Mine Eyes
8
Mine Eyes
8
“Hey! Send her a drink!” Black shouted to the bartender as he continued his loud banter at the other end of the bar.
As Candy sat there at the bar with her usual drink, sitting in her usual seat, she had somehow caught the attention of that loudmouthed man she’d seen there many, many times before. She was very flattered that he bought her that drink, because this was a man who usually ignored her. It didn’t even bother her that he normally came in right after work, all dusty and dirty with paint splatters all over his arms. His boots were so beat up and worn that the outward corners of the heels were elevated and didn’t even touch the ground anymore when he was standing still. His modus operandi was to burst through the door of the bar, shouting as he came in at his friends, who were usually already there and who were also loud, cussin’, rowdy guys. The overall decibel level in the bar was raised once these guys got together.
Candy’s reputation preceded her there, and she was considered a mainstay from the neighborhood. This was a neighborhood bar with regulars who took their same barstool positions whenever they were there, which they were on regular, designated nights every week. It seemed baffling to her for a moment that Black had all of a sudden decided to buy her a drink, but she almost immediately put that puzzlement aside and relished in the idea that this man wanted her.
He finally sauntered down to where she was sitting and plopped down onto the barstool next to her. He didn’t have much conversation for her other than “What you doin’ later?” and “Do you want another drink?” He knew she had nothing to do because he knew she usually sat there at the bar, and that she was usually still there when he left. Sometimes he’d come back later in the same night, and she’d still be there until around 11:00 p.m., at which time she would leave and slither her drunk ass home. She lived just around the block and usually walked to the bar since she lived so close.
After a few drinks, Black had convinced Candy to let him take her home, which really didn’t take much convincing. They left the bar that night and he brought her home in his beat up pickup truck, which was the only vehicle she ever saw him drive. He parked his truck right in front of the house she lived in, and leaned over to kiss her. Candy was just bursting inside at the idea of finally having a boyfriend again. She surmised that this man was now her boyfriend, and she was swept up in the moment as he got out of the car, raced around to her side and opened her door, and then followed her to the door of the enclosed front porch. She turned to kiss him goodnight after telling him that she lived there with her mother and grandmother, so he could not come in. After hearing that, he opened the door to the front porch and they both stepped in. He somehow managed to push her down to the floor on the porch while kissing her, and then he fucked her right there on the front porch floor. It was late and she didn’t even consider that either her mother or grandmother might get up and catch them but that was okay, because the whole act didn’t last long. It seemed like it hadn’t even been five minutes before she snapped back into consciousness at hearing the zipper on his pants going up. She was just climbing up off the floor and Black was already out the door of the front porch as he quietly yelled back without turning his head, “I’ll see ya later,” and he barreled on down the stairs, jumped in his truck, and sped off. What registered in her head was that her boyfriend had said he would see her later.
The next day, Candy sat at the bar on her regular barstool and she was all charged up and just waiting for someone to ask her what had happened with Black, because she knew people there had seen them leave together the night before. But no one said anything—not to her, anyway. Just before she got there, the bartender was guffawing with a few others in there about Candy and Black. They could not believe he had left with her, because they all knew how needy and overbearing she was. They were still laughing when she walked through the door, but her ego never allowed her to think they were laughing about her. She sat down and had a proud look on her face, which made them laugh even more.
And not long after she got there, Black came through the door and walked over to the bar and sat next to her, which was something he had never done prior to the night before. He bought Candy a drink and then went on down to the other end of the bar where his loud talking friends lived on their respective barstools. They were cussin’ and going on as they usually did about anything and everything. Black didn’t say anything else to her until he was ready to leave. He paid his bar tab and hers, and she was thrilled. She figured that she would ask him about his wife when they left. He must be leaving his wife, she decided.
Everyone at the bar knew Black was married, including Candy. But the regular men at the bar that had wives kept quiet about each other’s infidelities as though it was some kind of “bar code.” They embarked on these sex escapades and never told on each other. Nor did they ever try to stop each other or consider these infidelities as really damaging to their home lives. Every now and then a couple of them, in their drunken philosophies, would bring up the fact that their wives never bothered to come to the bar to see what they were doing. But they would stop short of admitting that their wives were probably happy that their husbands were out instead of getting on their nerves at home. These men were not the most dapper of guys to begin with. Some were crusty, dusty, and unkempt. One could only wonder how they managed to find women to marry them in the first place. Their wives’ usual complaint was the amount of money they spent at the bar, not the fact that they didn’t come home right after work.
Now, the guys at the end of the bar did wonder what had gotten into their friend, who had decided after all these years to all of a sudden indulge in Candy, who sat at the other end of the bar, because they knew what a delusional, ridiculous woman she had always been. But then they all settled on the realization that it was sex, so it made sense because of that.
Black and Candy’s next rendezvous was a trip to a nearby forest and into one of the picnic area parking lots. It was pitch black there, and his headlights made all kinds of moths, gnats, mosquitoes, and other bugs visible. There were so many that Candy thought it would be impossible not to breathe them in with every breath. Black parked and turned the lights out and told her that they should take a walk. It didn’t even occur to her how familiar this move was to him as she followed along. At a certain clearing not far from a gazebo that was near some trees and an anchored barbecue grill, he grabbed her and kissed her, pushed her down to the ground, and fucked her right there. It was the same move he used on her front porch. This time, since she knew the move, she went down a little easier to the ground.
Once he was done, he jumped up the same way he had the night before and zipped up his pants. She gathered herself, brushing grass and twigs off her clothes and her back, and took some tissues out of her purse to wipe off the messiness he left between her legs. There was so much slime that she decided to leave the wad of tissue in her panties as she pulled them up. She didn’t notice him wipe anything. He just pulled his pants up and made his way to the truck and told her to get up and said, “Let’s go,” because he was getting bitten by mosquitoes.
As they were driving back to her house, she asked him if he wanted her phone number and if he would call her, and then she asked him if he was leaving his wife.
“Hell No! I ain’t leavin’ my wife! What da hell gave you that idea?”
Candy was shocked at first by the way he answered her. That her boyfriend could talk to her that way was incredulous in her mind. Then she became furious because of the way he answered her. She was thinking that he had to be in love with her because he had bought her drinks and he wanted to make love to her. All the while that she was pondering all this in silence, he was actually talking out loud to himself, and she swore she heard him call her an ignorant bitch, but her own thoughts were so loud in her head that she wasn’t sure.
Somehow she could not fathom that her boyfriend, Black, had just told her that he was not leaving his wife. That was all she heard him say. She missed all that other stuff he had said. So her mission the next day was to find his phone number, which wasn’t hard since she knew many people who knew him. He was a neighborhood handyman, and had been for years. Candy reflected on how he had acquired the nickname “Black” as a kid. She was told that it was because he got in many fights and had many a black eye. It was kind of funny, because Black was a light-brown-skinned man. Anyway, the name just stuck throughout the years with his neighborhood friends and family. Candy went down the street and lied by saying she needed to contact Black about a paint job to an older woman in the neighborhood who had used him for that kind of job before. The minute she got his phone number that day, she called his house, and his wife answered the phone.
“Hello. I’m calling to let you know that your husband and I have been seeing each other.” His wife was shocked at this news, and called her every kind of skank, ho, and bitch she could think of, and then slammed the phone down. Feeling triumphant, Candy believed that this would take care of his marriage, since he was afraid to tell his wife, and this would allow him to be her man without the distraction of that wife. So she went on down to the bar, figuring he would be relieved that she had helped him out of his marriage so he could be with her.
The door of the bar flew open and slammed into the wall behind it. Black came in with his eyes bulging out of his head and bloodshot red. He opened his mouth and the words came out like fire from a dragon. He cussed her out worse than anything imaginable in front of everyone that was there, and no one stopped him. He told the entire bar how he “fucked her in the dirt” in the forest and how he “fucked her on her front porch like the low down dog she was.”
“And your pussy stank too, you rotten ho!” he shouted, and kept on shouting about how ignorant and stupid she was for about ten entire minutes. He went on and on and she sat there and didn’t move. It looked like she wasn’t even breathing, as if she had become inanimate, until she slowly reached her hand up from her lap onto the bar and grabbed her Budweiser bottle and slowly slid it down by her side, as if she was contemplating hitting him with it.
“Bitch! I wish you would hit me with that bottle! I would beat you to death! You ever call my wife again, I’ll kill you.”
Candy just sat there with the bottle by her side, as if it were concealed. Finally, he stomped out of the bar and the place remained silent. About ten seconds later, some chuckling could be heard from the far end of the bar. Candy pulled the beer bottle up from her side and sat it back down on the bar, and she sat there for about five more minutes and said nothing. She could not believe he had dogged her like that. She finally got up and left as she tried to understand what she had done to make her boyfriend so mad that he would leave her like that.
So about a month later when a new guy who came into the bar with one of the regulars sat next to her and bought her a drink, she was back in the saddle again! Candy was thrilled that she had a new boyfriend, Ed. Ed took Candy to a short-stay, sleazy, crackhead motel the second time she saw him after they talked at the bar two nights in a row. And this time he gave her his number after the second trip to the sleazy motel. She never bothered to ask him why he didn’t bring her to his place, and he didn’t ask to go to hers either. The next day, she decided to call him before she headed down to the bar.
When she called, a woman answered. She figured that it had to be his sister or relative since he did give her his number. But the woman sounded disturbed as she asked “Who is this?”
Candy said, “I’m Ed’s girlfriend, who is this?” The woman then rather calmly explained that she was Ed’s girlfriend and that she was living there with him. Baffled, Candy told the woman that Ed gave her that phone number himself. The woman, who had obviously already dealt with this kind of madness from him before, just explained again that she was his woman and told Candy not to call there anymore.
Candy was crushed. That evening, she went to the bar and Ed did not show up. She asked one of his friends what happened to him and she was told that he had moved to another state. She was devastated for about ten minutes because she thought that answer was stupid. Then she forgot about him after knocking down another shot of vodka. What helped move her on was another woman who frequented the bar. This woman’s husband was currently in prison, where he was apparently comfortable, since he kept going there over and over again.
The bar girlfriend whose husband lived in prison had received a letter from her husband that included a picture of a prison mate. The prison mate had the colossal nerve to include a note asking her to show his picture to some of her girl friends so that they might contact him. “They won't be disappointed,” he actually wrote at the end of his note. It’s hard to imagine a man who decides he’s not a disappointment while sitting in prison on his second stint for an armed robbery charge. However, the bar girlfriend passed this picture on to Candy knowing that she wouldn’t be insulted at the gesture.
“He’s cute!” Candy drunkenly slurred as she slid the picture into her purse. The bar girlfriend walked away knowing that Candy would probably send him a letter. Mission accomplished, she thought.
And send a letter she did, quite promptly, too, as she was starving for attention and desired to exclaim that she had a man. Being overweight most of her life had really taken a toll on her psyche and self-esteem, and had made her into a very defensive, needy person. Candy was an easy target for predators, and she never seemed learn much from these episodes. Instead, she usually concluded that something was wrong with any man who slighted her, or anyone else for that matter, and she would move on in scripted madness, realizing the same results almost every time.
Well this time it will be different, she thought, since this man is in prison. Shareef called her collect because Candy had put her phone number in the letter, and he instructed her to have phone sex with him every time he called. He was getting out of prison soon, and Candy told him she was living with her mother, so she could not put him up when he got out. Shareef contacted some of his relatives and found one who agreed to allow him to stay in a room of that relative’s house.
When he got out, he was not thrilled with her look, but he figured she would do because he had no woman and he knew she would try to take care of him as much as she could. When he realized how much she liked to drink, he managed to talk her into moving into a tiny basement apartment where the rent was cheap enough for her to afford it. It was soon after that suggestion that he managed to get a job at a car wash, so Candy agreed, although the place smelled like mildew and was very dark and dank.
It wasn’t long after they settled in there that Shareef began to not come home on some nights after work and would occasionally be missing for days. Candy refused to believe he had another girlfriend and would be furious until he came home, and then she’d be so glad he was there that she wouldn’t be mad anymore. This went on for a while until she lost her job again. Shareef was so mad at her for losing her job that he called her all kinds of names, like “broke down bitch” and “ignorant ho.” Candy cried and begged him to not leave. She promised she would get another job very soon, especially since it was mostly her money that paid the rent and bills while he mostly kept his money and only contributed when she told him she didn’t have enough.
Candy found a bar in their neighborhood and had been frequenting the place soon after they moved to the area, so she was usually drunk by the time he got home, if he came home.
She took her first unemployment check and put some aside to go toward the rent, and then instead of going to the grocery store as she had intended when she stepped out the door, she made a turn at the first block and headed for the bar. She tied one on that night, and after a couple of hours she slithered back around the corner, took off all her clothes, and fell into the bed. Shareef had been in the bar before she got there, and someone told him when he got back that she had been there. One of the regular, older alcoholic bums that hung out there had told him that she was crying about not having enough money to pay the rent. He told Shareef he could help them out, but he wanted to know how much she meant to him. Shareef told this ancient alcoholic creature that she didn’t mean shit to him, which everyone at that bar knew anyway from the way they had seen him act when she wasn’t around. Shareef asked the grizzly, whiskered, drunken gargoyle what he had in mind. The man said that he would pay Shareef one hundred dollars if he let him go to his place to have sex with Candy. Shareef’s mouth dropped open and he said, “What?” louder than he intended. And then he said it again, almost whispering; “What?”
That senior citizen son of an alligator had propositioned him to provide his woman for one hundred dollars. Shareef quickly realized he could probably get more, because this man was a beast, and probably wasn’t getting much action to begin with. He wasn’t smelling too good either, and his clothes were dirty. Shareef thought about how he hadn’t slept with her in weeks, and he kept making excuses as to why he didn’t want to have sex with her, the main reasons being that she was drunk, fat, and he had actually grown to despise her. He had some other young girl who was letting him sneak into her bedroom and spend the night sometimes, so he felt like he was straight.
“Well, Pops, I think I might allow this, but you’ll have to pay me two hundred dollars.” The crusty drunk scratched the side of his head, poking his fingers underneath the nest of gray hair that was attached to it, and let out a sigh. Then he looked at him and said “Okay.”
They both left the bar and walked around the corner to the basement apartment where they knew she was probably laid out since she had clearly been smashed when she left earlier. Shareef directed the man to the bedroom and said he would be waiting in the living room. The man had already shown him the two hundred dollars, but he negotiated to actually hand it to him on his way out. He disappeared into the dark room behind the curtain they had hanging where a door used to be. The monstrous troll peeled his clothes off, exposing his skin to air for the first time in a couple of days. He pulled the covers back and saw she was naked already, which gave him much relief. He rolled her over and then rolled himself on top of her, pulling her legs open and up, grabbing her behind her knees, as both their stomachs impeded his penetration otherwise. And then he entered her and began pounding away, not even noticing whether she had even gained consciousness.
She had woken up during this event, wrapped her arms and legs around him, and just got right into the act. Candy didn’t even realize she was being fucked by a gorilla. When he was done, he almost suffocated her as he lay on top of her with his deadweight and tried to catch his breath. He finally got up, grabbed his clothes, and walked out of the room to put his clothes on in the light.
“Damn, that was fast!” her man said as he watched this man put those filthy clothes back on. Shareef was thinking that he would never put his dick in her ever again in his life now. The old man passed him the two hundred dollars that they had agreed upon and left. Shareef decided to sleep on the couch because he could not even stomach the idea of lying in that bed after witnessing that scene. The thought of it made him want to vomit. He managed to fall asleep and it seemed like morning came immediately after he had eyes closed. Candy stepped through the curtain from the bedroom and asked him why he had gotten out of the bed.
Shareef was flabbergasted that she didn’t even realize it wasn’t him who had had sex with her. Candy walked into the bathroom and closed the door. He listened to her brushing her teeth and gargling, peeing, and then washing her hands. She came out of the bathroom smiling like she was in love because she believed that he had come home and made love to her that night. Projectile vomit shot out of his mouth before he even knew it had happened, and it landed on the snack stand that was next to the couch he slept on.
Candy was shocked, and asked him if he was sick. Shareef said that he thought he had the flu as she grabbed some cloths to clean up the mess. She was walking on clouds and he was sickened by it. He went into the bathroom, took a shower, got dressed, and as he walked out the door, he waved at her. She smiled, feeling like she was in love, not knowing that it would be the last time he ever crossed that threshold.