Snapshots of Modern Love (12 page)
Read Snapshots of Modern Love Online
Authors: Jose Rodriguez
There is an early morning cinnamon sky to the east that casts a soft glow in the far away snow on Pikes Peak. Ken sits at the break fast nook and faces the mountains, another world so distant and different from his house. He may as well be looking at a Martian landscape. His jaws chew his cereal with listless determination. Crunch. Crunch. The noise fills the inside of his head but cannot drown his thoughts.
Thinking about last night makes him both angry and ashamed. Being rejected off hand by Helen felt like a back handed slap on his face, and his cheek still burns. Anger and shame, he swings in and out between both mind states, not sure where to stop the maddening pendulum.
How naive he had been, trying to patch up things with his wife by walking into the bedroom naked with a stiffy standing ready between his legs. Had she laughed and refused, or had she got mad and refused, that he could have handled, but the mute and disgusted look she gave him, the look she would have used if a sewer creature covered in refuse had walked into the bedroom, dripping scum and stinking to heaven, that look, that he couldn’ t swallow. Her obvious revulsion turned his stiffy into an instant floppy. The way she had turned her back to him and had hidden under the blankets had buried his hopes for a truce and reconciliation.
They had been unfounded hopes from the beginning but his stubborn and misguided optimism had chosen to ignore what now was rather obvious:Helen, the mother of his son, revolted at the idea of him touching her.
Crunch. Crunch.
Seconds turn into minutes and cereal goes down his mouth but Ken still cannot figure out how or when or where things had started to turn bad. It had not been something you could circle on a calendar. There was no turning moment, no key event, no relevant flash of memory; things had just turned into shit as fresh snow melts under the morning sun, and Ken knew that he cannot recreate snow from a muddy spot on the ground. What was gone was gone forever.
Helen came into the kitchen and started opening and closing drawers in search of her breakfast, without saying a word to Ken. He keeps on eating, watching her ignoring him. A kernel of hatefulness inside him starts to heave and expand. His rib cage feels the pressure growing from the inside, the hate trying to sip out from between his ribs. His head tries to simmer down the rising emotions that are making his hand shake and the cereal spill back in the bowl.
This struggle is not new to Ken but today it is different because he doesn’ t want the common sense in his head to suppress the ugliness that is brewing inside him. There is a time to take it and there is a time to give it and today Ken feels like it is his time to let it out, to let that thing inside him explode and screw Helen and everything else.
His spoon drops in the bowl with a clank that splatters milk over the counter top. He pushes the bowl away from him and its contents spill out.
“ Helen!” he says aloud. “ I’ m tired of this crap!”
Helen says nothing, her back still to him, bending over and looking for something inside a cabinet.
“ God damned! Do you hear me or are you playing dumb?” Ken’ s voice is now a yell. Helen stands upright and turns to him. Her eyes are welled up with tears, and she cries when she answers.
“ I hear you. I hear you and I’ m also tired of this life.”
She runs upstairs to the master bedroom and slams the door shut.
Ken remains sitting at the nook, disgusted with himself and Helen and the world. He is not running after Helen. To do what? To say what?That he’ s sorry? Bullshit. He can hear Helen sobbing. Probably is his fucking fault that things had turned to shit; he doesn’ t know how or when or where but somehow the blame is his but he doesn’ t know how to fix things. Love cannot be rekindled like a stove after the fire is extinguished.
After their young love had died under the subtle but constant beating of boredom, they should have remained friends and stayed together for the sake of giving each other company in their old age, but instead of becoming used to each other like tired feet and old worn out shoes do with each other, they came to see themselves as a disagreeable strangers living under the same roof.. Something had gone wrong and Ken cannot figure out what.
Ken tires of thinking about it. He grabs his keys and cell phone and heads out for the garage. He spins tires on the way out of the drive and sees his suburban home getting smaller in his rear view mirror.
He has to unlock one of his rental homes for a crew to replace the carpet. The last renter and their dogs left a mess. Ain’ t that funny, he thinks, his life is falling to pieces and a fucking pissed on carpet is the only excuse he has to keep on living.
Glyn ejaculates and Debbie feels his thrust pushing her high and keeping her up there, like if she were bucking a wild horse. After the orgasmic wave passes a panting Debbie gets out of bed, stands upon her one leg and hops to the bathroom to clean herself up. With each jump a few drops of semen hit the floor. Debbie is thankful that of all the crappy jobs she has had, she never had to work as a motel maid.
She comes back to bed refreshed and lays next to a tired Glyn whose still swollen but now soft penis drips on the sheets. He’ s smiling from ear to ear. She reaches over his body and grabs her cigarette pack from the night stand.
“ That’ s number seven, if I’ m counting right, ” says Glynn poking fun at Debbie.
“ Fuck it, ” says Debbie. “ I got to smoke after a good hump.”
“ Them things are gonna kill you, you know that.”
“ Honey, screwing like a rabbit is gonna kill me. Don’ t blame the smokes.”
“ Yeah, lung cancer is now a side effect from fucking too much.” Glyn laughs and the roar fills the room. He rubs Debbie’ s little breasts in a playful way.
“ How many girlfriends do you have Glyn?Asks Debbie. “ I’ m curious.”
“ You’ re the only one babe. Nobody else but you.” Glyn tries to talk with a straight face but cannot hold it and ends up giving Debbie a boyish smile.
“ You’ re so full of it, ” says Debbie, her hand resting on Glyn’ s big and dark belly. “ You’ r eprobably screwing half the women in your church plus the whole choir.”
Glyn looks at the ceiling and sighs. He’ s thinking about something, taking his time.
“ No church pussy for me. Too much gossip and too much trouble, ” he says in a half serious tone. “ Plus my wife goes to church with me, and the kids.”
Debbie tries to picture the happy and devoted family in their Sunday’ s best. The picture in her head doesn’ t look right. Her hand slides down to his crotch and grabs his penis and starts to stroke it.
“ Oh poor thing, look at him, so devoted and concerned for the missus and the little ones, ” says Debbie, mocking Glyn.
“ Hey, I have my standards.” He puts his hands behind his head and spreads his legs with a satisfied face. After a short pause he starts talking again. “ I got a few girl friends, you know, nothing serious, here and there, now and then.”
“ Are they any good?” asks Debbie. She looks at him with a pretty smile and her dimples. Her hand is still working on his member, now rather swollen and fighting to get hard.
“ Nothing like you honey. You’ re the best fuck in this town, and I mean it.” And he did.
“ What about you?” asks Glyn. “ You must have a truck load of boyfriends.”
Debbie thinks hard. Boyfriends? What is a boyfriend? Glyn is a fucking friend, literally speaking. She shakes the tree of her memory to see if any boyfriends fall down like mangoes, but nothing comes down. Ex-husbands are easy to pinpoint because there used to be a marriage certificate at the bottom of some drawer and city hall had a copy of it too. They cannot be called boyfriends. Boyfriends, are they paying johns? Are they the bloodsuckers in search of pussy and a free lunch she always had a hard time getting rid off? Was Ken a boyfriend?
Standing on that sidewalk in Dallas and watching him drive away, that had hurt. The money in her hands didn’ t mean a thing. That was the money she had used to get high and drunk and buy the car she used to kill that woman. Great good had that fucking money done. The tears that had rolled down her face, those Ken never saw in his view mirror. Like he was gonna give a damn because she was crying. Nobody ever gave a damn. But she didn’ t and she doesn’ t blame him. Who wants to be the boyfriend of a whore and a junkie?
“ Debbie ...?” asks Glyn. “ You’ re too quiet.”
Debbie bends over his waist and puts his almost erected member in her mouth and starts to give him fellatio in a furious way, squeezing hard and making him moan. A whore, of course she is a whore, always been and always will be, that is the nature of the beast, she thinks, that’ s her lot in life, to please men for a few bucks or for a few hours of company, what’ s the difference?
She is sucking so hard that Glyn starts to moan in pain more than in pleasure.
“ Wow!” he shouts. “ You’ re gonna bite it off!”
Debbie stops, his large and swollen member is gagging her. She pulls it out of her mouth and looks at him over his belly. There are tears in her eyes.
“ Debbie, what’ s wrong babe? asks a surprised Glyn. Debbie shakes her head and says, “ Nothing.”
“ Did I say anything I shouldn’ t”
“ Oh, no. It’ s not your fault. It just me, being messed up tonite.” Debbie wipes her face clean.“ I’ m sorry.”
“ Come here, ” says Glyn patting the spot next to him on the bed. “ Sit next to me.” Debbie obeys. He makes her put her head on his big chest.
“ Now, there you are, cry like a baby‘ cause you got a shoulder to cry into.”
And Debbie did.
Billy exits the Colorado’ s Department of Correction’ s van that brought him to Colfax Avenue in downtown Denver. He is greeted by sunshine and people walking without name tags on their shirts. His personal things are in a small night bag and the prison walls are miles behind in Cañ on City. Prison overcrowding and the fact that he was not serving time for a violent crime let him out before he had served one third of his sentence. Life as a parolee in a halfway house is sweeter than behind bars.
Billy has heard all the sad stories in jail, of how they didn’ t look for trouble but trouble found them. Yeah, right, thinks Billy. He likes trouble, he lives for it. He doesn’ t want to stay out of trouble; he just wants to get away with it. He walks to a pay phone and makes a couple of calls. Trouble has started to stir.
Me sleeping alone in the guest room has relieved some of the household tension between Helen and I. Sharing a bed had been for appearances, to fool ourselves and the world that we were part of a dysfunctional but still standing marriage, with physical contact being the occasional and accidental rubbing of backsides. We watch TV together and now and then make small comments about what comes through the tube while sitting on opposite sides of the couch. We are like the Japanese and avoid looking at each other.
This ain' t married life, or much of a life at all, but it' s all we have. It sounds so easy to say it: get a divorce. All undone in a swift moment and happiness recovered, just like returning unsatisfactory merchandise for a cash return. The true is, I don' t have the balls to go through it, and she doesn' t either. So we watch TV like strangers sitting in a lounge. Dinner time is fast and monosyllabic, if we happen to be at the house at the same time to share a meal. I work long hours on purpose so I don' t have to go home, and she finds excuses to spend time visiting relatives to do the same.
My biggest fear is the shame of calling my son and telling him that his mother and I are going to split. Maybe it is the Catholic in me, or the thought of soiling the memory of my dad' s steadfast loyalty to my mother, a loyalty unperturbed by her death. He kept his love for her until the day he died and I' m sure that his last thought on this earth was one of bliss, knowing that he would soon see her face on the other side.
The old man was old school. He believed in that until death do us apart bit, and beyond. I don' t know what the hell I' m or what I believe in. But the shame is there, having to admit that the last twenty years of my life are a flop, a monumental family failure. My business, the Harley, the big truck, the big house, fuck all that, I failed at being a good husband to my wife, the most elementary of things. This thought of self incrimination comes with a side dish of blame towards Helen; after all, it takes two to make a marriage work. I don' t want to dwell on whose fault it is because it serves no purpose.
The marriage has a broken leg and there it lies in the dust in silent agony and I cannot bring myself to put it out of its misery with a point blank divorce. I' m not sure about Helen' s reasons for putting up with this life. Any other wife would already have run to a lawyer to get her half of the pie. What is she waiting for? Frumpy she, the years have not been kind to her figure, and I have to admit it, She is as dull as anybody can be. Maybe she is afraid of getting fatter and older alone and me sitting on the opposite side of the couch gives her a sense of security. Maybe it is her inability to make a living. The woman has never held a job in her life because I, the provider, have always put food on the table and paid for everything.
But something is gonna give; it has to. This ain' t living right. Either we fix this marriage or we bail out but right now we are standing on no man' s land, exposed and afraid and worried, frozen by our own doubts and inaction. This cannot go on forever.
"Marriage counseling," I said aloud. We are watching
Everybody Loves Raymond
. I don' t look at her. I just blurt the words out, let them fly out there like a pigeon. After along pause she speaks from her side of the couch, without looking at me.
"Do you have one in mind?"
"No one in particular. There should be a few in the book."
After another long pause she answers.
"Ok."
And that is how it comes that we are now seeing a shrink.
Billy parks the clunker he has borrowed from his buddy outside the Night Owl, back end to the wall, just in case he has to hit the road in a hurry. Billy doesn' t shy away from trouble but he has been around long enough to understand that there is no need to make things harder than they have to be.
He sits at the darkest corner of the bar with his back to the wall and waits for the waitress to come by. There is no chance that his parole officer is going to see him in this joint; the place is too low life for such an upright citizen to show his ugly face here. The waitress comes by and he orders a Bud. Nice ass.
Through the smoke from other patrons and his own he keeps a watch on the bar counter. An old hag with bad hair is tending bar tonight. There is a big black dude cracking jokes and a few other losers sitting at the bar, laughing, probably the regulars ' cause they look too relaxed, like if they were watching TV in their living rooms and scratching their balls. Billy cannot relax. His jail mindset still runs through him, the natural mistrust of anybody and everybody. Even at the halfway house he sleeps with an eye open.
Where is that bitch, Debbie? he asks himself. His info is good. The ex works at this joint. Billy wants to talk to her, wants to get laid. The fact that she got a divorce after his conviction means nothing to him. It is up to him to decide when she has had enough of him, not the other way around. What was the little one-legged cunt thinking? Does she believe she can just dump him like a dried up dog turd and watch him crumble into dust and be blown away by the breeze?Fuck her. He came to get what was his.
His beer is gone and no Debbie yet. The nice ass waitress stops by his table.
"Another one?" she asks when she picks his empty.
"Is Debbie working tonight?"
"No. She' s off."
"Oh," says Billy. "I don' t need another one. I better hit the road."
"You know her?"
"Sure I do," he says. His smile is more of a sneer. "She knows me too."
Nice Ass says nothing. She can feel that the guy is up to no good, and she is happy when his back disappears through the door. She makes a mental note to tell Debbie, just in case he' s some wacko but by tomorrow she won' t remember to tell her anything.
The bastard left a dime for a tip.