Mostly FishScale (prt. IV)

They say, it took Chauncey ninety-three seconds to decide whether or not to help that homeless man; ninety-three seconds to decide and one minute to act on that decision. It’s funny what people do under pressure, when serendipity opens up her sweaty legs and puts you on the spot. What do you do? Some people can’t handle it. Some people can’t fathom it. Most of yous just blindfold yourselves and walk around aimlessly through the wastelands, cul-de-sacs and concrete jungles of this country called “here”.

“Come for the views and stay for the American Dream”.

Sunlight went and died across the mountains at dusk but, monotony lives on; redundant, repetitive, and recessive like so many retarded genes in tight jeans. So much wasted potential. So many pissed soaked flip flops mingling with toe nail polished cowgirl boots. How romantic. “Looking at your bitch through her dirty fake eyelashes”, I sees yous. A match made in a QuikTrip bathroom. This is that kind of town that likes to pick its own boogers before farting onto a homemade cake. And why wouldn’t it? Happy Birthday, Tucson.

It’s the kind of place that hides its deficiencies and takes pride in its fallacies. Stockpiling ammunition but, rattling at the knees over a wall. So much guns but the predators roam freely in town and I’m not talking about the coyotes. The type of place that’s bothered and fingers get triggered when you wish them, “Assalamualaikum”. A place where you can buy menthol cigarettes, a 2 liter of soda and methamphetamine’s; while dodging the attacks of a javelin as a homeless couple two-steps with Circle K feet at 2am. This place.
Where the roads are crumbling, the schools are short staffed. Pop Culture has a late pass and the collective consciousness is more behind the times than public transportation; you don’t have to believe it to see it – you can feel it, like wet shit under your heel.
You make some friends and you like some of them. Some fade out and sometimes some of them die. People die, some too soon and some not soon enough. Some people shed tears and it is all theater, living their own delusions.

I need a Xanax for this heat, a bag of coke for the boredom and a muscle relaxer to suppress the constant stimulations to beat someone over the head with their dead grandmother’s dildo…
I apologize, that was too much; No one here has a grandmother that interesting.
I need one of those Hannibal Lecter muzzles before I start eating faces to and fro work.

You get what you pay for. No, that’s not an air mattress, that’s the inevitable housing bubble. It’s the drivel and dreck, the cook that asks the new trainee if he’s “Pussy or not” cuz, “This is a man’s kitchen and men talk shit”. When what he really means is – Translation: “Are you going to hit me? Please don’t hit me”.

Did you know they river dance on the drugs, here? Fentanyl and all that government shit. Poisonous shit. A red white & blue kind of safe space, innit? Living free and dying for that American Dream. The American Dream? You can see it in the food and down the aisle at Walmart. The same people that reject free Health Care are visibly the ones that need it most. I hope the guy with the “let’s go brandon” decal on his truck falls off a razor and guillotines himself on thin piano wire. Let us pray, that politicians start forgetting to turn on their pilot lights too. Truly.
I need a Quaalude just to leave my house.

I miss the duffel bag mobility. I miss the hiss of steam and the ambient police sirens. I miss the decency of delinquency. I miss those Hainesville good times. I can still smell the fresh paint on the walls. I can still hear the racket from the Oasis bar, the Funkadelic, the possibilities. The hallucinations are becoming more frequent. Morning is here and for a few seconds I don’t recognize where I am. Like for a few breathes I’m somewhere else. Then I remember as I watch caterpillars of light crawling up the walls. My wife’s kiss is morphine. She sedates me most of the time. Fresh bowl of oatmeal on the table, bathrobe is warm and the OJ is cold. I need a pick me up to keep going. She gives me a kiss and I can repeat the day one more time.

Saturday August the 20th, 2022. Happy Birthday, Tucson. Keep your cake and choke on it, boo. Your wrinkles are showing and your Gucci bags are bootleg. Even your panties are secondhand, too.