danielmarronewriting-blog

[danielmarronewriting-blog]

I Sell TV’s

It’s 4am and I wish I could sleep or perhaps I wish I could die. No matter how many cigarettes I put in my lungs or bottles of booze I put in my gut I just can’t manage to die. It’s almost funny when I think of all the people dying of cancer unwillingly in bedrooms and hospitals sobbing and holding hands with whatever loved ones could manage to get off of work, all those wasted Gilgamesh tears trying to find the Fountain of Youth. And here I am ushering it into my house and the capricious bastard won’t walk through the front door. The back of my head hurts. I turn onto my left side, then onto my right side, then back to my left. I put my clothes back on and go for a walk.

I got in the habit of going for late night walks when I was in college. Everyone would be out popping pills and smoking pot and I’d be in my dorm with some blues music and a bottle of whiskey I bought from a homeless guy. I am content alone. It didn’t make me happy, but I gave up on being happy years ago. Contentment is what I strive for. It ebbs and flows. I walk for about an hour and I can start to feel my eyes getting heavier. I go back to my room.

I’m lying in bed. I take a few swigs from a bottle. The opiate rush of several drinks has been replaced with only a vague dizziness no matter how many drinks I pound. When my drinking first started to pick up, I fell in love. The way the booze warmly caressed my body like a lover. Just like Amber used to. Warm hugs. I don’t drink all day, though. I only drink at night. Or sometimes in the afternoon but only when I’m very depressed.

It’s hard to tell who I am and what I want. I know what I do for a living, though. I sell TV’s at an electronics store right next door to a whorehouse masquerading as a massage parlor. I think I’ve spent more time at the latter than at the former.

I need a drink. I pull out my laptop and instant message a hooker. It was on one of those websites where people buy or sell furniture or antique typewriters or stamps. Shit like that. You can buy people on there too. Well, you can’t necessarily buy them. You can rent them, for thirty minutes to an hour. I typically paid for thirty minutes. An hour was a waste of money and time. Prostitutes were listed under “Therapeutic Massage.” They aren’t bad looking. Some are kind of chunky around the waist but it doesn’t matter as long as they have a hole to unload into.

I get her phone number and then call. She gives me a price: $125 for an hour, $75 for thirty minutes. I tell her thirty minutes and she says Be there soon, baby. I hang up and drink a beer, awaiting the arrival of la petite mort.

The phone rings again and I think it’s the whore so I pick it up and say Hello but it’s not a whore it’s my sister and she’s crying and tells me that my nephew Matt is dead. Matt is my brother Julian’s son. He’s six years old. I ask her What happened and she says He was at a Chinese restaurant with Julian and Marie (Julian’s wife) and he tried some chicken with peanut sauce and all of a sudden he starts turning purple and coughing and gagging. Apparently he had a severe peanut allergy none of them knew about. She breaks into sobs and pauses her story but I know where it’s going. When’s the service, I ask. She says it’s on Thursday. What day of the week is it today? Today is Tuesday. She gives me an address and a time and I say Goodnight, sis, and she says, Take care, David.

Cars pass by the highway next to the hotel and the sounds fill me with despair. Everything is still moving, everything but Matt and his heart. You’re not supposed to die at a Chinese restaurant with your parents. That’s not how the world is supposed to work. I look around the room and the reality of everything seems questionable. My ego has abandoned me. I feel like a moving camera just taking in sensory data, unable to do anything with it. I’m a TV on wheels and something or someone keeps changing the channels and all I can do is watch myself with futility. I have work in a few hours and I’ll be selling TV’s again to morbidly obese couples and poor single mothers hoping to keep their kids quiet with flashing colors. I feel like I should warn them to keep an eye on their kids because you never know when they’re going to die.

I try to fall asleep but I just lay in bed and think of Matt. There’s a knock at the door. I answer it. A dangerously skinny girl with blonde hair and big tits walks in. She has a smile as wide and plastic as the TV’s I sell. I say hello and I don’t know what to do. I feel the thought of Matt slowly sinking into my unconscious mind like quicksand, from which it will resurface in different clothes when I’m questioning my life choices or thinking about my mom or making a sale or at some other inopportune time. She puts her purse on the nightstand and sits on the edge of the bed and takes off her shoes. I say to her You look beautiful and she says It’ll be one hundred dollars. But you said online it was seventy-five. That was then and this is now, sweetheart. One hundred dollars.

I go into my wallet and pull out sixty dollars. What can I get for sixty? I can suck your dick, but I’m only giving you fifteen minutes to cum. Alright, fine. I give her the money and she pulls off her shirt. Lay back on the bed, she coaxes, running her hand over my cock. I’m not hard and this all feels like a business transaction, like I just paid her to file my tax returns or some shit. Matt is dead and his parents are weeping right now, probably screaming at the sky in an attempt to rid themselves of pain but no matter how hard they scream it won’t ever go away.

She sucks my dick and it feels okay. I’m not hard yet so it just feels weird. I already can’t wait for it to be over. Why do I even bother with sex anymore? My brain tells me I want it and then I get it and I walk away more bored and more depressed than when I started. I think I’m becoming self-destructive.

I try to think about some of the women I've seen on TV, in the cooking shows and all. They keep the cooking channel on in the store I work at. I'm hard now, which should make it easier for her. What's her name? I don't think she said. I used to have a girlfriend. She used to love me, too.  At least she did some of the time. I cum and she gets up and asks if she can get a quick fix. I say sure and she gets some paraphernalia from her purse and locks herself in the tiny bathroom.

The sun is starting to come up. I feel really bad right now. Like my soul has the flu or something like that. I feel like I can finally fall asleep. I lay down on the bed in a warmth of alcoholic dizziness and fall into a deep sleep.

I wake up and it's dark outside. The tiny red lightbulb on the phone is flashing. Someone tried to reach me. I call the front desk and they tell me my sister and my boss tried to reach me. I call my boss first. He’s wondering why I wasn’t at work today. I tell him that I was getting topped off by a hooker and couldn’t be bothered. He yells into the phone that I’m a useless employee. He fires me and hangs up. I could’ve told him the truth, that my nephew died and I’ve been wallowing in my own filth in a dingy hotel room for the past week but I don’t want any of the sympathy he has to give.

I dial my sister and wait for her to answer. She does. She's crying a lot and talking about how it hurts and she doesn't know what to do. David, I love you and I need you. I love you too, Sis, and it’s going to be alright. It’s a little too late for things to be alright. Things haven’t been alright in a long time. She asks if I can come spend the night at her place and I say Yes, I’ll be right over. I hang up.

I’ll have to ask her husband if I can borrow a suit for the wake. I don’t own any nice clothes.

[danielmarronewriting-blog]

I Was Drunk When She Called and Told Me She was Pregnant

I was drunk when she called and told me she was pregnant. At least I think I was. When you drink whiskey like its water you start to lose sight of the line between inebriation and sobriety. You no longer get drunk. Just vaguely dizzy, and the shakes go away.

Anyway, drunk or not (or both), Caitlin phoned me at two in the morning and told me she was pregnant. Her period had been two-and-a-half weeks late, so she bought a pregnancy test and it was positive and she called me and it was two in the morning. I was asleep, so when the phone rang I was upset. I love dreams. Sweet, sweet unconsciousness. Best of both worlds: death and life. They have all the vibrancy and colors of the latter, all the serenity of the former. Except when I dream about Emily.

I keep getting sidetracked. Caitlin phoned me and she was pregnant and being very very loud. I told her I’d take her to a doctor tomorrow and “get it taken care of.” She asked me if I would come comfort her. I told her I was sleeping and that I’d come see her in the morning. She was angry but I spoke firmly and she agreed and hung up.

I laid in bed for a while, just staring at the ceiling. I took a cigarette out of the pack on my nightstand and lit it. I smoked it for a while. Still staring at my ceiling. I put the cigarette in the ashtray on the same nightstand as the pack of cigarettes and I went to sleep.

I woke up in the morning feeling lonely, with the weight of having stuff to do pulling me down into the depths of a deep depression. I poured myself a drink. If only I fucked Caitlin with a condom, I wouldn’t have to deal with this today. I already have to buy groceries and stop by the mechanic for an oil change. My brother used to do my oil changes for free when I lived at his place. He wasn’t a mechanic, but he damn well could’ve become one. It must feel great to be useful.

I was going to call Caitlin but I dialed my friend Aidan instead. We had some drinks and watched a movie. I don’t like movies but we never had too much to talk about so it was an okay way to fill the time. Nothing but fake people in fake crises with some music and tits and death to hold your attention. If you look closely, I mean if you really pay attention to any movie, if you look past all of the editing and camerawork and witty or incisive dialogue, you’ll find the same lonely, confused, anguished heart of Man that beats in all of our chests.

I’m starting to think that maybe my digressions are unconsciously deliberate. Isn’t everything unconsciously deliberate? Anyway, Aidan left in the late afternoon and I grabbed my coat and drove to Caitlin’s place.

I entered her house and Caitlin asked me where I was. “Where the fuck were you? You said you’d be here this morning, and it’s almost the evening!” Then she asked if I was drunk. I told her the truth, that I honestly didn’t know. I didn't think so. I could drive alright. She just wasn’t happy that my breath smelled like alcohol. “Can’t you take just one goddamn thing serious in your life?” It was a fair question.

I thought about Emily, and I thought about the time her dad took us fishing. We were on his boat, not too far off the coast of Sandy Hook. I could still see the sand and the beachgoers running around. The weather was very nice. Emily was sitting in a chair reading a book and I cast out my line and so did her dad. He handed me a beer and pat me on the shoulder. He said, “You’re a good guy, David,” and I said, “Thank you.” Then he asked me if my dad ever took me fishing and I said that he didn’t. I didn’t tell him that my dad died. It’s such a boring conversation at this point. I kept one eye on the line, and the other on Emily. Her phone rang and she got up quickly from her chair. She didn’t bookmark her page in the book, she just closed it. Then she whispered surreptitiously and walked to the other end of the boat. There was a tug on my line, but the rod was limp in my hands. I didn’t want to reel it in. “Oh, you got a bite!” But I let the fish run with it because I liked watching the rod bend. Emily came back to her chair and sat down. She didn’t pick the book back up, but she stared at the beachgoers splashing and running and laying down and kissing and holding hands and throwing frisbees and footballs. The line snapped.

“I told you I’ll take care of it.”

“How the fuck are you gonna take care of it?! I haven’t even heard from you in a goddamn month and half! You think you can just fuck me and leave me in the dirt like some worthless whore?! Is that what you think of me? A whore?!”

“You’re not a whore, baby.”

“A month and a half! You son of a bitch, I don’t hear from you for a month and a half!” I started to realize that this was going to take longer than I anticipated. I tried to estimate how late the mechanic would be open until. Is today Saturday or Sunday? He’s only open until three on Sundays. Then I thought about committing suicide because everything hurt. It soured my mood and I desperately wanted a drink. “You should sit down.”

“Don’t tell me to fuckin’ sit down! You told me you would be here this morning!”

“I was busy.”

“Busy doing what? Smoking pot with your goddamn worthless druggie friends? I can’t believe I ever slept with you, you selfish piece of shit.”

I didn’t like what she was saying. I always hated pot, and she knew that.

It took a while but I quelled her hysterics and we both sat down in the living room. She cried for a while. I played with the arm of the sofa, tracing the patterns in the fabric with my fingers.

We talked for a bit. She didn’t want to get an abortion. I tried telling her that it had only been a couple weeks, that she could take a pill and just have it naturally flush out of her; she wouldn’t even notice anything happened.

I felt really strange. I didn’t really care what she ended up doing: have a baby, have an abortion. Two different paths with two different miseries, each with components worse than the other. A hell by any other name.

But she agreed to the abortion after a while, and I hurried out the door to get to the mechanic before the closed shop.