i am now okay with being stupid
Mark came over, without Escho, and it hasn’t just been Mark and I hanging
out in forever, so it was a bit weird, and maybe that’s why we went right
to the pipe and the bottle, old habits in a decaying tape loop now fuzzy
and distorted, and that’s all we ever wanted. We sat up watching black
and white movies with the sound off, giggling at improvised dialogue
until even that seemed too much, then giggling just at the image, the
poses and postures and costumes. “I should start dressing like that,”
Mark said, and I agreed, and so at four in the morning we went out to
find suits. We had maybe twelve bucks between us, and we were cognizant
that the transaction would be difficult, but we were certain we could
convince the local tailor that our plan was of such certain necessity
that he would gladly lend his name and wares to our arc toward fame and
fortune. Struck dumb by inspiration, I froze in my tracks, long enough
that the snow snuck into my boots, and told Mark that I knew a guy who
had lots of suits and was Mark’s size. This guy, I did not tell him, was
the husband of my onetime girlfriend, the both of them content to draw
close in a shared hatred of what I now was, and that he would throw us
from the roof and into a pile of broken glass he’d break himself just for
the occasion as give Mark use of his suits. I knew I could work this, and
in the process I’d convince Michelle that I was not the person she
thought I was, not that I wanted her back (may shrews nest in my rectum
before I go through that hell again) but because I cherished the idea of
zinging her one last time, making her doubt a bit, oh my heavens that
would be sweet. It was a twenty minute walk to Michelle and Steve’s
place, cutting across the abandoned K-Mart and a park with all the
playground equipment pulled out, and plus another ten minutes of getting
high again in someone’s backyard with the dog silently staring at us from
behind the fence, so that the sun was just starting to rise when we
knocked on the front door. No one answered, so we went around the back
and knocked on that door, and Mark said okay wait, this is the right
house? These people actually have suits? Because even if it is not the
people that we believe are in possession of the suits, correct, they may
have other suits of which we might make a use out of, and he had some
other thing to say but we never got around to it because suddently Steve
opened the door and hit me right in the mouth. Mark is not a big guy, and
he probably sees less physical activity than I do, but he’ll surprise
you, and he sure surprised Steve, as by the time I got back up to my feet
Mark was kicking the shit out of Steve, prone and fetal on his kitchen
floor. I screamed “Now! Get the suits!” and the two of us darted in and
ran upstairs, looking for the bedroom, and that’s when I saw Michelle
standing in the bathroom, the door open, the toothbrush sticking out of
her mouth. “Not a muscle!” I screamed, my voice cracking from all the
excitement and the exhaustion of running up a full flight of stairs. Mark
and I ran into the bathroom and rushed through the closet, finding two
suit jackets and what looked like a nice pair of slacks, and we headed
back to the stairs, tripping over Steve, still spread out on the floor,
on our way back through the kitchen. As we ran out the back door and into
the street, I stopped again, looked back and saw Michelle staring out the
bathroom window. I tried to strike one of those classy poses like we saw
in the movies earlier, but I don’t think it came out exactly right, and I
yelled “I zinged you good on that one! Choke on it!” and caught up with
Mark, who was taking off his clothes in the middle of the street to see
if the suit fit.
(12:24.05.19.2005) [/scrytch] #