The Life and Times of Innis E. Coxman

by R. P. Lester

  ***

  Sex offenders don’t suffer the ostracism I endured.

  Being bullied in the halls by rednecks and jumped in the locker room by the brothas honed my fighting skills. Weathering four years of exile from the rest of the student body taught me the pleasures of my own company. But the fondest memories that I hold dear are the slanderous names which have bolstered my present sensitivity to others. Alcohol and chemicals did their best to destroy them, but I can still recall some highlights:

  Cum Boy.

  Cum Bubble.

  Nutty.

  Nut Head.

  Loose Cannon.

  Fuck Fountain.

  Gooshy.

  Goosher.

  Splooge Mcgooge.

  Sticky Stanley.

  Hose Stick.

  Wet Willy.

  Hey-Dude-You’re-Supposed-to-do-That-on-Her-Stomach.

  Slicky.

  Slickster.

  That’s-the-Guy.

  Punching Bag (more of a viewpoint than an insult).

  And the most creative handle for a newcomer with a bull’s-eye on his back: Look Ma, No Hands.....

  VD clinics don’t have that many names on the sign-in sheet, good people.

  I’m not downplaying when I say the experience was difficult. There were many times when I felt myself breaking at the joints, coming close to suicide at the ripe old age of fourteen. Naturally, now that I’m older, have seen more of the world, and have witnessed people with real problems overcome them, I’m glad I didn’t. With all the atrocities out there—war, famine, Simon Cowell, steamed squash, cold coffee, and that old lady at the head of the line who still writes a check instead of using a fucking debit card—my dilemma didn’t amount to a hill of Xanax. But I’ll be a monkey’s inappropriate uncle if I didn’t have to go through years of self-annihilation to see that.

  ***

  (Unfortunately), things turned out well for Slobadong. After undergoing extensive electrolysis, some time with a speech coach, and a radical name change, she became a stand-up comic with one hell of a stage show. With a successful run of club work under her belt, she went on to pursue a career in movies and television. You may have seen her in such films as Exit to Eden playing second fiddle to the comic genius of Dan Aykroyd, A League of Their Own trying to convince Madonna to stop being such a slut, and the live-action version of The Flintstones, where her role as Betty Rubble butchered the sexiness of the character, prompting John Goodman to retch off-camera.

  Of course, many will recognize her as host of the strangely popular and thankfully cancelled The Rosie O’Donnell Show.

  Love Means Never Having

  to Say “You’re Crazy”

  In my early 20s I anticipated a violent death by my mid-20s. And nothing heroic like a warrior falling in battle or a mishap with two wet prostitutes and an electric dildo. I mean the sort of demise that beckons your angry spirit to look down (or up) at your withered meatsack with seething antipathy.

  The existence I was leading wasn’t conducive to physical longevity. If I’d stayed on that path I most certainly would’ve wound up face down in a puddle of puke with the straw in my nostril as proof I’d had a really good time. The amount of narcotics the human body can tolerate in a single sitting is limited; there were many occasions when I hocked a loogey in the face of such logic. To further an early grave, the social circles infiltrating that lifestyle bring the threat of ferocity, be it from the attempted theft of your drugs to someone in your bunch mistaking a simple “Hello” as an offer to intercourse their mother.

  I was also married to psychosis who wished to snuff me and who wasn’t the least bit concerned if she joined me in the demise.

  ***

  I was at a very dark place in life, so close to the edge that some of my dealers pondered an intervention. They opted out when they realized I was eighty percent of their gross. Satan exacerbated the downward spiral when he gave me a perfect addition to my self-destruction, a wife. Her name was Raptious de la Cray and we were wild together: parties lasting days, enough acid in our bodies to fuel a car battery, and experimenting with Martha Stewart’s engrossing bestseller Martha’s Meth Cook: Speedy Recipes For the Sniffer in a Rush.

  It was a hasty courtship. Raptious and I met at a local bar, discovered we had nothing in common except drug suppliers, and after only a few weeks we foolishly got married. In the beginning it was great, the ideological romance of newlyweds still fresh on the table. It didn’t last long. Within a month of our nuptials, I began to suspect something was awry.

  One day I returned to a still house. I called out for Raptious and heard echoes in response. Her brand new Buick was in the carport so I knew she was home. I walked through the faded-wallpaper living room, passed the glass table supporting a Pyrex bong and a pile of weed, wending past the white plastic wall shelf holding lines of crystal divided on a cookie lid, down the hall stretching to our bedroom. I found her kneeling on the floor at the foot of our bed sitting on her feet, the lobe-length auburn hair chaotic as a bird’s nest, her chunky frame hunched over a pile of clothes with her back to the doorway. Hiding one of my Zippos in her hand. The lamps in the room were off, the only light being that streaming from a globed sixty-watt in the hall. She wore only a holey pair of black underwear and a pink wife beater. I knew then that something was wrong; she never wore wife beaters because they cut into her back fat. The air was teeming with the scent of freshly poured lighter fluid. My sympathetic nerve system rushed to life and I didn’t know what to expect.

  I suddenly began kicking my own ass for not replacing the expired fire extinguisher in the kitchen.

  I meekly called to her, “Raptious?”

  She shot up like a ninja, whirling her corpulent body and planting both feet in the carpet. The words came screeching. “Don’t come any closer, motherfucker! I’ll do it! I swear to God I will!” Her eyes were wide, wild, like a newly captured tiger biting the bars of its cage. Before I could ask as to the trouble, she lit the Zippo and swung it back and forth, grasping the lid, letting the fiery bottom case dangle over the malodorous heap of cloth. She laughed like an orphan plotting the murder of its abusive caretakers.

  In that instance, I was able to talk Raptious down and confiscate the Zippo before she lit the fabric ablaze, possibly destroying our home and killing us both in the process. The experience was my first whiff that something in her mind was broken, but it wouldn’t be the last.

  I soon realized my new bride was made of sugar, spice, and everything nice.

  And lunacy.

  ***

  It was a blustery Sunday in January and it couldn’t have happened on a better day. After all, Sunday is the day of worship and domestic violence, so sayeth the Lord.

  I’d created a bend in our river of bliss when I cheated on Raptious the night before with a cashier from a convenience store. My cousin had concurrently been in their living room fucking her roommate. For reasons that remained unclear for quite some time, that asshole told Raptious all about our boys’ night out (years later, I came to realize that they were maybe probably definitely sleeping together). She asked me details about the assignation between bouts of assault. Her angry fists landed madly for two hours and I had reached my breaking point.

  Not concerned with my marital faux pas so much as my well-being, I said I was leaving our love shack, vowing to return when I was high enough to deal with her insanity. After plucking a pre-rolled joint from the stash in my nightstand, I grabbed my keys and plaid blue coat and headed out the door. She followed me, yelling that if I left right then I’d, “regret it!” I gave no ear.

  The sight of me strolling blithely around the hood of my stylish Ford Escort was too much for her. From the open carport door, she threatened to halt my departure by harpooning her Buick into the foyer. I thought she was blowing off steam, but when I opened the door to my car, she sprinted to her monstrous Regal, got in, turned the ignition, and revved the engine loud enough to rival stampeding buffalo. She thre
w it in reverse and backed out of the driveway toward the street. Such was my desire to avoid a gaping hole accenting the fireplace, I ran to the driver’s side of her battering ram and attempted to make sweet, hasty amends.

  “You crazy cunt! You drive that fuckin’ thing in the house and I’ll tell your mother you stole her speed!”

  She rolled down the window. “Fuck you! Tell her, you cheating cocksucker! Just don’t be surprised if I do some remodeling while you’re gone! Remember those French doors you wouldn't let me have? Well I’m about to get ‘em for free, dickhead!” She capped her declaration with a whiiiiiiiiiiiir of the V6.

  I didn’t think she’d do it. Then again, I’d had no reason to suspect she’d douse every article of clothing we owned with flammable liquid.

  It was imperative that I stop Raptious from wrecking our home with that car. I would achieve this by slamming a fist into her windshield.

  I ran to the passenger side and raised my clenched right hand, bringing it down with gusto—crunch!—to form huge fissures running in every direction with a fist imprint at the center. From behind the steering wheel, Raptious drew a breath, held it, her eyes widening to fury as she stared at the injury her new vehicle had sustained. I pried my bloody knuckles from the windshield and shook the shards from my flesh, satisfied that I’d prevented her shenanigans from advancing any further. I crammed my torn hand into my jean pocket to retrieve a pack of Marlboro Reds. Tapped one out and lit it. I eyed her for a moment through the fractured glass before strolling to my hatchback, confident that my action was in no way about to have an imminent consequence.

  Smoke blew from the tires when she reversed it farther down the driveway.

  I halted and turned around. I was fed up with her bullshit and called her bluff, bellowing the threat of a man with more heart than sense. In the wake of this incident, I’ve concluded that the words were poorly chosen, having rehearsed them in my head to the point of mental fatigue, certain that if I could revisit the event I’d pick a phrase more apt to soothe the savage beast than inflame the ire:

  “I FUCKING DARE YOU!”

  It was obvious that I’d disparaged her grit; the motor roared with extreme passion and batshittery.

  A loud clu-chunk! belched from under the hood; a transmission thrown into drive as it drowned my pleas for sanity.

  When the Buick raced toward me, I was pinned at the knees to the designer plywood of our carport, proving once again I am built for power instead of speed. (Cat-like reflexes were sacrificed for a great story. You’re welcome.)

  I opened my eyes and took stock. I was alive. The next order of business was to thank God for keeping me whole. After a brief exchange with The Almighty, I focused on the stinging sensation in my legs, electric shocks of pain surging to every receptor in the brain. And how fortuitous! None of my receptors were doing a goddamn thing right then so they were all available to tell me that it was fucking excruciating!

  In the middle of our fracas, I had an epiphany: without my legs, I was never going to have the pleasure of sinking my foot in her ass once I was freed.

  I beseeched Raptious to release the gas, or at least put it in park. Her dementia refused to comply and she floored the accelerator. I could feel my patellas being crushed as blood seeped through my denim pants, small flakes of bumper chrome mixing with the blotches.

  If I didn’t launch a counterattack, I’d literally be cut off at the knees. Being that I was trapped, my defense options were limited, but not absent. I pounced when I saw it, stretching my rippling, muscular chunky, oafish body to the passenger side and snapping off her radio antennae. If crippling me wasn’t a concern, maybe she’d care enough about her vehicle. Loud whipping noises arced across the carport as I thrashed the maroon hood like a disobedient Hebrew slave. Within seconds, it looked as though hydrophobic badgers had played hopscotch on the paint job.

  I’d had the presence of mind to snag a weapon in a dreadful situation, giving Raptious’ cherry new ride deep scars like the ones I’d forever have on my knees.

  A small wave of pride crested in my soul.

  The wave broke when she reversed her car and I fell to the ground like a severed foreskin. I collapsed, knees to my chest, rolling on my back, wallowing in physical torment.

  By this time, the neighbors had poured from their homes to see what all the ruckus was about. We lived in a cookie-cutter part of the city with houses mere yards from one another, providing them ringside seats to our soap opera, and trust me when I tell you—if there’s anything that residents love in their neighborhood on a Sunday afternoon, it’s the blood-curdling screams of marital discord.

  This was around the time cell phones became commonplace in our society. I’d even begun to see the homeless with those shitty bar phones everybody used to have; the novelty of ownership hadn’t waned for them, either. People held their cell phones to the same importance as their middle fingers and were just as attached (my, how the times have changed).

  Imagine publicly fighting with the mentally disturbed only to have bystanders throw their hand to an ear and relay every juicy tidbit to the cops.

  I rolled on the concrete like a turtle on its back, my knees killing me as the piercing shrill of sirens approached the neighborhood. I cautiously got to my feet, fighting against the agony, composing myself for their arrival and preparing to go back to jail.

  ***

  Ah. You’re in the dark about this. I’m sorry, good people, allow me to expound:

  You see, in a majority of DV calls (Domestic Violence for the uninitiated), cops generally side with the female, even if the male’s been beaten like an eighth grade phallus. I’ve known plenty of men who will back me on this to the nth degree. Seeing as how Raptious was consistently out of her fucking mind, this wasn’t the first time the police had visited our residence, and even though she’d yelled and cursed at them on multiple occasions, somehow they’d always assumed I was in the wrong.

  Large + tattoos + permanent scowl = guilty as shit.

  But I was certain that sense would prevail on this occasion. One look at the marks on my face and the blood on my knees and they could see that-

  “Fuck! You’ve gotta be kidding me! I didn’t do anything, you motherfuckers! Get off o’ me!”

  “Easy, Mr. Coxman. Do you remember what happened last time?”

  “Yes I do, Officer Wankman! She threw a brick through the kitchen window and I went to jail after you tased me. Raptious, tell ‘em it was you. You know it was you!”

  “He said he was gonna throw a pipe bomb in the police station. I had to stop him ‘til y'all got here.”

  “What?! You lying whore!”

  “That’s a disturbing the peace charge, too, Mr. Coxman. Now watch your head.”

  ***

  Now I’m back on the streets and my records are clean.....oh, sorry. The last thing I listened to was Eazy-E.

  But I was, in fact, back on the streets. More pointedly, I was walking one of the busiest streets on one of the coldest nights ever, headed home after bailing myself out. They let you do that if you act right and don’t try to rape anyone in holding.

  The day’s occurrences had drained me and the guys in the tank contributed to my aggravation. I’d spent six hours in a sweltering holding cell with one talkative second degree murder, two drug possessions who kept threatening to roll on each other, and an Iraqi gentleman who persisted I was on speed due to my neverending streams of sweat. Once I hit the street, I required Snapple and silence.

  If anyone had said a word to me I was going to rip their tongue out and order it to shut the hell up.

  After paying the bondsman his percentage, I still had two hundred dollars in cash with no cigarettes. Trying to wrap my mind around that laughable irony, I felt my cell phone vibrate in my pocket. My clenching asshole could’ve snapped a crowbar when I saw that it was her.

  My enemy.

  My nemesis.

  The villain in a straight-to-DVD movie.

  The cumsho
t on a video camera because some moron filmed the scene from the bottom.

  And just so you can wrinkle your nose at the page like it farted on you, she was asking if I wanted her to come and pick me up.....

  I told her I’d rather go back and sit with the guy who said I smelled pretty.

  ***

  My journey home led me through the projects. I found a twenty-four-hour oasis where I obtained smokes and a refreshing beverage. The place was full of regular customers purchasing various wares. Menacing eyes bored into me in that all-black establishment and I couldn’t figure out why, for if slavery, the civil rights movement, and American History X have taught us anything, it’s that large, tattooed white men with shaved heads are always welcome amongst their African-American brethren. Much to my relief, I knew the cashier. She worked at another store down the street from my house. Seeing the cacophony my presence was inciting, she loudly vouched to the other patrons that I wasn’t the Grand Wizard. Crisis averted. We made small talk for a moment after she rung up the sale. As I pushed through a nest of black guys occluding the exit, she asked as to my limp and the cuts on my face.

  I told her that my wife had found out about me and my cousin at her place the night before.

  In case you’re curious, Raptious did get arrested for vehicular assault that day. They let her go ROR—Released on Own Recognizance—three hours before I bailed out (don’t you just love America?). A few more years passed before I jumped that sinking ship and set about a major purge in my surroundings.

  ***

  Throughout my ex-wife’s bouts of depression and unpredictable outbursts, there was always a piece of me that loved her, for no one can be with someone else for any length of time without lingering affection, even through unpleasantness. There remains an inkling of the individual that drew you to them in the first place. A flicker of the person you once loved sunk beneath all of the muck and mental illness. Anyone who’s ever been in a similar circumstance will attest to that. Even after our divorce, I still held a candle for her due to the gift she’d given me before our split. That’s why it stung to my core when I heard how they’d found her.