It came down to this: Jay Leno
or midget porn.
Smug jokes about people I don’t
care about or some chick named Twiget.
Either choice could end the
relationship that was just three dates old. But I didn’t have time to think
about it. I made a decision, and God damn it, I was going to live with it. What
else could I do?
“What the hell are you watching?”
she asked as I pretended to not know she was standing behind me.
“It’s redhead midget porn…” I
said as numbly as possible to create some kind of illusion that I didn’t
actually type “redhead midget porn” into Google to see exactly what was on the
screen of my 52 inch television.
“Weird,” she replied and walked
into the kitchen. I heard her books slam against the cement floor, then the
fridge opened. Some bottles clinked around and one opened with the
pssssssssssst sound that I have heard more than any other in my lifetime.
She came back in the den. Took
her boots off and plopped down on my ratty red futon mattress with me.
“Is this what’s in store for the
next 50 years?” she said.
“Nah, I like this tranny named
Bailey Jay a little more than Twiget the Midget,” I replied, taking a small
swig of whiskey from my “Makin’ Bacon” glass.
“Nice glass,” she said,
pointing.
“Found it at a thrift store a
long time ago,” I said. “Was with a redhead. She won’t no midget though. She
was normal sized.”
“What the fuck does normal sized
mean,” she said, glaring back at me.
“You know, not a midget or
playing in the WNBA,” was the best I could do. I took another swig of whiskey.
It was a bottle I’d brought back from Ireland in 2011. My best friend from
college took me with his wife overseas. They paid for 99 percent of the trip. I’m
a deadbeat, but I’m a lucky fucking deadbeat I thought to myself as I watched
some guy with an 8-inch penis fuck a three-foot, 4-inch midget.
“This is pretty good,” she said.
“I wonder if it hurts?”
“Nah,” I said. “It’s no
different than if it was a …” I honestly couldn’t think of anything to say. My
dick wasn’t that big, and I’d never fucked a midget. So my frame of reference
was slight.
“You were saying?” she asked,
taking a long swig of Michelob.
“Don’t drink that!” I screamed,
grabbing the bottle away. “It’s old.”
“How old?”
“It’s been in my fridge for
about 3 years, I’d guess.”
“Eh, I’ve had worse,” she said,
grabbing the bottle back. Some of it spilled on my table/trunk. An old Joe
Strummer sticker got the worst of it. I cringed a little bit. She noticed.
“That trunk means a lot to ya,
doesn’t it?”
“It’s been with me for a while,”
I replied, trying not to look like it mattered.
“How long?”
“After I left New Orleans. So…about
14 years now.”
“You lived in New Orleans?”
“Just a short while. I should
have never left New Orleans…”
“You should write that down,”
she said.
“I have.”
“Don’t get testy with me.”
“Not testy, just sad. The past
does that to me. I cling to it like the Spanish moss does to the trees or maybe
how the Kudzu hugs everything around here.”
“Yeah, Kudzu sucks,” she said.
She stared into my eyes. I didn’t want to look at her. I wasn’t ready to fall
in love again. The worst part about getting your heart broken isn’t getting it
broken, it’s falling in love again. I
reached for my notepad and wrote those words down. I had to. While I probably
heard them before in some clichéd Americana song in some shitty dive bar in
North Carolina or Richmond, Va., over the years, they sounded close enough to
good that I figured I could re-write them some other way years later and maybe
sound profound.
Not likely.
The notepads full of aimless
starts at stories. The blogs full of inane ramblings. The scaps of paper, or
receipts or napkins or even the backs of cigarette packs that I never smoked
are full of endless words. Usually scribbled while drunk, but never while
thinking about Bob Costas. He scares me. Looks too much like Ellen Degenerees.
Or whatever.
She watched me put my notepad
back under the couch. I left one there for just such moments. It had beer and
some kind of peanut residue on it.
“What was that?” she said.
“Annoying habit I picked up from
a buddy,” I said, finishing off her beer.
“Did you just write down
something I said?”
“Nah.”
“You’re lying.”
“No I’m not. You haven’t moved
me that much yet.”
“No?”
“Nope.”
“Well, you’re really smooth with
the ladies, aren’t you?”
“Never.”
