buckyball (excerpt from twisting the knife)

I got home from work twenty minutes ago. I’ve been asleep for fifteen of those minutes and, of course, the Tetris-themed ringer of my cell phone wakes me up.

“Wanna come to work with me today?” You ask.

No. I want to sleep for ten more hours and maybe knock one off to some hentai at a distant, unimaginable point in the future when I decide to wake up. “Sure.” I say.

“Great. Pick me up in ten minutes.”

That’s a nice invitation, Melanie. Inviting me to take you to work and hang out with you all day instead of regenerating myself. Maybe you really do love me.

I’ve noticed a recurring theme of people depriving me of slumber so I can chauffeur them all around. I think I need to squash this cell phone thing under my tire next time I leave the driveway.

I think I need to crawl inside a snug little cave and crash for an eternity.

Instead, I park in front of the hair salon you live atop. After two songs and three honks, I see you pop out of the ground-level door and stroll to my car, wearing your cute black pants and collared green t-shirt that says ‘Community Solutions’ in yellow stitching on the left breast.

The contrast of your green shirt and red hair reminds me of Christmas, of when I was eight years old and came to associate those colors with deception, with the idea that everyone really can conspire to lie to me. Lies about such mythical figures as Santa Claus and Jesus.

He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good or you’re condemned to an eternity of Hell. Guess that’s not as catchy as the original.

“Wake up, Jonas.” You tell me.

“Sorry.” I guess I was spacing out.

“It’s 1103 Serpentine Boulevard. Do you know where that is?”

I nod and turn left at the first red light. I mean, I wait until it turns green and then I turn. A few minutes and a few more turns go by and now we’re in the driveway of a one-story house with yellow siding and an immaculate lawn.
The mailbox says, ‘The Mastersons’ and on the corner of the house, next to the garage, is one of those black wooden silhouettes meant to represent someone leaning on the wall. There aren’t any cars in the driveway, besides mine.

We’re standing in the doorway, and you’re scanning each of about a dozen keys to find the one that goes to this particular front door. You find it, and now we’re inside.

The living room is just as yellow as the outside of the house. Not a bright and penetrating yellow like the skin of a lemon, but a paler variety, the yellow of stickynotes and a lifelong smoker’s teeth. A couch and a matching brown plaid chair sit on top of an off-white, thin carpet. On the couch sits a middle-aged looking man with closely-spaced eyes, short hair, and blotchy skin. He’s wearing overalls.

“Hi Bucky,” you say, “are you ready to have some fun today?”

Bucky claps and looks very excited, like I might have done when I was six years old and my dad asked if I wanted to go out for ice cream. Or to the zoo. Or to the museum to look at dinosaur bones. Are we going to the museum to look at dinosaur bones today, Melanie?

“Bucky, this is Jonas. Jonas, Bucky.” You introduce us and I nod toward him. He walks over and gives me a bear hug, crushing my ribs.

I imagine he’s only a few years older than me, but being retarded gives him that appearance of maturity. I can remember in middle school when the retarded kid in our gym class got facial hair way before the rest of us, and was always bigger and stronger. The only relief was when I caught a peek of his junk one day in the shower and saw how small it was. It made me glad not to be retarded.

He smells like the room does, of cat piss drowned in strawberry air-freshener. The smell of caring for invalids. The smell of nursing homes and Special Education classrooms all across this great nation. The antithesis of Darwin.

As humans, we’re not evolving. We’re keeping our defective, our retards, and our cripples alive long enough to produce even more fucked-up offspring that we will also have to pay for from the cradle to the hospice.

Sorry, Melanie. I’m not trying to downplay what you do. I’m just cranky because I’m tired. Itsu mo tsukareta, it seems.

I pop a squat on the recliner and you’re planted next to Bucky on the couch. Bugs Bunny is getting chased by Elmer Fudd, the Trix rabbit is chasing the cereal, Wile E Coyote is chasing the Road Runner. It’s all very loud. It’s all very colorful. It’s all very futile.

Bucky is clapping. He must not care that the vicious cycle is never-ending.

You leave the room for a few minutes, and Bucky stares at the television, basking in its numbing glow. He giggles at the loud noises, at the G-rated jokes. He doesn’t even notice me over here dozing into oblivion. I snap into awakeness when Bucky lets loose a loud fart.

He thinks it’s hilarious.

They couldn’t pay me enough to do your job, Melanie. To babysit retards every day. To wipe their asses when they shit themselves. To not get upset when they grab your breasts.

Sometimes, I think it would be great fun to be retarded. You never have to work, you can do pretty much whatever you want, and masturbation is considered a form of expression. It doesn’t matter if you fail so long as you try. And even if you don’t try, it doesn’t really matter because nobody expects anything of you.

And it’s comforting. Everybody is nice to you, most of the time. Everybody pretends there’s nothing wrong when you shit your pants. It’s like there’s a big conspiracy involving everyone you know, until that one day when you realize everyone was lying.

In the B’gunda tribe, when a child is discovered to be defective, it’s left in the middle of the jungle. Inevitably, it will be torn apart by wild animals. The scientist who first observed this ritual was so appalled that he tried to rescue the baby. The men of the tribe stoned him to death, leaving his body on an anthill.

You reappear, carrying a plate with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches cut into fourths and a glass of milk. You set it in front of Bucky and he starts gobbling it up, jelly slopped around the edges of his mouth.

In your hand, you’ve got a wet washcloth. When he’s done you wipe his mouth off. You take the dishes away and put them in the dishwasher. And he’s back to watching television. There’s a teddy bear sitting on top of the TV, but it doesn’t seem out of place because I notice that there are stuffed animals all over the room.

Cartoon gun-shots ring out, followed by the clomping of running feet and screaming. Nobody gets hurt, nobody dies. Daffy duck gets a faceful of buckshot and has to readjust his beak.

You’re sitting next to Bucky, taking sips from a glass of water. You reach into your pocket and pull out a baggie and some orange Zig-Zags. I’m startled to see you rolling a joint. You’re not very good at it, though. It takes you ten minutes to get it rolled right, and then you produce a lighter. You take a deep draw of it, making the strawberry glow bright orange.

You blow the smoke in Bucky’s face, and now you’ve got his attention. You pass him the joint and he takes a clumsy hit. You take it back and shotgun him again. You proffer it to me, and I pass. Drugs are bad. Especially on the job. Especially when you’re in charge of someone else’s safety and well-being.

I don’t remember you doing that when you were my babysitter.

You can’t even smell the reefer over the stench of sour milk and plug-ins. You keep smoking, and Bucky keeps trying to take hits. He doesn’t understand how devious you are. He doesn’t know he’s committing a crime. You’re a terrible person, Melanie. Why did you bring me here to watch this?

After it’s down to a little roach, you crush it out between your fingertips and drop it back into the baggie, and put the baggie back into your pocket. And we all sit here, dazed in a pall of smoke.

It’s just like any other Tuesday morning.

Bucky’s incessant laughing is magnified by the THC, and the animated animals are a hysterical sight for him. You grab the remote and turn off the television, and now he’s not laughing anymore.

He’s confused, but you start massaging his crotch with your left hand, looking straight at me as you do this. Bucky’s eyes are fluttering, and he looks to be enjoying this. You start rubbing him harder, making circular movements over his twig and berries.

You lean over him, unfastening his overalls and he stands up. They drop to his knees and now I can see his whole dirty white t-shirt and the gut poking out from beneath it. He’s got dingy tighty-whities and hairy legs. With delicate motions, you pull down his underwear until they’re also around his legs.

His cock is huge and intimidating. It’s purple and pulsating. I feel like I’m in a nightmare, and for a second it seems like that’s a plausible explanation for everything that’s happened today. He sits back down and now you’re moving your clenched hand up and down his shaft. This has to be a bad dream.

The motion of your hand is causing little ripples to form in the glass of water in front of you on the polished wooden table. Bucky is moaning and his eyelids are flittering as you draw him closer to release.

What did you do today, Jonas? Nothing, Grandma. All I did was watch Melanie give some retarded guy a handjob. Just like every other Tuesday morning.

With your eyes still fixed on me, you lean over him, lowering your lips to his helmet. Your head bobs up and down, that loose wisp of red hair dangling down over your forehead.

Bucky keeps moaning, thinking of nothing, his hands at his sides.

This goes on for like five minutes. It’s like when someone has a seizure and all you can do is watch. I’m just watching, half-asleep, half not believing what I’m seeing.

And Bucky screams. His eyes bulge. He’s grabbing for handfuls of cushions as he starts spraying inside your mouth. You just keep up the sucking, still staring at me. When it’s all over, you bring the glass of water to your lips. You set it back down, and there’s a fuzzy white glob in it, expanding and coiling.

You narrow your hazel eyes at me, giving me a wide, Cheshire-cat grin.

Again, I don’t remember you doing that when you were my babysitter. I feel gypped and disturbed. I think I want to projectile vomit.

You clean Bucky up with the wet rag. As you’re pulling his overalls back up, he lets loose a trumpeting fart and laughs like he just heard the funniest joke in the world.

And now we’re all sitting here, watching cartoons again.

It’s almost noon when Bucky’s mom gets home. She’s carrying a bag of groceries and wearing high heels. She has an expensive purse. She thanks you for doing such a good job and asks if there were any problems. You say no, and we step back into the summer sun.

It’s seventeen hundred degrees in my car, and we’re backing out of the driveway. You seem pretty happy.

“What would Bucky’s parents do if they found out what you did today?” I ask.

You raise your eyebrow at me. “Find out? Who do you think bought me that reefer?”

“Bucky’s parents bought you drugs?” I’m confused.

“Bucky’s dad gave me fifty dollars to ‘service’ his son,” you inform me, “and he gave me the reefer to loosen the kid up a little.”

I’m just trying to soak it all in. It seems pretty shady to me. Like some perverted form of prostitution, as if the profession weren’t already deviant enough.

“But couldn’t you just take the money and say you did it?” I ask, “I mean, how does he know you actually did it?”

“You saw that teddy bear on top of the television, right?” you ask me, and I nod.

“There’s a camera inside. Bucky’s dad watches it on his computer while he’s at work.”

 

(C) 2003 Jordan Baugher