I’ve added some to this, and the original wasn’t posted here, so I’ll chunk in the whole thing so far.
Odd, this place I think has changed my writing already.
-m
——-
1
Abundance
Late afternoon, and the sun is angling in to where I sit in my chair. My throne, a rickety wicker piece. Next to me rests a five gallon paint bucket, water, ice, full and empty beers inside. The empties rest there because I’m too lazy to throw them in the trash can five feet away.
That is a blatant lie, shown by the three bottles lying around the can. The truth is I am long past the point of being able to aim.
Four o’clock on a Tuesday and I am drunk, the vicious, hot sweaty sort of drunk that only happens here in the desert. Heat reflects from the near molten street in front of me, the illusion of water in a land with none.
I hate the summer time here, daylight is a curse, only scorpions and cactus belong in this blast furnace. Sleeping is the only way to survive, and the only way to sleep is in drunken stupor. I heave myself to my feet, swaying, sweat dripping off my nose and stumble into the house. I collapse on the couch and close my eyes. Darkness and vertigo swirl up around my brain.
A few hours later the sun has set and I have risen. Sitting in the shower, water drizzling from the under-pressured pipes onto my head. Unexplained tears leak from the corners of my eyes.
Out of the shower I scrub myself with a threadbare towel and tug a pair of jeans over my still damp legs.
In the mirror my face is ragged looking, three days growth of beard, dark circles and the ever growing network of creases. Broken blood vessels add extra prominence to an already pronounced nose. I smile.
The street still radiates enough heat that my left shoulder is warmer so I cross the street every block to keep things even. I walk fast, or so people tell me, I simply walk and others are left behind. It’s a handy thing and the half mile to the bar goes quickly.
As I reach for the door I notice that my hands are trembling, anticipation, lack of proper food, delirium tremens, it doesn’t really matter.
The bar is mostly quiet, a Tuesday isn’t the night for nine to fivers, and aside from the half dozen kids in the corner, they are drunks, disciples of the bottle, like and unlike myself.
“Chuck, you look like shit.” The bartender sets a glass of pale watery beer in front of me.
“Chuck, chuck, banana nana of FUCK! and that is why I hate that name.”
“Ornery tonight Chuck? A buck and a quarter.”
I dig into my pocket and extract a couple crumpled bills, fumbling with them to straighten them out and read the denominations. I lay a five on the bar. A sip of the beer and I spin slowly on my stool, surveying the room.
“Slim pickings tonight, the college kids don’t have enough money and the rest of them are wise to you.” Ham, the bartender is referring to what I call ‘The Talent,’ but most folks call ’scamming’ free drinks’.
“No need tonight my friend,” and I smile again, “Here, let me know when this runs out.” I’ve unfolded another of the bills, this time a hundred.
“You roll an old lady Chuck?”
“Three of them in fact. Get a round of shots for the house.”
“You could drink for a week on that round.”
“It’s like a bank my friend. I take money out when I need it and put it back in when I have it. Pour the round.”
Ham shrugged and shuffled off to pour.
“Don’t forget the kids in the corner, they are the future, the ones that will save us all!” I called across the bar. Giggling into my beer I realized that my nap hadn’t sobered me as much as I had thought.
When the shots were delivered to the crowd of young faces in the corner and Ham explained where they had come from their heads swiveled in unison to stare at me. A third time I smiled and even gave them a little two finger wave. A practiced move, calculated to be cool, reserved, the action of man of the world, full of confidence. Internally I chuckled to myself. These kids might not have money for drinks but tonight I did and there were other forms of coin for the talent.
It only took one more round before I had the whole group clustered around me, a royal bastard surrounded by his sycophants. Where the free drinks flow, so does friendship, or a fair facsimile thereof, if only for an evening.
A couple hours of traded stories of debauchery, the common coin in cheap bars and I took all six of them back to my place. We stopped at the corner store for a couple cases, cheap cigars and a bottle of some overly sweetened crap popular with the nubile ladies. I had my eye on one particular blonde, tall, a bit haughty and obviously the alpha female. I wanted to break her, but her ego presented a challenge, hence the hooch. On the other hand, there was the chubby girl. An obvious hanger-on, probably someone’s roommate, tolerated out of necessity. She desperately tried to join in, her interruptions brash and often greeted with blank stares and silence. She was easy pickings but I worried what she might be carrying. Anyone with that ‘once kicked and coming back for more’ puppy dog look had been used and many times.
With one case beer gone, drunk, spilled, sprayed about the room, it was obvious to me that the alpha girl was more intent upon insinuating herself between an obviously established couple for whatever Machiavellian reasons. I felt a bit sorry for the girl being culled, a plain Jane sort but with an honest gaze and a pleasant smile. I wondered how she had earned the displeasure of the reigning queen as I caught her eye. I winked and nodded at her but she only turned away, gulping hurriedly from her beer, eyes bright with unshed tears. She knew well what was happening and that she’d already lost the battle. Sympathetic feelings rose inside me but I shook my head and brushed them aside, involving myself in the woes of others was no place to go, experience spoke that and loudly.
Morning and the attendant trauma of being alive and hung over came with the suddenness of the flash floods in the surrounding desert. My stomach roiled and my head spun in different directions. I groaned and slid from the bed to the floor, resting on my knees for a moment before crawling to the bathroom. There i was confronted with a scene of devastation, cans scattered about, vomit streaking the seat and sides of the toilet. I grasped the edge of the sink and hauled myself to my feet. A wave of dizziness swept me and I clutched blindly for the towel bar. Using a toe to lift the befouled toilet seat I kept my eyes open only long enough to insure aim and guided the stream of piss by sound after that. The sink and walls provided support as I stumbled back to the door. There I leaned on the jamb and stared down at the still sleeping form of plain Jane, and I couldn’t even remember her name.
2
Famine
I flipped the couch cushions and dug in the folds. My hands skated across nameless things I didn’t want to think on. A touch of cool metal and I scooped it out. A quarter and a bit of pizza crust. I grabbed the quarter with the other hand and flicked the crust away with a twitch. I dove in and groped about some more.
After an hour of scouring I had three dollars and seventy cents. It was enough for a couple bottles of cheap malt liquor, or a pack of smokes. Dilemma, caught up on the devil’s horns. What I really needed was more money. No one owed me money, hell, I probably owed several times the amount in my pocket to various ‘friends’. I could get the money in few hours of begging for change in the park, but my dignity tended to balk at the fine line just over from sorting spilled cereal to find coins in the couch.
The clock claimed a little past three, two hours and Serena would be back from her shitty job, a few meager tips in her pocket, but more than enough for smokes and a jug of sickly sweet and potent wine. Bliss for an evening, if only she’d give me the money. Lately she’d become more of a mother than a lover, prattling on about saving money.
I needed that money though, I’d been out of work for almost two months, living on her income, drinking on borrowed favors and slowly reaching a desperate point. My luck had deserted me, I couldn’t even think anymore. I wanted to hate her, but I couldn’t even do that. When I fucked her at night, I had to envision things in my head that frightened me, just to keep myself hard. I’d curse her but my mother taught me to never to bite the hand that feeds, and from watching her, I learned to fuck the hand that pours. Serena had kept me drunk since three weeks after I met her, and the money I’d made in an offhand sale of a story was gone. For that short period, I’d lived like a king, shuffling about with her as my queen. She made a shitty queen, nothing regal, noble or even beautiful about her, but she was complacent and uncomplaining, which made her a perfect queen for a man reigned over shit, with a tenuous hold on that.
I poured the change from hand to hand and watched the clock. I’d take her out, on her own money of course, but I’d make it seem her idea. I could do this.
The screen door protested opening, my warning, and I was waiting. I pounced upon her, my arms locking around her, pressing her against the wall, my tongue searching her mouth with a passion I’d never felt. She responded, startled at first, but immediately sliding into eager. I’d have felt bad about manipulating her in this way if it wasn’t what she wanted. I pulled back and looked at her, staring into her eyes. Lesson to learn kids, if god gifts you with good eyes, use them. If you don’t believe in god, so much the better, this is evolution, it is imperative that you use them.
“Wha… hi… ummm…”
Flabbergasted, that’s the word for this. It’s a stupid word, I’d slap the bastard who named it such, but we’re fucking stuck with it now, thanks to Webster. I smiled. Oh that liar’s smile, why isn’t that genetic, or is it?
“Hi,” I said. Simplicity is everything. You can spin the greatest tales in the world but they don’t mean a fucking thing if you can’t sell them and simple sells. I can load a single word with more power than I can a thousand word essay. Pictures? Worth a thousand words? Tone and inflection are worth ten thousand pictures. I read her answer in the muscles of her legs, sagging, her body weight suddenly resting on my arms. I held her up, giving no sign that it mattered.
I shifted my face alongside hers, brushing my lips across her cheek and whispered, “You and I, we’re going out tonight. We’re going to drink, and laugh. If I get drunk enough, you might even convince me to dance.” Spoken in a rumbling voice, lust wrapped around every word, I wasn’t speaking a sentence, I was building a mighty empire in her head. I was so good I’d even gotten hard, my cock stiff against her leg, reinforcing every word. I shifted my stance and pressed the head of my cock against her cunt through our clothing and gave a tiny thrust of my toes. She moaned and bit my ear. Victory comes to those who want it enough to take it.
I swaggered into the bar, cigar clenched in my teeth, hip to hip with Serena like I had the local beauty queen on my arm instead of a diner waitress desperate for attention. Fuck it, if I was going to play this game, I’d play it to the hilt. I crashed into the bar like a New York ferry docking. I spun my waitress into my arms for another kiss.
“Barkeep! My woman and I need two gin and tonics, Bombay please. We’re celebrating tonight.”
Serena purred and rubbed against me, “What are we celebrating?”
“Us, we, two people against the world. Do we need any other reason?” I was pushing it, I knew this, but her eyes were bright, her mouth open just a bit and I could smell her. Women stink when they lust, it’s a dead giveaway. Their breath carries everything you need to know.
I pressed my forehead against hers as we picked up our drinks, staring straight into her eyes. I held my drink up and she brought hers softly against it.
“Tonight, all that matters is now,” I whispered and brushed my lips against hers. I pulled back and drained my drink.
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November 21st, 2006 at 02:21amMordecai
dumb humor crap:
They call me Shortymac, or just Shorty, most of the time. The joke is supposed be that I’m tall, somewhere over six foot, built like a brick shithouse. The real joke is that I’m fucking short. I’m no midget, and I’ll get violent if you call me one. It’s not that I have a problem with references to my height, it’s that I hate lawsuits. When I came up with my genius idea to be a private detective I also came up with a genius slogan about no case too small and played off my height. I thought it was as clever as fuck. Not everyone agreed, and among those was the Anti-defamation League of Little People. You see, I’m an entire inch too tall to qualify as a midget, so my use of height as an advertising slogan made me an evil bastard and the object of a lawsuit. If I lived in reality, probably could have argued my case, but at the time, I lived in southern California. So I began my life as a hired dick as one too tall to be special and too short to be taken seriously. I “settled out of court,” and before you scoff, it doesn’t matter how tall the guy holding a branding iron two inches from your face is. So, to avoid having my knees broken by guys who didn’t have to lean down to hit them I gave in. It wasn’t the worst, but no one wants to live in debt to the Midget Mafia, it’s humiliation of the sort that earns you a place in the dictionary.
If someone you don’t like ever asks you what you do, tell them you are a private investigator. They’ll nod knowingly and babble about some retarded dick-fic they read as a kid. Fix them with an icy glare and say, “It’s not like that.”
The advantage is that you’re telling the truth, whatever they have read, it’s fucking wrong. No one ever writes the truth about being a hired dick because it’s boring as fuck. They nod because they think they know the life of mystery you live, and they like to pretend it’s nothing new to them. What they don’t know is that the real mystery of being a private dick is why anyone would work such a thankless, worthless job.
In the novels, and the movies that inspire them, there is always the beautiful woman, a bit past her prime, dubious of her husband. The hired dick spies on him, witnesses a murder, solves the case and gets laid.
That’s why I became a dick, even if I was a short one. Two years in, I can tell you that it’s all horseshit. The women that come in are past their prime all right, for a fucking reason. They aren’t slim, aging movie stars with a few crows feet, these are suburban mothers with asses like dump trucks. They are shrill and angry. I don’t blame them for being so, but I cannot blame the unfaithful husbands either, if that was what I had to come home to, I’d be on the first plane to Belize. I wouldn’t even care if there was a young piece of ass waiting or not, solitary confinement beats life with a fat-assed harpy. Honestly, when my life gets me down, I read a case file or two, cackle like a chicken and drink a couple shots. It’s really that pathetic.
Given all of this, you can imagine how suspicious I was when the cliche good looker walked in, all gams and cleavage.
“The insurance office is two doors down lady.” I like looking at her but I don’t like reminders of the sort of thing I can’t have.
“I’m looking for Mac’s Detective Agency.”
I went from suspicion to paranoia faster than a fighter jet off the carrier deck.
“Why?” I asked accusingly, “ What do you want from a third rate snoop?”
“I just need someone watched, discreetly. I need information, and I need to be sure the information doesn’t go far.”
I sighed and reached for my pen. My better judgment was telling me to have nothing to do with this, but her gams told me to keep talking. “What is your husbands name?”
“I’m not married.”
“Err what?” Nothing quite like stuttering like an idiot in front a looker like this. “Boyfriend?”
She looked a bit confused, “Is it necessary for you to know this information?”
“Well look, if I’m going to watch the guy, I have to know who he is.”
“But… I want you to watch my sister.”
“Err, right.” Stuttering again. I shook myself mentally and started over.
“Ok, perhaps you’d better explain just what you want from me.”
“My sister, she’s been acting really strange lately, something completely out the normal for her and I want to know what is going on.”
“Have you tried simply asking her?” I asked, wondering just what I was letting myself in for.
“I haven’t had a real conversation with my sister in two years, I don’t … I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Look, my family isn’t quite like most families.”
“Look, I’ve got to have some idea, a baseline to work from so I know when I’m seeing something out of the ordinary. I can follow a person around for weeks, and never know that anything they do is out of the ordinary unless I know something about what constitutes their regular routine. If you haven’t even talked to your sister in years, how the hell am I supposed to know when I’ve found the reason she’s acting different when I don’t even know what different is?”
“Can’t you just follow her around and keep notes, or videotape her?” Her voice was pleading, leaning forward. I hate women, that shit is so trite, and yet any man will fall for it in a heartbeat.
“Yes, but it’ll cost, that sort of work is fifty an hour plus expenses.” Even I’m not immune. At least I could excuse it by lying to myself that I was really after her wallet.
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November 21st, 2006 at 02:18amMordecai
I’d come over here to drink her beer, looking for a free buzz, but now she was sitting on her piano bench, legs crossed, her skirt hiked up, casting come hither glances my direction. What kind of asshole fucks his friends old lady? No way I was going to be that sort of shit. I was only into my fourth beer though so I played dumb. It’s not hard, most guys are dumb, they wouldn’t know when a woman wanted them unless she slapped them with her cunt.
“Do you like music?” she asked me, her head tilted down, looking through her eyelashes at me. Jesus Christ, where had this girl learned her seduction techniques? Someone needed to ban her from the classic movie channel. I felt like I should have been wearing an old pin-stripe suit and a hat with a brim. Bitch.
“Yeah, I like music, hey, you want another beer?” I said, rising and turning towards her kitchen. For an answer I heard the cover on the piano slide back and she started playing the piano. I was a bit surprised to find she could even play the thing. I’d known ever since my pal had moved in with her three months ago and it had always been a piece of furniture. I swung her fridge open and snagged a pair of Coronas. She liked drinking Corona, I think she had some idea that it gave her class. I popped them open on the edge of her count, leaving tooth-like gouges in the formica. I shrugged, no one would notice the damage in this place, this woman had more pets than most zoos.
Beethoven was coming from the other room, a bit hesitant at first but she got into it pretty quickly. I wondered if Ben had told her that I liked old Ludwig. I strolled back in the other room, the bottles dangling carelessly from between my knuckles. I leaned against the door frame and watched her play. Her fingers moved across the keyboard in an intricate dance that fascinated me. I’d always loved music but I was all thumbs when it came to playing it. Pressing play on the cd player was the height of my skill.
She glanced back over her shoulder, another perfect frame from Hollywood’s golden age. I had to admit she was a beauty, not classic silver screen material, but such women don’t play piano for men like me. Her eyes were storybook bullshit, large and blue, but they looked pretty good with her dark brown hair. Evil bitch. When she turned back to her playing I walked over and set one of the beers in front of her, resting my arm momentarily on her shoulder. She leaned back against me and kept playing.
A good friend would have moved away. I took a drink from my beer and set it next to hers. I placed my head close to hers and whispered, “Keep playing,” someone should ban me from the classic movie channel.
I sat down behind her on the piano bench, legs on either side of hers. I buried my face in her hair and grasped her thighs in my hands, just above the knee. I slid them upwards, moving towards her hips. She moved her head back.
“Keep playing,” I whispered again. She kept playing and I bit down gently on the join between her neck and shoulder. She gasped a bit and pushed her ass against my crotch. Her fingers faltered on the keys.
“Don’t stop,” I urged her. My hands moved up across her stomach until I was cupping her breast through shirt and bra. I could feel lace and hard nipples. The lace was a dead giveaway, no woman wears lace bras unless she’s planning on showing it off. Planned seduction, what a whore. The only thing worse than a woman like this is the man who give into her. She turned her face to meet mine. Her lips were soft.
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October 28th, 2006 at 12:33pmMordecai
I met a man one day
Some would say he was mad
Maybe so, with his muttering and mumbling
But if you ask me
Even if you don’t
He’s still the only man I’ve ever met
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September 15th, 2006 at 11:26pmMordecai
Thinking I might use this somewhere, somewhen.
I could see the tears in her eyes, unshed as of yet, on the edge, one more word from me and they would overflow. Christ but I hated this, how the fuck do you tell a woman that months of endearments amounted to a pile of horseshit? You’ve shared a bed, meals, counted change for a bottle of cheap wine, combed the want ads for a way to make money that doesn’t require being sober for more than you can handle and now you’re done with her. It isn’t convenient any more. Isn’t that what all relationships are though? I can use you, and when I can’t anymore, you can go away, all the romance novels a lie? I sighed.
“Look, it isn’t you, it’s me.” Surely never has been a bigger line of bullshit propagated on the planet than that line, but oddly enough it was true this time. I didn’t care anymore, I wasn’t even sure that I ever did give a damn. I hated the sight of her, more than that, I hated the sound of her voice. What had once sounded like lightness and a carefree attitude now clanged with tones of stupidity and it disgusted me. I supressed an urge to slap her in the mouth as the tears finally broke free and she fell to her knees, sobbing.
“I’m sorry,” she sniveled through the tears, choking on gobbets of her own snot.
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August 18th, 2006 at 06:04pmMordecai
I have a wound on my finger that looks surprisingly like a cunt. I think I’ll refrain from fucking it.
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August 17th, 2006 at 06:28pmMordecai
I’ve just been called successful. That has to be a first. I’m rarely successful at anything. Thankfully I won’t let the assessment of a random magazine salesman go my head. Bizarre sort of character he was, someone should give him some speech classes. No matter which way you cut it, Shreveport accented ebonics makes you sound about as bright as a solar powered flashlight in the middle of the arctic winter.
Who the hell decided that having former street kids sell magazines is a good idea? I have little doubt it works well as a sales tactic, but if you really wanted to make something useful out of the useless, train them to actually do something useful. Selling magazines based on guilt isn’t. It probably doesn’t help that I don’t have any interest in magazines.
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August 16th, 2006 at 06:54pmMordecai
So once again, I’ve yet another place in which I’m supposed to be writing something. Anything. It really isn’t that hard, banging away at the keyboard brings results. I can certainly spew out sentence after sentence with little effort. Little effort until I try to come up with something that is interesting, worth reading and not written like some Cussleresque pile of shit. I suppose it might help if I wasn’t such an arrogant and self righteous prig. Hm, no, I don’t think that would change a thing. So now I’ve got this, a fantastic idea, a place to just put down some sort of daily thought, snippet of story. Great fucking idea. Fantastic even, except I lack the discipline for things like this. Hell, I lack the discipline to shave daily, relate to people on a normal basis, have a normal job or generally function at all. It’ll be interesting to see if I can even remember the password to login here, since remembering your name thirty seconds after you tell me is nearly impossible.
I also hate writing like this. It just seems like such self-indulgent garbage and if I were reading me at this moment, I’d tell myself off except that I couldn’t be arsed to register in order to reply. On the other hand, this is something where there was nothing.
Dead silence. My skull should have crickets in it for moments like these. Typically I’ve got a head full of things to say, but all of deserts me when I sit down to deliberately put something down. Most of the writing I do is while sitting in bar, drunk and doing battle with the keyboard and fingers that don’t quite do what they should. Most of the time, it works. With any luck, I’ve got enough gin left here to kickstart something.
…
time passes
…
Then again, maybe not, I’m down to about enough to make one more drink, I’ve got enough for about one more drink, and I’m only half in the bag. If I go outside and sit for ten minutes smoking, I’ll come up with fantastic rants, but once again, they’ll flee my mind. My brain is attached to the front porch and nicotene. I give up, this is it for today. If I’m not a useless cunt, I’ll try again tomorrow.
-m
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August 15th, 2006 at 08:01pmMordecai