by Bobby Adair
I sometimes wonder if the last time I was unreservedly happy was back then.
It’s the smells I miss most when I think about all those Yuletides since. No matter how fuckin’ miserable Christmas was most years—the smell of breakfast I loved, and the pumpkin pies, and turkey stuffed with stale bread, sage, onions, and random bits of shit I could never identify, baking in the oven. And of course, ham.
God, I love ham. I wonder if ham will ever be a thing again?
And bacon.
What I wouldn’t do for a strip of crispy bacon.
The frying pan is sizzling with raccoon strips I marinated in maple pancake syrup and salt overnight. It doesn’t look like bacon. The closest it’s coming to smelling like peppery breakfast ambrosia is burnt. And Punchy Bryan’s Armageddon-on-a-Budget® Ready-to-Eat Survival Meals reconstituted eggs—well, they look like somebody already ate them once and hoarked ‘em back into the pan.
My after-Christmas breakfast would mortify grandma, but that’s not what’s got me down.
Amelia left.
Last night we ate dinner and opened our gifts and she got tired of me talking about how I’d financed Bunker Stink and the fights I’d had with the HOA. Mind you, she was polite about it. She waited until we’d both run out of things to say.
The last two people on earth and we don’t have enough in common to talk for more than an hour or two. What the hell does that say about people?
I don’t know. I suppose I’m over-generalizing.
My food’s about done, so I’ll get back to writing this in a moment.
Deep breaths.
I know I sound like an idiot, writing this down like I’m talking to you like you’re here sometimes. I can’t help it. Loneliness does things to your head you don’t expect.
I dumped the blackened varmint strips on my plate beside the viscous puddle of eggs and poured the grease from the pan over everything. The eventual ex would have had a coronary if she’d seen me do it. The grease is full of calories I need. It doesn’t taste exactly good, but it’s a flavor that didn’t come out of Punchy Bryan’s Taste Bud Terror House. There’s that.
I moved to the table and sat in the seat where I’d parked myself last night, where I’d looked at Amelia’s bright smile and cautious eyes.
She loved the Colt Army Model 1860 I gave her. Of course, she knew before she ripped the paper off what it was. I suppose anybody still alive in the world knows a gun when they have one in their hand, paper or not. Her eyes lit up when she tore it open, and I think for a moment, she had a memory of pinecones and sparkle trees from back in her Santa Claus years.
The thing she didn’t know, not until she pulled the paper off, that it wasn’t just a killing tool I gave her, it was a piece of antique art, still dependable after more than a century, still capable of blowing the head right off a Shroomy with frisky hands and gritty teeth. It was from a time when they made things like they used to make ‘em, a near priceless—well, that’s an exaggeration—hunk of perfect steel.
Amelia didn’t cry. The world being what it is has made her too hard for that. But her eyes got glassy, and a frog had crawled up into her throat when she tried to thank me.
It topped off my day.
I don’t know why doing something nice for somebody makes me feel good. I never thought about it back when people in need of favors were on every street corner. It never occurred to me that the eventual ex appreciated it when I brought home a half-gallon of her favorite ice cream on movie night. Maybe it never crossed her mind, either. I guess it must have been special once, a long time ago when I started it, before it turned into a habit, and then a chore. Maybe the way that infatuation turns into love and turns into commitment and then a contract, until finally it’s just easier to stay together than to come up for air.
It’s easy to piss away the things you think you have enough of.
December 26th, second entry
My raccoon bacon tasted like maple-flavored briquettes.
I ate it anyway.
I put Punchy Bryan’s egg-o-licious experiment in my mouth, too. I chewed, not that they needed to be chewed. I swallowed. Calories in. I tried not to taste them.
I wonder if there are still chickens out there?
Maybe little flitty birds’ eggs taste just like chicken eggs. I wonder how many sparrow eggs it would take to make a Denver Omelet? I’d still need that vegetable garden, and cheese would be a problem. Cheese production means having domesticated animals I can squeeze milk out of, and having—oh fuck, I don’t know—a cheese machine?
I don’t know how the hell they make cheese. Used to make it.
I need to find a how-to book on that subject.
I don’t know if I’ll ever see another cow again. I hope they aren’t extinct. What about goats? Some of those little bastards are fast. I’ll bet I could find me some goats and build up a little herd.
Pipe dream.
Where would I keep a herd of goats? Goat cheese tastes like dirty socks, but cheese is cheese, right? Maybe getting the hell out of Houston is in my future. I wonder how the world fared out in the less populated parts of Texas. Come to think of it, I wonder how the Shroomheads fared up north? Can a dipshit Shroomy survive a hard winter in Minnesota when it’s thirty below and a hard wind is tear-assing off Lake Superior?
I’m smart enough to chop some firewood, stock up on food, and stay indoors when the weather outside can kill me. Would a Shroomhead take such wise precautions?
Maybe I need to think about migrating toward Canada.
First things first.
On the table, spread out face-down is my gift from Amelia. I’m embarrassed to tell you what it is.
What the hell? It’s a deck of playing cards with full-color Playboy centerfolds printed on the backs. Pretty smiles, perky tits, shiny butts, and fuzzy pubes. Given the abundance of big hairdos and proud beavers, I think the deck is at latest early-eighties vintage.
Fine by me.
The porny little portraits remind me of the girls I fantasized about when I was racing through puberty like a jet-powered penis without a pilot.
I’ll admit, because I know nobody is ever going to read this while I’m alive, I rubbed one out last night.
And this morning, I spanked that bad little monkey again. A few Christmas gifts to myself.
It’s nice to know Little Lyndon Johnson can still push a bill through Congress, if you know what I mean. I was starting to worry.
I know, you’re thinking, ‘Hey, Mr. Pervy Man, I don’t need to hear your Handy Dan score.’
Yeah, about that. It’s relevant. If Little Lyndon had been voted out of office, it would call into question my judgment over my next venture.
You see, when I unwrapped the deck of playing cards, I was pretty damn happy, but I was embarrassed, too. Amelia let me pretend like I wasn’t going to utilize them exactly how I’ve put them to use. She made a point of making me spread them out on the table to find the three of clubs.
I played along, not knowing where she was going with it, but once we found the card, she flipped it over and showed me the girl on the back.
“That’s her,” she said.
I was staring at a pretty, dark-eyed girl, with ebony hair flowing in luscious curls over her shoulders and avalanching over her big, round tits. A pout on her lips that begged loudly from the decades ago for me to take her hand and lead her into my love palace. And the bush—it’s been awhile, but I’m pretty sure. It was in shadow, so it was hard to tell how much, but definitely bush.
“That’s her,” Amelia repeated.
I’m guessing I was acting like I’d just gotten off the banana boat, sitting there with incomprehensible words bouncing off my head until she nudged me.
“That’s her,” she repeated.
“What?” I asked. “Who?”
“You don’t think she looks familiar?”
I admit, my eyes settled pretty quickly on Miss Three O’ Club’s porny parts, and saw her face just long en
ough to determine that she was pretty. So, I took a long gawk at the little card. Okay. She looked like Mazzy, in a way. Well, a lot like Mazzy. Only prettier.
Yeah, I know, prettier than Mazzy? Is that possible?
If Mazzy was a ten—and don’t get me wrong, she was. No doubts about that. Then Miss Three O’ Clubs was tipping the scales over eleven and maybe closing in on twelve. To her credit, she was completely naked, showing off all her lickity parts, so that adds a point or two, but still. She was damn gorgeous.
“That’s Aunt Millie.”
“Aunt Millie?” Rollo never mentioned Mazzy having a sister. Mazzy never said a thing about it, either. But then, they never talked about the nudie parties they used to have at the pool in the backyard until the day I accidentally wandered through the gate and caught an eyeful of Mazzy, goddess of the backyard pool party, standing naked on the diving board over the sparkly blue water, showing the world a pair of perfect perkies that looked just like the two here on Miss Three O’ Clubs.
“I stayed with her after mom and dad turned.” said Amelia. “She was a football cheerleader once. For a pro team.”
“Pro football?” I asked. A centerfold and a cheerleader? It seemed to me there’d be a rule against that sort of thing, but what do I know?
Amelia shrugged. “The Oilers or the Cowboys. I don’t remember which.”
“And she wasn’t infected?” I asked.
“No.”
“When did you last see her?”
Amelia guessed right away where I was going. “Last time I saw her was about a year ago. A little more.” She flicked the card in my hand, breaking my trance. “She’s about your age.”
“My age?” That would make sense. Mazzy was my age. Well, younger, by five or ten years, I guess. Rollo was about as old as me. Miss Three O’ Clubs, she had to be closer to my vintage. Still, I looked at the card and noticed some feathery hippie earrings dangling beneath Miss Three’s cascade of brown hair. She had tan lines. When was the last time I saw a tan line in a spank mag? Jesus, I must have been in junior high. And then there was the bush. Was that sixties, seventies, or eighties fur? With the shadow I couldn’t tell. Seems like the 60s centerfolds were all about nipples and tan-line butts, almost never an honest-to-God beaver. ‘70s bush was everywhere. Proud lions on the savanna, showing their manes to the world. And then they were gone again. All but extinct by the mid 80s.
“Say something,” said Amelia.
I looked up at her. “What?”
“She doesn’t look like that anymore. She’s old, like you.”
I let the ‘old’ remark slide.
“She’s probably still alive.”
December 26th, third entry
With my dirty breakfast plate sitting on the counter behind me, I had the cards spread out on the cleared table, backside up. I told myself I was deducing Auntie Millie’s age.
The gears in my head weren’t grinding right over that question. If she was my age, early to mid-fifties, that meant she wouldn’t have been old enough to pose legally for a nudie mag until sometime in the eighties. But she wasn’t an 80s girl. And she was not a teenager.
Maybe she’s five or ten years older. Could she be twenty? That doesn’t make sense, either. Who has an aunt twenty years older than their mom?
Ugh.
Maybe I was just looking for excuses to stare at pictures of fifty-four naked girls—all the playing cards plus the pair of jokers. Like I needed an excuse.
I don’t know.
As much as I obsessed over every version of every fantasy that would land me some concubinal company, I was apprehensive. I still am, even as I write this down. I don’t understand what I’m afraid of.
Amelia told me Aunt Millie was a little whacked in the head, had taken to wearing a gas mask full-time to save herself from infection, and had rigged a pair of pink kiddie sunglasses with white polka dots over the eye holes. Weird. Aunt Millie had chased Amelia off when Amelia couldn’t hide her warts anymore. Millie didn’t know Amelia wasn’t going to turn into a brain-fried monster. Millie did the smart thing.
I spin it over and over and over in my head.
Near the center of the table, I found myself staring at one particular girl in a sunny field of golden grass on the side of a hill with green trees standing tall in the distance. From decades ago, her eyes invited me into her 2D slice of nature to love me up under the blue sky with God and everybody else watching.
It occurred to me then, maybe I was afraid of the outdoors?
Aunt Millie lived in some other part of town. Far away. With who-knows-what dangers hiding in-between.
As much as Aunt Millie is the answer to my prayers, I think I might be afraid to leave my hermit crab hidey-hole.
Bunker Stink is my security blanket. Going outside for a few hours or even days, that’s one kind of thing. I know shelter is never far away. Running off on a trek across Houston, with no safe base to hide in when the shit starts raining down, that could be the bad choice that finally kills me.
December 28th
It was cold again today. I went outside under a thick blanket of weepy clouds that seemed low enough to touch.
I cleaned out the BBQ pit, put the ashes in a bucket, hauled them down to the culvert near the community pool, and dumped them there on the ground. I rinsed the bucket in water trickling down at the bottom of the ditch. Moving the ashes away from the house seemed like a good idea. Who knows what aromatic scents will draw in a curious Shroomhead?
Afterward, I walked the neighborhood. Cautiously. Of course.
The weather was shitty. Most of the Shroomies had enough sense to stay indoors, cuddling their girlfriends or playing with their dicks. I mean, I guess they do that, right? It’s hard to imagine an uninhibited Shroomhead foregoing that personal pleasure.
Still, I kept an eye out for anyone in the hood besides me. In truth, I was looking for Amelia.
I hadn’t seen her since she left after Christmas dinner. We said we’d do it again. Dinner, I mean. Getting together. We didn’t plan a date or anything, but I guess I figured maybe we’d make a regular thing of it. Maybe every couple of days. Maybe every day.
I even thought I’d see her around the hood. If not in person, then on my neighborhood CCTV network.
Nope.
Each day passes, and I can’t help but wonder if I said something wrong. I replay the dinner in my mind. I think of the jokes I tried to make. I wonder if I offended her? I ask myself over and over again if I showed too much interest in her crazy aunt, or not enough. I even started to second-guess the Model 1860 Colt.
I know she liked it.
But, I doubt myself. My skills for reading peoples’ faces are rusty.
By the time I got home, I was back in limbo again, not liking the ambiguity of my relationship with Amelia, and resenting her for having talked to me in the first place. I was doing fine all by myself in the world. I started wishing I’d never crossed paths with her.
January 1st
I’d hoped she would come by for the holiday. I even had a can of black-eyed peas ready. You know, for luck. I don’t even like black-eyed peas.
Still, no Amelia.
I killed time in the morning with an old Christmas movie. I know the season is over, but I came across one that had fallen down behind my TV cabinet. What was I doing peeking behind the cabinet at the cables and dust bunnies? No comment. Except to say that boredom and loneliness can make almost anything interesting.
That reminds me of a story.
I was on a tour of Alcatraz some years ago when the girls were young. The eventual ex had copped some free tickets and a four-night hotel stay from a radio contest. A story that turned out to be ninety-nine-percent bullshit. The hotel was a condo owned by her greasy fuck buddy from down in Plinko Ranch. I never figured out why he let my family use the place over a long weekend, but I don’t question it too much now. We enjoyed ourselves. We spent way too much on going out to eat. Got to ride a restored trolley and took
the ferry out to Alcatraz among other touristy shit.
Even though Bunker Stink had already been sunk in my backyard by then, I never made the connection that my life might one day end up like some of those hardened 1930s gangsters who lived in Alcatraz’s solitary confinement cells.
There was a story about one guy, who once they slammed the door shut on the isolation cell and he was stuck there in the dark by himself, tore a button off his shirt, tossed it into the air and then proceeded to find it in the dark. Over and over, day and night. He felt like he was going crazy, until months later the door opened and he found he still had his sanity. Mostly.
Finding the Christmas DVD was like that. Funny how dust bunnies can become a source of comfort and entertainment.
Make sense?
Ah, who the hell cares? It makes sense to me.
Anyway, that was my morning.
At noon, I tossed a bag of popcorn into the microwave and popped open an ice-cold beer—one from the dwindling stash in my dorm-sized refrigerator—and I started my New Year’s Day tradition. Unfortunately, alone.
I have a DVD of the 2005 Longhorn-USC Rose Bowl, the college championship. Only the greatest football game ever played. Yeah, I’ve seen the game at least a couple dozen times now. I know how it ends. I memorized the bad calls. I’ve felt the highs and the lows, but when Vince Young carries that ball across the goal line with seconds left to win the game, I gotta be honest, it tingles my toddlers every time. That’s one-hundred-percent, red-blooded American, hardcore excitement right there.
I holler every time.
Even this year. Even though I was alone.
After the game, I sat on the couch, finished the cold remains of my styrofoamy popcorn, and watched the TV go black. I listened to the sounds of Bunker Stink. It creaks like an old house. I think as the water content of the soil it’s buried in changes, the tank shifts. It moves as the winter temperatures slowly seep down through the soil. I hear the soft whir of the ventilation fan motor, and the soft rhythm in the air from an imbalance on the fan. Dust collects there and throws it off. I’ll need to clean that soon. I should have done it already. I’m behind on my maintenance chores. Not good for a man who wants to die of old age one day.