TWO
“Welcome to Chez José. Party of three?” Ashley wasn’t a thicken. She was a juicy little thing who would make my body drip in places with only a thought or two. I would drip from my eyes when I wanted her and couldn’t accept that she wasn’t mine, from my mouth when I wanted to kiss her and couldn’t, and from my loins after I’d fantasize about being with her. She was beautiful and emanated love to everyone’s spirit just by walking into a room. I know it was love she emanated because she’d make people turn to look at her when they weren’t even facing her. She had that kind of power. She was an angel and everyone wanted her blessing by way of her smile, voice, laugh, touch, kiss, caress, and orgasm.
Chez José was our collective joke. Claire’s husband, José, was a half Cuban and French. It was her idea to open a Latino / French restaurant on account of José’s mixed breeding. It was the choice spot for neighborhood cut-copy-paste trust fund babies who’s net worth had taken an aggravated raping due to a more than turbulent economy. Trust fund babies of Chez José were subdivided into sub categories, like the overbearing families that come through my day job at Low Deals. Half were victims of the aforementioned economy whose lifestyles hadn’t caught up with the program of their life’s circumstances. The other half were aspiring nouveau riche assholes with delusions of elitism. The economy was pasting the cut copies of the former types over the latter at a curious rate. The economy was also pasting the former types elsewhere – mostly back to the Midwest with Mom and Dad after those of the esteemed type had found themselves unable to afford the extravagant rents of their lavish caves. Very few babies stuck around to participate as dwindled statistics in their overpriced neighborhoods.
I was a busboy most days. José took a liking to me and would let me tend bar whenever Claire wasn’t about. She wasn’t the boss, but she was a pushy-boss-bitch and could make life intolerable at home for José. She often got all tingly about making life intolerable at the restaurant for everyone else. It wasn’t much in the way of a business. All income earned at José’s Chez rested José’s skill at combining a proper mix of spice and attention with meat. He could serve dead cat and have scores of assholes lining back for seconds.
“No sweetie, we’re here for the party. Snelling & Forrest?” Obnoxious asshole-day trader responded to Ashley like she was second-class on account of her very apparent Mexican heritage.
Tonight’s menu special included oven-roasted rabbit sautéed with saffron and chervil served with a side of white rice and red kidney beans, mango crepe with a side of fried banana slices for dessert – all chased with a shot of spiced, Caribbean rum. Claire paid some university debtee-to-be a few dollars for a proper description of the menu specials to make them seem more extravagant. Point of fact: a new health department inspector could frolic through the kitchen on the high of gaining new promotion points from observing the number of José’s violations. He never washed his hands and freely scratched away the skin flakes of his psoriasis.
“Your party is in the lounge. This way please?” Ashley was pleasant and sexy.
“We know, honey. We were the ones who ordered it.” Obnoxious asshole-day trader customer guy was a little pissy and maybe a little gay. There’s nothing wrong with gay, except some of the more vain gay types tend to get catty with Ashley on account of her being such threatening eye candy. Douchebag customer types can generally go either way with Ashley. They can be nice or they can be rude and sometimes grabby, but she’ll always have some sort of edge over them on account of her being so damned beautiful and curvy. Obnoxious asshole-day trader mumbled something to his friends that caused them to chuckle with laughter as they followed Ashley to the lounge.
Tonight I feed the social pigs their liquid dreams. I grab bottle after bottle and pour their poison of choice into crystal troths. I did this during my two years at college. The toxicant of choice was any concoction smacked with an audacious label. People loved asking for such cheeky favorites as Sex on the beach, the Blowjob, and the ever-favorite ‘purple motherfucker’.
“M’man! M’man!” A wasted drunken asshole fund baby slams his palm to the rhythm of his bartender call “Seven n’ sleven-nen-en-nen-nen!” and slumps. City ordinance requires me to cut them off when they’re more than eight sheets to the wind.
“Here you go, sir. Your seven and seven.” It wasn’t as fun when I cut them off.
“Milo? Can I have another Long Island?” Ashley has a pouty mouth. It makes me want to do all sorts of pornographic things with my heart. I can’t, so I just smile and taste the sight of her with my eyes. She smiles back at me and pushes Low Dealz, cut-copies, and drunken fund babies all to the back of the fridge.
“Lon-guy-lend! Lon-guy-lend! Hah hah!” Drunken asshole’s volume control is broken, and so needs to hear himself over the casual tone of talking customers. “Where are you from, honey? Lon-guy-land!” He stands so that Ashley can hear him, like he needs a microphone. “You look more like Jenny from the block! Ride the six, honey? Hah-haaah!” He makes an even bigger ass of himself. “Ay, que r-r-r-r-ico!” He doesn’t just butcher a foreign language. He manslaughters human speech.
“Hey my friend, I’m gonna need you to settle down, you’re making people kind of nervous.” I do my host guy routine to get him to settle. It’s my routine. It’s not me. It keeps Lexie in her latest wares.
“Yes, my friend! Yes, my friend, I will settle down, my friend!” Drunken asshole spat all over me and poked me in my right peck. He’s got a good deal of pokage for a drunken asshole. He spills his drink. “Fuck! I gotta piss! Gimme another, will ya?” He stumbles to the kitchen for a piss. I hear José redirecting him not so gingerly before coming out of the kitchen to ask me why the hell I make drunken assholes out of trust fund babies and send them to the kitchen for a piss.
“Milo! Take eh’ eacie, brothel!” Milo and Ashley have the same accent, but Ashley’s makes me want to feel her tongue. Milo’s just makes me smile.
“Sorry bud.” I smile at him.
“Gee-su cry, man!” José abandoned religion a while ago, but still prays when he’s pissed off.
Drunken asshole slumped face down onto a table a good ninety minutes ago. Now his friends or cheap copies of what would be his friends sit some ten feet away from his flopped carcass as they point and laugh amongst themselves.
“Look at Tim—” I heard, then “—real loser—” and “—leave the jerkoff right there on his—” right in earshot of Tim, the drunken asshole. I wondered if he had heard. They weren’t real words. They were just sound bytes made by people who were arguably real, but not all that much.
“I’ll wake him up.” Fund-baby-buddy of Tim walked over before slapping him silly. “Wake up, fuck stick!” Buddy makes me chuckle under my breath.
“mrrrph…” Fuck stick Tim mumbles before standing. Fund-baby-Tim vomits almost every drop I fed him for hours and hours after taking only two steps.
“Wow. You’re a real winner, Tim.” Fund-buddy softly claps while berating. “Let’s go.” Fuck stick Tim slips hard and drops like a bag of hammers and skates onto his own vomit before stumbling out of the restaurant.
The busboys won’t clean up fuck stick puke. They’re often successful at arguing the point to José, who passes the buck onto Ashley. She walks over with a bucket and mop and starts to clean. My Spanish isn’t so good. I translate Spanish the way I translate telltale shirt stains on rubber brats, but as the busboys stood off to the side and watched Ashley bend and wring out the mop, I swear I heard one say “Watch the schmuck do it for her.” Oh yeah, they have schmuck in Spanish.
“Hey Milo.” She bends and wrings.
“You know, you don’t have to do that. Let me.” She makes me nervous. Her shy and appreciative smile makes me want to kiss hard.
“T’ank you.” She sings.
“Don’t thank me. It was my fault. I should have cut him off after he started acting like a jerk.
“Den he wud’ nah had drink.” She smiles and subdues her laugh with her hand over her smiling mouth. I mop.
“You shouldn’t cover your mouth. You have a pretty smile.” I want her to smile wide and bright.
“Aye Milo! No flirting!” She sings back to me with a smile. She sticks her tongue out playfully and walks off with the shake of her curves. She leaves me with my heart beating strong and fast and with a pulse in my pants. It not only reminds me that I’m still alive, it makes me want to live in a big way. She makes me want to live big. I can mop up a lake of copy-paste-fund-baby-asswipe vomit for just a kiss. But I don’t think she’d care for kissing me after the fact.
Right as I get on my jacket, José calls me to the kitchen to help move some boxes with one of the busboys.
“Eh Milo! You lift boxes, yes!” He doesn’t ask. He affirms for me. I bend at the knees and push cradling boxed meat.
“E’ smell bad, no?” This he asks me smiling as if he wants me to say ‘No! Me love!’
“Milo – tomorrow, you help me bring meat?” José’s not his wife. So I’ll do pretty much a lot of what he asks.
“You want me to head on over to the market with you?” I try and clarify.
“iSi! La Marqueta.” He confirms it for me. He and I usually play language hockey, passing terms back and forth before either of us understands what the other is trying to say.
La Marqueta is a misnomer. Markets pack fresh kills in shrink-wrap plastic on Styrofoam trays. The meat isn’t made at markets. ‘La Marqueta’‘ manufactures meat from God’s creatures. José prefers fresh kills. He either thinks they’re disease free, or he thinks God wants it this way. I asked him why once, but our language hockey went nowhere.
I hang my hat each night in a one bedroom two story walk up. I live directly over a Stone’s Funeral Chapel. Most nights, I navigate through crowds of mourning ethnic families on my way to the building’s entrance. The landlord makes his daily bread from fresh corpses. He provides loved ones and their departed with low-cost, emotion-filled good-byes. Most ethnic families in my neighborhood don’t have much, so when they lose a loved one, they lose big and cry bigger.
“Hey young fella.” The old man called me.
“Evening Mr. Stone.” I like the old man. He rents me out a nice sized room on the cheap. “How’s business?”
“Seems like it’s slowing down.” He looks at me serious.
“Seriously?” I fall in head first to the punch line.
“No! What’s the matter with you? Don’t they make young folks smart nowadays?” He laughs. I snicker. I appreciate it because I haven’t laughed in a while.
Through a sea of people inside the chapel, I get a glimpse of a grey face lying peacefully in his casket. He may have been a black guy, but it’s hard to tell on account of Mr. Stone’s fading skills with formaldehyde.
We all rot. I’ll be grey and everyone will be able to see.
My walk up the cold marble flight smells like incense. There’s bound to be some rationale behind the smell of incense and faith. I think it’s just meant to cover up the smell of follower filth.
With each step up I hear less organ playing and blubbering and I hear more of something else. It’s rhythmic. At first it sounds a little like a noise or a power tool, then more like a person, then two people. From the aggressive rhythm, I can then make out the sound of a colliding headboard. One of the rhythm power tool noises sounds a little like Lexie.
“Yeah, like that.” One noise says to the other with lapsed breath. So much like Lexie. It’s coming from the Super’s apartment. I turn from my door and walk slowly toward his. I hear him breathing, grunting. I hear them both kissing, their breaths on each other’s necks and faces. They breathe through their noses because their mouths are busy. I feel a tinge in my gut because Lexie and I don’t do that like we used to. I feel a tinge because I can’t do that with Ashley.
Like I’m walking on cotton, I step back toward my door. I don’t dwell on whether Lexie’s humping the Super. I can still hear them. I fumble for keys and stick one in the lock. Like a remote, it puts them both on mute.
“Oh, shit.” I hear one whisper. I don’t know which, but they both start whispering hard and fast. I hear a few words, but no sentences.
“Whisper-whisper-got home-whisper.”
“Whisper-still working-whisper.”
“Whisper-probably not-whisper.”
“Fuck-whisper!”
I turn the key and step through my hole in the wall.
Eighty percent of all dust is made of human skin. I work eight hours a day. I’m constantly moving and talking to all sorts of people and I’m sure I breathe in enough of it and accumulate enough of it on my own skin and against my sweat. I have microscopic bits of spoiled scum filth stuck to my skin. I can feel it before a shower. I can smell it. It clogs my pores. It’s cigarettes and drink and rich food.
Every night ends with a sabbatical cleansing in my shower. I’m thorough and deep. I can’t wash enough of the filth off myself. Before stepping into the shower, I smell the dead shit smell of the meat boxes José asked me to lug into the freezer. It was pork for his signature roast pig.
I start at the very top of my head and work my way into my ears. I scrub my face, neck shoulders and back. I work my way down onto my privates and give a pause to reflect on Ashley. She let me see her tongue in a playful kind of way. I cleaned my privates while thinking about all sorts of porn and Ashley’s tongue. I stand under the shower and let the trickle-finger-like sensations run down my back, ass, and legs and watch all of my grime spiral away into the small black void I pay cheap rent for. Beyond my drain are all sorts of nasty sludge clumps that would probably kill me if I ate them.
After the shower, I end my sabbatical with my mouth. I pull out about a foot of floss and start from my lower left back teeth. I bleed every time. By the time I’m done flossing, the string looks like piano wire used to strangle someone. It smells like a cross between the boxes of meat I carried for José earlier tonight and a homeless person’s dirty underwear. By the time I’m done, I can taste what the floss smells like. I don’t know how it ends up smelling this way. I only eat vegetables and bread.
Like the filth washed off in my shower, the last putrid bits of me are washed away and spun down into nowhere. It donned on me one night how much of our time is spent pushing our way through narrow openings, going all the way back from birth. From the safest and most secure place in the universe, we’re forced through our first hole. I’ve spent my whole life trying to get a small piece of me back into that hole. When we die, we’re buried in one. Life is about as empty and meaningless as the drain that carries away my filth. No one wants to live in a hole. Everyone wants to stand on a mountain.
I go still when I hear her keys. Through the bathroom’s mirror, I see the door open before Lexi walks in.
“Hi babe!” She smiles. She only smiles when she feels I’m on to her. It’s becoming a pattern.
“Hey. Why so late?” I don’t even pretend to care. The question is more like a statement.
“Ugh! Between the bus and the train and—” I give my attention to spiraling blood and spit. She’s happy because she’s just been plugged. “And how was work babe?” Nice and flat, I ask her.
“Uhm. Same thing every day.” She tells me, all nice and generic as if she actually went to work today. “You know Glenda? The woman who sits in the cubicle next to mine? Well she’s pregnant again!” She feigns surprise as if this is news.
“I heard, babe.” I feign interest.
“Really? Uh, how?” She touches on nervous after a pause.
I pause.
“You told me last week.” I grin flat. I don’t know how else to be...
“I did?” She glances around pensively for effect, but she really doesn’t remember. She’s either too dim or often too self absorbed. “Scatterbrain me!” She’s corny and kisses me. She’s breathing hard.
“You’re breathing hard.” I tell her.
“Those stairs are killer.” She lies. She probably hadn’t used the stairs all day. “Mmm!” She kisses me again and I taste the super. “Minty fresh!” He must have used a menthol-flavored condom and I just don’t care. I swish and rinse. Maybe I care a little. “I’m in the mood for a little hummer. Are you baby?” She solicits. Her battery’s on overcharge.
“Sure.” I say, because I just don’t know how else to say it.
TWO
“Welcome to Chez José. Party of three?” Ashley wasn’t a thicken. She was a juicy little thing who would make my body drip in places with only a thought or two. I would drip from my eyes when I wanted her and couldn’t accept that she wasn’t mine, from my mouth when I wanted to kiss her and couldn’t, and from my loins after I’d fantasize about being with her. She was beautiful and emanated love to everyone’s spirit just by walking into a room. I know it was love she emanated because she’d make people turn to look at her when they weren’t even facing her. She had that kind of power. She was an angel and everyone wanted her blessing by way of her smile, voice, laugh, touch, kiss, caress, and orgasm.
Chez José was our collective joke. Claire’s husband, José, was a half Cuban and French. It was her idea to open a Latino / French restaurant on account of José’s mixed breeding. It was the choice spot for neighborhood cut-copy-paste trust fund babies who’s net worth had taken an aggravated raping due to a more than turbulent economy. Trust fund babies of Chez José were subdivided into sub categories, like the overbearing families that come through my day job at Low Deals. Half were victims of the aforementioned economy whose lifestyles hadn’t caught up with the program of their life’s circumstances. The other half were aspiring nouveau riche assholes with delusions of elitism. The economy was pasting the cut copies of the former types over the latter at a curious rate. The economy was also pasting the former types elsewhere – mostly back to the Midwest with Mom and Dad after those of the esteemed type had found themselves unable to afford the extravagant rents of their lavish caves. Very few babies stuck around to participate as dwindled statistics in their overpriced neighborhoods.
I was a busboy most days. José took a liking to me and would let me tend bar whenever Claire wasn’t about. She wasn’t the boss, but she was a pushy-boss-bitch and could make life intolerable at home for José. She often got all tingly about making life intolerable at the restaurant for everyone else. It wasn’t much in the way of a business. All income earned at José’s Chez rested José’s skill at combining a proper mix of spice and attention with meat. He could serve dead cat and have scores of assholes lining back for seconds.
“No sweetie, we’re here for the party. Snelling & Forrest?” Obnoxious asshole-day trader responded to Ashley like she was second-class on account of her very apparent Mexican heritage.
Tonight’s menu special included oven-roasted rabbit sautéed with saffron and chervil served with a side of white rice and red kidney beans, mango crepe with a side of fried banana slices for dessert – all chased with a shot of spiced, Caribbean rum. Claire paid some university debtee-to-be a few dollars for a proper description of the menu specials to make them seem more extravagant. Point of fact: a new health department inspector could frolic through the kitchen on the high of gaining new promotion points from observing the number of José’s violations. He never washed his hands and freely scratched away the skin flakes of his psoriasis.
“Your party is in the lounge. This way please?” Ashley was pleasant and sexy.
“We know, honey. We were the ones who ordered it.” Obnoxious asshole-day trader customer guy was a little pissy and maybe a little gay. There’s nothing wrong with gay, except some of the more vain gay types tend to get catty with Ashley on account of her being such threatening eye candy. Douchebag customer types can generally go either way with Ashley. They can be nice or they can be rude and sometimes grabby, but she’ll always have some sort of edge over them on account of her being so damned beautiful and curvy. Obnoxious asshole-day trader mumbled something to his friends that caused them to chuckle with laughter as they followed Ashley to the lounge.
Tonight I feed the social pigs their liquid dreams. I grab bottle after bottle and pour their poison of choice into crystal troths. I did this during my two years at college. The toxicant of choice was any concoction smacked with an audacious label. People loved asking for such cheeky favorites as Sex on the beach, the Blowjob, and the ever-favorite ‘purple motherfucker’.
“M’man! M’man!” A wasted drunken asshole fund baby slams his palm to the rhythm of his bartender call “Seven n’ sleven-nen-en-nen-nen!” and slumps. City ordinance requires me to cut them off when they’re more than eight sheets to the wind.
“Here you go, sir. Your seven and seven.” It wasn’t as fun when I cut them off.
“Milo? Can I have another Long Island?” Ashley has a pouty mouth. It makes me want to do all sorts of pornographic things with my heart. I can’t, so I just smile and taste the sight of her with my eyes. She smiles back at me and pushes Low Dealz, cut-copies, and drunken fund babies all to the back of the fridge.
“Lon-guy-lend! Lon-guy-lend! Hah hah!” Drunken asshole’s volume control is broken, and so needs to hear himself over the casual tone of talking customers. “Where are you from, honey? Lon-guy-land!” He stands so that Ashley can hear him, like he needs a microphone. “You look more like Jenny from the block! Ride the six, honey? Hah-haaah!” He makes an even bigger ass of himself. “Ay, que r-r-r-r-ico!” He doesn’t just butcher a foreign language. He manslaughters human speech.
“Hey my friend, I’m gonna need you to settle down, you’re making people kind of nervous.” I do my host guy routine to get him to settle. It’s my routine. It’s not me. It keeps Lexie in her latest wares.
“Yes, my friend! Yes, my friend, I will settle down, my friend!” Drunken asshole spat all over me and poked me in my right peck. He’s got a good deal of pokage for a drunken asshole. He spills his drink. “Fuck! I gotta piss! Gimme another, will ya?” He stumbles to the kitchen for a piss. I hear José redirecting him not so gingerly before coming out of the kitchen to ask me why the hell I make drunken assholes out of trust fund babies and send them to the kitchen for a piss.
“Milo! Take eh’ eacie, brothel!” Milo and Ashley have the same accent, but Ashley’s makes me want to feel her tongue. Milo’s just makes me smile.
“Sorry bud.” I smile at him.
“Gee-su cry, man!” José abandoned religion a while ago, but still prays when he’s pissed off.
Drunken asshole slumped face down onto a table a good ninety minutes ago. Now his friends or cheap copies of what would be his friends sit some ten feet away from his flopped carcass as they point and laugh amongst themselves.
“Look at Tim—” I heard, then “—real loser—” and “—leave the jerkoff right there on his—” right in earshot of Tim, the drunken asshole. I wondered if he had heard. They weren’t real words. They were just sound bytes made by people who were arguably real, but not all that much.
“I’ll wake him up.” Fund-baby-buddy of Tim walked over before slapping him silly. “Wake up, fuck stick!” Buddy makes me chuckle under my breath.
“mrrrph…” Fuck stick Tim mumbles before standing. Fund-baby-Tim vomits almost every drop I fed him for hours and hours after taking only two steps.
“Wow. You’re a real winner, Tim.” Fund-buddy softly claps while berating. “Let’s go.” Fuck stick Tim slips hard and drops like a bag of hammers and skates onto his own vomit before stumbling out of the restaurant.
The busboys won’t clean up fuck stick puke. They’re often successful at arguing the point to José, who passes the buck onto Ashley. She walks over with a bucket and mop and starts to clean. My Spanish isn’t so good. I translate Spanish the way I translate telltale shirt stains on rubber brats, but as the busboys stood off to the side and watched Ashley bend and wring out the mop, I swear I heard one say “Watch the schmuck do it for her.” Oh yeah, they have schmuck in Spanish.
“Hey Milo.” She bends and wrings.
“You know, you don’t have to do that. Let me.” She makes me nervous. Her shy and appreciative smile makes me want to kiss hard.
“T’ank you.” She sings.
“Don’t thank me. It was my fault. I should have cut him off after he started acting like a jerk.
“Den he wud’ nah had drink.” She smiles and subdues her laugh with her hand over her smiling mouth. I mop.
“You shouldn’t cover your mouth. You have a pretty smile.” I want her to smile wide and bright.
“Aye Milo! No flirting!” She sings back to me with a smile. She sticks her tongue out playfully and walks off with the shake of her curves. She leaves me with my heart beating strong and fast and with a pulse in my pants. It not only reminds me that I’m still alive, it makes me want to live in a big way. She makes me want to live big. I can mop up a lake of copy-paste-fund-baby-asswipe vomit for just a kiss. But I don’t think she’d care for kissing me after the fact.
Right as I get on my jacket, José calls me to the kitchen to help move some boxes with one of the busboys.
“Eh Milo! You lift boxes, yes!” He doesn’t ask. He affirms for me. I bend at the knees and push cradling boxed meat.
“E’ smell bad, no?” This he asks me smiling as if he wants me to say ‘No! Me love!’
“Milo – tomorrow, you help me bring meat?” José’s not his wife. So I’ll do pretty much a lot of what he asks.
“You want me to head on over to the market with you?” I try and clarify.
“iSi! La Marqueta.” He confirms it for me. He and I usually play language hockey, passing terms back and forth before either of us understands what the other is trying to say.
La Marqueta is a misnomer. Markets pack fresh kills in shrink-wrap plastic on Styrofoam trays. The meat isn’t made at markets. ‘La Marqueta’‘ manufactures meat from God’s creatures. José prefers fresh kills. He either thinks they’re disease free, or he thinks God wants it this way. I asked him why once, but our language hockey went nowhere.
I hang my hat each night in a one bedroom two story walk up. I live directly over a Stone’s Funeral Chapel. Most nights, I navigate through crowds of mourning ethnic families on my way to the building’s entrance. The landlord makes his daily bread from fresh corpses. He provides loved ones and their departed with low-cost, emotion-filled good-byes. Most ethnic families in my neighborhood don’t have much, so when they lose a loved one, they lose big and cry bigger.
“Hey young fella.” The old man called me.
“Evening Mr. Stone.” I like the old man. He rents me out a nice sized room on the cheap. “How’s business?”
“Seems like it’s slowing down.” He looks at me serious.
“Seriously?” I fall in head first to the punch line.
“No! What’s the matter with you? Don’t they make young folks smart nowadays?” He laughs. I snicker. I appreciate it because I haven’t laughed in a while.
Through a sea of people inside the chapel, I get a glimpse of a grey face lying peacefully in his casket. He may have been a black guy, but it’s hard to tell on account of Mr. Stone’s fading skills with formaldehyde.
We all rot. I’ll be grey and everyone will be able to see.
My walk up the cold marble flight smells like incense. There’s bound to be some rationale behind the smell of incense and faith. I think it’s just meant to cover up the smell of follower filth.
With each step up I hear less organ playing and blubbering and I hear more of something else. It’s rhythmic. At first it sounds a little like a noise or a power tool, then more like a person, then two people. From the aggressive rhythm, I can then make out the sound of a colliding headboard. One of the rhythm power tool noises sounds a little like Lexie.
“Yeah, like that.” One noise says to the other with lapsed breath. So much like Lexie. It’s coming from the Super’s apartment. I turn from my door and walk slowly toward his. I hear him breathing, grunting. I hear them both kissing, their breaths on each other’s necks and faces. They breathe through their noses because their mouths are busy. I feel a tinge in my gut because Lexie and I don’t do that like we used to. I feel a tinge because I can’t do that with Ashley.
Like I’m walking on cotton, I step back toward my door. I don’t dwell on whether Lexie’s humping the Super. I can still hear them. I fumble for keys and stick one in the lock. Like a remote, it puts them both on mute.
“Oh, shit.” I hear one whisper. I don’t know which, but they both start whispering hard and fast. I hear a few words, but no sentences.
“Whisper-whisper-got home-whisper.”
“Whisper-still working-whisper.”
“Whisper-probably not-whisper.”
“Fuck-whisper!”
I turn the key and step through my hole in the wall.
Eighty percent of all dust is made of human skin. I work eight hours a day. I’m constantly moving and talking to all sorts of people and I’m sure I breathe in enough of it and accumulate enough of it on my own skin and against my sweat. I have microscopic bits of spoiled scum filth stuck to my skin. I can feel it before a shower. I can smell it. It clogs my pores. It’s cigarettes and drink and rich food.
Every night ends with a sabbatical cleansing in my shower. I’m thorough and deep. I can’t wash enough of the filth off myself. Before stepping into the shower, I smell the dead shit smell of the meat boxes José asked me to lug into the freezer. It was pork for his signature roast pig.
I start at the very top of my head and work my way into my ears. I scrub my face, neck shoulders and back. I work my way down onto my privates and give a pause to reflect on Ashley. She let me see her tongue in a playful kind of way. I cleaned my privates while thinking about all sorts of porn and Ashley’s tongue. I stand under the shower and let the trickle-finger-like sensations run down my back, ass, and legs and watch all of my grime spiral away into the small black void I pay cheap rent for. Beyond my drain are all sorts of nasty sludge clumps that would probably kill me if I ate them.
After the shower, I end my sabbatical with my mouth. I pull out about a foot of floss and start from my lower left back teeth. I bleed every time. By the time I’m done flossing, the string looks like piano wire used to strangle someone. It smells like a cross between the boxes of meat I carried for José earlier tonight and a homeless person’s dirty underwear. By the time I’m done, I can taste what the floss smells like. I don’t know how it ends up smelling this way. I only eat vegetables and bread.
Like the filth washed off in my shower, the last putrid bits of me are washed away and spun down into nowhere. It donned on me one night how much of our time is spent pushing our way through narrow openings, going all the way back from birth. From the safest and most secure place in the universe, we’re forced through our first hole. I’ve spent my whole life trying to get a small piece of me back into that hole. When we die, we’re buried in one. Life is about as empty and meaningless as the drain that carries away my filth. No one wants to live in a hole. Everyone wants to stand on a mountain.
I go still when I hear her keys. Through the bathroom’s mirror, I see the door open before Lexi walks in.
“Hi babe!” She smiles. She only smiles when she feels I’m on to her. It’s becoming a pattern.
“Hey. Why so late?” I don’t even pretend to care. The question is more like a statement.
“Ugh! Between the bus and the train and—” I give my attention to spiraling blood and spit. She’s happy because she’s just been plugged. “And how was work babe?” Nice and flat, I ask her.
“Uhm. Same thing every day.” She tells me, all nice and generic as if she actually went to work today. “You know Glenda? The woman who sits in the cubicle next to mine? Well she’s pregnant again!” She feigns surprise as if this is news.
“I heard, babe.” I feign interest.
“Really? Uh, how?” She touches on nervous after a pause.
I pause.
“You told me last week.” I grin flat. I don’t know how else to be...
“I did?” She glances around pensively for effect, but she really doesn’t remember. She’s either too dim or often too self absorbed. “Scatterbrain me!” She’s corny and kisses me. She’s breathing hard.
“You’re breathing hard.” I tell her.
“Those stairs are killer.” She lies. She probably hadn’t used the stairs all day. “Mmm!” She kisses me again and I taste the super. “Minty fresh!” He must have used a menthol-flavored condom and I just don’t care. I swish and rinse. Maybe I care a little. “I’m in the mood for a little hummer. Are you baby?” She solicits. Her battery’s on overcharge.
“Sure.” I say, because I just don’t know how else to say it.
