There are people out there who want to tell you a story. They will bend down to whisper things in your ear that they are ashamed to say out loud in line at the grocery store. They will tell you that things are going to shit. The world is falling apart.
They spit a bit into your ear when they tell you, "Plan for the worst. Things won't be getting better."
It's true. Life is shit. But that does not mean that everybody I know isn't better off than me. The spit mumbled narrative is not the story of "our" times. It's just the story of my life.
Martin had a plan to kill Lester.
The plan backfired. It ended in a sad ironic twist.
But before that Martin sat on the video game chair getting pissed. Not far from his line of vision a couple of cockroaches ran from the dishwasher to the cabinet. No one at the party noticed them. The cockroaches counted themselves lucky after they reached the safety of the dark food pantry.
There is a party going on but someone forgot to buy plastic cups, so we are all drinking out of dirty glasses. The host of the party is running around asking people if they have "seen any of her shot glasses." The party hosts also forgot to purchase toilet paper. There is a crate of empty beer cans and trash in the middle of the floor of the living room that we have to step around to get to the beer stored in the refrigerator.
An mp3 player is connected to a couple of computer speakers. The speakers strain to be heard over the noise of a half dozen teenagers getting drunk. The piles of damp towels on the floor in each of the bedrooms are beginning to mildew. The towel's eerie smell sticks to your goatee when you use them to dry off spilled beer.
Martin is upset that the door to Jessie's room is locked. He has tried unlocking the door, but the cheap apartment frame and the door's hollow particle board center are too much for him. The door remains securely locked. Whatever secrets the door has kept from Martin remain hidden.
Martin is drinking heavily. He has consumed one of the two bottles of Crown Royal purchased for the party by himself. I bought the Crown because it was on sale. Buy one get on free. I never knew how smooth Crown Royal was until I tried it at the party. Now I see why all the kids in the Ghetto enjoy it. You can't taste the liquor or the alcohol. All you taste is the Dr. Pepper you bought to mix it with.
The television is on. On the screen a man is talking behind a podium. There is a large red devil painted into the background of the podium. The man behind it is talking about Abbey Hoffman and the counter culture.
The party has gone through 3 cases of Budweiser in addition to a quart of vodka and the Crown Royal.
The man on the television is telling me it is okay to take money from yuppies. "Yuppies want to pretend they are part of the counter movement. Don't worry that's okay. We are ALL part of the movement."
I wonder if the man is talking about me. I wonder if I am counter culture because I am twice the age of the second oldest person here. I am not sure. I wonder if being old only makes me perverted. I begin to question my attendance at this party after I get a lap dance from an 18 year old girl who tells me, "She thinks of me as a father figure."
"You have a strange father." I tell her.
She lifts her shirt to show me her belly. She slowly grinds me. Her breasts nuzzle against me awkwardly. As soon as her breasts touch my face they stop. She falls forward off the chair and off of me to the ground. She laughs and runs back to the bedroom where Lester waits. Lester locks the door again and I think that's when Martin begins to think about killing Lester.
Martin and Jessie have a history. The history consists of Martin trying to conquer Jessie and failing. I can imagine why he is worried. All that hard work Martin has put in over the years has left Jessie vulnerable. Martin is fuming that Lester is going to take advantage of all of Martin's hard work.
"If you take Ritalin you will be able to stare at boring websites longer."
"Excuse me?" I twist my head towards the sound. I look at the girl next to me but she just stares at me blankly.
"That was the TV… I think." She says after I ask her for Ritalin. She does not have any. And then she laughs at my joke that, "This party would be more interesting if we had Ritalin."
She agrees. She tugs at the lime green striped dress she is wearing. The dress is more like a long t-shirt than a skirt. The dress is tight. She has a nice body. I was surprised by a Martin's remark after he caught me staring at her long legs that, "she's had like 4 kids."
"But she's like 20." I found myself adapting the local language and adding "likes" to most any sentence.
"Unbelievable." The man on the TV and I respond.
Martin was getting antsy. He kept glancing over at the door that Jessie and Lester were behind. I knew it was only a matter of time before the door got kicked in.
Martin does not disappoint me. He got up and sat his drink down on the kitchen table. He then walked quickly over to the bedroom door and gave a mighty pull on it. He jiggled the lock and cursed. Then he raised his foot and kicked hard at the door knob.
A loud KERAAACK sound. But the door still stood. The knob was in place. The frame seemed resistant to his efforts. Martin placed two hands on the door knob and started pulling. That did not work either, so he started bumping the door with his shoulder. He put all his weight behind a last effort with his shoulder just as Lester from behind the door managed to swing the door open.
Martin's shoulder missed the door but his head did not miss the frame. He fell backwards after making a strange sound. Like he had the wind knocked out of him.
"Sorry, man." Lester said as he looked down at the crumpled body below him. A knot was already starting to show on Martin's forehead.
Martin sat down on a chair. He mumbled for the next few hours. In between mumbles he would place his head in his hands and fall forward off the chair. He would lower his head between his knees for a few minutes. Just long enough for me to begin to worry that I would have to get up and ask him if he was okay. Then just as I would stand up so would he and he would start to say something about being "good."
That was good. I needed Martin to live long enough for the buses to start running. After the buses got here and I was safely gone it would be someone else's fault if he died. I could imagine saying to the police officer, "he seemed fine while I was there."
Maybe I would only get charged with negligent homicide instead of manslaughter.
"If I went to prison." I told myself. "I would use my time wisely. I would learn how to be an arsonist and a murderer. I would join the counter culture."
"Great idea!" Echoed the guy on the TV. "Great idea!"
Read Part 1 of this post HERE!
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