Confronting the Cherub

Jamie Gegeny

April 2006

There was an urgent knocking at the door, the phone was ringing, the dog, Ron, was barking at whoever was knocking and Push Up Upton knew that masturbation would have to wait.

"Son of a fuck," he snarled. This wasn’t shaping up to be the kind of day Push Up had envisioned when his alarm went off an hour earlier. Rush’s "Tom Sawyer" was just beginning on his clock radio, which meant that he could awaken to it in its entirety. The sun was shining, Ron had coffee made, the outlook looked fantastic. Now, though, after breakfast, after the shower, after the clothes were on and the teeth were brushed, everyone wanted to get a hold of him, himself especially. Against his better judgment, he reached down to his ankles and grabbed his pants.

"I got the door, Ron," he muttered to his Golden Retriever as he put a cigarette between his teeth and bit off the filter, "you’re on phone detail."

He was well-built, muscular, and would have been quite an intimidating man on sight alone, had it not been for his cherubic face. He was in his mid-thirties, but to look at him, you’d think maybe twenty- seven, twenty-eight tops. Having this youthful appearance, Push Up was rarely taken seriously in fights and was often picked on by muggers and street toughs, drunks in bars. His pajamas, which he rarely left the sanctuary of, were baggy and served to camouflage the rippling ice cube tray of muscles underneath them, surprising many a confronter in the process. Push Up, you see, always removed his shirt to fight. He liked to see the look on the other guy’s face, the surprise of seeing a hidden giant emerge from the shell of a manchild, before he rearranged it. That look of surprise allowed him to get in two, sometimes three shots to the face before the other guy could react, stunned as he was initially. If the first blows didn’t knock the guy down, which they often did, Push Up would have to resort to taking a shot or two in order to get in position to double the guy over with a punch in the gut. Then the knee to the face would usually seal the deal for Push Up. The nose would break, the blood would come spraying from it like Old Faithful, covering his slippers and sometimes his robe, if he was wearing it. Yes, he liked the knee to the face. It felt right to him. From there, to make his point even more clear to those around the area who might be watching, he would do any of the following, depending on his mood: 1) Jump straight up in the air as high as he could and land with his knees on the man’s ear/temple. 2) The same as Number One, but with elbow replacing knees and falling replacing jumping. 3) Pick the by-now-side-of-beef-like victim up and throw him across a table like in the movies. 4) Punch him a bit more. 5) The same as Number Four but switch punch to kick. 6) Find something, anything, to smash against the guy’s head (past selections have included a pool cue, a cue ball—same guy, same night, different fights—a burning log, a golf club, the phone, a tuna, a sled, the hood of a car, etc., etc., etc.) To see a man fight Push Up Upton was like watching a gazelle carcass being ripped to shreds by something that would come out of a Hercules-impregnated Truman Capote.

As he grabbed the door knob, he was reminded of what he was doing when his day took a turn for the worse. It made him angry. He swung the door open and spit the cigarette filter into the left eye of his neighbor, Anthony, from four doors down.

"Ow!!!" Anthony shouted. "What’s the matter with you?!?"

"I thought you were going to be the cunting newspaper kid. What can I do for you? Hold on. Ron!," he shouted into the next room, "who’s on the phone?" Ron barked a sharp, guttural bark that was loud enough to make Anthony blink. "Cockass," Push Up whispered to himself. Then, back into the other room, he hollered, "Do you think you could call her back? I need you to go tell Gordon to bring the car around. Please?" Ron barked, followed by a muffled growl. "Sorry about that. What were you saying? Here, come in."

"I’m, uh. . .I’m here, Mr. Upton," said Anthony, "because my son, Derek, tells me that you owe him quite a bit of money."

"Derek? Who’s that, the kid at Best Buy with the hash?"

"My son. Your paperboy. Derek?"

"Yeah, Derek. That’s who I thought you were going to be when I opened the door. That’s kind of weird, don’t you think?"

"He says you haven’t paid him in six weeks."

Push Up now finally got around to lighting the cigarette that had been hanging from his lips since he opened the door. He blew a cloud of shiny, blue smoke into Anthony’s face.

"What’s your favorite word, Tone?"

"Excuse me?"

"What’s your favorite word? The word you just love saying and writing and hearing? There’s gotta be one."

"I. . ."

"That’s terrible, Anth. Terrible. It’s only one letter long. Here, I’m reaching into my pocket. I like you. Your son needs his paper money, right." Push Up kept his hand in his pocket, even though it contained no money. It contained a paper clip, three pens and a wadded up gum wrapper. Anthony’s eyes wandered down for a second; realizing the situation, that he would have to tell the man a word before he actually got to see the money, his eyes again met Push Up’s.

"I guess, uh. . .Mississippi. . .?"

"Uh-huh. Why do you like that particular word?"

"I don’t know."

"Were you born there? Did you fuck around on your wife there? What?"

"I just. . .I just. . .like the. . .way it sounds. Now, Mr. Upton. . .I upheld my part of the..."

"I like a lot of words. Don’t like a lot of words, too. But, you know my favorite? The number one word in the entire English language?" Push Up removed his hand from his pocket and scratched his cheek with it.

"Mr. Upton. . ."

"There’s no better word in the English language. There’s no word more powerful, more...dare I say, cleansing. And you know there’s no better word to use in that situation because it just rings so true, truer than any other word. People’s reactions. . .when they hear that this word holds significance in your vocabulary. . .it’s priceless. No two people react the same way. And when you say it, the way it rolls off your tongue when your tongue hits the back of your front teeth where they meet the gums. It makes you feel alive, it really does. You know what that word is?" Here, Push Up leaned into Anthony, not much, but enough to make Anthony draw his head back slightly. "Here, watch my teeth. Ready? Cunt."

"You can expect a visit from the police. . ."

". . .Idn’t that a great word? Cu. . .I’m undoing my tie here. You see this? And what I’m going to do is place it around your neck. I’m giving you this tie. It’s a nice tie, look at it. It’s very expensive. It’s yours to keep, but first I’m going to strangle you with it. Not to kill you, I’m not a murderer, but to threaten you and to strike fear into you. . .you see? You feel that? It’s pretty scary stuff, isn’t it? You feel like you’re going to die, aren’t you? You can’t breathe, you can’t think. I’ll bet. . .that you’ve watched movies where you see people get strangled and you ask yourself, ‘why don’t they just hit the person strangling them? Why don’t they just pretend to be suffocated and dead so the person loosens their grip?’ It’s not that easy when it’s actually happening, is it?" With that, Push Up walked to his coffee table, picked up his unfinished orange juice and put it to his mouth. "You sure you don’t want this?" he asked to Anthony, who was already crawling out the door, through the small pool of vomit he had deposited on Push Up’s floor. "I’ll clean that up, friend. You just get home and get your son’s financial problems fixed. The boy needs to be paid for the work he’s doing."

Push Up downed the last two swallows of his orange juice in one swallow. He then slammed the glass against the dry wall table, leaving it with its third dent in five days, checked his teeth in the monitor of his computer, walked out the door and over top of the crawling/gasping Anthony to where his driver, Gordon, was waiting with the car.

"Gorgeous as fuck today, sir," greeted Gordon.

"You took the words right out of my mouth, Gordo" replied Push Up cheerily.

Jamie Gegeny is not meant to be taken either seriously or on an empty stomach.