Authors: Edward Lee

The Minotauress (41 page)

BOOK: The Minotauress

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Ajax' surname was Jackson, and his parents had absurdly dubbed him with the first name Andrew. In his bent political persuasions, however, he regarded the seventh president of the United States as the nation's first "pinko," a closet separatist who boldly killed unarmed Indians while the rest of the Continental Army was fighting the well-trained British, and who "lucked out" at the Battle of New Orleans because his drinking habits forced subordinate officers to lead the battle. Hence, Ajax didn't like his name, so he insisted he be called Ajax.

Ajax was also a bit of a pervert.

"Man," he said, "I'd like to pee on her back."

Dean frowned at the table.

With this comment, Ajax had been referring to the zombie-shuffling waitress who'd just brought them their beers. She was rack-skinny, straight black hair like a mortician wig, with unbra'd tits pushing against her black PIERCE ME! T-shirt like a couple of under-ripe peaches. Tattoos of skeleton hands crawled up her neck to strangle her, and she had something in her lower lip that looked like a shower-curtain ring.

"Shit," Ajax appended, "that tramp's probably had more abortions than I've had beers. Bet she gargles biker piss like Listerine. Pops empty Jim Beam bottles out of her pussy for parlor tricks and has an asshole bigger than the drydock for a Nimitz-class carrier."

Dean blanched.

"Yeah, I'd yank that bitch's reins bigtime; she'd whinny like a horse, " Ajax went on, his eyes fogged in fantasy as he stared after the vapid barmaid. She moved like one of the cast of
Cemetery Man.
"I'd fist-fuck her entire large intestine, then piss on her so hard her Ozzy Osborne tattoos would wash off." Dean blocked out his friend's pornographic rant.
God he's so sexist! No wonder women don't go out with him.

Full of reeking bums eating their own boogers, bovine-faced bald lesbians, and a man with a beard and large breast implants—God Bless Seattle!—the Rte. 25 bus had brought Dean here from downtown—here being a tavern called THE WHARF which sat one street away from beautiful Lake Union, or not so beautiful when one considered the lake's history. For a hundred years, a coal-oil processing plant had dumped its petro-chemical effluence into the lake's pristine depths. Swimming was strictly prohibited, and if you ate a fish caught in Union's waters, any sequent offspring would more than likely be born with flippers. As for THE WHARF itself, it was an actual murder site: A number of years ago, a local "businessman" was shot in the head with a small-caliber weapon, evidently for running up too lofty a marker with other local "businessmen." Ajax and Dean sat at the self-same table.

The tavern made a garbage pit look well-appointed. Some entrepreneur took a couple of double-wide trailers, smacked them together, and that was it. That was the bar. The clientele fit right in, West Coast rednecks to the max. Heavy metal blared from the juke, billiard balls clacked in the back. A giant projection TV in the corner sported Monster Truck races.

Ajax sipped his Redhook ESB and winced. "So the wife let you out of the cage tonight, huh? Let me guess. Work meeting?"

Dean squirted lemon juice into his Pyramid Hefeweizen. "How'd you know?"

"Duh. What is this, like the eighth Friday night in a row she's had a
work
meeting?
"

Dean grinned triumph against the ceaseless implication. "No, it's the sixth, smart guy."

"Oh, that's right. The other two
work meetings
were on
Saturday
nights. And you don't think that's odd."

"Why should I?" Dean retorted. "She's in an odd business. Clothing distribution isn't like working at a bank, you know. Most of their invoices go out on weekends."

"Whatever you say... "

For as long as they'd been friends, Ajax had always intimated that Daphne might be cheating on Dean, the prospect of which Dean viewed as preposterous.
We're in love!
he thought.
He doesn't understand true love.

"How often do you drop wax?" Ajax asked.

"What?"

Ajax rolled his eyes. "How often do you fuck her? Let me guess—once every two weeks?"

Dean was taken aback. "Well, not quite
that
often. Once a month or so." Actually, it was more like once every
two
months... but why quibble?

Ajax laughed. "Christ, my grandparents fuck more than that."

"Marriage isn't about sex," Dean explained. "It's about a spiritual bond, an everlasting one. It's about commitment and total faith. It's about
sharing your life
with someone else. It's about
love
, Ajax," and at that precise moment an uncharacteristic selection switched on over the juke: "All You Need Is Love," by The Beatles.

"See that!" Dean clapped at the coincidence.

The side of Ajax's bearded face flopped into his palm. "You're hopeless. You live your life by advice from The Beatles."

"The Beatles were monumental," Dean defended. "The most important musical assembly in history."

"They were a bunch of acid-head hippie pinko guru-loving junkie shit-heads—"

Dean was long used to Ajax's rather conservative nature. Best to change the subject as quickly as possible. "We were talking about the reality of marriage, Ajax. Sex becomes faddish, much less important."

Ajax grinned. "Faddish?"

"Statistically, sex amongst happily married couple drops drastically after the second year."

"Not into the toilet," Ajax said. "Shit, man. If I was married to a woman as good-looking as your wife, I wouldn't even
care
if she was cheating on me. But I'd sure as shit be busting my nut up her cooze twice a day. No, with her? Make that three times. I'd be hosing her down like a fuckin' fire truck."

There was no arguing with him.
He just doesn't understand,
Dean realized.
He's never been truly in love.
Best to just leave it lie.

But even though Ajax was a weirdo, pervert, and asshole, he was also Dean's friend. And true friends were always there when you needed them. "Look, Ajax, I've got a problem. Do you know anything about—"

Ajax was rubbing his hands together at an image. "Yeah, I'd be dick-spanking that tramp every night. I'd be coring her asshole and dropping
big
peter-tracks on her back. Shit, I'd whittle my dick down to pencil-width and fuck her
nose
—"

"Ajax!" Dean was disgusted. "That's my wife you're talking about!"

"Oh, yeah. Sorry. I was just... .abstracting."

Dean simmered. "I was asking if you knew anything about psychology."

Ajax sipped his beer, then winced. "Does the pope have nocturnal emissions? Fuck, yes, I know about psychology. Shit, I
majored
in psych... before I quit college."

"Well, see, I've been having these—"

"Nocturnal emissions?"

"No," Dean said.

"So what's the problem, partner?"

"Sometimes I think... " How could he say it? "I have these... dreams. I call them the Jig-Jags, 'cos that's how my mind feels. It's like vertigo or something; my brain jigs and jags, and then it's like I'm someone else."

"Dreams, huh?"

"Well, no, it doesn't happen when I'm asleep. It's more like a day dream."

"The Jig-Jags? Sounds like lucid dreaming to me," Ajax said. "Let me guess. When this happens, you see yourself doing something you'd never do in real life."

"Exactly!" Dean excitedly replied. "Like today, I was standing there, and I saw myself grab Daphne by the face and yank her out of the car."

"By the face—I like it," Ajax remarked. "And if you ask me, you should've done it for real, the way the bitch treats you."

Dean scowled.

"It's called non-REM imagery, waking fantasy construction," Ajax went on. "Freud wrote all about it. The strictures of society repress everyone to an extent, but some people get squeezed harder."

"What strictures?" Dean asked. "Society doesn't impose any
strictures
on me."

"Don't be a dope; of course it does. Everything that's made mankind civilized can be viewed as a stricture.
Progress
is a stricture. Part of us, in our psyches, will always be cavemen. It's in our genetic code. Raping cavewoman pussy, eating raw meat, and shitting in the woods. Then ‘civility' comes along, and we gotta shit in shiny white bowls and wipe our asses with toilet paper. We don't eat raw meat, we eat a ‘balanced diet' consisting of the four major food groups. When our dicks get hard, we don't drag a bitch by the hair into the nearest cave and stick her; now we gotta
date 'em
first, hold hands in the park and buy 'em roses. Shit, we gotta take 'em out to
dinner
before we come in their pies. Cavemen didn't do any of that shit! When they got horny they just spit on their dicks and stuck it in, and if the bitch didn't like it, she'd get her head cracked with a rock. In a sense, the modernization of society wages war with our true primordial selves. Get it?"

"No," Dean said.

"
Domestication
is one of those strictures, nimrod. Relationships. Pair-bonding." Ajax winked.
"Marriage."

"I don't believe it," Dean attested. "You're talking like human love is an aberration but it's not. It's part of how your primordial cavemen
evolved,
" and then, at that precise moment, another uncharacteristic song switched on to the jukebox: "Love Me Tender" by the King.

"See!" Dean clapped at the coincidence.

"First The Beatles, now Elvis."

"What's wrong with Elvis? He was the most monumental vocalist in—"

"He was a fat drug-addicted cracker who never wrote a song in his life and died on a toilet seat."

Dean grit his teeth at such blasphemy. "Let's stick to the point, huh?"

"And the point is, you've got these ‘Jig-Jags,' and I'm telling you why. Non-REM Imagery Syndrome is commonly experienced by people who've undergone a drastic change in their lives. And look at you. You spent the first twenty-five years of your life growing up in a rural environment, then—BAM—you move to a big city. Three years later, you're married and you're damn near having hallucinations. Something ain't right in the gearbox, Dean. And I know what it is: your wife."

"No it's not—"

"Come on, you just told me you had a waking fantasy about being violent to Daphne. She's the common denominator in what's not working in your life. Face it, she treats you like shit—"

"She does
not
treat me like shit," Dean had to rebel. "She—"

"She walks all over you. She makes
you
clean the house, cook dinner, wash the dishes. Last year when you fell off the ladder and broke your arm, you had to
drive yourself
to the damn hospital because she refused to."

"That's only because... she wasn't feeling well."

"Christ almighty!" Ajax railed. "She won't even let you have a dog—"

BOOK: The Minotauress

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