TDTF

The guy who used to live with me, his community college diploma came in the mail yesterday. I stared at the plain manila envelope for a moment, considering how I would feel if my diploma arrived at someone else’s house and that person was holding it. Then I remembered that I’m not the kind of person who doesn’t change his address when he moves, doesn’t rail against things that he uses and certainly has some scruples.

So, I tossed in a lawnchair that serves as my dining room and went about my business.

Hey, I never said all those things added up to being successful at anything.

He walked into the bar, as always Melody, the bartender, queued up the Dead Kennedys’ “Too Drunk to Fuck.”

Poor Charlie. He went home with a girl from Midlothian one night. She had been all over him. Kissing him, buying him drinks, and just making him the center of her universe. It was obvious that someone wanted to get laid that night.

Charlie went out the backdoor and drove they hailed a cab. Charlie lived just a couple blocks away, but figured what the fuck. He was getting laid tonight!

After going inside, the girl pulled him directly into his bed. He had a studio apartment, so it wasn’t hard to find. She ripped of his pants, ripped off his shirt and ripped off his underwear. By this time, Charlie had taken off her shoes.

She tossed her clothes to the side and Charlie stared at her tits. He’d never seen tits before. They were egg shaped. Not round like the ones he always saw in the horror movies. Him and Joey always picked out horror movies based on the boxes. If it looked like there would be titties, they always rented it.

He grabbed a hold of one of them and it was soft and warm. He freaked out a little, but kept his grip firm. He wondered if he was squeezing it right. There was no way to really know. But she seemed to be enjoying it. He kissed her neck and then gulped. Next were the tits. He kissed them. And sucked a little. She then grabbed his dick. It was still shriveled up and tiny. He freaked out a bit and started to move his fingers on her crotch. She was wet and warm. And not very hairy. He looked real quick at it. It was beautiful. Then he looked at his limp cock. He grabbed it and shook it. Nothing. He tried to think of the best porn he’d ever seen. Nothing. He just grabbed it and tried to push it inside of her.

She blocked it with her fist.

“Do you have a condom?” she asked.

Charlie had never bought a condom. Never had a reason to. Actually, he’d never even thought about buying condoms. It seemed like such a foreign thing to him.

“Um, no,” he finally answered.

She stared down at him. He could see her tits in the light coming from the hotel next door busting through the window. She wasn’t exactly pretty, he saw. Not having a hard on had sobered him up a bit.

She pushed his chest and frowned.

“Well, this ain’t going nowhere,” she said, getting off of him.

He watched as she put her clothes back on. He was rubbing his cock still, hoping for some kind of life. He’d never experienced such a thing. He was too young to have this problem.

She finished putting her clothes on and left.

Charlie sat there in his room, looking up at the ceiling. He began to cry.

Just then, Charlie’s roommate busted in.

“Whoah, Charlie,  you fuck girl?” he said in very broken English. Na Hoon was from Korea and moved in because Charlie needed money to buy more VHS tapes. He recorded everything he watched, no matter how bad it was. Or how good.

“She was big girl,” Na Hoon said laughing. “Wait till bar hear about.”

With that, Na Hoon walked out.

Charlie put his clothes back on slowly. He couldn’t believe he was naked with a girl and was still a virgin. She wanted to do it, and he couldn’t. He’d never forget this. Never forget her name. That’s when he saw her watch. It was sitting on his bedside table. He picked it up and looked at it. Then threw it across the room. Later on, he’d see that he broke it, stopped it right on the time of his worst day – 1:33 a.m. on July 7. Then he put it in a box and kept it. A reminder of the worst night of his life.

Back at the bar, Na Hoon was telling what he saw.

When Charlie walked into the bar, everyone gave him a standing ovation. Charlie blushed and got more angry.

“Give me a shot of Jim Beam,” he snarled at Melody.

Swig.

“And other.”

Swig.

“And another.”

Soon, Charlie’s anger started to manifest outwardly. His brow furrowed and his eyes glared. Especially at any woman in the place.

“Charlie, um, I think you need to go home,” Melody said.

“Not yeeet,” Charlie slurred. “I’ve got to forget about tonight.”

Melody was concerned. Here was Charlie, who everyone knew was a virgin, and some lady took him home and made his night. Hell, his decade. Something must have gone wrong.

“Charlie, what happened,” she whispered in his ear.

“I couldn’t geeettt it up,” he slurred. But in a voice that he thought was a whisper, but instead was a yell. It didn’t help that the Black Crowes’ “Twice as Hard” ended right before he spoke.

“Oh, jeez,” Melody said. But she couldn’t help it. She laughed. And soon everyone was laughing.

Charlie grabbed a shot glass and threw it against a wall.

“Why me?” he screamed and stumbled out the doors.

Charlie would forever be known as TDTF, as the Dead Kennedys’ album “Give Me Convenience, Or Give Me Death” was a bar favorite even before that night.

Maury Povich pays better than Jerry Springer

“I guess this is the right place,” I thought to myself as I took a seat in one of the blue vinyl chairs. They had very uncomfortable metal arm rests that dug into my elbows. “God, I hope this doesn’t take all day.”

But it did. The purpose of sitting in a dank, overcrowded room full of the slobs and misfits of my adopted state of North Carolina? To get paid.

Being as broke as I am, I decided to go and sell plasma. I’m not too proud to do something like that. So, I searched on the internet for a place that did it, found one close by and went.

After filling out endless rounds of paperwork, I found out that my first trip was a test. Of my blood. To make sure I didn’t have AIDS or hepatitis or some other awful disease. It was good to find out that I didn’t have any of those things.

However, I never went back. I just couldn’t deal with the masses of people sitting there, waiting to donate. Talking to each other. Trying to talk to me. It freaked me out. It made my inner misanthrope want to grab a pair of scissors and start stabbing. Going for the jugular kind of behavior.

So, instead of going there to sell my body for the good of mankind, I sold my record collection. At least I can pay the rent this month. Next month? That’s going to be dodgy. But, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. We? The collective we, I suppose.

It’s late May and I’m wondering whether I’ll survive the summer. I’m debating moving out of my house to a place two hours from where I work. A two-hour drive to and from work every day will be expensive and tedious. It will also save me about $400 a month. No rent payment and all. But, of course, the cost of car maintenance will all but destroy that saving.

Finding a job outside of my current job has proven to be impossible. The will is there, but the effort hasn’t been outstanding. I’m disappointed in myself a little bit more each day. And disappointed in the employer of today. They seem to want something that I either don’t possess, or don’t know how to articulate that I do, indeed, possess it.

So, instead I stew. And bake. And cry. And wonder why.

Outside my window they are doing landscaping to a parking lot. So they can charge people to park there. It’s quite sad to watch. I don’t like it when they charge. I do, however, wish I could take the attendant’s job. He or she just sits there for hours doing nothing except reading. Or maybe writing. And occasionally talking to someone who decides that the lot furthest from civilization is worth paying to leave behind their car.

A sign says that they must leave by 5 p.m. as well. The bar that owns the lot – which I’m sure gets some kind of cut – mandates it. Will they tow the cars away this year, I wonder to myself. Of course, who else would I wonder it to?

The stereo isn’t on. That’s odd. Music doesn’t soothe the way it used to. You listen to the same lyric too many times and it loses impact. The pain fades, I guess. Just like the songs tell you.

I think about shooting a machine gun. Wonder how it would feel in my hands as the bullets flew out of it. But guns scare the shit out of me. I don’t even like holding them for a second.

Eating tacos on the beach. It’s not pleasant. During or after.

Some days they flow like wine. Other times I have to extract them like rotting teeth. Putrefied and black. Puss flows from gums that are swollen epically from neglect.

“My head doesn’t so much hurt as throb,” I told the nurse at the free clinic that I paid $30 to have services rendered.

She looked at me with a bored, sullen face. She didn’t give two shits about my head. It was 4:45 p.m. and she got off at 5. Margaritas with the ladies were waiting for her, and hopefully some stud from the accounting firm would fuck her silly tonight.

“How long has it throbbed like that,” she said. Her mind was thinking about another kind of organ throbbing. She giggled a bit and hope that I didn’t notice.

“Three days or so,” I replied. “Right after I was stung by some kind of bug.”

I showed her my wound. It was on the back of my neck. Swollen and red. It didn’t hurt, it just existed. But it had existed much too long for a bug bite.

“That’s not a bug bite,” she said with a gasping quality. “I’ll be right back.”

Three days later, I was under a white sheet. They thought I was dead. But I wasn’t. Just immobilized by whatever venom was inside of me. I thought back to the plasma office. Maybe this was the plasma karma ghosts fucking with me.

“See, you should have kept your appointment, mother fucker. Now, these doctors are gonna bury you alive!”

I chuckled inside a little. Then I started thinking about porn. I don’t know why. I figured it would put my mind at ease. Then I remembered Christopher Reeve. When his wife talked about them having sex after his accident. That they did it “whenever he rose to the occasion.” Or something similar to that.

So, I dreamed of Smokie Flame and Neesa and Gianna Michaels.

And before I knew it, I had a hard on. And before I knew it, the nurse noticed.

That was the day a hard on saved my life.

At least that was the name of the show when I went on Maury Povich. Why Maury? He paid better than Jerry.

Hard on. Apply directly to the penis.

It’s a moment etched in the brain. It’s not wanted in there anymore, yet it insists to exist there.

Drinking till stupid didn’t get rid of it. Yelling and screaming at it doesn’t work much either. Writing about it endlessly doesn’t help much, but the pain seems to subside a bit. Talking to others about it just gets perplexed looks and uncomfortably bad advice.

Why this memory is so much more vivid than, say, that great night in Texas or the first time I kissed someone, I have no idea.

Instead, this one stays there. It’s just a short memory, but it’s awful -- me, driving my sister’s SUV. The smell of her dog everywhere. Her, standing there with no emotion on her face at all. Tears running out of me like ants attacking a dropped Push Up. Everything so bright as the late Spring sun is high in the air on Memorial Day in Florida.

I watch her stand there, making sure I’m not going to stop and come back. I watch the entire length of the driveway, finally reaching the road. I put the SUV in drive and go. Soon, the house is gone from view. So is she. The next 12 hours are nothing. I have one vague memory of the drive back to North Carolina. I remember making a phone call or getting one, I don’t remember which it was. My best friend who is an ex-girlfriend calling me or me calling her. I didn’t kill myself that day/night because of that phone call. Although I definitely thought about it.

Funny how that sticks. Two endings meeting up, but not allowing for another end.

Why fucking Dokken brings that one flooding back, I’ll never know. I guess the line “I told you I had to leave, I had my reasons. I said that it’d hurt to stay, the way I’m feeling.”

Eh. Whatever.

I could go grab a beer. Like I did so often when this memory flooded up my mind. Clogged it may be the better descriptor. Other things just don’t exist when that memory is there. Damn, has it really been four and a half years? What the fuck am I still haunted by that ghost for? Normal people don’t do that, do they?

Enough bad writing (including my own) has been dedicated to the longing that won’t leave. The longing that you think is gone when you find someone else, but when that person goes away, it comes right back. I guess I just need to find someone that’ll stay. Is that the key? Is that the solution? Is it really that fucking simple?

Probably.

***

“You fucking listen to this shit?” she said after my jukebox selection of “Dream Warriors” by Dokken started playing.

“I saw them live once,” I replied. “Still the loudest show I’ve ever been too. I couldn’t hear right for three days after. It was even on the local news just how loud the show was.”

“Still, this song. It sucks.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t remind me of anything.”

“Well, that’s as good a reason as any. My name is Michelle.”

“Michelle, pleasure to meet ya. My name is Randy. Can I buy you a drink?”

“Nah, I’m waiting for my boyfriend.”

“Figures.”

“Why?”

“You’re the first woman to speak to me in three months that I didn’t work with or who wasn’t at a cash register.”

“It’s no wonder.”

“Huh?”

“Shave once in a while.”

“Cheers!”

***

Lights flickered in his eyes. Bright colors all of them. He felt a little heavy on the left side. Every bit of picked up medical knowledge told him he was either having a stroke or a heart attack.

But he had more important things to worry about. Mostly, the 14 hours left in his drive to New Orleans. He was depending on this trip to end some melancholy. She was depending on him to get her there. Basically, it was do or die, and maybe even do and die.

The lights stopped flickering after a couple of hours. The numbness in the arm about an hour after that.

“Survived another one,” he thought to himself as he guzzled some Dr. Pepper and ate a Slim Jim. Yeah, there was no reason to think, at 40, he’d be having those kinds of troubles. Just the mind playing tricks on him.

“Sure. But when the dick stops getting hard, that’s when you might want to get it checked out,” the sensible voice inside his head said.

“Not like I’d know,” he chuckled. Was that out loud, the definitely thought as he looked at her sitting in the seat next to him.

“You say something?” she muttered, digging around in the bag of cds he’d brought.

“Just thinking about my not having sex in a long time,” he thought.

“Nah. Just mumbling to myself.”

“You do that a lot. You know that?”

“Yeah, you live by yourself as long as I have, and you tend to not notice,” he said.

“I’ve lived by myself for most of the last 10 years. I don’t do that.”

“Well, I guess I’m insane. And you’re going to be a car with me for the next 15 hours. Buckle up!”

“Joy.”

I looked at her. Got a hard on.

“Ha. Guess, I don’t have to worry about that yet.”

***