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Jason woke up to the sound of his alarm clock, which had been going off for almost two hours, blaring in his ear. Woke up, or - closer to the truth - regained consciousness, in a bed soaked with what appeared to be (& smelled of) a mixture of sweat, gin, marijuana seeds, bong water & urine. Around him lie the evidence. The thermostat had been slammed into & pushed up to 87. A Gilbey's bottle lie shattered in front of his dresser. A makeshift bong made out of an old Stroh's can lie overturned at the foot of the bed. The only thing he couldn't figure out was the piss smell. His pants were, aside from a butt-crack sweat stain, relatively dry. "I'll kill that filthy whore," he muttered to himself as he snapped the used condom off his half-hard-with-morning-wood cock. What seems like galaxies ago, i had met a man who kept a trampoline set up in his backyard. Every once in a while he'd go out back & bounce - just to stay balanced. He had a job selling copy machines to small businesses. On weekends he was a rodeo clown at various rodeos & county fairs in the tri-state area. Balance, balance, balance. It was all about balance. That was, of course, until his wife was gang-raped & stabbed to death & his seven year old son was beat to death with a bat by a group of local hoodlums while he was out getting "balanced". I spent the rest of my shift twiddling my thumbs & eating neatly pre-packaged, ready-to-serve Smores. Sales had been slow in the morning & stalled to a stagnant whine by late afternoon. The thunderstorm & ensuing golf ball-sized hail had something to do with the present Slow, but the sad truth was that nobody much wanted Oriental rugs anymore. Or at least not OUR Oriental rugs. I shifted lazily past The Boss, who was sitting at his desk with his back to the showroom, pretending to talk business on a dead phone line. I inched to the dock, took out a Pall Mall & lit it up. The smoke soothed my lungs, but my heart was still pounding. I knew that Ray wanted his money by Friday night, i knew i would be alone in the store Thursday night & i also knew enough to throw away the slip of paper upon which i had written the latest combination to the safe in The Chief's office (it gets changed every Saturday morning). Quite frankly, i could handle Ray. The Boss, however, was a different story. If my four years in the French Foreign Legion taught me anything, it was to never fuck with a man who is willing to dive headfirst into the Oriental rug business. Bookies may break bones, but men like that will do things much, much worse. He became a famous author/poet. He gained commercial success even despite the critical acclaim. Gays clung to his ever printed word as though it was Holy Scripture. And he hated them. Not for being gay, not because he was a bigot or a homophobe. And not even cos he was famous & they weren't. He hated them because they bugged the shit out of him. He had had so many conversations with them, signed so many autographs, talked with so many right in the middle of eating dinner, took so many photos just trying to walk to the store. The thought of gay sex repulsed him. He found men disgusting physically (& never really thought about it much beyond the physical realm... emotions, personality). This is not to say he thought it was wrong. "Different strokes for different folks," as Sly once said. Quite frankly, he never even understood how women could be attracted to men. Fine for them, just, "not my bag." Of course, when some New York City faggot starts hitting on him in a club, he's gotta smile, shake the guy's hand, say, "No thanks, man," & just walk away. He can't tell the guy to go fuck himself. To, "Suck my dick, faggot. I've got a fucking WIFE. The only ass i eat or fuck is my WIFE'S ass. It's cool that you're gay, it really is. You like to slam hairy, man ass... have your balls slap against another man's ass, perineum & balls. And that's cool, truly it is. Hell, i even thought about takin' some dick back in the day, but i'm just not interested, okay? Now, get the FUCK! And get the hell out of my face." The man shuffled into the library, mumbling to himself as he always did. And, per usual, he dug into the pocket of his tattered jeans, pulling his hand out full of change, mostly pennies & dimes. He did this every time he walked into the library. No one was really sure why. It's not as if there was anything to actually buy there, with maybe the exception of copies. But what would he need with that? He couldn't write... &, actually, could barely read. He didn't go to the library to read, however. Mostly, he just liked to flip through the magazines, picking out the most colorful ones, looking at pictures of things he would never do & places he would never go. Luckily, for him, this never got him down. Quite frankly, he was too dumb to realize any of this. After an hour or so of alternately looking at pictures & gazing up in a leering fashion at the ever-increasingly uncomfortable librarians, he would shuffle over to the Reference Section & sit across from Larry for about a half an hour. Larry was an older man, an ex-drunk-turned-crazy veteran of no particular war who spent much of his days at the library searching the encyclopedias for hidden messages from Soupy Sales regarding the Communists he was sure were, at any moment, going to invade his tiny Burg & use it as their command HQ for their upcoming invasion of the rest of the country. He would moan & groan at his findings. Percy waited at the bus station. She never arrived. Percy sulked back to his 2 room trailer apartment ship. Fourteen years he had waited. She promised. Of course, she'd promised before. But this was different. He heard something different in her voice this time. Maybe it was just the static of the pay phone... but it was a risk he was willing to take. Marvin was a broken man. He took things too seriously. He was a Carni, for Christ's sake - how serious could life get? Been working the Tilt-A-Whirl for seven years. Started smoking again when Alice left. She said he was a loser. Goin' nowhere, doin' nothin'. She was right, but it still hurt. He took an odd solace in the fact that she was out whoring around already. She obviously didn't really care for him. She didn't understand. Some un-thought-of complexity. But how complex can a Carni get? The booze followed, but it just made him sick. Wanted to start a habit but didn't know how. Bought a $10 whore to "gain an edge," but ended up just watching her play Solitaire for an hour. She had a tear-drop tattoo & a scar on her throat. He lied about it the next day. Made up some ass-sex story like the ones he read in the skin mags. Then he caught the Syph from a toilet seat & died on a Tuesday. Only four people showed up to see him buried. Two of them just to go through his pockets. The Carnival moved on. The fog rolled in. Sammy took one last drag on his cigarette before dropping the butt & stepping on it. "Where the hell is she?" Ellen was 20 minutes late... again. This was always the most un-nerving time for Sammy. He'd gotten to the library an hour before she was supposed to meet him there. He did this every time, even though he knew she was never early. In fact, she was always late. But Sammy never started to worry until after 20 minutes. |