Beautiful Blemish (4 page)
Authors: Kevin Sampsell
I step into the mall.
I feel myself shaking and think I might even charge at him if I don't watch myself.
I want to break something, something that has some legitimate answers inside.
Suddenly I am grabbed from behind.
I wrestle away and stumble to the ground.
It is my mother, fully clothed in a
Fila
sweatsuit
and fresh from a facial at the Nordstrom's.
I look at her with shock and anger in my eyes.
She can't help but to burst out laughing.
I look at Skip.
He looks concerned.
But not for my mother, for me, sprawled on the floor again.
He moves to help me but my mother grabs on to him, laughing.
She is trying to make him laugh, as if they just pulled the greatest joke in the world on me.
I watch them and hear the
muzak
filling my ears.
She is draped on his left shoulder, barely hanging on, her loud mouth is open and pointed at his neck,
her
eyes pushed shut.
He looks uncomfortable.
I wait for it to become quiet.
I want to tell her something.
I want to tell her that they are meant for each other.
And then I want them to go away.
New Suburban Lit
I.
This morning, as I started my car, I had the strange feeling that I had forgotten how to drive.
As I approached an intersection, someone honked their horn and yelled at me, “Hey asshole, did you forget how to drive?”
II.
I was watching a game show on the Spanish channel. People had to race to a microphone and then sing a karaoke song. Then someone had a bunch of crap poured on their head.
III.
I was at a party with my wife and some friends. We were on an outdoor patio and there was a gathering of snakes on the hillside just underneath the patio. We leaned over the railing and watched the snakes slither against each other as we drank. We chatted and laughed at each other’s jokes. Every few minutes we would get silent and watch the snakes. We began to realize there were too many snakes.
IV.
While watching a true crime show on television the other night, I heard the announcer say that one dangerous man had killed four people in six months. I quickly found myself thinking: I could kill more people than that in six months.
V.
Random profanity has always pleased me. Once, in the city, when I was walking to work, someone came up to me and said: “You are the
unslickest
motherfucker I have ever seen.” Then he calmly crossed the street while flipping off all the cars. It made my day glow with a happy tint.
We had some people over to the house recently and I couldn’t stop saying that. “You are the
unslickest
motherfucker I have ever seen.” Everyone was gone before dessert.
VI.
They say the house around the corner from ours is a crack house or a speed house. But don’t they always?
I wanted to say hello, slightly high on the feeling of being “the new folks.” A slow young girl answered the door and asked me to help her with her Spanish homework. I don’t know Spanish but I went in anyway, out of curiosity more than anything else. I helped her with two of the easy words but floundered when I only could only count to six. She offered me a Mountain Dew. I noticed the fridge was nearly empty.
VII.
I had a dream that I became really concerned about smells. I started to buy air freshener spray for the bathroom and incense for the living room. My wife would smoke pot and I would spray lemon water on the couch when she wasn’t looking. I looked in the mirror and noticed that I had Michael Jackson’s new nose.
VIII.
I don’t let my son play with the other neighbor kids. One of them always has a cast. I believe the ten-year-old twins across the street smoke cloves.
My son is still innocent. He calls his penis his “private.” Sometimes we play baseball in our front yard. His goal is to someday break someone’s window with a home run.
Stuck
Lisa calls me from the party at
I am counting cigarettes and running water into the mop bucket.
"I'm at Jimmy's now," she tells me. I hear Prince in the background. "I keep asking people to take me to your store, but they're all drunk."
"And what about you?"
I ask.
"I dropped acid at 10." She laughs just a little, her mouth away from the phone. "How is work going?" She is trying to get me to talk.
I dodge the question, irritated by her giggling. "Who else is there?"
She seems to have dropped the phone or something. Her voice is heard saying a name, but it is far away, barely audible: "Jimmy. Yeah. Jimmy. Not...
bu
-
mermserr
err
semm
mu
..." She laughs again, picks up the phone. "Jimmy's trying to kiss my pussy. He says it's like a little fruit. Oh, I wish I could come see you."
I hear the phone fall again, this time not so far from her mouth. Is she lying on the floor? I say her name but she is talking to Jimmy again, asking for a ride (
pleeeease
) in that little girl voice. He says something back to her in a scalding tone.
I can picture them on the floor in some bedroom, his head burrowing between her skirted legs.
"I'm not the bad guy. Don't think I'm the bad guy." I'm guessing this is Jimmy's voice on the phone now. "It's just that everyone's either drunk or on acid. I'd say she should wait about two hours for someone to sober up... Hello?"
"Okay, whatever," I tell him, "just let me talk to Lisa."
The phone goes on the floor again. I'm looking for soap for the mop bucket. A customer comes in the store, asks me for "Camel, box." I take his money with the phone still pressed to my ear. I hear them talking in short sentences... on the floor... him at her feet. Something is thrown over the phone.
A blanket or a shirt.
I hear the volume of the music cut in half. Lisa is gasping or laughing or crying or breathing hard.
I'm tired and can't wait to get off work. I feel more annoyed than jealous, but I slip off mentally and lock my stare on a
Slurpy
machine, memories of Lisa and me on all-night acid trips together. She is so skinny. Something about her skinniness made me want to stick her entirely in my mouth, like a shark swallowing a Barbie doll. I licked her pussy for a long time. It seemed so tiny and hard.
A little pearl.
I chewed. I wanted to bite. She sucked me like crazy, but we both never came. We were still on the high side of coming down. She told me she wanted to bite my dick off and chew it like a wad of bubble gum, for a few hours.
"Honey?
Can I call you back? In about fifteen minutes." She sounded like she could barely talk. "Someone else wants to use it."
An hour later, she calls back.
"I'm sorry honey, I was going to call you right back and then Stephanie showed up and saved me from Allan."
"Who's Allan?" I ask, as my confusion and anger start to meet somewhere inside my stomach.
"He's just some guy I met at the show. He thought I was giving out blowjobs in the bedroom or something, it was really weird."
"What did Stephanie say to him?"
"Just told him to fuck off.
Jimmy was trying to keep me in the room or something. He wouldn't turn the lights on. They were both trying to get my panties off. I probably would've puked on their little pricks."
"Look, it's about
," I tell her, "I can be out of here at
. We'll meet somewhere."
"Well, I'm over at Allan's house now."
"What!"
"He lives closer to the
store,
I can start walking over there. He was being nice after Stephanie set '
im
straight."
"Is he trying to scam on you and shit?"
"When we came inside he told me- Oh yeah, my roommate just moved out, like he just remembered. Then he said I had the kind of hair that made me look like I fucked twelve hours a day."
"What did you say?"
"I said it was your fault."
"What did he say then?"
"He was confused. It totally looped him. He started telling me about his dick size and stuff, saying he wasn't circumcised, that I could peel him like a banana or some shit like that."
"Where is he now?"
"He's on the toilet, sleeping. Should I steal some of his stuff? Cut his finger off?
His dick?"
I want to say yes to all the above but I don’t.
At
in the morning,
Elizabeth
comes in for the morning shift. I've already done all my counting and cleaning and am ready to go. Lisa is going to meet me outside at the bus stop.
Elizabeth
gets a little pissed because I don't have three pots of coffee ready. I remind her that it's Sunday, but she still wigs out. At 43, and with a rich husband and a Cadillac, I always wonder why she wants to work a geek job like this. It keeps me out of
trouble,
I think she told me once.
As I wait at the bus stop, I see a car drive by one way, and then the other. I think it's Jimmy's car. Doing what, I don't know. Then a few blocks up I see Lisa walking my way; obviously as tired as I am because her steps are labored and slow. She bends over and spits something on the sidewalk, then stays that way for a moment before looking up, and then behind her. I yell her name, but she starts down the other street. She looks in my direction and her body language tells me she is lost, or suddenly unsure of where she is. I notice she isn't wearing her glasses. I start walking quickly toward her. She starts down the wrong street. I start running until I get to the spot where she has spit. "Hey!" she calls out from behind me, "Where are you going?"
"I thought you went down that street. I thought you forgot where to meet me."
She looks at me as if she doesn't know whether to laugh or think I'm crazy. "I was right behind you."
I look down the street, breathing heavily, not seeing anyone else. The Sunday sun is shining orange through blue. The city is quiet. I realize I have made a mistake.