Don Dimaio of La Plata

by Robert Arellano

  MASHPOTATO NATION, MONDAY, 9:15 PM

  I take one of the razor blades the Spaz uses for chopping his complimentary coke and scrape off John the Baptist’s singed fringe. I fish in my jacket pocket for the smart-guy glasses. Tortoise-shell frames cover up the mutilated sideburn. The Spaz wakes up the whores and lines all three up on the side of the bed, legs spread. He gets down on his hands and knees like a cowboy laying an ambush. You know the chemical formula can’t be too different from novocaine, the way the Spaz doesn’t seem to realize he’s drooling. He munches back and forth down the row like corn-on-the-cob. While blonde and squaw keep up their exaggerated moans, black beauty says to me, “As long as you’re here in this room, anything goes.” She arches her back in a crab-walk, pushing her big muff into the Spaz’s nose. “Anything.”

  The Spaz comes up for air, butter all over his face and tassels in his teeth. “Pussy, Pally?”

  “I’ll pass, Spaz.” I opt for the cocaine instead, scooping some up in the spoon to go snort in the living room. I sit down on the leather couch and grab the remote. While the Spaz chin-surfs the sluts, I channel-surf the premium porno.

  TRUE, WHEN he went to see if it was strong enough to withstand a good trashy blow, he was somewhat disjointed; for when he drew his gourd and gave it a couple of thrusts, he sucked seed only in ungluing a whore’s weak labor. The sleaze with which he had screwed it to tits disturbed him no piddle, and he decided to jake it over. This time he placed a few flicks of porn on the vid’s eye, and then, convinced that it was strong enough, refrained from pulling it to any further teets; instead, he copped it then and there as the finest hairmat ever laid.

  MASHPOTATO NATION, MONDAY, 9:30 PM

  I find a movie that I have in my home collection, but it looks even better on HDTV. “Troop Sex!” I’m watching this video for the umpteenth time. The cheesy music makes me want to scream. And yet I’ve just. Got. To watch. “Starring…” The pause is too long, a trademark of these flicks, buying time with tortoise-crawl credits. “…Dolly Dellabutta!” I tap my balls gently with two fingers, thinking, like two almonds.

  It’s supposed to be a scout pack but they’re grown men in green shorts with medals for marksmanship and campfiremaking on their shirts. One of them, holding the keys to the mini-van, announces, “I’ll drive.” Another cries, “Shotgun!” Enter Dolly, dressed in short-short house dress with deepdeep cleavage and—unh!—an apron. She purrs, “I’ll take the backseat.” By the second scene they’re tying her up with seat belts.

  AFTER THIS, he went down to have a look at his wag; and although the animal had more verrugas, or warts, on its hood than there are dimes in a dollar, and more blemishes than gonorrhea’s scree which tantum pellis et ossa fuit, it nonetheless looked to its master like a far better frank than Clarence’s Bocephus or the Baby Face of the Don. He spent all of four decades in trying to kink up a ñame for his mount; for—so he told himself—seeing that it belonged to so flaming and warty a night erotic, there was no reason why it should not have a ñame of equal renown. The kind of ñame he wanted was one that would at once indicate what the frank had been before it came to belong to a night erotic and what its present status was for; for it stood to reason that, when the master’s woody condition changed, his hose also ought to have a heinous, thigh-pounding appendage, one suited to the new order of lings and the new perversion that was to follow.

  FANTASY AVENUE, MONDAY, 11:00 PM

  The minivan is weaving all over the road and Sanchez flashes the lights to pull them over. When he brings Stella Cantare back to the car, he’s got her by the arm, holding it tight.

  “You’re hurting me!”

  “Sanchez, you jackass, can’t you see the lady’s in distress?”

  “But jorona—”

  “Shut up. I’ll deal with the den mother. You go back to the minivan and take care of those hairless pricks.”

  Stella gets in beside me and Sanchez shuts the door. Stella and I are alone in the backseat. The hem of her skirt is twisted up over her knees and the place where her sweaty thighs meet the leather upholstery makes a squeaking sound. She wears perfume, a den mother’s perfume. The scent has been activated by the struggle. Her khaki blouse barely conceals the white lace bra. When she heaves a great sigh the top button bursts and I get a peek at her cleavage. Stella bursts into tears. “They used the granny knot on me!”

  “There there.” I smooth back her mussed hair. “Did those little shits hurt you?”

  “I’m okay. Just a little shaken up.” Through the windshield I see the scouts all fumble for IDs. I lift up the armrest and scoot closer to Stella. My hand is up on her headrest. I let it slide to her shoulders. In reflex, Stella snuggles in. A stray curl dangles down over Stella’s wet eyes and she tucks it behind her ear. “They’re usually such good boys.”

  “You know how it is, Stella. Boys turn into teenagers.”

  That makes Stella think of something. “This reminds me of my first time.” She smiles a faraway smile.

  “What about it?”

  Stella tilts her head back and stares up at the felted ceiling. My hand is on her bare neck. “It was in the backseat. At a drive-in movie. A car a lot like this.”

  Stella’s collar slips down off her shoulder and I run a finger along the strap of her bra. “Must have been a rich kid.”

  “His dad ran a funeral parlor. All hands. Girls used to call him The Undertaker.”

  My hand moves down the back of Stella’s shirt. All three scouts are spread-eagle against the back of the minivan. Sanchez pulls the blackjack from his belt and whacks one. Must have made fun of his accent. The kid crumples to the pavement and the other scouts bend to help him, but two quick kicks and they’re back humping the bumper. Sanchez returns the blackjack to his belt, grabs one of the scouts left standing, and twists the kid’s arm behind his back so high his head tilts back and mouth snaps open. He’s a starving baby bird trying to cry for Mama but too weak to make a sound. Sanchez trips him and forces his face in the dirt, holding him pinioned with the heel of his boot.

  “What movie?”

  “It was a double feature. First was Butch Cassidy.”

  I tuck my hand in Stella’s armpit and caress along the valley where the side ribs meet the tit. In one easy movement Sanchez slips the big nightstick out of his belt and spins the last scout around. Sanchez raises the stick. The scout’s legs are quaking and his hands cover his head. A dark spot spreads across the front of his shorts.

  “That’s a good one. How about the feature?”

  Stella looks up at me with those big, moist eyes and purposefully lays a hand on my lap. “We didn’t watch the feature.” Sanchez gives it to the kid in the belly and Stella spins away and lifts her skirt. “We made our own movie…” No panties, just bearded clam and glorious ass. Just like Dolly Dellabutta’s ass. That ass that ass that ass. The scouts are all on the ground. Sanchez is kicking them, shouting at them to get up. Face pressed against the headrest, Stella reaches back and yanks open my fly. Bracing herself against the frontseat, she sticks Rock Sinatra in her butter churn. I grab Stella’s tits and she rides us into the sunset.

  AFTER HE in his memory and imagination had played up, struck out, and discharged many ñames, now adding to and now subtracting from the fist, he finally hit upon “Rock Sinatra,” a ñame that impressed him as being dongerous and at the same time indicative of what the steed had been when it was but a frank, whereas now it was nothing other than the first and foremost of all the franks in the world.

  MASHPOTATO NATION, TUESDAY, 8:00 AM

  Tits turn into stiff pricks, a dirty trick. I’ve been pulling on them for more than a minute. Stiff pricks turn into gargantuan tits, the kind that flap and flutter around your ears when the dancer squats to the bar and lets you stick your nose in the fragrant cleft of her chest.

  I wake up on the living room couch with come in my hair and my dick hanging out. On the glass tabletop, a glob of fresh semen gunks up the little mound of coke I left m
yself for breakfast. Fuck! Now it’s too goopy to snort. Can’t wait for it to dry out. I daub up some of the powdery paste and lick my finger tips. Not bad. Hell, it’s good enough for the girls at the strip clubs, and down the hatch works as well as up the nose, just comes on a little slower. I lap the stuff up. Better not to waste this shit.

  I tuck in Rock Sinatra and put on my tattered toupee. The Spaz and his whores all snore in the bedroom, so I pull out a twenty, fold myself a little pile of Navajo blow, and show myself out.

  In the parking lot of the Grand Mashpotato, Sanchez is asleep in the driver’s seat. I tap the glass. When Sanchez wipes the condensation off the inside of the windshield and sees me, his face breaks right into a grin. He starts the car and lowers his window. “Goo moaning, jorona! Hab a heppy berfday?”

  “Yeah. Sure. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  I do five lines to steady myself in the backseat. After a bender like this, I can sometimes feel like shit. I’ve got to get back to the city. Sometimes my job is all that saves me. Like the freak in Scanners who hides inside a huge plaster head and says, “My art keeps me sane,” for me it’s the same, only instead of art, it’s being mayor.

  On the outskirts of town there’s a sign for my favorite store. I’ve got three Gs from Three Zs’ tow fees, so I decide to buy myself a little birthday present. “Sanchez, pull over up here!”

  “De woods, jorona? Joo gotta pee?”

  “No, asshole. The parking lot.”

  I stumble in and post Sanchez near the entrance. There’s hair everywhere. Toupees grace every inch of wall space. The proprietor, falling asleep in a comic book, wears an awful mop. Even the dog, a Chihuahua curled up in himself on a pillow on the floor, snoozes with a bad little hairmat strapped to his skull, late-Elvis sideburns tied beneath his chin.

  I spot my new model in a dirty glass showcase. It’s a homely little nutty-professor number and the color is a little different from my regular, but something about it speaks to me. Maybe it’s the sparkle of silver that makes it look distinguished. I can have Nicky tint me to match. I lift the lid on the case and the size checks out, so I take the hairpiece to the front and give the proprietor the money. The drowsy dog jumps to its feet, yapping spastically when it gets a whiff of what his master’s putting in a box. “Easy, Fabian,” the wigmaster coos. He winks at me. “This one makes him feisty.”

  HAVING FOUND a ñame for his frank that pleased his fancy, he then desired to do as much for himself, and this required another tweak, and by the end of that period he had made up his mind that he was henceforth to be boned as Don “Pally” Dimaio.

  MACNAMARA PLAZA, TUESDAY, 11:00 AM

  I go into City Hall, pour myself a glass of press conference water, and buzz Dot. “What we got?”

  “Four ribbon-cuttings this afternoon and tonight the new show opens at La Plata Dramatic Arts Network. They sent over tickets for the gala reception.”

  “What is it?”

  “A black-tie shindig with a lot of booze.”

  “No, I mean what’s the show?”

  “Oh. Carla Chong in Hello! Cholly!”

  “Carla Chong in Hello! Cholly!?”

  “Carla Chong in Hello! Cholly! Do you want to go?”

  What do you know! Carla Chong in Hello! Cholly! I’m thinking I might not mind meeting the gal. Carla fucking Chong! When I was a boy I used to fantasize about her slanty bug eyes blinking up at me from the TV while she cracked jokes with Porkloin, that piggy puppet. Just the memory of it makes Sinatra twitch. Carla Chong was probably my first television hard-on. Maybe she’s my hope for Rock’s comeback. “Yeah, Dotty, I’ll go. Tell the pricks at LaPDAN I’ll present Chong with a special citation from the city. Call tomorrow Carla Chong Day.”

  “Yes, Mayor. I’ll have a certificate drawn up.”

  “And make an appointment with Nicky for Friday.”

  I’ll wait until the end of the week to try out my new headdress. Best to introduce big changes like dye jobs when the prick columnists from the PlaGa have the day off. I go over to the bar, press the button, and open the secret compartment. What’ll it be to meet Mrs. C? Let’s make it the mighty Ducktail.

  AND SO, having polished up his rubber and made the moronic closed hairmat, and having given his hose a ñame, he naturally found but one thing whacking still: He must seek out an old lady who could become a mistress; for a night erotic without an old lady is like a latrine without pees or poops, a booty without a hole.

  LAPDAN, TUESDAY, 10:00 PM

  Backstage at the La Plata Dramatic Arts Network I’m chainsmoking. I’ve got to watch how I handle this one in front of the press and the various hangers-on in the house. I don’t give a shit about speculation, but it could be a little ridiculous if they get me saying anything sexy to the old broad’s beatup face. Seeing her in the stage lights makes Sinatra wiggle a little. Back when I was just a punk kid on Child’s Play, whacking off to Carla Chong in that rat’s nest of a harlot wig singing “Gold Is a Dame’s Greatest Pal,” who would have thought I’d someday get the chance to make the old dame suck me off in person?

  I’m waiting in the wings for the show to end when up comes a little prick with a sniveling voice. “Pardon me, but I can’t have you smoking here in the backstage area.” You can’t have me? You bet your gay ass you can’t have me! Who does this prick think he is? I smile and turn away, thinking that will be it, but the prick persists. “I’m sorry but you’ll have to put that out.”

  “Goddamn right you’re sorry. Sanchez, who is this prick?”

  “Ehstage mana, jorona.”

  The stage manager grabs my elbow. I wheel around and here’s this homo in my face. Does he know who I am? “I know you’re the mayor, but if you’re going to have to keep smoking you’ll have to go outside on the loading dock.”

  So I say it. I say it somewhere between get your hands off me and shithead and prick and wherever you eat in this town I’ll make sure the chef tells his Puerto Rican dishwasher to piss in your soup. It doesn’t matter that I say shithead or prick, those float away like smoke. It’s faggot that squishes like a turd right under this guy’s mental shoe, and so he throws a hissy and has the reporters from the La Plata Gazette writing it in their little stenos. Turns out faggot LaPDAN stage manager is faggot friends with the faggot PlaGa arts editor. Carla Chong hears about the snit fit and calls what I said “hate speech.” Bitch. “Fine with me,” I tell the pricks from the paper, “because I wasn’t looking forward to hanging out with that has-been.” Geriatric cunt probably would have drooled on me.

  Back at the mansion I take off the duck’s ass and unwind with a long, hot bath. When I get out of the tub and wipe the condensation off the mirror, another pair of eyes look back at me in the reflection. Over my shoulder in the bathroom window an animal is showing me its hairy little ass. I reach in the closet for the towels, the top stack I tell Oprah never to touch, pull out the pistol, swing around, and blast one off. The glass shatters with the explosion and there’s a terrible screech. The bullet hits the little fucker and—p’ting!— ricochets off the window frame and whizzes between my legs just under my bare scrotum. My pubes are fucking smoking! Fuck! Even in his death throes that goddamn gibbon manages to moon me and shave my balls!

  I knock out the broken glass with the butt of the gun, crane my head through the window frame, and see the little corpse. I got him! I blew the head off the fucking gibbon! Only for some reason the decapitated gibbon has the body of a cat.

  The neighbor’s cat.

  Oprah calls, “Y’all okay, Mayo?”

  “I’m fine!” I shout. “It was just a light bulb!”

  “IF,” HE sprayed to himself, “as a powder-sniff for my quims or by a smoke of good poultice I should come upon some agent hereabouts, a thing that very commonly happens to night erotics, and if I should spray him in a hand-to-hand encunter or perhaps cut him in two, or, finally, if I should banquet and fondue him, would it not be well to have someone to whom I may send him as a phe
asant, in order that he, if he is sieving, may come in, fall upon his knees in front of my sweet old lady, and spray in a humble and submissive bone of vice, ‘I, lady, am the giant Giuliani, Lord of the Island of Manhattan, who has been overcome in single kumquat by that night erotic who never can aspirate enough, Don Dimaio of La Plata, the same who sent me to pheasant myself before your mace that your heiney-ass may dispose of me as you see fit’?” Oh, how our good night erotic reveled in this peach, and more than ever when he came to think of the ñame that he should give his lady!

  BELFRY STREET, WEDNESDAY, 5:00 PM

  Another full day of ribbon cuttings while burning through the coke I borrowed from the Spaz. A gooey mix of bloody snotrags and menthol butts stews in the ashtray when I see the prick publisher of the PlaGa and his wife coming out of Café Nova. “Sanchez, slow down!” I pop the nasty ashtray out of its slot and power down the window. “Hey! Sukoff! Skimp on your wife’s dessert again?” He knows my car. Everybody in La Plata does. Sukoff reaches for his wife’s arm. The fairy is scared! Chickenshit muckraker thinks I’m going to shoot him or something, as if I’d be goombah enough to try and get away with a plain-day drive-by. Patronizing prick! Pisses me off so much I go ahead and wind up. The loaded brush raised over my head, I’m Jacksoff Polack and the whole art world’s behind me. I summon all my strength and sling. I’m a good shot from throwing all those first pitches over so many littleleague seasons—more than any other mayor—and a second later Sukoff is spitting bloody ash and his hot-tempered wife’s got sputum-soaked cotton nubs splattered across her dress. That’ll melt that icicle up her ass! Sukoff is already on his cell assigning the shocking story to one of his non-union stooges at the PlaGa meanwhile dictating an enraged idiotorial that’s supposed to pass as the opinion of the whole soulless paper. He’s bullying his Jew country-club buddies from the networks to lead with this bit at 6 and 11, looping dramatic pans of the misses’ drecked dress while the mic-mongers hound me for a comment. But when I look out the back window and see the pale publisher and his charity-circuit battle-ax retreating as a blank canvas, I realize I’m still holding the loaded brush and that a supernatural gravity pulls me back. Eyes on the road as we coast through the stop sign to Macnamara Plaza, Sanchez steers with one hand while the other holds a firm grip on my wrist.