Dear Life, You Suck (3 page)

“Them crappy old ones are a cinch to pinch.” Grubs drags his sleeve across his mouth. “There ain’t nobody ever lurking around that dusty corner.”

“Good for me.”

“What the frig is Monty Python?”

“You ain’t never seen it?”

“Nah,” Grubs says, pushing himself off the couch. “Pop it in and I’ll roll us a fresh one.”

I eject the Stooges and slip in
Monty Python
.

Grubs hits Play on his stereo and “Smokin’ in the Boys Room” by Brownsville Station starts up. He air-strums when the guitar riff twangs in. Grubs dresses like a seventies heavy metal rocker. He looks a little like Steven Tyler from Aerosmith, but maybe I just think that on account of his long stringy hair.

I plunk my boots on the shipping crate coffee table and look around while the video rewinds. The faint glow from a lamppost outside illuminates the shadowy space. There are magazine photos of hot rods and hot babes taped to the plywood walls, and the particleboard ceiling has a giant stain in the center. The sofa smells mildewy, like the inside of a tent. The room reminds me of a place I have no interest in remembering.

I lean forward to click Play on the VCR and catch a glimpse of my face in Grubs’s coke mirror. My scar looks flat and black. It changes color under different light, like it’s alive. Like a chameleon. In direct sunlight, it’s puffy and pink. Under the school fluorescents, it’s deep and red. It’s shaped like a tall, skinny X and runs down the right side of my face from my eyebrow to my chin. The crevices are deep and round, as if someone scooped out slivers of skin with a tiny spoon. Maybe Grubs is right and I should get it inked. At least that would disguise it.

Grubs plunks down on the sofa and fires up the joint he just rolled. It crackles and snaps and wafts wispy swirls of sweet escape in my direction.

He passes it to me and I take a long suck on the freedom stick.

“So what’s this Mountain Python thing anyway?” he asks. “A fucking documentary or something?”

“
Monty
Python. It’s a comedy group from the seventies. Right up your alley, era-wise.” The skit starts and I parrot the lines word for word in my best British accent.

“Don’t come here with that posh talk, you nasty, stuck-up twit.”

“‘Oh, thank you,’ says the great queen like a la-di-dah poofta.”

Grubs is laughing like crazy. Not at Monty Python—at me. “That’s friggin’ awesome, dude. Where’d you learn to talk that shit?”

“From dee telly, mate.”

Grubs slaps his knee and chugs his beer.

“Me crack-whore mumsy plunked me young arse in front of dee telly fer hours and hours whiles she strutted ’er ax-wound up and down Keelumbus Avenue, looking to cream dudes’ knickers for a block of rock.”

Grubs stumbles to the refrigerator for another beer.

“Yuse sure gots dee wanky, wanky giggle fits, ya divvy dog,” I say as he falls onto the sofa, laughing.

We watch some more skits, and Grubs cracks up at my Cockney gibberish.

After
Python,
I throw in
Rebel Without a Cause,
but Grubs falls asleep before James Dean is even arrested. I grab my bag and head for the door. As it squeaks open, Grubs wakes up.

“Don’t forget, we’ve got collecting tomorrow night,” he growls.

I nod and pull the door closed behind me.

I get home from Grubs’s around one A.M. and sneak up the fire escape to my room. I’m the only kid at the Prison with his own room. Of course, I’m the only seventeen-year-old at the Prison too.

Two years ago, Mother Mary liberated the attic for me as my own personal nomad pad. It used to be packed to the rafters with a million cardboard boxes stuffed with tragic tales of the ugly and unwanted. But the newly appointed fire marshal—who looked about nineteen—was doing annual inspections and told her she had to clear out all the boxes on account of they were a fire hazard.

The timing was perfect, because Mother Mary Makeamends was in the middle of pumping her skull muscle for a primo punishment for my pummeling of a brown-toothed redneck who had pushed Bernie, a chubby Little One, down a flight of stairs. The tumble bruised Bernie’s face up and busted his glasses. Seeing his busted eyeglasses bothered me more than seeing busted Bernie, though. Ain’t that an itchy pair of husky irregulars? There was just something about Bernie’s hand-me-down spectacles getting twisted and smashed that made me lose it. I popped the greasy douchebag in the head a few times and hurled his unshowered ass down the same staircase. Asked him if he still thought it was funny to push a helpless kid down a flight of stairs. He didn’t answer.

Mother Mary made me empty the attic as penance. After my millionth trip to the basement with my millionth box, I was staring at the old wood beams and tree- trunk columns and saying to Mother Mary how cool it must have been to be a builder back before there was electricity on account of how rewarding it must feel to look at something you built with nothing but muscle and mind. I guess something about me being enamored by the workmanship pinpricked in her the notion of letting me hang my hat up here. She was scratching her chin, going
Hmm
-
hmm
-
hmmmm,
and after about the hundredth
Hmmmm
she said I could move in once she got it renovated all modern and white and plasticized and
blaaaahhhh,
and I said
aaaahhhh
what a shame it would be to cover up all this nifty knobby craftsmanship, and so she let me move in as soon as I slaughtered all the dust bunnies that had taken up residence.

Man, I had a severe case of the Christmas jollies for I don’t know how long after plunking my mattress down on this creaky floor. The coolest thing was that I was finally alone. After fifteen years of being held hostage in tiny rooms with screaming adults and screaming orphans, I finally had my own room.

I grab a pen and notebook and climb back out onto the fire escape. The view of the ocean is splendiferous. I spend more time out here than in the room. Sometimes I lie out here for hours, gazing at the stars and the moon and listening to the waves roll at me from God knows where, and sometimes being on this steel magic carpet makes it seem like things could be okay. But something always crashes the carpet—like a rainstorm or the sun rising or Mother Mary yelling, “Cricket, plunger!”—and I remember it’s nothing more than a precarious fire escape attached to a precarious Prison attached to a precarious life.

I figure I might as well get started on my five-hundred-word essay for Mother Mary. Since it’s also going to Sister Elizabeth and Monsignor Dobry, I intend to make it extra juicy. I tap my pen on my chin. I need an ultra-sacred topic to debase.
Ahh, I’ve got it
. The Virgin Mary. Nothing more sacred than that pristine hoo-ha. I fire up a joint, take a nice long toke, and start scribbling and sniggering.

The Inaccurate Deception
By Cricket Cherpin

There’s more to the Virgin Mary story than meets the
vagina
eye. I mean, if there is a God, and He created LIFE, and He created PEOPLE, then He created SEX. Check it out—God was the first porn addict. He was peekabooing Adam and Eve snake charming each other’s slippery figs. He gazed upon the sticky canoodle and said, It is GOOD!

So, if God created Paradise Spice, why’d the Bible scribblers flip it into Paradise Vice? How the hell else are these one-God wonders supposed to continue begetting rugrats onto God’s List of Favorites? I mean, why’d the Bible writers say knocking sandals was bad when God said it was good? Why wouldn’t God want His precious offspring squeezing through a contaminated wombikins when He was the One Who invented the
modus contaminatious
in the first place? It doesn’t make sense.

Personally, I think it all happened way different from what the Bible says. You can read all about it in Cricket’s First Letter to the Cynicalians.

Here’s a preview.

It ain’t no secret that Roman soldiers shacked up with Jew broads all the time way back when. Heck, the Jews were hunkering on leased land with a temporary travel visa anyhow. The Romans let them slaughter up a kosher kebab now and then, but it wasn’t like they were free or anything. And they sure as hell weren’t the most popular chosen ones on the block.

Now, I don’t know if these throwdowns were date rape or if the unsatisfied cream churners were taking donkey rides to the cheating side of town, but it doesn’t really matter. It is what it is. All I’m saying is, it’s pretty likely more than a few Jewish ladies filled their days polishing Roman swords, if you catch my meaning. But heck, can you blame them? Power’s a horny-toading aphrodisiac. Always was and always will be.

Besides, compared to their yes-sirring, commandment-following, beanie-wearing boyfriends, those long-scabbarded warmongers had to be some smoking hot love-kebabs.

It’s not that far-fetched when you think about it. Same crap goes on nowadays. The rich rulers screwing the poor servants. I mean, these soldier dudes could make your life a living hell or they could make things comfy-cozy. Why wouldn’t a Jew chick chutzpah a soldier’s knish?

The soldier would be like, Okay, Esther, here’s the deal. I can whip you silly for half an hour or you can invite me in for a tasty bit of love-falafel.

Ummmm, the whip, please, sir.

Gimme a break.

So here’s my angelic theory. Mary had a hot and heavy roll in the manger hay with the rough-and-tumble Roman warrior Stiffus Maximus while she was engaged to doughy Joey. No big thing, right? Joey was probably banging the daughter of some Saddjuicy he was building a DVD cabinet for anyway. But Mary was irresponsible. She didn’t insist on Soldier Boy slipping on the ol’ llama skin before they whoopsadaisied, and: Shazam! An unleavened bun in the oven.

So Mary finds herself in quite the kosher pickle. She can tell the truth and be outcast forever and maybe even stoned to death, or she can transmogrify her titillacious transgression into a God-injected miracle, and all it’s gonna take is a little white lie.

Oh my goodness, Joey, this floaty, dreamboaty angelicious cherub slipped a magical roofie into my goat’s milk and diddled me a ripe prophecy square in the burning bush.

And what could Joey say? He hadn’t caught her in the act with her hand in the nookie jar. That would have been a little more difficult to explain.

That wasn’t a Roman soldier, my love. I was milking our bull.

And Joey wasn’t the only one who gobbled up that tasty Whopper with secret sauce. The whole damn world fell for it.

Imagine a dude trying that nowadays with his old lady.

No, sweetums, this ain’t stripper glitter. It’s angel dust.

Yeah, right.

The following morning, I’m in the front seat of the Prison van again with Mother Mary. Groundings don’t apply when there’s God’s work to do. My ears are still ringing from the thirty-minute tongue lashing she gave me on blasphemy and religious tolerance. I guess typing up and emailing her my Virgin Mary dissertation from the Prison computer in the middle of the night while still under the herbalicious influence of my spiritual mentor, Buddha Bambalacha, wasn’t the smartest idea I’ve ever had. Wait till she finds out I also emailed copies to Sister Elizabeth and Monsignor Dobry. Mount St. Mary is gonna erupt big-time.

Mother Mary is driving rationally today due to delicate cargo. Eight Little Ones and one Big One (a fellow nun). The Little Ones are squawking like crows on a dumpster, and I can tell their giggling and jiggling is grinding on Mother Mary’s last nerve. Her face is red like a stick of dynamite.

I flip around and jam my head between the seats. “Don’t mess with Mother Mary, fellas! This ain’t her first time at the rodeo.”

They gawk at me and clam up pronto.

Mother Mary relaxes her death grip on the steering wheel and flashes me a sideways smirk. “You do a very good Faye Dunaway, Cricket.”

“Thank you, Mother Mommie Dearest.”

Mother Mary chuckles.

I’m embarrassed to admit where we’re going, but I might as well on account of we’ll be there in a few min-utes. Prison kids get their clothes at the Salvation Army.

It ain’t as bad as it sounds. The only time it really frosts my jewels is when the donation dumpster is overloaded, ’cause it reminds me that I’m stepping out in other people’s garbage. This probably sounds whiny, but it kinda makes ya feel like a piece of trash when you see a pant leg from your future wardrobe dangling out of a Hefty Cinch Sak on the side of the road.

The worst part is that the store is conveniently located dead-ass in the middle of Main Street. I mean, why not string up a few Hollywood spotlights and blast some big band music from the rooftop while you’re at it. And do you think Mother Mary Makeafoolofus would ever consider driving around back and using the rear entrance? Hell, no. Climbing out of that overloaded van with its giant Orphans-R-Us insignia on the side is a prime Saturday-morning fundraising photo op. Mother Mary Moolah intentionally sashays our Raggedy Andy asses up and down the concrete catwalk to drum up donations and bake sale volunteers. People gawk at us like we’re wearing orange jumpsuits and might break free from our chains and pillage the village. Man, it sucks.

The enormous red and white sign comes into view. As do the bright orange cones reserving our parking spot. Jesus, you’d think we were escorting Madonna to a Rodeo Drive boutique. The Little Ones start bouncing and squealing and elbowing each other in the ribs. They don’t realize this ain’t Nordstrom for Orphans.