Who cares
“Well I’ll fuck my uncle,” said the clerk. She was a sharp-nosed woman with cocaine hair and many moles. I spotted a thirsty sea wench or two tattooed to her body. “Glorine,” she went on…
The only other woman, or person, in the whole of the joint, sat adjacent from the clerk, chaired and watching a small television; I assumed she was Glorine.
Behind sweet Glorine and her television: a wall of cigarettes. “Yeah?” she said/asked. I’d assumed right. Glorine was gaunt and had jowls all at the same time. Her eyes both shrunk and bulged. She was an oxymoron, like good writing.
The dim and buzzing lights hung above. “So this man’s ticket has the numbers matchin’ last nights. Does that mean he won?” She talked with a southern drawl but she had grown up in Northeast Ohio, same as me. It made no sense.
“Well,” Glorine said, turning from the game and looking at me, “yeah,” she cocked her head, “let me see that ticket.”
“I already seen it, Glorine. I just wanted to make sure I ain’t wrong.”
Glorine laughed, “well, go on, give him his two billion dollars. It’s right there in the drawer.”
Furthermore my heart was a drum down in a gorge. A herd a mile wide pounded through the gorge and an Indian beat on my drum-heart. I felt like passing out. I looked on and out of the window, making attempts at breathing. Across the street stood a light—erect, very tall, towering over an empty parking lot. The highway ran by and I could make out the sound of grunting trucks trudging on down to the next dreary town. I could make Rome by morning! I could kick pigmies from an isle and claim it mine! Two billion dollars.
“Oh shit,” said the clerk, leaning towards me, “look here darlin’,” she showed me the ticket, “that’s 13, not 31.”
“Right,” I said. “Dyslexia,you bitch.”
Glorine began to laugh her flabby ass off, “I’m sorry,” she said, “I don’t mean to laugh.”
I shook my head and grinned. What was I to do? When wasn’t the joke on me?
My phone rang; I pulled it out of my pocket.
“Hello…” I recognized the voice on the other end,”…do I want
to go to the strip club? …does a wolf wear sheep’s clothing? Is a bird in your pants worth three off in France? …no, nevermind. Yes, of course I’d like to go.”
+
Standing there at four thirty in the morning I realized two things: birds in the early morning hour sounded almost as sweet as the sight of the sun coming on back around. It was quiet. I had met my pal Therman at his house and we had gone up to the local gentleman's club and now I was out standing next to the street in front of his house, waiting for a cab. Serenity is a lethargic giant whom only wakes to leisurely stretch his muscles in the wee hours of the morning: when the streets and highways are bare enough for a comfortable touch of the toes.
The stench of pre-cum and sweat hung thick in my nose like an odd glue. The thought of watching women take their clothes off was fanciful enough but the reality was this: dried up vaginas and friends taking turns at the same girl. It was almost enough to turn me off woman all-together. Almost.
Under those musty red lights I spotted the same girls running back to the same creep-laden tables, grabbing a hand, disappearing, then coming back, then disappearing again.
“How many bags of douche do you suppose come through here in a night?” I remembered asking one of young entrepreneurs of that fine establishment. Strippers are easy to talk to that way. She responded by asking me if I might want to pay for her pussy.
“No,” I said, “I would not like to pay for your pussy.”
I drank my two hundred dollar bottle of forty dollar champagne. I paid twenty dollars for a woman to lie to me about my cock being a, “monster”, but naturally I’d had a good time; I was seeing a pair of tits every other second! Women called my cock huge!—not that it’s not, affirmation does a man’s soul wonder.
Hardeehar har is what I was saying in my mind as my car pulled up.
A woman walked by in orange flip-flops. Where was she walking in those flops, and with such leisure? It was a little cold for such footwear but oh baby, I dug her style.
I got in to the cab with all of my pre-dawn happy thoughts, crisp as the air itself. I was headed home as the sun was coming up and all my bones were dripping with youthful nostalgia. I recalled times spent in Toledo, smoking bowls at five-thiry in the morning to get ready for the after party. I recalled carrying a stumbling bimbo to her car very early some six new years ago. The sun was falling and I was walking in a poem.
It went like
this:
Midnight stroked;
struck;
I had my champagne.
My friend
of long
had been drunk enough
to forget to
walk.
She was wearing heels.
She was swaying in and out of
consciousness.
The streets outside were
snow-laden.
I led her to the streets:
outside.
It was cold
but
refreshingly so.
Streets, snow, buildings,
who cared?
It was all spinning to her.
I laughed
when I almost dropped her in the
street,
in front of a car.
She curtsied—
really—
when she went to get back
up,
because,
I hadn’t almost dropped her in the street, I,
in fact,
had.
The snow fell on her head and the sun rose up behind her.
The first in this tango ‘til
next.
“Well, thank you
kind sir,” she said in heavy
english
accent,
“for the streets are ice,
would you walk a lady home?”
Or something of that nature. Point being in full is that I was thinking poetic thoughts and when the words all scrolled through my head like that I could always be found happy, some would say content, even.
The poetic mind catching sunlight stretching through a cloud and down to earth might make the collective mind weep for the eons of infinite things that had to happen for that sun to beat down on this earth only seen by this man or that. It was enough for madness.
We pulled up to my apartment. I’d almost forgotten about being a cum-shot away from retirement with my two-billion dollars.
‘Fuck,’ I thought, rolling up the stairs, to bed, ‘I could have made Rome.’
“Babe,” she said, hearing and feeling me make my way under the covers. “Can you take a shower?”
It was a pungent scent—mine—oft caught in the glands, “yeah.”
“Thanks,” she said, “I hope you had fun tonight.” She was not being sarcastic. She turned over and looked at me with her deep eyes and I sank until I was drowned.