an excerpt
from
The Donkey Show
- Chapter Thirteen
-
Our Parade
[or Click here to read
Chapter 8 first]
By Michael Patrick Welch
-On the 28th anniversary of my birth I’m
drinking wine and waiting for her. Before leaving my bed this
morning she surprised me with a skinny joint, which she told
me to save until she returned from her Lunch Shift but...She’ll
need it after work; her new job foisted another new duty on
her: teaching the old people Cajun line dancing. She definitely
has it rougher than I do. Especially today, I have it damn good:
not shit to do but breathe and wait for her to punch out. Maybe
I’ll brave The Trampoline! Or take Brad up on that free
reading --- or just supply him with friendship, talk to him.
Not about Divorce though. I’m sure he’s past needing
to talk about that by now. He seemed fine watching the band
with us the other day, composed, relaxed. “I’m not
mad,” he’d said. “She’s a nice lady,”
meaning his ex. But he also mentioned being medicated. “Marinated”
as Little De’von calls it in his writing. I’m a
little too marinated right now... I’ll talk to him some
other time. For now I’ll just wait here for her.
- 2 -
It’s funny, or it’s not, that just
days ago, escorting her out to her truck I cooed, “Thank
you for your sweet affection,” and in response she huffed,
“Oh Jesus,” barely kissing me before rolling up
her window. But she’s very different in the days since…
There are times now when we’re lying together after I’ve
pulled it off again, and she’s staring into me with what
seems like ‘I love you’ trapped in her mouth. And
now that we’ve had crawfish together, that’s it:
Consummation. Crawfish have allowed her to fall into me…
Not fresh-boiled; we couldn’t find those. Ours were merely
the two single garnishes atop our real meal: take-out rice littered
with thawed-out, reboiled, rubbery crawfish tails. I carried
our Styrofoam in the icy gray wind that shifted the grass blades,
aimed them at the Mississippi’s bank, where she seized
the bag from me, holding the containers under her chin for warmth.
On the big cold rocks we smoked what was left
of the joint I hadn’t really saved for her, and watched
the giant fairy out there, coming and going from Algiers. Fucking…God…
Still I wished we had whole, fresh-boiled; it felt for some
reason important that her and I participate, together, in this
shell breaking guts sucking raccoon ritual. So imagine my dramatic
excitement when we opened our Styrofoam containers to find whole-but-not-fresh
ones, one each atop our food-piles.
“I’m not eating that thing though,”
she laughed --- I barely heard her over the wind; we’ll
eat then run for warm cover in some bar…
“What? No c’mon, we have to, together…”
“Nuh uh.”
She was serious when she warned that they were
just garnish, that they’d burned in some freezer for a
year and weren’t fit for consumption. But it was important
to me… “They’re rancid,” she protested
the entire way through demonstrating How to Crack the Body Cleanly
from the Head, and The Meat-Removal Ceremony. For separate reasons,
neither of us drank the brains, but she wouldn’t even
eat the tail. “C’mon…” I beseeched.
When mine tasted fine, distrust flared in me; She’s just
making excuses... This is the ONE thing she will not give me?
Why won’t…It doesn’t seem in her nature, but
I swear she regarded Whole Boiled Crawfish like The Last Step
before she’d have to care about me for real; like a prom
night fingering, this crawfish equaled obligation…
But then, as I was about to suggest we find warmth,
she popped it into her mouth, grimaced, then validated my distrust:
after that she really fell into me…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
continued on next page >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
....
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
For three years, Michael Patrick Welch was a Staff Writer at
The St
Petersburg Times in Tampa, FLA. During those years he also began
his first ever creative writings in the form of the self-destructively
honest on-line journal, Commonplace (screwmusicforever.com/commonplace)
which, along with some entries being published at Pual Tough's
Open Letters(.net) and McSweeneys(.net), also eventually became
the author's first self-published book. Since moving to New
Orleans a coupla years back, MPW wrote a second book, a novel,
The Donkey Show, published by Equator Books (equatorbooks.com).
MPW also plays skewwed electronic indy-R&B music, as the
one-man-band White Bitch.
