Mission Street: A story about a man, two girls, some Mexicans, Nitrous Oxide, sex, alcohol, a broken bicycle and a dog named Tugboat.
by Andrew J. Perez
The dog's name, Tugboat, has no bearing on the story but to give you, the reader, a sense of the size of the behemoth dwelling in the tiny two bedroom apartment. I imagine, partly from Tugboat, partly, again, from the copious open alcohol containers strewn about the living room, bedrooms, kitchen and bathroom like sentinels guarding the diseased and drugged, and partly, from the so-called Bohemian lifestyle, the apartment's aroma is one of legend. I'm not certain myself how to describe the scent this pit gives off. Somewhere, I'd say, between a fish dying in the Arizona sun on July sixteenth at one-fifteen in the afternoon and the open mouth of a Wino who's just gone for a run around the block.
It's as though the Tecate cans and half-finished whiskey glasses only add an excuse for the flavor of the space. It's more that the space was meant to have this smell. Like the original contractors and city planners got together one day and said,
"Gentlemen, we require a building full of apartment units that smell of disease, sex, alcohol and death."
"Well, sir, is that not why we have the Irish quarter?"
"Silence fool! The Irish quarter will have no candle to hold to the aural experience had by those visiting this building. It will be a stench of legend. It will reek of stories that need telling. In short, gentlemen, we need a building that will stink."
Though it seems unlikely that this sort of conversation would have occurred, stranger things have happened.
I lie on the mattress - if one could call it such - spooning and being spooned. Ordinarily, this would be the stuff dreams are made of, but not this night. From the mantle above the bricked-over fireplace on which leans a framed William Claxton poster, a ceramic gargoyle, wax dripping down the sides of its face, stares down at me as if to say,
"owned."
I stare back for some time in the street lamp-lit room, the window just behind the pull-out couch wide open for all manner of insects to come in and all manner of tobacco and Tugboat-generated scents to go out. I try to close my eyes to sleep, but I can't seem to distract myself from my situation enough to surrender to unconsciousness.
"It must be pushing four," I think to myself, wishing for my own bed, wishing to be anywhere but this particular position in the world.
A mosquito comes to visit. I kill it on my forehead, the sound of which wakes Tugboat, my left side spoon.
It seems somewhat fitting that after a long while of flirtation with the blonde on my right, this would be how we would end up. Not with consummation of our blatant desire for one another, not with a torrid, sweaty, sticky affair that lasts the night and is gone just as fast as starlight with the rising sun, but with me in the middle between the half-horse, half-ape creature to my left and the philosophically-minded twenty-year-old to my right on a mattress that probably gave us all pink eye, covered in a thin blanket that has been licked to a near dripping state by the demon crushing my left arm.
I try to think about the rest of the space. Perhaps something about this apartment will be so disgusting that it will make me laugh and, with that, I will fall off to sleep. I stare into the closet to the right of the pull-out bed. I'm almost sure that it is literally the mess that has been piled up inside that holds up the television. T-shirts, video games, a copy of the film version of Jonathan Larson's RENT. This is a tomb for things that were once art and are now coasters. Several philosophy texts sit atop the mantle to my left, above the drippy gargoyle and beer cans. A copy of "The Wasteland and Other Poems" is the topmost book. A dry laugh nearly escapes my lips.
I look to the rest of the apartment with hope that it will bring relief. The green carpet running up and down the tiny hallway looks like something one would find when the real carpet is pulled up to be replaced. Waves roll across it like the bay beyond the tenement-like buildings blocking the view from the window. That's alright, there's at least a framed print of a satellite photo of the city right next to the window. In case you forget where you are. The doors lining the hallway - numbering eight in total and all closed and jammed shut - are painted in rectangular panels of nauseating pastels. Pink, blue, yellow, green; it's like Babies R Us had a vomit sale and the first hundred customers got whatever they could carry away without someone noticing for free. I try several doors and one gives way.
Hallelujah - the bathroom. I step inside, close the door behind me, grope on the wall for a light switch and immediately wish I hadn't found it and had just done my business any old where. I may have cleaned something inadvertently that way. I take care of my needs and struggle with the fact that there is no soap to be found anywhere in the room. Not in the shower, not in the sink, not in the trash. I rinse well and dry my hands on my pajamas. I know that at least they are clean.
After the day I'd spent with the specimen who rents this space and my blonde friend, sitting in the park, drinking beer, writing poetry, eating burritos and taking pictures with a disposable camera, I thought that certainly things will be going very well for me this evening. When we arrived at the magazine release party, Blondie had to sneak in, being merely twenty-years-old. She did well and we joined her directly. As soon as we were all in, I casually ask if she'd like a drink. I decline her offer to pay,
"Nah. Don't worry about it. I've got this," I say with a wink in my voice.
I bring her the requested Makers Mark on the rocks and accompany it with a Rum and Coke for myself. The show is fantastic. Act after act of erotic poetry, fantastic music, hilarious standup and can-can dancing. I buy the blonde another Makers.
Shortly thereafter we find ourselves outside listening one of the apartment-renter's friends who has brought her baritone ukulele to show us a song she'd written. Her arms work the strings, strumming in a way that nearly hides the matted hair in her underarms visible beneath the cap-sleeves of her ratty shirt. The song, at least, is very pretty.
When we return to the bar to see the rest of the show, a band has started up who proclaims to be a band-to-dance-to. The blonde asks me to hold her camera and phone for just a moment for what looks to me like a girl-chat moment. Within seconds, she has asked a tall, dark, scruffy, handsome and red-shirt clad man to dance with her with whom she proceeds to dance all night. I've been stood up for a red-shirt.
Whilst she dances, I rejoin the ukulele-toting hippy and her nitrous-snorting friend outside. After some time, a pair of angry Mexicans start into a fight. The hippy tries to stop them but the unfortunately stoned fat fuck to my left involves himself. I grab a bouncer and ask for an assist. He tells me that it's past the door and, thus, out of his jurisdiction. I pull the hippy away and back into the bar to leave the fat fuck and the Mexicans to their business. When I return, they're all bloody and prostrating themselves before each other amongst the discarded NO2 canisters begging each other's forgiveness.
I reopen my eyes and, yes, I'm still in the apartment. Autistically reliving the evening's adventure didn't make any of it any better. There's a let-down.
The sun has started to rise. I can tell because the window is still wide open and I can't move once again. As sunlight streams into the apartment, I fight my way up to use the restroom once more. With light filtering into the hallway, I notice the broken Cannondale bicycle leaning up against the left-side wall right in front of what looks to be a pile of at least two cans worth of refried beans dumped on the floor. Worried and holding my breath, I return to the living room, find my glasses and go back to the hallway. If only it really were beans.
Between the Wino-mouth / rotting beer-fish smell, the slobbering, snoring beast spooning me on my left, the the drunken, smelly, and rude blond on my right, the fly circus being hosted above my head, the Syphilis -Sale mattress and the newly discovered pile of dog shit in the hallway, I damn near run for the door as soon as traffic has cleared up enough for me to make my escape. I travel back to my home town, stopping to visit a friend on the way, and land at home.
I shower.
For a very long time.
