My walk had opened up my eyes to more than just the neighborhood itself and I returned to my place on my porch, heavy with thoughts and even heavier in spirits. I glanced over at the bowl that once held my corn dinner to find that it was now filled with something else entirely—ants. The mini army of black carpenter ants must have caught a whiff of the sugary butter now congealing at the bottom of the bowl and stopped their usual routine of whatever ants do to forage what remained of my indigestible dinner. As I watched them dive headfirst into the bowl, I could not help but be reminded of a woman I had been seeing by the name of Martha.
Martha was more than just an occasional lay looking to bring it to the next level. She was a coddler and a nag, and from what I could tell, the kind of woman who could choke the life out of a fully-capable and healthy male within an estimated one year’s time. I had been seeing her for about three months, and when she was around I already felt tightness in my chest and a desperate need for oxygen. I was feeling claustrophobic in her world and in her presence, and staring down at that bowl made me imagine what she’d say had she known I had eaten corn, and nothing more, for dinner.
“Why don’t you eat real food?” she’d squeal like a pig. “Look at the nutritional values on the label. They’re all zeros except for salt.”
Her voice was now filling up my head, rupturing my ears and choking the very life out of me. This was all imaginary, so you can imagine the effect she has on me in person.
“All you’re doing is raising your blood pressure,” I heard the imaginary voice announce. Sadly, my high blood pressure wasn’t
due to the food I ate, the job I kept, or the genetics that made me who I was. No, the unhealthy spike in that number was due to the women I kept finding myself involved with. For whatever reason, Martha and those that came before her in the relationship scheme of things have either knowingly or unknowingly been like tiny nails in the big-picture coffin. Yet, like the crack addict up the street who can’t stay straight long enough to kick the habit, I couldn’t keep my whacker in my pants long enough to actually break it off with these women. Some would say I’m a glutton for punishment. Most would say my pain is self-inflicted and that these women are keepers, only I’m too blind to see.
In all honesty though, thinking of Martha did put me slightly on edge.
We had met in a laundromat. On that first run in, she was doing her regular weekly wash, and I was attempting to get blood stains out of my sheets after a drunken tryst with a girl who warned me she had her period. I have selected hearing as it is, never mind when I’m six beers in and horny as hell.
Anyway, so we met over a long line of industrial-sized washing machines and dryers. She was extremely quiet, sitting there reading her “Family Circle” magazine as her laundry loads soaked, spun and heated themselves to the ultimate goal—cleanliness. Upon reaching said goal, I watched her fold her wardrobe, taking particular notice of something that should have tipped me off right away. I could tell that she was a conservative girl based on the fact that there was not a single thong anywhere to be found and against my better judgment, I struck up a conversation with her regardless. Now that I think about it, it was no doubt my curiosity towards her repressive nature that originally attracted me to her. She was a conquest, and like all quiet women are said to be, I convinced myself that she was a screamer. Boy was I wrong.
Missionary was the mission every time out with Martha. There was no funny business to be found anywhere in the bedroom and all lights had to be kept off, the shades pulled down to the floor and the curtains drawn when performing all acts of fornication. It was always an in-and-out job, and because Martha had never had an orgasm prior to us being together, there were no expectations for me to deliver on something, big or small. Instead, I did my thing while she lay there with the deer in the headlights look, never once making a peep. Although her clitoris was the size of a jolly green giant pea and one would think she could climax like a champ, whenever I tried to touch the pink chickpea, she would nudge my diddling digit to the side.
It was the moments after sex that I dreaded even more. After rolling off of her, she’d immediately suck me into the confines of her delusions. Without hesitation and without warning, the woman would ask me what I was thinking, hoping to find something matrimonial going on just beneath the layer of bone that is my skull. Sparing no feelings, I’d tell her what I was thinking, and never once was it her. A terribly confused, somewhat morbid look would fill her face and she would say, “That’s incredibly psychotic,” before turning her back to me and going to sleep. Soon all that was left was to tell her what she wanted to hear, and she quickly became devoted to my lies.
Like a super-sleuthing bloodhound sniffing out a clue, Martha must have sensed I was thinking about her, because my cell phone rang and it was her. I answered reluctantly.
“Hello, honey,” were the first words out of her mouth and I began to sweat. The night before I had told her that I was thinking about our future together and apparently it had triggered the honey button in her brain. I could have hung up and smashed my tiny cell phone to bits, but like a zombie without any real direction, I remained on the line.
“Hi, Martha,” I replied.
“How was your day?”
“Not bad. And yours?”
“Very nice, thank you. Have you eaten dinner yet?” “Just finished up not too long ago actually.”
“What did you have?”
“Corn. I had a can of corn.”
“Why didn’t you eat real food?”
“I like corn.”
“When I see you tomorrow night, I’m going to make you corn on the cob. At least that has a purpose.”
“Purpose? It’s the same thing. The only difference is my kernels were conveniently removed from the cob, making it easier to eat.”
I internally asked myself why I needed to justify my eating habits to this woman and I was admittedly unable to come up with anything that made me feel better about the situation. She was slowly killing me and for a second, I imagined her high-pitched voice capable of melting my eyes.
“Nevertheless, I’m making you a full meal tomorrow and the vegetable of the day will be corn on the cob,” she responded.
“Make sure it’s white and crispy.”
There was silence on her end. It was my favorite part of the conversation.
“Have you given any thought to seeing a therapist?”
There it was. The continual therapy bomb. Martha wanted nothing more than to see me on a leather couch.
“Not really, Martha. I’ve been kind of busy.”
“You made a point to mention it in bed the other night that you’d give it serious consideration. You weren’t lying, were you?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said just prior to releasing a lion-sized yawn.
“It’s rude to yawn on the phone!” she snapped.
I went silent and lost my zen. I was close to losing my patience as well and telling her just how little she meant to me, but I bit my tongue. It was clear that this relationship was nearing its end and I’d rather stick a fork in it amicably to avoid any immediate emotional outbursts.
“Honey? Honey? Are you there?”
I bit my tongue even harder, piercing the pink flesh with my canines just enough to cause a little bit of blood to escape. I was selfmutilating now, a sure-fire sign that things were not going well. What started out as a casual sexual fantasy had now turned into an all-too-common nightmare. She had become a conscience, a nag, and she called me “honey” to boot.
“Absolutely I’m here, Martha.”
“Sometimes I think you’re not listening to me when I talk.”
For once she was right.
“I’m just a little tired,” I responded.
“It’s okay. What’s important is that we’re together and we get to see each other again tomorrow. I’ll be at your place at seven and make sure you have an appetite. I’m going to make you a wonderful chicken dish. I found the recipe in the back of a magazine and it looks absolutely yummy.”
The tongue biting was reaching a feverish pitch.
“Sounds good,” I somehow mustered through gritted teeth. “See you then. Bye.”
I snapped my cell phone shut before she could say good-bye, hoping to avoid any more nauseating “Honeys.” She fed me so many “Honeys” I almost barfed. If I had a jar of honey in the house I would have brought it outside and smashed it on the pavement into a thousand pieces, all as an act of defiance against the bee-made substance. If I had my way, I would have made all of the honey in all of the world disappear. Needless to say, I had reached my fill of honey.
The human capacity for self-delusion utterly amazed me. I mean, how this woman, whom I regularly avoided emotionally, could possibly think I loved her was beyond me. I’m her worst nightmare whether she cared to admit it to herself or not and she was mine, and yet she expected me to behave like we were a normal couple. It was definitely time to end this charade. Even though it had only been three months of courting as my grandmother would call it, I knew it was inevitable that I would still get hit with the final complaint of, “I can’t believe I wasted so much time with you.”
Although I had all but given up my search for my true golden mermaid and accepted the fact that she probably didn’t exist, the problem I was facing most of all these days was in dealing with all the consolation prizes. The women I was meeting were an unbelievably distant second, as far away from what I wanted as the truth is from a lie. The older I got, the problem seemed to worsen and I couldn’t help but wonder whether it was really worth the pursuit of these separated gazelles that hobbled across the open concrete wasteland looking for a mate.
The thought of Jennifer entered my consciousness. She seemed so different and I couldn’t stereotype her into any one category. It was almost like she was connected to another world, yet at the same time she came off as so down to earth. I thought about our first conversation and how I felt a kinship with her almost immediately. I couldn’t point out our similarities yet, but I knew on some subconscious level that she and I were alike. I wanted to see her again.
Before I could finish another thought, I was greeted on my porch by Rocky, a squirrel that had lived in the vicinity of my house long before I moved into the neighborhood and who had recently become somewhat of a pet. Upon seeing me, Rocky reared up on his hind legs, waiting for me to serve him dinner. I smiled as I always did at my little friend and made my way past him, into the house, and returned quickly with a tin of salt-free nuts that I kept by the door for his visits.
When I first met Rocky, I knew immediately that he was a mutant squirrel. There was no other way to explain his blasé take on the world around him, and more specifically, his completely carefree behavior towards me and the other bipeds that walked the streets. He approached me on the first day I moved into the house, going out of his way to make eye contact with me, yet still hesitant to get too close. By the end of the week he was eating out of my hand, and after a few encounters with each other, I had named him.
I reached down and handed a peanut to Rocky and he quickly took it in his mouth and positioned it snugly in his cheek. He took another and another, until his mouth was bursting at the seams. He would always take as many peanuts as he could fit in his mouth, and then he’d disappear for a few minutes and return for some more. I could never tell if he was eating them or storing them away for a rainy day, but sometimes it would go on until the entire tin was gone. For all I knew, he was stockpiling peanuts for a squirrel war.
Today was different though. Rocky was actually eating the peanuts, nibbling on them furiously and swallowing them down. After a few handfuls, he’d take a water break, gulping a long drink of fresh H2O from a bowl I kept on the porch for him. It was a meal fit for the king of squirrels himself, but it came to a crashing end when we were interrupted by the stumbling solicitations of an overweight prostitute named Clea.
“You lookin’ for a good time, mister?” she said as she stepped towards me, her ass hanging out of the bottom of her leopard print skirt. Rocky had already seen all he could handle and hightailed it for a nearby tree, perching himself high above the action.
“I think my idea of a good time and your idea of a good time may be two different things,” I replied playfully.
As Clea got closer I was able to get a better look of what she was selling. She was an African American in what I estimated to be her early forties, though I’ve learned never to judge a book by its cover because this part of town tends to age a person more quickly. She had bright red lipstick smeared over her voluptuous lips, as well as a good portion of her right cheek, which gave her that crazy pill lady quality. Her eyes were heavily caked with purple eye shadow and her skirt was just high enough to reveal a pair of black panties that had seen better days, and her shirt was cut deep down the center of her chest, making it possible for her breasts to spill out. She wore thigh-high boots with six-inch heels that clopped like horse hooves as she stepped up my concrete walkway, and she topped off her ensemble with what appeared to be a pus-filled cold sore that grew on the corner of her mouth.
She pointed back to my Ferrari and asked, “That ya car?”
“Yeah,” I replied, not knowing where the conversation was going.
“Ya live here?”
“Sure do.”
“This is one sorry ass looking place for a white boy like yourself to be shacked up in,” she said as she eyeballed the house from top to bottom. “You buy this house and lookin’ to fix it up?”
“No,” I replied. “I like it just the way it is.”
Clea’s face filled with disgust and she had no qualms about hiding it. Her head darted back as if dodging an incoming missile and her brow sank deep between her eyes.
“You crazy or somethin’? You been smokin’ crack?”
“I’m proud to say that I’m a subscriber to the Say No To Drugs mentality.”
“Well, you must be doin’ somethin’ cause ain’t no one want to be livin’ here. One and one don’t add up to two, if you get my drift.”
She paused briefly to scan me up and down.
“You on the run?” she asked.
“No,” I said, laughing under my breath.
“Sugar, all you do is say no,” she returned in a now-seductive voice as she ran her hands over her mostly exposed breasts. “You are too negative. How ’bout you and me have a date and make ourselves some positive. And I’m talkin’ in that car of yours—not in that haunted house.”
While the idea of contracting a communicable disease in any of my many orifices was a scrumptious thought, I fought off the urge to get really dirty and turned down the forward hooker.
“No thanks,” I replied in a sincere voice. “I’m thinking about becoming asexual.”
“A what?”
“It means I don’t have sex.”
“You got somethin’ wrong with your dick or somethin’?”
Just for the record, there is nothing wrong with my dick, unless a slight upward curve is abnormal, but from what I’m told, it tickles the g-spot region and makes for an added intercourse bonus.
“No, I don’t have anything wrong with my dick per se. I just don’t want to have sex anymore.”
“Shit, if more people think like you, I’m gonna be outta business and that shit ain’t gonna fly with me. You crazy white boys are usually my best customers, although you always want the freakiest shit done to you. What’s up with that?”
“My guess is that our mommies didn’t love us as much as they should have.”
Clea gave me a disgusted glare. Her face always had an expression of some sort exploding from it and it made her come off as very cartoon-like.
“They must have let you out of the crazy pen, huh?” she asked me.
“No. I wasn’t that lucky. I lived in the suburbs with an army of yuppies, but I smartened up, sold my condo and moved here.”
“Here!” she shivered. “Everybody’s lookin’ to move out of here! Nobody moves here unless they have to.”
“I had a severe case of affluenza,” I told her.
“Say what?”
“It’s a social disease. You get it from the relentless pursuit of money and material possessions.”
“Survival ain’t no disease,” she insisted.
“Affluenza isn’t at all about survival. It makes you go after more than you need. Whatever you have is never enough and you always want more, be it a better car, bigger condo, kinkier sex or whatever. It’s the crack of the rich and the wannabe rich. Affluenza turns everybody into a materialistic junkie.”
“So you rather be a poor sucker?” she asked me, raising her eyebrow as she posed the question.
The herpes carrying hooker just wasn’t getting it and I couldn’t help but think of the absurdity of the moment. Here was this destitute woman who had absolutely nothing and was forced to whore herself out for money, and I was trying to explain to her the pangs and sorrows of someone whose cup runneth over. She was just trying to survive in life and I was going into a philosophical rant about how eating too much of the apple was hazardous to your health. It was then that I realized it was best to keep my impoverished soul to myself.
I smiled at the confused hooker and pointed back towards the house.
“I’m thirsty,” I said. “You want a beer?”
She was hesitant at first, looking at me as if I was concealing a large butcher knife in my waistband.
“Do I have to go in there with you?” she asked, never once taking her eyes off of me.
“Nope. It’s probably better that you not because there’s some kind of serious snake on the loose in there. I was thinking I could grab you one and then just bring it back out here.”
“Well in that case, grab me two so you don’t have to get up again.”
I headed into the house and returned steadfast with three beers, one for me and two for my new scantily-dressed friend. I handed her the bottles and she wasted no time ingesting their contents.
“I was kind of hoping we could have a toast,” I said to her jokingly.
“You can toast my ass,” she blurted as she drank the remaining bottle in a single gulp. “Look at that shirt of yours. Those threads are dying for some starch.”
“I know. I need to go to the dry cleaners. Any of them do pick up around here?”
“Sugar, the only establishment that picks up around here is the funeral parlor.”
I chuckled even though the reality of her comment was quite depressing.
“So how much did that car cost you?”
“One hundred fifty thousand, give or take a thousand.”
“Your last name Rockafella or somethin’? How about givin’ me a loan?”
The conversation was getting sticky, and I avoided her question like I would the herpes on her lip.
“Come on, man. All I need is five hundred to pay off my electricity bill and to put some food in the house so my baby girl can eat.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea, and I’ll tell you why. If I give you money, you’ll keep coming back for more.”
“So?” she asked as if I was being ridiculous.
“Well, when I stop giving you money, that’s when our friendship would be ruined.”
“Last I checked, friends don’t let friends starve to death neither.”
“You’re an attractive woman with a lot to offer. Why not reel in a nice big sugar daddy to call your own?”
“Around here there are no such things as big fish—only minnows and sharks.”
Surely there must have been something I could do to help Clea boost sales. I thought long and hard and tapped into my MBA training and business expertise. And then it came to me as clear as day. I told Clea about how she had to work on her branding and marketing, which in business, translated to dollars. The problem was that she just hadn’t plugged in to her true potential in terms of reaching her customer base.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“When you are out walking and working the streets, most of your customers are inside, which means they don’t even know you are out there and available.”
Clea thought to herself for a moment and I could tell by the expression on her face that she agreed with my free business advice.
“So how do I get them to know I’m here?”
“Why not go with an already proven method? Music.”
“Music? You mean like hip hop or somethin’?”
“Not exactly. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to loan you a boom box, a CD and a knapsack and you’re going to conduct an experiment. You load it all up, you blast the speakers, and you walk around doing exactly what you normally do, only this time you’re advertising. Trust me. You’ll be swimming in customers.”
I ran inside and dug out a high-tech portable sound system that I had yet to unpack since moving to the neighborhood. The speakers were capable of projecting sound up to two blocks away, making it possible for Clea to broaden her sales horizons without having to clock extra hours. I grabbed the recently purchased “Pop Goes the Weasel” CD from the kitchen counter and loaded it into the boom box, making sure it was set on repeat before I piled everything into an oversized backpack. I quickly cut out a series of holes for the high powered speakers using a pair of left-handed scissors and returned to the porch where I handed it over to the entrepreneurial hooker.
Clea strapped the backpack over her shoulders and smiled in delight, no doubt wondering to herself why she hadn’t come up with the idea before. She left after saying something to me, but the weasel jingle was too loud for her comment to be heard and I had never been good at reading lips. I watched as she walked down the street, laughing to myself as various coin-carrying kids ran from their houses only to be disappointed to find the human ice cream truck and the fleshy treats she had up for grabs. Once word spread, I could actually see Clea’s client list tripling.
As I made my way back towards the porch I noticed Mikey sitting in the shadows. At first he startled me, but his stocky frame and barrel chest were a dead giveaway for who the mysterious silhouette belonged to.
Mikey was my new best friend. I met him the first day I moved into the neighborhood and we bonded instantly. He was a Neanderthal of man and spent most of his free time lifting weights, though he was adamant about skipping legs because, as he tried explaining to me once, they were the least-seen part of his body anyway. He was always wearing muscle shirts and I had yet to see him without a gold chain around his thick neck.
Since day one Mikey went out of his way to make me feel comfortable. When I told him where I had lived prior to moving to the neighborhood, he told me that he would keep an eye on me and that I was under his protection. He told me the ‘hood could be a dangerous place and, like prison, it’s important to have friends to watch your back. My favorite piece of advice that he shared with me was to steer clear of guys with expensive sneakers and starched tshirts because they were most likely gang bangers and that I didn’t want any part of them. He talked the talk quite a bit and while he had the veneer of a tough guy, he was extremely likable and humorous once you broke through the top layer. Even though I had only known him for a short time, he was always there for me and was always willing to do me a “solid” as he called it.
I could tell work was bothering Mikey. I had seen that look on his face a few times before. He had been working as a salesman since he graduated from high school, first starting out as an appliance guy at department stores like Sears and eventually getting a break with a Ford dealership downtown.
“How are sales?”
“Eh,” he said. “Today was MIT day so I got all of the cyberfreaks rolling in. They’re in what they call their ‘pre-research’ phase, which basically means that they walk around rubbing their beards and making me offers two hundred dollars below cost. It’s a giant waste of my time. The boss is pulling down seventy to eighty grand and me, throw the dog a bone.”
Mikey lit a cigarette and began belching forth smoke and gas from every possible orifice. A woman who was innocently walking her dog by the house was repulsed by the sound and smell wafting in her direction. They both tilted their noses away from Mikey and picked up the pace.
“Hey, I stink, therefore I am,” Mikey declared to the victim fleeing from his flatulence.
“I didn’t know you were a philosopher,” I said to him.
“I take my One-A-Day and don’t ask any questions.”
Mikey fiddled with the gold chain around his neck. He sucked on his cigarette and I watched the ash fall to the porch and for a moment I feared that the dried wood planks would ignite.
“Fuck, cigarettes taste damn good, man. I can’t believe these politician douchebags are trying to make it so difficult for me to smoke now. I tell you, if they ever try to take my smokes and Twinkies away from me, I swear I’ll storm the White House myself.”
“Martha says Twinkies are no good for you. She says there’s nothing but chemicals in them.”
“You can tell Martha that she can stick to eating celery sticks and carrots because that just means more Twinkies for me. I’m twentyfive man, and these are supposed to be the best years of my life. I plan on enjoying them.” Mikey paused and reflected for a moment and then blurted out, “I need a new job. I’m just not making what I should be. I know I’m not a rocket scientist, but I have talents and I work hard. I should be making more than the peanuts I’m making, I’ll tell you that much.”
“Have you thought about becoming an independent sales rep?” I asked Mikey.
“What the hell would I sell?”
“I read in the newspaper yesterday about how some local laboratory invented a silicone substitute for breast enlargement surgeries. It said they were going to be looking for salesmen to bring the product to market. Basically your clientele would be boob doctors. How hard could that be?”
“How can anybody get excited feeling up some Jell-O that some nerd made with his Bunsen burner? I’ll take some itty-bitty titties over some hard fakies any day of the week.”
“You don’t need to date the shit, you just need to sell it. I bet you can make good money in that field these days. Everyone’s trying to improve themselves in our self-obsessed society, so why not cash in on it?”
“And what do I tell people when they ask me what I do for a living?” he said, flicking his cigarette onto the walkway. “Am I supposed to tell my friends that I’m a breast salesman?”
“Nah. You just tell them you’re in pharmaceuticals.” “Thanks but no thanks, man. I need to believe in what I’m selling.”
“Can I ask you something, Mikey?”
“Sure thing.”
“I remember when I first moved here, you warned me about the girl Jennifer that lives a few houses down me. What was that all about again?”
“You thinking about hitting that?” he asked me.
“No. I was just talking with her recently and I guess I’m just curious about her.”
“You don’t want that,” he warned. “She’s the Lone Ranger of girls—a total shut-in. If I’m being completely honest, I think there’s something wrong with her. As long as I’ve been here, she’s never had any friends and I’ve never seen her with any guy. My brother went to school with her and they called her Space Girl all through high school. She’s out there, man.”
“Do you have any idea how long she’s been living with her aunt?”
“As far as I know, forever. Something bad happened to her parents when she was a kid and her aunt became her legal guardian or some shit like that.”
Mikey stared at me, investigating my thoughts like a psychic.
“You’re thinking of going after that, aren’t you?” he asked.
“No,” I reassured him, fearing that his knowledge of my interest in Jennifer would become an unwanted interference down the road. “Like I said, I’m just asking.”
Mikey stood up, stretched and shook out his crotch.
“Let’s go to Da Bomb tonight,” he told me. “I bet there will be plenty of action up in that joint tonight and I don’t know about you, but I could use some action.”
I found Mikey’s dating habits interesting, especially for a streetwise kid from the ‘hood. Most of the women he was seeing were either professionals or in college with ambitious aspirations. He steered clear of what he called “gutter girls” from the neighborhood and chose to chase successful women because it inspired him to advance himself.
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