Joey Cloudy online

chapter 13

TRAMP: Poetry in the time of Apocalypses New Year’s Eve 1999

Aaron wasn’t panicked; he rationalized this move as a transitional phase. He didn’t want to move out of his apartment. There was nothing special about it to outsiders, but this was the first time in his life that he had a place that was a reflection of his own taste. When he was married, his wives took over the decorating. They thought they had created a unique space, but to him it seemed like it was decorated by a Stepford wife. They didn’t seem to understand that they were all reading the same home decor magazines and copying the style of the same designers and interior decorators slavishly until there was nothing in the house that looked like them except the family photographs.

Aaron loved his little second-floor apartment. The location was perfect, a quarter mile from his favorite grocery store, a 24-hour Tom Thumb. And in the same strip mall was also located one of his favorite eateries, Brothers New York Style Pizzeria, which had the best Stromboli in the city. A Denny’s, where he would take Ahmaad for Sunday breakfast instead of the doughnut shop they ate at during the week. There was even a video rental store there as well.

Over the years, he had carefully furnished and decorated, while living alone for most of that time. He built one of the many bookshelves by stacking the sections of the cubicle and using stainless steel brackets to stabilize them. No one ever realized that they were stacked sections of a cubicle storage he stacked liked Jenga blocks and bolted together.

The TV stand was a repurposed cabinet from a doctor’s office. The cobalt blue sofa trimmed in chrome came from the same office. The half barrel he used as an end table, he found sitting on the curb, and spent a weekend sanding, cleaning, and varnishing it at the shop before he brought it back to his apartment.

The Sandman poster, the Pulp Fiction poster, and his own water colors, he had framed himself with scraps of molding left over from jobs at the frame shop.

Nat and Mona came over and helped him load the big pieces into his pickup. He had helped them move out of his parents’ house into thier apartment near Forrest and Abrams, and Skillman a few years ago. They weren’t very strong and didn’t really know how to move heavy furniture, but he was glad for the company as he moved.

After they loaded the last of his junk into the storage unit, he bought Chinese, and they ate at Mona and Nat’s apartment before he headed across town to crash on his cousin Robbie’s sofa. He hadn’t really spent any time hanging out with Robbie except on every other weekend when he had custody his son Ahmaad, then he would make it a point to always drive to the southside to visit family so Ahmaad would have the opportunity to make friends with black folks.

Ahmaad’s blonde haired blue eyed mother had moved to Garland, one of the most racist, hickish suburbs of Dallas. Aaron didn’t understand why a white woman who only dated black men and had a biracial child would move to such a place. Years later, he would discover that she, too, was addicted to cocaine and was fleeing her old life.

It didn’t work; she ended up marrying a druggie ex-con who beat her. Aaron didn’t understand why Christine had kicked her husband out. Aaron and Christine were friends; they would go outside to the garage to smoke pot and talk when ever he visited his cousin Robbie at their 2 story brick house in the Grove. Over the years, they became like brother and sister in laws. She would try to fix him up with some of the single ladies from her office. He would babysit while they went clubbing. Ahmaad would hang out with his cousins while Aaron watched old movies on cable TV.

When the neighborhood drug dealers began to come by to hang out after they finished thier shift, Aaron began to suspect he knew why Christine had kicked his cousin out. The guys would show up in the middle of the night and stay until sunrise, playing Madden and smoking blunts.

Aaron still thought of himself as a visual artist, a painter, and an illustrator. 6 months from now, Mona will call him with a question just before 1999 ends. He hasn’t seen Mona in 6 months because Aaron refuses to play D&D with her and Nat’s friends.

He’d been busy working in an Antique warehouse in Forney, a small town about 30 miles east of Dallas. The manager there likes him and remembers him from seeing him occasionally show up to help his older adopted brother, Christopher Williams, make deliveries. The reason he hired Aaron was that he had seen him arrange the chairs around a dining room table after they delivered it to the showroom floor. It was a small thing, but he had never seen a delivery guy take the trouble to arrange the chairs properly after they made a delivery.

When he heard Aaron was looking for work, he offered him 100 dollars a day, cash. The shop opened at 9am and closed at 5pm. He had Aaron come in at 10, take an hour for lunch at noon, and leave by 3. The old manager of the Clements family business, JD, was one of the good ones.

During the 6 months that Mona had not seen Aaron, she found herself looking at the sketch he had given her 2 years ago when he was still playing Dungeons and Dragons with her and Nathan. It was a pencil sketch of her D&D character dancing in the rain, and it was lovely. But what kept her coming back to it was the poem he had written in the margins. He had long ago stopped coming over to game with them and had told them all that they were wasting their talents playing the game instead of creating something of their own.

Mona hated gaming and only played because she was trying to keep Nathan happy. But Aaron’s abandoning the group had given her the courage to quit, too. Neither Nathan and his gamer friends, nor her twin Mia and her husband Walton, were happy about this. Mona picked up the cordless phone and dialed Aaron’s pager number from memory, and left a message on his voicemail:

“Hi Aaron, it’s me, Mona. We need to talk, call me.”

Aaron called her back after work once he got to his cousin Robbie’s apartment.

“Hey, I got your message while I was stuck in traffic on my way home, so what’s on your mind, Mona’?”

Aaron had a great day at work, even getting a 100-dollar tip from the Egyptian antiques dealer Sabah. He liked Aaron, he noticed that whenever ever saw him on break, he was reading a book as he ate lunch alone. He was quiet and avoided all of the usual shit-talking talking cussing and name-calling that the other black guys who did delivery and warehouse work.

What did they call it, playing the twelves? No, the Dozens, the game of exchanging insults in black American culture, was called playing the dozens. He didn’t understand it, but this was not his country or his culture.

Aaron sat at the end of the loading docks, reading a second-hand paperback copy of ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’ and smoking a Newport 100 when Sabah sat down next to him. Sabah lit a Gauloises as he greeted his only friend here.

“Aaron, I have a question for you, my friend,” Sabah said earnestly.

“I’ll do my best to answer if I can.” Aaron replied between sips of his Dairy Queen root beer float.

“Why do these white people in America not understand that the Egyptians are Africans?”

Aaron tossed back his head and laughed a little too loudly.

“Hollywood and racism. They think the original Egyptians look like you instead of me. But you and I both know that’s not true. They get most of thier education from movies and TV shows. And they always cast white people in these shows. I could gather a stack of anthropology and history books from the finest Ivy League university’s and show them the art in the oldest pyramids, show very black skinned, wide-nosed, thick-lipped people, and they will not believe it. The Greeks knew this, the Romans knew this why they don’t is because the truth conflicts with their racist fantasy. The conative dissonance should cause their heads to explode.”

“I knew you would have an answer. Sabah sighed. They are a very strange people.”

“A very strange people indeed.”

Since it was New Year’s Eve 1999, Aaron decided to take Mona to a tiny Italian place on Lower Greenville, Sister Sempre, located across the street from Whole Foods and Blockbuster behind the 7-11. The place was so tiny it looked like a small house rather than a restaurant. The waiter was a consummate professional, and Mona noticed that he obviously remembered Aaron from his previous night’s dining here.

Within the confines of the little restaurant, it was a cozy, intimate atmosphere, with dark-stained woods and amber Christmas lights wrapped around the post, and exposed beams enhancing the ambiance of the tiny space. Aaron ordered a vegetarian pizza for Mona that they would share and an order of fried calamari for himself. When the warm bread and garlic butter arrived, he thanked the waitress and began to devour one of the tiny loaves.

He offered to share his calamari with her when it arrived, promising that it was good with the sauce, but she just smiled and said no as she ate her pizza. After dinner, they decided to take a walk down Greenville Avenue. Aaron left the vermilion 87′ Chevy pick-up parked in front of the restaurant. The strip was already bumper to bumper; he would go east to Matilda and avoid the parking lot that would be Greenville Avenue for the rest of the evening. The street was lined bumper to bumper with college kids on their way to the clubs and bars on the strip.

“Aaron, I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said the last time I saw you, the thing about not wanting to waste your life gaming, and I think you’re right. So, what I want to know is: what do you want to do with your life?”

“Why the same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world.”

Mona laughed. His Orson Wells impression was awful, all of his impressions were awful, but he did them anyway, always totally committing to the bit, and that always got a laugh out of her.

“Aaron, I’m serious, taking over the world is fine, but a bit vague. How specifically are you going to take over the world?

“I’ll take over the world of writers.”

“What kind of writers? That’s kinda’ vague.”

‘I’ll take over the world of poetry.”

‘Ok, but the world’s kinda big, maybe you should narrow your focus.”

“I could start by taking over the poetry here in Dallas.”

“Now, that is a doable plan. You can take over the poetry scene here in Dallas, and I am going to help you do it.’

“Mona, I know nothing about poetry or the ‘poetry scene’ in Dallas. Other than the stuff they make you read in high school, the only poetry I’ve seen was about something called Slam Poetry on PBS a few years ago. It seemed kinda stupid to me. It looked like someone combined the rules of bull riding and rapping into the worst thing ever.”

Mona began laughing uncontrollably.

“You’re right, I know those people on the slam team, and they are God awful.” She said between guffaws.

“We need to find a spot avenue where we can meet with other writers who have no interest in being rodeo poets. Give me a few days, I know some people who might be willing to help us secure a venue and get started.”

Mona took his hand as they continued walking past the noise of engines revving, horns blowing, loud music of clubs, bars, and cars, and college kids shouting out the windows of their cars when they saw one of their friends walking by.

They strolled past the myriad bars, clubs, and tax shelter knick-knack shops as they headed south down Greenville Avenue. They sat on a park bench at Garrett Park across the street from the arches of the stained-glass window of the Munger Place Methodist. From here, they could see the fireworks show lighting up the sky over South Dallas Fair Park.

It was December 31st, 1999, and as the end of the year approached, everyone readied themselves for the coming Y2K apocalypse. Mona and Aaron would battle whatever came armed to the teeth with a fist full of poems.

-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.