DOYLE PART IV: THE DRIVE FAIR
by CHRISTOPHER CURRY
That night after the priest dropped him off at his apartment, Doyle went for a drive to ease his mind. He stopped at a convenience store and bought a six-pack of Colt 45 big boys from an unshaven clerk with bad teeth who kept one hand under the counter and one eye on the door. In his Honda, Doyle cracked open a "nice, smooth Colt 45" and steered down Nebraska Avenue, past the crack dealers, the police, the working girls and trannies.
He was at a stoplight, rolling a joint out of a bag of seed-ridden brown ditchweed, when a tall black hooker with a scarf around her neck and large beefy hands sauntered over to the driver’s side window.
"You looking for a good time?" she asked.
"You’re too much man for me, darling," Doyle laughed. He handed her the toothpick-thin joint and drove off. What was he looking for? Nothing. He was driving down this neon lane of XXX bookstores and pawn shops populated by cops, criminals and disease for no reason at all. It kept him from thinking. Too much thinking is bad for the soul. It brings all those faults and flaws bubbling to the surface like a fart in the tub.
He drove seedy side streets for hours watching the johns cruise narrow alleys with their tricks and the squad car lights flashing by. Each blow job, each arrest was another act in night’s ongoing production of sin. Doyle was the audience, riveted by some new plot twist at each street corner until his eyelids finally grew heavy from drink and smoke and he drove home with a loud, hearty "Bravo!" to the cast.
Hours later, Doyle woke in night’s deep bowels to a light tapping on the apartment door. He stumbled across the worn, salsa — was that blood? — stained rug to the door, peered through the eyehole and shouted "Jesus Christ." He fumbled to open the lock for the gorgeous naked blond girl in the hallway, and ripped off the rusted fake brass knob. She was trapped outside, separated from his loins by three inches of dented metal.
"Fuck," he yelled.
"Right here, babe" a sultry voice behind him purred. Doyle turned to see her in his apartment, standing next to the inflatable Darth Maul lounge chair he bought at Big Lots. He moved in, seized her by her firm ass and went to plunge his tongue down her throat.
"What the fuck are you doing with your hands on my ass, fag-o?" a cigarette-worn voice growled. It was not, in fact, an extremely friendly Penthouse pet in Doyle’s arms but his dead father, wearing that Mets uniform kept pristine-white from seven years of riding the bench. Doyle jumped away from his old man in abject horror.
"My own son, an ass pirate," his father said, "Christ, your poor mother. Anyway, as if your taste for the trouser trout wasn’t enough for me to deal with, I’m here to deliver a message."
"Where’s the girl?" Doyle said.
"That’s the thing. There was no girl here, you sick fuck. Just one extremely disillusioned Irishman. I blame myself. Never should have bought you that Queen album."
"But I saw her, smelled her, touched her."
"Enough. Shut it off. Save it for the prison therapist," his father spoke, "What I am here to tell you is that, if you can fit it in between your regiment of queer bars, you must go to the state fair tomorrow in search of that which has always eluded you."
"That which has eluded me? The girl! The girl’s at the state fair? Listen, I’m not getting involved with some dirt rocker chick. I don’t care how nice her ass is. When her teeth are rotted out from crystal meth and she’s got a mail order steak-knife at my neck in the kitchen of our rented trailer, where will that gorgeous ass be then?"
"That’s deep," his father said. "Do me a favor and forget about the fucking girl. There is no girl. It’s something else."
"Something besides ass? What else is worth searching for?"
"Dignity, self-control and a job all seem like good bets."
"What’s this shit," Doyle said. "I haven’t seen you in years, and you show up here in the middle of the night calling me a fag, casting aspersion on my temperament, tracking clay all over the carpet with those cleats. You’re far more high maintenance than the naked trollop who preceded you."
"I apologize for being so distant. It’s tough being a good father when you’re dead. Shit, think of all the court dates I’ve missed."
"Take the couch if you want," Doyle said as he turned his back and walked back to his scattered sheets and uncomfortable mattress. "I’m going back to sleep."
"Not for long, shithead," grinned the utility infielder with the .215 lifetime batting average. "Soon, you’ll wake up whether you’re ready or not."
Doyle woke at nine that Saturday morning. It might as well have been sunrise from the way he stumbled around the place like he had a bottle and a half of Thunderbird in him. Thunderbird. The last time he touched that stuff he threw the empty bottle through the window of a Starbucks. It was a social comment.
His dead father’s surprise appearance had all been a nightmare, a twisted vomit-inducing nightmare that he remembered a little better than he cared to. Was his subconscious calling him a closet case? Well, fuck it if it was. If it had any balls it would try and pull some shit like that with him when he was awake. But why had his old man cock-blocked him from beyond the grave? That bastard.
To be continued...
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In The Now: June 25 - July 3, 2001
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BY ELEANOR ROOS
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BY ERIC MESSENGER
Everyone Wins With the N.M.E.
BY LEOPOLD E. QUANSARA
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