An Experiment in Scotch

EDITORIAL NOTE: As noted here, I’m tak­ing a Fic­tion Writ­ing class. I plan to post com­pleted and semi-completed works on my blog. This post and any sub­se­quent posts filed in the “Fic­tion” cat­e­gory are exactly that and should be read as such. END EDITORIAL NOTE

“How are you?”

I was pay­ing atten­tion to my hand-washing, mak­ing sure no rem­nant of air­port bath­room clung to my skin. I assumed the voice was directed at some­one else who had walked in after I’d fin­ished up. I glanced in the mir­ror to make sure no hair was out of place only to find the leer­ing face of a half wit stand­ing behind me watch­ing me expec­tantly. Christ, he was talk­ing to me. I went back to the scrub­bing, des­per­ately hop­ing he’d leave me alone. I made my first mistake.

“Good,”, I mut­tered. I tried not to make eye con­tact, con­tin­u­ing to scrub the skin off my hands in hopes that he might con­tinue out the bath­room door with­out both­er­ing to cleanse him­self which seemed to me was prob­a­bly what peo­ple like him did. He didn’t. Dumb­struck by the weird awk­ward silence and hop­ing to just escape, I made my sec­ond mistake.

“How are you?”

“Well to tell you the truth, I’m happy to be alive. I first cut my fin­ger in 1994 and then I cut my wrist in 2001 after the tow­ers fell. I wrecked a sweet ass Vette in Dal­las, Texas in 05 and just barely walked away with both legs. Dal­las, I’m not unhappy to say, is a city in which I have a lot of exes.”

This of course had to be a lie made up in a fit of fan­tasy one night back at the retard farm, the lot of it for sure but most cer­tainly the last part since the only way this half wit had ever had an ex was if he cor­nered one of the sim­ple­tons in the men­tal ward and had his way with her. He didn’t have the cheru­bic face of a happy retard. He could only be described as deranged look­ing. He had a dirty Chap­lin mus­tache with hair that hadn’t been cut in months. His eyes were dark, not unlike the gray mat­ter behind them I sup­posed. He reminded me of my fourth cousin twice removed by divorce who came to the fam­ily reunion each year and sat in the cor­ner pick­ing his nose and eat­ing banana pud­ding with his thumbs. I could not believe I was in the Albu­querque air­port bath­room with its turquoise and stucco mak­ing me dizzy, lis­ten­ing to a retard talk about things that couldn’t pos­si­bly be true. I saw no way out except to con­tinue to pro­long the hand wash­ing in hopes that he would wan­der out the bath­room and into some­one else’s nightmare.

“Huh,” I said, hope­fully not too conversationally.

“My women really like Pay-dro. They like to pet him and cud­dle with him. Pay-dro is nice to them.”

Visions of his under­fed, abused Chi­huahuan rat dog swarmed my inner vision. I began to think that maybe he had in fact enter­tained the ladies back in Ver­non or what­ever State School he had been impris­oned in by sneak­ing in a cute lit­tle dog that caused the shetards to ooh and aah and fol­low him back to his room for some mid­night baby mak­ing. I could just see him sneak­ing scraps of pork chop and Sal­is­bury steak to feed Pedro. How he kept him quiet dur­ing the unavoid­able fits of small dog dis­ease was beyond me. Maybe a muz­zle. Or maybe the State Schools were let­ting the res­i­dents keep ani­mals these days, some study say­ing old peo­ple and retards were hap­pier and eas­ier to man­age with 20 min­utes of daily time pet­ting dogs and cats.

“Do yoou like Pay-dro?”

I stood straight up, turned around, won­der­ing what on earth he could be nat­ter­ing on about. It was at this point that I real­ized my two mis­takes had been com­pounded into a trap of epic pro­por­tions here in the men’s room off Gate A1, Albu­querque airport.

When I turned around, I met Pedro, the halfwit’s huge Hick­ory Farms Sum­mer Sausage of a dick hang­ing out of his unzipped fly. He (the halfwit, not his dick, I refuse to per­son­ify the thing though, in ret­ro­spect, it) was leer­ing at me in the same way he had been when I saw him behind me in the mir­ror, enjoy­ing my clearly hor­ri­fied reac­tion to this decid­edly inescapable sit­u­a­tion, self-congratulatory in his efforts to get me to take in his mem­ber. He stood with his hands on his hips, imper­cep­ti­bly thrust­ing Pedro at me which in a darker light could very well have been a pants dachs­hund with­out eyes and ears.

With that thought, I gig­gled. Then I threw up a lit­tle. Faint­ing became a real pos­si­bil­ity. The room started to give way, to get a lit­tle bit wavy and uncon­scious­ness threat­ened. I think that wor­ried the boy a bit, afraid that if I fainted, the game might be up so to speak. Plus the thought of being uncon­scious here with him snapped me back to some sem­blance of real­ity. I stead­ied myself, reach­ing back for the bath­room coun­ter­top. Once sta­ble, the absur­dity of the sit­u­a­tion washed over me and I sti­fled another laugh at this odd predica­ment where­upon the largest dick I had ever seen out­side the foot­ball locker room at Alabaster High School was star­ing at me from the pants of a retard in a pub­lic restroom.

Like a nubile coed in a hor­ror movie, I was drawn to the dan­ger even though the small voice of rea­son inside my head was shout­ing at me to RUN AWAY. What in God’s name to do? Surely soon some­one would have to get off a plane from Tulsa or Jack­son or Birm­ing­ham or some other red­neck locale, need to relieve him­self and stum­ble into this sit­u­a­tion which would allow me to escape into the sanc­tity of the air­port, leav­ing Cap­tain Retardo and Pedro to some qual­ity time. But alas, it was as if no other men existed out­side this tiny lit­tle win­dow into some weird dream I was hav­ing. I was frozen in some­thing resem­bling intrigued terror.

“So do yoou like Pay-dro? He’s my free-und.”

The man-child was clearly enjoy­ing him­self. Or he was just retarded. I’m not sure which, prob­a­bly a dev­il­ish com­bi­na­tion of both. I won­dered how many times he had sprung Pedro on unsus­pect­ing fools like me. I wanted to bash his head in with a club or a bat. Had this been a nor­mal sit­u­a­tion, per­haps I would have attacked him but I was effec­tively neutered by air­port secu­rity, hav­ing only a roll of But­ter Rum Life­savers in my pocket with which to fight off this indig­nity and I can hardly think it would be suf­fi­cient against such a deter­mined opponent.

The only rea­son I’m still not in the bath­room won­der­ing how to get out of the sit­u­a­tion is because a voice sud­denly came over the intercom:

“Atten­tion, this is your final board­ing call for flight 567, ser­vice to Las Vegas, depart­ing gate A6. All pas­sen­gers should be on board at this time.”

Cap­tain Retardo seemed stunned by the voice, appar­ently unaware that the plane might leave before he fin­ished hav­ing his way with me, what­ever that way might have involved. He grabbed his yule log of a penis in his meaty fist and stuffed it back into his cargo pants, apt attire. He shuf­fled out the door, drag­ging one lame foot behind him as if to mock me, to extend the moment for as long as pos­si­ble as his body and then his leg went around the cor­ner towards his flight.

I washed my hands again. Just in case.