Meeting Lyle

“God damn it!” Shelby the bartender yelled at no one, but definitely at me. “Those fucktards have been playing Puddle of Mudd and Slipknot for over an hour now.”

“So why don’t you tell them to stop? Or better yet, take those God awful bands off of your jukebox?” I retorted.

She glared at me. I think she was expecting sympathy. But I’m the guy who comes in and selects and entire twenty bucks worth of sad Lucero songs, back-to-back-to-motherfucking-back as she some of the patrons have taken to noticing out loud.

At that very moment an elderly chap walked in to the bar. He winced at the sound of Wes Scantlin’s voice. He walked over to the bar and looked at Shelby disapprovingly. I smiled and attempted to give the same look, but failed.

“You like this … this …”

“Music?” I interrupted.

“This is not music!” the old guy exclaimed. “I’m going to put a stop to this!”

He looked at the two guys, each wearing black wife beaters with some kind of skull logos emblazoned on them. The also had visors on. If they had been wearing Birkenstocks they would have needed to beat each other up, repeatedly. On principle alone.

“Oh, hell,” he said. “I need a drink first.”

The old timer sat down next to me. There were 27 other empty stools at the bar, but he plopped down in the once closest to me. This, of course, made me interested in what this old guy was selling.

“Hey, there old-timer,” I said, hoping that he wasn’t one of those old guys who hated to be told he was old. “What’s shaking?”

“I’ll tell ya what’s shaking, kid,” the old guy said. “My balls around my ankles when I don’t have my underwear on.”

We laughed and clinks whiskey glasses.

“And damn, you’d run away from my penis!” he snorted after downing his glass. “Right, Kylie?”

Kyle was the local whore. I didn’t know that yet, as I’d only been coming to the bar for about two weeks now. After getting my advance for a magazine piece, I drove 1,107 miles exactly – the amount of the check – and decided to write the story wherever that was. And that was here, at Sam’s Pub. In Kermit, Texas – just outside of Odessa, if you’re keeping track.

“You’re drinking some RedBreast there I see,” the old man said looking at my glass. “Damn good stuff. Can’t afford it much anymore. Except when Samantha’s working. She’s got a soft spot for me.”

We looked at Sam, the owner and most of the time barkeep. He was reading the local newspaper and sipping on a cup of coffee. Sam, I’d find out later, hadn’t had a drink since the night before he opened the joint. Made a promise to his now-ex-wife that he’d never hit the sauce if he actually opened the bar.

He lived up to his promise. Only problem being his wife didn’t like the Sam who didn’t drink. She ended up fucking one of the dishwashers one night by the old Donkey Kong machine. Sam walked in on them and nearly killed the two of them. Luckily, Odell, a local janitor from the nearby factory was on his lunch break and stopped Sam cold in his tracks with just these words “Sam, you won’t like getting fucked in the ass by a guy like me.”

Sam laughed at Odell’s comment, then put his shotgun back under the bar. Instead, he walked in to his soon-to-be-ex-wife’s little trist with his soon-to-be-ex-dishwasher And right before the guy came, he punched him right in the taint.

They have a still from the surveillance video of that exact moment poster sized above the bar. The video made YouTube, last time it was checked it had over 11 million views. Eventually, it made Tosh.0 once. But Sam wouldn’t allow for the dishwasher’s redemption.

As for his wife – Janet – she ended up going back home to Llano and living with her mom and her aunt.

“The bitch always deserved to live with her mom,” Sam said the day he heard that news.

Meanwhile, Slipknot’s third time singing “Butcher’s Hook” finally got me riled up enough to spend some of my ever dwindling advance.

I walked over to the jukebox, the two hogs were busy air-guitaring and singing the awesomeness that is “Go Ahead and Disagree … I’m giving up again!” I slipped in two twenty dollar bills and selected two albums. First up was Neil Young’s “Arc”. Thirty-plus minutes of noise and distortion. Followed of course by Mr. Young’s “Weld”, just another in the long line of fine live albums by the Canadian-turned-American.

As Slipknot ended, there was a brief period of silence. I asked Sam to put a pause before my songs started. This way the surprise would be better. The two lads, as they became known, went to pick some new songs by the same two bands. Putting their money to good use. But, suddenly Neil Young’s guitar started blasting.

Lad No. 1 stared at No. 2.

“What the fuck, Bart! You picked this shit?”

“Hell no, man,” No. 2 yelled back. “I picked ‘People equal Shit’, man.”

The old guy watched them arguing. He looked and me and patted me on the back.

“Those guys gotta learn to let it go, kid. They really do.”

This was the day I met Lyle.

Jack Rebney vs. the cats

The place smelled bad again today. Like some kind of furniture polish mixed with bleach. Unbearable, for sure, but it came with the territory.

Each day seemed to bring a new odor. Some days, it was easy to tell what it was. If the bug guy had been there, and he was there often, it would smell of bug spray and vinegar. If it was the beginning of the month, it would be of potpourri, as the janitor’s wife always gave him a new bag on the first. If it reeked of shit, then the toilets were clogged up. Usually by Richard. And if there was paint, it meant someone punched a wall and it had to be covered up.

The cubicles were all the same. Some people decorated with pictures of family and friends. Others had action figures and toys. A few just had dirty wrappers and napkins from weeks of fast food purchases.

The floors were marked with black circles at each desk. The more a person spent in their desk, the blacker the circle was. The floors were cleaned about twice a year if there was a reason. A dead mouse sat behind an abandoned desk. It had been empty for months, since the last round of layoffs. A newsroom was no place for people anymore.

The computer came on. Taking time to boot up its store of over a decade-old software. No one used CS2 anymore, right? Wrong.

Finally, his computer was done booting and he logged in. And sighed a long sigh.

“Hey, buddy, what’s happening?” a voice said from behind. It was Mike. He was way too chipper now that he had lost weight. It was good for him, but it also made him more annoying.

“Same job, different day,” he replied.

“Heh, heh, heh,” Mike laughed and went back to work.

Staring at the walls he couldn’t help but look up at the stains on the ceiling. They appeared to be blood. Crusted and dark the stains were. Just above his desk. He fantasized often about it being from the last person in this cubicle, who finally had had enough and just blew his head off, spraying some blood on the walls and ceiling above. The wall, they just painted over. The ceiling, it just absorbed it. Those tiles made out of corkboard. Blood and mold.

He shuttered thinking about it and stared at his computer screen. A balding man stared back at him. The screen saver was of the Winnebago Man of internet fame. It got him through the days sometimes, just having a staring contest with Jack Rebney.

After about six minutes of this, another sigh. And this was enough to make him get up.

He walked through the newsroom, staring at the empty cubicles. The ones that still had people in them, all looked sullen and wasted. Plus, they all had headphones on. Every single one of them. Hell, the phones never rang anymore, so I guess it didn’t matter.

After opening the door to go outside, he held his breath. Walking through the smoking area always made him angry too. Why the hell did it have to be right next to the main employee entrance. It seemed to defeat the purpose of making them do it outside. Hell, if the newsroom was full of smoke, maybe it would feel like a newsroom again. Maybe the newsroom itself would realize exactly what it was again and something good would happen?

Nah.

He walked to the back. There was a beat up old van there with broken out windows. The keys were in the ignition. They were always there. I guess no one needed a van bad enough to take it.

Past the van were the recycling areas. Giant 18-wheelers just sitting there waiting to be filled with newspapers. Most of them just printed and then thrown away. A great scheme in the old days. If you printed them, you could say that was the circulation. Charge more for advertisements and then print some more.

It didn’t work that way anymore.

He walked past the trucks to an empty patch of grass. It seemed so out of place in this industrial complex. But it was here.

He’d heard two days ago that a couple of mailroom employees sneak out into the woods and fuck. That seems to be silly. Why do it there? Just use a cubicle.

Feral cats were everywhere in the field. It appears that folks feed them as empty tuna cans and pieces of tin foil are strewn about. The cats are all well fed and not exactly friendly. Bastards. You’d think if we’re feeding ya, you’d want to be nice.

He sat in the field and stared at the cats.

“This is more enjoyable than staring at Jack Rebney,” he thought with a smile.

Before he knew it, three hours had passed. He looked down at his leg. It was asleep and covered with ants. He’d sat right next to an ant hole and they were not taking on the job of devouring his body.

For just a second, the thought of being slowly taken apart by ants as appealing. His job was that bad, he thought to himself.

But it really wasn’t. Hell, it was easy. Mind-numbingly easy to be exact. One day, he wouldn’t be working there anymore. And he’d probably end up with a tougher job.

He hoped at least.

legs

“Mr. Jones, based on our calculations, you need to save about $897 a month for the next 30 years so you can retire and live the life you are accustomed to. This is based upon complex formulas and your current, past and future earnings that we estimated.”

I sat there and stared at my “Investment Guru.” This was a self-given label. These people were called in by my company to try and “kick start” retirement planning. Funny, I’ve pretty much known for 15 years that if I didn’t marry a rich woman, retirement for me would be a one-bedroom hovel on skid row.

“What do you think of that Mr. Jones?” this perky, 24-year-old guru asked me.

“Well, Miss Smythe. … It is Miss?”

“Yes.”

“That is more than I make in two weeks. If you double that to get my monthly income, then subtract rent, utilities, gas money, student loan payment, credit card payment, internet payment and so on, you’ll see that this is impossible.”

I stared at her as she stared at me.

“And that does not include food.”

“OK. So you’re feeling a little bit overwhelmed. … No need to be belligerent.”

“Belligerent? I’m not being belligerent. I’m being rational. If this company paid a living wage – no one in this office has received a raise in the years I’ve been here. In fact, they’ve all received pay cuts. Do you know what that’s like?”

“Well, uh…”

“I thought not. I mean, if the company took the money it spent hiring you and your “associates” to come in here and tell us that we’re not going to ever be able to retire, and divided it up amongst the 100 or so of us, then we’d have that amount of money. For a week.”

Dumbfounded, Miss Smythe played with her pencil and stared at her computer monitor. I didn’t mean to be mean, but sometimes it was inevitable.

Instead of apologizing, however, I decided to stare at her legs. They were great legs. The kind that look like ivory, but soft. She had on a short skirt to show them off and it made me feel worse. So, I stopped looking at them. But a little too late.

“Did you enjoy that?” Miss Smythe said angrily.

“Not particularly. Just reminded me of an ex-lover of mine who devastated me years ago.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” I said, looking at her tits now.

“Mr. Jones, I want to help you. And it appears from your financials that you need help.”

“Just from my financials?”

She brushed that off and continued: “Here is my card. I don’t usually do this with clients from this job, but you genuinely need help. And I think you are smart enough to know you need help.”

“Being smart enough isn’t enough,” I said with a bit of a southern drawl.

“Yes, that is true, Mr. Jones. Most people don’t know it’s too late until they aren’t working anymore and have medical bills and other financial obligations that a measly savings and a Social Security check won’t pay.”

I knew all of this was true, but I didn’t care. I was here for one reason – my boss said I had to come – but now was here because staring at Miss Smythe was better than staring at the drivel known as copy that the reporters and editors handed to me at the paper. Bitterness did not come close to describing what I felt each day I plopped down into my cubicle.

Yesterday was especially bad because my boss found a project I’d been working on. Sometimes in the office, but mostly late at night in the comforts of my way-too-expensive for my income beach house while sipping on a bottle of Jameson. A collection of short stories based upon a dying newspaper. It would never be read, but it was damn funny – to me at least.

Reporters who can’t write and editors who can’t edit filled its pages. A manager in number – but not effort – for each reporter. A drunk leading the charge – not altogether a horrible thing, mind you – and an elf-like publisher who showed up every so often and said hello – his hunched shoulders reminding you that he had millions in the bank and you had $45.12.

“Mr. Jones, we need to talk,” she yelled from her glass-enclosed office in the corner of the newsroom.

I got up, sighed loudly and trudged to her office.

“Sit down please, and shut that door!” she barked.

She managed to say that second part after I had sat.

“What is this? This garbage?” she then yelled.

“What exactly are you talking about? The paper? Or something in it?”

She stared for a second, trying to intimidate me. After realizing the folly, she continued…

“I think you know what it is I am talking about. This, this writing you’ve been doing. Probably doing it while sitting in your comfortable chair over there.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s comfortable….”

“Shut up. You’ve been writing about us. Making fun of everyone in that office. What do you think they would all think about it if I showed them?”

“It would be quite a portrait of just how awful all of our lives have become,” I replied. “About how awful we’ve all let our lives become. This, for all of us on a daily basis, is a choice.”

My boss, taken aback by my non-chalance , sighed even louder than I did moments before.

“Mr. Jones, do you know what this means?”

“That you don’t know my first name?” I thought of saying, but since I knew the answer I refrained.

“Yes?” I finally said.

“You need to apologize to everyone for this. If you want to let them see it, and then hate you for it, that is your decision. But you must apologize.”

I stood up from the leather chair in her office, noticing just how comfortable it was compared to my stained with God-knows what, rickety old felt covered chair at my desk, and nodded. I felt it served the purpose better to just nod like Billy Bob Thornton in “Sling Blade”.

I went out into the office and cleared my throat.

“Attention everyone!” I said. “Attention everyone!”

The quiet of the newsroom stopped. Now it was a murmur of noise. A pleasant, but too slight, consequence of my voice ripping through.

“I have to say something,” I said, looking back at my editor. She was smiling, just a slight smile, but it was there. Her legs were crossed. Damn, she had great legs too.

“I’m sorry,” I finally said.

“For what?” a voice I knew all too well echoed from the back of the room. It was Larry. He was an overweight reporter. The only one in the room I had any respect for. And that was mainly because he kept action figures on his desk.

“For what? Damn, that’s a good question. I guess because I write stuff, and it hurts.”

Everyone looked down.

“We’ve seen it,” Larry piped up. “We saw your writings months ago. It made me laugh.”

I turned back to the editor. She was frowning now. Her legs? Still hot.

“And you don’t need to apologize,” Larry continued. “We all know.”

Ol' Puddin'

Hanging out at the local dirt racing track, things sometimes take a turn for the better.

Me and Mitchell just got into line for some cold beers – Miller High Life bottles, of course – when Dick Dale’s “Misirlou” started blasting out of the shitty speakers surrounding the track. No one but us seemed to take much notice of it, instantly going into air guitar mode. A couple of ladies with Billy Ray mullets and old Iron Maiden and Warrant tour shirts started pointing and laughing.

“Wanna get laid tonight?” Mitchell asked.

“Yeah, but not like that. Too desperate and too easy.”

“So you say now.”

“Yes, I say now.”

We got our beers and ambled over to the parking lot. There was some kind of distraction going on near the bunch of El Caminos parked bumper to bumper at the area known as “El Rey” to the locals. We found this out later in the evening.

Some guy was talking about how lucky he was this afternoon.

“I was brushing my teeth in the kitchen when the water stopped working all of the sudden. You know, you turn it on and all you get is the sound of pipes shaking? Well, I had a mouth full of paste and I needed to get it out, pronto! (Giggles from the crowd). So I reached for the first bottle I had on my countertops. It, of course was a mason jar, as that’s where I keep all my booze. The legal stuff and the “homemade” stuff. If you catch my drift?

“Well, I open the lid and commence to sippin’ and garglin’ when I notice a funny taste. Now, all of you know my liquors can have a taste that takes some getting’ used ta, so this ain’t no surprise. Neither is a slight burn. But, this my friends won’t no slight burn. It was Devil’s Spit kinda burnin’.

“So I spit it out pronto. All over my kitchen, my shirt – which I just paid five dollar fur at the Roses – and just start cussing up a fit.”

“What was in that jar, Puddin’?” someone in the crowd asked.

“Let’s me tell ya what was in that jar, Smithson. It was freakin’ GAS-O-LINEY!”

The audience laughed up quite a cackle. Even Mitchell and I had a good gut laugh out of Puddin’s story. Hell, he knew how to keep an audience with him. Maybe politic-an would be a future endeavor for him, if he so choose that path.

We started to walk away when someone screamed.

In a flash, we turned around. Just in time to see ol’ Puddin’ running. And he was on fire.

And instead of the stop, drop and roll we all learned in sixth grade – probably a grade or two further than ol’ Puddin’ made it – he was running around “Like a damn chick with its damn head plum cut off!” as one of the amused audience members would later be quoted describing the scene on local television at 11 p.m. later in the evening.

No one was chasing poor Puddin’ with a blanket or anything. A couple of guys in mesh hats threw some beer on him as he passed them by. But ol’ Puddin’ seemed to have a destination in mind.

About 200 yards away was a duck pond. It was a duck pond simply because someone had placed some wildly painted duck decoys in it. So forever it was known as the duck pond by locals and race affciandos.

Anyway, Puddin’ made it to the pond and dove it. A loud sssssssssssssssssssssssssssss sound followed. Which we all figured was his skin singeing after hitting the water.

Puddin’ then let out a yell.

Soon after, an ambulance arrived. It was already on sight for the racers, but now it had a fan to take care of.

A lot of folks had their cell phones out and recorded Puddin’s run, as it became known on the Internet. “With gas so expensive these days, Ol’ Puddin’ decided he wouldn’t wash it out of his shirt until he’d gotten a little buzz off it.” Was just one of the t-shirts which ended up selling. Thankfully, no one auto-tuned Ol’ Puddin’s run. I think he didn’t scream enough for it to work?

As Mitch and I were leaving the race later that night, a local newspaper reporter came up to us and asked us some questions about Ol’ Puddin’. Neither of us knew him, we said, but we saw the whole thing happen. Well, except for ignition, as we turned away to drink our Miller High Lifes.

She asked some questions and we answered. Some serious, some not so serious. It was interesting to see what got into the paper when you got asked questions by a reporter. Being a former ink slinger, I knew a thing or two about the truth and how some choose to bend it.

Finally, the reporter, who looked all of 19 years old and very out of place in rural North Carolina, asked me: “One last question, Mr. Jones. What would be your one regret if you were to die like Ol’ Puddin’ did tonight?”

I scratched my beard and made it look as if this was the single most important question anyone had ever asked me. Finally, after a few moments of silence I said: “Not having sex in a car. Now, I had a girlfriend that promised me she’d do it. But she never did. We did just about anything else. We even re-enacted the train scene from “Risky Business.” I’ve done it in a Burger King bathroom, as Digital Underground instructed me to do in 1989. I did it in front of a hotel window on the top floor. Albeit in Rockville, Maryland over looking a parking lot, not in Las Vegas looking out at the strip like it is in my fantasy.

“But never once have a fucked in a car. It would be a damn shame to die that way. Especially, if it was to go like Ol’ Puddin’ went.”

She laughed, and said “Don’t think I can use that one.”

“Sure you can. Just take out the fucks and such.”

“Have a good night fellows.”

“It’s fellas. You ain’t from ‘round here are yeh?”

“No thankfully. No.”

“Same here darling. Moved from Northern Virginia, myself.”

“Really?”

“Yep, really. Manassas via Arlington.”

“I went to Chantilly High School!” she said, now a little bit more interested in us two – me in a Lucero shirt, him in a Zanadu one.

“Actually dated a girl who went there, way before you, but still…”

“Awesome,” here’s my card. “Give me a call sometime. Maybe you can show me what there is to do here?”

“Well, tonight, Ol’ Puddin’ put on the show. It wasn’t expected, but it was a good-un.”

She smiled and walked away at that.