Pink Flamingo & Silver Tinsel

Note to self, literally.

I can’t write “Dear Claudia,” because I don’t know if I’ll have earned my own affection by the time I reread this. I’m giving myself three years to decode my own love language, starting with this letter. Three years to assess and essentially rewrite my life seems to be the sweet spot for this self-esteem experiment. One year would make me too time-pressed to meet my goals and two would be too soon to forget where I came from.

Turning a potential suicide note into a spark of motivation, a pinprick of promise, will be the best Christmas present anyone could give this Cigar City stripper.

I’m told, by self-help books and balding TV personalities, that tough love is the first step towards transition.

So listen up, you stupid hoe. There are going to be some changes.

Instead of getting the cops called on you for blasting Mariah Carey’s Christmas album at ungodly hours, you’re going to lay low. Stick your goddamn nose in a book, why don’t you? Let the septum piercing anchor you in.

No, scrolling through Wattpad erotica your friend Bambi writes from her iPhone doesn’t count. We both know that bitch can’t spell, let alone produce thought-provoking material. (Secret Santa-style gangbangs, no thank you.)

How about reading some Nietzsche or Terence McKenna? At the least, clients will buy into your cliché college fund excuse for stripping. Babbling about psychedelic mushrooms in Kris Kringle lore as men throw dollars at your elf heels—now that’s festive.

But if studying philosophy proves to be as boring as perusing dimly lit comic shops late at night, check real estate listings. Girl, we are not letting the Capital of Crazies consume us until we’re putting around Bealls Outlet, complaining our senior discount only works on Fridays. A diet of chew tobacco and Publix subs is not doing you any favors, you hear me?

You are not the Florida trash you’ve befriended, fucked, loved, then begrudged. 

Scraping glitter out of your ass-crack is only glamorous if you’ve accepted that you’re never leaving the trailer park. 

It may take a cranberry red eviction notice, but you’re destined for things brighter than a tin roof strung with shoddy Christmas lights.

Savor your surroundings now because you won’t want more than a memory three years down the line. Next time you trudge home from a night of awkward lap dances and eggnog shots, trace the porch’s rotting rings. Remember the musk of torn window screens and piling fly corpses. Sit on that muddied lounger and relish the tinkle of homemade wind chimes, the sizzle of the electric bug zapper.

One day—instead of cowering behind the blinds—you’re gonna smirk when you look back on your crackhead neighbors scouring the dirt for dropped pills. You’re gonna forget the ball of brawling stray cats you watched for entertainment when you were too high to remember your Netflix password. 

Speaking of getting high, that’s one thing we need to stop if we’re ever going to move on from this sagging mobile. Swimming on molly until you have to call out from a Saturday night shift is worse than treading water.

Remember that night we spent sweating out a pint of Pabst Blue Ribbon, worried our face was permanently frozen in a creepy Casey Anthony leer? What about the time we tried to pass off to our friends that puking on the pristine grasses of a golf course was a woke political statement?

Yeah, fuck that. The only white powder we need is what awaits us up north. Even if we don’t ever get to take a bite out of the Big Apple, we’ll see snow. (I’m sick of thinking trading in a tank top for a Tapout T signifies cold weather.) Hell, we’ll eat snow on sticks with syrup like the Canadians do. 

Keep stuffing your stockings with dollar bills and this hoe will laugh all the way into the next three New Years. 

Okay, so now that I’ve titillated you with dreams of life beyond chicken wire and powdered party favors, I know you’ll heed what’s written.

This is called the miracle season for a reason. 

So, twenty-three-year-old me, what’s life like away from America’s balmy taint: Tampa, Florida? 

Are your nights still riddled with cute clothes and unappealing faces? Are you still working the stage as a bruised minx named Midnight, the Edgar Allen Hoe of strip clubs? Still playing Pokémon Go between half-hearted hand jobs?

Tell me, did you truly escape the skeeviness of living inside a Fiona Apple music video? Or have you moved onto more traditional hustles? Being a hair salon receptionist or small-town real estate agent might suit you. During high school you loved overhearing gossip and snooping around. Hey, maybe you’re something in-between but cooler, like a bartender or news reporter.

Now that you’ve surely stopped dyeing your hair a Grinch green, have you cuffed anything better for yourself lover-wise? (I’m not talking about bedroom cuffs, missy.) 

You learned the hard way that only Gulf Coast swaggots meet for coffee at 4 AM. Yet don’t feel bad if the best you’ve brought home is a stray cat to sleep under your martini-pink Christmas tree. The gift of self-love comes in parts—not parcels. 

Speaking of loved ones, are you answering invitations to festive family gatherings again? Or do you feel too guilty knowing “performance” once meant singing “Hallelujah” in front of steeples and stained glass, instead of gyrating between a wreathed pole and drunken deadbeats? Do you still have nightmares about Mom and Brad finding out you suckle from candy canes while posing in scarlet fishnets for a living?

As I’m sure you’ve learned by now, a profession can’t define you. Can the same be said about an address though? Even if your night-terrors have ceased, I bet there are whispers during the day: “You can take the trash out of the trailer park, but you can’t take the trailer park out of the trash.”

Does driving by an untouched tire swing or an empty dog house trigger your nostalgia? Remember how you cried when your artificial tree crashed to the ground, all its little bombs exploding into neon shrapnel? You swore to do better every year, acquire more comfort than garland and glass keepsakes from childhood to remind you of the good times.

Well, the good times—or marginally better—times are here. At any rate, I bet you don’t miss scrounging up the courage to smash cockroaches into smears on the bathroom wall. What about binge eating under piss-yellow lighting or rolling on sob-inducing substances that make you question if you actually ran over a baby alligator that one time?

Clean. Legitimately employed. Properly housed. Did you listen to me? Did this shitty snapshot in time (capsule) work? Were the resolutions worth waiting three years?

As long as a cord of Christmas lights isn’t twinkling around your neck like a noose, I suppose I’ve done my job.

The bitch who knows you best,

-XO, Claudia

The Director

Quiet On The Set 
Roll Sound 
Camera Ready 
Action

We’d just scored eighty bucks in  crack from the black dudes in the Sugar Hill neighborhood. The car I’m driving burns oil and produces a trail of gray smoke still visible at night. Adding to the car’s unique characteristics is that the license plates were stolen from an abandoned car in South Tucson and on top of it, they’re expired.

Also there’s no registration for the car and I’m driving without proof of insurance. That’s not even the Bingo, my driver’s license has been suspended for over two years with outstanding warrants for my sorry ass. I don’t have any type of identification whatsoever. Yet, here I am at 1:00 in the morning scoring drugs with a prostitute and an ex-convict still on parole as my passengers. I’ve failed to mention one detail, the brake lights don’t work. Every day I say I’ll fix them, but somehow it just never gets done.

It’s only a couple miles of Tucson neighborhood back streets to navigate until we reach our room at the Paradise Motel on South Sixth Avenue.

“Hey Messiah, get me a beer will ya? Do you want one Santi?” Selma asks. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you? Don’t want to get stopped for open alcohol in the car! Damn, you’re just inviting the cops to bust our asses.”

“Sorry, I figured it would calm you down some. You look all uptight.”

“And drinking a beer in the car would just add to my stress level.”

“Is it okay if I do a hit real quick like? I’ll hold it down out of sight. I promise.” 

“Then Messiah will want a hit. Five minutes later you’ll want another, flicking the god damn lighter off and on. Even a rookie cop knows what that signifies.”

“You know what you are?” she asks. “Do you know? Huh?”

“This ought to be good. No, tell me. Better pick your words wisely, it’s a long walk back to the motel.”

“You ain’t scaring me. You’re not the director of this movie, ass clown!”

“That’s a good street name for Santi, Director,” Messiah chimes in from the back seat. “Selma, it’s perfect! Director, it fits your personality.”

“Just fine, I can live with that name. Now I’m about to direct your ass to get the fuck out of the car and walk. You’re really pissing me off, Selma.”

“What’s wrong with you, Director?” Messiah asks. “Why can’t you lighten up, relax and have some fun?”

“Why? Did you just ask me why I can’t lighten up? I’ll tell you why! Because I have to babysit you two all the fucking time. Both of you don’t have any type of safety filter. You just go about your lives doing what you want to do, without any concern for the consequences of your actions. Just think about it for a few minutes. How many times have I saved both of your lame asses in the past two weeks? I can think of seven, maybe eight times. Do either of you try to change your inane witless actions? Hell no! You both act with a blatant disregard for simple social standards of conduct. What’s even more incredibly amazing is you’re clueless, you have no idea of the level of stupidity you demonstrate.”

“Are you done putting us down? You’re treating us like some kind of lowlife street trash.”

“Sorry you see it that way Messiah. This reckoning is long overdue. I’ve tried to make you aware of this personality defect for a while now. Neither of you would pay any attention to my pleas. You went on ignoring my advice. Maybe this is the only way to get through to you guys. And I apologize if your feelings were hurt. I’m not purposely being disrespectful, if I didn’t love the both of you I wouldn’t take the time to even mention this shit.”

“So what’s this then, your idea of tough love?” Selma asks. “Are you practicing some radical new kind of therapy you read about in one of those books you’re always reading? Let me tell you this, Director, you can’t control what everyone in the whole world does. Life isn’t a movie, so you can shove your bullshit advice up your ass. Stop the car, I wanna get out now!” she screams. “Don’t want you to have to be responsible for me no more. I’m taking two rocks with me, I put in twenty bucks.”

“Ya me too Director,” Messiah demands, “hand over two rocks.”

I stop, give them the crack and put the car in gear.

“Ain’t ya gonna try stopping us, tell us to get back in the car?” Selma asks.

“Hey Messiah, don’t forget your beer in back. Selma, I didn’t tell you to get out. You both said you wanted out. I’m just doing what you requested.”

“You’re a limp-dick son of a bitch!” Selma screams as I drive away.

“My mother was a very nice lady, I’ll have you know!” I holler back at her.

Forty-five minutes later, there’s a knock on the motel door.

Wonder who that could be?

Goregasm

“Don’t you dare stop now, motherfucker!” Jade gasped, gritting her teeth and peeling her lips back, exposing her gums. A giggle escaped her, her eyes glassing over. “You’re right on the mon— Oooh! keep going!” she continued, grabbing a fistful of his slick hair and twisting it, keeping his face pressed against her soddening pussy. 

Jade arched her back, thrusting her hips, driving his lapping, twisting tongue deeper. “Fuck!” her voice quivered.  “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you, you mucky bastard!” she managed, panting and wriggling, her jeans and panties down ‘round her ankles.  

“Uch-urggh…” he groaned, his wet, soggy noshing sounds bringing a smile to her face.

“Such a good boy, aren’t you? Mummy’s trained you well.” 

A fresh jolt of ecstasy pulsated through her dripping snatch, punching her in the guts, her g-spot numbing. “Just one more orgasm, and I’ll be satisfied. It’s been so— Oh, God,” she said, throwing her head back, her eyes rolling in their sockets. 

And why shouldn’t I enjoy? It’s taken him long enough to figure out what the fuck he’s doing down there! Men, she thought, her hand patting the ground, searching for his arm. My tits aren’t going to play with themselves, are they, dickhead? Guess I’ll have to show this slow fuck everything! she continued to muse, discovering the cuff to his jumper, pulling, the stump where his hand use to be landing on her pert breast, covering it in gore. 

“That’s it, rub the nipple,” she said, manoeuvring his limb, manipulating the stump that had soggy, pus-dripping veins hanging out of its glistening end. “Where’s your other— Shit, never mind! Don’t. Stop!” 

Jade’s fingers dug into the ground, her body quivered, a third orgasm washed over her.

“Yes!” she declared. “Yes, yes, yeees!”

Spent, she opened her thighs and pushed his head away, getting to her feet and pulling her knickers and jeans up. “That’s more like it,” she said, fastening her belt, eyeing the zombie before her. “That’s the first decent bit of coming I’ve done since this whole shitshow of an apocalypse kicked off, pal. Still want to eat blood, guts and brains, now you’ve had a taste of the good life?” Jade laughed. 

The zombie groaned, staggered to its feet and shuffled towards her. 

“You want cuddles now, eh? Well, I suppose you’ve earned them this time,” she said, accepting him, placing his head against her chest, his sunken cheek pressing against her. “It was worth keeping you alive, painstakingly training you, as I knew you wouldn’t let me down.”

“Ugh,” he gargled.

“The struggle I had in yanking your teeth out with those rusty pliers and sawing your hands off was worth it.” Jade grabbed him by a tuft of hair and pulled his head back, looking him in his white, sunken eye, the other one missing. “I love you—in a platonic way—even though you stink worse than an arsehole filled with diarrhea,” she said, swatting flies away from around his head, brushing her fingers through his blood-gelled hair, scalp dropping away. 

Jade smiled, grabbed her top from off the floor, and pulled it on. “Phew, I’m all hot and bothered,” she said, fluffing her tee, wiping sweat from her brow. “Right, where did I put your collar?”

When she turned, she spotted his metal neck cuff—a six-meter chain acting as a lead hung from it—lying next to a tree. “Brilliant,” she said, retrieving it, placing it around his throat. “We better get going, find shelter before sundown, Paul. Once we do, you can show me more tricks you’ve learned with that tongue of yours,” she said, leading him off into the woods.