Читать книгу Since I Laid My Burden Down - Brontez Purnell - Страница 10

CHAPTER THREE

Drinking at the bar near his house in Oakland, memories of DeShawn’s dead uncle had been on repeat in his head. He remembered riding in his uncle’s ’67 Dodge pickup, his uncle driving, totally fucking wasted off bourbon, with DeShawn and his two other cousins in the cab, all four gentlemen packed in like sardines. DeShawn must have been all of eight or nine.

“Y’all wanna see Uncle cut some donuts?!”

“Yes!” screamed all three little boys simultaneously.

Uncle raced the vintage pickup to a field and did just so. On the third 360-degree turn, ol’ Uncle noticeably lost control of the truck, and that heart-stop, wait-for-disaster feeling flew through little DeShawn’s body. The miscalculation proved not to be fatal, but there it was—the origin of that anxious feeling DeShawn would come to know all his life. That punched-in-the-lungs feeling of anticipation, moments before something spun out of control.

The last thing DeShawn remembered that night was getting kicked out of the bar.

In the morning, poor DeShawn woke up on the kitchen floor in front of the refrigerator, door wide open and all the evidence splayed out around him: a half-empty jar of peanut butter, a jam jar, a rice-milk container, and half a stick of unwrapped, salted, organic (delicious, delicious) butter with teeth marks in it. He was naked and there was peanut butter every-fucking where. WAS I ATTACKED LAST NIGHT?! he thought after jerking into consciousness. He faced up to it three beats of silence later; he had blacked out and was binge eating. Again.

He left the mess on the floor, showered, and arrived at work a full forty-five minutes late.

“Dude, fuck this place,” he said as he looked around the shitty barbershop. He prayed for the courage to quit and become a drug dealer. He figured that maybe if he got put in jail he could finally find a boyfriend. He was feeling optimistic that day—maybe he was still drunk—but didn’t want those positive feelings to float too high in this place. He knew feeling good was a setup, so he sat down and waited for his bitch-ass coworkers to fuck with him.

One of the hairdressers, Lucy, was this nasty, fake leprechaun from some redneck part of California. She was the worst mix of born-again Christian and closeted homosexual. Her “husband” would come in to help her close, and from the looks of it, he suffered the same affliction. Sexually frustrated assholes as they were, DeShawn felt sorry for them. There was no reality whatsoever in which he could picture Lucy’s husband dicking her down good in any tangible way. When DeShawn looked at Lucy’s husband, he saw an anxiety-ridden homosexual with a hungry booty hole, and it takes one to know one.

Her husband’s panic attacks were infamous (he had upward of three a week), and each time Lucy would come into work disgruntled, highly critical, and pissed at everyone. DeShawn was only a receptionist, so in accordance to natural law Lucy got to fuck with him. For instance, she once explained to DeShawn why the young black teenagers in the area made her uncomfortable; she got robbed by a group of them once. DeShawn didn’t believe this cackling bitch one bit. The ironic part was that, in this gentrified part of town, the black teenager robbing you most likely came from college-educated parents—though DeShawn knew that Lucy’s stuck ass would never see the humor in that. It also left DeShawn wondering, What kid that comes from college-educated parents would rob a sloppy white bitch in sweats? Like, wouldn’t you rob someone who looks like they have a future?

Then there was Lucy’s lil’ gay sidekick, Juan Gomez. Juan was from redneck California too, and he and Lucy would openly bond over their fear of “outsiders.” Once at a Christmas party DeShawn got way too drunk and told Juan about when he was gangbanged by four tourists from Mexico City the night before at the bathhouse.

“EWW! YOU FUCK MEXICANS?!” cried Juan Gomez.