You see,
back in those days we lived on the shady side of the street. I’m
convinced that was the problem. I
mean, nothing grew there. No grass. No flowers. No bushes. The trees
in our front yard were the size of
redwoods and sequoias, or close to it. According to our local herbologist,
they were the biggest firs in
the county. One of those suckers fell on our neighbor’s house
about two blocks away. Poor Mrs.
Huckleberry. I imagine she was crushed through the floorboards into
New Guinea somewhere.
Anyway,
my sister and I lived on that street. Our mother’s bachelor uncle
died and she inherited the
house without a hitch. What better way to use it, she said, than to
just let us kids live there? I don’t
know if she just wanted us out of her hair or what, but it didn’t
bother me either way. Since dad ran off
to Timbuktu with his young Peace Corp slut, Mom turned into a shell
of her former self. It made me sad.
So when I was eighteen, I moved in, and once Jill turned eighteen, she
did the same. Neither one of us
felt like going to college, so we didn’t. We had this house all
to ourselves. Aside from food and electricity, we lived for free. We
could afford to take a few years off. It felt good to just make new
roots anyway. I liked having both feet on the ground.
The first
few years sis and I got along smashingly. We’re not twins, but
I always thought we could be.
Neither one of us had “life partners,” so we spent a lot
of time together. Watching movies, drinking,
eating gourmet meals every day. I’d cook on Monday, Wednesday
and Friday, and she’d take the rest. One
thing Mom did do was teach us a thing or two about cooking. I’m
not kidding, the chef at La Cocina
Bonita told both Jill and I that we could be chefs without a day of
cooking school. Funny cause when I
was a kid I had pica. I ate straight from the sandbox every day. I ate
mud pies. I swallowed pebbles.
Bits of glass. My parents cured me with shock therapy. Now I can hardly
pick up a pebble without
cringing.
Anyway,
even though our jobs weren’t great to start off, we saved money.
Our mom gave us a bed, two old
couches, some throw rugs, and a table and chairs. What else did we need?
What could be better than
sharing your life with blood?
Well,
then the shit hit the fan. Jill was working as a cashier for Poe’s
Jewelry when this rich and famous
politician (I won’t mention names) came in one day. She bowled
him over with her beauty. From what she
told me later, this guy was wearing Gucci everything, and he wrote his
telephone number on the back of his
card in liquid gold. He bent over to her and whispered: “You just
won the lottery, baby.” He told
her as long as she knew him, she was set for life. I hated this politician
slime ball from the onset.
But then I’ve never adjusted well to change. I tend to be restless,
but only about my own life. While I
grow, everyone else should stay the same.
The next
day Jill quit her cashier’s job, and went onto the politician’s
payroll. Every Wednesday at ten
in the morning Mr. Politico’s helicopter would lower itself onto
our street, and his five hundred pound
nose-ringed bodyguard would pound on the door until Jill came out. When
I saw Jill slink out wearing a
silky peach blouse and a miniskirt the size of my hand, I just about
had a heart attack. I couldn’t
work all that day.
When
Jill came home late that evening, I confronted her. I told her that
there was no way I was putting
up with this every week. I told her that I would rather sell myself
into slavery than have my sister
become some rich man’s strumpet. I told her that I would strangle
the fat bodyguard and Mr. Politico both
if I ever saw them again. Do you know what she said to me?
“Learn
to live with it.” That’s it. Learn to live with it. She
lit a cigarette, and blew a cone of smoke into the air. Jill never smoked
before.
I stormed
out. No gourmet brother-sister meal that night. I went to a greasy spoon,
as if I was spiting
her by eating shit. Bolted down a hamburger and some fries, then promptly
puked both into the men’s room
sink. This was a time when I wish I could urinate. The shock therapy
evaporated most of my bladder.
Something to distract me from Jill’s mad rush to star-fuker-dom.
When
I crawled into bed that evening, Jill rolled over and asked why I was
so torn up over this.
“I
hated that cashier’s job. For one day a week, I will pull down
what I would make in twelve days at
Poe’s,” she said. And what I would make in a month at The
Pork Shack, I thought. Plus, I had to smell like
fried hog intestines.
“That’s
great,” I said. “I’m happy for you. I am.”
“You’re
just jealous, big bro,” Jill said, wrapping her arms around my
shoulders. She was trying to
tickle me with her fingernails. I could feel her perky breasts drill
into my back, though I know I was
not supposed to think about that. We’ve always been close.
Jill
said that Mr. Politico isn’t that bad, and that he is just lonely
from a life of empty speeches and
thin compensation.
“He’s
soulful,” she said.
“Wait,
I thought he was rich,” I said.
“He
is, but it’s the oil money,” she said. “You can’t
just become a politician. Get real.”
I became
too depressed to work. It was windy. It was drizzling. Even though The
Pork Shack called and
called and called for at least half an hour, I just couldn’t pull
myself out of my stupor. My depression
was marked with bouts of soup making, and feelings of emasculation,
and a general lack of appreciation. I
just felt like a used tissue. How could my little sister make more money
than me? How could I allow her
to become the personal jock assistant to Mr. Politico?
Even
my dreams became twisted and bizarre. I dreamt that Jill was a pig hunting
for truffles, and that I
was her handler. I dreamt that my feet turned into roots. I dreamt that
I couldn’t move from the spot
where I was planted. I dreamt a humungous flying insect made a nest
in my stomach. I dreamt of a giant
plate of sand, decorated with fringes of pebbles, glass, and a fine
layer of mud glazing. I dreamt I
had a top-secret job where men in black swooped down each Wednesday
to whisk me off to Texas for the day.
These dreams weren’t that out of the ordinary, but usually I wouldn’t
have so many consecutively, all in
one night.
I decided
to up the ante. I stormed into the living room where Jill was painting
her toenails with
licorice-scented nail polish. The aroma made me nauseous.
“If
you go off in that helicopter with him again,” I said. “I’m
going to crush your head in with a
baseball bat.”
I stared
at her, my fist shaking, my temple throbbing, my heart racing. I watched
her eyes
bug-out. She knew I had a temper. Her mouth sucked-in, and her body
corkscrewed. I could hear the
tree branches smack the roof as if we were under siege by a line of
catapults. Then I watched her shocked
expression fade, and a smile widen on her face, and she began to laugh
hysterically. She laughed for ten
minutes straight, turning beet red and knocking her nail polish over.
When she regained her composure,
she turned to me and said: “That was a good one. Do you want a
beer?”
“Sure,”
I said. “Sure.” I knew I couldn’t hurt Jill. I wanted
a hug.
Deflated,
I decided to fight fire with fire. It took me five minutes on the computer
to find my local
extremist-fringe-anti-government-militia chapter. It sounds made up,
but they called themselves “IHOP”: I
Hate Other People. The group was lead by a man who called himself “Bloody
Serpent.” I scribbled the IHOP
cave meeting in my weekly planner, right after the course I was taking
at the local nursery on “floral
arrangements for the bathroom.”
I thought
I would be intimidated when I entered the IHOP cave, but I didn’t
realize I would recognize so
many people. There was the children’s librarian. There was the
Salvation’s Army guy. There was my
mother. There was that guy who looks like Donald Rumsfeld. There was
the local car insurance salesman.
At the head of the cave (if caves have a head) was a skinny kid with
a pathetic scruffy beard who looked as
if he was skipping class down at the vocational school. He banged two
rocks together and attempted to
call the meeting to order in his squeaky little bark.
After
about fifteen minutes of blathering on about how we need to be mindful
of the influx of Zulus into
America, and how America is for Americans, yadda-yadda-yadda, the meeting
broke down to a general
free-for all. This is when I broached the subject of attempting to assassinate
Mr. Politico.
“What
is the son-of-a-bitch’s name?”
I didn’t
know. I didn’t know.
“I
just call him Mr. Politico,” I said. I felt like an idiot.
“Well,
when you find out his name, we might be able to help you,” said
Bloody Serpent. “And what’s your
name anyway?”
“Jack,”
I said. “You can call me Jack.”
Putting
a cap in Mr. Politico became my goal. My new life’s ambition.
I had an ambition. Can you believe
that? And just then I felt a strange pressure in my groin area. I had
to piss.
“Mom,”
I said. “I have to pee. I have to pee.”
She cocked
her head, tucked her wig hair behind her ear, and did a polite little
clap. Smile plastered on
my face, I ran out of the cave, and urinated into the weeds. The steam
rose in the cold air. For a moment
all was good again.
I had
a few friends. Things were changing for the better. The sun was coming
out. It is difficult to
tell what is true and what isn’t, but my own place in things was
becoming clear. When Mr. Politico was no
longer Jill would understand. She wouldn’t hold it against me.
She would be the first one to
congratulate me in our home together on the shady side of the street.