Dirty Mouth

I rolled off of her onto my own pillow in a rather unceremonious fashion, practically wheezing for air. I really did need to lay off the smokes if I was going to start working out like that. My lungs were never ready for it.

Keeping up with my tradition of never doing what I say I’m going to, I leaned over the side of my mattress and grabbed my pack of smokes and lighter from the pocket of my discarded jeans, popping one of the cancer sticks between my lips. I rolled back and offered Emmie one, being the kind gentleman I am. She took it; we lit up, then laid back and watched our smoke clouds hover up near my ceiling.

“So,” I breathed, “just friends, eh?”

“Yep,” she replied.

“This is how you treat all your friends?” I smirked.

“The chosen few,” She chuckled.

“Mm,”

We fell silent and we just kind of sat there for a bit, quietly drowning in our cancer clouds that were only slightly tainted with the smell of sex. If you had asked me just a few hours ago how I thought my day was going to pan out, I wouldn’t have answered with having sex with Emmie. That would’ve been the last option on my mind. Yet here we were, naked in my bed, wondering if we should regret what we just did or not. Well, maybe that’s what she was thinking. I was thinking more along the lines of if I should regret letting her push me over so easily. I mean really, who spends all day bitching about a person, telling themselves they’ll be happy if they never see them again, and then takes them home and sleeps with them at the first opportunity? What kind of hypocritical scum does that? Oh yeah, I do.

Eventually I got sick of myself the longer I sat there in silence smoking with her, fancy that. So I threw the covers off myself and stood up, grabbing my underwear and a fresh pair of jeans and pulling them on.

“You know, you have a nice butt,” she said from my bed.

I looked over my shoulder at her. She had the covers clutched up to her nose but I could tell she was giving me that smile. I just chuckled wryly and buttoned my pants up.

“Yours isn’t so bad either I guess,” I mumbled, sticking my head out of my bedroom door. “Sid? C’mon, Sid, go pee.”

I kicked open the door to my bathroom and Sid walked in, hopped up on top of the toilet and did his thing.

“Is your dog peeing in the toilet?”

Her voice surprised the shit out of me since it came from directly behind me. She’d gotten out of bed and was standing there with my blankets wrapped around her naked body, staring into the bathroom in awe.

“Uh, yeah,” I replied. “We’re on the fourth floor, he’s a dog, and I’m lazy.”

“That’s amazing,” she whispered.

“I guess.”

“You feel awkward, don’t you, Max?”

I turned around to look at her. She was staring up at me, kind of pathetic-like, with these big blue eyes and sad, full lips, all wrapped up in my blankets. And despite what we’d just shared with one another, I knew she was right. I felt awkward as hell. It was like I’d never had sex with a woman before. I didn’t know if I should make her a drink or a cake with the word “sorry” written in the icing. Normally I was pretty confident with myself in such situations, but there was something about Emmie. She really knew how to dissect me, but I didn’t think she knew how to put me back together. Even I didn’t know how to do that.

“I should probably go, right?” she said, rushing over to her clothes. She sat down on the edge of my bed and started putting everything back on.

I followed her with my eyes, fondling my cigarette between my fingers.

“Yeah, maybe you should go,” I said quietly.

She looked at me with that same sad face, like she was hoping I’d tell her to stay. But she only nodded and continued pulling her pants back up.

“And maybe this was a big mistake,” I said. “Maybe I’m setting myself up for failure, getting involved with you. Maybe I’ll fall hopelessly in—maybe I’ll really like you, and you’ll just screw me over again like you did before.”

She heaved a sad laugh and put her hands on her thighs.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” she said quietly.

“At this point, me either,” I replied. “But I’ve never had a very good track record when it comes to making good decisions.”

She nodded, pulling her jacket back on.

“Well I’m definitely not a good decision.”

“I know you aren’t. And I’d be a fucking idiot for taking a chance on you.”

She sighed and gave me a look out of half-dead eyes.

“Where are you going with this?” she asked.

I shrugged, leaning against my doorway.

“I’m a fucking idiot.”

She just gave me a tiny smile, the kind that said “yeah, you are, and I’ll prove it to you.” I’m sure she would prove it to me. Maybe whatever we had would be gone in a week or less and she’d run off in the middle of the night, leaving me to wake up alone and wondering what I did wrong. Maybe her father would be the next person to come into my work, only he’d actually murder me. Either way, in the end my heart would get destroyed and I’d have no one to blame but myself. But my life had been one long series of disappointment and blaming myself for everything, from my parent’s divorce to my dad hating me and losing touch with my mom and sisters. What was one more episode of bad luck on my behalf? Whatever Emmie could do to me, it probably wouldn’t be half as bad as whatever I could do to myself.

I took a drag off my smoke and walked over to my window, pushing it open so I could ash out of it. I leaned against my wall, propping my arms up on my windowsill and staring out at the bleak Rogersdale sky.

“So I guess you can stay if you want, but don’t expect me to make you food or get all romantic about it or anything.” I said.

“Of course I don’t expect that,” she replied. “We’re only friends, remember?”

“Yeah,” I muttered, “right.”

“Um, is your dog, uh…finished in the bathroom…?” she asked. You could tell she’d never uttered a sentence like that before in her life, and she never thought she would.

“Yeah,” I smirked. “If he didn’t flush just do it for him. Sometimes he forgets.”

“…Right,” she said. I heard the bathroom door shut and the toilet flush a few seconds later.

I stared out the window and again found myself wondering what the fuck I was doing. I was a dirty hypocrite. I knew I was going to get hurt and there I was, putting my fucking foot right into the bear trap. No wonder people hated me.

I stuck my head out of my window and the cool breeze that was rippling through my dumb grey town tousled my hair all up and bit at my cheeks and eyes. But I kept my head poked out that damn window. I just liked to do that sometimes. It was fun to look down at anybody walking on the sidewalk below when you were up on the fourth floor. They all just looked like tiny, crushable ants, sort of. Maybe a bit bigger than ants; I wasn’t up that high, after all. But I liked to pretend they were ants anyway. It made me feel better about myself for some weird reason. On that particular day there were a few people meandering the cracked sidewalk outside my building. Sometimes there were younger kids walking home from school or something, and they’d play that dumb game. You know the one: don’t step on the cracks or you’ll break your mother’s back or something. It was kind of entertaining to watch them jump over the huge breakages in the cement, and I didn’t mean that in a pedophile way or anything. I just remember playing that game when I was younger, only after my parents divorced and my father put the notion that it was all my mother’s fault in my head, I made sure to stomp on every goddamn crack with a vindictive heel. But there were no kids on that day. There was some older lady, trying to navigate herself around the larger cracks so she wouldn’t get her walker lodged in one and fall over. After she disappeared from my line of vision two sweethearts appeared, holding hands and all that shit. I could hear their giggles and voices that echoed up to me. It kind of made me sick. They were all PDA with no holding back. They were so certain of their feelings and they didn’t fear getting hurt. God, I hated them for that, and I didn’t even know them. I gathered a decent ball of spit in my mouth and let it drip out of my lips. I watched it fall the distance down to the sidewalk and it landed right next to the guy’s shoe. He didn’t even notice I’d tried to spit on him; he was too focused on his girl. What a chump.

I was pretty angry at myself, like usual. I mean Jesus, I was willing to touch my bare wrist to a flaming hot grill without a second thought, but I was terrified of getting my damn heart broken by a stupid girl with blonde hair and a dimple. I guess I was afraid because usually it’s me who did the heartbreaking, or I tried to, and if the girl tried to break my heart I wouldn’t care. But I knew with Emmie that would all be dumped on its head. She’d be the one to destroy me, and I’d never recover from it. I didn’t like caring about things. I’d grown too used to not caring about anything that the thought of actually giving a shit scared the piss out of me. I’d been hurt enough, I figured. Only an idiot would put himself in harm’s way for the sake of some pretty girl. Like I said, I was a big fucking idiot.

I heard the floor creak and I knew Emmie was finished in the bathroom. So she didn’t startle me that time when she spoke up over my shoulder.

“Well I’m hungry,” she said. “You got cooking materials? I can make food if you won’t.”

“I don’t know what I’ve got. Look in the fridge, I guess.” I said, not bothering to turn and look at her.

She didn’t say anything back; she just went about her business. I was feeling real damn sore of all a sudden, on the inside. They needed to make icepacks for a man’s pride, because mine had gotten badly bruised in the last 48 hours. I didn’t even know what I was doing anymore. I needed to either get over myself or get beaten with a stick.

“You have some stuff for a decent couple of omelettes,” Emmie said from the kitchen. “You want one or what?”

“I guess,” I replied as my stomach grumbled. I really hadn’t eaten that much that day. I wandered out towards the kitchen and sat in the recliner sideways, so I could still see her back if I looked around the back of the chair.

“You’re some romantic, Max,” she said, “making your date cook for you.”

“Didn’t know this was a date,” I muttered, crushing my cigarette into an ashtray. “I thought we were just friends.”

“We are.”

“Then why are you on my ass about it? I fucking told I wasn’t gonna cook for you.”

“I was just joking,” she replied calmly. “You swear a lot, did you know that?”

“Yeah,” I sighed glumly.

“It’s okay. I don’t mind a dirty mouth. I have one, too.”

I snickered, recalling our bedroom altercation.

“I know, but you do some good things with it.”

She chuckled gently at my naughty joke and the pan sizzled as she cracked a couple eggs onto it. I just sat there in my chair. Sid came over and joined me, laying down in front of the chair and blinking a few times before resting his head on his paws and falling asleep. I wish life was easy for me as it was for him. All he did was eat, lick his junk, and sleep all day. All he had to worry about was finding a comfortable place to pass out in. He didn’t care about getting his heart broken; he didn’t know what that meant. I would trade my life for his in an instant.

“God, I can practically hear your moping all the way over here,” quipped Emmie. “Why don’t you come cook with me for awhile?”

“Why should I do that?” I asked.

“Because,” she replied. “It wouldn’t kill you to crack a smile and enjoy yourself for a minute. Can’t you be happy, just for a little bit? I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”

Surprisingly I didn’t have some smart response for that. A few things came to mind but I didn’t have the guts to vocalize them. I ended up just getting out of the chair and walking into the kitchen. She looked all wife-like, standing at the stove and cooking shit. It was weird. I didn’t really want to help her cook, so I went for the “cute distraction” method. I slipped my arms around her waist and buried my face into the side of her throat. She grinned and gave a dreamy sigh.

“Are you happy, Max?” she asked, stirring the steaming egg mixture.

I had no goddamn idea how being that close to a girl was supposed to make me anything other than horny, but just to get her to shut up about it, I pacified her.

“Yes,” I murmured in her ear, “I’m so damn happy I could fly to the damn moon.”



I sat in the middle of my mattress, a newly empty mickey of whiskey in my left hand and my phone in my right hand. For an hour I’d been taking a drink of whiskey every time I thought of dialling that damnable number. Now I was out of whiskey and since I’d drank the entire damn bottle in an hour I was not capable of getting up and grabbing another drink. So I stared at the phone and admitted my defeat by pressing the numbers I was too ashamed to admit aloud that I had memorized.

I hadn’t talked to my sister Stephanie in a good two years. She was older than me by just a year and three months, and she was something else. As kids we fought a lot, but we also had our moments of bonding, like every sibling pair does. She was the only one of my siblings I actually could stand, though. Maybe because she wasn’t a judgemental prude, and she actually cared to listen to me talk before she tried to correct me about anything. She never tried to rub her accomplishments into my face, so I appreciated that. But we’d had kind of a fallout the last time we talked. It wasn’t anything big, really; she’d been bugging me about never speaking to mom, and how the old woman actually worried about me. I’d blown my top and yelled at her that the hag never gave a damn about me, and if she had she’d given up really early. I refused to listen to Steph try and defend mother so I’d stomped out of her hotel room—she’d been up from New York just to visit me; I’d clearly run her efforts into the dirt—and didn’t speak to her again after that. Now, it was safe to say I’d grown up some after two years—not much, but some. I felt kind of sorry for how I’d acted. Maybe it was because I was damn lonely and incredibly lost, but I would never say that to Stephanie. She’d throw some therapist talk in my face—that’s what she did, she was a therapist. Ironic, seeing as I’m her brother, eh?—and I wouldn’t want to hear any of it. She always complained that I was impossibly stubborn.

The last time I’d actually talked with Stephanie, not argued, she’d been with some guy she’d met when she was still in college. His name was Brent or something like that. He was some PhD idiot; a doctor or professor or something, I can’t remember. I remember thinking just by the way she’d talked about him that she must be head over heels for the guy. It was all “Brent went to Ethiopia once, to help drill for water. I just love looking at his little slideshow of pictures from his trip; the children make me cry! You’d love it, Max” and “Brent can cook, which is more than I could say about Lee. Do you remember Lee? You punched him square in the nose on Christmas Eve because he wouldn’t shut up about the NFL.” I wondered if she was engaged to that Brent guy or if they’d broken up. Maybe she got tired of his flashy PhD and the snapshot faces of all the dirty, malnourished children he’d “helped”. I made a mental note to ask her about him as I listened to the dial tone hum in my ear.

Granted, Steph could probably make the Pope fall in love with her. She was all tall, skinny limbs, kind of like me only she had hips and a woman’s chest, with long black hair that she could fashion into any position on her head. Her eyes were huge and brown and damn, they could stare straight into your soul if you let them. I tried not to look into her eyes for too long. She always found things out about me that I didn’t want her to know when I did that. It was creepy. She was a pretty well-known therapist in New York, too, so she wracked up a pretty decent paycheque at the end of each month. She specialized in couples therapy and family therapy, but she could analyze my stupid burnt out brain in a split second if she wanted to. I hated it when she did that. Anyway, she was the quiet, listening type, which was the worst kind. She just sat there and watched you as you talked or even when you didn’t talk. She could gain your entire autobiography just from ten minutes of your body language. It was unsettling. And sometimes she’d never say a word about what she knew, but you could always tell in the way she’d look at you when she thought you weren’t looking back. Her brow would cinch together just the tiniest bit, enough so there was a little dent between them, and her lips would purse a bit and get all tight, and her eyes would look all sorrowful and worried. I chose to avoid her when she gave me that look.

Finally the dial tone got cut off mid-buzz and Steph’s voice crawled through the line into my ear.

“Hello?” Her voice was kind of quiet but always polite. Even when she was yelling at you she sounded proper. It was infuriating.

“Hey—uh, hi, Steph,” I stammered, clearing my sore throat. “It’s your brother. Max.”

There was silence for a little while on the other end of the line. I could hear her brain just processing my words with a ferocious speed. It had been two years after all, so I gave her time.

“Max?” she asked. “Is it really you?”

“Yeah,” I muttered, picking at a scab on my knee through a hole in my jeans. “It’s really me.”

“Gracious…how long has it been? Two?”

“Two years, yeah. How’ve you been, anyway? You still with Brent Whatshisname?”

She chuckled softly on the other end of the line. “His name is Brad Zinkowski. And yes, I am, actually. I’m hoping we’ll get engaged someday soon…we’ve been together for so long, you know that.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.”

“How about you? Do you have a girlfriend?”

I pictured Emmie for a second, with her blonde hair, thick makeup, stupid dimple and omelettes. But I shook her image from my head.

“No. Hey, how’s New York been, anyway? I was thinking about maybe coming down to visit sometime when I’m not working, you know. I don’t know when that’ll be exactly. Well I mean I’m not really working right now, but only because I got injured. It was just an accident, I swear, but Ol’ Marty told me to take a break. But I don’t think I’d come down now. I’d just come to see you, that’s all. I don’t think mom would want to see me—”

“Are you drunk, Maxi?”

“What? Am I drunk? No—”

“It’s just, you get very talkative when you’re drunk. The drunker you are the harder it is for anybody to get a word in edgewise. And I must admit that this phone call is very out of the blue and a tad worrisome. It’s been two years, Max. Has something happened? Why are you drunk at this time in the middle of the week?”

There was the therapist. I couldn’t even escape it over the goddamn phone. I winced, like I was getting a needle or something.

“Nothing’s happened,” I argued. “And I’m not drunk. I just…I wanted to give you a shout. I wanted to know if you were still with whatshisname.”

“Alright, alright, sure. So you missed me.” I could practically hear the self-righteous smirk in her voice. Steph knew how to drive the sword right into my dumb heart and wiggle it around.

“No—well, not really. I was just thinking about you. Am I not allowed to do that?” I asked.

“Of course you are. You can also outwardly admit it. You love me, don’t you, Max? You love me.”

“What?” I spat. “You’re my sister.”

“Yes, and you love me like any brother loves their sister, don’t you?”

“You make me mad sometimes.”

“And yet you still think of me. Don’t you see, Max? You love me. You are capable of such a thing, you know, everyone is. Even Lucifer himself was cast from heaven just because he loved God so much. And that was family love.”

“Don’t rub that religious crap on me, Steph, c’mon.”

“I’m not, it was only an example. I know you love me even if you don’t say it, Max. It’s alright.”

“Okay.”

“How have you been, brother? Tell me the truth.”

I tugged at the ends of my hair. I should’ve known better than to dial her damn number. Not only was it long distance but I was being charged for an impromptu therapy session.

“Shitty,” I replied. “I’ve been shitty. Nothing’s changed.”

“Max…why? What’s happening?”

“Nothing! That’s just it. Nothing happens. I’m like a goddamn ghost in this stupid apartment and at work I’m just being stupid. I’m a half-dead, lonely ghost. It’s like nobody can see me, Steph. And if they do, they pretend they don’t. I don’t care, and no one else in this grey town does. And I don’t want to care because I don’t want to be hurt by stupid people who can only destroy.” Ah, verbal diarrhoea. What a terrible disease.

She was silent for a moment, clearly analyzing me over the phone. I could just picture that dent between her eyebrows appearing as her brain worked on overdrive. She’d told me once that I was one of her more “complicated cases” whatever the hell that meant. I wasn’t one of her patients, not willingly anyway.

“You’re not a ghost, Max. Surely you’re lonely, but that doesn’t make you a ghost. And you certainly have every right in the world to fear getting hurt; lord, you’re not the only one on the planet who is scared of that. But you have to let yourself care, just a little bit. I know it’s scary, but if you just let one person in…even if you get hurt in the end you’ll come out with a whole new perspective. It may be negative at first, but you’ll learn a valuable lesson in the midst of it, everyone does.”

“What might that be? Never trust anyone ever again?”

“Maybe. Or maybe it’ll be something slightly more life-changing. I can’t tell you for sure. I just urge you to try, that’s all. Only you can stop yourself from feeling awful all the time. The world won’t change for one small town punk.” There was a smile in her voice when she said that.

“Hey, Steph?”

“Yes?”

“Do people actually pay you to verbally shoot that shit at them?”

She chuckled at me. “Yes, they do. Do people actually pay you to cook them a greasy death on a bun?”

I roared with laughter. It was little quips like that one that reminded me Steph and I were undoubtedly related.

“My boss does. Should I tell the cops he’s a conspiring murderer?”

“It might be wise to collect proper evidence first.”

“I cook the shit; I’d say that’s proper evidence.”

“They’ll arrest you for being an accomplice.”

“Damn. Guess I’ll keep my mouth shut, then.”

“I guess you should.”

We shot the shit for a little while longer and then Steph said she had to run because she had a date with Brad that she didn’t want to be late for. “I was late the last time because I couldn’t choose what colour of lipstick went best with my dress. You can imagine Brad’s eye-roll at that excuse.” Surprisingly I hadn’t even been concerned about what kind of phone bill I was racking up; I was just so caught up in talking with her that I forgot about all of that. I had missed her after all. It felt weird coming to that realization.

“Oh, and before I go, I should tell you something else, Max,” she said hastily. Clearly she was rushing.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Maybe you should start by letting that girl you like in, regardless of how absolutely terrified you are of her.”

I blinked. Goddamn therapists, learning everything you don’t know even when they can’t see you…

“What are you—”

“When I asked you about girls you said no and quickly changed the subject. I’ve known you for your entire life, Max. I know when you’re lying.”

“Or you sold your soul to the devil to gain that kind of creepy insight. You’re really intrusive, you know that?”

“That’s my job. Now I have to go. Please don’t hesitate to call again. And if you do decide to come down, which I hope you do, I can assure you that mother would be very pleased to see you again. I know you don’t like to hear it but she really does worry about you. Goodbye, Max. I love you.”

“Okay. Goodbye.”

I hung up and just sat there in the middle of my mattress for a little while. As always, stupid Stephanie was right. It was my own fault I felt like shit and I hadn’t done a single thing to change it. I knew I should. I hated how she could get into my head like that, even when I tried to block her out. She always knew everything. It was distracting and it bothered me. She was so damn intrusive. She didn’t even ask to know everything I tried to hide, she just knew it. What’s worse is that she always reminded me that she knew, whether it was verbally or just with the little dent between her eyebrows. That dent was infuriating. I kept picturing it that entire time we were on the phone together because I knew it was there.

Despite the fact that she’d made some good points, I really didn’t care to utilize her advice right away. It was late, and whiskey made me sleepy as hell.