SS - "Symbiosis"

[aplus]

This is a DAMN long ass short story, but I need feedback on it, and my boxden peeps are usually good for that. Anyone who actually reads it and provides a crit, good or bad, will get propped. Let me know if you are feeling this...


Symbiosis

Dawn arrives and the skies are deceitful, promising raindrops yet delivering nothing. It’s a perfect day to tackle the nagging tasks that often fall victim to procrastination. Unless you happen to live in the Quail Ridge Homes, Apartment 213. That, unfortunately, is my residence.

This morning, I am concealing caveats of a craptastic existence before my mother visits. It’s an attempt to make my life appear better than it is, an activity that is as American as overeating. My mom’s pending arrival has forced me to realize that I’m far from successful. I am wedged in a dull career path. I have no children or pets, just a houseplant that I murder and revive periodically. It’s challenging to stay optimistic when your entire self-worth can be summarized in a few empty résumé phrases.

The tempo of my life is slipping off beat. I would describe that more technically, but aside from being a dashboard drummer and a shower-stall soprano, I don’t have a scrap of musical talent. However, sometimes I pretend that I’m a musician to divert my attention from reality. It’s a mental crutch that helps me limp though days like this.

You may wonder what has me downhearted. Well, if Visa hadn’t called earlier demanding money, I wouldn’t have known that the phone company was still providing me with a dial tone. And I wouldn’t be behind on the bills if my lowlife roommate Craig wasn’t so shiftless. On top of all this, my girlfriend Rita and I broke up earlier this week. Check that; she dumped me with a gutless misuse of text messaging technology.

So private issues have me mired in a certain blues aesthetic, but I am still trying to make my place presentable to a parental unit. I’m hovering over the kitchen sink, busting suds like a minimum-wage worker at a diner. I’ve never seen anything like the mold on these abandoned dishes. I scrub, but the tainted plates resist any effort to clean them. The bathroom is probably even nastier. Craig is a shaggy Neanderthal who can’t aim straight, so I imagine there are public hairs littering the toilet rim and blotches of piss on the linoleum.

I’m no fan of grime, so I want to be someplace where dirt and germs don’t exist. Inside a Lysol can, for instance. This slave labor situation is unbecoming of musician, or even a wannabe like me. I glance towards the living room at Craig, who is sprawled across the sofa in a semi-comatose state. His drool pools unevenly atop a couch cushion. He’s undoubtedly crashing from another high. I shake my head. Living with a paroled drug addict would be a classic theme for a blues ballad, but those lyrics would tell a tale that I’d rather not have to author.

[aplus]

* * *
Loyalty is the focus of hip-hop music. Sprinkled in every rap song are rumblings about staying true to a neighborhood, never snitching to authorities, and maintaining a level head despite personal success. Loyalty is also the impetus that drives my association with Craig. Therefore, it’s fitting that the explanation of this whole ex-convict roommate situation starts at a rap concert. More specifically, it begins at a scheduled performance by the esteemed lyricist Rakim, a few years after his split with deejay Eric B., at the First Avenue Club in downtown Minneapolis.

At the time, I had been working with Craig for just a few months. He was a bouncer at a local dive where I bartended during college. Craig was a burly Caucasian guy who grew up listening to hip-hop. So when I mentioned that I was going to see Rakim live, he asked to roll with me and my crew to the concert. I agreed. Any white boy who knew the words to “Paid in Full” was cool with this brother.

But Rakim never appeared that night. After several substandard opening acts, the promoter tiptoed onstage and gave a sheepish excuse for the no-show. This was a negative catalyst for the crowd. A rebellious tone churned through the masses, and I was in the center. But most people misdirected their fury. The slick promoter was able to creep out of a side door while his swindled customers threw punches at each other.

Earlier that night, I had pissed off some insecure pretty boy who claimed I was flirting with his date. But it was really his girl who winked at me. I wasn’t interested in her, especially since she looked like an STD dressed in spandex, but pretty boy didn’t listen. Rather than argue, I walked away with an eerie feeling that this would all come back to haunt me. And I was right.

During the riot that ensued after the promoter’s escape, pretty boy and four of his linebacker-sized friends jumped me from behind. Fists and feet impacted my face and chest. I tried to protect myself; I curled into the fetal position on the floor and retaliated with wild swings when I could. But the circumstances were bleak. I wasn’t a punk, but I couldn’t withstand a sneak attack by five grown men.

When jealous boyfriend and his steroid-pumped posse ambushed me, my friends scattered like roaches at daybreak. The only person that stayed put and displayed loyalty was Craig, someone who was only vaguely familiar with me. This husky white guy battled my assailants with musical precision. He smashed a beer bottle on one of their skulls for percussion. He choked another with some excess speaker wire, a violently tuned stringed instrument of choice. Next, a gut shot pushed the breath out of a third attacker for a woodwind effect. Craving revenge, I recovered and accompanied him during this sadistic symphony.

There were other fights in the club, yet there were only a handful of arrests. Craig got caught up, but I didn’t. He knew that I had a college diploma in my future. So right before the cops arrived, he insisted that I sneak out the door the shady promoter had used.

Under oath, Craig never once uttered my name in connection with the fight, even though we were both involved. He was convicted of assault and other miscellaneous charges. Since it was his first conviction and the jail system was inundated, the judge said he might get lucky and only serve a few years. That scenario didn’t sound too lucky to me.

So I visited him occasionally while he was in the penitentiary and put money in his commissary fund whenever I could afford it. Four years later, Craig was released from the Moose Lake correctional facility. It was two years after my college graduation. I picked him up in my imported sedan and we sped southward to Minneapolis, with high-end Bose speakers blaring out the latest fast-paced rap song.

I told Craig that he could live at my place until he got settled. I offered this without contemplating how prison might have sodomized his character. I didn’t think about what habits he might have picked up to make those idle days pass faster, so I had no clue that recreational drug use was about to become his full-time occupation. I was simply being loyal. But loyalty between individuals often backfires, especially when one man has evolved while the other has digressed into a narcotic-driven beast.

[aplus]

* * *
“Unbelievable,” I mutter out loud to myself, knowing that if Craig doesn’t get off his ass and start contributing, and soon, I will undoubtedly endure a harsh berating about my lack of assertiveness and common sense, and will, in years to come, suffer because I helped a friend after his prison release.

The venomous allegations of my incompetence will come from my mother, who is making a rare pilgrimage across the Midwest to see me. She’ll arrive in a few hours on a cozy first-class Northwest airlines flight, a trip filled with free cocktails. Once her plane hits the tarmac and grinds to a halt, she will travel from the Lindbergh Terminal via taxi to my doorstep. And I am terrified, because the woman has an uncanny knack of making me feel inferior.

“Hello, son,” she will say smugly upon entering my place, a humble co-op apartment that I barely financed with my shaky credit rating, a residence which she has never visited. The syncopation in her voice will spoil my scripted thoughts. Then she’ll stop abruptly and mutter her first expletive in a decade.

“sh*t.”

She will cringe at the utilitarian décor, a sparse collection of clearance furniture from Target (the assemble-it-yourself-kind). Then, she’ll give me a strange look related to the lethargic druggie perched on the couch. I could explain his presence, but my mom would never understand the enigmatic beauty of what Craig did by taking the heat for me. Instead, I’ll simply shrug, prompting her to immediately strip me of favorite child status. Finally, her eyes will settle upon me. That will force out my mother’s second curse word in two minutes, after ten years of pristine Christian communication.

“Goddamn.”

An onslaught of maternal criticism will follow. “What’s wrong with you, boy?” she’ll say, pointing at my bloodshot eyes. They are red from extended work weeks and excessive alcohol consumption, although not necessarily in that order of contribution.

Earlier this morning, I gave up the pretense of daylight sobriety. Now I know that I shouldn’t get smashed before my mom arrives. Booze won’t clean this apartment, but it will give me a more detached perspective on everything. And if I remain sober, I’m likely to not answer the door when she comes.

An excuse for my tipsy appearance will be needed, so I’ll have to improvise, even if my ad-libbing skills are rusty. As musicians know, improvisation requires relaxation and a clear head. My thoughts will be too clouded to create anything vaguely free-form.

“I’m okay mom. I’ve been working a ton of overtime lately.” I won’t tell her that I’m barely surviving because Craig’s presence has mooched away any disposable income, but she’ll somehow know. Her face will show disapproval.

My mom’s sense of smell is exceptional, so she will undoubtedly detect the faint scent of Craig’s urine that the steam cleaner didn’t quite remove from the carpet. Last week, Craig came across some cash, possibly from the teenage girl that he forces to turn tricks uptown. He stumbled into the apartment lifted after wasting the money on pills. After washing down a Xanex with light beer, Craig whipped out his penis and triumphantly gave the carpet a golden shower. Try explaining that amphetamine logic to a fifty-five year old Baptist churchgoer. You would lie too, probably blaming the piss smell on a cat that you never owned.

“You can do better than this rundown apartment, son,” my mom will say. “You have a degree and good job. I came all the way from Chicago to see you scraping by like this?”

Wrapped in this grim premonition, I now feel desperate. If I had more time, I would practice until my life assumed the correct beat, like a dedicated musician. But time is an endangered commodity. I consider talking to my buddy Jay, who always squeezes beautiful blue notes out of desperate situations. He’ll know how to arrange this chaos.

[aplus]

* * *
The tidal wave of scorn from Jay will almost be as wicked as the one that will emanate from my mom. But whereas my mother only will see part of my bullsh*t, Jay knows the entire truth. He repeatedly warned me about Craig and I didn’t listen. He reminds me of this whenever we speak, so I haven’t called him in a few months. Reluctantly, I dial Jay, knowing he’ll preach to me once again, but that he will ultimately help me.

“I’ve got a bit of a problem over here,” I understate once he answers the phone.

“Hey, man. What’s going on? Long time since I heard from you.” he responds.

“Craig is passed out on the couch and this apartment is filthy. And my mom’s coming here in a couple hours.”

Jay laughs, not as sarcastically as I expected, but for about thirty seconds longer than I feel is necessary. Eventually he says, “I told you Craig was a freeloader. You’d be better off without that bastard.”

“I know.” I don’t want to admit it, but being humble is the best way to solicit Jay’s assistance.

His sermon continues. “But you insisted on helping that bloodsucker.”

“Don’t you think ‘bloodsucker’ is a little harsh? Craig did go through hell upstate so my cornhole could remain unmolested.”

“I know, man. You’re keeping it real. So you’re cool with housing an ex-con while you work your little corporate job. But fu*k that, you’ve got to prioritize. Craig’s a bloodsucker. He’ll drain you like a thirsty vampire until you do something.”

“You’re probably right. But what can I do right now? My mom will be here soon.”

“Hold on a sec. I’m coming over to help.”

When Jay arrives fifteen minutes later, he looks wider than I remember him appearing. His belly now stretches the seams of his T-shirt. He pats it periodically, a drumming to remind himself how good life has become. Jay hasn’t missed any meals. He hasn’t swallowed canned ravioli and feigned satisfaction in order to stretch his budget. Glancing at his chubby frame, I know our lives have gone on divergent paths the past few months. Nonetheless, it’s refreshing to see a friend, someone who can see me all tired and broke and fu*ked up without judging.

Jay can’t go five minutes without saying something from the realm of unsanctioned crassness. Usually his rants are about trips to the toilet, complete with descriptions about the heft and consistency of his dump. His mouth curls into a smirk right before he says odd things, as if he knows better but is fully committed to making a disturbing remark. Musically speaking, Jay embodies dissonance. His comments are often atonal when he should follow the chords. But it isn’t that Jay doesn’t know the chords. He just doesn’t care.

He looks at me with sympathy, then peeks at Craig, and finally shakes his head. “Well, it looks like someone has sh*tted on your sofa, and now you’ve called me to clean up the steaming pile,” he said. Jay, master of the obvious, is now officially onstage.

[aplus]

* * *
For all his quirks, Jay can sure get down to business. He quickly helps me clear the place of excess debris and empty pizza boxes. We clean with a jazzy rhythm of intellectual precision, like Charlie Parker’s Yardbird Suite, smooth yet energetic. I hear the groove internally, and it’s only interrupted by Jay’s occasional farts. He pretends to be completely deaf to his occasional passing of gas, but there’s no way he can’t notice all that putrid air rushing out his sphincter.

After the stench of Jay’s ass subsides, the apartment smells pristine. Everything falls in place, except for Craig, the thirty-year-old scumbag with prison tattoos strung out on the sofa. Jay and I consider picking him up and moving him to his bedroom, but then we think better of it. We don’t want to trigger a penitentiary flashback and end up on the wrong end of a sleeper hold.

Oh well. Everything else is as clean as it will ever be. This calls for a drink.

Jay and I take refuge in my room with a fifth of Old Crow whiskey. We sip at a relaxed pace. He jokes that my mom is really coming to see him, but he isn’t playing the dozens. My mom has always adored Jay from the time we were kids, mainly because of his affinity for her meatloaf. If he’s here when she arrives, she might even hug him before me. Maybe Jay being around will offset the criminal presence in the front room. I can only pray that it does.

Jay urges me to move to the suburbs, where new construction has been spreading like a virus. Normally, I cut him off and profess my love for the city, in all its smog and syphilis infested glory. I have previously ignored his encouragement for relocating to some handsome gated community of town homes and skyrocketing property values. But with today’s sobering events, I ask Jay to grab me a brochure for his housing development. It’s time to think about change.

In rhythm, we knock back more slugs of cheap liquor. I start giving Jay a rundown on the whole Rita breakup situation, happy to have an audience for my self-absorbed bi*ching.

“So I visited to a yoga class a couple months ago. Craig, in a rare lucid moment, said it was a great spot to meet women. I didn’t participate; I just observed as a ‘potential customer.’ The hot-women-in-freaky-positions-on-the-floor show was well worth the effort.”

Jay begs for pornographic details, so I readily give them up after downing more whiskey. “This girl named Rita was the instructor. She found it sexy that a man would show up to watch yoga. By midnight, I had her in the downward-dog position. We screwed all night like horny undergraduates.” I reminisced about the smooth pace of our canine-style sexual encounters, the gentle beat of Rita’s wide Latin backside clapping against my lower abs.

I continue telling Jay about the failed relationship. “Rita is the wrong woman. On one hand, she’s petite with black curly hair, a round ass, and Latina olive toned skin. What hound wouldn’t chase that bi*ch? But she’s also a dollar-store diva with an attitude problem that has two kids from different sperm donors.” Listening to my commentary, I recognize that my relationship with Rita was predicated on converging cadences, mine a pounding Funkadelic bass line, hers some salsa-meringue melody. No wonder we could never quite get in sync.

“I won’t be tagging Rita’s ass anymore,” I concluded. “She started screwing this model named Francisco. I saw him in a magazine ad sporting Tommy Hilfiger briefs and an unrealistic bulge. I’ll never hear from that chick again.”

We get into a deep discussion about why I always date the wrong women. Jay brings up a couple of old flames, like the aspiring actress who got hooked on meth and the young lady who used to scrape fine parallel lines across her thigh with a drugstore knife whenever life felt too stressful. I can do nothing but laugh uncomfortably at my sullied history of picking losers.

Suddenly, a forceful crash occurs in the living room. The crescendo makes us leap from our seats and check on its origins. Craig has somehow crashed through my pressboard coffee table without completely splitting it. He is unconscious, once again from drugs, and both Jay and I are tentative to check his pulse.

[aplus]

* * *
If “parole violation” was listed in Webster’s Dictionary, my apartment could be a captioned picture beside its definition. Visualize a 245-pound man keeled over like a rogue potato sack. Imagine a room where a half-ounce of top-grade imported tan heroin inside of a plastic baggie has now become the impromptu centerpiece. Envision a tablespoon charred with black soot, where Craig, a comatose addict, just cooked his righteous dope with a stolen gold Zippo. Picture three dull syringes littering the floor with one additional needle planted firmly into Craig’s left bicep, a muscle with a dirty tube sock tied around it to make it more vascular. This is the scene that has mutated before me, a weary person that is now feeling the intoxicating effects of drinking Old Crow.

“What the fu*k is all this sh*t, man?” Jay’s eyes are virginal when it comes to crime scenes, unless they are staged on TV. My eyes are desensitized. I try to mimic his innocence, but it’s difficult. I’ve seen this commotion before, from Craig and others in the past. And I have a secret, a mistake that I discarded in the compost heap of my personal history. I can’t pretend that I’ve never seen smack, Craig’s narcotic of choice, thanks to an unfortunate one-time lapse in my judgment as a teen. So I know this scene well, but I still don’t like it. Therefore, I play along with Jay’s innocence, like a good band does when its frontline singer is clueless.

Neither of us can fathom why we didn’t hear Craig’s drug cravings from the other room. We failed to detect any desperate rustlings or grunts or whatever other sounds are associated with the injection process. I feel dizzy. I can’t keep up with all this new material. Jason tried to accompany me on this number, but we have committed to a failed performance. All of our efforts to straighten up are now a complete bust (that over-the-head-with-a-beer-bottle-kind).

Things flash through my mind with heavy metal guitar riffs as background music. All I can think about is an archaic junior high science film that my prune of a science instructor, Ms. Brendan, forced our class to watch. It was about symbiosis, how a parasite will use a host until it dies. It was exactly what Jay had said earlier (fu*k him for being right). Symbiosis also explains why misery is firmly attached to my life. I am the place where happiness comes to die, where depression can thrive until it eventually kills me and migrates to another victim.

* * *
Jay and I stare at Craig, a cataleptic scrounging parasite. We are governed by the quiet acoustics of fear, a silence that is interrupted by knocking on the front door and the nasal whine of my mother giving orders to a foreign cabbie. “Bring the luggage up here to Apartment 213,” she barks.

I’ve hit several wrong notes in today’s tragic masterpiece of personal downfall. I want to stop playing mid-song and run offstage like a sissy with stage fright. But as the cliché says, the show must go on. I shut my eyes and unintentionally summon the mantra of my fifth grade music teacher. Don’t think about it, just play it. I could never quite follow that advice. That’s why I failed as a musician (even in elementary school), and that’s why my life is so screwed up now. I feel my chest tightening. I need to breathe.

I swing open the door, rudely push past my maternal unit’s hug, and venture outside to inhale some fresh air pollution and shake off the sting of symbiosis. Soon I will hear my mom’s sour-noted screams, followed by Jay’s subsequent babbling explanation for the overdosed felon and drug paraphernalia in my living room. The scene can sufficiently explain itself without my improvised lies.

Right now, I know deep down that I’ve strayed too far from the written score. If my attitude doesn’t change, then I will, and perhaps not for the best. It’s time to grow up and start dealing with misery before misery kills me.

[mac58]

i didnt get a chance to read yet im at work and running around all day today and tonight, and if i read it I would just rush through it. Ill give it a good read 2morrow and give u some feedback.

[mac58]

Another good drop. I liked this. Believe it or not I've delt with a similar situation in the past so I could really relate. liked these lines>>Jay’s eyes are virginal when it comes to crime scenes, unless they are staged on TV. My eyes are desensitized. I try to mimic his innocence, but it’s difficult. I’ve seen this commotion before, from Craig and others in the past<<< I liked the musical theme stung throughout the story. Only real critisism i can think of is that it may be a bit long for a short story, but then looking over it I couldnt decide what parts i would take out to shorten it. so overall good story.

[aplus]

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to mac58 again.

^^^Thanks for the crit, I will hit you later

[Jazzy Soul]

Though it was long for a short story, your descriptive genius kept me hanging on to every word... I wanna be like you when I grow up... :lol:

I'm critting this as if I'd written it and upon revision these are some tiny things that I would change.

One is a use of punctuation that could probably go either way, but I think a semi-colon would fit better than a comma here:

...my girlfriend Rita and I broke up earlier this week. Check that, she dumped me with a gutless misuse of text messaging technology.

The word should be spelled 'straight' not 'strait' in this sentence:

...Craig is a shaggy Neanderthal who can’t aim strait...

And I would change the words 'syphilis' and 'smog' around just to make this sentence flow better.. since something is more likely to be infested by syphilis and not by smog. It's probably not something that the average reader would even notice...:shrug:

...cut him off and profess my love for the city, in all its syphilis and smog infested glory...

Sorry for nitpicking but that is all that I would change... everything else is perfect to me... wonderful read... I liked the way you incorporated the music theme and stuck to it... made it even more interesting if you ask me. Yeah but that's my 2 cents for ya.

[aplus]

thanks jazzy...those are all good points, and I will make those changes...

I've read that "strait - straight" mistake a thousand times and never caught it...very glad you did...

[Don Savant]

yooooooooooooooooooo plus..sorry it took me so long bro...been doin this and that but you already know..ay man...


man


you do what you do very well man...with a great consistency

keep it up man...your name will be on the minds of a lot of people soon.