Andersen Prunty's Blog

I run out of alcohol and go to the bar. It’s not my usual bar but my girlfriend’s kid wanders the house with a microphone and headphones, trying repeatedly to get us to sit in chairs and talk while he occasionally praises promotional products spread out on the coffee table in front of him and I need to leave the house. He doesn’t actually have a podcast. I told my girlfriend I’d have to be nearly blacked out to indulge him in his delusions. She told me I’m the worst stepdad in the world and I told her I’m the only thing she has besides … and I nod to her son who’s sitting in his chair eating nicotine pouches like candy.

The bar’s so small it only consists of the bar and some stools. I order a whiskey and a beer and try not to look at the television. They have it tuned to the stoning channel. Stoning was only made legal last week and I wonder how they already have a channel for it, but I guess AI can do pretty much anything as long as it closely resembles things that already exist. The bartender and the one other patron are pretty enthralled by it—groaning, laughing, and cheering with abandon.

“You get anybody yet?” the patron asks the bartender. I notice the patron has a gun on his hip.

“Nah,” the bartender says. “I don’t think I could. Pretty damn fun to watch though.”

“I ain’t got none neither,” the patron says. He digs into the deep pockets of his tactical pants with his short, fat arms. He pulls out a rock slightly larger than a softball and clunks it down on the bar next to his razor shades. “But I’m just waitin’ for the chance.” He mimes throwing the rock and the imagined person in front of him gives his eyes a glow. “It’s gotta feel pretty good. Real satisfying. Course, I wanna make sure I ain’t gonna go to jail.”

I pound the whisky and think this guy probably belongs in a mental institution. I drink my beer quickly, happy I got the twelve-percent pint. When I’m finished, I decide to head back home, even though I’m nowhere near blacking out. The bartender’s too taken with the stonings to ask if I need anything else anyway.

I walk home quickly so I don’t have the time to sober up.

Approaching the house, I can see my girlfriend and her boy sitting in the chairs and talking.

I grab a couple rocks from the flowerbed and put them in my pocket.

Opening the door, I hear the boy say, “Stay tuned for our next guest,” before launching into an ad for a security company.

Over a span of 83 years, the old writer moves 25 times. Each time he moves he keeps his writing area the same.

He has an ancient black desk with a narrow drawer in the middle. On top of this desk sits his typewriter, perfectly centered. In the right-hand corner is the same pale green lamp with its paper brown shade. To the immediate left of the lamp there is a picture of his wife and children. He keeps a ream of blank typing paper on the right side of the typewriter. Printed papers go on the left side. Dali’s Impressions of Africa hangs above the left half of the desk.

The writer considers himself a Surrealist.

My face melts off so I pick it up and put it back on, runny and twisted as it is. Putting on my shoes, lumpy black things that look more fitting for a janitor, I step outside into the fresh, early morning air.

A Boy Scout troop is collecting dandelion specimens from my front yard. Their leader is blowing a whistle and shouting at them to collect more, more! Eventually, they all spot me. One of them shouts: “Oh God, look at that guy’s face!”

The leader blows his whistle furiously and says, “I think it’s best we get outta here.”

A little kid who has been busy urinating in the corner of the yard runs up to me and shoves a wad of grass down my pants before hurrying to catch up with the other boys.

“Yeah!” I call after him. “Well you’re fat!” But he isn’t fat at all. But my face is indeed hideous.

I go back inside, remove my face, and throw it in the trashcan.

I got a bonus for a year’s work down at the paper factory. It was a big bonus. I wanted to buy something for myself with this money. I went to a department store and bought myself a black leather jacket. First I tried it on and looked at myself in the display mirror. It made me look dangerous and warm. I had to have this black leather jacket. After buying the jacket I still had over a hundred dollars left from my big bonus. I wanted people to see me in my new jacket so I decided I would go out and have a drink. I went to the G Club. I especially wanted a pretty woman to see me in my black leather jacket and be attracted to my new sense of  dangerous warmth. I sat at the bar and ordered a drink. I drank the drink and looked around. A small woman sat in the smoky back corner. She was wearing a thin emerald green dress. I could not see up the dress. She looked neither dangerous nor warm. She looked seductive and cold. I walked over to her, drawing myself down into my new jacket. I asked her if I could buy her a drink. She said she would rather do something else. I said we could go back to my place. She said that sounded good. But I’m with my mother, she said. Girls’ night out. She can wait downstairs, I said. I have a couch and television and a dog named Seamus to keep her company. Yes, she said, that sounds good. So we all went back to my house. Me and the girl, whose name was Tracy, went upstairs to my bedroom. She went to the bathroom to insert her diaphragm. She told me, I’m going to go into the bathroom and insert my diaphragm. I said okay. I took off my leather jacket and the rest of my clothes. Then I put the jacket back on. She came out and she was naked. She lay down on the bed. I took off my jacket and hung it on the footpost, hoping I’d used just the right amount of extravagance. I crawled into bed and rolled over between her legs. I’m pretty sure she didn’t come. I rolled off her and lit a cigarette. She said, Well, Mom’s waiting, I better go. I said okay. On the way out she took the leather jacket. When I finished my cigarette I went downstairs to feed the dog and watch television but the dog and the television set were gone. So were the stereo and the silverware. There wasn’t much left in my house. It felt like even the heat was gone. I could have used that black leather jacket.

Lowprice Head gets into his car and takes a drive down to the local supermarket. It is a pleasant drive. Not a day for revelation but a nice day nonetheless. The sky is blue and clear. Not a cloud in it. He sings, “I wear high pants,” to himself and realizes how much he sounds like his father. This irritates him because he does not like his father. He tells himself the rest of the day will be better once he has stocked up on assorted fruits and vegetables.

Suddenly, he is struck with the overwhelming urge to stop the car, get out, and point at the sun for a few minutes. So he does that. And as he stands at the gravel shoulder of the road a black truck pulls up behind his car and a group of three teenagers gets out. They all have a lot of tattoos and wear extremely short running shorts.

The most well-muscled of the three approaches Lowprice and gives him a little shove. Lowprice continues to point at the sun.

“You wanna start some shit?” the muscled guy says.

“No,” Lowprice begins. “I’m perfectly content just pointing at the sun for a few minutes or so.”

“That’s some fucked up shit,” the guy says. “You better stop that.”

“I can’t,” Lowprice says.

The muscled guy tries to force Lowprice’s arm down but it stays, ironlike, pointing at the sun. The heavily muscled youth’s friends begin laughing at his failed attempt to bring Lowprice’s frail arm down.

“If you don’t put that arm down I’m gonna fuck you up real good.”

His friends collectively make a sound like, “Whoo!”

“Sorry,” Lowprice says, continuing to point.

“You asked for it, you little shit.”

He walks around to the front of Lowprice and punches him in the face. Several of Lowprice’s teeth shatter and he collapses back onto the gravel, his arm continuing to point toward the sun.

“All right now,” the muscled guy says to his friends. “I’m gonna roll him over here and when I do that I want one of you to get in the truck and drive over his arm.”

“Right on, Mitch,” one of them says.

Mitch rolls Lowprice over and the guy driving the truck runs over it once going forward and again in reverse. Mitch kicks Lowprice over onto his back so his arm rests floppily and broken on his stomach. “Serves you right, you damn pointing shit!” Mitch screams before joining his friends in the truck and speeding away.

Lowprice begins singing, “I need medical attention,” to himself around broken teeth and a busted jaw. Luckily, he no longer sounds like his father when he sings. That makes it an alright day.

We go see a movie called Bloodfest. The title is horribly misleading and it ends up being a four-hour documentary of people with all different ethnic backgrounds donating blood. Midway through, my date turns and starts making out with the man on her right. I tug on her sleeve and tell her she’s confused. A woman behind us shushes me.

Fatigued, we exit the theater onto the bright city street. From behind my date, I notice a large red blotch on the back of her skirt. I tap her on the shoulder and point to her behind. Lightning fast, she throws a right hook at my face. I stumble backward, lose my footing, and collapse onto the street. Once I can focus again, I look up at her. She has discovered the stain. “Oh, gosh, I’m sorry,” she says before coming over and lending a hand, helping me up. She then sticks her hand down the front of her skirt, bringing it back out and smelling her fingers. “Yep, that’s blood all right,” she says. “Damn, I don’t have a san nap!”

I am briefly taken aback by her crudity until I remember. “Here,” I say, reaching for my wallet. “I’ve got something.” I pull a pad from my wallet, warm and smooshed. She snatches it away.

“Oh, God, thank you,” she says.

Amazed once again, I watch as she pulls down her skirt and underwear in the middle of the sidewalk. I see an old couple walking out of the theater and I rush to shield them from my date, blocking their view with my expansive coat. “I liked the part where that Cuban fellow has a crisis of conscience when he realizes he can’t go through with the donation because he is getting over a cold,” the old woman says. The man casts a cold, suspicious glance in my direction.

“Hi there!” I shout, not knowing what else to say. He grabs his wife a little tighter and they move closer to the road.

“All ready,” my date says.

Relieved, I put my coat back on. I look at her and shake my head. She has merely used the device to mop up some of the excess blood and now has it fastened to her wrist like a bracelet.

“You’re hopeless,” I laugh.

Walking away, I notice she has hiked her skirt up in order to hide the stain beneath her shirt and now her buttocks are practically hanging out … but I can’t see the stain. I think about letting her borrow my long coat, its hem drifting just millimeters above the sidewalk, and then think better about it.

In my search for spiritual enlightenment, I travel to the desert to study a group of people called the Johnsons. Living in total isolation, their village has the look of a suburban street. There are only about sixty of them and none of them have a first name and, since all of their last names are Johnson, the only way to address them is by their street number. I visit 468 Johnson Lane and speak with the man and woman there. All of the men have very thick hair, which they keep heavily gelled and parted to the side. I ask them why there are no children around and Mrs. 468 says, “Oh, they’re really worth too much money to keep.”

“You mean they cost too much?”

“Oh, good heavens, no. We get paid so much for them. The men with the mustaches give us so much money … Well, it’s impossible to resist—look at all the nice things it has bought us.”

The house is nice. It has all the modern amenities. The electricity, Mrs. 468 tells me, is supplied by sorcery. I stay overnight at their house, sleeping in a luxurious bed, and get up the next morning to follow Mr. 468 to work. He dresses as though going to an office—a clean white shirt and navy blue tie, khaki trousers, his hair all thick and gelled. I follow him out into the desert, across a low dune where he is, in due time, joined by the other Johnson men.

They do not speak. They merely shuffle around in the sand, as though the others don’t exist. This continues for a few hours until they decide it’s lunchtime. They pull sandwiches and bottles of water from their baggy khaki trousers. After they finish eating they all begin ridiculing one man. They tell him his wife doesn’t love him and they all slept with her last night. They tell him his house looks like a garbage sack. They accuse him of being impotent, flatulent, and disease-ridden. They tell him the only person uglier than him is his wife. Then they pull out barber’s clippers and shear clumps of hair from his lustrous head. They all laugh at this new haircut and circle up around him, chanting, “Flumpy hair! Flumpy hair!”

When lunch is over, they all go back to shuffling around. I start back to search for the village, but I can’t find it. When I go back to ask the men if they could point me in the right direction, I can’t find them either. I stare at the sun and continue moving west.

I wake up from a twelve-day inhalant bender. My room has been redecorated, a giant poster of Kirk Cameron taped to the ceiling above the bed. I have to piss.

I pull the leaves of wilted lettuce off the toilet seat and discard them in the trashcan. I pull down my underwear, the sight astonishing me. My genitals have become a dry, lumpy mass, something only resembling a penis protruding from the mire. I reach down to seize it delicately between two fingers and it tumbles off into the toilet, a spray of urine shooting everywhere.

I decide I never should have rolled out of bed. Reaching under the sink, I grab a can of spray paint, anxious to huff my way back to sleep.

Ted the Salesman bends over his papers, greedily stuffing them back into his giant briefcase. He seems incapable of shutting his mouth and his dry lips frame teeth so large and white I almost think they’re fake except for the spaces in between each of them. His papers are on the floor because I emptied his briefcase when he went to the bathroom. A bathroom that will be sterilized as soon as he leaves.

“Been on the road a long time, eh, Ted?”

“Yes. Indeed. I shur have an ya know whut?”

“I know very little, Ted.”

“People are getting meaner ’n’ ruder all the time.”

“People are bastards, Ted. Hey Ted, guess what?”

“Whut?”

“I knocked your briefcase onto the floor. Dug right in there and pulled out all those papers. I had myself a pretty big time.”

“Now why’d you go ’n’ do that for?”

“Oh, I knew you wouldn’t say anything.”

“Why’d you figger I wouldn’t say nothin’?”

“Because you’re trying to sell me something.”

“Logical, I guess.”

“But guess what else, Ted.”

“Whut?”

“I lied to you. I don’t even own this house. I’m not even supposed to be here.”

“It’s people like you that waste my time.”

“Yeah. But I sure did have fun. If you could have seen me in here, rolling around in all those papers.”

“I woulda whupped yer ass.”

“You know why I did that, Ted?”

“Why?”

“Because I’m one of the dirty bastard people.”

“Figgers.”

Ted finishes gathering up his things and storms out the front door. I watch him speed away, a trail of dust rising up behind his battered car.

I approach the three teenage girls and brazenly inform them they can call me “Cowboy,” motioning down to my shiny new boots. They look at each other and begin laughing. They laugh hard enough to make their firm breasts jiggle.

Jiggle.

I try to tell myself I don’t need their approval of the name change or the new person the name is to represent. I try to tell myself they are ugly but, looking closely at them, I can’t find a single flaw. I begin to cry, loud and gushing. I look down at the ground as the tears roll out of my eyes, splashing the surface of my new boots.