Oh Honestly, Erin

“Barbara.”

He said it with a strained tone, the kind of tone someone uses when they’re trying to downplay an arthritis flare-up. Barbara was growing accustomed to the taut, cold tinge plaguing Larry’s voice these days.

She guessed it was the stress of his job weighing down on him. Barbara didn’t turn around, didn’t stray her eyes from the cross-stitch in her lap.

“Barbara, do you love me?”

The tension was tighter now in his voice. It was never like that in the beginning, when Barbara loved Larry. He spoke with warmth and tenderness, back when Barbara loved him. She supposed there was still love there, as much love as there could be after thirteen years of marriage and countless bland dinners endured with the absense of words, scraping knifes and slurped milk serving as the soundtrack.

Her mother had taught her that you love your husband no matter how many shades of lip-prints you’re made to remove from his work shirts, no matter how many hotel receipts you pull from his pockets before washing.

“Barbara, answer me! Do. You. Love. Me.”

When was the last time they had said those words to each other, Barbara wondered. It used to  be the punctuation at the end of every phone call, the last words mumbled in bed after a long day. She supposed Larry knew, or at least suspected, of her long-going tryst with her boss. Barbara was never very good at lying. When she was fourteen, she stole a pack of Lucky Strikes from the gas station. Later that night, she couldn’t keep the corners of her mouth from curling up when her father asked her where she had gotten the money for it, as she crouched behind the shed in the backyard, a half-smoked cigarette dangling from her strawberry glossed lip, a handful of cherry Pop Rocks coagulating with the sweat of her palm. Barbara could still see the sticky cerise streak she slimed onto the sleeve of her denim jacket. Barbara could still see her mother in the laundry room, scrubbing the pink from the denim jacket, scrubbing the pink from her father’s work shirts.

“Barbara.”

Barbara, back when her mother had schooled her on marriage, never fathomed that it would be her lipstick on a man’s collar. Never imagined it would be her back rubbing against the scratchy wool of a brown and taupe highway motel comforter. Barbara’s mother told her about wives straying; it was always the husbands.

A shrill giggle purged from Larry’s throat just then, some kind of hysteric laughter reserved for a clown who leaves a child’s birthday party and returns to his basement apartment to feast on the thigh of his last victim. The giggle froze Barbara in her seat, the giggle made the cross stitch slide from Barbara’s knees.

“Barbara, look behind you.”

When Barbara was twelve, she went to a haunted house with some of her friends from school. She didn’t want to go, she remembered her friends needling away at her, calling her names and clucking their tongues, until she finally shrugged into her jacket and followed them out the door.

The haunted house was set up in the old school house and was being run by the YMCA.  Costumed volunteers with fake blood seeping from their eyes, noses, mouths exploded from corners and hidden holes in the walls. Barbara shuffled and stumbled her way through, grasping onto the shoulders of the person in front of her, when a hoarse voice whispered from behind her. “Look behind you.”  Later that night, sipping hot cocoa and hunkering beneath her jacket in the police station, Barbara learned that the figure she saw cloaked in a white sheet, concealing everything but a flaccid penis which was left wagging obscenely through a hole cut at the groin,  wasn’t even a YMCA volunteer, just some bindle stiff who had been making his rounds in their county. Probably was abused a lot as a boy, the police man attempted to reason.

“Look behind you, Barbara.”

Larry’s tone was hard, callous, his voice cracked when he said her name. She detected something more than anger in his command, something more like madness. Barbara wondered again if Larry knew, if the knowledge of her affair had him straddling the fringe of lunacy.

Something heavy and orb-like hit the ground next to her feet with a wet thud, spraying the carpet with a glistening red substance. It reminded her of that denim jacket she bought in ’87. The acid-washed jean jacket with the neon paint splattered across the back. A Rod Stewart pin gave the right shoulder flair, and she had had her mother sew a Debbie Gibson patch onto the breast of the jacket.  Teresa Oster tried to rip that patch off one day on the bus, in a fit of hair-tugging and face-scratching. Everyone knew that Teresa loved Chad Brown, but Chad loved Barbara and had even given her a jelly bracelet. That night, Barbara had found, in her jacket pocket, one of Teresa’s Lee Press On nails.

“Do you like your present, Barbara?”

The blood on the floor. There was blood on her floor. The blood from her lover’s severed head splashed so artfully across the carpet. It really does look like that denim jacket, Barbara mused out loud. That fucking denim jacket that I wore to that haunted house. Barbara laughed. That fucking haunted house.

“You’re next, Barbara.”

Barbara laughed even harder. She could taste briny rivulets trickling past her lips, wondered if her mascara was leaving streaks, and she laughed harder still. She was still laughing when the hatchet blade plunged into her head, like an hirsute cantoulope, shattering her skull with a sickening crunch. As she looked down at the crimson splashes on her cross stitching, she wondered what ever happened to that fucking denim jacket.

One plump lemon was thoughtfully procured by Eddie Orpik, whose live-in strumpet insisted that rubber ball gags tasted like her Uncle Herb’s sweaty taint.

Two lemons spotted with rot were unearthed from the bottom of the pile by Jamison Fitzshittery, who would eat them whole while sitting on the freshly covered graves of his recent slayings. 

Three ripe lemons were chosen by Jorge Martinez’s shaking hands, who would squeeze them into his mother’s favorite summer cóctel, a wishful attempt to soften the blow when he later reveals that he’s an el homo.

Four lemons were palmed by a paranoid window saleswoman, the curled rinds of which would be cautiously tucked inside the vents of her car to mask the lingering bouquet of marijuana.

Five lemons went into Mrs. Hunchsnatch’s basket, who was slowly luring her husband to his death bed with a panoply of meringue pies.

Seven lemons were plucked by Sasha Eltsin, who would pair them with oranges to create sacks of didactic citrus to unleash on the gulag unrulies.

Eight lemons filled Mother Bonnie’s basket, who planned on turning the tart fruits into sugared delicacies in order to capture ragtag boxcar kids for her signature stew.

When the sun set, the proprietor gathered the remaining bushel and turned it into fresh ambrosia for his wife, whose decomposing body slumped in a supine pile on a Laura Ashley bedspread. She always did like lemons in her ambrosia.

Boy was it going to be the best year ever for Trudy Stufflebean. 1962 and Trudy was a perky blond girl of 23, she was going to ride her big boobs and blazing white smile all the way to the big city. 1962 and she was finally about to bust out of small town living, leave her family’s hog farm in a cloud of dust as she sped off on the back of her boyfriend’s Harley, black leather seat stuffed intimately into her crotch.

It was the summer of 1962 and Trudy could picture this, the twilight Harley getaway, as she sat atop a duffel bag overstuffed with hot pants and tube tops, hair spray and romance novels to be read under the dim lamplight of salacious highway motels.

1962 was going to be the last year that Trudy waded around up to her thighs in mucous-y muck, refilling the slop in the pig pen while defending herself from horny hogs intent on dry-humping her legs. 1962 and Trudy was going to escape her father’s cracking leather belt and her mother’s swatting wooded spoon and the town drunk’s unzipping pants.

Trudy’s boyfriend Earl was going to come and rescue her, he was going to whisk her away on the back of his Harley and they were going to start a new life in Las Vegas. Earl was going to be a croupier and maybe do some tattoos with the handmade gun he fashioned to emblazon his biker gang with the flaming knife insignia he designed. Earl was proud of that design, he sketched it one day off the top of his head when he was waiting for his daddy to come home from prison.

And Trudy, she was going to be a show girl. She knew all about jutting out her pelvis to make the men in the front row lick their lips. She was looking forward to wearing a real headdress, after practicing for a month with her father’s prized deer antlers, making sure to replace them on the wall when she heard the crunch of his tires on the lane as he returned home from the bar.

That summer night of 1962, Trudy sat on the porch for three hours waiting for the headlights of Earl’s bike to peek over the hill. But Earl never came. He ran off with Holga Swanson instead, because she stole five grand from her lawyer daddy and they ditched his hog for her Mustang convertible. Plus, Holga would touch his asshole with her tongue and didn’t crinkle her nose at the skid marks on his underwear like Trudy always did.

It is now 2008 and Trudy Stufflebean, who has inherited her family’s pig farm, has lost the perk in her boobs and the sparkle of her teeth have been masked by a yellowed veneer. Trudy still reads romance novels but no longer struts around in makeshift headdresses. Trudy’s head still snaps when she hears the revving of a motorcycle engine in the distance, she cries when she sees flaming knives; Trudy is still morally opposed to salad tossing. Trudy makes supplemental income by traveling to Wal-Marts, K-marts and Big Lots in the Heartland where she instructs teen girls on tampon insertion and she warns of the horrors of pelvic inflammatory disease — the closest she’ll get to thrusting a sequin-swathed pelvis. Trudy no longer wears hot pants but she still has a camel toe.

Trudy Stufflebean goes home at the end of a long day to replenish the slop in the troughs. Sometimes, Trudy eats some slop too, and no longer cares when the horny hogs hump her leg.

(Photo courtesy of my friend Angie.)

It starts out slow, always slow, the thrum thrum thrum pulses rhythmically. A wrong turn, thrum thrum thrum. A gaggle of jaywalkers, thrum thrum thrum. A traffic jam en route to work and the gentle thrumming has exploded into a pounding heavy metal opera just inside the forehead. The vein swells and pulsates with aggressive vigor. Sweat glands along the hairline join hands and the forehead now glistens as it pulses. 

Around his stout neck, Benny’s date wears a paisley ascot in muted earth tones to hide the ligature marks. His thing, his dirty little secret, is auto-erotic asphyxiation. A coiled telephone cord usually does the trick. He speaks animately of summers in Bristol and his parent’s mattress factory and the titillating sensation of wearing pants too tight.

His name is Ponce.

Ponce does not notice that Benny’s temper is about to flare worse than the pants he used to wear in the fall of 1972 and Benny hopes to make it through at least one cup of orange tea before Ponce starts to realize that behind Benny’s flaccid stature is a writhing sociopath ready to blow over brick houses.

Benny’s cheese danish has still not arrived and he feels the old familiar thrum strum-strum-strumming of impatience’s gnarled fingers against his angry vein. He blots with the back of his thick and hairy palm, fans his neck with his thick hand-sausages.

I should get one of those to wrap around my head, hide the angry worm that undulates beneath my skin, Benny thinks as he eyes up Ponce’s silken ascot. With a quick flit of his hand, he self-consciously paws at the rivulets of perspiration sopping down his temples. Benny hopes Ponce won’t suspect that behind his nervously smiling countenance lies a percolating human decanter of vitriol and acidic impatience, a real hot head, they call him.

The last time Benny didn’t get the proper danish at a cafe, he tossed the waitress onto the grill and gave the owner a Mexican necktie. Not today, not today, I’m on a date. Benny coaxed himself silently, breathing evenly past his thickly capped teeth.

But the sizzling track light, paired with the tardy danish, has quickly turned Benny’s face into a flush sheath of moist flesh. Benny swats at the drizzling sweat with his napkin. No one knows, he encourages himself. No one knows I’m a hot head.

Ponce talks about his chess club and his favorite mug crafted from hardened lava and is that your sweat plunking onto the table?

No, it’s coming from the waterlogged tile in the ceiling. And Ponce resumes talking about riding bareback on his prized gelding.

Benny hates the way Ponce’s tongue darts across his lips each time he pauses between sentences. Benny strains to maintain aloof. Don’t let him see you’re a hot head, Benny. Don’t let anyone see. Benny quickly glances around the room. No one is looking at him. No one knows.

Where’s that fucking danish? Thrum thrum thrum.

Ponce tugs at his ascot. It’s stuffy in here, let’s leave, he suggests. Benny blows a tuft of sweaty hair away from his brow and his chest caves with relief. Another minute under that track light waiting for his cheese danish and a gasket would have been blown.

No one here has to know I’m short-fused, Benny is happy to think.

At a nearby table, two women giggle at the sight of Benny’s broiling dome, not yet cooled from the harrowing brush with bad lighting and bad service. "He must be a real hot head," the one woman chortles to the other in a thick Southern drawl. Benny hears this as he and Ponce loop arms and walk past. Benny slows to a halt and stares at the women. His left nostril flares slightly.

But Benny leaves the coffee shop still thinking no one knows —  Benny only speaks French.