Chapter 9: Chapter 9 – A Typical Evening for Americans Seeking Entertainment

The sun is setting now and Fritz is only just half way across the great state of Texas. His hands are shaking and his vision is cloudy. He needs a drink. He pulls his truck into the gravel parking lot of a rest stop. Blessedly, a bar is there. The stripping kind. Texas Dolls. He checks the ammo in his revolver before getting out. 

It’s a week night so it isn’t too crowded. The barely lit velvet chairs comfort him while he drains his double whiskey. A stripper named Aurora approaches him. Short black silk hair. Her naked tits poin at him as she walks over.

“Do you want a lap dance?”

“Yeah.”

“Three songs.”

She grabs his hand and takes him into the back room. The music in the room pulsates in his ears and envelopes him like a blanket. Aurora twists in the non-light. As she rubs her breasts against his knees, up his thighs, he gets a whiff of her hair and it pulls him into the moment. Out of the pain of the past. Away even from the excitement of the near future and the hunt. He finally feels like his heart is beating. Her skin is soft. She puts her hands on his shoulders, and puts all her weight on him as she jumps to straddle him, her thighs wrapped around his hips. She gyrates against his crotch and lays her head against his shoulder.

“Your hair smells good.”

“Thanks.”

She stands up, her disco ball lit ass in his face. She grabs her ankles and shimmies. She turns and kneels, her tits in his crotch again, then her head between his thighs. She unzips his jeans and pulls the fly apart. She puts her hand where his cock used to be. Feels a metallic, bolt shaped doohickey. It takes all her years of stripping to fight the reflex to yank her hand away like she would from a hot stove.She pulls his underwear down to reveal the metal plug where his new battle penis goes in. She stares at it, dumbfounded, while the blue and purple lights flash across the locking mechanism and inner machinery of the plug.

“I’m sorry.” She looks back up at him. Worry on her face. 

“Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. Not many like this one.”

She stands up.

“I want you to touch it.” 

“I’m not supposed to do that.”

“Looked like you were just about to.”

She’s not standing like a stripper anymore. She looks cold. 

“We’re not that kind of place.” 

“Touch it,” he snarls.

She power walks out of the room As Fritz gets up to follow, a large strip club bouncer approaches. “We got trouble, buddy?”

Fritz leads with his elbow, catching the big guy in the throat. The bouncer goes down gasping, and two more appear through the black curtain. One grabs Fritz from behind, in an attempted chokehold, but he’s unable to maneuver his arm all the way around Fritz’s bulging neck. Another charges from the front with a baton, driving it into the ex-SEAL’s midsection. 

Fritz bites the meaty hand fumbling to connect to the wrist around his neck. He bites until the sinew within splits and ligaments pop. The bouncer screams into his ear. Fritz reaches back with one hand into the screamer's mouth. He finds the wet flesh of an inner cheek and grips it, pulling forward and down. The scream becomes gargle. As Fritz pulls down, and twists his hips, the body of the man behind him flips over. The cheek rips off and gloves Fritz’s hand. The other bouncer, with the baton, cannot see what’s happening in the disco light. He doesn’t understand that he is fighting a monster, not some drunk redneck.

He swings the baton in a high arc, towards Fritz’s skull. Fritz side steps, then stomps onto the front of his attacker’s knee, so, with a crunch, it bends the other way. The bouncer screams and loses his grip on the baton, which clatters to the ground. 

He walks through the black curtain into the rest of the club. Drunkenly, he barks to a stripper that looks like Aurora. “Next time I’m here I’ll bring my cock with me. And you’ll be choking on it.”The bartender gets out of his way when Fritz jumps behind the bar. He grabs a few bottles of Jim Beam for the road, and strides out to his truck. The highway opens up at night. Nothing but black sky all around. The moon keeps him company. A big rig truck every few hundred miles. Violence behind and violence ahead.

#

Peter and his wife get ice cream on Saturday nights. They walk from their apartment to the Sweet Rose Creamery a few blocks up the street at the Brentwood Country Mart. They take a route through the neighborhood adjacent to the apartment building that they live in. The neighborhood is made up of massive houses with large lawns and luxury cars. Peter can smell someone doing laundry with scented detergent. The air is cool and pleasant. 

Peter’s wife is a natural brunette who takes great care to keep her hair dyed a Naomi Watts blonde. She has blue eyes and delicate features, mostly crafted by plastic surgeons. Her parents were very concerned about appearances and got her a nose job for her 15th birthday. She’s from a rich family and Peter had almost been able to convince himself that he loved her. Her dad often pressed them about moving into one of the large, ostentatious homes he owned, but Peter didn’t want the strings attached, so they stayed in their 2 bedroom apartment. Peter was happy, however, to let his wife press her father for funding on a variety of projects he’d worked on throughout the years, none of which returned him a cent.

Peter’s wife holds his arm while they walk. The fabric of her Patagonia quarter zip is itchy against Peter’s arm but he lets her hold it anyway. He’s too distracted to get pulled into a fight about their intimacy problems if he pulls his arm away. “It’s beautiful tonight,” his wife intones. 

“Yeah. Really nice.” 

“You seem distracted, honey. What’s on your mind?” 

“I feel like I’m going to be fired soon. I think I finally hit the ceiling.” 

“You always say that.” 

“No I don’t--” Peter hears himself raising his voice. He strains to reel it back in. “This time I think it’s for real.” 

They order their ice cream inside the wood paneled store. The girl scooping the ice cream has braces that are exposed as she asks them if they’d like their respective choices in a cone or a cup. Peter imagines cumming into her braces, his jizz dripping through the wires between her teeth, onto her tongue like vanilla syrup. They take their ice cream to the wood picnic benches outside. Peter keeps going on about how he will probably lose his job and have to figure out something else to do with his life. His wife tries to stay sympathetic. She scrolls through instagram while he talks. “Honey, I really think you should consider finding a therapist. You always have this dark cloud over your head. You always think the absolute worst thing is going to happen and it never does. You always get through it. I remember you were talking like this right before you got promoted last time.” 

“This time it’s different. If I fail, I’m doing it publicly. There’ll be an article in Deadline about how I’m not there anymore. People can Google my name and my failings as an executive and human will be the first result. I’m so fucking sick of this town. I hate this fucking industry.” 

“You could always start working for my dad. His door is always open.” 

“Yeah, maybe. I got the wrong flavor.” He tosses his cup of ice cream into a garbage can.

#

Karen thinks about the shooter while her Tinder date drones on about something. They’re at Perch, a rooftop bar in the middle of downtown Los Angeles and when you’re there you can see the skyscrapers go up all around you and it kind of gives you the feeling that you’re a bird, perched on the window sill of a tall building. At least that’s how Karen’s date is currently describing it. She’s an artistic looking woman with pitch black dyed hair, and a loose fitting vintage baseball t-shirt with tons of holes in it. She has leather bracelets and satanic rings to match. She is clearly trying hard to look like she doesn’t give a fuck. Karen is giving her a chance because she’s pretty and was very enthusiastic about the Magnetic Fields during their pre-meet up texting. “Huh, that’s a very poetic way to put it,” Karen remarks. 

“Thanks, I’m actually a writer, so…” 

Karen waits a second, getting a kick out of her date’s pretensions. “Oh, really? That’s awesome. What kind of writing do you do?” 

“Mostly poetry, and lyrics, sometimes I dabble with playwriting and screenwriting.” 

“Wow, sounds like you do a bit of everything. Have you made anything I’d be familiar with?” 

“Oh— haha, no… I’m not really into that corporate shit. I’m a bit edgy to really get anything made.” 

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“I’d love to read something of yours some day.” Karen politely takes a sip of her beer. 

“Yeah, maybe we could go back to my place and I could read you something I’ve been working on. Everything I write is really made to be said orally…” Karen’s date scoots a little closer and lets her tongue hang over her bottom lip when she says “orally.” 

“Oh, that would be cool.” 

“Yeah. I’m way into the oral tradition. It’s how language evolved.” 

“Totally.” Karen sips her beer again. “Are you hungry? I was thinking about some oxtail fries.” 

Karen’s date stares at her. “Yeah, sure. Sure.” She scoots a little farther back into her seat, retreating from the close position she’d worked her way into. “Say, you don’t drink much, do you?” 

“Oh, I do sometimes. I guess I’m pacing myself. ” 

“Ah, I thought you seemed kinda closed off. I almost thought you weren’t into chicks for a second.” Karen’s date has her arm spread along the back of the couch while she eyes Karen for a reaction, legs splayed out like she’s in the middle of her living room. 

“What, just because I’m not throwing myself at you yet, I’m not into chicks?” 

“Feisty. I like it. I feel like I’m finally starting to see a personality.” 

“You’re coming off kinda rude.” 

“So, why don’t you come back to my place, then? I can tell I’m getting you all hot and bothered and we’re not even touching each other. Imagine how much I could wind you up if we were…. wind you up ‘till you exploded…. Pop.”

 Karen gets up. “I’m gonna pay. I actually have to get going. I’m supposed to meet my friends later tonight.” 

“Prude hetero bitch. Straight up dyke-phobic.” Karen’s date stayed seated. 

Karen turns to say something, can’t think of anything, and then storms out, where she has to take an elevator ride to the lobby, from where she catches an Uber to a hole-in-the-wall poutine restaurant. She sits at the window table by herself while she refreshes her email inbox, chewing the crispy, crunchy fries, which are doused in gravy and layered with braised, tender oxtail, and cheese curds. She washes down a swallow with some Diet Coke. It’s late now, but she texts Peter “can’t stop thinking about it. You think we’ll get a bite?” 

Peter is in bed lying awake on his phone while his wife snores peacefully next to him. They had sex a couple of hours ago and he’s scrolling through various porn sites to push out the memory of his mechanical fucking-while-counting-the-threads-in-the-upholstered-headboard charade. He smiles when he sees the text notification pop up on his phone. He texts back “Me too. I think we might.” He adds a praying hands emoji for good measure. 

His wife wakes up and sleepily mutters “What’s happening? Are you still awake?” 

“Yeah, honey. Go back to sleep. I’m gonna go pee.” 

He gets out of bed and walks out of their pitch black bedroom into the rest of their apartment. He shines the light of his phone to help him avoid running into a wall. He takes a piss while shining the phone’s light into the toilet. He avoids looking at himself in the mirror above the toilet while doing so because in his reflection in his peripheral vision he looks like the devil. He gets back into bed with his wife and cuddles up to her warm body. She stirs again. “Peter?” 

“Yeah, honey?” 

“Are you there?” 

“Yeah, honey.” 

“Do you love me?” 

“Of course, sweetie pie.” Peter hugs her more tightly and kisses the back of her neck. 

“I love you too.” 

His wife falls back to sleep again. Peter turns over to lay on his back and stares out into the darkness of the bedroom, letting the optic shapes in his eyes play out in front of him as he thinks about the shit he’ll buy and the women he’ll fuck if they’re able to sell the stream.

#

Fritz stops his truck at the bottom of a valley. It’s early in the morning and the sun is just beginning to rise over the mountains of West Virginia. He needs to urinate. There is a small concrete shack on the side of the road that looks like it’s supposed to be a public bathroom. The sun peeks over the top of the mountain, and paints everything purple. Fritz opens the door, and finds the entire bathroom a mess. Mud and possibly shit is smeared everywhere, along with graffiti and stickers for various outdoor companies. He turns and heads to the foliage outside the bathroom. The thick grass and leaves covering the hillside make for a beautiful toilet. Fritz undoes his trousers and squats next to the base of a tree. 

A park ranger’s SUV comes down the road into Fritz’s view. The vehicle pulls onto the 

side of the road behind Fritz’s truck. A bundled up park ranger rolls down the driver’s side window and calls out. “Everything okay out there?” Fritz looks up from his squat into the window. He nods without speaking. “Why aren’t you in the bathroom?” Fritz keeps pressing piss out of his pisshole. 

“You forgot to clean it. It’s a fucking mess in there.” 

“Okay, well you need to use another bathroom, then. You can’t just be shitting in the woods. It’s a protected area.” 

“I ain’t shitting.” Fritz wipes his pisshole with a leaf, then stands up without pulling up his pants, leaving them crumpled around his ankles.

 “Hey, damn it. Put some pants on.” 

“I’ll do as I like.” Fritz stands tall and bear-like, legs spread, staring into the Park Ranger’s SUV window. 

The Park Ranger hesitates for a moment, then speaks into his walkie talkie “Got a drunk and disorderly on South Bend, by the bathroom. Will possibly need back up. He’s a big one.” The Park Ranger opens his door, and unbuckles his seatbelt. “Now, sir. I don’t want to do this, but if you’re going to be acting like this, I need to keep you here so we can check you out and make sure everything’s alright.” Fritz laughs and approaches the car, his pants still around his ankles. 

“I suggest you remain in your vehicle if you value your life. If you approach me, or attempt to prevent the freedom of my movement, I will have to defend myself to the best of my abilities.” 

The Park Ranger scoots in his chair, away from the window as Fritz approaches. “You call off backup, okay. Believe me, they won’t get here in time. And you even look at your service weapon again, you’ll be a smear on the pavement.” Fritz keeps staring. 

The Ranger grabs the walkie talkie. “Calling off backup, got it under control. His family’s taking him home. Good on my end.” 

A crackling voice at the other end of the walkie talkie comes through. “Copy. Backup no longer needed. Stay safe out there, officer.” 

The ranger talks again into the walkie. “Will do.” 

Fritz smirks and smacks the top of the SUV. “You’re smart, but cowardly. Get along now.” He shuts the SUV’s door. The Park Ranger drives off. Fritz lets the morning breeze caress his ass cheeks as he watches the SUV disappear around the bend.

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