Hyena (2 page)

She scampers like a midget. But she’s too tall to be a midget.

Hell naw!

I’m fucking a dwarf, a tall-ass dwarf. Shit’s got me fucked-up.

I had a midget on my bucket list, but that was just talk.

Now I finally got one, and I don’t know what to do with it. I always thought I’d be prepared for this, but I got hit out of nowhere with a surprise dwarf while rolling my balls off.

I’m sitting there buck naked on the carpet, eyeballs twitching, teeth grinding, and I’m getting all emotional. Thinking, Goddamn, you’re doing ecstasy with midgets. This is fucking crazy, man. What are you gonna do? Don’t say nothing to her, you don’t wanna hurt her feelings. It’s not her fault she’s a dwarf. She’s just playing the hand she was dealt.

Then I start thinking about people doing the best they can with what they got, motherfuckers running marathons on prosthetic
legs, the little old man at the bus stop with threadbare clothes but he’s clean and they’re tucked in and I damn near well up.

Life is beautiful.

The toilet flushes.

She waddles back into the room, kisses me on the mouth,
and lays down next to me real dwarflike.

Ain’t shit to do but finish what we started. I pop another pill and give her one, too. We fuck until my dick doesn’t work, so I pop another Viagra and fuck her some more. Hard as I can.

WE DIDN’T HAVE JEWS IN
my neighborhood growing up. I didn’t think about them one way or another. My auntie was the housekeeper for some; I never met ’em. We weren’t allowed in the house, but they’d give us hand-me-downs and that was pretty cool.

When I came to LA, I used to cuss out the Hasidic ones. These motherfuckers would jaywalk a caravan of strollers across the street right in front of the car and not have the decency to even look up.

They’d do that shit to me and I’d holler out the window, “You’re welcome, bitch!”

And they’d still ignore me.

My best friend Andrea’s ex-husband was Jewish, so she was always riding for Israel and shit. She’d be in the passenger seat ducking down, shushing me.

“Jude!”

“What?”

“You sound anti-Semitic.”

“I’m not anti-Semitic, I fucked tons of Jewish chicks.”

“Jude, you’ll fuck anything with a hole. That doesn’t count.”

And I’d be like, “They’re jaywalking all up in front of the car like they own the place and don’t even fucking wave.”

Then she’d say, “Black people do that, and you don’t get mad at them.”

“Well yeah, they walk slow as hell, but that’s cuz they got an inferiority complex. They think by having me wait at the light that’s gonna make up for the sixties. And at least they acknowledge you. They’ll stare you down. These Jewish cats pretend you don’t even exist! Fuck that! Lose your little I’m-better-than-you God-chose-me attitude you Jewish motherfuckers!”

She’d just shake her head and say, “Anti-Semite.”

We’d go round and round about it all the way to Bed Bath & Beyond.

But that’s all I thought about the Jews. That I liked fucking the chicks, the Hasidic ones were assholes, and whatever I learned from the Anne Frank movie.

When I got to New York and got the job at Sirius, I was at some club with a few of the bosses and a couple of ’em come over to me. One of ’em puts his arm around me, all chummy with this shit-eating grin, and he says under his breath, “Welcome, welcome. It’s good to see we got another member of the Tribe here.”

I say, “What?”

So he says it louder with a nod: “It’s good to have another member of the Tribe here.”

I’m confused. I don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about.

I say, “Member of the Tribe? What tribe you talkin’ bout?”

He goes, “The Jewish tribe; you’re the Rude Jew, aren’t you?”

I say, “Nah I’m Rude Jude, J-U-D-E. My folks were Catholic, my dad’s Italian. I’m not Jewish.”

And he doesn’t say anything; he just takes his arm from around my shoulder and they all disperse.

They ain’t say shit else to me for the rest of the day.

Who the fuck does that? I don’t run up on Italians with some secret handshake.

I got it into my head that there was some secret Jewish club going on. As the weeks went by I noticed that damn near all my bosses were Jewish. Yom Kippur, there’d be fucking tumbleweeds rolling through upper management’s office cuz nobody was there. The percentages don’t add up. How the fuck does a group of motherfuckers who represent 2 percent of the population in America represent 90 percent of my bosses? Jewish nepotism.

I’m looking at these cats bitter as hell, like, “How you get this job?” This goes on for years. I’m busting my ass, watching our stock prices fall, and these cats keep their jobs. I’m looking at dudes collecting paychecks and I don’t even know what the fuck they do and I’m mad. I get this anger in me, this resentment.

One night, I’m out with these motherfuckers and some other manager cats and they’re all Jewish and doing business with each other with their nice watches. Fuck these dudes. I like ’em, but I don’t respect what the fuck they do and I’m jealous that they’re doing better than me. I leave.

At the crib, I’m trying to unwind. It’s one in the morning. I got work the next day but I’m like, “Fuck it, I’ma do some Whip-Its.”

I got a box of nitrous cartridges, a cracker, and a punchy balloon. I’m doing four Whip-Its at a time. I’m sucking it down, passing out, coming to. I decide I’m gonna jerk off and catch a nut while the wah-wah-wahs are going on in my head. I’m out of lotion, I get the olive oil, I got my pants around my ankles, I’m looking at Internet porn, trying to find the perfect scene, trying to time it just right.

I find one. She’s got a fat ass, she’s blowing him. I’m staring at her ass, watching her head bob up and down. I hit the balloon, the wah-wah-wahs come, I’m jerkin’, I bust.

That was the shit.

I’m leaning back in my chair. Pants down, dress shirt on, I got a shriveled balloon in my left hand, semen’s on my right. Enjoy the moment. I barely soak it in, look to my left, and there’s four more Whip-Its in the box. Let’s go. I kick off my pants, wipe myself down with my boxers, throw on some music, and get to filling that balloon.

I start hitting it, Smashing Pumpkins is on; “1979,” that’s my shit. I’m breathing in ’n’ out on the balloon, in and out. I sound like Darth Vader. I’m thinking about my bosses and how
they’re all richer than me and how come? Do they deserve it? I’m thinking about the Jew Club of insiders and how they look out for each other and I’m like, Fuck them dudes. And the wah-wah-wahs are coming but I still just keep breathing it in and my head goes fuzzy and I’m dreaming and I’m playing out scenarios from the day in my head for what feels like hours and I keep sucking in that gas and there’s a thud.

I come to. I hear Billy Corgan singing, “Weeee don’t even care, as restless as we are. . . .”

I’m facedown on my JCPenney shag carpet and it hits me. I bet them Jewish motherfuckers aren’t facedown in the carpet, naked from the waist down, dick covered with olive oil, passed out from nitrous on a school night. My mouth tastes like metal, my stomach’s rotten. I get up, go to the bathroom, and puke.

I WAS DRIVING WITH MY
dad in his Chevette when he decided to have the sex talk with me. On the way to my mom’s, we just drove past Old Perch Road when he turns down the radio, looks over at me, and says all solemn, “Jude.”

I’m thinking I’m in trouble for something. I look at him back, I say, “Yeah?”

“Do you know what cunnilingus is?”

I didn’t want to have a sex talk. I already knew about sex from health class and from stealing dirty magazines from Merle, our downstairs neighbor. He was on welfare; he’d lie in his bed all day smoking weed and reading sci-fi novels. He had a long stick he used to change the channels from his bed. He’d poke at the TV with it when he wanted to see something different.

When he’d run up to the gas station for smokes, I’d walk into his apartment and steal the
Playboy
s and
Hustler
s and take ’em back upstairs to beat off.

I knew where the dick went, how babies were made. I was fourteen. This wasn’t the fifties when motherfuckers believed in storks.

My dad’s doing this shit he does with his face when he tries to look sincere, this half frown with puppy-dog eyes.

“Jude. Do you know what cunnilingus is?”

“Naw, what’s cunnilingus?”

He says, “When a man loves a woman very much, he takes her into the bedroom and puts his mouth on her vagina, and he licks it with his tongue.”

I look at him disgusted. “Eating pussy? Hell naw! I’m not putting my face where some fucking bitch bleeds out of once a month! That’s fucking gross.”

At the time I really felt like this. I had never even touched a pussy, so the idea of eating one seemed daunting. Plus, I grew up with black kids and eating pussy was some bitch shit.

My dad keeps pressing, “No, Jude, listen to me. The ladies love when you go down on them. You lick their clitoris till they go fucking crazy and cum.” And he sticks out his tongue and he touches his nose. “See?” He used to do that a lot.

I tell him, “I don’t care what the fuck they do, I ain’t eating no pussy.”

He says, “You will.”

I say, “I won’t.”

He says, “Oh you’re gonna eat pussy. You’re gonna lick it clean.”

“Look, Pop, I’m not eatin’ no motherfuckin’ pussy—chill out with that shit!”

And he stares at me and I’m glaring back and he turns his head. We drive in silence for a while and I’m grateful.

It was tight quarters in the Chevette. My shoulder touched his shoulder and both our shoulders touched the window. My pop’s a big-ass Italian from Leominster, Massachusetts. He says “cah” instead of “car” and “bah” instead of “bar” and he claims he knows people in the Mob. He was always telling stories about Porky Valeri getting his hand smashed to bits with a ball-peen hammer and how his buddies took some Puerto Rican into the mountains, shoved a funnel in his ass, poured battery acid in it, and then threw him down the hill.

He was always talking about how he coulda been in the Mob but he decided to go straight. So that’s why we’re having this sex talk wedged into his rusted-out, piece-of-shit Chevette. Taking me from his shitty one-bedroom apartment where we lived to another piece-of-shit apartment, where I lived with my mom, because he decided to go straight.

“Jude.”

“What, man?”

“Do you know what anilingus is?”

“Don’t even tell me.”

“That’s when if you love a woman very, very much, like how I loved ya motha, you take her in the bathroom, wash her up real good, and get her squeaky clean. Then you lay her down on the bed on her stomach and you lick her asshole. You spread her cheeks and you tongue her asshole. I used to do it to your motha all the time, she couldn’t get enough of it, it’d drive her nuts. Make sure you get her nice and squeaky clean,
though; you don’t wanna get shit in your mouth because the fecal matter’ll make you sick. That’s what the Vietcong did in ’Nam: they dipped spikes in shit and buried them in pits and set up booby traps to kill soldiers. They’d get these puncture wounds with shit in ’em and it’d fester. . . .”

I sat there in silence staring at the trees out the window while he went on about ’Nam and eating my mom’s ass. He was always talking about fucking my mom. Poor guy, never did get over losing her.

I’VE HIT A NEW LOW.
I got my phone in one hand, my dick in the other. I’m in bed jerking off to chicks drinking urine. Regular porn doesn’t cut it anymore. It’ll only get worse. It might be an elephant dick tomorrow. Let me just take care of this fucking thing, beat it to submission, then I can face the day.

It’s better than jerking off to old sex with my ex-girlfriend. That’s no way to start the morning, with some brokenhearted shame nut.

Then I’m thinking about her all day, thinking it’s Julie every time I see a brunette from a distance with full hips. Waiting for her to turn around, walking faster to see her face, follow her for a block or two, just to talk to her, what are you gonna say? Nothing. Wrong person. Never mind.

I wonder if she sees ghosts, too.

I rub the cum on my belly and wait for it to dry before I throw the covers back on. The phone’s on my side with the movie still playing, this chick lapping up piss out of the bowl.

I WAS LOOKING TO MEET
a chick who played backgammon in my area, so I posted an ad for it on Craigslist. I kept it straightforward yet vague. That way if she was cute, I could try and fuck her, and if she was ugly, we’d just play the game and I could try and fuck her friends.

It read something like this:

Backgammon Anyone?

do you love playing backgammon? me too! Looking for new people to play backgammon with. i hope to start a club. please contact me if you’re interested. i’m located in the Hollywood area.

I might as well have written, “Hi I’m Jude, I’m on suicide watch, sometimes I wake up crying.”

I genuinely love the game; it’s poetic, it mirrors life. You can do everything right, but you get one wrong roll and lose in
the end. But over time the better player will come out on top if you just keep playing. When I put out the ad, I thought that women might find this hobby quirky and charming. They don’t. It’s about as quirky and charming to chicks as a captain’s hat and a corncob pipe.