in search of the absurd: fiction & nonfiction

The Straight Talker -- by Roscoe Kandowski, Jr.

            There's this man I occasionally run into on my way to the store named Charles. Charles is a straight talker. He's no myth, just some guy. He gives it to you straight if he happens to get in your way, like if he happens to step out in front of your car, if you have a car, when your making a right on Main. All you can do is stop, but I suppose if it were him behind the wheel he'd gun it, and after your body rolled up the windshield and off the back he'd clamp down on his cigarette with his lips like a vice, give two squirts of cleaning fluid and run the wipers, then gun it in reverse. He'd repeat this process, somehow, until you were so dead you were Christ. Of course the rest of us, most of us, probably wouldn't do that, but like I said, Charles is a straight talker.

            So there's this old lady on oxygen who's been stopped by Charles and she's laying into some horn in her oversized sedan and traffic is backed up suddenly for what seems like endless city blocks. Charles very delicately informs her that she'll be dead before he's dead and that he hopes her children are of the age that they'll find it superfluous to cry.

            So there's this kid skateboarding down the street. Charles very skillfully sticks his leg out and the kid grinds his teeth into stone and junk and wails, tears streaming ridiculous though naturally from those shiny blue eyes his teachers compliment his mother on during Parent/Teacher conferences. Charles says, with his knee to his chest, embracing his shin, "Shit, you see that! Did anybody see what this little shit did to an old man like me! Anybody?" When people keep walking, and cars keep driving, and a mail man stays on the steps of a nearby building just long enough not to have to pass the guy, Charles yells "Go fuck yourself!" to nobody in particular. Then he lights a cigarette and walks off.

            So there I am and I'm on my way to the store. Charles shouts, "Hey motherfucker, got an extra smoke?" even though he's smoking one and I see a pack of expensive cigarettes peaking out his breast pocket. "You've got better ones than me, sorry," and Charles flicks his cigarette which is actually hardly smoked at my face. I cower and walk away while passersby shake their heads disapprovingly and Charles laughs with what is most certainly his utmost approval.

            So there I am and I'm on my way back from the store with some beer and a smoke in my mouth. Charles yells, "Hey fucker, give an old man a beer," to which I respond, "You just flicked a cigarette at me, man," and Charles says very lenient and patient, "Listen kid, you or the next. Take a seat with an old man and let's kill them beers." I had a twelve pack and time. There was nothing else to do because dead generations did it all, Charles' generation too, the Greatest Generation. I worked at the restaurant the night before and made more cash than I'd made the entire previous week. When these ran dry I'd just cross the street and buy some more. No problem.

            I sat next to him on the steps of this fancy funeral home that was closed because it was Sunday. He said, "At-a-boy" and smiled, his teeth surprisingly clean, all of them in their proper place, his eyes luminous and his chuckle deep like the sea.

            I handed him a beer, grabbed myself one too.

            "Two," he said.
            "Two what?"

            "I need two beers. I never liked jerking-off. I prefer pairs, couples, dig?"

            I handed him another beer and he handed me another chuckle.

            "You like pills?" he asked, wiping some suds from his gray mustache with his sleeve.

            "What kind?" asked I, wiping some suds from my brown mustache with the top of my wrist.

            "Never mind, I shouldn't be talking to kids about pills."

            "I'm twenty-six," I said.

            "And I'm sixty-two go-fuck-yourself."

            He drank fast, a hell-of-a-lot faster than me, and I drank fast, especially when the sun was shining.

            "This beer tastes like shit," he said.

            "You asked for it."

            "You've got the wrong guy, guy, I didn't ask for this. You could've gotten something better than this."

            "It's all I can afford."

            "Don't you work?"

            "Sometimes."

            "That's the problem," he explained, "You young guys work peddling your cute tight asses for pennies and then y'all think you only deserve pennies, like this fucking penny-for-fart-whiffing-queers beer."

            "I've adjusted my taste to my pocketbook," I said very slyly, sipping my beer and looking at the sky.

            "Suppose you have, young man, suppose you have." He lit a smoke and put his hand on my thigh, "Have you adjusted your tastes to dirty old rich men who prefer to pretend they live on the street."

            "Not yet," I said, brushing his hand away, wishing I didn't have thighs.

            "That's good, that's real good." I was pleased that he was pleased. I cracked my second shortly after him, feeling the swill from the bottom of the first can rise back into my throat because after work the night before was a rough night and this beer tastes worse the more you make yourself stomach it- and the worse you are for making yourself stomach it.

            "Listen to me, son, if you didn't work you'd probably want better beer. But you wouldn't just want it, you'd demand it. You'd walk into the store and say, Give me a mother fucking case of Guinness you fucking whores! Give me my case, I won't leave until I have my case!"

            "Is that right?"

            "Are you questioning my intellect you little piss-fart?"

            "No, I -"

            "I'll tell you this much. When we're done with this stale-fart beer I'll show you how it's done. You understand?"

            "Sure," I said.
            We weren't sitting there more than half an hour and already we'd each had about four beers. I hoped to the God I didn't believe in anyway that he'd slow the pace. I wouldn't be able to keep up. Then the fifth beer came and went, and I was feeling bolder.

            "You know something, old man, I like sitting here with you."

            "Well wasn't that fucking sweet. Why don't you suck my limp dick?"

            "Naw," I said, laughing, and he laughed too. Then he flicked his cigarette butt in my face. "The fuck!" I yelled, rubbing my eye where ash must have landed.

            "You listen to me. I'm gonna get you drunk and then I'm gonna have my way with you. You got that?"

            "Shut the fuck up," I said.

            Then he said, "That's the way I like it said, Shut the fuck up, yeah, I like that, son. That's straight talking. You all right?"

            I told him I was fine and continued to drink my beer. He finished his sixth while I still worked on mine. Traffic started to move slower. I hated the people driving by in their cars, trying to kill us with their eyes. They didn't like us and we didn't like them. We all hated each other.

            "What's your name, guy?"

            "Joshua."

            "That's a nice name. You know what it means?"           

            "I think it was Jesus in Aramaic."

            "Was it?” he asked. Then, “But it has meaning, too." 

            "Oh yeah?"

            "Look it up sometime."

            "Sure thing. What's your name?"

            "Charles."

            "You look like a Charles."

            "Just shut the fuck up," he said, standing. "You almost done young man. I've got to show you something."            

            I rinsed the rest of my beer away and stood up with him, staggering a bit. We crossed the street, walking through traffic, accompanied by a chorus of horns and curses. Charles walked ahead of me, twisting and turning, bobbing his head, his arms stretched to each side giving them all the finger.

            We went straight to the beer aisle and picked up two twelve packs of the most expensive stuff. It was an Ithaca beer that I was familiar with from college, when with my loan money I'd buy only the best. Then we made our way to the front of the store, sauntering our asses through a closed check out aisle leaving the place.

            Right about the time Charles was saying "You see, son, nobody says nothing. They don't have the balls," a brown skinned female clerk rushed outside, screaming, "You gotta pay for that! You gotta pay!" Charles stopped, turned, then very stiffly approached her.

            "What do you want?" he said.

            "You gotta pay or I'll call the police."

            "No, what you really want," he said, his finger pointed an inch away from her face, "is my green card, bitch. Or you wanna sniff an old man's ass. Which one is it?" The poor woman was speechless. I could tell by the way she was standing that she was scared. I felt awful for that poor woman. I still feel awful for her.

            "Sir, you gotta pay."

            "Chalk it up as ruined goods. It's not your paycheck," he said, very matter-of-fact, very teacher-like. The woman shook her head and went back inside. We shook our heads and went back to our stoop. "Can you believe these people?" said Charles.

            Twenty-four beers meant twelve a piece. I was already feeling pretty wasted. We finished the first twelve in less than an hour and it was still daylight and the daylight felt terrible.

            Although this beer was better, I didn't like the taste. I wouldn't be able to drink it again for some time. I didn't have the balls Charles had. So the beer that already tasted bad was going to taste worse in the morning. I didn't like to spoil myself, because that meant an increase in expectation. If you didn't expect anything you were happy to have something. But the truth is that if you had something you'd want something else, something better, something that would make you better.

            "This, young Joshua, is good beer."

            "Yeah," I said. Then, "Is she gonna call the cops?"

            "The cops? You need to know something about the cops. They don't want trouble either. Sure, they bust heads like they bust chops, but they don't want it. Something moves them to do it, something dark and terrible inside of them. But beneath that is a plastic vagina and it quivers in fear. They don't want nothing but a weekly paycheck."

            "I hate cops."
            "I hate 'em too," said Charles, raising his empty bottle and lobbing it into the street. "But, young man, they are still human. They are afraid and they are dangerous when they're afraid. Best bet is to present no kind of threat to them. Just tell it like it is and let them sort the rest. You don't have to kiss their asses, you do that you're fucked. Fuck a duck."

            "You ever been arrested?" I asked.

            "Boy, my old man was a cop. I don't get arrested."

            I thought about this a moment and suddenly I understood there was a reason for Charles' straight-talking. He had a card that could trump the rest.

            "Are you really rich?" I further asked.

            "Me? Yeah, I am. I used to be a college boy, well forty years ago I was. And then thirty years later I made the proper investments at the proper time."

            "In what?"

            "Microsoft."

            "Microsoft?"

            "Yeah, son, that's what I said."

            A few faces passed wearing J-Crew pullovers and corduroy pants. They smoked their cigarettes without really smoking them. And they looked at us, and then they looked at me. They were old classmates of mine in graduate school. They stayed in town and became professors. I stayed in town and became a drunk.

            "Hey," I yelled at one of them. "You remember me?"

            He smiled and dipped his chin and raised it. He kept walking.

            "Hey motherfucker!" I shouted.

            He turned around with too much smoke coming out of his mouth, like none got to his lungs. I launched my bottle at his face but missed. He and his buddies took off at a running pace and I made like I was going to run after them. I didn't.

            I shouted, "THEORIZE THIS YOU PRICK MOTHER FUCKERS!"

            How's that for straight-talking, I thought to myself, giddy at how proud Charles would be of me, returning to my proper place: the front steps of a funeral home on a Sunday in Binghamton: a college town, a convict's town, a pervert's town, a place outside  Giuliani's late City so woebegone and rundown that incest here really is best, because nobody's going anywhere so they might as well fuck each other. 

            Then I puked, heavily.

            Charles said, giving it to me straight, as always, "You're ruining yourself, son."

           Because Charles is a straight talker.