by Peter Manus
Burly-Bear: (lets my tale sink in) You cared about your twin, growing up.
Me: (easily) Well, you got that right. Look, Sergeant, I’ve been a good girl and answered a bunch of blind questions. Now let’s get off this track before you circle right back where I know you’re going and I don’t want to revisit, all right?
Burly-Bear: Where’s that, then?
Me: My father’s suicide.
Burly-Bear: We’re heading to that? How?
Me: Doesn’t everything?
Burly-Bear: (He sips some coffee. I don’t join him.) This guy in the picture is your mother’s brother, Stephen, who lived with you for about a year, ending about six months prior to your father’s death. Your father was very generous, according to your mother, to allow Stephen to move in on the four of you. Money was tight. Space was tight. Your mother says she thinks that your father thought that her brother Stephen might be a good influence on your brother, who was already tough to handle. Your father was a lot older than your mother, she says, but Stephen was young, and himself a bit of a street kid, or he had been back in…what town was that your mother was from?
Me: (not harshly) Look, I’m sorry to undermine all the good police work you’ve been doing, apparently round the clock, but I’m afraid my mother’s version of the past—or anything else—isn’t anything that I’d call reliable. So please shut up before you embarrass the both of us, would you? (I offer the last suggestion with a little laugh.)
Burly-Bear: She says your uncle never touched you.
Me: (I close my eyes and shake my head. When I speak, my voice is icy.) Points for Mom.
Burly-Bear: (dogged to the end) She says your father always blamed Stephen, and so blamed himself for allowing Stephen to stay in the house with the two of you. She says she tried to get it through your father’s head that he was wrong about Stephen, but your father wouldn’t hear of it. Your father wouldn’t accept that it was just…your own idea.
Me: (speaking without feeling my lips) My idea?
Burly-Bear: (swallows more coffee, then speaks plainly) Yours and your brother’s.
Me: (doing an amazing job at collecting myself, if I do say so) Well, as long as my mother and all our kin on her side were wonderfully good and innocent people, that’s all that really counts, isn’t it? And Dad was delusional, of course. So there we have it. Nice and tidy.
Burly-Bear: Was he?
Me: Was he?
Burly-Bear: Delusional?
Me: (standing up to go) Well, he killed himself, didn’t he? You’d have to be pretty fucking delusional to come up with that as a way to cure whatever ailed you.
He waits, finishes his coffee, crushes the cup and twists it in on itself, rather contemplatively, it seems to me. Then he gets into what’s really eating him.
Burly-Bear: So, tell me. Who is he? The guy.
Me: (feeling a pang of relief that one of us has scraped together the intestinal fortitude to start talking about it. I sink back down to the bench.) I don’t really know. I just think of him as “Guy.” (Yes, I’m teasing by telling the truth, but Burly-Bear doesn’t know it.)
Burly-Bear: (incredulously) You don’t know him? Guy’s got no name?
Me: Not much of one, now that you mention it. (Get it? What a card I am.)
Burly-Bear: What are we talking about, love at first sight?
Me: (mildly surprised) Love? No. No, nothing like that.
I feel him glance at me and realize I’ve hit a nerve. First that puzzles me and then it dawns on me—Burly-Bear imagines that he’s in love with me, and that makes my blowing him off for someone I don’t even profess to love that much worse. Sure enough, he decides to go with a coarse jab. I’ve just hurt him, and now he’s going to give some of that back.
Burly-Bear: Just a case of lust, then. Well, that happens, too. At least you’re honest about it, which is more than I can say for most women.
Me: (studying the wintery reeds) Oh, I’m not so honest. Not really.
Burly-Bear: (playing it decent when he realizes that my cryptic remark wasn’t a lead-up to some sort of confession) Okay, well, it’s not like you owe me an explanation.
Me: No, I guess I don’t. (I say it softly—basically talking to myself, although I realize now, much later, that he must have been imagining that I was carefully maneuvering him.)
Burly-Bear: (speaking heavily—his tone that of the guy’s guy who’s reached his tolerance limit on the head games that some chick’s been putting him through) Then I guess there’s nothing else to say. (He gets up, smacks his gloves against his thigh.) That time, huh, killer?
I don’t look up at him, but instead get up and make for his car, my head ducked, my shoulders pulled together in a hunch. It sucks udders to feel guilty over a guy. Immeasurably better to be the victim. Believe me; I’ve tried both.
We drive back to my office in silence. It’s pretty damned excruciating, sensing how much he hates every interminable red light and every dildo who decides to parallel park right in front of us. By the time we get back to the spot where he picked me up, my armpits are drenched. I squeeze my elbows to my sides, certain that as soon as I move he’ll catch a whiff of me.
Burly-Bear: (looking my way and smiling ruefully. I have to hand it to him, he’s got nads enough to admit that he’s hot for someone who apparently doesn’t return the compliment.) Well, I hope this guy is worth getting messed up over. That’s all I’ll say.
Me: (laughing sharply, suddenly resentful toward him) If that’s the way you want to put it.
GIVE IT TO ME STRAIGHT
webmaggot @ February 9 12:28 am
Look, am I, like, reading into this, or is the idea that Uncle Stephen used to make fickel and her twin brother, umm, “play doctor” as kids? And then later, when Uncle Stephen had moved along to find other recreation and the twins kept at it, someone found out?
roadrage @ February 9 12:30 am
Well, that’s where I’m at. So, want to go on?
webmaggot @ February 9 12:31 am
I’m busy heaving on my end. Anyone else?
36-D @ February 9 12:33 am
Eye roll—why do I always have to supply the balls around here? Okay—after the I-word finally gets uttered, this led to Mom and Pop disagreeing over which parent’s side had supplied the “strange-love” gene, ending with Pop (dads are always so accommodating) concluding that either way, he was ultimately to blame for either supplying the DNA or allowing Unckie Steve to “infiltrate” the household.
roadrage @ February 9 12:36 am
Pop broods, Mom needles, Pop offs himself, and then?
i.went.to.harvard @ February 9 12:37 am
Mom ekes out a numb sort of existence married to a much different sort of man while Uncle Steve—perhaps totally unaware that he’s precipitated this family crisis, or perhaps well aware of it—rattles off to Nowhere, Nevada. There he meets X, recreates himself as Mr. Pearle, and emerges relatively unscathed as a Boston jeweler.
chinkigirl @ February 9 12:41 am
And the twins?
wazzup! @ February 9 12:42 am
One word to add, my fellow B-flick fanatics: JIM THOMPSON. Wahooo, brilliant!!!
webmaggot @ February 9 12:43 am
Look, do you have numbers in the Netherlands? Jim = 1. Thompson = 2. TWO words, brainiac.
36-D @ February 9 12:46 am
Okay, I don’t want to drop another bomb, but I have news that I don’t think would be right to keep to myself. Like I told you, I started talking to the Rottweiler about this mess, right? So he gets curious and then he comes to me and says he checked where I was going on the internet during the day, which is, like, his prerogative as my boss and I can’t say I resent it (or not that much), and so of course he finds Life is Pulp. So he visits here himself and he goes to check out these cops—Tyler Malloy and Escroto. He says there is no one there named Escroto, and also there’s no Tyler Malloy. But there is a Tyrell Reed, and what with fickel’s thing about not giving people’s real n
ames, that seems like a match to the Rottweiler (and me). But that’s not the important point, which is that Tyrell Reed is married. Wife’s name is Lindy. There’s even a baby daughter.
roadrage @ February 9 12:47 am
I get how Tyler and Tyrell are practically the same name, but how does Reed become Malloy?
webmaggot @ Feburary 9 12:48 am
Woah, guess you’re not into “classic” TV, mon. Reed and Malloy—the cops from Adam-12. Best cop show in the world, according to my dad (yeah, he’s an alkie).
chinkigirl @ February 9 12:49 am
I guess I can buy that connection, if the Rottweiler can confirm that the guy looks like Burly-Bear. Did he actually meet this Ty Reed?
36-D @ February 9 12:50 am
Not as of yet. I’ll keep everyone posted.
roadrage @ February 9 12:54 am
Wait a sec. Just to clarify, 36-D, Burly-Bear’s partner isn’t really named Escroto. That’s just one of fickel’s nicknames. Means scrotum in Spanish.
36-D @ February 9 12:55 am
Oh. Gross, by the way.
i.went.to.harvard @ February 9 12:57 am
You know, even if all this subterfuge is true, I’m not so sure that Burly-Bear presented himself as something other than what he is. First, he might not wear a wedding ring for any number of reasons. Second, he could present himself as a nice cop because he is one, and a shoulder to lean on for fickel because he sees that she needs a shoulder to lean on. Third, he could have sent dickel back to where he belongs because it’s his job. Fourth, he could have shown up at the hospital where dickel’s laid up because he genuinely cares about fickel, and also because he’s still investigating Pearle’s death.
I mean, has the man ever actually made a pass at fickel? Sure, maybe he’s attracted to her, but why shouldn’t he be? Anyway, that’s my gut reaction.
proudblacktrannie @ February 9 01:15 am
Why are you people obsessing over this SOAP OPERA NONSENSE? Can I remind people that a young black male was shot in cold blood the other night? Mr. Suicide may have killed himself. The Colonel and the Peacock may or may not have been victims of a domestic homicide-suicide. But that boy got shot to death in PUBLIC. Am I to conclude that we have pushed that one aside because he was black, poor, and/or gay?
36-D @ February 9 01:16 am
Who pushed anything aside? My Rottweiler’s been looking into it. I’ll report in as soon as he tells me anything.
chinkigirl @ February 9 01:18 am
Where have you been, proudblacktrannie?
proudblacktrannie @ February 9 01:19 am
About time someone asked, or did anyone even notice the token nigger’s absence?
chinkigirl @ February 9 01:20 am
We noticed, of course. But, speaking of bloggie blackouts, I would very much like to hear from fickel, with everything that’s been going on. fickel? Are you with us?
proudblacktrannie @ February 9 01:22 am
oh fine with me I will bide my time absolutely
webmaggot @ February 9 01:26 am
What’s eating her? Him? Which are we supposed to use, again?
roadrage @ February 9 01:27 am
Dewd.
35
02.09 @ 1:52 am:
I decide to es&d
I’m over. Outta heahh. Done my share of sucking air…sucking face…(never sucked dick but I have to say I don’t regret that)…I am, at heart, sick of the rest of you schmucks.
Fucking sick of…
…every last fetid stinking bit of…
THE HUMAN CONDITION
Don’t mean to be a downer. It’s just that lately I’ve begun to see altogether too clearly that my faith—by which I mean that impulse that gives life its definition—has been a belief that there is in fact a meaning to life that has simply eluded me. So I’ve sought it. Mostly with my nose between the legs of various females. And what a crock that adventure has turned out to be.
Fun fact, though? I’ve always known this was coming, that I’d run out of tolerance for life. The first time I read Tolstoy—no, way, way before that—like, as soon as I got old enough to get it—to start meeting enough people to really get that this was it—humanity, what it was like, I faced the fact that this world just about sucks. This may explain why I’ve spent the past decade or so ramming poon tang like there was a contest on. Sigh, I knew there’d be a catch.
Rien ne forme un jeune homme, comme une liaison avec une femme comme il faut.
They teach you a lot of moral crap through childhood, all while undressing you with their eyes. Ever believe any of it? I didn’t, yet I believed in something. However, I can’t think back to analyze what that something might have been without horror, loathing, and a shit-dose of pain.
The fact of it is, life is doomed, a tragedy dolled up as a romance, and God is the standup comic that made us unable to get that fact. We’d have been better off one way or the other, Big Fellah—animals or gods—and not the freak hybrids you cooked up. And now you don’t even possess the nads to destroy us, leaving us the job of recognizing our futility and KILLING OURSELVES OFF. Like, thanks, Hozzanahh—waydabe. Can you blame us for being who we are? Can you blame us for the sheer mendacity of humankind? I mean “sheesh,” phukah, take responsibility.
So you see, I’m not being shoved off Planet Sukz by the ugly masses. I’m simply taking my leave. Not due to despair but by design.
But why NOW for the big plunge into eternal damnation? I do believe that U are the answer, m’sweet—I believe that I always anticipated your arrival in my life, and that you would serve the function of shifting me toward the realization of this all-important goal of mine. I believe that I anticipated you and the pain you would so negligently, so contemptuously yet inadvertently inflict. Thanx, bitch, for fulfilling my destiny.
Hey, and thanx for cummin, one and all. Please remember to leave your life as you exit the weblog.
TALK, NIHILIST DOGS
garbo @ 02.11 02:14 am
Glad to have been of service, traveling man. Say hi to Cerberus for me, wouldja?
fullfrontal @ 02.11 04.04 am
I’m already dead, you clit. Show a little respect.
36
February 18 @ 4:14 pm
>DEATH…A LONELY BUSINESS<
Well. The worst has happened. Inevitably, it seems, although I do not know why.
It’s been days since I last posted, but those of you in Boston will have heard about Anthony Cunio’s death and seen the television coverage of the funeral. Tyler Malloy, I’m truly sad to report, was the name I picked, more or less spontaneously, for Tony Cunio when I wrote about him in Life is Pulp. You know my thing about not using real names. I’m sorry that I confused you and the Rottweiler, 36-D, into thinking that someone named Tyrell Reed was Burly-Bear, but the fact is I’ve never met nor heard of Tyrell Reed. I’m sorry if that got the Rottweiler after the wrong scent. Sorry to have caused any and all of you such a load of consternation. Sorry, too, that I wasn’t able to attend Tony’s funeral. Sorry, most of all, to have been the troubled woman somehow at the bottom of this good man’s murder.
I’ve been rail-riding, actually. Found a sleeper to Seattle, and then a return via…well, what difference do the cities make? Rail-riding is just a thing that I do when life is really cruel and I need to be in limbo. I’ve been in limbo—am in limbo still, as I post. Don’t know when or where (or how, actually) I will land. That’s the thing about limbo. That’s its risk element.
One thing that’s been eating away at me is how predictable it all was. Here’s this guy, Burly-Bear, the one healthy, decent guy in my life, so of course he has to be brought down. Like dickel. His opposite in so many ways, but in my mind his match.
Incidentally, dickel’s made a full recovery—apparently that boy heals like a paraplegic at a holy roller tent show. Of course, none of you will accept dickel as a “decent” guy (moral majority snots that you are), but I know him. Also, he wasn’t always the one who got us kicked
out of private school. I messed up a few times—there was an English teacher at one school. MacLean Jared, his name was (cute name, yeah?), and a sweeter young pencil-dick you’ll never meet, frail and anemic, pumping his skinny arms as he motored his way along those rural roads on his daily marathon. I was just looking for some assurance, some sign that—how would you put it, marleybones?—that all men aren’t total dicks. I suppose I got that assurance from Mr. J, but not quite in the way I imagined. Anyway, I’m sure that my stepfather would have shackled me to the basement wall and left me there to rot if he’d found out, but dickel took the blame for our ejection (and quite a lashing) for me. So, you see, he’s really the most decent man I know. He’s the Christ to my Mary Magdalene, the martyr to my reformed whore.
But Burly-Bear was a close second, I mean for sheer decency, and he wasn’t even my own blood. That says a lot, when you’ve lived most of your life in a dark corner…Dans un coin noir. The original name for this blog. Would you have come to such a gloomy place?
You know, it’s like i.went.to.harvard said. Burly-Bear didn’t really lie about being interested in me—not out-and-out. Of course he lied about knowing about this blog—they all knew, all the cops, because of course it was in Mr. Suicide’s internet history. How stupid of me not to think of that weeks ago. I mean, if Pearle was stalking me, more or less—how did none of us figure out that of course he’d learn about my blog? After all, I wasn’t secretive about it—why would I be when the point is to attract a circle of commenters? The Colonel certainly knew. Therefore, the Peacock could have known, easily. So why wouldn’t Stephen Pearle hear about it from her, if he was asking her about me after seeing us exchange wan greetings at the Berklee? Naturally she’d steer him to Life is Pulp; it’s me at my best, and she wanted me out of her life.
Pretty dumb, my not figuring out that one. Dumb, dumb, dumb.