To the River

Outside, the sun keeps climbing higher everyday.  In the mornings, there she is, staring at me.  I try staring back, but Dr. Phleps said if I keep on doing that I’ll go blind.  He’s lucky he still has his nads.  And in the evening, there she is again, just staring at me, like I don’t belong or something.  Like my words are weird.  So I screw up my face and give her some real weird words, and she is all the better for it.

Last night at the laundromat, the Wash ‘n Go, I had some time to ponder my station, and although I’m not proud, I bemoaned it.  Some man sat staring at me, at my twirling whites, at my disgrace, and if I could have mustered my gumption, I would have sent him to his maker.  Not the sun, mind you.  Not all of us are that way.  Some of us like the moon, or the moorn as Flaccid Jim used to say.  He didn’t last beyond his 24th year.  And it’s no wonder, with strange words like those.  I’d be on the other side of the grass now, too, if it weren’t for my keen eye, or eyes, if you ask me (but not everyone).

Yes, there are a lot of wandering eyes out there, and sometimes they catch upon your curly hairs.  By the river?  Well, I’m not proud.  I just enjoy a clean bunghole.  A clean beard.  Never has so little a thing wrought so much havoc in my face.  Fraisy, the whoor, she says, cut off your beard, or I will rip it off.  The only thing you’ll be ripping off, I reply, are my pantaloons.  Now drop and give me twenty.   But she could nary do one.   She gave up half way and bemoaned her own station.  Not that I hadn’t heard that before.  Some men like it I suppose.  Not me.  I prefer wailing myself.  It sounds a little like washing, and I don’t believe they are dissimilar.  Fraisy says, stop that wailing, so I just glare at her.

There is only one way out of the brothel, and that is through the window.  And they build the windows high there.  And the shrubbery which breaks your fall is sparse, at best.  It is not uncommon to see the townsfolk bemoaning their broken or twisted ankles, wibbling and wobbling around in the mud.  Of course, some men are doing that for their own pleasure, and at times it is difficult to differentiate from the two.  Nothing a little gun shot won’t help.  Nothing like a few bangorangs to separate the fakers from the realies.

And from the brothel, on such nights as these, there is only one direction, and it’s into the hills.  What’s that in your bag, asks Fraisy, as I ready myself for the jump out.  That is my animal mask, I reply.  I made it from real animals.  She is not as impressed as I’d like her to be, but isn’t that always the case?  She wants her men to never wail.  Well, she is a whoor after all.  Here, she says, take some of these pancakes with you.  I traded them for the last of my perfume.  She reaches into her pocket and pulls out some crumpled old pancakes and shoves them into my bag.  I suspect she just wants to be rid of them, since the bugs have started circling again, and she is weary of them.  I thought I smelled something funny, I tell her.  She can’t smell a thing from all the coke she’s done.  She’s burned a hole clear through her cartilage.  Some people have poor life choices, I guess.  Not me, I know where the water is and that’s where I’m going.