madp

I saw a chair in the snow, on the street, in the city, from half a block away.
I continued walking towards the chair, step by step, drinking a quart of beer from a paper sack, and I thought of a few of the comfortable chairs that had been part of my life.

There was the brown leather chair and ottoman when I was five. My pop would snore like a bull in that beauty, all 250 pounds of him, his mouth hung open like he was expecting a sneeze, while my brother and I watched football on the TV.

There was the frighteningly-green plaid recliner in college that I could stay glued to all day after pulling a couple of bong hits, as a parade of users and boozers I called my friends drifted in and out of my apartment. Mike S finally passed out and threw up all over the damn thing one night, and it ended up on the street as well.

I was just about to think about the overstuffed reading chair from my office at the university that smelled like Right Guard deodorant (I had done some research on the toiletries aisle at Osco one day trying to figure out what the smell was), when I found myself stopping right next to the chair in the snow, on the street, in the city. It didn't smell like Right Guard. It smelled like cat piss. The quart of beer was weighing on my bladder, and the street was empty. I pulled off my right glove with my teeth, unzipped my pants and pissed on the chair, with my hands defiantly on my hips, reclaiming it from the neighborhood cats.

. . . . . . .

Deron woke up in his girlfriend's second floor flat, groggy, on the filthy area rug that had turned beige from whatever it's original color might have been, with no idea why he was on the floor. The sun coming through the window felt like mid-afternoon. He was naked, his head hurt, he needed to throw up.

He made it to the bathroom and heaved three times before a small amount of mucousy matter sprinkled into the toilet. Not very satisfying, but okay for now.

"Goddamn, I'm too old for this shit."

He got off of his knees, drank five or six big gulps of water straight from the faucet, and staggered feably towards the living room to collapse in his chair. The chair wasn't there.

"Shannon, where's my fuckin' chair" he hollered.

"Shannon? Shannon!? Where you at? Shit!"

No response.

"The thing about dating white girls, they get so damn mad about a little drinking, a little flirting, a man just being a man," he thought, growing more and more angry that Shannon, nor his chair, were nowhere to be found.

Deron walked over to the living room window and looked out onto the street to see if Shannon's car was still there. He thought he remembered parking it across the street last night, or this morning as it may have been, but he wasn't quite sure.

Out the window and across the street, the car was gone. But, Deron saw his chair, and saw some college-looking dude all bundled up for the cold with a glove in his mouth, looking at his chair with his hands on his hips. About a second later, he realized that the guy was pissing on his chair.

"Mother FUCKER!"

He opened the window to curse the guy, but the guy was already zipped up and walking away.

"Fuck you, bitch! I'll kill your ass if I ever see you on the street!" he yelled. The guy never turned around.

Feeling sick again, he dropped his head and rested his chest on his arms on the sill, looking down at what should have been the ground one story beneath the window. Instead of ground, he saw every stitch of clothing he owned laying in a heap in the snow. He also saw a big black tomcat with his tail raised to the pile, spraying the whole thing down like he was putting out a fire.

"Mother FUCKER!"

__________________
why are you wearing that stupid man suit?