Bump

Lou woke up with one of the cats sleeping over his head, hogging the entire pillow. He didn't have to reach up to know which one it was; it was Skeeze, the long haired hermaphrodite. The little fucker never really forgave him for moving in and taking its side of the bed. It seemed to Lou that he always started out sleeping firmly in the middle of the pillow, but by morning, he had slid – or been pushed – down almost to the edge. Two of the other cats – Fauntleroy and Scar – were sitting on Fiona's side of the bed, watching him with the unblinking eyes of scavengers. They're hoping I'm dead, he thought, so they can eat my eyes and my tongue.

Sitting up and putting his feet on the narrow strip of floor between the side of the bed and the outside wall, Lou almost stepped on two of the kittens. There were four of them. Lou hadn't bothered to learn any of their names because he was still hoping that Fiona would come to her senses and find homes for them. Seven cats in a small one bedroom apartment was six too many; but he knew better than to convince her to get rid any of the full-grown ones. She had made it very clear when he moved in that he would move out before the any of her cats would; she also made it very clear that she wasn't the kind of person to clean out the litter box or the entirely too frequent hairballs, or the puddles of semi-solid puke from her changing the food all the time, depending on how much money she had. And the fur. There was fur everywhere, on everything. Not even the food was safe from random blowing fluffs of cat hair.

It was daylight and she wasn't home yet; that surprised him less than the cat hair he found in the bottom of the coffee pot that Fiona had left on last night. She'd had a couple of friends over while he was at work – a couple of guys that had, once upon a time, been fuck buddies, and a particularly angry lesbian named Marie. Marie was angry because Fiona was still fucking men. Lou wasn't sure if he would've minded if Fiona went ahead and fucked Marie; because except for the fact that she was a very angry, very man-hating lesbian (the result, according to Fiona, of being tricked out by her father to his friends when she was very young), Marie was a beautiful woman. Nice big tits, slim waist, round hips and a heart shaped ass. If he had ever come home from his third shift gig at the sock factory and found the two of them in bed together, he wasn't sure he'd be all that pissed off. He pointed that out once to Fiona, who snarled and said “How is that any different than you coming home and find me in bed with another man?”

“I don't know,” Lou answered. “It's just different.”

“You're a pig.”

“At least I'm honest.”

He had tried hanging out with Fiona and her cabal of post-modern goth intellectuals before; they liked to sit around and drink cheap wine out of gaudy goblets and name drop philosophers and the authors of crap vampire fan fiction. Early on, Fiona had wanted him to make the attempt. She gave him books to read. Many books. But they all seemed like the same book. Pretty vicious vampires that bite instead of screw. Lots of homoerotic undertones. Lots of long wordy descriptions after the manner of Bram Stoker, lacking anything else that made them interesting. He found them unreadable and was embarrassed to be seen with them at the break room – not because he gave a damn about what any of them thought. Just because.

It was Friday, which meant he was off for the night. He'd gotten his check, pathetic as it was, and he wanted to spend some of it on himself. The bills were paid, but Fiona would want to spend on expensive cat food that would end up in puddles of puke dried into the cheap shag carpet.

The first thing he did was take a shower. Not that it did any good. No matter how many times he showered or washed his clothes, he always smelled like a walking litter box. When he was in the apartment, he didn't notice except for when the central air kicked on and moved all the dust around. Fiona was a lousy housekeeper, and Lou wasn't inclined to clean, either. She always complained about it. But did she ever pick up a rag to dust, or plug in the vacuum cleaner? Lou never complained about it. Not anymore. She used to at least straighten up before her cabal came over; now she didn't even bother to do that. Why should she when she could blame the mess on him?

The shower left him feeling refreshed, but he knew the feeling was fleeting. He didn't feel like risking having cat hair in his coffee (rinsing it out didn't do any good. He could rinse it a hundred times and he'd still end up with stray hairs floating in his cup. He opened the refrigerator. It was empty except for a six pack of expensive beer and there was a Post-It note on that read MORGAN'S MEAD. DO NOT TOUCH. Morgan was one of the former fuck buddies that Fiona spent all of her free-time with … free time that had grown exponentially since she got herself fired from her job. When Lou met her, she had been the manager of a men's formal wear store. She claimed the owner sexually harassed, tried to get her to sleep with him for a bump in pay. A bump for a bump. That was what she told him, anyway. Came home crying and everything, and Lou bought into it. He offered to go kick the guy's ass. He tried to convince her to get a lawyer.

“No, no,” she sobbed, burying her head in his chest. “ I'll never be able to prove anything.”

And Lou let it go at that.

The tuxedo shop fiasco had been more than six months ago, and Fiona still hadn't found a job. According to her, she was “psychologically shaken.” He accepted that for the first month or so; after all, he had no idea what it meant to be sexually harassed, or, in the words of Marie, to be “assaulted by yet another miniscule man's disgusting member.” Lou could only assume that if Marie had ever had any experience with a man's member, it must have been a man who hadn't heard of bathing. But he couldn't argue with the fundamental logic beneath the bitch's biased words. He supposed she had the right to be biased.

He ran out of sympathy, though, when he overheard her talking about how she really got fired. Apparently she had been stealing from the till in order to buy expensive cat food and gaudy cheap wine goblets and badly written books. And the owner-- having caught her twice on hidden camera – fired her. When he confronted her the following morning, she cried again and accused Lou of being part of the “global patriarchal conspiracy to claim ownership” of her vagina. They argued, then she stormed out and didn't come back for three days. And when she did come back, she claimed it was because she was worried about what he would do to the cats.

“You're nothing but a neanderthal with a college degree,” she said.

“Morgan's Mead,” he muttered. “Fucking moron.” Does he even know the difference between beer and mead? Or does he think he's being cool? Leaving his beer in the fridge like he paid rent was worse than fucking Fiona. At that point, the dumb son of a bitch could have the malicious cunt; but he was going to be damned if he was going to let Morgan move into the goddamn refrigerator. Lou took one of bottles, opened it with a bottle opener sitting on the kitchen counter that was supposed to look like a medieval mace, and emptied it down his throat.

Fuck him, Lou thought.

Plan Ahead Next Time: Part 1

Every woman in my life, except my ex-wife, has told me I’m nothing but a big softie. That underneath my growling and grumbling and howling against the universe, I’m just a sweet and sensitive guy. This has always been my undoing; and now I’m beginning to suspect they’re right.

I woke up that morning to Muriel’s loud pouting whine: “There’s no coffee!”

This was my problem for a couple of reasons. For one, she didn’t drink coffee before she married me. Didn’t even like the taste or smell of the stuff. She could manage one of those coffee drinks like you buy at Starbucks – all cream and sugar and flavor and next to no coffee – but beyond that, she didn’t like it. And at first, she didn’t like that I liked it. Scratch that. I don’t like coffee so much as I need coffee to keep at bay the OTHER aspect of my personality that gets me into trouble: the snarling, anti-social rube that, if the sweet bean nectar was withheld long enough, would melt into a puddle like that cackling green bitch in The Wizard of Oz. It didn’t take her long to see this, and, from early in our relationship when one of us spent the night in other’s college dorm room (which including the compensatory Walk of Shame the following morning; an interesting name since I never felt ashamed of getting laid) we developed an understanding: don’t talk to me before I’ve had a little coffee. That I am walking and maybe talking to myself doesn’t mean I’m fit for human company, including human company I desire above and beyond all others.

But marriage changes all of those early equations and accommodations, especially since the morning may be the only time when you are able to talk about all those annoying domestic issues: money, bills, buying cat food, taking out the garbage, what to eat for dinner that evening. (If you’re even eating together, that is.) And in this case, there was another reason why I needed to interrupt my not so deep sleep and listen to her: that there wasn’t any coffee was also my fault.

I’d known the day before that there wouldn’t be enough coffee, but I forgot to go and buy some. Now that she’s the bread winner and I’m her “cute unemployed writer” I also fill the role of June Cleaver. (Sans the string of pearls, heels, and anti-depressant painted smile. What would the neighbors think then?) She works outside the home. I work – theoretically – inside the home. We tell ourselves that we’re modern and that the old gender rules don’t apply; after all, television has been trying to convince us for years that a cock and balls is just a cunt twisted out and shaped like a small sausage and couple of rotten potatoes. Her forebears, the ancestors of all women who fought for equal rights and the option to wear pants, would all be cheering from heaven if, in fact, there was a heaven to cheer from. Mine, on the other hand, would be shaking their heads in disappointment and dismay and the decay of manhood in the 21st century; I see it in the faces of retired old men when I’m out during the day when most men my age are slaving away at some job for which they receive next to no money, no respect at all, and are compensated, if at all, with lousy health insurance benefits and a death benefit that wouldn’t pay for a pine box, a few nails, and shovel.

I’m grateful every day that they’re all dead and can’t see me. The old men on Main Street are bad enough.

But since I didn’t buy the coffee the day before, I knew I should get up and buy it. I would need it; but it was possible for me to dress, drive to the store, buy a can of coffee – being reduced to the cheap and functional in our one income household— and come home without talking to a soul – the advantage of having few friends and no one other than Muriel and the cats who cares for my daily existence. Granted, there shouldn’t have been any reason to rush, since it was Saturday; but since starting her new job, Muriel had taken to waking up early during the weekend. Her theory, as she explained it to me, was that if she woke up earlier that the day would last longer; and she hated how quickly the weekends flew by.

I think the opposite. On the surface, her logic makes sense. However, I had long begun to suspect that time worked more like quantum physics than straight mathematics. While it was true that being awake for more hours might equal a longer day, the quality of those waking hours made a huge difference. I could wake up before the sun if I HAD to and which I did when I was playing Ward instead of June Cleaver; but those hours were not quality hours; the days dragged on and I was simply subjected to more noise, stupidity, and the crowded thrall of humanity. Moreover, I was less able to cope because I lacked the minimum required hours of sleep – which for me aren’t even all that excessive. All I need are a solid six hours. Anything less, and the first few hours of my waking day are wasted.

What makes her approach so interesting and gives credence to her theory is that on days like that – Saturdays, holidays, or on those rare days she allows her workaholic soul a vacation— she will bound out of bed excited, energetic, and ready for the day. And that’s without the benefit of her cup of coffee – which is still more cream than coffee—or even a can of pop, which she will have right after finishing her coffee. Another compounding issue was that the previous night, like every night for more than two months, I woke up every night during the witching hours (between two and four) and could not sleep. That meant I usually got up and watched a movie or read or wrote in my journal until I felt sleep returning. And when I was awakened by the sound of sweet Muriel’s proclamation, it was 6:30. That meant I’d only been back asleep for two and half hours.

But I knew the coffee wouldn’t wait. My only hope was that she’d run out of steam in the mid-afternoon and I’d be able to take a nap in my chair.

“I’ll go get a can of coffee!”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I’ll go.”

She was relieved and my feet were on the floor. I pulled on the clothes from the previous day, put on my boots, and wandered out of the bedroom into the kitchen and the nauseatingly bright overhead light. Muriel had gotten herself a can of pop and planted herself in front of the laptop in the living room to check her email and play those odd online games where nothing gets blown up and nobody dies – which, as far as I’m concerned, makes them pointless video games.

At that point, the coffee was more for me than for her; shed never drank more than one cup, and she rarely finished that. Since she had a can of pop, she would have the caffeine she needed.

I would’ve gone back to bed if I thought it would do any good. But all I’d do is lay there with my eyes closed pretending to sleep and hoping to fall back into the dream I’d been having.

“Coffee,” I muttered.

“Honey?”

“Yeah?”

“Why don’t you pick up something for breakfast while you’re out?”

“Breakfast or something sweet?”

“Something sweet.”

Like one more thing mattered. “Okay.”

“Love you,” she said, not looking away from her game.

And that was when it happened. I was in the process of responding in kind and before I could finish saying the word “too” my boot ran into one of the cats. He screeched and hissed and tried to move. I tried to move and get him out from under foot, but that only resulted in me stepping on him again. He howled even louder and retreated under out bed, snarling like a corned raccoon.

It was the long hair black one, Che. The one a vet had once told us was “nuts.” Generally, the cat didn’t like people; he and I had this in common. Our mutual misanthropy bound us together so much that Muriel, who wanted a lap cat, eventually brought home the other cat, a short haired orange tabby we named Nine, in honor of the 9th Ward in New Orleans where it had been rescued from. Nine was an unrepentant whore that would love on anybody who fed it or reached out a friendly hand.

Che got under my feet a lot. Cats do that when they’re hungry or wanting attention or just wanting to trip you up for shits and giggles. Cats are rascals. They’re worse imps than young children when there’s no adult around to behave for. And, they’re egocentric little fuckers, too. They expect to be fed the same time everyday, in the same way, with the same food – which they will remind you of by yowling, scratching the furniture and, if that doesn’t work, by simply staring at you until you wake up. If they’re box trained, they expect the litter to be clean or they’ll remind you by taking a shit on your pillow or in your favorite chair.

“Fuck!”

“What’s wrong?”

“I stepped on the fucking cat!”

“Which one?”

“Which one do you think? Which one likes to get under my feet?”

“Why don’t you pay more attention? You know he does that.”

This was an old conversation, and I wasn’t awake enough to have it again. Regardless of how those little sons of bitches behaved, when something happened, it was my fault. Inevitably. Always.

“Fine,” I said, digging the car key out Muriel’s purse. It was a small red purse, her latest favorite among many; but it wasn’t small enough that shit didn’t get lost in it. Cigarette lighters, the car key, her wallet. The keys were nowhere to be found. I emptied the contents of the purse onto the corner chair.

“What are you doing?” She looked up, annoyed.

“Looking for the car key.”

She sighed and shook her head. “It’s on the bookshelf by the door.”

Fuck me. “Oh.”

“Why don’t you pay more attention?”

Why don’t you put things where somebody can find them? “Sorry.”

“Just go and get you some coffee, please? I hate it when you’re like this.”