Chapter 5

Chapter 5

            Pinky is taking a shower and I’m trying to cook spaghetti, which seems to be beyond my minor culinary skills. Just to catch you up: she’s been living with me for four months now. We have an easy accommodation. We each have our own bedroom. When one of us isn’t doing it with someone else we both sleep in my bed. If she comes home and I have a girl here she goes to her room. If I come home and she has a boy (or a girl) here I go to my room. Sometimes we share. I’m working at Best Buy selling TVs. She manages a theatre. I think we’re happy. 

            I haven’t seen Quetzal since the night me and Pinky got together.

            Pinky’s in the shower. I’m cooking. That’s everything.

            Hey, I yell toward the bathroom, Dinner’s ready.

            Just a minute.

            I put the spaghetti and the bowl of sauce on the table then get the garlic bread out of the oven. I’m not going to wait on her. I sit and start eating and she joins me in a minute. After we eat we’re going out to see a movie. It’s some bad action flick that everyone sees but no one admits that they like.

            She’s cute when she eats. Look at me: being that guy. I can’t help it, though. She’s cute when she eats. I didn’t love her when this started, but I think that maybe I do now.

            You wanna know how sweet she is? She tells me that I should go back to college. She makes more money than I do, but she doesn’t care about that. She just wants me to be happy with my life.

            I’m not burning myself any more.

            I am still drinking. That’s another thing about Pinky; she never asks me to stop drinking. She doesn’t even suggest that I cut back. She takes care of me when I’m wasted.

            So we go out to the movie and when it’s just too stupid to stand we make out in the back row instead.

            A few weeks ago she showed up with this cute little skinny girl who was zapped out of her mind on a variety of drugs. Pinky undressed her and dropped her in bed with me, then went to sleep. Now what kind of girlfriend does something that nice? It wasn’t even my birthday.

            The only thing is, sometimes when I look at her I see Carol. That will pass though.

           

help a brother out

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

            A long time ago a Frenchman who’s dead now wrote about being the king of a rainy country. I think that he meant that he was sad all the fucking time. Morose is the word that comes to mind. We are talking here of the sort of sadness that bleeds out into everything you see or touch. That, by the way, is the Midas touch.

            The same frog also wrote about being a drunkard. At the end of that poem he talks about lying in the road and letting a carriage wheel crush his skull.

            They put him in prison for that.

            Instead of going to prison I wake up and tell Pinky to pack her shit and go. I’m not gonna tell you all the nasty details. I don’t feel like it.

            She’s gone and that’s enough. Stop being a voyeur. 

            So now I’m on the floor, naked, a half empty bottle of scotch next to me in danger of being  tipped over. There’s blood trickling down my arm describing lines that seem to be a schematic of everything I’ve done wrong and everything I’ve missed. I’m working the tiny little point of the knife around in a circle, widening the hole I’ve made and trying not to cry.

            Something moves. I look up to catch the small form fluttering toward me. It’s Quetzalcoatl, flapping his feathered wings against the silent air and coiling himself aloft as he approaches. 

            As he gets near I reach out my bloody hand and run it along the length of his scales.

            He coils against my leg and looks at me with his lidless eyes.

            Just for this moment I feel at home. Quetzal feels like family. Just me and him.

            Alex, by the way. My name is Alex just like the main character in A Clockwork Orange. I'm not quite as interesting as he is, though. Amen and all that cal. I can't quite think of why it took me so long to tell you that.

If you have enjoyed this nonsense, please consider spending a couple of bucks to buy it. I need to eat. 

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