Will Work for Drugs (3 page)
Deano, it seems, through tear-stained confessions, doesn't stay hard for too long. It's the reason his wife's having an affair ⦠He can no longer get it up ⦠his kids hate him ⦠they make fun of him ⦠call him
Silly Putty,
after hearing his wife complain one too many times through plasterboard walls about what a lousy lay he is ⦠“Jesus, even the kids know ⦔ he moans.
All revealed between nasty pulls on his now hard, now limp “thing.” He begs me to take it in my mouth. To kiss it ⦠just a little ⦠to mouth a prayer to the Virgin of Guadalupe on its ugly purple tip ⦠“You're still a virgin, right? Maybe you'll cure me ⦠Please just try ⦠just this once.” His heartbreak is obvious. I'm overcome with pity. Self-disgust. I put the shrunken head in my mouth. It tastes like a soft pretzel soaked in saltwater. He pats me gently on the head. Praying again to Mary. The soft dough starts to rise. Swells, bubbles up, gets sticky.
Deano panics. Plops it out of my mouth. Pushes me back on the bed. Shoves the bread stick inside me. The first time he thrusts, it hurts. Him. “Easy! Easy! Easy!” he wails at me. I giggle, amazed. He immediately goes soft again. Swirls it around outside until it garners a bit of heft. He tries to force it back in. It's semi-soft. But the buttery roll folds in upon itself. In desperation, he jacks it up and down so hard, he gets a Charlie horse in both legs, causing him to flap and flail around on the bed braying like an electric donkey or spastic piñata being pummeled by hundreds of invisible blows, until screaming, he squirts one or two drops of gooey gluey paste, which land on my right shoe as he rolls over and buries his head in his hands crying, “Oh, dear God, Immaculate Mary, Sweet Baby Jesus, what have I just done â¦?”
There is safety and comfort in this ritualized disintegration. A sense of homo-pathetic male bonding. On Monday morning, when these five sacks of living puss and puke wake up, they will not remember their diseased lust. They will have erased all traces of their own malignant guilt and once more embraced the lies they have based their subhuman existence on. They will, after their first blurry-eyed beer of the day, congratulate themselves. Proud to have formulated a ridiculous credo based on the outlandish belief that by working 9 to 5 five days a week at shitty, low-paying, brain-dead, minimum-wage slave labor camps, the respect and human dignity that they have been so rightfully denied their entire lives has now been earned in transmutation by their brutarian mistreatment of me, who in a cruel reversal of fate, is made to feel as filthy and degenerate as they truly are.
I
love Sleep, that elusive bitch, but Sleep hates me. Just the way it is. I can't seduce her into tolerating me for more than a few hours a night. Fickle cunt. Oh, she'll allow me into her warm embrace. Five minutes after my head hits the pillows, I'll be swimming into a delicious nocturnal numbness. But before REM has a chance to cock his nugget against mine, Sleep, that fricking creep, screams for her night nurse Insomnia to kick me in the head like a bouncer at a funeral party, and faster than you can say
the quick and the dead,
I no longer am. Asleep that is. Bitch.
I've tried over-the-counter as well as various prescribed medications, including, but not limited to Klonopin, Ativan, Halcion, Xanax, Valium, melatonin, marijuana, valerian root, and heroin. I've tortured myself with exhaustive workouts followed by hot baths preceding tantric sex where I practiced deep breathing in conjunction with meditation and visualization techniques.
I gave up nicotine, sugar, spice, and tried a light box. Didn't help. I quit coffee. HA! Anyone who has suffered from decades-long Insomnia knows damn well that that ain't gunna last. You need all the caffeine you can suck down to function above that semi-somnambulant state of dream-deprived Sleep that results in a numb narcosis, a permanent twilight zone, rarely fully conscious, never completely asleep. Exhausted, but jacked up, like an electric rigor mortis that short circuits the neurotransmitters creating a dense fog of chronic irritation that can cloud even the simplest of tasks.
I am not referring to a few nights or even months of unfit Sleep. Nor the youthful buzz which invigorates the blood stream, rife with recollections of uncountable naughty deeds performed under the influence of designer cocktails. No, this miserable ditty is a song of the sirens to the janitors of lunacy who have certainly not made peace, for there is none to be made, after nearly half a century of stalking Morpheus, that cruel trickster who only grants the occasional performance, and then upon a stage so soaked with blood and guts that the sheer magnitude of his insane cruelty creates a magnificent terror from which one is throttled awake, soaked in sweat, choked by tears and stifling a scream, which unleashed would wake the very dead themselves, those lucky bastards to whom Sleep is an eternal given.
Even in the cradle, I couldn't sleep. I can recollect conversations I was too young to fully decipher. The winning hand held by my father on a typical Friday-night poker marathon. The date the gas bill was due. Useless drivel. I started Sleepwalking at six. Talking to the electric sockets in the living room. Directing traffic in my pajamas. Urinating in the refrigerator. Suffocating my younger brother with a ratty teddy bear. By the age of nine, already terminally Sleep deprived, my nightmares were so gruesome that horror films read like bad comedies to my twisted preadolescent psyche.
Youth feeds on adrenaline. Who needs sleep when you're a rambunctious teenager carousing through the night gallery of new experience? Or a rampaging twenty-something hell-bent on accomplishing as much as possible, living life to the fullest, glutting on potential, and wilding in the streets desperate to make your mark before that grump Thanatos comes calling. And what the hell ⦠I'LL SLEEP WHEN I'M DEAD becomes the young psycho's mantra screamed into the crack of an unforgiving Dawn who is always able to creep up on you faster than you could ever dream of outrunning her.
For most of my life I just didn't need more than four hours of Sleep a night. I felt great, I glowed, got a shit-load of work done, Loved the twilight hours between 3 and 6 a.m. when the rest of the world died or at least wasn't crawling up my ass with its noise, its complaints, its problems and demands. But enough is enough; or let me rephrase that: Now there just isn't enough. Ever.
I am jolted awake after a three-hour stint kissing Slumber. Cheap bastard kicks me out of bed and snickers as I begin my night watch. He will not welcome me back into his cozy surround for at least another twenty hours. Doesn't matter how exhausted, drained, or in pain I am. And pain happens. Migraines multiply when you are running on fumes. A throbbing band of tension expands outward from the temples threatening to shatter the skull. The bones in your face splinter into glass shards exiting through your eye sockets. Vision blurs. Breathing becomes shallow. Your shoulders spasm and lock, grinding into your neck, freezing ligaments. Chronic Sleep deprivation encourages the build-up of toxins in the body, creating a permanent irritability. You're always itchy somewhere under the skin, between the muscle and bone, deep inside the tissue. Tendons are scraped raw as if infected by an army of slow-moving insects whose miniscule mandibles rub together in delight as every inch of skin stings. The eyes twitch. The temples throb. The brain bleeds.
But, after all, what's one more day, month, decade robbed of Sleep and stuck squirming in a state of agitated limbo-essence, when you have an eternity of peace to eventually look forward to? That is, if you are foolish enough to believe that yes, death will be peaceful. It will caress like black velvet those shattered nerves and twisted muscles that have revolted now for so long that even beyond the grave they may still be screaming for relief. A relief like deep Sleep, which I am convinced I may never, not in this lifetime or the next, ever experience.
MOTHERHOOD: IT'S NOT COMPULSORY
H
e's nineteen months old pushing a fire engineâred go-cart across the driveway. Perfectly formed almond eyes bespeak the mystery and intrigue his limited vocabulary will never mouth. Our eyes lock upon each other. Instant hypnosis. His motor functions freeze. He drops his toy and barrels at me as fast as his little feet will fly. Grips my thighs. Attempts to crawl up my body, and with a little boost my two hands cradle him under his arms, raise him to my face, and kiss his nose. He wraps his pudgy baby legs around my hips, pets my hair, burrows his head in my neck, and coos. All is motherly bliss, until he shits his diaper. The smell rises. My clothes reek. His real mommy is headed our way. She wants him back. Thank God. She can have him. At least until he's twelve.
I love children and they love me. Years of plane, train, and bus travel have helped me to master the secret of forging an unspoken allegiance with kids of all ages. On interminable ten-hour transatlantic journeys, for the sake of not only myself but the rest of my fellow travelers, if I hear a child crying I will immediately seek out the source of the yowling little nipper, and take matters into my own hands. I can assure you peace will quickly be restored. The once ferocious battle cry whose very resonance threatened to break the sound barrier is instantaneously replaced with a soft chuckling, a tender purr, a benign smile. Baby Love.
It could be my circus-red hair, the pheromones I excrete, or the look of pity, empathy, and total understanding that emanates from my very own baby blues, but infants, (not to mention dogs and men alike) have an uncanny urge to please Big Momma and usually do so by dropping down to all fours, crawling around at my feet, quickly quieting down, and burying their runny little snouts under my armpits, between my legs, or in my breast. Often accompanied by a soul-shuddering sigh so completely neutralizing it borders on a mild neurological orgasm. Of course, I need a lithium douche to feel half human again after my own chemical makeup has been momentarily skewered by the lingering afterglow of baby drool sponged off my shirt collar. Now isn't that cute???
My maternal instincts kick in to spite me. I hate to hear babies cry. Hell, I hate to hear anyone cry. It's the most obnoxious form of noise pollution. And if all it takes to temporarily abate this skin-crawling caterwaul is a quick snatch which lifts the little bantam-weight crying time bomb into my arms to give it a tight squeeze and a peck on the cheek, who am I to argue? After all, “Mother” knows best ⦠which both amazes and horrifies the real birth mom. Who may indeed enjoy the respite, yet whose first instinct is to grab the little critter and flee as far away as humanly possible so as to rescue her precious little angel from the unforeseen and imaginary evil of an obviously over-sexed baby freak.
However, upon hearing the opening stanza of the Terror of Tiny Town's latest lung-busting operetta, Mommy usually gives in, Baby wins out, and I'm stuck playing bouncy-wouncy with the twenty-pound flesh ball for the next eight hours. Not a problem. I understand children. It's their mothers I can't fucking stand.
Every new mother believes her little cherub is the most awe-inspiring angel to ever be shat forth upon this ungodly planet. The endlessly exaggerated delight over the little darlings first coo, goo, drool, burp, barf, and poop becomes a tireless tirade whose glorification of the most foul bodily functions insults not only the intelligence, but the patience of every ear within a ten-mile Toys“R”Us radius. A nonstop daily update tumbles forth in fits and starts from the lips of the first-time mother's mundanity-strewn mouth, as if the size, smell, and consistency of the little shitter's latest bowel movement is in itself news, and not merely the sandwich meat of sea gull roughage down at your local landfill, where disposable diapers by the tens of millions, which have a half-life of about ten thousand years, in a flagrant disregard to future generations, will forever swelter and billow in noxious sky-blue and pink clouds, further contaminating an already toxic landscape whose single most environmentally hazardous threat to the planet is the SIX BILLION other greedy babies who live to eat, shit, piss, consume, and make waste enough to result in a non-biodegradable garbage barge piled sky high from here to the moon and back again. And I thought the smell of one of the little poopy troopers was befouling enough to behold. Hold your breath and smile. The average four-year-old has already soiled more than 2,595 Pampers before he or she hits kindergarten. And then the real fun, bed wetting, kicks in. At least bed sheets are recyclable.
I shot out my biological time clock before it even punched itself in. The mortifying thought of actually having an alien life form develop inside my body terrifies me. I can barely stand to live inside my own flesh. Call me inhuman, but childbirth gives me the creeps. It seems the single most unnatural act that a woman would ever consciously perpetrate against herself. As if the ritual abuse of sex isn't grotesque enough, a nine-month gestation period follows, which begins after a single sperm cell worms its slimy way in and infects a fertile egg, resulting in the glorious wonder that is morning sickness, vomiting, insatiable craving for junk food, sore back, ballooning breasts, weight gain, and funny-looking clothes that don't fit. This honeymoon from Hell is capped off with the eventual expulsion of a nine-pound sack of blood and mucous with the vocal range of a shrieking demon who will for the next three years be forever demanding tit, diaper changing, and constant affection. I can't even afford to pay that much nonstop attention to myself. It would make me sick, I'd turn homicidal and go fucking postal in about three days.
Let's not even begin to discuss the horror of the possibility of an eighteen-hour-long delivery, where shitting out a watermelon would by comparison be a cakewalk in the park. My theory is if it doesn't fit
in
, it won't come
out
. And until you've seen a live broadcast of a C-Section you have no idea just how medieval modern medicine really is. After the evil smiley-face incision is carved in the lower abdomen, the mad doctor removes your uterus, as in
lifting
it out of your body
, brushing aside the blood and guts with a Betadine hose down, painting an even more gory picture of the real meaning of the Hippocratic oath, as he forces the little devil out of its morbid hiding place, restitching the permanent damage already done as casually as darning an old sock with size-ten knitting needles. Heinous. Horrible. Count me out.
Besides, the truth of the matter is, all the men I know are still fucking babies. They all demand to be coddled, handled with kid gloves, spoon-fed, sent to obedience school, and even on the odd occasion, spanked in a way that only a
real mother
would truly know how. These services I am more than happy to oblige. It's always at most a part-time job, not a lifelong commitment. Or, as the New York Board of Education once so astutely promoted in an subway ad campaign against teenage motherhood:
It's like being grounded for eighteen years!
And at least I know that none of them will grow up to one day hate my goddamn guts because try as I may, I just couldn't supply the parasitic lechers with everything their greedy little hearts desired. Men may be babies, but unlike the little leeches, they thrive on neglect, abuse, and abandonment. They may cry and stamp their feet in order to suckle on Mother's Milk, but they won't starve to death if they don't get it. One word of advice: Next time “the urge” to procreate kicks in, close your legs, shut your mouth, grab the closest man, stick his rash-covered ass in an adult-sized Depends diaper, hold him in your arms, and feed him your left tit for forty-five minutes every three hours for the next week. I hope it forces you to reconsider exactly what the “joy of motherhood” is really all about.
