Disgust and Desire (ch. 4-5)

Chapter 4/5

Photo by Nelson Ndongala on Unsplash

Before jumping into chapters 4-5 (read chapters 1-3 here), I am excited to announce the recent publication of my short story collection (a long time coming), AMERICAN FREAKS. Please do me a huge favor and buy, read and review the book.

BUY AMERICAN FREAKS HERE

Brief description of the book:

In the vein of Denis Johnson, Raymond Carver, Jack Kerouac and Ottessa Moshfegh, Michael Mohr offers 21 gritty, raw, honest stories covering his drinking years (mostly) in the form of (mostly) autobiographical fiction which cover everything from hitchhiking across America to a clash with Hell’s Angels to being kidnapped during an alcoholic blackout in Mexico to shooting guns while high on LSD. Always searching for the deeper meaning in these sordid adventures, Mohr keeps you entertained, astonished and, often, shocked.

*Chapter 4 is very short so you get two this time, and all of chapter 4 free!

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4.

It was evening. Saturday night. Just past dusk. Sam walked north from 63^rd Street along the Waterfront. It was cool out. The East River was calm to his right. A massive red and black barge floated by. Cars raced along FDR to his left. He was almost under the freeway now. This was one of his regular routines. He enjoyed walking up the Waterfront to Carl Schurz Park, in the low-mid 80s where the traffic on FDR grew quiet. He liked to smoke and take nips from a pint and think.

Yanking his pint of SoCo from his inner leather jacket pocket, he swigged, sliding the bottle back. He smoked his Marlboro 100. He still had three cigarettes left. A tourist had given him the dregs of his half-full pack days ago.

Tonight Sam thought of his past.

He came from Seattle. He missed the University District and Capitol Hill and Lake Washington, but not the nine months on and off of rain. New York was better in that way. Seasons. He’d attended the University of Washington. Freshman year he started drinking. It escalated quickly. Getting in fights. Stealing. Sleeping around. Halfway through junior year he was expelled for being in class drunk multiple times, and for once badly insulting his American Lit professor. For a decade he worked dead-end jobs. Survived. Moved constantly around Seattle. Always existed in tiny, rancid apartments.

Around 30, his drinking increased. He’d become a regular at several Irish pubs around Capitol Hill. He blacked-out often. He woke up in strange women’s beds. He woke up with black-n-blue eyes. He woke up lying in the street. He rarely remembered anything.

Sam tried to get sober. He crawled back to his folks over a five-year period, from 30 to 35. They put him in several rehabs. They weren’t rich. His father owned a plumbing and heating company, and his mom had been an RN. He kept leaving rehabs. He kept going back to the bottle. He couldn’t stay sober.

Just shy of 36, he finally said, Fuck It. He left the rehab he’d been in in Eastern Washington, hopping freights and hitchhiking east to New York City. He took his time. He’d stolen a few hundred bucks.

That was in 2017. Three years ago.

He called his parents a month after arriving in New York. They were worried sick. An argument ensued. His father said, Enough is enough, Sam. We’re cutting you off. No more financial help. No more rehabs. You have to fix yourself. They hadn’t talked since.

And here he was. Sam Bouchard. Not yet forty years old. Alone in the world. A college dropout. A disappointment to his family. A societal reject. Young enough to be angry with himself, old enough to feel like a dismal failure.

Sam drank down the rest of his pint. He thought of his ex. Zelda. They’d met in Rehab. When he was 32. She was in for heroin. He for drinking. She had that tragic, wounded look in her dark eyes. She was tall, thin—you could see her ribs poking out—and had short, rough brunette hair. They met on his fifth day inside. She’d been there on and off for years. A 30-day stay, then out, then relapse, and then back again. Everyone knew her there. All the staff. She was a legend, had a reputation. She was known as a slut. But he didn’t see her that way at all.

He was mopping the kitchen floor one night—everyone had chores—before an AA meeting (he hated the meetings; he found them too religious and one-sided) when she walked into the kitchen, making Doc Martin boot marks all over the perfectly cleaned white-tiled floor he’d just done. His shoulders fell.

“Are you serious?” he said, to the woman’s back.

She didn’t respond. She walked to the cabinet, extracted a glass, went to the sink, filled it, and drank it all down in one massive gulp.

Then she looked at him. She saw the bright white tiles. Surely she could smell the bleach and hot soapy water he’d been using to clean it. They caught eyes and held. She was taller than him by an inch or so. There was something so tragic and dramatic about her eyes. About her whole face. The little button-nose. The dark circles around her eyes. Her angular, sharp cheeks. Her skin was as pale as the moon.

“What’s your name?” he said.

“Who’s asking?” Her voice was soft, feminine, high-pitched. But there was an edge to it.

He grinned, just barely. “I am.”

“Who’re you?” He both liked and disliked her teenage attitude. It was immature. But sexy.

He smiled wider. “Sam. Sam Bouchard. Alcoholic.”

She chuckled. “What’re you a salesmen?”

“No,” he said, his feelings hurt. He was sensitive. Always had been. She poured another half glass full of water from the faucet. She turned her back to him. She drank it. She left the glass in the sink.

“I’m Zelda Dawkins. I’m a junkie.”

“You seem pretty young for a junkie.”

She shrugged. “Twenty-four.”

“Where’re you from?” he asked.

She crossed her arms. She walked right at him, those skinny, pale long legs. She had on a shredded denim skirt which ended just above her knees. A scar ran across her right arm, off-brown and mottled.

She stopped at him. She said, “You ask a lot of questions.”

“Maybe.”

“Where’re you from?”

He laughed. “Seattle.”

She ran her hand through her short frizzy hair. She stared at him for what felt like forever. And then she bent down slightly and whispered into his ear, “I’m from wherever you want me to be from, honey.”

She walked past him. He didn’t see her again for a whole week.