I live just over an hour from my hometown and have been going back there a lot since my wife lost her job. Because I have issues with people being dishonest and don’t find it natural to call another human being “boss,” my wife has accepted that she’ll always

I live just over an hour from my hometown and have been going back there a lot since my wife lost her job. Because I have issues with people being dishonest and don’t find it natural to call another human being “boss,” my wife has accepted that she’ll always be our only source of regular income. While she’s not working, one thing I can do back home is earn a paltry dose of non-taxable income, whether it be through doing odd jobs for the old people in my parents’ neighborhood or selling weed to Chet and his friends when their SSI checks come in, there’s always a buck to be hustled back home.
My mom called me a couple days ago and told me that Mr. Kelly a few doors down needed someone to get rid of a raccoon on his property. It was sleeping right on this 89 year old man’s porch in the middle of the day, causing a huge ruckus amongst the retired people in the ‘hood. Raccoons are pretty transient beings so I told them to be patient and wait for it to leave, but Mr. Kelly insisted that I come out and let him pay me $80 to get rid of it. With gas and everything 80 bucks isn’t much, but I figured what the hell, I’ll give the coot a hand.
When I got there he let me in the side door, gave me a beer and started talking. After a while he showed me where the raccoon had been crashing, and sure as shit, it was there. The fucker was huge so I went to my car and got out my Mossberg 950. When Mr. Kelly saw my weapon of choice the first thing he said was: “That thing’s gonna make one hell of a goddamn mess, don’t you have a pea shooter?” I told him “no” and went and finished the raccoon off. I love animals, I really do, but these people were intent on driving me completely nuts until I did something about it. So, I did what I had to do, cleaned up the mess, took the 80 and went to my parents’ place.
When I walked into their house the first thing I saw was my little brother sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a 40 and looking at a print of Pollock’s “Gothic.” He seemed excited to see me, which usually means that he needs something. We started talking and he revealed that some guy on the south side wanted to give him one of those traveling rib wagons. My brother’s real job in this life is to spend time with lonely people. He always keeps them company and then they give him something right when we need it the most, hence the rib wagon.
Suffering from a phobia against all bureaucracies, my brother asked me if I would look into getting a license so he could set the rib wagon up around the university. I tell him that I’ll go downtown that afternoon and see what I can do. I can’t believe how stoked he is when he realizes that he might get to hang out in some shitty van and sell ribs to college students. He asks me if I’ll do it with him. I tell him I will when I have the time. He rewards me by warming up a can of Chunky Sirloin Burger for lunch.
When I finished at home, I headed downtown where I ran into a bull-shitter townie chooch named Timmy. Timmy was wearing a black Rush t-shirt cut off at the sleeves, Steelers cap, jeans, and steel toes. As is always the case at home, we pass on formalities and basically continue the epic conversation we started back in nursery school. Timmy’s new thing is that he’s the only white member of a black church. He keeps going on and on about it. I’m cool and polite, listening to whatever he has to say while still thinking to myself: “Big fucking deal ya fart, we’re some of the only white people in our whole fucking neighborhoods. What the fuck is this shit and why does he keep repeating it?”
“Hey uh hey uh listen man I’m the only white member of a black church. Can you believe that shit?” the nut keeps repeating at me.
“Yeah yeah that’s cool Timmy. That’s great. Whatever makes you happy. What else is new?” I ask as I realize that this is his incredibly simplistic yet bombastic attempt at showing the world that he’s with the diversity program. I’m also reminded that race is the real religion at play here. My neighbor Stan calls race the new American religion, which I agree with, but I more specifically call it a mere battle in the grand house of worship called “war.”
He bums one of my Marlboro Reds, enjoying it immensely since being relegated to rollie use. “My church is called Zion Nazarene Mount Holy Mother of God Our Lord and Saviour Baptist American Congregation,” he persists.
“Isn’t that the one that has the red school bus that drives through town every Sunday morning, picking up people who don’t have cars and taking them to church?”
“That’s the one,” he answers.
“You’re far from being the only white member of that church. That’s a mixed race evangelical congregation.” Finally, I found something that would get him off the topic of church…his bullshit.
“Goddamn you got any weed?” he goes for what he’s really after.
“You fucking people around here,” I answer, “always looking for a baby pacifier, a booby to suckle.”
“Ah hey come on I mean you know how it is I like to get high and I don’t have any weed on me right now but you always do. It’s a mild drug bro. It’s like I’m askin’ you for coffee. Hey you still have that super good shit you always had back in the day? That happy horny weed like you always scored back in high school?” he inquires confidentially.
“Nope,” I answer as I hand him a joint that he lights up. He takes a massive hit and starts to hack like he’s ejecting last night’s beef parm. When he finishes he looks up at me all red faced and teary eyed with spittle in the corner of his lips. “The more you cough the more you get off!” the cliche dribbles from his tongue.
I also smoke down, but take my dose discreetly. The thing about Timmy is that he’s far from being any kind of saint. I suppose that means he’s complex in some ways, but I say that he’s just fumbling around in the dark looking for different ways to get off. The church thing doesn’t mean shit other than he apparently believes in god and is sinning his way straight to hell, probably hoping to save his soul at the last minute by staying clean when he’s finally too old or fat or crippled to do anything else. If I handed him a free bag of the most potent drugs in the world, he’d gladly snatch them up and sell half (ripping people off) then take the money from the sale and get a motel room and a hooker, who he’d do the rest of the drugs with while charging her full price for her share. “So anyways,” he plows ahead. “I just got off work.”
“Really?” I encourage him as my eyes start to moisten and I fight off a panic attack. “Yeah, work. Can’t wait to hear this.”
“I work for these Armenians that run a cleaning company. We do daily cleaning for various offices around here and a couple homes. I’m their only employee right now.”
“What a total fucking drag. Can’t you become a minister or something? I bet that’s a great way to get lots of pussy.”
“No no man but check this out. I always go through these people’s drawers and shit. Porno, drugs, crazy letters, weapons, the whole deal. I clean this one old lady’s house up the Avenue every Saturday morning. Bitch has like polished human skulls in her bedroom closet with a massive collection of black leather lingerie and a pile of Xanax like you wouldn’t believe. Saturday night is THE night if you know what I mean.”
“Maybe she’s a depressed swinger phrenologist or something,” I’m grasping to care.
“But man my fuckin’ bosses are fuckin’ with me big time. Always callin’ me lazy and shit. Sayin’ I stink. Man fuck them. You know it’s like I basically just wanna smash some shit up and they talk about me like I’m not there. Calling me a pig and all this other bullshit. It makes me feel like shit.”
He goes on and on about the problems he has with his bosses, doing everything he can to finish off my struggling buzz. “Why don’t you just ignore them. Why don’t you tell yourself that they’re a pair of many-time losers who own a struggling maid service with one employee. Tell yourself that they’re stuck with their miserable selves and each other and all their self-imposed oppression and that you’re single and free and can move on any time you want. You, my friend, are the straight-up boss because whoever has the most freedom wins. Amirite? Just smile at them, do your shit, go home and do whatever it is that you do to chill. Or better yet, fondle the wife and get fired or laid. Assuming that the former will happen, you can finally get on unemployment and live the good life. You’ll fit in much better around here.”
He looks up at me and smiles like I just handed him the golden key. It’s still weird seeing him look up at me. He’s one of those kids that hit puberty at like the age of nine and was always big but all of a sudden stopped growing when he hit about 5’7, allowing late bloomers like myself to easily pass him in physical stature. “Yeah, you’re right ya know. Sometimes I just gotta hear that shit from somebody. They ain’t worth it. And oh yeah, you definitely still got that happy weed,” he finishes with a shit-eater while smoke blows through his teeth. I look away at the incredibly obese office workers wobbling by with their bags of biscuits and cheeseburgers. I picture them floating down the street. “Oh hey, I almost forgot to tell you,” he jumps in again.
“What now?”
“Hey don’t fuckin’ talk to me like that!”
“All right all right. What next?”
“Jim Pucker died.”
“Hmmm…”I’m a little happy because he was a total cocksucker to me. I’m a little sad because it reminds me that death happens, and I’m somewhat surprised because he was sort of young like me.
“The motherfucker just died last week. He was living in Columbus. Had a wife and three kids. Doing insurance sales or some shit like that. One day he’s driving home from the office and he starts to feel weird. He calls his wife and tells her that he’s dropping into urgent care to see what’s going on. She’s on the phone with him when he walks through the sliding doors at the clinic and drops dead right there on the spot. Massive heart attack.”
“Holy fuck, someone loved Jim Pucker enough to care about his physical well being?”
“Yeah man, a wife and three kids. But hey, he took shitty care of himself, smoked like a chimney, STILL snorted massive amounts of coke, ate bad food every day all the time, loved whiskey. He got fat and sweaty as all hell.”
“Oh well. I guess his wife probably didn’t give that much of a shit about him. Great to know that he grew up to be mean AND ugly. Fuck, the dude was our age. 32. That’s three in their 30s all keeling over in the same year.”
“But check this,” Timmy interrupts. “I went down to Columbus for his funeral and there was like a thousand people there.”
“He was well liked?”
“Hell yeah he was well-liked. Me and Jasninski and Peterman went out fer drinks afterwards and we were talking about how many people knew this guy and what an unbelievable cunt he was when we were kids.”
“And you think that his popularity means that he somehow wasn’t a cunt?”
“Duuuude, one thing we talked about over drinks was how you represented the beginning of the end for him being an asshole. You beat it out of him back in the sixth grade. That motherfucker was the devil incarnate before you came along, yet he became a good guy over time, starting with you. But yeah I guess you didn’t care for Jim that much,” Timmy says.
“I was fine with Pucker once he learned to keep a safe distance from me. You were either submitter or submittee with that guy. I hate that interpersonal S & M shit, but he forced his rules on everybody. I ran into him about ten years ago at the Royal Pines. Drank with him for hours, but that was plenty for both of us. I didn’t need to see him again. I just figured that he’d learned to be more subtle at being a dick. I bet his wife has well-placed bruises. Man, you just wanna bring up some bullshit from the past, don’t you?”
“No no that’s not me,” pleads Timmy like a smiling rat.
The thing is that Timmy wants me to tell the story of my childhood feud with Pucker. He’s told me on many occasions how happy it makes him. It’s a pretty good story, but I don’t feel like telling it to him. He’s heard it many times before and eye-witnessed large chunks of it. Fuck it. I’ll tell it to him. I’ve got nothing but time.
“Remember I first came across Pucker in Mrs. Anderson’s 1st grade homeroom? I’ll never forget Mrs. Anderson. The woman was fine. Right? But yeah, Pucker. He was already bigger than everyone in the first grade. He started messing with me about a month into the school year. In our homeroom group photo he looks assimilated and serene, I look shell-shocked, catatonic, blown away…not entirely because of Pucker, he ranked somewhere in the midst of my worries. But still, that unholy prick liked to grab my arm and punch it as hard as he could. Some days he’d leave me alone, other days he’d come for me. I never knew what to expect, and it wasn’t just punches, he also gave hardcore noogies and Indian burns that he’d hold for minutes. This shit continued until the 4th grade when he figured out that I had a crazy brother 10 years older than us that ran with the Chosen Few biker gang. He didn’t fuck with me for a while after that. Anyways, to make a long story short, my brother died when we were in the 5th grade and that piece of shit Pucker took the opening and started to fuck with me more and more. My brother was crazy and mean and wanted/deserved to die, but I still mourned the loss of his protection. Pucker even started hitting girls, not because they directly pissed him off, but instead because he could. No one would stand up to him. By the time we were in the 6th grade the dude was fucking 8th grade cheerleaders, like 3 at a time. I didn’t pull women like he did, but I sure as shit pulled my share. It always seemed like they chose to be with me, but instead felt like they had to go with him, the mega-alpha wolf. At the age of 11, it made me ill to see any girl anywhere near that scum. So it all came to a boiling point one day in the 6th grade, about a year after my brother died. Pucker got on at the bus stop right ahead of me. As I waited for the bus, Sherry Kooyenga, a girl who once liked me but who I didn’t like back, told me that Jim Pucker had punched her in the arm the night before. She showed me the bruise like it was some kind of medal. I told her “no shit” I’d seen him punch all kinds of girls. “He’s an asshole,” I said. When we got on the bus I sat right in front of Pucker, next to my friend Mikey. I felt safe on the bus because we had a cool bus driver and Pucker always minded his own ass, but that day would be different. As soon as we sat down, Sherry told him that I’d been talking shit. Without hesitating even a second he had my left wrist in an Indian burn. This was by far the worst thing he’d ever done to me. All the punches, kicks, and gouges never equaled the intensity with which he went at that Indian burn. I felt like the contrary directions of skin were going to start separating on my soon to be broken arm. Not being able to take it, I hauled back with my right hand and busted that bitch right in the eye. His head snapped back and he sure as shit let go of my wrist. Sitting there trying to act like his red, swollen, watery eye wasn’t giving him any trouble, he told me that he was going to “kick my ass” when we got off the bus. Mikey and Jasninski gave me worthless boxing advice. I felt finished. The whole bus knew that I was about to get whupped extra hard. Every kid in the parking lot would be in the know when some ass yelled “fight,” circling around for a look at that day’s victim…me. “No way this gets off the bus,” I say to myself. “It will be over before we get off the bus.” The bus stops and there’s a shitload of kids, they’re all there, strolling into school very slowly and in small packs. I feel Pucker stand up behind me. He pulls my winter cap off my head and tosses it to the back of the bus. I whirl around and go the fuck OFF. There’s no warning. No “come on!” no “put up your dukes!” or whatever people say when they do and don’t want to fight. I wanted to go and I went. I teed off on that piece of shit. I knocked him down and jumped on him like a fucking monkey, battering my way to a brutal first round KO. His blood splattered onto the window. It was finally over when the Presbyterian minister’s kid, Billy Johnson, pulled me off and told me to “cool it.” I could barely breathe and my arms felt like bricks. Where was the bus driver? Later on I figured out that the other kids had shielded the brawl from the driver, but she knew what was going on. They’d all seen Pucker fuck me around for years. Our code said never stand up for anyone, but once they finally stand up for themselves, let them finish it. When we got off the bus, all the driver said to Pucker was, “Get to the nurse, Jimmy.” She smiled at me. No one asked any questions. They were all waiting for someone to come along and take him out. It just happened to be me. I freaked the fuck out right afterwards and went into those weird convulsions. Remember that? I convinced myself that the soul of Genghis Kahn had entered my body and gave me the mad dog strength to finish that punk ass off once and for all. It was beautiful. End of story.”
“Uh hehehehehhehehe uh hehehehehehe…Timmy laughs it up until his cell rings. His ring-tone is “Eye of the Tiger.” He flashes me the “hang-on a second” index finger and says hello to a Sister Janice from his church. Timmy tells Sister Janice everything that the “lord” told him to do that day, including the advice I gave him regarding his bosses. I guess that makes me a divine vessel…no thoughts of my own, just there to have everything dictated to and from my body by an anal god. Timmy’s whacko if you ask me. He has voices in his head, or better yet, he’s pretending to have voices in his head so that he can fit in with the people who do in fact have voices in their heads.
I wave at him and say “gotta go.” He waves back.

-Vane$$a Moneystein AKA Erik X. McCoy

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