The Train

The train moved slowly. Alongside it, in my car, I moved in the same direction. Parallel, but moving slightly faster than the train, I approached from behind. My progression up the length of it was a climb. My car on the road, and the train on the tracks, and the river, and the trees lining the road all went in the same direction. We were all lines. The river pretended to move, but ultimately went nowhere. The trees didn’t even pretend to move. Their numbers simply implied movement. The train moved, but had no choice. It moved on a track, and it pulled an enormous weight. It was a beast of burden. I, however, had a choice. I pulled a different sort of weight, but one no less heavy. I could drive along the river or I could not. I chose to move along the river. We each had purpose. The world fell off into oblivion behind us. There was no road behind, only road ahead. That road is all in one direction, the only direction, forward. It’s perfectly simple. We’re pulling all of that weight. We’re pulling slowly but with purpose. We’re pulling until we stop.

Broken Toe

She had a 1995 Honda Civic, beige, with no hubcaps, lots of rust, and lots of miles. Not her miles. Somebody else put them there. They came with the car. She had big sunglasses that faded from the top down to the bottom, with rhinestones around the frames. She had a smile bigger than her tits, which were considerable. She had dirty blond hair and a tight middle - a gorgeous girl. She was 20 and taking classes at her local community college. Eventually she wanted to be a doctor. Who was I to argue? I’ve never had any interest in smashing dreams. Not my thing. She was from New York somewhere, the western part of the state, just above Pennsylvania. We rendezvoused in a mall parking lot in Erie (about geographically halfway between our residences), and followed her to the hotel. We talked and all got pretty drunk on vodka and orange juice. Nothing fancy, though it got everybody loose, and served its purpose.

Admittedly, I was a little nervous, and I sat Indian-style on the bed, sort of squeezing my toes in my hands. I’m not sure why I was doing this, just a nervous behavior. At one point, I squeezed a bit too hard and broke one of my toes. It’s a disgusting and fascinating thing to do to yourself because you can feel it two different ways. I felt both the pain of my toe breaking and the toe breaking in my hand. It was remarkable, accidental, and incredibly stupid. I don’t know why I was that nervous in the first place; probably just leftover anxiety from less than smooth past experiences. Since I’m extremely familiar with the pain of broken fingers and toes, I didn’t visibly react. Neither my wife nor this girl had any idea. When I walked, I limped a bit, but we hadn’t driven up there for walking.

After the toe break we got down to business pretty quickly. My wife excused herself to use the bathroom. The blond girl took that opportunity to pounce on me and things got started very quickly and naturally. There was a great deal of screwing and it was all incredible. She had absolutely no gag reflex at all. I was astounded. I had never been with a woman who could perform that task quite so vigorously. Apparently, though, she had never been with another woman before, and applied that same reckless fervor to my wife. It was very hot to watch, though somewhat rough for my wife’s taste. I thought it was fantastic. My wife disagreed. Her irritation was poorly hidden but this girl was so consumed with performing that she was oblivious. She really wore my wife out and it gave me opportunities to recharge and recuperate. We had a great time getting each other off well into the night. We parted friends, though we haven’t stayed in touch.

Roadside Emergency

Most people keep some emergency materials in their cars. A jack. Spare tire. Flares. Tire iron. Jumper cables. I’ve got these things in my car, and I’ve used them on many occasions, except the flares. I’ve never needed those. My wife also has these things in her car, though she’s never had to use any of them. I doubt she would even know how to utilize any of the items if she needed to. She does have one particular item which she says is immensely helpful. She keeps a book of gothic horror stories under her seat. “In case of emergencies. You know, like if you’re stuck in traffic, or waiting for AAA to show up.” She plans well. You wouldn’t want to be stuck by the side of the road without stories of homoerotic vampires, blood and buttfucking. That would be insufferable.

An Impotent Tyrant

This jackass beats his dog all the time. I suspect it’s because his dog has a bigger dick than he does and he’s jealous of that. Regardless, this man takes out all of his disappointments and frustrations on his family and this animal. He lives next door. People near him live in fear of him. Nobody else does. Nobody else is impressed. He extracts his vengeance not on the deserving parties, but vicariously, on those who love him. And they do love him. Each time they forgive. They still snap to attention when he yells and do whatever they can to bring him contentment. The dog takes the worst of it and the dog loves him the most. That animal has heart. He can take a hit much better than his owner. You can see the cautious distrust in his eyes. I wonder how the dog sees him. Does the dog understand that he’s owned by a 46 year old, fat alcoholic boy who beats his wife and two kids? That he’s owned by a man who drives a broken-down, rusted-out F-150, and left the previous broken-down, rusted-out F-150 parked and unmoved on the street for a year, taking up a valuable parking space in a densely populated neighborhood? That he’s owned by somebody who dresses up in camouflage and runs around in the woods “being a man?” That he’s owned by a Bush voter? That he’s owned by a man who has a couch and miscellaneous garbage on his front porch? That he’s owned by a weak, imitation dictator who came from Wal-Mart? Does the dog know and understand all of these things? Is the dog that strong?

Corpse Teeth

I never knew that teeth could decay completely down to small, greenish brown nubs without actually falling out. She had the most remarkably hideous teeth I had ever seen. Around the office, we all referred to her as “Corpse Teeth” - behind her back, of course. She drank three cups of coffee a day, at the very least, and also smoked constantly. As you can imagine, she had the most fragrant breath I’d ever smelled. It was a bouquet of stale cigarettes, coffee, and gingivitis. If you caught her on the right day, you might get a hint of whiskey as well. Forty-five years old and looking every day of 60. I suppose that chain smoking, barely restrained alcoholism, and rampant drug abuse will do that to you. A bipolar personality, a fondness for skipping out on work, and a penchant for lying only added to her list of attractive qualities. She had red hair, cut like Farah Fawcett. To compliment her own hair, she wore a great deal of her cats’ hairs too. Unfortunately, she wasn’t morbidly obese, as that would have completed the ensemble too perfectly. No, she was just kind of chubby, definitely overweight but not obese. She employed the “…and lastly, remove one piece of jewelry” approach when composing her identity, as perfection is so boring.

Eventually she decided to have the front four teeth removed and replaced by a bridge. A fantastic idea! Of course, this was done without announcing the plan to anyone around her beforehand. But, the efficient and effective nature of office gossip quickly circulated this information. She was absent from work for about one and a half weeks for this surgery. When she returned, her angular brown and green teeth had been replaced by big, straight, white ones. Awesome! Can you compliment somebody on that? “Hey there! Look who doesn’t have a mouth full of broken glass and dirt anymore!” But alas, it only took two weeks before they were beige from all of the coffee and lack of cleaning. I suppose you can’t change who you are.

Corpse Teeth (also known as the “Horse-Toothed-Bitch,” affectionately, of course) did have one exceptional quality. The most fascinating detail about her character was her daughter. She had an 18 or 19 year old daughter who was not to be believed. I never learned her name but her daughter was gorgeous! She had great, full breasts, a tiny waist, nice hips, delicate facial features, and long, straight, thick, red, hair. Every aspect of her appearance encouraged procreation. I’ll never understand where in the hell those genes came from. It will always be a mystery how something so gorgeous came from something so cancerous. Corpse Teeth had pictures of her all over her desk. She was proud, and rightfully so. Being newly divorced, resembling a corpse, reeking of stale cigarettes and coffee, having the personality of a badger, displaying constant embarrassing professional ineptness, and most recently, achieving toothlessness certainly aren’t personal attributes upon which you want to dwell. If a few well-placed pictures of her beautiful daughter can distract from the cumbersome weight of her own wreckage, more power to her.

One day, Corpse Teeth quit. Three months later, as we were all losing our jobs and our little company was going belly-up, it came to light that she had been not only sabotaging our success, but had also been stealing clients away from our company. She had been fucking up her own job on purpose and slandering our company so she could take the clients for her own. Remarkably, as a result of the indifference and ineptitude of our company’s owner, no lawsuits were ever filed. We were all amazed. Many of us were angry. She sank our battleship! Corpse Teeth had won. I didn’t feel that a lawsuit was necessary - it would have been redundant. The burden of her existence was sufficient punishment. Inevitably, she will fail with her new company. It was a tangled mess of semi-literate, malignant underachievers, all fighting over a failing idea. I was just fortunate enough to be there for a year to watch the collapse. Regardless, her daughter was stunning.