This is a work of fiction, taken from a story I have been working on for a number of years but published in physical form by Punk Around Zine (Vol 9). Partial proceeds from the zine go to various harm reduction programs around the country. I’m used to writing non-fiction, so I’m a bit nervous as this is new for me. I wrote with a few people in mind and a few who didn’t make it. Special thanks to Alexander Herbert, who publishes Punk Around and wrote a fantastic book on the history of Russian punk rock called “What About Tomorrow: An Oral History of Russian Punk from the Soviet Era to Pussy Riot” (Microcosm Press).
“Hey, do you see that over there?” holding a cup of coffee in one hand and pointing with his other hand towards a small group of men huddled at the entrance of an ally across the street. She turned her head and followed his finger, “those men?” she asked. “Nah, look behind them, at those birds sitting on those garbage cans.” In the shadows of the alley there was at least twenty or thirty birds sitting on top of some heavy aluminum garbage bins, that had long ago had the metal sheen thocked out of them, they were bruised and dented—much like the birds that sat on top of them. The birds were standing, bobbing their heads back and forth, silent except for the occasional flutter of their wings which sounded like small decks of cards being shuffled. It looked like every can was covered in feathery movements.
“I haven’t seen anything like that” he whispered.
“There is nothing there, just a bunch of dumb birds sitting on trach cans” she replied, stabbing her fork into a pile of scrambled eggs.
“Look closer,” he gestured towards the alley, his index finger pointing across the table, “see? There, right in the middle, there is an orange cat standing in the middle of all of them.”
Squinting, her jaw hung open, a ball of chewed up egg on her tongue, “oh my God, you are right. That is crazy.” The cat stood tall with the birds, as they shuffled and moved around, the cat yawned and licked one of its paws. The men walked away and the view of the birds plus cat was easier to see. “That’s the damndest thing I have ever seen.”
Reaching under the table she squeezed his knee, causing him to grin on the outside and beam like 200 headlights on the inside. She rode her hand up his thigh, just enough to make him squirm in his seat and floated her hand back down and gave his knee another hug before taking another drink of coffee. The table floated with love, it could have carried it up and through the diner if they had thought of such a thing. Her eyes fixed on his, a smile, a few blinks, this was all really all she needed to tell him. His gaze went back to the birds, and the confident cat, the cat that didn’t think about what anybody thought, that she was going to sit with the mother-fucking birds if she wanted to, and his admiration for the cat grew with every moment. A truck honked at a small compact car and the frightened birds all took flight, the cat looked skyward and licked her paws, after a minute she laid down on top of the garbage can and went to sleep.
“Let’s go” she said, cradling his hands in hers, “it’s so nice out, and we should be in the sun.” “O.K.” he went to grab his wallet, but she said, “I paid while you were looking at the odd cat.”
“Thank you,” he pulled her close, kissed her cheek, smelled her hair and suddenly wanted to nibble on her ear. Outside they walked north, she told him about an antique store she wanted to go to “there is a chest there, an oak one, it looks just like one my grandmother had. She would put all her sheets and the quilts she made in it. I can still smell it, it smelled of lavender. I want it.”
Their hands intertwined, “where would we put it? That apartment is so small, plus all those stairs! Will you start sewing quilts to put in it?”
“Ha-ha, yes, just for you—I will make a quilt out of all your old dumb rock shirts, some might not be suitable for display though.”
He laughed, “you mean like Anal Cunt or the Ass Ponys?”
“Yeah maybe, but let’s look anyway. We can always dream even if it doesn’t happen.” Living in the fantasy future can be better than the present.
A delivery truck barreled by them, the driver fighting gears that ground against one another—they were tired, those metal gears, the driver dressed in brown from head to toe smiled down at the two lovers walking, he had an urge to honk—their splendid moment in time carrying up through the open window, instead he shifted and drove past them. She laid her head against him and he felt all her love from this small gesture, it felt good, but he always had a twinge of doubt. Always. The thrift store was five blocks and change away, with a small parking lot in the back used for deliveries and pickups mostly, it was always crowded.
“Come here, I know where it is” she clutched him tight, pulling him towards the furniture section. He wanted to look at the records and books, he wanted to leave, he wanted to go home and swallow her whole. Her hand tore from his, “c’mon, its over here” laughing as she implored him. Behind a giant glossy dresser, the bottom two drawers covered in Garbage Pail Kids stickers, she stood next to the chest, it wasn’t as big as he thought. It was banged around the edges, the metal lock was scuffed but it looked ok, putting his head against the Garbage Pail Kid dresser, it wobbled causing him to yank his hand away.
“I like it, how much is it?” he asked.
“Ummm, let me see,” she bent down, her legs folding under her, he looked at her butt, all those thoughts came back and he crouched next to her. “I don’t see the price tag” her lip a thinking thin line, “They usually have them on the edge, hmmm, oh here it is. They wrote it on the corner, the dummies—of course in brown ink. Um, it’s $35! We can afford that, and it’s not as big as I thought, I guess I was imagining it as a little girl when I would climb in my grandmother’s when we played hide and go seek.”
“Let’s get it, I think I can just carry it, or we can get a cab?” he offered.
“Nah,” she replied, “Fuck that, I’ll help you carry it.”
They dragged it home, fifteen blocks taking a small break on block number nine to share a bottled water and trade kisses as they sat atop their new piece of furniture, the one that would always echo grandmother’s house and lavender. They pulled and pushed the chest up the stairs, it banged and clumped all the way up, they laughed and rolled their eyes, funny what love can do. If he had been alone and doing it, muffled little ‘fucks’ and ‘god-damnits’ would have slipped out of his mouth, but together it was different. It always is. Inside she grabbed some wood oil and an old rag that used to be a black and orange sock that his big toe finally busted out of one day at work, and she started polishing it, working across the bottom and working her way up. He made some coffee in the kitchen, its’ smell filling the apartment, they had worked hard to make it their own. He dropped some ice cubes in a glass and poured her some water. Walking over to her he put his hand on her shoulder and handed her the cup.
“you are sweet” raising it to her lips, she was sweating.
Returning to the kitchen, noticing that it had started to rain, with a small puddle of water collecting on the windowsill, he closed the window, felt the drop in temperature against his forearms and wiped up the water with the pink sponge from the kitchen sink. He poured her a coffee, rubbing the chill out of his arms, he felt the goosebumps from the rain.
“Hey, come here” she said, peering into the chest.
Removing the tiny silver spoon, given to him by his mother shortly before she died, “I used to feed you Gerber’s from this, I would polish it every week until the light sparked from it. I think it was the only thing you would eat with” she had told him as the memory passed from her lips to his ears, forever to live until he would take his last breath. She died two days later; her head propped up against a mountain of pillows.
“What is it?” he carried her coffee, she looked up.
“Thank you honey. Look at this,” she held up a small black and white photograph. “This was at the bottom, it was folded in half and stuck in the corner, I think whoever had this must have owned a fleet of cats.” She dropped a giant ball of old cat fur on the floor.
He held the photo in his hand, “wow, that’s crazy. Do you see who that is?” holding the photo close to his eyes.
“Yeah, I mean I think that’s him, don’t you?” She stood up and wiped her pants.
“I do to, it’s old though a little blurry but shit, I’m sure that is him. Is there anything else in there?” She shook her head.
“Nope just that. And the hair, there was a shit-ton of hair…I hope it was only cat hair.” She grimaced.
Leaning next to him, she put her arm under his, tracing one of the fingers over the crinkled-up photo. It was bent in several places and the crooked fold where it was crammed under the wood of the chest, but otherwise the picture was fairly clean. It was a photo of a young man, grinning into the camera leaning back on a motorcycle, one hand on the handlebars the other on his left knee. His smile was almost a sneer, his jet-black hair combed back, with a small curl at the top, in the background was a white building, possibly a garage, and some trees. There was a baseball on the ground and what looked like a guitar case on the driveway off in the short distance.
“Yeah, that’s him, it’s Elvis Presley. Motherfuck, what the hell?!” he muttered to himself.
“Wow, do you think it’s his? I mean the chest.” It was obvious this was a personal photo, taken by a loved one, it was an intimate photo. They turned the chest over, looking for a clue.
There was a small white label stapled into the wood, “Wolford’s Cabinet, 220 South Virginia Street Hopkinsville, TN.” Wolford Cabinet was typed in dark gothic letters and the rest was normal typeset.
“Wow, it could be? I have no idea,” he whispered. “I don’t know, maybe it is. I mean my grandmother had this same chest; this is identical. She lived in Bowling Green when she married my grandfather, that was after he got back from Korea. But, wow, I wonder if we have Elvis’s chest—that would be wild.” They turned the chest over again, and underneath the door there was another small label, this one pink and fastened to the side of the inner door, “To Darlene, with love, Bruce.”
“welp, it’s not Elvis’s chest, it’s Darlene’s and I wonder if Bruce knew about Elvis?!” she laughed, and pulled the photo from his fingers, walked to the living room window and set her coffee down on the windowsill. The rain was coming down in waves, with the gusts of wind pushing it forward in intermediate spells, like a DJ pushing the beat, the rain splattered and bashed itself into everything. Fifteen million miniature suicides. She pulled up the old chair that had come with the apartment, sat down and pulled her knees up close as she held the black and white photo close to her eyes, wondering where it was taken, who Darlene was and surprised by her fortune of being able to peer into the past personal life of a King.
She bit her bottom lip as she traced her finger over the top and edges of the photo, sipped her coffee and looked behind her. He was on the couch, one leg on the floor and the other bent at the knee that he was balancing his coffee on, in his other hand he was reading a paperback, the spine bent in half. She followed his eyes as they soaked the words off the page, his crooked smile reacting to the words and felt her draw towards him.
They had met in a basement nearly eleven months ago, he saw her, slide the cold metal chair backwards, it screeched against the concrete floor of the church and sat down next to her. His hands engulfing the small Styrofoam cup, he didn’t make eye contact but just asked her if she minded if he sat next to her. “Sorry, but uh, there isn’t very many seats here, do you mind if I sit here?”
Looking sideways at him, “no, not at all—we all need to sit.” The coffee was bad, and she remarked to him as he scrunched up his face when he took a sip, “nobody comes here for the coffee, but putting sugar and creamer may help, no need to act tough here. The coffee will kill you if you aren’t careful, we use it to weed out the newbies.” He looked at her for a moment, his eyes like a puppy, she laughed and touched his hand, “I’m joking, we don’t weed out the newbies—we need them.” After a minute of silence, nothing had started yet. He went up and poured some creamer and sugar in his coffee and sat down next to her.
“How can you tell I’m new?” he sipped the coffee; it was a bit better but still bitter.
“I can tell, I’m kinda new myself but I’m a retread, so not really. I’ve been coming back for about seven months now, I sort of came and went out for a long time but then, well I realized if I went for too long there would never be another come-again” she stuck a piece of gum in her mouth.
“Oh,” he squirmed a little in his seat, like a cat clawing a pillow getting ready to nestle in, “yeah, I’m new. My first one since I got out, I went to a few when I was in treatment but never one on my own, not like this.” He looked down, speaking more to his chest than to her, “to be honest, I’m scared shitless.”
Scared shitless was a feeling she knew well, it was one she had felt for most of her life, at least the life she could remember, and no matter what, that feeling was always there sometimes as faint as an aspiration and other times it roared like a tornado screaming in her ear, trying to consume her from the inside out.
“Yeah, I can relate” she whispered, “sometimes just learning to sit here helps, I couldn’t even really sit when I started coming, I’d just stand in the corners moving from one to the other during the meeting—I didn’t trust my legs to sit down, maybe I thought if I stood I could leave whenever I felt I needed to. Luckily it hasn’t happened yet.”
He kept coming and he kept sitting next to her, after a few weeks he introduced himself, she had brought him a better coffee from a coffee shop up the street and he stuck his hand out,
“Hi, sorry I’m Jake” shaking his hand.
“Yeah, I know you tell everybody your name when it gets to you.”
“Oh yeah, you’re right” rolling his eyes at himself,
“Um, I forget your name, sorry—half the time my mind is racing and I can barely keep attention.” She noticed his hands were shaking, the coffee spilled out the top of the lid.
“It’s o.k., I’m Mary.”
“That’s right, I do remember, Mary Whositsnexttome.”
“Yup, something like that” she grinned at him.
From there, he would loiter outside the steps leading up to the sidewalk and chat her up as she walked to her car, a light blue Golf that had more dents in it than any car ever should. “This thing is such a reflection of my life” she laughed on one of these occasions as they talked next to it, “but it keeps plugging away, bruises and all.”
After a few weeks she said to him, “you know if you want to ask me out you can, there is no rule against it” she was staring at him hard. “Well, I just thought…they say no relationships for a year” he stumbled over his words.
“Going out for coffee or dinner does not equal a relationship for God’s sake, anyway I think I can make my own choices.”
From there they were together, bumbling through the new lives they were sharing together, sometimes with tears but mostly with laughter. One night as they were making love he was about to cum, she looked up at him, “don’t you dare cry when you cum, don’t you dare.”
He gasped, “sometimes I feel so deeply, I feel on fire.” But he didn’t cry, and they kept making love and they kept going to church basements together, and eventually they moved in together. She had gone back to school, while he worked framing houses and contemplated a return to school. “I need another career; I want to help people” he said one night as they sat on the couch while the stereo played.
“You mean not your current career, the one where you build houses? Or the one where you were a lawyer, that career?”
“Yes, that career, the lawyer one—it was too crazy for me, too much temptation, too much ego—including my own.”
She felt the cushion sag underneath her, “this fucking couch has got to go,” the wire spring had sprung their last spring—the bounce of the sofa had deserted the relic of furniture many years ago. Her bottom sank to the seat. The couch didn’t come with the apartment, but they had dragged it from an alley up the street, checking it for bugs, stains or any other unsavory details. It was a vinyl couch, it looked immaculate with smooth pine legs and underboards, but when a person sat on that one cushion it gave away its age. Which was nearly forty years old. But it looked good, and they planned to get the cushions refitted with new coils.
She pulled his head on her lap, stroking his hair, staring down at his small mouth, lips pursed while he slept, small breaths sneaking out in a three second pattern. She wanted to ride his out-breath across the room, to live on the essence of him, his being—she wanted to devour him and to be devoured. He was a mystery at times, he would forget sections of his life even though he was in his early forties, “it’s all a blur” he would say when she probed him about his past. She knew he was an attorney, but that he lost his job due to his drinking but not because of the drugs, “maybe I did some coke every now and then, but really, in the end it was the booze. I did a bit of everything for a while, but I was able to work—I went through about two years when I was using heroin, it got out of hand—I was hiding it, spending money I didn’t have. I felt like a hypocrite in court, representing people who were using the same drugs as I was, but I had more skills to hide it.” He explained to her he just woke up one day and quit hard drugs, getting sick for a few days but “it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but I have always been able to battle through things. I went on a trip, used up my last Mastercard and went to the Bahamas for a week. I figured I couldn’t really score there. Anyway, I came back no longer a drug addict but an alcoholic.” She knew this story, they shared this much but the other aspects of his life she didn’t know, and she didn’t know if the exclusion was intentional or if he forgot.
Her own story included alcohol as well, but there was also a lot of heroin when she was in her twenties—she got turned on both ways by an old boyfriend (now deceased). “That was a mess” she thought as she kissed his forehead, “boy, I was fucked up.” She did remember a lot, too much she felt. The abuse, both physical and sexual, she was raped twice—once by her boyfriend’s drug dealer when her boyfriend went to pawn something and left her alone in the dealer’s house, and once again by someone she was using with. “I can’t forget that shit, even if I tried” she told him one night as they laid in bed, their bodies hot against one another. But like him, she felt that alcohol was something she couldn’t beat, although her drug use never completely ended, she would use occasionally—maybe once every four months or so “Just to get a taste,” but it never cost her work or school. Finally, after almost being raped again after drinking and going home with a mutual barfly she had enough. “that’s when I decided, fuck it, I’ll try this way again—the rooms, give them a chance again. So far so good, I don’t want that kind of drama in my life anymore.” She went on Suboxone over three years ago and that was what changed for her, “there is something I don’t like about some of the meetings, and that’s why I need my medication—I could not have done anything else without quitting heroin, it took me over two years to finally quit drinking and my main reason was because I couldn’t afford it—it was stupid, how much I would drink. When someone talks about shit, they don’t know about in the meetings I used to want to gauge their eyes out, but I just take what I need from the ones I respect.”
These conversations happened a lot between them, the parsing out of what worked for each of them. She had also started volunteering at one of the needle exchange sites in town, “I love helping those people, I mean I was one of them—maybe not as bad—I wasn’t homeless, but I was sick a lot.”
He never joined her there, at least not at this point, “I can’t do that yet, I need to make sure I can handle it first.”
The love was deep, all the way through to the beginning of her life, the oldest part of her felt his connection. She wanted to consume him, to be one—a burst of electric energy. But, when alone she questioned herself, which he felt was odd since she appeared so strong, committed to her recovery and her life, this he admired. She felt desperate at times, combing through his past via the internet. One night he came home and found her looking at one of his social media accounts, “what are you doing?” He asked, a bit annoyed, “there is nothing there, I don’t even use those things very much anymore.”
She cried, one of the few times she was tearful with him, “I don’t know what I’m doing, when I can’t feel you, not physically but you know, when I can’t feel you. I guess I want to see if you loved me before you even met me, if there are clues to your past that you needed me.” She paused, one hand clutching the opposite shoulder, “it doesn’t make sense, I’m sorry.” He went upstairs, eventually she followed him, and as he slept, she removed her clothes, and as she held his hand, she masturbated while he slept. They never spoke of it but occasionally she would feel that compulsion to seek his past to assuage their future.
“Do you think we knew each other before?” she was cutting onions up for soup, their scent filled the apartment as she noticed the olive oil in the pan rolling around in hot liquid balls, glistening as they ran from the heat.
“What do you mean? Like in a former life? Or did we meet at some point” he was eating an apple, sitting at the table with magazine in front of him.
“No, I’m not sure how to explain it, there is a part of me that thinks I have always known you. I know it sounds odd, or new-age-y but ever since you sat next to me at that meeting, I felt touched by you. Maybe I’m just weird” she slid the onions into the pan, they sizzled, and their sweetness exploded like a bomb across the kitchen. She could hear him eating his apple in the other room, one bite, two bites, pausing, another bite. “You’re not listening to me.”
“I am, I’m trying to think about what you asked me and how to frame it. Whatever you are making smells really good, by the way.”
She started slicing up the garlic into thin pieces and placed a red pepper onto the open flame of the stove top, she moved to the door and watched him obliterate the rest of the apple, put it down and wipe his hands on his black jeans. “and…? Maybe it’s just my insecurities, I don’t know.” He scooted the chair around, its legs scrapping the floor, and he looked at her.
She continued, “perhaps it’s a need we need, and we can only feel it deep—on a cellular level—that’s where the familiarity comes from and we can’t explain it. I feel it with you, but I also feel shitty when I don’t see you, there is a void even if I know where you are, a sort of low hum of anxiety” he looked at her softly. “Yes! That’s it, except it almost a soft panic when I don’t see you or I’m waiting, it makes zero sense. I wish I didn’t have it, I should be a big girl” she flipped the red pepper over, the skin black and bubbly. “ow, that’s hot.”
Thinking he looked down, “my dad wasn’t around much, I’ve told you this. He was always working, always busy and never at home much until, well he finally split. My mom worked as well, went back to school so we were expected to do well, failure wasn’t really an option nor was taking a day off—everybody worked, nobody sat back for a day, not to mention even an afternoon.”
She was pulling the skin off the pepper now, it was hot and goopy, she slid it onto a cutting board, she hated the slime on her fingers, “go on, I’m listening.”
“So, when I started partying in high school, it helped me relax and I had my first true girlfriend, Angie who I dated well into college. You met her one night a few months ago, at that art thing.”
“yes, I remember—she’s nice.”
“She is nice. I treated her like shit though, cheating and yelling. We fought hard; I don’t know if I told you, but I hit her once when I was drunk. She broke up with me shortly afterwards, I’m so ashamed of myself, of course I blamed her. What a shithead I am” he was now speaking more to himself. “But I never felt solid with someone, it always seemed they were going to leave, or I was going to leave first. This is different but I don’t like feeling pangs of longingness, that food smells delicious.” His stomach grumbled in approval.
“Thank you, maybe you are right, that we need each other in such a way that it’s something that we don’t even know where it began. I am feeling guilty as well.” She paused. “I don’t think I should comb through your past, on social media or whatever—I don’t know what I’m looking for when I do that. Maybe a fear of something from way back will come and swallow me like a fish, and I’ll lose you or lose myself.” She felt herself starting to tear up.
“Jesus” she sighed and washed her hands.
“I get it, I feel the same. Maybe we think our past will fill the holes in our future—for the first time, maybe ever something feels solid in my life. The past has always been like trying to navigate through liquid, or clouds filled with rain. This feels differently, I am trying to tell you everything there is, but stuff keeps coming up—it’s probably having to do with sobriety and trying to be honest.” He got up and kissed the back of her neck while she let the hot water wash over the back of her hands.
(originally appears In Punks Around #9, published 2020, punksaround.com) partial proceeds to various harm reduction programs: Providence Outreach, Rogers and Rosewater Soup Company, West Oakland Punks with Lunch and Safepoint.
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