Don’t Call Me Thunder Slut

After three hours of shaking every proverbial tree, checking bars, searching alleys and breezeways for my dealer I had to settle on scoring my wake-up hit from the Chinos. I am not comfortable in their barrio especially when I’m jonesing. I’m not familiar with the territory and I risk getting ripped off. Their “heir-on” is always top shelf but they charge more and their papers are small. You gotta do what you gotta do to feed the monkey. My man is M.I.A. and I owe him twelve dollars from the shit he gave me on the arm last night. Saves me from the humiliation of having to beg. As if I had any pride left in my pathetic character. Scraped away like the  charred part on a piece of burnt  toast.

I head back toward my digs at a quick pace so I won’t be sidetracked by anyone. The strategy proves ineffective and I’m confronted by every Junkie in the  neighborhood. It’s as though every dope fiend I’ve ever been associated with is on the look, all asking me the same questions. “Where’s the Dope Man? Can ya spare a bump, I’m Jonesin’ bad. Getting sick, man help me out.”

I answer in a desperate an apologetic voice.  “I couldn’t find the man. No hay, got nothing, I’m looking. I don’t have any cash, trying to get a front.”

They know I’m lieing but don’t challenge my integrity.  Integrity, what a laugh, another moral standard of ethical behavior I seem to have pissed away. Did I choose this addiction or did the addiction choose me? I planned on just experimenting with Heroin but somewhere the

procedure went horribly wrong. It’s the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. High syndrome. Intended to only pawn my soul but the pawn ticket was lost and my time ran out. I don’t give a shit about these addicts . These are the streets, the rule here is to cover your own ass. It’s not my job to coddle these junkies. I’m not responsible for their habit.

I’m holding and still have seven dollars left to buy a tall boy and some “loosies.”

The entrance to my pad is littered with crackheads pushing their pipes made from stolen aluminum car antennas. Their tecolote (owl) eyes stare at images only visible to them, sweating profusely in the morning chill. They move aside letting me pass, trying to speak but the words come out garbled.

I start the frantic search for my key to unlock the door. In desperation I  turn the door knob and the door opens.

Son of a bitch I didn’t lock the door? I mentally interrogate myself  only mouthing the words.

Surely I ‘ve been robbed and in this neighborhood they steal everything. Forks, spoons, soap, toothbrushes down to the light bulbs.

Inside I investigate and I’m relieved to discover that nothing has gone missing.

Jessica who calls herself my girlfriend is sleeping on the mattress on the living room floor. She slowly rolls over, stretches , smiles  and then farts.

“Morning baby did you score?” She asks

Now I can’t lie to her not

about that, other subjects sure, not this she’ll know if I get high.

“Yes Thunder Slut I certainly did just that. Jenk was a ghost I had to score from the Chinos. So I want you to know there’s not much because their papers are smaller”

“Why didn’t you get two? I want to get high shithead.

It’s always about you. You don’t give a shit about me. I’m selling my ass around town to drunks and perverted sons of bitches for twenty here thirty there all night long. And what do I do? Come home to you and give you my money while you sit around on your lazy ass the whole night getting high or drunk or something. I don’t know?

And don’t call me Thunder Slut! You know I don’t like it!”

She delivers a poignant  soliloquy with a Marisa Tomei sexiness. I don’t need to hear this bullshit first thing in the morning.

Then sometimes I think maybe I do. Jessica may be a prostitute and I know there’s some of you that have a derogatory view of her and others working in the world’s oldest profession. Let me take a moment to comment on the subject.

Jessica as well as those now and in the past provide a fundamental service in every society. They are what most men secretly desire and almost everyman wishes his wife was in the bedroom.

They have performed more charitable acts than Mother Teresa. They don’t ask for your respect or understanding, only that you shove your snide comments and puritan opinions up your ass. And speaking for all the Angels of the Night, “Go Fuck Yourself.”

Now Jessica is a prostitute but she is defined by so much more.  She’s not comfortable with her beauty which makes her all the more beautiful. She’s the most compassionate, sincere, emotional amazing, evil, vengeful,  psychotic creature you could ever love. So yes she’s a prostitute but she is my prostitute! Now back to damage control for a situation that I have no responsibility for causing.

“All I said was it’s small. I’m gonna share. It’ll be enough to numb the withdrawals and subdue the Jones. Also where am I going to get the coin to buy two? We can figure out how to score more this afternoon. How come the door was unlocked?”

“I must of forgot to lock it after I let the cat out. She was driving me crazy, meowing.”

“What fucking cat? We don’t have a damn cat!” Are you high?”

“See that’s what I mean. You don’t pay any attention to me or this relationship. You gave me a cat two weeks ago for my birthday you shithead. Thank you for remembering and my birthday isn’t for another month. Must have me mixed up with one of your other girlfriends, Santihole.”

What the hell has happened here. I risk my life in the dangerous jungle of the city “dragging myself through the negro streets a dawn looking for an angry fix.”

I know that’s Ginsberg the master of bohemian genius. Just seemed so fitting. Ok back to the story…

There I am foraging through the neighborhood for dope to get me feeling almost normal. The sickness waits in hiding ready to bushwhack me at any moment and she is giving be misery for something I haven’t done. Of course I was going to do the whole paper myself but now I had to share. God Damn it!!

There’s something amiss with me today. I’m unable to focus on any particular issue and my mind wanders finding cognizant thoughts to ponder. Could it be possible that I’m sober. Is this what it’s like?

“Danger Will Robinson” most of the poor decisions I have made in my life were made while I was sober.

Listen to her still going on and on with her relentless tirade. I know where the switch is to shut her off.

“Here Diosa you take the Dope. I would rather you have it. I’m sorry that I’m so insensitive and selfish. You’re right once again, I need to exhibit more  appreciation for your sacrifices. You know how I feel about you. I’m sorry mi amor. Please forgive my callousness.”

“Oh Santiago you softie. You know how to get straight to my heart. You just made up for all your stupid ass screw ups. And we do have a cat.”

“Don’t refer to me as softie again. It’s not a particularly enduring description if ya know what I mean.”

She takes possession of the dope and heads off to the bathroom to do a hit. Her ass exposed wearing my  Barcelona Soccer jersey which I don’t appreciate but I don’t dare to mention.

Then there’s a knock at the door. Let me share a piece of wisdom. Opportunity doesn’t knock, in most instances it’s Jehovah Witnesses. Opportunity has been on vacation and hitting on your lover while you’re at home anticipating its arrival.

“Who is it?”

“Barry the manager. Everything ok in there?” he asks.

I open the door to interact to keep him from calling the cops.

“Hey Jerry what’s going on? How you been doing?”

“My name’s not Jerry.”

“Okay not Jerry. What can I do for you this morning?”

“Santiago why do we have to go through this game every time we talk?”

“Sorry Larry, I’m not good with names. There’s been times when I couldn’t remember my own name. What’s the scoop?”

“The people in the next apartment said they heard yelling and screaming coming from your place. I have to investigate and make sure everything is okay. I’ve had to come up here so many times. Can you two please stop fighting all the time? I’m getting tired of your bullshit. Next time I’m going to have to take legal action and call the police. And your rent is two weeks late again. I need the money by tomorrow afternoon or there’s gonna be a problem with the owner. Do you understand?”

“Only two weeks late? That’s good to know. I’ll see what I can do to rectify the problem. How did my neighbors tell you there was a problem? They don’t speak English and I know you don’t speak Spanish.

Terry are you fibbing? It wasn’t my neighbors. Are you spying on Jessica again? If you don’t stop your peeping activities I’m going to have a talk with the owner. And the money you’ve been pocketing from overcharging the undocumented residents to support that voracious cocaine habit of yours… we don’t want anyone to mention those activities to Mr. Landlord do we?

So Harry I think we have a mutual understanding of how we’ll be addressing problems in the future. Entiendas gringo?”

“Please Santiago don’t rat me out. I’m trying to warn you about what’s going on. See if you can get me the rent by next week. Is Jessica around I wanna say hello.”

“She’s in the bathroom right now. I’ll tell her for you Gary. You have a wonderful day.”

“My God Damn name is Barry. Will you please just call me by my right name?”

“Ciao” I whisper as I close the door.

“Hey Santiago is this your cat at the door? You know there’s a strict policy against pets in your apartment!” he screams.

“Please don’t yell. Keep it down. You don’t want to upset the neighbors. We don’t have a cat.”

“Who you hollering at through the door? And I told you that we do have a cat, you son of a bitch!”

I put my finger to my lips giving the shush sign.

“It’s your boyfriend Perry, he wants the rent and said we aren’t suppose to have a cat.”

“Okay, here, take this,” she whispers “I saved it for you. Do you have cigarettes?”

She hands me a syringe loaded and ready to fire. Self loathing is in most cases along with confessing your imperfections are a catalyst to favorably end a disagreement. They have a saying in Colombia. When a man and woman are in an argument. The man always has the last words.

They are “si mi amor.” Yes my love.

I accept her gift and place a tender kiss on her lips. She giggles and gives me a hug. This is the woman I’m accustomed to. When she’s high she’s so much more concerning.

“So baby do you have a cigarette? Si o si?”

“No JJ but I’ll make a run right after I do this hit. Get dressed and come with me. Before you head off to work.”

“I’m not going to hook for a couple of days because I got my regla,(period) and I’m not into giving blow jobs for five or ten dollars a cum. It’s ok with you baby?”

 “Ya, it’s just fine now get dressed.”

I head off to the bathroom to do my fix. Surprisingly, it gets me perfectly numb. Not nodding out or nose scratching high but enough to subdue the monkey.

“Hey baby it’s chilly outside so wear a jacket. Where’s my suit jacket the black one ? I haven’t seen it for a while. Have you seen it baby?”

“Have you looked in the closet? That’s where civilized people put their clothes. Not on the floor or slung over a lamp. I put it on a hanger.”

“Thanks smart ass I found it. Do you know where the key is? I misplaced…”

She dangles the key in front of my face before I can finish my sentence.

We exit the apartment and she puts her arm in mine, then places her head on my shoulder as we walk.

I put my hands in my pockets and touch what feels like a pack of cigarettes. I pull it out and it’s an almost full pack. And there’s a balled up piece of plastic shoved in the cellophane of the cigarette pack. I immediately tear at it and discover it’s a large amount of heroin that I have forgotten about. I check the inside breast pocket and retrieve seventy three dollars from inside. Jessica begins to scream with excitement from the find.

“Santiago you didn’t know you had all that? Where did it come from?”

“The last time I wore this jacket was when we went to the casino to celebrate your birthday, which I  now  understand is the wrong date,” I say, handing her the cigarettes. “You didn’t say anything about it at the time. I was winning at the blackjack table. Then we left came home and got so fucking high we didn’t remember. Here, happy birthday mi corazon.”

She stops and puts a hand on her hip, holding out the other hand palm up and tapping her foot impatiently.

“Well, and the money?”

It wasn’t really your birthday and you played me. Okay, here.”

I place the cash in her hand but not before peeling off a twenty.

Suddenly the cat cozies up to Jessica meowing.

“I know let’s put her in the apartment before we go. Hey what did you name her? “

“Thunder Slut seemed like the perfect name. Now hurry up put her inside. You know you’re taking me to breakfast don’t you? It is after all my birthday.”

She says spilling laughter all over the morning.

I recall a proverb from the Furry Freak Brothers.

“Dope gets you through times of no money better than money gets you through times of no dope.”

And so that’s that.

“Ok breakfast, but no pancakes!”

New Aeons Still Will Not Answer

I wish I didn’t remember this river. My mother and I used to eat here, sitting against a rock with cucumber sandwiches from her garden, eating the bread she baked. The courts allowed her to spend one day a week with me. Something is better than nothing. Across the river I see a man with a small boy, probably his son. But maybe it isn’t his child. Maybe they’re just there, the older man feeding the younger. Men think they love feeding, that they understand justice.

Men think their gray hair has something to do with honor, that using foundation to cover your skin cancer and red puffiness makes you as vain as a politician. I don’t want to remember this river but I’m walking alongside it for a very specific reason. After my mother entered a permanent state of departure my father took me here to fish. I refused and there are several places in the United States of America where refusing to eat an animal means Satan is speaking to you, much like the way Satan spoke to your mother. Parents and priests will tell you they’re concerned. These are the fathers who let physicians remove their wives and daughter’s clitori and are just thankful there’s something to be done, a way to help their families.

This river mouths out at the Catholic Church my dad always took me to. Last night I saw my father, today I am going to visit another father. There is something I want to tell him, memories I want to remind him of. I’ve finally graduated from college. I left my apartment back in the Twin Cities with my degree from U Minnesota and a plane ticket to Italy. The last paper I wrote was a personal one. I used to think nothing could be worse than Haldol. Then I read about one of the earlier treatments for hysteria. Patients were put in comas with insulin treatments. Force fed nothing but red meat. This is what happened to people who enjoyed having cocks inside of their mouth.

River towns tend to have a lot in common common. My father never thought anything was wrong with our community. He thought it was a place worth living in. Old women trying to control their children by filling them full of pie and cookies. Writing my research paper on the history of insulin treatments was very triggering. I had to stop, go for runs. I would come back to my apartment and drink glass after glass of water.

Walking by the river, on my way to the church, I pass a tree. When I was fifteen dad sat me underneath it so we could talk. He said that it was good that I loved my mother but that I needed to understand, she didn’t love me. It wasn’t because she didn’t want to love me, it was because she couldn’t. She was sick. I ran from him. He tackled me and pinned me down and started yelling that I needed to listen, that I needed to understand things were different, that it was good things were different.

He told me things needed to change. We were going to go to Mass every Sunday. If I refused to go, he would take me out of public school. Tough love, like a basketball coach. There are a lot of things to hate about highschool. But my guidance counselor promised to walk me through my college applications. She told me I could apply to as many colleges as I wanted, “They can be anywhere, in any state,” she promised. She said she could get money from the school district to pay for my applications fees. The school district got money from the state if they had a high number of kids enrolled in college. My father also had the legal right to pull me from the school and enroll me in a Catholic highschool. The Catholics wouldn’t help me get to the University of Minnesota. I had to play along. But after sitting in that fucking shit church, seeing those people sucking their dead god’s cock every fucking week, I began to snap.

One Sunday I spat the communion wine in Father Michael’s face. My dad took me out behind some bushes near the church and beat the shit out of me. I could smell the River from where we were. My mother always joked about wanting to spit wine in Father Michael’s face. He was her priest, too, when she was my age. The priest’s body was stuck to our town, a rot the diocese wanted to preserve. My mother knew how to transform rot into something holy, how to grow things in compost. “When people die we should feed the Earth, not be put in a box and prayed for.” She called Jesus a corpse and they said she was ill. She liked to grow things in her garden.

My father drug me back to his car, after beating me. Father Michael was standing outside of the Church, smoking a cigarette. Everyone else had gone. The priest saw me bleeding and he told my father, “Don’t worry, Jim, it gets better.”

I don’t care when they find either of them. I can move fast. And that hurts because the smell of the river still reminds me of my mother. I want to sit with the River, I want to sit with my Mother. But I have already committed to revenge. I need to be in Italy by tomorrow night, absolute latest.

As highschool crawled on, Father Michael offered to help my dad deal with me. One night Dad came home from work early and found me fucking a girl I went to school with. Allison brought a strapon and a harness that her older sister gave her. The dildo she brought over didn’t fit with the harness so I tried to ducktape the bright purple cock onto the harness. Mostly all we did was laugh while the cock kept falling off inside of me. Allison would try to work her hips, the tape would give and she fell on top of me over and again. We gave up on the dildo and just kissed and rubbed eachother’s tits. We were having fun, the way your first time should be. After my Dad threw Allison out the first thing he did was call the priest. Father Michael was the one who gave me a black eye, all my Dad did was scream.

I met Allison at the coffee shop she worked at. She was a senior when I was a sophomore. I talk as much shit about rural, conservative areas as anyone. But there are people who live in such places who are cool. Just like there are fucking idiots who live in the most progressive spaces. When I met Allison, when we scheduled our first date, I finally thought I could survive highschool. I spent the week before our date masturbating to thoughts of her slapping a dildo against my face, making myself cum thinking about the way her cum would taste.

I’ve avoided dating Catholics. I did go out with a girl in the Twin Cities who was still Catholic after coming out. The priests on campus weren’t that bad, she told me. She thought Pope Francis was a nice man. She didn’t understand why I wanted to fuck him up with a razor. I asked her why she thought things were getting better because Francis knows better than to give bad soundbites.

Sadly, Satanists aren’t much more fun. During my Junior year in college I spent some time with a Satanic Coven. One night we walked out to a lake wearing nothing but purple robes we sewed ourselves. We had to climb over a traffic barrier on a bridge and walk down a grass hill to get there. None of the cars driving by honked, no one even seemed to notice. These girls spoke their rituals in Latin. I’ve never understood why people think Latin is so Satanic. I mean, if your rituals were written by Roman Satanists from the fourth or fifth centuries, sure. Why not. But I don’t think Satanism should be so tied up to the Roman religion. Moving away from artifice would be a good tenant for contemporary Satanism. Feeling things with your intestines, learning to read the messages encoded in your shit, that’s where truth is. But I guess it’s also okay to want to feel sexy, to let someone spread your asshole wide the way a whore in Corinth would have.

But other than the ritualized group sex there wasn’t much else going on with their coven. Eventually I told them I thought LaVey was dangerous, his antipathy towards social activism dangerous. It’s fine if you’re in love with yourself but he isn’t trying to get people to fall in love with themselves, he’s trying to get people to fall in love with him. They told me I didn’t understand so I quit having sex with them.

My Mother dated a Satanist, once. He wasn’t so bad. The three of us came out here to the

River and ate lunch together once. He made these wonderful garlic and hummus sandwiches. I think he worked in a health food store or something. I thought of him later on when I read LaVey talk shit about people who shop at health food stores in the Devil’s Notebook.

We drank tea and ate his sandwiches and then he and my Mom went off to have sex in the bushes while I watched the water. I was so mad at my mother for fucking him while I had to sit by myself and wait for them to finish. Why could she have fun and not me? Why couldn’t I take someone from school behind the bushes and investigate them?

I did know enough not to tell my Father about the different people Mom fucked. I didn’t hate Mom, I was just jealous but still knew these are all things best kept hidden. Before my father had her institutionalized, one of my Mom’s other boyfriends gave me a hammer and a screw driver. He said tools are the instruments of curiosity. I used them to pull up a couple floor boards in my room. The same boyfriend gave me tapes from his old AV collections. I kept all of the horror films in the space I created underneath my bedroom floor. Last night when I snuck into my Dad’s house I pulled up the boards and they were still there.

VHS copies of Fulci, Bava, Rollin, Franco, Argento. Cinematic guides to perversions and the right questions to ask. Under the floor was also a tape I made of my Mom having sex with one of her girlfriends. When my Mom broke up with the AV boyfriend she stole abunch equipment from his car and then I stole it all from my mom. Late at night I would practice working the cameras and manipulating video on these old tape decks.

My Dad always worked the traditional first shift. When he was at work and I was at school my Mom usually had her partners come over to our house. When I filmed her it was summer. I was probably thirteen or fourteen. I didn’t hide the wireless camera very well, and I love my Mom, but she was never the most observant person in the word.

Last night, or I guess this morning, before I left my Dad’s house I plugged in an old VCR from the closet and watched the whole tape. My Mom looks great. She is propped up, sitting in a chair while her girlfriend slurps and sucks her. My Mother’s hair is long, her partner’s hair is the color green. They kiss, the green haired one uses her fingers to make my Mother cum.

I’m close to the Church and I’m looking forward to seeing Father Michael. I’m looking forward to the look on his face when he remembers me. Dad wouldn’t let me eat breakfast if I didn’t go to confession every Saturday. I didn’t have money to buy breakfast and lunch both at school. But if I was forced to go to confession, I wanted to have fun with it.

I started confessing things that I saw in porn videos. A friend and I were hanging out after school, walking around down town. Out of no where he jumped inside of a dumpster and after a second screamed, “Holy Fuck! There are a ton of fucking porn tapes in here!” At least half of the Where the Boys Aren’t series were in that dumpster. I started telling myself the things Janine Lindemulder and Dyanna Lauren and Jenteal did with eachother were things I also did, with the community college girls that worked at Target, with the older women who worked in the garage. Sometimes when I smell bad popcorn or gasoline I still get wet.

I made sure my Father knew it was me. He was just sitting in his fucking house alone, watching television. McDonalds wrappers on his kitchen table. I thought about him realizing he was hungry, driving to McDonalds, choosing what to order. I wondered if he ate his food in his car, if he was sad when he got back home because he already ate.

Sneaking in and out of my bedroom window is the first artform I ever perfected. I took my hammer and hit him first in his right shoulder, then in his left. He screamed and I hit him in each foot. He kept screaming and looked up at me and flailed so I punched him in the chest and he fell back. I smiled. I wanted to enjoy it.

I climbed on top of him, I wanted him to smell me. I punched him in his nose. I clawed at his face with my nails. He never even knew how many times Mom was raped inside the hospital. He visited her there just to make her suffer. He told her that he loved her, that she needed to get better for my sake if not for his.

I maintained my mount on top of him. I told my father one story that my Mother told me, how the night watch would flush her medicine down the toilet and tell the doctors she spit her pills in their face. Dad was about ready to give up. I punched him in his nose, again. I saw he had a cross on the wall and decided to improvise. I told myself to stay in control. I got up and grabbed the cross, I started sucking the tip of it. I wiped my ass with the long, wooden end. I stuck it in his mouth and pissed on my father. No one would find him for at least a day.

Father Michael will be found sooner, because people will look for him when he doesn’t show up for daily mass. And unless someone finds my dad sooner than I expect, I won’t be a suspect. I didn’t tell Mom my plan. I didn’t tell her she wouldn’t see me again. That would be too hard for both of us. And at this point, things are different. Most of the girls are raped and abused by the people who work at her hospital. My mother is a veteran of this system. She teaches the new patients things they need to know. She teaches them how to communicate, how to tell doctors what they want to hear. How to find friends once they get discharged, where to find good jobs that will keep them away from home or the books they needed to read while they spent their summers alone in their room at their parent’s house.

And besides, when she hears what happens to dad and father Michael, she’ll know. She’ll be questioned and won’t tell anyone anything. She’ll play the silent, mentally ill woman. She’ll be happy for me, proud. I’m an atheist but when I was in college a miracle happened. Her doctor let her take the bus to St. Paul and she spent a few days with me, in my apartment. We cooked dinner, we made salads, we drank wine and she met my current lovers. We traded stories. One night she went out and met some lovers of her own and I hung out at a coffee shop while they used my apartment. When I got back they were all curled up on my living room floor. I started to leave again but they all insisted I stay and watch a movie with them. I made a big pot of turmeric and ginger tea and we all got underneath blankets and opened my apartment windows and breathed the Midwestern October Air and watched Mario Bava’s film, Black Sunday.

The next day we were waiting for the bus and my Mother said, “Imagine that, Black Sunday coming out of you. It’s Mario Bava’s first film. Imagine writing your first book, making your first record and making Black Sunday.” She didn’t say anything after that. I told her goodbye when the bus came and she didn’t look back at me. I had on a black sweatshirt and purple leggings. My hair was down to the small of my back, my mother’s hair fell down on her shoulders.

God doesn’t understand justice and neither does Satan. Before my Father died he started crying. He was covered in blood, sobbing, and I knelt down and looked him in the eyes and said, “I’ve been waiting for this moment for so long.” I told him I dreamt about killing him while I slept, thought about it while I fucked. I told him I wished he had cancer and I could have came to his hospital every day to rip out his IV and whisper in his ear all of the pain he still hadn’t experienced from his chemo. But God isn’t real, Satan doesn’t answer prayers.

Father Michael is the only one in the Church. Back behind the altar he has a little office where he keeps his robes. Once in confession I told him that I had sex while ovulating. I described making the boy I was with eat my pussy, how I refused to kiss him after he was done. Father Michael took me back to this office and beat the shit out of me himself. He told me when he was first assigned here, fresh out of seminary, my mother confessed the exact same sin to him. He told me he still hadn’t got over the disgust he felt for her then. He said we must have had the same demon in us, a generational curse. He told me his only regret was that he wasn’t able to help my father lock me away in the same hospital my mother was in. He told me he was the one who convinced the judge to sign the papers my father brought him, signed by the loving husband and concerned family priest.

I told Father Michael it’s a terrible sin for a priest to break the seal of confession. He just beat me harder. I’m glad he’s back here, that this is where I find him. He doesn’t even turn around. He just assumes I’m there to ask about the schedule for Eucharistic ministry. He tells me he’ll be right with me. I close the door behind me and lock it. I hold my hammer in my hand and think of my Mother, I think about the joy she must have felt getting fucked at a time when she really wanted it, when she really needed it.

Human Consumption

Get lost is good advice, unless you take it too far.

The man behind the drugstore counter said we were standing in Michigan. I shook my head. I was sure I was in Canada. The friendly pharmacist said nope, no doubt about it, and told me to help myself to concentrated Bunn-O-Matic coffee and the remaining day-old doughnuts on a scalloped cardboard salver, if I was hungry.

The last truck driver said he was bound for Ottawa. The idea was to roll across The Border stashed in the back of the cab, asleep. I couldn’t remember getting off, so I must’ve had some assistance. Maybe I snore, or said something offensive about truckers in my sleep. Anyway, I woke up on a bus stop bench. A bus pulled up. The driver wheezed the door open and said get on I ain’t got all day.

“No thanks.” Canadian buses looked awfully familiar.

I thought it’d be a good career move to be an American who knows how to cook Mexican in Canada.

The drugstore manager couldn’t use a Mexican cook, but if I had a degree in Pharmacy, they needed a night man. He didn’t ask to see a framed diploma, but I didn’t want to lie to him.

There were no Mexican restaurants in Sault Ste. Marie. A more entrepreneurial Joe would’ve seen an opportunity. He’d do what needed to be done to turn a new tamale joint into a hot spot. The usual process is a cakewalk through municipal offices, fees paid, hands shaken, but liquor licenses entail organized crime. I’d been there already. Couldn’t do it.

So I thought I’d walk across the Canadian border.

On the way out of the country, I passed a funeral parlor. A woman, still alive, was on her way out too. Her hair was so red it became a traffic signal.

Not her natural color, she said. Nobody alive has hair this red.

She was on her way to bed after an all-night rush-job, a tough case, a murder victim, a local big-shot. The deceased had sustained massive shotgun damage to his face, but his survivors wanted their flesh-and-blood presentable for his last ride down Michigan Avenue. She had to glue down skin-shreds, reshape scattered eyebrows, mould mangled lips. The teeth were a relative snap, she said. Remove the ruins with pliers, snap in the one-size-fits-all-more-or-less-OK dentures. Nobody examines the dead the way they do horses.

Sanitation workers keep whatever they find. Morticians excavate gold teeth. Got to be somebenefits to jobs no one else wants to do. But I didn’t know Michigan’s Upper Peninsula was infested with gangsters. “Do they run unpasteurized cheese rackets?”

The red-headed mortician asked if I was a professional comedian. When I told her my area of specialization, she said I could make myself useful in the form of huevos rancheros. She had a car.

When we got to her place she said, “Back me up,” like we were rookie cops on TV. Her boyfriend Ern was in there, she said, and she wanted him out. She’d felt this way about him for a few months, but the right moment hadn’t come till right then.

At the door, she silently counted three and we went in.

“Sorry honey but it’s time for you to find your own place and maybe even get a job. Let me know where you settle and we can arrange the transfer of your…your louse-infested garbage, you drunken Indian.”

Her shrieks awoke Ern into what you could see in his eyes was a miserable hangover. He grabbed a potato chip bowl, vomited weakly and wiped his mouth on a hairy forearm instead of his sleeve because he was dressed in a T-shirt, a drab gray number, stained. Ern was missing crucial teeth. Grabby mortician treasure-pliers clanked like alligators in fantasyland while I observed a final domestic squabble in progress.

All I could think was, how long before she throws me out. And she hadn’t even formally invited me to move in yet.