Ad Nauseam (2 page)

Jimmy really wanted a beer, but ordered a cup of black coffee instead while looking at the menu. Someone pinched the back of his arm, startling him from his sullen inspection.

“Hey there Jimmy.” Charlene stood at his elbow, holding three empty coffee cups by the handles expertly in one hand. Her smile, beautiful as always, made his heart skip.

“Uh, hi, Charlene.” Jimmy felt himself blush, and tried to stop, only making the heat in his face worse.

“Sorry about the table, Hon. If I’d known you were coming, I would’ve saved it for ya.”

“That’s okay. I don’t need that table. I was planning on sitting at the counter today anyways.”
God, I
always sound like an idiot when I try to talk to her!
Jimmy wished he could just slither out the door.

Charlene cocked her head to one side and smiled, clearly amused by his awkward behavior. Before she could reply, a woman across the restaurant called out, her hand waving frantically in the air.

“
Waitress!
Can I have my bill? I’m late for a meeting!” Jimmy thought the woman was rude, and hated her for interrupting their conversation.

“Just a minute,” Charlene called back.

She reached out to grab Jimmy’s elbow gently, the feel of her hand reminding him of the tingly feeling he got from the hole. He tore his mind away from the memory just in time to catch what she said to him. “I go on break in about forty-five minutes. Would you be able to hang around that long? There’s something I wanna ask you.”

“Sure!” He said too quickly. “I mean . . . um . . . of course. I haven’t even ordered yet. Was thinking maybe a hoagie, or a French dip—”

She smiled at him as the woman needing her bill began to holler again. Charlene hurried away and called over her shoulder. “Talk to ya in a bit, Jimmy!”

As if on cue, Sam came over with his pad and stood in front of Jimmy expectantly, not saying a word. Jimmy asked for the first thing on the menu, which happened to be a Rueben and fries. He didn’t like sauerkraut, but at the moment didn’t care. His mind whirled.

What could Charlene want to ask me?
What if she was going to ask him to quit coming in on her shifts? What if she thought he was creepy? Jimmy squashed the thoughts before they could blossom into a full blown panic. She probably needed someone to a repair a fence for her Mama. Or maybe for a new
boyfriend?!

Oh geez! Here we go again!

The next forty-five minutes were the longest in his life, but Jimmy managed to eat his lunch, shoving the sandwich in without thought, and was surprised when it was gone. He almost left then, but suddenly the lady herself slid into the seat beside him, a diet coke in one hand and a pack of cigarettes in the other.

“Whew! What a day! I think everyone must be crabby today. I swear if one more person complains about their food or the bill—she stopped abruptly, her big blue eyes bright with mirth. “Say Jimmy, would you mind talking outside? I only get fifteen minutes and I’m
dying
for a smoke.”

Jimmy smiled in his awkward way and nodded. He always found it very charming how she spoke so fast and never seemed to run out of things to say. Charlene made him almost dizzy with her constant chatter, but he liked it. She never seemed self-conscious. He followed her out into the humid afternoon, the bell over the door sounding as they left.

Charlene looked the same as always.
Beautiful.
She kept her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, and wore pink eye shadow and lip gloss that matched her uniform. Her skirt was short and tight, giving Jimmy a glimpse of long, tan legs that made him feel slightly lightheaded. She lit a cigarette and leaned against the brick wall, dragging deeply and squinting across the street at their reflections in the shop windows. As an afterthought, she held the pack of smokes towards him.

“Want one?”

“No, thank you.” He almost added
Mama wouldn’t like that
, but had enough sense to realize this wasn’t the sort of thing a grown man should say. Then he glanced at her legs and the roaring blush was back.

“So anyway, I was thinking,” Charlene looked away as she spoke, paying too much attention to her cigarette. “There’s this picnic on Sunday after service, and I was thinking about going. But with me being divorced for so long and never showing up with a date to anything . . . I know those old women always have their tongues wagging and they have to be saying I’m some sort of lesbian or something.”

He knew what a lesbian was, but he was unsure about the mechanics of such a relationship, so he nodded in a way he hoped looked knowing, saying nothing. Charlene stared at him for a minute, her eyebrows raised in expectation, before she finally spoke again, huffing in exasperation.

“I was wondering if you would like to go with me.”

“Go with, um, you?” Jimmy felt dizzy. Was she asking him
out?
“Like a
date?”

“Yeah. Sure. A date.” Charlene looked doubtful now and Jimmy felt that familiar panic well up inside him. She might be changing her mind.

“Yes! Sure I would!” Jimmy beamed but she looked unsure, so he toned it down a notch, hoping he appeared less eager. “I mean, yeah. I would go with you.”

Charlene smiled then, her teeth uneven and yellowed from nicotine, but still the most beautiful smile he had ever seen. She took out her order book and scratched something on it with her pen, before ripping the sheet off and handing it to him.

“Here’s my number, Hon. Call me tomorrow night. We’ll figure it out.” She crushed the cigarette under her shoe then, with a wink, turned on her heel and left Jimmy to watch her hips swing as she walked back through the door.

He stood there for a moment dumbfounded.
He had a date!
It was too much for him to process. Instead, he tried to remember if he had paid Sam for his sandwich or not. Checking the remaining cash in his pocket, Jimmy got into the truck and headed for the liquor store across town.

***

Jimmy barely heard the liquor store’s little bell above the door. He walked to the back of the store and opened the cooler, locating his favorite brand of beer. There was a sale on cases, so he grabbed one instead of the usual twelve-pack. He heard Mama’s voice sound off in the back of his head, saying something about an alcoholic, but he ignored her. He was too happy about his date. Mama would have plenty to say about
that
too.

On the way to the counter, Jimmy’s eyes fell on the magazine rack in the corner and he stopped. Unlike the racks in other stores, the front was higher so you couldn’t see the covers, only the very top where the name was. The beer wasn’t the
only
change in the house since Mama had died. He didn’t have very many of these magazines, but had collected a few.

He looked at the rack longingly, trying to decide if the embarrassment of purchasing them would be worth the excitement of having some new
material
for his fantasies. He decided he wanted them and grabbed two without even looking to see what they were.

At the register, a kid who looked barely old enough to drink rang up the case of beer, and then stopped with his hand on the nudie mags. He looked around suspiciously, leaning over the counter until he was a little too close for Jimmy’s comfort. Then he spoke in a hushed and secretive voice.

“You don’t want
these
, man.”

Jimmy was flooded with embarrassment, wishing he hadn’t grabbed the books at all. A big breasted blonde mocked him from the cover, one hand holding up her breast like an offering, the other hidden in the mystery between her legs. Jimmy looked away, ready to pay for the beer and abandon the magazines.

“I got something better than this shit.” The young man smiled and winked. He looked around one more time for good measure, reached beneath the counter, and came up with a shoe box held together with masking tape. “Check these out, man.”

Inside the shoebox were DVDs, their covers depicting scenes much worse than any Jimmy had ever seen in his magazines. His heart raced at the thought of
watching
naughty things instead of just looking at glossy pictures, but the excitement quickly waned.

“I don’t have a way to play them. Just a VCR.”

The kid made a noise of derision and shook his head, placing the box back under the counter and coming up with a larger one. “That’s dinosaur shit, pops. But I do have some VHS. Now what you want? Gang bang? Anal? Fetish? Lesbian?”

“Lesbian.” Jimmy said quickly, surprising himself. “And, um, whatever else you think is good.”

The cashier made a show of digging through the box and inspecting each one, before setting three aside and returning the others to their hiding place. He put money in the register for the beer, but the crumpled twenty for the videos went directly into his pocket. He smiled at Jimmy in a creepy way that made him want out of the store as soon as possible, putting the movies into a paper bag.

“You have a nice day, man. Let me know what you think. If those don’t get you off, nothing will!”

Jimmy grabbed the beer and the bag and left without a word.

***

The phone rang ten times when Jimmy finally gave up. Charlene told him to call her
tomorrow
night, but he was too excited to wait. He managed to hold off until after dinner, but spent the entire time staring at the old phone where it sat on the kitchen counter.

Scenarios played through his head. What if she had gotten into an accident on the way home from work? What if she fell and was lying on the floor only inches away from the phone, suffering some terrible injury and forced to listen to the telephone taunting her with its every ring? Or worse! What if she was in her bedroom romancing with some other guy?! The possibilities were endless.

What he really wanted to do was drive straight to town and find out why she wouldn’t answer the phone, but didn’t know exactly where she lived. He also realized somewhere deep down that this would not be normal behavior. He wanted to be cool with Charlene.
Act cool.
It became his mantra.

Jimmy popped the tab on a beer and began to wash the dishes. Edna DeLeon hadn’t approved of a lot of things, and automatic dishwashers were one of them.
Real women,
she told her son often,
didn’t need a machine to do their jobs. No machine could ever get the dishes as clean as good ol’ elbow grease.

He was coming to hate his Mama. At times he fantasized about hopping in the truck late at night and driving out to that cemetery to piss on her grave. It would be
beer piss
too! Sometimes these thoughts caused him guilt, but as time passed, the thoughts increased in frequency and the guilt diminished. As he finished the chore, his eyes fell upon the paper bag on the counter
.

Jimmy picked up the bag with the intention of stashing the movies in a drawer, certain that he wasn’t ready to watch them. But he found himself taking them out of the bag and inspecting each one.

The covers depicted things that would’ve made his Mama turn over in her grave; the backs had paragraphs describing what each video promised to show him. The language was colorful and foul. Most of the words he didn’t completely understand, but having made it half way through high school, he’d been exposed to enough teenage guy-talk to get the gist of it. He grabbed two more beers, drinking one in a single gulp. Just the thought of actually watching the movies made his hands sweat and his heart race. He felt such a bittersweet mixture of excitement, disgust, embarrassment and arousal.

As he grabbed another beer and slid the first video into the VCR, his Mama’s voice came again. Jimmy wasn’t crazy. He knew her voice wasn’t real, but she was there none the less, babbling with rage.
Oh no you DON’T James Allen DeLeon! My own son, a drunken whoremaster! Not in MY house!

“Shut up, Mama.” He said, sitting on the worn couch and pressing play.

His eyes went round and his jaw slack as the images began to grind upon the television screen without any beginning credits. There was no plot whatsoever, no pretense at acting; just raw footage of men and women at their most perverse and primal. Jimmy loved it.

Two hours and countless beers later, Jimmy was just starting the third video. He had masturbated until he no longer could, the beer and his exertions leaving him weak and tired, but still he watched, his gaze riveted onto the screen. Somewhere in the night, an animal wailed in pain and terror, but he paid it no heed.

James Allen DeLeon was learning the erotic details of a lesbian relationship, in living color.

***

When Jimmy awoke in the morning, his head was pounding almost as hard as his heart. He had been in the middle of a graphically erotic dream turned nightmare. In his dream, he was one of the guys in the video, doing nasty things to women, but when he looked up, all of them wore his Mama’s face. He sat up fast in bed; his throbbing head making him regret the decision instantly. He felt dirty and hung-over.

And oddly satisfied.

After a hot shower and a hearty breakfast of eggs and hash browns, Jimmy began to feel human again. A couple of aspirin washed down with half a gallon of water restored him to his previously joyful mood from the day before.

I have a date with Charlene tomorrow!
He wondered if she had ever done any of the things he had seen on the videos. Just the thought made him blush, but he felt as much excitement as embarrassment. Putting on his cap to shield his thinning hair and scalp from the sun, Jimmy whistled as he headed out back to the garden for his morning chores. He wasn’t surprised to see the mess that waited for him.

Pile of guts?
Yep.

Larger than yesterday?
Sure was.

He vaguely remembered hearing howling the night before. This time it was a dog, no question about it. A worn collar with no tags lay on the ground beside the innards. He didn’t recognize the thing, but it didn’t matter anyway. He wouldn’t have driven the mile to the nearest neighbor’s house just to tell them their dog had been eaten by a hole in his yard. People already thought he was simple. He wasn’t about to make them think he was crazy, too.