Follow the Stream Back Up

CONTENT WARNING: READER DISCRETION ADVISED

“Whilst Man, however well-behaved,

At best is but a monkey shaved.”

—W. S. Gilbert (1884)

What I remember is Richie and I had our backs jammed against a freezing curb on a bitter January morning. We should have been trudging through the snow to classes at the U instead of wrangling a junkyard transmission into a ‘53 Packard. The massive car was jacked up on blocks. We were lining up the Ultramatic transmission, biggest I’d ever seen, when two cars rolled up. Alan would come upon you anywhere, anytime, and frequently intoxicated:

“Charlie?”

“Yeah, what?”

“It’s your lucky day.”

“Oh, yeah? What are you doing here?”

The transmission teetered.

“We got two women.”

Alan peered under the car. “Hear that? Back-to-back racks.”

“Hold it, right there, Richie. It’s Alan.”

“Not Alan. Fuck no!”

“Check it out,” said Alan. I edged out for a look. Alan fished a loose cigarette from his jacket and lit it. “The one in the Studebaker has the hots for you.”

“The one with twenty-four zeroes?”

“Yeah.” Alan began to hover. “We’ve got Bunny’s pad, but we’re not gettin’ laid unless you come along. ‘Cause otherwise, if we’re gonna have a problem we’re not gonna get any.”

“No chance.”

“You don’t want to fuck her? Wait till she sticks her tits in your face. Those nipples have to be the size of quarters.”

“That would make me a shallow person.”

“Hey, we can’t sit here all day.”

Richie and I went in and cleaned up and then out to the cars. Alan took me aside. “There’s one thing, though.”

“What?”

“If we find out you kissed her, we'll never talk to you again.”

A weird tension was in the air when Richie and I took our places in the motorcade. I was in the car jammed against the fat one who was showing tit. “Uh, [laughs] I don't want you to feel creepy, but the thing is, I came here mainly because of you [laughs],” was how she began.

“Yeah? I didn’t know.”

She said. “I mean, I thought about you all day.”

I should have said nothing. What I said was, “Yeah, [laughs] now I'm here, you know.”

“[laughs] Yes of course,” she said, pressing a boob against me. 

She said more on the way—including personal details about her past—but there was nothing she could say to make up for the thought that I could lose all my friends with a faux pas. 

Snow flurries were filling the air when we arrived at Bunny’s. Brian, who had been the burly, myopic guard on our high school football team, was downstairs, waiting. We talked for a second, turned on the music and began dancing. I rocked the chosen one, fondling her monstrous boobs while she swung a bottle of whiskey wildly in the air, takin’ swigs straight out.

Miss Baun, my old Latin teacher, should see me now!

Everything was going good until the cute one raised the alarm, "I'm not doing anything!" and dashed out in the snow without any boots or coat. I grabbed Alan and took him off to a corner, trying to make sense. “What’s this crap?” 

Alan gestured wildly. “She’s got the clap. Afraid we’d beat the shit out of her.”

“We’re jinxed!”

“No. No, no, no, no, no. Don't fuck up a good thing.”

“Shove it.”

The party had barely come alive and her friend was out in the snow with her teeth chattering. When problems arise, it’s tempting to expect someone else to fix it. Sometimes, the only person who can... is you. I took the heavy cavalry upstairs to a bedroom and closed the door. “I sometimes get messages from the beyond,” she said, heated by the whisky. I was a little drunk by then. “I see what you're saying.” “I knew you did.”  

Her vast curvature was a steep hill, but I managed to slip in after a few false moves. After a near stroke, I tapped on the footboard to signal Alan, next in the rotation.

When I got back out in the hall, Richie was on deck, huddled with Brian. From the look on Richie’s face, I know he was thinking How will I ever find the opening amongst the folds of skin and rolls of fat?

Brian raised his bushy eyebrows. “What’s your problem?”

Richie shifted from foot to foot and whispered loudly, “Her hole.”

Brian squinted out of his coke-bottle glasses: “Have her piss and follow the stream back up!”