Excerpt from: In Season -- Taking Stock

No time for poetry today.

The mornings are predictable, in the way that all small town mornings are. The only real difference is that today is garbage day. Tuesday. I set the garbage out last night and this morning when Maude left for work, she had to come back in to tell me that something had gotten into the garbage after I set it out the night before. I knew which little son of bitch it was, too. And if I didn't already know I could sure as shit guess by looking at it. Big dogs throw trash all over the place, leave big gaping holes in the bags. Whatever had gotten into the garbage gnawed tiny holes in the corners and sides of the bags. Small mouth. I told myself that at least the little fucker hadn't strewn our garbage all over the place; it was relatively easy to clean up. Maude left for work and I picked up the garbage, re-bagging it all so that the garbage men would pick it up and so that when they did it wouldn't make an even bigger mess. After that I go back inside, wash my hands two or three times, pour another cup of coffee, and light a cigarillo to get the morning chill out of my bones.

Winter's coming. Summer hung on longer than I expected it to and Fall has been shorter than I wanted it to be. I wanted to enjoy the changing the of the leaves. That was one of the things I missed. Leaves changing. Though I'm starting to realize that my brain, yet again, played another massive trick on me – the same trick it always plays. Things never work quite the way I remember them. I remember Fall in Eastern Kentucky and in the Ohio Valley where I was born and grew up. I can almost see them again when I close my eyes. Lots of vibrant colors; greens exploding into red, orange, yellow, like the last charge of the light brigade. I always think of that poem when I think about Fall. My 7^th grade English teacher, Miss Mallory, made me memorize that poem and then stand in front of the class and recite it. Maybe it was the Fall when that happened. I don't really remember all that precisely because I didn't pay much attention to things when I was a kid. All I really remember about that year was that I had to memorize two poems – Charge of the Light Brigade and Poe's Annabelle Lee – and recite them in front of the class. I also remember that Miss Mallory had the biggest set of tits I had ever seen, and that was around the time I started noticing those kinds of things. Tits and poetry. When faced with the weight of those things, most teenage boys simply aren't bothering to look out the window and pine over the beauty of the changing leaves.

But when I close my eyes, I can almost see the leaves as I think they should be. And in my imagination, they are invariably brighter and more beautiful than they ever really are. Maybe I've watched too much television. Or maybe I stayed out of of the Midwest too long. I thought that maybe moving back to the Big Empty would unearth something in me; that small town boy, the one I also remember with probably too much revision and creativity. Over the years through the different places I've lived, I have always identified myself as a small town boy. I suppose the problem is that when a small town boy becomes a man somewhere else, those things that really made him a small town boy disappear.

These are things I mull over, trying to get the idea out of my head that I should walk across the street and tell the neighbors to pay more attention to their dog when they let it out. It's a chow mix; one of those hairy little snarky ankle biting bitches. That it's a tiny mop of a dog isn't the most annoying part. No, the most annoying part is that the people who's dog it is have a fenced in back yard and they don't let the dog shit there because they don't want to have to clean it up. Even if I did walk over there and thank them for the mess their useless little dog left me this morning, nothing would change. I'm already the neighborhood oddball because I don't obsess over manicuring my lawn and because I'm not a Bears fan. Being the neighborhood freak puts me in the running for town rube. There's already a couple of town drunks, a few trailer park whores, and the dog catcher ahead of me. But the drunks work, the whores perform a necessary, albeit frowned upon, public service, and the dog catcher grew up here. I'm a freak AND an outsider.

And that means, among other things, that when people's ill-mannered dogs get into my trash on an early Tuesday morning, my only option is to clean it up and say nothing. Because even though other people's trash has been similarly attacked in the past, they get around it by not putting it on the curb until after the dog has done it's business.

I suppose I should forgive the people their little snarky dog. They're from Ohio, originally. I know that because we've gotten their mail in our box by mistake before. But they're from Wooster, which might as well be in a different state. And while I remember being told about the divinity of forgiveness, I'm fairly certain that nowhere in the bible does it say I have to forgive people for not wanting to clean up after their pets. Although from what I hear at the bar in town sometimes, everything is in the bible, in spite of the fact that I don't remember it being there. One of the bartenders will, whenever the discussion borders on politics, say that all the troubles we're having are “in the bible.” I like the bartender well enough, so I haven't bothered to inquire as to her meaning, or ask her to prove it. I know how that'll work out, anyway. I'll be godless AND a freak AND most likely a communist … because here, they're all the same thing. Plus there will be the added bonus of wearing out my welcome at the only bar in town I can tolerate.

Maude keeps trying to tell me I need to be nice. “If people knew how you really were,” she tells me, “maybe you'd make some friends.”

“If people knew how I REALLY was,” I tell her, “they'd run me out of town on a rail. I'm sure they still do that here.”

I wonder sometimes if she wants me to act How I Really Am or How She Would Prefer Me to Be. That's probably unfair, I know. Sometimes she reminds me of how I wasn't always so bitter. That's what she calls it. Bitter. When my general demeanor gets in the way, I'm bitter. When it's funny, or poignant, she says I'm turning into a Cranky Old Man. She smiles when she says that.

Nice doesn't seem to fit into things, though. Nice gets you a smile and a handshake not much else. Nice is the trait bullies look for when they want someone to beat the shit out of. Nice. I was told once that I act like an ass because I'm overcompensating. Because down deep I'm really insecure. Well no shit. Everybody overcompensates for something. Everybody has some thing about them they don't like. Maude overcompensates for her deeply anti-social feelings by being nice to everyone. We're more alike behind closed doors than most people would think. I'm a little nicer. She's a little meaner. We share a bitter disappointment in the human race, and we both laugh about it on a regular basis. The difference is that I don't mind voicing my disappointment for everyone to hear. But I also know that she'll get where I am eventually. I used to try and be nice. But the world wears you down. 

Everything about it wears you down until all that remains are those honest feelings and true thoughts that don't go away, that stay with you. The ideas that dance behind your eyes when you're busy mediating your way through another day, the ones that give you solace and feed your darkest revenge fantasies. I went to a counselor once at the urging of my family because they thought I was too depressed. I told the counselor that I had violent fantasies, that I used to imagine myself ripping someone's throat out. I described the sound I thought the esophagus made as it tore free... like hundreds of suction cups being ripped off hundreds of windows. A pleasantly gory series of syncopated pops. The shrink asked who I pictured in these fantasies. I told him I was imagining him at that very moment.

He offered to medicate me. I told him to go fuck himself. My anger and depression may annoy the shit out of everyone around me. But at least they're mine, goddammit.  

Excerpt from Novel Mss: Eau De Garbage

Randall caught me on my fifth and final trip to the dumpster; the bags were filled to capacity and with every step I worried that one of them would split and dump everything in the alley.


“Hole-ee shiit!” he gawked. “Is hell freezin’ over?”

“Nope.” I heaved one of the bags into the dumpster. The plastic lid came slamming down and I was punched in the face with a breeze that stank of old garbage, warm beer, and melted plastic.

“You get evicted?”

“Nope.” I opened the lid to heave my last and heaviest bag into the dumpster. Randall, in an act of misdirected kindness, held the lid for me. “Thanks.”

“Lynda coming back?”

“You’re funny.” I dropped the bag in and managed to move before Randall let the lid drop, narrowly avoiding another blast of Eua De Garbage.

“Whatever the reason,” he said, “it’s about fuckin’ time. Your place was turnin’ into a fuckin’ sty.”

“You’d know. I hear they let the pigs roam the streets like child molesters in Georgia.”

Randall didn’t like when I made fun of Georgia, his accent, or the South in general. He wasn’t one of those “The South Shall Rise Again!” mother fuckers; but he was often critical of movements to stop flying the Southern Cross over government building. I didn’t make fun of it often because watching him get pissed stopped being fun. But he had to go and mention Lynda.

He must’ve realized his faux paus because he raised his hands to declare a truce. “I tried callin’ you,” he said. “You know what TODAY is, right?”

“Should I?”

“It’s THURSDAY, son!”

“’Kay.”

He shook his head at me and smiled. “It’s THIRSTY THURSDAY. Come on, let’s go.”

“Where?”

“The bar, jackass.”

“You need a reason to drink? Besides, weren’t you just there?”

He shook his head at me, disapproving. “It’s got nothin’ to do with it BEIN’ Thursday. It’s… IN SPITE of it bein’ Thursday. So come on.”

“Is Eunice running specials? Trying to get that TGIT crowd?”

“Shiit.” He spat on the broken parking lot cement. “You’d think you were AGAINST drinking all of a sudden. S’got nothin’ to do with Eunice; she’s not even working today. It’s not that. It’s just a THING, okay? Come on. Everybody’s there.”

“Who?”

“Quit bein’ such an old woman and come on. “Everybody. Steve, Paul, Chris. The important people. So COME ON already. I don’t put out this much effort to get laid.”

I went inside and washed up a little to get the garbage smell off of me. The kitchen looked better, even if the stench still lingered. I supposed I could’ve opened the windows, but that would’ve meant opening the curtains and letting all the people who complained about me see just how decayed my little world had become. Besides, Marie Rubio might stop by, and even though she had a key, she couldn’t enter without good reason. Granted – she was trying to get rid of me, and that might give her the probably cause she needed; but I doubted it. She thought very little of me at that point, but she still wasn’t sure how I’d react. Besides, she was the kind who’d follow the letter of the law and give me enough rope to hang myself. That, at least, bought me a little time.

When we got to the bar, the music was loud with a thumping bass beat; I looked behind the bar and there was Eunice, in all of her blonde bleached, tan sprayed and stretched glory. It was actually Lindsay’s night to work, and she was pouring drinks for some regulars; Eunice was behind the bar mixing free shots for her posse of users, abusers, and hangers on. She exemplified the rule that governed the universe: the person with the best stuff runs everything. And though she’d lost her stuff physically a long time ago and had gone the route of the saggy and haggy club druggie, Eunice still had the hook up for good drugs, free shots, event tickets and swag, and for forcing naïve young waitresses with nice bodies into perpetual sexual servitude. The only real difference between Eunice and a pimp was that Eunice didn’t take a cut from each girl; she took their souls instead, and used them to keep herself going a little longer. And when the girls got too coked out, dried out, or got knocked up, she kicked them to the curb like an unwanted cat.

I looked over at Randall, who was flashing his shit-eating grin. “I thought you said she wasn’t working.” I had to pretty much yell over the lousy music.

He laughed and yelled back. “I lied.”

“Great. You know that bitch doesn’t like me.”

“So what? Who cares? Lindsay is working and wearing a low cut shirt. Who gives a fuck about ol’ Sag Bags?”

To answer him would have required me to yell again; besides, my throat was dry and I was already there anyway. Might as well drink and hope somebody would change the music. When I sat down at the bar between Chris and Hugh, who was one of Eunice’s, Lindsay saw me and poured me a beer. Darling girl, that one. And while I didn’t like Randall’s hyper-piggishness, he at least had taste in women. I waved at Lindsay when she placed the cold beer. She smiled a short smile and went back to work.

Chris was staring into his beer and Randall was on the other side of him trying to talk Paul and Steve into going in on a horse. I looked over at Hugh. He was drinking his usual Rum and Coke and laughing at whatever it was Eunice had just said. Hugh was an older guy – maybe his late 50’s – and besides buying and frequently sharing Eunice’s medium grade cocaine, he was also fucking Emma, a former waitress turned arm candy. Emma wasn’t my kind of girl. Nice enough body, and the high strong cheekbones and dark eyes that betrayed her Mexican heritage; but she had this huge beak of a nose, and you could just tell by looking at her that the years wouldn’t be kind to her. She was the kind who peaked early, maybe in her teens, and had learned to get through the world on her tits and the occasional backseat hand job. But that can only carry a girl – even a pretty one—so far, and she had begun realizing it. So, she latched on to a grateful old man who liked fucking girls the same age as his daughters and was just riding the slow slope down, waiting for her looks to give out before she “accidentally” got knocked up. I didn’t like her, but Chris did. When she worked there as a waitress, he made special trips during her weekend shift just to see her. Chris was a friendly guy; the women liked him, but he never pressed the advantage. As far as I could tell Chris was one of the few noble men left in the world; he wouldn’t turn something down if she dropped in his lap, but he didn’t hound after pussy like Randall, and he didn’t play wingman like Steve and Paul did. Except for the horses and his fondness of beer and Mexican food, Chris had no vices. Except Emma.

I let Chris stew over his beer and focused on Hugh, the lecher. Hugh reminded of a stock character in a black and white noir movie; everything he did was predictable. Hugh always told the same stories, always cracked the same jokes, and never deviated from the script. His latest string of jokes, which I was certain he’d heard from somebody else, were about Michael Jackson. As a matter of fact, most of his jokes focused on child molesting and that form of lukewarm racism that lingered deep in backwater red states like Arizona. He was one of those guys who’d look around and check the demographic layout of the bar before he muttered the word “nigger” or “spick”, but as time wore on and the drinks and nose candy got to him, he cared less and less. Randall wasn’t much better; but at least he didn’t bother to act ashamed of his ignorance. The only thing that probably made Hugh attractive to Emma was the fact that Hugh, besides having a taste for acting thirty or forty years younger than he was, also had a lot of money. She tolerated his stupid jokes and inane stories, and even managed to push out a forced giggle when he called out “Where’s my Spick Princess?” when he couldn’t find her. Which meant, as far as I was concerned, that they deserved one another.

He looked like he was about to put out the arm candy mating call when she appeared and latched onto his arm. Chris looked over, but didn’t say anything. He barely seemed to notice me. It wasn’t fair. Granted, I figured Emma for a manipulator; but what the hell? Don’t people deserve a little happiness?

“So how’s it going, Hugh?”

He looked up and smiled to return the greeting; right when he did, I sniffed and rubbed my nose. It was a casual movement; Hugh didn’t seem to notice, but he sniffed and rubbed his nose, too, like a subconscious response. I could tell by his eyes that he’d probably already been to the back room with Eunice and had done a few lines.

“Fine, fine,” he said like he was trying to remember my name. I didn’t help him. “Hey, did you hear about Michael Jackson? When they went through his room they found a thousand pairs of little boys’ tightey whiteys.”

“Oh yeah?” I sniffed and rubbed my nose again. So did he. This time, he blinked and stopped for a second.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, yeah.” He took a drink and I took the opportunity to sniff and rub my nose again.

“Yeah,” he sniffed and rubbed his nose again and looked around like he was nervous. “Yeah… he ah… apparently he used them as air fresheners.”

I sniffed and rubbed my nose. That time sent him off his stool, walking quickly to the restroom to check himself in the mirror. Too easy.

The minute he left Emma’s face went to stone and she stared off into the distance. I elbowed Chris break him out of deep meditation. He looked up at me like he hadn’t seen me the entire time. I nodded over at Emma. He smiled.

“Hey there girl,” he said. “What’re you doing staring off into the distance? How the hell have you been?”

She turned towards him and smiled. Then she breezed by me and hugged him the way girls hug old men and paraplegics. What the hell? It was something. They chatted it for a while and Chris seemed to instantly reanimate.

Meanwhile, Eunice was pouring another round of some pink colored shot for her crew and she set one for Emma right between me and Chris without so much as a hint of a hello or a recognition of our existence. Then she took her shot and walked out from behind the bar, heading for the back office. On her way there she ran into Hugh, who, after a few words, went with her to the back office. I looked over at Chris and Emma. They were chatting it up and Emma was leaning on him and laughing… just letting her boobs brush up against his arm. Poor, poor bastard.