So when the smudgy-mouthed, crack-eyed, jelly-bummed beauties said, “Hey, big boy, how about a quickie, out behind the doughnut stand?” he did not say, Coming and he did not say, Meet you in heaven when I’m dead and he did not say, Are you out of your fuckin’ mind? He said nothing.
In addition to the disease factor, he did not yet know how to navigate the dark and darker pathways of the pleeblands: he didn’t want to hook up with a total stranger and then wander blind-eyed into some alley or sleazy motel or dubious knocking-shop washroom and come out on a stretcher or in a body bag, if that. More likely was, they’d toss him into a vacant lot and let the rats and vultures take care of him. Now that more and more of the once-public security services were privatized, there was no margin in the proper burial of a drifter like him, or in the apprehension – they liked to use that word, apprehension – of whatever scoundrels might have knifed him for pocket change.
His height and his budding ’stache were scant protection. He was green wood, an easy target; they’d get that at one glance, they’d beeline for him. The pleeblands were far from the school playgrounds of his youth, in which size really did matter. “The bigger they are, the harder they fall,” the scrappy little bantams – more than one of them – had said to him then. “Yeah,” he’d replied. “But the smaller they are, the more often they fall.” Then a swift whack, not even a punch, and down they’d go.
But in the darkest pleeblands, there wouldn’t be any verbal foreplay. No rattlesnake-warning quips and banter, just a rapid stab or slice or even a bullet from some obsolete, illegal firearm. The Linthead gang was especially vicious, according to the net. And the Blackened Redfish. And the Asian Fusions. And the Tex-Mexes with their drug-war tricks – the stacks of heads, the legless bodies strung up from old movieland marquees. He figured there must be a lot of Tex-Mexers controlling the Truck-A-Pillar highway heading south, it was close to their territory.
Despite these reservations, or, to be more honest, despite these cowardly fears, he knew that his best hope of cover in the short-term was in the worst part of town. Spending too much money would attract jackals; he was streetwise enough to know that. So once in San Jose he kept a low profile, stayed out of bars, and blended himself into the underclass that swirled around in the lowest pleebs like rats in a dump bin, scrabbling for whatever they could pick up.
For a while he slung quasi-meat products at SecretBurgers. It was ten hours and less than minimum, he had to wear the company T-shirt and a dorkwit cap, but SecretBurgers wasn’t fussy about identities. And they had protection against the street gangs for their booth workers, and bought off both official nosies and non-official ones, so nobody hassled him. He felt sorry for the female workers: they were paid less than the guys, and they had to wear tight Ts and fend off customers and management alike. They should have been issued hard plastic visors for their tits.
But his sorrow didn’t stop him from finally acquiring in-the-flesh carnal knowledge with one of the SecretBurgers meatbunnies called Wynette, a brownette with big, dark-ringed, starved-looking eyes. In addition to her alluring personality – a euphemism, he now has to admit, for her somewhat meagre snatch, which was the part that fascinated him, and he apologizes for that, but such is the case with hormone-sodden adolescent males, and it’s nature’s plan, and he thought he was in love, so fuckit – she offered the advantage of a tiny room.
Most of the SecretBurgers meatgirls couldn’t even manage that: they shared overcrowded walkups, or squatted in repossessed and decaying houses, or hooked on the side to support some child or addicted relative or tinselly pimp. But Wynette was cautious and frugal, and hadn’t squandered, and could afford some privacy. Her place was located above a corner store that sold alcohol tasting of troll piss and paint remover, but Zeb wasn’t too choosy at that time, so he used to grab a bottle of it to ply Wynette with before sex because she said it helped her relax.
“Was it as good?” asks Toby.
“Was what as good? As good as what?”
“Sex with Wynette. As good as the decapitated Lady Jane Greys.”
“Apples and oranges,” says Zeb. “No point comparing them.”
“Oh, give it a try,” says Toby.
“Okay. The Lady Jane Greys were repeatable. Reality’s not. And since you’re wondering, they’re both good sometimes. But it can be disappointing either way.”
Snowman’s Progress
Floral Bedsheet