South of The Bottle

South of The Bottle


"That's what happens when you keep a retarded baby, guess that abortionist doesn't sound so sleazy now, does he?! " I ambushed her as I stormed out. It was the first time I called that little mutant of ours retarded. A simpleton maybe, but never retarded. "Precious" was the little accident Nia and I shared out of wed-lock. Tonight she shredded a 10 months worth of gluing my ass to the chair. The novel that was supposed to be the redemption of us all. She can't even work a fuckin flusher but that she does. I needed a drink, maybe ten. Fuck it, someone is coming home in a stupor tonight.

An alcoholic novelist, bit of a cliche isn't it? May be it is.. maybe I'm a poorman's Bukowski, or a Thompson knockoff. Fuck if I know. They say a gentleman is one who leaves his self-destructive shit at the door when with family. Maybe that's the thing about never actually being married, you're not really a family.

I tend to write about the dark, gloomy neighborhoods of life, and it's sin-paved streets. I was never one for happy endings; I weep when the villain dies. God must've sensed my craving for a proper muse, so he sent me Nia and Precious. A highly neurotic nympho and an autistic child, such a jaunty combo. I don't remember ever asking Adult Santa for that.

Be them a threat to my drunken serenity as they may, my sun rises and sets on them. Somehow, they're the only thing in my life that hadn't been defiled by my debilitating shenanigans. The only pure, unadulterated chapter that I haven't pissed on yet.

Lucifer resided in Chicago before moving to the City Of Angels. And like the good blood hound I'am, I followed his scent in the name of inspiration, call it a literary pilgrimage to The Windy City. And I kid you not, he has defecated an enormous turd within Bubbly Creek, with an odor so foul that it clouded the moral sense of every citizen. I've seen preachers with guns, brothels with nuns, children with stresses beyond chronic, and bums with library cards. It was Disneyland, and I stood in awe.

It was one of those nights in Milwaukee Ave., fogs creeping their way through, ravens shrilling in admiration of the present eeriness. Edgar Alan Poe would've pleasured himself to such a mood. Amidst the fog I spied a blurry figure shoveling dirt off some front yard. The closer I got, the curvier it gotten. "It" was a she, and "she" was eventually introduced as Nia.

-"Need a hand?"
- "No, it's just Body, if I kept it inside any longer the walls will rot."
-"Body? You're burying a.. I'm sorry, Body??"
-"Yeah, my cat. Body."
-"Oh, so to speak. Lovely name."
- "I'm kidding, silly! His name is Tyson."
-"Tyson? Seriously?"
-"Yeah he used to gnaw on my ear whenever I lay down, never thought I'd miss that you know, it's the little things. Come on in, I'll let you smell him."

She wasn't standardly pretty, but she met my essentials. Sad eyes, ample bosoms, boozy breath, cutting scars.. she was highly damaged, takes one to know one. I was invited in to share her night cap. We talked music and life, spinned some Zepplin, she's a vinyl girl, I digged that, I digged her. She was nuts... in a way that made me smile. She laughed, I watched, next thing I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life in the middle of that night cap.

Two months later on a very similar night, condoms snapped, lips gasped, and an undesirable weedling was sown. Funny how the swans of my life started out as ugly ducklings. Precious was diagnosed with down syndrome, yet there is nothing down about her. The day she was born, it was loathing at first sight.

-"God, isn't she sweet!"
-"Hideous is what she is."
-"Yeah, and aren't you the charmer.."
-"Why is she dangling her tongue like that?"
-"May be she's a Stones girl."
-"Yeah, won't that be something."

Precious had an uncanny ability of inspiring killer pages out of me. How could something be so pure and so fucking damaged. Talk about irony in disguise. She loved me gratis, which I of course found vaguely irritating. I would drink, and watch her watch me drink. With each sip, she would look more and more alien. In fact it was almost too disturbing to bear, even for a deviant such as myself. I can't afford to lose a decent muse, and I can't be held responsible when she drowns herself in an inch of water. Dilemma is a cruel bitch. I loved her to death, and that scared me the most. What does she see in a grubby bum like me? It was overwhelming, something has to buckle, something has to give..