//Have you ever noticed how stories always get told by the nice one? Always the wallflower. The sweetheart. The one that don't do much, mostly watches, but is probably in the right.
Well fuck that.
Just cause you're gentle don't make you honest. Don't mean shit. Except maybe fear. And scared people are the worst. Scared people are pussy faggot bastards and all they do is lie. Only thing a scared person give a shit about is staying alive. And pretty if they can help it.
I'm not scared.
You can say a lot of things about me, and you probably do, but scared ain't one of them. Not unless you want to start something, in which case, go ahead.
Say it.
I've got all night. A beer or two buzzing in my belly and only the yellow kind of bruises anywhere on my body. That means they're a good week old and I'm getting itchy.//
// There's some commotion behind me.
I turn and see two scared people standing by the door waiting to get in. They are arguing with the bouncer, Mr. Holes In His Ears. He's not a scared person, but he is certainly an asshole. Also I don't even understand his tattoos. If they are supposed to be ironic or if he is just stupid. Mostly naked girls with purple skin and snake tongues or else wings. Bat, not angel. Go figure. His ears really are something to look at though. Or rather, look through. Gauges so big they only make sense if they're for spiritual purposes, which the purple girls tell me with sly little shakes of their heads is not true.
Suddenly I do not want to be in this bar anymore. I want to be anywhere else. The night is not young, but so what? Old is best for a night to be. I slam down some coins and sling myself to my feet. And then I head to the door. Push passed the scared people and out into the streets, into the old, old night.
On my way, I pass lots more scared people. On my way to where? On my way to the house of another scared person. The reason I came back to this sorry place at all. Since I've been here last, more letters have fallen off of more signs and more plants have grown up wild and wide and a few new buildings have been built but mostly the buildings have been torn down, or been condemned but then left to swell with squatters and quietly rot. So the house should be hard to find, but it isn't, because my legs remember what my mind's forgot.
There's an aloe vera plant in the yard that reaches long barbed dragon tongues up as high as my thighs. But it's dying. That's the problem with everything here. Everything is almost something good but nothing ever quite makes it. Like how the nice thing about this place would be the open, the calm, the space. But sooner or later, you see the machines in the background and that ruins it. The oil rigs go up and down like drinking birds. And they never stop.
Inside the house, which is actually three houses pushed together into too little space, it's not much better. The windows are after thoughts, tiny and awkwardly placed. Most of the furniture came from the curb.
The scared person on the couch looks like she came from the curb too. Like maybe someone saw the couch and wanted it so bad they just said, fuck it, why not? So what if it comes with a woman?
The scared person's dress is the color of a dirty window, and through it I can see boxer shorts and a plain white bra. Her hair is also almost beautiful: orange and cut shorter than mine. That's new. Last time it hit her shoulders.
I admit I stumble a little coming in. I admit I do not knock. I admit to the bulk and aggression of my shadow.
Yet it still slams me in the gut how she looks at me, wild and frail. And then she says, "Is that you, Kevin?"
And I don't talk.
And the scared person says, "What do you want from me, Kevin?"
"I'm not Kevin."
The scared person squints at me like maybe it really is her mistake, not mine. Like maybe it could be that I'm a stranger with a gun breaking into her home at four in the morning to steal the cash from her underwear drawer. (Top left, cabinet under the mirror, if anyone's interested.)
The scared person says, "Kevin, aren't you on prohibition or something?"
I laugh. Not because it's funny, although it is. I laugh because it's sad.
"No," I say to the scared person. I call the scared person mom. I say, "No, mom. You mean probation. And I'm not even. Did Kevin #2 tell you that?"
"Kevin number?"
The scared person is confused.
Sometimes a scared person is like a pop song. They just keep saying the same stupid refrain over and over like if they sing it sexy it will mean something. But it never does.
This scared person's song is: "What do you want from me, Kevin?" all we need is some auto-tuning and snap that's it, we're on the radio, and the rest is a matter of static.
I don't answer. That's the best way to get a scared person to talk. But I don't even want this scared person to talk, I just don't have anything to say.
She talks anyway. "What have I even got that you could want?" she makes the same move with her hands as a king or a gangster saying, all this is mine. Only it's nothing. It's mildew and bottles. It's bullshit.
She's right.
"You must have something left to lose."
"Well, at least I'm still pretty." She smiles like a miracle or a joke and picks a bottle off the floor. "I'll drink to that," She says. And the bottle is empty but she drinks anyway.
What did I say? Scared people are liars. There is still a scroll of bills saving spot backs for her breasts in her favorite blue bra that she says is from Paris. The Paris part is another lie.
And this is why it shouldn't be Kevin telling the story. It should be me. Because I'm never in the right, but I'm always right.
To the scared person I say, "Good night." //
