Baby, $2000, and the Dork Brothers

By Tenzin McGrupp © 2003

Once again I was screwed by the Dork Brothers, Cecil and Numnuts. What could I really do? Call the cops? They walked away with over two thousand dollars of Baby’s money, which I foolishly forked over on a sketchy drug deal that grew sketchier with each minute I paced back and forth in my living room, with the baseball game on mute. The only thing I could do was wait until Baby came home from work, and endure whatever wrath and fisticuffs she’d unleash, after I sat her down and calmly told her that I lost her life savings, all $2078.00, the remainder of the money that she inherited after her father was randomly killed when a Greyhound Bus collided with a cantaloupe truck just outside of Smyrna, GA, and his car skidded on the broken fruit, only to flip over several times before jackknifing into the guard rail. It goes without saying that Baby hated cantaloupes.

Baby came home ten minutes late from working at O’Henry’s, the seedy bar in the Bowling Alley by Route 12. She waited tables and sometimes she was lucky enough to tend bar, on the frequent days that Daisy, the owner’s slutty, gum chewin’ daughter, would call in sick and stay home to smoke crystal meth and watch the Game Show Network. Those were the days when Baby would come home the happiest, since bartenders got much better tips than the waitresses did. By the looks of her growling expression I could tell that she had a bad day. She walked in the apartment without saying hello, and ran into the bathroom. She locked the door, but I walked over to hear her sobbing and whimpering. She’d been crying a lot these days, sometimes for no reason at all. I always wanted to ask, but deep down I really didn’t want to know.

A couple of minutes later Baby came out and started talking to me.

"Did you find a job today?" she said her slow Alabama drawl.

"Of course I didn’t. But I thought I had a great idea for an investment."

"What kind of investment?"

"The powder kind."

She rolled her eyes and opened up a can of Keystone Light, took a long sip, then poured it into the dog’s dish bowl. Bubba was my old roommate’s dog that he left behind when he had to skip town after his girlfriend’s husband found out he had been having sex with his wife, a not so bright woman who charged rooms at the local Motor Inn on her husband’s credit card for twelve days in a row a couple of months ago. My ex-roommate left without packing, got in his car and drove off. The bastard owed me a month’s of back rent and left his blind, asthmatic ridden black Labrador tied to my bedroom door.

I did what any sensible guy who got shafted with $350 and stuck with a blind dog. I sold all his crappy CDs, pawned his entire stereo equipment and TV, and then I kicked his dog. That’s right. I kicked the fucking pooch three times. Each time making sure I yelled out his owner’s name.

"I’m sorry Bubba, but your owner, Lucas Dork is one fucking asshole."

WHACK! The dog went flying across the living room.

"I’m sorry Bubba, but I fucking hate the fucking Dorkmonger!"

WHACK! Bubba crashed up against the couch and bounced right back to me.

"I’m a prick, I know, kicking a blind fucking dog. Only an asshole would do that. But since your daddy ain’t here, you’re gonna pay for that limp dick, redneck, cock smuggler Lucas Dork’s mistake!"

WHACK! The dog tumbled back under the coffee table, knocking over a couple of half filled plastic cups, cluttered with cigarette butts and beer bottle caps, leftover from Daiquiri Tuesday a couple of days before. I would have killed the damn thing, unless Beatrice, Baby’s half-sister from Florala, hadn’t woken up. She passed out on the couch after she drank too much tequila and snorted a half of gram of Pixie Stix that I told her was high grade French-Canadian cocaine called: Stix du Pixie.

"But why is it pink and purple?" she seriously asked me.

"It’s the new rage. It’s a Hollywood thing. By the way where the fuck is Florala anyway?"

She snorted a line of grape flavored Pixie Stix and wiped her nose. With a sappy grin, and in the cutest trailer park voice she whispered, "It’s on the border. Not quite Florida and not quite Alabama."

"Wow. So it’s just like Texarkana. Right?"

"I suppose," she said, cutting up the cherry flavored Pixie Stix, "But then again, I’ve never been to Iowa before."

Tenzin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.