okay....so i hear change is good. unless it's my local wrap place who got rid of my blackened chicken wrap...then change can eat shit. anyway...thought i'd post a short story today. it's actually a piece of a novel (not the one i'm working on) and involves a younger version of the character from my novel,
The Librarian, one Randall Epicurus Wyndham. The story is pretty raw and will probably be revised. For this who read it, thank you. For those waiting on the poems...they'll be back tomorrow....but the Blackened chicken wrap? That shit is gone forever.
Communion Party
In May I went with Jenny’s family
to Chicago for her nephew's first communion. Things were about average between
us. She being my first real relationship I didn’t have any kind of gauge as to
what average meant. We hung around together. There were trips to the mall.
Chain restaurants. Bad television shows and movies. We had sex. It was vanilla
missionary sex, but to a guy who’d been a virgin a mere month before I couldn’t
complain. Vanilla sex beat jacking off. We didn’t have much of value to say,
which I thought could be a problem down the line. Jenny told me she loved me
all the time. I told her I loved her too. I assumed that’s what couples did. I love you. No, I love you. Back then I thought people loved being in love.
I didn’t really
have much to say to Jenny anyway. Talking always lead to me saying something about
one of her ex-boyfriends. I was jealous of them. Something about going where
other men had gone before made losing my cherry to Jenny a bit anti-climactic.
I especially hated this one named Leif.
What kind of a name was Leif? It was the name of some thirty-one year
old dude who spent the previous summer fucking my eighteen year old
soon-to-be-girlfriend. That was who Leif was. Leif who was so smart. Leif who
was so mature with his investor job. Leif who had a big house in the posh North
Hills, who had a gym membership and a new car. Yeah Jenny? But could Leif read
James Joyce and get him? No. Because
he was a money-making philistine.
“Mom,
I want my music,” Jenny said. We were in
the backseat. I was trying to read an
Ann Charters biography on Jack Kerouac in lieu of having to talk to anyone, but
it was getting dark out. Jenny was pissed that I was reading. She had a subtle
hatred for knowledge that was only beginning to express itself. She looked at
books that I was reading the way a jealous woman counted the competition. Books
were her Leif. So she kept kicking
her legs like a petulant child.
“Mommmmmmmmmmm.”
Mrs.
Pellegrino sighed. The gray mop of her
hair rumbled. I tried feeling bad for
her. I couldn’t imagine having an adult
daughter who needed her music played like a child. Jenny still had stuffed
animals and Disney shit on her bedroom wall.
It was strange having sex with a stuffed Donald Duck looking at you, but
I did my best. “I heard you.”
“Now.”
“Your
father is listening to the baseball game.”
“But
mommmmmmm,” Jenny said. There was some
whispering from the front seat. Then it
was bye-bye ballgame, hello Stone Temple Pilots. Jenny didn’t even say thanks.
We listened to Stone
Temple Pilots. The band was going to give me an aneurysm. “Rand, how are you
even reading that book?” Jenny said. “It’s dark.”
“Focus, babe. Focus.”
Mr. Pellegrino
laughed. He drove the car and looked
like he missed the comfort of his home and the blue light of the TV. I hoped
for his sake that Jenny's sister had a TV.
I’d been dating Jenny for a few months, but her old man and I hardly
spoke. I always thought about the bad things I wanted to do to Jenny when he
and I spoke. Like when Mr. Pellegrino tried talking to me about hockey I
couldn’t help but think about the first time I tried licking Jenny’s asshole. I
wanted to tell Mr. Pellegrino that his daughter had no imagination in bed. Instead I told him that the Flyers were going
to take it all this year. His daughter’s lack of kink was my problem, not his.
I wondered if Jenny had been kinky with Leif?
“You’re going to
miss all of the scenery,” Jenny said.
“It’s an
Interstate,” I said. “It exists to kill
scenery.”
“Gee, aren’t you a
downer.”
“Don’t blame me.
Blame Eisenhower.” More laugher from Mr. Pellegrino.
“Mommmmm, turn the
music up.”
Mrs. Pellegrino
did as told. There was no point in my
reading with STP going full throttle. I
shut the book. I could hear a satisfied sigh come from the front seat. I was
certain Mrs. Pellegrino was smiling. I knew she didn’t like me much. Before me,
Jenny had been going to Saturday night mass almost religiously. Even Leif was a
Eucharistic minister even though he was fucking chicks barely overage. Maybe
that’s what Jesus would’ve wanted. Didn’t he hang out with hookers? But after
my heathen ass showed up Jenny abstained from the good word as well. I’d caused
a rift. Instead of Jenny doing the act of contrition and hallelujah, she was
crying Oh God, Oh God, while I ate her out in her bedroom, underneath photos of
ex-boyfriends who’d happily taken communion before
taking a piece of her ass.
“I told you my
sister is a slut, right?” Jenny said, apropos of nothing.
“Jenny,” Mrs. Pellegrino
said.
“Well, she is.” Jenny
turned to me. “She dresses like a slut.”
“I like sluts,” I
said. Which was true, unless I happened to be dating one. Sluts just never
liked me.
“I’m not a slut
and you love me.”
“I have a voracious
appetite for each and all.” Mr. Pellegrino laughed again. Maybe I could
talk to him about his daughter’s lack of kink, or ask him how to man-up when
you knew your girl had been with an older dude.
“Jenny, stop
calling your sister a slut,” Mrs. Pellegrino said.
“A spade is a
spade, mom.”
“Now you’re just
being racist,” I said.
I didn’t care what
Jenny’s sister was. If she was a slut,
fine, more flesh for me. I was just
excited to see Chicago. Illinois was the furthest west I'd ever been. It was a
pathetic statistic considering all the Kerouac I had been ingesting for two
years. I talked a good game about going west. San Francisco. Seattle. Take the
summer and go. It never amounted to anything. I just stayed at my job working the
circulation desk at the library, and then hung around nights at the Eat’n’Park
trying to pick up girls like Jenny.
“Can I sleep on
you?” Jenny said.
“How can you sleep
with all of this so-called music?” I said.
“I’ll make you a
fan yet.” Then Jenny laid on me anyway.
I watched the glorious Eisenhower landscape disappear into the black of
night. McDonald’s arches glowed in the distance like fat, happy stars.
Eventually Mr. Pellegrino turned the STP off, and found a west coast game.
Hours later that city
showed in the distance, beyond the sulfuric stench of Gary, Indiana. Oh how it
glowed majestically. Chicago. The Sears Tower combed the early morning sky. Lake
Michigan curled against the waterfront. I was anxious to get into the mix of
it. I wondered when we were. Where would we be staying? The North Side? But the
Pellegrino car rolled by the city like it was a roadside attraction. Soon the
whole metropolis was nearly gone. It was nothing but a faded gray shape against
the flat Midwestern landscape.
Jenny woke
up. She rubbed her eyes and yawned in my
face. Christ, her breath. “Morning.”
“We passed
Chicago,” I said.
“Well, we’re not
going to Chicago proper.”
“You told me we
were going to Chicago. Chicago was the reason I came on this trip. It was the
reason I fought with my alcoholic, anorexic boss for this weekend off. Without
Chicago this trip is worthless to me. It’s a weekend lost. One I could’ve used
making money for rent and those Tom Hanks movies and Mexican food dinners you
like.”
“Well, Charlene
lives in the suburbs,” Jenny said. “What can I tell you, Rand? I mean who’d want to go to Chicago anyway? It’s
dirty.”
Yeah. Like fucking
older dudes? Like licking asshole, right Jenny?
We
ended up in the suburbs. There I was in the goddamned suburbs where it looked
like we hadn't traveled at all. There were white houses and picket fences and
little bastard kids on bicycles galore. I hated it. I loathed the suburbs anew.
America was one vast and ugly suburb connected by long, gray spools of Interstate.
I may have lived in a shithole studio in the Bloomfield section of Pittsburgh,
but at least it was the city. At least those pink lights at night were
mine.
Jenny got out of the
car and looked with wonder. Those white homes were exactly what she and her
mother were always yapping about. They were status. They were what good, church-going
people strove for. They were monuments to the type of success the Leifs on the
world were hell bent on achieving. I could feel Jenny looking at me. I could
tell her mind was moving. She was wondering what it would take to get me locked
behind the walls in a joint like that. It would take my soul, Jenny. It would
take my goddamned heart and soul to end up a prisoner in some suburban
concentration camp. I looked back at her. Jenny smiled. I didn’t. Keep
dreaming, I thought.
The
niece and nephew stormed out of the house. Little Sarah and Joey. The girl was
blonde and about as pale as a kid could get. The boy looked Mexican. Jenny claimed
they had the same old man. She wasn’t sure why he split on her sister. Seeing
the difference between the two kids I had my reasons as to why he left. Maybe Jenny
was blind. Only a few weeks before, we were looking at her old family photos. Mr.
Pellegrino was practically bald in the pictures. Now he had a full head of black hair. Jenny
couldn’t understand how this had happened. When I suggested he was wearing a
piece she shoved the pictures back in the box. Then she pouted. And I drove back to the city sexless that
night, thinking about her old man’s hair and ways to murder Leif.
“Jewn-nee,”
Joey said.
“Gwam-my
and Gwamps,” Sarah said.
Both kids needed a
speech therapist. Pronto. They hugged their grandparents and then they squeezed
and clasped on to Jenny. Then the two attacked me at the waist. They were flesh
and blood repellents.
“Isn’t that cute,”
Jenny said.
“Cute is a word,”
I said while trying to keep the kids from cutting off the circulation to my
family jewels.
“What if we have
one, one day?”
I thought about
all of my school notebooks. The ones Jenny had scrawled on. Her name with my
last name affixed to it; the names of two random, unmade children who had my
name as well. “I’d rather have anal cancer.”
Then Jenny’s
brother Dave and his girlfriend Melody came out of the house. They'd just gotten
there and looked stoned. Melody was a pretty chick. She had straight brown hair
that came to her shoulders, and a permanent tan. She wore sandals. I usually
wasn’t attracted to hippie chicks, but I couldn't help wonder what this Melody
might be like in bed. I was sure she
liked her ass licked. Maybe she liked to lick ass. Oh Dave, you lucky fucker. He
looked like Mr. Pellegrino before the hairpiece. But Melody was no match for Jenny's
sister, Charlene.
Holy Christ. I
almost fell over when she came outside to greet us. Jenny wasn’t lying. Charlene was slut from top to bottom. But she
was a good- looking woman. She was gothically erotic, if gothically is even a
word. She had long jet-black hair and a pale face with these wide, rich eyes to
match wide, rich hips. Charlene looked like a vampire, a mistress of the
suburban night. She wore a red halter-top that matched the color of her
lipstick. She had on jeans that hung low, almost to her ass crack. When she
hugged me I got insta-boner. Leif might’ve liked them young, but I’d been a
world class MILF lover since I’d first bust a nut over a sitcom mom whose name
I will not mention.
“Where’d you find
this one?” she asked Jenny. Charlene cocked an eyebrow and then winked. Had she
felt me?
“This is Rand,” Jenny
said. She glared at me. I looked down at my crotch. Jenny did too.
“That’s a strong
name.”
“It’s an
Australian penal colony name,” I said.
“Really?” Charlene
said.
I stared at her tits.
“I have no fucking clue.”
It was best for
all that we went inside before I busted a nut out of sheer force of will. Charlene
introduced us to her new boyfriend Chuck. A chill went through the room. Jenny
and her folks had never mentioned a Chuck. I was no psychic but I had a
suspicion that they didn’t know about him. Mr. Pellegrino still had that same
blank face that he always had, but Mrs. Pellegrino looked pissed. She looked at
Chuck like she looked at me on Saturday nights, when I came over to fuck her
daughter instead of going with them to church. We were both walking pieces of
garbage in her eyes.
“Slut,”
Jenny whispered. She was still going on about her hot-ass sister. I didn’t
understand it. Jenny and Charlene had a decade between them. There had to have
been no competition growing up. Plus, knowing the vast history of Jenny’s men
I’d say she’d done all right for herself. At the very least she’d bagged Leif. She’d
at least never been too lonely.
“Chuck. Chuck,” Charlene said, to get her man out of
his chair.
But Chuck wasn’t
budging. He was drinking beer and
watching the Cubbies. He was in his own paradise. He looked like a suburban lay
about with his head of shaggy black hair that hadn’t been combed in weeks. Chuck
had a big caterpillar moustache. I couldn't believe he was able to pull a woman
like Charlene. I would’ve imagined her getting ahold of her own sugar daddy.
Some silver haired benevolent old fuck who flung the money around as long as he
was getting head. I wanted to find out what Chuck’s secret was. It was probably
confidence. It always came down to confidence when money wasn’t involved.
“You want a beer,
kid?” Chuck said to me.
“Rand is only
twenty,” Jenny said.
“Just in dog
years,” I said. “I’ll take one.”
“Help yourself.” Chuck
tilted his head toward the kitchen.
I went in to get a
beer. Jenny cock-blocked the fridge. “What are you doing?” she said.
“Getting a beer,”
I said. “Drinking with Chuck.”
“We don’t know Chuck.”
“He’s Charlene’s
beau.” I went for that beer again. Cock-blocked.
“You can’t drink
in front of my parents.”
“Tell them to
avert their eyes,” I said. “Have your
mom pray for me.”
“Rand.”
“It’s a party,
kid. Lighten up.” I felt cool using Chuck’s lingo. I opened the fridge door
when Jenny finally moved out of the way. Chuck had the fucker packed with more
aluminum than a set of low income row houses. I grabbed a tall can of Colorado
piss water, cracked the top, and let go. I felt better almost instantly. Maybe
I’d become an alcoholic. Drunks seemed like they had it all figured out. “You
want?”
“Um, I’ll have a
soda,” Jenny said.
“Help yourself,” I
said. I titled my head toward the fridge Chuck-style.
I went back into the
living room with two beers. One for me and another for Chuck. He was where I
left him, watching the good ol’ Cubs. Mr. Pellegrino watched too. He looked relieved
to see a TV set. He didn't seem to care either way about Chuck.
Every time
Charlene walked by Chuck looked at her ravenously. He looked like he wanted to
tear her flesh from the bone. I saw him do the same to Melody. The man was a
world class pussy hound. He had to know how good he had it being surrounded by
these women. Dudes who typically looked
like Chuck hadn’t had ass since people burned Bee Gees records. He raised his
head and nodded at me when Jenny bent over to play Legos with Joey. It was like
Chuck was sculpting her ass with his mind. I felt like a proud father.
“Hey kid,” he
said. Chuck tilted his head toward Mrs. Pellegrino. She was sitting in the far
corner of the dining room. She looked displeased as usual. “How in the hell do
you think that made those two sexy
girls?”
“I try not to focus
on science, Chuck,” I said. But looking at the gray, frumpy lump of Mrs. Pellegrino
I often wondered the same thing.
“Fuck science.”
“I think Carl
Sagan said that.”
“Well, fuck him
too.” Chuck laughed.
“What kind of work
you in?” I said, because I felt like being the typical American dickhead who
asked people what they did for a living.
“Trucking.” Chuck
took down the rest of his beer in a gulp. He cracked the one I brought him and
killed half of that. When he burped Mrs. Pellegrino gasped, but little Sarah
and Joey laughed. “What’re you? College?”
“Aries actually.”
“You should do
trucking.”
“I thought about
getting into trucking. I figured it be a good gateway drug for amphetamines.”
“Yeah.” Chuck
killed the rest of his beer. “Speed is fucking cool.” Then Charlene sauntered
by with that ass of hers. Chuck scratched his belly and burped. Charlene looked
back and winked. “Excuse me, kid,” he said. Then they both went up the stairs. They
didn't come back for some time. Chuck was one lucky fucker.
“Can
you even believe this?” Jenny said later. We were in a spare bedroom that we
were going to share with Dave and Melody. We were putting away our things while
I imagined a night of Melody tossing and turning in her underwear.
“No
I can’t,” I said. “Melody and Dave got the bigger bed.”
“Stop
trying to be funny, Rand. No one here
thinks you’re funny.”
“Sorry, kid.”
“And
stop talking like him.”
“Chuck
seems okay,” I said. “I’m sure he’s only abusive when drunk. And probably only verbally.”
“Anyone who gives you beer is going to be okay. He’s so
gross. He’s just the type my sister ends up with.”
“Not
everyone can pull thirty one year old investment bankers.”
“Don’t
be rude,” Jenny said.
“You’re the one
who called her a slut.” I pictured Chuck and Charlene. I pictured them going
upstairs so that he could molest her with his moustache. Chuck looked like an
ass man. A doggystyle aficionado. Or he lay on his back and had the woman do
the work. It still didn't make sense though. “Chuck defies science. Biology
specifically.”
“What’s with you
and science today. Carl Sagan?”
“Chuck
digs science,” I said.
“I saw the way
that creep looked at me and Melody.
”
“He’s
a man of good taste.”
“He
hasn’t worked in six months.”
“Wow,”
I said. “How’d he pull that off?”
“He
found my whore sister,” Jenny said.
“She
doesn’t seem like a whore either,” I said.
“Oh
get off it. I suppose if I wore halter-tops and showed my ass, you'd defend me
more, too.”
“If I wasn’t
dating you I would.”
“You heard them up
here, right?”
“Was kind of hard
not to,” I said. “That Chuck needs to find his inside voice, and find it fast,
before your mom has an aneurysm.”
“Forget
I said anything,” Jenny said. “Just keep making a joke of everything.”
She unpacked her
clothes and opened a drawer to put them in. The drawer was already filled with
Melody's clothes. Jenny pulled out one of Melody's rolled joints, and a pair of
her black, lace thongs. She made a face. Jenny held the joint like she was
holding a turd. The sight of those thongs was a momentary ray of light. Like
golden arches on interstates. I was facing a tough weekend: Melody and
Charlene.
“You
should probably put those away,” I said.
Jenny
looked at Melody's thongs. “This whole drawer already smells like
marijuana.” She put the thong and the joint
back in Melody's drawer. Then Jenny put her clothes back in the bag and came
over to give me a hug. “Rand, even though Chuck is horrid I'm so glad we have
this weekend here. Mom said maybe on Sunday we'll go into the city. Would you
like to see dirty Chicago firsthand?”
“I already told
you Chicago is my raison d’etre this weekend,” I said. Jenny kissed me. She made for a quick one. But I kept it
going. “But why don’t we have a little bit of our own fun?”
She looked toward
the empty hallway. “I don’t know.”
“You know I have a
good inside voice.”
I kissed Jenny
again. I started angling her toward the bed. Dave and Melody’s bed. I had a
hand on her ass, and the other was already heading inside the front of her
shorts. Yet it always seemed awkward to me when we started; like I imagined
other boys and men doing this to Jenny. I was sure they did it better. I
imagined Leif with his hands down her pants. I was probably the reason Jenny
wasn’t kinkier. Me and my fumbling hands. Christ. I sometimes wished that she
hadn’t been my first.
“Excuse me, kids.”
I pulled my hand out of Jenny’s pants. Chuck was in the doorway. His smirk made the caterpillar moustache
wiggle sideways. “I got the grill on and burgers frying,” he said. “Just
letting you lovebirds know.” He left the doorway for a second but came back. “Do
you like whiskey, kid?”
“More
than my own mother, Chuck,” I said.
“Fuckin-a. I got a
bottle of Jack downstairs, and I've been looking for a guy to drink some
whiskey with.” Chuck smiled. He winked at Jenny. Then he left.
“Don't you dare
continue to make friends with that pig,” Jenny said.
“I’ve
made friends with worse.”
“Don’t
be too surprised if Chuck is gone the next time we come here. I'm just saying.
Don’t go making best friends because he might not be here when you come back.”
Neither might I, I
thought. “It’s just whiskey. It’s just
hanging out and having some fun.”
“Right,” she said. “Fun.”
Then Jenny left
the room too, and I was alone with my thoughts of inferiority and the contents
of Melody's underwear drawer.
Charlene and Chuck
put on a big char-grilled feast of dead animal for everyone. There were tons
and tons of side dishes too. It looked delicious after a day of drinking beer. Chuck
brought out the Jack Daniels. He made me drinks, mixing the whiskey with Coke.
They were good. They went down smooth and sweet. I kept drinking them until Jenny,
her family, Chuck, Melody, my sexual malaise, and the whole Chicago suburb grew
nice and blurry. Being drunk felt magical. Straights couldn’t understand this.
I was totally going to become some kind of drunk.
I was in a good
place. I was trying to have a good time. Chuck was my co-pilot on the flight to
boozy bliss. Jenny hated me for it. Her eyes burned through me. She looked on
murderously when Chuck sat Charlene on his lap, and began playfully slapping at
her supple hips. Jenny thought everything had to be modest and decent and last
forever. That’s why she had a corkboard full of pictures of ex-boyfriends who’d
burned her. They were still her friends. Yeah right. That’s why she let some
Eucharistic minister put his head between her legs. I wanted to take a whack at
Charlene’s hips too. But I didn’t dare even look.
Chuck made me
another whiskey and Coke. “For the college boy,” he said. He was starting to
slur his words.
“I am in college,”
I said. “That’s absolutely, one-hundred
percent fucking true, Chuck.”
“Rand,” Mrs.
Pellegrino said. “Language.”
“What’s so great
about college?” He was addressing the audience. I was in college. Jenny was
doing to communications thing at community college. Melody and her hot hippy
ass were in college. Psyche major. Dave was in college. He was doing engineering,
just like his old man. A couch and all-day sports watching awaited him down the
line.
“Freedom?” Melody
said.
“I got freedom
right here,” Chuck said. He slapped Charlene on her hips again and she giggled
and burped. Mrs. Pellegrino sighed. At least Chuck hadn’t told us that freedom
isn’t fucking free. “College is debt.”
“Well, my parents
are paying for mine,” Melody said. Dumb
answer. Chuck scoffed and then his lips sort of fell into his booze glass. Poor
Melody blushed. She turned a fine pink.
“Mommy and daddy
paying for you too, college boy?”
“I’ll be in debt
until I’m sixty,” I said.
“Owned
like a good little corporate soldier.”
“Chuck,
sounds like you’re an expert on everything,” Jenny said.
“I
know enough little girl,” he said. He had another sloppy sip on his drink. Then
he pulled Charlene close for another feel, another laugh. That’s when the crash
came. The crying. Little Sarah running
into the backyard holding her wrist. “What happened?”
“Joey
hit me,” she said.
Charlene
got up off of Chuck’s lap. She set her drink on the picnic table. It wobbled a
bit. She wobbled a bit. Charlene bent
down to check her daughter’s wrist. “There’s nothing there, honey.”
Then
came another crash. “The fuck?” Chuck said.
He got up off his
lawn chair and placed his drink next to Charlene’s. Then he was inside the
house in a drunken heat. I could hear murmurs at first. Then shouting. Chuck’s
voice. It mingled with Joey’s whimpers and then his tears. Jenny, her mother,
Melody, and even Dave all exchanged awkward glances. Mr. Pellegrino was
oblivious because the Sox game was now on, on a small color TV outside on the
deck. I kept my eyes to myself. I didn’t want to be involved. It wasn’t my place. I was just the boyfriend,
and a shitty one at that.
Chuck came back
out on the deck. Joey was still crying in the house. “He got into the goddamned
communion cake. Smeared the holy cracker and everything.”
“It’s a host,”
Mrs. Pellegrino said.
“Yeah…well…the
moron should know better.”
“Chuck,” Charlene
said. She stood up from her daughter and
went to tend to her son.
“What?” He sat back down on his lawn chair like the
king of the castle. The man didn’t even notice the glares. Goddamned enemy of
the state and Chuck sat there like a prince sipping on his Jack and Cokes. “You
know how kids are.”
That
was when Mrs. Pellegrino got up to join her daughter.
“I
know they say the darndest things,” I said. I wasn’t so sure I wanted Chuck as
my co-pilot anymore.
“Well,
they’re rowdy. They get a little nuts. Especially boys.”
“Do
tell,” Jenny said.
“They
just need a guiding hand,” Chuck said. He had another big pull on his drink
while he looked at both sides of his open right hand. “Joey is mostly good. What
am I telling you guys for? You all know that. It’s just that boys need men
around.”
“Otherwise
cakes would get smeared,” I said. “And Americans are funny about cakes.”
Then
Charlene and Mrs. Pellegrino were back with both kids in tow. Joey’s eyes were streaked but he had a Batman
figure to play with now. Sarah had a coloring book and she sidled up to the
picnic table to go to town. Charlene went for her drink. She eyed Mrs. Pellegrino
as she sat back down, shaking her head. There’d obviously been words. I was
sure the name Chuck had been bandied about. Mothers and daughters, man. Then
Charlene sat back on Chuck’s lap.
“Crisis
averted,” he said.
“For
now.”
An
hour later, Charlene put the kids to bed. Mr. and Mrs. Pellegrino went inside
the house to watch the TV. The rest of us stayed outside. We had some more
booze, and listened to Chuck tell us college kids what the real world was like.
Even Jenny lightened up. Out of the glare of her mother she let Chuck fix her a
few rum and Cokes. Jenny sat on my lap. We all continued to bullshit. Casually,
she ground her little ass into my crotch. It seemed like a nice night. Jenny
was so friendly I thought I’d get laid later on.
“You
guys wanna spark one?” Dave said. He smiled, raised his big, bushy eyebrows.
“Shit
yeah,” Melody said.
“Daaaaave,”
Jenny said. She whined. If there was one thing Jenny Pellegrino didn’t tolerate
it was marijuana. Marijuana led to delinquency. She’d used ex-boyfriends on me
as warning signs about pot. That just led to me discussing her ex-boyfriends
with my pals as we got high. We all had a lot to say about a guy like Leif.
“You
brought drugs into my house,” Chuck said. He looked dead serious.
“I…”
Dave began.
Chuck
laughed. “I’m just kidding, you puss.” He had more Jack and Coke. Chuck shook
his head. “College kids.”
“You’re
not going to, right?” Jenny whispered to me.
“Well,
I haven’t seen Reefer Madness yet,” I
said. “So I’m not really aware of the pitfalls.”
“Don’t,
Rand.”
“Can’t
you ever have a good time?” I said.
“I
don’t think doing drugs is a good
time,” she said.
“They
define good times.”
“Maybe
we should ask a police officer what he
thinks about drugs.”
“Or
a Eucharistic minister,” I said.
Dave dimmed the
outside lights. He sparked a joint. He took a hit and handed it to Melody. She
took a rich toke. Hippy chicks always knew how to smoke pot. Then Charlene toked
up. She laughed after one hit. She was probably drunk, I thought. Chuck took a
big hit. He followed it by downing the rest of his Jack and Coke. He gave the
joint to me. It was the moment of truth. I sat there holding the joint, looking
at Jenny Pellegrino’s disappointed face. Then I took a nice hard tug on the
joint.
Jenny got right
off my leg. She went and sat alone on a concrete stoop near the backdoor. I was so angry at her for being a child. She
was always a child. Other than her young ass, I mean, what did an older dude she in her? I took another hard toke on the
joint, and then passed it back to Dave. Fuck her, I thought. Fuck having a
girlfriend. Fuck ex-boyfriends. Fuck Leif. I had a library job near the
university and college girls came in all of the time. The summer was coming and
people were loose. Jenny had given me the experience. All I needed was a set of
balls, and I’d have my pick of the litter. The thought felt good. I had Chuck
do a Jack Daniel’s shot with me. The whiskey was warm and comforting. I bummed
a cigarette off of Charlene and the first drag was like coming home.
“You’re an
asshole, Rand Wyndham,” Jenny said. Then she went inside the house to watch TV
with her folks. I looked around the table. Everyone seemed to pity me. They all
understood, even Chuck.
“Women,” he said,
like it was an excuse passed down through generations of frustrated men. I was frustrated
by the whole thing. Women. Relationships. Someone telling you what to do.
Constant disappointment. I was tired of stacking myself up against the past. I
wondered what it was that had made me want a girlfriend so badly in the first
place.
The next morning I
awoke on the floor. My head hurt and so did my chest. It was trapped gas.
Everyone was asleep. Jenny was alone on our bed. Melody and Dave were wrapped
up in each other on the other bed. I lifted my head. It throbbed. I farted to
try and kill the chest pains.
I looked over at
Melody. She was above the covers in a t-shirt and panties, just as I
prophesized it to be. I got hard. I thought about rubbing one out on the floor.
Then the bedroom door creaked opened. It was Charlene. She saw me awake with my
tent pole under the sheet. She smiled
and waved. She was wearing a black see-through kimono. There was nothing on
underneath but a thong.
“I
thought you were all asleep,” Charlene whispered.
“They are,” I whispered back.
Charlene
pointed at the closet. “I just have to get Joey’s communion shoes.”
“You
do as you like.”
Charlene
walked over to the closet. My eyes followed. She opened the door and bent over
to dig through a few boxes. Her ass was on full display. It was just beautiful
white firmness with a small indistinguishable tattoo on her left cheek. Holy
Christ. I had Melody on one side in her panties, and Charlene nearly bare-assed
in the closet. If I were anyone else I would’ve wandered in that closet and
taken my chances. But I wasn’t. I was Rand Wyndham. I was Charlene’s sister’s
henpecked boyfriend, who slept on the floor as a punishment. I was a sexual
novice, jealous of a thirty one year old investment banker who moonlighted with
Jesus on the side. I couldn’t keep up with what Charlene had to offer even if I
wanted to.
Finally she stood
up. She closed the closet door and came right toward me. “Chuck has coffee on
if you’re interested.”
“I
love coffee,” I said. “I’m practically Colombian.”
“So
was Joey’s dad.”
“No
shit.”
“Chuck
made Irish coffee, if you get my drift,” Charlene said.
“I’m
drifting away.”
“I’ll
be in the shower.”
“Cleanliness
is next to Godliness,” I said.
Then
she left the room, giving me one more glimpse of that fine ass. A shower? Was
that a hint to go and get soapy too? Or was Charlene just being informative?
People were mundane to a fault. I shook all over. My head hurt and I wanted to
burst. I was going into a sexual overload. I farted again. Then Jenny lifted
her head off of the pillow and stared at me.
“I
told you she was a slut,” she said.
The
morning was a fucking blur. I nursed a hangover in church while little Joey and
a couple dozen other kids got further indoctrinated into the sick rabbit-hole
that was Catholicism. I hadn’t been in a
church since my mother died. I had no use for the Catholic Church. I put Jesus
up there with Mickey Mouse and Santa Claus. That made me laugh, which made my
head hurt more.
Jenny squeezed my
hand, not in a loving way. It was our first contact of the day, unless you
counted her brushing by me in the hallway, after accusing me of gawking at her
sister. I didn’t gawk so much as leer. Jenny said that was the same thing. I
laughed again. Mrs. Pellegrino shot me a look. She had her rosary beads. She
was in her glory. She was in her place.
I worked to find mine, so I stared murderously at the one young Eucharistic
minister. I was sure Leif was in the phone book. Eventually church ended.
Back at the
homestead, Chuck looked at me, smiled, and shook the Jack Daniels bottle. It
was out of place on a dining room table set with cookies and vegetables and
soda and cold cuts. “Kid, you need a
little something to wash the Jesus out of you?”
“More
than you know,” I said. Chuck grabbed two red, plastic party cups and poured us
both whiskey and Cokes.
“I
really wish you wouldn’t drink in front of my parents,” Jenny said.
“What
mommy and daddy know won’t kill them,” Chuck said.
“They
do know. That’s why I said what I
said.”
“It’s
only a whiskey,” I said. “It’s not like we’re going anywhere.”
“What
if the cops show up?” Jenny said.
“The
cops are going to crash a communion party?”
“There
was a drug den down the block,” Chuck offered.
“Why
am I not surprised that you’d know that,” Jenny said to him.
“You
don’t have to get smart, little girl.”
“I’m
nineteen.”
“Hmmm,”
Chuck said. He said it like he’d just as soon tear into Jenny as he would
Charlene.
“I’m
going to play with the kids.” Jenny poured herself a Coke. Straight. I wondered
what that tasted like. “It would be nice if you came with me, Rand.”
“He’ll
play with them later,” Chuck said. He sucked down half his drink. He poured
some more whiskey in both our cups. “It ain’t like he don’t have the whole
summer to play with them.”
“What’s
that supposed to mean?” Jenny said.
“Surprise.”
Jenny’s
face dropped. She frowned. The girl actually looked like she was going to cry
right there in her sister’s dining room. “I thought they weren’t this year.”
“Weren’t
what?” I asked.
“Where’s
my mother?”
“Kitchen,”
Chuck said. He had that crooked caterpillar smirk going.
Jenny started away
but I grabbed her arm. “Mind telling me what’s going on?”
“Nothing,”
she said. “Just the end of our lives for the summer.”
Then
she stormed away.
I
went out on the back deck with Chuck, the whiskey, a purloined two-liter of Coke,
and a full pack of Camels. The day had turned overcast and a bit breezy. I
didn’t mind. I hated the sun. I hated the heat. I kind of hated all weather. We
held down the fort on the picnic table.
“Don’t worry about
that business with your broad,” Chuck said. He poured us another round. Chuck
had a cooler full of beer. He took ice from it to keep our drinks cold. He also
got us two beers to chase the booze.
“Jenny,”
I said.
“Yeah.
Charlene’s sister.”
“I’m
not worried, Chuck,” I said. I lit a
smoke. “Getting upset is sort of Jenny’s deal.”
“They’re
all fucking nuts. Her sister’s a dingbat too. But damn if she don’t wear a fine
kimono, right?”
I
kept my opinions about the kimono to myself. “You know what she’s mad about?”
Chuck
sighed. “Probably about Sarah and Joey coming to Pittsburgh for the summer.”
“Say
what?”
“Charlene
wasn’t gonna send them this year, but I
talked her into this cruise. So…”
“So
the kids are coming to Pittsburgh,” I said. I shot my drink down. “And staying
right in the room next to Jenny.” Bye-bye sex. Bye-bye almost full-throttle
blowjobs.
“Think
of it as an art project,” Chuck said.
“You
mean like fucking in bathrooms?”
“You
get it where you can.”
“I’m
twenty,” I said.
“Back
seat of a car worked for me at twenty.”
How
in the hell could you just dump your kids off for the summer? And do it more
than once? And who’d be watching these kids now? Probably me and Jenny.
Evenings. Weekends. It would be a summer
of fucking Disney films and runny ice cream cones and crying kids. Of course
with Jenny chances were good the summer would go that way anyway. There’d be no
sex. I had no illusions how close that spare room was to Jenny’s. You could
fart in there and it would sound like someone doing it in your ear. Shit, even
vanilla missionary sex was sex. And I had big plans for the summer. The one
year anniversary of Leif. I was going to make Jenny forget him. At least make
myself forget him. An art project for sure.
“You
look like you need another whiskey, kid,” Chuck said.
“Charlene
ever talk about ex-boyfriends?” I just sort of blurted it out.
“Why
in the hell would she do that? She’s a
grown-ass woman.”
“No
talk about Sarah and Joey’s dad?”
“Which
one?”
“So
they do come from different dads,” I
said.
Chuck
poured us two more. He went heavy on the whiskey and light on the Coke. “That
Joey looks like a little beaner. So tell me what you think, kid?”
“And
she never says anything?”
“Just
that they don’t send any money.” Chuck had a drink. “Why you asking? Is Junie a
talker?”
“Jenny.”
“Whatever.
So she talks up the ex-boyfriends?”
“Somewhat.”
“Give
her a good stuffin’ and she’ll quit moaning about them.”
I
killed my beer. I lit another smoke. “I’ve tried that.”
“Maybe
not enough.” Chuck had some of his drink. He stared off into the distance. I
waited for his advice. I figured Chuck would have some kind of advice. “Charlene
said one of Junie’s exes is a faggot?”
“Que?”
“Better
watch yourself,” he said. That gave him a good laugh.
“I…I
think it’s genetic,” I said.
“Is
that what that scientist Clark Seeger told you?”
I
was surprised he remembered Sagan at all. “Someone like him.”
“Dude
must’ve been really smart.”
“Yeah,”
I said. We drank. From inside the house came the sound of people yelling.
Jenny. Charlene. Mrs. Pellegrino. There was crying too. Joey again. He seemed
to be crier of the pair.
“Well
I guess you need to get used to that sound,” Chuck said. He raised his cup. We
clinked. “To love and misery.”
“Love
and misery.”
We
both killed our drinks.
“And
a summer of freedom for me," Chuck said.
We
were silent a moment.
“Charlene
ever mention a guy named Leif?” I said. “In regards to Jenny.”
Chuck
gave another thoughtful glance into the suburban abyss. “Why? Was that the fag’s
name?”
