Joey Cloudy online

chapter 8 version III 

TRAMP: Nathanial III

The Drunker You Get, the Blacker You Talk – 2001 

–Karla 

“I wish I was special, but I’m a creep. I’m a weirdo. 

What the hell am I doing here. I don’t belong here.” 

-Damien Rice 

Nathanial Percival Robertson III ran the fingers of both hands over the top of his bald head, then ran his them through the rusty curls on the side and back of his head before scratching his beard. He was house-sitting again, and whenever he was obligated to guard his parents’ home while they were on holiday, traveling abroad in some exotic locale populated with tiny brown skinned smiling islanders. He used it as an excuse to party. 

Mona, Aaron, and his new Israeli lawyer friend from Brooklyn, Tavah, were all stoned off their asses on hydro, sprawled on their backs, bellies, and each other on the antique Prussian rugs that cover the cherry hardwood floors in one of the studies of Nathan’s parents’ estate. Mona looked around the room as they lay tripping. She didn’t really like her fiancé’s parents’ mansion and was happy when they paid for them to move out of Nathan’s old room into their own one-bedroom apartment. 

His parents despised her, speaking to her only when necessary, with the thinnest veiled contempt. IT was better than being out on the streets. Aaron didn’t notice that his new girlfriend didn’t really like Nathan or Mona. She wasn’t rude, but Mona knew when a woman didn’t like her. Are these my friends? Briefly contemplating random ideas as they floated into and out of her blurry skull. What did they have in common anyways? Why were they friends at all? How had they come together? Maybe it was the fellowship of rationalists? It took an odd sort of courage to face a faithless future. They were all atheists or agnostics, which her fiancé, Nathanial, referred to as an atheist with no conviction. In the same way that a bisexual is a homosexual without conviction. She knew that her fiancé was, in fact, gay and suspected that Aaron was bi from his paintings and occasional hints dropped in passing during casual conversations over the years. 

Where should we go to eat? The dreadlocked man caressed the head and face of the woman whose head lay on his chest. Tavah puffed on the joint, not really caring where they ate. 

I just want coffee. Mona said in her soft voice with her customary rapid-fire delivery. As she pushed her shoulder-length dark hair behind her ears, she continued her work. Revealing a fading hickey on her neck. 

I don’t care where we go, Tavah exhaled. I just want a waiter or a waitress to bring my food and drinks to the table. 

So, you want servants? Mona giggled, sitting cross-legged beside them, stringing beads for her jewelry to sell later in Deep Ellum, while they all lounged about Nathan’s parents’ mansion. 

Yes, for the next few hours, I would like servants. 

You know she has a maid clean her loft. Aaron drawled, ignoring a firm elbow to the ribs from the tall brunette whose head rested on his chest. As she read the Olympia Reader paperback, 1965, Grove Press, she had pulled from Aaron’s ALICE pack. He picked it up at the used bookstore the previous evening. Explaining that famous writers of the mid-20th century wrote porn under pseudonyms, and he had grown up reading this smut since he was in grade school.  

The only name Tavah recognized from the table of contents of the smutty short stories was Henry Miller, but she had never read Sextus or any of the other books of The Rosy Crucifixion. Before seeing William Burroughs, The Soft Machine, she recalled watching the movie Naked Lunch in college. And she recalled everyone’s shock when they discovered the soft rock group Steely Dan’s name came from a steam-powered strap-on dildo manufactured by the Yukiyama Company. Steely Dan number three is what the woman called the thing, having worn out one and two on her previous lovers.  

Hey, she came with the lease. Tavah exclaimed, passing the smoking joint to Aaron. I can’t believe you read this as a child. Tavah chided, No wonder you’re so fucked up. 

I happen to know you gotta’ pay extra for housekeeping. You’re not my only friend in the Santa Fe Lofts. He said petulantly, sticking out his tongue. Horas and Kira live on the top floor. 

Anywhere but the Pit, Nathanial Percival Robertson III said, we have eaten there so much lately I am growing more than a little weary of the place that you generously refer to as a cafe. When in fact the more accurate descriptor would be shithole on its best day. 

Yeah, but it’s a shit hole that’s open 24 hours with a kick ass jukebox. Mona offered in defense of their favorite dive café. 

I am tired of looking at those pretentious University Park, Park Cities hillbillies. Aaron said, holding in the smoke from the joint as much as possible as he spoke. Little white puffs escaped with each syllable he spoke. No offence, old man, present company excluded. 

Non taken, Nathanial said magnanimously, I fully understand the history of the demographic that I (who, while I personally may not be wealthy, being the child of the entitled, I am, as you would say, rich by proxy) coincidentally represent. Ironic that I am cursed with the genetics of a shallow gene pool; my life as a white man of means will be unchallenged, unremarkable, and tragically short. The men in my family are in the filthy habit of dying of sudden heart failure by the time they are 50. 

I’m aware that I’m the only one here who has a Trust fund. By the time my sister and I were adolescents, we knew the approximate net worth in dollars and euros of every one of our grandparents, uncles, and aunts in whose wills we were destined to inherit a portion of their fortunes. Due to our peculiar genetic disorder, we knew approximately when we were going to get a bump in our Net Worth with each new addition to our portfolios. 

True, these ridiculous hicks, the descendants of old Texas oil men, the wild catters, the white trash who struck it rich when they struck oil, cattlemen, ranchers, and developers, realtors. Retailers, businessmen, and the people who owned the stores you bought your food and clothing from. And the bankers who lend money to finance cars, mortgages, and businesses, big and small. They were the lawyers who prosecuted those foolish enough to travel outside of the law. 

Whether the laws were just or not was irrelevant; it was simply a matter of law to these sheepish ignoramuses. The visage of the judges mirrored the chalk faces of the jury pool. Their grandparents and great-grandparents may have been nothing but poor white trash, but their children were white trash with delusions of taste and money enough to whitewash away their sins. Now they all suffered from an overdeveloped sense of their own nonexistent specialness. 

How about Café Brazil? Mona suggested. 

Not the one off Central, good lord, woman, it has a far worse clientele than the Pit. Nathanial took the roach from Tavah, puffed on it before putting the end out in the 12-inch square marble astray. 

It’s the closest Aaron said a bit impatiently, but we’re going to Deep Ellum. Let’s go. Aaron said resolutely. Mona and the others got up to get their shoes on. She observed the subtle power of how Aaron directed them all. It was he who first suggested they eat, and it was at his command that they all now rose. He seemed oblivious to the fact that he was a penniless poet in a rich man’s mansion. 

To strangers, he was just the black guy, but to his friends, to Mona, and everyone in this room, he was their friend Aaron the poet. They were in a mansion owned by a wealthy white doctor, yet it was the impoverished black man they all followed, not because he was a decade older, not because he was a veteran, not because he was a father; he led with the power of his word. Where he went, they all followed; they were his Ruth. She didn’t want to die poor, or else she would be engaged to Aaron instead of Nathan, raising their beautiful half black baby. 

You know what the first casualty of war is. 

No. 

Sanity. Aaron stated flatly, When I enlisted… 

You weren’t drafted? Nathanial queried. 

Hell no, how old do you think I am, Dude? No. I’m too young for the draft. It was my older brother Dickson from my father’s first marriage who was drafted. They sent him to the meat grinder during the police action, or undeclared war, or whatever the hell you want to call it in ‘Nam. But he’s just a myth to me, a legend never even seen so much as a picture before, hell, I don’t even know if we have the same last name because I’m not sure exactly when my father changed his last name. I enlisted during the Iranian hostage crisis of ’79. I signed up to go kick some sand nigga’ ass the summer before my senior year, then flew to San Diego for boot camp after graduation. 

What did your father think about your enlisting? Tavah asked between sips of wine. 

It was one of the happiest moments in his life when I told him I was joining the Marines. The other would have to be the day he walked into my room unannounced, caught me fucking. He was so happy that it was a girl, he didn’t know how to act. He never would admit it, but I was such an alien creature to him that he had no idea how to deal with me as a child. He would always look at me, shake his head, and say; 

 “Boy, you just like yo momma.” 

 Whenever he saw me hold up in my room alone all the time reading, writing, painting, watching musicals, opera, or figure skating on TV. That was just a nice way of saying he thought I was kinda faggy. 

I do not think your father thought you were gay. Nathaniel said as he returned with another bottle of pinot noir. He circled the room, refilling everyone’s glass except for Mona, the lone teetotaler in their motley crew. 

Nathan enjoyed playing the role of the compère when his friends visited. He was a gracious host, whether they were here in the opulence of his parents’ Georgian mansion or in the dank confines of the one-bedroom Maisonette he and Mona shared. He always enjoyed having company. The sound of glasses clinking being raised in a toast, the music of their conversation, the chorus of laughter, these are the things that brought him joy. He learned about the real world from his friends, and that was important to him to try to know what was really out there while he was on top of the earth instead of beneath it 

You’re probably just misunderstanding whatever it was that he was really concerned about. Mona offered in a consolatory tone. As she contemplated what a child would look like with Aaron, while her fiancé refilled their wine glasses. He already had one mixed 9-year-old child. She had seen Ahmaad, and he was beautiful. She had seen photos in his old photobooks of his son’s mother; she was blonde with blue eyes, still as slender as she was as a teen model.

Mona was paler and had much larger titties than Aaron’s ex-wife, but she was just as pretty in a different, darker way. She wondered if she married him, would he even want another child? He had daughters from his first marriage who lived in one of the Carolinas. He carried a photo of them in his notebook, and they were pretty in the same way he was. Aaron was the only black guy she had ever been in a relationship with.

Sure, she had slept with a few when she was still on the streets hustling, but sucking a guy’s cock in a car parked in a lot in Deep Ellum for dope money didn’t constitute a relationship. Even on the nights that she occasionally slept on the drug dealer Sterling’s sofa while he slept in his bedroom with Fatima after smoking cocaine and screwing around with his girl while he watched, they were never in anything you could call a relationship.  

But what was happening between her and Aaron was something real. And she knew if she tried to have it, she would lose everything. It finally dawned on her that Aaron was the first black man she had ever fallen in love with. The thought stunned her. How had that happened? How had she lost control and let something like this happen? I’m in love with Aaron?! The world began to spin as the realization landed on her consciousness. I love Aaron. The words detonated like a car bomb in her skull. 

You don’t know my father. He’s a black man who grew up working as a sharecropper in the Jim Crow South. My daddy never got past the 5th grade because he had to go into them goddamned fields and help pick crops to make enough to keep their family alive. He was raised by his grandfather, a fire-and-brimstone Southern Baptist Preacher.  

I was a sensitive, soft-spoken, bookish kid who preferred to spend my time alone in my room reading and drawing. Sure, I went hunting and fishing with the old man and my brother and cousins down in East Texas, but even though I was the best shot of us all, everyone thought it was just some sort of a lucky fluke. 

Everyone thought I was weird, my aunts, uncles, and cousins, because I was weird. My daddy had nothing in his experience to measure me against. The idea that a sensitive, bookworm of a son was a good thing was as foreign to him as particle physics. He had a rather simple, John Wayne, Ernest Hemingway, country boy sort of view of the world, and if you didn’t fit easily into his narrow category of manhood, then you weren’t a real man. That’s what he really thought: that if you weren’t some macho cliché, then you were a sissy. I envy him his simplicity. 

He was so happy when he caught me in bed with a girl. Back when I first signed on, I thought I was a patriot, one of the good guys, like every dip shit dumb enough to enlist. But the sad truth of the matter was that I was just another expendable piece of meat. I was young, stupid, thought I had something to prove, and I thought we were the good guys. But I was wrong, we were all wrong. 

I was in my psycho killer phase, too much TV, too much testosterone, when I was obsessed with what it would be like to kill people. I constantly wondered would it be like squashing a roach, sliding a hook through the length of an earthworms body, hooking a fish through the eye, feeding green light to a rat, kicking a cat off of the balcony of a third floor apartment, shooting a squirrel in the neck with a twenty-two rifle, snapping a wounded rabbits neck, running over a dog? I wanted to go to war to prove I was a real man, a killer of men, a real American hero. You know what the difference is between the enemy and us. 

No? Nathanial said meekly. 

Neither do I. Aaron replied with a shrug. When you kill people for your country, they call you a good soldier and praise you for being a hero. But you are not a hero. What you are is a killer. Sanctioned by the state to murder in the name of whatever political abstraction is in vogue at that particular moment in your native land. That is all a soldier is. A murderer for the state. A low wage assassin for those draft dodging, Ivy League cowards we call politicians. 

I thought you liked being a Marine? Mona said quizzically. 

Oh, make no mistake, Aaron continued solemnly, I love the Corps. But I detest flag-waving, jingoistic idiot politicians, craven bureaucrats who are always letting their Lone Ranger mouths overload their Mickey Mouse asses. 

I always sort of admired the fact that you had been in the service. Nathanial stated flatly. It always seemed so patriotic. 

Hired guns for old men who murder by proxy. Aaron stated without a hint of irony, A romanticized murderer of men, women, and children. Blood lust is a powerful thing; once awakened in a man, it is not always easily stopped. In the field, you are the judge, jury, and executioner. You see how men react when the only law is survival. In the midst of it, you come to realize that “there is but one law do what thy wilt”, soon enough you see that, given opportunity and little encouragement, people do what they can get away with. 

How many people did you kill? Nathanial asked without thinking. 

None. Aaron said, a mischievous smile spreading across his face as he spoke. They made me a cook. The closest I came to killing anybody was the night I gave a shift of military police food poisoning.  

The funniest part about giving those MPs food poisoning is that they all believed that I did it on purpose to punish them for busting a couple of stoned cooks a few days before. Marine Corps cooks had a reputation for being a bit volatile before I arrived in Barstow. One guy slapped a staff sergeant with a red-hot stainless-steel spatula while he was on the grill for complaining about his over-easy eggs. 

 Another cook, a former NFL kicker for the Eagles, kicked a marine in the ass so hard he ruptured the man’s sphincter. I had several close calls before on my record and was known to step out of formation and get right in a staff sergeant’s face if they crossed the line talking to me. They always backed down. But they knew I wasn’t scared to fight, and no matter how smooth the voice, I could go from zero to real nigga’ in point .05 seconds.  

I lucked out, I got an honorable discharge after my first tour and managed to escape that mad institution with nobodies’ blood on my hands.  

Whooo fucking Raaa! 

-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.