As a grown human being male who is looking to achieve his sole purpose in life, to love a beautiful grown female human being. And of course spreading my seed. I often think to myself, what else is there for me to do because all I can think about is where this god damn seed is supposed to go. It’s becoming my entire being. My primitive subconscious is controlling my mind. Especially when that grown adult female makes her way into my sights.
I found that I must be doing something wrong because I haven’t fulfilled my duty as an adult male yet. It surprised me that sitting at home, hoping the phone would ring and when it would, it would be that grown female, asking me to plant a seed of life inside of her beautiful, perfect, and naturally warm fetus nurturing baby maker. That simply won’t happen. Let’s not forget my go-to move (another surprise to not be a successful tactic); staring over at a beautiful grown female waiting for her to look back and then she makes her move on me. That method works the best with about a 0.08% success rate. An adjustment must be made. For the sake of my patience, availability, and my seed, something must be done.
These are just a few of the many things that I had told myself on a beautiful fall Saturday afternoon while lying in my hotel bed in Nashville, Tennessee. As I laid there in my underwear watching college football, my stomach was empty and rumbling. I had not had a sip of water in about an hour since the last time I masturbated and my last sip before that was about an hour prior to that which was moments after I had masturbated. But plenty of minibar premixed cocktails had been flowing beautifully down my gullet for a few hours.
I was in Nashville for work. Something inside of me was telling me that I didn’t deserve to be there. I felt that having an all expenses paid work trip where I would get paid to do a photoshoot for small local Nashville restaurants. They treat me as a celebrity but I just feel like I’m making a fool of myself. To drive the point home of being a fool, I like to hit the hotel room mini bars very hard; no money out of my pocket. Someone else gets the bill and think about what the hell went on in that room. Photographer from New York must have been some party but in reality I was just sinking further and further into a lonesome madness.
Masturbation is an incredibly depressing activity when you haven’t had sex, or even spoken to a lover in over a month and your Ex-girlfriend has had enough of you. There’s also the precious seed being folded into toilet paper being flushed down the toilet that hurts the soul. And spending a Saturday in your hotel room in a city that you’ve never been to before because you’ve been jerking off all day really suppresses the serotonin.
Something along the lines of “God Damn it” had aggressively poured out of my mouth as I was sprawled out on the king size bed. A burst of energy, fueled by self loathing, helped me fly out of the bed and to my feet. “I need to go do something right now,” I said out loud. So I threw on baggy black sweatpants with a broken draw string, a baggy black sweatshirt, and brown boots that slide right on because the laces are loosely tied. Comfortability is king.
The weather was beautiful. As the evening was settling itself upon the quaint city where the sun seemed to be eye level and casting gorgeous orange rays. I walked down the road west, I felt incredible. It seems as though when in a depressive state of isolation the first step to get out of the depression is just to go outside. That always works for me but to find the strength to go outside is always the most difficult type of strength to muster up. Perhaps it’s just the switch up of the scenery. Because the depression starts to hit when the quality alone time extends far beyond what is actually needed.
So I went walking around Nashville, Tennessee. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any friends or locals to tell me where to go or what to do. To traverse the city quicker, they have these electric scooters that are scattered all throughout the city lying on the ground. It looks as though people had been teleported mid-ride and the scooter fell over. It is quite the scene. What a fun way to get around, however. Zooming through the streets, passing by lively and high-decibel bars, police stations, car accidents, construction sites, A Johnny Cash Museum, Country Rock Hall Of Fame, also beautiful monuments and statues dedicated to legendary musicians who helped make Nashville the music town it is today.
Most of the day was spent staring at beautiful women, hoping they would do all of the work and walk over to me. That is sort of the way I like to flirt. Although now as I am approaching twenty eight years old, I have noticed that that method doesn’t work. What needs to be done is, go straight up to the beautiful women with the utmost confidence, say hello, ask their name, tell them you had to let them know that they’re beautiful. It might not even go any further than that but at least you told them what you have been thinking from across the street. They deserve to know and then if they end up being a nice and cool person then look at that. You met a beautiful, nice and cool person in the street. However, I did not do that once while in Tennessee. I was on a sexual mission from whatever entity created me, I was not into finding a good girl in the street who may or may not be cool. I was interested in going into a bar, becoming piss drunk, flirting with a piss drunk female, dancing with her and then somehow asking her to leave her friends to come to my hotel room. First thing’s first though. It was Sunday and it was October. That means there is football and playoff baseball on TV. That’s a great way to continue the boozing.
I went into a bar called The DawgHouse. I felt it to be quite fitting of my intentions for that evening. I ordered a few beers and some terrible fried chicken from them. The bar was lined with TVs playing every football game that was on. It was rowdy and a blast. I somehow forgot that I was incredibly horny. It must have been the sweating beefy, burly men that were viciously colliding into each other on TV that curbed my thirst for procreation. That was until the games ended and the crowd of people poured out. Then the lonesomeness struck again and I had to figure something out. I ordered another beer from the beautiful blonde bartender. She kept eyeing me and then whispering to the other female bartender with her eyes still on me. After a few sips of my beer, she came over to me to ask if I was doing fine.
I worked up this courage to be some sort of a suave son of a bitch. “I’m good, I would be even better if you told me when you get off tonight to show me around town.” I was momentarily shocked because that was the first thing I said to anyone in the previous 72 hours besides checking into the hotel, plus my beer or food orders. This was actually about to be a conversation. Well, She was extremely surprised and not at all flattered.
“You should go up to Broadway, there’s a ton of stuff for out of towners to do there.” She said.
“People go dancing over there?” I asked.
“There’s some dancing.” She was very short with me.
“What do I gotta do to take you out over there?” I asked.
“I don’t have any desire to go out over there.”
I got the hint so I didn’t try any more than that. The old salesman trick when asking her out probably would have worked if my entire being wasn’t screaming greasy italian-american from New York. Well, I thought, the night is young. That was just a warm up of the old charisma. If broadway is filled with out of towners like she said, I would be able to find some girl on the dance floor who might be in the same boat as me. So I stumbled out of the DawgHouse while pulling my sweatpants up to waist level. Those pants were inching down my ass all damn day.
I headed towards downtown Nashville over to where the notorious Broadway is located. It was a scene. The legend of the American cowboy and the old west had been made into a novelty. It was a shit show. Masses of people crowding the sidewalks, One bar after another in a two block radius with huge neon signs claiming to be the bars of famous country singers. The bars were overflowing with people in joke cowboy outfits, pink cowboy hats, hefty people, large beards, flannel shirts, trucker hats with pro gun jokes on them, drunkenly sloppy men and women from the ages of eighteen to eighty. The medley of sound that flooded the air gave me a panic attack and took some time to adjust to. Each bar having a live band playing in the window, cars stuck in traffic on the outskirts of this road that was shut down, cops blowing whistles trying to direct said traffic, the shouting. It felt like a fever dream. I didn’t want to pick up any of these women, I thought.
As I walked down the road with my head on a swivel, avoiding the large groups of people barreling in from every direction, while the sounds of each bar were muddled out by the sounds of the next bar I would pass and so on. I was horrified. However, I was on a mission “God gives his toughest battles to his strongest warriors,” and I was fighting for my life, it felt. Though booze, dancing, and women were on my mind which trumped any feeling of anxiety and helped me ignore how badly my skin was crawling.
At first glance, I am often mistaken as some sort of trouble maker. The fact that I was standing on the corner of the intersection with my arms crossed, dressed in all black sweats, bulky untied boots on my feet and my “resting bitch face” in the sea of happy, rambunctious, cow folk and southerners dressed in denim, sparked many “are you from out of town” questions. Questions that sparked a few lovely conversations with strangers that I won’t ever see again. An incredibly elderly old man from Alabama told me to turn my frown upside down and then smiled at me, all gums no teeth.
“My sister wants to know if you were police or just from out of town?”. He pointed in the direction of a woman roughly the same age as him who was laughing and waving at us.
“Nah,” I laughed, “Why? Do I look like police.”
The rushing river of humans was loud and flowed powerfully by us.
“Well I’m not sure either! You don’t look like you’re from here. And you’re standing next to the police car.” He pointed at the cop car behind me. We both erupted with laughter. I didn’t notice the damn cop car, I was people watching, not vehicle watching.
“Makes sense you would think that.” I said.
“Good night, sir”
I walked into the bar directly in front of me immediately. Why don’t I go inside and have fun? Standing on the corner, people watching, was not doing me any good. There was a shit ton of shit going on and I didn't know what else to do besides survey the crowds. My head starts to scramble when I’m faced with more than two decisions. Scattered mindedness can quickly become a horrifying place where indecision, insecurity, and anxiety run freely without any limits to their power. Like the confusing times in middle school at the holiday mixers where questions about sexuality and society asserted themselves at the forefront of forward thinking for the next twenty years without any answers in sight. When those questions arise, it’s total mind-numbing-static-fuzz.
Now that I come to think about it even more, that’s where the overly rambunctious party goer personality had developed for me. The heavy boozing, the micro and macro dosing of psychedelics, hallucinogens, muscle relaxers and mind numbing substances, just to avoid the uncomfortable tasks of social courtesy. Forcibly becoming the center of attention at the function because frankly, with anxiety being steered by the unhealthy combination of mind altering and body tingling substances, it made it real easy to spend most functions on cruise control.
I became older, I got tired quickly, I fell in love with a good night’s sleep, and I became a working stiff. I hadn’t gotten insanely rowdy in a long time but I hit the bottle pretty often by my lonesome. That’s all that there is to do on the road, finding things to do on the road is tough and scary. Luckily, Every town has a bar.
The bartender in a cowboy hat gave me a beer and I walked past the stage where, for the fifth time today, I heard a band playing Folsom Prison Blues in a pop-punk style. I bounced to the familiar song and sipped my beer as I walked on by. It was too loud to have a conversation with anyone, what a perfect place. People watching and beer.
Right past the bathrooms there was a staircase. I kept my eye on it for about a half an hour. I was enjoying the band, the vibes, my buzz that became sauciness, and I was comfortable. I shook my arms out and I remembered that I was on a mission to get laid.
With my eyes on the staircase, I noticed beautiful woman after beautiful woman go up the steps. At one point, three men, who all had tattoos on their faces and wore sunglasses came into the bar. They weren’t dressed like anybody else here, they had big shiny jewelry, black clothes with bold white writing on the pants and shirts, and they were surrounded by gorgeous dancing women who were dressed for the club. Their skin tight dresses with their waists exposed held my attention as they vanished up the staircase. That’s where my next destination was. That was a party I was very interested in attending. Getting out of a funk is easy when you just go where the party animals are going.
The stairway seemed to be on an endless loop. On the fifth flight of stairs, people were dropping out. They simply couldn’t do it anymore. When approaching lit people in the stairwell, you would hear a reluctant someone out of breath ask, “how much further?”, while crutched by their arm on the banister. I don’t know much about purgatory but that seemed to be it. The reasoning behind the difficulty could be one of two things; their old age or the massive deep fried meal they just ate that hasn’t settled yet. It’s probably both, honestly. For me it was the deep fried food thing. I pulled my god damn sweatpants up to waist height and pressed on as others folded. It was a journey to the top of the bar that formed some beautiful camaraderie between recluse drunks yearning for a good time.
A rhythmic thumping began vibrating my insides. It felt good. I got excited. The vibrations grew louder and became a coherent early 2010s pop music mashup. This must be what NFL players feel like when walking out of their locker room tunnel to the field on game day. It wreaked of chaos but that might have been the madhouse of a bathroom waiting area that I walked past.
I reached the roof of the building. Panting and sweating. There was a sweet relief at the sight of a bar. Very happy that I didn't have to go back downstairs but that was just a silly worry. Just slightly beyond the bar was a beautiful mess of people smiling, chatting, sweating, and dancing in unison. Cowboy hats of all different shapes, sizes, and colors. Some with glitz, glams, rhinestones, others just plain old cowboy hats. And just beyond the calm waves of twinkling hats was a humbling view of a bridge that I don’t know the name of, the stadium where the Tennessee Titans play their football games, and all that lies east of Downtown Nashville.
I’ve been on the road for two months by this point and introverted behavior was my game. I wasn’t home and I was unfamiliar with where I was and who I was with. Caution amongst strangers became second nature, especially on this rooftop with these supposed gunslingers, I should at least stay conscious of my words and actions.
After grabbing a beer from the bar, I bopped up and down across the floor with a beer over to where the lovely cowboys and gals were dancing along to the radio hits from my childhood. Like an animal in the wild looking to mate I tried to separate myself from all the other men with my best suave dance moves and soul-gazing eye contact. Not much had stuck. Though there were some fair ladies who were receptive. The group of sixty something year old women were especially receptive. There was Marley, Blaire, Macy (not to be confused with her twin Marley. A mistake they aggressively made sure that I only make once), Julia, and I forgot the other woman’s name. Let’s call her Donna because she reminded me of a bus driver I had in middle school. They were all drinking gin and tonics when we met and I felt a great force inside of me telling me to switch from beer to join them on their G&T crusade. So I got them all gin and tonics. We danced our damn asses off together. Marley sat down and fell asleep on a couch off to the side. I thought it was adorable and everyone at the function too until I made a joke and everything went sideways.
“Aw someone get Marley her insulin!” I thought it was funny and so did some of the other women. There were a couple of facts and details that were not articulated while we were all hanging out.
First, Marley actually had diabetes. Second, Tonic water is absolutely disgustingly loaded with sugar. So her twin sister Macy didn’t find my joke funny and in fact burst into concern. Smacking her sister’s face who was knocked out cold. Totally limp, she didn’t respond at all.
There was so much commotion going on, especially when the paramedics arrived. Most of the party flooded out down the stairs while Marley was being resuscitated. I stayed with the old women who worried in fear. A few minutes had passed and Marley lifted her head up herself. Everyone applauded for her.
“We still need to take her to the truck.” One of the paramedics said to Macy. They threw Marley onto a stretcher and vanished down the eternal stairwell. My old lady friends went along with the paramedics for good and obvious reasons.
It took about three minutes after they left for the DJ to make an announcement about how serious taking care of your health is as he flicked the ash off of his cigarette into an ashtray next to an ice cold glass of brown. He followed up with something along the lines of how we need to have fun now because the next minute could be our last minute. I’m paraphrasing because I wasn't really paying attention. I was busy being enthralled by the happy-dancing variety of human beings.
After a blissful survey of the fun, my eyes stopped on beautiful women on couches, fancy bottles of vodka, tequila, cognac, beer in ice buckets; a good time tucked into a corner behind a velvet rope. I wanted admission. How do I get in? After a more careful look, subsiding the sexual thirst for a moment to make a rational thought. I was not in my neck of the woods by my lonesome. Thinking with my dick wouldn’t be the best idea.
I walked to the disaster of a bathroom thinking about stuffing the thought of sex into my shoes. The fear of a stranger stabbing me in my lower back has lurked in my mind constantly in my everyday life, in my everyday neighborhood since I was a child. This bathroom trip mimicked that feeling exponentially. The mess of toilet paper and puddles of god knows what kinds of fluids on the floor, flickering lights, and men and women shouting to each other in southern accents made it easy to keep my guard up and my penis down. With the help of the internal dialogue at the urinal, I was able to think clearly. Understanding my environment, the scattered cigarette butts, the smell of hot piss, the buzzing from the leaky urinal, I was finally grounded. I was in a gross bathroom avoiding all anxiety of asking if I could party with strangers with face tattoos. It smelled terrible, I needed to get out.
I walked out and straight over to one of the men with face tattoos standing at the forefront of the roped off party. He wore sunglasses, big thick gold rings and chains, a fitted hat made out of leather with silver studs, and his thick porous face reminded me of an old leather handbag that my grandmother used to carry around.
“Have you seen that bathroom?” I asked.
“It’s disgusting,” he said in a country accent.
We laughed.
“You didn’t leave with your friends?” He asked
“My friends?”
“The lady in the ambulance.” I was shocked that he thought they were my friends. Also shocked because that debacle felt like a distant dream that I had and not reality from thirty minutes ago. They call that Stoicism. I’m pretty stoic.
I laughed. “Oh those ladies. Yeah that was crazy, not my friends though. Well I guess now they are. But no, no, no, I met them here tonight.”
“Well it looked like you folks were having some fun. Must be a good guy for entertaining some old women like that.”
“Yeah a good guy, that’s what they call me.” I said.
He looked me up and down. “Y’aint drinkin’ tonight?”
I looked at my hands, surprised as if my drink had disappeared from my hands. I guess just hadn’t found the time to get back to the bar after seeing that woman almost die before. I need some booze for sure.
“Oh shit, I’m actually sauced right now, I guess just hadn’t found the time to get back to the bar after seeing that woman almost die before.”
“You want something to drink, we got plenty.” He asked.
“A hundred percent,” I said.
He lit up. And with one hand he patted me on my shoulder then guided me past the velvet rope.
“What are you drinking?” he asked.
“Whatever you got.” I said. Then he poured tequila and pineapple juice in a tiny plastic cup with ice.
“Tequila and pineapple juice.” He passed me the cup. “Beau Brooks,” he held his cup out awaiting mine to crash into his. Our flimsy plastic cups collided with each other. I didn’t know what he meant by that. Beau Brooks.
“What is that?” I asked.
“What”
“Beau brooks.”
“Oh that’s my name.” he said, I was blown away by this information.
“Ohhhhhhhh”
“How long are you in Tennessee?”
“How do you know that I’m not from here?” I asked and he laughed.
He sucked his teeth causing a click. “‘Cause im from here, fool.” he said and I thought to myself about how right he was. Here I am in southern United States as an Italian-American from New York. I don’t look like anybody in this town. I don’t even have a cowboy hat or a flannel. I really can’t forget that my accent screams that I’m from New York. So I laughed.
“Yeah I’m here for the week, then I’m headed to Austin” I said.
I like to be honest, especially with people who I will never see again. It’s the people who I see quite often that I am afraid to be totally honest with. Who knows how and why they would use things against me. Trust issues that I've developed over the years have made it very hard for me to accrue solid friendships. That’s why I really enjoy my life as a continental touring photographer. I gather a friend quickly at the bar, hangout for the night, then adios see ya never.
When I was in my early twenties, just a silly little boy, I wouldn't leave my hometown of Bethpage, Long Island. Everyone knew everyone. I didn’t have to tell anyone what I was up to for them to know what I was up to. If I ever bumped into someone in the supermarket, so and so would tell me that they heard from him and her that I was doing some of that with another so and so. They would ask me how it was going doing whatnots with so and so's. Or they heard that so and so and I had a falling out over what not and asked me how I was feeling about it. And I would lie and say I was feeling fine even though my insides were crumbling. For a little more context on the whatnots and so and so that I so vaguely speak about, after my girlfriend of three years and I had broken up, I had caught my best friend at the time of fifteen years at her house only days after we had broken up. That ruined me on the inside. What ruined me most was that fact that I wasn’t the best boyfriend to her and I wasn't even the best friend to my friend or even myself. I had issues. For close to two years, I was an insomniac bartender with addictions to drinking, sex with strange women, and a little bit of cocaine. My ex-girlfriend had given her heart to me and I was too distracted to accept it. I was confused as to why she had broken up with me for some reason. But when my whole world came crashing down upon me that day at her house, the confusion came to an end and a soul searching journey had begun.
So when someone that I hardly knew would ask me on line at the grocery store about how I’m feeling after all that, I didn’t think they needed to know that I felt like an empty shell of rotting flesh floating around upside down in an empty void. So “good” would always be the answer.
“Well welcome and I hope you enjoy yourself for this short time. I’m glad you’re here, Kenny.” He said, we smashed plastic cups once more and the legend of southern hospitality had poured out of him. He introduced me to his friends, the other tattoo faced men, and the beautiful women that had flustered me earlier. I joined in on their party seamlessly. Casual conversations regarding the geography of Tennessee that everyone felt the need to school me, the out of towner, on. I entertained the redundancies nonetheless.
“Oh yeah?.... Oh right and that’s East Nashville? Oh it used to be called?…. Oh and where is Memphis?” I didn’t feel the need to tell them that I’ve already heard a handful of times about the beauty but pain in the ass that the drive from Nashville to Chattanooga is. Their excitement to tell me these factoids about their beloved state made my heart full. Also the intimate human interaction was quite charming. I was in Nashville for two days up to this point and hardly had any conversation that didn’t involve the best food in town competition.
This one guy (without face tattoos) told me about his brother who works in Film and TV in Atlanta. During this time there were some union strikes. The Screen Actors Guild and the Writers Guild of America felt that the big corporate film and tv studios and companies weren’t providing these working men and women with sustainable incomes in comparison to the spoils of the product the writers and actors were giving to these companies. Due to all of these union strikes, all production in film and TV had been shut down and millions of people across the country were out of work for an unforeseeable future.
This man’s brother is an electrician for Films and TV shows. He helps provide accessible electricity throughout the entire set. He belongs to a separate union that would never get as much publicity as the writer’s and actor’s unions would. But this guy’s brother has a family to feed in Hotlanta so he drives from Atlanta to Nashville once a week to work for two days with his brother in a plumbing supplies warehouse. He says he loves seeing his brother so often.
Conversation was interrupted by fearful chatter within the crew. I had turned to see that a squadron of police officers had infiltrated the party which carried on as normal. We watched them carefully as they approached the DJ booth calmly demanding answers where the DJ’s response was to focus even harder on his craft and prop his headphones even tighter over his ears.
Like sharks passing through a school of fish, they waded their way slowly through the crowd scanning left and right. A rather tall and handsome cowboy with an his impressive beard had leaned over into one of the cops ears and pointed directly at me.
“Oh my God, why did he point at me?” Lacey, a hysterical woman to my side, cried. I looked over and saw the horror in her face, it was pretty funny. Millions of different scenarios formed in my head about what this woman had done prior to this that would make her so paranoid.
The police approached us and asked me my name and about what had happened here. I couldn’t have been more confused. Searching my memory bank for what they could be talking about.
“I don’t know. What happened?” I asked.
“We were sent down here because a woman came into the hospital unconscious and her family said she was drugged by a man and we were told that you…”
Whatever Whatever. I was blown away because I simply forgot about Marley going into diabetic shock and being taken away in an ambulance. People come and people go, you know. It’s hard for me to remember who, when, and the severity of their departure from my life. I’m just stoic like that. But what a wild accusation, I thought we were having a good time. But to call me a Bill Cosby, that hurt my feelings.
“Oh that’s a wild accusation, we were just hanging out…” Then I was interrupted by the good southern boy, Dallas, part of the tattoo face entourage within the Velvet Ropes. He had a log of Copenhagen Mint flavored Long-cut tobacco stuffed into his bottom lip.
“Now donchu say nothin’ Kenny! You ain’t do a damn thing! We saw ya over there, showing the ladies a nice time but chew was classy! Now officers this boy aint done nothin’ wrong.” Dallas said.
“Sir, we ain’t accusing you of anything, we’re just following protocol.” Said the officer leading the pack.
Dallas and the other boys started getting rowdy. This was about to get out of hand but I chimed in to cool everyone off.
“What do you need from me to make you guys go away? She had a diabetic attack or some shit. She shouldn’t have had eight gin and tonics. Her dumbass decisions have nothing to do with me.” I said.
The officer seemed perplexed.
“She has diabetes?!” He asked.
“That’s what her sister said after I made a joke about her needing insulin shots while she was passed out.” The officer’s laughed. “If I had known she was diabetic, I wouldn’t have made the joke but whatever.” I said.
That story seemed to have checked out because the one officer just asked to see my ID to make sure there was no funny business going on with me. He returned my ID, no funny business. He apologized and wished me a happy birthday.
Whoa. I forgot it was my birthday. Everyday’s the same thing to me and I’m not too good at remembering things like that either. Our party within the Velvet ropes was very happy for me because it was my birthday. A lot of hands touched me within ten seconds, it gave me the skeevatz and I felt like I was going to fall over.
After we all did a shot in my honor, Beau wobbled over to me, laid his arm around my shoulders and told me to pick a girl. What a question to ask someone. Like we were living in a Feudalistic society and he felt obliged to impart to me a gift of one of his prized animals. I liked Samantha though, she was cool and super southern. Something tells me that she wasn’t joining in on the costume party of cowgals and just is one. Call me a libtard from New York but I didn’t want to be gifted a woman like she was livestock. So I just laughed, slid out from under his arm uncomfortably and said I would peruse.
Is everybody here just banging each other? I’m not really into banging drunk strange women at the bar now that I think about it. I definitely don’t want to wrap myself up in this livestock situation. I was getting ready to run to the bathroom so I could think this through and also take a piss and then Samantha had stepped in front of me.
“Howdy, Birthday boy!” She flustered me. Her big freckled cheeks, light brown eyes, the way the canadian tuxedo shaped her curves, her exposed waist line and that thick louisiana accent had distracted me from everything
“Well, howdy miss Samantha,” I said.
“Happy birthday love! How old are ya now?” She asked.
“Twenty Eight I said.” I said.
“Aw ya jus’ a baby” she said.
We laughed and I asked her how old she was.
“Why ain’t’cha mama teach ya to never ask a woman that?”
“Well I just sent some old women to the emergency room so I guess mama ain’t teach me how to treat a woman.” She smirked. “What am i getting myself into with you, miss?”
“Well you are about to dance with another older woman, so let’s start there.” She said and we pressed pelvises together, my hand went around her waist, and we swayed back and forth to a song that I could remember playing on the radio all summer back in 2006.
We got sweaty. We were nasty drunk. Well I was at least. This was the part of the night where I tried to convince this girl’s friends to let her friend part with me back to my hotel. It didn’t take much convincing really, I told Samantha that I wanted to leave and take her with me. I had been drinking for about seven hours straight and dancing for four. I was exhausted. She was very into the idea of continuing to hangout with me. She slobbered on my face to drive that point home. Lacey told me to take good care of her bestie or else she’d kill me and I believed her. That whole motley crew seemed like they would kill anyone who would do any wrong to their friends. I thought they were going to kill that cop for questioning me and I met these people today.
I wanted to take one of those scooters back to the hotel but they don’t operate between midnight and 7 AM. So I called a car and in the car, Samantha and I were mushing our faces together, rubbing hands all over each other. I had no idea we arrived at the hotel, that was until the driver interrupted us and kicked us out of the car. We ran inside and wasted no time. Briskly walked through the empty lobby and said hello to the front desk man. It was a weird interaction but I’m sure he sees that all the time. Being the overnight front desk man of a hotel and all.
In the room we plopped onto the bed and immediately started to rip each other’s clothes off. I was very interested in what was underneath all that denim all night. We fooled around skin to skin. Samantha rubbed her breasts on my chest and slid them down my torso as she kissed nearly every centimeter of my body.
After a few moments of euphoria, she slowed down. Examining my sack, flopping left and right. She seemed very curious.
“Uhm..” She said
“What?”
“I ain’t no doctor but I have felt a good deal of nuts in my life. Healthy nuts that is. And something just don’t feel right with this one here.” She said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well this one feels normal.” She fondled my left testicle then flipped to the right one. “But this side has more than just your ball.” She said and she took my hand to show me what she was talking about. She was right, there was something in there.
“Ah it’s nothing” I said.
“You should get that checked out.” she said.
“I will.” I said. The next day would be Columbus day, there’s no doctor’s offices open. And I have to work all week and then I’m headed out of here. Maybe in the next city, I thought. Even though I brushed it off, internally, I was horrified. The reality set in. The state of my balls and my healthy seed is now in jeopardy. I don’t know whether or not testicular cancer can taint the seed but it would make plenty of sense that it would. I used to wear very tight underwear up until I was about twenty years old. Surely that has something to do with it. But I quickly rationalized the state of my testicles. Yes, if my balls were riddled with cancer then it would throw a wrench into my existential mission from above. Not only am I afraid to go to the doctor, the medical bills alone would drain the life out of me. If I have cancer, those medical procedure salesmen are going to get me for everything I have. Chemotherapy, surgery (removal of my testicles) where I’d be all shaft, and whatever the hell else. My seed would be fucked regardless. But there is the narrative where my balls are completely healthy, if that were to be the case, I wouldn’t even need to get checked out and I am totally fine. We got back to business after her concern subsided and we fell asleep next to each other.
The next morning I felt like a layer of molten hot toxic waste had replaced my skin, my brain felt like had someone nailing a piece of rotten water-logged plywood to it. And my mouth tasted like ass and dead rats. Samatha slept and she looked way better than I felt, plus peaceful. I tucked my head into the pillow trying to muzzle the invisible man hammering away on my brain but that didn’t work. I jumped in an ice cold shower to wash away the toxic waste. I just stood there. The white noise was amazing. I rinsed my mouth out.
Samantha came in, sat on the toilet and peed.
“Boy Kenny, you don’t look too hot.” She said with a groggy voice.
“I could say the same for you.” We laughed with all our might which was just a soft, raspy chuckle that ended in coughing and hacking up thick grotesque phlegm.
Samatha joined me in the shower, she turned the handle all the way to the scalding hot setting. We made love with whatever energy that we could muster up.
Samantha told me she wanted to see me again and that she liked me a lot. She said I’m not like these southern boys or like these other visitors who are pretending to be cowboys for a weekend. She called me a contemporary cowboy because I was still riding in from town to town with no one. Just in town to make a quick buck and then head off to the next place. I didn’t know how to take that. I saw Samantha a few more times while I was in Tennessee that week. She even drove me to the airport which was bittersweet. I normally can’t wait to get to the next city but this time I really wanted to stay.
I think about that weekend in Nashville often. I force myself to remember Marley and her gang, I hope everything turned out fine. I can’t help but think about Samantha most days. In my line of work, it’s hard for me to be holed up in one city for a long enough time to make an everlasting connection, or even see a doctor. Maybe I’m just scared and running away or that’s just me being stoic.