Misfortune

On the first day by myself I spilt liquor all over the street outside of a Mexican restaurant. I went down the curb the opposite way I was supposed to and the stack of boxes tipped over sideways and crashed onto the road. Five bottles broke.

A lady who was sitting outside, eating her Mexican food, said, ‘Shoot’ in a very unenthusiastic way and then proceeded to tell the person eating at the table next to hers that her daughter just had her first ultrasound.

The neighbor enthusiastically congratulated the woman.

I call my manager. He tells me to take the liquor out of the soaked boxes, and to ask my contact for another container, “and let them know we will be delivering replacements later.”

The people at the destination are very accommodating. They give me a large plastic crate to use. They are the only people to remember my name on my second rounds of deliveries.

Nothing bonds people quicker than misfortune.

Crafting the Impossible

The second trip is weirder than the first. We are not on standby so we get in quick. When Musette is called I do not follow; not wanting to receive another palm to the chest displacement. But after fifteen minutes she sticks her head out, beckoning me.

“I never know what the right move is…” I say.

She tells me to just keep trying.

We are in the same ‘room’ as last time, which is really just a segmented portion of a large warehouse. I sit in the same chair I sat in last time, and stare at the same strange children’s books. We have a different technician but are surprised to have the same dentist.

She remembers Musette. She has a little more time this time, but the procedure is more complicated. It involves creating a makeshift crown for a chipped tooth. There are only two procedures: fill or pull.

“You don’t want to lose your tooth do you?” the dentist asks.

“No.”

Musette is numbed. It takes a few minutes to take effect, so the dentist leaves to work on another patient.

Musette’s numbing doesn’t work. She flinches against the dentist’s drill. The dentist asks if she is just reacting to the concept of the drill. Musette tells her that she is legitimately feeling pain.

“Let’s give you another shot.” the dentist says, loading another capsule into her device.

She gives Musette the shot and rises with her assistant. They move to another section of the warehouse to work on another patient.

Musette gives me her glasses and puts on a pair of large plastic sunglasses.

“Do I look cool?” she asks with a shockingly swollen face.

“So cool.” I say.

The dentist returns and gets back to work. She struggles with the procedure. Her drill is not working properly. It is shooting water all over the place. She fiddles with it and then tells us that it’s fixed, saying that she just had to push the bit in a bit harder; but it is obvious that it is not fixed. It drops large globules all over Musette’s bib and face; it even spurts when it’s just sitting in its holster.

“I can’t work in this chair!” she exclaims, rising and rolling the chair out of our section, returning with a shorter one.

“There, that’s better.” she sits back down and fumbles with her assistant, calling out the wrong names for tools, explaining to us that the names vary from place to place, and they are called something different where she is from.

She ends up just asking for ‘the large one’, or ‘that one I just gave you…’

She then resorts to pulling the tools from the tray herself without even bothering to ask her assistant for them.

The assistant tries to make up for this, and get the dentist to once again mind her own business, by proactively holding tools in front of her face before she can reach for them.

At one point the dentist asks the assistant, “What would you do in this situation?”

The assistant responds with a text book answer and the dentist says, “Oh yea… Good idea…”

She then proceeds to take her assistant’s advice.

Musette starts shuddering again.

“Are you still feeling something?” asks the dentist.

Musette nods her head.

“Ok, hold on.” says the dentist, loading up another capsule.

She pumps the shot into Musette’s mouth and exits the room.

Musette sits up.

“She’s such a good dentist…” she says, slurring her words around a sloppy tongue.

“You probably shouldn’t talk right now.” I say.

She lays back down, smiling.

The dentist returns and finishes drilling.

“One can only drill so far.” she says. “At some point you just have to move on.”

She proceeds to build a makeshift crown which is really just a massive filling made of silver.

“Dentistry is a lot like carpentry.” she says. “You create a foundation and then build upon it. It’s all about framing.”

“Hmmm… That’s interesting.” I say.

“Are you in dentistry?” she asks.

I tell her that I’m not.

She continues working on her sculpture. When she has it built she tells Musette to ‘slowly’ bite down. “And wiggle your jaw around…” she says.

She looks into Musette’s mouth and becomes dismayed.

“You destroyed one of my walls.” she says.

She has her assistant whip some more silver and then she splatters it in Musette’s mouth, having her bite down again, “But even slower this time, please.”

“Your mouth is not used to having that space filled.” she says.

She tells her again not to chew on any rocks.

“And just try not to eat anything solid for a few days. In fact keep your mouth open as much as possible. Especially don’t grind your teeth. OK?”

Musette tells her that she won’t.

“That’s a good girl.” says the dentist, slapping Musette on the back.

We exit the dentists’ chambers. There are no other patients in there. The assistant looks happy to see us out. She is relieved the dentist didn’t just give up. When she takes her mask off I spot the skepticism on her face.

The dentist sticks her head out and beckons Musette to her.

“That could last for five days or five years, it’s so hard to tell with these makeshift procedures.” she says.

Musette thanks her and we leave the building.

I have to remind her to put her glasses back on.

Clive is Christ

Clive is a good trainer. He is very considerate. He does his best to make me feel comfortable. He wants this job to work out for me because he’s ready for his load to be lightened.

I am hoping that what he is feeling is just fatigue and not MS. I would be happy to help his symptoms go away. He is my age or a year older. And it seems strange for someone so young and so healthy to come down with MS. But I do not know how these things work.

I only get two days of training with him before I am on my own. I do my best to take advantage of those two days, making sure to do a little bit of everything. I drive the van, parallel park, load the handtruck, unload the handtruck, load the van, unload the van, go up curbs and down curbs, count bottles to sous chefs, take service elevators, etc.

We deliver liquor to many of the local bars. I would say that our store has the majority of the city’s bars. We even deliver to the restaurant Musette works at, which is always at the top of the list of restaurants to eat at when visiting Bridge City.

I feel like Hemingway in his ambulance days. Even though there is no literal war going on, this job is more active and exciting than a desk job or a shop job. Every zone is a war zone just waiting to erupt. One day you’re in peace, the next you’re in Syria. Or you’ve got some intruder knocking on doors asking if you’ve heard about the new regime.

Clive had ambitions of being a writer. He even went to school for it, pursuing a degree in creative writing. But I guess he just doesn’t see himself invested with the talent. Because he told me he believes that school is unnecessary for a writer; and that you either have the ability or you don’t.

He asks me how I do it, like what my process is. I tell him how I work. He seems to think writing takes a massive amount of time. And I guess it does. But what he doesn’t understand is that it doesn’t have to be difficult. And it doesn’t have to take a massive amount of energy.

“I have sweated over it.” I tell him. “Especially during my first piece. But that was a process of devirginization, and I thought that everything had to fit like puzzle pieces; like there was some kind of perfection capable of being achieved. But I think I was just testing myself, like I was in school: my own self created university; going through a process of cleansing the guilt I felt in regards to my lack of formal education. And maybe people will see it for the rigorously etched and polished gem I consider it to be, but I find that working in that fashion actually cramps the magic, stopping up the fountain of jewels which will forever flow if only you let it.”

He asks me what my novel is about. I give him a brief description. He tells me that it sounds like something he would like to read. He hasn’t done much reading recently. He is stuck in ‘Heart of Darkness.’ which I inform him is the basis of one of his favorite movies ‘Apocalypse Now.’

He likes Bukowski, and Dostoevsky. I ask him if he’s read ‘Ham on Rye.’ and he tells me that he hasn’t, but that he really wants to. So as a gift, once my time training with him is over, I give him my copy of ‘Ham on Rye’, as well as my copy of ‘Tropic of Cancer’, because he has never heard of Henry Miller, and he likes Bukowski, but thinks he’s a bit negative.

“I’ve never read somebody as positive as Henry Miller.” I say. “And you remind me of my friend Alex, who introduced me to Henry Miller. You all three share a common thread of daylight, which I find closer to Christ than any crucifix.”

The Fifteen Minute Filling

We go to the dentist. It is a thirty minute bus ride. The place looks like the DMV. There are three counters: one for dental services, one for medical, and one for pharmacy. We stand in line and wait for a woman with big blonde hair to call us to her terminal. She has music playing from her computer speakers. She asks us if we have an appointment. We tell her that we do. She takes Musette’s last name and says, “You know that you’re on standby, right?” We tell her that we do.

A few people get called before us. Some of them look homeless. Some of them have children with them. Some of them look like they are in extreme pain. And then someone gets called who isn’t present. The person’s translator is present but the person herself is nowhere to be found. The woman with the big hair asks the translator to call the missing woman. The translator makes the call but gets no answer. The technician returns to the doctor’s quarters and returns a few minutes later calling Musette’s name.

We stand and follow the technician. She leads Musette into an X-ray chamber. Pushing her hand into my chest, she says, “You wait out here.”

The hallways is small, large enough for only one person to pass through at a time. I have a large backpack on. I do my best to squeeze around rushing nurses, but can’t help banging into wall hung clutter.

The technician finishes taking Musette’s X-rays and releases her back into the waiting room.

“Had I known that we would be returning here I would have waited here myself.” I say.

Musette tells me not to worry about it.

We wait for another five minutes before being called back into the doctors’ quarters again.

“Should I come with you this time?” I ask.

“Of course! Don’t be an idiot! Be proactive!” she says.

So I follow her back. The technician leads her to a small room with a dentist’s chair.

“Is there room enough for me?” I ask.

“Yes.” she says, pointing to a small chair in the corner. “You can sit there.”

There are a couple of children’s books propped up on the window sill.

“To read while you wait!” says a sticker plastered on their fronts.

Another technician comes in and starts preparing supplies. He is followed shortly by the dentist. The dentist appears to be in her fifties. She has earings which match her scrubs. Her socks are multi-colored. They are tucked inside a pair of rubber clogs. She takes one look at Musette’s chart and says, “They expect me to do a filling in fifteen minutes!?”

“Well, then we better get started…” she continues, sitting down in her chair next to Musette’s face.

She is a fast mover. No bulshit. I’ve seen dentists bulshit. With their nurses and attendants. Not this lady though. When she talks to her assistant it’s too release tension, not to waste time. She looks at me:

“So what do you think, is summer dead?” she asks, her hands still moving rapidly.

“It’s still limping along, I think.”

She tells me that she’s from another state. They brought her to this place for god knows why. Either she’s pretty special or pretty desperate. It’s like a war hospital here.

“Fifteen minutes for a filling! What do they think I am? A goddamn machine!”

There is a woman screaming in the next room over.

“You’re going to need this tooth over here fixed also.” says the dentist. “I can’t tell how bad it is without an X-ray, but you should schedule another appointment as soon as possible.”

Being that this is considered an emergency procedure they are only allowed to work on one tooth at a time.

She takes a hunk of silver from her attendant and mashes it into Musette’s mouth.

“Now bite down.” she says. “And wiggle your jaw around for me.”

She pokes and prods at the wad until she feels satisfied with its placement.

“Just don’t chew on any rocks. And avoid chewing on that side of your mouth entirely for the next day or so.”

We return to the waiting room. The lady with big blonde hair tells us to wait our turn. While we are waiting, the person who had been screaming exits the dentist chambers. Her face is very swollen and red. She is holding an ice pack to her jaw.

“Now that looks like an emergency.” I say.

The woman with the hair calls us. We pay our bill. It is more than the technician told us it would be but also much less than Musette had prepared for.

She had pulled six hundred dollars from our savings account.

We look at our bus tickets.

“Two minutes past…” I say.

“Just our luck.” Musette says.

“At least we have money to spare.” I say.

We rush to the stop.

 

Shadow

“Mr. Piranha, good to see you again.” I say, shaking the hand of the man who sent me off last time with such a cold goodbye.

“Remind me again your story.” he says.

I tell him that I worked at OfficeStore, until I quit, along with ninety percent of the other stupid employees, to pursue a path of writing.

“It’s me, that good employee. The one who never missed a day, never called in sick, stayed overtime, went the extra mile for the job. He who will get good recommendations from all his fellow overseers. A real straight shooter who has not been lazy even though he’s been ‘unemployed.’”

“I’ve worked harder in this time than I ever have elsewise.” I say, continuing. “Learning skills of self-motivation and the value of time and effort.”

He tells me that he will give me a chance, but that the only position left is the delivery driver position.

It was not what I was expecting – not that I was expecting anything, but if I were to be expecting something, it would not have been this.

But I have no choice other than to take the job because Musette would never forgive me for passing this opportunity up.

Mr. Piranha tells me that I’ll be training with someone named Clive.

“Are you ready?” he asks.

“You mean right now?” I respond.

“Yes.” he says. “I want you to shadow Clive.”

I ask him if I can make a phone call. He tells me that is fine. So I step outside and call Musette. I tell her that I have basically been hired, but that the position is for a delivery driver.

“I have to shadow for the next couple of hours, so I’m not going to be home for a bit.”

She is confused and worried. Neither of us are major fans of driving. We are both scared of it. I used to love driving and remember not being able to wait for my license to be issued. But something changed around the time we got smashed by a semi.

I tell her that I love her and that I will be home soon.

She tells me to be careful.

 

Clive is a tall, clean cut, Indiana pacer. He’s wearing a polo shirt with the name of the company embroidered on the chest. He takes me to the company van. It is parked just outside the store, on a curb, next to the streetcar tracks.

He pulls a handtruck from the back of the van and shows me stacks of boxes which need to be loaded.

“This is how you load boxes onto a dolly.” he says, showing me a technique for wedging the bottom of the handcart beneath a stack of boxes.

I cannot do it the first couple of times I try.

“Like this…” he says, wedging the edge of the dolly beneath the stack like shoveling dirt from the garden of my dad’s tomato patch.

“Ah, I see…” I say, taking the dolly and replicating his actions. “Sometimes it just takes finding the right analogy.”

 

We load the boxes into the back of the van. He has me get in the passenger side. He drives to a couple places.

“You want to give it a shot?” he asks.

I tell him that I might as well.

“It’s the only way to test my abilities.” I say.

I get in the driver seat. The car is an automatic but I still skid from park.

“It’s been a while since you drove, huh?” Clive says.

“It has.” I say. “But I’ll figure it out.”

Clive says that it is amazing what the human spirit can live up to.

“I agree. I think it is a miracle that people can drive at all.”

 

Clive is a real good guy. He was arrested for selling pot once. But he got off without having to serve too much time, thanks to a good lawyer. Now he’s trying not to smoke as much. I tell him that I have a marijuana license. He does not have one. I bet he takes bong rips with his buddies. They all moved from Indiana together. He tells me he was very nervous when he first got this job.

“Driving in Port City is much different than driving in Indiana.” he says.

He tells me that Indiana is full of ‘the diner’ crowd.

He gets hesitant watching me stop suddenly for pedestrians.

“You have to keep a sharp eye.” he says. “All of that Call of Duty you play should come in handy out here.”

 

I drive to a bar. The delivery destinations are all bars or clubs. Clive is in well with all of the owners. He introduces me to them, telling them that I’m the new driver. He wants the position to work out for me. He has been going to the doctor recently for unexplained coughing, numbness in his extremities, tunnel vision, and dizziness. The doctors have recommended he see a neurologist.

“They say it could be MS.” he says.

He has been working double shifts ever since the last driver quit.

“He only gave one day notice.” Clive says.

“Yikes!” I say.

“Exactly.” he says.

 

When we return to the store Mr. Piranha takes Clive into the cigar room and has a five minute conversation with him. He then calls me into the cigar room and tells me that I’ve got the job. He gives me some paperwork to take home and fill out. I tell him thank you and he asks me if I think I can handle the position.

“I think I can.” I say.

He tells me that’s enough for now.

The Pit of Doors

A door in life. A new tool for a new time. Passageways from point A to point B. Don’t let me distract you by publishing along this course. Everything is always connected with no apology necessary. Wormholes through space and time, not physically present, but existing as symbols, invisible, as far as their tunnels are concerned, but as clear as any other word, as far as their doors are concerned. Nature works this way but we’re usually too panicked being a living, dying, part of it to be aware of it. So many trees look the same, but they all do have their own personalities if you know how to read them. The knots, and branches, leaved and bare, speak stories of age in rings and roots. Seedlings falling to the collective Earth with spores of continuation in their midsts. The job of life is to keep it progressing. Death is the ultimate sin. It is to be avoided at all costs. But that is natural. We don’t need any pushing or prodding in that direction. You don’t have to tell me twice.

“We’ve got you covered as far as that’s concerned.” says the voice within the wind, rustling in the leaves. The sound of so many things dying. The chorus of demons.

“You have to live to die.” says the master of this pit we seem to have stumbled into…

 

Princesses

My eyes open to the streaking sound of labia lips sliding down aluminum stainless. The lights are dark and the table is full. Two chairs sit facing away. Musette and I take those chairs.

“What are you having?” asks a waitress.

“A whiskey sour.” I say, repeating the order of someone else.

“What are you smoking?” asks Dick.

“Oh, I haven’t got any.” I say.

He shakes a pack of roasted chicken sticks in my face.

“Sure, I’ll take one.” I say.

 

We go outside. I see Saphire finagling with the woman at the front counter. She’s trying to get some kind of deal. She is upset that she has to pay a five dollar entrance fee. I want no part of that.

The woman tells her that Hank can get in free, but only if he tips well.

Hank puts five dollars in her tip jar and joins us for a smoke.

 

While we are out smoking this guy comes up to us and tells us that his brother is real mad at him.

“I’m ruining his party.” he says.

“What do you mean?” asks Hank.

“I’m belligerent!” says the man.

He is very drunk.

“Is he in there?” Hank asks, pointing towards the strip club.

“Yea.” says the guy. “It’s a bachelor party.”

Another guy approaches us and yells condemnations at the drunk man.

“He’s my brother.” says the drunk man.

“That’s your brother?” asks Hank.

He is dark skinned.

“He’s my little brother.” says the drunk man.

“It’s his party?” asks Hank.

“No, it’s my older brother’s party.”

“A blood brother?”

“Yea.”

Hank tells him that blood is thick, and that alcohol can’t cut through it.

 

The guy chases after his younger brother. They get into a hot conversation on the street corner. We take the opportunity to re-enter the strip club.

Dick passes our table and heads straight for a large cage wherein three strippers dance. I see him start up a conversation with one of the girls. When he returns he tells Musette he bought her a lap dance.

Musette adamantly refuses his offer. It takes a while but Dick doesn’t give up. He looks to me. I give him a firm ‘no.’ He doesn’t press it.

One of the other little chefs takes the dance. He’s a nervous kid. It takes him two approaches before he gets the courage to talk to the stripper. He then disappears for the length of a song, returning with a dopey look on his face.

Another kid, I’m going to call him Charles, because I don’t care if I’ve called him something else, because he’s minor. He’s the kid who had his girl hit on by a chubby naval vet. The red headed girl. Apparently they don’t sleep together because she has a vaginal cyst, which is a physical manifestation of a personal issue against sex. The point is that he isn’t getting much sex and he complains about that fact to Musette and his other coworkers daily. But the actual point is that a stripper (one who I personally consider the least attractive of the whole lot: the most common, slouchy, chubby, shameless, defeated, and classless stripper in the club sits next to him and starts fondling him. He follows her down lapdance hallway.

By the end of the night three people have gotten lap dances. They cost twenty dollars each. Dick had purchased himself one at some point. I don’t know why they felt the need. They don’t seem old enough to need the touch of a woman.

While I am out smoking Musette approaches me, worried, telling me she promised a lap dance to me. I have our money so I know that she couldn’t have purchased it yet. I tell her that it isn’t going to happen. She tells me that we should just leave. I tell her that I have to get my credit card from the bar.

“Just get it and let’s go…” she says.

“Which stripper is it?” I ask.

“She has an afro.” Musette says.

I know exactly which one she is talking about. A real princess. My favorite stripper of the bunch. I had told Dick earlier that he couldn’t handle that one. He had gone and sat at her table while she was stripping, but the song she was dancing to was almost over so he came back without spending a dollar or getting danced on at all.

While I’m picking up my credit card from the bar the stripper grabs me by the forearm.

I turn around, gasping at the sight of her.

“Check the phone.” she tells me.

Silently I reach into my pocket.

I have one new message. It is from Mansac, the owner of the liquor store.

“The position is still open.” he says. “You can come in tomorrow if you would like another interview.”

Pets have Pure Hearts

A figure approaches through the darkness.

“Master?” I call out.

“No. It’s me, Lil’ Jizzer. Well, actually it’s Charlo. I just took this form so that you could see and hear me.”

“Charlo?”

“Yes, Master, I am here to help you into the next stage of your chrysalis.”

“I am so cold.” I say.

“Your body is running amok out there.” he says. “It’s giving your girl one heck of a time!”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“It is stubborn as an ox. It refuses to lie down. She can’t prepare your parts. If it keeps up there will be no feast! That’s why I’ve come. On special assignment from the lady herself. To push you into the next reality, where your body is servant to your mind which is in service to your soul. We’ve got to eat something! We’re all so starving!”

“How are you supposed to help me?”

“Look.” he says. “I’ve got problems, and my problems are your problems. If we work through my issues, then naturally we’ll be working through yours.”

“What are your problems?”

“Well, my neck hurts…” he says.

“How do you think mine feels?” I ask.

“You feel things?” he asks.

“I guess I do…”

“That’s a good sign.” he says.

“Does it mean that I’m coming back to life?” I ask.

“No one ever dies.”

“But am I coming back to this life?”

“You are still pulling from it. That’s why I’m here yanking you. But I can only do so much. At some point you are going to have to make the conscious decision to stay by my side.”

“That concept, this life, this willingness to submit, doesn’t always make sense to me.” I say.

“I know sweetheart; but I am here, and I will not let you go.”

A Dash of Salt

Coughing all night. Keeping my girl awake; she being like, “Kum on bro, stfu…”

Here I am, being like, “Babe, if I could I would… It just keeps coming out of me. This horizontal position’s got my goat…”

“So sit up.” she says. Which leads to more computer time logged. Just looking, browsing, passing it along, filtering, channeling, distributing, judging. The pillars of culture must not be afraid to express opinions. Latch onto your voice and scratch higher through the vacuum, because when that time comes you can say, “It was me said that. And I done that. It was me thought this way, and if it was good, then I was good, and if it was bad, then I was intelligent. For it wasn’t me who sat idly by. I was kissing, driving, shooting, laughing, talking, dancing, moving. I was a shaker back then. You could see me on the stage. They gave me VIP treatment. My berries were ripe with juice.”

That’s what they’ll say about me, teenage idol, rocking it in his bedroom, which he thought was a camera, as though the audience could do more than just read; like they could lift him into the strobing lights, sweating diamonds for his following.

But even heroes must submit. Hermes is more than Achilles and Odysseus combined; smaller than Pluto, the lover-boy, mama’s son, sailing through poetry to the shores of the future, wondering how I ended up here, in this dangerous world of hoboes, and lunatics; drunks and drug addicts; beggars; muggers; the ugliest of preps; dog walkers, smelling of bad jissom; all of us inches from the dinner table, always checking in, leaving dollars, bussing and bartending, hoping to contribute to a speedy service; filling out applications for account manager positions, models, advertisement actors, dispensers, bookbinders, writers of activist literature, copy editors, journalism interns: gotta pay the rent; respect the law; feed the flesh; awaken into tomorrow.

To die is the greatest sin. Yet living lies so close to death. Awakening eternally from that. The breath of freedom which might be found in chance. The song being sung at the pitch of intuition. Stepping in to make that goal. Something else taking over: more than the meals and the inertia: a fluid sort of grace; the song of life’s script, sung in silence, with all of life’s noise making up its harmony.

Be Here Now

It is palpable, the changing of acts, like the changing of tracks, on the rails and in your cassette tape decks where we are bringing you today’s todays, yesterday’s tomorrows, and tomorrow’s yesterdays. Yes sir, yes ma’am, we’re broadcasting live action television straight into your soul. Keep it tuned to KJZZ for more of the sweet spots, the tender rubbings, the necktie tuggings, and as always Big Boy Thomas’s famous underbelly muffin suckings.