Jessie & Linda

I like to look at people, young people, poor people. I imagine what they do in their one-room place after work.  Surely they get high on dope, ganja maybe or speed; cheap dope. They watch local TV with their old ladies fucking around during commercials.

At night, they go out and eat noodles with bits of spongy beef, shredded onions, and holy basil, 2 dollars a bowl. 

The workers stroll to the Gypsy camp on the river; the Romani boil large pots over a fire, cooking rabbit, wild bird, carrots, and potatoes seasoned with fresh ginger, chili pepper, garlic, and salt.

Bowls of food for all, big bellies dancing into the wee hours, falling in place, waking up, going to mundane jobs: Car washes, kitchen work, street cleaning.

They have no insurance, when sick they go to county hospitals queuing for hours.

They are slammed from above by their employers, rapped, under pressure for money, sweating blood.

Tyson Chicken and a slaughterhouse open in town. Jessie and his wife, Linda, get a job at the slaughterhouse; she’s a cutter and he unloads frozen sides of beef from the freezer trucks.

The couple takes a bus to the slaughterhouse, they fill out paperwork and Linda asks,

where is the slaughterhouse? 

the boss says follow the trails of blood honey.

Linda works as a cleaner hosing down and sweeping up bits up scrap meat saving the choicer bits and saving them. 

Jessie is wearing rubber slippers he carefully walks in the freezer truck and slings a quarter of beef over his shoulder, his back coils but he knows he must keep going.

They are paid after work, and they go to their one-room place, Linda makes stew with bits of meat and potatoes, seasoning it with Romani seasoning. After eating they pass out on straw mats.

Weeks at work turn into months they rent a  three room apartment. Linda’s pregnant.

Jessie works partime at a car wash; they buy a crib, washable diapers, and plastic baby bottles. 

Let me interject here as the author; this story is hard going, I’m struggling, bare with me. I’d rather be writing a poem.

In August, Linda gives birth to a tiny baby, a girl, they name her May, she has curly blond hair, she’s a Leo.

Jessie buys a bag of shrooms at da pack home.

The lovers clean up good, put the baby to bed and slip outside to their 5 x 5 patio wrapped with a mossy tarp. They light candles and burn incense, turn on the radio, as they come on they listen to hard stuff, Blues, Rock, Soul, radio ZZKX. 

The patio spirals upward, room and occupants flying past the clouds in the Heavens, flying with Angels, august, exalted, high and happy, in a spacecraft jetting into the future.

In the morning, they wake in the Gypsy camp the river is high, dancing, eating stew with the Romani, by 9 am they are at the slaughterhouse. 

Linda works with mops, red with blood, Jessie slings frozen quarters of beef over his back, slips on a wet spot, hearing something crack on his upper back. He wakes up in Saint Matthew’s Hospital ward, there are fifteen men ; burn victims, sick junkies, and psychos. 

Jessie is given a wheelchair and sent home paralysed from the waist down. Linda gives a Gypsy handyman a blow job to build a ramp at the front and back doors.

In the long hall, Jessie is fucked.  

A paraplegic friend, Jimmy Glynn, was stationed in the Army Signal Corps in Bremen. While on leave he went on holiday, getting wasted on the Autobahn, drunk driving too fast in his Porsche, going off-road down a hill falling out of the car, feeling a crack in his upper back, later in an Army hospital, paralysed from the waist down; he told me this story about the VA hospital state side:

Some guys would drink all day, shoot dope, none of them made it home. I took care of myself, ate good, no booze, just ganja; it helped with leg tremors. I was one of the few guys to make it out of the place.

Jessie and Linda would make out, he would eat her pussy like a pro, but no hard ons that was tough for him.

He says home, Linda works at the slaughterhouse; he learns to maneuver in the house and take care of the baby, cook, clean house even. He lives ten more years, dying of bladder cancer cause by the tubes of his catheter rubbing on his bladder.

Lind finds another guy who can fuck her, she’s happy with that.

    

 

 

   

Out West & Beyond

I think it was July 1987; I was living with my mother in Chicago near Wrigley Field, selling beer during games, dripping wet, squawking:

beer, beer here, get your ice cold beer.

Go west young man go west, write The Great American Novel, get a job, get a boner, go surfing, be a bum, drink rum, walk in the sand.

I pack a duffle bag with, chocolate bars, flannel shirts, short pants, my combat boots and converse all stars.

I line the bed of my 80 Dodge Wagon with a mattress, then securing a Coleman Cooler to the driver side door with binding cord. 

By 11am I'm in Gary, Indiana at Bob’s Deli & Liquors where I buy Coca Cola, hard salami sandwiches and and five litres of Greek Metaxa.

At noon I pull into East Saint Louis,  parking in front of  Ned’s Love Club, goin in for a drink, the crowd is interracial.  

I perch bird like on a stool sipping Budweiser draft from a tulip glass, half in the bag I order a T-Bone steak, rice and read beans.

A young black girl taps my shoulder saying, 

I’m Mary Jane, 

Oh, I’m Henry, Henry Stone

and she says, 

I’m hungry baby, 

I slide my plate in front of her and she eats savoring every bite.

As we walk out I pay the cashier and she asks,

where ya goin baby? I say

California and beyond, 

take me to Kansas City, my aunty’s there,

sure sweetie.

At 9am I'm driving 80 West, the stars  burn red because of pollution. Mary Jane's asleep behind me, I sip Metaxa from the bottle praying and saying a loud, 

Praise  be Lord light the way.

I wheel the wagon into The Oak Ridge Prairie Forest Preserve parking under big pines, getting out of the car, peeing in the bushes, stretching, savory the scent of crushed pine cones.

I crawl over the front seat and lay down next to Mary Jane, passing out.

In the morning we drive 80 to the city for breakfast, walking into Stan's Deli sitting at the counter she orders, 

a tongue sandwich on rye, hash browns, a milk shack and and soda for my friend.

She eats like there's no tomorrow, I gulp down the soda, hungover.

By 10pm we're in Kansas city on Paseo Street, she takes a cab to her aunties, I'm thrilled she's gone.

I drive eight hours on Highway 30 turning into The Pawnee National Grassland Park, parking in high grass, sleeping for a six hours.

In the morning I drive to Cheyenne eating 

at The High Plains Grill; a steak sandwich,  hash browns, washed down with hot coffee.

Full, I drive eight hours to Utah, bypassing salt lake city, staying in Bountiful City, sleeping at the Big Horn Inn, eating burgers by the pool, swimming, drinking beer.

Poolside I chat with a older lady from Long Island, an accountant from New York who's going to visit her sister.

It’s sunny and hot, she has a two piece suit on I see her erect nipples, she puts her hand on my cock, I get hard she rubs it until I cum and we go to her room screw, talk about life, falling in love some.

That night in Liz's room we watch 6o Minutes, I ask her to travel with me to Colorado and she says,

I would love to Henry.

We check out at 5am, Liz pays, then we drive south on Highway 30, it's four hour to Denver, on the way we stop at Iron Mountain Hot Springs floating in the pool on our backs, shielding our eyes from the Sun.

In Denver we exit on Highway 30 and Liz gives me directions to her sisters place, It’s in Platt Ford, we park and go inside, we sit in her kitchen drinking coffee and eating donuts, I pour Metaxa into our coffee.

After eating Liz hugs her sister, hands her a check for 900$, saying, 

take care sis.

We stop in Las Vegas booking a room in the Flamingo Hotel, 25$ a night, cheap, but the hotel will take that and more from us in the casino

Our room is on the 12th floor and we can see the Red Rock mountains to the West, Liz says, 

it looks like mars.

We fall asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillows.

At 8am we shower, dress casually going downstairs to the dining room. The meal’s buffet style offering carved meats, chicken dishes, porridge, juices, cereals, coffee or tea.

Liz and I eat like pigs, then changing upstairs and going down to the kidney shaped pool, passing out in the lounge chairs. 

When we wake we're ready for drinks, we order frozen margaritas spending the rest of the afternoon there.

At 9pm we go to the casino, playing black jack, I quickly lose 200$, but Liz wins 5000$, I convince her to hold fast. 

We check out at 5am after a quick breakfast, 

It’s a four hour drive to San Diego, we stop at Joshua Tree National Park to see the trees, watching them sway in the wind like the Angry Apple Trees in the Wizard of OZ.

Soon we're in San Diego were we book a room at Hotel 6 for 30$.

In the evening we walk the Gaslight Quarter  where we're approached by white haired Mexican who offers a quarter ounce of cocaine for 200$, Luci buys two, I smiles nervously, thinking it's too much.

At Jupiter & Ivory we eat ribs, broiled Mahi- mahi, Hawaiian poi, Caesar salad and yellow rice. 

After eating we walk a few blocks

to the Tipsy Crow sitting at the bar drinking tequila and mango juice, going to the WC to snort coke on and off.

We  sleep late Sunday morning, waking at 11am and check out of Hotel 6, loading up the wagon and heading South to Tijuana, stoked to escape the USA.

At the border Liz shows a passport and I show my drivers license, the border agent looks like Cantinflas the Mexican actor throws the documents back at us saying, 

don’t get the clap gringos.

We check into a room at  Motel Rojas for 30$ carrying our luggage to room 3.

We lay in bed awhile on our backs, hypnotized by the ceiling fan and she says,

Henry I have stage 4 cancer,

okay baby let's see if we can get you some help, I ask the desk clerk,

Señora my lady has cancer can you help? 

Yes amigo, my aunty is a voodoo priestess  here's her address.

We take a taxi down back roads to a  wooden house knocking on the door, a dark skinned woman in a long dress invites us in  telling Liz, 

strip Señora and lay on your back. 

The old lady rings the neck off a chicken spattering blood on Liz, rubbing  blood all over her then sprinkling holy water.

The medium is irrational, Henry throws a  couple hundred pesos at the old woman, and the couple walks out. As they walk the boulevard Lucy grimaces, stooping over, we take a taxi to Angeles  Hospital. 

Liz dies in the waiting area with a smile on her face, I see a spark floating up to Heaven, thinking,  

she'll miss sex, hot dogs with relish, and the occasional cigarette. 

I hire professional mourners, old women in  black and have Lucy cremated, promptly tossing her ashes into the Pacific.

 

Oddly, I feel nothing. I drive south to Chihuahua, book a cheap room, drink Jose Cuervo mixed with fresh lemonade, eat lovey meals at cantinas, sleep with putas.

Life is grand I love it.