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“Why can’t you fucking be normal?” He shouts into the phone.
He cant find a vein and she is pissing him off.
She can’t be normal. She’s tried.
At a busted up phone booth near his brick apartment building she tricks him- her relentless calling was more shit than he needed, he had enough shit, he wasn't answering- she figures if she calls from nearby he would think it was his dealer or another junkie and she was right, of course he thought that. She’s too smart and that's why she can’t ever be his girlfriend; his exact words.
“You're the junkie and you‘re calling ME abnormal!” she screeches like a bird caught in the jaws of a cat..
He finds a vein and she’s history.
She was not one to let anything go.
By the time she ran the three blocks to his building, rain and hysteria were sliding off her in slick sheets of liquid metal.
His number is 23, she pushes the button.
“This better not be you.” he growls.
“I need to talk to you, please please let me in.”
“You fucking..... psycho.....bitch.” Click.
What she wants to hear: ‘Sure Sugar Tits, I’m buzzin you in.’
Sugar Tits was not exactly the most loving pet name, in fact ,her gut clenched with a tiny spasm each time he called her that, but she would gladly take it now and would wrap it around her body like spun sugar.
He once said she gave the best head he ever had and she thought that was a shoe in to work herself eternally into his being. Is it your first love or the best blow job you ever had that you remember forever?
It was summer- the really stagnating, dry and yellow /brown fields part- when they mutually cheated with each other. His girlfriend, used to being cheated on, was back in The Big City. Sugar Tits boyfriend, not used to being cheated on, was out of town on business somewhere; she didn't care where.
It was rodeo season, when the small town of Cowshitty is resurrected from a dried up donkey corpse and temporarily transformed into a drunkin, hootin, paradin, fightin, buckin and fuckin paradise.
His band was playing. He was a rock star. She knew him from before so she wasn't really a groupie. She had always found him crass and thick headed but now something was sparking in her and she had to have him.
At a fairgrounds red painted picnic table they caught up and she ate corn on the cob. Butter glossed her lips like sex and he couldn't resist her even though his belly was cramping from too much watermelon. All he ever consumed was sugar, tobacco and heroin. A tortured man in need of nursing.....it was an endorphin, pheromone surging combination for her...she would fuck him back to health and he would see that he didn't need heroin or watermelon. She would be his new addiction.
His pale skin burned in the sun; he was Irish and so was she, partly, but she wore sunscreen and a hat. Her hands reached out to touch his fiery, freckled skin.
“You should put Aloe leaves on that. I have a plant at home.”
As if that was the most stupid thing he ever heard he laughed, “Im not putting fucking Aloe leaves on it.”
“It will help the pain.”
“I can handle the pain,” he said in a tough way that she believed and that made her want him so much.
“But I think we should head to your place anyways.” he said.
In her head she corrected him ‘It’s ANYWAY not ANYWAYS’ but she wouldn’t dare out loud. She wanted to let him be right, to be the boss; she didn’t mind.
On a scratchy turquoise vintage love seat in her apartment that was located above a laundry mat on Main Street their bodies heated and drew closer. They argued about everything and watched a music documentary and she watched his mouth and he watched hers.
When the singer on the TV went into his last song, and was crying out ‘Do you love me?!’ like he would commit murder if the answer was no, she felt longing and need shooting up her legs and and through her groin and stomach and chest and mouth and finally squeezing out through her eyes as watery ache.
“Jesus, Sugar Tits, you're even beautiful when you cry. Come here.” he said kissing her cheeks tenderly where the tears had settled.
The next morning, a long goodbye at the door, he promised things. He said I love you without saying I love you. She heard it though, she didn't need the actual words. She can read between the lines. She’s not stupid.
“I don't want to be here anymore.” she said.
“Move to The Big City.”
“With you?”
“Awwwww, Sugar Tits,” he pulled her head to his mouth and kissed the top. “ You can’t live with me, Sweet Girl lives with me, and I’m not getting rid of her, but you and me got something different and I want to see you again okay?”
So she left behind Cowshitty and all it's trappings and crappings and moved to The Big City by herself and they had this something different and it was good enough for here and there, for when he needed that something different and for him it was so good, to be loved in so many different ways by different women because a man needs that no matter who he is, and she accepted what he doled out to her and even though it was nothing like what Sweet Girl got it was enough to sustain Sugar Tits for a bit.
But every girl starts spinning after a while of not enough and runs herself down from chasing the carrot ,and pretty soon too many wheels are turning; some wheels that had rusted stuck and hadn't moved since other fucked up times from as a child were now getting oiled by the new pain.
And she couldn't stop. She had to have everything he offered: the venomous love, the dry kisses, the crooked cock, the humiliation..
It drove Sweet Girl away so he used up more and more of Sugar Tits and he used up more heroin and eventually heroin triumphed and he didn't need any kind of love from any kind of girl anymore.
Number 23, over and over and over she pushed the button, knowing it must be making him boil. She held it down for minutes at a time giddy with an exploding heart and a vengeful mind.
The rain continued to hammer her into the sidewalk as she pressed her mouth to the intercom like it was oxygen.
"Let me in.....Let me in.....Let me in....." she chants rhythmically hoping to break him but finally forgetting that he’s the reason she’s even there.
Suddenly, hacking through the incantatory calm she had going, his harsh, hateful voice blasts through the speaker, “Dont make me come down there you insane bitch, I will kill you!!” The words bounce in her skull like nails.
You want insane? You fucking want insane? She will show you insane. She kick the fuck out of his precious 1964 Impala until its riddled with pockmarks just like his ugly face and shred the perfect upholstery like she is ripping hair from his oily scalp She will scale the crumbling brick building like Spider Man on crack and smash through his window and stab him all to hell with glass shards. She will happily leap from the top of his junkie shithole building and fucking die so that he will never be without blood on his hands again - because HE -the worthless, spineless fuck- will be the last person to ever pull this love bullshit on her again.
Crumpling on the sidewalk, almost catatonic now with a glaze settling over her eyes, her body heaves with sobbing. “Youre okay, its gonna be okay’, she tells herself. - She knows hes sick. She knows she’s sick. She’s not stupid. People pass and ignore her because she’s a crazy person, they can see that. One guy passing by, drunken, big and stupid, kicks her which makes his friends laugh. She screams from the bottom of her aching guts at the drunk guy and ,open mouthed shrieking, turns her fury towards the cold night sky and in it’s swift judgment, it drowns her on the dirty sidewalks of The Big City.
The door to the building opens and he comes out in levis, wool socks and flannel shirt, shaking his head of long, greasy hair, taking the last few drags off his cigarette before tossing it in the gutter. Somewhere between a sound of disgust and a laugh, he says, “Jesus Christ, Sugar Tits, you really need to get your shit together.”
He goes back to his apartment, walks to his freezer and takes out a fruit pop.... the flavor of watermelon, his favorite.
He cant find a vein and she is pissing him off.
She can’t be normal. She’s tried.
At a busted up phone booth near his brick apartment building she tricks him- her relentless calling was more shit than he needed, he had enough shit, he wasn't answering- she figures if she calls from nearby he would think it was his dealer or another junkie and she was right, of course he thought that. She’s too smart and that's why she can’t ever be his girlfriend; his exact words.
“You're the junkie and you‘re calling ME abnormal!” she screeches like a bird caught in the jaws of a cat..
He finds a vein and she’s history.
She was not one to let anything go.
By the time she ran the three blocks to his building, rain and hysteria were sliding off her in slick sheets of liquid metal.
His number is 23, she pushes the button.
“This better not be you.” he growls.
“I need to talk to you, please please let me in.”
“You fucking..... psycho.....bitch.” Click.
What she wants to hear: ‘Sure Sugar Tits, I’m buzzin you in.’
Sugar Tits was not exactly the most loving pet name, in fact ,her gut clenched with a tiny spasm each time he called her that, but she would gladly take it now and would wrap it around her body like spun sugar.
He once said she gave the best head he ever had and she thought that was a shoe in to work herself eternally into his being. Is it your first love or the best blow job you ever had that you remember forever?
It was summer- the really stagnating, dry and yellow /brown fields part- when they mutually cheated with each other. His girlfriend, used to being cheated on, was back in The Big City. Sugar Tits boyfriend, not used to being cheated on, was out of town on business somewhere; she didn't care where.
It was rodeo season, when the small town of Cowshitty is resurrected from a dried up donkey corpse and temporarily transformed into a drunkin, hootin, paradin, fightin, buckin and fuckin paradise.
His band was playing. He was a rock star. She knew him from before so she wasn't really a groupie. She had always found him crass and thick headed but now something was sparking in her and she had to have him.
At a fairgrounds red painted picnic table they caught up and she ate corn on the cob. Butter glossed her lips like sex and he couldn't resist her even though his belly was cramping from too much watermelon. All he ever consumed was sugar, tobacco and heroin. A tortured man in need of nursing.....it was an endorphin, pheromone surging combination for her...she would fuck him back to health and he would see that he didn't need heroin or watermelon. She would be his new addiction.
His pale skin burned in the sun; he was Irish and so was she, partly, but she wore sunscreen and a hat. Her hands reached out to touch his fiery, freckled skin.
“You should put Aloe leaves on that. I have a plant at home.”
As if that was the most stupid thing he ever heard he laughed, “Im not putting fucking Aloe leaves on it.”
“It will help the pain.”
“I can handle the pain,” he said in a tough way that she believed and that made her want him so much.
“But I think we should head to your place anyways.” he said.
In her head she corrected him ‘It’s ANYWAY not ANYWAYS’ but she wouldn’t dare out loud. She wanted to let him be right, to be the boss; she didn’t mind.
On a scratchy turquoise vintage love seat in her apartment that was located above a laundry mat on Main Street their bodies heated and drew closer. They argued about everything and watched a music documentary and she watched his mouth and he watched hers.
When the singer on the TV went into his last song, and was crying out ‘Do you love me?!’ like he would commit murder if the answer was no, she felt longing and need shooting up her legs and and through her groin and stomach and chest and mouth and finally squeezing out through her eyes as watery ache.
“Jesus, Sugar Tits, you're even beautiful when you cry. Come here.” he said kissing her cheeks tenderly where the tears had settled.
The next morning, a long goodbye at the door, he promised things. He said I love you without saying I love you. She heard it though, she didn't need the actual words. She can read between the lines. She’s not stupid.
“I don't want to be here anymore.” she said.
“Move to The Big City.”
“With you?”
“Awwwww, Sugar Tits,” he pulled her head to his mouth and kissed the top. “ You can’t live with me, Sweet Girl lives with me, and I’m not getting rid of her, but you and me got something different and I want to see you again okay?”
So she left behind Cowshitty and all it's trappings and crappings and moved to The Big City by herself and they had this something different and it was good enough for here and there, for when he needed that something different and for him it was so good, to be loved in so many different ways by different women because a man needs that no matter who he is, and she accepted what he doled out to her and even though it was nothing like what Sweet Girl got it was enough to sustain Sugar Tits for a bit.
But every girl starts spinning after a while of not enough and runs herself down from chasing the carrot ,and pretty soon too many wheels are turning; some wheels that had rusted stuck and hadn't moved since other fucked up times from as a child were now getting oiled by the new pain.
And she couldn't stop. She had to have everything he offered: the venomous love, the dry kisses, the crooked cock, the humiliation..
It drove Sweet Girl away so he used up more and more of Sugar Tits and he used up more heroin and eventually heroin triumphed and he didn't need any kind of love from any kind of girl anymore.
Number 23, over and over and over she pushed the button, knowing it must be making him boil. She held it down for minutes at a time giddy with an exploding heart and a vengeful mind.
The rain continued to hammer her into the sidewalk as she pressed her mouth to the intercom like it was oxygen.
"Let me in.....Let me in.....Let me in....." she chants rhythmically hoping to break him but finally forgetting that he’s the reason she’s even there.
Suddenly, hacking through the incantatory calm she had going, his harsh, hateful voice blasts through the speaker, “Dont make me come down there you insane bitch, I will kill you!!” The words bounce in her skull like nails.
You want insane? You fucking want insane? She will show you insane. She kick the fuck out of his precious 1964 Impala until its riddled with pockmarks just like his ugly face and shred the perfect upholstery like she is ripping hair from his oily scalp She will scale the crumbling brick building like Spider Man on crack and smash through his window and stab him all to hell with glass shards. She will happily leap from the top of his junkie shithole building and fucking die so that he will never be without blood on his hands again - because HE -the worthless, spineless fuck- will be the last person to ever pull this love bullshit on her again.
Crumpling on the sidewalk, almost catatonic now with a glaze settling over her eyes, her body heaves with sobbing. “Youre okay, its gonna be okay’, she tells herself. - She knows hes sick. She knows she’s sick. She’s not stupid. People pass and ignore her because she’s a crazy person, they can see that. One guy passing by, drunken, big and stupid, kicks her which makes his friends laugh. She screams from the bottom of her aching guts at the drunk guy and ,open mouthed shrieking, turns her fury towards the cold night sky and in it’s swift judgment, it drowns her on the dirty sidewalks of The Big City.
The door to the building opens and he comes out in levis, wool socks and flannel shirt, shaking his head of long, greasy hair, taking the last few drags off his cigarette before tossing it in the gutter. Somewhere between a sound of disgust and a laugh, he says, “Jesus Christ, Sugar Tits, you really need to get your shit together.”
He goes back to his apartment, walks to his freezer and takes out a fruit pop.... the flavor of watermelon, his favorite.
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