Posts tagged "stories"

2
edie gobbler stories miss amanda jones

Nov 12

Miss Amanda Jones

by Chris Eng

“That’s your romantic night for us?” Edie stared at Gobbler, looking for any trace of black humour in what he’d just said. “You want to eat microwaved 7-11 food and watch movies while getting drunk on cider.”

Gobbler’s expression was utterly devoid of irony and he seemed to be missing any flaws in the plan. “Um… yeah? We don’t have to go to 7-11, if you don’t want to. The Speedy Market’s got food, too.”

Edie studied her boyfriend while she ran his words over in her mind. He was cute—that was a point in his favour. His short-cropped haircut and clean-shaven face accentuated his youthfulness (and periodic cluelessness… like now); the form-fitting Johnny Hobo shirt and black jeans were masculine without going overboard, and his matching tattoo sleeves of art based on Jack Kirby’s New Gods—well, those were just hot. But he honestly didn’t see what she was upset about.

“Dude, this is our anniversary!”

“I know! One whole year. It’s awesome.”

“It is. And if we hadn’t done anything at all, I probably would have been okay with that, but you promised me a romantic evening and the Speedy Market really wasn’t what I had pictured.” In point of fact, Edie had dressed up a little in anticipation. Her hair was done like it usually was, cut short with the peroxide blonde growing out and her brown undercut showing, but she’d worn her classiest jacket (the red plaid one) over a Cock Sparrer t-shirt and added a black miniskirt, some old fishnets and her 16-hole silver Docs. Considering what Gobbler had just proposed, she’d definitely overdressed.

“What kind of dinner did you have pictured, then?”

“I dunno. Maybe some kind of picnic. That would have been nice.”

“I didn’t have time to do any shopping. I worked at the art store today.”

“You could have picked something up on the way home.”

“The stuff from 7-11 would be cold and gross by now.”

“I am so not talking about 7-11 or the Speedy Market anymore. You could have gone to the supermarket and picked up some olives and a salad. Dude, we could have made a salad. It’s not hard. And we could have drunk wine instead of cider.”

“I thought you liked cider.” The confusion on his face seemed to grow ever deeper as the conversation went on.

“I do, but we get drunk on it, like, three times a week. A little variety is nice sometimes.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine. Forget it.” She was irritated but not willing to spend the evening fighting over their anniversary plans. That’s what stupid “normal” people did. She changed the subject. “What movie did you want to watch?”

“Sid and Nancy?”

“Seriously?! I am not watching the story of a couple of self-destructing junkies on a night when we’re supposed to be celebrating our love. God, I hate that film. I mean, a thousand Punk Points for the idea, but minus a thousand for the romantic gesture.”

“Suburbia?”

“Jesus, Gobbler.” She massaged her left temple with her fingertips. “You know, just because we’re punks doesn’t mean we can only watch movies about them.”

Gobbler gestured at the TV/VCR combo on the far side of the room and the smallish pile of VHS cassettes next to it. “I don’t have that many tapes and the DVD player is broken.”

“I know; I live here, too.”

“How about Some Kind of Wonderful?”

“Sure. Why not.”

“It’s your favourite movie.”

“I know. Go put it on.”

“What about dinner?”

“We can worry about dinner later. Just…” She sighed a sigh comprised of equal parts disappointment and exhaustion. “Just put the movie on.”

He scuttled off the double-stacked mattress that was their bed, grabbed one of the tapes, and shoved it into the VCR. The TV screen flickered for a second and rearranged itself into the scene where Eric Stolz shows Lea Thompson the painting he made of her. The scene that always made her cry for some stupid reason. Awesome. She started to well up instinctively.

“Do you want me to rewind it?” he asked.

“No.” She focused on an section of wall far removed from the TV. “Just let it play.” Pressure was starting to build around the back of her skull and threatened to turn into a headache. On top of that, she was aware that unmoderated aggravation was coming through in her voice, but didn’t care enough to stop it.

Gobbler sat down on the bed next to her. “This isn’t what you wanted tonight to be, is it?”

“Honestly? Not really, no. But I’ve learned that life is a whole lot of ‘not what you wanted it to be’.”

He made an apologetic half-smile. “I got you a present.”

“You did? Why?” She was genuinely surprised by that. Presents weren’t something they did for each other. They celebrated each other’s birthdays and Christmas by doing something fun, but presents weren’t usually part of the scenario. Both of them preferred experiences to collecting more material possessions. “I didn’t get anything for you.”

“I didn’t expect anything from you. Hold on,” he said as he got up and left the room for a minute, leaving her with the movie. There was nothing to distract her now and her eyes kept tracking back to the screen and she kept edging closer to tears and she was pissed-off and tired and wasn’t sure how much longer she could hold it together.

Gobbler came back in the room. He was holding a painting.

It was on a two foot by three foot canvas and he’d evidently been working on it for a while, since it had all of his style but none of the rushed tone evident in his other art. It was of Edie standing under a streetlamp wearing her leather jacket and smiling. She looked radiant.

And Edie did burst into tears then and there was nothing she could do to stop them. She tried to tell him she was sorry for being a bitch but the words wouldn’t come out properly and she started weeping instead. The painting dropped to the floor and Gobbler ran to the bed and hugged her and apologized and kept apologizing.

Edie looked up at him then and kissed him, hard and fast and urgent, and her teeth were biting his bottom lip, and the taste of his skin and her tears were mingling, and she pulled him to her and bit his neck and asked him, “How long have you been working on that?”

“About two months. You’re not mad, then?”

She scrabbled at the button on his pants, forcing it open and pulling the fly apart. Falling back onto the bed, she hiked up her skirt, grabbed a fistful of stocking in each hand and pulled, tearing a wide hole in the crotch. Her face flushed and her voice short of breath, she pulled her panties to the side and said, “No. But if you don’t fuck me right now, I will be.”

He lowered himself onto her and she reached down and guided him into her, wrapping her legs around his waist and groaning thickly as he pushed forward.

Ten minutes later, they were a mass of sweat-soaked, clothes-covered bodies struggling weakly to disentangle themselves from each other. Gobbler eventually managed to roll off of his girlfriend, but his fingers stayed entwined in her hair, gently caressing her scalp. He leaned in and whispered, “Happy anniversary.”

Then, for a few seconds, there was no sound but the TV until Edie asked, “You planned all of that, didn’t you?”

“What?”

“The crappy food. The movies I hate. My favourite movie cued to that exact scene. You had all of that planned from the beginning.”

He propped himself up on his elbow so he could look down into her eyes. Looking back up at him, Edie saw the boy she fell in love with the first time she laid eyes on him. “Yeah. You mad now?”

She reached down and circled her fingers around his cock. “No. But if you’re not ready to go again in about two minutes, I totally will be.” She grinned and gave him a squeeze. “Happy anniversary, yourself, you clever, clever asshole.”


4
cristy c road derek ember stories ain't it the truth

Nov 26

Ain’t it the Truth

by Chris Eng, illustration by Cristy C. Road

She was standing up against the wall of the Hollybrush Community Centre, out by the basketball courts. Canned music faintly intruded while the next band set up, and a single outside light blanketed her in its harsh illumination.

It didn’t much matter. She was radiant. A sweep of chin-length copper hair clung lightly to her forehead with sweat and her plain red t-shirt hugged her chest in much the same way. She took another sip of Pilsner, closed her eyes and rested her head against the wall, basking.

A set of footsteps on the concrete and a voice, slightly nervous. A man. No, a boy. “You’re Ember.” There was silence from both of them for a second. She said nothing and kept resting her head. “Aren’t you?” She opened her eyes slowly.

It was indeed a boy in his early teens, trying hard to be a man but falling short in ways that nothing but time and biology would fix. For now, though, he was too young to fill out his Black Flag shirt, too young to make his army boots believable. Cute and earnest, but way too young.

“Yeah,” she said in a rasp that was almost a growl. It wasn’t agressive—no more than anything she ever said was. That was just her voice: the rumble of a Slant-6 engine, the subsonic slink of a punk rock Lauren Bacall.

“You guys were really good.”

“We’re not guys.”

His eyes flicked sheepishly toward the ground. “I know.”

“Thanks,” she said.

“I’m Derek.”

“Hi, Derek. You know who I am.”

Derek unslung his knapsack and set it on the ground, undoing the straps and pulling out a can of Canadian. “Do… do you want a beer?”

She cocked an eyebrow and gave him a slight smile as she tapped the can she was already holding. “I’ve got a beer.” He looked sheepish again. “But I’ll take another, if you’re offering.” He smiled this time and pulled another can out, handing it over. “So. What did you like about us?”

“It was just really great!” He popped the beer open and took a sip. “Your bass playing is sick. I play the bass.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah! Clyde and me are supposed to start a band this year, but he still can’t play guitar yet, so it’s kind of just me, but I’ll start a band one way or another. I’m getting better.” Another silence that seemed more awkward for Derek than Ember fell over them. He eventually broke it with, “So, er… do you go to gigs often?”

“Derek,” she said, leaning forward and standing straight. “Are you trying to pick me up?”

“I—no! I mean, unless you’re interested…”

She took a step forward and closed the gap between them to less than a foot. Even in her Chucks she stood a good inch taller than him. “You’re too young for me.”

“I’m fifteen,” he said, despair and defensiveness co-mingling in his tone.

“I’m nineteen, kid. Too young. Here’s some advice, though. Straighten your shoulders. Do it.” He pulled his shoulders up and straightened his back, regaining the inch she’d had on him. “Good. Keep doing that. Practice it. Get some self-confidence. Believe you’re good enough. Girls like confidence; it’s a weakness of ours.” He jutted his chin out and for just a second the awkwardness was replaced by defiance and assurance.

“That’s it,” she purred, grinning. She slid an arm around the back of his neck and pulled herself into him. His lips were soft and tasted of beer. She kissed him lightly at first and then his hand looped around her back and his tongue worked its way into her mouth and she was caught off guard by its skill, because it meant that he’d either had practice before or was just that good a kisser naturally. She let him take the lead for about three more seconds, then pulled away.

Giving him a smile, she walked off toward the gym entrance. “Keep straightening those shoulders,” she said without turning around.

“I won’t always be young,” he said as she reached the doors.

Ember looked back and appraised him. “No,” she said seriously. “I don’t think you will.” She ducked inside and Derek took another sip of his beer, straightening his shoulders and jutting his chin out toward the light.


2
stories burn out mj kathleen

Dec 03

Burn Out

by Chris Eng, illustration by Cristy C. Road

Leaning over the porch railing and staring off into the night (which, from her vantage point, consisted of a diner that hadn’t been renovated since the ’50s and a jazz dance studio above a boarded-up storefront), MJ licked her lips, popped a fat joint between them and lit it.

“You gonna smoke that whole thing yourself?” a woman’s voice asked.

The porch wasn’t shrouded in darkness, but there was a blind spot that shied away from both the house’s ambient glow and the one street lamp on the block. And into that corner a moss green armchair had been shoved where a woman was sitting, the cherry of a cigarette buzzing around the dark outline of her head like a drunk firefly. The shadow pulled itself to its feet and made its way over to MJ. It was Kathleen—the Lark Street punk house’s second-longest running resident and the vital component that kept it running smoothly. She was wearing a Circle Jerks t-shirt she’d cut the sleeves off of and a pair of impossibly tight jeans. She towered somewhere just north of six feet without wearing heels. Giving MJ a half-smile, she held her hand out. “Seriously,” she said, “share and enjoy.”

MJ by comparison was a black girl six or seven inches shorter than Kathleen, decked out in an Exploited shirt, a pair of jeans almost entirely obscured by band patches and a crimson mohawk standing proud and tall. Shrugging, she passed the joint over to Kath, who took it with the same hand she already had a smoke in.

“Heard you got a new band,” Kath said, taking a long drag on the joint, then two smaller ones.

“Yeah, Peak Oil. It’s all right. Lauren’s doing vocals, but I cant tell how into it she is yet.”

“Have you ever not been in a band?” She passed the joint back and MJ took another drag.

“Not for, like, five years.”

“Hunh. How many bands is that?”

“Umm… five?”

“Have any of them actually recorded anything?”

“There was that one time Big Boots sang a song to Jake’s answering machine, but I don’t think that’s what you mean. No, none of my bands has recorded anything.”

“Did they all suck?”

A laugh escaped MJ, long and loud. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess they pretty much did.”

Kathleen took a drag on her smoke and was quiet for a second before speaking again. “So, why do it?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Why do you keep having a serially monogamous band life if they all end up sucking?”

“Do you remember the first punk song you ever heard?”

“I dunno. Maybe. Why?”

“Because I do. I was staying at my grandma’s house and was up way too late with nothing to do. There was no computer or TV in the guest bedroom, just an old radio. So, I kept spinning the dial back and forth past all the Destiny’s Child and Nelly looking for anything worth listening to and I hit the local college station and stopped. They were playing ‘Pull My Strings’ by the Dead Kennedys, and that was the moment. I know how fuckin’ cheesy that sounds, but it’s still true—that was when I realized things didn’t have to be the way everyone said and and when I figured out there were other paths you could take to get you where you needed to be. I stayed up for hours listening to the radio. Around three in the morning I think it switched over to some goth show, but I didn’t even care. I didn’t sleep that entire night. So, why do I keep joining or starting bands that’ll probably go nowhere? Because I know what music can be. I know what music can do if you end up with the right combination of people. I keep trying because one of these days I’ll get it right and I’ll be in a band that matters. And I don’t even care if it only matters to one person—if I can make a difference to one ten-year-old girl the way the Kennedys made a difference to me, I’ll be happy. That’s why.” She took another long drag on the joint and passed it back to Kathleen. “Why do you do any of this? What do you want to get out of the scene or the house or… or Dave.”

“Dave’s hardly the reason I’m in the scene, MJ.”

“You know what I mean. Why stick around? Is it the music? Is it the politics? Is it the guys?”

Kathleen took a deep drag on the joint, exhaled, smoked her cigarette down to the filter in one breath, stubbed it out on the railing and flicked the butt into the yard. “It’s because I’ve finally found a place where I can set fire to myself and everything around me and no one cares enough to take the matches away.” She passed the joint back to MJ before heading inside.

MJ flicked the cherry off the joint and deposited the roach in her wallet, letting out a shiver as she followed Kathleen in.


3
stories questioningly becky rev

Dec 10

Questioningly

by Chris Eng, illustration by Cristy C. Road

“Okay, go ahead.”

Becky opened her eyes. What spread out in front of her was one of the cheesiest things she’d ever seen.

She was looking off the roof of the Adams Building toward the harbour. More than half of downtown was caught in her view and the twilight sky had begun to daub the surrounding landscape in swatches of orange and purple. Directly in front of her, a blanket was laid next to an ’80s boombox. Rev, clad in his least scungiest sweater and jeans, stood next to her holding a $12 bottle of shiraz. “Ta-da,” he said, straight-faced. “Sit down. I’ll take care of everything.”

Becky looked back and forth at Rev, the blanket, the skyline, the blanket, Rev, the skyline and Rev, trying hard to stifle the laughter building. Was he really doing this? Getting her giggles under control, she sat on a corner of the blanket.

Rev reached into the front pouch of his knapsack and produced two cassettes. “Lady’s choice,” he stated. “Sinatra or The Ramones?”

She pointed at the Frank Sinatra tape. If everything was going to be over-the-top, there was no point in doing it half-assed. Rev dropped the tape in the player and the strains of ‘Young at Heart’ began to play as he pulled two plastic Muppet Babies tumblers and a corkscrew out of the bag. He opened the bottle, filled the cups and passed one over.

Becky and Rev’s relationship over the previous six months had been a number of things. Unexpected was definitely one of them, but so were surprising, goofy and maybe even slightly miraculous. She wasn’t a pessimist or a cynic, but the realist in her had long since given up on the fairy tale. Most guys were after one thing so she’d set herself to finding one of them who was better at it than others and maybe had a couple of redeeming qualities beyond that. It was really just settling for the best of a bunch of options. Then Rev showed up.

Standing three inches taller than Becky (the right amount), Rev understood style (rare in the guys she knew) and hygeine (rarer), he liked the same bands that she did (practically unheard of) and constantly introduced her to bands she’d never heard of (exciting), he was handsome (she described him as Byronically dorky), and he was romantic.

In fact, the romantic gestures never seemed to stop. It was almost overwhelming, especially for a girl who considered herself mousy, or at least underwhelming. Her black hair was cut into a shaggy bob; a pair of Buddy holly glasses perched on her nose and she habitually wore boys’ clothes. Why he made an effort was beyond her – especially after he’d already won her over.

There was a night a few months back when she’d come home to find him sitting in one of her chairs patiently reading a book and the words “I LOVE YOU BECKY” spelled out in love hearts on her bedspread. She’d started to cry then. She didn’t even know why; she just turned away weeping and suddenly Rev was behind her, holding her, asking her what was wrong, telling her it was going to be all right.

And that night she decided to believe him. She’d spent so much of her life denying the fairy tale that she was initially ready to view Rev as anything other than what he was. He was just trying to get into her pants, she thought; he was fucking with her head; he’d get bored in a week and go screw someone else. But he never did. He didn’t do any of those things (except get into her pants, which he did often) – he was there simply because he loved her. And the night he ambushed her with the love hearts she conceded that the girls in elementary school who’d babbled about how they were waiting for their prince to show up might have actually had a point, because she didn’t know what Rev was if not her Prince Charming, and she didn’t know what she was living, if not a fairy tale.

Rev pulled a couple of Italian bistro candles out of the knapsack, lit them and set them on the tar-paper roof. Then, removing two Ziploc tubs of linguine in cream sauce, he passed one to Becky.

“It’s hot,” she exclaimed.

“Better be. It was practically molten when I put it in there.”

“You made it yourself?”

“With Sarah’s help, yeah.”

“When?”

“When you weren’t looking.” He smiled and handed her a fork. Sitting down next to her, he tucked in. They ate in silence.

When they were done he stacked the containers one inside the other. Becky went to take a sip of wine and found her glass empty. “Top-up?” he asked.

“You know, we never toasted,” she said as he refilled their cups.

“Couldn’t think of a good one.” He touched his glass to hers, the thick clunk of the plastic substituting for a clink.

“To… to us,” she said.

“Yeah, to us.”

They drank their glasses down quietly and watched as the sun sank below the horizon, leaving them draped in purple and shadow.

“So, this is it,” she said. “This is all we get.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You’re leaving for Providence tomorrow. That’s on the other side of the continent. And you don’t know when, or if, you’re coming back.”

“Well, yeah…”

“Then this is all we get. I can’t wait for you, Rev.”

“But it doesn’t have to end like this.”

“It already has. I love you, but I’m not hanging out and hoping the fairy tale magically kicks in again someday. Especially not after the thing already wrapped up thirty pages back. You get me?”

“I get you.” They watched the cars drive by and listened to the murmur of people on the sidewalk below. “Will you dance with me?” he asked quietly.

“Yeah.” He switched tapes and the twangy strains of ‘Questioningly’ by The Ramones echoed across the rooftop. As they danced, the tears welled up in her again and her feet stopped moving and she wept. Rev wrapped his arms around her tightly and and kissed her and told her it was going to be all right.

And she tried so hard to believe him.


12
stories hot as a docker's armpit chezz snickers

Dec 17

Hot as a Docker’s Armpit

by Chris Eng, illustration by Cristy C. Road

The ground wobbled as he walked and Chezz was glad Snickers was there to hold him up. In the back of his mind, though, he knew she was as drunk as he was if not moreso, and he wasn’t sure how that was going to work in the long run. Maybe they’d prop each other up. Maybe their mutual drunkenings would cancel each other out. Maybe he wasn’t in a state to be considering things rationally.

But one thing he was sure of was that he’d started the evening in a hoodie and was now in just a t-shirt. It was probably back at the Jett Labs behind the couch, but that was about ten blocks behind him and there was no way he was turning around to get it, even if it was November. He didn’t feel cold anyway, but that was probably due to the case of Extra Old Stock he’d drunk. Snickers had paced him with a case of Kokanee, and the fact she was currently upright, coherent and maybe half-supporting his weight was more than impressive.

He looked over at her. If she’d felt like it, there was no question she could be a Suicide Girl. The requisite tattoos were all in place and she was thick like the most popular burlesque models. On top of that, the push-up bra under her black blouse and red pea coat bolstered a set of tits that would have given Mamie Van Doren pause, and her legs and ass simply. Would. Not. Quit.

Snickers was, in layman’s terms, a bombshell.

Chezz, on the other hand, was a beefy and slightly chubby guy of Mongolian extraction with a shaved head and a clothing collection made up of of too many hardcore shirts and too many pairs of baggy shorts. He was a self-described manslut and while he and Snickers were far from an exclusive item, he suspected she kept coming back because he was good at one thing: fucking. He had little to no work ethic; he was a shitty cook; he didn’t own anything of any real value aside from his record collection and he got way too drunk way too often, but he could get it up pretty much on demand, whatever the circumstances.

Once, after being awake for 72 hours, he’d successfully picked up a girl in a coffee shop and fucked her to three separate orgasms before passing out. He woke up in her bed a full day later. He fucked a girl in the shower once when he was so drunk he would have been considered legally blind, and after it happened, he couldn’t recall enough distinguishing features to remember who she was. That one still nagged at him, if only because the sex was hot and he wanted a sober rematch. Still, because he was utterly committed to playing the field, one kick at the can was all he got with most women. Well, most women outside of Snickers.

Snickers also had a comparably high sex drive and wasn’t interested in seeking out monogamous bliss. Snickers liked fucking. Fucking in beds, in washrooms, in closets, in parks, on rooftops – pretty much anywhere she could get her panties down for an uninterrupted five minutes. She fucked Chezz missionary, doggy, cowgirl and reverse cowgirl, and she seemed pretty happy getting it in the pussy, the mouth and the ass. He heard that she’d even strapped-on a strap-on and gave it to a couple of guys in the ass. He bet she’d liked that too.

In fact, thinking about her sexual appetite and how if he teased her for long enough she’d get so wet the juices would literally start dripping down her legs started to give him wood. He thought about her tits and how she’d actually let him fuck them a couple of times because, even though it didn’t do anything for her, it got him off. Tit-fucking wasn’t usually his thing either, but her tits were incredible. In fact, when you got the push-up bra off her, they basically stayed where they were.

Ugh. His cock was so hard now it was starting to verge on the uncomfortable.

Chezz peered around, trying to figure out where they were. Ah. The side of Chinatown bordering the industrial zone. As a neighbourhood, it was never particularly full of people in the middle of the day, but at three in the morning it was desolate. He and Snickers were, in fact, the only people he’d seen for blocks.

Taking a calculated risk (the risk being whether or not he could remain upright), he moved his left arm from Snicker’s shoulders, down her back, past her ass cheeks and up her skirt. She looked over at him as his middle finger pressed against her silk-covered mound.

“Can’t you wait ‘til you get home?”

He shook his head. “Nope.”

“You wanna fuck here?”

He worked his finger around her panties and parted the lips of her already damp pussy. “Uh-huh.”

Snickers inhaled sharply as he started to slip his finger into her and nodded toward a thin alley between two brick buildings up the block. “There.” She took his wrist and removed his finger from her, leading him toward the shadows. Stepping out of the light, she lifted her skirt, hooked her panties with her thumbs and dropped them to the ground. As she leaned over a convenient pile of boxes, she stuck her ass out and looked back at him expectantly.

Neither of them needed to say anything. He dropped his shorts to the ground and slowly pushed himself into her. “Make it quick,” she groaned. “Fuck me fast.” He grabbed her hips and she braced herself as he fucked her as hard as she’d asked for. A box tumbled to the alley floor with a bang, and her body slid forward a couple of inches. “WHOA,” she said suddenly struggling to regain her balance. “Maybe right here isn’t the best idea.” She stepped over to the wall, crossing her arms against it and pushing her ass out again. “Okay, try this,” she purred.

Chezz looked over at her, grinned, adjusted his cock and then gave the briefest of glances at the pile. The box on the ground had popped open and its contents had slid out slightly. It was filled with what looked like dozens of albums. He took a step closer and squinted at the inch and a half visible on the top one. Two words were showing: “BUDGIE / SQUAWK”

“No fuckin’ way,” Chezz whispered. He leaned down and sat the box upright, carefully flipping through its contents.

The booze had slowed down Snickers’s brain but not to the point that she couldn’t register that Chezz was not only not fucking her but possibly wouldn’t be fucking her in the immediate future. “What the fuck,” she enunciated as clearly as she could, “are you doing?”

“This is totally amazing,” Chezz said reverently. He picked an album out of the box, flipped it over, and scanned the back.

“Look,” she said, reaching the upper limits of her patience, “get your cock in me now or I’ll come over there, tear it off and we can do this the hard way.”

He glanced over at her, absolutely uncomprehending. Delicately pulling out an album, he displayed it for her. “Bloodrock 2,” he said. “This is the album ‘D.O.A.’ is on.”

“You say that like I know or care what you’re talking about.”

He reached into the box and extracted another, holding it up with even more awe than the previous one. “Diamond Head’s Lightning to the Nations. Their first record!” She looked down at him. He was holding the LP up like some kind of holy relic while kneeling on the ground with his shorts around his ankles and his dick at half-mast. It was ridiculous and gross at the same time.

“Are you gonna finish fucking me?” she asked matter-of-factly. “Or are you just gonna keep rooting around in the trash?”

He flipped one of the other boxes open. It was filled with records too. He quickly surveyed the rest of them, but they were empty or filled with actual junk. “This is the best score I’ve ever seen,” he mumbled, setting the two boxes off to the side. “The most amazing ’70s rock collection. I need to get these home.”

Snickers seemed to be gauging if any of her words were registering at all. “C’mon, you wanna stick it in my ass? I’ll let you do it right here. Do it, assfuck me in this dirty alleyway. I’ll even let you cum on my face, ‘cuz I’m a big cum-drinking whore.”

He looked at the boxes and then at her. “Can you carry one of these back to the house? I don’t think I can handle both.”

Snickers stared at him in disbelief, but eventually gave in to the pleading look in his eyes and pulled her skirt down with an exasperated sigh. “Fine. I’ll take one. But if you ever mention any of this to anyone else, you’re never sticking it in me again.” Picking her panties off the ground, she shoved them in her pocket.

“Okay,” he said confused as he passed a box to her.

She looked at his cock, still sticking straight out. “Goddammit, dude, pull your pants up.” He did it and hefted the other box as she strode off ahead of him. “And incidentally,” she said without glancing back, “there’s no fuckin’ way you’re cumming on my face tonight.”

“You were gonna let me give you a facial?” he asked quizzically. “Hey, slow down. Oh, y’know what? I saw a copy of Thin Lizzy’s Jailbreak in there somewhere. You’ve heard it, right? It’s the one with ‘The Boys Are Back in Town’. It’s so good! Hey… hey, Snickers, wait up!”


4
stories feel good factor tank swango

Dec 23

Feel Good Factor

by Chris Eng, illustration by Cristy C. Road

Swango recounted the change in his hand. A buck eighty-seven. He was positive he had more money than that. Oh right, the beers he bought yesterday. And the chickpeas they made hummous out of. Cramming the change in his pocket, he grudgingly accepted two bucks was about right. Accepting it didn’t make him less fucked, though: it was Christmas tomorrow and he didn’t have a present for Tank.

Really, it wasn’t like Christmas was the biggest deal. They were crusties, so spending huge amounts of cash to celebrate a corporate greed-fest sponsored by the religious patriarchy wasn’t something they were particularly into, but they liked to give each other something small, both as a token that they cared and as a way of not being completely left out. Because as much as Swango wanted to tell Christmas to go fuck itself, it sucked if you didn’t have friends to hang out with and at least one present to open. Friends were the easy part—there were probably fifteen people coming over for the Krust Haus’s vegan potluck—but the present, well, that was going to take some ingenuity.

Tank was out panhandling and he knew he had at least a couple of hours before she got back. Good. He frantically sifted through his stuff looking for anything he could sell. There wasn’t much. He owned a lot of things that meant something to him, but not a lot that “normal” people would be willing to pay money for. His zine collection? Uh-uh. His vegan cookbooks, stained with the residue of a thousand Food Not Bombs gatherings? Not a chance.

The only thing of his worth anything to anybody was his Discman and he was under no illusions as to how much that was going to net. Still, it was a top-of-the-line model (when it was new) and he was under the gun. He grabbed it, apologized to his stack of scratched-but-still-playable CDs and bolted out the door.

The grossly overweight man behind the counter of the pawn shop wore an open Hawaiian shirt over a wifebeater and had jowls that literally stretched to his chest. He gestured at the Discman and belched. “Five bucks,” he said in a voice that resembled nothing so much as a groan.

“It’s worth more than five bucks,” Swango countered.

“’S a fuggin’ Dissman. Who wan’sa Dissman these days?”

“I could make three or four times that in an afternoon by panning.”

“Then do it or take thuh five bucks. ‘S yer choice.”

Swango didn’t have an afternoon. He had an hour before Tank got back. “Fine. Give it to me.” The pawnshop owner slid a ticket across the counter for Swango to fill out and then traded the completed ticket for a stub and a soiled five dollar bill.

“Murry Chrizzmss.”

There weren’t many places for Swango to spend his $6.87. After all, the amount of things out there which totaled slightly-less-than-seven-dollars-including-tax were kind of few and far between. He thought about picking her up a comic at Mythmakers, but he couldn’t remember which issues of Hellblazer she was missing and there weren’t any graphic novels he could afford, so that was pretty much out of the question. He wracked his brain for alternatives, but it was Christmas Eve in Westport and most of the stores had already closed early. A light bulb flickered on above his head and he mentally face-palmed himself. Except the Circle A. Duh.

The Circle A was Westport’s one-stop anarchist/activist collective. It wasn’t big (its entire retail space was a 25’ x 8’ room) and its selection wasn’t expansive, but it was open and it would have something in his price range. Tabouli Dan was sitting with his legs propped up on the counter, reading an old issue of Infiltration when Swango burst through the door.

“Oh, hey, man,” Dan said, laying the zine down. “’Sup?”

“I need a present for Tank. What have you got for seven bucks?”

Dan thought for a second and gestured at the selection of zines for sale.

“Naw, zines are kind of my thing.”

Dan pointed at the display of political buttons on the counter.

“I don’t think buttons are really the gift that says ‘I love you’. Well, maybe that one, but it technically says ‘I anarchy you’.” Swango’s gaze dropped down into the glass counter and stopped. “Now those on the other hand…” Filling the top shelf in the display case were hand-screened patches for pretty much every notable crusty and political punk band (and a few that weren’t) next to a little sign that said ‘$1.50’. “Tank’s still working on her vest. She needs some more patches. Okay, gimme one of the Nausea ones, an Aus Rotten and a Capitalist Casualties.”

He was practically bouncing by the time he got home. It’s not like he’d solved cold fusion or done anything that deserved huge amounts of pride, but he was still pleased with himself. He’d found something Tank would love and he still had a couple of bucks left over. Enough for a large coffee. Sweet.

He burst through the door and found Tank and Coinslot sprawled on the floor in front of the TV playing Punch-Out on their dumpstered NES. “I am the winner,” he declared. “I win at life!”

Coinslot, who was currently engrossed in fighting Soda Popinski mumbled “that’s nice” over his shoulder. Tank craned back to look at him and Swango took the opportunity to be reminded how lucky he was.

There was something slightly otherworldly about her; something not identifiable but definitely not quite normal. Her body looked as if it had decided to be elfin but couldn’t decide on a Christmas or Tolkien elf. She was tall and thin like the residents of Rivendell, but her face was round and pixie-like. Her dirty blonde hair was chin-length and three small dreads hung off the right side of her head, one with a skeleton key woven into it. “Hunh?” she asked, somehow managing to make it sound eloquent.

“I rule at Christmas. I am awesome. We should go get a coffee to celebrate. We can share one! I have enough!”

“Dude, I was out panning with Coinslot. I’ve got enough to cover my own coffee.”

“Woo-hoo! Coffee! Get ready; let’s go!”

She laid her controller next to Coinslot. “You wanna play my guy?”

“Sure, whatever.”

Grabbing a black hoodie off the couch, she threw it on and held her fist out to be bumped. “Let’s do this.”

Swango was grinning like an idiot. “Where’s your vest? You should totally wear your vest.”

Tank looked sheepishly down toward the floor. “I, uh… I don’t have it anymore.”

The grin fell. “Why? What happened?!”

“She traded it to me, dude,” Coinslot said without looking back. Tank nodded.

“Tank’s way smaller than you! It won’t even fit!” Swango’s voice was rising despite his best efforts.

“It kind of fits,” Coinslot said. “It fits if I don’t wear anything underneath it. Or, y’know, stretch my arms. It’s not very good for winter.”

Tank looked confused and a little sad. “Why are you upset? It’s not a big deal. I thought we were going to get coffee.”

“But my awesome Christmas present was these!” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the swatches of black fabric. “I pawned my Discman to buy these for your vest!”

“Ha!” Coinslot exclaimed, still not looking back.

“What the fuck, dude?!”

“She traded her vest for my Doom ‘Rush Hour of the Gods’ CD.”

Swango’s gaze swiveled from Coinslot to Tank. “It was the only Doom CD you were missing,” she said quietly. “I didn’t have the cash to buy you a new one.”

“So she traded with me, because Coinslot’s got all the answers,” Coinslot said with a self-satisfied air.

Tank reached underneath the couch and pulled out the CD, handing it to Swango. “Merry Christmas, sweetie,” she said with a tiny smile.

He handed her the patches and gave her a hug. “Yeah, merry Christmas, baby. Don’t worry—I’ll make sure this all has a happy ending. Hey Coinslot, give Tank her vest back.”

“Chuck you, farlie! She traded it to me fair and square!”

Swango placed his still-booted foot on Coinslot’s solar plexus. “You owe me $40 for the two cases of beer I bought you at the beginning of the month, asshat. Give her back her vest and we’ll call it even.”

“Fuck, fine! It’s on the chair.”

Tank grabbed her vest and threw it on over the hoodie. “Thaaaaanks, Coinslot!” she trilled. A disappointed look suddenly crossed her face. “But that doesn’t help you,” she said to Swango. “You still don’t have anything to listen to the CD on.”

“Pfft. The dude at the pawnshop lowballed me. I can pan for an hour next week and have more than enough money to get my Discman back. Everything’s fine. Know why? Because we rule at Christmas!”

Coinslot threw the NES controller at the floor suddenly. “GODDAMMIT, would you shut up?! You just made me lose! Go drink some coffee and leave me alone!”

“I think someone’s getting a lump of coal in their stocking,” Swango said seriously.

“I think someone’s getting sucker-punched in the back of the head while he sleeps if he doesn’t take this bullshit elsewhere.”

Tank looked dreamily up into her boyfriend’s eyes. “Aww, pissing Coinslot off until he starts spouting random threats and curses—it’s the best gift a girl could ask for.”

“I’ll kill both of you with the rusty knife I bought at ThrifTown.”

“Awww,” Swango said, wrapping an arm around Tank and kissing her deeply. “God bless us, every one.”