I could hear the horn outside. “Beep beep!”
“Beep beep beep!”
“I’m going out with Bob.”
“Have a wonderful time,” she said. By the tone of her voice, she was really saying FUCK YOU, or I never should have married you. I didn’t care. Bob was outside, waiting. Sundown was coming.
I rushed outside without looking back, or giving the uptight bitch a farewell for the night, let alone a feigned kiss goodbye. After all, Bob was there, waiting, the engine of his grandma’s gigantic, baby blue, 1975 Lincoln Town Car purring like a pussy cat; waiting, idling, but god-damned ready for action, ready to pounce.
And there was Bob at the helm, with Led Zeppelin plugged into the 8-Track and blaring, even though it was 1998 – and I think cassette players were already being replaced by CDs at that time. Bob was in black, all black, his hair slicked back.
The front seat of that damned car was a fucking mile-wide, padded, light blue premium leather. They just don’t make rides like that anymore. A tattered paperback copy of Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra sat in the middle at Bob’s side, with its pages used, curled, and yellowed.
“Fuck,” I said, as I swung the long, heavy door shut without a creak. It was well-oiled by grandma’s mechanic.
Bob immediately read me. “I told you not to get married.” He put the lever on the column to reverse, spun the powered wheel with a finger, and we rolled back.
“That god-damned kid makes it worse.”
“I told you.”
The baby blue ride entered the streets. Sundown was coming.
“Fuck. I should have listened.”
“Don’t give it a minute. 5’ tall with tits like that…”
“Yeah, but that fucking kid of hers...”
“Yeah.”
“Every time I try for a piece of ass, that fucking kid comes banging on the bedroom door. ‘Mommy! Mommy!’”
“I told you – you stupid mother fucker.”
“I deserve your chastisement, Bob. Every word. Especially today. You see – just about an hour ago, I was getting a blow job. She was on all fours on the bed. I had two fingers in her ass and one in her pussy. My little finger was sliding up and down her clit – like this:”
With a hand in the air and a serious countenance, I showed how it went. Stiffened fingers jabbing seriously at the air above the dashboard.
Bob’s head was tilted and watching, his face bright with interest. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Then what?”
“She cums – shakes, convulses, moans, sucks even harder. I swear I was into her throat… and just before I blew a massive load straight into her stomach, these little knuckles rap the door – and even worse, on top of that, I’m interrupted by this little fucking squeaky voice ‘MOMMY! MOMMY!’ …Fuck. It was so terrible.”
“That sucks.”
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t cum?”
“No. My dick went fucking limp, just at the sound of that little fucking voice. Shit!”
“Shit,” agreed Bob.
“Lions eat their stepchildren, the children of their lionesses, for a reason.”
“Shit. I understand. I desperately hated my fucking stepfather and wanted him dead. He felt the same about me.”
“No shit?”
Bob nodded. “Like you said, it’s against fucking nature, these kinds of relationships, for both Man and Animal.”
I rubbed my chin and pondered, smelled my fingers. “’tis true.” Then I offered Bob a whiff. His nostrils flared and sampled the aroma.
“I can’t tell if I’m smelling pussy or ass, or the dish soap you must have used to wash it off.”
“Sorry about that. I thought some evidence was left under the fingernails.”
So we drove out of the streets, onto the highway, and back into the streets again. Bob switched out the 8-Track, popped a few buttons, and Freddy Mercury sang Fat Bottomed Girls for us. We listened and giggled, slapped palms in a High-Five.
The song ended. Bob spoke. “At least we’re together again. It has been a while. Right now. Here and now, Man. We can forget all the shit for the night.”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t get me wrong, Johnny, Dallas is the fucking place to be, but coming back to Phoenix is always a treat – because we get to spend some time together.”
“I love you Bob. I’d suck your dick if I were queer.”
“And I’d suck yours.”
So the baby blue Lincoln Town Car loaded with blaring 8-Track tapes from decades ago made its way through the streets of Phoenix some more, onto Van Buren, and ultimately turned into the parking lot of the Airporter. It was the place for us to be. A dive bar for the scum of the earth, whores, drug addicts, alcoholics, and guys like us who’d just fucking figured it all out. The Airporter wasn’t just a bar with cheap, strong drinks and packed with rolling cigarette smoke. It was a place to stay for the night at $17.99, the cheapest place we knew in town. When you got a room across the parking lot from the bar, there was no guarantee you’d get any sheets or pillows.
“Let’s get a booth in a corner,” insisted Bob as he pulled open the blacked-out swinging glass door to the place. Smoke rolled out in plumes, and I ducked in first. Music was playing. Elvis, Ain’t Nothin’ but a Hound Dog, emanated from the juke. We found the booth we wanted. Coated in Red Vinyl. Deep. Relaxing and cool to the touch. We sank so far into the softness, the table almost touched our chins. The walls were mirrored. A disco ball spun from the ceiling. The forms of the living dead moved slowly about us, or laughed out loud, or simply slumped at barstools and over tables. The cherries of many cigarettes blinked in the blackness like fireflies on a Midwestern summer night. Glasses were clanking, beer bottles piling up. We had escaped into Paradise. We were safe, surrounded by solitude and coolness. A getaway from Life. A temporary but blissful skit of Death.
“Get you boys a drink?” requested a raspy voice.
“Yeah, two Long Islands, and keep them coming. One half-full glass means bring another for both of us.”
“You got it sugar,” chuckled the gruff waitress. She knew the order.
Bob leaned back into the softness, lit a cigarette, then flipped the pack to me. I lit up. Together we tilted our heads and blew smoke at the ceiling.
“I’ve been reading Nietzsche,” said Bob. “Thus Spake Zarathustra, right now.”
“It’s a good book.”
“I’ve read it twice. Every night I read a little Nietzsche. It does a lot for me.”
“It does help us make sense of all the bullshit.”
“No doubt! Nietzsche has freed me from all the expectations, prejudices, and the bullshit I’ve been fed all my life. Now, and only now, I can finally do what I want, without all the guilt.”
“Most of us live our lives in imaginary shackles.”
“Especially Christians. I’m so sick of their shit,” Bob sighed and threw up his hands.
“But are we truly free? Even if we’ve figured out the bullshit?”
“Fuck… Johnny... That’s a good question. I mean – look at you. You don’t fall for all the bullshit… …but what are you doing with that stupid Mormon woman, and the kid?”
“Maybe that answer lies with Schopenhauer? My dick gets in the way of my mind’s infinite wisdom.”
“Yeah! You are fucking pussy whipped!”
“Yeah, and a fool.”
“You’re a fucking idiot.”
“I can’t agree more.”
And the drinks came, and we put them down, and more drinks came, and we only paused for cigarettes between the swilling – and to speak the profundities only we knew. The wisdom of the Great Nietzsche, the Awesome Schopenhauer. Thus Spake Zarathustra. FUCK.
“I mean… how can a guy like you have so much figured out, but live such a fucked up life?” Inquired Bob.
“If I knew, I’d be President of the Fucking United States.”
“True enough.”
And we laughed, laughed more, carried on, smoked a whole pack, laughed some more, drank, drank, drank, smoked, laugher, smoked more, spewed forth the profundities, drank and drank, and sometimes even lifted our knees and farted. And the table filled up with empty glasses. Some were filled with lonely ice cubes and others with just melted ice – water, getting warmer. We didn’t know how much time was passing as we found delightment in it all: smoke, joviality, intoxication, dizziness, foolishness, the wisdom only we knew, death, life, fucking, spitting, shitting, bad jokes, the family dog, our first fistfights in grade school, the profundities, the aging of our bodies, indulgence, laugher, the girl that got away, another Long Island Tea. It didn’t matter but it all mattered all the same. It all mattered so much it hurt the nerves in our teeth. Like a chalkboard scratched hard with sharp fingernails. But the night was there. It lingered about us, offering its sweet and delicate, forgiving embrace. So from the soft cushions of a low-sitting booth, in a dive bar filled with lost souls, but all of them imbued with the Wisdom of the Ages, we partook of it all and offered it all up. Thus a cheap disco ball whirling multicolor flashing lights in the darkness, from its thousand small mirrors, hanging from a failing string – any second it would snap, sending the ball smashing to the filthy floor beneath – was living, spinning for each second as if it were the last. And that is how we loved one another. We were true brothers, Bob and me. How we laughed and poured forth from our hearts like swollen rivers when the rains were too much, and we were filled to the brim with the swarming fishes we had eagerly swallowed.
“I finally figured it all out,” explained Bob. “It isn’t about knowledge or philosophy. It is about being what we want to be, not being what our parents, or the Christians, or the fucking priests, or so-called teachers want us to become. We gotta live by our hearts, without guilt.”
“I’ll drink to that.”
“Me too!”
And we clanked glasses and drank some more.
A tall redhead on the brink of anorexia appeared at our table. She had on flimsy tight shorts with no panties underneath, allowing her thick pussy lips to bulge, pinching the thin material to form three obvious, fattened, vertical clefts. The long legs were good, smooth and hairless. She wore a tube top and was flat as a rail, but her nipples stood straight out the size of large grapes. Her face, even through the darkness – the smoky haze – showed deep lines; she was between 20 and 40, depending on how hard her life had obviously been, yet her features were still delicate and pleasant underneath, despite the outward roughness. A missing canine showed when she smiled. It was a genuine, painted smile, with thick, inviting lips.
“Can I sit with you guys?” asked the redhead.
We both nodded. She plopped down next to Bob. Before saying another word, she took a cigarette from the pack on the table, lit up, had a drag, blew smoke, then lifted Bob’s glass and took a hard swallow of Long Island.
“You guys looking for girls?” she asked. She reached for the back of Bob’s neck and playfully fiddled with the ends of his hair.
“Yeah,” I answered.
She looked at me.
Bob looked at me.
“What are you after?”
“Just a little action.” I said.
“You guys look like cops,” she accused.
“Bullshit!” I answered with a grin, set down my drink, and immediately reached for my fly. The zipper came down and I pulled out my dick. “Look under the table.”
Bob just sat there, staring blankly into my face. The anorexic redhead peeked under the table.
She sat up, giggling. “I have a room across the parking lot.”
“How much?”
“Depends on what you want.”
After a bit more chatter over merchandise, she and I stood from the table, but Bob just kept staring that blank stare. He was only able to move one part of his body – his arm. With it he could reach for his burning cigarette and put it to his mouth, or lift his glass for another swig. That was it.
So the redhead and I left the bar, crossed the parking lot, and went into her little dingy 10’ x 10’ room. The Venetian blinds were bent and yellow. Cracks lined the peeling walls. The red shag carpet was matted and stained. A toilet with no lid sat behind a half-open sliding panel door, and just by it a little round sink hung from rusty bolts. The redhead dropped her shorts to her ankles, kicked them off, and went to the sink. I sat on the little bed, the springs creaked, and watched. Standing there bare-assed, she washed up. Droplets of water ran down her legs but were toweled off with a grimy dishrag. Her pussy lips were even larger than I’d imagined. From behind you could see them hanging there, thick, purple, dangling. The Redhead dropped the rag to the floor, to the matted red shag. She grabbed something small at the side of the sink, turned my way, and tossed it underhand. I caught the little tube of petroleum jelly in both hands.
“Put a lot of it on your cock,” she instructed.
I was back to Bob in ten minutes, but the redhead didn’t return.
“What the fuck, Johnny!”
“I was just living without guilt, parental, church, or school rules.”
Bob stared at me accusingly.
I shrugged and grinned, picked up my glass and took about half of it down. It still had ice in it.
“What did you pay?”
“50.”
“What did you get?”
“Anal.”
“With a rubber?”
“No.”
“Holy shit! You’re crazy!”
“Yeah.”
“Did you put it all the way in?”
“Yeah, all the way.”
“Holy shit!”
“I washed the shit off in her sink, and then I pissed in it to make sure I unclogged my pecker.”
“Fuck!”
“Yeah, her ass was really tight. I came fast.”
“Fuck. I should have been the one fucking her in the ass! She sat by me first!”
“True.”
And another round of drinks came. And another. And several rounds after that. We started into our third pack of cigarettes.
“Fuck, Johnny… …I think I finally get it – intellectually. I can live like I want. Be what I want, all without guilt. But shit! It is so hard to put the philosophy into action. How do you do it?”
“That girl, for instance. I knew she was a whore. She was for sale. She had a nice ass.”
“Yeah, so?”
“I didn’t think about the philosophy or ethics of fucking her for money. I just did it.”
“But how?”
“Have you ever really liked a chick and wanted to please her so much that it was hard to get a boner?”
“Yeah. It sucks when that happens. And it happens when I drink too much.”
“That, to me, is like being Intellectual. You just can’t think about it or you limit your ability to take real action. You do okay if you just fuck and don’t think. You get into the groove by wanting to fuck, lusting to bust your nuts – not by thinking about the mechanics and geometry of fucking beforehand.”
Bob stared at me with narrowed eyes, took a few drags and swallows. He pondered the meaning of the universe.
“Fuck… It makes sense to me now…”
I shrugged. “Not to me.”
“Johnny?” asked Bob.
“Yeah?”
“I want to fuck a whore tonight too. I just want to be able to say that I did.”
“Sure. There are plenty on Van Buren.”
So we paid the tab with a stack of mixed bills, swallowed our last gulps of Long Island Tea (I think we had more than a dozen, or perhaps even 15 each) then staggered toward the front door. We didn’t walk in a straight line.
Out in the parking lot, we crossed the asphalt, zig-zagging and dragging our feet.
“Sure you can drive?”
“Fuck yeah,” insisted Bob. “Fuck yeah. I party a lot harder than this in Dallas.”
A group of transients approached us from the night. They were older and dressed like every hobo ever claiming to be a Vietnam Vet for the sake of winning spare change.
“GOT SOME CHANGE?” demanded one of them in a threatening voice and coming straight at us from the shadows.
I stopped and Bob hurried for the baby blue Town Car, his keys jingling fast. “COME ON JOHNNY!” he insisted. But I just stood there. The anger was starting to swell my blood. Then a second hobo approached me from the right. Then a third stepped out of the darkness to my left.
“FUCK YOU!!!” I screamed, lunged forward and punched the leader hard in the throat before he could say another word. He crumpled to the ground as if his body had no bones. Then knuckles caught me in the back of the head. I turned, dove, made a tackle onto the concrete, and started sinking into the fucker. I didn’t stop until the enemy’s face was a bloody, toothless pulp and my knuckles were opened up. When I stood, gasping and ready to puke from the booze, all the other bums had scattered, disappeared, but for the motionless one at my feet. The headlights of the baby blue Town Car were beaming straight onto me.
The passenger door opened and slammed, the tires squealed and we made our getaway.
We were silent for 30 minutes. Bob couldn’t look my way. Finally we arrived back at my apartment, the place the night had started.
Bob still didn’t look at me. “I’m getting tired. I’ve got to go back to Dallas in the morning. Do you need this book?” he asked, offering me the copy of Thus Spake Zarathustra that had been sitting between us.
“Naw. I’ve read it. Keep it for your library. You might want to read it again some day.”
“Alright,” said Bob.
“Alright.” I said.
I got out of the car and swung shut the heavy door. It drove off into the darkness.
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