Angel Dust Apocalypse by Johnson Jeremy Robert

Author:Johnson, Jeremy Robert [Johnson, Jeremy Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Swallowdown Press
Published: 2012-12-05T00:00:00+00:00

Swimming in the House of the Sea

The retard is finally asleep, which is great because now I can head down to the hotel swimming pool and relax. I can finish off this gut punch of a day without thinking about the blown engine on my sedan, or the lung-sucking heat tomorrow’s sunshine will bring.

It’s time to get this nasty, reeking desert sweat off my skin and just float in the clear, chlorinated water. I picture myself, arms and legs extended wide, a big floating X in Hawaiian print shorts. I’ll close my eyes and hover there in the safe, sanitized water, floating static and alone while the world rotates around me. I can let the cool water roll into my ears and amplify the sound of my heart.

I grab my plastic key card with its generic sun-and-palm-tree logo and the words “Casa Del Mar Resort Hotel—Bakersfield, CA” across the top. I slip it into my swim shorts pocket and seal the Velcro shut. I don’t grab one of our ratty, dishrag-thick room towels; there should be some plushies down by the pool.

I take a quick look at my brother, Dude, who is seventeen and still wearing pajamas with Looney Tunes on them. His too-far-apart eyes are twitching beneath his eyelids, which I read as deep sleep. The sound of his breathing fills up the room, eclipsing even the hum of the air conditioner. His thick snore is the final nail in the coffin of my evening’s eligible bachelorhood. Even if I could find a girl to hook up with in this festering armpit of a city, I can’t bring her back to the Snore Suite at Casa Del Mar.

I close the hotel door behind me, clipping off the sound of my retarded brother’s stertoric breathing. I hate the sound of Dude’s breathing, when he’s asleep. It’s like he has to fight the air to pull it in, all sniffles and snoring and open-mouth rasping. Or, as my dad once said to my mom, before their divorce two years ago, “Maybe Dude can’t breathe right because God wants him to stop.”

“Stop what?” asked Mom.

“Stop breathing, living, all of it. Maybe God’s hoping he’ll give up and die.”

Dad was a charmer back then, right before the marriage fell from its hippie foundation. Mom decided that Jesus was her new savior, and told Dad that he had to stop making acid in the tub. Dad got turned off by Mom’s newfound fire-and-brimstone, her nightly Bible readings, her orthodox self-improvement. He shuttled his drug engineering to placate her and secretly reinvested his energies in the pursuit of free love.

Free love turned out to be an ex-Hell’s Angel harem member who claimed to have been in a gang-bang with Sonny Barger and Bob Dylan back in ‘65. Her name was Jasmine and she still lived in LaLaLand, Dad’s preferred real estate.

Jasmine lets my dad drink Jack Daniels from her cooch.

Dads will tell you this kind of shit after a divorce. They think it affirms a newfound buddyhood.

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