Too Weird for Ziggy by Sylvie Simmons

Author:Sylvie Simmons
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2004-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

I KISSED WILLIE NELSON’S NIPPLE

“My grandma taught me how to fish, play poker, and find myself a husband. My other grandma taught me how to save my soul. Grandma One had six hundred record albums, all of them country music. She used to say, ‘Country music is life. If you love life, you’ll love country music.’ I despised country music. When she died she left me all her records. I took ’em down to the used record store, traded ’em in for some rhythm and blues records and an old saxophone. Never did learn to play it—my mother wouldn’t allow it—but I tell you, girl, with that old sax I learned to give the best blow jobs.”

LeeAnn Starmountain clasps my arm with her redtaloned nails and smiles a big, wide, lacquered-lipped, country music star smile.

“Then a friend called me up one day and said, ‘My husband’s left me.’ Around about that time I was having trouble with my man too.” A bluebottle circling our bar table lands in a puddle of spilled red wine and spins around, around, buzzing, on its belly. Without missing a beat, LeeAnn picks up the magazine I brought along for her to see where our interview will wind up and rolls it tight, lowers the tip toward the swimming fly, and—slowly, so as not to make a mess—scrunches it into bluebottle paté.

“So we drove to the bar and got us something to drink. We drank all night. When we walked out of that place we couldn’t even stand. It was the worst weather in forty years and the snow was up to here. And there’s this old guy lying on his back in the snow—dead, drunk, I don’t know; maybe he’s just fallen over. So I say to my friend, ‘I’m gonna go check on the old guy,’ and I go shlooping back over to where he is—I made up that word, ‘shlooping’—and I say to him, ‘Hey, mister, d’ya need help?’ And my friend is laughing fit to piss her pants. And I say, ‘What?’ And then I see it, and I scream. He’s got his thing out, and he’s pumping away at it in the snow with his eyes closed—wonder it didn’t snap off in the cold. ‘Go on,’ my friend says, ‘help the man.’ And we’re both laughing and trying to run at the same time and getting nowhere, it was like sleepwalking.

“Whenever I get seriously drunk I sleep three hours exactly and then I’m bolt upright, wide awake, and there’s nothing can get me back to sleep again. So I got up and went down to the kitchen and made some coffee. And I started thinking about that old guy back there and how he was dealing with all the shit life had thrown at him far better than any of us were. And that’s when I started writing country songs.”

She’s a handsome woman—in her late forties, though she looks older. Mostly it’s what she’s wearing—everything too tight or too bright, too low-or too high-cut.

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