Leukemia by Jay Passer

I worked with her at the bar. I was the cook and she was the server. Her name was Karen. A lot of them have that name, especially the Caucasian blonde ones. I think it’s even a brand. Karen was slim with good skin, a passable face and good hands and ankles. She was a blonde of the stereotypical school, meaning dumb, though she had her moments. She was cute enough and sassy enough to get very good tips which after she got to know me better she generously shared. I, in turn, made certain her food came out as prompt and perfectly as possible to ensure the very good tips. We were the weekly afternoon shift team working in a small neighborhood pizza joint that had a full bar and five flat screen TVs tuned to sports exclusively. Karen was always busy providing table service as well as tending bar in the spacious single-room establishment. I got a kick out of watching her hustle her ass. As time went on I started to admire that ass. Kinda on the smaller side but she had great hips which she swiveled about like a seasoned stripper. I threw dough and ladled sauce and sprinkled cheese and layered pepperoni and imagined chasing her around naked in a room somewhere. That trim snatch, I thought, maybe it's good for a little something other than tips. The problem was Karen had a boyfriend. Don’t they all? Karen's boyfriend, Chad, looked like a Hitler Youth recruit all grown up and gung-ho to apply torture to subversives and degenerates. Chad worried me somewhat since once, Karen and I had a bit of a tiff over something inconsequential and she told Chad about it, so later in the tavern a few doors down from the pizza joint Chad told me if I ever talked shit to Karen again, I'd wake up dead. Well despite the world being a hellhole and the people in it generally a population corrupt and asinine, and an existence basically meaningless, I still preferred waking up alive. I steered clear of Chad that evening and basically whenever possible and it was only years later that Chad was chanced upon in the locker room of a nearby private gym sucking on some bodybuilder's cock for the price of a gram of meth. This was of course quite some time after Karen's diagnosis, and subsequent treatment, for leukemia. A sad story displaced in remnants of time. After Karen's medical leave of absence she came back to work. I had to give her credit. Karen rocked the bald look. Which did nothing for her depression. She really started hitting the bottle. After shift, we'd sit at the bar and shoot Jäeger bombs. I kept my distance for the most part since the specter of Chad loomed, as he was still in the mercy seat for Karen - meanwhile getting quite ripped at the gym, surreptitiously eyeing the musclemen. One such fine evening, I happened to have made a reluctant trade: an eighth of Blue Shiva for half a dozen tabs of blotter acid. What the hell was I gonna do with a bunch of blotter? I didn't know. I hadn't dropped acid since high school. Karen, sitting next to me as I fingered the tabs, was fascinated. What's that? LSD, I said, no es buena para ti. But before I could react, she snatched a tab out of my hand and popped it in her mouth. Karen! Jesus! You can't be taking that shit! What the fuck, aren't you on prescription meds? Karen stared at me. Really, Eye? I mean what the hell do I care? I just beat cancer, I'm bald, beggars can't be choosers, I'm going all in! So fuck it. I considered her point of view. I had to concur. Okay then, if you can't beat 'em... Down the hatch! I dropped a tab myself and washed it down with a slurp from my pint glass. The shit took about half an hour to kick in. I was starting to trip but Karen was really freaking out. It had plenty of speed in it. The bar contained a kaleidoscope of too much information. We took our party into the cab of a huge pick-up truck parked out back in the alley parking lot. Which just so happened to be Chad's truck. A big white Ford F-250. A colossal metallic heap of paranoia. Aye. The world was getting very hot and intense and suddenly Karen was all over me in the cab of Aryan Chad's Built Ford Tough truck. Like horny teenagers, Karen and I did it. We definitely didn't bother to fully disrobe. It was like a porno flick without the film crew. Then we buttoned up sheepishly and Karen gave me a lift back to my place. I could sense a vacuum of anticipation riffing between us. In the alley behind my apartment building, the truck idled, and the moon and the night and the insects, and everything else that didn’t matter buzzed outside. Karen gave me a baby-doll smile with just a hint of total futility: Should I come in? I was wondering about that myself. Life is full of wonder. With Karen’s bald pate shining from the light of the streetlamp, I wondered if I’d ever truly wake up dead. It hadn’t happened yet. I wasn’t sure I was ready.

Jay Passer's poetry first appeared in Caliban magazine, alongside the work of William S. Burroughs and Wanda Coleman, in 1988. His work has been included in numerous print and online publications and several anthologies. Passer is the author of fifteen collections of poetry and prose, and his debut novel, Squirrel, was released in 2022 by Alien Buddha Press. His work is featured in 3:AM Magazine, Asylum Floor, Beatnik Cowboy, Don't Submit!, EKL Review, Fixator Press, Horror Sleaze Trash, Mad Swirl, Poetry Super Highway, Silver Birch Press and is forthcoming in Chiron Review. A lifetime plebeian, Passer has labored as dishwasher, barista, pizza cook, housepainter, courier, warehouseman, bookseller, and mortician's apprentice. A native of San Francisco, he currently resides in Los Angeles, with a legion of imaginary cats and some very real houseplants.