job
I thought Erin was easygoing. She’s not, she’s just boring. She can’t take dick either. I go down on her till she comes then she only lets me fuck for half a song. She’s pushing me off before the breakdown, saying she’s sore.
I’m lying next to her listening to the Isleys, thinking either she’s selfish or my breath stinks.
I breathe in the pillow.
She’s selfish.
She hits me the next day to hang. I tell her I’m going out of town.
“For how long?”
“Real long…like weeks.”
In June, I see her at the ice cream parlor with some black dude. They look happy. Maybe she lets him fuck longer, maybe he nuts quick. I don’t know.
Brandy has shitty tattoos and references trash TV when we talk. I look past that; she’s got a fat ass and a sweet way about her. Maybe that’s what I need, a nice simple girl. I’m pushing forty, I might as well settle down.
I try. We talk for damn near two months and she doesn’t come once when we fuck. It’s messing with my confidence. It’s like going to a job you’re bad at every single day.
I start thinking about life. Do I really wanna be going to these fucking streetwear parties with this chick? Do I really want the mother of my child to have sparrows tattooed on her titties?
I end it. She’s mad but she’ll get over it.
Karen’s cool. She has a good job. We have lively debates. We have nice dinners. I don’t wanna rush anything, but this could be the one I take trips with.
Then I go to fuck and her pussy smells like a boxing glove. I power through it ’cause I like her. I don’t even trip. The vagina’s an ever-changing ecosystem. I try again the next week, same deal.
That’s that.
She ain’t dirty, it’s just her. And if the pheromones don’t match, you gotta respect it, or you’ll fuck around and have a retarded kid.
I stop talking to friends about my dating. They say I’m the problem.
They’re usually right. I’m codependent with trust issues. I build these girls up in my head, break ’em down when I meet ’em, fuck ’em at night so I’m not alone, and send ’em home when we’re done so they’re not too close.
But this is different. I have good sex with the annoying chicks and the girls I actually like talking to have cave pussies. It’s like a sick joke. I wanna believe in God just so I can tell him to fuck off.
I’m exhausted.
I’m home alone one night and get to thinking about Emily up in Flint. She’s been on my mind since I wrote that story about her. I wonder how she’s doing. I’m heading back pretty soon. It’d be nice to catch up.
I type her name into Google. She’s dead.
I decide to be celibate. I’m on the couch coming out of a K-hole. I’m thinking I should travel more. If I keep waiting for a companion to do it with, I’ma waste my youth.
I look on eBay for designer bags, something elegant yet understated. Where the rich people’ll see it and understand but the broke people won’t know to rob me.
I get a text from this girl I went on one date with a year ago. She got drunk and started name-dropping Fred Durst. I haven’t seen her since.
She wants to come over. I give her the address. We talk a bit then go to my room.
The sex is awesome. The pussy’s so good, I keep checking my dick to see if the condom came off. She comes a bunch. I come so hard I start laughing.
“What!?” she says.
“Nothing, it was just a good nut.”
I go get her some water and me a towel.
I come back in the room. She’s sitting up in bed. I’m wiping my dick off. She starts talking about “The Flat Earth Theory.”
She says, “I’ve been on YouTube all day and I’m starting to think the earth isn’t a globe.”
She says, “If the earth is round, then why do they call it a skyline?”
I say, “Look girl, I’m dumb as hell but I think the earth is round because of gravity.”
She says, “Then explain this: why then, when I’m in a plane, I don’t see a curve? ”
Now I’m thinking this girl’s wrong as hell, but I don’t know how to prove it. I don’t look out the window in a plane. I always get the aisle seat.
So I say back, “If the earth ain’t round then what the fuck is it, then?”
She says, “A disk.”
I’m standing here naked having a flat-earth debate with the girl who name-dropped Fred Durst.
I say, “If that’s the case, all they need is a damn motor boat and a camera phone to prove that flat earth shit true and they ain’t do it yet.”
She’s shaking her head slow. “I don’t know…could be flat.”
I hand her her water. I say, “Do me a favor. For your own good and mine, don’t say this shit out in public ever again.”
I fuck her once a week after that, until she finds herself a man and quits me.
loops
My driver’s in a good mood, and that puts me in a good mood. With all her Deepak Chopra talk, she’s got me feeling pretty optimistic about things.
I usually take my own car when I go out with a chick. But I was on my dating app, high on ketamine, and made myself an impromptu rendezvous with an art chick that looks like a little sexy elf. I’m too fucked up to drive. She’s way the fuck on the west side, I’ll be good by the time I get there.
Sexy elf said bring a present. I got a nice bottle of liquor in a box on my lap, she can drink that.
Me and the driver make small talk about urban gardens and shit. She’s trying to sell her art and she’s new to town so I’m telling her about the different flea markets she should hit. She doesn’t care. So we go back to food talk. She tells me she’s a vegan.
It makes sense now. She drives like a vegan: frightened and slow.
She comes to a full stop at a green light and looks both ways. The car behind us flashes his brights, lays on the horn, and goes speeding by.
Smoke blows in our car.
I say, “Dude needs to check that exhaust out.”
She says, “I think he blew smoke on purpose.”
I’m like, “Uhhh, yeah. His car’s just fucked up. I don’t think he’s got a smoke button he can just push when he’s angry. And to be fair, you did stop at a green light.”
She gives me some silence.
I change the subject. “Doing all that driving must be crazy, huh?”
She says, “Yeah, it sure is. The main thing is, you just have to be patient and you can’t take anything personal. It’s one of The Four Agreements: never take anything personal.”
She drops me on Venice. I’m looking for the elf.
I’m on some side street. It’s garbage day. The street lights glow orange out here. I’m on the corner holding my box of tequila.
She sees me from her window. Her gate’s in the alley. She unlocks it with a key and lets me in. She’s cute in the face but way bigger than her pictures. She’s wearing a dress that hides it, but I can tell. She’s no sexy elf.
You see a girl on the Internet, you text back and forth with her pictures, and you build something in your brain resembling hope. Then you meet ’em in person and reality shits on your dreams. That wasn’t beauty, that was just a good angle.
She asks how my ride was.
I tell her, “My driver’s a vegan.”
She says, “So am I.”
I look her up and down. “Of course you are.”
I signed up for a sexy elf and I get a fat vegan.
What a waste. If you’re gonna be this big, you might as well eat hot dogs.
We go upstairs. Her house looks like a style blog. She has all the right chairs, the birds on the wall, the porcelain deer head.
It’s soulless and stuffy. I open a window to breathe.
I give her her gift. She puts it aside and drinks her wine on the rocks. She offers me some.
“I don’t drink,” I tell her.
We talk a while on her couch. She’s mumbling some story about how her neighbor wants to fuck her. I’m trying to care, I don’t.
She was way more clever via text.
I ask her how dating through the app’s been for her.
She says, “I just started last week. I’ve only been on one date, it was for a half hour but he got tired and went home.”
I make a note to stay longer.
I take a sip of the G and slog through our conversation.
This one’s a one-time fuck and that’s it.
I wait an hour then tell her I’m leaving. I lean over to kiss her goodbye. She tastes like white wine.
The kiss lasts a minute. Let’s see where this goes.
She straddles me.
She’s grinding her hips. She’s in my mouth. I throw my hand on her pussy, it’s wet. She’s moaning. I’m not into it yet, but I’m getting there. Then I feel that hairy asshole and lose it. My dick goes rock hard.
She feels me stiffen and gets up, goes to her bedroom, and doesn’t come out.
I’m sitting on the couch, waiting.
“Come here,” she calls.
I stare at the deer head and think about it, smell my hand, do the sniff test. Well, I already dropped fifteen for the cab.
I go to her room. I’m above her, between her legs with my dick out. She’s still wearing her dress. I whisper in her ear, “We’re gonna fuck, then I’ma go home.”
She whispers back, “Okay.”
I dig her out with my socks on. She leaves a puddle.
I don’t even come, I just fuck till I’m bored.
I go wash up. I’m getting dressed.
I need her to let me out. She’s still laying in bed.
She says, “You should stay for a drink, we can talk.”
I say, “It’s late.”
She says, “We can have that tequila…”
I look down at her and say, “Shit, I don’t drink and I told you I was going.”
She says, “Never mind, never mind.” And her eyes well up like she’s ’bout to cry.
I sit down on the bed, look at her. “You alright?”
She turns away, “I’m fine.”
“Well, tell that to your face.” I say.
Tears on the brim of her eyelids, she says, “No really, I’m okay. This just happens all the time.” She shakes her head. “It’s stupid.”
That’s not fair.
I gave her a nut and conversation. She gave me lies and tears.
We talk for a couple minutes. I try and console her. It doesn’t make it any better.
I tell her I’m going. She’s gotta let me out the gate. It’s a long walk down.
I tell her I’m leaving out of town, I’ll hit her when I get back.
I’m lying, I won’t.
She says, “Whatever,” and undoes the lock.
I wait for my car under the orange street light. I watch her close her curtains and shut her windows. She won’t look down.
My car comes.
He says, “How was your night?”
I shake my head and say, “Weird.”
We drive off.
I text her, “Thanks for the lovely evening.”
She doesn’t respond.
I’m staring out the window at an empty taco truck in a gas station when it hits me, I left a used condom floating in that girl’s toilet.
For some reason, I feel kind of bad about that.
Then I look down and see her pussy juice dried up all over my khakis.
Well played, Fat Vegan. I shake my head and laugh.
Fuck it. I’ll sleep this one off. I’m twenty minutes away from my bed, just lemme get home.
We’re going north on Alvarado when we get pulled over by the cops.
He’s got the spotlight on us with the red and blues flashing.
I take a deep breath. This may take a while.
psalms
Rachel thought Joe was gonna be the one. He wasn’t.
He dumped her again and now she’s all fucked up.
We go to Death Valley to get our heads right.
Victoria’s up there, taking care of some cabins. She needs company; she just broke up with her man too.
This isn’t the getaway we expected.
It’s hot out here, the sand blows, and the sun hates you.
We explore ghost towns. We push our way through barricaded doors into homes long abandoned and take what we want.
We take pictures—a Star Trek light switch in a little boy’s room, a crucifix on a baby-blue wall, a melted ceiling fan that looks like it’s crying.
We’re out here wounded, digging through other people’s trash, searching for gems.
Physically, it’s hard on me. The other day I pulled a muscle snorting ketamine. I did a rail and felt my neck lock up. I can’t turn my head and lost hearing out my left ear.
I tried to have this Chinese lady rub it out but she couldn’t speak English, so she just played with my dick for a while and sent me home.
I’m in pain, the heat is miserable. We go back to our cabins and hide inside till the sun ceases and the temperature drops. At sundown we take a walk through the desert.
Victoria’s telling us a story about how the holy men wore linen and how it saved her dog’s life.
Her dog was crippled and was gonna die. She’d been to the vet and they couldn’t fix him. She was all out of money so she put an ad on Craigslist offering to trade her Winnebago to save her pup.
Nobody answered.
Then this crazy lady calls and tells her to wrap the dog in wet linen, rub him in circles, and give him magnesium.
She does and the dog heals. The lady even let her keep the Winnebago.
Turns out the lady was some scientist. She did studies on fabrics and their electrical charges or some shit. Linen’s good for you. Cotton’s neutral. Silk sucks.
I look down and there’s her little wiener dog, tongue out, waddling through the sage, fucking with snakes. The vet calls him “the miracle doggy.”
I make a note to get some linen sheets for my bed. I could use some healing myself.
The sun goes down. We lay on our backs and look at the stars. It’s beautiful.
I’ve been in LA so long, I forgot we even had stars. Sometimes when you’re around that many people, you stop being human.
We talk for a while then go to bed at ten. We’re all alone with our brains and none of us sleep.
We wake up exhausted, go home that day.
We drive through the desert in silence, listening to love songs. Me and my sister, both pushing forty and still single.
She’s in her thoughts, staring out the window. This breakup’s got her feeling defeated.
I tell her, “Hey, you took him at his word and gave him your heart, there’s no shame in that… You were brave.”
She answers me with silence.
I say, “I wish I was that brave.”
She says she just wants some sleep.
We get back to LA and pick up Ativan from Eddie to knock Rachel out.
That evening, I’m at my place alone, snorting K, watching an old movie—The Apartment. Jack Lemmon plays a lame. Shirley McClain plays his love interest. She looks like Björk. I’ll probably listen to her later.
I remember when Björk used to make me think of Gabby and destroy me. Now when I hear her, it’s just a song.
I hit up Mona, this Ukrainian Jew I met online.
First time we speak she asks me what kind of car I drive.
“Mazda Six,” I tell her.
She says, “That’s cute. That was
the first car I had when I was eighteen.”
Then she starts talking about EDM and Burning Man.
I say, “That sounds awful. Fuck Burning Man, we can have Burning Man at my house. I got enough drugs.”
She says she’s down.
But when I text her she doesn’t hit back, so I blow another line and zone out. When I’m good and fucked up, she hits me.
She was tied up for Rosh Hashanah, just dropped off her old man.
I shoot her my address.
She hits back, “Be there in twenty.”
Not a lot of time to sober up. I drink the dregs of some coffee and a can of Coke, then hop in the shower and wash the desert off of me. I get dressed, dim the lights, and throw on some Smokey Robinson.
She shows up in a green party dress and expensive heels. We have drinks on the balcony and talk for a while. She thinks I’m taking my time with her. I’m not. I’m waiting for this ketamine to wear off so I can feel my dick again.
I’m trying to tell her a story and keep forgetting where I’m at. Finally, I say, “I’m sorry. I’m gone on K.”
She gasps, “On a Sunday?! You’re crazy.”
I say, “I am, but it’s wearing off.”
She’s shaking her head, smiling, “I don’t know, Jude, I worry about you.”
I smile back and say, “You know what, Lola? I don’t think about you at all.” We have a good laugh. I say, “I got that from Mad Men.”
We go to my room. I get her out of that dress and we fuck to Björk. I’m all stuffed up from the K, but I’m still going down on her. We make a real session of it, sweating away. I’m blowing my nose in my Fruit of the Looms and digging her out. I give her all the dick. She can’t take it, but I make her anyway.
When we quit, I say, “Happy New Year.”
She says, “You’re pretty good at that.”
I say, “I hope so, that’s where my self-esteem comes from.”
The next day I wake up still fucked up. I hit a rub and tug, this one works out my neck, then handles my dick. She’s jerking me off, moaning like she feels good doing it. It’s patronizing; I wish she’d stop. I come on my belly and bail feeling worse than when I got there.
Hummingbird Page 9
