Killer Good Looks

Certain things stick to you, like a drunken friend’s late-night sleaze bar zen. “Jack, good sex is like an out of control forest fire. The delicious irony is that you pass out wet, but in your dreams, it’s raining matches.”

Goodwill laid me off a good six months ago. You know the one on Sepulveda? Budget cuts and all, they said. I was their go-to fix-it man. I get why nobody buys fix-it shit anymore, except the Russians. Everything is easier to replace nowadays.

In order to salve my low self-esteem, I’ve stayed at home and milked unemployment for nearly three months. But free and money won’t cure your indigestion from watching endless Oprah reruns. So recently, I took a new job. I was so bored. Plus, truth was we were hurting for money, Mia and I. 

We’d been shacking up and rubbing two pennies together for almost six years now.  

We’d both won at karaoke the night we met. Me: Burning Love. Mia: Billie Jean. For God’s sake, she moonwalked a new shine across the dull floor of my heart that night. We ended up walking home to the edge of my king-sized bed.

I’ve been fired from seven short jobs now, four long years without a raise. I’ve never received a frozen turkey or fresh ham for the holidays, not from one single employer.

Mia is not at all happy with any of my career choices, my lack of any success. Who knew?

She says, “Jack, you’re clueless. Every syllable out of your mouth is total bullshit.”

“I bring home a check don’t I? How about the perks? I don’t see you asking me to return any of your sex toys, the ones I fixed at my new job? How about that $75 vibrating Buddha you use for your meditation?”

“What the hell kind of gift was that Jack,” Mia fumes. “For Christ sakes, and you gave it to me on Valentine’s Day to boot?”

Mia stomps off toward the bedroom, each step a war drum. The slams shut behind her, and next comes the damned click-clack of the lock.

It’s hard to forget that sound: a whip crack at the Midnight Garden of Good and Evil, Michael Jackson snapping his fingers. 

I am locked out once again.

***

I arrive early at work the next morning. It’s not so much that I’m ambitious. The sofa springs are twisting through the couch like sheet metal screws.

As soon as I step through the stock room door, my boss Jenkins shouts, “Hey you, I have a rush delivery, the bachelor physician at the Stanford Ranch subdivision.”

“Jesus, its only 7:45 A.M.,” I say.

 “What did you say? He’s a damned good customer. Why is time your business?”

His expression lets me know they’ll be no coffee first this morning.

“Dr. Bennington wants his new toy ASAP, understood? Now, go!”  

His mother’s blue money financed the business. She knows her son is a failure. But Blanche is a fixer like me. She repairs her son’s bankruptcies, settles his expensive divorces, and pays for his prostitutes, only she doesn’t know it. I fix the expensive broken toys of love and loneliness, program the gently used A.I. sex dolls, and repair Zen Buddha vibrators for women who feel empty inside.

The elderly Mrs. Jenkins lives in France. She has early Alzheimer’s. Her only son Carl has convinced her that Evil Pleasures is a horror boutique in downtown L.A. In reality, it’s a Hollywood A-list go-to shop for uncomplicated love, for sale or rent. But really, the clientele and location are not all that important. For the right kind of money, all love is for sale, anywhere. 

Carl Jenkins is a cruel, driven man, eternally angry. You’d think he wouldn’t be appealing to the opposite sex. But the kind of women he sees don’t seem to mind. After all, anyone can purchase the right brand of love.

And, with the amount of money his mother gives him, he falls in love a lot. Carl’s even been known to hit up on my Mia. Last time it was at the company Halloween party. I was a pack of Camels and she was a bottle of Jack Daniels. Mia and I never complain about Carl because we need the money.

***

A hardly known fact is that in Los Angeles, all the freeways hiss like snakes. But today, it’s rainy and windy, so all the thoroughfares are sizzling like butter on a hot sauté pan. I’m moving from fast lane to fast lane, and on the Artesia, all the lanes are fast, especially when you’re running late.

“Hang on Maverick,” I say to my passenger, stepping on it as I zoom into the commuter lane.

Maverick pays no attention to me. He’s auditioning for the hard-to-get role, channeling a moody James Dean as he stares idly out the window.

Maverick is dressed in a wife-beater and ripped jeans. His tan shoulders ripple and glisten, even in the dull light of morning. His arms and chest are inked with hot, expensive tattoos.

I imagine him asking me, “Jack, aren’t you going to call stud muffin?”

Maverick is new to L.A., a gorgeous specimen and oh, so very vulnerable. A sexy amalgamation of raw flesh and innocent morality. He’s made it all the way here from Kansas City, Kansas.

Impulsively, the words escape my mouth:

“I fantasize about you, Maverick.”

***

This rush hour, urgent delivery crap is too much. I’m pissed off.

So, my inner devil says, “To hell with it all.” Out loud, I say, “I need the tip, better buckle up Maverick!” 

How cool can he get? He just sits there, jutting out his pretty jaw just so.

“Hell yes!” I holler with abandon, creeping the useless Prius up to 80 miles per hour. Stink-eye headlights flood the rearview as we go flying past all those stuck in the L.A. gridlock.

Maybe we’ll get a big tip from Dr. Bennington after all. Then I won’t have to sleep on couch again tonight. Meanwhile, Maverick couldn’t care less about my crumbling marriage, let alone my sleeping situation.

On the same worn psychological sofa, in a dark corner of my mind, Alter-Ego-Jack smirks as he whispers, “We both know Mia is cheating on your ass, and not just with Jenkins.” 

“There’s no evidence of that!” I scream at the top of my lungs, feeling increasingly reckless.

“Maverick, you are so damn hot,” I suddenly blurt out. I’ve kicked open the saloon doors of my vocal cords. I hope Maverick understands. I hope he doesn’t think I have Tourette’s or anything like that.

***

Weaving in and out of traffic, I manage to clip the fender of a shiny, new BMW. I barely miss side-swiping a limo that has a Harvey Weinstein look-a-like inside of it.

Maverick remains frozen in silence. He just stares straight ahead through all the madness. I can’t help admire his steely blue eyes, reflecting poise and internal strength.

“This isn’t going to end well,” Alter-Ego-Jack whispers. “You’ve picked a hell of a time to come out of the closet.”

“No shit Jacky-Boy!” I spit back at him.

I know Maverick must think I’m crazy by now.

***

“Passenger, slowly open your door and exit the vehicle, hands in the air.”

Maverick and I both sit frozen in place on the side of the road. It’s just like a scene from one of those really bad cop shows. You know the ones with the hot rednecks.

“Passenger, open your door and exit the vehicle with your hands up!”

Fear comes zooming in on me from the rearview mirror. It looks like Pinhead from Hellraiser, the sexy horror film, the one with the original director. A miniature voodoo doll prickles my throat. Outside, it’s a nothing but a creepy carnival of clowns with guns. Maverick sits stiff in my peripheral vision, somehow still radiating sexiness amidst the chaos of the situation.

“DRIVER, tell your passenger to exit the vehicle, NOW!”

For a nanosecond, I imagine the female officer on the megaphone as a thirteen-year-old girl. She’s one of those San Fernando Valley Girls, the type with a horny trigger finger. I imagine her rehashing our story for happy hour at the Blue Bar on Spring Street, where all the cops hand out.

“I am not going to die today,” I say to myself.

In a panic, I kick off my right shoe, peel off my sock, and stretch my leg over Maverick to toe the passenger door open. Next, I kick him in the side as hard as I can, sending him tumbling out of the Prius. He looks like the cartoon character, the Tasmanian devil, as he spins and rolls down the steep embankment.

So I’m selfish, whats new?  

As I slump down in the driver’s seat, my voice betrays me once again:

“Bonnie and Clyde, Bonnie and Clyde! La la la, dah dah dah, I can’t hear you! La la la, dah dah dah!”

Suddenly, everything is in slow motion. Maverick continues to flip ass over tea kettle down the long hill to the bottom. Along the way, his shimmering body erupts in a hail of gunfire. The bullets eats away at him like shiny electric minnows. By the time he stops moving, he’s been reduced to a husk of silicone and circuitry.

Maverick hips mechanically unwind for the last time. Elvis has left the building.  

***

“You can’t make this shit up”, I say to my captive audience of murderers, thieves, and rapists. Today, I am just another someone, one of the crew, at the L.A. County Jail.

“Damn dude,” says an old man who left most of his sanity splattered somewhere in ‘Nam. “You may not get the death penalty, but this is Cali, you’ll get life for sure!” He laughs his crazy parrot laugh. “That’s for second-degree murder or manslaughter!”  

***

Four months slowly crawl by. 

Mia has moved to Florida. She’s supporting her new boy toy in college. She tells me what he lacks in bed, he makes up for in potential. He’ll have a future in computer programming, she says.

In the meantime, I seem to live here at the 7-11 Quick Mart these days. I’m pulling extra hours so I can pay for my bad side of town rent, plus restitution to Dr. Bennington for destruction of property.

Dark And Stormy 

It was 10:11PM and the wind was raging, and the rain was frightful.  The house was shaking and creaking.  I could have tolerated it if I had felt better.  My stomach was rumbling, and I could barely keep my food down.  My intestines were as water and sweat poured down my face, even as I was chilled.  My head throbbed, though I hadn’t had a headache in years before this night. 

Even though it was taking my health both mental and physical, I must complete my task before midnight.  As much as I had tried to finish earlier and avoid the torture that would attend an incomplete job, I was thwarted by those who were supposed to support me in my quest.  Those that I had counted on were late and inadequate in their portion of the complex riddle that I faced. 

Even knowing the horrors of being late, I had to lose the torment caused by the contents of my stomach, but even that didn’t help.  My stomach continued to roil and now my discomfort was doubled by the taste of bile in my mouth and its foul stench in my nose.  Combined with the aura of my fear and horror, I was in every way a pariah. 

At 10:35 I thought that I would succeed, only to be plagued by diarrhea.  After an abbreviated cleanup, I smelled the wretched odor of my latest calamity.  By the time I could return to my task the clock showed 10:50. 

By 11:14 I felt short term triumph as I had succeeded.  Oh, but the results would ruin my life, even if I could deliver them by midnight. 

At 11:57 this broken man delivered his tax return to the post office, just in time to avoid late penalties.  In the process of finishing, I rediscovered capital gains that I had already spent.  With no time to find another tax preparer, my man Steve Hinson had to have a fatal heart attack.  With no experience in taxes, I was forced to take over the job.  I owed $5,678 to the Feds, and $2,897 to the state.  Why hadn’t my accountant warned me and why was my investment firm Grubber & Grubber so late with my tax forms?   

What bothers me most by this hit to my budget is lost time with Scherezade.  I’ve had her on retainer for several years now alternating her masochistic and sadistic sessions.  She costs a lot but is number one is so many categories.  BDSMagazine rates her at the top in all these categories – costumes, whips, dildos, vinyl, fur, torture, and pain.  Just the thought of her tightens my pants and makes my mouth go dry.  

There would be no upgrade to my three-year-old Mercedes, no dates at fine restaurants, and Starbucks visits would be cut back to four a week.  Has any man ever been as miserable?

Bet You Can’t Eat One

–So, madam. How long were you and your husband together before you left him?

We were married a little over two years, your honor.

—And prior to that? Did you live with him for any length of time before your marriage?

My religion forbade it, or I’d have discovered the truth about him in time to call off the wedding.

—In your petition, the reason you give for seeking release from your marital bonds is your husband’s vulgarity. Would you mind being more specific? How did this vulgarity manifest itself?

For one thing, in his way of disposing of his—forgive me, but I can’t think of a more respectable word for it—his boogers.

—Just to be clear, you refer to bits of solidified mucus picked from the nose?

That’s correct.

—And what did he do with these? Flick them on the floor?

Not that I noticed.

—Fix them to the bottom of his chair?

I never caught him doing that either.

—Then what? Surely you’re not going to tell me he ate them?

The use he put them to was even worse than that. Try to imagine how I felt when I discovered—concealed behind the curtain on the windowsill by his side of the bed—what I at first sight took to be a rather dirty ping-pong ball. Except it definitely wasn’t made of—whatever ping-pong balls are made of.

—Do I understand you to mean—?

You do, and not only did he threaten me with physical harm if I dared to throw the thing out, but he kept adding to it every day, till it grew to the size of a peach, then of a grapefruit, and finally of a basketball. It was all I could do to stop him from exhibiting it at the county fair, he was so proud of his creation.

—Something tells me this wasn’t the  extent of his offensive behavior.

Unfortunately, no. He proved to be similarly devoted to preserving his toenail clippings.

—What for? He could hardly hope to mold these into spherical shapes.

Of course not, but he was religious about storing them in an old shoe box he liked to open and sniff whenever he was feeling blue. 

—I see. And is that it?

Not quite. What repelled me about him more than anything else was—not so much the loud belches he was in the habit of emitting even in mixed company but the disclaimer he invariably followed them up with.

—Feel free to quote it for the record.  

“Pardon me, I meant to fart.”

—In light of all this, I wonder you managed to stay with him as long as you did.

What made things easier was that his job—he’s regional sales manager for Bumfree and Sons, the toilet-seat manufacturer—took him out on the road every other week. That left me ample opportunity to swap horror stories with Mr. Rubson, our next-door neighbor, who was trapped in an equally unhappy marriage.

—His wife specialized in vulgarity, too?

Just the opposite. In her morbid fear of fleas, she never let him enter the house or sit down on the sofa without vacuuming him first from head to toe.

—I assume your religion, that you spoke of earlier, prevented the relationship between you and this sympathetic neighbor of yours from crossing the line into impropriety?

Till the day we made the mistake of drinking a gallon of Chianti together. I don’t remember which of us took the first step, but Elmer had hardly begun to unbutton when we were startled by the sound of a key in the front door. 

—Why is it adultery is so prone to interruption?

I couldn’t say, but I managed to keep my wits about me and, in a flash, bundled Elmer into the closet, just before George—pale from the bug he’d come down with—entered in a sweat.

“Fix me a pot of tea, will you?”

When I returned from the kitchen with the tray, George was sitting on the edge of the bed in his BVDs, painstakingly clipping his fungus-riddled toenails.

“Do me one more favor.”

With my heart in my mouth, I opened the closet door and, crouching to remove the shoe box, observed with relief that Elmer had concealed himself so well behind the hanging clothes only the tips of his tassel-toed loafers could be seen, if you looked really hard.

“Ah, that does a body good. I think I’ll try to get some rest now.”

After I restored the shoe box to its place, I tucked him in and left the room. I was confident I’d be able to sneak Elmer out once George—ordinarily the soundest of sleepers—drifted off, but, every time I looked in, he was tossing under the covers, no doubt because of the fever he was running. Hours later, when I had no choice but to climb into bed alongside him, he opened a rheumy eye and looked at me wearily.

“Maybe if we talked a little,” he said. “Have you heard the one about the proletarian buzzard who inherits an old mansion and determines to join the upper crust?”

Like the dutiful salesman he was, George was always trying out new jokes on me, with a view to incorporating them into the line of patter he used on prospective customers. 

—That’s all very interesting, but if you could get to the point?

The point is that the first thing the buzzard does is to hire an old friend of his, a rabbit down on his luck, to help him revive the mansion’s neglected garden. 

“We’ll need fertilizer,” the rabbit says after tasting the soil. “I’ll take your new Bentley and get some.”

During his absence, a camel in a tuxedo appears at the front door.

“You advertised for a but-laire?”

So aristocratic is the camel’s bearing that the buzzard at once puts him in charge of the house, before resuming his exertions in the garden. He’s busy clearing weeds with a hoedag when the rabbit, toting a heavy sack, returns and rings for admission.

 “Who the hell are you?” he demands when the butler opens up.

“I’m Mr. Ca-mel. I answer the bell for Mr. Buz-zard, who’s out in the yard.”

“Oh yeah? Well, do me a favor.”

“Certainly, monsieur, if I can.”

“Tell him Mr. Rab-bit is here with the shit.”

At this, I laughed so hard George took it for a tribute to his knack with a narrative, but the truth was I feared I’d heard giggling in the closet and was doing my best to drown it out.

—Did you succeed?

Beyond my expectations, because, soon afterwards, George and I both fell asleep.

In the morning, he was feeling so much better he let loose with a long contented fart.

“Pardon me, I meant to belch.” 

—That’ll do, madam. You can stop right there. The court has heard more than enough about your husband, and is persuaded to rule in your favor.

You’re saying my petition is granted? I’m free to marry Mr. Rubson?

—If he’s free to marry you. What happened to him anyway? Did he escape in one piece?

As soon as George bounded from bed into the shower—where I knew he could be counted on to spend at least ten minutes perfecting his yodeling—I hastened to extract Elmer from the closet.

“Poor darling, you must be starved.”

“Not a bit,” he assured me as I hurried him out of the house. “Those potato chips you smuggled in for me were delicious!”