Read Online It's All Relative by Wade Rouse - Free Book Online

then she reached down and touched my wiener.
    Which immediately inverted, like a turtle’s head.
    Now, I paid twenty dollars for this single pair of beads—partly because the shimmery green of the alligator’s scales matched my eyes perfectly—and I was not going to give them to a three-hundred-poundwoman who looked like she just got shot in the mouth.
    â€œNo deal, Spock,” I said.
    My buzz hit me at the wrong time.
    â€œExcuse me!
Excuse me!
” she screamed.
    And then she grabbed me by the turtleneck and shook my head back and forth, like lion mothers do to their cubs. My feet weren’t dangling off the ground, but it felt like it.
    I began to get alarmed, mostly because
Excuse me!
was the catchphrase of an insane girl named Toni on the awful reality show
Paradise Hotel
, where whorish singles basically got drunk and slept around in order to stay in an oceanside resort paradise. Toni, like this girl, was always ready for a throwdown after a few drinks.
    â€œSorry. You can go ahead of me, no biggie,” I said.
    â€œAre you calling me big?”
    â€œNo … ma’am.”
    Big Red started kind of screaming, slurring, like drunks do, and I could just see her throwing the remnants of her saliva-strewn hurricane all over me, so I somehow worked my way loose of her meaty palms and bolted, down another alley—through which she might not fit—and then down the street, fighting to get through the crowds.
    A few blocks away, I ran directly into Uhura’s opposite, a malnourished woman with sketchier teeth than a rotting jack-o’-lantern. She was sporting jeans that fit like a second skin and a mangy halter, though it was roughly forty-five degrees out. She had a cigarette positioned in an empty slot where a tooth should have been, and I immediately thought:
Good for her. She’s a glass-half-full type of gal
.
    â€œI’ll show you my cooch for them gator beads!” she screamed.
    In less than five minutes, I’d moved from breasts to vagina.
    â€œDon’t you wanna see my cooch?”
    She might as well have asked if I wanted to kick a puppy or punch an old woman in the face.
    â€œNot particularly.”
    For some odd reason my response, and not her initial question, infuriated her boyfriend, who was sporting the rather frightening fashion combo of a mullet (“Business in the front, party in the back, man!”), a sequined mask over his eyes, a bushy mustache that looked like a dirty floor mat, and a T-shirt that read: SAVE THE BEAVER! , which featured a photo of Jerry Mathers with a shotgun positioned against his head.
    I found this combination highly unsettling, like seeing Michael Keaton as Batman. And then he asked: “Why don’t you wanna see her coochie?”
    I mean, how does one even respond to a question like that?
    So I yanked out my best Colin Powell impression and said, calmly, “Because it’s special. It belongs to you.”
    â€œThat’ll be the day!” he roared. “She likes your fuckin’ beads. Why don’cha wanna barter?”
    I looked around in desperation. My friends were nowhere to be found. Useless as they may have been, they at least would have been able to step in and pee on somebody.
    There was no option: I wanted to live. So I unkinked my pricey gator beads from the nest around my head and presented them to her.
    â€œHere,” I said, walking away, defeated. “Enjoy.”
    There was a hand on my shoulder.
    â€œOh, no, you don’t,” the boyfriend said. “Fair’s fair. You get to see her cooch.”
    An honest, admirable sort of chap, I thought
.
    He grabbed me close and put his arms around my shoulders and those of his girlfriend, making kind of a one-man shield, and, as she slowly unzipped her jeans, my life flashed before me. Inch by inch, zip by zip, I saw, in descending order:
    A pink scar …
    a faded rose tattoo …
    a nest of black-brown