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Lapping it Up


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Listen to me.

Chances are I don’t like you.  Yah, you.  The fucking reader.  I’d like to scream in your face.  I’d like to see you cry.  I’d like to fucking kill you.  Maybe now you’ll put this down because you don’t care what is going on with a stupid psycho bitch like me.  Go ahead.  Put this down you privileged dumbfuck.  You don’t belong here with me.  You probably don’t belong anywhere.  Isn’t that some pathetic shit?  No one belongs anywhere, but you don’t know that.  You don’t believe that.  That’s funny.  Fucking hilarious.  You’re coming?  You’re coming over?  To my place?  You’re really going to fucking read this?

Wow.

You’re dead.

Look.

The back porch is small and tight.  It is off the second story above my best friend/roommate Stephanie’s mini-backyard.  Our stocky chocolate chow, Purdy, pants like crazy in the sun below, and our little Pomeranian, Gizmo whines at the downstairs sliding glass door.  He probably needs to go to the bathroom.  The long-haired little faggot will hold it outside for hours then come in and take a shit on the floor.

Gizmo’s not really a faggot.  Just a cross-dresser.  He nuzzles his face into the cups of bras until a strap slips over his head.  Then he prances around, proud to be wearing girlish under-stuff.

Sometimes Purdy grabs Gizmo by the scruff of poofy circus dog hair on his head and wipes him back and forth across the tile with jerk of her strong neck.  Stephanie will scream at them to stop.  If I catch Purdy mopping the floor with Gizmo, I don’t say shit.  I’ve been on both sides of that type of altercation.  More Gizmo than Purdy.  But someday things could really change for me.  I’ve always had that feeling.

Robby, Tory, Steph and I smoke from a plastic bong on the back porch, under the overhang, shaded from the fierceness of the Arizona afternoon.

Our parrot, Paco, doesn’t like the black and brown seeds from the mixed bag of bird food.  He picks them out and spits them on top of the deep freeze where his cage sets.

“Why doesn’t he talk?” Robby asks as he blows out a rip of the freezer’s green.

“Too old,” I say.

“He’s a parrot though,” Robby says.  Robby hasn’t been around too much before.  He’s friends with the steroid boys that live next door, but, he doesn’t do steroids.  His canvas belt latches with a bronze crest of a cannabis leaf.

“Yah, but he’s African-” I start.

“American,” Robby laughs.  At this point our friend Tory storms inside.  He’s got no tolerance for racist jokes.

“Look at what you did,” Stephanie says.

“Look at what I did,” I say.

I’m not racist.  I’ve sucked black dick, including Tory’s, more than I can probably even remember.

Are you paying attention?

We move the bird indoors.  There’s no TV anymore so we set Paco up center stage.  Paco grips a flaming hot cheeto in his tiny bird foot and gnaws with a sideways head in front of the closed vertical blinds.

The purple lava lamp in the corner has gone bad but we use it anyway.

Robby gestures down to the glass tray in the center of the large round ottoman.   He squeaks out Sara from what sounds like a tight throat.  He is sitting between two of the steroid boys.  The steroid boys are flared and pink.  I try not to look at them because they seem about ready to snap.  They usually look like this when they mix.

“Are you serious?”  I ask.  I’m sitting on my knees talking to Steph, Tory, and my boyfriend L. S. Dave.  My nasal passages feel swollen, collapsed maybe, and my neck is tense from holding my head in an erect and alert position.  It’s my turn.  Robby is serious as a seizure.

Earlier, I’m pretty sure I had a mini-stroke.  My arms became stuck to my sides, numb and stiff like a heart-attack, my mouth dropped open and I probably would have drooled if there was any moisture inside my body.  I felt like laughing but couldn’t move my face.  I saw flashes of white and felt the lower half of my jaw jut jut jutting.   And it was like AAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA  INSIDE MY HEAD I WAS STUCK IN MY HEAD AND I WAS RETARDED AND NEVER COMING BACK AND I WAS SO HAPPY AND SO SCARED I ALMOST PEED MY PANTS.

But I didn’t because I’m dehydrated.  When it stopped I was so relieved I heaved a few dry sobs up and everyone’s face went from crazy-serious to just crazy.  And one of the steroid boys, my favorite steroid boy, the one with the biggest veins on his legs and the least acne, said “get this bitch a line.”

Do you like that story?  Do you think it was funny?  Let me ask you this- you think I give a shit?  I don’t even like you.

I’m sweating like a pregnant whore before a random U.A. at the parole office.

Paco opens his beak and rrrrrrrrr-aaaaackkkkk. His tongue, bright orange, thrusts out.

“Your turn,” Robby holds the straw out for me, and I go to my knees from the couch.  The new powder, so fresh its yellow, burns-forges-pushes a path straight UP MY FUCKING NOSE.  Some of it sticks at the bridge inside.  That I- will- save- for- LATER.  LATERFUCK.  ME.  I slam my elbow backwards into the couch and hit myself across the face in flat-handed slap because I think that this might stop the onset of another mini-stroke.

The rotation goes around the couch.  Again.  Again.  MMMMEEEEEEE.

Fuck me you stupid fucking bitch.  I laugh.  I’m a bitch.  I laugh.  A STUPID FUCKING BITCH.  I scream.  I hope you’ll FUCKING DIE.  I laugh.

“There’s blood on the floor,” Tory tells me.  He had enough a few rounds ago and has taken to pacing the stretch of sienna tile in front of the door and looking out the peephole every couple minutes.

“It’s Purdy,” I say.  “She’s on the rag.”

“Why don’t you get her fixed?” Robby asks.

“Why don’t you get her fixed?” I repeat.  Same tone and everything.  I don’t know what to say.  If I don’t look down every now and then I don’t even know what shirt I put on today.

We move Paco back outside.  He is hungry all the time and it is driving us crazy.  We don’t clip his wings.  All of our money has been vaporized.

Imagine that you fucking snobby fucker.  Imagine sucking on raw spaghetti and week old pizza crust from the bottom of the garbage bag.  Put down your fucking California roll, your fucking soy-shit salad.  Shove that healthy brick bar of organic goodness up your fucking ass.  My choice?  To live like this?  Wow.  I would love to rip your stupid face off.  I’m dying.  I’m laughing so hard right now thinking of all you who want to put this down that I’m dying.  Cracking up.

Watch.

We stand out back in the night that isn’t any cooler than the day and ignore the neighbors who we can’t see but who we can hear.  I open my mouth into a tight O after burning a lot of dust and some little rocks in a stolen glass pipe and breathe out almost no smoke.  This is how it should be.  I’m careful to keep my tongue over my back teeth.

“You think the neighbors can smell this?” Robby asks.

Rrrrrrrrraaaaackkkkk. Paco is on top of his cage.  He extends his wings like crazy.  Cutting through the smoke with dips and rolls of his shoulders.  Looks like some sort of African tribal dance.  Rrrrrrrrraaaaackkkkk.

I take the pipe back.  It’s hard to get the lighter working.  My hands are so sweaty that with a glob of shampoo I could get enough suds going to wash my hair.

You know that smell when you turn on the stove and there is a tinny electric odor.  That’s what this tastes like.  That’s what this tastes like.  THAT IS WHAT THIS FUCKING TASTES LIKE.

Rrrrrrrrraaaaackkkkk.

Robby takes the pipe.

“What’s up with Paco?” Robby asks.

“Too many hot cheetos.”

What I said before was kind of fucked.  I don’t like you.  But you’re probably alright.  Maybe after we get done here we can kick it at your place.  Only if Dave doesn’t show.  My boyfriend.  L. S. Dave.  I like him a lot.  He’s a Mormon.  Half-mexican too.  But you can’t tell just by looking at him.  He’s impotent.  Can’t fuck for shit.  But he makes me feel better than ever.  Better than you, I’ll tell you that right now.

But, I don’t know.  We can hang.  You don’t have to go.

We moved.  We live in the foothills now, in a normal-people neighborhood.  I never lived anywhere so nice before.  We don’t have any food and the phone rings non-stop with calls about the mortgage.  We don’t answer.  Well, sometimes I do-  I don’t know about anybody else, but I get lonely when everyone else has crashed and I answer the phone.

There is more blood on this floor, this new floor, but I’m not exactly worried.  People like me because I’m really laid back.  Stephanie has started up with Robby, but only during the early morning hours when you’d be crazy not to do whoever to kill the comedown.

Someone died.  Someone killed herself in this sandy suburban foothill of Tucson.  Stephanie’s mom.  We live in a dead person’s house now.  The DEA put a lien on the condo so after some minister came, and gave a ceremony here at the house, we never left.

Confusing I know.  Must be nice to not have to move every 3 months.  But let’s try to remember not everyone is as lucky as you.  Oh, you still can’t get past this whole choice thing.  I’d like to hold you down, slit your throat, watch you bleed, and tell you to make better choices.  Seriously, I’m exhausted right now.  Having you here is really fucking with my state of mind.  Way I look at it, you owe me.  Big time.  Not that you have anything I want, but don’t leave.  Just don’t leave yet.

Not yet.

There is blood on the purple floor in the mint-green kitchen and I haven’t seen Gizmo for days.  We don’t see the steroid boys anymore.  My favorite one came over here once and banged me out front on the hood of Stephanie’s mom’s forsaken antique jaguar under the star-spattered desert sky.  He couldn’t keep it up for too long and I guess that made him mad because there are still dents in the car from where he smashed my head.  Over.  And over.  Until I claimed to have come about a million times.  I miss him a little.  Not too much.  I like my boyfriend more.  L. S. Dave can’t love me though, because of the whole Mormon thing.

Sake, a run-away neighbor boy, has taken Robby’s place as Stephanie’s morning fuck.  No canvas belt with a cannabis leaf, but he knows how to shoot a gun.  He pulls the charred light-bulb from his lips, and holds the lighter to the side.

“There’s some blood out here now,” Sake says.

“Who are you?  Sherlock?” I say.  Ever since he figured out why the doorbell hadn’t been working he’s been going around pointing things out.  Pulling the mail from the box, asking questions about the mortgage.

“I did find those sheets of pills in the doorbell speaker,” he says.

“So,” I say.  Sake’s real name is Josh.  “So what Josh?  For Josh’s sake.”  Josh figures he’s some sort of seventeen year old genius.  I could be smart if I tried.  A lot of people say that to me.  Stephanie’s mom said that.  She also said she could tell I was a nice girl and interesting too, underneath it all.

Is everyone else dead?  Or just me?

“So-  ” Sake says like the know-it-all juvenile delinquent that he is, “your little dog Gizmo is lying in the backyard, squealing like a squished rat.”

We put Paco out front on the concrete step and let him chill out on top of his cage because it seems to make him happy.

I’ve started sitting with Paco in the mornings, smoking cigarettes while the sun comes down the bruised-purple mountains thick with veins of gray, and inches up my blond-haired legs.  Paco leans into the smoke.  Last night my boyfriend left a half-eaten burrito in the garbage.  Paco’s eating a little piece of the burrito that I pinched into a roll for him.  He seems to like it alright.  Sake had come out from around the corner of the house.  He watches Paco and then takes out his thin dick and pees into the dirt a few feet from the step where I sit.

The sound of piss reminds me of a hose spraying off a blood-soaked mattress.  I look to the side of the house where the corner of its abandoned box spring still rots in the sun.  I know the little rivulets of red have already rusted and disappeared into the sand.

“What were you doing back there?” I ask Sake.

“Walking,” he says.  He tucks his dick back in and wipes his hands down his pants.

“Want a fuck?” I ask.

“You’re a bitch,” he says.

“It’s too hot anyways,” I say.

“You feed that fucking bird chicken?” he asks.

“So?” I say.

“Bitch,” he says.

“Bitch,” I say.

Do you know what happens when someone puts a .357 in her mouth and pulls the trigger?  She misses.  She misses because the kickback breaks the angle of her wrist.  The bullet goes into the ceiling.  And then, she shoots again.  At least that’s my experience.

Purdy throws her dog bowl across the large empty kitchen.  We’ve pawned all of the copper pots and pans, the appliances, and the orange Fiesta ware.

“She wants to play?” Stephanie asks.

“No,” I say.  “She’s just crazy.”

And it’s true.  Purdy killed Gizmo.  After examining the body and finding the puncture wounds all around his blood-crusted neck, I’m almost positive.

Paco wasn’t there this morning.

I smoke beside his abandoned cage and hear his rrrrrrrrraaaaackkkkk.  I follow it to a Palo Verde tree about ten feet from the house.

“Come back,” I offer.

He shakes his head.

“You’ll starve,” I say.  I love to say the word starve.

Rrrrrrrrraaaaackkkkk.

“You’ll starve,” I say.  “And then die.”

I laugh.

Still with me?  Wow.  Do you actually give a shit?  What’s that feel like?  No, don’t tell me.  I don’t remember.  I don’t want to remember.  I don’t want to remember flubbery pieces of human brain jiggling from Purdy’s red muzzle.  Maybe I should get some help?  From who?  You can keep your fucking therapists.  Your trauma intervention fags who don’t do anything about the blood, or the vomit, but just stand there asking are you alright.  Fuck no.  And this is just my story.  We’re not even going to touch on anyone else’s shit.  You’re here to see me.  Fuck you.  Fuck your hospitals.  Fuck your rape kit- I don’t want one.  I’ll stab the nurse in the hand with her own pen if she asks me again if I feel like I am going into shock.  I’d like to rape someone.  Who knows?  Maybe someday I will.

Last night Stephanie went pee in back of the house and a javelina trotted past her, so she says.  Today she is lying face down with no pants, on an opened sleeping bag, waiting for the lacerations to heal.  She sat on a barrel cactus and got an ass full of fish-hook needles.  Sake pulled them out with pliers that are crusted with last night’s blood still lying at the bottom corner of the sleeping bag.

“That wasn’t a javelina,” I tell Stephanie.  From outside we hear Paco.  I wish he’d either come back or fucking die.  I’m sitting beside Stephanie on the floor, and every once and awhile I run my sweaty hand over her head like her mom used to do.

Rrrrrrrrraaaaackkkk.

“It was,” she says.  Sake sits on the Mexican-tiled step that leads from the dining room to the living room.

“It was your dog,” Sake says.

“It was your dog,” I say.

It doesn’t matter.

Nothing matters.

NOTHING FUCKING MATTERS.

Nothing fucking matters and you are a piece of shit.

Just.

Like.

Me.


Sara Gerot is a graduate of the University of Iowa and has an MFA in Critical Studies from Cal Arts. Her work appears in Black Clock, A Bad Penny Review, and Bookslut. She lives and teaches in Iowa. She is the mother of two kids by two guys, so far.
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