Sweet Lord, have mercy! Tha' chile's been at it again!

Well, I have been at it again. For some reason, I've got a spark under my ass and an itch to write, so that's what I've been doing with myself lately. I'll post what I've got done so far in installments. There's no title for the collective body of work yet, just working titles for the sections. I don't know how long this inspiration will last, but I hope I won't sputter out like I usually do so that I can say that I finished this. Constructive criticism is always welcome, but I honestly don't care if anyone likes this. I'm writing it for me. But plagiarize this, and you will find out exactly what happened to Jimmy Hoffa. And I'll swallow your soul. That is not a threat, it is a promise. And I keep my promises. 

So without further ado, here it is...

In Dogma We Trust, All Others Pay Cash

I’m just drivin’ nails in my coffin
Every time I drink a bottle of booze
I’m drivin’ nails in my coffin
Lord, I’m drivin’ those nails over you. 
--Those Darlins, “Drivin’ Nails in My Coffin”

There we were, all gathered together again:  another gathering of the “Brat Pack.” I don’t know how we were ever bestowed such a clichéd moniker, especially since we were all children of the flannel-and-grunge 1990s, not the androgyny-and-synth-pop 1980s, but however we got it, it had stuck. Like stink on shit.

A mournful tune began to bellow on the funeral home’s cheesy 1970s Hammond organ. Across an aisle of chairs to my right, a young woman began to wail pathetically while a dour, obviously soused middle-aged female creature resembling more of a squat toad-like thing than a human being hiccupped slightly and dabbed at tears that were clearly not present at the corners of red-vined squints that were supposedly eyes.

The toad woman may have been attractive in her long-gone youth, but age, hard liquor, and lush living had not been kind to her. The wailing one was clearly a ridiculously tall and slow-witted, equally idle version of her mother, but despite her gaudy and ill-conceived Gucci dress (more appropriate at a dance club than a funeral, it was), you had to give her credit:  her emotion was genuine. Which was more than what you could say for Mrs. Toad.

Yes, Mrs. Toad was—I hate to say it, really—almost dolefully gleeful that her son was dead. She’d never loved him--not really, not like she loved her half-wit daughter--and was not really not even bothering to pretend she felt the least little bit of anything at her son’s untimely passing.

Which was why we, the “Brat Pack,” had gathered at Morely’s Funeral Home that day:  to give Micah a showing. To let him know that, though we’d done a real shit job of showing it in life, we cared. That someone cared.

There wasn’t a big crowd there, just me, Micah’s best friend Ethan, Micah’s old roommate Ted, Jake, Lizzie, and Micah’s sister and mother. His old man, the one person whose love he had wanted the most, couldn’t be bothered to be pried away from his daily golf game to attend his own son’s funeral apparently.

“Jesus, you’d’a thought the old fuckwad would’ve made an appearance,” I muttered under my breath to no one in particular. Jake glared at me from the corners of his piercing blue eyes and put his finger to his lips in an obvious signal for me to hush up.

“Eh, fuck you,” I muttered as I jabbed my sharp little left elbow into his ribs as hard as I could without being noticed. He sucked in his breath painfully and somewhat audibly and turned to glare deeply into my eyes.

I glared right back. He perpetually pissed me off, and I was mad at the world anyway at that moment, so I was ready for a knock-down, drag-out, no-holds-barred fisticuffs sort of altercation with anyone that day.

Not that Jake had the balls to try anything like that with me:  Misogynistic as he was, he was a real pussy when it came to strong, hot-tempered women like me. That’s probably why the only women he felt truly comfortable around were scantily clad, drugged up, and grinding for measly dollar bills in his lap at places with names like “Lipstick Lounge” and “Kitty Kat Klub.”

Jake rubbed his side and turned back to the think-accented officiant.

Christ, why the rent-a-reverend? I wondered. Micah was an atheist!

The whole funeral service was a farce and in such bad taste and so antithetical to who Micah was and what he truly stood for that it made the bile reach my lips. It also made my blood boil. If I had been raised in a barn, I’d’a gone over to his mother and confronted her right then and there, but I decided that some fights will just never be worth it.

Micah was the sad result of a perpetual lack of love and phenomenally bad parenting—hell, I’m the product of irresponsible breeding and equally lackluster parenting, but I at least knew love as a child—so I really felt for him. To never know genuine love from anyone—anyone—in your whole life—well, no wonder he became the sad sack of neuroses and bottomless pit of needs and wants that he was, constantly chasing one high after another with a crash and then putting a Sisyphusian effort into trying to claw his way out of the dark bowels of despair until that day--the day he had his final overdose.

Not that his kidneys and liver were going to hold out much longer with the way he chased bourbon with tequila with red wine with Coors Light and mouthwash before 7 a.m. And all before 30.

It was hard to wrap your mind around. So brilliant, so troubled. Dead before 30.

Ethan, though vacant-eyed and silent, was moved beyond comprehension. He was probably the only person who ever truly gave a damn about Micah—the only person who probably ever truly loved him and loved him like a twin brother—or perhaps even a second half of himself—and I could tell he was truly heartbroken. He’d never be a whole person again, and that bothered me. It truly bothered me.

It didn’t help that in order to get Ethan out of his house, we’d—Lizzie and I—had had to physically drag his blacked-out ass out of bed, throw him into an ice-cold shower, slap the shit out of him until he came partially out of his drunken stupor, and dress him reasonably for his friend’s funeral.

After we got him in the car and he woke up enough to speak somewhat coherently and he realized where we were going, Ethan had tried to leap out of the back seat of Lizzie’s Subaru while we were doing highway speeds until I pushed a generous handful of my Xanax tablets his way and gave him a half-empty bottle of Jack I’d found in Lizzie’s glove box. I’d thrown in a couple of vicodins, too, just for good measure—and to get him to calm the fuck down.

After all that, Ethan was still standing, but you could tell he’d never smile again. Hence the vacant look:  It’s the look of a man who’s lost a major part of his soul, a man who will be haunted for time immemorial.

I don’t ever want to see that look on anyone ever again.

Frankly, I was surprised that Ted and Jake even bothered to show up. Ted’s usually so coked up these days that there’s no telling up from down with him. Jake probably showed up to drive the final nail into Micah’s coffin, a final dose of comeuppance that could never be comeupped in return:  he’s a spiteful fucker that way. Lizzie, well, she was there because she’s always had a thing for Ethan—not that Ethan’s ever noticed.

I was there because, well, I pitied the poor bastard being so poorly eulogized that day.

I pitied him.

I hate saying it.

I hate thinking it.

Pity to me means condescension, that you feel like you’re better than the other person in some way, and I’ve never really considered myself better than anyone. I’m just another plain Jane outta the trailer park in Buttfuck Rural Southwestern Michigan. I’m not smarter or prettier or nicer than anyone else—just run-of-the-mill average. Spit in any direction in my hometown and you’ll find half a dozen just like me.

But, Jesus, I pitied Micah. He really could’ve been something.

Micah was that rare combination of things that everyone wants to be:  astonishing good looks, dazzling charm, phenomenal talent, and driving, but not ruthless, ambition. And money. He was mad money.

All of that made his ending up as friends with the rest of our ragamuffin group of slightly-domesticated Dickensian street urchins a bit of a conundrum to the outside world. But it was our total lack of pretention that probably initially drew him in. We weren’t really significant in the grand scheme of humanity and history, but we were genuine. To a fault. And that was something his mommy’s and daddy’s money and his Harvard and UCLA Film School educations and his casting agent and his powerful inside connections couldn’t get him, ever:  genuine human emotion.

Micah’s light had burned so brightly. I think that’s why it had to fizzle out so soon.

The little-better-than-storefront preacher droned on. I basically tuned him out by staring intently at the beads of sweat sliding silently down his portly bald head.

I was only briefly interrupted from my uncomfortable, vigilant reverie by Jake wincing and rubbing his ribs where I’d landed the blow earlier. Christ, if Micah could bring the tragedy, Jake could bring the melodrama. I turned and shot him my “Bitch, please!” look and then went back to staring at the minister’s sweatiness.

Ted sniffled slightly behind me. I shot him a look that could kill. I knew he was just as bored as the rest of us (with the exception of Micah’s mom—no one could match her level of boredom ever from here to kingdom come), but he should have at least bothered to pretend to not be a raging, incoherent cokehead for at least one hour of his life. Or at least done a better job at pretending not to be the next one to be following in Micah’s irreversible footsteps.

Finally, the preacher concluded his generic remarks. Ashes to ashes and all that bullshit. Worm food. We all end up as worm food.

Lizzie and I discreetly helped an unsteady Ethan to his staggering feet. Ted and Jake had already started towards the doors of the funeral home when a thin, whiny, tear-choked voice recalled us all to the decorum required of the situation.

“Um, thank you for coming,” stuttered Micah’s rail-thin, stringy-haired, pathetically mousy (and clearly bereaved) sister Evangeline.

I smiled as warmly as I could.

“We were friends of Micah’s,” I said quietly. “We’re sorry for your loss.”

Micah’s mother started to roll her eyes but then became conscious of the fact that the gazes of five people were resting upon her countenance. She cleared her throat loudly.

“We’re having the funeral dinner at the Washtenaba,” she said brusquely. “You’re all welcome to come.”

Her voice, crackled and deepened by years of chain smoking, had all the warmth of a drill sergeant’s at a military training camp. It was like she was daring us to show up. I gladly accepted her challenge on behalf of the group.

“We’ll be happy to come.”

We piled into our respective vehicles and drove the few short miles to the local hole-in-the-wall restaurant. This was really starting to stick in my craw. Micah really hated this place, but only because he could afford better. The rest of us only ate her occasionally out of collective local habit. It was the nicest dining experience in our small town, but that didn’t mean we had to like it. Or disavow our tired antipathy towards it.

But Micah wouldn’t have been caught dead here. I suppose, then, that it was only fitting that we commemorated his demise at the place he had so mercilessly ridiculed in life. The Washtenaba got the last laugh.

We took our seats at a large round table in the restaurant’s private room. Micah’s rotund mother ordered enough food for herself and a set of twins she was clearly not capable of expecting any more:  New York flank steak, stuffed baked potato with extra sour cream, a chef salad, a bowl of minestrone soup, a slice of the house’s ultra-decadent seven-layer German chocolate cake, and two bottles of the house’s most expensive burgundy.

The rest of us made much smaller demands of the kitchen and bar:  Jake ordered a top-shelf scotch on the rocks (douchey), Lizzie requested a side salad with light French dressing, Evangeline put in for a small cup of mashed russet potatoes, Ted ordered a Jager bomb (typical Ted, really), I asked for a house brew beer and a piece of turtle cheesecake, and since Ethan was still too numbly dazed to talk, I ordered a Jack and coke for him. After a funeral like that for a friend who he had loved so dearly, I figured the least I could do to help him was put booze in front of him—that would surely snap him out of his stunned mutism, if only to puke.

We sat in awkward, solemn silence in the dim and musty room until the food arrived. Micah’s mother devoured her food and drink like she’d never eaten before and would never eat again. The rest of us sat quietly, vaguely picking at our food and swallowing our sorrows quickly.

A second round of drinks wasn’t ordered after the conclusion of the first. We sat somberly and pensively, some of us absent-mindedly playing with our phones, some of us staring almost ashamedly at the floor, none of daring to utter a word against the smacking and gnashing and chewing being done at Micah’s mother’s side of the table, not even to reminisce about or toast our fresh-in-the-grave friend.

After another ten minutes or so of oppressive silence pierced only with the staccato sounds of primal gluttony, I rose from the table. I could stand it no more. The others took this as their cue to leave.

I didn’t feel right leaving just yet—well, okay, I really needed to take a hit of smack—so I made my way to the ladies’ room.

Once inside the dank and poorly lit confines of the bathroom, which had clearly last been decorated in the 1970s, I walked over to cracked double vanity sinks and looked deeply at my reflection in the grimy, gaudily gilt-edged mirror above them.

I looked like hell. Pure and utter hell. The lines I get around my mouth when I set my jaw and grind my teeth had reappeared after a prolonged absence, and my eyes were puffy and bloodshot. My black eye liner had smeared somewhat and my eyelashes had matted together in uneven clumps, but that wasn’t the cause of the dark hollows beneath the windows to my soul.

I hadn’t cried, had I? I certainly don’t remember crying or fighting the urge to. Hell, I didn’t really consider myself that close to Micah, so why would I have even come close to shedding tears? All I had ever felt towards Micah was pity and a big empty—surely I couldn’t have been crying.

I splashed water on my face, sighed, and prepped my syringe. I tightened a belt around my upper arm, looked around for a suitable vein, and steadied my slightly trembling hand.

I wanted it so bad I could actually taste it.

I inhaled deeply.

A poke.

Some pain.

The burn.

And then the sweet blessed relief.

Oh God, thank you.

All is right in the world again.

I swayed a bit on my feet as I pulled the needle out of my arm. Instinctively, I grabbed the edge of the vanity. Lord knows at this point I couldn’t have consciously willed such an action in my extremities.

Damn good hit.

I heard the bathroom door open. I quickly hid my needle and spoon in my purse and turned on the nearest tap, pretending like I was going to wash my hands.

I looked over nonchalantly. It was Evangeline, no longer crying. She was very still and somber. I remember Micah telling me about her once. She was ten years younger than him, give or take, which currently put her at about 18 or 19 years old. But shit, she looked so much older than that now with deep care lines permanently and prematurely etched into her plain, youthful face. She met my gaze.

“You’re Tinny, aren’t you?” she whispered.

I nodded sadly and smiled slightly.

“Micah talked about you a lot.”

“He did?” I asked, barely disguising my incredulity. I didn’t know he ever thought about anyone other than himself.

I was truly dumbfounded, which left me momentarily mute. I regained my ability to think clearly again half a moment later, but before I could form further questions for her in my vocal chords and project them outward through my lips, Evangeline grabbed me by the waist, looked deeply, imploringly into my eyes, and kissed me. 

The kiss was soft and delicate and closed-mouth at first, but then she forced my lips apart and introduced her tongue to mine with an urgency and raw hunger that spoke to my core.

Her hands then began to explore my body:    shyly over my clothing initially, then more assertively under my clothes as her arousal grew.

She unbuttoned my blouse, unfastened my bra, and began to passionately lick, bite, and suck on my breasts. She quickly moved down to my waist, her tongue tracing a path between my breasts and down to my abdomen, stopping only to briefly suck on my belly button piercing. Then she deftly lifted my skirt and removed my panties. She then began to suck on my labia and clitoris while fingering me gently. We were both moaning softly and panting heavily.

I could’ve fought her off, despite the fact that she almost twice my size, but I didn’t want to. I understood what she wanted in that moment because I craved the same thing:  touch, nearness, pleasure, intimacy, love, id.

She was just like me:  a poor mixed-up lonely girl adrift in the world.

It’s not that we were lesbians—hell, I’ve never enjoyed girl-on-girl sex the few times I’ve tried it—it’s that we knew no other way to relate to the world, to others. We knew of no other way to express the whole wild breadth of emotions we were feeling all at once and at that very moment, except through an endless cycle of exploitation and self-abuse—sex and drugs and more sex and more drugs and so on to infinity.

At that moment, I understood, and I understood why I could never truly break free of the titanium irons binding me to that insidious cycle.

As suddenly as it began, it ended.

I redressed quickly, looking down at the floor the whole time. Evangeline pretended to be curling her eyelashes in the mirror, sheepishly acting as though I wasn’t there and that what had happened minutes earlier had never occurred.

Finally, we faced each other briefly. She quickly looked away for a few seconds as she dug through the contents of her purse. I watched her silently, benevolently.

She pulled out a large joint.

“Do you smoke?” she asked.

“Sure.” I smiled at her.

She lit the joint, took a puff, then offered it to me. I took a long drag, exhaled slowly, and passed it back.

“Thanks, kid. I needed that.”

We looked deeply into each other’s eyes, then broke into hysterical laughter.

We quickly fell silent but continued to smoke until we reached the roach. She graciously gave me the last toke, and I snuffed it out in the cracked and stained ancient bar of Yardley soap in the soap dish on the vanity’s counter. She turned to go.

“Wait, Evangeline.”

She looked at me, puzzled. I was rooting around in my purse.

I pulled out a crumpled twenty-dollar bill and placed it in her hand, gently closing her fingers around it as though it were a piece of fine porcelain.

“What is it?” she asked as she studied it intently.

“It’s your brother’s lucky twenty-dollar coke bill. It’s from 1976. He said that was his lucky year.”

She looked at me, bewildered.

“Why 1976? Micah wasn’t even alive then.”

“With your brother—who knows? All he told me when he gave it to me was that 1976 was his lucky year. And that he really wanted me to have it. That was probably one of his most rational moments ever.”

“But why are you giving it to me?”

“Because I felt someone should have it. I was going to put it in the coffin with him to give him luck as he climbed the stairway to the best party in the universe, but your family had him cremated. So much for my plan.”

“What should I do with it?”

“Don’t spend it all in one place,” I said over my shoulder as I walked out of the bathroom.