In Between, Ode to Chinaski

Mike Addiego

March 2006

She sat across from me on the stained futon. Theresa was foreign and I didn’t give a shit where she came from. I think she was Italian. She was tired and dirty. She displayed her Old Country anguish in the way she sat, always at attention, though I didn’t rule out scoliosis. Her plan was to commit suicide in spectacular fashion. Unlike the many privileged but attention-starved girls in these Los Angeles suburbs, I gathered she was serious about it. She pointed to my computer.

"I will broadcast it on the internet."

"Yeah, sounds great."

I stared at her thighs. They were too round. Too European. She wouldn’t make it here anyway, not with today’s standards.

"Computers will take over everything soon. Why stay around for that to happen?" she said.

"No, they won’t. I suppose you think credit cards and grocery stores are the work of the devil."

"They are."

"Well then, you are a walking, talking cliché."

She looked at me in disgust as I poured another glass of wine. I figured I blew any chance I had at getting laid. The slivers of sunlight let in by the blinds illuminated the grease on her face. She finished her wine and triumphantly leaned back on the futon.

We sat in silence for a while. I didn’t know what to do. I hated the conversation we were having. If either one of us said something worthwhile, who cared? There was no audience. We were two drunks sitting in my apartment at 1:00pm on a Wednesday, discussing suicide and computers. I decided at that moment that I really did want Theresa to end it all. She was a piece of shit with an accent. I stretched across the floor to kiss her.

She tasted like salt water and cigarettes, so my tongue focused on the bumps and lesions in her mouth. She grabbed the back of my head. I ran my fingers through her slimy hair and took off her shirt. No bra. She reached for my cock but I pushed her to the floor. I took her pants off. No panties. She was hairy and I dove right in, lapping away, up and down, around and around and around. Her musk fired a hidden cylinder in my brain. Sensory overload. Suicide and computers and $400 a month apartments and pussy eating and...

She jumped on top of me and slipped it inside of her. She started off fast and hard, never once looking at me, moaning and talking in her native tongue. Definitely Italian. I could feel her rage. After what we discussed (what we loathe, specifically), fucking was the purest and most simplistic thing to do. It truly was inevitable.

I thought she came, but I wasn’t sure. I was a complete idiot when it came to women. She slowed down and finally looked at me. There was no doubt she was going to kill herself. It wasn’t so much in her eyes as it was in everything else. Even her pussy felt sad. I pushed her off of me. I had too much wine and my balls were big and purple.

I watched her get dressed and light a cigarette in what seemed like one fluid motion. I didn’t get dressed – I wanted her to see what she just fucked in all of its glory. I wanted to push her over the edge and erase any point of return. Get rid of any doubts or last minute jitters. She stepped over me, and for just a split second I saw the worn soles of her shoes.

"Thanks for the wine," she said.

"Thanks for the conversation."

She stopped at the doorway. She looked at me with compassion for the first and last time. I still thought she was ugly. I still thought the sky was blue.

"When I do this, do you think people will talk about it?"

"For a little while. It depends, though. You have to convince them it’s real."

"I will."

"I know you will."

She closed my door considerately. I sat, balls aching, wondering if people really would watch. Of course they would. Not me. I’d be so fucking jealous that some dirty Italian girl topped herself publicly while I sat naked and alone and crazy, head filled with everything and nothing. Nope, I wouldn’t watch.

Mike Addiego is thirty-one years old.