Sunday, September 30, 2007

THE WATERFIGHT                                                       M.E.Daley                                 (Posted, 9/24, updated 9/25/ never reproduced in Times 3 pt by my software, which I believe is called Userland. Though, who is the User and who is being Used is a matter of some conjecture.)       We were in Daryl's ratty pickup laying waste to the Southern Comfort.  We eased our backs against his big metal tool box while almost a whole bottle of SC went down our throats like warm honey.       Daryl needed to get me drunk so he could indulge his perversions on my heedless body, which is usually taut with hostility toward him.   I needed to get him drunk so he would fall asleep.  Show me a human being that hasn’t any needs and I’ll show you a body in a piney box.      Unmet needs are the reason I was swigging SC on a hot summer day with a man I loathe and despise. One of my needs is not to confront my needs, if you get the drift.  SC helps me deny that I am in denial.      Daryl took a big mouthful and the walnut lodged in his stringy throat went up and down like a yoyo.      The man had stretched out his legs all the way to the tailgate.  His ravaged jeans were worn thin as toilet paper, and his bare toes looked like pink worms.  His yellowed toenails were so long they curled under like those of the old ladies at the Home where I freelance when the felons who run it can flush me out.         They knew I was subversive, but, when desperate, hired me anyway. .  They knew I told my ladies to spit out the Haldol after the pill pusher left.    Hotshot doctors and their familiars will tell you that they can spot an Alz by his gait.  Oh really, Doctor Dear?   Did they walk funny before they took the Haldol?  What that drug does to a person is beyond disgust. A Haldol victim can’t tell where he ends and the world begins so he walks on eggs, careful to tippy toe around, and it’s called the typical Alz walk by fat doctors who walk like ducks to allow more room for their swollen prostates.      Daryl, envisioning a hard-on that was never to be, suggested we cool off in the house.  This meant going to his quarters in a basement that was not only cool, but damp as death.  His accoutrements amounted to a futon, bought second hand from an opium den, a rigged up shower, and porta-potty.   There were a few books on planks supported by bricks,  I’ll give him that.  A tattered red velvet curtain Daryl had salvaged from our decaying movie house separated his quarters from his mothers industrial-size washer and dryer and some desultory garden equipment.  Oh yes, I had been there before, and drunk before, too, but would never forget his décor.       We staggered in, and I went into a near swoon on the futon, but was able  to choke out, “No sex or I will kill you.”        The next thing I knew I was hit in the face with a vicious stream of water from the garden hose.  “When I said ‘cool off’ I meant cool off,” Daryl bellowed, cackling as he tried to run from me..  But I stopped him in his tracks.  From behind, I threw my arm around his neck like an iron bar—a move we used at the Home to detain fleeing old ladies.  I yanked his pants out from his desiccated body and aimed the nozzle at his crotch.  While he was clutching his wet pants I consolidated my hold and dragged him to the washer and stuffed him in it.       Drunk or sober, I am much stronger than Daryl from hoisting the old ladies, so holding him down and arranging his parts in the top loader and carefully winding his legs, like a rug, around the agitator blades to keep  the machine from going off balance was no big deal. I turned on the cold water, dribbled in a little detergent, and turned the dial to “regular wash.”          When he got out of the hospital, Daryl walked with only a slight limp that the doctor said would no doubt always be with him.  And the left side of his head was disturbingly flat from where they put in the steel plate.                          3:16:55 PM    comment []

THE WATERFIGHT                                               m.e. DALEY                         (The Reprint that never gets reprinted by my software)      Of course you are wondering, brows knitted—and you more emotional types still wringing your hands, and asking is that all there is?  Is this how the saga of  Daryl and that vicious bitch who put him in the top loader ends?  Up in the air like a New Yorker story, instead of neatly wrapped up with some kind of denoument.  I know that many are left unsatisfied and stuffing sugar.  So…       As it happens we had a drink not “sometime” as Daryl suggested, but the very next evening in a bar with the after work crowd from the place where Daryl got fired for having a flat head and a limp.  In the office memo they said Daryl had quit “to spend more time with his family.”  When will middle management rid itself of that cliché? It’s in a league with supposedly quitting to “spend more time gardening,” “seeing the Great Wall of China”, Why not “Making and marketing macramé for plant hangers,” or, ‘flying a kite” as colleagues may have suggested.      About the third drink, Daryl said he wished his head was rounded like normal people and that there’s an operation for it but he needed a donor.      I quizzed him relentlessly on what kind of op, and he allowed that the match up would need to donate some body fat to fill out the flatness.  Being able to think productively, I asked him if he had queried a few plastic surgeons about donating or selling the body fat they suctioned from bellies and asses and, if so, he ought to buy at least a pound of it.  Daryl said that would be useless because the fat would be all mixed up and there wouldn’t be a match.  My next question was for him to find out when a suctioning was scheduled, and offer to pay the doctor for only a pound of fresh fat from one of his porkers.   Well, the little fucker just raged at me:  “Those doctors are slobs,” he screamed, alerting the entire bar.  “They don’t change the suctioning device after every procedure.  As usual, you think I am some kind of reject who hasn’t considered all the possibilities. I’ve even considered asking for a slice at the morgue.”       At that, I playfully flicked beer foam in his face, and he responded by emptying his entire bottle of Coors over my head.  “Let’s not start that stuff again.  You know what happened" I said.       The upshot was I told him I would have myself tested as a donor, and if it worked, that I would supply the stuffing for his head.  I announced this without flinching for I knew chances were excellent that there would be no match. But it was important that I show some concern, right?  The poor man had no job and no prospects and had to sit with his  right side toward everyone. 3:04:19 PM    comment []