How I broke my arm

I’ve only thought I was in love twice before in my life, once head over heals in love with a red headed Heroin addict and once with a black stripper while I was hammered on New Years Eve. Ironically the first love triggered the other, which in turn caused my wrist to shatter into three different pieces.

               

I was in a shitty mood, an especially shitty mood because not only had I just crashed my beloved Cadillac but also I had just been forced to break up with my girlfriend. I had lost the only two things I had ever fell in love with in the same month and it tore my fucking heart to pieces. Some people put all their money into their arms and there is nothing you can do about it, I know that now. It was this type of chauvinist, break-up attitude that drives a man to want to read “The Crucible” and totally understand why they burned girls at the stake. It was the kind of mood that makes a man drink too much and consider buying a muscle car. I’m still looking into a Chevy Nova. Naturally my childhood friend and I decided the only remedy was to go to a strip club in West Palm Beach to reign in the new year. After-all where is there a better place in the entire world for depression, rage and sexual angst to come together with a full liquor bar? “Girls end up taking all of your money anyway, only here they’re not ashamed to admit what they want” my buddies reassured me the entire ride. “Thanks guys”, I guess they didn’t hear the sarcasm. My heart felt like it was sinking into my stomach and being consumed by my acidic innards.

                Packed in the car down to West Palm Beach was one seven foot tall ginger by the name of Greg and three German flight students who I had met at a beer bar the weekend before. They had been amazed at the lack of girls in Vero Beach, Greg and I had planned to quench their thirst with a waterfall. The entire ride down to West Palm our Chrysler 300 rode in the fast lane going ten under the speed limit, I had grown up with Greg’s driving so it was easy for me to ignore the angry horn blasts and flashing lights from the people having to pass us in the right lane. I had to smile. Greg was the kind of guy who could tell you how the earth spun on an axis and how cells multiply, but didn’t know what to say to a pretty girl. I happened to be the opposite and I sported the GPA to prove it . Whenever we talked to girls at bars we ended up convincing them he was a professional athlete. No one argues when you are as big as Greg, either because they actually believe you or are too afraid to question it. This particular night though he was not worried. He had three hundred dollars in one dollar bills, George Washington would do all the talking he needed tonight. As I stared out of the window into the dark fields parallel to I-95 my depression plagued me like locusts. This was our exodus from crappy Vero

Beach, we were pilgrims and our promised land was called “Cheetahs”.

                We arrived in West Palm and decided to visit Clematis Street. I had been there earlier that year with friends chasing them from night club to night club. I hate nightclubs with the same intensity that Hitler hated the Jews, but I digress. We ate at an upscale sushi restaurant that was considered “hip” for serving portions that even anorexic supermodels would have complained about, soon after we crushed some Five Guys burgers and were on our way to Cheetahs.

We arrived to the strip club at about nine o’clock. As I walked up to the door a bouncer frowned down at me, ironically another tall ginger but not as large as Greg. “ID’s”, he demanded as we approached. He looked me in the eyes and barked “take the hat off”. This particular rule pissed me off. A strip club is one of the worst and most desperate places on the planet. It is a place where drugged out single mothers wave their genitalia in the stale air for disgusting pigs like me to throw money at. The last thing a strip club should ever have is a dress code. If I want to wear a Darth Vader costume, I should be able to. If I want to dress up like mickey mouse, the bouncer had better open the door for me and call me “Mr. Mouse”. I was wearing my lucky captain’s hat that night and fuck anyone who said otherwise. This plus my lack of respect for authority caused me to chuckle condescendingly at the bouncer’s not so friendly request. “Come on Andy” Greg pleaded with me, he had been my friend long enough to tell when I was down to start trouble. I sized up the bouncer, he looked like the kind of guy that had just finished shooting uncut HGH into his ass while watching himself flex in the mirror. I wasn’t impressed. I took my hat off and stuffed it into my back pocket. I walked slowly past the bouncer, he looked like he was about to go into a steroid fueled killing spree. Inside the club was like a meat market where all the meat had been left in the sun for a day. Like a candy shop selling candy that had been dropped on a carpet before being sloppily repackaged. The place was covered in mirrors and flashing pink lights. As I walked through the thin layer of smoke in the air, I gazed around at all the broken dreams I saw dancing naked on the poles.

Now I spent two years of my college career partying in Atlanta, Georgia with some of the biggest fuck-off frat boys of all time, I can hold liquor. That night though I had ordered a slew of the cheapest vodka drinks available, Mr. Boston and Red Bull, and they were doing their job well. I had blown about half of my hard earned money on a girl who could shoot a marble across the room like a bullet when I met Simone. Simone was a short half black, half latina girl with big fake boobs and an ass you could bounce a quarter off of. She had hair down to her waist like an amazon princess and dark eyes that reflected the pink neon lights. She was nice, but she was paid to be nice. I knew it and she knew it. She asked me what I was doing in a place like Cheetahs, “a young guy like you should be out actually getting laid”. I laughed and responded “aren’t you supposed to lead on male customers so they think they’re gonna get laid?” Suddenly I realized why I was there. “I’m here to satisfy a primal urge and so are you.” This time she laughed, “and what kind of primal urge am I trying to satisfy?” I took another sip of my drink, it was hard to pretend to be slick when you’re choking down Mr. Boston. I paused for a minute to collect my thoughts, I looked into Simone’s big brown eyes and said “you want money, and I want sex. You’re willing to exploit your body to obtain money and I’m willing to exploit my wallet to obtain sex.” Simone gave me the first real glance she had given me all night, she had let her guard down and I could see it in her face. “I like you” she said, suddenly her guard was back up as she flashed me a fake smile,

“but I’m gonna have to watch out for you.”

The next few hours pass. I drank more cheap vodka drinks. I became numb. Simone had circled the bar twice talking and laughing with other guys but I could tell every once in a while she looked back in my direction. I could feel her eyes beaming down on me like the hot sun. My gaze also occasionally followed her around the bar like a lion spotting a gazelle from a nearby patch of tall grass, I still can’t decide who had played the part of the lion. Finally she sat in my lap while I was in front of a stage with Greg. The Germans were already smashed and resorting to their native tongue. They laughed wildy while the stripper on the stage pulled Greg’s face into her ass with her feet. I had to smile as well. Simone began to speak to me “so what’s your name?” I told her my name. “What about you?” I said gruffly as I felt the vodka now cheerfully helping my stomach acid tear my sunken heart apart.

“Its Simone, I told you –“

“Its not Simone.” I smiled as I looked into her eyes. I could tell I was right.

She looks back into my eyes with another genuine expression. We’re the same type of animal, and we could practically smell it on each other.

It was eleven fifty at night, only ten minutes until the new year when Simone offered me a private dance in a room behind the bar. She told me there was something special about me, I reminded her she is paid to say things like that, but who could pass up a private dance? I told her I would meet her in the back room as I stood up to go to the bathroom. As I pissed onto the urinal cake I thought about my mortality, I think about it all the time, it comes with the territory of depression. As I began to leave the bathroom I noticed a small black man standing next to the sink surrounded by cheap bottles of cologne and little packages of mints.

“Where are you from?” I ask him as he squirts soap into my hands. My voice echoes off the tile.

“I’m from Haiti, but I live here now.” He seemed surprised, it was obviously a question he didn’t

get often. He looked like he was in rough shape. As a romantic I place significance on events in my life, and as a cynical bastard I later realize that significance is a farce. “This place sucks.” I said as I reached into my wallet to place a $50 dollar bill into his plastic tip bowl. “Take it easy,” I tell him. I began to walk out of the bathroom I thought to myself that if a god exists it is going to have a hard time trying to decide to put me in heaven or hell.

As I exited the bathroom Simone grabed my arm and lead me into the back room behind the bar. She shoved me hard against an arm chair in a cubicle covered in mirrors. She didn’t give me a chance to tell her I just ran out of money. She stripped naked for me and began to rub her body against mine. “You don’t have to be shy with me,” she whispered in my ear as she took my hands and ran them along her breasts. I looked up at the large “No Touching” sign about the door we walked in through. I was drunk, incredibly depressed and feeling a naked stripper when I heard the countdown to 2013 begin. At that point the large bouncer had walked through the door and witnessed the blatant and rather enthusiastic breaking of the “no touching” rule.

“TEN!” The crowd shouted from the bar.

“What the fuck is this?” The ginger bouncer yelled.

“Fuckkk”, Simone moaned as she jumped off me.

“FOUR!” The crowd continued.

“Are you kidding me bitch?” The bouncer yelled again.

“Uhhhh,” is all I could muster from my drunken stupor.

The bouncer grabbed Simone by the shoulders and threw her into an empty arm chair violently.

                “ONE!” The crowd shouted as I became enraged.

By some strange twist of fate like something straight out of Patrick Swayze’s Road House or literally any terrible Chuck Norris movie ever, we had had words earlier and now we were finishing the encounter with fists. Now I’ve been boxing for the past six years of my life and when the crowd shouted “One”, I heard a bell ring inside my head. I jumped off of the chair like a prize fighter jumping off of a stool, I clench my fists. I could feel the alcohol pulsing through my veins as I made every muscle in my body tight. My hands felt like stones and my heart raced, I was unstoppable. I threw a combo, jab, cross to his nose, and I pivoted my feet to throw a left hook to his ribs. BANG. The giant bouncer fell to his knees. I had never punched anyone so hard in my life, my knuckles were leaking blood. I hurt him and I immediately feel bad about it. Simone looked stunned as people from the bar outside the room screamed and laughed “HAPPY NEW YEAR!” I took my captain’s hat out of my back pocket and threw it on my head like a trophy. It was about time to hit the old dusty trail. Simone laid naked on the arm chair adjacent, mouth open in shock.

                “Hey Simone” I turned around in front of the door to face her. “What’s your real name?” She looked from the giant bouncer back to me, “It’s Tammy.” She suddenly sounds more ghetto, its still sexy. In 2013 my eyes opened and I looked through my glasses and across a darkened sex room at another human being, “Happy new year Tammy.” I ran out into the bar and made my escape, Germans and all.

One week later a doctor squinted at an X-ray rendering of my shattered wrist, and I sure as hell

don’t regret it. 

How I killed my Cadillac

        I told the cop I wasn’t speeding but I sure as hell was. It was hard not to speed when I sat in my Cadillac. I had seen pictures of it for sale on Craigslist five months earlier and just like thefirst time a photohraph of a naked woman flashes on your computer screen, it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen and a symbol of my primal urges. I wanted it. The golden hood ornamentburned into my eyes and the tan leather interior was like lingerie on a playboy bunny. It was atwo door Burgundy with a tan canvas top, a 1988 Deville with a 4.5 liter turbo engine in pristinecondition. Some old lady had bought it in ’88, drove it to church and back for years and dropped dead, now it was mine. I had the interior carpet redone in a burgundy shag complete with crown air freshener and a suicide knob with a picture of half-naked pin up girl printed on the face. I waxed it weekly and changed the speakers back to stock, I even furnished the front fender with a skull and crossed lightning bolt vanity plate. The tires burned every-time I hit the gas, and if you weren’t prepared for the acceleration the force would throw you back into your seat. I was in love with the same libido one has with a girlfriend you don’t date for the conversation and I was having the time of my life.

The night it died, it did so gloriously. I had just finished polishing the hood ornament and the continental kit earlier that day, the chrome was immaculate. It was pouring rain and the reflection from the yellow streetlights flew past on the windshield so quickly it almost seemed like a blur. The hum of the engine had played like a soundtrack to a dismal evening. I had been depressed, sometimes it hits me like a sack of bricks. Driving was soothing to me and there is

 nothing like the hum of a V8 and risking life and limb when you feel you have nothing to lose. Suddenly though like a great orchestra rosining their bows, everything began to synchronize. The stereo flicked to “Walk Don’t Run” by The Ventures. The mix of twangy guitar and rain pounding on the windshield filled my ears like the woodwinds fastening their reeds to their instruments and the trumpets emptying their spit valves. I look left, “look at this ass-clown” I say out loud to the empty car. There sitting in the lane next to me is a v6 Mustang and a guy who wanted to rev his piece of shit engine at me. I throw the shift into neutral and rev mine back, I’d

 burned fools like this on a bicycle before, this asshole was going to be fun.The light flicked to green and I eased on the gas, the traction was trash on the slick highway. Almost immediately I had left “Mustang Sally” in the dust. At the same time the speedometer read 70 and like a glow of divine justice beaming down at me, I saw the red light reflected off of the wet asphalt and into my now widened eyes. The Orchestra began to play. I hit the brakes and the tires began to sing like dying sirens in Homer’s Odyssey. Everything became very slow.

There I was screeching toward impending collision when I realized that my mouth had tightened into a smile. I don’t remember ever feeling so alive. I spun the suicide knob to the

 right to lock the tires, I watched as the miniature pin up girl did nude back-flips around the wheel. This time it was the low brass’s turn to play, as I heard the groan of the axle now taking the full brunt of the friction. I began to laugh. My movements had been seamless, this orchestra could not have had a better maestro. The symphony suddenly came to a crescendo as I skidded closer to the black Honda Pilot carefully stopped at the red light. I hate Hondas. I found myself whooping, since when do I whoop? The crash itself was a climax, like the percussion section had suddenly fired to life as the hood of my beloved Cadillac began to make contact. The Deville was horny for a Honda Pilot and once it had started it wasn’t going to stop. The hood bent, smashing glass, suddenly it was over. Like the first time I had had sex; I felt incredible and it was over entirely too quickly. The car’s engine began to smoke, I decided to light one up as well.

 Excitement arose in my stomach like a child on the night before Christmas. This had been the most fun I had had in years. I climbed out of the driver’s side window like a NASCAR super-star, the entire door frame had been pinned shut. Covered in glass and blood I checked to see

 how the Pilot faired, apparently much better than me.

The police arrived, then the tow truck, and then my parents. It continued to rain. The police asked me basic questions, the tow truck man told me my Cadillac was finished, and my

mother acted towards me like I had just finished raping and murdering a classroom full of underprivileged children. For the next few weeks broken glass covered the side of the road where my Cadillac died like a memorial to my visceral experience or an epitaph made by GMC. I guess fast love dies fast. At least I still have the suicide knob.