Laundry Day

Laundry Day

We met at the bar and grill down by the beach. It was a warm
sunny afternoon and he caught my eye. We talked
about nonsense, beer, music, trivialities. And then later about dreams, fears,
our mothers, and lovers. We went out a couple times before we ever had sex. I don’t
even remember the first time but he read me so well. I hardly needed
to tell him when to do it harder or when to slow down or when to come. He’d light up two cigarettes
for us and we’d lay side by side, feeling like our skin would melt together
and we’d be a seamless whole.

If it was only a fuck
it would’ve been OK. As a fuck he was pretty good. Great, in fact.
His cock wasn’t that big but it had girth. But I let him get to me. I fooled
myself into thinking maybe this was love. He was just a junkie whore and I was just
another trick. Or I dunno, maybe I was the whore and
he was the trick.

Later on whenever we finished he’d jump out of bed and put his clothes on right away. I think he was trying to hide the trail of punctures dotting
the crooks of both arms. I knew about that. And I knew he was fucking
middle-class old ladies and maybe even some men to get the money for dope. He was so beautiful and tragic. I was drawn to him. One time he tried to get clean. I stayed
with him through the withdrawl, through the sickness
and the shakes and the sleeplessness and the nightmares that descended when sleep finally
came. I guess I must’ve cared if I stayed with him
through that, because during those days when I played nurse and mom to him, he was like a giant gaping asshole dumping shit all over me. He stayed clean for three
months. He got chubby in a healthy-looking way
and I honestly liked him better sober.

But then he started using again. I don’t know what prompted it, but one day he came over and he started nodding out. Then he started staying in the bathroom for extended periods of time, constipated like all fuck and I knew he was shooting up again. I don’t
know why he never told me, why he tried to hide it. He dropped all sorts
of other baggage in my lap but
never talked about that. He told me he wanted to die,
that I was the only thing worth living for. We fantasized about the different ways we could do it, killing him, I mean. We could be fucking
and from some hidden place I would bring out an icepick, or an exacto knife or some other dangerously sharp object and plunge it into
his chest as he came. I could take him out to the desert and make him dig his own grave. I’d shoot
him in the back of the head, sweaty and exhausted in this pit six feet deep. But first we’d fuck in this hole in the ground in the middle
of nowhere, driving our bodies in and out of eachother and the
earth and everything. It always involved fucking. My favorite fantasy,
the one I never told him, was where he gets really high, I mean like
comatosely high, and we’re in his mother’s house.
We fuck in his mother’s bed. I rape his ass with various objects as he lay nearly unconscious.
Then I sit on his face and place my hand down
hard over his nose and suffocate him. I leave him dead and naked in his mother’s bed for her
to find the body later. I asked him once if he would
struggle if I tried to hold his head underwater. He said he didn’t think so, but that
some primal survival mode might kick in on its own
and make him fight it. He said he didn’t want to go that way, drowning.

I let him go when he began to get so high
he couldn’t get it up anymore at all. But that was hard, letting go.
He got to me, got under my skin.

I saw him the other day. Skinny as all fuck.
He looked kind of dirty and sexy. He was wearing the cords I bought
for him during his chubby clean period. The pants now hung on his frame
like he was some third world scarecrow, all sticks and no stuffing. He didn’t see me. Or at least,
he didn’t recognize me. I cut
my hair short after he left. He was walking into a pawn shop
carrying a small TV. His eyes were droopy and he looked like he might fall over at any moment but he still had that pout in his lips
and his shaved hair was just grown in to the point where I liked it. I thought about offering him some money to come home with me for a couple hours, I knew he wouldn’t refuse. Just
to play out some old fantasies. But it was almost better to stand there
watching him without him knowing it. I wanted to fuck
him so bad. Strange that he still had this affect on me. I watched
him disappear towards the back of the shop to
conduct his business. I walked back to my car in the alley
behind the laundromat and masturbated, watching piles of clean laundry tumble around in industrial dryers. Colorful
pieces of clothing mingled together, intertwined, and then separated
and continued spinning, spinning, spinning.
I closed my eyes and saw his face between my legs, my hand smashed down over his nose.
He never even struggled.

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