Joey Cloudy online

TRAMP: Muse

“White trash, get down on your knees

Time for cake and sodomy…

I am the god of fuck

I am the god of fuck”

-Marylin Manson

Tavah Allison Frankfurt possessed the strongest legal mind most would ever encounter. She was a favorite of the judges and lawyers she clerked for. You wouldn’t know it to look at her now, but just four short years ago, she was a hundred pounds heavier. She was the big girl who always followed local metal bands all through Brooklyn junior and senior high school and the first few years of college. She knew her groupie days were behind her the night she walked into the bar in Soho to hear her boy toy Jeremy’s lame assed metal band play. Jeremy was as scummy as the rest of the guys in his band, but he had a humongous schlong with the cutest little red rocket tattooed on his thigh that hung at the same angle as he did, and he always scored the best coke in New York, both of which made up for the fact that he was a first-class asshole. Generally, a pretty sorry excuse for a human being.

As she waited for the bartender to get her drink, she glanced around the room. The crowed bar bustling with the noises of pick up artist being rebuffed, feedback from the sound check as the next band dicked around with the sound system, manmade clouds of cigarette smoke hung in the dank air mixing with the smell of Clove cigarette’s, imposter designer perfumes, and the B.O. of all of the leather armored regulars, most of whom were in a band or dating someone in a band. She realized that, excluding drummers, she had fucked every guy in the room, including the bartender.

Tavah had seen the same look of thorough dreadfulness mirrored in Mona’s face at the coffee shop as one pathetic fucker after another read his poems, each beginning with the same adenoidal dedication “-for Mona” it was excruciatingly obvious that she had slept with every one of them.

Tavah sat at a table near the rear exit with Ahmad, carrying on as if she were still in grade school, passing notes mocking the dorks with a scathing commentary;

“as sharp as an egg.”

“No need to hide the DNA, no one’s gonna’ clone that one’,

“…fcp, Fat Chick Poetry.”

As she and Ahmad amused themselves passing notes during the reading, she noticed that every guy who read that night dedicated their poems to Mona. With the notable exceptions of Aaron and the six-foot-four-inch, micro-mini skirt sporting drag queen with a Fred Flintstone five o’clock shadow peeking out from beneath a flaking foundation.

Tavah felt sickened recalling the look of shame in Mona’s eyes as she sat there ashen-faced, trying to shrink into herself. It was a lesson in humiliation that Tavah had long since learned; Mona was not as quick a study. Tavah had never cared for Mona from the moment they first met; she found the sullen manner in which that petulant little girl carried herself despicable, but at that moment, she felt her disgust turn into pity.

Tavah awakened, wrapped in the warm afterglow of recreational drug indulgence. She lay on her back, stretching herself until her toes touched the cold brass bars at the foot of her bed as she arched her back and then reached up over her head and wrapped her long fingers around the cold brass bars of the headboard, pulling until she heard the soft pop of her back cracking. Ahh, that felt good. She relaxed her body and lay back down flat on the mattress as she stared at the ceiling for a moment, letting her eyes focus on the roof of the federal building across the street, where she had been working for the nine months since she moved to Dallas. Reaching for the Marlboros Reds on the bedside table, her gaze fell across her old friend Aaron asleep on the sofa not ten feet away from her bed in the middle of the loft. Tavah lit the cigarette but didn’t get out of bed.

She rolled onto her side, her head propped up on one arm, her elbow sinking into the pillow, smoking as she watched her sleeping guest. It was a striking image, his body stretched out in a gentle sleep, dressed in black jeans and a long-sleeved tee shirt. His hair free from the confines of his usual ponytail, his ever-lengthening dreadlocks hung across one side of his face, the thick cords fell over the edge of the sofa to cascaded over the edge of the red camelback sofa down towards the jet black concrete floor. If she didn’t live here and saw the picture, she would think that it was a photo shoot, one of those weird ones where the image never quite connects with the product being advertised. The idea of Aaron’s modeling was ludicrous. No one would ever use a middle-aged black man for a model, and even if they were stupid enough to think of such a thing, Aaron would never do it. He hated being told what to do by fashionable idiots. Still, she watched, examining the composition.

She possessed no artistic ability whatsoever, but she had taken the prerequisite art appreciation and art history courses at Columbia. Why was this composition working, she wondered, tapping her lengthening ash into the ashtray on the nightstand? It wasn’t just the contrast of his black clad figure against the crimson colored fabric that covered the camel-backed sofa. Nor was it only the contrast of the sofa against the floor. It was a tiny thing, a subtle detail that brought it all together in her head. It was the way his inside leg bent at the knee that rose up to echo the rise in the back of the sofa. Even in his sleep, he made art. Tavah knew she was being silly, but that was part of his appeal; he made it feel ok to not take life too seriously. A big smile had crept over her face as she watched him sleep. There was something sweet about him, like a boyish quality that he worked hard to suppress when he was awake.

Last night, at Desiree’s party, Tavah had truly enjoyed herself. Especially, when Desiree fell out of the skylight as she was climbing onto the roof using the aluminum ladder that Aaron kept in his room. She was so drunk she could barely walk, let alone climb a ladder, but she was determined to do it, even though Aaron, along with every other stoner and drunkard in the room, had cautioned her not to; each questioned the wisdom of her attempting such a feat in her inebriated condition.

As she reached the top following her boyfriend “old balls”, she placed one foot onto the edge of the skylight and lost her balance, and kicked the ladder over, then landed on it as it lay on its side. She landed flat on her back. Everyone thought for a moment that she was hurt or had broken a vertebra, but she had the luck of the drunkard on her side that night. Once it was established that she hadn’t been injured, everyone noticed that she had squashed the ladder from the side.

Tavah thought about it later. What were the odds of a woman falling almost fifteen feet, landing on her back on an aluminum ladder, and walking away with little more bruised than her ego? Some poor schmooh slips in the bathtub and ends up spending the rest of their life in a vegetative state; there were worse things than death, much worse.

It was nice to spend time with Aaron away from the poetry scene without Mona shadowing him or vice versa. Aaron said that they looked alike, but she couldn’t see it. It had been a rather pleasant evening overall, especially since that jackass Nathanial wasn’t there. Yeesh, what a creepy fucker he turned out to be.

The only thing more baffling than Mona and Nathanial as a couple was Aaron and Mona’s relationship. She just couldn’t wrap her head around why a guy like Aaron would waste so much of his time with that indolent waif; it infuriated Tavah. Aaron would be so much better off with someone whose passion and work ethic matched his own, not this third-rate piece of poor white trash with delusions of literary prowess. Mona disgusted her. She was sloth personified and a user.

Did being in the company of an attractive young woman mean that much to men? Was a hot body, tight pussy, and a pretty face such a valuable commodity that it blinded men to every flaw of morality, personality, and character in a woman? Mona had the charisma of a potted plant. They were nothing alike. She had nothing in common with that pathetic little user. Tavah could barely resist the urge to spit in her hostile little face when she saw her. She was never going to understand what Aaron saw in her. He seemed to have some misplaced sense of gratitude towards Mona, Trevor, and Brandon.

Lately, Mona had been banging Trevor exclusively, and that was something else she didn’t get. They were both so androgynous looking that she couldn’t see what the turn on would be; they looked more like brother and sister than a couple. She found Aaron’s fashioned since of loyalty rather quaint yet, simultaneously infuriating. His insistence that he was in their debt was, if not erroneous, definitely overstated.

Aaron had been a poet who thought he was a painter when he met Mona. She had not made him a poet so much as she had revealed to him that the words that he had been writing for most of his life were poems. He had no idea that most people didn’t write down their thoughts and ideas during the day. He assumed everyone wrote what they thought, that everyone had notebooks full of ideas, songs, and stories. Aaron thought that this thing that kept him up late at night after going to school and work, forcing him to paint and write, was something that everyone had to deal with.

And that his use of language was of no more significance than sleep, dreams, or nightmares. It was not something special that he wanted to do; it required no more effort on his part than touching something with his eyes or listening to the sound of his heartbeat. He exercised very little control over it; it was what he had to do. Writing for him was not something that required some Herculean effort, quite the contrary, actually; trying not to create for him would be akin to trying not to breathe. Aaron was a great poet, not because of some Pygmalion transformation that they had performed on him; they didn’t make him a poet, they just gave a title to what he had been doing his entire life. Paul Farmer said it best nearly a decade ago when he told him. “Writers write.”

Aaron only slept for five hours a night; you could set your clock by it. No matter when or where he went to sleep, no matter how drunk, drugged out, or tired he was, he would always pop right up in five hours. He explained it as being able to dive straight into REM state, a way of compressing one’s sleep cycle. He didn’t have insomnia; he woke up wide awake, feeling refreshed after only five hours of sleep. He didn’t remember when things had been any different.

He slept the way porn stars fucked if they were high on ecstasy and jacked up on Viagra. There was no need for fluffers. He climbed into bed with sleep with an obscenity of a hard on, spread her legs, spit into the palm of his hand, and smeared it all over the head of his dick was as close to foreplay as he gave sleep before he rammed it into sleep to the hilt. His waking life was the fluffer on the set. Sleep was a whore you just fucked her until you busted a nut. You don’t kiss a whore because you know where her mouth’s been. You don’t put your mouth anywhere near some drugged-out scank’s twat.

The only thing you put in a whore is your latex-armed erection. You only have to give a woman who makes her living on her back one thing, the same thing you have to give any beautiful woman you want to sleep with eventually, and that’s your fucking money. You just put your hand around a whore’s throat, suck on a nipple if she’s got nice tits, and start fucking.

This is ‘The Joy Of Selfishness’, a woman’s climax moves at a tectonic pace. Forget about your girlfriend or your wife, who’ll have your face buried in her crotch for hours until your tongue cramps and your jaw aches before she can cum. You don’t have to hold back or worry about coming before she does. Premature ejaculators are just like working a half day; the words multiple and mutual orgasms aren’t even in her vocabulary.

You don’t worry about a whore’s orgasm; that’s the great thing about fucking prostitutes, it’s their job to worry about your orgasms. Every time he went to bed, he made sleep his jailhouse bitch. It was something you could set your watch by. If you observed him and looked at the time when he went to sleep, no matter how fucked up or exhausted he was, he always popped up in exactly five hours. It was un-fucking canny.

He was always a little wary looking for a moment until he focused his eyes and got his bearings, and then he was up, sucking down coffee, writing in one of his notebooks for a few hours before he headed to work. Not that he wasn’t one delightful fucker, she wouldn’t invite him over so much if he weren’t such good company. Aaron was an excellent conversationalist, and traveling with a man around town kept the creeps from harassing you every time you walked out of your apartment.

He had all of the personality traits that she desired in a man, and she was long over the whole marrying a “goyim” thing. Life was too short to let a little foreskin stand between her and happiness. But, he didn’t make her heart go pitter-patter. She was so relaxed around him; with every guy she had ever been around, she could never use the toilet to take a shit with them in the house. But with him around, she had no problems making a bowel movement. He had seen her hungover, no makeup, with morning breath and bed head. Hell, he had even seen her bleaching the hair over her top lip and waxing her moustache and not been creeped out by it.

He was the first guy that she had met who appreciated the fact that she didn’t shave her bush. This was one of the cases where his age was an advantage. Having grown up in a culture where most girls didn’t shave their pits or legs, let alone their pubes. It was Aaron who explained to her why her boyfriends her age wanted her to shave her bush, which she thought of as a symbol of her womanhood, was because they had grown up on porn. All of their ideas about sex were filtered through the simulated sex they’d grown up on, streaming into their prepubescent consciousness everywhere from cable and satellite TV, to video, DVD, and the internet. Their first sexual experiences were all hopelessly tied up with the sex industry.

Aaron was from a different era as well as culture; the first girls he had ever dreamed about were the girls he went to school with in the fifth grade. He had grown up seeing beautiful women with underarm hair and unshaved legs. As a student of sociology, he understood that standards of beauty were not real. They changed from place to place and over the course of history. Ultimately, even though he possessed a very strong visual aesthetic, he understood that it was silly to waste too much of your time worrying about being pretty. He understood things about the nature of men. She told him more than once that he was a credit to his gender.

“Listen, Tavah, the Greco-Roman standard of beauty that has been adopted by America does not, cannot apply to everyone. Nothing is uglier than stupidity and mean-spiritedness, no matter how pretty the face or well-developed the body. You have to figure out for yourself, without the psychic pollution of the mass media, what works best for you. Think about it. If I, as a black man in America, let the media, ad agencies, and pop culture determine for me what I should look like, I would look like Michael Jackson by now. Now, is there anything more pathetic than a black man trying to look like a white woman?”

Aaron was also one of the best-read individuals that she had ever met. In that respect, he was a lot like other intellectuals who had grown up poor. She had met a few other autodidactic types like himself who seemed to feel the need to overcompensate for having been too poor to go to college by learning everything that they could wrap their heads around. The fact that he was so well endowed intellectually was in large part what made him such pleasant company.

Yes, he was unapologetically perverted, but she suspected that he wasn’t any more depraved than any other man in America; he just didn’t lie about it in order to scam women into thinking he was a nice guy so that he could get them into bed. If only things were not so complicated with him. Tavah had thought about the situation with Aaron before; she knew herself well enough to know that if he were anything other than black, except a goddamned Muslim, then she would have long since drained his bone.

Even her mensch of a mother, who had never even met him in person but only chatted with him briefly over the phone a few times, had been won over by him, as well as her little brother, who hated every guy she had ever dated in her life. Everyone seemed to be waiting for Tavah to come to her senses and snap this guy up before some other girl did. But, she couldn’t do it. Was it wrong to take up so much of his time? She tried to rationalize it, telling herself that he was just her connection, but she had been getting her pot from Roderick, the bartender at the Balcony Club, for six months.

She had even gone so far as to run a criminal background check on Aaron and pull up his credit report from work; one of the advantages of working for a federal judge was that she had access to this sort of information on just about anyone. Of all of the men she had ever known, the only person she had ever checked up on was Aaron. And what did she find out? That he had no credit to speak of, he had two ex-wives and four estranged children, that he was behind on his child support, and the only thing criminal on his records were unpaid traffic tickets. If he ever found out what she had done, he would never speak to her again. Why had she even bothered? She discovered nothing that she didn’t know, because he’d already told her everything about himself.

Tavah had a knack for sizing people up and getting to the core of what made a person tick. The tragedy of it was that while she could easily figure out what was wrong with any of her girlfriends’ lives, she could never seem to get her own shit together as far as relationships. In that respect, like most, she was invisible to herself, and Aaron was the exact same way.

-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.