I’ve been on Vicodin these past three days. I keep taking it so I won’t shit. I’m afraid to. Vicodin and tighty whities with a maxi-pad shoved in my ass crack, cuz I’m leaking blood.
My mom keeps calling me to see if I’m all right.
I am. I just walk funny and I’m getting used to the tighty whities smashing my balls. I tried to do the maxi-pad with some boxers and that shit fell out in the middle of the road, right next to some kids playing. I tried to kick it across the street, but it kept getting stuck to the pavement, so I just kept walking like it wasn’t mine.
Kev took me to the Dodgers game yesterday. The good seats. It was nice to sit out there in the sun, nodding off on opiates while the Cubs whooped the Dodgers’ asses. It was fun till some piece-of-shit Dodgers fan started talking shit to us.
We ain’t say nothing to this fucking dude and the motherfucker’s talking ’bout the “douche-bag Cub fans” in front of him. I’m not even from Chicago. My friends are. I’m waiting for them to say some shit, but they don’t. I turn around and it’s some day trader sitting with his hot wife and friends.
I tell him to chill out.
He says he was being funny.
I tell him he isn’t funny and to stop talking to us.
He starts talking about my accent; his eyes are wild like he’s gonna do something, talking to me like he knows karate or some shit.
I’m like, “Bruh, chill out and shut up talking to us.”
He’s like, “Brah brah brah. What the hell is a brah, brah? Why you talking like that, brah?”
“Cuz I’m from Detroit, bruh. Look, I’m not even a Cubs fan. I just don’t like you, so don’t say shit to us, okay?”
That’s the best I can come up with? Mr. Rude Jude, Mr. Get Paid to Talk Shit on Jenny Jones. All I can do is explain how my accent stems from my place of origin? I blame the Vicodin.
He keeps on talking and I’m staring him down like, “I’ma fuck you up.” But he knows I won’t, so he stays on me. Now I’m arguing with him and I’m not very good at it, but I can’t stop and my friends are telling me to chill.
He’s still calling us douche bags and calling me all types of wiggers and shit. He keeps on yapping, and I can’t shut him down. I’m getting owned by a frat boy at the Dodgers game, and it’s irritating the shit out of me.
The only thing left to do is punch him in the face, but let’s be real, I’m not a fighter. I’m worried about my glasses. I’m not about to start fighting, doped up on Vikes, wearing a maxi-pad, at a goddamn baseball game.
I try to get his wife to chill his ass out. “Can you please get your man? Ain’t you embarrassed?”
She says, “You should be embarrassed.”
This bitch.
Then I see my opening. What I see on her thighs and what she sees every day when she gets out of the shower . . . I see some cellulite on them fucking thighs. Now me, I like cellulite, it don’t bother me. But I know she hates it.
So I say something to him like, “Blah blah blah, look at the scoreboard, loser, fuck you blah blah blah, with your chubby-ass wife.”
And his face breaks and I see it, so I keep going. “You need to stop rooting against us and start rooting against her eating all them hot dogs at the game cuz she’s getting fat, bruh.”
I found that soft spot. And now his homeboy jumps in like, “Whoa whoa, we don’t need to be talking about people’s wives.”
Where were you five minutes ago? I ignore him and keep calling her fat and he keeps trying to say shit back, but it doesn’t matter what he says, cuz I keep on disrespecting his woman and his honor and he’s not doing a fucking thing. Ain’t shit to do but punch me. I might be a bitch and not wanna fight, but guess what? He’s a bitch, too, and I’m gonna remind him.
Now I’m pointing at my mouth smiling.
He says, “What the fuck is that? All I see is an ugly red beard.”
I say, “That’s me smiling. I live in your head now, motherfucker. Cuz you know your wife is getting fat and every time she gets seconds on some food or gets dessert and you tell her not to . . . you’ll be thinking about me.”
It’s true. He’ll be thinking about me when he sees that cottage cheese on her legs and when she’s on her period, feeling fat, and he’ll have to reassure her. That’s me, motherfucker. And I bet you she won’t be wearing those shorts again anytime soon.
You shoulda seen her face. You shoulda seen her put that popcorn down. Fuck her. That’s what she gets for being married to a douche bag.
And now he ain’t talking as much and his wife is whispering for him to just calm down and to drop it and it’s okay and she knows she’s not fat.
I’m sitting in front of them sipping my lemonade, smiling, watching the game, bleeding into my maxi-pad.
animal planet
LORI TRIED TO BLOW ME in Jamaal’s basement after the homecoming dance. I wouldn’t let her. I was afraid of pussy and thought my dick was too small. I didn’t want her going back to school talking shit.
I told my homeboys, “I ain’t let her to do it cuz she was a ho.”
They was like, “And?! That’s who you sposed to let suck your dick!”
They’re calling me all types of lames. I pound a forty of beer. “Let’s run some spades.”
I was a fat fucker. Some fat kids are okay being fat. I was the one who wore his T-shirt in the pool like I was fooling somebody. I was a chump. I’d sit on the phone with girls I liked and listen to them complain about how their man was dogging them; I was waiting in the wings while they stayed with him.
When I was little, my mom used to take us with her to go cheat on my dad. He cheated first, but we didn’t know that. My sister and I would be in some guy’s living room sitting on the couch watching Hall and Oates on MTV while she was off in the bedroom doing whatever.
Years later I watched her hold down a bunch of jobs to support her deadbeat-ass husband. He’d be laid up on the couch, hungover with his sunglasses on, watching The Young and the Restless, talking to her like she was a fucking gerbil. And she’d take it. I used to beg her to leave, but she wouldn’t, and after a while, I’d be like, bitches ain’t shit if my own mom’s this dumb.
Over the next few years I started dropping weight, pulling more chicks. It was Valentine’s when I finally got some ass. I met her at McDonald’s and banged it out in a church parking lot, made it halfway through that Des’ree song and nutted all over my Nautica shirt.
I dumped her a few months later. Her ass was so flat I’d get mad when she bent over. She’d be in front of the TV changing the channel, ass looking like a cookie pan.
She’d be like, “What’s wrong, Jude?”
I’d be like, “Nothing, take me home.”
After that, me and Loc would try and run girls. I’d be getting head in the laundry room from some chick and he’d show up with his dick out. Most of the time, they’d look up at me, mouth full of penis, like, “Really?”
But every now and then, they’d suck us both up.
One time we were riding in the car. Me, Loc, and his girl in the middle.
He looks over to me and whispers, “You gotta rub her.”
So I throw my hand between her legs, start rubbing her pussy through the jeans. The whole ride back from Seven Mile, I was on her. They drop me off and she’s mean mugging.
Loc gets out, he’s like, “Ay, you got that shit, cuz?”
I say, “Got what?”
He says, “You got a rubber?”
I said, “Hell naw! That’s what you was askin’? You got a rubber? Man I thought you said, ‘You got to rub her’! ”
We’re laughing about it. She’s in the backseat salty.
We were some dogs but where we lived, it was Animal Planet and the chicks were no better. Ben’s baby looked an awful lot like Jermaine. Melody put Pooh’s kid on Jamaar cuz she found out Pooh was fucking his retarded sister.
Dont was claiming a son for two years, then went and got a blood test right before the kid’s s
econd birthday. Wasn’t his. Canceled the party, took the gifts back. Never saw him again.
We all had told him that bitch wasn’t shit. She used to borrow Dont’s car and we’d see her other baby’s daddy driving that bitch down Perry Street. Told Dont about it, he ain’t do nothing, so we clowned his ass, too.
Years later I asked him why he dealt with that shady bitch. He told me cuz he didn’t think he was good enough for anybody else.
I get it.
Roach used to cock-block. He’d get the neighborhood whore and turn her into his girlfriend. We’d be about to run a train on this chick. He’d get the pussy, then block the doorway talking about, “Me and Krista spoke on it, dog, and it’s just gonna be just me and her.”
Fine, we’ll run her purse.
Next day, he’s like, “That’s fucked-up, you didn’t have to take her beeper man.”
And we’d be like, “You didn’t have to wife our fuckin’ busto.”
One time I had this drunk chick in the bathroom about to blow me, but her big cousin kept knocking on the door, so I told Roachie, “Take her ass down to the graveyard while we keep her cousin busy, and me and Myron’ll meet up with you in like ten minutes and we’ll all get our dick sucked.”
He didn’t even go to the graveyard. By the time we found ’em under a tree somewhere, Roachie’d already gotten some head and was talking to her about her boyfriend and she’s sittin’ there crying.
We’re standing over her arguing.
Myron’s like, “What the fuck you do to her? Why the fuck is she crying? All you was sposed to do was take her down the street and wait for us.”
“Yeah,” Roachie said, “but we just got to talking about her man. She started crying. That’s it.”
Myron says, “That’s it? Man, we all trying to get our dick sucked, why you talking about her man?”
She’s bawling under the tree talking about how she misses Mikey or some shit. I go over to her, take my dick out, and tell her, “Put this in your mouth; it’ll make you feel better.”
She starts crying even louder.
I put my dick away and we leave her there under the tree.
maps of africa
MY LAST BED WAS HAUNTED. It was my dad’s bed when he lived in LA. He got it from someone else, and when he went back to Detroit, it was mine. I lugged it around town with me from apartment to apartment. I dragged it along.
I fucked my homegirl on it. The next day, when I was cleaning up the mess, I peeled back the sheet to see a mattress pad covered in stains. She called them types of stains “maps of Africa.” Like if you fuck someone so good, you leave wet marks on the sheets that look like a map of Africa.
That’s what I’m left with: maps.
I’ve forgotten half the women who contributed to my mattress. They’ve moved on, got boyfriends, and forgot about me, too. But their marks are still there.
I stood in the bedroom of my new apartment, the one I was supposed to have gotten with Julie, wet towel in my hand, sopping up this mess I made with somebody else.
I thought back to an argument Julie and I had had. She was sitting on that bed in Burbank, we were yelling at each other. I was hurt about some lame she had slept with when we were broken up. People are gonna fuck who they’re gonna fuck, but some failed rapper turned real estate agent I knew from back home? She couldn’t have fucked an astronaut or somebody worthwhile? She had to fuck a lame from my area code? I was mad she told me about it, I didn’t need to hear about that shit, but since she did, I was grilling her. Where, when, why? How many times? She sat there silent and defiant.
I said, “Fuck it, I don’t give a fuck who you fuck. You think I care who you fuck? I don’t give a shit. You know how many girls I fucked right there where you sittin’? Right there, in that spot, where you sleep every night? You laying in that shit.”
She sat there arms crossed on the edge of the bed, right where I had bent over some black hooker and fucked her on her period. Something in me was happy knowing that. She acts like she don’t care. I know she does.
I was looking at those stains on my bed. My dad’s bed. Thinking about that fight. Looking at all that DNA. Thinking about what a cruel thing that was to say to someone I love.
I didn’t wanna be able to say that to my next girl.
I got a new bed now. I’ll make new memories.
I saw Julie at Target today. She’s lost weight. She was buying travel-size soap and toothpaste. She was reading the labels and didn’t see me. I didn’t want her to.
I turned around and left the store.
I thought about where she might be going with her travel-size toothpaste.
I pushed that out of my mind, told myself to harden the fuck up.
ahab
EVERY TIME I GO TO flint, i end up at LLT’s, this grimy little strip club on Saginaw. They do a five-dollar lap dance, and I know you shouldn’t go bargain hunting for your tattoos or sex workers, but I just can’t turn down a good deal.
In my defense, you’ll understand that five bucks isn’t as cheap as it sounds. Flint’s like Detroit except it’s smaller and shittier. It looks like they built a shantytown, dropped bombs on it, and then moved people in. So five bucks in Flint is like ten bucks in Detroit. It’s the Tijuana of the Midwest.
As plants close and jobs leave Michigan, LLT’s has been a good barometer of how hard the recession has hit. The first time I went there in ’99, I got a lap dance and a hand job from a cute little Filipino chick who would’ve been a ten if it wasn’t for the birthmark on her face. Last Christmas they had a girl with Down syndrome working. She had on a Coca-Cola sweatshirt and a hip pack. I didn’t get a dance from her, though; I got mine from a black chick with a bullet wound in her back. Times are tough.
Six months later and I’m back in town, looking to stimulate the economy, throw some money at these broke chicks, get my dick grinded. It’s the day shift, about 98 degrees, the AC’s broke so they got the back door open with a box fan in it, daylight coming in. It smells like the carpets haven’t been vacuumed in months. Some old white dude’s on a Rascal chatting up a fat redbone playing the touchscreen with a Newport 100 dangling from her lips. The one security guard working is sitting in the middle of the bar getting a lap dance.
The dancers are murderers row: one’s Wesley Snipes, another’s a carny, the redbone looks like a glob of peanut butter. I get a dance from a forty-year-old meth head with a half-shaved Mohawk and a ponytail. But fuck it, she’s a grinder and has a good attitude. I give her a fiver and keep it moving.
I’m shooting pool when this haggard broad comes up to me with a sob story about her baby daddy in prison. I buy a dance. She calls herself Tweety. I think she’s Mexican because of the brown C-section scar on her belly and the knife wound on her shoulder. She’s got a tattoo of her baby’s footprint on her neck and another one, prison style, in the middle of her back, off center, that says GOOD MOM in block letters.
I ask her how’d she get the knife scar.
“Fighting with my old man.”
Of course.
Her skin’s saggy, the dance is lackluster, and I’m losing interest. It’s always the begging-ass strippers that give the shittiest dances. That’s why they’re begging.
And then I see her, from across the bar in all her majesty, tucked in the corner, grinding on some pathetic chump. My Moby-Dick, a white girl with dreadlocks and an ass like a Clydesdale. She looks like a Robert Crumb drawing straddling his knee, pushing her thigh into his groin, Nine Inch Nails banging away. I wanna fuck you like an animal. I wanna feel you from the inside.
And what’s that I see? Could it be? It’s too good to be true. . . . She’s only got one arm.
This chick is Goth as fuck.
I want a dance off her ASAP.
Years to come when I’m at the bar and some dipshits are telling their little pussy-ass stripper stories, I’m gonna be able to hit ’em with the “One time, up in Flint I got a lap dance from a one-armed stripper.”
&n
bsp; And everybody’ll be like, “Whoa!! What the fuck!!?? You’re fucking crazy!!!!”
And I’ll take a sip of my water with lemon and say, “Fucking-A I am, fucking-A.”
I give Tweety five bucks to leave me alone and I wait for the one-armed Goth.
The song finishes and he pays her for another, then another; it’s like time’s crawling. Jesus Christ it’s stuffy in here and fucking hot.
The redbone’s eating BBQ chips, pushing her ass up against the old dude’s dick in the Rascal. We lock eyes; she’s chewing.
I order a Coke from the bartender; it’s flat. I drink it anyway.
Three songs later and the one-armed Goth’s done. She’s walking toward the ladies’ room. I cut her off.
“Excuse me, I’d like to get a dance from you.”
“You want it out here or in the champagne room?”
I ask, “Where’s the champagne room?”
“That chair in the corner.”
“Here’s good.”
She sits me in a chair off to the side and gets to it. What I didn’t take into account was the sweat she worked up dancing five songs straight in 90-degree weather. She’s got a good lather going and it’s dripping all on me. I watch it pool and run and drip and she’s dragging her slimy ass all over my shorts.
Her arm stops after her elbow in a pointy nub that collects sweat like a stalactite. She rests it on me to get balance. I’m horrified, more by her constant sweating than her nubby arm, but the nub’s not helping and she’s rubbing it against my arm and I can feel her bone through the skin. I thought it’d be mushier. I wanna be a champ, I wanna ride this out. But I’m feeling kind of fucked-up, like is this what it’s come to? You’re getting lap dances from one-armed strippers to impress assholes you’ve yet to meet at a bar you haven’t been to?
My shorts look tie-dyed from the sweat, her slimy little nub’s on my neck, and all I can smell is smoke and dust and her fucking Victoria’s Secret body spray.
I need to dead this shit right now, but if I do, she’s gonna think it’s cuz she’s handicapped. But they wanna be treated like regular people, so, if a regular person’s sweaty nub was rubbing all over me, bumming me out, I’d tell ’em. Except a regular person wouldn’t have a sweaty nub arm. Catch-22. Where do we go from here?
Hyena Page 3
