Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Dwight Eisenhower Ilescu
Now as the phone was ringing, Mort was watching a live broadcast of a fire happening at a building that he managed that was owned by his boss, Steven Swartz. On the phone was the janitor to the building by the name Dwight Eisenhower Ilescu.
“Boss, you gotta to come down here right now… It’s terrible… I toll you last week that we gotta to fix the electricity… Come on, I toll you.”
Dwight almost was given a name that was hard for Americans to say and so his parents chose the name Dwight. It was during World War II that General Dwight D. Eisenhower, came to the small Romanian village that Dwight’s parents were from. Dwight Eisenhower stopped with his entourage to have a cup of tea at an insignificant little café that was frequented by nobody but locals. Dwight’s father ordered his wife to find their cousin who was a wedding photographer when he wasn’t fixing cars and made him stop what he was doing so that he could have a photograph with the famous general. Up on the wall of that café was a mural sized photograph of Dwight’s father with his left arm around Eisenhower and his right hand shaking hands with the future president. The picture remains to this day.
Dwight’s father offered the general a pastry and a cup of coffee. Eisenhower finished neither. To this day in a Sub Zero freezer in Chicago, is the cup of coffee with coffee still in it and a pastry with one bite out of it forever frozen in time. Dwight Eisenhower Ilescu, made it on national television twice. Once was to have chemists test the frozen products to ensure the validity of the claim. The DNA matched. Dwight D. Eisenhower in fact drank from the cup and took a bite of the pastry. For this reason Dwight has always voted Republican. He voted for Ronald Reagan in 1984 after becoming a naturalized citizen.
Dwight was a dichotomy of sorts. He hated Jews but realized that the key to his success rested in getting along and depending on them and working for them. His hate stemmed from the fact that the Jews all seemed to find a way to really make good money without working quite as hard. Steven Swartz, who owned the building that Dwight worked and lived in, never acknowledged Dwight even though Dwight fixed Steven’s plumbing at his house for free twice. Both times it took his entire day off which was Sunday and Steven never even said thank you. Steven did throw a bonus in his checks but Dwight wanted more than anything to have a handshake and a pat on the back. If the supreme general of the European theater during World War II could wait twenty minutes in a café to have a mechanic take a photograph with a nobody in Romania, surely the president of a small company could take the time from barking at someone on his Bluetooth, to thank the man who made it possible to have his shit flow again down stream. Into the abyss.
“Boss, you gotta to come down here right now… It’s terrible… I toll you last week that we gotta to fix the electricity… Come on, I toll you.”
Dwight almost was given a name that was hard for Americans to say and so his parents chose the name Dwight. It was during World War II that General Dwight D. Eisenhower, came to the small Romanian village that Dwight’s parents were from. Dwight Eisenhower stopped with his entourage to have a cup of tea at an insignificant little café that was frequented by nobody but locals. Dwight’s father ordered his wife to find their cousin who was a wedding photographer when he wasn’t fixing cars and made him stop what he was doing so that he could have a photograph with the famous general. Up on the wall of that café was a mural sized photograph of Dwight’s father with his left arm around Eisenhower and his right hand shaking hands with the future president. The picture remains to this day.
Dwight’s father offered the general a pastry and a cup of coffee. Eisenhower finished neither. To this day in a Sub Zero freezer in Chicago, is the cup of coffee with coffee still in it and a pastry with one bite out of it forever frozen in time. Dwight Eisenhower Ilescu, made it on national television twice. Once was to have chemists test the frozen products to ensure the validity of the claim. The DNA matched. Dwight D. Eisenhower in fact drank from the cup and took a bite of the pastry. For this reason Dwight has always voted Republican. He voted for Ronald Reagan in 1984 after becoming a naturalized citizen.
Dwight was a dichotomy of sorts. He hated Jews but realized that the key to his success rested in getting along and depending on them and working for them. His hate stemmed from the fact that the Jews all seemed to find a way to really make good money without working quite as hard. Steven Swartz, who owned the building that Dwight worked and lived in, never acknowledged Dwight even though Dwight fixed Steven’s plumbing at his house for free twice. Both times it took his entire day off which was Sunday and Steven never even said thank you. Steven did throw a bonus in his checks but Dwight wanted more than anything to have a handshake and a pat on the back. If the supreme general of the European theater during World War II could wait twenty minutes in a café to have a mechanic take a photograph with a nobody in Romania, surely the president of a small company could take the time from barking at someone on his Bluetooth, to thank the man who made it possible to have his shit flow again down stream. Into the abyss.
Friday, January 22, 2010
A Day in the Life of an American Part II
Now keep in mind that our hero in part 1, blended one day into the next without the benefit of any sleep. He has spent over $15.00 on over priced coffee which included the obligatory drop of coin change into the barista’s clear box next to the register.
Trent’s mother has come unexpectedly with his her husband, Trent’s step father who is nearly three years younger than Trent. His stepfather is a former Marine and a closet homosexual with a drinking problem. Trent has driven over 100 miles since leaving home half of which were in a Smart Car. He answered over 30 emails on his Blackberry as well as answered close to ten voice messages. We find him pulled over on the north side of Chicago in part two.
2:20 pm- Trent has been pulled over by an Officer O’Malley in squad car 1592. Officer O’Malley is fifty seven years of age, has twenty two percent body fat and a penis that used to get 4.75 inches long when it could become erect. That was back when his body fat was under fifteen percent, over ten years ago. Officer O’Malley enjoys watching sports, loves his nine grand children and his time share in Cancun. He and his wife fall asleep watching Jimmy Kimmel on late night television in their matching recliners most evenings after watching the news.
“I hate to do this to you but there is a law here in the City of Chicago and normally I wouldn’t give a driver a ticket but I sat behind you for an entire red light and then you made a left hand turn without using your turn signal. I’m going to give you the choice of what I give you the ticket for… Personally I would go for the cell phone as it will not go on your record,” said Officer O’Malley.
Here’s the irony; Trent was on the phone with the Chicago Police Department, trying to get an officer to meet him at an apartment building where a tenant had adopted all the furniture in the foyer, for her own unit. A water leak from an over flowing tub in the thief’s unit had caused terrific water damage to a unit below.
A section 8 tenant with five cats, called to tell Trent that plaster had fallen and hit her while she was asleep in bed. The tenant had already called an injury attorney that she sees every commercial break on local television. He was in her corner all along.
“I’m on the phone with the Chicago Police Department right now!” Cried Trent as he held out the cell phone towards the officer.
“Okay… I’ll let you go on that account but I gotta ticket you for the left without a signal. That was just plain stupid, sir.
2:47 pm- Trent walks into the lobby of the apartment that had been stripped of a table and four chairs. Two lesbian officers stood annoyed with the janitor of the building whose name was Abulfasal and was born in Bosnia. Abulfasal changed his name to Bud. Bud had a wife and four children who lived in the one bedroom basement apartment belonging to the company that Trent worked for. His wife is an illegal alien and Bud is missing a tooth. The tooth came out while fixing a small plumbing issue in the building the year before. He hit himself with a large pipe wrench while trying to loosen a rusted fitting that was leaking. Bud underestimated his own strength. He loosened the rusted fitting and took his tooth with it. With no health insurance, his tooth did not stand a chance.
Now the lesbian cops both played softball on the same team and were training to run a marathon. Both of them had short cut hair and very pale white skin and spoke an octave lower than the voice god meant for them to have. They were annoyed that Trent had left them waiting in the lobby for over ten minutes when they were in the middle of eating lunch when the call came through.
The tenant opened her door to find Bud, Trent and the two female cops with low voices. The tenant was trying hard to get off of drugs and find a job but the problem was that she just had a child three months earlier and had another one that was eighteen months old. Both children were of mixed race or as they called them in the old days; mulatto. She was thin and pale with greasy blond hair, with huge bags under her eyes and a black front tooth that was affected by heroin. She was smoking a cigarette and trembling. The father of the second child had just called her from Cook County Jail and needed to be bailed out. She had no money and her boyfriend would have to stay until a court hearing and then maybe some extra for breaking the terms of his probation. The young woman was really nervous about what would happen upon her boyfriend’s return. Violence of some sort was expected but what was not known was to what extent. She had some time. Meanwhile she was at the mercy of Trent. Trent looked at the sleeping infant in an old car seat and couldn’t ask for the woman to be arrested. He ordered Bud to move the furniture back to the lobby and bolt it down. The officers questioned Trent in the hallway.
“It’s up to you… We can arrest her, the kids become ward of the state and chances are the judge is going to let her go anyway… Whaddya wanna do?”
The tenant with the five cats could hear the conversation as she walked up the stairs with yellow Tweety slippers, holding an ice pack to her head. Even though she was clunked pretty good on the head by wet plaster, she was absolutely fine. She was hoping to win the lottery on this one and nothing was going to come out of it. At that moment though she was full of hope as she climbed the stairs in her yellow slippers, holding the ice pack against her forehead, she interjected.
“You better know what you’re gonna do, mister. This is a serious situation…”
It was a serious situation. Trent at that moment was the closest he had ever come to quitting life completely. Nothing suicidal but more like clearing the deck. What Trent really wanted to do was go back to work and quit. He wanted to tell everyone at work to go fuck themselves and try to have a nice life. He then wanted to go home and tell his mother to plan her life better and send the Marine to rehab. He then wanted to put it to his wife that they sell everything and open a wine bar in the Bahamas or maybe a miniature golf center. Trent was ready to slow his life down. After all, every work day was nearly identical to the one he was having and some times he would sleep and often times he was too wired to relax. Trent wanted to live by the ocean where most every day was as beautiful as the next. He wanted to drive his car on the left with a wheel on the right and watch cricket matches in the shade on days that he wasn’t selling wine or handing out putters. All of these thoughts crossed Trent’s mind as he sat in stand still traffic late in the afternoon on Interstate 94 headed north even though the sign says west towards Milwaukee. While Trent contemplated changing his entire life for the sake of saving it, he listened to the news about tens of thousands of some of the poorest people on the planet, losing their lives in an earthquake in Haiti. The news was more or less subliminal. Trent then received a text from his wife.
“What’s the plan with your family for tonight? Eating? Food? Please advise.”
Trent really wished that she had not ended the sentence with please advise. Most people who complained all day long in emails, always ended their emails in please advise.
7:52 pm- Trent had brought home some deep dish pizza that Chicago was really famous for. His mother, her husband, his wife and he all made small talk. The kind of talk that when you try to remember what was discussed the next day it leaves one wondering what exactly was exchanged for hours? Weather? The baby? The past? It didn’t matter. While everyone chatted, Trent scooped up their infant daughter who was fussing due to the fact that she was hungry and tired. He changed her and got a bottle of formula ready. His eyes grew heavy as he starred down at his infant daughter who was having a hard time keeping her eyes open and focused on him. After all, he was one of two people she could now pick out of a crowd of strangers if she had to as she drank her milk in his arms. Trent thought about all the meaningless but necessary bullshit for a moment while looking down at his baby girl and decided he was no better or smarter than the Salmon. He like most, were just trying to fight their way upstream, against the tide for the benefit of their progeny. That’s just how it goes.
Trent’s mother has come unexpectedly with his her husband, Trent’s step father who is nearly three years younger than Trent. His stepfather is a former Marine and a closet homosexual with a drinking problem. Trent has driven over 100 miles since leaving home half of which were in a Smart Car. He answered over 30 emails on his Blackberry as well as answered close to ten voice messages. We find him pulled over on the north side of Chicago in part two.
2:20 pm- Trent has been pulled over by an Officer O’Malley in squad car 1592. Officer O’Malley is fifty seven years of age, has twenty two percent body fat and a penis that used to get 4.75 inches long when it could become erect. That was back when his body fat was under fifteen percent, over ten years ago. Officer O’Malley enjoys watching sports, loves his nine grand children and his time share in Cancun. He and his wife fall asleep watching Jimmy Kimmel on late night television in their matching recliners most evenings after watching the news.
“I hate to do this to you but there is a law here in the City of Chicago and normally I wouldn’t give a driver a ticket but I sat behind you for an entire red light and then you made a left hand turn without using your turn signal. I’m going to give you the choice of what I give you the ticket for… Personally I would go for the cell phone as it will not go on your record,” said Officer O’Malley.
Here’s the irony; Trent was on the phone with the Chicago Police Department, trying to get an officer to meet him at an apartment building where a tenant had adopted all the furniture in the foyer, for her own unit. A water leak from an over flowing tub in the thief’s unit had caused terrific water damage to a unit below.
A section 8 tenant with five cats, called to tell Trent that plaster had fallen and hit her while she was asleep in bed. The tenant had already called an injury attorney that she sees every commercial break on local television. He was in her corner all along.
“I’m on the phone with the Chicago Police Department right now!” Cried Trent as he held out the cell phone towards the officer.
“Okay… I’ll let you go on that account but I gotta ticket you for the left without a signal. That was just plain stupid, sir.
2:47 pm- Trent walks into the lobby of the apartment that had been stripped of a table and four chairs. Two lesbian officers stood annoyed with the janitor of the building whose name was Abulfasal and was born in Bosnia. Abulfasal changed his name to Bud. Bud had a wife and four children who lived in the one bedroom basement apartment belonging to the company that Trent worked for. His wife is an illegal alien and Bud is missing a tooth. The tooth came out while fixing a small plumbing issue in the building the year before. He hit himself with a large pipe wrench while trying to loosen a rusted fitting that was leaking. Bud underestimated his own strength. He loosened the rusted fitting and took his tooth with it. With no health insurance, his tooth did not stand a chance.
Now the lesbian cops both played softball on the same team and were training to run a marathon. Both of them had short cut hair and very pale white skin and spoke an octave lower than the voice god meant for them to have. They were annoyed that Trent had left them waiting in the lobby for over ten minutes when they were in the middle of eating lunch when the call came through.
The tenant opened her door to find Bud, Trent and the two female cops with low voices. The tenant was trying hard to get off of drugs and find a job but the problem was that she just had a child three months earlier and had another one that was eighteen months old. Both children were of mixed race or as they called them in the old days; mulatto. She was thin and pale with greasy blond hair, with huge bags under her eyes and a black front tooth that was affected by heroin. She was smoking a cigarette and trembling. The father of the second child had just called her from Cook County Jail and needed to be bailed out. She had no money and her boyfriend would have to stay until a court hearing and then maybe some extra for breaking the terms of his probation. The young woman was really nervous about what would happen upon her boyfriend’s return. Violence of some sort was expected but what was not known was to what extent. She had some time. Meanwhile she was at the mercy of Trent. Trent looked at the sleeping infant in an old car seat and couldn’t ask for the woman to be arrested. He ordered Bud to move the furniture back to the lobby and bolt it down. The officers questioned Trent in the hallway.
“It’s up to you… We can arrest her, the kids become ward of the state and chances are the judge is going to let her go anyway… Whaddya wanna do?”
The tenant with the five cats could hear the conversation as she walked up the stairs with yellow Tweety slippers, holding an ice pack to her head. Even though she was clunked pretty good on the head by wet plaster, she was absolutely fine. She was hoping to win the lottery on this one and nothing was going to come out of it. At that moment though she was full of hope as she climbed the stairs in her yellow slippers, holding the ice pack against her forehead, she interjected.
“You better know what you’re gonna do, mister. This is a serious situation…”
It was a serious situation. Trent at that moment was the closest he had ever come to quitting life completely. Nothing suicidal but more like clearing the deck. What Trent really wanted to do was go back to work and quit. He wanted to tell everyone at work to go fuck themselves and try to have a nice life. He then wanted to go home and tell his mother to plan her life better and send the Marine to rehab. He then wanted to put it to his wife that they sell everything and open a wine bar in the Bahamas or maybe a miniature golf center. Trent was ready to slow his life down. After all, every work day was nearly identical to the one he was having and some times he would sleep and often times he was too wired to relax. Trent wanted to live by the ocean where most every day was as beautiful as the next. He wanted to drive his car on the left with a wheel on the right and watch cricket matches in the shade on days that he wasn’t selling wine or handing out putters. All of these thoughts crossed Trent’s mind as he sat in stand still traffic late in the afternoon on Interstate 94 headed north even though the sign says west towards Milwaukee. While Trent contemplated changing his entire life for the sake of saving it, he listened to the news about tens of thousands of some of the poorest people on the planet, losing their lives in an earthquake in Haiti. The news was more or less subliminal. Trent then received a text from his wife.
“What’s the plan with your family for tonight? Eating? Food? Please advise.”
Trent really wished that she had not ended the sentence with please advise. Most people who complained all day long in emails, always ended their emails in please advise.
7:52 pm- Trent had brought home some deep dish pizza that Chicago was really famous for. His mother, her husband, his wife and he all made small talk. The kind of talk that when you try to remember what was discussed the next day it leaves one wondering what exactly was exchanged for hours? Weather? The baby? The past? It didn’t matter. While everyone chatted, Trent scooped up their infant daughter who was fussing due to the fact that she was hungry and tired. He changed her and got a bottle of formula ready. His eyes grew heavy as he starred down at his infant daughter who was having a hard time keeping her eyes open and focused on him. After all, he was one of two people she could now pick out of a crowd of strangers if she had to as she drank her milk in his arms. Trent thought about all the meaningless but necessary bullshit for a moment while looking down at his baby girl and decided he was no better or smarter than the Salmon. He like most, were just trying to fight their way upstream, against the tide for the benefit of their progeny. That’s just how it goes.
Monday, January 18, 2010
A Day in the Life of an American Part 1
Trent Kelly was one the fortunate Americans who had a job and for that he was truly thankful. As a leasing agent for apartment buildings within and around the city of Chicago, he met people everyday that did not qualify to rent an apartment due to poor credit or no job. They were all less fortunate.
12:38am Friday- Trent returned from playing four games of pick up basketball with young men from a Romanian Christian church who were roughly half his age. Trent sat and watched the Cleveland Cavalier/Utah Jazz game that he recorded prior to leaving home as he ate roast beef with Munster cheese that had been microwaved. No bread with the cold cuts and cheese. Trent slams in a handful of blueberries and a small stalk of broccoli. He remembers that they fight cancer and have antioxidants. Trent doesn’t remember what an antioxidant is exactly. He knows that it fights oxidants with vigor and it makes him feel healthier to know that there are less oxidants within him as a result.
As Trent tries to decide whether he should have a glass of red wine with his sleep medicine, he watches Shaquille O’Neil miss two free throws and wonders how a man plays the game of basketball for so many years and is still unable to shoot over 50% from the foul line. He wonders how the man does not take the whole summer in his palace overlooking the smog and over population of Los Angeles from his mountain side home and shoot free throws over and over until the rhythm is secondary just as putting on a panel on a Ford Taurus would be to some poor slob on an assembly line making a great American vehicle in Windsor, Ontario. It’s a panel that gets put on the right front, just like the last one and ten thousand others before it and after it. Ten thousand free throws per summer and one is bound to shoot at least 50%. Lack of rhythm must be the key.
A television time out it became time to decide whether to have a healthy poor of Fat Bastard Merlot and wash that down with sleep agent that has Diphenhydramine HCI. Just 25 little milligrams to help with sleeplessness. Insomnia is a pervasive problem for Trent. He goes to the bathroom and urinates and looks at his own face in the mirror while relieving himself. He has dark rings under his eyes like a raccoon and a hint of crow’s feet around the eyes. Trent thinks to himself that he probably doesn’t appear to be forty yet or at least what he perceived forty to appear like when he was twenty. His hair is salt and pepper and for the mean time, it’s more pepper than salt. His head is shaved due to the fact that it is thinning in spots. Every week without fail, he visits a Ukrainian woman who was raised in the former Soviet empire and only learned to speak Russian. She tells Trent as he fights sleep in the barber chair, that the current president of Ukraine is a piece of shit and hopes the man who lost in 2004, wins this time. Trent only faintly listens as he tries not to breathe the breath of the Ukrainian woman who smokes a pack of Marlboro Cigarettes a day. Trent didn’t realize that the Ukrainians had their own language and that their language was in fact not Russian. Trent is not thinking about the president of Ukraine or his adversary or the cigarette breath of his female barber from a former Soviet region as he takes the Minoxidil and rubs it on his scalp as he has for years. He has Minoxidil for his hair and Nair for his back with a spatchula to help reach those troubled areas of his back.
The phone rings at a little after one in the morning right after Trent swallowed a little pill to help him sleep with a healthy poor of Fat Bastard Merlot. Trent thinks about the temp girl who answered the phones at the office and how she was not supposed to give out his cell number to tenants but was supposed to give out his email so that he could receive emails instead of calls. The phone played Richard Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries as loud as could be. The phone was in the bathroom next to the bedroom where his infant daughter slept. The same song that played in Apocalypse Now when Robert Duval attacked by helicopter, the civilians on the Vietnamese beach, stunned his relatively new born daughter from her slumber. While a fragile tenant cried about feces coming up from her toilet and the need for immediate action, Trent’s new daughter went off like a siren. Trent’s sleepy wife staggered past Trent who was on his cell phone after one in the morning to attend to their child who was woken by a phone replication of a Richard Wagner song. Trent’s wife didn’t care who it was that he was talking to as much as she cared that he was talking with his day time voice in the middle of the night.
“I hope you’re saving lives tonight. There are people in Haiti that are dying. I sincerely hope nobody is dying,” said Trent’s wife, as she changed the diaper of their screaming new born who was fighting the diaper change with both arms and both legs.
Trent added two scoops of Similac to four ounces of water and handed it to his sleepy wife who was sitting in a rocking chair, waiting for the liquid meal for their new arrival. Trent tried to assure the woman that he would get a plumber the first thing in the morning.
2:10am Friday- the Utah Jazz with roughly five minutes to go, had an eleven point lead on Cleveland. Trent watched James Lebron undress the entire Jazz squad in a little more than three minutes as an email was coming in. This is what the subject said;
NO FUCKING HEAT AGAIN…
Then the message went on to say… I KNOW WHEREVER THE FUCK YOU ARE TONIGHT, YOU ARE QUITE WARM. WELL I’M NOT, ONCE AGAIN, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES. STAY WARM.
Now the tenant who wrote this was a stay at home father of twenty nine years of age with 18% body fat and a 3 and ¾ inch penis. This tenant loves Xbox and comic books and saw Avatar five times. His wife paid for the tickets each time as well as the popcorn with extra butter and the economy sized cola. Trent got to play god with this particular asshole. Trent pretended to be sleeping and would respond to the urgent message until after noon time later that day.
Now one of the best finishes to a basketball game took place with five seconds to go in the game. Like a good Disney finish, the Utah Jazz inbound the ball and got it to a man with the last name of Gaines who had been playing minor league basketball in Boise just days before. In front of a sell out crowd, he hit a three pointer at the buzzer and solidified his chances of sticking in the NBA. Another email came in.
“Trent honey, its mommy. I have decided to come and visit you, your beautiful wife and darling new addition. I read my horoscope and had a dream about dying early and decided that since I have the time, I will be coming with my husband Bob to spend the week with you. Life is short and you never know what could happen. I’m going to need a car and hope that we will not be crowding you if we stay at your place… Hugs and kisses.”
That single email kept Trent from sleep more so than anything else that could possibly happen. Even with a sleeping aid and red wine, sleep would be postponed for the night pending the arrival of Trent’s mother from Vermont.
Now Trent was born and raised in Los Angeles by a single mom who happened to be a hippy. Trent’s mother was on her sixth husband. This latest step father was three years younger than Trent, a former Marine and an alcoholic. Trent got on line and found a motel called the Ambassador on Lincoln Avenue on the north side of Chicago and an independent car rental company that rented Smart Cars for his mother.
5:02 am Friday- Trent stops at a Starbucks. An effeminate young man with skin tight jeans and two earrings on his lips asks Trent what he would like to drink in a southern belle lilt. Trent for a moment remembered when being overtly effeminate was as dangerous as being overtly communist and wondered if communism and homophobia died simultaneously.
Trent bench presses first at the gym. Four sets of 235 then leg lifts push ups, pull ups and then curls. Trent’s heart pounds as he takes a hot shower. Next to him are two old Jewish men that small talk. Trent listens in.
“Mortie… You’re late. It’s one of the seven deadly sins isn’t it?”
“What, what… Not getting my tired old ass out of bed and to the gym and for what? I’ll still look like a wrinkled prune with ball sacks hanging down to my fucking knees…”
That made Trent smile as he stood naked in front of the mirror, putting lotion all over his body. Trent could see some muscle tone and a hint of a six pack on his abdomen. He dreaded getting as old as the old Jews but knew with each day, the time was coming.
8:45am Friday- Trent picked up a yellow Smart Car from O’Hare airport and drove to Midway Airport on the other side of Chicago to greet his mother. The Smart Car shook as it went 62.5 miles per hour on the Stevenson Expressway. The news from Haiti was dismal. The Blackhawks won and the weather would be sunny and above freezing for the fourth day in a row.
A Chicago Police officer in a bright yellow raincoat came up and yelled at Trent for pulling up in the fire lane to pick up his mother and her husband.
“You leave that car for a second and I’ll have it towed…” said the cop.
“I’m picking up those two people there,” Trent said, combatively.
“And I’m telling you if you leave the car, it will be towed.”
Trent had no way of knowing that the middle aged angry officer, had been sent to Midway to keep scofflaws and terrorists from double parking their cars because he had been caught grocery shopping and sleeping in his car by a news television station that was trying to point out just how lazy some police officers were and their abuse of power. The cop hated standing out in the cold, telling people to move their cars all day. Do you blame him?
9:02am
Trent, his mother and step father, were eating at Brandy’s Family Restaurant on Cicero and 52nd Street. The waitress looked a lot like WC Fields, red nose and all. Everyone except the girl who rang people up and sat them, were morbidly obese. Trent didn’t know exactly what to say to his mother and stepfather who he did not like. He mentioned the fat people.
“2/3 of Americans are obese now and 90% of them are in this room,” said Trent, while stirring his coffee. Trent’s latently homosexual step father, who was three years younger than him, starred at Trent blankly. Nothing was said by either Trent’s mother or the Marine.
“Musta been a pain in the ass to get to Albany, New York with all that snow in Vermont. Did you make it to the airport okay?” said Trent, searchingly looking for something to discuss.
“Well I love to hunt and ski… Chop down wood and just enjoy god’s green earth,” said Bob, in a manly and quite husky voice.
Trent didn’t understand the answer to his question from Bob and did not press him for an answer that made sense. Trent listened to Bob claims of being the outdoors man and couldn’t help thinking about the $1,000.00 phone bill he had to pay for his mother due to the fact that Bob rang up a doozy by calling1- 900 gay phone sex numbers while on a drinking binge. Bob had no idea that Trent knew. Trent told his mother that before he would help out with the outrageous phone bill, he had to know first what kind of 1- 900 Bob was calling. Trent called one of the numbers and heard this recording:
“You’ve reached The Man line… Lot’s of interesting men are waiting to talk to men just like you. Your seconds away from joining the fastest growing network where men meet men… Just like you…”
11:00 am- A mandatory meeting was called for all employees of the real estate office where Trent worked. A bald man who looked like Dr. Phil with eyebrows that looked like gerbils, stood with his arms folded at the front of the room behind a podium. The owner of the company came in late and the murmur that had filled the room immediately ceased. The boss started the meeting with a red face and trembling hands. He was so angry that he literally shook.
“I called this meeting to put you all on notice. Someone stole a gift from my desk while I was on vacation and yet nobody knows where it is. Among us is a thief… Secondly, I brought my eight year old son in the office and allowed him to look up Nick on Line from the front desk computer and come to find out that someone here was looking at a website called Goats and Blondes. MY SON BELIEVES IN SANTA CLAUS STILL AND KNOWS ABOUT SEX WITH FUCKING FARM ANIMALS! I had to learn this from my wife as she learned this while reading him Dr. Fucking Seuss before bed. You are all being put on notice. I have hired Mr. Dupuis to monitor everything that goes on in this place from here on out. This bullshit ends today. Mr. Dupuis… The floor is yours.”
The boss received a gift certificate from his girlfriend at work while he happened to be away with his family over the Christmas holiday. He received a text message from his girlfriend who had purchased a gift certificate to the Love Palace. The Love Palace was frequented by couples looking for intimacy and fun. The suite chosen by the girlfriend had a pool with a slide and a trapeze where she could lower herself onto her boyfriend. The text message read as follows:
DID YOU GET THE GIFT CERTIFICATE TO THE LOVE PALACE THAT I LEFT ON YOUR DESK LAST WEEK? I CAN’T WAIT TO TRY IT OUT. I MISS YOU. SEE YOU SOON.
Upon returning, the boss panicked over the prospect of anyone seeing the card from his girlfriend. He of course he yelled at his girlfriend for leaving the envelope on his desk instead of giving it to him. Whoever stole it knew that it was safe to steal since; the boss could not divulge the contents. The same person who stole the card also was looking at bestiality on line too. I can’t say who it was. It just wouldn’t be right for me to get involved in this.
12:38am Friday- Trent returned from playing four games of pick up basketball with young men from a Romanian Christian church who were roughly half his age. Trent sat and watched the Cleveland Cavalier/Utah Jazz game that he recorded prior to leaving home as he ate roast beef with Munster cheese that had been microwaved. No bread with the cold cuts and cheese. Trent slams in a handful of blueberries and a small stalk of broccoli. He remembers that they fight cancer and have antioxidants. Trent doesn’t remember what an antioxidant is exactly. He knows that it fights oxidants with vigor and it makes him feel healthier to know that there are less oxidants within him as a result.
As Trent tries to decide whether he should have a glass of red wine with his sleep medicine, he watches Shaquille O’Neil miss two free throws and wonders how a man plays the game of basketball for so many years and is still unable to shoot over 50% from the foul line. He wonders how the man does not take the whole summer in his palace overlooking the smog and over population of Los Angeles from his mountain side home and shoot free throws over and over until the rhythm is secondary just as putting on a panel on a Ford Taurus would be to some poor slob on an assembly line making a great American vehicle in Windsor, Ontario. It’s a panel that gets put on the right front, just like the last one and ten thousand others before it and after it. Ten thousand free throws per summer and one is bound to shoot at least 50%. Lack of rhythm must be the key.
A television time out it became time to decide whether to have a healthy poor of Fat Bastard Merlot and wash that down with sleep agent that has Diphenhydramine HCI. Just 25 little milligrams to help with sleeplessness. Insomnia is a pervasive problem for Trent. He goes to the bathroom and urinates and looks at his own face in the mirror while relieving himself. He has dark rings under his eyes like a raccoon and a hint of crow’s feet around the eyes. Trent thinks to himself that he probably doesn’t appear to be forty yet or at least what he perceived forty to appear like when he was twenty. His hair is salt and pepper and for the mean time, it’s more pepper than salt. His head is shaved due to the fact that it is thinning in spots. Every week without fail, he visits a Ukrainian woman who was raised in the former Soviet empire and only learned to speak Russian. She tells Trent as he fights sleep in the barber chair, that the current president of Ukraine is a piece of shit and hopes the man who lost in 2004, wins this time. Trent only faintly listens as he tries not to breathe the breath of the Ukrainian woman who smokes a pack of Marlboro Cigarettes a day. Trent didn’t realize that the Ukrainians had their own language and that their language was in fact not Russian. Trent is not thinking about the president of Ukraine or his adversary or the cigarette breath of his female barber from a former Soviet region as he takes the Minoxidil and rubs it on his scalp as he has for years. He has Minoxidil for his hair and Nair for his back with a spatchula to help reach those troubled areas of his back.
The phone rings at a little after one in the morning right after Trent swallowed a little pill to help him sleep with a healthy poor of Fat Bastard Merlot. Trent thinks about the temp girl who answered the phones at the office and how she was not supposed to give out his cell number to tenants but was supposed to give out his email so that he could receive emails instead of calls. The phone played Richard Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries as loud as could be. The phone was in the bathroom next to the bedroom where his infant daughter slept. The same song that played in Apocalypse Now when Robert Duval attacked by helicopter, the civilians on the Vietnamese beach, stunned his relatively new born daughter from her slumber. While a fragile tenant cried about feces coming up from her toilet and the need for immediate action, Trent’s new daughter went off like a siren. Trent’s sleepy wife staggered past Trent who was on his cell phone after one in the morning to attend to their child who was woken by a phone replication of a Richard Wagner song. Trent’s wife didn’t care who it was that he was talking to as much as she cared that he was talking with his day time voice in the middle of the night.
“I hope you’re saving lives tonight. There are people in Haiti that are dying. I sincerely hope nobody is dying,” said Trent’s wife, as she changed the diaper of their screaming new born who was fighting the diaper change with both arms and both legs.
Trent added two scoops of Similac to four ounces of water and handed it to his sleepy wife who was sitting in a rocking chair, waiting for the liquid meal for their new arrival. Trent tried to assure the woman that he would get a plumber the first thing in the morning.
2:10am Friday- the Utah Jazz with roughly five minutes to go, had an eleven point lead on Cleveland. Trent watched James Lebron undress the entire Jazz squad in a little more than three minutes as an email was coming in. This is what the subject said;
NO FUCKING HEAT AGAIN…
Then the message went on to say… I KNOW WHEREVER THE FUCK YOU ARE TONIGHT, YOU ARE QUITE WARM. WELL I’M NOT, ONCE AGAIN, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES. STAY WARM.
Now the tenant who wrote this was a stay at home father of twenty nine years of age with 18% body fat and a 3 and ¾ inch penis. This tenant loves Xbox and comic books and saw Avatar five times. His wife paid for the tickets each time as well as the popcorn with extra butter and the economy sized cola. Trent got to play god with this particular asshole. Trent pretended to be sleeping and would respond to the urgent message until after noon time later that day.
Now one of the best finishes to a basketball game took place with five seconds to go in the game. Like a good Disney finish, the Utah Jazz inbound the ball and got it to a man with the last name of Gaines who had been playing minor league basketball in Boise just days before. In front of a sell out crowd, he hit a three pointer at the buzzer and solidified his chances of sticking in the NBA. Another email came in.
“Trent honey, its mommy. I have decided to come and visit you, your beautiful wife and darling new addition. I read my horoscope and had a dream about dying early and decided that since I have the time, I will be coming with my husband Bob to spend the week with you. Life is short and you never know what could happen. I’m going to need a car and hope that we will not be crowding you if we stay at your place… Hugs and kisses.”
That single email kept Trent from sleep more so than anything else that could possibly happen. Even with a sleeping aid and red wine, sleep would be postponed for the night pending the arrival of Trent’s mother from Vermont.
Now Trent was born and raised in Los Angeles by a single mom who happened to be a hippy. Trent’s mother was on her sixth husband. This latest step father was three years younger than Trent, a former Marine and an alcoholic. Trent got on line and found a motel called the Ambassador on Lincoln Avenue on the north side of Chicago and an independent car rental company that rented Smart Cars for his mother.
5:02 am Friday- Trent stops at a Starbucks. An effeminate young man with skin tight jeans and two earrings on his lips asks Trent what he would like to drink in a southern belle lilt. Trent for a moment remembered when being overtly effeminate was as dangerous as being overtly communist and wondered if communism and homophobia died simultaneously.
Trent bench presses first at the gym. Four sets of 235 then leg lifts push ups, pull ups and then curls. Trent’s heart pounds as he takes a hot shower. Next to him are two old Jewish men that small talk. Trent listens in.
“Mortie… You’re late. It’s one of the seven deadly sins isn’t it?”
“What, what… Not getting my tired old ass out of bed and to the gym and for what? I’ll still look like a wrinkled prune with ball sacks hanging down to my fucking knees…”
That made Trent smile as he stood naked in front of the mirror, putting lotion all over his body. Trent could see some muscle tone and a hint of a six pack on his abdomen. He dreaded getting as old as the old Jews but knew with each day, the time was coming.
8:45am Friday- Trent picked up a yellow Smart Car from O’Hare airport and drove to Midway Airport on the other side of Chicago to greet his mother. The Smart Car shook as it went 62.5 miles per hour on the Stevenson Expressway. The news from Haiti was dismal. The Blackhawks won and the weather would be sunny and above freezing for the fourth day in a row.
A Chicago Police officer in a bright yellow raincoat came up and yelled at Trent for pulling up in the fire lane to pick up his mother and her husband.
“You leave that car for a second and I’ll have it towed…” said the cop.
“I’m picking up those two people there,” Trent said, combatively.
“And I’m telling you if you leave the car, it will be towed.”
Trent had no way of knowing that the middle aged angry officer, had been sent to Midway to keep scofflaws and terrorists from double parking their cars because he had been caught grocery shopping and sleeping in his car by a news television station that was trying to point out just how lazy some police officers were and their abuse of power. The cop hated standing out in the cold, telling people to move their cars all day. Do you blame him?
9:02am
Trent, his mother and step father, were eating at Brandy’s Family Restaurant on Cicero and 52nd Street. The waitress looked a lot like WC Fields, red nose and all. Everyone except the girl who rang people up and sat them, were morbidly obese. Trent didn’t know exactly what to say to his mother and stepfather who he did not like. He mentioned the fat people.
“2/3 of Americans are obese now and 90% of them are in this room,” said Trent, while stirring his coffee. Trent’s latently homosexual step father, who was three years younger than him, starred at Trent blankly. Nothing was said by either Trent’s mother or the Marine.
“Musta been a pain in the ass to get to Albany, New York with all that snow in Vermont. Did you make it to the airport okay?” said Trent, searchingly looking for something to discuss.
“Well I love to hunt and ski… Chop down wood and just enjoy god’s green earth,” said Bob, in a manly and quite husky voice.
Trent didn’t understand the answer to his question from Bob and did not press him for an answer that made sense. Trent listened to Bob claims of being the outdoors man and couldn’t help thinking about the $1,000.00 phone bill he had to pay for his mother due to the fact that Bob rang up a doozy by calling1- 900 gay phone sex numbers while on a drinking binge. Bob had no idea that Trent knew. Trent told his mother that before he would help out with the outrageous phone bill, he had to know first what kind of 1- 900 Bob was calling. Trent called one of the numbers and heard this recording:
“You’ve reached The Man line… Lot’s of interesting men are waiting to talk to men just like you. Your seconds away from joining the fastest growing network where men meet men… Just like you…”
11:00 am- A mandatory meeting was called for all employees of the real estate office where Trent worked. A bald man who looked like Dr. Phil with eyebrows that looked like gerbils, stood with his arms folded at the front of the room behind a podium. The owner of the company came in late and the murmur that had filled the room immediately ceased. The boss started the meeting with a red face and trembling hands. He was so angry that he literally shook.
“I called this meeting to put you all on notice. Someone stole a gift from my desk while I was on vacation and yet nobody knows where it is. Among us is a thief… Secondly, I brought my eight year old son in the office and allowed him to look up Nick on Line from the front desk computer and come to find out that someone here was looking at a website called Goats and Blondes. MY SON BELIEVES IN SANTA CLAUS STILL AND KNOWS ABOUT SEX WITH FUCKING FARM ANIMALS! I had to learn this from my wife as she learned this while reading him Dr. Fucking Seuss before bed. You are all being put on notice. I have hired Mr. Dupuis to monitor everything that goes on in this place from here on out. This bullshit ends today. Mr. Dupuis… The floor is yours.”
The boss received a gift certificate from his girlfriend at work while he happened to be away with his family over the Christmas holiday. He received a text message from his girlfriend who had purchased a gift certificate to the Love Palace. The Love Palace was frequented by couples looking for intimacy and fun. The suite chosen by the girlfriend had a pool with a slide and a trapeze where she could lower herself onto her boyfriend. The text message read as follows:
DID YOU GET THE GIFT CERTIFICATE TO THE LOVE PALACE THAT I LEFT ON YOUR DESK LAST WEEK? I CAN’T WAIT TO TRY IT OUT. I MISS YOU. SEE YOU SOON.
Upon returning, the boss panicked over the prospect of anyone seeing the card from his girlfriend. He of course he yelled at his girlfriend for leaving the envelope on his desk instead of giving it to him. Whoever stole it knew that it was safe to steal since; the boss could not divulge the contents. The same person who stole the card also was looking at bestiality on line too. I can’t say who it was. It just wouldn’t be right for me to get involved in this.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Monday, January 4, 2010
The Mason Dixon Excuse
Colin Mason left Grand Rapids, Michigan to pursue his passion of being an artist in New York City. He found job in a coffee shop with a struggling black poet by the name of Deandra Dixon. Deandra wrote poetry about being black and poor and angry and a woman. A lot of her work was very abstract and really hard to read into but she had several poems published in anthologies whereby she never earned a cent. Deandra would read her poems at poetry slams and open microphone nights at small clubs in Brooklyn. After spending so much time with Colin in the coffee shop, Deandra decided that Colin was a safe catch. He was white, smart, fairly attractive and pliable. Deandra for all her militant black, feminist liberalism, she really wanted the old fashioned nuclear family and so she married Colin and they had a son. His name was Obama Mason-Dixon.
Obama of course was named after the president of the United States. He was conceived shortly after the election in November of 2008. Colin and Deandra drove in Deandra’s yellow Volkswagen Beetle to Chicago to take part in the historical moment in Grant Park when President Obama declared himself victorious in the 2008 presidential elections. Both Colin and Deandra cried as President Obama took the stage. They were both deeply touched.
Working at an independent coffee shop in Brooklyn, provided them enough money to make ends meet barely. Deandra had decided that she wanted to take their young son to visit her grandmother in Mississippi for Christmas. Deandra’s grandmother was getting old and Deandra feared that her grandmother might never meet her 31st grandchild and so Colin and Deandra left New York City on a Wednesday night late so that little Obama could sleep through the night. Colin was dead set against driving to the south with a black woman in a yellow Volkswagen with political bumper stickers plastered across the back. Deandra wanted everyone to know at all times how she felt about things. The several bumper stickers gave a thumb sketch as to her political leanings. Colin felt as though he had to comply if for no other reason than to ensure the safety of his wife and child even though he had never engaged in a fist fight in his life.
Colin snuck down to the south, carefully following behind those that needed to go ten to fifteen miles an hour beyond the posted speed limit of seventy miles per hour. Meanwhile, Deandra and little Obama slept like angels in the back seat of the Volkswagen while Colin listened to whatever he could tune into in their car radio. They arrived early on Christmas morning if you can believe this, in a town called Hot Coffee, Mississippi. It is roughly thirty miles north of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. They just could not get away from coffee and Colin had been wolfing it down at every filling station along the way just to keep alert.
Now Deandra’s relatives were southern folk born and raised in the south and most never ventured out of the south for anything. None of them really had any desire to ever visit New York and so their only link to the northern world was Deandra. Deandra was an outspoken buxom young black woman in her late twenties who wore her in an Afro. Her cousins thought she was too intense and probably a bit crazy. They all decided that Colin fit the description of a compliant and subservient mate and so they felt sorry for him more than anything else. Colin had spindly arms and a sunken chest. He had no interest in football or college football. All of Deandra’s male cousins were all geared up to watch bowl games on television. Colin went for long walks on country roads and people passed by and looked at Colin like he was a Martian. Nobody messed with him but he was an oddity. New Years day rolled around and it became time for the great trek back north.
Colin made the mistake of buying a combination cheese and beef jerky all wrapped up in plastic. It looked safe enough when he filled up for gas and poked around the filling station/diner/locker room for truckers. Amid the confederate flag license plate holders and hats, sat days old donuts behind a glass case and so Colin opted for packaged products and a bottled water. The old woman with a cigarette dangling from her mouth and more wrinkles than a Shar Pei Dog, told Colin that was one of her favourites as she broke into an uncontrollable smoking induced cough. By the time Colin had driven to Meridian, Mississippi, something had gone seriously wrong within his intestines.
Colin tried with all his might to keep from shitting in his own pants as he broke out in full body sweats. He pulled off the highway and carefully walked as though he was trying to keep something in his ass and he really was. As Colin lowered his draws, the liquefied feces shot out of his anus at blister speed. It sputtered as it hit the tank and wall and dripped onto the seat. Colin trembled as the episode seemed to go on for minutes. Finally the uncontrollable need to relieve himself ended. He crawled into the backseat beside his son who was asleep with a pacifier in his mouth and pulled the Snuggle up to his chin as he shivered in the back seat.
“I think that cheese or beef jerky was no good. I think I got food poisoning… I’ll be alright soon. You’ll need to drive for a bit,” said Colin.
Now Deandra was not a patient driver. If seventy was good, ninety was better and so she flew down the left lane of the two lane interstate leading out of Mississippi towards Alabama. Just before the Alabama state line, a Mississippi trooper sat parked with a radar gun pointed right at blazing yellow Volkswagen.
“Oh Fuck!” Said Deandra, as she slammed on the brakes.
Officer Clinton Dixon, no immediate relation to Deandra, sauntered up to the driver’s side with one hand near his gun. Officer Dixon was a stern man who had served in the first Gulf War as a Marine and then returned home to Mississippi to be a law man. He was born Baptist, coached high school football, loved to hunt and thought George W. Bush was a darn good president. The “Buck Fush” sticker on the back of Deandra’s car angered Officer Dixon right off. The Obama sticker, peace symbol in rainbow colors and pro choice sticker only served to solidify what Officer Dixon was already thinking as he saw the neon yellow foreign automobile with highly offensive bumper stickers and a New York license plate. Officer Dixon posed a rhetorical question to himself as he exited his car; what in the hell is this damn world coming to?
“License, registration and proof of insurance, ma’am,” said Officer Dixon.
At the same time that Officer Dixon was learning that he shared a last name with Deandra, Deandra was learning that she too had something in common with the Mississippi state trooper. Officer Dixon could not bring himself to refer to Deandra as Ms. Dixon and so he used Deandra’s first name. This only angered her.
“Ms. Deandra, are you aware of the posted speed limits hare on this hare interstate within the state of Mississippi?”
“Yes sir.”
“Okay then Ms. Deandra… Cain you tell give me a reason why you was goin eighty nine miles an hour in the posted seventy mile an hour zone?”
“I was trying to pass some cars on the right.”
“That’s an excuse not a reason. A reason would be that someone was ill or dying. Anything short of that is an excuse… Now then what is the problem with that young man in the back seat of your vehicle, Ms. Deandra?”
Officer Dixon assumed that two young people had obviously been partying on New Years Eve and Colin was paying the price all day. Deandra told the officer it was possible food poisoning but he wasn’t buying the story.
“Ms. Deandra, if I was to find an open bottle of alcohol in your vehicle, I spect that the issue would not be so much food poisoning as intoxication… I will now ask you if you have been drinking?”
“No, I haven’t,” said Deandra, angrily.
“Spell your last name backward for me,” said Officer Dixon.
“What!?”
“It’s a simple question… We share the same last name. I want to hear it backward…”
“I cain’t believe this fucking bullshit!” Said Deandra, while gripping the steering wheel tightly.
Officer Dixon was shocked by the lack of respect. He felt that anyone with no regard for the unborn or George Bush, had no respect for order and further measures would have to be necessary. Colin stepped up to qwell the situation.
“Sir, I stopped for gas back near Heidelberg. I have the receipt in my pocket. I purchased some cheese with beef jerky and got sick within twenty minutes. I had to stop to use the restroom and I broke out in body sweats… We haven’t been drinking. We came down to visit my wife’s relatives here in Mississippi and are working our way back to New York City,” said Colin, calmly.
“Let me see your license.” Said Officer Dixon.
Officer Dixon could not believe what he was seeing. A Colin Mason married to a Deandra Dixon. Luckily he never asked for their child’s name. Officer Dixon blinked heavily, shook his head and gave the license back to Colin.
“Set tight…” said Officer Dixon.
Officer Dixon handed Deandra her license back and told her that she was two miles an hour from being taken into custody. She had the option of returning back to Lauderdale County Court for a hearing at the end of the month or pay the fine of $150.00 by mail. Deandra took the ticket without saying a word and got in the back seat so that Colin could continue driving.
Officer Dixon returned home to his pretty wife who was wearing a summer like dress. She was putting the fried chicken, mashed potatoes and greens on the supper table for her husband who was just stopping in to eat his lunch before going back to work. She did what any wife would do which is to ask her husband how the day was going.
“Well darlin… Picture this picture; a large black woman with a puffed up Afro hairdo driving a VW bug in bright yellah. Now she goin nearly ninety miles an hour and got some sickly looking white boy in the back huddled undah some blankets. She go by the last name Dixon and he go by Mason. They got themselves a baby asleep with a binky in his mouth and this woman is defiant as the day is long. I aks her if her boy been drankin and she swore at me. Ifin it wasn’t for the boy speakin up, ida hauled them in for any number ah reasons… Hares the kicker, love; hates Bush, for abortion, wants peace and is from New York City… All this wrapped up in one yellow bug…”
Mrs. Dixon laughed and gave her husband a kiss on the forehead. Having a good sense of humor, she had an idea for her husband.
“Honey… Why don’t we go visit New York City sometime. We kin use mah brother’s jacked up Chevy Blazer with the Confederate flag sticker on the back. If that ain’t enough, we kin git a “Rush was right” and “Charlton Heston is my President” bumper stickers. We kin bring shotguns and shoot at rats running loose in Manhattan… Wouldn’t that be fun, honey?”
Officer Dixon took a sip of his coffee and thought about the idea of going up north with the hoards of people, pollution, and crime and winced.
“Oh… The humanity…”
Obama of course was named after the president of the United States. He was conceived shortly after the election in November of 2008. Colin and Deandra drove in Deandra’s yellow Volkswagen Beetle to Chicago to take part in the historical moment in Grant Park when President Obama declared himself victorious in the 2008 presidential elections. Both Colin and Deandra cried as President Obama took the stage. They were both deeply touched.
Working at an independent coffee shop in Brooklyn, provided them enough money to make ends meet barely. Deandra had decided that she wanted to take their young son to visit her grandmother in Mississippi for Christmas. Deandra’s grandmother was getting old and Deandra feared that her grandmother might never meet her 31st grandchild and so Colin and Deandra left New York City on a Wednesday night late so that little Obama could sleep through the night. Colin was dead set against driving to the south with a black woman in a yellow Volkswagen with political bumper stickers plastered across the back. Deandra wanted everyone to know at all times how she felt about things. The several bumper stickers gave a thumb sketch as to her political leanings. Colin felt as though he had to comply if for no other reason than to ensure the safety of his wife and child even though he had never engaged in a fist fight in his life.
Colin snuck down to the south, carefully following behind those that needed to go ten to fifteen miles an hour beyond the posted speed limit of seventy miles per hour. Meanwhile, Deandra and little Obama slept like angels in the back seat of the Volkswagen while Colin listened to whatever he could tune into in their car radio. They arrived early on Christmas morning if you can believe this, in a town called Hot Coffee, Mississippi. It is roughly thirty miles north of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. They just could not get away from coffee and Colin had been wolfing it down at every filling station along the way just to keep alert.
Now Deandra’s relatives were southern folk born and raised in the south and most never ventured out of the south for anything. None of them really had any desire to ever visit New York and so their only link to the northern world was Deandra. Deandra was an outspoken buxom young black woman in her late twenties who wore her in an Afro. Her cousins thought she was too intense and probably a bit crazy. They all decided that Colin fit the description of a compliant and subservient mate and so they felt sorry for him more than anything else. Colin had spindly arms and a sunken chest. He had no interest in football or college football. All of Deandra’s male cousins were all geared up to watch bowl games on television. Colin went for long walks on country roads and people passed by and looked at Colin like he was a Martian. Nobody messed with him but he was an oddity. New Years day rolled around and it became time for the great trek back north.
Colin made the mistake of buying a combination cheese and beef jerky all wrapped up in plastic. It looked safe enough when he filled up for gas and poked around the filling station/diner/locker room for truckers. Amid the confederate flag license plate holders and hats, sat days old donuts behind a glass case and so Colin opted for packaged products and a bottled water. The old woman with a cigarette dangling from her mouth and more wrinkles than a Shar Pei Dog, told Colin that was one of her favourites as she broke into an uncontrollable smoking induced cough. By the time Colin had driven to Meridian, Mississippi, something had gone seriously wrong within his intestines.
Colin tried with all his might to keep from shitting in his own pants as he broke out in full body sweats. He pulled off the highway and carefully walked as though he was trying to keep something in his ass and he really was. As Colin lowered his draws, the liquefied feces shot out of his anus at blister speed. It sputtered as it hit the tank and wall and dripped onto the seat. Colin trembled as the episode seemed to go on for minutes. Finally the uncontrollable need to relieve himself ended. He crawled into the backseat beside his son who was asleep with a pacifier in his mouth and pulled the Snuggle up to his chin as he shivered in the back seat.
“I think that cheese or beef jerky was no good. I think I got food poisoning… I’ll be alright soon. You’ll need to drive for a bit,” said Colin.
Now Deandra was not a patient driver. If seventy was good, ninety was better and so she flew down the left lane of the two lane interstate leading out of Mississippi towards Alabama. Just before the Alabama state line, a Mississippi trooper sat parked with a radar gun pointed right at blazing yellow Volkswagen.
“Oh Fuck!” Said Deandra, as she slammed on the brakes.
Officer Clinton Dixon, no immediate relation to Deandra, sauntered up to the driver’s side with one hand near his gun. Officer Dixon was a stern man who had served in the first Gulf War as a Marine and then returned home to Mississippi to be a law man. He was born Baptist, coached high school football, loved to hunt and thought George W. Bush was a darn good president. The “Buck Fush” sticker on the back of Deandra’s car angered Officer Dixon right off. The Obama sticker, peace symbol in rainbow colors and pro choice sticker only served to solidify what Officer Dixon was already thinking as he saw the neon yellow foreign automobile with highly offensive bumper stickers and a New York license plate. Officer Dixon posed a rhetorical question to himself as he exited his car; what in the hell is this damn world coming to?
“License, registration and proof of insurance, ma’am,” said Officer Dixon.
At the same time that Officer Dixon was learning that he shared a last name with Deandra, Deandra was learning that she too had something in common with the Mississippi state trooper. Officer Dixon could not bring himself to refer to Deandra as Ms. Dixon and so he used Deandra’s first name. This only angered her.
“Ms. Deandra, are you aware of the posted speed limits hare on this hare interstate within the state of Mississippi?”
“Yes sir.”
“Okay then Ms. Deandra… Cain you tell give me a reason why you was goin eighty nine miles an hour in the posted seventy mile an hour zone?”
“I was trying to pass some cars on the right.”
“That’s an excuse not a reason. A reason would be that someone was ill or dying. Anything short of that is an excuse… Now then what is the problem with that young man in the back seat of your vehicle, Ms. Deandra?”
Officer Dixon assumed that two young people had obviously been partying on New Years Eve and Colin was paying the price all day. Deandra told the officer it was possible food poisoning but he wasn’t buying the story.
“Ms. Deandra, if I was to find an open bottle of alcohol in your vehicle, I spect that the issue would not be so much food poisoning as intoxication… I will now ask you if you have been drinking?”
“No, I haven’t,” said Deandra, angrily.
“Spell your last name backward for me,” said Officer Dixon.
“What!?”
“It’s a simple question… We share the same last name. I want to hear it backward…”
“I cain’t believe this fucking bullshit!” Said Deandra, while gripping the steering wheel tightly.
Officer Dixon was shocked by the lack of respect. He felt that anyone with no regard for the unborn or George Bush, had no respect for order and further measures would have to be necessary. Colin stepped up to qwell the situation.
“Sir, I stopped for gas back near Heidelberg. I have the receipt in my pocket. I purchased some cheese with beef jerky and got sick within twenty minutes. I had to stop to use the restroom and I broke out in body sweats… We haven’t been drinking. We came down to visit my wife’s relatives here in Mississippi and are working our way back to New York City,” said Colin, calmly.
“Let me see your license.” Said Officer Dixon.
Officer Dixon could not believe what he was seeing. A Colin Mason married to a Deandra Dixon. Luckily he never asked for their child’s name. Officer Dixon blinked heavily, shook his head and gave the license back to Colin.
“Set tight…” said Officer Dixon.
Officer Dixon handed Deandra her license back and told her that she was two miles an hour from being taken into custody. She had the option of returning back to Lauderdale County Court for a hearing at the end of the month or pay the fine of $150.00 by mail. Deandra took the ticket without saying a word and got in the back seat so that Colin could continue driving.
Officer Dixon returned home to his pretty wife who was wearing a summer like dress. She was putting the fried chicken, mashed potatoes and greens on the supper table for her husband who was just stopping in to eat his lunch before going back to work. She did what any wife would do which is to ask her husband how the day was going.
“Well darlin… Picture this picture; a large black woman with a puffed up Afro hairdo driving a VW bug in bright yellah. Now she goin nearly ninety miles an hour and got some sickly looking white boy in the back huddled undah some blankets. She go by the last name Dixon and he go by Mason. They got themselves a baby asleep with a binky in his mouth and this woman is defiant as the day is long. I aks her if her boy been drankin and she swore at me. Ifin it wasn’t for the boy speakin up, ida hauled them in for any number ah reasons… Hares the kicker, love; hates Bush, for abortion, wants peace and is from New York City… All this wrapped up in one yellow bug…”
Mrs. Dixon laughed and gave her husband a kiss on the forehead. Having a good sense of humor, she had an idea for her husband.
“Honey… Why don’t we go visit New York City sometime. We kin use mah brother’s jacked up Chevy Blazer with the Confederate flag sticker on the back. If that ain’t enough, we kin git a “Rush was right” and “Charlton Heston is my President” bumper stickers. We kin bring shotguns and shoot at rats running loose in Manhattan… Wouldn’t that be fun, honey?”
Officer Dixon took a sip of his coffee and thought about the idea of going up north with the hoards of people, pollution, and crime and winced.
“Oh… The humanity…”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
