why bother, you pee blood...

The fucking Police was playing when I walked into the bar.

“God damn I hate the fucking Police,” I yelled. Then I remembered something important, I was at the bar because a friend invited me. That friend? He’s a cop. And the bar was filled with cops.

So, like Tim Roth says in Reservoir Dogs, you’ve just got to jump right in and swim. That in mind, I walk up to the jukebox, just as Sting finishes saying something stupid over a backbeat provided by a drummer who appeared in a reality show about storage unit auctions. I put my dollar in. I picked my song.

“Right about now, N.W.A. court is in full effect…”

A few seconds later, a couple hundred cops were chanting along with Ice Cube, Easy-Z and Dr. Dre.

I watched this scene for a few seconds and thought back to 1988. I was a teenager who wanted to be James Hetfield. I drank like him. That was about the end of similarities. I had more of a Dave Mustaine mullet. I don’t think about high school much. Nothing much happened.

Kind of like this party. It’s at a strip-mall bar. It stinks like pee. I want to go home.

But I don’t. Why? I don’t know. Maybe something will happen.

I order a shot of Jameson and a Miller High Life to chase it down. I gave up drinking soon after my stroke. Well, I didn’t “give it up” as much as I just stopped because it hurt to drink now. That made it silly to do. Yeah, I still think about the girls and women of my past. And now, I don’t fight with them anymore. I just look at them and nod. Yep, still here.

Then I eat some unsalted nuts out of a can from CVS.

I take a sip of the beer. Fuck, it tastes bad. Then I take the shot. It tastes worse. But the beer, now it tastes OK.

Why am I friends with a cop? I’ve never had a good experience with one. It’s weird. Except that guy who showed up at my apartment in New Bern at 3 a.m. one night. I was blasting The Faces, signing along with Rod and Ronnie, and drinking way too much. I guess one of my neighbors complained to the police. Instead of just knocking on my door. Of course, I opened the door when the cop showed up in my shorts only. Beer gut hanging out, bottle of Shiner in one hand, devil horns in the other.

“Yes?”

“Sir, could you turn down the musi….Hey, is that a Jump in the Fire Metallica poster?” he said.

“Well, yes it is,” I said slurring just the it.

“Soooo awesome, man.”

“It is?”

“I never got to see Metallica, but they’re my favorite!” he said, to me, I guess still.

“Saw them twice in a month back in high school,” I said, puffing my chest a little bit. I have seen some good music, even though when SHE happened, I mostly stopped.

“Cool, cool,” he said. “But man, can you turn down the Rod Stewart? Neighbors complained.”

“Yeah, not a problem. Gotta be at work in the morning,” I said, fully knowing I went to work when I wanted. Some days at noon, others at 5 p.m., and still others never. Being the boss at that point of my life was a good, and bad thing.

“Night officer,” I said, slamming the door behind me and turning off the stereo. I drank the last half of the Shiner in my hand and threw the bottle in the trash can. It hit another bottle. “Clank, cla, clank.”

I went into the bathroom and peed … blood.

Probably should have paid closer attention to that stuff, I think, now back in the bar in a strip mall in suburban Raleigh, North Carolina, surrounded by cops I don’t know wondering where the fuck the one I know is?

Probably getting a blowjob in the bathroom, his brother says to me. I guess I’d been narrating stuff out loud again. It’s a bad habit of mine. I’ve been punched three times because of it and slapped twice. And got a girls number. Why? Because I fucking asked for it. Who’da thunk that actually works?

How the fuck did Sting get so damn rich? I think.

I order another beer and another shot. It’s going to be either a really long night, or a very short one. I hope for the latter, but know I’m in for the former.

“She’s here,” my buddy, not the cop, but the other one at the party I know says.

I look over my shoulder and yep, there she is, not HER, but instead her. She stole my heart for a moment because I left it out to rot. She kept if from rotting, and poisoned it instead. And her mom told me she liked me best.

Like mother, like daughter.

I look at her and then I smile. Why? Because I figured it out before it was too late.

I scratch my balls and think about cancer cells and Miller High Life bottle caps. This, I think, would make a great fucking story. And then I realize this is exactly why I don’t write for a living. Except for that newspaper thing any more.

Hopelessly awful

“So, do you have plans for the past?” she said to me as I sat in my broken down leather recliner. I got that thing at a thrift store for $35 and she’d never let me down. Sure, she smelled a little bit. The left arm had cracks in the leather, but overall, she was comfortable and certainly dependable. More than I could say about most things.

I cracked open another Miller High Life before delving into my latest companion’s attempts at saving me from myself. It never failed. Either I was trying to save them, or they were trying to save me. And really, since the only one who can truly save a person is themselves, I’m assuming we’re always fighting a losing fight.

“I don’t understand your question, honey,” I said before burping that last sip of beer. It was stale tasting. I’d gotten used to better beer, this was like a watered down version of Abita’s Amber.

“Yes you do, you fucking prick,” she said, slamming down her foot on the hardwood floor. That very same spot on the floor was where we shared a slow dance together about a year and a half ago. Three quarters of a bottle of Jameson first, mind you, but we did share a nice dance. The song was that Urge Overkill cover of “Girl, You’ll be a woman soon.”

And indeed I did know what she was talking about. It was what every girl found out about me eventually. I had a past, and I liked it there.

“You live in the fucking past. You stay there. And I really believe you want to be there!” she yelled.

“I don’t want to be there,” said. “I want us to be like then.”

That was stupid. Now it was her against her. The girl from the past. The one who broke my heart. The love of my life. I’d written those words so many times. I’d wrapped other people’s stories into her story and made them mine again. It was a losing proposition, but it was the only one I knew.

“Randy, you’ve got to get on with your life. It’s been over a decade now, and you still pine for her,” she said, starting to cry now. “I don’t think you know how much this is hurting me.”

I knew, exactly. Sometimes I think I wanted it to hurt. So maybe the one I was with could feel something akin to what I was feeling. Wrong of me? Certainly. But it just kept happening. Whether the relationship was fucking in the back of the stockroom at work every so often with the young reporter from Troy State, the girl I dated for six months and fell helplessly in love with way too fast and way too soon, or a crush that developed because a friend said “this girl’s got the same weird tastes as you” – and she was right, but just too much the same as she ended up hurting me.

“Listen, honey, I was honest with you from the get-go. And that’s a change of pace for me. I said I had a hang up, and she was it. I don’t want it to be that way. I try every day to leave her behind. But she stays. I yell at her. I curse at her. But it’s all in the wind. If I could see her today, I’d tell her to go fuck herself. And you know what? She wouldn’t care one bit. I guess that’s why it hurts. Still.”

“But that’s precisely why it shouldn’t hurt anymore, babe. Don’t you see that?”

I felt more and more like Jim Carrey in “The Truman Show.” Something always felt just a little off. Which is why I think I held on to a piece that was “normal.” A part of my life when everything went right. Even when it was wrong. Until it went to shit. In one night. All at once for me. Probably over months for her. Damn her for coming and acting like everything was OK for those two months we were together in North Carolina after all that time apart while she was in Florida. New Year’s eve was so special to me that it ranks up there as one of the top 5 nights of my life. Sadly, I do rank such things, and did so before I read about it and then watched it acted out in “High Fidelity.”

She looked at me, and sighed. She knew I was thinking about such random things. She was the first person who was able to get me to admit this. That when we were talking about serious things – bills, our sex life, insurance, houses, etc. – that most likely I was seeing pictures of Matt Damon in “Rounders” or John Laroquette in “Stripes” instead of real life. She grew to think it was cute, I believe, even if it was “fucking annoying.”

“You and I, we will be fine,” she said. “When you move to the present. Until then, we’re going to be like this. You drinking. Me crying. I just hope that’s enough for both of us forever.”

She got up and left. Off to the beach. I sat there in my recliner, thinking about the Ken Griffey Jr. Super Nintendo game. And about how hopelessly awful that was.

the envelope

Sitting on the couch, a documentary on Howard Hughes came on. I watched, somewhat interested, but not really.

My grandmother was with me. She started to squirm a little bit at what was going on on the television screen. This drew my interest more than anything that the voice over guy was trying to tell me about this man.

The early years didn’t elicit much of a reaction. But when it got to the 1950s and 1960s, she started to wince a bit and even cry a little.

“Ooms, what’s the matter?” I asked.

She looked at me, touching my hand ever-so-lightly before saying “I never liked that man.”

Whoah. This was kind of a revelation. My grandmother knew Howard Hughes? Could it be possible? Or did she just not like the celebrity Hughes. The guy who may or may not have gotten away with manslaughter. Or the crazed 90-pound guy that died back in 1976.

“Why’s that?” I asked slyly.

“He was so mean to everyone. Especially your grandfather.”

At that very moment, a shot of Hughes appeared on the television. I was astounded by how much he looked like my grandpa. The eyes, the chin, eerily similar.

The voice over started talking about Hughes’ doubles. How they became the public face of the billionaire as he further sank into his mentally ill world, but still tried to keep his empire going strong.

“You mean…”

“Yep, he was one of those guys. Used to pretend to be Mr. Hughes.”

“That’s amazing!”

“I thought so too. At first.”

Of course this response only piqued my curiosity up another notch on my brain’s amplifier.

“But he was so much older than Grandpa,” I said with a stern “It’s hard for me to believe this” voice.

“Yes, but remember he had a huge hold on Hollywood. The makeup people could do amazing things. Even back then.”

Made sense.

“So, Ooms, tell me more. Please.”

I’d never really asked much about my grandparents. And now that three of the four of them are gone, I regretted it. I knew only bits and pieces. My grandpa was in the Navy. Saw a lot of ugly stuff, and didn’t talk much about it. I’d found out since he passed that he smoked a bit of marijuana from time to time. Was a bit of a racist from birth, but worked hard to not be. And he had a very confrontational relationship with god.

That was more than I’d ever known growing up. Heck, I knew even less about my dad’s parents. He worked for the railroads and was a drunk. She was a librarian. That’s about it. Sad to think. So, I pressed on with my mom’s mom.

“This could be a very interesting movie,” I continued.

“No. No. No. We are not allowed to talk about it. Had to sign a contract that said as much. Hell, boy, I shouldn’t be telling you.”

We stopped talking for a little bit. She took a few sips on her Bloody Mary, I on my Sam Adams. The program continued. It got to the Vegas years. My grandmother smiled.

“Ok. Now you’ve done it. I need to know why that makes you happy?”

“Because that’s when he stopped needing doubles. Everyone knew he was nuts, so the act didn’t work anymore. My Paul was free.”

That line made me smile too.

“So, how much money did they pay for this?”

“Well, let’s just say that the money we had when he retired was a hell of a lot more than you’d make working for Firestone for 40 years.”

I always wondered how much money they had. And if my grandfather had really been such a stock market wiz like my mom always said he was. This, obviously, swept that assessment out the door. Or at least opened it and got out the broom.

“You have any pictures?”

“What? Of him as Howard Hughes? Of course. You just saw a couple of them in that show.”

“Really? That’s neat. How about any proof?”

“Still have the contract we signed. Was told to hold on to it forever.”

She got up from the couch and went into her bedroom. A couple minutes later, she came out with an old yellowed envelope. She handed it to me.

Inside were three sheets of paper. Typed from an old typewriter, complete with a couple of white out marks. I read it. It was very straight forward. It was fascinating.

In short it said my grandpa would be on call 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. He could never say why he was leaving if he had to leave. He would be paid, in cash, every time he was needed. And he could never say a word about it, or would have to “face the consequences.”

It was signed by my grandpa, a lawyer Jonah Jones Jr., and Howard Hughes himself.

“Wow,” was all I could muster after reading the contract.

“Indeed,” Ooms said. “Now, you know, you can’t talk about this. At least until I’m gone.”

“OK,” I nodded in a Ralphie on Santa’s lap kind of way.

She patted me on the hand again, then went back to her bedroom to put the envelope away.

I woke from my daze and blurted out “Ooms, can I have that envelope….One day?”

“Maybe, darlin’. Maybe.”