It should be noted that I really love to eat pussy.
Less than a year after my divorce I was staying in Rhode Island with a hippie woman named Pam I met on Myspace. I never intended to stay in her lake cabin beyond a few days but add drinking on top of depression and the all-you-can-eat pussy buffet, and I ended up staying for months. Eventually I secured a clerk job at a local fish and meat market called Ron’s.
Pam’s sister, Rachel, would come around loaded on Alabama Slammers and Mai Tais. If the drink was fruity, Rachel drank it. Pam didn’t care that on occasion I put my wang in Rachel, in fact Pam encouraged it. Rachel was taller than me with long legs, and she always wore a stars n’ stripes bikini. The first time it happened, she bent over an old boat and put me in her. After I finished, I asked if I should call her, but she didn’t say a word. Rachel simply walked away and joined whatever bonfire was closest. Besides the oddness of the situation, my problem with her were the conversations, which equaled me discussing books and music, and her asking if I watched ‘American Idol.’ I decided we shouldn’t have discussions, she seemed more than okay with it.
Rachel didn’t let me eat her pussy, Pam did. Pam wasn’t like other hippie chicks. She shaved her armpits and legs. She worshipped daily showers, sometimes two a day. Every other hour the cherry from a joint lit up the darkness Pam liked to sit in. We talked about music, who hurt us, and the pain we felt. Long hauls of talk looking at one another without an ounce of love in our eyes. Admiration for our survival skills. Maybe lust, but love was a feeling we never shared.
I was a tool Pam used when she needed me. I knew it. It happened the same way every time. A stoned, red-eyed Pam leaned in for a kiss, then she’d lay back on the bed and stare at me until it dawned on me that it would be me putting in the work. I lifted one of her many long hippie skirts and I’d eat her pussy until she came. It was a nice pussy too, trimmed, and tight with an easy clit. She let me ball Rachel because she never let me fuck her. She wasn’t cruel though, she’d jerk me until I came, but she refused to look into my eyes when doing so. Instead, she’d look up at the ceiling when pumping me. I didn’t understand it. I also didn’t argue with her. I had been living rent free for weeks.
After the newness and the excitement wore off, I started to feel like I was living in a hippie cult, and I was. I wasn’t balls deep in Rachel for the pleasure of it but to impregnate her. Going down on Pam was a way for her to control me and keep me in line. Who else was going to mow the lawn, fix random electronics, walk to the store, and take out the trash to a dumpster two hundred yards away from all the cottages?
No one in the cottages liked me. I noticed how they leered at me when I walked by them though long rows of tall pines. One guy who chopped wood every morning made sure I saw the sun hit the blade of his axe. Martha, an elderly woman with a dozen poodles, made sure I noticed that love didn’t live in her two-story cottage only money. I thought the lake and all the quaint cottages, and the inhabitants were a little happy community. Eventually, I realized I was only there to be a sperm donor. The community was close to becoming inbred. Kids were born with four eyes, one leg longer than the other, slow brains, no lips, fingers growing out from necks. They needed to recruit fresh cocks. They found mine on Myspace.
It wasn’t long before Pam announced, “You need a job if you plan on sticking around.”
I agreed to get a job. I didn’t want to return to where I had been living before and see my bipolar and alcoholic, ex-wife, Alice. I didn’t have it in me to return to the arguments and anger. It was our child that made me stay married to Alice one day short of a year and move from Boston to Alabama. I wanted my sweet daughter in my life, but not Alice. The next morning, I got out of bed, showered, walked two miles, and secured the clerk’s position at Ron’s Meat & Seafood. I needed the money to mail child support, and if I was going to continue to live among the hippie sex cult, I had to pull my weight.
Pam grabbed my head and yanked on my hair as I worked my tongue in between her tanned thighs. I glanced at the clock and noticed I had to be at my new job in a couple of hours, and since Pam couldn’t be bothered to give me a ride, I had twenty minutes. I worked her clit. She moaned and tightened her legs like a vice around my ears. Her body quivered, she was getting ready to let go, but on the first day of my new job, the day I was supposed to start my life anew, Pam didn’t cum, but instead released a long and loud ripping fart inches from my nose.
It smelled of old beer left to die in a can on a nightstand. A desperate old taco not wanted because it had more lettuce than meat and cheese. I nearly died after swallowing her fart and she laughed. She pushed my head away and rolled over and continued to be a hyena A shower and ten gallons of toothpaste didn’t get rid of my fart mouth. In the depths of my mind everything that had ever embarrassed me, and everyone who ever did me wrong, pointed and laughed at me.
On the walk to my new job, I stopped at a Cumby’s and bought a pack of spearmint gum. I chewed three sticks until they lost flavor and loaded another stick in my mouth. My mind drifted, “Great! It’s my first day and I’m going to be known as the fart swallower! Sir Egg Salad!” Humiliation popped through the vertebrae, and I popped another stick of gum.
“No gum,” Mike, my boss, said. “We have a delicate clientele, and we don’t want our employees disrespecting them with gum chewing.”
I spit out the gum in the garbage, and after he left joy filled my bones. A feeling of ease relaxed over me because he didn’t make a face nor mention the fart lingering in my throat.
The small store was active with yacht tans, pearls, diamonds, blazers, shirts with tiny alligators, leather loafers, and handbags worth more than my soul. Their teeth all perfect and white, lined up like the war gravestones of Arlington. They wanted expensive steaks, and Maine lobster tails straight off the boats of drunk fishermen who couldn’t afford the mortgage. They wanted fresh shrimp, porterhouse, New Yorks, and in massive quantities. It was my job with dumb hobo face and tan ball cap that said “Ron’s” to keep them happy. “Yes sir. Yes ma’am. Would you like me to follow you around the rest of the day and hold a golden bowl under your bum so you can shit in it?”
After the rush I’d look in the small cutting room and noticed two old Italian men cutting meat. Trimming and shaping the primal, turning them into what we had in the case for the rich and demanding. They worked with ease, and talked without even looking at what they were doing. Shiny, sharp blades hit the cutting board and made a rhythmic sound. Two highly regarded dago butchers, like the two chieftains of the store full of ancient wisdom and wild medicine that heals.
Their knives dragged, flipped, and trimmed, all while talking about fishing, their wives, the Red Sox game. They laughed like serial killers in bloody white coats and carried on about ravioli and romancing women. They played old music on a tiny radio. The sounds of Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Patsy Cline filled the tiny cutting room adjacent to where I served the yacht rock crowd hell bent on making my eight dollars an hour ass miserable for no other reason other than they could. Mike never turned off their radio. He let the two old men do whatever they wanted.
It wasn’t long before I learned the two chieftains’ names, Dominic and Pauly, stocky twins originally from Providence but after retiring they moved near the lake with their wives. They took the job for something to do besides playing cards. Every morning, they arrived at five or six in the morning and cut meat until eleven and left. No questions asked. Neither of them had to clean the saw, knives, nor the grinder. They had a kid they called “night bitch” do it for them.
“What do they mean by night bitch?” I asked William Taylor Jr. An artsy looking man who not only demanded you call him by his full name, but adored stocking pears. He didn’t care about making pyramids out of oranges. Handling apples flat out insulted him, but stocking pears that was William Taylor Jr’s pride and joy.
“That’s what they call the apprentice.”
“Why?”
“It’s the night bitch’s job to clean the saws, knives, grinders of meat and blood and make it sparkling clean.”
“Does he get paid more?”
“Not at all. He makes the same amount as you, but the night bitch gets to learn the trade because he’s the night bitch. Need someone to run into the ground? Night bitch. Need coffee? Send the night bitch. Need to make fun of someone because you feel like shit? Night bitch. He does whatever they want and in turn they teach him how to butcher.”
“Must be long list of people waiting to become an apprentice.”
“Nah,” he replied. “They quit all the time. No one wants the job; they get tired of the cleaning and insults.”
“Think Mike would let me apprentice?”
“Don’t ask Mike. He might whip you like Jesus. Ask the twins, they’ll decide. Might work more nights, but we close at seven, so it isn’t a big deal.”
“Thanks man,” I replied, watching him blow into the pear. I snatched up a bottle of Windex and started to clean the meat and seafood glass case. A feeling of hope filled my body. I thought about learning a trade, returning to Alabama, seeing my daughter again. Maybe even moving back to Boston and having a new trade under my belt and having the kid half of the year. I cleaned the glass until you could see what was inside the case from the street. Old Fart breath had a new lease on life.
“Say,” William Taylor Jr said. “They are having a poetry reading over at Dink’s Coffee House. After the round robin of poems Victorian Disaster is going to be there. Wanna go?”
“What’s Victorian Disaster?”
“This cool band. My lady is the keytar player.”
“What kind of music?”
“Mostly covers like Bauhaus, The Smiths, The Cure. You know, shit like that. Goes great with drinks after some serious fucking poetry.”
The douche chills crawled up and down my back. I imagined William Taylor Jr, king of produce, reading poems and holding a pear for all to see. His woman in knee high leather goth boots lightly tapping away on her keytar in between douchey poetic breaths.
“Sounds like a killer time, but I got to pass, man.”
“Your loss,” he said, releasing a slight air of the pompous.
The following days and nights were like most other days. Banging Rachel and pulling out so I didn’t get her pregnant. Making sure Pam was satisfied sexually and all the yard work was up to her standards. Only now I did it all with a bit of joy and hope in my heart. I didn’t let Pam in on my secret of becoming a butcher’s apprentice. I didn’t tell her of my plans to escape the hippie, inbred, cult, after I learned the skills. Pam had been using me as a slave, and in turn I decided to use her. I only had to make sure I didn’t knock up Rachel in the process, or I, too, would be a part of the cult. My seed spread to other women lining up to become pregnant, and their children growing up to marry and have children of their own. Children damned with disfigurements and the inability to pass grade school due to a slow brain. Long after I’m gone, photographs of me hanging in community buildings. Me with a long white beard sitting in rocking chair, hundreds of adults and grandkids, and great grandkids surrounding me with the same look of stupidity on their disfigured faces.
I worked the counter at Ron’s and dealt with Mike’s rules and clipboard for days on end. I waited and waited for the night bitch to quit. Eventually, Fleetwood Drevlow had enough of cleaning and putting the saw back together and stopped showing up all together.
Dominic and Pauly looked out on the floor at the various employees in the shop. Who would clean up after them? Mop up and hose the blood from the floor? Pick the fat from the auger? No one volunteered. They vanished back into the cutting room. Mike watched me walk towards the cutting room. He wanted to stop me from improving my life, but I beat him to the room. I opened the door, breathing heavily. Dominic and Pauly stopped cutting and waiting for me to say something, anything.
“I want to become a butcher, and I’ll do anything if you two will teach me.”
“Hey, listen to this asshole,” Pauly said with an Italian accent.
“You don’t have what it takes, kid,” Dominic said. “You are good at wrapping steaks, but no way can you cut them. You keep wrapping them though.”
“I’m serious. I want to learn how to be a butcher.”
“Listen, just by looking at you, I can tell you don’t have what it takes. You look tired and lazy.”
I didn’t want to tell them about how I was tired from fucking, eating pussy, raking leaves, mowing lawns, dragging trash bags a mile to a dumpster. I was tired of not loving and trusting myself. I yearned to be my own man and live by my own rules, and I needed a set of old Italian twins to help me get to where I wanted to be.
“I was up late watching the Sox game.”
Dominic’s eyes lit up, “Hey, kid, you like the Sox?”
It wasn’t a lie. I love the Red Sox, but with all my chores I never had time to watch an inning.
“Love the fucking Sox.”
Pauly put down his knife-like Saint Francis of Assisi himself had entered the room.
“You like the Pats too?” He asked.
“You kidding me? LOVE the Pats. Celtics and Bruins too.”
“You like Sinatra and Bennett?” Pauly asked. “We only listen to Sinatra and Tony in here. None of that hippie music.”
“I was fucking raised on Sinatra!”
“Ay, Dom, Che figata! This son-of-a-bitch likes Sinatra. Kid’s got class.”
That’s all I had to do, confess my love for things they enjoyed, and I landed the position. Mike wasn’t happy about it, but he went out and hired a new clerk, a wiry guy named Augustus Wise. He was known as Scooby because he called the crack rocks he smoked in the bathroom ‘Scooby snacks.’
I performed my duties on cult street with perfection so I could secretly learn how to butcher at Ron’s without them knowing. Rachel dropped her bikini bottoms behind the shed, in the bathroom, inside the lake when swimming, holding onto a tree, anywhere she could bend over so she did not have to look at me. She wasn’t interested in getting to know me. She didn’t care, not one iota. She didn’t want to know that my desires moaned with savage sounds, nor that when I felt safe, I opened my chest like a cabinet and let the fall foliage I kept locked up inside blow out and cling to the clothing of the people I cared for. And if I trusted just enough, I’d let all the foliage empty until the frost cleared and you’d see the colorful Christmas lights wrapped around my heart like glowing thorns dug deep into my hopes and dreams.
It was around the time I became the night bitch that I realized people had been observing me screw Rachel. From windows with long noses and peering eyes. Old golden tanned men and women with binoculars in a rowboat. From a hammock with roach clips listening to Rachel’s tiny whimpers, instead of loud moans, due to my average sized cock. I even noticed Pam watching us from weird places like behind a silver metal garbage can wrapped in a banner that read: Let Love Rule, and Peace In 2006.
I had to up my cult game. After morning sunrise yoga which I detested, Rachel dropped pants and I went to work. Later, Pam needed her pussy licked, then after demanded I make scrambled eggs with tabasco, or hard-boiled eggs with a freezer cold beer. Pam started pointing at things like a washrag, rake, a lawnmower, and I’d get to work. Then there was the late morning dickin’ of Rachel in the shed, followed by the pregame cunt licking of Pam before I left for work. I was exhausted, beat, sore, hurting, fearful before I even took on my duties at Ron’s. Due to all the tasks in Cultville I stopped reading. Stupidity took over as well as a low attention span. I became addicted to thirty second YouTube clips by the millions.
The first month I learned the basics: trimming fat from pork and poultry. No one cared if I ruined a pork chop or chicken breast, beef on the other hand they cared about. “Hey, ay, vaffanculo, no beef until you master the pork!” Every night it was the same: disassemble the saw, the table, the blade, the different tiny clips, then soap and sanitize them, and put them back together. I also had to take apart the grinder and soap and sanitize and put it back together. The floors and walls needed to be cleaned of blood and little chunks of flesh, bones, and fat. When Pauly and Dominic arrived in the morning it needed to be cleaner than a nun’s vocabulary. If it weren’t up to their standards, I’d have to clean out the bone bucket as a penalty. If you think of the vilest smell on earth, multiply it by one hundred and it still doesn’t touch the smell of the bone bucket. Ron’s hired a company of men wearing hazmat suits to empty the bucket once a week. A week’s worth of rotting meat, bones, fat, tendon, tissue, rotting inside the can with a lid fastened with clips to keep it shut. A lengthy line of night bitches quit because of the bone bucket.
After three months I found myself next to both Dominic and Pauly cutting pork, beef, and chicken. I turned into them. I cussed in Italian even though I didn’t have an ounce of Italian blood in me. We all laughed the same way. Insults flew around the room like a Mahler symphony. Mike stopped busting my balls. The three of us talked about shitty cars, angry women, and if Tom Brady was going to lead us to another super bowl. I was a part time night bitch, a part time butcher. I wore a cheap cloth apron. I hadn’t been awarded the white coat. Blood got all over my pants and boots. Rachel started to notice I smelled of decay and rot when I pretended to try and to get her pregnant, it hurt her nose.
Pam said, “You smell like the Charnel Ground,” after I made her cum. I had no idea what she meant, but it sounded cool. The sisters nor the other cult members on the little dirt roads had the slightest idea that I was having the time of my life at Ron’s, learning from Dominic and Pauly. Pam noticed a confidence in me, and it started to make her cum quicker. I still enjoyed eating her sweet and musky cunt, but I got to admit, it felt marvelous that I gained a bit of control.
It had been raining out the day Pauly and Dominic walked up to me with a carboard box.
“Hey, little motherfucker, here you go!” Pauly shouted.
Both brothers smiled at me and handed me the box. I set it on the clean white boards that the new night bitch, Sanjo Fugett, cleaned the night before and opened it. Inside was a my very own set of cutting tools inside a nice little rolled up canvas bag. There was a clever, a breaking knife, boning knife, also cimeter and skinning knives. The most beautiful weapons for a job I’d ever seen. The stainless-steel blades polished and sharpened to perfection glowed underneath the lights above. I gazed at them and wanted to cry, but I knew better not to cry in front of men who called me “asshole,” for fun.
“Whaddaya think little motherfucker?” Pauly asked.
I wanted to let out a moan I’ve been holding onto for well over a year. The divorce, roaming on a greyhound bus, eating pussy every twenty seconds, fucking to get another woman pregnant, slaving over lawns I didn’t own. Somewhere along the way I lost my spine. I was owned by whatever wanted to own me. It felt good to be recognized for something more than my ability to do what I’m told. Chills ran up and down my arms. It had been ages since a person, anyone, gave me a gift out of kindness. I wanted to thank the old dago twins with a hug, but I simply put out my hand and shook their hands like I meant it.
“One more thing,” Dominic said, throwing something at me.
It had too much starch and smelled of powerful cleaners and detergents, but it was even more gorgeous than the knives they bought me, my first butcher coat. I flung it over my body and buttoned it up. I put my hands in the oversized pockets and stood there for a minute. A small victory. Both Pauly and Dominic understood and let me have my moment.
“The name patch is coming next week, that’ll have to do for now,” Pauly explained. “You got the shit locker next to ours and the cleaning company will drop off new coats into your locker every week.”
The name patch stitched into the coat didn’t matter. Standing there wearing my first butcher coat meant everything to me. The stiff, cheap, white threads soon to be covered in cow blood and my sweat thrilled me. I let it sink deeper into my mind. I cracked the cabinet of my chest and let a dozen crunchy leaves hit the ground.
“All right, asshole, let’s get to work,” Dominic said. “We need ten pounds of chuck and twenty pounds of sirloin. And when you are done grinding all of that, we need you on the saw cutting rib and loin chops. And little motherfucker, don’t throw away the riblets this time. We can sell that.”
They shouted out their orders and I got to work right away. It wasn’t long after that I started to butcher by myself on their days off. The entire store depended on me. I brought my little radio and instead of Sinatra and Tony Bennett, I played the Stones, Beatles, The Stooges, Black Sabbath, Springsteen, the Kinks. Mike started to treat me like one of the most valuable employees in the building. They fired Augustus Wise for smoking crack in the bathroom and a guy named John McNally replaced him. I didn’t know much about him, other than that he wore twenty different Poco shirts and loved to go to Karaoke bars by himself.
Dominic died of a heart attack several weeks after they gave me the knife set. Pauly couldn’t go on without his brother, so he went into full retirement. I’s never been to a full-on Italian funeral but lord if it isn’t a sight to see. The screaming, the tears, the alcoholism, the food for miles, and the shady characters in black that make you think you are sitting with mobsters. I bid farewell to a teary eyed Pauly. He told me he’d check in on me from time to time. I insulted him with a smile, and he gave me an attaboy tap on the shoulder. The following day Mike offered me more money to be the lead butcher and work alone until they could find me a partner. I accepted.
Rachel slipped out of her jeans and dropped her cotton panties around her ankles and stuck out her narrow ass. I unzipped myself and tossed myself inside of her. I knew in my heart it was the last time I’d ever be inside of her, so instead of fucking like a robot, I began to make love to her. I pulled her hair, slapped her pale white ass, I reached around and groped her body. She didn’t want me to enjoy her skin.
“Fucking stop it,” she said. I stopped fucking her. “No,” she continued. “Keep doing it but stop trying to turn me on. We are only doing this so I can get pregnant.”
I continued like the usual way, holding onto her hips and working my excitement. I let myself feel her pulsing wet velvet. It hadn’t occurred to me how sexy and beautiful she truly was, or I did and forgot because she owned hours of my life, as did Pam, and the rest of the cult. I picked up speed and let myself glide in and out until I came. Only this time I didn’t pull out, I let go inside of her. I felt ashamed for a moment, but the shame quickly shifted into a feeling of not caring. She pulled up her panties and jeans.
“Later tonight,” she commanded. “I’ll let you know when and where.”
I went inside and sat next to Pam. An angry reality show shrink on the TV screen shouted about how this person and that person were ruining their lives. A large joint hovered around Pam’s mouth. She didn’t even look at me.
“What up, dude,” a muscular guy in a tank top said. He brought in plates of meatballs over mashed potatoes. I looked down and noticed he wasn’t wearing any pants. An enormous porno dick wagged around in between his legs.
“Hey, honey,” Pam said. I didn’t know if she was talking to me or the half-naked man climbing into her bed.
It hit me that she not opposed to fucking, she just didn’t want to fuck me. She gave orders, she controlled the outcomes. I was only there to service her and give Rachel a baby. My confidence and my newfound ability to be strong made her feel weak, even if for only a moment.
“Hey, bro,” the muscular guy said lifting the blanket, “want to join us?”
Pam side eyed me and waited on a response. I didn’t respond.
“Yeah, come to bed with us. You can both have me,” she said smiling and twisting the guy’s nipple. “And after I want to watch Mr. Muscles over here pound your ass with his big dick until your ass bleeds.”
I chose to sleep on the couch with fifty hacking cats, and a parakeet named Josie that may or may not have been dead.
The sun started to come up over the lake. I lit a cigarette, and slowly closed Pam’s back door. I walked down the narrow dirt roads and inhaled the morning air. The cottages full of the inbred were without sound and movement. The dunes wrapped around the dumpster crawled with early morning flies.
My wallet, green cargo pants, Beatles T-shirt, grey hoodie, and a Red Sox cap, were all that I had on my body when it dawned on me to keep walking. I walked the long asphalt road until I came to an exit for route one heading north to Providence. I stuck out my thumb and waited. A church van that said Our Lady of Sorrow picked me up. A man with an eyepatch who must’ve been eighty years old and looked like Bruce Dern greeted me.
“How far you going?” He asked.
“Greyhound station in Providence.”
“I’m going to Pawtucket. I can drop you at the Providence ramp.”
I thanked him. In the back of the van, I noticed boxes full of food, cleaning supplies and toiletries.
“On my way to the homeless shelter with all the donations.”
I nodded my head and thanked him again for the ride.
“Where are you headed?”
“Either back home to Boston, or to Huntsville, Alabama.”
“You don’t know where the shit you are going?”
“Which ever bus is leaving first. I figure I’d let the universe spell it out for me.
“Shit, son, a man’s got to have a plan. You can’t dick around the country all your life. If you are running from yourself, let me be the first person to inform you no matter where you go, you’ll keep running back into yourself. It’s a mother of life to live. Trust me, son, you don’t want that life.”
“I have family in both cities.” I replied.
I didn’t say anything more to him. He continued to drive, until he dropped me off and I walked another mile to the bus station. I grabbed a breakfast sandwich and coffee at McDonald’s and went to the ticket counter.
“Where you headed?” The woman asked.
“Either Boston or Huntsville, AL, which ever leaves first.”
Chubby fat fingers typed away, “bus heading south leaves in an hour. Next bus to Boston leaves in four hours.
“Huntsville then.”
Awful smelling perfume and a boring look on her face printed out a ticket. I sat down on a wall facing city hall. Thousands of pigeons congregated and shit all over the place. The once copper dome of city hall had turned a moldy green. People walked down different streets on the way to their jobs. I couldn’t tell the difference between the pigeons and the people. But I felt good about having escaped and how I’d soon be on the road to see my child and start over in Huntsville with a new trade. I understood I’d start off homeless or in a shelter, but eventually I’d find my way. I pulled a pen from my pocket and started to scribble words on the brown McDonald’s bag. Words that meant nothing, but felt good to write, like a friend walking into your house with a bottle of unopened whiskey. I never cared to see Pam and Rachel, the cult members of Coventry Lake, ever again, and I doubted that they’d miss me. What started out as an escape from divorce a thousand miles away turned into a different collar around my neck.
Hope and confidence returned, as did optimism. I’d land a job once I got to Huntsville and someone would pay me well, and everything would eventually turn out how I dreamed. I wrote more words, felt good about them, and stuffed the bag into my pocket. The bus arrived and I climbed on and took a window seat. It pulled out and headed south. The sun blasted my face, and I kept a well-earned smile to myself.
Eighteen Years Later
The bottle of Vicodin in my pocket clanked against my car keys. Everything hurts, both body and soul. I’m not even sure where I’m working. I’m not sure where I live. I’m not even sure if I go home to a woman at night. How did I get here?
“Francis, we need one billion ribeye for a customer order right away.”
“Fuck this job,” I mumbled. It’s impossible to believe in anything else.
