The Good Guy

The Good Guy

“Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.”—Erma Bombeck

JAKE: I make people feel good. I care for people. I’m a good guy. I really am. Just ask my mother. I help people out as best I can. And my rates are pretty fair. Who else charges just a grand for a facelift? You try to find a doc in the white willing to do that, and I’ll buy you a beer.

And when it’s all said and done, do they get that smile? I swear, when those bitches with the new faces or the firmer asses walk out of here, they’re the happiest girls alive and think they’re hotter than Satan’s rectum. I make people feel good. I care for people. I’m a good guy.

And no: I’m not a goddamned gook or spick or chink who left his med license back in Colombia like all the other butchers who do this shit. Hell no, I’m a hundred percent white American ass, baby. Straight from Drexel Med, third of the class. Or was I fifth? The memory slips these days….

Today’s been an easy day. At least as easy as you can get in this line of work. No one came in with a bullet in their aortas, gushing out pints of blood by the second onto my new floor. No one came leaking brain and snot on the rug. No one came begging for extra kidneys. Just a lipo and a silicone shot for the lips and face for some lady who’s wrinkly at age 30-something and looks like she likes to walk the city blocks, if you know what I mean.

The only thing really noticeable about this bitch was her huge cartoonish rack: they were more like fifty pound cannonballs than actual breasts. It was definitely a ‘string-plant’ job—the kind of boob implants that literally grow in water. That’s probably some of my work there. I just can’t keep track of everyone who walks in here, you know.

She smiled as she walked; I was surprised she could do both at once. Her giant boobs bobbed like over-inflated basketballs with her every step. She still had that dumb clueless smile on her when she entered the apartment’s—sorry, office’s—operating room, and no ever smiles when they enter the operating room. Fittingly enough for some clients, the operating room also happens to be my bedroom.

A single dangling 60-watt bulb lit the operating room. It dimmed and started to fade and crackle a bit. Dust circulated and settled down on anything it could find. A big table littered with old magazines and yellowed papers sat under the light. Two little metal carts with sharp metal thingies soaking in lukewarm water hovered around the big table like a moon to a planet. I also had a few drums of silicone I stole from an auto mechanic and a container of funny gas I stole from some dentist.

I heaved the papers off the table, scattering them on the floor. I told her to lie down.

She told me her name’s Jennifer Juggs—at least that’s what the boys in the industry call her. She worked for one of the underground Philly porn rings. Her girlfriend shot her my way. Her face glittered and ran rogue and mascara. Her teeth looked like yellowing pearls. It looked like a raven died on her head; hair strands spread on the table like thick feathery wings. Bottom line: she was hideous in every way and there weren’t enough damn surgeons on the planet to make her look remotely fuckable.

“How long will this take?” Her voice was as disgusting as her body. It had the cute high-pitch of a Catholic schoolgirl but it was raped by the croaky rasp of an old toad that’s had one too many cigarettes.

“Oh, about three hours.” Give me a half hour and beer and it’ll be done. But I do like reading the sports’ section in the Inquirer and get a bite to eat during the operation. “But I promise you won’t feel a thing. The time’ll just whoosh by.”

I snapped on a pair of white rubber gloves and threw on a stained green t-shirt that kinda looked like a real scrub. I also threw on a dust mask for good measure and to add to the mystique. I was ready to go.

“Ready, honey?”

“Yes.” Her voice wasn’t even jerky or trembly or anything. She’s been around. She’s been under the knife before, I bet.

“You’ll promise to make me beautiful and thin and skinny, won’t you?” Her voice almost sounded innocent for a second there.

“I promise.” I lied with a smile. Not even Jesus Himself could make this woman remotely cute.

I took a syringe from one of the warm water pools and filled it with morphine I stole from a nurse I used to go out with. I cut it with salad dressing or milk, depending on which one spoiled first that week. Actually, I think I may’ve used Night-quil for this batch.

I sunk the needle into her pudding soft upper arm. She went out before I could scratch myself. I took the needle out with just a quarter of morphine in it for later—it’s like my reward for a job well-done. A tiny ruby of blood formed on her arm where the needle came out. I wiped it off with an old rag and then used it to clean off the syringe. I threw it aside for later use.

Her grayish eyes silvered and turned glassy when they glanced at me. A twisted wry smile sprawled across her face. She couldn’t see a damn thing.

I was in the clear. I yanked off the gloves, the mask, and most importantly, the professional attitude. I now had a few hours to kill.

So I did what any good surgeon in this position would do: get a beer and a tuna sandwich out of the fridge and read the Sunday paper’s comics.

Three beers later, I realized these comics weren’t getting any funnier. I filpped on the bedroom TV and got to watch most of Playing God on TNT, but then jumbo-tits over there starting making some weird noises.

“Oh shit,” I say to myself, “she’s coming to.” So I throw the act back on and haul my ass over to the table.

I had a black Sharpie in one hand and half of a tuna sandwich in the other. While piling huge bites of tuna and bread in my mouth, I lifted up her shirt. I think I wanted to puke. I seriously lost my appetite. I had to throw a perfectly good sandwich away.

Her boobs looked like two blue veiny pumpkins with pink-red dinner plates sitting atop them. Beneath them was a pale, thin, stalky waist—hard and bony and white as a wedding dress. I just wanted to paint her body green with vomit. It was really fucking disgusting.

Hell, there wasn’t even a tummy to suck!

But hey, I get paid to suck stomach, so I’m gonna suck some stomach—even if I got to suck her stomach out. I have to pretend that she’s paying me for something.

I uncapped the Sharpie and lifted it high in the air, ready to strike. I drew a few lines here and a few there and a few everywhere on her tummy—all of them signifying absolutely nothing. I cast the marker aside and picked up a steak knife—or a scalpel, as we refer to it in the medical world.

Before I started, I sank the morphine needle into my arm. There wasn’t a lot left in there, but it was just enough to get that warm, welcoming, cleansing feeling to flow through my veins and burn them without saying a word. It was a claming clean feeling, not sticky and sickly and messy and deceiving like heroin. My arm numbed a bit, transforming into a liquidy, rubbery latex.

But it soon passed. And I soon realized I had a knife in my hand and that I was standing over a girl. And ironically, I wasn’t paid to kill her.

The steak knife slit through the black marks, slicing her brittle little capillaries open. Blood flooded out through the cuts—rich, syrupy, and black. I think I might’ve hit the stomach or the gallbladder or something.

I shot her full of lidocaine and then rammed a cannula—the funny name for a skinny copper pipe—in the incisions when the little fat that she had got loose and hard. I stirred the pipe around, tearing and ripping the yellow scaly fat off her gut. I think I might’ve got some muscle and maybe a layer of stomach too—a bit of pink shit and red shit and blood came off with the yellow mesh of fat. But eh, these things happen in this line of work.

I flipped on a Hoover vacuum that also came with a snakelike attachment. The vacuum sucked in the fat and shit like a bloodthirsty vampirish anteater.

I sewed her up with some dissolving stitches and splashed some rubbing alcohol on her and called it a surgery. She didn’t seem to mind. She was still smiling and counting my ceiling tiles, still on her morphine high.

After that was over, I got that old syringe once filled with sweet, sweet morphine and jacked it half-full of silicone from one of the big metal drums and half-full of crazy glue to save some money. But eh, whatever works. I took a syringe-full and flooded the ugly bitch’s checks and lips with the shit. They slowly inflated like little sausage shaped balloons. She looked like a mix between Angelina Jolie and a very round chipmunk. Just don’t tell her that.

She slowly came to life—the glassiness sorta left her eyes as she awoke from her drug-induced glare. She moaned softly and yawned, raising herself from the table and planting her feet on the ground. Her hand swam up and down her abs. She made no facial expressions and didn’t really say anything aside from a few moans that cried out for more morphine. She caressed her face. She finally cracked a smile.

“Wow.” Her voice was awestruck like a kid on his eighteenth birthday after buying a pack of cigarettes legally for the first time. “I feel prettier already. Is there a mirror I can use?”

“Sure. In the bathroom. Go right ahead.” She’d love it, I know it. She looked a billion times worse than how she started, but she was dumb enough to believe that she was as hot as Angelina Jolie.

She stayed in there for a good twenty minutes, checking herself out. She came out at last with an ear-to-ear smile painted on her face. It was a smile of satisfaction in something that I couldn’t understand. But it was satisfaction. I make people feel good. I care for people. I’m a good guy. Try to buy that kind of satisfaction from a doc in the white.

She ran up and wrapped her arms around me. My body collided with the massive wall of solid polypropylene boob; the air crawled out of my crushed lungs, begging for life. I gasped and coughed as she let go.

“How much will that be? I’d pay anything for such a great job you did, doctor!”

I was keeled over, hacking, trying to get back my stolen breath. “Two thousand sharp should do it. Cash only.” I tried to hide the alcohol and morphine in my system by not moving too much or talking a lot. I don’t think it was working too well.

She fished through her purse and produced the two grand—most of it in hundreds, some in fifties and twenties—every bill crisp and freshly minted. I fanned myself with them and held them to my nose. I breathed them in. They made my blood richer than oxygen. It was real. It was beautiful. Fresh. Cold. Hard. Dirty. How I like it. Most beautiful thing I’ve seen all day.

She said bye and that’d she tell all her friends about me. I said OK, but really meant ‘I don’t give a fuck,’ and ‘shut the fuck up—I can’t hear myself count.’ She strode out the door—happy and proud with her new body.

And it was all because of me. I make people feel good. I care for people. I’m a good guy.

But before the door even shut, she swiveled around and poked her ugly fat head back into my office.

“By the way, doc, is that tuna fish on your shirt?”

———

I hit it big with this last surgery. 500 Gs, half a mil. It’s not every day that a guy like Pat O’Reilly asks you to do him a favor. The job was a bit unusual and maybe a little out of my element, but money’s money. With that, I’m getting out of this rat-hole. Fuck this apartment and fuck this city.

I’ve got everything packed and boxed in cardboard. I leave for the intercity—Center City—in two days. It’s about time I setup shop somewhere new: the temperature was getting too hot around here. But in just two days I can tell the landlady to fuck herself and her rent. I just hope I can get some more cash so I can I call it quits and retire and work on my golf game.


Everything was in the truck. I’m ready to get the hell out. But every now and then a ghost springs from the floorboards and decides to haunt you.

I was getting the last box from the apartment to bring out. Behind me, the door swung open, slamming against the wall; a gust flew in. A decrepit old bag of a woman crawled in. Well, not really crawling on her belly (that’d be a bit messed-up), but walking like a wheelchair cripple would.

Her cheeks were bony and stuck out; the skin was stretched and tense. Her left cheek shot out a bit more than the other one, and it looked like her face was beaten in by a lead pipe. She smelled like gasoline and cheap perfume and beer. She was a real eyesore of a ghoul but had cartoonishly huge boobs.

She stood in the doorway; her bloodshot eyes slicing me open like a cadaver. Something shiny and silver glimmered in her hand. A knife. Her lips twitched and a thin rough growl left her lips.

“You goddamn bastard.” Her voice was toneless, unfeeling, surprisingly steady. But dead. “You did this to me.” She stuck a knotty finger on her lips. Giant pea-like bubbles stuck out of them, filled with pus and silicone, ready to burst like a great big whitehead. She inched closer and closer.

“You did this to me. You promised to make me beautiful and thin and skinny.”

She wore clothes that revealed more than I needed to see—certain things I didn’t even want my imagination to think about. My eyes wanted to sink into my skull and explode into my brain.

“You did this to me.” She lifted up her shirt halfway. Red and purple skin shone through—oily, scabbed, and infected. “See that? You did that. It’s infected.” She inched closer and closer. I could sniff the booze on her breath now.

I said nothing.

“See my face? See it, you bastard? You did this too. I went to a real doc. Said the silicone crusted over my face’s nerves. It’s growing; it’s fucking growing. Do you know that I can’t sleep nights? I can’t even close my eyes, thanks to you.”

Her face was cold and bitter and cringed tight. “But I’m sure you know all about not sleeping at night. I don’t see how you can, you fucking bastard.”

Her voice wasn’t excited or animated at all. It was a cold, lifeless, dead monotone. It had a more matter-of-fact tone than a ‘rip your balls off pissed’ tone. But her voice sounded choked; smothered by something, tears maybe. But there was bitter angst in those words, no matter how hard she tries to hide it.

We’re at eyelevel now. She was even uglier close up.

“They say that the damage might be not fixable. It might be infected with gangrene. I hope you know that, you monster. I hope you’ll lose as much sleep as I did. Do you know how much this’ll cost me? Do you have any fucking clue how much it’ll cost to fix this damn fuckup? Do you?”

I cleared my throat.

“Do you?”

I cleared my throat again. I coughed into my hand. I tried to hide a little smile with that hand. I couldn’t help but smile. “Do I know you, ma’am?”

“You ruined my life and you don’t even remember me?”

I giggled. She put the blade to my throat. The sharp blade caressed my esophagus and massaged my Adam’s apple; it dug slowly into my skin. I giggled again. “I’m sorry. I don’t.”

“I came in here a week ago. I asked for a lipo and a face injection.”

I squinted. “Nope. Sorry. Don’t remember.”

“Jennifer Juggs.”

Two words…

“Sorry. Don’t recall.”

…that mean absolutely nothing to me.

Her bloody eyes widened; her pupils turning into black holes bound to suck me dry. The blade sunk deeper into my throat. The first layer of skin ripped; hundreds of capillaries shattered and spewed out blood. A thin weak stream of blood seeped from the cut. Sweat burned like battery acid in the wound.

“Listen, Jackie…”

“My name’s Jennifer, you pig.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Listen, I know you’re pissed. But these things happen all the time, even in whiter medicine. I just want you to know that you had the best and best-priced doc in the underground work on you. I’ll fix you up tomorrow, I swear. And I’ll do it for free. Just stop by tomorrow and we’ll fix you up right away—no need to see a topside doc and pay his bullshit prices.”

I smiled as brightly as I could for a guy with a knife piercing through his throat.

“I’d help you know. But I’ve doing some quick renovations. They should be done by tomorrow. I want to help you as soon as I can and makes things right again. Mistakes happen, and I’m really for that. But I want to fix things. Please let me…”

I couldn’t help it. I forced my eyes shut and waited for that quick cut—for that blade to rip through my skin, to slash my larynx, and to force my carotids and jugulars to vomit blood all over my feet.

But none of that happened. The pressure slid off my neck. I opened my eyes. The knife was gone. She stood there; the knife sat on the ground. A small smile lied on her face. She had the world’s ugliest smile. But my little speech worked.

It worked so well that I got her to sleep with me. For a woman that hideous, she knew how to work it. And she had a real nice pair on her. Of lungs, that is.

The next day, I made sure I was as far away from that office as humanly possible. I went and opened shop down at Center City and never looked back. I haven’t seen that bitch since. And I hope I never do.



I woke up one morning from a long comfortable sleep. I got dressed, made some buttered cinnamon toast, and swigged some whiskey from a dusty old bottle without a label I had lying around. An ordinary day.

I picked up the morning paper. It felt inkier and grimier than usual. Like always, I went for the comics. Instead, I stumbled on the obituaries.

Jennifer Jamison, better known as local porn star Jennifer Juggs, has died. A short concise sentence fragment informed anyone who cared to know how she died. Infection from an illicit silicone shot. That was all it said.

I hadn’t seen her for a month. And I thanked God daily for that.

Now she was dead.

Eh, oh well. These things happen. It’s natural—it can’t be stopped. It’s a shame nonetheless though. But these things happen.

I shrugged. I flipped over to the comics. As usual, they weren’t funny at all.

A knock rapped on my door. I tossed the paper aside. It was a sixteen year old girl that didn’t look too bad but was as flat and smooth as a geometric plane. She wanted a nicer pair and a lip shot. I smiled. Another day, another face, another person to help, another smiling face at the end of the day. And more importantly, another grand to be made. An ordinary day.

Right this way, I said with a big white smile.

I make people feel good. I care for people. I’m a good guy. I really am. Just ask my mother. I help people out as best I can. And my rates are pretty fair. Who else charges just a grand for a facelift? You try to find a doc in the white willing to do that, and I’ll buy you a beer.

But for now, I got a surgery to perform and a cool grand to make.