Your Wife is

I’m lucky in a bad way.
When I was a kid, I fell from a tree without any broken bones. That’s because I landed on my dog.
When I was in grade school, I forgot to do a particularly important project. It’s something about volcanoes; it can also be something about birds. In any case, my teacher got mugged on the way to school and couldn’t make it until the week after.
When I was in high school, I got my first feel of tit when a hot but epileptic classmate collapsed on the floor. I helped in restraining her. Hey, fuck me, I was fourteen.
Speaking of which, I got my first fuck when this cute girl who sort of knows me, but who I don’t really ‘know-know,’ asks me to take her in the back of her asshole boyfriend’s car. I happened to be smoking outside when she storms out, tears on her cheeks. Asshole boyfriend, blah blah. It was the start of a beautiful one-night friendship.
I’m lucky in a bad way.
I’m reminded of this today.
It started particularly un-particular. I went to work, little Samsonite bag in tow, sandwich in a baggie: the whole ho-hum shebang. I waste my irreplaceable moments inside a photo-developing shop. We do film and digital, and we also sell some low end crap. Mostly we do digital, although we get the occasional ‘purist’ who does not want anything to do with those new, soulless computer stuff. True art is dead, at least that’s what I hear.
Anyway, the day had all the indications of filler; gray skies, gray people, gray everything. Even this fifty year old lady I work with decided not to dye her hair today. It was all just fucking gray.
I was wondering which porn site to stealth-browse when someone went in. The first of the day. He could also have been the last, so we both looked up, gray haired lady and me.
“Heyhowareyou” he said, in that cannot-be-bothered to separate my words type of way. I was like, “It’s good, anything you want?” I’m helpful that way.
“Yeah, uh” he said, now glancing to the left and to the right. I notice that he has acne marks under his chin. Why did I notice that? Well it’s because he’s like 8’ 10". Okay, maybe just 7 feet. So I look up at him.
My balls begin to tingle. It was like some Spiderman shit; not the situation, no - I was having a spider sense on my balls. Something was about to go down.
There was a long, wooden, probably homemade display cabinet hanging above us. This guy says, “How much for that thing?” pointing to an old but beautiful camera inside the case. It wasn’t for sale.
“It’s not for sale.”
The man takes a deep breath. I open the display cabinet.
“Man, the wife is gonna love this.” He says as he plays with it, pretending that he knows what to do with such 1980’s photographic power.
“You can, uh, probably get that on eBay.” I said. “I bought a… something on it last week. It’s pretty cool.”
“Yeah, eBay’s great.” Tallguy said. “I’m kind of an internet businessman. Buy and sell, you know.”
“That’s nice.”
He nods. Sighs. Heaves.
“Okay man, I have a feeling you ain’t gonna be a pain in the ass.” He says. His voice changed somewhat. It was gruff before; now it was Xtreme!!! gruff. It’s kind of unusual hearing that kind of vocal quality in person.
Grayhair woman looks at us; she had been fiddling with something on the computer. Probably checking out her myspace or something; I heard old guy Dick from next door added her. She was totally flipping.
Anyway, the tingling balls were right. The guy produced a small but believable revolver. He showed it to us both, just flashed it. He didn’t really need it, I think. He slips it back somewhere.
The human mind is weird. At that moment, believe it or not, I was thinking of the word hi-fi. Hi fi. Hi fi? It’s a weird word, and my mind seemed really interested in thinking about it at that moment. God forbid that I do not decipher the latin or greek origins of the word before lunch.
A phone rings.
Was it mine? No, no it wasn’t. I had Beyonce as my ring tone. This wasn’t grayhaired lady’s, either. She had Rihanna.
It was tallguy’s.
There was a moment when we all looked at each other, all our eyes wild. Mine with, uh, adrenaline and hi-fi deciphering power, grayhaired lady was probably turned on by the entire proceeding, while tallguy seemed inappropriately frazzled. Scared, even.
Three seconds. Two rings.
“Hello?”
Mosquito sounds from the phone. Bzz bzz bzz… bzz bzz! Bzz.
Mosquito sounds stop. Tallguy keeps the phone glued to his ear. Snaps it closed after a while, his face flat and neutral as a bottle of Coors.
“My wife…” He says. He just lays the camera gently on my hand and pirouettes. Slouches out of the shop.
Grayhaired woman and I look at each other, and I felt like I wanted to kiss her; I remember that she’s older than my mom so I don’t.
So I scratch my balls instead.


Was this story true? Who cares. I got to say ‘tit’ and ‘balls.’

…a good read, indeed!

More like rood gead, dindee!

Ity, that was so funny - really had me in stitches and i liked the natural progression of it. i suppose it could be autobiographical in some parts, knowing you. in other parts, i don’t know. :-k

you ought to really write a book!!! :laughing: and there’s a good idea for the storyline or at least a small chapter in it.

also you yourself do not need an incentive to use your favorite words. :imp:
:banana-dance: :banana-dance: :banana-dance: :banana-dance: :banana-dance: :banana-dance: :banana-dance:

I’ve actually explored this character in several other stories, but I can’t really say that it’s autobiographical. I’ve never worked in retail.

i liked the character. he’s sort of an up-side down real human kind of weird hero sort. :laughing: