yustyoking

  

            I’m a little ashamed, this was not supposed to happen. It feels like I’m sending you a message in a bottle from outer space. I live with my mom. Christmas Day, she had me telephone her dear friend Maggie and arrange a time when I could drive over and deliver her Christmas basket. All well and good. An hour later, shaved and showered, I load this ethereal creation of bleached wood and assorted goodies into my forest green Toyota Prius. I drive down Flanders Avenue toward Rockville Pike. The sun bathes everything in a blinding yellow light, but it’s as cold as a penguin’s feet.

Want your Prius

To break 60?

Drive off a cliff!

            One o’clock on Christmas Day, the streets are deserted. There’s nobody around.  Even from a block away, the only pedestrian stands out like a surrealist painting by Magritte. It’s a woman and she’s built like a top: Wide shoulders in a fur coat, big bosom, wide hips, tapering down to tiny feet in stiletto heels. Black hair in a pageboy cut, olive skin, a little upturned nose. It’s amazing the details you can distinguish in sunlight that bright.

Hey, I’m the only driver, she sees me, too. Arching her back, she stops and stares down at the pavement pensively. A civil engineer inspecting the sidewalk for cracks? I gotta pull over. In situations like this, I ask myself, “What would Jesus do?” It hasn’t stopped me yet. I swing a U-turn and jump out of the car. “Hi!” says I.

“Leave me alone or I’ll call the police,” she declares, reaching into her purse for— I suppose— her cell phone.

“Wow, I’m so sorry,” I babble. “You’re wonderful. I didn’t mean to bother you.” As I turn to go, she stops me dead with the simplest of questions:

“What’s your name?”

“I’m Kevin.”

“Kevin?” she chortles, flashing white teeth, smiling enormously. She folds her arms across her chest and shakes with mirth.

Hey, she had me at “Leave me alone.”

“Where are you goin’?” she drawls, walking up Flanders, dragging me in her wake.

I like this woman. God knows how old she is. Twenty? Twenty-five? Seventeen? I can’t tell. We’re talking ghetto trash, someone stepping off a bus way beyond “uptown,” out here in the ‘burbs where we never even see professional women of her ilk. Ever. “My momma has me makin’ Christmas deliveries,” I tell her. “How was your Christmas?”

“Could be better,” she says, turning to stare me full in the face. Wow! Hazel eyes. Hickory and cognac. Cajun if a day. “Christmas ain’t no fun when yo’ flat broke! ” she declares.

“Are ya flat broke?” I tease.

“Sho’ nuff, honey,” she drawls, her heels drumming on the pavement, marching along, nose in the air.

I have to run to keep up. “Geez, I’m sorry to hear it.”

“Yo’ got any… cash?” she asks me, giving me a sideways peek, a smile playing around her ruby lips. “I was on mah way t’ do a therapy session when yo’ interrupted me.” Her eyes flash.

Listen, my heart is doing flip-flops. My nether regions are getting so engorged, I’m light-headed. The lady turns, stares into my eyes and laughs. A goner, I pull out my wallet and pluck out all my cash.

This gets her full attention. Stopping and facing me, six inches away, she waits hungrily, hands stretched flat, palms up, while I count out the bills. “Twenty, thirty, five… thirty eight dollars.” Accepting this meager pittance, she folds the bills with fingers adorned with ruby-red nails sharp enough to puncture a set of radial tires. She sticks the money in her purse. “Thang kee-yu! ” she declares, Mississippi gulf dialect intersecting New Orleans.

“What’s you name?” I gasp, transfixed by the toothy smile on her young face. This is a lot of woman!

“Candy,” she murmurs.

I just manage to catch myself, so I don’t destroy the mood by shouting “You’re kidding!” We walk a couple of yards before I manage to say, “Wow, what a beautiful name.”

“Thang kee-yu! Y’know, why are we walkin’ when yo’ got a car?”

“I’ll get the car!”

“Sho, honey, yo’ do that,” she smiles, right hand on hip, smirking, left leg forward like a fashion model.

Man, I jog back to my abandoned vehicle and drive to where Candy is standing. She pops the door and jumps in before I’ve even brought the car to a stop. “It’s a shame yo’ ain’t got no mo’ money,” she observes pensively.

“Well, I got another hundred something in my sock drawer. It’s Christmas, everything’s closed.”

“Tell me about it!” Candy pouts prettily.

I have an erection like nobody’s business.

“Let’s go get that money,” she suggests, cuddling in the seat, turning enormous eyes in my direction. I drive back home.

We have a carport. It’s built of red brick, but the sides are wide open to the elements. I leave Candy sitting in the Prius while I hustle to the basement and pull my stash— in its white envelope— from beneath my undershirts.

“Kevin? Is that you?” shouts my mom from the top of the stairs.

“Yeah, I’ll get back to you!” I reply.

“What’s goin’ on?”

“Nothin’. I’ll get back to you!” I swear, hustling through the basement door.

Candy sits demurely curled up in the passenger seat, staring at me with huge hazel eyes, pouting, stiletto nails poised to grab either my money or my body. “Didja git it?” she squeaks.

“Yeah, I got it.”

“Let’s see!” she sings, grabbing the envelope playfully. “Oh-h-h, twanty dollah bills! I like twanties! An’ tens! Looka all the tens! An’ fives! An’ ones! Ain’t yo’ sweet!” she remarks, folding the money quickly and stuffing it into her seemingly bottomless purse. “I ain’t told yo’ what I do! I’m a masseuse. I specialize in physical disorders,” she now informs me, her left hand migrating to my waist. Pulling the band on my sweatpants, her hand grabs my penis in a single mighty tug. I don’t wear underpants. She’s got me. “They’s two biggest prob’ems in men be erectile dysfunction an’ premature ejaculation,” she explains professionally, beginning to jerk me off rhythmically. “I can see that erectile dysfunction ain’t yo’ problem. Must be premature e-jac-u-la-tion,” she sings.

“Wait! Wait!” I plead. “Stop!” Any second I’m about to explode.

“Wassa matter?”

“At least let me get some tissue.”

“You wanna save it?”

“I wanna dispose of it!” I gasp.

“Oh, yo’ a neat freak,” Candy observes calmly, reaching into her purse and pulling out a packet of facial tissues. Plucking three, she now concentrates her full attention on the act at hand. She whacks me off.

To quote the age-old slogan, “Here at General Electric, progress is our most important product.”

Collecting my semen in the facial tissue, Candy neatly rolls it into a ball. Opening the car door, she debonairly throws it on the concrete floor of the carport.

“I’ll clean it up later,” I suggest.

“Oh, yeah. I forgot, this is yo’ property,” she admits.

I mean, what goes on in that head of hers?

Now I notice— I mean, NOW I notice— that Pamela next door is outside with Oscar the Dog, cleaning up dog poop. Naturally, she looks over at me. Sitting in the car with a strange mulatto whore. Pamela does not appear amused. I start the car and get us out of there.

As soon as we hit Rockville Pike, Candy begins ragging on me: “Ah knows hotels downtown where yo’ can rent rooms by the hour, but they’s don’ allow that at Comfort Inn, Best Western, Day’s Inn, Travelodge, Motel 8…”

Jesus, such a nag! “What d’ya want me to do about it?!” I complain.

“We gotta book fo’ the night,” she explains.

“What? I’m so horrible, you can’t spend the night with me?”

“I told ya! I gotta do a therapy session! He expectin’ me!”

“I got it! I got it! Candy, what do you want me to do?” I sigh, stopping at the traffic light at Montrose Road.

“I’se hungry!”

It’s Christmas, most everything is closed. I try my compadre Eduardo. He’s stretched a torn, painted bedsheet across the front of his taqueria, “Open On Xmas!” Hooray! At least he’s glad to see me, perched in the window of his trailer. Eyeballing Candy and listening to her drawl, he’s salivating. He gives me a look that says “I’m impressed!” Eduardo provides us with tacos, burritos and South American fizzy soda to wash it all down. Candy and I convert the front seat of my Toyota Prius into a dining room.

Candy brings out the Edgar Allan Poe in me:

Once upon a time when evening wanes

I dreamt of erasers and pencil ends,

Since I’d discovered I have no friends

And writing poetry gives me the bends.

            When we’ve eaten, Candy makes that all-important telephone call: “Hi-i-i! I’m comin’ t’ yo’ now, sweet’ums!” she croons into her cell phone. Then she directs me back into the ‘burbs to a house not five blocks from my own.

“I can let you off and deliver my package,” I suggest, brain cells once again functioning.

“No! Uh uh! Yo’ sit here an’ wait! I ain’t gettin’ stuck wi’ standin’ out inna cold an’ ordering a cab. Once Peter finish wi’ me, he boot me outta his house. Happen every time! Yo’ sit,” she commands angrily, sweetly caressing my cheek. Talk about mixed signals. Just to be safe, Candy takes my car keys! Cute kid.

With the ignition off, I can’t even listen to teen heart-throb Blind Justice on the radio. I loved his close-up at the Rally the Troops Awards: Arrested for drunk and disorderly in a Thai brothel, he could still claim to his adolescent followers, “I’m so glad to be here! I’m a glamorous person. My skin is clear… as is my conscience!” I have yet to see either of his movies. Internet, what hath thou wrought??? So I sit, alternately daydreaming and stewing, while my love object services one of her johns. Merry Christmas! Families walk by on the sidewalk in both directions. I ignore them. There’s no law against sitting in an automobile.

I am considering asking Vladimir Putin if I can do a “Dennis Rodman” and visit the premier as his new best friend. Since no one has ever heard of me, I am hoping this heightened celebrity status will benefit my blog.

It seems like forever before Candy gets finished, the sun setting majestically in the west. Since she’s driving me crazy, I attempt to analyze the situation from a military perspective: Boots on the ground, if this maneuver is necessary in the Struggle for Xmas, so be it. Anything to stem the tide of insurgent Christmas trees and minimize the flow of refugee wrapping paper.

Observing how wasted and out of sorts Candy looks coming from Peter Whoever’s house, I take pity on my newfound friend. I don’t give her a hard time. In near silence, I drive us to a motel, sign us in and follow her inside. She disappears into the bathroom. She takes a shower and, draped in a towel, comes back to me on the double bed, mightily refreshed. “Hi-i-i!” she smiles, peeling away the towel, exhibiting brown and pink marathon breasts, fulsome hips, a round little stomach and a sweet bush. “I’se ready fo’ love!”

What a screw-up! Mom is angry, Maggie is disappointed and Candy’s impatiently waiting for the banks to open on Thursday morning. This is not the way I intended to spend the holiday!

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