If This is Love I\’m Not Happy

Mexican Carol and I would drink Coors, hit a few bongs, and watch Alfred Hitchcock; after a good hard romp. I called her Mexican because I was also poking Red-Haired Carol and Pizza Hut Carol. She was Mexican too, right down to her little chile bean nipples.

It was convenient having three women named Carol at the same time, besides the obvious fact of never calling out the wrong name in the throes of orgasm, each was special in her own way.

Red-Haired Carol had an hour glass figure. She could have stepped out of a center fold, no staple. I believe she could’ve sucked the chrome off a 57 Chevy Nomad. Carrot top red, on both ends; makes my gonads tingle just thinking about all that red hair splayed across my lap.

Pizza Hut Carol was manager of, you guessed it, Pizza Hut. She was a big boned lady, not fat, just husky. I ate so much pizza and chugged so many free beers, they should’ve put my picture on their logo. This Carol was into leather, but not the tie me up and do kinky things kind; she had tools and hammers and made belts with your name on them. She liked it in unusual places: the floor, tables, and counter of Pizza Hut, up against the lion’s cage at the zoo, the cemetery, on top her Ford Falcon at the drive-in movie.

We once did it on the toilet at her grandparent’s house, going so wild we ripped the commode out of the floor. I’ll never forget what her grand-dad told me, standing there pointing his scatter gun at my belly button.

“Son, you ever come in my house again, I’ll blow your guts into such little pieces the buzzards won’t even waste time on ’em.”

My mother told me I’d always been attracted to Latin women. She said it started on a Greyhound bus on the way to Hollywood. We were going to the Queen For A Day Show from Fresno. She wanted to expose her rough, downtrodden life of being married to a bricklayer, to all America. How they were all no-good drunken skunk sons of bitches. There was this beautiful Mexican Lady on the bus, that held me while Mother went to the bathroom. When she got back to her dismay, I had my tiny two-year-old fingers up the woman’s dress. The lady and I were both smiling and enjoying ourselves.

Mexican Carol was my favorite. She could bump and grind and squeeze and tease. I told her she could milk a barn full of cows, better than a machine. She was so sweet, even her farts smelled like Chanel numero cinco.

My amigo always asked me how I managed three women. I replied, “One at a time.”

“There must be some advice you could give me?”

“Never lie, never tell everything, and get a secret weapon.”

“Secret weapon?” he asked.

“You heard me.”

“Well. Do I gotta beg?”

“How long have I known you?” I asked him.

“All your life, I’m your cousin,” he replied.

“I guess that’s long enough. What I am about to reveal to you has never been seen by a man.” I gave him my poem. He read it.

I Am

I am a rainbow, Jack the Ripper’s knife, a tumble weed, the petals of a rose, a worm drowning in mescal, Van Gogh’s ear, the Statue of Liberty, Hendrix’s guitar. I am now. I am free. I am.

“A poem?”

“That’s it.”

My sexathon continued. I felt like the Sheik of Arabia.

One afternoon I walked into Mexican Carol’s, the other two Carols were there also. This had never happened before, I smelled peligro, danger, dread.

One of them said, “The arrangement is no longer satisfactory.”

I awoke in the hospital, feeling like a herd of buffalo had walked on me.

A doctor entered the room, a dour look on his face. “What happened to you?” he asked.

“Domestic problem,” I shrugged.

“Paramedics brought you in beaten, half to death.” “Guess, I made it, huh?”

“That’s not all.”

“What are you keeping from me, doc?\”

“You’ve been castrated. We found your left testicle lodged in your throat and were able to reattach it. We were unable to locate your right testicle.”

“Damn. Will I be okay, you know sexually?”

“In about six months you should be able to perform within limitations, maybe once a month.” The doctor left.

About an hour later the phone rang.

“Hello,” I answered.

“Que pasa, lefty?” I heard three women laughing their asses off.

*

PRYING by Jack Micheline, Charles Bukowski, and Catfish McDaris