Dear Partnas in Crime,
I been writing a lot of poetry over the past couple of years and keep most of it hidden away. I do it because my poetry is like doo doo: it comes in many different shapes and colors, but it's always a stinky shit, no matter what it looks like or what ideas I'm trying to spread on the paper.
But I digress. Let me get back on topic.
So Willy B. comes over to my trailer, and we drinking beers and laughing and watching The Vow, and Willy's about fucking out of it man, talking crazy shit because he's been popping Percocet again. I hate it when that mothafucka go to the doctor and bitch about kidney stones. He'll drink Coca-Cola after Coca-Cola, gallons of that shit, and he doesn't even like soda pop, but he'll drink that shit down like it's the essence of life to get kidney problems. He knows when he get kidney troubles his doctor gonna see blood in his pee pee and prescribe some kind of pain killer to fuck his ass up. And this time it was that fucking Percocet. Out of all the pills, I hate that one the most because it usually turns people into assholes. They say loopy, mean shit and laugh at you.
"Get your hand out your pants and live a little. Who knows? You may be able to pick up some big titty bitch that digs bad poetry."So I was trying to watch this new film, concentrating on the girl's breasts, wondering what they looked like under the shirt, and here this mothafucka Willy B. was, saying off the wall shit. Crazy, creepy shit.
"I got to go to the bathroom, Big Jim," he says.
"I told your ass you couldn't go to my toilet no more," I said. "I'm tired of cleaning piss off my walls, motherfucker."
"I'll sit down on the toilet, Jim. I'll sit down."
"Fine then," I said, draining a can of Natty Light. That girl on the TV looked fine as hell. I picked up the remote control and put the movie in fast forward, hoping to see her naked. No such luck.
I heard Willy's piss splashing the toilet water, and it sounded like he was standing up, and I especially got pissed when I heard his pissing go silent for a second, then he was pissing in the bowl again, like he missed the commode or something.
"You better not be pissing on my wall!" I said, lighting a cigarette and staring at the popcorn ceiling. I dated a girl whose face looked like that section of the ceiling I was looking at. She wasn't the best looking thing in the world, but neither was I. She knew how to smoke the pole though, man.
I was picturing her naked, calling my name, when I heard that motherfucker Willy reading my poetry. "Eating a taco salad in a Mexican restaurant, by Jimmy James Pudge," he read, in that chain smoking voice.
"I ordered a chicken taco salad and a sweet tea,
Then stared at the matador posters on the walls…"
"What the fuck is this shit?" Willy said, laughing like a maniac.
"It's poetry, motherfucker. Something a fool like you can't understand."
Willy laughed and stood in front of the TV. "Man, why you writing poetry about taco salads?"
"It ain't about the taco salad, dumbass," I said, lighting up another cigarette.
"Oh, dude," Willy B. said, his eyes blood shot. "Man, we gotta go to the poetry slam at the Ramada Inn."
"Hell no."
"Don't be a pussy, man. You could get up in front of an audience and read your shit, man."
"Hell no," I said, drinking a beer.
"Why not?" he asked. "You afraid? Need some courage?" He pulled out a plastic bag of something powdery, could have been coke or meth or sugar for all I fucking know.
"Don't be doing no shit in my house," I said.
Willy laughed. "Come on, man. Get your hand out your pants and live a little. Who knows? You may be able to pick up some big titty bitch that digs bad poetry."
That got my attention. I stood up, suddenly overcome by the possibilities of picking up a sophisticated woman at the Ramada Inn.
The walk to the motel was relatively short, and Willy was wobbling all over the road, asking me if he was walking straight. "Man, I'm sober, motherfucker," Willy B. said. "Would I be able to do this if I wasn't sober?"
He tried walking in a straight line and somehow wound up in the middle of the road.
We finally made it to the Ramada Inn; it seemed as if hours had passed. The place was packed full of people, but it wasn't your normal crowd. The rednecks and hellraisers were curiously absent tonight and there was a room full of sophisticated individuals crowded around a stage. On this stage was a woman in a bright pink shirt and a moo cow looking dress.
I felt out of place. I didn't belong with this bunch. I started sweating, looking around the room at the unfamiliar, fashionable young folks. Some were clean shaven, others had the slacker look. Not a goddamn soul was wearing a Walmart shirt. The sight sickened me. It was like I was suddenly in a country club or something.
"That bitch looks like a cow!" Willy B. shouted at me. He was laughing way too loud, and people were starting to turn their heads and stare. "She looks like a fucking cow!" he said again, spit flying out his mouth. "Why you wearing pink, cow?" he squealed. "You make strawberry milk?"
The woman was a complete professional and kept reading, ignoring Willy B. like the piece of shit he was.
"I am a woman with a vagina," she said. "I have a proud vagina. A vagina that is beautiful. A vagina that is free…"
"Let me see it then, bitch!" Willy B. shouted. "Let me see that pussy, baby."
I held my hand over my face.
The moo cow dressed woman finished her poem, stepped down off the stage and walked straight to our table. Heads in that room turned like wildfire. She walked right up to Willy B. and slapped him hard across the face.
"Pig," she said.
"Hey now, you the fat one, bitch," Willy B. said.
She slapped him again, and he grabbed her hand, pulling her down to him. She let herself go willingly, her arms wrapping around his dirty neck, her lips meeting his lips. I couldn't fucking believe it. If Willy was having that kind of luck, I was damn sure going to have that kind of luck.
I walked up front to the stage, waiting my turn patiently as an old man dressed in a tight blue skin suit kept saying, "Trapped," over and over again. When he finished, he received thunderous applause, and when he walked past me I noticed a wet spot on his ass where he'd been sweating.
It was my turn, and my heart was thudding loudly in my head. I walked up them stage steps, the chatter turning to dead silence as I faced the audience. All eyes were on me, this goofy-looking motherfucker in a Pirates of the Caribbean t-shirt. I looked down at the poem in my hand. I couldn't speak. I couldn't breathe.
Willy B. was back at the table with the girl's shirt thrown up over her head. She was wearing a moo cow bra to match the moo cow dress, and his hands were under the lacy fabric, grabbing a hold of those titties.
"Say something," some heckler in the audience shouted.
"Eating a taco salad…" I read, my voice freezing mid-sentence.
"BOOO! BOOO! YOU SUCK!!" roared the crowd. "GET OFF THE STAGE!!!"
The problem was, I couldn't move. I was trapped like a married man in a divorce layer's office.
That's when Willy B. came up the stage and snatched the microphone from me, looking out at the audience.
"I'm so fucking disappointed in you motherfuckers," he said. "All my boy wanted to do was to get up here on stage and read his taco salad poem to y'all and get laid by some bitch sitting in the audience. We got any takers?"
The audience glared.
"We walked here all the way from the ABC Trailer Park," Willie B. said. That's a half hour walk. We did that to share our word with you. And this is how you repay us? By joking us? Look at this man beside me. He's so scared he's going to piss his pants…"
"I ain't scared," I said.
"Shut the fuck up," Willy B. said. That got some claps from the audience.
"This world," Willy B. said, "this world is like a fucking time bomb and I'm the goddamn ignition switch."
The people clapped even harder, and I got off stage, slipping into the audience. Willy went on for about thirty more minutes and became a star.
I sat in the back by the moo cow girl and asked her what kind of bra she was wearing.
She seemed to realize her shirt was pulled up and slid it back down, cutting me dirty looks.
"I like your poetry," I lied.
"Shut the fuck up," she said.