everybody feels ambivalent about Raymond



the whiffle ball of his life began its declension thusly:

the edge of his olfactory perception

began to crumble and fester like vile asbestos from beneath walls

condemned; in short,

his sense of smell went gamy.



at a public cafeteria associated with the drab yellow box of a building

where he worked as a typist of various alphanumeric codes into various

incomprehensible computer systems, a short, grey-skinned cafeteria



lady

doled him out a blob of mashed potato

and a stench hit him like a litter box,

like someone had dumped one on him, a full one.

he wasn't sure if it was her

or the food. he flinched, he pointed his glance

down on her, and her gums cracked open,

concupiscent and terrible, to hiss the words,

"cricket meal....bugssssssssssss...."



and the odor of that breath and of those words was the beery, pissed



upon odor of typically homeless individuals,

sick, befouled bodies sprawled upon concrete,

the odor of a man with a bleeding forehead on the ground smoking a



butt

he picked up and lit off the ground and him down scrabbling and



reaching around

for his teeth, his busted state-issued spectacles, his dry pint of Zhenka.



and it too was the odor of the yellow, mouseshit-covered white keys of



an ancient piano in an abandoned church basement,

and also the odor of an improperly used condom slicked off hastily and



crushed

beneath a venereally infected, sexually victimized-turned victimizing



individual's grubby sneaker into a pile of char and cinders and

broken brown glass, and yeh it was the death smell of a cluster of dying

red sumac just beyond the pilings of a dead railroad by a broken brown



river

with a huge concrete pipe of offal emptying into it.



as she spoke the gray-skinned cafeteria lady's eyes dimmed out to black

like weak headlights fusing out on the last night of civilization as missles



start falling

and rioting convicts, freed, start burning front yards.

the other humans behind him in line at the cafeteria and seated

before thier trays of food seemed not to notice

any of this. shit, he thought, well, fuck,

May is as good a month as any for psychotic episodes.

I better get out to my car and smoke 3 filterless cigarettes.

He proceeded to the end of the line, dropped his tray in the trash

and soon enough walked out of the building.



To get to the store he had to cross four lanes of traffic.

Standing on the battered white stone median at mid-road

the exhaust fumes hit him, but the smell was the smell of the last

girl he'd worked on and took from behind in the manner of dogs. this



had occurred a while back.

too long a while back. she was from Quebec. he'd met her at party

at a friend's apartment. The friend was a white Jewish Rastafarian. He



fancied himself a percussionist but slung dope for a living. The friend



happened to live above,

I shit you not, a fish market, about 63 paces or so from the edge

of a tidal river on the North Shore of Massachusetts.

Danversport, Beverly. One of those towns. It might have been.

He wasn't sure of the name of the town. It was a lamely attended

party, at least by the time he got there. A Peter Tosh record was in the



CD player and blaring.

The RastaJew and three other young men sat apelike, passing spliffs,



congretgated around and totally consumed

by the violent colors and sounds of the dark urban rape-and-murder



fantasy emanating from a boosted X-box and a boosted Quasar 36-inch

television, all boosted from a local Wal-mart. No matter about the



boosting,

plenty of employee hide to cut that shrinkage out of, and plenty more

where that came from. This was the white Jewish Rastafarian's take on it

at least. He was the most frivolous, deadly serious, utterly dangerous buffoon

our hero had ever encountered. Our hero owed him money, but only a



small amount. Our hero knew the friend kept a Glock 9mm and clips

stashed in a black nylon laptop computer tote also stolen from Wal-mart

and kept beneath a bed. Our hero also drove drunk occassionally, and

rationalized the risks thusly.



But the girl from Quebec. Our hero, by the name of Ray, ended up, as I've

mentioned, at this time in the past too long ago for his particular

self-esteem's tolerance, working on her privatalia from behind, in the

manner of dogs.



Her name was Manet. He didn't ask her about it, never even thought

about doing so. The Jewish Rastafarian informed Ray in between

mouthfuls of cold Chinese spare rib caked with that pink stuff as they



were both in the kitchenette standing by an open refrigerator that she was tripping on LSD,

mid-trip, about 4 hours in. She was drinking Seagrams

margarita-flavored wine coolers in the living room, chain smoking Camel



Wides, Unfiltered, and lying on her back on the dipiliatory dirty vanilla

shag carpet, staring at the whirling ceiling fan. She was wearing a navy

blue knit jersey with a hood and baggy black warmup pants. Her socks



had holes in them and were filthy.



What she and Ray shared was a total lack of interest in the video game

in progress, and also 3 bong hits a piece. Oh and they were some

crumbly, stankie trees up in that bitch. She found nothing he said



entertaining in the least. She called him "wigga." Her voice was hoarse

from the butts. Ray thought she sounded like the Canuck Joan Rivers.

He told her so. She responded that he seemed like the kind of person



who probably liked to be pissed on. Ray said, I'm not the one doing the

talking, you french bitch. It was a good move. She warmed to his

insults. He verbally abused her a bit more, but in a very low and as



tender a voice as he could muster. He was aware it was working. Their

conversation went on in this soft, foul, antagonistic vein for more than an

hour.



The video gaming went on and on. Drinking began. Ray swigged from a

bottle of cheap ass brandy he found in a cabinet over the RastaJew's

stove hood. He had no idea whose it was, didn't care. A couple people



left. Then after a while there was something happening in the apartment's bedroom that

Ray hadn't been included in. Manet had been though. Ray heard some

sounds. A thump, a peep, an exhalation. A groan. You can probably



guess. I don't think I have to spell this one out for you.

Ray was out of smokes. There were none around. He exited the apartment

and walked a mile and a quarter up the side of the road to the Packie. Bought a pack of



Pall Malls and a 40 of Bull Ice. Headed back down the road. Went up the stairs

past the fish market and back into RastaJew's hideout. The dudes had all

left. Manet was hitting that bong. Then after a while he was hitting her



from behind in the manner of dogs. The smell as he ground away was pretty hot and also not so

hot. She was not in fact particularly clean. It was sickening and exiting.

There was a fleck of some dun substance on the back of one of her thighs.



Nothing like this had really happened for old Ray. Few girlfriends

in college. Couple misty hookups after bars. But this was grotesque,

dramatic, really depraved. He felt so. It was the best lay of his life, hands down. He



made it through like a champ. He thought anyway. He never found out what

Manet thought. Never saw her again. Thought about her a lot after. But

I gotta get back to this narrative so you'll have to wait for what he



thought.



It can't be said that he never forgot that smell. He did. And remembered

it only now, standing on the white crumbled median with 4 lanes traffic whooshing past,

2 per side, opposite directions, on his



way to the store to

get guess what a pack a Camel Wides Unfiltered, on the day his

olfactory glands went inexplicably and indecently to game,



the day before the next day which was when shit really started to get weird