{"id":13470,"date":"2017-04-06T05:00:07","date_gmt":"2017-04-06T12:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bullmensfiction.com\/?p=13470"},"modified":"2022-08-03T13:14:28","modified_gmt":"2022-08-03T17:14:28","slug":"small-rain-on-the-tender-herb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/fiction\/small-rain-on-the-tender-herb\/","title":{"rendered":"Small Rain on the Tender Herb"},"content":{"rendered":"

Slick, slick, way greasy. Like sluicing down a waterslide to splash right into his bull-doody. Gorgeous bastard, good offense his defense as he spied me coming. Listen, Marilyn<\/em>, fully two of the last five months you\u2019ve spent over in Copenhagen. Rory misses you like mad and I consider the state of our union shabbier than that ridiculous firm you\u2019re trying to resurrect.<\/p>\n

How did I put it? Sock in it, Jerry, this is about you boning the Bajan nanny.<\/p>\n

\u201cAntiguan,\u201d he said, \u201cWrong island, wrong conclusion. She\u2019s a fine girl overwhelmed by the big city. I\u2019ve spent some effort trying to ease her way, that\u2019s all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Swear, don\u2019t know who\u2019s more obvious, him with the put-upon rectitude or Miss Pickney Gyal<\/em> falling over her luscious self to telegraph she\u2019s got my man…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That was the first or maybe the second. Storming your personal beach and riddling the pock-marked pillbox of your sanity. It was one of those slim girly cigarettes with scarlet lipstick on the filter. Good for a couple puffs, that butt–what you called a three-banger<\/em>. You torched it and a woman\u2019s voice blared in your brain, as real as the smoke breaching your lungs. Too weird.<\/p>\n

Last Thursday that was and it preoccupied you now, drumming down seven flights of stairs to give a miss to the sociopaths, cons, fiends and lunar-tics waiting to fob off bronchitis or sundry URIs on your sorry behind in the elevator.<\/p>\n

You breezed past the bottom-of-the-academy-class Homeless Service cops working the metal detectors in the lobby and out of Bellevue Men\u2019s Shelter onto 30th Street. Snicking your zipper tippy-top against the raw December morning, you still got a little kick that the city morgue is directly across the way. The Next Stop, you call it, because you\u2019re so very, very clever.<\/p>\n

Bellevue as the former booby hatch was shaping up as a better fit lately, what with the bone house also handy and 2nd Avenue hereabouts known as Hospital Row. You felt like a prospect for any and all with the onset of this new wonder.<\/p>\n

Firing up discarded butts for the past week, you\u2019d begun to find yourself\u2026in someone else\u2019s head?<\/em> Or they in yours, some type of bizarre consciousness-switch flicking on.<\/p>\n

Consequences were dawning. Yesterday you sucked four hits of a generic menthol in the bathroom alongside degenerates booting up dope and then hightailed it to your appointment with the social worker allegedly assembling a housing package to get your arse out of this particular circle of Hell.<\/p>\n

Asked to confirm you had no income beyond basic welfare benefits, here\u2019s how you spooked the gal:<\/p>\n

\u201cSo Jeb tells me I\u2019ll bonus out at a full chilly mil if I can crank WayTech to say, 72 \u00bd, by the close on Friday. Meanwhile, all week he\u2019s looking cocky on my behalf, winking and doing that retard rubbing-your-fingers-together-for-cash move, like it\u2019s fait accompli and didn\u2019t my genius mentor\u2014him<\/em>— bring me up right?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe I can sling a mess of puts against that pig of a stock, hedge if it ain\u2019t too late, \u2018cause nobody knows what I know. Lucky if that sow finishes the week at seven<\/em> bucks. And it\u2019s my fault.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, that was hinky. Troubling<\/em> was the word you think the social worker used and no, you hadn\u2019t yet arranged to join an outpatient program but would certainly, uh, uh, expedite the\u00a0 proccess. You fled, praying you hadn\u2019t violated the pooch in your campaign to escape this dunghill. Couldn\u2019t she grade on a curve? If only she understood how that verbal vomitus paled compared to how you appalled the Indian liquor store guy yesterday.<\/p>\n

After half a Parliament enroute, blabbering that you\u2019d kill<\/em> for a third callback, God breathed life into you so you could play Julie Jordan and honeybunch, you nailed What\u2019s the Use of Wondrin\u2019<\/em>, positive you had that stage manager crying. Sure, on If I Loved You<\/em> \u00a0you\u2019d gone a bit flat at the end on never, never to knooooowww<\/em> and maybe you went overboard admitting you were no Rockette but could definitely handle the dancing\u2026and weren\u2019t you pretty enough?<\/p>\n

You were invited to spend your money elsewhere. The chorus girl invading your marrow could do as she pleased.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But look, you\u2019re a cheeky boy with resilience, needs and a sense of math. There\u2019s not benefit cash enough for both vodka and smokes, especially at $12 a pack. Full bottles of hootch aren\u2019t found on city sidewalks or streets, but butts, by God, are–a renewable resource, part of the bounty of the universe. Though there\u2019s still vestigial shame in your game, desperation is a tireless overseer, so off you trod on what you called your Aqualung Odyssey.<\/p>\n

Leg hurting bad,<\/em><\/p>\n

as he bends to pick a dog-end\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

That Jethro Tull tune you sang millions of years ago in your high-school band, never forgetting the line because at first you thought it meant puppy poop, not twigging to the Brit slang. Nowadays the old bum in the lyric seemed increasingly familiar, rather like the mope eye-screwing you mornings in the broken mirror. And hell, get real. Partly why you liked the song\u2014this was you being highly profound, now\u2014is that in it was the word panties<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Granted, the allusion regarded ol\u2019 Aqualung watching girls with bad intent<\/em>, and that was icky, but hey, aren\u2019t you the guy whose estimation of Pink soared as she belted it out about somebody being a panty-snatcher<\/em>, whatever that might be?<\/p>\n

Pink, by the way, from Doylestown, just up the highway from where you grew up in pastoral, affluent Bucks County. The Pennsylvania hamlet where you sailed along, certified as gifted, nourishing an array of talents with galactic possibilities ahead.<\/p>\n

Scanning the shark-belly sky, you judged precip of some kind to be imminent as you hiked up toward Lexington. Scouring the ground for smokables. Reflecting how music telescoped the epochs of your wretched little life. Often you remembered it more vividly than your own history, because Denial, like Karma, is a bitch and a balm\u2014thank you, alcohol\u2014and bygone shards slash your thoughts in a continuous way.<\/p>\n

Always you\u2019re chasin\u2019 waterfalls<\/em>, in double-deep<\/em>, so don\u2019t speak, I don\u2019t need your reasons–don\u2019t tell you \u2018cause it hurts.<\/em><\/p>\n

Point being? You have issues, fella. Not homeless four years by accident. Didn\u2019t get to Bellevue by taking a wrong turn off the road or on some bizarre vacation. For sure, you\u2019re a sour mash of paradoxes. A cascade of colliding particles. Between booze and your addled psyche, you\u2019ve learned to hold a vision of the chicken and the egg sprinting toward the finish line. And you go from worse to absurd.<\/p>\n

One of only about six Republicans to be found in New York, you returned to the city from across the river to partake of all the liberal-weenie services available to the indigent. So, basically, as a conservative-without-portfolio, a taxpayer burden, you don\u2019t approve of you. Huh. Self-loathing comes in many shades at affordable prices.<\/p>\n

Hey, Aqualung<\/em>, there\u2019s half a Marlboro. Yippee!!<\/p>\n

And uh-oh\u2026ouch\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cDidn\u2019t hit all the cancer. Just sense it, dammit. Tumor right breast wholly excised, no question. And I was good in there with the blade today. Feel the beast\u2019s headed toward the nodes but that won\u2019t emerge for a while.<\/p>\n

So bloody young. Sweet as a gherkin, fixes me with those huge eyes like I\u2019m her ticket back to life. Can\u2019t help thinking her ticket\u2019s going to get punched in the other direction, we\u2019ll recur here\u2026from the lymphs to the brain\u2026then this train runs outta track\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Sheesh. You snapped out of that one feeling headachey, but some inchoate clue waved a faraway hand. These folks got problems<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Well, you were vexed too, doubling your pace, wondering when your frolicsome God, that trickster with \u2018tude, will bring rain or snow and ruin the dog-end harvest. Death to the butt-hunter, wet stuff. All those lovely fag-bits soaked, bloated. And ya know what? That\u2019s when they\u2019re suddenly plenteous, practically whole cigarettes appearing everywhere around like grasshoppers for multitude<\/em>.<\/p>\n

There you went, citing from your recent Old Testament safari, mostly stalking it lately to roust self-pity. Poor, poor you. Casting Gotham as a waste howling wilderness<\/em>; that just getting the will and wherewithal to stay alive was like sucking honey from the rock.<\/em><\/p>\n

Now you were up by the bars that ranged this part of Lexington, so you gave yourself a refresher drill in best practices, methodologies and informing principles. Each arising from the many lives you\u2019ve lived and torpedoed. Maybe you could convert these insights into a money-making scheme. Put \u2018em on a laminated card you\u2019d market to other guttersnipes, maybe wrangle up some of the scriptural hooey\u2026<\/p>\n

Whither Thou Goest, I Will Go\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n