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Missed Connection Fan Fiction #1
Patty is at Motel 6 on Roscoe - w4m - 38
Reply to: pers-bcp5n-1220365113@craigslist.org
I’m leaving tomorrow for Canada. If you have any balls, McGough, you’ll
come and say good bye because I don’t know if me and the little ones will ever
be back. Grow some freakin’ balls dude. Stop calling the cops like a puss. Be a
man. This is your last chance to see me and speak honestly and explain why you
lied to the cops. Why you would do something so mean to me. I deserve an
explanation. Pronouncing your impotency was mean, but doesn’t equate to trying
to have me locked up.
Patty dipped a towel into the metal bucket of ice, half water by now but still
cold. She wrung it out and brought it to her forehead. When she pulled it away,
there was a brown stain of day-old sweat. Patty aired herself out by pacing
around the room, feeling too keyed-up, but at the same time too lazy, to
shower.
The room smelled old and dry and faintly of drug store perfume. Flat sunlight
poked through moth eaten curtains, pink flowers against a blue sky. Patty could
see Donald and little Julie roughhousing out by the pool. Donald had found a
plastic squirt gun and was using it to douse his sister in chlorine. The girl
retaliated by chucking golf ball-sized berries at his head.
Patty lit her second-to-last Virginia Slim and thumped down on the bed. The
comforter was a flipped-around version of the curtains. Blue flowers on pink
sky. Patty sighed once, and then again after she decided she deserved it. There
was leftover Chinese in the fridge, and Patty mulled the idea of cold broccoli
in greasy peanut sauce. She lifted her shirt and stuck a finger into the corner
of her once-white bra. She pulled out a wet wad of crumpled hundred dollar
bills.
“Canada,” Patty muttered. “They use dollars in Canada?”
There was a knock on the door and then two more. Patty leapt
up, shoving the money back down inside her cleavage. She peeked through the
curtains. Donald was holding Julie by her feet and dangling the little girl
over the pool. Julie shrieked bloody murder while Donald cackled like late
night TV.
Patty dropped the curtain and smoothed her hair. She checked the peephole, but
it was too scratched up to see through. She pulled open the door with a
tentative hand.
McGough.
Patty felt her anger rise like acid reflux. She slammed the door right back in
McGough’s swollen pig face and fell onto the bed. She clenched her fists and
ground her molars, practically tombstones. She opened the door.
“McGough.”
McGough grunted. Patty let him in. She put her hands on her hips and
chewed gum that wasn’t there. They stood like that for a while, roughly unlit
dynamite.
“You want Chinese?” Patty finally asked.
McGough shrugged. Patty got the broccoli and the orange chicken from the
fridge and handed the cartons to McGough along with a pair of wooden chopsticks.
“The hell I’m supposed to do with these?”
Patty shook her head. She took the chopsticks back from McGough and
demonstrated the over, under method for scooping food.
“You never used chopsticks before?”
McGough shrugged again. He tried to do as Patty showed. A sticky clump
of chicken fell from the box and died on the carpet.
Patty laughed despite herself. McGough let out a quick snort. Seconds
later, they were steamrolling the bed, crunching the blue flowers with their
bulk. McGough sucked the sweat off Patty’s neck. Patty reached for McGough’s
belt buckle, a pistol of polished brass. McGough breathed deeply. Patty clawed
at his pants.
McGough jumped back suddenly. Patty reached out for him and he slapped her hand
away.
“Patty. I can’t.”
She looked at him and shrugged. Pulled splinters from the chopsticks. Stuck
one in her mouth and sucked it slowly. McGough tightened his shiny buckle.
“I mean… I can’t.”
Oh. Patty began to laugh. Quietly at first, then loud enough to ruin a
nap.
“I swear to fucking god.” McGough grabbed the carton of broccoli and threw
it at the wall, where it thwacked and slimed down the cheap paint. He tucked
his shirt back into his pants and stomped towards the door.
“You better go get your kids before they drown each other to death. Cops can be
here in under five.”
Patty looked through the window where Donald and Julie were chicken
fighting in the water, using sticks to jab each other in the belly. She pulled
ice from the metal bucket and sucked.
“McGough?”
McGough turned, a quiver below his snout.
“They use dollars in Canada?”
Keith Richards
“Before we do this, there’s something I feel like I want to tell you.”
Ben was down on his knees in front of me and he was slowly easing my hips away from my jeans.
“I had a sex dream about Keith Richards last night.”
Ben looked up with one eyebrow cocked and stuck out his tongue.
“But it wasn’t young Keith Richards, it was current Keith Richards. In fact, it actually might have been future Keith Richards.”
I slid down the wall so he could more easily dispense with the nudity.
“I wouldn’t even say it was a sex dream, really. It was a sexual tension dream. There was a little kissing. Keith seemed really old.”
My jeans sailed over Ben’s shoulder and landed on the floor in a criss-cross that set up a pretty unreasonable expectation, contortion-wise. He lifted me from the ground and presented me to the bed.
“Sad old, was how he seemed. Old enough that there’s no point in learning anything new. Crinkled sighs, brittle bones, all that shit. Or maybe it was supposed to play as wise. Anyway, I told him I hadn’t read his book because I’d been warned that the way he talks about bitches would make me hate his band.”
Ben kind of laughed. He waited a moment, hovering over me like a UFO that’s probably a weather balloon, and when I didn’t say anything else, he began to lick my neck.
“Mmmmm.”
There was a lamp on in the corner of the room that forced my shadow limbs into some modern dance: strange shapes, too earnest, not quite ballet, probably in a high school gym, definitely donation only. I couldn’t actually remember whether Ben and I had ever done this before. Didn’t have much of an opinion about it, either way.
“It probably wouldn’t make me hate his band. I love his band. More likely, it would just make me feel excluded from his band. Kind of grasping at the fringes for access. Way harder to pretend that all the cool songs were written about me.”
I said that part into a pillow. Ben was behind me, pushing his palms against the section of my back I’m so very happy I never got tattooed. I repeated the bit about everything having to be about me, more slowly this time, and wondered if it sounded to Ben like I was moaning.
“His mouth tasted antiseptic. Though I had gargled with Listerine before I went to bed.”
I was on my back for that line, but Ben was being much louder. I didn’t particularly want to hear him, or myself anymore. His breathing slowed and he pressed his head against my chest for a beat, a beat-and-a-half. Then he rolled off me and took a sip from the beer that had gone lukewarm on his nightstand. He brushed a strand of sweaty hair from my eye. He sat up. “So? Don’t leave me hanging. How did the dream end?”
I kissed Ben on the mouth. I poured the rest of the beer down my throat. I kissed him again, bit his lower lip way too hard, then retrieved my jeans to put them on. I grinned at Ben. He grinned back and waved from his bed while I walked out the door.
In my dream, sad and elderly Keith Richards had told me he thought he could maybe, like, love me some day, but no fucking way was I ever admitting that shit to Ben.
Looking back, my only regret from the whole experience was that I hadn't managed to get in a single “sticky fingers” joke, to either Ben or Keith.
Downward-Facing Dawg: I Am Looking for a More “Urban” Yoga Experience
Okay, here’s the deal: I recently moved to an up-and-coming neighborhood that honestly isn’t 100% safe, but it seemed worth it to me because I like to experience different kinds of cultures, But in actuality, I am totally baffled that most of the people I encounter are still white. I mean, I spend a lot of time each day in my hood. I stop at the coffee shop each morning and the juice bar every evening after work. I ride my bicycle to the park where I have joined a kickball league. I am out there trying to gain different experiences, because that is something I have decided is important to my personal growth. I have even chosen to be bisexual on OKCupid.
I was thinking about volunteering at the school in my neighborhood but I truly don’t really have time right now, so I’m trying to branch out in terms of the parts of my schedule that are already in place. Which is why I’m interested in a more “urban” yoga experience. I have come to realize that I see the same types of bodies day in and day out, when in fact, there are all different types of bodies and skin tones that are worth experiencing as they sweat and bend into beautiful poses, which can somehow be even more beautiful when they aren’t perfectly articulated. It’s okay to not be amazing at yoga! And, frankly, I’m okay being the person who takes you aside and tells you that.
You guys, I feel like I am being suffocated by my white yoga milieu.
I want someone to call me “girlfriend” over the face towels. I don’t need to drink coconut water, I can drink Vitamin Water. I’d like to try out calf stretches to the new Lil Wayne. I want some different kinds of friends for my Facebook page. I believe there are many, many ways a person can be spiritual. I want more neon and bling in my workout clothes. I want you to think me for telling you that you are allowed to do yoga, too.