, straddling my bike and unable to discern if what I was seeing was real or the result of way too much LSD the week before. My father solved this riddle by yelling, “YOU BETTER RUN, ASSHOLE! THAT SICK FUCK’S MOTHER JUST CALLED AND TOLD ME I’M RESPONSIBLE FOR THE HOSPITAL BILL, OR HIS FATHER’S GONNA SUE! YOU BETTER CARRY YO’ ASS WHILE YOU STILL HAVE AN ASS TO CARRY! WOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”

It was like a scene from Full House if Bob Saget had been a deranged psychopath.

I took off down the street as neighbors watched from their doorsteps, nodding to themselves, saying, “Yep, he’s finally going to kill him.”

Hearing Pops rev the engine made me pedal faster than I ever had before, pumping my legs like pistons in a well-oiled machine. He released the brake and shot out of the yard, laughing sadistically as he jumped the curb and tore into the street with total disregard for the car he’d ran off the road. He was in hot pursuit. My heart was beating like a meth head who’d lost his straw. Occasionally, he'd speed up and close the distance between us, forcing me to regret that time I passed on helping Mrs. Vadgastank trim her “rug.”

Pops would accelerate his chariot, blowing the hot winds of death on my neck with devilish delight, only to retreat at the last instant. He was toying with me in the same way jaguars toy with their antelope, mocking me, throwing his head back in maniacal laughter when the front winch ground against my tire with a nauseating eeeezzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

We lapped around the neighborhood. Whenever I thought I’d shaken him, he would resume his previous position five feet from my rear tire. We'd ridden passed Robbie's house twice. On the third revolution, he was standing outside shouting words of encouragement:

“Ditch the bike, Innis! Let him graze you! He just wants to cripple you, not kill you!” (I ask you, good people, what kind of fucking advice was that?)

At least Robbie was rooting for me. Every time I passed Walford, he just stood there with a stupid look on his face and his retarded dick in his hand. That unhelpful little bastard!

It became evident that this would be a homicide if I continued relying on a Beach Cruiser for survival; I was on a horse carriage and Pops was driving a rocket. Had I made him battle for that beating anymore, my life would surely be in question. I began to entertain Robbie’s advice of doing a tuck-and-roll. Pops would beat me unrecognizable, but at that point, anything was better than dying without life’s milestones under my belt.

I flinched as I envisioned being killed without ever fishing inside of a girl’s vagina for the elusive “lost condom.” That’s an induction to manhood that every boy needs and I was not going to be stripped of it.

As we came to the same intersection for the fourth time at breakneck speed, I decided to lay the bike down and take my punishment. My legs were turning to rubber. No matter how close to empty the gas tank was in the ATV, it was more than enough to ensnare me. I swiveled my head ninety degrees to the right to catch a glimpse of him out of my peripheral vision and gauge the distance between us-

TWANG-ANG-ANG-ANG-ANG-ANG-ANG!!!

Robbie told me he was going to steal that thing and mount it on his bedroom wall. Obviously, he never got around to it.

I was so preoccupied with surrender that I didn’t see the stop sign. It deflected my watermelon head and I landed in the corner of a neighbor’s yard with a loud doomth! There was so much blood it looked like I’d used an old maxi pad as a washcloth.

Fighting through the tears and mucus was hard enough.

Fighting Pops was out of the question.

I gave up, lying there vulnerable, waiting for retribution while mumbling profanity and telling Death to go fuck himself. My snazzy Beach Cruiser rolled another twenty yards on its own with Casper at the handlebars, hitting the curb in front of a driveway and finally toppling over with a mournful clank.

A pitiful reminder of the freedom that almost was.

As I laid there looking up at the blue sky for what I thought was the last time, I made my peace with God. Then a dove flew overhead and shit in my eye. It’s inconsequential to the story, really, but I felt you should know because fuck me.

My father parked next to me with the tail pipe aimed at my face. I inhaled the poisonous fumes. For a moment, I thought he was going to kill me painlessly with carbon monoxide. But alas, that would deliver no joy to his mania. My point of view from the grass put him upside down as he lumbered toward me. Though my vision was cloudy from defeat and body fluids, I could see him shaking his head shamefully as he raised his leather belt with the brass-knuckle buckle. I was beginning to lose consciousness from my meeting with the stop sign. Everything was fading. Before it went dark, I heard my father’s deep roar:

“You should’ve slammed his dick with a toilet lid like I taught you, Innis!”

***

I awoke on my stomach and thought I was in Hell.

It was pitch black all around. Not a shred of light was to be seen. The demonic tones of Billy Ocean screeching “Caribbean Queen” in the recesses of some fiery pit made me brace for the sting of pitchforks in my scrote from horned little monsters. I relaxed when I realized it was just Labianna’s horrible music emanating from another room. I was lying on my own bed.

The pain from getting smashed in the face with a road sign had diminished, but there was still an uncomfortable sensation pulsating through me. I tried to move and sonofaBITCH!! No, no moving. Groggily, I felt around and realized that the blazing spasms surging over my body originated from my ass. I placed my hands on my backside and felt wetness.

“Ah! You’re awake. I didn’t know if you were dead or not.”

My father had cracked open the door to my room. He was checking to see if I was alive. When he saw me shifting around in the semi-dark, he flipped on the overhead light. When he did, I looked in the dresser mirror that stood across from my bed. In the reflection, I could see my ass wrapped with coarse bandaging all the way to mid-thigh. Blood was seeping through. My cheeks were staring at me scornfully. The jeans were off and the bandages conformed to their dimpled consistency. They looked like two misshapen Jell-O molds.

Pops leaned against the door jamb. “Well, I’m glad you’re alive, at least. I called Douglas’ parents, spoke to ‘em about everything. They decided not to press any charges once they realized their kid was watching baldies in the bathroom. His father seemed to realize that if they pushed the issue, the whole story would come out as to why Douglas was on that ladder in the first place. They agreed to take care of the medical bills if we agreed to keep our mouths shut about it.” His eyes drilled into mine. “You do want to keep this between us, don’t you, Innis?”

I couldn’t crane my head up anymore due to the unspeakable pain. I replied with my face muffled in the bedspread. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. Now that all that talk of ‘suing’ is over, I don’t have to worry about this affecting me. As for you, I’m not gonna punish you anymore. I figure beating you bloody and getting knocked unconscious by a stop sign is enough. Okay, Son?”

Muffling, “Okay, Pops. And, you know, thanks for not killing me and stuff. I really appreciate it.”

He gave a laugh from somewhere deep in his throat and walked over to the bed, rumpling my hair as I laid in panging misery. I could tell he wanted to be sentimental but was looking for the right words. He spoke straight from the heart.

“Aw hell, Innis. I still wonder if you’re mine sometimes.”

Coxman’s Log: 11:36 PM

“Mrs. Hamfist! Oh, Mrs. Hamfist!”

God—not this product of cheap wine again. “Yes, Innis?”

“Can I go to the bathroom, please? I promise I’ll leave the lotion this time.”

“Only if you can say the alphabet, Innis.”

“Yes, ma’am: A, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o.....q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, and z. How’s that, Mrs. Hamfist?”

“You forgot the ‘p,’ Innis.”

“No I didn’t. It ran down my leg ‘cause you made me say the alphabet first, Hagatha.”

“Well! I never! You march straight to Sister Virginia Lee for telling an off-color joke to a teacher!”

Great. Another trip to the principal.

I grabbed my shit and started out for Sister Virgeneral Lee’s office.

Again.

When I got to the door, I turned and asked, “Mrs. Hamfist, what the fuck does ‘off-color’ mean, anyway?”

After a heated conversation between the nuns and my parents, it was mutually decided that I would leave Our Lady of Grope and Pucker to pursue my instruction in the wellspring of public education.

***

When my kid came home today, she said that her Science teacher had given her a failing grade on a homework assignment. I inquired about her teacher’s name as I had misplaced it in my font of memory banks.

“It’s a man named Chunky Hamfist. He looked at my last name and asked who my daddy is. He said he remembers you from when y’all went to school together a long time ago. Then he frowned and gave me a zero on my homework. Did something happen with you two, Daddy? Huh? Did it? Did it?”

I don’t even live in Louisiana anymore, as I’ve stated.

What are the odds that Mrs. Hamfist’s son not only became a teacher, but lives in the same state we do, in the same area code, the same city, works at the same school my child attends, and—on top of all that shit—winds up as her fucking Science instructor?.....

It’s going to be a long year.

Chapter Two

Those Who Left Me Weeping

in the Fetal Position

Something tells me you have a penis or a vagina. If you have both, that’s fine. I’m not here to judge or call you a drain on our nation’s medical resources.

I simply find you greedy.

Whatever. You’re a human being with feelings that make up the human condition, running the gamut from love and forgiveness to savage brutality.

Since you hold yourself in such high regard with your even-keeled emotions, you’ve probably been in a relationship. I’ll even bet you’ve had intercourse (it counts if she was inflatable). While sailing this sea of love, perhaps you’ve wished your boat would capsize, leaving you perched in a lifeboat and your lover to flummox against the tides, a look of abject terror on their face as you gleefully reel in the rescue float, quietly humming “Another One Bites the Dust.”

Those dimples in your cheeks tell me you know that fuzzy feeling, good people.

Come, let us venture into the void of bloody valentines together and I will show you the way. Anything to help you put down that gun.

Jesus Christ, man, do not redecorate your garage while reading this! When they find my book next to your bloated body it’ll come back on me and I want nothing to do with your poor decision making!

Have a drink and relax. I promise the first divorce is the hardest. After that it’s rice pudding.

***

Women have always fascinated me. The curvature of their bodies; the way a pair of breasts jiggle under a blouse, a t-shirt, or the dim glow of my forty-watt bedroom lamp; their ability to transform the most sagacious Joe into a stuttering pile of ignorance; and the enticing manner of thick, beautiful thighs beckoning a man to dive betwixt their cavernous mounds of flesh, enveloping his ogreish head like balloons coated with vinegar and sweat.

In different stages of my life, it’s made me question why I was born with a dick, for I would’ve been one hell of a lesbian.

I’ve never been what you would call a “lady’s man.” There were many years when I couldn’t have gotten laid in a morgue with a Benjamin hanging from my zipper. I suppose it had a lot to do with being a rotund, socially-repellant douche, although most of it was my wobbly conversational skills, attempting to draw the petticoats into topics ranging from the new Run-DMC album to the differences between homemade biscuits and the Pillsbury brand.

Thank maturity, times change.

As I grew to become more fluent with my tongue—insert double entendre now—I was slapped with the truth that’s plagued scared little boys since the beginning of time: women are just as scared, nervous, and unsure of themselves as men are. For all the young men reading, it does get better, sirs. If no one’s ever told you this, then let me be the Wizard to your Cowardly Lion.....

Chicks are clueless, too, okay?

***

We all need love. It’s right there on your computer. The internet has shown us what a healthy, meaningful relationship is supposed to emulate and obviously it’s a Bill Clinton imitator bending a Lewinski look-alike over a couch before coating her teeth.

But that is the rarest of crap shoots.

The emotional dice you throw on the table will likely roll snake eyes, culminating with psychotic stares shooting across the room as one of you wraps your lacerated forearm with a towel after the other has ripped it to shreds with the nearest kitchen knife (tattoos have obscured the scars).

You’re about to get slapped with a bitter shitsack filled with some of the women I’ve known and one relationship in particular I was fortunate enough to drop like an infected rubber. Just so you’re aware, your tongue may wither from the salt being poured on your ice cream.

And your head will explode.

***

One disclaimer I must bring to your attention before we go any further: I’m not a misogynist, no matter how this may appear. I was much different when I was younger, and I acknowledge that some of the hens who rode my rooster had good souls. I’ve been with some really cool women in my life who had my best interests at heart and only wanted to see me succeed. I just fucked them over so bad that the damage had been irrevocably done. I’ll also cede that some of this happened with flighty little girls and we’ve all matured since then and blah blah blah you owe me therapy money blah blah fuckity blah.

But for the womenfolk who were good to me, who truly did want better for me and who truly did help me in various ways—I’m forever sorry. I’ll always hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive me. I suppose we weren’t ready for each other. Then again, maybe it was me who wasn’t ready.

As for the rest of you bitches, find some shelter.

Because it’s open season on all of you.

Black Magic Woman

Being kicked in the nuts by a little girl with high heels hurts like a goddamn sonofabitch. For you to buckle under the weight of that statement, allow me to apply a bit of context:

The typical ten-year old boy isn’t aware of the phrases “blunt force trauma” or “OH GOD MY BALLS ARE IN MY THROAT!” And to be dealt such a sack-crushing blow by a floozy in a parochial school uniform was either a crash course in self-preservation, or a crystal ball foreshadowing my experiences with women for the next twenty years.

Jury’s still out.

Let’s kick it old school like Spuds Mackenzie and Trapper Keepers. Back to a time when Perfect Strangers ruled the airwaves and Alf was the brother I never had.

***

I was the chunkiest, cutest little motherfucker you were ever lucky enough to run out of your fridge. My cheeks were as red as a baboon’s ass, my hair so curly it rivaled Screech’s pubes, and the girlies were on me like a twelve-step pin on Rick James.

That is to say, I was a rather unpopular kid.

It took loads of healthy introspection, but at length I embraced the solitude, it enabling me to discover the joys of hip hop, rock ‘n’ roll, and pornography. Still, it vexed me that I could never figure out the source of my social quarantine, for I had so much to offer any child inhabiting my play space: my G. I. Joes were regally poised in block formation, I’d sanctioned the invasion of Castle Grayskull by the He-Man hordes, and that little bitch down the street said I was so plump I popped her Pogo Ball.

Meaning she wasn’t coming around anymore so that left me ample time to contemplate my place in the world.

Add Motley Crue teaching me that girls, girls, girls rode something called a crazy horse in Paris, France and you would’ve thought that Vince Neil spoke through me whenever I flapped my besoiled braces.

What about me just wasn’t adorable?

As you may have guessed, there was a little angel wishing to bring my faults to light.

As it happened one bright, sunshiny day one horrible, crotch-searing day, I was by the jungle gym performing research on the effects of wailing guitars in a juvenile setting, charging my classmates as unwilling test subjects (my handheld blasted speed metal so loud as to be heard across the playground).

It was Halloween and the principal had let the students wear their costumes to school. By then my interest in going door-to-door begging for cavities had waned so I didn’t participate. My needs for the day were as simple as they were irritating: I sought to bedevil the living shit out of everyone with music spun on Bottom 40 radio. No one had complained thus far.

Except a witch named Trashley Sexneeder who wanted me to know exactly what she thought of my swinging, metallic tunes.

***

Trashley Sexneeder was surly, violent, and hit harder than an alcoholic foster parent. Her stringy, unkempt hair and spaghetti-thin frame gave her the appearance of a lonely child searching for a meaningful friendship. Or a wayward lass from an afterschool special in desperate need of a strict but loving authority figure. It was a perfect mask to hide the bloodthirsty mongoose lurking within.

That venomous bitch was so God-awful that Mother Teresa would’ve prayed for her crib death.

The first time I ever met Trashley was in kindergarten when I was waylaid for using her crayons. We were engaged in free time after a day spent prepping for lives of Guilt and Regret—benchmarks of a Catholic education. My fat body shook the light-blue uniform shirt ferociously as I was taint deep in an Inspector Gadget coloring book completing a stunning likeness of Dr. Claw, Gadget’s faceless and diabolical rival. It was nearing completion and I was driving on zeal alone. I reached over to my box of crayons to discover I was missing the color needed to finalize his enviable gauntlets.

Trashley was prostrate on the floor next to me, her colors abandoned as she was heavily engrossed in fashioning a shank from a cafeteria spoon. She was really getting in there, too, beet-faced and grunting, applying pressure on the lime carpet to sharpen her weapon (I remember thinking how the poor girl was never going to achieve her goal because fucking carpet). Not wanting to disturb her, I wordlessly grabbed the one color required to finish my project from her Crayola box. I’d no sooner lifted “grey” from the top column than I was met with knuckles befitting an unlicensed cage match.

The force of the punch snapped my head back. I regained my composure and looked up to see Trashley kneeling, the oversized black-and-white checkered school dress hanging like a potato sack with her nose scrunched in indignation. Her fists were clenched into wads of steel. I scrambled to my knees, eye-level with my attacker. I put a hand over my bleeding bottom lip.

“Why did you do that?”

Her eyebrows furrowed and she jabbed her finger into my flabby chest when she spoke. “Fuck you, Innis! These are my colors! Don’t you ever touch my colors, Cockman!”

I was aghast. No one had ever spoken to me so harshly in my entire life, much less hit me without provocation (marriage later raised the bar). It dawned on me that I should’ve asked to borrow her crayons like I’d been taught, despite the fact they were lying unused.

Why, I wasn’t exercising good manners!

I sought to end our quarrel and asked permission to use her chromatic supplies. “I’m sorry, Trashley. That was very presumptuous of me. If you don’t mind, may I please use your crayons to finish color-” She bashed me in the nose with a flaming right cross that opened the floodgates in my eyes. I was shocked, bleeding, blinded by tears. I didn’t know what sin I had committed but obviously it was a whopper of a fuck-up.

I waited for the dizziness to leave and my vision quickly returned. Seconds passed as Trashley and I remained kneeling, looking down at the blood dripping on my coloring book. Without a word, she snatched it up and ripped it apart, tossing the scraps at me like a woman throwing a drink in a man’s face.

Our teacher had been sitting on the other side of the room clipping coupons for Preparation H, oblivious to the activity taking place in her class, the rank of Elmer’s Glue and talkative children filling her senses with inattention. The space cadet called for recess and Trashley stood, towering over me. She stuck her goddamn tongue out and stomped away, likely busying herself with the live burial of a classmate in the sandbox.

I sat back down on the carpet, dumbfounded. I began to feel woozy from blood loss and stumbled to the boys’ bathroom to clot my bleeding, trying to figure out what in the hell just happened, leaving my destroyed, unfinished work lying helplessly on the floor. My dreams of attaining artistic perfection had been dashed upon the rocks. Dr. Claw’s appearance would have to gel another day.

In the spring of second grade I’d developed a crush on Trashley, the poetic hint of a “young man’s heart turning to fancy” and whatnot. It was a classic case of unrequited love when she shoved me from the top rung of the slide and gave me a fancy plaster cast on my leg.

As we grew, the child became more hateful and full of spite. I’d managed to avoid her wickedness for the next three years, careful not to come within arm’s reach of her wrathful aura, until the day arrived when the hemlock planted in kindergarten grew to bear poisoned fruit, sprouting on an elementary school playground for all the world to see.

***

Trashley reached the patch of dirt I’d staked, removing her witch’s costume in case a scuffle broke out. Her black cape and pointed hat laid beneath her plastic broom on the ground, the ill-fitting Catholic school uniform hanging on her pathetic body like John Candy’s robe. The black come-fuck-me pumps her mother had bizarrely shoed her with glinted in the afternoon sun, harboring untold trepidation.

She forcefully told me to tame my theme music with all the tranquility of silverware in a woodchipper. “Hey, fat boy! Nobody likes that shit and we think you’re weird! Turn it down!”

Oh, but how I loved her sugary voice!

I never forgot her propensity for chaos. Not wishing another pugilistic sleight of hand to land across my chubby face, I heeded her demand with the appropriate delicacy: “Why don’t you give Roger Rabbit his teeth back, ya bucktoothed bitch?!”

I just knew my retort would quell the ensuing fray.

Had I known that hairy-pitted cretin was about to deliver some footwork mastered only by Olympic soccer players I would’ve migrated to another location on the schoolyard post-comeback.

The Kick of a Thousand Mustangs was so powerful it created a dust cloud, landing with the might of a vengeful God raining sulfur upon the wicked. I wouldn’t feel pain like that again until years later when I was trapped between a wall and a Buick in my dealings with another woman.

I puked everything I’d eaten since breakfast. Such was my distress, I half-expected to see my underdeveloped pellets in the pile of corn dogs and Trix. Instead, when I looked up through watery eyes, I saw a smile across Trashley’s face, her canines tapering into smart points (“Monster Mash” blared from somewhere in the distance). A crowd of children gathered around to see what had transpired. I doubled over and fell on my side to conceal my shame.

In a twinkle of seconds, the Wicked Bitch of the West had stunted my manhood, turning me into a chick forthwith as red dots speckled my crotch.

I was curled into the fetal position, pondering the word “sex” and what importance it would have in my adult world. I’d heard about it from some of the other kids but was given only minor details. What I did know was that you needed a video camera and your junk to do it. I panicked when I realized that Trashley had kicked my nuts into my pelvis and that this “sex” thing may be something I’d have to relegate to fantasy like those surgically implanted knuckle spikes I’d always craved. I was in a world of agony, so chagrined that I wanted to stick my head in the Earth like an ostrich.

But all was not lost, for just as the horny aunt of embarrassment was running over to envelop me into her large, lopsided bosom and marvel at what a big boy I’d become.....

Thank God for Fred! In the afternoons, he’d meet me by a makeshift hole in the fence for our walk home from school. He’d seen everything.

My faithful friend hoofed it toward Trashley with hot daggers in his eyes and enough fumes in his ass to blow away an entire acre of evil! That little sorceress may have had a reptilian heart, but I had a fearless omnivore ready to eat her black spirit! He gnashed teeth at Trashley, halting her from another assault as I heaved in the background.

Keeping that succubus at the fringe, Fred made attempts to look for my little raisins in the dirt so they wouldn’t get squashed, him being a goat and not realizing that it’s physically impossible to kick the testicles out of a scrotum. I think it is, anyway.

Seeing futility in further attack, Trashley accepted defeat (that’ll teach her to fuck with my music!). She grew weary of the fat bastard writhing in pain and put her witch’s costume back on, straddling her broom like a Thoroughbred and clopping away to steal the leg braces from that handicapped kid with the asthmatic seeing eye dog whose mom was in jail.

With good fortune held together by spit and prayer, I was able to take a knee, but getting up wasn’t in the cards. My loyal ally picked me up with his Herculean teeth and helped me right myself. We exited through the hole and I limped the six blocks home, Fred supporting me whenever I began to falter. I was a butterball, but my goat was tough and could prop me for hours if need be.

And oh God, did I need be.

My parents had gone out of town for a few days so I was spared the twenty questions. I collapsed on my bed where I slept for the rest of the night. Fred laid down on his blue quilt and chewed on a pair of Victoria’s Secret panties from the garbage can of the escort next door, prepared to alert me should Brunhilda return to finish the job. When I awoke the next morning, I discovered that he’d nudged my Wiffle Ball bat next to my unconscious body.

Ride or Die Fred, my only friend in the world.

***

It looked like a cow had chewed a pack of Juicy Fruit and slapped it under my dick.

My pebbles reappeared the next day, though seemingly worse for wear. I probably should’ve gone to a doctor, but fuck that—that would’ve led to my parents’ involvement and I wasn’t telling them shit. I guess I could’ve gone by myself, but I was ten years old; what the hell was I going to use for payment, fucking Batman comics? After a few days my sack quit looking like a stressball in an abusive marriage so I knew it was cool.

The fact that I didn’t tell my parents about Trashley’s testicular ambush didn’t carry weight at school. The principal found out but, despite there being dozens of witnesses, Trashley maintained innocence and ducked retribution of any sort (her mother being a teacher at the school had a lot to do with that shit). My parents were never notified. The furor eventually died down and it was not at fucking all forgotten about.

***

Trashley and I parted ways after sixth grade. Through associates, I heard she’d gone on to become the leader of her coven through high school graduation, her employment options scarce once she realized black magic wasn’t a viable skill in the American workforce. I often heard of her struggles via third-parties, her main source of income being the other side of a gloryhole.

I saw her once and we laughed about this childhood memory over drinks, the flakes from the Goldschlager lining her lips like she’d blown a Mardi Gras dancer. And my, how she’d changed; back then the girl was so skinny she could barely hold a thought. But she’d filled out quite nicely by the time of our encounter, and for a moment, I thought I was about to get laid. Wistfully, our reunion was cut short when her break ended and she had to get back on stage.

As I bid Miss Sexneeder adieu, I couldn’t help but salivate, her colossal asscheeks devouring her red g-string as she wrapped her sizable thighs around the pole and shook her enormous belly and G-cup hooters for the last show of the evening.

I’ve always loved the thick ones.

Lifestyles of the Bitch and Shameless

Many have heard the saying, “Don’t let one incident in your life define you.” It’s a simple statement with a humanitarian concept, but it’s easier to voice than it is to apply. Because for many years, I let a single, dispiriting circumstance do just that.

In the course of one’s existence, an event can occur that changes the way they look at themselves, the world, and its inhabitants. One intervening half-second of fate can reshape their plans for the future, their self-esteem, and ultimately, their self-worth.

So then.....

In high school a rumor circulated that a chick made me cum on myself. It ruined any potential for that portion of my history and was a huge incitement for the plunge into drugs and alcohol that persisted for the better half of two decades.

***

Picture the Rob Lowe of your high school. Or one of the rent-boys from Twilight, depending on your level of gay. That guy who made the women swoon with a flip of his locks and a flex of his crotch. The student whom teachers yearned to have in their class who was the poster boy for popularity: defined muscles, a rugged jawline, fashion sense straight from GQ, and a laugh so infectious it made STDs jealous.

Now strip that asshole of his superficial bullshit and you have me: a timid, insecure, lonely ninth grade loser whose sole talent was encrusting the family towels.

You may be asking yourself, “How in the hell could you jerk it so much, Coxman?” The answer’s simple: I was the clueless new guy who failed miserably at social interaction. How to Address Peers Without Appearing Stupid should’ve been a pamphlet issued in the first week of school, man. My aloneness left me all the time in the world to envision titties I couldn’t touch.

The only people I knew were the two older kids from next door who I’m almost certain were bribed into showing me around. I had zero street cred, which can be worse than shitty cred, and I was as invisible as the bassist in a rock band. Dating wasn’t even feasible; the closest I ever got to the opposite sex was in my dreams. I didn’t get any action in reality, but in my mind I was Thor.

(By the way, you ladies who would’ve rather walked over my dead body than said hello: you deserve to know that in my twisted bitch of a brain I fucked all of you a thousand times. You did things that would make back alley whores vomit and seek Christ. If those statements require refinement, just imagine yourselves in 2 Girls, 1 Cup. Starring as the cup.)

If there was only some way to get noticed by a chick. A way for a girl to see the lesbian within me. A talent I could exploit to lay with one tarted harlot. Anything other than being unnoticed and alone.

Enter a girl named Slobadong Misuchabitch.

***

Slobadong had expressed an interest in me since the first day of school, or so I was told. She sat across the room from me in Biology and we’d never even spoken to one another. But the scarce number of people I associated with said that she’d asked about my availability.

My loins flickered at the prospect of having a girlfriend, though Slobadong wasn’t the bar of gold I was mining for. She was rough to look at, so much so that I thought she was related to Hoam Li and Ug Li, two brash Mandarin sisters whose faces were known to uproot tree stumps.

I decided that sexless beggars can’t be choosers. I’d always heard that Slobadong was abrasive, so if I was unhappy I’d drop her. When the opportunity presented itself, I’d give her my phone number and see where it led. There was only a skosh of apprehension coating my bones:

Slobadong was such a whore that the only students seen in her company were the jocks who packed towels to wipe the semen off her back.

***

Hailing from the Russian tundra, Slobadong did nothing to dispel the legacy of cruelty left over from Stalin’s Siberian prison camps. She came stocked with a full mustache, a face that could be used for a voodoo charm, and a personality so caustic it corroded hope. The only attributes going for her were breasts that passed for deflated medicine balls. If provoked, she could swing them and break a jaw. All in all, she was a brutish Russkie with untameable facial hair who enjoyed fighting and turmoil.

Since her family’s arrival in America, Slobadong had always confined her villainous tendencies to the streets—where she was never mowed down by a gang of drunken Shriners, goddammit—but when hurling Molotov cocktails at the homeless ceased to provide release, she set her sights on me, smearing my dignity like a Bulldog eating mayo.

***

The principal had held a screening of Scorsese’s romantic 70s masterpiece Taxi Driver in the school auditorium. It was meant to show appreciation to the student body for attaining such high scores on a statewide standardized exam (forged permission slips were collected in homeroom). Those attending were dismissed from class at 9 o’clock to gather behind the school. I’d arrived on my lonesome and melded into the crowd as we were herded across the street to the facility.

The building had been constructed during World War Two and was in a state of crumbling disrepair. It was a two-balcony venue, its interior made up of cinder blocks that were painted a sickly yellow. Streaks of paint were missing on a majority of the masonry, and chunks of grout had been gouged by those with prohibited weapons. The seats had once been a dazzling snow-white, but years of abuse and spilled whiskey had turned them tattered and dingy. Pushing the crash bar on one of the grey aluminum doors, I entered and inhaled the intoxicating scents of old cigarettes and Evan Williams, courtesy of teenagers who’d snuck in during lunch to fuck in the upstairs projector room and partake in all manner of worldly vices for the last fifty years. I snaked through a gaggle of Girbauds with too much makeup, tripped over a copy of Introduction to Physics: The Star Trek Theorems lying on the ragged brown carpet, and quickly procured a spot on the ground floor (damn, man—when I read all that back I see how much of a joke my high school really was).

My popularity was such that I’d secured a row all to myself. I’d claimed an aisle seat and was digging the flick, when the pungent aroma of seafood suddenly filled my nostrils. Indeed, I had eaten catfish the previous evening and farted a minute before. I thought I’d shit my pants. I shuffled from side to side feeling for the squish. Wasn’t it, though. A quick check under my chair produced zero findings. Scanning the surrounding empty seats yielded similar results. So help me, I couldn’t locate the root of the funk. Unable to endure the stench any longer, I turned to find another seat only to look up at Slobadong standing in the aisle beside me. She was inhaling a can of Bumble Bee sardines like they were planning an escape.

Surprised, I said, “Oh, hey, Slobadong,” in my best Dolph Lundgren voice, circa Rocky IV. I was trying to be suave but she didn’t say a word. She continued stuffing those abominable turds of the sea in her piehole, staring down at me intently.

It was creepy as fuck.

Legend had it that Slobadong’s stare once killed a shark and I was nervous. I steeled my balls and gazed in the direction of her dark, empty eyes. It was dim in the hazardous auditorium, but the movie projector gave me just enough light to view her features: her greasy black hair fell to the middle of her back with some ratty strands cast over the front of her linebacker’s shoulders; freckles dotted her face like an infectious case of chickenpox; her crooked nose told of the fights for toilet paper and cabbage back in Russia; a rash speckled her upper lip from the over-application of Nair; her right eyebrow held the scar from a lunchroom brawl over a deaf kid’s Nutter Butter; the reform school tattoo of Charles Manson on her neck pulsated with each tremor of her carotid artery; the knees of her jeans were wet from a blowjob in the bathroom; and her red plaid shirt screamed “lumberjack dyke” all the way to the Pacific Northwest.

The decision to withhold my phone number came swift and ironclad.

Without an invitation, she abruptly skirted by me to the next seat, shoving her ample ass in my face and dropping a sardine in my lap as she passed. She might as well have thrown a live grenade on my dick. I threw that motherfucker on the floor like it was a roach. I hate sardines, man.

She plopped down next to me, her cheeks filling one seat as her fabled floaties threatened to engulf the next. We sat for a few minutes in silence, my eyes fixed on the movie. She all but poured the can of sardines down her throat. What yanked my sack the most was why she chose to sit there. With all the empty seats in the auditorium, her ass could’ve intruded anywhere it pleased. Didn’t matter—at that point, I was trying to cork the magnum of bile climbing its way up my esophagus.

A sardine had touched me, man.

She began speaking in a husky voice with a thick Russian dialect. Think Barry White from the Eastern Bloc.

“What are you watching, Penis?”

Any unease I’d felt about the situation quickly evaporated upon being called a male sex organ. I looked at her incredulously. “Excuse me? I’m watching Taxi Driver, Slobadong. I thought that would’ve been hard to miss. And what the fuck you mean by calling me ‘Penis’?”

“Well, isn’t that your name?”

“No. It’s Innis, not ‘Penis.’”

“Oh. I’m sorry, Glynis.”

“No, Innis.”

“Tennis.”

“Innis.”

“Anus.”

“No, goddammit—Innis!”

She put her hands up, palms out and facing me like a mime trapped in a box. “Woe, woe, woe, Denise. Calm down. I just wanted to talk to you, that’s all. Look, would you like a sardine?”

Is this pinko bitch serious?

“No, Slobadong, I don’t want a sardine. Even if I did, you just ate them all when you tipped the entire can down your gullet. Thank you, though. Now, not to be rude, but was there something I could help you with?”

“You don’t have to get so mad, Patrice. I was just wanting to get to know you a little bit. Hey, you want some vwodka? I soaked my sardines in the bottle all weekend so it would be extra strong, just like my papa showed me.”

Sigh. “Look, Slobadong, I’m really into this movie. What’s up?”

So began her encroachment on my cinematic enjoyment. While Jodie Foster engaged in gross and illegal child sex on the auditorium’s dirty silver screen, Slobadong gleefully yakked about nothing at all. I listened to her ramblings with the fakest of sincerity: her life in Russia before her family’s emigration; their escape from the motherland due to her father’s arrest for trafficking underage prostitutes; how the Russkaya Mafiya was after them because of his testimony in open court; her ability to suck a Tootsie Pop down to the center in two minutes.....

Mindless trivialities that oozed from her lips like syphilitic backwash.

As our feature wound down, she started rubbing my thigh and speaking of topics more sexual in nature, like the time it was her and four guys playing “Find a Fold and Fuck it” in the bathroom of some church in St. Petersburg. She trailed a painted fingernail up my leg, sending tingles to my nether region. My body was acting on pure instinct. Try as I did to think of something totally unsexy like your mom, my Levi’s became tighter in the crotch.

The movie ended. As the credits rolled, Slobadong took the pint of vwodka she’d been sipping on and tucked it in a front pocket of her tight-fitting jeans. Bouncing her hefty cheeks out of the seat, she winked and said she’d see me around. Then she disappeared into the crowd.

I felt like I’d been on a whirlwind. I was finally alone and didn’t know what to make of our get-together. When the lights came up, I looked down to see the empty can of sardines in the off-white seat cushion. Outlined by a large brown stain that wasn’t there before Slobadong sat down.

I vomited all over the Doc Martens I’d gotten for my birthday.

Cut to lunch time. I’m standing in the spacious lobby that doubled as a hangout watching a stoner roll one as teachers strolled by, blissfully unaware of his crime (that place had to be ripped out of a comic strip). Two burnouts named Michael Hegayla and Elmo Fagsund ran up to me grinning maniacally. They reeked of weed that’d been smoked in a Datsun and the Cool Water that was doing a poor job of masking it. They finally quit giggling long enough to say that they’d something to ask me, but that immediately kickstarted their stoner’s laugh once again. Being as I didn’t really know either one of these vegetables, I had no clue as to what they were talking about.

Hegayla finally pulled it together. “Hey, Innis, is it true? Hee, hee, hee.”

“Is what true?”

“Slobadong said you and her hung out during the movie. Hee, hee, hee.”

I eyed them suspiciously. “Yeah, so what?”

Chuckling like a first grader who can’t get through a fart joke, “She said you two were talking and.....tee-hee, hee, hee, hee.”

I’d never smoked marijuana up to that point but I’d always heard it was next to impossible to tie your thoughts together under its influence. My patience was wearing thin at having to deal with two dumbasses who couldn’t complete a sentence.

“Yeah, we did. So what’s your point, man?”

Fagsund had been chomping at the bit and could stand it no more. “Dude—did you cum on yourself?!”

I was as shocked as a Kardashian getting a clue.

It wasn’t enough to make me miss a classic American tale of a New York City cab driver slipping into the abyss of delirium. No, Slobadong also broadcasted that she’d made me blast my boxer shorts without so much as touching my tubesteak. No lips, no graze of the teeth, not even a flick to the nuts. After the movie, she’d enlisted an introverted lackey named Finger Porkin to help spread this vicious lie. Finger was eager to please, for she hadn’t felt the burn of attention since her father had given her herpes in junior high. She was more than happy to assist with my destruction. The cherry atop this scoop of shit was that everyone believed them.

My fate was sealed.

Really, I should have seen it coming. I was the new guy who reeked of loneliness and hand lotion, and Heaven knows that setting homeless people ablaze can only keep the maladjusted focused for so long.

***

Sex offenders don’t suffer the ostracism I endured.

Being bullied in the halls by rednecks and jumped in the locker room by the brothas honed my fighting skills. Weathering four years of exile from the rest of the student body taught me the pleasures of my own company. But the fondest memories that I hold dear are the slanderous names which have bolstered my present sensitivity to others. Alcohol and chemicals did their best to destroy them, but I can still recall some highlights:

Cum Boy.

Cum Bubble.

Nutty.

Nut Head.

Loose Cannon.

Fuck Fountain.

Gooshy.

Goosher.

Splooge Mcgooge.

Sticky Stanley.

Hose Stick.

Wet Willy.

Hey-Dude-You’re-Supposed-to-do-That-on-Her-Stomach.

Slicky.

Slickster.

That’s-the-Guy.

Punching Bag (more of a viewpoint than an insult).

And the most creative handle for a newcomer with a bull’s-eye on his back: Look Ma, No Hands.....

VD clinics don’t have that many names on the sign-in sheet, good people.

I’m not downplaying when I say the experience was difficult. There were many times when I felt myself breaking at the joints, coming close to suicide at the ripe old age of fourteen. Naturally, now that I’m older, have seen more of the world, and have witnessed people with real problems overcome them, I’m glad I didn’t. With all the atrocities out there—war, famine, Simon Cowell, steamed squash, cold coffee, and that old lady at the head of the line who still writes a check instead of using a fucking debit card—my dilemma didn’t amount to a hill of Xanax. But I’ll be a monkey’s inappropriate uncle if I didn’t have to go through years of self-annihilation to see that.

***

(Unfortunately), things turned out well for Slobadong. After undergoing extensive electrolysis, some time with a speech coach, and a radical name change, she became a stand-up comic with one hell of a stage show. With a successful run of club work under her belt, she went on to pursue a career in movies and television. You may have seen her in such films as Exit to Eden playing second fiddle to the comic genius of Dan Aykroyd, A League of Their Own trying to convince Madonna to stop being such a slut, and the live-action version of The Flintstones, where her role as Betty Rubble butchered the sexiness of the character, prompting John Goodman to retch off-camera.

Of course, many will recognize her as host of the strangely popular and thankfully cancelled The Rosie O’Donnell Show.

Love Means Never Having

to Say “You’re Crazy”

In my early 20s I anticipated a violent death by my mid-20s. And nothing heroic like a warrior falling in battle or a mishap with two wet prostitutes and an electric dildo. I mean the sort of demise that beckons your angry spirit to look down (or up) at your withered meatsack with seething antipathy.

The existence I was leading wasn’t conducive to physical longevity. If I’d stayed on that path I most certainly would’ve wound up face down in a puddle of puke with the straw in my nostril as proof I’d had a really good time. The amount of narcotics the human body can tolerate in a single sitting is limited; there were many occasions when I hocked a loogey in the face of such logic. To further an early grave, the social circles infiltrating that lifestyle bring the threat of ferocity, be it from the attempted theft of your drugs to someone in your bunch mistaking a simple “Hello” as an offer to intercourse their mother.

I was also married to psychosis who wished to snuff me and who wasn’t the least bit concerned if she joined me in the demise.

***

I was at a very dark place in life, so close to the edge that some of my dealers pondered an intervention. They opted out when they realized I was eighty percent of their gross. Satan exacerbated the downward spiral when he gave me a perfect addition to my self-destruction, a wife. Her name was Raptious de la Cray and we were wild together: parties lasting days, enough acid in our bodies to fuel a car battery, and experimenting with Martha Stewart’s engrossing bestseller Martha’s Meth Cook: Speedy Recipes For the Sniffer in a Rush.

It was a hasty courtship. Raptious and I met at a local bar, discovered we had nothing in common except drug suppliers, and after only a few weeks we foolishly got married. In the beginning it was great, the ideological romance of newlyweds still fresh on the table. It didn’t last long. Within a month of our nuptials, I began to suspect something was awry.

One day I returned to a still house. I called out for Raptious and heard echoes in response. Her brand new Buick was in the carport so I knew she was home. I walked through the faded-wallpaper living room, passed the glass table supporting a Pyrex bong and a pile of weed, wending past the white plastic wall shelf holding lines of crystal divided on a cookie lid, down the hall stretching to our bedroom. I found her kneeling on the floor at the foot of our bed sitting on her feet, the lobe-length auburn hair chaotic as a bird’s nest, her chunky frame hunched over a pile of clothes with her back to the doorway. Hiding one of my Zippos in her hand. The lamps in the room were off, the only light being that streaming from a globed sixty-watt in the hall. She wore only a holey pair of black underwear and a pink wife beater. I knew then that something was wrong; she never wore wife beaters because they cut into her back fat. The air was teeming with the scent of freshly poured lighter fluid. My sympathetic nerve system rushed to life and I didn’t know what to expect.

I suddenly began kicking my own ass for not replacing the expired fire extinguisher in the kitchen.

I meekly called to her, “Raptious?”

She shot up like a ninja, whirling her corpulent body and planting both feet in the carpet. The words came screeching. “Don’t come any closer, motherfucker! I’ll do it! I swear to God I will!” Her eyes were wide, wild, like a newly captured tiger biting the bars of its cage. Before I could ask as to the trouble, she lit the Zippo and swung it back and forth, grasping the lid, letting the fiery bottom case dangle over the malodorous heap of cloth. She laughed like an orphan plotting the murder of its abusive caretakers.

In that instance, I was able to talk Raptious down and confiscate the Zippo before she lit the fabric ablaze, possibly destroying our home and killing us both in the process. The experience was my first whiff that something in her mind was broken, but it wouldn’t be the last.

I soon realized my new bride was made of sugar, spice, and everything nice.

And lunacy.

***

It was a blustery Sunday in January and it couldn’t have happened on a better day. After all, Sunday is the day of worship and domestic violence, so sayeth the Lord.

I’d created a bend in our river of bliss when I cheated on Raptious the night before with a cashier from a convenience store. My cousin had concurrently been in their living room fucking her roommate. For reasons that remained unclear for quite some time, that asshole told Raptious all about our boys’ night out (years later, I came to realize that they were maybe probably definitely sleeping together). She asked me details about the assignation between bouts of assault. Her angry fists landed madly for two hours and I had reached my breaking point.

Not concerned with my marital faux pas so much as my well-being, I said I was leaving our love shack, vowing to return when I was high enough to deal with her insanity. After plucking a pre-rolled joint from the stash in my nightstand, I grabbed my keys and plaid blue coat and headed out the door. She followed me, yelling that if I left right then I’d, “regret it!” I gave no ear.

The sight of me strolling blithely around the hood of my stylish Ford Escort was too much for her. From the open carport door, she threatened to halt my departure by harpooning her Buick into the foyer. I thought she was blowing off steam, but when I opened the door to my car, she sprinted to her monstrous Regal, got in, turned the ignition, and revved the engine loud enough to rival stampeding buffalo. She threw it in reverse and backed out of the driveway toward the street. Such was my desire to avoid a gaping hole accenting the fireplace, I ran to the driver’s side of her battering ram and attempted to make sweet, hasty amends.

“You crazy cunt! You drive that fuckin’ thing in the house and I’ll tell your mother you stole her speed!”

She rolled down the window. “Fuck you! Tell her, you cheating cocksucker! Just don’t be surprised if I do some remodeling while you’re gone! Remember those French doors you wouldn't let me have? Well I’m about to get ‘em for free, dickhead!” She capped her declaration with a whiiiiiiiiiiiir of the V6.

I didn’t think she’d do it. Then again, I’d had no reason to suspect she’d douse every article of clothing we owned with flammable liquid.

It was imperative that I stop Raptious from wrecking our home with that car. I would achieve this by slamming a fist into her windshield.

I ran to the passenger side and raised my clenched right hand, bringing it down with gusto—crunch!—to form huge fissures running in every direction with a fist imprint at the center. From behind the steering wheel, Raptious drew a breath, held it, her eyes widening to fury as she stared at the injury her new vehicle had sustained. I pried my bloody knuckles from the windshield and shook the shards from my flesh, satisfied that I’d prevented her shenanigans from advancing any further. I crammed my torn hand into my jean pocket to retrieve a pack of Marlboro Reds. Tapped one out and lit it. I eyed her for a moment through the fractured glass before strolling to my hatchback, confident that my action was in no way about to have an imminent consequence.

Smoke blew from the tires when she reversed it farther down the driveway.

I halted and turned around. I was fed up with her bullshit and called her bluff, bellowing the threat of a man with more heart than sense. In the wake of this incident, I’ve concluded that the words were poorly chosen, having rehearsed them in my head to the point of mental fatigue, certain that if I could revisit the event I’d pick a phrase more apt to soothe the savage beast than inflame the ire:

“I FUCKING DARE YOU!”

It was obvious that I’d disparaged her grit; the motor roared with extreme passion and batshittery.

A loud clu-chunk! belched from under the hood; a transmission thrown into drive as it drowned my pleas for sanity.

When the Buick raced toward me, I was pinned at the knees to the designer plywood of our carport, proving once again I am built for power instead of speed. (Cat-like reflexes were sacrificed for a great story. You’re welcome.)

I opened my eyes and took stock. I was alive. The next order of business was to thank God for keeping me whole. After a brief exchange with The Almighty, I focused on the stinging sensation in my legs, electric shocks of pain surging to every receptor in the brain. And how fortuitous! None of my receptors were doing a goddamn thing right then so they were all available to tell me that it was fucking excruciating!

In the middle of our fracas, I had an epiphany: without my legs, I was never going to have the pleasure of sinking my foot in her ass once I was freed.

I beseeched Raptious to release the gas, or at least put it in park. Her dementia refused to comply and she floored the accelerator. I could feel my patellas being crushed as blood seeped through my denim pants, small flakes of bumper chrome mixing with the blotches.

If I didn’t launch a counterattack, I’d literally be cut off at the knees. Being that I was trapped, my defense options were limited, but not absent. I pounced when I saw it, stretching my rippling, muscular chunky, oafish body to the passenger side and snapping off her radio antennae. If crippling me wasn’t a concern, maybe she’d care enough about her vehicle. Loud whipping noises arced across the carport as I thrashed the maroon hood like a disobedient Hebrew slave. Within seconds, it looked as though hydrophobic badgers had played hopscotch on the paint job.

I’d had the presence of mind to snag a weapon in a dreadful situation, giving Raptious’ cherry new ride deep scars like the ones I’d forever have on my knees.

A small wave of pride crested in my soul.

The wave broke when she reversed her car and I fell to the ground like a severed foreskin. I collapsed, knees to my chest, rolling on my back, wallowing in physical torment.

By this time, the neighbors had poured from their homes to see what all the ruckus was about. We lived in a cookie-cutter part of the city with houses mere yards from one another, providing them ringside seats to our soap opera, and trust me when I tell you—if there’s anything that residents love in their neighborhood on a Sunday afternoon, it’s the blood-curdling screams of marital discord.

This was around the time cell phones became commonplace in our society. I’d even begun to see the homeless with those shitty bar phones everybody used to have; the novelty of ownership hadn’t waned for them, either. People held their cell phones to the same importance as their middle fingers and were just as attached (my, how the times have changed).

Imagine publicly fighting with the mentally disturbed only to have bystanders throw their hand to an ear and relay every juicy tidbit to the cops.

I rolled on the concrete like a turtle on its back, my knees killing me as the piercing shrill of sirens approached the neighborhood. I cautiously got to my feet, fighting against the agony, composing myself for their arrival and preparing to go back to jail.

***

Ah. You’re in the dark about this. I’m sorry, good people, allow me to expound:

You see, in a majority of DV calls (Domestic Violence for the uninitiated), cops generally side with the female, even if the male’s been beaten like an eighth grade phallus. I’ve known plenty of men who will back me on this to the nth degree. Seeing as how Raptious was consistently out of her fucking mind, this wasn’t the first time the police had visited our residence, and even though she’d yelled and cursed at them on multiple occasions, somehow they’d always assumed I was in the wrong.

Large + tattoos + permanent scowl = guilty as shit.

But I was certain that sense would prevail on this occasion. One look at the marks on my face and the blood on my knees and they could see that-

“Fuck! You’ve gotta be kidding me! I didn’t do anything, you motherfuckers! Get off o’ me!”

“Easy, Mr. Coxman. Do you remember what happened last time?”

“Yes I do, Officer Wankman! She threw a brick through the kitchen window and I went to jail after you tased me. Raptious, tell ‘em it was you. You know it was you!”

“He said he was gonna throw a pipe bomb in the police station. I had to stop him ‘til y'all got here.”

“What?! You lying whore!”

“That’s a disturbing the peace charge, too, Mr. Coxman. Now watch your head.”

***

Now I’m back on the streets and my records are clean.....oh, sorry. The last thing I listened to was Eazy-E.

But I was, in fact, back on the streets. More pointedly, I was walking one of the busiest streets on one of the coldest nights ever, headed home after bailing myself out. They let you do that if you act right and don’t try to rape anyone in holding.

The day’s occurrences had drained me and the guys in the tank contributed to my aggravation. I’d spent six hours in a sweltering holding cell with one talkative second degree murder, two drug possessions who kept threatening to roll on each other, and an Iraqi gentleman who persisted I was on speed due to my neverending streams of sweat. Once I hit the street, I required Snapple and silence.

If anyone had said a word to me I was going to rip their tongue out and order it to shut the hell up.

After paying the bondsman his percentage, I still had two hundred dollars in cash with no cigarettes. Trying to wrap my mind around that laughable irony, I felt my cell phone vibrate in my pocket. My clenching asshole could’ve snapped a crowbar when I saw that it was her.

My enemy.

My nemesis.

The villain in a straight-to-DVD movie.

The cumshot on a video camera because some moron filmed the scene from the bottom.

And just so you can wrinkle your nose at the page like it farted on you, she was asking if I wanted her to come and pick me up.....

I told her I’d rather go back and sit with the guy who said I smelled pretty.

***

My journey home led me through the projects. I found a twenty-four-hour oasis where I obtained smokes and a refreshing beverage. The place was full of regular customers purchasing various wares. Menacing eyes bored into me in that all-black establishment and I couldn’t figure out why, for if slavery, the civil rights movement, and American History X have taught us anything, it’s that large, tattooed white men with shaved heads are always welcome amongst their African-American brethren. Much to my relief, I knew the cashier. She worked at another store down the street from my house. Seeing the cacophony my presence was inciting, she loudly vouched to the other patrons that I wasn’t the Grand Wizard. Crisis averted. We made small talk for a moment after she rung up the sale. As I pushed through a nest of black guys occluding the exit, she asked as to my limp and the cuts on my face.

I told her that my wife had found out about me and my cousin at her place the night before.

In case you’re curious, Raptious did get arrested for vehicular assault that day. They let her go ROR—Released on Own Recognizance—three hours before I bailed out (don’t you just love America?). A few more years passed before I jumped that sinking ship and set about a major purge in my surroundings.

***

Throughout my ex-wife’s bouts of depression and unpredictable outbursts, there was always a piece of me that loved her, for no one can be with someone else for any length of time without lingering affection, even through unpleasantness. There remains an inkling of the individual that drew you to them in the first place. A flicker of the person you once loved sunk beneath all of the muck and mental illness. Anyone who’s ever been in a similar circumstance will attest to that. Even after our divorce, I still held a candle for her due to the gift she’d given me before our split. That’s why it stung to my core when I heard how they’d found her.

In addition to a heavy drug addiction, Raptious was anchored with a host of unchecked health issues. It caught up in her mid-30s. She died in a grimy bathroom on her knees, her head in the toilet, hair licking the surface of the water, cold left arm draped over the side of the tub with her body crumpled in an unnatural position. By that time I’d changed my ways and had a friend on the police department who told me more details about the scene. It appeared that she’d tried to call for help.

Her stiff right hand lay on the dirty tile next to the toilet base, cradling a cell phone with a dead battery.

***

Ages ago, a friend and I spent a night inside a bottle of Maker’s Mark. On a drunken whim, he asked me, “Coxman, what’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done?” The answer came slurred but immediate.

I can say with concrete conviction that through prison, the passing of a parent, bad women, fair weather friends, dodging a couple of bullets, being stabbed a few times, and fifteen years stuck in the mire of hardcore drug addiction, the most gut-wrenching thing I’ve ever done in my life was tell my daughter that her mother was dead.

Coxman’s Log: 7:36 PM

I’m lying here under the bane of fever with mucus pouring out of holes that God didn’t mean for mucus to pour from.

I know he didn’t.

Supine as I find myself on the bed, I stuck the index finger of my left hand up my left nostril in a vain attempt to clear it out. What I whipped out was a string of snot resembling a hoary alien beast. It sling-shotted from my nose and smacked against my finger with a retching kooeeeck! I studied it for a moment, holding it directly over me as I lay helplessly on my back. Dark green and mildly transparent it was, with bits of chunky green goo embedded in the middle. It hung from my finger like a monkey on a trapeze, dangling back and forth, daring me to fling it across the room. Then it fell into my left eye.

I almost cried.

Chapter Three

The Drugs Never Have You

(Until You Try to Quit)

I grabbed the trash can and held on to both sides as I braced for another tidal wave. Every muscle in my body locked like a set of brakes on wet pavement. My head felt like it was about to explode, and I swayed like the suicide jumper on a windy bridge. The last gush of bile had been more voluminous than the previous three, and I was pretty sure I saw Monday’s meal in the chunky river of red regurgitation.

Good Christ! I don’t remember eating chili & chicken burritos!

What the hell? Red? I don’t drink red beer.

No, wait. Is that?.....

Fuck me, that’s blood.

Like all good binges, it started out with the best of intentions: half a sheet of Timothy Leary, a dash of coke, two eightballs of glass—light bulb and straw optional—an ounce of weed, and an ocean of beer. All for a party of me.

As you’ve gathered by now, I don’t like people.

Those were my narcotics.

After getting up close and personal with the bottom of my Sesame Street trash can, I viewed the zombie in my bathroom mirror: five layers of body grease shrinkwrapped my skin, eyes recessed so deep they looked like charcoal briquets, and my heart was pounding so hard I couldn’t wait for it to splatter all over the sink and get it over with.

I was three days into my six-day bender and it felt like I’d been going for ten. After seeing the mixture of blood and beer splash violently atop the used condoms and tossed issue of Big Butt Magazine, I told the corpse staring back at me to quit mixing Bud Ice with his acid.

***

I use to dabble in drugs a little bit.

Okay, I use to dabble in drugs a little lot.

Well, to be more exact, I’ve done my fair share of drugs.

If we’re being totally honest here, one could suggest I’ve endured a hell of a lot of drugs.

Fine—I’ve occasionally been known to ingest the inventory of a pharmacy.

Look—fuck you. At one point my body rivaled New Orleans in toxicity, alright? Your mom’s snatch still beat us both…..

And that’s a point to the Coxman.

***

So you’ve never partaken of any illicit substance and you find yourself at a pivotal crossroads: you’re at a high school party in the woods where you pay some redneck for a few hits off the joint he’s smoking with six other people. Not even catching a buzz because now you’re smoking a joint with seven other people. Next thing you know, you’re deepthroating a Liza Minnelli impersonator you’re reaching depths you never thought possible to feed your wretched addictions.

This was my existence for many years. I stole from family and friends. (They were doing it to me, too. Circle of life.) I borrowed money with the intent of never giving it back. I sold dope just to skim off the top for personal use—which got me into trouble more than once when it was on the front. I held jobs by applying the fiend's logic of “working to buy more dope.” The arrangement kept me and Uncle Sam happy for years. And—surprise!—I pawned shit. Just not always my shit. Including a buddy’s guitar he’d left at my place. Told him it was stolen by a drug dealer I owed money to and I’ve never told anyone about it. Good thing I’m taking that one to my grave.....

Fuck!

***

Yes, yes, yes, I did all these things and more to obtain leafy buds, multi-colored powders, and trippy hallucinogens, as well as a few things known only to myself and whatever accomplice joined me in the crime. However, I can look anyone in the eye and say I never performed acts of sexual debasement to catch a buzz. Even at my lowest, I maintained a semblance of standards.

But if your crackheaded ways did lead you to be the guest of honor at a bukkake party, whatever, man. It’s cool. You won’t find any self-righteousness here. Drug addiction is a heavy burden for anyone, and the stiff middle fingers of judgment shall not extend from my scarred and battered hands.

You fag. Quit reading and move on. That’s nasty.

***

Point is, I was a No-Good-Lousy-Drug-User.

A Wastoid.

Speed Freak.

Pot Head.

Drug Head.

Motorhead (no disrespect, Lemmy).

Radiohead (fuck you, Thom Yorke).

Junkie.

Tweaker.

Addict.

Those of you who were unlucky enough to fall into that lifestyle know that’s not even the tip of the belittlement iceberg. If you’re reading this, then that probably means you quit all that nonsense and can afford to buy books and other recreational shit now. Congratulations.

It’s better on this side, isn’t it?

When you’re under the influence of psychedelic/life-threatening/fun-as-shit narcotics, you inevitably put yourself in situations that are removed from the scope of normal, everyday living. Simply put, you’re going to be exposed to some volatile people under some horrendous circumstances.

The Proof is in the Pudding

I used to mule for cash and free cocaine. Nothing heavy, mind you, just the occasional cookie wrapped in clear, sterile packaging. I would perform this activity only when it was most beneficial to me, and I never transported across state lines. Mostly, my routes stayed within the city limits.

For anyone unfamiliar with the vernacular, a “cookie” is roughly one ounce of cocaine molded to resemble a Keebler product with a sugar rush from Hell. At first glance, it appears to be a white, undersized hockey puck. They’ve also been known to be oval or oblong, but are typically the shape of a circular, artery-constricting treat.

That enables you to curl a fucking Volkswagen.

Muling for Alfonse was easy and provided me extra funds with a wealth of free talking powder; anyone who’s ever been weighted with a healthy drug habit knows how strong the allure of free narcotics can be. I did this intermittently for a few years until the night Alfonse lined a load of coke into his cock. His girlfriend had informed him that injecting cocaine into the penis enabled men to fuck "for a really long time." The amount of yayo shot into his dick on that evening, however, indicated that she wanted him to fuck her forever.

He didn't.

He was forced to amputate his manhood after a five-day erection piggybacked with gangrene. He and my cousin subsequently ended their relationship before he got out of the game altogether, thus ending our reciprocal arrangement.

Now by and large, smuggling a cookie in your person provides only mild discomfort. Their modest size and huge illegality dictate they be shoved in your ass. This may sound difficult, if not invasive, but is really as simple as ABC: Always keep things loose, Bend at the waist for easy access, and Cram it in like Elton John at a gay pride parade. Depending on how they’re shaped, one can grab some K-Y and be done in a matter of seconds.

I never had any issues with shoving a deadly toxin up my starfish. Periodically, I would even get a wild hair up my ass (ha!) and take on a heavier load in my supple buttocks. I must admit, though, there were many times when I questioned whether a free sniff was worth it.

It was usually when Alfonse tried to turn a single cookie into more of a baker’s dozen.

***

The cramps threw me to the cold concrete floor. I was as bloated as that red-head in the Bendy’s hamburger commercials. The load trying to push its way through my abdomen didn’t give a fuck-all about the mechanics of human anatomy. My tummy was dangerously distended, pushing the silver snap buttons to bursting. Sweat streamed from dirty pores and a thready pulse beat my temples into submission. From my hands and knees, I strained upward to look at the red brick wall four yards away. I didn’t know what the hell I expected to see—there weren’t any clocks in there.

I figured it was about an hour until I could take care of all this.

Leaking tear ducts blurred the “FUCK DA PO-LICE” mantra next to the “I (heart) Sherry” profession written on the cinder block. Some forgotten woman missed by some forgotten sad sack. Ironically, what came through crystal clear were the five scrawled sets of chalk, remnants of another unfortunate counting down his days.

Fuck Sherry, that cheating bitch!

I couldn’t even look at the sink anymore. A lot of places had moved to aluminum fixtures, but this place was just a step up from Mayberry’s jail. It was porcelain, with old-fashioned silver twist knobs. One was rusted shut and the other had been ripped off during a riot. It’d never been replaced, leaving a serrated shard jutting to the sky. I noticed it just in time before gashing my palm on it the first night. Neither side was functional, yet the broken faucet had a constant drip that left a green streak on the oily basin. No water except for what I was given, not that I could drink anyhow.

If I have to listen to that goddamn thing one more night I’m going to rip it out of the fucking wall!

They said they’d ran out of pillowcases the day before.

And sheets.

Pretty sure my pillow had lice.

I didn’t even want to know what the too-white-to-be-piss stains were on the bare blue mattress.

I crawled to the toilet and heaved again. The results were the same—nothing but a sharp belly pain and long lines of drool hanging from my cracked lips. I wiped my mouth with the back of my orange sleeve and recoiled in disgust as the reek from the nauseating bowl punched me in the nose. It almost made me faint headfirst into the brown water.

I would’ve welcomed the release if I knew I’d drown quickly.

As I lifted my face out of the foulest, most disease-ridden shitter to ever have a stranger’s blood caked to the seat, I silently cursed myself for committing such a stupid traffic violation, the arrogant pigs who pulled me over for it, and my own addiction for allowing Alfonse to talk me into five cookies instead of one.

That greedy Mexican-Latvian-Irish-African-Norwegian-Saudi-American halfbreed.

***

When Alfonse asked me to transport five cookies I gave him my best Scooby Doo. I didn’t really want to, but his offer was most compelling: an ounce of coke and five hundred bucks for an inner-city trip.

That’s as sweet as a prostitute doing butt stuff without charging you extra.

I readily agreed and held my breath for the old grease and go, loading up my shipment with minimal bleeding straining and setting out in my sky-blue Studebaker while smoking a hooter enroute to the dropoff. I exited I-49 and took a left at the intersection of Stoner Avenue (I swear to God that’s a real street). So far, so good. Until I fucked up, of course.

As carelessness would have it, I ran a stop sign.

As fate would have it, there were two cops tanning their leathery asses across the street in a Frisky Dream parking lot, inhaling donuts like they were the last ones the place was ever going to make. I didn’t even notice them as I drove by. They saw my violation, driving out of there to fix themselves behind me. We traveled three blocks, my body a jumble of nerves as I took note of their unwavering position in the rearview mirror. When the time was ripe, they hit the lights and pulled me over in a Booger Fling parking lot.

I would’ve shit my navy-blue Dickies if my asshole hadn’t been plugged with five ounces of cocaine.

The first little piggy got out of his city patrol car wearing a pressed blue uniform, dark Raybans, and a smug exterior. He shifted his duty belt, placed his left hand on the taser, and kept it there. I saw him eyeing my plates and rear lights as he slowly made his way to my vehicle. Once on the driver’s side, he knocked on the window, rotating his melded thumb and index finger in the universal symbol to roll it down.

What the hell was I going to do, punch it? The Police Interceptor would’ve snagged my mammoth Studebaker like a cheetah to a gazelle.

I sat looking straight ahead and exhaled a deep sigh. Reluctantly, I complied as I felt metaphorical batons knocking on my asshole for an unwelcomed entry. (I cannot tell you how much I yearned to avoid this scenario, good people. The smoke filled my cab like a poker game and I knew I was fucked.)

As well as driving a fogbank, I’d stupidly left joint roaches in my ashtray from a couple of days before. It was ajar, and Piggy #1 could see them from his vantage point. Not that it would’ve mattered; the stench of cow flesh searing on a commercial broiler couldn’t hide the vapors of fresh Blueberry Kush wafting from my cab. The funk gave him all the probable cause he needed for a search.

Piggy #2 had stayed in the cruiser running my tags. When Piggy #1 realized that their traffic stop warranted an arrest, he motioned for him to come assist with my detainment. There was no point in protest. I begrudgingly exited the truck, was cuffed, charged with possession of CDS I, and thrown in the small back seat of their Interceptor with knees in my chest because it’s common knowledge that midgets are the only people to ever go to jail. The fast food joint’s parking lot welled with gawkers and rubberneckers searching for free entertainment. Before we left, the first little piggy radioed for a tow truck to come impound my beautiful ride.

On the way to parish jail, Piggy #2 informed me that since it was Friday afternoon, I wasn’t seeing a judge about bail until Monday morning. Upon arrival to the clink, I was booked, stripsearched—absent a cavity search—printed, and handed a dapper orange jumpsuit to sport for the weekend. I was mad, but grateful for what the cops hadn't found, thankful I’d deflected a latex finger jammed up my ass.

So then.....

I’m in parish lockup. Sitting on five tightly-wrapped ounces of fresh cocaine. Hoping nobody tries to force the love. At least with all that coke in my rectum it’d be numb to the abuse.

***

Friday night faded to Saturday afternoon without a hitch. The only fight-or-flight I’d felt was in the showers. I’d shaved my head the evening before my arrest, and my sleeved arms and painted torso elicited glares from some of the homies. Luckily, the absence of swastikas bought me a pass.

I was concerned about the load I was packing, but fortunate enough to have a cell to myself. At least the grub didn’t have sand in it that time. The weekend staff treated everyone like humans and accommodated reasonable requests, allowing rec time to extend pass normal hours if everyone maintained an even keel. They even gave the inmates extra desserts due to a surplus in their foodstuffs. Oddly, that’s where my troubles worsened, my weakness for creamy Jell-O pudding cups teabagging me like a senior in the locker room.

Did I mention I’m lactose intolerant?

***

Saturday Night

Haven’t shit since Friday morning. No laxatives in the clink. Wouldn’t ask for them anyway. A small tummy ache. Feel trouble brewing. Lower intestines locking up and I think I greased a little bit in my jumpsuit. Trying hard to maintain. Face stays twisted. I snarl a lot. Other inmates avoid me because they think I’m possessed. Yay for small miracles.

Sunday

Tummy is starting to bulge. Pain becoming unbearable. Can’t eat anymore. Fearing an OD from a leaky package soaking into my rectum. Question whether death would really be a problem. Exhausted. Haven’t slept since Thursday night Wednesday night Tuesday night can’t remember due to heavy consumption of coke prior to arrest. Keep to myself and wait to get out. Hoping I can make it. I look like shit, thus am deemed too unattractive to rape. Motherfucker, will tomorrow ever get here?

Monday

Thank God!

***

A sheriff’s deputy in a wrinkled beige uniform retrieved me from my cell around 8:45. He stood inches away from the bars and called my name from an old wooden clipboard:

“Coxman! Innis!”

I verified I was me and rolled off the bottom bunk to stand, sweating and looking like I’d swallowed a bowling ball. Rivers poured down my face as pallor washed over my body. Wetness coated the chest of my orange jumpsuit down to the third silver button, matched only by the puddles in the armpits. Patches of my alabaster skin were scabbed over due to binging.

The deputy took note of my condition. He crinkled his face and asked if I needed an ambulance. A speedy, “No, sir!” flew from my mouth. (They’d transport me to a hospital with X-ray machines. Fuck that.) Shrugging his shoulders, he ordered me to turn around and cuffed me through the grey, flaking bars. I’d expected ankle shackles, but he said there weren’t any available. I was ordered to behave under the threat of mace to the eyes and a baton to the head.

Once my cell buzzed open, I walked out and was held tightly by my left arm as we muddled past the cells of other prisoners hollering obscenities and outlandish demands. The foulness of stale urine and sweat was an appropriate accompaniment to the heckling.

Two electric doors later, we were at the end of the block, rounding the glass hexagon control room to our final steel door. The Beluga Whale inside the hut put down his triple-meat heart attack special with fries and pushed a button on the control panel. The door opened, and the deputy and I walked under the red, handwritten “Judgment Lane” sign where he escorted me down a long corridor connecting the jail to the courthouse. It overlooked the street from three stories up. I looked out of the tinted five-by-five window panes as we walked along the brown speckled tile, eyeing the traffic below, the people on the sidewalk going about their day in fresh sunlight.

I wondered how long it’d be before I was pounding free pavement.

By the time we made it to the courtroom I felt like I was going to die, the sterility of Lysol stinging my eyes to bring additional moisture. The deputy placed me in the jury box to the left of the judge’s bench. It served as a bullpen for prisoners awaiting indictment, arraignment, etc.—if you were in cuffs, that’s where you stayed unless instructed otherwise. I sat slowly, puffing like Pavarotti on a morning jog. When my name was called, I stood and prepared to shuffle my parish slippers toward the waist-high podium between the defense and prosecution tables.

In every courtroom, the bailiffs are responsible for controlling prisoner movement during legal proceedings. It’s an essential part of the job. But when this bailiff came to lead me to the podium, he halted, his face twisting like he’d been offered a sack of diarrheic dog shit. He never laid a hand on me. I was treated like a leper and couldn’t help but turn it around on him.

“Oh no, I trust you, Mr. Coxman. You don’t look like you’ll do anything. Now just go stand over there. No, sir, I don’t need to escort you. Go stand over there. Right there, sir. Over there. No, don’t—sir, don’t fucking—get away from me! Mr. Coxman, I said go stand way the hell over there!”

I kept acting like I was going to brush up against him and he was losing his mind. It was hilarious.

Outward appearance reflected the distress of internal organs and the silver-haired judge didn’t attempt to hide his disgust at my rancid state. Sitting rigidly atop his wooden throne, he looked noble in his black, velveteen robe, but utterly repulsed at the zombified condition of the defendant stooping before him. I stood at the podium with my cuffed hands in the small of my back, bent at the waist like a cattail in a thunderstorm, trying desperately to mitigate the pain in my midriff. Ill as I was, it looked like I’d taken a full shower in my jumpsuit. The chancellor’s eyebrows crashed together as he flashed me from head to toe.

“Mr. Coxman, are you alright, sir? Do you need medical attention before we continue?”

“No, sir, Your Honor. I’m fine. I just have a mild touch of the flu. My unfortunate incarceration has hastened its umbrage. Hopefully, with the Lord as my healer, I’ll be rid of this detestable sickness with medicine and cold fluids, encircled by the grace of my beloved family.” I’m still waiting for my Oscar.

He gave a gravelly, “harrumph,” his exasperation obvious at having to deal with another smartass in his courtroom. He slowly swiveled the squeaky leather chair, never taking his eyes off of me. After forty-five degrees, he turned to face the Brooks Brother on my left: “Proceed, counselor.”

***

The city prosecutor wasted no time in painting me out to be an urchin of the first order, flapping his gums about being under the influence, something about “possession” that I didn’t catch, and making reference to a “stack of homemade pornography in the glove box of Mr. Coxman’s vehicle.” Just being a dick and airing business that made the sexually repressed stenographer fall out of her chair more than once. Incidentally, the judge told him he couldn’t do anything about my porn stash and to stick to the transgressions he could actually adjudicate.

I quoth the coolest magistrate in the history of jurisprudence: “Sir, this court has no control over Mr. Coxman’s sexual proclivities with other consenting adults, no matter how much they stray from the avenues of convention.”

Checkmate, you tweed-coated cocksucker.

Throughout the prosecution’s finger-pointing I felt like I was going to pop. I hadn’t blown ass in three days and it was severely affecting my sexy. I was dizzy and feverish. I was a greedy tick in a dog pound. Had somebody thumped my belly, it would’ve sounded like a cantaloupe. Anguish clouded even the most basic of senses. Somewhere in my veil of suffering, I heard the judge say three letters that had never applied to me before: “ROR.”

Excessive cocaine ingestion can lead to auditory hallucinations; I thought one of the packages had burst and I was hearing shit. Either that, or I was so physically ill that my mind had crossed the line into schizophrenia. But I’d heard the judge correctly, and in the healthy portion of my brain, I was quietly celebrating. I didn’t even know if I’d make bail, let alone be released of my own accord. I was so floored with this turn of events I would’ve filled my fashionable orange attire with solid excitement had it not been for the quarter-pound of cocaine blocking the exit.

ROR. Are they fuckin’ serious?

I was about to get out of there! I was about to escape the Gulag at no cost! I still had the possession charge to contend with down the road, but it was a misdemeanor. Nothing a good attorney couldn’t handle. I’d take some Ex-Lax, blow out this delivery by noon, and be soaking in a hot bath shortly thereafter. By that time I felt my asshole and I both deserved some R & R.

Then the goddamn Jell-O pudding kicked in.

***

The entire courtroom heard the rumble coming from my bowels as I released a long, booming fart, permeating the room with viral death.

The judge raised an eyebrow.

The prosecutor covered his nose with his overpriced silk tie.

A black guy awaiting arraignment for killing his wife and her lover with a nine-iron threw his fist in the air and cheered from the jury box.

The audience chuckled before shifting to the rear of the courtroom once the turd blanket descended.

The bailiff I’d harassed gave me a toothy grin with a double thumbs-up.

And somewhere in the world, my doppelganger shot up from his chair with inexplicable assfire.

My body had had enough. It was backed up with three days of excrement, some of which was jail food. I frantically looked around for the closest bathroom.

A purse.

A shopping bag.

A wheelbarrow.

An empty baby stroller.

An occupied baby stroller.

A fucking red wagon.

Then I spied the witness stand.

Adrenaline quenched my arteries like the mighty Colorado breaking the Hoover Dam. I grimaced, pulled with every muscle in my haggard body, and broke free of the ancient, rusty handcuffs. Jumping out from behind the podium and brushing the prosecution table, I slipped passed the bailiffs and ran to the closest salvation I could find. When I got to the witness box, the judge screamed and lifted his arms to guard his face, thinking I was going to hurdle the bench and assault him. But the only thing I needed from his eminence was his wife’s hot box big, wooden box.

Once in my guano gulch, I stripped out of the jumpsuit like it was stitched of pedophiles. Amidst confused faces and screaming cries of protest, I kicked the rolling witness chair behind me to squat in the privacy of my public shithole. The front of the stand provided me with a screen as I blasted out a load of ordure that is still responsible for His Honor’s policy of forcing prisoners to use the bathroom before they enter his court. He looked down at me with perplexion and odious contempt. Everyone else could only view me from the chest up as a look of orgasm settled across my face.

It was plentiful. Bountiful. Copious enough to match an anthrax outbreak. Load after load of pudding cups, coke, and dry baloney sandwiches blew from my ass like brown snow in a shitty blizzard. The prosecutor threw up in his briefcase, spectators fled the courtroom, the bailiff drew his parish issue Glock, and I didn’t notice any of it until my bowels were thoroughly evacuated.

The judge never moved. He sat in his chair the whole time, awestruck. He just stared at me and my smile of satisfaction when it was over. Still squatting, but smiling, I faced him and asked if I could use some paperwork from his bench to wipe my ass. His reply was an open mouth and befuddlement.

Fuck it. Silence doesn’t necessarily mean “No.”

Snatching up the closest sheet of paper, I cleansed myself—wipe, fold, wipe, fold—before crowning the mound with a steaming page of legal grandeur. When I stood and buttoned up, the jumpsuit fit better. My tummy was flat again.

After rounds of vomitous from the dwindling occupants, I was re-cuffed by the bailiff—this time with new, sparkling cuffs and ankle shackles—before he gingerly led me back to the cell block. He didn’t even hold my arm as was policy for prisoner escorts. A ten-foot gap was purposely maintained for our hike back to lockup.

Call me crazy, but I could’ve sworn I felt a smile warming the back of my neck.

***

Reality set in after ten minutes in my cell: it wasn’t just a pile of waste in the witness box. A great majority of the substance was pure cocaine.

Alfonse’s cocaine.

What if, by some fluke, I’d actually gotten out that day? Even replacing my ROR with a high bail, it was possible. Taking into account all that’d transpired, probably not, but stranger things have happened. I began to worry heavily about Alfonse’s reaction when I showed up with no money and no product, as well as brooding over the mountain of offal now sitting in a courtroom. The discolored contents of my colon were surrounded by a judge, some sheriff’s deputies, and anyone else who wanted to investigate the anatomical miracle of saran-wrapped shit.

My worry over the latter was all for naught.

Apparently, three nights in a hot sphincter is the half-life for cookie’d cocaine. Upon expulsion, the two substances blended evenly to match a dessert topping at a family reunion.

Nobody was that interested to learn how I’d produced eggshell-cocoa meringue.

***

There’s something to be said for the axiom, “If you mess it up, clean it up.” When I called for a deputy to my cell, I asked him to relay that I’d be more than happy to go in and remove my inner goodness from the judge’s courtroom myself. He laughed heartily and said it’d been taken care of.

I felt bad for the trustee who was tasked with the sanitation, but from what the deputy said, he chuckled to himself as he shoveled everything away and disinfected the box.

My guilt subsided.

Curiously, I was still released ROR, much to the bewilderment of myself and everyone else. When asked, the deputy escorting me to processing said the judge let me go due to my flu, stating it’d be inhumane to lock me down for such a small amount of marijuana with, “gastrointestinal calamities so forcefully afoot.”

That deputy did secure my arm, standing behind me, diagonally to the right. My smirk cleared three frontal feet so as not to get popped at the end of the tunnel. He saw a poker face when I turned and asked him to give the judge my thanks and warmest regards.

An Ivy League education bought the guy a title, but goddamn, it didn’t buy him sense.

***

Low-cut Chucks slapped the sidewalk in front of parish, my Dickies and Big Johnson t-shirt smelling of mothballs from the brown envelope that’d housed my clothes all weekend. The Kool at my lips tasted like freedom. And fiberglass. I inhaled deeply, feeling five ten twenty pounds lighter.

I walked the half-mile to the impound lot to obtain my Studebaker, immediately checking the glovebox for my portable haram. Someone had lifted it from me while I was in lockup. It was of no concern. I was pissed to be sure, but it was a small price to pay for taking a coke-riddled dump on a witness stand in front of an unwitting judge and some stupid cops.

And a full courtroom.

And a handful of prisoners.

It was later revealed that my two arresting officers were as corrupt as a Southern governor. They’d been under watch by IAB for quite some time. In the end, they did themselves in: a few weeks before my arraignment, they were busted smuggling illegal drugs into the jail.

Cocaine.

In their asses.

Their integrity was compromised and I was found innocent of all my charges. The headlines said they’d received ten years apiece for their crookedness.

Irony is where you find it, I suppose.

Alfonse wasn’t upset about his lost product. He accepted everything as the cost of doing business and was pleased I didn’t snitch, happy that I, “dealt with it like a man.” His gratitude was politeness in its purest form, however. If I had snitched he would’ve heard about it.

And given me a bullet within minutes of hitting the street.

***

I learned many important lessons from my muling days, one of which was to limit my load to two cookies, goddammit.

Another was to avoid that life altogether. It’s a trap, man. The only thing waiting for you is the prison yard or the bone yard. I’ve seen too many people walk into the void and many of them didn’t come back—for various reasons. I’m proud to say I’ve left my scandalous ways in the dust, thanking God for every new day I shirk the need for any debilitating drug.

Redemption is the greatest high in the world.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment to keep. The salon closes at four and Klaus will only bleach men’s assholes on Tuesdays.

Rushin’ Roulette

A nasty gash with a dick in her mouth rides me on a broken couch while a humongous nutsack flaps wildly near my face. Somewhere in our canoodling, the nutsack’s owner announces that he’s about to achieve release somewhere in the vicinity of my bloodshot baby-blues.

The three lines of speed I just bumped are perforating my brain like a sewing needle. Images from the robbery they came from flash in my mind like movie clips. Primal grunts yank me back to the two-faced chick we’re double-teaming and the impending splooge that may shoot across my peepers:

I can’t wait to get this over with.

Her nipples are freakishly huge.

Christ, am I still even hard?

Dude, please aim it at the Pink Panther doll.

I’ve gotta get better friends, man.

***

My buddy Jay used to run a tattoo parlor called The Dirty Needle. It was located in a brick, two-story tenement in a part of town that always had fresh chalk outlines on the sidewalk. Jay owned the building and ran his shop out of the second floor. The first floor was rented to a mortician and his funeral home. I never asked questions, but from what I saw they seemed to have a good business relationship. It had deep roots, going all the way back to when they were both struggling up-starts trying to make it.

You see, when Jay was first learning his craft and the funeral home was still begging for bodies, Jay would let his tenant fudge on a payment in exchange for some late-night practice.

The mortician got a free month’s rent.

The bereaved never knew Grandma went in the ground with “CARROT TOP RULES!” carved in her asscheek.

It was a win-win.

To say that Jay’s place had a diverse clientele would be an understatement. If the casts of Oz and L. A. Law had a bunch of bastards running around, that would about cover it. It catered to everybody—from wannabes in suits to the lowest sacks of dirt to ever duck a Morning-After pill.

Drug dealers, strippers, doctors, nurses, drug dealers, lawyers, hangers-on, paralegals, drug dealers, addicts, real estate shills, and drug dealers all crossed his threshold on a daily basis.

There were bars on the windows to protect his investment, electric doors in case a snappy shutdown was needed, and weaponry strategically stashed for quick retrieval. It was a successful business that brought in sacks of cash and Jay kept his patronage in line with a .44 Bulldog that resided on his person at all times.

Which is why it blew my mind when he asked me to help him rob the meth-dealing husband of this meth-addicted whore who frequented his cock frequented the shop.

***

Jay’s office was a relaxing mahogany room in the rear of the building with Bob Marley on the wall and The Geto Boys blasting from the stereo. An oakwood desk obtained from an “after hours sale” at a furniture store sat at the far corner. A black filing cabinet was on the right as you walked in. It was his private oasis from the hustle of business where only a few people were ever allowed as guests. He and the artists under his employ would congregate back there before going home, smoking blunts and sniffing lines, unwinding after a day of tattooing rainbows and Winnie the Poohs on homosexuals who were trying to convince themselves they’d made the correct life-choices.

We were in his office when he asked me to get his back on the robbery. The shop was closed that day but we had made arrangements to meet. Jay had a date shortly thereafter, and may I say that he was dashing in ghetto-fab white boy garb. From his purple porkpie hat down to his steel toes, the man was dressed to impress: light-blue cholo button-up, baggy Karl Kani blue jeans, an enormous belt buckle in the shape of Texas, and a spit-shine polish so high on his boots that a man could see the reflection of his teeth before they were scattered all over the parking lot.

He was reclining in the leather chair at his desk smoking a joint as I gave him my gut reaction about his request. I paced back and forth over the hardwood, coolly explaining to him the wrath that theft of a chemically-based entrepreneur with an illegal arsenal could bring upon us:

“You’ve gone batshit fucking insane! Did you drink all the tea? I knew that cow shit was too old!”

“Coxman, chill, man. Listen.”

“Deez nutz don’t listen! Dude, have you thought about who we’re getting in bed with here? We’re talking about Alotta Shitz, the most double-dealing bitch to ever snub penicillin. You know if something goes wrong she’ll give us to the cops. And if we’re caught red-handed, Harry’s not gonna kill us. He’s gonna keep us a while—then he’ll kill us! What’s the deal? You owe her a favor or something? Why ya wanna help some strung-out geek who doesn’t even swallow?”

“That’s not true. She swallows sometimes.”

“Point taken. But why did she ask you to do it? Between her and her snaggletooth little brother, they should have a stable of tweakers itching to rob that asshole.”

“They do. Which is why she asked me.” Jay leaned forward and put his elbows on the desk. “Check it out, dude. She wants to leave him but she needs some money first. Said if she gets a hold of Harry’s stash she can flip it and have enough dough to leave the state. She told me that when he starts a new cook, he leaves it to simmer for a few hours in their shed while he takes a nap. He keeps three duffle bags of speed in there, too. Me and you can snatch that shit up while he’s sleepin’ and call it Miller time.”

“That’s a fuckin’ peach. But I’m still waiting to hear why she asked you.”

“Because he’s gonna lose his shit when he finds out and she doesn’t want it coming back to her or anyone they both know.”

“What’s in it for us?”

“A bunch o’ free speed, my man.”

He offered me the joint. I took a deep hit, mulling over the pros and cons, floored that I was even considering this suicide mission. Although I tried to come up with an acceptable out, there were two points I couldn’t ignore: I sniffed a lot of meth and blew a lot of cash.

I told him I was in. Once I got my cut, I could sell some, sniff some, and come out as delusional as Charlie Sheen.

I leaned against the wall, unable to believe the words falling from my mouth. “Dude, alright. I’ll do it ‘cause you’re my boy and there’s potential for some money. Truthfully, though, I think we’ll be lucky if this doesn’t bite us in the balls.”

“Cool. Thanks, Innis. It’ll be worth it. Oh, and Alotta has a little hideaway on the other side of town. That’s where we’re gonna meet to split the load. She might be down to fuck, too.”

“She still got the drips?”

“Nah. Free clinic took care of that. Don’t matter, though—if the vadge is sick I got wraps fo’ the dick!”

“Fuckin’ gross, Jay.”

***

Miss America 1985 had just been given a hole in her cheek to match her nostrils. At least, that’s where the hole would’ve been had Sharlene Wells’ actual head been in the line of fire. Just as that hook-nosed sea creature was accepting her award on national television, the bullet from Harry’s 9mm tore through her face on the screen.

Alotta’s father had just bought that TV the day before.

***

Alotta Flushing and Harry Shitz met at a miniature golf course when he bumped into her on a fairway. She was trying to hammer a shot into the clown’s mouth as he was running from the concession stand with the take from the register. Their eyes locked and it was love at first sight, two hearts merging as one. They soon discovered it would be a long road before they could be happy in their aortic misguidedness. (Speaking as a man who’s been attacked by a few fathers, take my word: you always love the hardest when it’s forbidden.)

She was a sixteen-year old Bible thumper with straight As and a pony tail.

He was a twenty-four-year old dope fiend with a flattop and a prison record.

She came from an extensive line of Jehovah's Witnesses.

His pedigree included addicts and petty criminals.

The loving rays of the Flushings shone dim when Harry was taken to bask in their Christian glow.

Alotta’s father, a used car salesman, had put his foot in Harry’s ass when he put his cigarette out in the lasagna. He threw Harry out of the house and promised to feed his nuts to the family Pit Bull if he ever came back. Mr. Flushing should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy.

Harry called Alotta’s house all hours of the night, begging her parents to let him see her. He filled his empty heart with Wild Turkey and biker speed, pining for the most beautiful underage girl he’d ever had. No matter what he did, he could smell her orange blossom perfume; taste her cherry lip gloss; feel her steel braces snag on the head of his veiny penis.

“There’s no way a man who sells fuckin’ Gremlins is gonna come between me and Alotta!” he screamed in between plunges of the needle.

Likewise, Alotta longed to be with her felonious bad boy. She lived in the body of a teenager—her Esprit sneakers flying her home from school to watch another never-missed episode of Charles in Charge—but beneath her pediatric shell beat the heart of a woman who was dying inside. She loved Harry deeply and was lost without him. She felt like Rapunzel, trapped in a suburban tower of brick and vinyl siding. Not even her Menudo posters brought excitement anymore.

Alotta loved everything about Harry—the way he kissed her, his skill in sizzling a spoonful of dope, his back tattoo of a Klan lynching (when Harry flexed his muscles the victim turned into a yoyo). Being apart cut deeper than a switchblade.

Oh, Pat, if love is truly a battlefield, then my Harry will figure out a way to break down the walls of this impenetrable fortress.

Yeah, she’d said that as a metaphor, never thinking he would really kick in the front door and pop a cap in the TV.

***

After massacring the family’s brand new Zenith console, Harry announced that he was taking Alotta to a state where sixteen-year olds could get married (there’s unsettlingly quite a few). He’d planned ahead, forging Mr. Flushing’s signature with exaction from the driver’s license he’d stolen the first night he was there. Harry then hit Mr. Flushing across the face several times with his pistol while Alotta’s mother slunk into the couch having a silent freakout. Alotta had overheard everything from the landing upstairs.

Bowled over by Harry’s commitment, and the totally tubular way he pistol-whipped her father, she vaulted over the handrail, crashing into the sweaty embrace of her beloved kidnapper. Leaving with just the clothes on her back and the Swatch Watch on her wrist, she yelled, “Cowabunga!” to her parents and ran out of the house with one of the nuttiest ex-cons to ever pack a gun.

Fifteen years later, me and Jay were packing guns to go rob the same nut.

***

Alotta said Harry always started a new cook around lunchtime. She called us at 2 PM the day he began making a fresh batch and we went over there to scope it out.

If Alotta was any indication, their house was going to be trashy. My suspicions were heightened when we entered the neighborhood. I use that term loosely, mind you; it was more like houses squatting on a maze of broken streets. It was called Pine Brook in its inception, but everyone, including the residents, now knew it as Pine Crook.

Originally meant to be a middle-class suburb back in the 70s, construction was abandoned when the bank financing the project went under. The homes that’d already been built were sold at rock bottom prices to recoup some of the expenditure, attracting a certain “element” in the process. It was now the sort of community where drunks lay passed out on porches, where bums pushed stolen shopping carts, where every corner reeked of larceny and old garbage. A place where you could brew megatons of crystal or beat your wife without drawing unwanted attention from the cops. Not that anyone would’ve called them.

Someone was beating somebody in every residence.

***

Everything was quiet around the old clapboard house. There were black garbage bags covering broken windowpanes, aluminum foil clinging to the rest. Three gutted trucks older than the wheel itself rusted in the front yard. Filled with bullet holes and groupings of buckshot. A late 80s model Corolla sat in the driveway with no bumpers and a lot of primer. Cap it off with a lawn that was mostly dirt and you had a setting straight out of a Depression-era novel. A leaning hurricane fence sealed it all in. We’d gain access through the broken front gate.

The first thing we smelled upon exiting Jay’s Caddy were the industrial fumes of primo speed hanging in the humidity.

Since this was Jay’s deal, I waited by the car and smoked on a joint while he did some reconnaissance. He crept around the side of the house, fighting trash bags puffing in the breeze to peer into the den. Through a slit in the foil, he saw Alotta’s husband, Harry “Crazy” Shitz, sleeping soundly on their green canvas sofa with a muted episode of Friends providing the only light in the room.

Clutching a 12 gauge like a murderous teddy bear.

Jay wheeled his arm for me to come over. I roached the joint and stealthed through the graveyard of Fords and scrub brush. We circled back behind the house to the dilapidated tin shed. My bolt cutters razored through the padlock like a hot knife through butter.

When we flung the door open it looked like New Jack City starring Bill Nye the Science Guy. There were beakers bubbling with caustic chemicals, lung-melting vapors frothing from clear plastic containers, interstates of tubing converging on top of one another, and enough packs of Sudafed to cure a hospital ward. Our eyes drifted to three black duffle bags in a far corner that were big enough to smuggle Asians.

We rushed over and unzipped them with shaking hands, careful to mask our faces with shirttails so as not to breathe the rotten air. We uncovered more than we bargained for: all three were filled to the brim with gram-size baggies of glass—that speed that looks like chips of a bottle after you’ve smashed it over someone’s head.

Erections were achieved.

We looped the duffles on our shoulders—one for Jay, two for me—and hauled ass back to the Caddy where we threw them in the back seat. I followed them, yelling, “GO! GO! GO!” at the top of my lungs. I hadn’t had a chance to shut the door. It slammed back on my shins when Jay peeled down the street.

Next stop, a shithole.

***

Alotta’s duplex was a fireball waiting to happen. It’d been built during the 40s and was smack dab in the middle of the ghetto. One of the oldest structures in the city, it had a front porch made of boards harvested from retired riverboats. It ran the length of the building, so loosely put together that it acted as a doorbell for both apartments; you could hear a mouse crawl over those planks. Concrete steps in front of the tinderbox had sunk into the Earth over time, lying six inches below the porch, and God help you if you weren’t paying attention; first-time visitors unmindful of their steps were treated to a face full of splinters. A white flowerpot with bright, plastic petals hung from a hook on one of the beams, doing its best to offset the dead chrysanthemum plants that lined Alotta’s side of the porch. A puke-green paint job was severely malnourished by fifty-plus years of exposure to the elements. The broken metal mailbox on the front post was supposed to read 669, but a rivet on the nine was fucked so it fell to read 666.

I would’ve taken that as my sign to turn around if I’d known what was going to happen.

***

Our plan was to split the booty into thirds. When we arrived, Jay chucked the bags on the untidy coffee table in the living room, sending empty Michelob bottles and the flaming nubs of orange-scented candles plummeting to the carpet. After stamping out the resulting inferno, we divvied up our plunder, each of us getting a duffle, Jay plunking a tattooed arm into his to retrieve a baggie. We left Alotta inspecting hers in the living room while the two of us hurriedly walked into the kitchen to crush the contents of the plastic with a ladle. As thanks for helping him with the theft, Jay let me do the honors. He dumped the powdered cargo on the grubby counter, cutting it into three lines with his pocket knife. I leaned over and hoovered the channels of transparent crystals one after the other through a severed Mcfatty’s straw.

My brain came alive after the first bump.

My nose fried from the second.

My face was prickly after the third.

I shot up from the formica ready to choke a Hells Angel and take his bitch, staggering to the faucet to wet my fingertips and sniff the droplets to coax the grains down my throat. My pupils were small but my eyes were huge, taking in strobes of color I hadn’t known existed. Successive waves of light reverberated around my field of vision like I’d taken a blow to the face. I was soaring with eagles through clear-blue skies, sharing airspace with every manner of flying fowl, thinking I’d never come down from the burning wonder of unknown oxidants mauling my cerebral cortex.

It was the best glass I’d ever done in my entire drug career.

Harry Shitz knew his shit and my olfactory singed with appreciation.

Jay and Alotta snuffled three lines apiece as well, sending us all into the stratosphere. Alotta was so tweaked that she actually started cleaning up the layers of pizza boxes and Carby’s sandwich containers that’d started paying rent on the kitchen floor. Her unwashed coochie-cutters and used-to-be red halter top flecked through the kitchen performing household chores that’d been neglected for God knows how long. As she scurried over the linoleum, I couldn’t help but wince at the sound of her naked feet retracting from the sticky material.

That girl was nasty.

Jay and I were in the living room on her brown leather couch watching a rerun of All in the Family, frozen in place by Archie Bunker’s take on race relations in 1970s America. Alotta materialized at the doorway, her thin brown hair stuck to her forehead from speed-sweat, the sunken cheeks rosy from an elevated body temp, with her brown eyes indented like a skeleton’s. Without so much as a buttery lead-in, she said she wanted a bigger slice of the pie. Her reasoning behind this astonishing demand:

Since it was her husband she’d stabbed in the back, she should get a majority of the spoils.

I would’ve fainted had it not been for the speed.

Jay turned to me, doubt slathered across his face with the beginning hints of anger in his usually deep-blue eyes. His nostrils flared and it wasn’t just from the glass. For a second, we glared at each other, telepathically agreeing that Alotta could go fuck herself. But the implications of her declaration were clear:

Do it, or get the Crazy Shitz.

I knew we were treading on thin ice when I’d agreed to deal with this bitch. Then Jay told her to kiss his dick.

Our world.

Was fucked.

This was a serious predicament, good people. We were at odds with an erratic speed freak whose drug use only intensified her erraticism. If we didn’t cohere to her terms, she’d tell Harry who stole his product and we’d be forced to go on the lam. Sure, he’d beat Alotta half to death for hatching the scheme—how would she know who stole his speed unless she was in on it?—but at the end of the day, that was his wife. He’d leave her breathing and her broken bones would heal. The same would not be said for us.

I stayed on the couch watching TV, listening to Jay and Alotta argue in the kitchen, plotting my new life performing donkey porn in a Mexican village if his interference didn’t produce results.

I was impressed with his restraint. He didn’t slap her or anything.

He gave a deep breath—“WHOOOOOOO!”—then took it down a notch. Over Archie’s racist dialogue, I heard him calmly inform that greasy slag how yes, she’d provided the information, but we actually took the risk; how there was a shotgun ready to blow our heads off at any moment; how, in light of that news, we were being nice by not taking the whole load and sticking her in the ground somewhere; and how yes, an even three-way split was more than fair considering all the information placed at her feet and because fuck that slimy bitch.

Shotgun, goddammit.

His arguments proved to be fruitless. No matter how well he explained it to her, that brainless junkie wouldn’t leave it alone. Jay finally gave up on diplomacy, steering the conversation toward sex. He knew that Alotta would drop a newborn for a good fuck and her predictability didn’t disappoint. He suspected that she’d see the light after the speed wore off.

And if she didn’t, he lived next to a light-yellow cornfield.

They walked into the living room without explanation, knowing I’d heard every word from the kitchen. Alotta smiled slyly, saying she’d always wanted to fuck both of us at the same time.

I’d always wanted to hump a wolverine before I put my dick in Alotta Shitz, but if this was the way it had to be for Jay and I to keep our share of the loot—and our lives—then so be it.

Alotta stripped out of her shorts and halter top. Jay got naked as well, his clothes joining hers on the floor. Mine wound up on top of the pile. Jay got ready to silence Alotta’s mouth with his dick. I donned a rubber and got ready to silence her ass with mine.

***

We moved to the couch where Alotta positioned herself on top of me. I cushioned my head with an armrest as Jay nestled his schlong firmly against her tonsils. I was buttfucking her from the bottom while he was buried asshole-deep in her throat. I know this because his asshole was directly above me and I was looking straight into its ungodly hairiness. I tried to shut my eyes, but the speed wouldn’t let me.

It was like watching a grizzly attack a campsite.

Leaning on the armrest at the other end of the couch was a sad Pink Panther doll with a pathetic eye dangling from an empty socket. I peered around Alotta’s hips and sent him an empathetic message. “You’ve seen all this before, haven’t you, old buddy?” He nodded “Yes” in time to our rhythmic boning before dropping unceremoniously to the floor.

That poor, pink bastard.

Alotta started going ass-to-mouth. She’d jump off and blow me through the rubber as Jay jerked his meat for a sec. I’d never had a chick do that before. It was really gross but kinda hot so I was on the fence about it. I got off that picketed motherfucker when Jay gave her a Frencher.

Jay was on the brink of eruption. I was on the verge of revulsion. Seeing him and Alotta share ass goblins made my innards bubble. I couldn’t tell if I was even still aroused. With great amplitude, he yelled that he was about to gush.

My wish to avoid a facial brought me back to focus. The abundance of chemicals ravaging my brain gave me a speech impediment, but I managed to tell him to unload away from my face.

“It’s cool, man! I’m about to show you she does swallow sometimes! Hahaha!”

Yeah, dude. That’s exactly what I’ve been wanting to know.

***

The sounds of a rumbling Corolla in Alotta’s driveway made us freeze in position, Jay’s nuts shrunk in his pelvis, Alotta in mid-thrust on my semi-muddy rod. He jerked out of her mouth and raced to peer through the nicotine-infused blinds. Ballsweat rained on my face, invoking a powerful gag from the bottom of my stomach. Though I wanted to throw up everything since the previous night, I had to maintain. Apparently, we were about to have pressing business.

Jay swiveled his head back and forth between Alotta and the window. “What the fuck, Lotti?! What's Harry doing here?! I thought you said he didn’t know about this place!”

Her ass had a vice grip on my manhood. Alotta bounced off of me so fast she took the Trojan with her, plunging wiry fingers into her cheeks and ripping it out before popping it at the blinds like a rubberband next to Jay’s noggin. She stood in the living room, a white trash Wonder Woman, her spread varicosed legs like maps of California, fists pinned to her bony hips.

“No, Jay. Of course he knows about this place. He pays for it! What I said was, ‘he didn’t know how to sit on my face.’ Not without suffocating me, anyway.” She wagged a gnarled finger at him. “That’s what ya get for trying to talk to me when yer eatin’ ‘shrooms, baby. I can’t help it if ya hear what ya wanna hear!”

“Sonofabitch, Lotti!”

We lunged at the pile of fabric on the floor. Our clothes were thrown in a heap and we ripped through them trying to find our respective duds. The car door slammed. Heavy workboots clomped menacingly up the steps and over the loose boards. I heard the familiar shuck of a 12 gauge followed by a fist beating on the door.

***

Our spines stiffened after the first wallop.

Harry’s bags lay open on the coffee table.

Chemical fury raced through our bodies.

Naked and streaming sweat.

Alotta with matted hair.

Me and Jay with dangling dicks.

Mine smelling kinda really shitty.

Fear gripped my senses.

I peed a little.

***

“Yeeees?” Alotta called out in an innocent tone.

“Alotta! Open the door! My stash was stolen and the neighbors said two dudes with a bunch o’ tattoos was at the house! Said they was drivin’ a cherry red Caddy like the one parked in the driveway!”

Alotta lied her freshly-fucked ass off. “Just a minute, baby! I’m cookin’ a pot roast! Got my hands full! Be right there!”

“A pot roast?! Bitch! Yer lyin’ ass ain’t cooked so much as a pot o’ Ramen noodles since we been married! I know they’re in there! If yer fuckin’ those dickwads, that’s yer business. But if they got my speed, that’s my business! Now open this door or Mr. Mossberg’s gonna turn the knob for me!”

He continued pounding on the door demanding entrance while the three of us tried to get dressed. We were successful in getting our garments tangled but utter failures in getting them on. Alotta kept putting him off with excuses that wore thinner with each passing second.

With the prospect of a double-aught death looming close at hand, Alotta said the best thing for us to do was hide in the broom closet. She’d brew a believable story for Harry and get him to leave once he calmed down. She hastily agreed to the original split, saying we’d part ways afterward. That suited me just fine.

***

Two men with a combined weight of six hundred pounds. Stuffed into a space big enough for a vacuum. Tweaking balls. Trying to keep their junk from touching and falling flat in the endeavor. Swooning from the sweet, overpowering tang of Pine-Sol. Clutching a wad of clothing, unsure if any of it’s theirs. Praying to God that if they get shot through the door of a broom closet, it’s a quick departure from the mortal coil.

Would’ve made for a killer book cover.

***

We heard Alotta open the door. Harry charged in the room.

“Where are they?! Those two motherfuckers ripped me off and they’re fuckin’.....why are ya naked, Alotta? And what’s my shit doin’ on the table? What the fuck is goin’ on here?!”

Alotta cocked her trademark attitude and let the hammer fall. “If you’ll quit screamin’ in my house I’ll tell you what the fuck’s goin’ on here! I took yer junk, ya sonofabitch! Me and Chrissy are goin’ to Sturgis this weekend and we wanted enough to do on the trip. With all the bikers there we thought we’d sell some for ya, too. You was sleepin’ when I went to the house so I decided to take all the bags and bring back what the rally didn’t buy. You ungrateful piece o’ shit!”

“Ya expect me to believe that? Who does the Caddy belong to then?”

“Oh fuck, Harry, that’s Chrissy’s new car. She let me borrow it to get the stuff ‘cause you had the Corolla at home.”

Through the hollow closet door, we heard what sounded like a pistol-grip shotgun being placed on a wooden coffee table.

“But why don’t ya have any clothes on, Alotta?”

She’d filed her edgy timbre. “‘Cause I was sniffin’ a little bit and got hot, asshole. Kept thinkin’ ‘bout that big ole dick o’ yers and figured I’d rub one out on the couch. That alright with you?”

“Well, yeah.” Harry sounded like a child whining about his early bedtime. “But what about the two dudes that Willy and Billy told me about? The twins across the street said they saw a couple o’ guys over there while I’s nappin’. Said two big motherfuckers with tattoos came to the house and-”

“You mean the twins who haven’t been right since they licked those sheets o’ acid five years ago? The ones who also told you they was gonna call Animal Control ‘cause o’ the chickens we was growin’ in our front yard? Ya mean that Willy and Billy, baby?”

Harry’s voice still had a tone of skepticism, only now it was tempered with acceptance. “What the?.....I don’t know if I buy this, Alotta. If all this is true, why didn’t ya just ask me for some?”

She swayed from defensive and rough to coy and pouty. “’Cause I know how ya are with yer stuff, sweetie. You wouldn’t’ve believed me. We were just gonna do a little bit, sell some, and bring the rest back. Honest, Sugar Bear. You know I wouldn’t take anything from ya without a good reason, Crazy Baby.”

Hearing her attach his moniker in such a babydoll fashion sent shivers down my back. What chilled my bones was the ease with which she did it. I’d often wondered how Alotta could stay with a man who was as notorious for smoking people as he was hard drugs. Fact is, after fifteen years, she was used to it. And for a split second I wondered how many times she’d had to placate Crazy Shitz throughout the course of their marriage.

Things fell silent after that. I couldn’t tell if they’d left the room or if Harry was standing on her neck. If he’d killed Alotta and went searching through the house, it was only a matter of time before he got to the broom closet and filled us full of holes. I felt Jay’s muscles tense. The sentiment carried over to mine.

I spoke so softly in his ear, it wouldn’t even register as a whisper. “What if she took him to another part of the house so we could get out of here?”

The words hung in the air as we heard the gagging gulps of a woman deepthroating a rigid hard-on.

***

I suppose you could chalk it up to Alotta trying to prevent a double-murder in her apartment. Or giving her husband some candy so as not to receive a fist in the mouth for absconding with his methamphetamine. Personally, I like to think she was just a filthy Jezebel who would stop at nothing to get her jollies. Her motivations didn’t matter, though. We were given a small window of retreat and I was going to crash through that shit like a wild pitch in the Special Olympics.

I began to put something on so we wouldn’t get arrested for indecent exposure when we hit the street. It would’ve sucked to achieve a narrow escape from the notorious Harry Shitz only to fall prey to the cops and go to jail naked. It wasn’t easy in the cramped space of the closet, but I didn’t want to be bare-assed when we walked down the hall. Jay, conversely, had other things in mind and wasn’t so quick to embrace our good fortune.

***

I heard a noise coming from his side of our dark, tiny matchbox. Couldn’t place what it was. I thought it was a rat scratching from inside the wall. But the more I listened, the more it sounded like someone tapping a pack of baloney:

(Fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap.....)

I could feel Jay’s movements. My blood boiled when it hit me.

“Jay! What the fuck are you doing, dude?! Are you serious?!”

“I can’t help it, man. That shit’s hot and I’m still horny.”

(Fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap.....)

“Jesus Christ! Put that thing down and let’s get the fuck out of here before he shows us what our kidneys look like!”

***

I opened the door and slowly stuck my head between it and the jamb. Harry and Alotta were in a heated sixty-nine on the couch with Alotta claiming the captain’s seat. She was covering Harry’s ears with her thighs, his face smothered by her curdled crotch. She released loud moans that shrouded our movements. We slinked from the closet and started tiptoeing our naked asses down the hall with clumps of cotton over our kibbles. I didn’t know what was ours and what belonged to Alotta, but at that point, I would’ve worn a tutu.

Alotta sent us a wink that said, “See ya later.”

I sent her a finger that said, “Fuck you, you infested, trouble-making whore.”

Before we climbed to freedom through the bathroom window, I heard Harry: ”Damn, girl! Yer ass smells extra shitty today!”

***

Jay had thrown his Caddy in neutral so I could push it out of the driveway. We were on the road headed to my place, nerves still jangled from our recent near-death experience. He’d put the top down and the joint I’d found in his glovebox was slowly taking the edge off the glass. We passed it back and forth in silence, grateful for every breath that didn’t involve an artificial respirator.

Jay had blue balls and felt cheated.

We had nothing to show for our work except a comedown.

I needed to boil my dick.

But we were thankful to be alive.

Sticky summer air lapped our faces like a senile old mutt who’d forgotten who its owner was. Hints of fresh-cut grass settled into the cab of the drop-top. The sunset held sharp hues of orange and vibrant pink and looked like an oil painting hanging in the sky. Leafing through the passing houses, I saw children playing in front yards with attentive parents watching over them, pets walking faithfully next to old people out for an evening stroll, couples staring dreamily into each other’s eyes so deep it made me want to puke.

Suddenly, it hit me how wonderful life is; how much greater it could be without theft and attempted murder.

I turned and looked at Jay.

Hairy, sweaty, half-naked Jay.

The guy who’d lured me in with the promise of stolen narcotics. I knew it wasn’t all his fault, because I was grown. I had made my choice to be there. But I’d willed myself to believe that he knew what he was doing and had almost paid the price for it.

I’d jacked thousands of dollars worth of drugs only to leave them in a hovel with their rightful owner. I’d been balls-deep in a woman so foul she couldn’t tempt a recovering sex addict. And twice in the same day, I’d gotten close to someone else’s gun over some bullshit.

All of that added up to the textbook definition of “buzzkill.” I knew I wouldn’t be hanging out with Jay anymore after that.

***

The weed was superb. I was high as hell and reached for a menthol from the console. It was only then that I noticed what Jay was wearing. After all the shit that’d gone down, I couldn’t resist a jab for the memories he’d given me.

“Hey, Jay?”

“Yeah, man?”

“That really is a cute fishnet thong you have on, Lotti.”

“Blow me, Coxman.”

Coxman’s Log: 5:07 PM

There. I’ve taken my rightful place in front of the toilet. Lord of the clothes hamper. King of the sink. Master of all I survey. Flesh hanging out of my jeans, languishing helplessly over the zipper, both hands cradling the shaft.

A Super Soaker of waste.

Swiveling my hips slowly in a three-sixty. Making circles as if manipulating an invisible hula hoop. A pilgrim come to stand before his sacred porcelain god.

Despite my best efforts, a few droplets of the yellow stream splash into the dark-blue water.

No worries—I’ve hit most of my targets dead-on.

Try not to break them up too fast.

The game must continue.

Gauging my gyrations, I mimic an exotic dancer enticing the men at her feet, commanding attention as she warps the images of their wives. Their mothers. Their sisters. Their-

“Innis, what are you doing?”

“I’m knocking off the chunks stuck to the inside of the bowl. Look! I’ve got almost every piece!”

***

My girlfriend hasn’t looked me in the eye since.

Clearly, she doesn’t support the dream.

Chapter Four

(Man, I Need a Boost.)

Hey You! You’re Fired!

Yeah, just like that, baby.

You like that don’t you, you dirty little bitch?

(Fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap.....)

You wanna play Massa and Field Slave, huh? I’ll bet you do, you freaky fuckin’ cracka.

You’s can whip me, Miss Marla, if'n you want to. Blackie Coxman be needin’ a good beatin’ sometimes.

(Fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap.....)

I’m the one who stole that mess o’ biscuits from the kitchen, Miss Marla. You’s gone punish me?

No, no, no! Don’t put the girdle on. Leave it off for a spell, just long enough for me to see them stretch marks.

(Fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap.....)

Come on, Miss Marla, I’ll let you piss in my hair like I know you like, you scummy fuckin’ snow bunny-

***

“Coxman! What are you doing?! Are you peeping at Marla again? Sweet Jesus on a jellyroll! You promised you wouldn’t do that anymore!”

“I’m sorry, sir. I have this medical condition where I have to release fluids throughout the day or the cartilage in my knees gets backed up. It can be very painful.”

“What.....what the fuck are you talking about, Coxman? There’s no such goddamn ‘medical condition’ and you know it! Look, I’ve already told you, just because there’s a hole in the wall between the bathrooms does not mean you can spy on Marla when she empties her colostomy bag. It’s illegal. And disgusting. Plus it creeps me the hell out. I should’ve fired you the first time I caught you doing this and I can’t believe I didn’t. You’re really not leaving me much of a choice here, Innis. This has gotten way out of hand.”

“Hahaha! Well played, Mr. Jenkem! You said ‘hand’ while I have my dick in my hand! Good one, sir!”

“Shut the fuck up! Goddammit, Coxman, what the hell is wrong with you? I am so tired of yanking you out of seminal fluid. It’s gross and Accounting is on my ass about the funds spent on toilet paper. You are such a sick fuck, man. Why can’t you just look at Family Guy porn in your cubicle like everybody else?

“That’s it. I’m tired of you walking around the office with sticky hands and stains on your pants. You’re outta here!”

***

No worries. I wasn’t a great telemarketer, anyway. Besides, soliciting money for the Sisters of Clitoral Mercy was a scam.

“Mercy” my creamy, suckable balls. From what I hear those dykes used the cash for the doubleheader models and pounded that shit.

***

Administrator.

Brass Hat.

Slave Driver.

Big Shot.

The Guy Pissing Away Your Retirement Dollars on Portraits of His Favorite Mythological Creature to Hang in His Office (top o’ the mornin’ to ya, Zack).

Your Boss.

Whatever you choose to call the tool preening his coif in the mirror of his company vehicle, he serves a purpose. Who else but your boss would tell you when you’re fucking up a mind-numbing task? Or inform you that you can’t use sick time to attend the Adult Video News Awards out of fear he’ll run into you?

The Man is everywhere at work: up your ass with a pen ready to write negative reviews in your anal tract; over your shoulder breathing the rancid redolence of cottage cheese down your neck; and lying in wait in the goddamn bathroom just daring you to go in there and pleasure yourself because you’re bored (I may have given supervisors reasons to distrust me in the past).

However demeaning the job we take to avoid eating tuna fish straight from the can, you can bet your ass you’re going to have some bureaucrat bitch over the most inane infraction.

So what if I dropped GHB into the secretary’s latte?

Who cares if a loogey wound up in a Happy Meal?

None of those details should affect my raise.

***

Through my long-range telescope I see that you’re employed. And you’re probably a good employee, too. You’re punctual, you perform your tasks efficiently, and when review time comes around you don’t remind your immediate supervisor that you know where his family sleeps. But however you view your position as the fitter of those little plastic pieces at the ends of shoelaces, there is one person who thinks you can do it better, faster, and without all the masturbation: your boss.

I don’t mean the owner, mind you. Their ability to wreck your world is simple. All they have to do is sell the business or shut everything down. I’m referring to the little dingleberry under the owner’s balls, there to guard their asshole from the rapist cock of Worker’s Despair.

My cynicism aside, I resentfully admit that there are bosses around who won’t fuck you until your nose bleeds. They’re the kind who will smoke your joint with you by the dumpster instead of calling the cops.

That shit makes them cooler than a herd of plump bitches on the Klondike.

But they are so rare that the mall Santa just grabbed his crotch when I requested one for Christmas.

That fat fuck. He didn’t have to make dirty hand gestures, too, you know.

Giving the Dog a Bone

I used to have a boss who was on the same level as pubic lice. I wouldn’t have helped that sonofabitch if he’d promised me Cadillacs filled with disease-free whores. If Mick Jagger had pinned him down and started tossing his salad I would’ve taken pictures and sold them to the highest bidder. His name was Bryan, and I called him Switch Hitter like it was on his birth certificate.

Typically, I would impart this as a form of greeting, such as, “Morning, Switch Hitter!” or, “Kiss my balls, Switch Hitter!” It was usually based on the mood I was in.

Anyone who’s ever worked a job anywhere has known at least one of these dickheads—the person who got a promotion and became the heaviest hardball to ever abuse an expense account. That rimsucker who was once one of us—another cog in the squeaky wheel; our brother/sister in arms; and the one who served as lookout when I was getting head in the supply closet—only to become one of them when the money was right. They typify the phrase “forgot where they came from” and infiltrate every hiding spot you’ve managed to forage in your office.

I’ll bet you even have one looking over your shoulder right now.....

My derogatory pet name didn’t go unchallenged. Bryan would complain to the owner about it but nothing was ever done seeing as how he didn’t like him, either (it was a family business and Bryan didn't become a prick until after he was promoted). Truthfully, I never understood his beef about the “Switch Hitter” stuff. It was all in good fun, and to me it seemed better than that period when he’d converted to Islam and I really became the dick in his birthday cake:

“As-salamu alaykum, Coxman.”

“And a-licka my salami to you, good sir.”

I should mention that I’d say this to Bryan’s face in a room full of people whenever I got the chance because he was a big traitorous bitch who deserved it for all the shit he pulled.

Now as much as I would love to use the term “Switch Hitter” in reference to that chubby cashier from Balfart yo-yoing between my girl’s clam and these salty nuts, I will abandon that yarn for the sake of telling you an enthralling tale an engrossing saga something that happened.

***

Bryan and I worked side-by-side in an enterprise that offered an outlet for humanity’s sickest desires. We provided a gateway to an edge of fantasy that very few people ever get to experience in their entire lives. Our vocation was one that facilitated a release for the most basic primal urges of perverted shut-ins everywhere. So adored were we in our field that cellar-dwellers across the country sent us letters about watching our greasy bodies in action while pulling their pork at the foot of their mother’s bed.

The meals of our livelihood were entrees of grunting served with steaming sides of sweat, rear-ended with desserts of delectable, nipple-biting pain. The tools of our trade were gag balls, sixteen-inch dildos, battery-operated finger bangers, and clear-blue anal beads. Last but not least, the hallmarks—the very staples of our profession—were raw stamina, physical strength, a sustainable erection, and the ability to shave your balls without developing the slightest hint of a razor bump.

We worked in the adult film industry, good people.

And lo, it was awesome.

To fully understand my sense of betrayal surrounding Bryan’s radical attitude shift, I feel it’s important for you to know the circumstances of his birth as well as his unconventional upbringing.

***

Bryan was of German descent, son of the two most sought after porn stars in the land of lederhosen. When news of his upcoming natality reached the ears of his grandparents, they were so excited about his bloody show that they sat outside the hospital for days waiting to buy tickets (they were very old-world, and their refusal to grasp medical terminology led to confusion as to what a “bloody show” actually is). Alas, his birth was not looked upon with jubilance by everybody.

Victor and Enemay Wienersmashin, his career oriented-parents, weren’t ready for his presence in their lives, and vigilantly pursued every avenue available to halt his arrival. They tried everything—from coat hangers and Lysol to uppercuts in Enemay’s tummy. It was of no use. Bryan came screaming into the world one night at 3 AM, already accustomed to being a loud-mouthed little autocrat.

Bryan was cannoned from his mother’s hairy snapper and smacked against the bedroom floor like a painful case of blue balls finding release. By all accounts he looked like a snot rocket sliding across the tile. The virtue of the Wienersmashin bloodline was such that they thought he’d enter the world with a ten-inch donger dangling from his shitty Huggies. Certainly, this was an unrealistic expectation, though Bryan didn’t disappoint with his golden appearance. He already had a mouth full of teeth, seeds planted for a crop of blonde hair, and blue eyes so huge that the doctor had to promise his parents he’d grow into them.

During her pregnancy, Enemay was hesitant about becoming a mother, her and Victor’s occupations not exactly promotive to raising a child. Her fears vanished the minute she laid eyes on Bryan. She instantly fell in love with the child, becoming a doting protector and caregiver.

Victor did not share her endearment. He’d been sketchy throughout Enemay’s gestation and wanted nothing to do with their little offspring when he took his first breath. He’d sit in his living room chair with a scowl, watching ruefully as Bryan crawled around on their shag carpet, playing with their coworkers when they came to call, and laughing uncontrollably as he chased Ben Wa Balls across the floor.

That is until the day Victor was changing Bryan’s diaper and noticed that his little baby dick had grown two full inches in his first six months. Amazed at Bryan’s brisk maturity, Victor tossed him in the air to the kitchen ceiling, knocking the boy unconscious and temporarily sending him cross-eyed. When Bryan came to, his father was cradling him in his arms, praising him for becoming a man so quickly.

Victor saw promise in his abnormally-endowed toddler and became an attentive, loving role model, as well as Bryan’s mentor in the adult film industry. An anonymous report made to German Social Services stated that there was a couple raising their son in a “haphazard manner,” specifically grooming the child to work in pornography once he came of age. The Wienersmashin clan moved to the States shortly thereafter to duck the authorities and further their careers.

Jumbo Dick, as the tyke was disturbingly called, accompanied his parents to porn shoots to learn the tricks of this filthy trade, growing up to become one of the preeminent stuntcocks in the business.

***

After growing complacent in my career as a low-level drug dealer, I went to work for an adult film company called Feisty Fista, LLC in sunny Los Angeles, California, owned by none other than Bryan’s American cousin, Dick Wienersmashin. Bryan had developed a following in the industry and was one of the company’s top-billed stars, though it wasn't simple nepotism that earned him his position:

Thanks to his impeccable bloodline, the man was truly a talent in his field. He could lick a woman’s colon through her vagina and had a cock big enough to direct air traffic.

So it was that Bryan and I met at an audition for the lead role in what was to become the runaway hit Basic Fiststinked: Asses and Elbows. Of course, I didn’t get the part. The audition was merely a formality, for everyone knew that Bryan was due for the spot. But while lounging in the jacuzzi in the men’s locker room, we hit it off wonderfully. Bryan agreed to put in a good word for me to the director of Bar Whores: The Empire Strikes in the Back, a movie that was set to begin filming on another lot. It was a coveted role and I wound up getting the job. Afterward, I took Bryan out for a dinner of Jack Daniels and cocaine to thank him.

We were cast in a number of movies together, performing scenes with various skanks from the company’s roster, and occasionally breaking in a new girl whenever she signed the medical waiver (Bryan’s dick was so huge that it was known to leave some of the newbies in traction for a few days following a shoot). He was a good dude who was popular with his peers, never hesitant to assist if you needed a helping hand, and always willing to take your scene if you’d been doing too many drugs and couldn’t get it up. It wasn’t long before we started hanging out away from work, becoming tighter than a first-timer’s bunghole.

***

As misfortune would have it, one of Feisty Fista’s executives was abruptly removed from his position without explanation. We came to learn that he was given a long prison term for casting an underage girl in one of his movies, much to the horror of everyone. Thankfully, his crime was discovered before anyone plunged into that cherry pie, but it left a gaping hole that needed to be fucked filled immediately.

Dick looked to his cousin Bryan to fill those lofty shoes. After all, Bryan had Wienersmashin blood coursing through his veins; he’d grown up in the biz and knew the ins-and-outs as well as any community dildo. Who better to spearhead Feisty Fista into the future?

In a moment of bad judgement that would leave Dick drunk and filled with regret, Bryan was promoted from a lowly Patch Banger to Director of Dongs.

***

Bryan’s transformation came on as fast as good acid. One day, he was an actor like the rest of us, another head of cattle on a stud farm. The next, he was a walking hard-on without the innuendo. The first noticeable example of Bryan’s change was when he embarrassed a long-time employee in front of numerous onlookers. Her name was Sheeta King and she had been a close friend of mine ever since I’d arrived to the company.

Sheeta was a devout Catholic who could suck the color out of an oil painting. An old pro in the porn industry, she was able to stretch her full lips around a swollen knob and make a man spew in a matter of seconds. She was a virtuoso in every sense of the word—whether it was solo masturbation, double-penetration, or a bestiality scene, she was an artist first and always put the craft ahead of her own discomfort. When she wasn’t turning coin on camera, she exhibited her civic pride as one of the community’s leading activists; during March of Dimes charity drives, she collected more funds than anyone in Los Angeles. (For some reason, a majority of her donations originated from the Freemasons Lodge on Fair Oaks Avenue. Always struck me as odd.) A true sweetheart who was adored by everyone, Sheeta was blindsided by Bryan’s conversion like the rest of us, receiving a dose of his management style on the set of her would-be gangbang classic All the King’s Ass Men: True Politics. As happenstance, she and I were in the middle of a scene together.

The script was set in a barn, the crew having constructed a hayloft in the studio. The scene took place on a hay bale and Sheeta’s shapely derriere hugged me fantastically as her tassled green roper skirt lay thrown over her waist, her lustrous dark hair draping to her haunches. Brock Musselman drilled her honeypot from below, Sheeta’s rouge lips expertly sucking off a very willing burro named Dave. He’d placed his forehooves on the bale to angle his monstrous dick in her mouth.

(Pursuant to Section 597f of the penal code, California law prohibits bestiality if it’s for human gratification, stipulating the animal can get off as much as they want. Even if the person receives pleasure from the encounter, it’s a small fine and a paltry six months in the clink. True, distribution is a different animal matter altogether, but it’s nothing that isn’t remedied with a few greasy palms. Yeah, they’re real progressive on the West Coast.)

The shoot was going as planned until Bryan strolled onto the set in a pair of brown corduroys, his waist hidden by an untucked purple shirt, blonde hair frozen in place with an abundance of mousse, emanating the air of entitlement afforded him by his new position. It was a week after his promotion and he was itching to flex a little muscle for the sake of showing off. He stood by the sound tech, taking in the scene, then stuck his nose in the air and sniffed.

“My God! What is that viral smell?!” He aimed a finger at Sheeta like an SS soldier choosing a victim with the sights of his Luger. “Goddammit, Sheeta! We discussed this the last time you smelled sick! I told you to douche with Massengill! Not Summer’s Eve, Massengill! If you can’t show up to work smelling April fresh then we’ll find someone who can!”

Brock and I stopped our hammering. Glares flew at Bryan from the rest of the crew like he’d lost his mind. Not only was it unprofessional for someone in his position to speak so rudely to a subordinate, but this was Sheeta King, for fuck’s sake. She was taking facials from Dobermans before he was even panty residue! The woman was a legend and he was calling her out on something that should’ve been handled behind closed doors after the scene.

Sheeta popped Dave’s meat from her lips, the donkey braying loudly with disappointment. She maintained her fortitude through the embarrassment. “Oh...um...I’m sorry, Bryan. I didn’t know. The yeast infection went away and I thought it was minty fresh.” She turned her head and spoke to me over her shoulder. “Innis, honey, do you smell anything?” Her tone indicated that I come to her immediate aid.

I looked passed her profile to Brock’s sweaty, uncertain face. I gave an inaudible sigh, hating myself for what I had to do. As much as I wanted to be Sheeta’s knight in naked armor, this was my job.

“Sheeta, I’ve had my dick in your asshole for half an hour, baby. All I smell is poop.” Bryan was my boss as well and I couldn’t lie.

He admonished Sheeta harshly in front of the cast and crew, firing her on the spot. Brock and I saw the argument to come and quickly withdrew our members from Sheeta’s cavernous holes, leaving her and Bryan to go at it like a couple of rabid meerkats. Poor Dave wilted from the washout and he was led away to his trailer.

***

Later that evening, Sheeta barged into Dick’s office to talk to him about Bryan’s actions, her black “GOD IS IT” t-shirt stretching over braless double D mams to bend the white lettering. She was told, and I quote: “Well, Sheeta, he is the boss now. There’s not a whole lot I can do about it.”

Sheeta was quick to educate Dick on his standing in the company. “Yes, Dick! There’s literally everything you can do about it! He’s your cousin and you own the place! Help me out here!”

Dick leaned back in his creaky restaurant chair and shrugged his shoulders with arms extended, palms turned to the ceiling in forfeiture. “Sheeta, what do you want from me? He’s Director of Dongs now. I have to back his plays. How would it look to the rest of ‘em if I didn’t support his decisions? I’d have anarchy on my hands.” He removed his wire glasses, leaning forward and setting them down by a stack of papers. Cradling his right fist with the palm of his left, he bowed and let the mass of flesh support his forehead. While staring down at the month’s financial reports, he mumbled, “Besides, he’s family.”

That panty-waisted bitch.

Realization loomed as the truth fell from Dick’s smut-peddling mouth. Sheeta let her arms dangle to the hem of her flowery mini-skirt, seeing it would be a meaningless argument. Her shoulders slumped, the bottom lip quivered. “I can’t believe you’re gonna hang me out to dry like this, Dick, not after all the ups and downs we’ve had.”

Betrayal never hit so hard. Sheeta had given her youth to dick for Dick. It was all she’d ever known. Now, when she needed him the most, he was casting her out like a pair of cracked assless chaps.

Fireworks began to explode behind her eyes, the emerald ringlets blazing into circles of heated rage as she realized what it all meant:

She was on her own.

Sheeta dug deep, straightened, clearing the ten feet to Dick’s desk in a few pounding steps. Her pointing crimson fingernail was an icepick, her voice louder than eighteen-wheelers in a head-on collision.

“I’ve been with you since you were filming barely-legal runaways in the back of that shitty Econoline van you used to have, motherfucker! When AIDS broke loose and everyone else quit, I was the one who stayed and used the condoms with strangers off the street! In ‘87 when you were about to go under, I was the one who went hooking to save your ass! Do you really think I enjoyed being squashed by fat, sweaty lawyers who wouldn’t shut up about their damn alimony payments?!

“I thought loyalty counted for something around here, Dick! But you know what? Fuck it! If you wanna take his side over mine, do it! But mark my words, Wienersmashin”—stabbing her finger on the desk—“if you let Bryan stay in that position, you won’t have anybody working here! He’ll either can them for something stupid or they’ll get fed up with his bullshit and leave!!”

With that, she stormed out of his office, crying inconsolably, grabbing her award for Best Anal by a Cougar from Dick’s trophy case as she left. She marched to the locker room, packed what little belongings she had on top her golden memento, and hurried through the lobby to her Camaro in the parking lot. Sheeta King was gone from Feisty Fista Studios forever.

Sheeta had given twenty-five years of her life to Dick and his company. You’d think her devotion would’ve forged a bond—if not personal, at least a strong professional tie. But you’d be wrong. She was curtly dismissed without so much as a severance package for padding.

To add career insult to financial injury, Bryan grapevined the incident throughout the city, embellishing aspects of the story, fabricating outright lies when the mood suited him. He defamed Sheeta’s reputation so bad she couldn’t get a gig blowing a leper colony.

I’ve never forgotten my beautiful raven.

***

Big and burly as he was, Bryan never attempted any of his browbeating with me. Not that he would’ve gotten far had he tried. I’m fairly certain our unspoken agreement was the crux of his hindrance: he didn’t pull his rhetoric and I didn’t pull his arms off his fucking body.

Bryan unleashed his tyranny one too many times. I drew the line when he suspended Sabrina Sparkles for letting a drop of semen hit the ground during a swallow scene. (Her male counterpart was known as “The Load.” What the fuck did he think was going to happen?) That was it for me. I went into Dick’s office and turned in my resignation. When he asked me why I was leaving, I said that Bryan’s domineering hand was too much to endure, adding that if I wanted mistreatment I would’ve stuck to being a birthday clown.

***

Bryan’s malevolence toward his people continued and Sheeta’s prediction rang true: it got to where there was only one employee on the payroll—him. He’d fired a majority of the stable for the most frivolous of violations. The ones he didn’t run off cut ties because he was an unconscionable douchebag.

While Bryan’s actions brought shame on the Wienersmashin legacy, the mismanagement of his cousin’s company led to ruin in Dick’s wallet; he had no stars for his movies thanks to him. Dick’s commitment to family had left him broke, in debt, and a hopeless alcoholic who couldn’t even afford his own liquor. His beloved film company gave a final curtain call when he filed for bankruptcy.

***

After the fall of the Feisty Fista Empire, Bryan was reduced to swimming through the seedy floor of Hollywood like a scum shark, always chomping for work but coming up short due to his toothy character. His infamy followed him everywhere, stalling his efforts to land roles even a beginner would turn down. In the end, he lost his mind and screwed the pooch as only he could.

No. I mean he actually put his dick in the Dachshund of a well-respected circuit judge and was busted humping the poor thing in His Honor’s backyard. The last I heard, he was in the Los Angeles county jail awaiting sentencing.

Damn, Bryan. Even Hollyweird has its limits.

Wade in the Water

Let’s be honest: sometimes you don’t even give a shit enough about your job to go in and give the boss a backhand for bothering you. No matter how many times that bastard calls the house seeking your whereabouts—waking up that beastly one-night-stand in the process—you don’t even care enough to invent a semi-believable story and lie to him like the flea-bitten bitch you are.

“Why does he need to know where I am?” you ask as you lie in bed staring at the caller ID. “What am I, a fucking organ transporter? It’s not like my job is that important. Jerry can wear the Chuck E. Cheese suit today, goddammit.”

Your soon-to-be jobless ass is not alone, my friend. Apathy nurtured by reckless behavior has been the basis for shirking many a shit job ever since there were jobs and the irresponsible shits who shirked them. It is commendable that you’ve elected to continue that tradition in such fine slacker form.

I mean, when you think about it, it’s not as if you had much of a choice, right? Your abhorrent lifestyle has given you a slew of reasons not to go to work:

You’re hungover.

You’re stoned.

You need to get stoned to cure the hangover.

You’re now hungover and stoned.

You’re trying to figure out why that chick you brought home from the bar is standing up to piss.

Dear God her Adam’s apple is huge.....

***

Point is, fuck ‘em. You’re not going. And if they want to fire you for not calling in then that’s their prerogative. You’ve had enough of being run into the ground by a faceless machine. You’ve decided to stand up to the oppression by lying down on your Tempur-Pedic mattress and getting so high you hallucinate ambition. Aside from bursting in with automatic weapons, there are numerous ways for a person to show that they give dog shit about their employment.

And today, you’re utilizing all of them.

Now you being a peon, your dispassion is understandable. If you’re not at work, they’ll just find another simpleton to scrub the toilets and forget you ever existed. What throws everything into upheaval is when the guy in charge says, “Fuck it.” By definition, the boss responsible for the decision making in your department cannot exhibit carelessness, if for no other reason than avoiding an unhinged employee trying to lance him with his erection like a toothpick through an hors d’oeuvre.

Not giving a damn about employee satisfaction can be as dangerous as wearing piranha rubbers (or rubber, since you’ll never have to wear one again). Hindsight being 20/20, an old boss of mine would probably agree.

If he could talk.

***

I assume you’re familiar with the art of ballet.

I know fuck-all about it myself. Couldn’t tell you shit.

What I can regale you with is the time I was wrapped up in a criminal organization whose tentacles reached every corner of the globe. When I was part of a vicious juggernaut that is still active in virtually every illegal enterprise. A network ran by Men of Honor who made their living from scandalous black-market activities—from human trafficking and narcotics sales to political corruption and contract murder.

***

I was at the top of my game as a celebrity bodyguard, sheltering such notables as a still-bangable Pamela Anderson all the way to Brad Pitt when he was still tackling meaningful roles, circa Fight Club. I took pride in my work and enjoyed it thoroughly, as I met famous people who finally gave me respect for my itchy trigger finger. Be that as it may, my last assignment had eroded my affinity for the job.

The contract had left me jaded, disillusioned. The client, being an exceptionally spoiled and willful little wretch, had wrung me dry of my virility, leaving me a shell of my former self. She incited mobs wherever we went, invited strange men back to her home for syrup parties, and eluded me in public to go pull trains in meth houses for days at a time.

Being a chastity belt for a twenty-something Kim Kardashian was fraught with peril because that slut made it impossible to adequately fulfill my duties. The finale of that contract was like the welcome end to awkward drunksex.

I abandoned my enterprise to seek personal fulfillment. Taking a cue from Conan the Barbarian, Fred and I roamed the land seeking adventure and loose bitches. Our journey led us to New Orleans where we found the good drugs and cheap whores we’d always known were out there. I rented an apartment outside the French Quarter, whiling away my time in the streets, loving every bit of ass that seated my face. But still, I felt a hollowness that yearned for something meaningful.

***

It was winter in the Big Easy. Walking along the outskirts of Woldenberg Park just after sunrise, I was approached by a gentleman in dark jeans and a black leather jacket with hair of galvanized steel. The jagged white scar slashed from the rim of his upper lip spoke of a once much-needed cheiloplasty. His introduction said the name was Marco Poliona. Told me he’d seen me on one of my walks the week before and had been occupying the wrought-iron benches every morning thereafter, watching me as I trudged through. It was fact; the corners of my eyes had taken him in, but I thought he was just a mugger scoping for a mark (his stares hadn’t garnered concern from me or my .45).

He made small talk as I smoked my large joint. It was colder than a dead man’s dick and my eyes narrowed at his interruption. They slitted thinner when he commented on my hefty size and asked if I knew how to handle wood. I began to suspect he was hitting on me.

I’ve seen Cruising, man. Pacino told me about the yellow bandana and I wasn’t falling for it.

My fears were abated when he revealed that he was a Made Man in the Italian mafia, a Caporegime in charge of a neighborhood crew who was looking to add muscle to his throng of soldiers. My conjecture was apparent when I queried him about the yellow bandana in his pocket. He laughed, stating it was for a bug he was fighting. I relaxed when he used it to wipe his nose, also relieved to find that his “wood” comment was an allusion to swinging a baseball bat.

The air rolling off the frigid Mississippi bit my nuts as we spoke. I was freezing and asked if I could have some time to consider his proposal. I’d meant in terms of days. Marco gave me only a moment to mull it over.

It was made clear to me that I had two choices: a) agree to his terms, or b) wind up in an oil drum at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. He said it as slick as reciting a grocery list.

What balls on this fucking dago.

I gave the park a quick once-over. It was early—too early for tourists and families with small children. No cops. The only people around were the hobos sleeping on the benches and they wouldn’t care what happened next.

This was New Orleans, man. They’d seen it all before.

I dropped my joint and slid my hand to the small of my back. He slid his through the open zipper of his jacket, reaching for the shoulder holster.

The cold air made my already-rough voice sound like Redd Foxx gargling broken glass. “Marco, if you got plans for an oil drum, it better be big enough to pack a fat man and a vengeful goat.”

Fuck him. I wasn’t going to take a threat from anybody, especially some stranger dripping of olives and Old Spice.

He stood stock-still with his hand on the weapon and voiced his rationale. I suppose from a criminal’s standpoint, it made sense: in under five minutes I’d been made privy to sensitive information, and I couldn’t very well be expected to walk around with it should I decline, nevermind that I hadn’t asked for any of that newfound knowledge.

The tight grip I had on my pearl-handled 1911 pressed white knuckles into my spine as we both held our positions by the water.

The ridges of Marco’s eyebrows jutted forth like a Neanderthal’s. “So what’s it gonna be, Innis?”

Ventilating the skull of a mafia captain in the early hours of the morning wasn’t the way to win friends and influence people, especially when those people were members of a crime syndicate who’d seek revenge for the murder of their boss. The only citizens I’d met since my arrival were the dealers on Bourbon Street, and if this went south, I had nobody to turn to for help. Even if I ran, his crew would track me; just because there was no one around to see it didn’t mean it wouldn’t get around who did it. For no matter how bad a man thinks he is, it’s impossible to wage a one-man war on the mob, even with a mentally broken goat picking up the slack.

Against every instinct, I cried uncle, dropping my hand back to my side. He slowly did the same and jerked his head toward Cafe Du Monde. We walked side-by-side to the open-air restaurant for beignets and particulars.

Despite his threat of stuffing me in a metal container for eternity, Marco proved to be a valuable instructor in the nuances of the criminal underworld, teaching me the all but indecipherable codes of the mafia, and educating me in the history of its many traditions.

He also revealed himself to be a dastardly backstabber who got what he deserved.

***

The son of humble Italian immigrants who owned a small cafe, Marco was given the wet end of the breadstick the instant he slid from Mamma Mia’s pie. Besides being born a club-footed, hunchbacked, twelve-fingered monstrosity with a sneering hairlip, his parents were a couple of uneducated foreigners who’d gotten their little bundle of horror late in life. Of course, none of that mattered to the Polionas. Though Marco was an abomination before God, they loved their son without question. Even so, their love failed to curb two harsh truths:

One, they couldn’t afford another mouth to feed; with Marco being their thirteenth child, the financial hardship would be just too great. Two, their other children were pretty thick; the Polionas were getting on in years, and couldn’t bear the chore of chasing another mental deficient away from the street sweeper.

After much praying, they came to a painful decision: they’d give the boy a better life by any means possible. It wasn’t their first choice, but they could swallow their emotions for little Quasimodo to have a brighter future. Still, this ray of sunshine came with a dark side. It meant a change for the family as well. They’d be forced to leave New Orleans, fleeing the urban swamp to avoid reprisal from the authorities.

This wasn’t like casually giving someone a cigarette. Or the clap. They were gifting a child to a stranger without overture. As far as the law is concerned—and my father when the whiskey has flowed like wine—“that’s as wrong as two boys fuckin’.”

Choosing the proper trustee for Marco would be difficult, for there were some factors to consider: who would give him the proper guidance? Who would teach him to be a man? Most importantly, who wouldn’t instigate a nationwide manhunt for the family who “forgot” one back home? The answer came in the most unlikely of benefactors.

On a warm evening in July, a prominent figure in the community called in a large order. The senior Polionas, bustling in the kitchen, froze in their tracks when they read the customer’s address.

They knew that address.

Everybody in the neighborhood knew that address.

Mr. Poliona shook the shock from his head and yelled the numbers to the rest of his family who were working in different parts of the restaurant. The dim-witted Poliona children dropped what they were doing, blank stares given to one another in the dining room, the information slowly sinking into their gelatinous brains.....

…..

…..

…..

…..before setting the wheels of their plan into motion.

The customer’s order was put together with extra attention to detail. The clan knew this was the last meal to be made in their café, and their final dishes had to have a punch. Mrs. Poliona slaved away over cast iron cookware. The men of the house took to clearing out irate customers. Marco’s sisters gently bathed him in a water bucket filled with lilac soap, preparing him for a new life with siblings who didn’t forget they had indoor plumbing. After coating him in olive oil and baking flour—Marco giggling as the flour tickled his hairless nuts—they sheathed him in wax paper (I’m telling you, these children were stupid), placing him next to the food in a handmade wicker basket made especially for the occasion.

Their eldest son reached the customer’s home and knocked on the huge wooden door. His knuckles had barely finished rapping the oak before he sprinted to meet the rest of the family at Louis Armstrong International. A hastily booked flight to New York was firing up to take them away.

The Poliona family, minus the youngest member, solemnly boarded a Delta plane and bid their private farewells to Marco and their city. As they taxied on the runway, tears flooded the crevices of Mrs. Poliona’s grizzled face. She was exhausted, but she could rest easy knowing that another life awaited them in the East; that little Marco finally had a fair shake in the South.

So it passed that Marco’s life truly began when he was gifted to the notorious Mafioso Peppino Ballasacko along with his order of tagliata di manzo and strawberry cannolis.

***

An importer of fine art and Italian cheeses, Ballasacko was a respected member of the business community who wielded great influence in local affairs. Known for his benevolence and entrepreneurial savvy, he organized events for charities, lunched with members of the political circle, and attended Saint Hypocrites on Sunday mornings. He’d been a decorated soldier during the Vietnam War, and was renowned for his shrewd financial acumen.

But his shellac was tacky. Everyone from the mayor down to the lowest gutter hood knew how the “Italian Battalion” really did business.

Ballasacko, commonly known as Don Balls, was head of the bayou branch of the mob with half the city fathers in his bed. When a corrupt politico pulled his thong to the side to expose the city treasure chest, Ballasacko yanked his hair and violated every fiscal orifice. He got a cut from everybody—from the little black kids who tap danced for the smiling tourists in the Quarter, to the councilmen who accepted graft from the shady construction companies.

If there was an apple pie cooling on a windowsill, he got a slice.

You didn’t satisfy his sweet tooth, you were garroted with piano wire and dispatched to the Gulf.

His charm was endearing, his bootleg funds bought him protection, and the threat of bodily harm to any would-be whistleblowers kept it the best open secret in town.

***

Don Balls was aware of Marco’s origin from the get-go. For him, the lineage was a technicality. He was often heard to joke in his thick Cajun accent, “The little fucker was ugly as sin! When the priest would go down there to pray over him, me and the boys would take bets on how many novinas he’d have to say before he purged the demon! Hahaha!” He’d slap his knee with a great belly laugh. ”Aw yeah, everybody in the neighborhood knew where that gargoyle came from. But you know me, I said, ‘Sure, I’ll raise the little elephant man. And if I can’t fix him, maybe I can sell him to the circus!’ Hahaha!”

Marco had usually excused himself from Christmas dinner by the time Don Balls got to the finale of his story.

The Don clutched the tot in his talons, raising him as one of his own, giving him all the perks that come with having a father who can buy your grades or bury obstinate teachers. He showered him with gifts, money, plastic surgery, and affection, same as his other children, though the plastic surgery was somewhat mostly really for Marco.

As the boy grew, he came to know the origin of his birth, having been clued in by a relative when he was five. It changed the dynamics of his world dramatically.

Marco built a wall of estrangement, shutting himself off from his adopted family and blooming in a bubble of his own creation. He knew he’d never be a blood heir to the Don, and his frustrations manifested themselves in disturbing fashions. He began to show rot of a bad seed.

Consensus held that Marco was a depraved child who turned dangerous when he didn’t get his way, bullying other children and pulling practical jokes that bordered on the alarming. Favorite pastimes included pissing on the narcoleptic butler when he had an attack, substituting cap guns for the crew’s Sig Sauers—a laugh riot at one of the Don’s assassination attempts—and replacing the maid’s tampons with string cheese and Nerf bullets. His personality intensified one hundred fold as he got older, running his own clique with the maturity of a spoon-fed toddler.

Poliona became a self-indulged prima donna with no concern for the happiness of his crew. Then he became my boss.

***

I was brought directly from the restaurant to meet Don Balls at one of his Haitian massage parlors. It was located in a Godforsaken part of the city just two blocks past a day-old robbery/homicide at a corner liquor store. Marco and I walked into the lobby of the brick building where I was instantly smacked with the scents of sex and cocoa butter. A woman with skin like dark roast coffee leaned on an empty glass case in the lobby. She flipped tediously through a foreign magazine and ignored me when I spoke. Marco divulged that she knew just enough English to arrange a service and collect the dough.

Red light bulbs suspended in track lighting lit a red carpeted hallway with blood red shag on the walls. A closed door at the end offered a woman screaming profanities—at least they carried the force of profanities—in Haitian Creole. Followed by the lightning crack of a whip.

I glanced at Marco. He gave me a horrific leer normally reserved for pederasts. I choked back my vomit and followed him to the Don’s office at the end of the hallway, past the screaming girl.

Her cursing had turned to quiet sobbing.

Before Marco could shut the door, the Don was heaving his portly, red-tracksuited frame up from the well-worn armchair to shake my hand and introduce himself. I told him my name and where I was from. His chunky cheeks pushed his horn-rimmed glasses to his forehead when he smiled. He said he had family around there, lamenting that he hadn’t visited in some time. After a brief trip down (his) memory lane caboosed with a drink offer at 7:45 in the morning, we got down to business.

The Don said he’d been having problems satisfying debts from gamblers and bit-borrowers. Said he was looking for a collections man. He eyeballed me like a pimp inspecting a new girl, saying I’d be perfect for the position provided I checked out (re: wasn’t a cop). He said I was a “big fucker” and looked like I could really “put it on ‘em.”

I decided to tap the Don’s funny bone to score some points. “Well, I don’t know about ‘puttin’ it on ‘em,’ but I sure did ‘put it in ‘em’ a few times when I was in the clink! Bent ‘em over their bunks and everything! They weren’t gonna put cherry Kool-Aid on my lips! No, sir!”

The two of them stared at me like I’d been caught jerking off in church. You could hear a flea fart. I was beginning to think my attempt at cute had earned me the oil drum, maybe a railroad spike through the neck. The Don did a double-take and laughed so hard I thought he was going to piss his chic running suit.

He looked to Marco with an arched, bushy eyebrow, grinning and grumbling something in Italian while giving an imperious wave. I just knew it was sign language to put a bullet in my head. Instead, when I looked at Marco, he gave me a nod, his face still twisted from my ill-timed sodomy humor.

Don Balls was a busy man and our meeting was drawing to a close. Getting up from our chairs for farewells, I nonchalantly asked what’d happened to my predecessor. He grinned and said he’d “grown a conscience,” his tone indicating that whatever befell him would happen to me should Jiminy Cricket set up shop on my shoulder. I didn’t need him to elaborate.

***

I immediately went to work, rising quickly through the ranks, forging friendships in the process and growing closer to Don Balls every day. Soon, my stance as a small-time street collector morphed into a grander position, one of stature, responsibility. Muscle and moxie may have been my entry-point, but loyalty and diligence earned me a spot that was normally held for those with pure marinara canoeing through their veins.

Out of the blue, Marco asked me to attend a dinner on the edge of the city. He was being nice. I knew damn good and well he wasn’t “asking” me anything. The tones of his invitation seemed ominous; the Don never ventured that far out of his enclave and I didn’t like my chances for survival. My paranoia told me that dinner was going to be an entree of lead with a side of concrete.

Thank the fuck Christ, sometimes it pays to be wrong.

After a bottle of red wine and some wonderful Italian cuisine, I was given the dubious title of Man Mixer in the Don’s organization.

Sounds like a dating site ran by The Village People, huh? That’s what I thought, too. But no, it wasn’t that sinister.

I was the last frontier of bad debt for Don Balls, acting as umpire in the deadly game of Mafia Bankruptcy. Only the outfield extended well beyond Chapter Thirteen.

To hear him describe it, my job was to, “exact retribution on the borrowers who did not recompense loans in a timely manner,” when in truth what I did was locate deadbeats who didn't pay their loans and mixed the last pair of shoes they ever needed, sending them screaming off the starboard side of a yacht for a one-way plunge into Fishville.

It sounded less evil when he said it.

And don’t judge me! I had a goat to take care of.

***

Things couldn’t have been better. The Don was pleased with my work, I was making money hand over fist, and Fred had a blast playing with the new toys I got him (you never know the durability of a pocket pussy until it’s been gnawed to the rectum by a wild goat). Things were looking up for the first time in a long time. Too bad there was a drop of piss in my orange juice.

Ever since I’d gotten the promotion, Marco had acted cagey. I felt the cold shoulder that night at dinner, but in the following weeks he shit icicles whenever we shared the same space. It started with the little things: gone were the rides to work together, getting high as we rode around collecting debts became a thing of the past, and freebies from my favorite Haitian girl were a distant memory. What made it all the more unnerving—what we didn’t talk about—was that I knew what was bothering him:

Jealousy. The way he saw it, an outsider absent of Italian heritage had come in and usurped a position that rightfully belonged to him, or at least another Made Man. What I didn’t foresee were the lengths to which he would go to reclaim his place.

***

Picture it: a one-room cinder-block shack housing farm equipment somewhere on the rim of the Big Easy. Hidden by sickly-sweet stalks of unrefined sugar in one of the Don’s cane fields. An indoor spigot jutting from the wall with a hose attached. Water droplets clawing their way through the cracked ceiling as a hurricane drives the living to seek dryer conditions. Buckets strewn about the room to catch it all. Me and one of Marco’s boys milling around performing mafia duties. Some blubbering deadbeat tied to an old chair with strips of bare wood showing where paint used to shine. Crying like the little girl who didn’t get the pony for her birthday. Shoeless feet in a silver wash tub. Gas heaters to combat the humidity.

Quikrete needs help in that kind of weather, you know.

***

Sal and I circled the guy like vultures waiting for a horse to keel over in the desert, smoking cigarettes, sniffing lines, enduring what seemed like an endless wait for the concrete to solidify, chewing the fat over a vacation that Sal had planned and periodically telling that crying bitch in the tub to shut his mouth. The concrete was hard but nowhere near to acceptable standards. His whining was becoming unbearable and I wanted to put a bullet in his brain just so he’d shut the fuck up. But the Don wanted him drowned, not shot.

We’d been there for over twenty-four hours.

I told Sal I was going to retrieve another heater from my Chrysler parked just a few yards from the shack. He’d forgotten to bring the raincoats like he was ordered to and I was drenched as soon as I opened the door. I ran to my car and unlocked the trunk, slamming the lid when I had all twenty-three-thousand BTUs cradled snugly in the crook of my left arm. I hurried back to the rickety wooden door and kicked it open to bask in the warmth of dry shelter, only to find Sal filling the tub with water from the goddamn fucking water hose!

I felt like a child catching his parents during coitous and discovering why the cucumbers were always a bit tangy.

I placed the heater at my feet, not even shutting the door. Over the deafening wind of a category three hurricane and sheets of stinging rain beating my back, I politely asked that joker, “Sal! What the fuck are you doing?! This guy has had six months to pay up and the Don wants him gone!”

He looked up from the deadbeat and snickered, two feet of green water hose curved downward from his right hand cascading water into the tub, thinning the concrete with every drop.

“Aw c’mon, Innis, I was bored just waiting around. I was only fuckin’ with the guy. We’re right here, man. It’s not like he’s gonna get away or anyth-”

A flash of screaming flannel barreled passed me into the great deluge.

The deadbeat left wet clumps of Quikrete in his wake. I had no choice but to pull my piece and let one fly, shooting him in the back to put him down. He crashed on his face next to the driver’s side of my car. The Hydro-Shock ripped into his left lung and he was still kicking with life. Soaking and pissed, I ran to him and put one behind his right ear before he could try to get up. His problems were over.

Asshole should’ve known he wasn’t going to get far with his arms tied to his waist, especially in a hurricane. What’s more, I don’t like shooting people in the back if I can help it, but that idiot Sal had forced my hand. If you think about it, though, I did the guy a favor:

Drowning or getting a quick shot to the head. What would you choose?

Sal’s bullshit stopped all conversation. We silently worked around each other the rest of the night, dragging that dead bastard back inside and tying him to cinder blocks with link chains. I grabbed some bolt cutters and cut off his fingers (something we didn’t normally do because concrete didn’t give fingerprints a chance to resurface). The next day after the storm had blown over, we sailed a few miles into the Gulf and threw him over the side of the boat.

Fuck it, I thought. If by some chance he came loose from his cocoon of chains and cinder blocks, hopefully the fish would do me a favor with his face before he reached the surface, if the sharks didn’t see to him first.

I brought it up to Marco that afternoon, thinking he would do something with Sal because that shit couldn’t happen again. His reaction was less than satisfactory.

“So what? The guy was having a little fun. What’s the deal, Innis? Big, bad Coxman can kill a man but can’t handle some jokes to kill time? Hahaha!”

I was told to forget it. Not to worry about it. Outside the bar that served as Marco’s office, one of the boys took me aside, dropping a bug that Marco had always been lax in disciplining rule breakers. It was nothing new. The Don had tolerated it for years because Marco was who he was. Said that when problems arose within the crew, we were expected to handle it amongst ourselves.

***

Noted.

***

Sal and I later had a come-to-Jesus in one of the Don’s empty warehouses where my baton extracted an apology from that silly clown.

I wish I could tell you that things got better. I’d love to say that the Don sat Marco down and he began taking his duties more seriously. I can’t, though, because that would mean I was still with the Outfit and you and I would’ve never met (and that would suck for you). Instead, Marco upped the ante when he began sabotaging his own men.

***

Case in point: there was a hitman in the crew named Asston who’d had a long, intimate relationship with the family. For as long as anyone could remember, he’d been schtooping Fellationa, the Don’s well-endowed and orally fixated daughter. It was supposed to be one of those “hush-hush” type of things, which meant that everyone from the city treasurer to the paperboy knew about it. Of course, the Don was aware, but turned a blind eye to their trysts. Ballasacko had known Asston and his family for years. He and Fellationa had been high school sweethearts before time pulled them apart like so many young couples. As they reached adulthood, they realized their love for one another still burned like a fresh STD from Vegas. Asston was married, but the Don’s silence condoned their arrangement.

And whatever Don Balls said—or didn’t say—was law.

Poliona threw down the bullshit card. He didn’t like someone in his crew boning his sister, not even Asston. Despite the fact that they were old flames; despite the fact that his and Asston’s friendship went all the way back to high school football. Marco strayed from the rules of family, friendship, and the mafia itself.

He fed his friend to the cops.

Through a convoluted plan that Ray Charles should’ve seen, that Benedict Arnold framed Asston for a string of break-ins that’d been occurring at a sperm bank in Metairie, a city just west of New Orleans.

Marco tore his sister’s heart out.

And Asston is doing twenty years for burglary and theft (stealing the juice of life can put you down for a while, apparently).

Any respect I’d had for the Don’s son vanished like Hyper Colors. I couldn’t stay in the family anymore, knowing that he was free to conduct himself in whatever manner he saw fit, casting the needs of his people to the wayside, sending good, innocent guys to jail to suit a need for control (or however good and innocent a killer can be, but you get my drift). It made me think of what would happen should he ever decide to turn on me.

I needed to go see the Don.

***

I’d always heard that the only way out of the mob was to be killed, even if you were just an associate. Jesus, I hoped that was a rumor. When I went to the massage parlor, I wasn’t sure whether I was going to leave on my feet or stretched out in a plastic bag.

The Don was seated at a white card table when I entered his office, conferring with his consigliere over some business matter, flanked by two massive soldiers whose brutality dwarfed their biceps. My fear was underscored by the memory of their last interrogation, a bloody Q & A of a snitch that ended with fingers on the floor and ball peins to his teeth.

There was no need to preamble. I gave the Don a respectful greeting, then told him straight away I needed out.

And why.

“Innis,” he said in his froggy voice from behind a rocks glass, “Marco is my son and I love him very much. I’ve tried to teach him the meaning of respect. What it means to be a leader. To be honorable, to listen to the problems of your men, to try and help whenever you can. After all, a happy crew is a loyal crew, no?” Sigh. “But it never took. The piccolo bastardo could never understand that. He always had to be pigheaded. Always had to be the big shot. I’ve dealt with his irresponsible ways for years. Cleaning up his mistakes, hoping he would change. But this deal with Asston”—circling his free hand at the ceiling—“I see now what has to be done with him.” He lightly slapped a knee. “Questa e la vita, eh?”

He put his drink down and stood, the silent soldier on his right immediately stepping back to give way. When he’d waddled around the table and reached me, he cupped my face in his hands. They were huge and rough and enveloped my entire mug.

He didn’t need soldiers.

Even at his age, he could’ve crushed my head like a graham cracker.

“Yes, my boy, you can leave. You’ve always done a good job for us, Innis, and I hate to see you go. But you’re free. May you have a long life filled with peace and prosperity.” He dropped his hands, smiling like a predator who’d cornered its quarry.

“I ask only one small favor of you in return.....”

***

Fred and I left the Crescent City that night. We had our belongings all packed and ready to bounce after I did the deed. He was so happy when I walked through the door that he spat out the old bra he’d been chewing on and tackled me.

***

My previous dealings in the underbelly had instilled in me a criminal code of ethics; a form of street conduct adhered to even by pimps, junkies, and purse snatchers. But my time with the Ballasacko Family—being around men who lived and died by the gun, watching how they interacted with one another, the exchange of respect that was required to make the Family operate at its prime—that ingrained the definition of loyalty for me deeper than Old Yeller ever could.

I’ll never forget Don Balls, New Orleans, or the lessons I took away from that life, although there is one memory of the urban swamp I’d love to expel that still sends me screaming into my pillow:

The goddamn sickening sound of Marco’s webbed left foot sloshing in concrete.

Coxman’s Log: 4:00 AM

I’ve spent the last few days on the internet researching old classmates from junior high all the way to high school. Not for the purpose of a heartfelt reunion, mind you, but to see how my life has unfolded in contrast to theirs.

Call it self-torture.

I’ve found that many of my old school chums have gone on to stake successful claims in the fields of finance, medicine, science, and law. Some have lucrative careers in the world of sports. A handful have achieved the American dream of owning their own businesses.

Once I saw the good fortune of some of my peers, my self-worth belly-flopped like the dark and hairy nipples of a fat, aging whore.

Then I saw a bunch of them whose image pics looked like death warmed over as they took another mugshot for crack possession, forgery, arson, murder, prostitution, and passing bad checks.

I didn’t even know there were websites for showcasing that shit.

I instantly felt better about myself.

Chapter Five

To Unnerve and Neglect

“Hello, Officer. Didn’t see you there behind all that thinly veiled evil.....

“Nothing, sir. This scantily clad lady just needed a ride to church to put money in the collection box.....

“Red streaks on the floorboard? I was repainting a fire hydrant next to the orphanage.....

“Cocaine? I find that to be a slanderous accusation, sir. If you possessed any knowledge of human biology, you would know that the tip of the nose is susceptible to moisture and may occasionally require a dash of baby powder.....

“What is your name, my good man? I wish to lodge a formal complaint with your captain. I will require your precinct number, badge number, and banking information.....”

***

As many times as I’ve had this exchange with the exact same cop, you’d think he’d get tired of the paperwork and just let me ride.

***

A civilized society needs police officers. They’re our saviors and protectors. The foot soldiers who come to blast the unholy hell out of the guy trying to get a cab by wagging his middle finger at the driver. Wherever evil is giving good a Dirty Sanchez, you’ll find the long arm of the law yanking the wind out of its sails like the rug from under a blind person.

In my opinion, every member of law enforcement is a messiah of truth with the most capital of good intentions. A guardian whose sole purpose is to see that the unjust rue the day they ever double-parked or bought a dimebag. They are the buffers between our crazed sexual urges and that lady of the night who only comes over at noon (false-advertising bitch). If it weren’t for the good men and women of the Kevlar, we would swiftly fall prey to our hedonistic tendencies. Caligula’s reign would rank just above a Mormon insurance seminar compared to our ensuing debauchery. Police officers everywhere deserve our trust and eternal devotion. To the death, if necessary.

***

Who the fuck am I kidding, man?

Okay, good people, I can’t keep up this charade any longer. It’s much too taxing. If I attempted this sort of endurance with a woman my prostate would implode.

Those of you who’ve never had the joy of getting probed with a nightstick should just bypass this shit right now. I don’t think you’d understand my point of view. Those of you who work in law enforcement in any capacity may want to skip over this section, as well.

If you’ve managed to read this far into your paperweight without setting it on fire, you’ve extracted that portions of my long-ago behavior have landed me in more trouble than I’d care to admit.

I’ve broken the law once or twice. I did it a few times after that. The four hundredth time was a lot easier than the first two. I lost count after batting a thousand.

Thank God and a shitload of luck I’m not in the clink ‘til Judgment Day.

There was a period of my life when I swam through the justice system like an inept goldfish, the turbulent waters full of violent offender sharks who stored shanks in the most unlikely of body cavities. I don’t consider myself a milquetoast by any means, but it’s fair to say I was scared out of my gourd:

I had to handle restroom duties in a dorm full of bored, impulsive men.

On the rare occasions I got a hard-on, I had to roll over and face the wall to catch a nut—when I had the good fortune to land a bunk next to a wall.

And inasmuch as I blamed other people for having to fight to preserve my precious manginity, I can point the finger at no one but the guy in the mirror.

But I’m not here to speak on the detestable state of our prison system. Lockup has done quite well with that imagery over the last few years so there’s no need to expound on it. Besides, if you really want to know what it’s like to be in jail, you can ask my cousin who was busted for stealing porn from the corner newsstand (what an embarrassing reason to go to jail, dude). My purpose today is to discuss the peacekeepers who brought me there. Or rather, those who maced me in the elevator on the way up to holding.

***

In my past life as a criminal, I was fortunate enough to exchange pleasantries with all types of law enforcement personnel. Sometimes, fate went out of her way to provide me with the civil servants whose lives shit on them with explosive diarrhea—those who were bullied as children, beaten with the ugly stick, or mistreated by a funny uncle. As those people grew—cramming all their childhood suffering into white-hot balls of fury—they were given tasers, firearms, and billy clubs to go forth and protect society from people-

Just.

Like.

Them.

History has shown us that the human race is the most devious, uncontrollable, and irrational form of life on the planet. How else do you explain the ancient Romans throwing men into battle with lions for the sake of sport? What conceivable reason could someone have for setting a homeless person ablaze as they slept on a park bench? Who will rationalize as to why a first-world government can swoop into a foreign country under the facade of salvation only to ransack its natural resources? And what disjointed motive would a man have behind stabbing the guy in the next apartment for bumping ‘N Sync at 1 AM? (Nevermind.)

In addition to opposable thumbs and our capacity for critical thought, nature has also embedded us with more savagery than any animal you’d find in the jungle. To my knowledge—and correct me if I’m wrong—we are the only organisms in the world who kill each other over cell phones, clothing, fender benders, lottery tickets, vehicles, religious beliefs, parking spaces, liquor, plane seats, drugs, stereos, money, jobs, sports, heavy traffic, Christmas toys, facial expressions, pride, just because we want to.....

Great Jesus. The list goes on and on.

I have grown. I have matured. I have greying pubic hair. So now I fully grasp the necessity for law and order in our communities. Maybe in our lifetime the Earth will do us all a favor and swallow humanity into its jowls to be digested into a better plane. One devoid of hate and callousness. But for the time being, the only things preventing most of us from throwing someone under a speeding garbage truck are a collective sense of decency coupled with daily exercises in restraint.

And a few overzealous cops.

Do Unto Others Unless You’re in Charge

They say that necessity is the mother of all invention. I say that’s a bucket of runny whale shit. Lust for profit is the parent to much of humanity’s creations, whipping necessity’s ass for cheating on a test and sending it to its room without dessert.

I mean really—how many of you know someone who’s ever “needed” a Snuggie?

Necessity is, however, a leading agent in the modernization of our world. There’s no denying it. While not everything on the planet is born of need, the idea of necessity has brought forth such conveniences as the automobile, air conditioning, gunpowder, the television, and glow-in-the-dark condoms (until you try it, you have no idea how cool it is to wave Mr. Johnson around in a dark room pretending he’s a light saber).

I’ve even heard people argue that necessity is the root of our actions: a guy “needed” to push that elderly woman out of his way so he could catch that cab; a mother “needed” to beat her toddler with a wooden spoon because he wouldn’t be quiet; a husband “needed” to lie to his wife about his addiction to prostitutes to spare her feelings; and your soon-to-be ex “needed” to rifle through your cellphone looking at other women’s names so she’d be up on the competition.

Now there are people who would say that the aforementioned actions were the result of some inherent necessity brought on by that individual’s current stimuli. In a sense, I suppose that’s true, although I disagree with the notion that necessity is the be-all-end-all behind mankind’s every exploit:

I didn’t “need” to slap the guy who bumped into me at the orgy, but goddamn if it didn’t feel good.

***

Yes, necessity is a strong impetus behind our activities as a species. It’s been proven time and again. However, one would be hard pressed to affirm its superiority to the invisible force that is present in all of us from the day we are born: emotion. The complicated vortex of human emotion can drive a person to mania, causing some of us to do the most unspeakable acts ever performed under God’s watchful eye:

Meek parents slaughter the one responsible for hurting their child.

A priest beats the man who burned his church to the ground.

Two friends disagree over a card game; one ends up bleeding out on the green felt from a bullet wound.

Boyfriends and husbands who beat their women to death for looking at another man.

A stepfather shoots his stepson with a .44 for breaking curfew (Justin deserved better than that).

Two men go to blows because one pulled into a parking space the other felt he’d laid claim to.

A father hangs his two-year old out of a sixth-story window to get back at the baby’s mother for her infidelity.

Good Christ in the sky, we’re insane.

I’m no social scientist, good people, but I don’t think I’m speaking out of school when I say that human emotion is the strongest catalyst in the universe.

***

Admittedly, my past emotions have caused me to fly off the handle at inappropriate junctures.

Contain your shock.

I’ve even given in to my hysterics in the workplace. There was the time blows were exchanged on a construction site. I recall a shoving match on a tugboat in the middle of the Mississippi River. One day I went off the deep end and teabagged an old boss of mine at his desk, raking my curlies over his nose with the balance of a Lithuanian acrobat. I’ve even sacrificed decorum for the greater good of stapling a coworker’s fingers together and showing him the inside of a computer as I shoved his face through the screen. (He was looking at child pornography on his company laptop. It was strange to have the police on my side for once.)

What I’m laying down is this: whenever I jammed a knee in the groin of professional behavior, the only tools at my disposal were huge fists, awesomely braided nuts, and a sense of shamelessness shown only by women in gang bangs. What I did not have during any of these occasions were a metal baton, an abusive demeanor, weaponry capable of wasting small villages, and a silver badge to back it all up.

***

I’m almost certain that some of my readers have never used cocaine or crystal meth.

Bully-fuckin’-hoo for you.

For those of you wise enough to have never touched either one of these substances, I shall explain the alternatives available to an addict nearing the end of his stash:

When you’ve whittled the contents of your plastic bag down to the last grains in the corner, your options are finite, but present. There’s always the tried and true method of accepting the conclusion of your binge, realizing that you’ve had a fun night (or five days) of ruining your body and coasting a gentle comedown. Usually, the synthetic endorphins are counteracted with whiskey, pills, or a large bag of marijuana that’s been set aside for this very reason. Of course, if you were a poor drug addict and didn’t plan ahead, having spent all your money on uppers and leaving none to help diminish your buzz, you have no choice but to take the second option and do it the hard way: you ride it out until the end. This route is generally avoided by most cokeheads and speed freaks, as it leaves your eyes bulging out of your face for anywhere from a few hours to an extra two days. Sleep is an elusive dream that never seems to come, and I don’t care who you are—whether it’s a family that needs tending, a job you must show up for, or your monthly meeting with a probation officer, eventually, you have to get straight to deal with some important part of your life.

Then there is the third option that is the most popular, at least among myself and the people I used to run with: you wave your dick at the idea of going without your precious narcotics and go get some more, by God.

***

I recall a time in my youth. I was big, tattooed, devilishly handsome, and villainously intelligent.

Not a lot’s changed.

My old buddy Jay and I had been knee-deep in three eightballs of glass for four days. That’s almost eleven grams for the squares. Raptious had been up with us for the duration. She was so strung out that she’d started arranging the coat hangers in our closet according to size and color (plastic hangers were saved; wire hangers were either trashed or turned into stem cleaners for our pipes). We’d gotten down to the last chips in our last bag. Jay and I were in my kitchen volleying a joint trying to take the edge off the top-notch redneck speed. We were seated at two of the barstools surrounding the counter. The one hundred-watt light bulb we’d modified for smoking the glass lay between us on the beige formica next to a straw used for inhalation. We passed the joint over two ounces of weed and what appeared to be less than a quarter gram of the clear crystals in a small, zip-locked jewelry bag. It was 1 AM.

“Hey, man,” I said, “do you have anything to do tomorrow?”

“Not really.”

“Neither do I. You wanna go see Dude and get some more speed?”

“Yeah. Sure. But don’t you have to go to work, Innis?”

“Nope. Not for a couple more days.”

“How did you manage that?”

“I told Bobby my aunt neutered her Yorkie. Said that ever since she did it the little bastard had been trying to kill her in her sleep and I had to go keep watch over him while he got used to being nutless.”

“Oh. Cool!”

“Yeah, no doubt. Too bad it’s all true except the part about me going to visit.”

“Oh. Well, yeah, that kinda sucks.”

“Hey, Jay, you think Dude’s even awake?”

“Yep. Should be. He makes his own shit. Cooks never sleep. You want me to call him?”

“Yep yep. How much money you got?”

“‘Bout a hundred. You?”

“I’ve got two bills. Three hundred should buy another ‘ball with a little extra.”

“Hell yeah it will! Does he know your cell number?”

“Nah. I use the landline when I call him. He recognizes that one.”

“Sweet. I’ll take care of it. My cell phone’s in my car, though.”

“You wanna call him from here?”

“Yep. Is your house phone on this month?”

“Sure thing. Give him a holler.”

***

Dude’s real name was Darrell. He lived in the country about twenty miles from my house. He’d fallen in love with The Big Lebowski and insisted that from then on his friends call him “Dude.”

I wasn’t his goddamn friend. To me he was a reliable meth connection with great product. Nothing more. To keep our business transactions going smoothly—and to minimize the threat of that crazy hillbilly pulling a gun for the smallest disagreement—I would’ve called him “Bubbles” if that’s what he wanted to go by.

Dude lived on State 116. It only ran about ten miles from beginning to end, but it was a long rural highway with minimal side streets. At least minimal for ten miles of road. Save for a few bends and a ninety degree curve, it was more or less a straight shot. The benefit of this quality was that you could see police coming in your direction. The flipside, of course, was that they could see you, too. One side intersected with State 28. The opposite end came out by some railroad tracks next to an active army base. There were trees set twenty yards from the highway in some places, thirty or more in others. Dusk-to-dawn lamps dotted the shoulder every couple of miles.

For law breakers, it was an imposing stretch even during daylight hours, for if the cops hit their lights there was almost nowhere to go. You’d be forced to pull over. If you chose to run and made it to one of the streets that led into the woods, good luck—maybe you hit one of the few that was actually paved. A great number of them were gravel and you’d lose control in a high-speed chase. Most people who made a break for it down one of these roads realized they were fucked after the first mile and stopped. Those who tempted fate usually flipped their vehicles or careened into the surrounding wilderness. At night, the blacktop of 116 seemed to extend forever. The only way to see any law enforcement was if they were behind you with their emergency lights on.

It was almost 2 AM by the time Jay had spoken to Dude. I told Raptious the deal and left her in our closet with the spider’s web of hangers. We got in Jay’s new Caddy and set off. Because we were geeked out of our minds, we followed the speed limits and took the back roads to 116. We didn’t get to Dude’s ramshackle lean-to until 2:45.

***

He greeted us at the screen door with no shirt, ripped jeans, and greasy waves of blonde, unwashed hair that curled at the tips. He invited us in with a jerk of his head. The trashy living room was filled with overflowing ashtrays, scattered newspapers, Nixon-era furniture and 90s-era porn on the twenty-two inch television. He made no bones regarding the manufactured screams of pleasure blaring from the staticky speakers. Foregoing a “Hello,” he immediately went into a dissertation about how he’d been up for a week. It smelled like his last shower coincided with his first line.

His jerkwater wife had joined Dude in his binge. Everybody called her Swizzlestick. To this day I don’t know her real name. She was skin and bones and as backwoods as they come. Her oily red hair clumped together in ropes of dreadlocks as she buzzed about like a blind mosquito. Through her dirty sheer nightgown, we could see her rib cage spread under almost-A-cup breasts. She was in the kitchen making their twelfth pot of coffee in two days. She played hostess through a lisp and nine teeth in her mouth, offering me and Jay a taste of her concoction. I felt confident in speaking for the both of us.

“Y’all wanna cup o’ the good thtuff?”

“Nah. We’re okay.”

“Y’all thure? It’th high-po’ered thit! I’been puttin’ new groundth over the old ‘unsth to give it a kick!”

“Uh, no thanks, Swizzle. We’ve gotta be getting on pretty soon. It’s late and the laws are out there. You know how it is.”

“Awlright then. Thuit yerthelf!”

Jay knew Dude better than I did. They went to a back part of the house to take care of business, leaving me trapped with Swizzlestick for a few minutes. She asked me if I wanted to bump a line off her tits. I gagged gave a polite “No,” telling her I felt funny about seeing someone else’s wife topless. The lie was so convincing that I almost bought it myself. Mercifully, Jay and Dude emerged from the back room a couple of seconds later.

Dude said our new eightball was from a fresh batch. Me and Jay eyed each other expectantly. We couldn’t wait to get back to my place and try it out. Jay put the baggie next to his gas cap before flipping the ignition.

116 wasn’t so bad once you neared Highway 28. There were plenty of byways paved with concrete on that end. You could shake a cop with no problem if you knew where you were going. Once you made it to the intersection, you took a right and rode it straight into the city. Barring a chase, you were home free.

Unless you flicked a cigarette out the window in front of a parish deputy like I did.

***

The law dog sprang into view like Houdini after a disappearing act. I didn’t even see where he’d come from. One minute we’re riding on the blacktop listening to Dr. Dre’s opus The Chronic, chainsmoking as speed freaks do and looking forward to inhaling our new bag. The next thing I know, blue and whites are filling our vision.

I was surprised at Jay’s reaction. He didn’t bitch or cuss, but if facial expressions could speak, his would’ve said, “If we get outta this, I’m gonna knock the living shit outta you.....”

There was no running. Jay’s Caddy was a steamship; the deputy’s car was a Blackhawk. The adrenaline surged and Jay turned onto the first gravel road in sight. The speed was next to the fuel cap. Unless a flicker of intelligence went off inside that Cro-Magnon cranium of his, the deputy wouldn’t think to check there. I wasn’t worried and neither was Jay. Until the deputy got out of his cruiser.

Jay looked in the rearview mirror. Droplets immediately appeared on his forehead. Within seconds the man was dripping like O. J. at a Women’s Lib rally. The winter gusts were blowing hard and we both had our windows down. Even with the most potent speed known to man, there was no reason for him to be sweating like a pig.

“Oh.....FUCK!”

“What, Jay?! What?! What?! What?!”

Never diverging his eyes from the driver’s side mirror, “You remember Mrs. Suckston from high school?”

“You mean the teacher who was busted sucking off the principal in the employee lounge? Yeah. What the hell made you think of her now?”

The sound of the deputy’s footsteps crunching gravel became louder as he approached the vehicle. Jay’s words came in a clipped cadence. “That’s her son, dude. And he hates my ass!”

“You mean that’s Harley Suckston, Jay?”

“Yep! You remember how me and Mrs. Suckston started messing around our senior year?”

Oh my God Christ Almighty Heaven help us Jesus please no.

“Yes, Jay. I do. What does that have to do with us at this very moment, pray tell? Did something happen that I don’t know about? Please, enlighten me before he gets to this car.”

“You remember when I left your house on Senior Skip Day? I said I was going home? I went to her place instead. She’d called in sick so we could hang out. Harley was in ninth grade but he’d skipped, too. He walked in when I was balls deep in his mom’s ass and almost shot me with his father’s pistol from the closet. She stopped him but-”

***

“How y’all doin’? Did y’all mean to throw that cigarette out back there? Ya know that litterin’s against the law, don’t ya?”

Jay silently stared at an invisible focal point in the woods. A disquiet of astronomical proportions whisked through the Caddy.

“Hello! Is everything okay there?”

Jay cleared his throat, never facing Harley. “Yes, sir. Everything’s fine.” He turned to look at me with angry eyes. ”My friend’s cigarette fell out on accident. He went to flick the ash but the wind caught it. Didn’t it, Innis?”

I didn’t leave Mrs. Suckston’s colon awash in semen so I had no problem leaning over to look at him. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry about that. The wind ripped it out my hands before I knew what happened. That Nor’easter is damn fearful out here. Won’t happen again, Officer.”

Harley leaned on his elbow against the red door of the Caddy. He eyeballed Jay momentarily. “Y’all better let me see yer license, registration, and proof of insurance.”

Knowing that cops are going to be suspicious of two heavily tattooed men with shaved heads riding on a country road in the wee hours of the morning, Jay moved cautiously. He told Harley he had to reach into his back left pocket for his wallet. Said he had to retrieve his insurance card from the glovebox. The deputy said “Sure” and allowed him to get his credentials. It was dark enough to where he didn’t see Jay’s Taurus 9mm under the envelope. Once Jay had the paperwork, Harley snatched it from his hand and started walking to his cruiser to run the information. When he got to the trunk, he doubled back to Jay’s window, his pudgy face twisted into a question mark—like when a strange woman says she knows you and you’re trying to remember her name and whether or not you’ve tossed her salad.

“S’cuse me, sir, but don’t I know you from somewhere?”

“No, sir. I don’t think so. I look like a lotta people, you know.” If it’s possible to hear a human being’s sphincter tighten hard enough to break glass, I heard it.

Harley snorted and walked to his cruiser.

I tried to assuage any anxiety. “Dude, relax, man. He probably doesn’t even remember you. You look totally different! Back then you were clean-shaven with long hair. Now it’s the exact opposite—your face looks like a Chia Pet and you’re bald. We’re good.”

“Yeah, Innis, but you don’t forget walking in on someone buttfucking your mother. Especially when it’s someone you go to school with. He went absolutely nuts!”

“Jay, chill. He’s gonna bitch at me for dumping the cigarette. That’s all. Probably give me a ticket for littering and tell us to get on home.”

“MOTHERFUCKER!”

***

We both looked in respective mirrors when he screamed. Harley leaned in his patrol car. His fluttering blue and whites vanished in the dark, but he’d left his headlights on. Then we watched with horror as six feet, five inches of ruthlessness pulverized the gravel on the way back to the Caddy.

Harley swung the door open on Jay’s side. “Y’all get outta that got’damn car! Now!”

We both looked at each other, fearing the worst. I opened my door and got out. Harley didn’t wait for Jay to move. He grabbed him by his wrist and yanked him onto the hard gravel road with all his might. When Jay got up, he looked down at his palms. There were deep cuts already seeping blood. At that moment, I realized that no matter what Harley did or didn’t find, he wasn’t planning on taking us to a nice, safe jail cell.

“Get yer fuckin’ ass around here, boy!” Against all principles, I did what the cop told me to do. Jay and I both stood next to his Caddy with our backs to the driver’s side.

Harley jabbed his finger in Jay’s chest. “I knew I knew you from somewhere, ya sneaky little shit! We went to high school together! Yer the one who fucked my mama!”

“Hey, Harley, look. I-” The deputy bitch slapped him so hard that Jay doubled over at the waist. When he straightened up, blood trickled from the corner of his lip to fall on his black t-shirt.

“You shut yer got’damn mouth when yer talkin’ to me! Ya hear me?!”

Even in the face of adversity, Jay held true. “Look, Harley. You’ve got it all wrong, man. I wasn’t the only one. A lotta people fucked your mother. It wasn’t like-”

Harley took out his baton. He positioned himself like he was swinging a bat in the bottom of the ninth with bases loaded and cracked Jay across his kneecaps as hard as I’ve ever seen a man swing. If his patellas had been white balls with red stitching, Harley would’ve knocked them out the park. My friend screamed bloody murder and fell on his back in a world of suffering.

I yelled at the top of my lungs but never moved. “What the hell, man?! You can’t do that! What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Harley grabbed his Glock and aimed it at me. My arms shot to the stars to show my empty hands.

“Calm down, man! Be cool!”

“Did you fuck my mama, too, ya tattooed freak show?!”

“Hell no!”

“Then I don’t want any sass, ya fuckin’ hippie! This motherfucker’s had this comin’ for a long time and I aim to do it right! Now keep yer got’damn mouth shut!” (He lost me. I’ve never known the first hippie who resembled a member of the Aryan Brotherhood.)

Jay was on his right side, coughing and spitting blood from the backhand. He brought his knees to his chest and whimpered from the splitting in his legs.

Jay was one tough cookie, good people. He and I had been involved in many a tussle with many drunken reprobates at various bars, and I’d only seen him go down once. I’d even seen him fight five guys—shoeless—and come out on top. The only time I’d ever heard the man cry was during the scene in The Neverending Story when Atreyu’s horse drowned in that swamp. From the way he curled, I knew he was in immeasurable pain.

Cops the world over have a bloated self-importance that supercedes the most contemptuous politician. That’s part of why they choose to be cops. In my experience, they tend to hold themselves to an unachievable level of greatness. They also want the people they unnerve serve to hold them to this nobility, as well. I thought of a mindfuck that maybe Harley hadn’t considered.

With my hands still in the air, “Hey, man, what do you think people are gonna say when they see the video from your dashcam? You really want everybody knowing this is how the parish acts on a traffic stop? And what the hell you gonna tell your dispatcher when they ask you about your status?”

He holstered his heater. “Don’t make much of a damn to me what they think, son. Ain’t nobody gonna know. Told the dispatcher I cancelled the call.” He ogled me like a pervert on a playground. “And the camera ain’t on.”

***

It was 3:15 in the morning. On that end of 116, the houses were few and far between. We’d turned onto a gravel road that stymied at an old cemetery. Nobody lived down there so the threat of passing traffic was nominal. There were no houses for a few miles, and no one was coming to help. If he so desired, Harley could’ve shot us, zipped us up in the cadaver bags from the trunk of his cruiser, and said he’d found the Caddy abandoned on the side of the road. The parish we were in let their deputies take the cars home after work; covering us with loose dirt in a shallow grave could be handled after his shift. Nobody would’ve cared about two druggies disappearing from existence (if you think none of this is possible, you don’t know the cops in Louisiana.)

For the first time since we got pulled over, I was seriously concerned for our lives.

Throughout this clear-cut abuse of power, I never forgot about the eightball of glass mere feet from our altercation.

***

Harley reached down and grabbed Jay by the front of his shirt. Stood him up straight. He was groggy and weaving. Without warning, he cocked back his right hand and punched Jay in the mouth so hard he flew back and hit the Caddy. The driver’s side door had remained open and the nape of his neck met the edge of the car’s frame to give a worrisome crack! as his head whipped back and smacked the roof. My defenseless friend shriveled to the ground. He coughed two times and spit out three teeth in the rocky roadway. He didn’t move.

I was speechless, which is a rare thing for me. The dirty deputy glowered at me. Maybe he’d expected benediction for his unlawful show of “public safety.” But friend or no friend, I wasn’t interested in becoming an alligator’s full belly in some swamp of the Deep South.

Content with having humiliated Jay for having his way with his mother all those years ago, Harley’s voice held a sense of placidness when he spoke.

“Do you have a license?”

I resisted the urge to wage obscenity. “Yeah. I do.”

“Lemme see it.”

I gave him my license. He scanned it quickly, making sure it was current. That’s all he could do really, since he’d told his dispatcher he was available. He didn’t recognize my name from high school, which almost made me break into song. Harley handed it back to me and looked down at Jay’s unmoving form on the ground.

“Pick this motherfucker up. Y’all get outta here.” He spoke to my soul with his next statement: “If I catch y’all out here again, I swear to God, I’ll kill both of you. Ya understand, boy?” I had no doubt.

I agreed to his one-sided terms and heaved Jay off the ground by myself. He was able to walk a little, but the force of Harley’s punch had left him bewildered. I had to throw one of his arms over my shoulders to get him to the passenger seat. Once he was safely belted in, I walked around to the driver’s side.

This was all my fault. I felt like the shit on the bottom of someone’s shoe. This had all happened because of a cigarette. If I hadn’t been so careless with my Marlboro, we wouldn’t have gotten pulled over and Jay wouldn’t need dental work. I sensed major apologies in my future.

One of my favorite proverbs is “An eye for an eye.” A great chunk of my belief system is rooted in it. I wanted revenge. I needed vindication for my stupefied friend lying in the car. But Harley was a parish deputy. There was a uniformed squadron of men and women standing behind him ready to support his every move. What the hell was I going to do, go to war with a cop? No way. But, goddammit, I could do the next best thing.

As Harley walked back to his cruiser, I called after him. With his headlights, I could see the conniption on his face when he turned around.

Fuck that abusive prick.

“Hey, man, don’t worry about this. Whatever happened with Jay and your mother was a long time ago. And if you’re thinking we’re gonna report anything, don’t fret. We don’t want any more problems than you do. The public needs people like you out here, Harley, and we wouldn’t want to strip the commonwealth of such an upstanding example of protection. We know that a career in law enforcement can make the sanest man snap. After all, it’s widely known that some of you just

Forget

About

Goodness

Sometimes.

“You just need to take up a hobby and vent your inner hostility. That’s all it is. Have a good life, Harley.”

I got in the car, made a Y-turn, and beamed a smile when we passed. He was scratching his head, looking at me like I’d recited the theory of relativity in Latin. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw him petrified to the ground, his fading face turned crimson from the taillights.

As far as I know, Harley Suckston is still standing in the middle of that lonesome gravel road wondering what in the hell just happened.

***

Thank God, the rest of our trip was uneventful.

We’d just gotten back to the city limits when Jay started coming around. As I pulled his car into my driveway, I thought about what could’ve gone wrong: not only could we have been sitting in a jail cell for possession of crystal meth, but—worst case scenario—we very well could’ve been speaking with Saint Peter at the Gates trying to talk our way into Heaven and feign repentance for all the shit we’d done. Between the two of us, we would’ve been there for a while trying to sell him on the worthiness of our souls.

I turned off the ignition. “Hey, dude. You alive?”

He was reclined on the passenger side gazing through the window. Blood dripped from his mouth when he spoke.

“Yeah. I’m alright. I can’t believe that dirty cockthucker knocked out three of my teeth, man.”

“I’ve got ‘em, dude. Picked ‘em up before we left. You’ll probably have to get partials, but they’re here if the dentist needs ‘em.”

“Thankth, Innith.”

“No sweat. What you wanna do? You gonna come inside or what?”

“Nah. I’m gonna go home and thmoke the largetht joint I’ve ever had. Keep the thpeed. I don’t even wanna thee it.”

“You want me to save you any?”

He slowly turned his head and looked at me like I’d insulted his intelligence. “What the hell, Coxthman? You know you’re gonna do it all before we thee each other again.”

“Well, yeah. You’re right. Can you even drive?”

“Yeah, I’m good. But hey, thomething I wanted to run by you. You remember Alotta Thith?”

“Tits?”

“No, Thith.”

“Dude, are you saying, ‘Blech’?”

“No, motherfucker—Thith! Alotta Thith! Quit being a dickhead, Innith!”

“Hahaha! I’m sorry, man. Yeah, I know her. Alotta Shitz—that slore who got ‘IF YOU DON’T EAT IT, YOU DON’T NEED IT’ tattooed above her pussy. What about her?”

“The athked me to take care of thomething for her and I’m gonna need your help. Come by the Needle on Thunday. We’ll talk about it.”

“Cool. I’ll be there, Swizzlestick.”

“Fuck you, Coxthman!”

Seek and Ye Shall Find

In his autobiography, Life on Planet Rock, American journalist and former editor of Rip Magazine, Lonn Friend, wrote of an experience he shared with two tramps from a home shopping network when he was invited to cohost a live program.

QVC, that oasis for lazy housewives everywhere, was shilling a Bon Jovi DVD to their viewers as the band performed a show in San Jose. As Mr. Friend relates it, the two female anchors were firing off product pitches one after the other, spewing them forth in such rapid succession as to scalp the journalist completely. Instead of doing the sensible thing and bashing their faces together, he interjected to tell one of the ladies, “Your enthusiasm is a bit intimidating,” halting both of the chatty Cathys in their tracks.

When I initially read that line, my associates and I were in a bank lobby making a large withdrawal. Though the situation at hand demanded my full attention, the passage was so profound that I holstered my .45 and diverted focus away from the teller.

I reread the line ad nauseum: “Your enthusiasm is a bit intimidating.” I became lost in an amusing memory, thinking back to an incident that personified Mr. Friend’s statement with truth and clarity.

***

Tell me something, good people: did you know that pieces of your car audio equipment have serial numbers? From the wires in your radio housing to a chip in your amplifier. Including that one speaker in the rear passenger door that plays nothing but static. Nearly every part of the system has digits burned, printed, or stickered on for easy identification. Well, in case you didn’t know that, I’m here to tell you that they most certainly fucking do. And I became privy to this fact when a few of America’s finest scattered the pieces of my car audio on the shoulder of a highway early one morning.

All four-hundred-and-eighty-two of them.

***

It was a particularly hot and sticky night, even for the South. My balls were chafed and itchy. I hadn’t had sex in months so I knew it wasn’t crotch rot. I quickly deduced that it was my nutsack rubbing the day’s sweat against my thighs, creating a deliberate friction to burn if ever I’d felt one. My abundant perspiration was the result of riding around with a pound of Mexican bud at 4 o’clock in the morning while attempting to corral two idiots, making futile efforts to squelch their baked rendition of “Guantanamera” as they hung their bodies from the windows like limp, diseased stalks of corn.

***

Connie Langus and Burt B. Trippin were two of but a handful of friends I’d made in high school. They’d been a couple since junior year and were still going strong in our late teens. Back when we were prisoners of the school system, we talked of pooling our meager resources to form a risky venture with great returns. Once we escaped the dungeon of secondary education, our trifecta turned nebulous conversation into substance.

We became pot dealers.

Not long after we went into business, the coffers of good marijuana in Louisiana were in depletion from a statewide crackdown. New laws written by the legislation made it harder than ever before for someone to hit the bong unmolested. Users caught with so much as a seed in their vehicle were levied hefty fines and an overkill of jail time; they made an example out of a friend when they handed him five years for two joints. Many suppliers in our part of the state decided it wasn’t worth the risk anymore, not for the punishments being given by the courts.

Before this stance on the plant went into full swing, the stuff rolled in like fog from a placid lake. Being as we weren’t old enough to buy alcohol, obtaining a quarter-key from across town was easier than finding someone to purchase a six-pack. When these Draconian penalties were etched in stone, however, getting a small quantity locally became a headache. Our quandary was two-fold as we weren’t like most people who wanted to score a handful just to get high; our interests were greater than scrounging for pithy bits left on the cutting floor. The way we saw it, if you’re going to catch a case, why let it be over a dime bag?

Go big or go home, by God.

We wanted weight, and we knew that tapping the source of all incoming product would be the lynchpin of our success. Fortunately, Connie knew someone south of the border who could secure the amounts we needed to stay afloat.

***

Immediately after graduation, Connie reunited with Merle, her gay/adopted/drag queen/dropout brother who’d moved to Matamoros, Mexico following a fallout with their father (must’ve been something “Meralda” had said). Through his connections, we were able to purchase kilos of primo border bud at rock bottom prices. The only people getting it cheaper were the Mexican cops. We exercised extra care in trafficking our product back into the country; the consequences for our standard shipment were brutal. Once stateside, we funneled the product into the lungs of our adoring public. After setting aside a pound or two for personal use, of course.

AND THAT’S WHEN THE LOCUSTS CAME!

No. That’s a lie. But that is when one of the worst droughts in Dixie increased from more governmental interference.

As if Louisiana politicians striving to please (some) voters wasn’t enough, the DEA and Federales had created yet another joint task force to put a dent in the cartels, performing a sweep of the Mexican countryside that netted hundreds of arrests and a plethora of our dope. It was so bad that people back home were breaking their glass pipes and scraping resin from the stems. Some even tried their hand at manufacturing shitty homegrown. Granted, the local boys did their best, but the weed didn’t get you high and it tasted like a cauliflower queef.

Now don’t get me wrong—it was around for those who were willing to pay, but forget about making any profit. As what usually happens when a drought rears its sober head, the city was turned into a dealer’s paradise. Sure, people could buy a pound of weed no sweat. At an insane markup. Getting anything more than that was nigh impossible. Even through Connie’s brother, we had some difficulty obtaining an order.

Gone were the huge blocks of bud lovingly shrink-wrapped by an illiterate Latino. The only amounts being moved were small bundles, mainly half-pound to one-pound bricks.

And anyone who got it was lucky to have it.

***

Matamoros is directly across the border from Brownsville, Texas. It’d grown steadily by the time we went into business, and the city fathers acted accordingly, hiring additional police officers to safeguard its citizens from the inevitable boom in crime.

Leaving late in the afternoon wasn’t my idea. I’d thought it was better to stay the night and travel in the daytime rather than run afoul of police and be subjected to the thrills of the Mexican justice system, much less the graveyard shift at Customs and Border Protection. But Connie was ready to get back to her cat. She said it’d been suicidal as of late. Said that her sister was staying with the feral beast to make sure it didn’t hurl itself down the stairs again. Burt and I laughed and pointed at her until she cried. Nobody believed her.

The events between Beaumont and arrest are foggy. We’d been smoking one after the other since Houston, close enough to home that we felt safe sparking up on I-10 in the middle of the night. Burt lounged in the back, twisting joints out of a Ziploc bag laid next to him on the seat. Even aerating my vehicle with cracked windows, the beige interior reeked of ganja and Newports. I wasn’t really worried about being pulled over, though. Every light, signal, and windshield wiper on my red Pontiac Sunbird worked perfectly. My license and paperwork were in order, and I followed the speed limits. Except for the horn, my car was ship-shape (I’d gutted the innards under the horn cap to store small quantities of narcotics). The only annoyance I’d had was somewhere around Beaumont when Connie swung around in the front passenger to give Burt a handjob. His long, dirty-blonde hair fell gracefully over his ears as he stared at the ceiling, moaning in ecstasy. He unloaded on the front of his Van Halen t-shirt so it wasn’t a big deal. I shook my head, took a hit, and turned up the music.

***

Everyone’s heard of spidey-sense—that feeling you get when you know something’s amiss. Well, drug users have what’s known as a “shitty sense,” especially when they’re carrying a sizeable amount of drugs they’re going to use. My shitty sense was no different. It began to dump peanuts and corn husks on the back of my neck about the time we drove into Louisiana. I should’ve heeded the warning and snagged a hotel room in Lake Charles, Connie’s cat be damned.

Being so close to home made me too comfortable. I’d gotten cocky, driving a few miles over the speed limit, my fuck-up doing it on a lonely stretch of country highway that was famous for hiding cops amongst its trees. The sudden appearance of a state trooper bursting from the inky blackness filled my car with bright lights and paralyzing fear. Connie twisted around on her knees, the incandescent beams distorting her face to that of a demon. Burt had been dozing under the spell of a weed nap, unaware of our predicament. I shouted at him to wake up.

“Burt!” I yelled into the rearview mirror. He didn’t budge.

“Burt! Wake up! We’re being pulled over!” Connie fared no better, her white blouse rapidly changing colors from the trooper’s twirling lights.

I threw my right arm over Connie’s head to push Burt back to life and discovered that his sizable cock was still flopped out of his Levi’s. He’d never holstered himself before passing out. I grabbed a handful of rubbery shaft as my palm landed in his lap instead of his leg.

His face.

His armpit.

His nutsack.

The seminal crust on David Lee Roth’s smiling face.

Fucking anywhere else, man.

The feeling of a phantom hand on his dick roused Burt from his slumber. One look at the blue light special illuminating Connie’s face told him all he needed to know.

Burt B. Trippin fulfilled his name and promptly lost his shit.

A pound of shrink-wrapped marijuana sat in the trunk, wedged in a space between the carpet and the back seat. The inside of my car looked like a Dutch holiday. I felt a churning in my lower gut. There was no way out of this. I swallowed hard and pulled to the shoulder of Highway 165, a road bisecting the greater portion of Louisiana. The alternative entailed flooring my poor Sunbird and getting hit with additional charges when we eventually hit the spike strips. Either that, or going out in a hail of gunfire. It took me exactly two seconds to weigh my options before hanging my head in defeat.

I came to grips with the fact that we were going to jail.

***

The state trooper killed his front bar light and exited the white Crown Victoria—presumably washed by a trustee earlier that evening—perching his Smokey Bear hat atop his shiny, bald scalp. Even in the murkiness of night, I could see the creases in his royal-blue uniform pants were sharp enough to cut diamonds. You could tell he was one of those who lived for this shit. He sauntered up to my window. I didn’t try to stall.

He was jaunty and celebratory when he spoke. “Mornin’! Goin’ a little fast, eh, boy? License, registration and-”

The smoke hit him in the face like a brick. His right hand instinctively went to the Glock .40 caliber on his hip without drawing the weapon.

“Step out of the vehicle. Put your hands on the car and don’t move.” His tone was deep, flat, and no longer jaunty. He crouched down to assess the other occupants with beady eyes. “You two. Lemme see your hands. Don’t y’all move a fuckin’ muscle.”

From the back seat, “Well, which is it? Do you wanna see our hands or not move a fuckin’ muscle?”

Oh my God.

We were clearly breaking the law with our actions; cops tend to frown on motorists who are motoring while smoking that sticky icky.

He confidently showed us who was in charge; you could smell the overpowering aromas of authority and Brut as he radioed for backup and threw us on the hood of my car.

I then watched as said car was stripped like a porn star’s ego once she found out she was only good enough to be a fluffer.

Once the other boys he blew Boys in Blue arrived on scene, we were split into three different cruisers. The cop that’d originally stopped us shoved me down to the cheap pleather seats in the back of his patrol car. I landed on my tightly cuffed wrists, the snug steel cutting harshly into my delicate skin. He slammed the door and I righted myself enough to see through the cage. It wasn’t easy with three coats of Armor All (incidentally, the theory of one-size-fits-all cuffs is a crock of shit, man).

They immediately went to work taking apart my beloved dope mobile. Anything and everything that could be dismantled was broken down and tossed onto the shoulder of the road.

My CD player: ripped from the console, thrown in the median to ruin in the wet grass. My twelve-inch Kicker speakers suffered the same fate.

A Rockford Fosgate amplifier that I had bought with hard-earned drug money: that expensive item “slipped” out of a trooper’s hands and shattered to pieces on the unforgiving asphalt.

The seats, front and back: plundered by Smith & Wesson duty knives and a German Shepherd in the early stages of mange. That bitch even relieved herself on the driver’s seat.

The speakers in my doors: once the cops removed the paneling, they were left to hang precariously by the wires.

And my dash?.....by the time everything was said and done it would’ve been cheaper to buy a new car.

The way those pigs carried on, you would’ve thought I had the Loch Ness monster hidden under the front seat. Or long-lost national treasure Amelia Earhart tied to my undercarriage. Or the goddamn ashes of Jimmy Hoffa in the fucking ashtray! I didn’t even know I had a spare tire in that piece of shit until those douchebags arrogantly informed me that they were ripping the entrails out of my ride because they swore they heard the cries of the Lindbergh baby. It was only a matter of time before they slithered to the crevice in the trunk. When they did, you would’ve thought I was the heir apparent to Pablo Escobar.

Game over.

***

There was no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow; it would’ve been welded shut anyway. Nor did we pass “Go” and collect two hundred dollars; but I managed to collect influenza from the holding tank.

All three of us were charged with drug trafficking and possession with intent to distribute. They hung me with a DWI just to make sure I knew the error of my ways. Can’t really say I blame them; the whites of my eyes were as red as Atomic Fireballs. If I were a slab of bacon committed police officer I would’ve done the same thing. My precious Sunbird—or the skeleton thereof—was towed to an impound yard fifty miles away. We were transported to the parish jail where we began making harrowed phone calls to eager bondsmen.

***

Don’t think I impart this tribulation with a whimsical air, good people. For all of you reading, it’s a story from some good-looking bastard you’ve never heard of. For me, it was a severe derailment in the Amtrak of my existence. Fact is, we did time over this.

After weeks of worry and a smorgasbord of funds paid to separate attorneys, we managed to escape lengthy prison sentences for trafficking. They even dismissed my DWI charge. The three of us plead guilty to possession with intent to distribute and received two years apiece in six-by-eight cells. My emotions were a composite of fear and resignation when the gavel came down. Mixed with a crumb of gratitude.

I thought of my friend who’d gotten the five years for his two small joints.

***

We were forbidden to see one another upon release. Felons can’t hang with felons. If you’re seen in the company of your ilk they send you back. The powers that be didn’t care that Burt and Connie were a couple. They were forbidden from contact, lest they return to the clink. As for myself, I resisted the urge to contact my friends. The meager sentence handed down to me, in contrast to what it could have been, taught me to fear that place.

Prison can change your perspective—provided you have the intelligence of a muskrat. It gives you space to ponder your future, seeing more to the “grand design” than being forced to do the Foxtrot with a very persuasive triple-murderer (my celly was a fantastic dancer). Gradually, my desire to see Burt and Connie faded. A feeling of guilt invaded my conscience; it hurt tremendously that I could schluff my longtime friends so easily. We had been the Three Musketeers for so long, though reconnection would’ve ended gravely.

The cycle would’ve repeated itself and I’d revisit the same horrors I was blessed enough to live through a first time. I’d take reckless chances with my freedom just to smoke my profit away. I’d put myself in dangerous situations with sketchy individuals who were my “best friends” on Monday, then putting a muzzle to my head on Tuesday.

I’d never get my life back.

***

Burt died bad. Real bad. Though he was feeling good when he went out. He’d developed an addiction to Morphine and Dilaudid, both extremely potent painkillers. They proved to be his undoing.

Prison chewed Burt up and spit him out several times in the years following our second chance. I’d run into him in the city occasionally and we’d talk before moving on with our respective days. We never chatted long; by then my daughter had been born and I followed a different agenda (I still sold and did dope, but he was too “out there” for me to hang with). With each encounter, he was a more distorted version of the friend I once knew.

Eventually, I got the long-feared call from a mutual acquaintance: a Guatemalan maid in some flophouse motel found Burt’s cold, mottled body face-up on the filthy mattress, a hypodermic dangling from his left arm with a pool of coagulated blood next to his blue, shirtless frame. The vials of hospital-grade medication on the nightstand stood empty, silently laughing at his rigid corpse, pleased they’d increased their body count. His eyes were midway, frozen in an unblinking stare.

Tear stains streaked toward the pillow under his head.

Sadly, there are so many gaps in my memory that I don’t recall attending the funeral. I was still in “the life”—brain cells perished. If I did see him lowered into the ground, the event has vanished from my mind.

Can’t say I’m broken up about that.

Whether I mourned at Burt’s open grave or shunned the ceremony, two things are certain: Burt Trippin was a good, talented, caring individual whose only slip was letting the silver tongue of evil lie its way into his confidence. Two, I will forever remember the man he used to be.

I miss my friend dearly. I miss the laughter and good times we shared before he was cursed with the cataclysm of addiction.

And I weep when I think of him.

***

The years crawled.

Slowly, I got my poop in a group, save for this speeding ticket I had to pay. (When I told the lady at the fines window that you can’t get blood from a turnip, she said, “True, Mr. Coxman, but we can put the turnip in jail.” I paid the goddamn ticket.) When I was leaving the courthouse, I saw the shadow of a familiar face walking up the steps with a disheveled gentleman in a wrinkled suit and a briefcase. Time and bad drugs had ravaged its once pretty features.

“Hey, Connie.”

“Innis!” she shrieked. “Oh my God, I can’t believe it! How have you been?!” The chap that’d been lagging halted behind her.

She threw her arms around my neck, then pulled away. We started talking and she brought me up to speed with her family and other developments. As we stood there speaking, I couldn’t help but flinch from her appearance. Her once milky complexion was splotchy. The crow’s feet and wrinkles smacked of a woman in her late 50s. It was scary. Connie was in her early 30s, same as I, but heavy consumption of pills and methamphetamine can age you quickly, cutting grooves into your face and sending your teeth to the floor like Chiclets.

When I asked what she was doing at the courthouse, she said she was there for the first day of her arson trial. Her silent companion was her public defender. (By the bye, burning your own fucking house to the ground for financial gain is severely frowned upon by fire investigators and insurance companies alike. I recommend against it.)

It all came flooding back to me in a fleeting instant. I thought of the drugs, the booze, the sex, the superficial means of escape. I’m amazed at the absurdity of it all—the futures destroyed by shameful pasts, the substances we use as filler to block the pain, to eradicate the memories of personal injustices and perceived slights, to stop that hole in the soul from collapsing us in on ourselves.

To squash life.

I couldn’t look at her anymore. It was too much. I bid my “good luck”s before descending the courthouse steps. As I neared the sidewalk, a lightbulb went off. I stopped and did a one-eighty. Considering the charges leveled against her, chances were good I’d never see Connie again (I haven’t). Before I left her to the fickleness of the justice system, there was something I had to know.

“Hey, Connie?”

“Yeah, Innis?”

“Whatever happened to your suicidal cat?”

She lowered her head and stifled a tear. “She finally killed herself. Jumped off the second-story balcony of my place when we were in jail. My mother said she bounced a couple of times on the lawn like a beach ball.”

It was a punch to the gut. I stared at the concrete, flabbergasted that she’d been telling the truth about that fuzzy bitch all those years ago. Connie lost her composure at the flashback, a salty stream running down her cheek.

She needed comforting words, but me being me, I couldn’t help myself. I grinned evilly, knowing I was buying a one-way ticket to Hell.

“Well, don’t worry, Connie. There’ll be plenty of pussy to stroke where you’re going.”

Coxman’s Log: 4:11 PM

I’d fallen victim to this before. But I wasn’t falling for it now. Many would call it prostitution. I simply call it a “suck for a buck.”

So then.....

I left the DMV after having my past probed for over two hours. Considering this was a new state, I tried to be relaxed. Subservient. But goddamn if they couldn’t leave “well enough” alone:

“What’s this arrest for ‘possession,’ Mr. Coxman?”

“None of your business.”

“Si. And this conviction for ‘assault,’ sir?”

“Oh. That’s nothing. It’s old. From a long time ago.”

“Si, Mr. Coxman. Smile at the camera, sir.”

Snap!

***

I drove to the Exxon across the street after having officially moved into my new state. As I was filling up my truck, a little Mexican girl sashayed out of nowhere asking to use my cellphone.

I say “little” as in she appeared to be five-four. And “girl” in the sense that she had a vagina. In every other form of the description, she could’ve passed for a madam at a house of ill repute; she was forty if she was a day. In my youth—or if I was a lesser man—I would’ve broken it wide open.

I mean shit: long black hair that gleamed under the sun; big, dark eyes that beckoned for a fucking; a white wife beater juggling naked, still-firm C-cups; and a pair of purple Umbro soccer shorts.

Do they even make Umbros anymore?

***

“Excuse me, sir. Can I use jur phone to call for a ride?”

“No, baby. Can’t do it.”

“Okay. Ju wanna come around the corner then? I could give ju something else and ju could gimme a ride. Que piensas?”

What did I think? I’ll tell you exactly what I thought.

“You mean we can go around the corner of this store? And you’ll gimme a blowjob or some of that hoo-hoo just for a ride somewhere?”

“Jes. Ju wanna see?.....”

“No. Get away from me, perra. You’re fuckin’ nasty.”

I got in my red pickup and screeched out of there. I’d paid before I fueled so my exit had the greatest impact. I left her at pump number six with her mouth hanging wide open.

Waiting for a dick that wouldn’t come.

Chapter Six

Another Day, Another Dollar

(That’s Not Yours)

Charles Bukowski, one of the most underrated poets, authors, and human beings of the twentieth century, said it best: “How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 AM by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”

My God. He was the lazy, instructional uncle I never had.

I have but two regrets concerning this most poignant of statements:

One, I didn’t invent it myself; if I did, I’d have it tattooed on my chest backwards to ogle it in the bathroom with my covetable beard. Two—and this deeply saddens me—I don’t have the motivation to send copies to the heads of every major corporation on the planet after wiping my ass with the pages repeatedly; if I did, they could use the ass hairs as dental floss to remove the chunks of their edible labor force.

***

The United States. A bona fide geyser of milk and honey. The greatest country in the world, we’re told ad nauseum. A bastion of capitalism where the fat of the land can be suckled like the thimbled teats of a pot-bellied pig. A place where men and women with a little drive and mountains of luck can succeed in their goals of making it, whatever their individual idea of “making it” may be. A speck of Earth whose indigenous peoples were tricked into nickel-and-diming away their cherished homeland by empty promises from European settlers. (Some history books say otherwise. Personally, I cling to the idea that Native Americans are completely justified in their distrust of the White Devil. They’re doing better than me, though; I have a healthy misgiving for all colors.) A continent of expansive acreage whose trees were used to provide homes, whose grounds were cleared to build navigable roads, and whose raw materials were harvested to compile one of the strongest societies in the history of mortal beings.

Even the ancient Greeks would marvel at the structural accomplishments of North America. The same minds who conceptualized the Parthenon, the Acropolis, and the Temple of Zeus would soil their togas if they stood before the Willis Tower of Chicago, the JP Morgan Chase Tower in Houston, the Empire State Building of New York City, and the Washington Monument in.....

No. I’m not doing it. If you have to ask where in the fuck that is, put this down immediately and go to a class.

A legion of man’s achievements—from the wheel to carts to weapons to power tools to plastic to cement to mechanized machinery to vehicles to aircrafts to national monuments to theme parks to the most cloud-puncturing skyscrapers that Homo Sapiens have ever erected toward the Heavens—were invented or improved upon by proleptical visionaries who saw the potential in this great land of ours.

Then they let others do the heavy lifting.

***

Surveyors were needed in the wilds of the new frontier, but without men to level the forests, early immigrants would’ve slept at the mercy of the elements. Engineers were responsible for designing the railroads; without workers laying the tracks and cross ties for slave wages, we’d still be driving covered wagons. Architects blueprinted testaments to man’s hubris and creativity, but it was the sweat of metallurgists that enabled financial centers to trade money under steel girders rather than huts of mud and twigs.

Sure enough, if it wasn’t for the ingenuity and grueling work of our forebears, we’d still be living in rickety wooden shacks, heaving manual plows, shooting inaccurate rifles at each other, and drinking beer because it was cleaner than the water in some areas. Day after day, this country was built on the backs of those who toiled in the blazing sun to push us into the modern fold. ‘Tis true, our ancestors were hardcore. I tip my hat to them all.

And I’m thankful I wasn’t around for any of that horseshit.

***

When you were a child staring dreamily at the stars, I’ll bet you wanted to grow up to be something that brought joy and personal fulfillment. Maybe a writer, a musician, a fashion designer, a journalist, an artist, a jewel thief, a porn star, a photographer, head of a criminal empire, a Playboy model, or Superman (clearly, some goals are beyond reach even for the most imaginative of souls). But what are you doing with your life? Chances are you’re schlepping away for some soulless entity that views you as an expendable workhorse. You’re seen as a dripping washcloth of performance, ready to be wrung dry for every drop at the lowest wage until you’re a stiff patch of cotton draped lifelessly over the towel rack.

I feel your pain.

I’ve never met an employer who viewed me as a flesh-and-bone human, but I’ve worked for plenty that saw me as a cash machine.

***

I hate work. I despise it. More specifically, I despise working for other people who could give a fuck less about me and my well-being. Waking up and going to a place I loathe to nudge some forgettable CEO’s stock is an injustice on par with running out of hot water during your shower. It’s not what any of us were put here to do. Our passions and horizons weren’t meant to be sequestered inside of offices. Our goals were not to “dig those ditches by noon” and die of heat strokes. And we most definitely were not put here to fork over our minds, bodies, and individuality just so high ranking company officials can take a Tahitian vacation whenever the mood strikes. Personally, my catalog of employment reads like a grocery list, and I can honestly say that to be subjected to another’s demands in a work setting is one of the most unbearable torments on the planet.

***

Now don’t misunderstand me, good people—I use “torment” as a metaphor. I wouldn’t dare be so arrogant as to compare employment in a leading nation to the problems of an impoverished country, for there are many forms of actual torture endured by poor souls in third-worlds everyday—false imprisonment, starvation, civil unrest, open crime, and murderous dictatorships being among them (well, maybe some of this applies to America, too, but being mashed under the thumb of a job is the wheel on which most of us are broken). I’ve always had a problem being exposed to the mercy of some faceless blob whose decision making is cored in a greed that King Midas would find absurd, the end goal being the swell of their treasure chest. And, goddammit, it seems like the bigger corporations get, the more money-hungry they become.

I’ve never understood it: a bunch of guys band together and form a business of some description; they work hard through the years, sacrificing personal time and time spent with loved ones; they make the right contacts, funnel money to the right pockets; eventually, their company morphs into the yardstick of the industry; someday, they garner the cover of Fortune 500 or some other financial publication, yet they predictably want more.

You’ve made it, fellas. Relax. Either by hook or crook, you’ve squashed the competition to achieve a level of financial security that many only dream about. Enjoy your gold silverware and leave some scraps for the rest of us.

Perhaps I’ve never thought “big” enough. Maybe I’ve always kept my dreams realistic, humble. Maybe that’s why I don’t swim in a pool filled with Spanish Doubloons. Be that as it may, what I’m certain of is this: contrary to the tutorials from captains of industry who’ve used their preachings to conceal their own megalomania, sometimes it is okay to sit back and enjoy what you’ve created—to rest on your laurels and revel in your cushy bottom line. (“Bottom line.” I’ve grown to hate that phrase as much as, “It’s crabs again, Mr. Coxman.”)

I say fuck the executives. Let some asskisser or relative of the Vice President come down and slog it out in the trenches. Chances are they’d be consumed and shit out by lunch. We should leave those bastards high and dry to deliver their own packages, shelve their own dog food, and empty their own fucking Port-o-Johns.

With that last point, most of you are probably thinking, “Coxman, this is utter balderdash! Nobody likes to work, but how else am I going to finance food, water, electricity, daycare, car payments, and life in general? Aside from the necessities, I need entertainment. Something to relieve my mind from the drudgery of responsibility. Your argument is unrealistic. Poppycock to you!”

First, calm the hell down. I’m not done. Second, you’re right.

I’m a realist, man. I totally agree that toothpaste and lube aren’t going to pay for themselves. What I want you to grasp is that you don’t have to be subservient to an organization that doesn’t care about you. Whose doubletalk and veiled threats control your every movement. An employer whose hobbies include ruling by intimidation, belittlement to the point of humiliation, and control by the threat of termination.

I wouldn’t tell you to quit your job absent a second plan. That’s just reckless. But please, if you can find a way to get out of there and make your own way without having to answer to some eel in a suit that costs triple what you make in a week, for the sake of those who fork over thirty years of their lives to a subhuman collective claiming to have “your best interests” at heart.....

FUCKING DO IT.

That’s Your Problem

(Note: you always hear the term “drug pusher.” While some who sell illegal pleasures have been known to “push” in order to get people hooked, I never subscribed to that practice. I never pushed anything on anybody. Despite what you may think of me, I was a dealer with a morsel of morality.)

***

I’m going to tell you something a few people just won’t understand. The most straightforward “job title” I’ve ever held in my life? Drug Dealer. Crazy, I know. I haven’t sold a narcotic in years, but the paradox of that livelihood still floors me to this day.

It’s no secret that the work holds grating factors. There’s deceit, treachery, the possibility of being dimed to police, and the air of tension in a crowded room from the presence of someone whose volatility is the stuff of legend. Aside from all of that, there’s the omnipresent threat of having your head blown off just by walking in the wrong house. However, when you subtract the dangerous aspects of the biz and strip the game to its meat-and-potatoes, it’s one of the more honest enterprises out there:

You have products for sale.

There is no shortage of customers who want said products.

Customers locate you, the person who possesses said products.

The customer gives you cash for one or many products.

You give the buyer the product they’ve paid for without substituting baking soda for the coke, oregano for the weed, or candy for the pills.

You have profited from another’s cesspool of sadness and/or need for exhilaration.

That leech goes forth into the world to smoke/shoot/snort/eat their product.

Aforementioned leech eventually squanders their product.

Repeat.

Save for prostitution, it’s the most scrupulous industry in the world.

Not often, but occasionally, someone would come over to my place with no money and a jones that can’t be understood until you see it. Pouring sweat like they just ran a 10K in Hell; eyes glassy from the last intake of their preferred poison; and they couldn’t keep still if somebody had threatened the life of their firstborn.

I had no qualms helping out a good customer. Depending on who it was, I’d give them a taste for free just to ease the pain. Of course, my magnanimity was conditional. It was quietly understood that I was to be reimbursed the next time they came around for a purchase. Otherwise, our business was concluded. (Didn’t matter. The city I lived in was full of drugs. If they burned me they knew they could score somewhere else.)

It goes without saying that if the individual had failed to pay me for previous assistance, there was a middle finger and a 9mm shoved in their face. They were on their own. Barring that, I’d do it. When I was in that viper’s pit of a life, I’d ran out of drugs plenty of times myself and knew the discomfort of withdrawal. However, if an honest customer came to me hurting, aching, and needing just a couple of pills or a few lines to tide them over, I was never so bastardly as to say, “Fuck you. That’s your problem.”

It’s a damn shame the legitimate business world doesn’t share my charitable views.

***

I was in a period of abstinence from narcotics. These spurts came around every so often but never lasted more than six months. When I got tired of doing and selling drugs, I’d clean up to pass a toxicology screen for employment.

It was during one of these stretches that I went to work on boats. I don’t mean that I constructed or tooled on them. I mean I worked on the boats. I was a deckhand, employed by a company who ran tugboats on the Mississippi River, and crew boats, whose main function was to pick up crews from or deliver them to oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. In addition to these vessels, the company had a fleet of supply boats that brought fresh materials to the rigs and carted away soiled.....supplies.

The business was started by a retired boat captain sometime in the mid-70s. His first tugboat was similar to a real one in the sense that it wouldn’t sink in a body of water. That’s it. By all accounts it was little more than a big raft lashed together with hope and bubble gum. Over many lean years of scrimping, saving, and securing lucrative contracts, he and his earlier employees began to amass a parade of seaworthy crafts. Approximately twenty years after The Airy Flatulence was christened into service, I filled out my application for employment. By the time I went to work, the company had an impressive fleet of over one-hundred-and-fifty vessels, becoming one of the premier offshore suppliers in the world.

***

I’d be a liar if I said there were some aspects of the job I didn’t like, my favorite of which was sunrise on the water.

My shift was from midnight to noon. When a new day came around, I’d drop whatever I was doing to bathe in the majesty. Depending on our direction, I’d post up at port or starboard with a full mug of coffee, chainsmoking, leaning on the rail and greeting the splendor with dolphins squealing just a short distance from my footing. Sometimes we were tied to a rig, sometimes not. If we were in motion, I’d remove my orange hardhat and let the breeze whip over my bald head as I awed at nature’s free glory. Daybreak seemed to last forever out there. I’d lose track of time staring at the wonderment, enraptured by one of God’s greatest creations.

Poets and authors use elaborate language to describe first blush for their readers. Everybody has seen portrayals in film and television. But Lord, one never knows how Heavenly the aurora can be until you’ve felt its warmth from the turquoise waters of the Gulf.

I’d never seen the rays of the sun until then. The birth of a new morning sent everlasting beams of yellow slashing through cumulus clouds threatening to dwarf its greatness. The coming light filtered through the atmosphere to glow purple, blue, and orange over the water. Every morning in the middle of my shift, I was reminded of how small we really are. All of us. We’re nothing compared to the illustrious ball of energy that heats the Earth. I’m still upset I never had a camera—that I didn’t have the talent to capture the moment with paint on canvas. The breathtaking sunrises of the Gulf are what I remember most about my time on the waves. They were the most unforgettable moments of the experience.

Well, that and plummeting fifteen feet to my near-death on the bow of a tugboat.

***

Everybody, from new-hires to seasoned vets, wanted to work on the crew or supply boats, leaving vacuums on the tugs. Instead of saying “No” to a portion of these requests, the oh-so-knowledgeable heads of Human Resources tried to please all the people all the time. And it worked: everybody was pleased except for guys like me who were stripped of their beautiful sunrises and sent to work on the goddamn tugboats in the Mighty Mississip’.

One day I showed up to a satellite office in Laplace. I was shocked to learn that I was going to be working on the river for a while. They told me I was going to be a “swing man.” If I’d been in a fetish club, that shit would’ve been awesome. But life is not Studio 54. The definition herein meant that I’d be in the Gulf for a few hitches, but spend most of my time on the tuggers pushing barges full of gravel or rotting corn. It was a demotion of sorts.

I was standing in an executive’s office with my bag thrown over my shoulder when I got the news. His name was Lonnie Langerhand and he was the owner’s great-nephew. I was one-hundred-and-thirty pounds heavier, five inches taller, a year older, and spoke three octaves lower than him. He was known throughout the company as a sniveling little power monger.

I asked him why I was being moved around. He never looked up from the papers on his desk and dismissively said, “Shit rolls downhill, Innis. It’s just the way it is.”

No one had ever said that to me before. I didn’t like it. Not only am I not shit, but if someone’s going to tell me that it needs to come harder than a Mickey Mouse impersonation. I began to imagine Lonnie’s head rolling down a hill and smiled at the vision. He interrupted my daydream when he added that instead of my standard two weeks, I’d be out for three because the tugs ran at a different schedule.

This threw a monkey wrench in my plans.

“The thing is, Lonnie, I can’t do that, man. I ran over some broken glass and nails that one of your maintenance crews dropped in the parking lot. It flattened my two front tires. I already called a mechanic here in town to ask him if he could do anything. He said that he’d tow my car and have new tires mounted, but that I’d have to pick it up as soon as I came in because he was leaving on vacation the next day. He won’t be back for two weeks after that.”

Lonnie looked up from his desk with annoyance. “What’s that got to do with me?”

I could see he was pissed because I’d left little wonder as to who was responsible for my punctured property. Thing is, I didn’t actually see the trucks do it. Otherwise, I would’ve pitched a bitch and gone over his head to have the company pay for my new Michelins. But I knew it was the yardhands; everybody from the captains to the office secretary knew they dropped shit in the lot all the time.

Whatever. Oompa Loompas could’ve slashed my tires and it still wouldn’t have changed the fact that I had a major issue.

“Dude, do you see my problem? I only have a day to get my ride back before he leaves. I’d planned on being out two weeks and that’s what I told him. If I’m gone for three, that puts me stranded here for seven days waiting for him to get back from his vacation. How in the hell am I supposed to get home?” Laplace is about thirty miles west of New Orleans, one-hundred-and-eighty miles away from where I lived at the time.

That smug cocksucker snorted and looked at me like I’d come to have an in-depth conversation about the color of the new office carpet.

Without a hint of pity, he said, “That’s your problem. Now get on the tug, Coxman.”

Your mama can tug my Coxman, motherfucker.

The boat was waiting for me at the dock about a hundred yards from the office. I stomped down the stairs, cursing the whole way. I threw my bag on the planks first, then climbed aboard. The other deckhand was leaning on the rail stern-side smoking a Black & Mild. I introduced myself and we untied the ropes.

I was in a pickle. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but apparently I had three weeks to think about it. The diesel engines rumbled to life to take us down the choppy fall current.

***

Two weeks in.

I’d spent fourteen days on the river and I still had a situation to deal with once we made it back to land for crew change. It was fine; at least then I’d be away from a drunkard steering inestimable tons of metal and a man who made my skin crawl. Fretting as I was over lodging and transportation, my mental condition was worsened by a boat captain who took nips from a silver flask and a deckhand who, evidently, had just been released from a ten-year prison stretch for drugging men in gay bars and raping them in their homes (I slept in my cabin with the door locked and chained). How in the hell either one of these guys were hired to work in one of the most hazardous fields on the planet still beats the shit out of me.

It was a sunny afternoon near New Orleans. We were “making up tow,” which in layman’s terms means we were tying barges together for a delivery down river. At times, a tugboat can push up to a dozen barges to its destination. For this trip, we were moving eight. I think they contained beans and sand.

Making up tow is a painstaking, dangerous process. I always compared it to piecing a jigsaw puzzle with rusty containers. It goes like so:

The tug picking up the order arrives at a dock to find a collection of barges that have been deposited by another crew. It’s their job to ferret through the mass and pick out which ones to haul. This is done by jibing the identifying numbers painted on the barges with the manifest. Once the paperwork and markings are in sync, the captain opens full throttle to close the gap between the bow and a lateral side of a random barge, gunning the engine to hold his position when necessary. Then the morons deckhands hike up steps located on the bow with barge ropes slung over their shoulders. At the top is a platform about four-feet-by-four-feet, give or take. A pole jutting skyward from the center of the platform is used as a buttress while waiting for the boat to position itself. When the bumpers of the tug are flush, leaving no crevices for a man to fall through, they step to the deck of the barge with their ropes and pray they make it.

The window to execute this maneuver is very small. Just because the bow is flush one second doesn’t mean it’ll stay that way for two. Currents and wind both play a hand in how long the Gully of Death remains closed. I’ve seen a couple of guys fall and get crushed between boat and barge. Either that, or they were swept away by the current. Both demises are tragic and ugly.

The ropes we used for tying the barges together were an inch-and-a-half in diameter and up to fifty feet in length. Big, thick marine ropes. And I’m not going to sugarcoat it, good people, the things were goddamn cumbersome. Your body’s equilibrium is off with just one coiled around a shoulder. With two, imbalance becomes less of a concern, though you still have to walk up stairs and jump to a fucking barge with around a hundred pounds of extra weight. I was strong, and heaving two ropes had never been an issue for me. So much so, in fact, that at the last minute I decided to carry three so I wouldn’t have to make another trip to the boat deck. My cockiness directly contributed to my upcoming dilemma, though it was mostly a drunk tugboat captain.

After ascending the steps to their apex, I was ready to jump. My partner had already made his leap of faith. I was braced to the pole, steadying against the boat’s teeter-totter motions. Once everything was in place, I signaled to the skipper that I was going aboard. He signaled a “Go” and I began to step across. Just then, I heard the sonofabitch gun it so the port side—my side—drifted away from the barge. For an instant, I looked like a flag of fear, my left arm and leg extended outward, perched precariously over the Mississippi River with the tips of my right fingers barely clinging to the pole and the toes of my right foot on the platform. Had I let go right then, I would’ve plunged into the red, churning water. The third rope hanging over my right shoulder provided enough centrifugal force to swing my body eighty degrees inward to the boat. Before I knew what’d happened, three-hundred-and-thirty pounds of screaming organ donor were dangling over the winch and bow rail.

I was screwed, man. Falling from the platform was imminent, for my fingertips were slipping from the pole. I had milliseconds to make a choice: a) release the pole and land on the rail, possibly breaking every bone on my right side, or b) release the pole and land on a tugboat winch, definitely breaking every bone on my right side, as well as my neck, brain, spirit, and rest of my body. The former seemed a better option.

As the bumper sticker says, I Let Go and Let God.

***

I don’t want to expound too much on the impact. I mean, what do you think it felt like? It sucked. But if you’re parched for a description, let’s say it was equivalent to a gang of tweaking biker bitches clubbing me with molten sledge hammers.

I’d like to focus primarily on the grace with which I careened toward the deck. I have to tell the truth—the fall itself was mystical. Magical. Fantastical, even. I felt like a buzzard swooping down to snatch a lone bunny who’d strayed from the family, like a rider on the world’s coolest roller coaster—only without the benefits of a cart, handrails, or motorized tracks to foster a sense of protection. If I’d had the presence of mind to do it, I would’ve screamed “FUCK YEEEEEAAAAAHHHH!” on the way down. But visions of death and paralysis filled my mind.

And it was a gusty silence.

***

I didn’t black out. When I tried to stand, I wished I had.

When I gathered my wits, the first thing I saw was the huge winch just inches from my face. I also discovered that I was alone. Neither the captain nor my sex-offending coworker had seen a fucking thing. I later learned that the boat’s operator was sipping his Johnnie Walker Red Label during my descent. The other deckhand had been three barges over.

I did a push-up from the moldy deck and collapsed from pain. The throbbing on the right side of my body spread to my left. It was so intense I thought that every bone, from shoulder to foot, was a powdery mass swimming in chunks of torn muscle. But subsequent x-rays showed that I was whole inside. No fractures. Not even one. How I didn’t break anything is still an unsolvable miracle to this day, though I’m not one to kick a gift horse in the mouth.

My second attempt to stand proved successful. Forcing a painful walk hobble to the “house”—the center of the craft where the kitchen, sleeping quarters, etc., are located—I slowly made my way up two flights of stairs to the wheelhouse and found that sorry, no-good, negligent bastard of a boozehound leaned back in his chair with his silver flask tipped at high altitude.

“What in the hell are you doing drinking, you fucking lush?!”

He jumped in his captain’s chair when I yelled, dropping his flask along with any acceptable explanation for his heedlessness.

“You gunned it and yanked the boat away when I was stepping off! You goddamned seafaring hag!!” I wish I had a recording of the profanity that fell from my normally pious tongue. I think I even made up some shit.

After my tirade, he said, “Damn, man! What you mean you fell from the platform?! There’s no way you did that, man! You’d be dead right now!”

“You loopy fuckin’ coonass! Look!” I angrily stripped down to my cock-and-balls to show that sixty-something barfly the hemisphere of my body that’d started to turn every hue of black, purple, and sickly blue. Standing in the wheelhouse in all my birthday glory, the skipper’s disbelief was nullified and he ceased his protestations.

I told that sonofabitch to have a pot of coffee. I was done.

“Take me back to the office, motherfucker! I’m done!”

Fuck ‘em. I was done.

I half walked, half fell back down the stairs to my cabin and assessed the damage in a mirror. The scent of freeze-dried Taster’s Choice soon wafted from the kitchen below. Shortly thereafter, I felt the boat reversing away from the barge. When the date-rapist came to offer me a cup of coffee—which I flatly refused—he said that El Capitan was sitting at the controls looking like a little boy who’d gotten a spanking in front of his friends.

That souse didn’t know it, but his real ass whipping was yet to come.

***

“You want us to do what?!”

“I want you to pay for my tires, my hotel room, and every meal I eat while I convalesce, Lonnie. Do it, or I’ll sue your fuckin’ tits off for letting this drunk asshole operate a tugboat!”

It was two days after we’d moored. We were in Lonnie’s office—me, the rapist, the captain, and Langerhand. After a visit to the company doctor to confirm the extent of my injuries, I was given crutches by his nurse and pertinent information from a battle-scarred first mate in the company. Apparently, the captain was known as an alcoholic who went out every hitch with a few bottles. He’d been doing it for years, but this was the first time his haphazardness ever resulted in an incident. Thank the Creator, I wasn’t dead. My biggest boo-boo was a caboodle of busted blood vessels on the flank of my right thigh running to my knee. It looked like a huge skin sack floating between my junk and asscheek. The doc said my tissues would absorb the fluid over time.

I’ll take that over “mineral analysis of the Mississippi River bed” any day of the week.

If you sue a boat or oil rig company, you better stick them for every dime you can get. You’re blackballed throughout the industry and no one will ever hire you again. I didn’t want to go that route because I didn’t know what my future had in store; I may have needed a job on the water down the road. Since there wouldn’t be any permanent damage to my sensitive person, I felt no need to pursue legal action, provided Lonnie acquiesced to my reasonable demands. Much to my dissatisfaction, they were met with a globular pair of hairy, mooning buttcheeks.

“Coxman, we’re not paying for a fuckin’ thing. Especially tires and a hotel room. What are you, nuts? That’s your problem. As for the accident, this is a clear-cut case of Workman’s Comp if I ever saw one. You want to sue, then be my guest. But I’m gonna warn you, you won’t get far. We’re not in the habit of rolling over for every cheap-jack deckhand who thinks he can steamroll-”

***

“Lonnie, you’ll give this man his tires, a hotel room, meals, any medical care he needs, and the cleanest whore in town if he wants one, all at company expense. Do you hear me, boy?” Four heads turned in unison toward the grizzly voice.

It was the Captain at the door of Lonnie’s office. The Captain. As in owner-of-the-company Captain. I’d never met him before, and he looked just like what one would imagine a salty seadog to resemble, from his wild, snow-white hair to his scuffed, brown loafers. His weathered face had the bleached whiskers of all old men. He had on a blue newsie hat that looked like it’d delivered the first written text. A rumpled, green flannel shirt covered his top, and oil-stained khakis were barely hanging on from a scrap of tattered boat rope fed through the belt loops. All this, despite the man having enough money to bitch slap a Rockefeller’s bank roll. He was elderly, but his gangly six-six frame stooped only slightly to lean on his beechwood sword cane. He filled up the entire doorway, an imposing figure to the youngest of men.

Jesus Christ, he was beautiful.

Without waiting for a response from anyone, he pointed his cane at the other captain like an M1 Garand. “Jarvis, you’re fired. I’ve let you get away with drinking on your hitches for years because you only did it at night. Now you’re drinking when you’re behind the wheel, too. You could’ve killed this man. And if you think you’re going to leave here and go somewhere’s else, think again. When they call here for a reference—and they will call—I’ll tell them everything. Simply firing you is the biggest favor I’ll ever do for you. I want you to put in for your retirement by the end of the week. Now get the hell out of this office.” He was twisting the knife when he said the bit about putting in for retirement by the “end of the week.”

It was Friday morning.

Without an argument, the lush scurried from the office. The gay rapist took the hint and went with him. The Captain hadn’t given them much room to walk through the doorway so they had to slink by. I was still sitting in the chair across from Lonnie’s desk when he spoke to me.

“Innis, I heard what happened. I’m truly sorry about everything. Are you alright, son?”

He had the kind of presence that leaves mere mortals gobsmacked with amazement. Once I knew I could speak without stammering, I answered him.

“Uh, yes, sir. I’m fine. Thank you for asking.”

“You’re very welcome. What did the doctor say when you went to see him?”

“That there aren’t any broken bones, no internal injuries. He said I should heal pretty quickly.”

“That’s good. Now listen, Innis”—shuffling to the other chair in front of Lonnie’s desk for a seat—“you’re a man. You know how things work. I’m not going to lie to you. With the situation as it is, you could sue our pants off. You wouldn’t be able to take everything we’ve built—I’ve got an army of lawyers who won’t let it happen—but you could definitely make a serious dent. The publicity alone would be enough to hurt us. Is there anything I can do for you to keep this from happening?”

For a split second I thought about sticking it to him. But save for allowing his buddy to work on a boat three sheets to the wind for God knows how many years, he wasn’t responsible for any of it.

“Well, sir, I’m not gonna be able to work for a while and I’ll need some money to tide me over until then. Not a boatload, just a bit.”

He pulled a folded check from the front pocket of his flannel shirt. It had a company letterhead. “Will this amount do?”

“Hell yes it will!” Clear throat and tame your erection. “Yes, sir. That’s considerably more than I had in mind, truth be told. Thanks, Captain.”

“No problem.” He laid both gnarled hands atop the cane that stood between his legs, eyeing me shrewdly from under white, bushy eyebrows. “Now, would you be willing to sign something saying that you’ve agreed not to file a lawsuit? There’ll be a clause in there allowing payment for medical treatment now and for any future problems arising from this ordeal.”

“Yes, sir. That seems fair.”

“Good. Thank you, Innis. Thank you very much. And I’m sorry. I should’ve gotten rid of Jarvis years ago. But you know how it is with a worthless brother-in-law.”

He got up to leave, telling me he’d arranged for a suite at a hotel, dispensing a thousand apologies as he meandered to the door. When he was almost out of the office, his crickety frame did an about-face.

“And what’s this I hear about new tires there, son?”

Lonnie shifted in his chair.

Considering I’d just been given enough cash to buy three new mid-range cars, I almost let it ride.

Fuck Lonnie. I got the feeling he’d been strawbossing without scrutiny since he’d been there. His head belonged on a chopping block.

“Well, Captain, the day I arrived for my hitch I ran over nails and broken glass in the parking lot. I know what happened—the yardhands dropped it. Everybody knows they drop trash all the time.” My blues ran straight through Langerhand. “Nobody’s been able to do anything about it.”

The repudiative flash Lonnie received from his towering great-uncle made him sink in his chair.

“Is that so, Lonnie? Ain’t you in charge of the maintenance crews? Isn’t it supposed to be the one responsibility that carries your tubby ass out of this air-conditioned office?”

Lonnie bit his lower lip. “Yes, Uncle Magnus.”

“Innis,” the Captain said, “you’ve got your tires. Four new tires. Would you like us to put them on?”

I told him about the vacationing mechanic.

“Call my secretary with the name of the shop. It’ll be handled from there. If you need anything else, and I mean anything, I want you to call Lonnie and he’ll take care of it. Personally.” He narrowed his eyes at Lonnie with unquestioned domination. “Won’t you, Lonnie?”

He lowered his head. “Yes, Uncle Magnus.”

“Good. Now, Innis, if you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to my nephew for a moment.”

In spite of my busted body, I unassed the chair quickly and doddered to the hall, clutching my big, enormous check. The old man shook my hand as I passed. It was like shaking paws with Bigfoot.

I felt as though I’d touched the hand of greatness.

***

I spent the next five days recuperating in the most expensive hotel I’d ever stayed in. Lobsters, steaks, exotic chicken mixtures, and dishes I couldn’t pronounce were delivered to me via room service on the company’s dime. On the second day, a lawyer accompanied by a representative from corporate brought over all the legal stuff for me to sign. Basically, it stated that they were at fault and I wouldn’t put them in the poor house for it. I’m no attorney, but the language was simple and I felt confident I wasn’t getting fucked. True to his word, the Captain included a provision for monies payable to any future medical issues stemming directly from the accident. The company rep even brought me two cartons of my cigarette brand.

My leg allowed limited mobility, but then again I didn’t feel like going anywhere. The most I did was move around the room or stand on the balcony overlooking the pool. I did, however, take the Captain up on his offer of a prostitute. And by God, she was a crackerjack ace at her job.

I would’ve fallen from the platform of a tugboat twice a month for that chick to give me those tongue baths sponge baths.

When my car was ready I called the Captain’s secretary. She arranged to have it delivered to the hotel. My bags were packed before the shop monkey arrived and I bounced out of there to go home. During my short tenure in the room, I’d gotten tight with a Jamaican bellhop who gave me two joints of Sensimella for the ride. (I was flush with cash and wasn’t going back to work any time soon. Who the fuck did I have to piss in a cup for, huh?)

I passed the office on a frontage road and saw Lonnie in the pea-gravel parking lot with a five-gallon bucket. He was in blue coveralls on his hands and knees with a magnifying glass. The sign on the back of his new uniform said “YARDHAND” in bright, yellow letters. I honked the horn and waved when I passed. For some reason, he didn’t wave back.

From that day on and forevermore, Magnus Devereaux was known as Magnus the Magnificent, if only to me.

Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You

DISPATCHER: “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

CALLER: “Yes, I’d like to report a shooting.”

DISPATCHER: “Ok, sir, what’s your address?”

CALLER: “I’m at the corner of Gironami and Cooper, apartment 1018.”

DISPATCHER: “Alright, sir, is the shooter still there?”

CALLER: “Yes. He keeps disappearing but I can see him when he’s still.”

DISPATCHER: “I’m sorry, sir. Did you say he keeps ‘disappearing’?”

CALLER: “Yes, ma’am. It’s Oswald. He just shot Kennedy and he’s trying to escape through the walls. I think I can hold him until you send someone, though. My apartment is lined with raccoon pelts and tin foil.”

DISPATCHER: “Excuse me, sir, but are you saying that Lee Harvey Oswald is in your apartment? And that he’s trying to dematerialize through your walls?”

CALLER: “Yes, you dumb bitch! Lee Harvey Oswald! He’s in my place! Are you deaf? Send someone over here now!”

DISPATCHER: Sigh. “Hold on, sir. I’m sending emergency agencies to your residence.” Activates emergency intercom. “Any unit available in the Creston District......”

RESPONDING UNIT: “Unit forty-nine, what ya got?”

DISPATCHER: “Forty-nine: I have a possible sixty-three at the corner of Gironami and Cooper, apartment one-zero-one-eight. Subject claims Lee Harvey Oswald is trying to walk through the walls of his apartment to escape his assassination of JFK. Subject is possibly under the influence of alcohol or narcotics. Suspect a psychiatric issue. Dispatcher has also requested police should patient become combative. Proceed with caution.....”

***

So begins another fun-filled Wednesday morning in the life of a Lifesaver.

***

I used to be a musician. Started playing when I was in the single digits. I came from a musical family—Pops played when he was younger and my mother’s side is rife with balladeers—so when you reached a certain age, it was kind of like, “Okay, what should I play?” I chose the drums.

They say that once music is in the bones, it never leaves. That’s true. I love writing with all my soul, but in my heart, I’m still a hitter.

I got my first drum kit when I was eight. It was a red, Muppets-themed four-piece featuring Animal on the shells and one goddamn cymbal that sounded like a cracked pot lid. I’d gotten it for Christmas and it was the best gift I had ever received (when I was older, I discovered that “Santa” had spent all night in our garage putting it together, piecemealing between swigs of Old Charter and drags from Winston Lights). I was jazzed like you wouldn’t believe. I’d always loved metal, rock ‘n’ roll, and had pined for my own kit for ages. Once I had it in my clutches, I could finally start emulating my idols:

At ten, I remember seeing Tommy Lee in the video for “Wild Side.” I just knew I could paint my drum heads like his.

The oil-based stains never did come out of my mother’s carpet.

After my father stuck a Florsheim in my ass, I discovered that the designs on drum heads spring from a scientific, chemically-applied process. Live and learn, I suppose. That kit met the grim reaper when I’d beaten it to a pile of unrecognizable firewood.

My second set was an all-black, five-piece beginner’s job made of poplar wood with two no-name cymbals that sounded like plastic when you hit them. Didn’t matter to me. I was thirteen and thought it was the pinnacle of musical refinement. Over the ensuing years, it was dragged to many a gig. That motherfucker had some miles put on it, let me tell you. It saw house jams, basements, backyard sheds, a hayloft, a recording studio—twice—and, in one of the most memorable events in my repertoire, provided the pounding beats that summoned cops to a potato field party. (They made me break down my kit and searched it for narcotics. The drums were fitted with clear drum heads. My bandmates and I shared a hearty chuckle at this blatant stupidity.)

That set is long gone to a donation site, hopefully plucked from the sales floor by some kid who wants to turn rhythmic, tribal beats into a job. In time, I may read an interview from a famed percussionist who says that they started on a black, second-hand drum set with a “311” sticker adorning one of the shells.

And a tear will fall.

Now my third kit, that’s just a bad sonofabitch. I got it some time ago once I quit all the drugs. It’s not going anywhere, man. In my eyes, the acquisition of that set is when I hit the big time, baby: a six-piece, semi-pro, Gretsch Catalina model crafted from pure maple, lacquered in a beautiful Cherry Gloss finish, fleshed out with professional-grade Meinl cymbals that could withstand punishment from the heaviest players. It’s the first high-end set of drums I’ve ever owned, and I love them. No stickers or paint on the shells for this kit; I do everything but wipe it down with a diaper. I don’t play “out” anymore, haven’t for years, but they’re one of my few cherished physical possessions.

***

The scant years I spent in the music scene were some of the best times of my life: the anticipation of splitting a crowd’s eardrums in half, the thrill of performing, and the camaraderie after a successful show where you just fucking nailed it. There’s a rush to be had from getting on stage in front of five hundred strangers in a club, brain swimming in artificial stimulants, and pounding a drum kit with every bulging muscle in your body. Writing has always been the place where I could express my innermost thoughts, where I could be alone to think and brood. But music was where I revealed the primal side, an unholy flood of thunder jumping from tendons and bone in front of a group of onlookers marveling at the dexterity of another man’s limbs.

Like many young people before me, I had dreams of playing for a living. According to teachers, my gut, and a lifetime of mediocre report cards, writing and music were the only fields in which I ever showed promise. Shit happens, however, and my musical ambitions fell victim to drug abuse, a busted marriage, life in general, and being a parent to my kid. Not that I’m complaining, for I love my daughter very much and wouldn’t trade her for anything. Plus, if I’d walked a different path, I wouldn’t be where I am right now, speaking with you.

I’m content with my life as it is, with the progress made and obstacles overcome. Although, sometimes, the nagging question of “What if?” plagues the recesses of my mind.

Then I realize that all of it was supposed to happen the way it did, and that I’m right where I’m supposed to be at this very moment.

***

Life can be as funny as a camel blowing a camel.

Aside from the seedy underbelly veering my appetites off course, I was tired of playing in public. I never thought that would happen. I’d spent every moment from my mid-20s all the way to the dawn of my third decade slamming skins. Eventually, however, I began to grow weary of the whole schmeer.

It was due in part to clubs, bars, and venues everywhere being full of untold viruses. I’d gotten sick a few times from microbes swirling around my five feet of personal space. The crowds had begun to affect me, too. Coming in close proximity with backslappers and well-wishers harboring bacterias and diseases, dealing with the unpredictability of those under a mountain of narcotics—all of it made me throw in the towel. I don’t see how professional musicians do it. With layers of hands tugging on you, breathing the human body’s foul stenches, never knowing what kind of alien pathogens your legion of fans may be carrying.....

Jesus. It’s enough to turn the hardest sewer worker into a hypochondriac.

Since I’d become tired of being hassled by inebriated/high interlopers, pawed by grubby, filthy people in tightly packed spaces, and taking preposterous requests from rank strangers whom I wouldn’t filet alive if they’d begged me to, of course, I made the most logical career move hewing my needs.

I went to work on an ambulance.

***

I fell into Emergency Medical Services the same way most sketchy ideas are pursued: off the advice of a woman.

I’d been seeing this chick who worked as a paramedic. She had come to one of my band’s shows and her presence coincided with my vow to leave all the bullshit behind. EMS sounded like a fresh start.

She’d tell me stories about the horrific calls that came in, the satisfaction she felt from being able to help someone, and about overlooking her partner’s tendency to pick up rubberbanded wads of cash fallen from the pockets of criminals slaughtered in the streets. (If you ever have to call for an ambulance, good people, hope to God that the arriving medics are honest. Because unfortunately, this kind of shit does happen.) She said the most vital aspect of the work, aside from displaying competence, was to remain emotionally detached from your patients: “Comfort them, do what you can, move on to the next, and forget what you did yesterday.” That’s her exact quote.

Now granted, it probably sounds like an uncompassionate line of reasoning to most of you, but for medics with thirty years of service behind them, it’s the principle that keeps them on the job.

This could’ve been the change I was looking for, but I thought long and hard before taking the necessary steps to obtain my EMT certification. The average “lifespan” of an EMS worker is five years—I beat the median by two—and I had to make sure I could hack it before I spent the time and money on training:

Shit—all I have to do is wade the deepest chasms of human suffering as blood, guts, and ass whirl about in a torrential tornado of gore? I did that when I was a husband.

I was in.

***

Once I took all the exams and earned my credentials I went straight to work. My seven years in the field were spent working on twenty-four hour trucks, and while I took away many relationships and memories from the experience, I was glad to close that chapter of my life.

Hollywood and reality television have led everyone to believe that ambulances run nothing but gruesome calls twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three-hundred-and-sixty-five days a year. Three-hundred-and-sixty-six on a leap.

Don’t believe the hype.

It’s all a pack of lies.

Those emergencies do come in, but it’s not balls-to-the-wall like many think.

In my time on the truck, I was called for shootings, stabbings, assaults, patients in house fires, chemical burns, hostage standoffs, DOAs, terrible wrecks, cardiac arrests, seizures, stroke patients, and on one occasion, a dogfight in which the winning canine turned on its owner.

I was also roused out of a dead sleep to go tend papercuts, skinned knees, a fallen grandmother with five people in the house who could’ve gotten her off the floor, fakers claiming mental health issues for a mandatory three-day vacation, family members concerned for a drunk cousin passed out in the corner, true psychiatric patients running amok when their meds ran out, and the all-time apogee in what was the most useless, squanderous, infuriating waste of resources I’ve ever been disprivileged to be associated with: goddamn fucking lice…..

***

George Carlin once said, “(People are) just another failed mutation.” There’s validity to his statement.

Deep thinker, old George was.

***

I began to agree with his assessment of the species. That’s when I knew it was time to get out. I grew to hate dealing with patients and all the bullshit that went along with the work: total strangers screaming at me, people who told me how to do my job based on medical advice they’d gleaned from WebMD, and jovial professional duties such as telling a father why his three-month old son died in his sleep.

I didn’t mind dealing with the quiet patients, however. The quiet patients were my favorite patients. Unfortunately, the quiet ones were usually either dead or about to die. In the end, that only behooved us to work harder so they might as well have been up and talking. If they were chatterboxing, you could sit behind them listening to their insipid questions, twiddling your thumbs and praying that your partner at the wheel got you to the hospital before your boredom led to a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

If my time in EMS taught me anything, it’s that the human race is not long for this world, man. There were plenty of days on the truck when I wondered why I didn’t just stay home and count my sumptuous pubes. But occasionally, a call came in with comic relief that boggled the mind—clear proof that truth is stranger than fiction—that in the hollow of tragedy, you can find an unpolished diamond of mirth in the form of a pink, ten-inch dildo.

***

“Let’s grab lunch.”

“It’s 7 o’clock, dude. At this point I think we can call it dinner.”

“Whatever, Innis. I’m starving. You want Mcfatty’s?”

“Jesus no, man. Their burgers taste like they’re made from yoga mats.”

“Let’s get Booger Fling then. I’m buying.”

“No. You know I don’t like fast food, Carl.”

“Well it’s the only decent thing we pass on the way to the station. It’s either that or that little Pakistani store with the deli and I can’t eat there. You remember last time when I got their chicken wings and threw up in the truck? I had to walk around with puke on my uniform for the rest of the shift. Only good thing about it was that it was mine instead of a patient’s.”

“Fine, Carl. I’ll have the number four and we’ll listen to our arteries grind to a halt, okay?”

***

Me and Carl had been going nonstop since we came on at 6 AM. After a near-drowning, a few shootings, some fevers, and an Alzheimer’s patient who swore I was her dead Uncle Shamus, we felt like a couple of whipping boys. All we wanted to do was grab something to eat on the way back to our station. Maybe snag a nap so we could deal with whatever tomfoolery the night had to offer.

It was 7 PM. We still had eleven hours to go until crew change and we were praying for daylight. Booger Fling was in our sights when another call came in:

DISPATCHER: “Nine-eighty.”

ME: “You diseased WHORE!” Clicking mic. “Nine-eighty—go.”

DISPATCHER: “Nine-eighty: got a call for a patient with uncontrolled bleeding. Says he can’t stop it. Patient is a white male in his early 50s. States he’s alone and ‘needs help.’ Patient says there’s been no violence but won’t say where he’s hemorrhaging from or why. Patient has specifically requested a male ambulance crew.”

Carl and I looked at each other in astonishment.

ME: “A male ambulance crew? Did you tell the patient that in an emergency you don’t get to pick and choose who shows up?”

DISPATCHER: “Sure did, Innis. Just so happens you and Carl are the closest truck I have. Everybody’s tied up on other calls. Address is fourteen-thirty-eight Darwin Lane in Pleasant Oak. Let me know if you need police.....”

Ten minutes and a scad of profanity later, we hit Darwin Lane with rumblies in our tummies.

***

Pleasant Oak was an upscale mixture of Caucasian, Middle Eastern, and Asian residents with some Korean families scattered throughout. Wheeling into the caller’s circular driveway, we saw a manicured lawn with rose bushes lining the perimeter of the brick structure. Fanned water patterns on the front walk told us the timed sprinklers had recently retreated back into the St. Augustine. Hanging pots sporting a gang of brightly-colored plants dripped from the eaves, separated by white marble pillars. A wooden, heavy-looking front door donned a lily-covered wreath on its face. Beige vinyl siding started at the attic floor and went to the roof—and none of that cheap shit, either; anybody in the know could tell this was custom-made. The shingles had to be brand new. A Mercedes SUV parked in the open-air carport looked to be more expensive than my house at the time. Fred would’ve had a ball playing with the two lawn jockeys in the middle of the yard. (One was black, the other was white. Yay for equality.) All in all, a beautiful home in a nice neighborhood.

On every call—but especially ones such as this where the details were shady—crew safety is the top priority. We got out of the truck and did a quick assessment. The tidbits of information we were given sounded ominous.

I was ready to stab a motherfucker with my medic’s shears should the need arise.

Enroute to the emergency, our dispatcher said the patient wanted us to enter through the carport door, saying it would be unlocked. When we finally got our stretcher and equipment around, I knocked. The door creaked open a few inches. I stuck my head inside to see an exquisitely decorated kitchen, painted blue with delicately placed bric-a-brac on the shelves.

I shouted, “Hello?! Ambulance!”

“Oh, thank God! I’m back here in the bedroom!” The voice was deep and full of anxiety.

We trundled our two hundred pounds of shit over the threshold and wound the corners toward the sound of the man’s voice. The hallway was so slim we had to walk in a straight line—me first, the stretcher in the middle, then Carl trailing behind. When I got to the doorway of the bedroom, my jaw hit the floor and my eyes got wide.

“What’s wrong, Innis?”

Nothing.

“Dude, what is it?”

I didn’t answer. Carl couldn’t mask the impatience.

“Coxman! What the fuck is it, man?”

I stood with my mouth open trying to speak but my vocal chords failed me.

“For God’s sake, Innis!”

Carl squeezed between the wall and the stretcher down to my position in front of the bedroom.

“Coxman, just tell me what the hell’s going-” He leaned around the door jamb and fell silent as well. Nothing could’ve prepared us for what we saw.

There, on a king-sized bed with no sheets or blankets, was a man on his knees with his ass in the air pointed straight at us. A shitzooka of surprise. He looked like he was ready for a good pumping, but judging from the blood running from his cornhole it appeared as though someone had already tagged him. From our standpoint, we could see that he had no underwear, not even around his ankles. Just a white t-shirt and a pair of brown dress socks. He had his face buried in a pillow, head turned to the side to talk. A cordless phone lay inches from his salt-and-pepper hair. Blood flowed down his taint and dripped from his balls onto the bare mattress, forming a huge puddle that had begun to coagulate. From the looks of it, he’d been there a while.

A faint buzzing sound could be heard from somewhere in the room, though it sounded.....muffled.

***

Carl and I were still frozen in the doorway when he spoke. “I’m not gay!”

I shook my head to collect my senses. “Um.....what, sir?”

“I’m not gay! Before we go any further you need to know I’m not gay! Whatever you think of me, just know that I’m not gay!”

Of the two of us, Carl was the more professional; I had a million jokes to run but sonofabitch if he didn’t defuse my whimsy. He wedged himself out of the hall and walked into the bedroom to browneye eye the situation, getting on his knees to speak to our patient and find out what in the fuck-all was going on.

I remained standing just inside the bedroom with my hands shoved in my pockets, gazing at a crucifixion portrait of Jesus on the wall above the man’s dresser. The Son of God had acted as silent witness to whatever in the hell had taken place in that bedroom. I felt that whatever the patient had to tell us was going to be so far out of left field, we couldn’t even begin to fathom it.

In the picture, the Messiah’s eyes were rolled back in his head, looking skyward as if to say, “Sheeit. Y’all ain’t gonna believe what this idiot did.”

And what is that buzzing?!

***

“Sir, what happened?” asked Carl.

The guy kept screaming his mantra like a chant at a political rally. “I’m not gay! I am not—gay! I’m a pastor at First Baptist! I don’t believe in homosexuality! For the love of the Lord, I AM NOT GAY!”

Carl’s professionalism quickly took a backseat.

He screamed in the man’s face, “We don’t give a fuck if you’re gay, Pastor! Tell us what happened!”

The congregation leader gathered his aplomb and enamored us with a saga of heartache and misplaced reconnection.

“Look, fellas, it’s like this: my wife left me. After thirty years of marriage, she walked out. After thirty years! She said she was tired of living a ‘constricted life with a holy-roller.’ Can you believe the nerve?!”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Carl said gently, his relaxed demeanor coaxing the pastor along to get the cause of his injury.

“And, well, she’s been gone a week. It’s been agony. Torture! I miss her so much!” He began crying into his pillow.

“It’s okay. It’s okay, sir.” Carl patted his back in a gesture of reassurance.

God, he had more patience than me.

The man gathered himself. “Alright. I’ve been lost without her. I wanted to feel close to her. I’ve just missed her so much. And, well, I found her vibrating dildo, and I stuck it up—you know, there. It was fine at first. I felt her here with me. But it got sucked in and I can’t get it out! Oh my God I’m going to Hell!”

That’s when the cleric lost it. He broke and started wailing into the pillow. Whether it was from the pain of his separation or a perforated colon, I’ll never know. It most likely was a combination of the two, though the smart money would be on the latter.

Carl’s eyes got bigger than when he saw the salad shooter from the doorway.

At least the mystery of the nebulous buzzzzzz had been solved.

Carl took his hand from the pastor’s back and reclined to sit on his feet. “Ooooooooh! Ooookay. Okay. Well then, uh.....

…..

…..

…..

…..okay.”

Good ole professional Carl.

That fuckin’ putz.

He turned and gave me a look that said, “Let’s load him up and get the hell out of here.”

And that’s what we did.

***

When we rolled our patient into the emergency room the ER doc looked at us with a sardonic grin on his face. The two of us had had plenty of interactions with the physician ever since we’d gone to work in the field so he felt comfortable questioning our mode of positioning.

“Hey, Carl, Innis.....” He brought us over to a corner of the trauma room, away from the horde of nurses bustling around the patient.

“Why is he like that?” he asked Carl.

“Like what?”

The doc scoffed. “I mean, why is his ass sticking straight up in the air, boys?”

Carl—being the more professional of the two, remember—slapped a palm to the back of his neck and began rubbing in an uncomfortable manner.

“Well, Doc,” he said, “when I called to tell the nurse what we were bringing in, she hung up before I could finish telling her the whole story.” He then beguiled the doc with the patient’s mechanism of injury. It was all the esteemed healer could do to hush his snickering.

“So you see, Doc, we had to bring him in like that. He couldn’t have-”

“Sit to save his ass!”

“Dude! What the shit, Innis?!” Carl looked like he wanted hide under a rock.

Fuck everybody. I’d withheld my barbs the entire call and it was time to cut loose.

***

The rest of the night dragged. We barely noticed. Any time we felt tired or ran a bad call, we just reminded ourselves of the Baptist preacher who’d jammed a plastic flesh weasel in his rectum.

We brought in a fall-down-go-boom around 2 AM. Some old lady with twenty cats and four useless relatives in the house. On the way back to my rig, I passed the trauma room where we’d left the pastor. He was still there—his ass in the air and bandaged to the nines from his waist all the way to the backs of his knees. When I asked the doc what they did about his predicament, he said they were still waiting on a proctologist for consultation and a special surgeon for removal of his impromptu romance device.

I couldn’t help myself.

Christ, I’m such an asshole.

I went into his room. He was lying with his face turned to the side, tubes and IVs running everywhere, sipping grape juice from a little carton.

“How you doing, sir?”

“Oh, I’m good. Thank you so much for coming to help me. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you guys.”

“You’re welcome, Pastor. But could you do me a favor, please?”

“Anything, son. Anything.”

“I’m sorry about your separation. I truly am. But if you ever decide to get married again and that one fizzles as well, don’t stick an object in your ass that reminds you of your old lady. Your next wife could be a sword swallower.”

***

“I can’t take this anymore, man.”

“What?”

“This, Carl. People crying all the time, strangers screaming and cursing at us, not getting paid what we’re worth to see horrible shit, leaving our shifts looking like a couple of zombies because we didn’t get any rest.....I think I’m going a tad mad.”

“Well if you gotta leave you gotta leave, Innis. I’m not gonna argue with that. Plenty of people have gotten out for the exact same reasons. But what are you gonna do?”

“I don’t know, man. That’s the problem.”

“You still write your stories, don’t you?”

“Oh, yeah. I’ve always written no matter what was going on.”

“Well, what about that? Haven’t you always wanted to write for a living? I know it’s a plunge into shaky ground, but you’ve gotta get happy, Coxman. You’re almost thirty-seven and you’re fucking miserable.”

“I know, man. I know, I know, I know.”

“Look, if you want my advice, take your woman and your kid and move to Texas like you’ve always wanted to. It’s all I’ve heard you talk about for the seven years I’ve known you. Once you’re there, you can chill and write your first book without any of the bullshit from this goddamn job. And with the city you’ve wanted to live in? Hell!—there are lots of writers and musicians over there! You’ll be happier, Innis. I think you should do it.”

“My ‘first book.’ That has a nice ring to it…..

“…..ya fuckin’ putz.”

Coxman’s Log: 1:29 PM

“What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a writer.”

“That’s interesting.”

“So they say.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, why do you drink so much?”

“That’s personal.”

“You’re not going to answer the question?”

“I drink because I’m a writer.”

“What do you write about?”

“Drinking.”

“That’s a smartassed answer.”

“Consider the source.”

“You’re a dick.”

“Yes. The world is an evil place. It obliges one to be a hard dick rather than a soft pussy.”

“My God, you’re disgusting.”

“You catch on quick, my dear.”

“Do you always talk to women this way?”

“Only when they’ve piqued my curiosity.”

“Well! You must be really curious about me then!”

“I’m curious as to when you’re going to do your job.”

“Don’t rush me.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. Rushing you may actually get your heels to clacking.”

“Why are you speaking to me like this?”

“So we can quit this whitty goddamn banter! Now,”—leaning into the name tag—“Sharon, I know we’ve just met, but will you get my drink order please and try not to spit in it?”

That nosey bitch finally scampered off to fetch me a beer with a Bacardi chaser.

I swear to God, man—the service at the Road Rash Saloon has gone downhill.

So Here We Are

Here I am, too, beholden to be so.

It’s been one shaky, turbulent, uncertain, heart-wrenching, and at times, fearful fucking ride.

In my relatively short time on this planet, I’ve shared

1) company,

2) drugs,

3) sex,

4) workspace,

5) cigarettes,

6) alcohol,

7) air,

8) and wasted-time with some of the most disgusting maggots to ever slither out from under a rotting corpse. I’ve been beaten, sucker-punched, and defeated, as well as won-over, conquered, and overcome. But I’m not so naive as to think I’m the only one.

Haven’t we all, in some form or another?

Thank God, we have survived.

***

I’m pleased with where we are. I look forward to starting over. I’m happy to be alive and healthy. I’m happy to have my wits about me and look west to the future.

I am grateful to have my life.

***

I once had an uncle who was a career truck driver. He’d been in trouble before—ridden his Harley through the Army barracks during ‘Nam and revisited prison a few times—and at a youthful five-eight and one-hundred-and-sixty-five pounds, was purported to be one of the baddest men to ever walk the Earth. One time, after he’d gotten to retirement age and fallen on bad health, he gave me a bit of advice:

“Innis, there’s a difference between ‘hard men’ and ‘tough men.’ The trick is knowing which one you are before you lose your balls.” Me being eleven at the time, I had no fucking clue what that meant.

Cresting the latter portion of my 30s, I think I do.

Hard men act without thinking—be it in a fight, in business, or something as mundane as a spot in a grocery line. No matter who gets hurt, no matter what pain they cause, no matter the consequences, they’ll fight without rhyme or reason. They don’t see how their actions affect anyone around them. Not even themselves. They just don’t care so long as they come out on top.

They’ve never had to get up because they’ve never been put down.

Tough men, on the other hand, are smart enough to realize they’re not hard. Instead, they take their place at the table, scoping for trouble and doing their best to avoid it. But not backing down if it comes. They push themselves off the floor when everyone thinks they’ve been bested, seeing a foe through swollen vision and blood in the eyes. Not to win, necessarily, but to say, “I’m still here. Now what the fuck are you gonna do about it?”

They keep coming back no matter what happens.

In my dealings with people, I’ve met many hard men. I’ve even fought a few: from dirty cops to coworkers to “friends” to strangers in bars to fellow drug addicts (plus a few women who tried to kill me, but that’s another book).

I’ve come to find that most hard men are out of their minds with insanity; sometimes, it’s just a cold, uncaring personality. And through my experiences, I can look anyone in the eye and say that I am by no means hard.

But sonofabitch if I’m not tough.

***

I told you from the outset that this was a recitation of sins. Of flaws, failures, fuck-ups, and transgressions. And also, a realization of maturity and faith in bluer skies.

Hopefully, I didn’t disappoint.

At some portions of this accounting, you may have thought I was bucking for sympathy. If that’s what you extracted from any of these writings, perhaps I failed you.

Sympathy is for the weak. For children or the ones who can’t take care of themselves. It is for those at the mercy of society stemming from the misdeeds of another—a bullet to the spine or a kick to the head bringing brain damage, paralysis. Perhaps an extreme physiological circumstance such as a stroke.

Sympathy is for the helpless, the dependent.

***

Thank the God ruling the Heavens, I am fit and capable.

***

I want as much sympathy proffered to me that I give to the able-bodied world, which is exactly less than zero. For as wiser men who’ve come before me have said:

“If you want sympathy, look in the dictionary between shit and syphilis.”

Table of Contents

Copyright

Introduction Who the Fuck Are You?

Chapter One Like Father, Like Son

Chapter Two Those Who Left Me Weeping in the Fetal Position

Chapter Three The Drugs Never Have You (Until You Try to Quit)

Chapter Four (Man, I Need a Boost) Hey You! You’re Fired!

Chapter Five To Unnerve and Neglect

Chapter Six Another Day, Another Dollar (That’s Not Yours)