travjob
02-10-2014, 05:07 PM
There is absolutely some adult language and themes in this (even after I went and replaced all the asterisked words) - don't get me wrong, it is definitely NOT, like, erotic fan fiction or something like that... so just be warned, and please let me know if this is something not tolerated on this forum.
Here goes nothin', thanks for reading!:
She and I sat staring at each other for what seemed to be an eternity in my noticeably unkempt apartment. It wasn't so much that it was dirty and moldy. Or that it had empty beer and liquor bottles overflowing in the laundry room, which by this time was effectively an extension of the trashcan. Nor was it the food-stained dishes in the sink and on the counter... and on the stove. And it wasn't that the carpets had not been vacuumed in nearly 5 months either, or the faint aroma of stale IPA. A simpler person would quickly attribute the unkemptness of my apartment to any of these factors. But in reality, there's a certain aura of mysticism to ordered disorder. It's the same way that underground jazz is unkempt. My apartment is like cool underground jazz.
Neither one of us dared to move a muscle, determined to claim victory over the other. Quiet brown eyes locked against a stern pair of grayish-blue. We inhaled and exhaled in almost perfect unison. How did we get here? I recalled it was in times past that we would take long summertime rides in the car going nowhere, just because I knew she loved the warm breeze on her face. We could spend all of a winter’s day curled up on the couch together, watching old movies. We would even go for a run every once in a while, as long as it was nice out and I wasn't already spending that day on the couch watching old movies. It was the most solid relationship I'd been in for years, but today was different. Today, the smell of conflict hung in the air. The smell of conflict, and excrement. Wits were being tested. Two opponents, equal in almost every way. It was truly a battle of endurance, and my silence broke first.
"I'm not cleaning up after you again,” I said to her, and partly to myself as I retrieved an unopened bottle of carpet cleaner from under the sink, along with an amount of paper towels that would be described as precisely double overkill by any reasonable person. I placed the cleaner and the four new rolls of paper towel on the floor next to a now not-so-fresh pile of feces. "I know you're trying to send me a message, and I understand that you're a dog and you can only communicate with noise and bodily functions… but seriously. I am not cleaning up after you again.” I sat down on the couch and turned on the television. I couldn't really focus on what I was watching, and instead dwelled on a trying roommateship between a man and his dog. Bunker was the perfect dog. She was a Rottweiler and German Shepherd mix. She had all of the things that I look for in a dog: a sense of loyalty, a sense of friendship, four legs, and laziness. Though, it's that last trait that always lands us in this exact situation over and over again. Bunk refuses to let me know when she needs to go for a walk, and I'm not the type of person to force exercise on anyone, man or beast, so we both stay inside until she inevitably relieves herself somewhere.
After completing a thorough sniff inspection of the bottle of cleaner, the paper towels, and the pile of crap on my goddamn floor, she reluctantly walked over to me and rested her head on my knee. With her ears back, she gave me a look that distinctly said, "I have no thumbs, and it smells like my business over there… can you help?" I could help, and so I did. This is what friends are for, right?
I disposed of the clump of soiled paper towels, and the now-empty bottle of cleaner, placing them on top of three empty cases of beer and four restaurant take-out containers tied up neatly in their plastic bags. When that fell over onto a mix of other indistinguishables, I took a deep breath and reminded myself - really cool underground jazz. I’d been performing this cleaning ritual time and time again since I’d brought Bunk home with me, and it had gotten so ingrained that this time it only took me about an hour or two before I remembered that I would have to go shopping for new carpet anti-poop supplies to replace my depleted stock. I picked up my phone and considered sending a quick text to a friend of mine, Bill. We were supposed to meet up later anyway, and maybe he wanted to join my quest. I sprung to action.
Me: Yo man, you want to hit the grocery store with me? Bunker stunk up my place again.
Bill: OK. Want to pick up some tail there?
Me: You say that every time, and my answer will always be yes.
Bill: OK. But don't be a wuss this time when I'm about to get some numbers...
Me: You say that every time too... and fine, just don't do the thing with the sausage again, we got kicked
out last time and I can't even go in that aisle anymore.
Bill: OK. I can't make promises though..
Me: Then don't say OK...
Bill: OK.
God. Dammit.
This conversation occurred while on my way to Bill's house, and with the last transmission, he hopped in my car. Bill liked to describe himself as “classically good looking, with sharp features, and an aptitude for seducing women.” While the rest of us would agree that, on the whole, he's not generally unattractive as a human being, what he does happen to possess is precisely the tact and grace it takes to make any situation sexually awkward.
We drove to the store and found ourselves winding through a relatively peaceful parking lot maze of minivans, SUV's, crossovers, and mid-size sedans that make up every grocery store parking lot in any suburban town. After finding an open spot, we got out of the car and found the closest shopping cart. It was conveniently right in front of my car, as I had just bumped it out of the way while trying to park. That's what bumpers are for, I reasoned with myself. Witnessing peoples' seeming inability to return shopping carts to the cart ..return thing.. always made me think a little bit. Some might judge such inaction as laziness, but I think some of these people truly believe it to be one of the last F-You's that they have left. I imagine they think to themselves, "They can increase our taxes, and they can cut our wages, but they'll never take our freedom!” . For the rest of the walk into the grocery store I couldn't help but sputter through quotes from Braveheart. Consequently, one man may believe that I loved him, and always had.
Entering the grocery store and embracing the smell of overconsumption, we made our way over to the produce section. I didn't need any produce, and I wasn't going to buy any produce. It was just something I picked up over years and years of going to the store with my mother, who had always, without fail, started every trip to the grocery store in the produce section. The only difference being that she actually bought produce - the fruits and vegetables with which to torture me at dinnertimes in seeming perpetuity until I could finally grow up and eat whatever I wanted to.
Being inside for less than 10 minutes, it starts. And it's just like last time.
Bill was continuously running his thumb and forefinger up and down the shaft of a baby carrot, which he had already placed near the bottom of some unsuspecting watermelons. "Yo, tell me this doesn't look a masturbating toddler...”, Bill started, and with a tone that implied (for him) such normalcy. “I mean, if they did that. Which I don’t think they do.. but just for argument’s sake.", he clarified. He had to relay this to me over the two aisles that separated us, and with all those people in the way, the sound couldn't travel nearly as well. Since ‘people’ weren't the kind of detail that Bill typically paid attention to, he pretty much yelled it. I knew that I wasn't going to be able to pick up my supplies. Bill had started molesting food. And more importantly, he wasn't doing it right. If I have one flaw, it's being a perfectionist.
"Nope. It doesn't.. it looks like you're manually stimulating a carrot near a watermelon stand," I promptly replied, equally as loud. Not before receiving multiple disapproving looks from other customers, I took hold of my cart and jogged over to Bill to show him that, obviously, if he used just one of the watermelons and then added a banana to the mix, it would go over much better. "No, no no... see, you put the banana here, and it's like his shoulder, kind of..." As I demonstrated the simplicity of it all, he stood next to me nodding in agreement. It didn’t take too long before we realized that we had a functioning watermelon toddler using its banana arm to jerk off its own baby carrot dick. We were impressed with the ingenuity of it. We then realized that everybody else had realized this too, and they were less “impressed with the ingenuity” and more “grossed out by the thought”. Bill made the only kind of move he's capable of to get us out of the situation.
"Hey ladies, we could make this a little more real if you'd like.. how about you there, Jennifer? Wanna put my carrot in your vegetable patch?" he asked with nonchalance, almost as if he were asking for directions. Realizing he was still holding the baby carrot, "It's bigger than this carrot though, okay? I mean, just think about a dick. Let’s just say mine's like a dick-sized dick, for argument’s sake,” he said in a surprisingly unconvincing manner. Bill had just verbally accosted a middle-aged woman. If Bill has one flaw, it's being physically and mentally present in situations like these.
"I... my name isn't Jennifer,” the bewildered woman somehow came back with, completely missing the point. Bill raised an eyebrow and stared at her for a just few too many seconds, then with a quick wink and a smile replied, "Well, you look like a Jennifer for argument’s sake, so you are a Jennifer. Don't worry, [I]Jennifer, I'll just take it real nice and easy... together, we could be like V8, baby.. you know.. Splash..." I chuckled, and also realized that Bill had no idea when or how to use the phrase “for argument’s sake”.
The words were crass, but any remote possibility of a positive response he could have hoped for with his confident smile was ruined when he started using his hands to very obviously grab a pair of air-hips, proceeding to hump the nothing that was bent over in front of him. Jennifer looked appalled, but I could swear there was a micro-expression of intrigue just before her jaw dropped. It was either intrigue, or the facial representation of her fight-or-flight instinct getting kicked in the gut.
*****
I flashed back to the sausage incident that had many of the same characteristics. The details were hazy after being actively repressed for so long, but suffice it to say a proposition was made to a woman in her mid-forties to get 'Prego' with Bill's sausage. He had obviously pronounced it in a way that would allow him to prove his point, but I'm not actually sure he knew he was pronouncing it wrong. I hadn't been down the pasta aisle since then, and I'm wondering when the time will come in which I won't be able to buy any
food at all. Bill's method of turning a branded product into sexual suggestion was something of a gift. Or a curse. Somehow it always felt like both.
*****
Listening to Jennifer’s screaming got us thinking that it was time to go. In an impressive display of athleticism, I whipped my shopping cart directly into the zucchini stand while trying to make a quick turn. As they spilled to the ground and started rolling around bumping into each other, I found myself chuckling again because they really looked like a bunch of blind dildos. Although I suppose that would imply that your typical everyday dildo is capable of sight? I would hate to be a dildo blessed with the gift of sight. In any event, I abandoned the cart, turned to Bill and shot him a stern look. With my jaw clenched, my eyes narrowed, and my breath steady, I held his gaze for a moment to convey the gravity of the situation. "We need to get the hell out of here” was the only thought running through my head, and I knew that Bill and I were in total agreement. It doesn’t happen often, but when the situation elevates, we always have each others’ back. "Dude did you just crap your pants?” God. Dammit.
Minutes later, we left the grocery store of our own accord. Totally unescorted by security, and definitely not because the police were on their way, we made our way back through the parking lot. Maybe it was just the after-effects of a grocery stop with Bill, but the parking lot felt different now. Droves of honking suburbanites trying to fit too-big cars around too-tight corners. I noticed a parking lot attendant taking pause to look at all of the strewn-about shopping carts that he would have to gather, knowing full well they'd just get redistributed within an hour. I felt his pain as Bill and I walked past. But as much as I felt his pain, I conceded that those carts were his problem, his life story. I didn't have time to get involved. Now, we were on a mission. Specifically, a mission to get the hell out of this place before the cops showed up.
We traveled to meet up with Gary. He was the voice of reason in our crazy little world. He was the kind of guy you could always go to for an honest answer, or, at least, a very convincing lie to make you feel better. Out of our group, he was the most stand-up friend we had. We walked into his backyard to find that he had some beers and food already waiting for us. This guy was our rock.
"What's the difference between where my dick was last night and your mom?" Gary asked, shifting his eyes between Bill and me, and contradicting everything I just described about him. "Nothing! They were in the same place! Get it? I banged your mom...s last night. Just- I.. both of your moms, I banged 'em.”
Gary was a bastard.
~The End~
Here goes nothin', thanks for reading!:
She and I sat staring at each other for what seemed to be an eternity in my noticeably unkempt apartment. It wasn't so much that it was dirty and moldy. Or that it had empty beer and liquor bottles overflowing in the laundry room, which by this time was effectively an extension of the trashcan. Nor was it the food-stained dishes in the sink and on the counter... and on the stove. And it wasn't that the carpets had not been vacuumed in nearly 5 months either, or the faint aroma of stale IPA. A simpler person would quickly attribute the unkemptness of my apartment to any of these factors. But in reality, there's a certain aura of mysticism to ordered disorder. It's the same way that underground jazz is unkempt. My apartment is like cool underground jazz.
Neither one of us dared to move a muscle, determined to claim victory over the other. Quiet brown eyes locked against a stern pair of grayish-blue. We inhaled and exhaled in almost perfect unison. How did we get here? I recalled it was in times past that we would take long summertime rides in the car going nowhere, just because I knew she loved the warm breeze on her face. We could spend all of a winter’s day curled up on the couch together, watching old movies. We would even go for a run every once in a while, as long as it was nice out and I wasn't already spending that day on the couch watching old movies. It was the most solid relationship I'd been in for years, but today was different. Today, the smell of conflict hung in the air. The smell of conflict, and excrement. Wits were being tested. Two opponents, equal in almost every way. It was truly a battle of endurance, and my silence broke first.
"I'm not cleaning up after you again,” I said to her, and partly to myself as I retrieved an unopened bottle of carpet cleaner from under the sink, along with an amount of paper towels that would be described as precisely double overkill by any reasonable person. I placed the cleaner and the four new rolls of paper towel on the floor next to a now not-so-fresh pile of feces. "I know you're trying to send me a message, and I understand that you're a dog and you can only communicate with noise and bodily functions… but seriously. I am not cleaning up after you again.” I sat down on the couch and turned on the television. I couldn't really focus on what I was watching, and instead dwelled on a trying roommateship between a man and his dog. Bunker was the perfect dog. She was a Rottweiler and German Shepherd mix. She had all of the things that I look for in a dog: a sense of loyalty, a sense of friendship, four legs, and laziness. Though, it's that last trait that always lands us in this exact situation over and over again. Bunk refuses to let me know when she needs to go for a walk, and I'm not the type of person to force exercise on anyone, man or beast, so we both stay inside until she inevitably relieves herself somewhere.
After completing a thorough sniff inspection of the bottle of cleaner, the paper towels, and the pile of crap on my goddamn floor, she reluctantly walked over to me and rested her head on my knee. With her ears back, she gave me a look that distinctly said, "I have no thumbs, and it smells like my business over there… can you help?" I could help, and so I did. This is what friends are for, right?
I disposed of the clump of soiled paper towels, and the now-empty bottle of cleaner, placing them on top of three empty cases of beer and four restaurant take-out containers tied up neatly in their plastic bags. When that fell over onto a mix of other indistinguishables, I took a deep breath and reminded myself - really cool underground jazz. I’d been performing this cleaning ritual time and time again since I’d brought Bunk home with me, and it had gotten so ingrained that this time it only took me about an hour or two before I remembered that I would have to go shopping for new carpet anti-poop supplies to replace my depleted stock. I picked up my phone and considered sending a quick text to a friend of mine, Bill. We were supposed to meet up later anyway, and maybe he wanted to join my quest. I sprung to action.
Me: Yo man, you want to hit the grocery store with me? Bunker stunk up my place again.
Bill: OK. Want to pick up some tail there?
Me: You say that every time, and my answer will always be yes.
Bill: OK. But don't be a wuss this time when I'm about to get some numbers...
Me: You say that every time too... and fine, just don't do the thing with the sausage again, we got kicked
out last time and I can't even go in that aisle anymore.
Bill: OK. I can't make promises though..
Me: Then don't say OK...
Bill: OK.
God. Dammit.
This conversation occurred while on my way to Bill's house, and with the last transmission, he hopped in my car. Bill liked to describe himself as “classically good looking, with sharp features, and an aptitude for seducing women.” While the rest of us would agree that, on the whole, he's not generally unattractive as a human being, what he does happen to possess is precisely the tact and grace it takes to make any situation sexually awkward.
We drove to the store and found ourselves winding through a relatively peaceful parking lot maze of minivans, SUV's, crossovers, and mid-size sedans that make up every grocery store parking lot in any suburban town. After finding an open spot, we got out of the car and found the closest shopping cart. It was conveniently right in front of my car, as I had just bumped it out of the way while trying to park. That's what bumpers are for, I reasoned with myself. Witnessing peoples' seeming inability to return shopping carts to the cart ..return thing.. always made me think a little bit. Some might judge such inaction as laziness, but I think some of these people truly believe it to be one of the last F-You's that they have left. I imagine they think to themselves, "They can increase our taxes, and they can cut our wages, but they'll never take our freedom!” . For the rest of the walk into the grocery store I couldn't help but sputter through quotes from Braveheart. Consequently, one man may believe that I loved him, and always had.
Entering the grocery store and embracing the smell of overconsumption, we made our way over to the produce section. I didn't need any produce, and I wasn't going to buy any produce. It was just something I picked up over years and years of going to the store with my mother, who had always, without fail, started every trip to the grocery store in the produce section. The only difference being that she actually bought produce - the fruits and vegetables with which to torture me at dinnertimes in seeming perpetuity until I could finally grow up and eat whatever I wanted to.
Being inside for less than 10 minutes, it starts. And it's just like last time.
Bill was continuously running his thumb and forefinger up and down the shaft of a baby carrot, which he had already placed near the bottom of some unsuspecting watermelons. "Yo, tell me this doesn't look a masturbating toddler...”, Bill started, and with a tone that implied (for him) such normalcy. “I mean, if they did that. Which I don’t think they do.. but just for argument’s sake.", he clarified. He had to relay this to me over the two aisles that separated us, and with all those people in the way, the sound couldn't travel nearly as well. Since ‘people’ weren't the kind of detail that Bill typically paid attention to, he pretty much yelled it. I knew that I wasn't going to be able to pick up my supplies. Bill had started molesting food. And more importantly, he wasn't doing it right. If I have one flaw, it's being a perfectionist.
"Nope. It doesn't.. it looks like you're manually stimulating a carrot near a watermelon stand," I promptly replied, equally as loud. Not before receiving multiple disapproving looks from other customers, I took hold of my cart and jogged over to Bill to show him that, obviously, if he used just one of the watermelons and then added a banana to the mix, it would go over much better. "No, no no... see, you put the banana here, and it's like his shoulder, kind of..." As I demonstrated the simplicity of it all, he stood next to me nodding in agreement. It didn’t take too long before we realized that we had a functioning watermelon toddler using its banana arm to jerk off its own baby carrot dick. We were impressed with the ingenuity of it. We then realized that everybody else had realized this too, and they were less “impressed with the ingenuity” and more “grossed out by the thought”. Bill made the only kind of move he's capable of to get us out of the situation.
"Hey ladies, we could make this a little more real if you'd like.. how about you there, Jennifer? Wanna put my carrot in your vegetable patch?" he asked with nonchalance, almost as if he were asking for directions. Realizing he was still holding the baby carrot, "It's bigger than this carrot though, okay? I mean, just think about a dick. Let’s just say mine's like a dick-sized dick, for argument’s sake,” he said in a surprisingly unconvincing manner. Bill had just verbally accosted a middle-aged woman. If Bill has one flaw, it's being physically and mentally present in situations like these.
"I... my name isn't Jennifer,” the bewildered woman somehow came back with, completely missing the point. Bill raised an eyebrow and stared at her for a just few too many seconds, then with a quick wink and a smile replied, "Well, you look like a Jennifer for argument’s sake, so you are a Jennifer. Don't worry, [I]Jennifer, I'll just take it real nice and easy... together, we could be like V8, baby.. you know.. Splash..." I chuckled, and also realized that Bill had no idea when or how to use the phrase “for argument’s sake”.
The words were crass, but any remote possibility of a positive response he could have hoped for with his confident smile was ruined when he started using his hands to very obviously grab a pair of air-hips, proceeding to hump the nothing that was bent over in front of him. Jennifer looked appalled, but I could swear there was a micro-expression of intrigue just before her jaw dropped. It was either intrigue, or the facial representation of her fight-or-flight instinct getting kicked in the gut.
*****
I flashed back to the sausage incident that had many of the same characteristics. The details were hazy after being actively repressed for so long, but suffice it to say a proposition was made to a woman in her mid-forties to get 'Prego' with Bill's sausage. He had obviously pronounced it in a way that would allow him to prove his point, but I'm not actually sure he knew he was pronouncing it wrong. I hadn't been down the pasta aisle since then, and I'm wondering when the time will come in which I won't be able to buy any
food at all. Bill's method of turning a branded product into sexual suggestion was something of a gift. Or a curse. Somehow it always felt like both.
*****
Listening to Jennifer’s screaming got us thinking that it was time to go. In an impressive display of athleticism, I whipped my shopping cart directly into the zucchini stand while trying to make a quick turn. As they spilled to the ground and started rolling around bumping into each other, I found myself chuckling again because they really looked like a bunch of blind dildos. Although I suppose that would imply that your typical everyday dildo is capable of sight? I would hate to be a dildo blessed with the gift of sight. In any event, I abandoned the cart, turned to Bill and shot him a stern look. With my jaw clenched, my eyes narrowed, and my breath steady, I held his gaze for a moment to convey the gravity of the situation. "We need to get the hell out of here” was the only thought running through my head, and I knew that Bill and I were in total agreement. It doesn’t happen often, but when the situation elevates, we always have each others’ back. "Dude did you just crap your pants?” God. Dammit.
Minutes later, we left the grocery store of our own accord. Totally unescorted by security, and definitely not because the police were on their way, we made our way back through the parking lot. Maybe it was just the after-effects of a grocery stop with Bill, but the parking lot felt different now. Droves of honking suburbanites trying to fit too-big cars around too-tight corners. I noticed a parking lot attendant taking pause to look at all of the strewn-about shopping carts that he would have to gather, knowing full well they'd just get redistributed within an hour. I felt his pain as Bill and I walked past. But as much as I felt his pain, I conceded that those carts were his problem, his life story. I didn't have time to get involved. Now, we were on a mission. Specifically, a mission to get the hell out of this place before the cops showed up.
We traveled to meet up with Gary. He was the voice of reason in our crazy little world. He was the kind of guy you could always go to for an honest answer, or, at least, a very convincing lie to make you feel better. Out of our group, he was the most stand-up friend we had. We walked into his backyard to find that he had some beers and food already waiting for us. This guy was our rock.
"What's the difference between where my dick was last night and your mom?" Gary asked, shifting his eyes between Bill and me, and contradicting everything I just described about him. "Nothing! They were in the same place! Get it? I banged your mom...s last night. Just- I.. both of your moms, I banged 'em.”
Gary was a bastard.
~The End~