Joey Cloudy online

TRAMP: Looking Forward final edit 

by Joey Da’rrell Cloudy  

Nathan and Mona were both looking forward to Aaron’s arrival. Besides enjoying his company, his presence forestalled their quarreling. Things had become difficult between them since Mona stopped having sleeping with Nathan as she began to pursue a serious relationship with Aarons young poetry mentor Trevor Dixon. Aaron was coming over to watch movies. It had evolved into a sort of ritual for them, with his arrival after work, bringing a small stash of bud concealed in some hidden compartment in his ALICE pack.  

There was an organic quality to the way things had been going with hosting poetry readings, open mikes, and workshops that she felt was right – an undeniable rightness. Everyone seemed more honest these days, more raw and more vulnerable. During sad poems, movies, or even songs, Aaron cried openly. When she played the Radiohead acoustic cover of Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here,” he wept as if the song were personal, as if he had lost someone, as if someone he loved had recently died.  

But he had not yet learned how to carry himself burdened with the crushing weight of his life’s Sisyphean grief. The phone rang after midnight; it was him – nearly incoherent and indecipherable to anyone but her. So completely twisted on booze and pills she barely recognized his voice. The voice on the other end of the line was repeating in a sing song manner, “I’m gonna swim to the other side, baby.” She didn’t recognize the caller ID – the number was from a pay phone – and although she had never seen a pool at his apartments, she decided that it would be the best place to look for him. Mona left the apartment without a word as her fiancé fanaticized about intercourse with a Japanese anime character. Even the sound of the door slamming went unnoticed by Nathan as Sailor Moons animated image pirouetted across his monitor.  

The African cab drivers were spooked, afraid to pick up fares from their complex, given the recent string of unsolved murders of cabbies by neighborhood dope fiends, who could blame them. Now, she had to wait for her taxi in front of the quickie mart at the end of the block on the corner of Abrams and Forest next to their aging brick complex. Ten minutes later the taxi stopped at the Foxmoor complex, she paid the fare and got out of the cab and stared at the concrete stairs in the breezeway that led up to Aaron’s apartment. She didn’t even know where the pool was located. After walking around for a few minutes, she finally found it. She could hear him splashing around in the cool blue water, still very much alive, singing Concrete Blonde’s “Bloodletting.” As she neared the pool, she saw him swimming with a half-empty bottle of vodka floating next to him, a half smoked joint dangling from his lips, floating easily on his back as he stared up into the indigo sky. 

There was something about the image of him at that moment that made her think of her twin sister. Sometimes she missed her so badly it hurt. She wondered who it could be as she walked toward the pool’s black wrought-iron gate, already taking off her clothes automatically as if she had no choice. He had left a joint sitting beside his clothes at the edge of the pool. Mona picked up the roach and lit it with his Zippo. He floated at the opposite end of the pool staring up into the cloudless night sky singing,   

“So messed up I want you here.

In my room I want you here.  

Now we’re gonna be face to face.

And I lay right down in my favorite place.  

Now I wanna be your dog.  

Now I wanna be your dog,  

now I wanna be your dog,  

now I wanna be your dog.  

Come on!  

now I’m ready to close my eyes,  

now I’m ready to close my mind,  

now I’m ready to feel your hand  

and lose my heart on the burning sand. N 

ow I wanna be your dog,  

now I wanna be your dog,  

now I wanna be your dog.  

Come on!”   

He didn’t hear the iron gate slam shut with the force of the thick blacked steel spring on its hinges. He didn’t notice her until she surfaced beside him and smiled, her face shining with wetness. In the slippery lights of the pool, it seemed as if she had always been with him, as if it had always been this way, as if she had always been his somehow. He knew that was a lie, another of the mind’s grandiose illusions, a chimera of intimacy – even with this exquisite creature floating lazily beside him. She stood now in the shallows beside him reach over him and gingerly plucked the half joint from his lips. He reached for the bottle and poured its burning contents down his throat for several seconds until he breathed some of the vodka into his lungs. 

  He let go of the plastic bottle, now nearly empty, as he began to cough so hard, she feared he might regurgitate in the pool. It scorched his throat going down, then settled in his belly where it burned in his guts.  

“Goddamn, that was good.” He grinned at her and smiled realizing that he sounded like his father. Was that one of his lessons? Was that how he learned to feed one pain, to chase away another? He replaced the red plastic top and let the 1.75-liter bottle float off again as Mona swam to the recessed pale amber lights of cement steps at the edge of the pool.  

 

She reclined, half floating over the concrete steps of the shallow water. Her head tilted back so far only her face was above the waterline. She smoked and stared at the constellations, only acknowledging his face sliding gently between her thighs by spreading her legs even further apart. She sculpted her lips into an “O” and blew smoke rings around the stars, wondering how long he could hold his breath. 

-about the author

JD Cloudy’s poetry has disappeared in the literary journals: Fatfizz, Mad Swirl, Texas Beat Anthology, Danse Macabre, Du Jour, and Death List Five. He has won no literary awards, entered no slam competitions, and never completed college. He lives to write in Dallas, TX.