Thanksgiving by Jay Passer

At the supermarket we stood there in a funk staring at the cheeses. There's so much cheese, she said, it's coming out of their ears here, it's a clinic, a festival, a pandemonium of fromage. Don't get ahead of yourself, I says, we don't even got any bread, we don't got any fruits, we don't got any fishies. We even burned the damn kitchen table in the fireplace, dontcha remember? She whopped me on the head with her magazine. She had this scrunched-up fashion ‘zine held tightly in her bony fist, she’d had it so long I think it’d taken root. I think she mighta been in it, I mean like a photo spread of super honeys from the Diazepam-chic set, it was a thing, and she couldn't let go. Lucky you never got me preggo, she said, and oft repeated, as her eyes skittered about joylessly. When we met at the Nova she was still in diapers. I mean actually; her band the Wed Betters was opening for Shove Blathering, and there she was onstage, frailly tottering in clear pink acrylic stilettos purple fishnets shredded wife-beater with a duct-tape belt, the frilly yellow diaper clutching ample handfuls of derrière. I says to myself, Jesus tits.  I wasn't so broken that I couldn't cry myself to sleep, but broke enough to put a pitcher of Red Hook ESB on Jason's tab. Lucky for me it was Jason's night off bartending but since we were tight he’d never know. I had my own thing. I lifted all manner of tasties off the Sysco delivery trucks, an intricate system, my little scammer Thursday morning delivery circuits, which Jason was happily privy to. But me and her, we hit it off, who didn't love her, Cyndi, the fruitcake freak lead crooner of the Betters. These days, however, had us on the prowl, the scene kept changing, like diapers, defiantly evolving in variations of stench. The Betts struggled after the chaos of their debut EP wore off, labels being fussy that way, fickle - gigs drying up, scarce as scaring up some shots, some bennie-blues, scripts vs obits, even a pack a smokes, since we liked to fire up the imported kind, like Gitanes, from France. Gitanes, Cyndi observed, means gypsy women, and I'm the gypsy woman G-O-A-T. About that cheese, though, I says. Why is it we nous aimons the absolute stinkiest shit? Because we're vile, Cyndi insisted. Now grab that hunka funk and let's get the fuck. I was powerless in the wake of Cyndi’s mission on Earth which was to snag everything in her path and what she didn't crush in her fists she'd shove in her craw, or clench in a skeletal clutch, tightly rolled, like that premier glossy version of Éstranger: the better to batter me with.  Crisp air outside the Broadway QFC, walking fast, plainclothes PD watching from every alley nook and traffic-signal CCTV, East Precinct salivating for shoplifting fodder like us, baby-junkies in nattily tattered drag. Why? Why you always gotta wear that same dress, Cyndi smirked. C'mon she-male it's your damn dress! Us broken gender non-specific chill young Turk indigents all rolled into a damp deluxe tortilla of need, damp ingredients at best, the late months of the year particularly monsoonish. Crashing above Shorty's Belltown at an ex-bandmate's crib on the kitchen nook linoleum. I blew up the foam mattress nightly but Cyndi, hyper-giggly, stomping around in her Docs while the rain went patter-patter out the window which was perpetually stuck open; Cyndi had to point out that you don't blow up a foam mattress, you blow up a porno sex-doll, even the ones with built-in Japanese vibrational cores, not just for thrills, but relief from famine. With the myopic chub face of Miley C, or better yet, the face of our own Cyndi, complete with spandex nappy, special-ordered from overseas. We needed antidotes for sleep, we needed speed and something to drink, something else, something more, something exotic. It was time, time to donate some plasma. We weren't quite there though, we weren't close enough. And it was cold and getting colder. Thanksgiving-time. I hear the Kennel's gotta pot-luck for Turkeyday, I says, I hear we can get in gratis since I'm tight with Ariel, you know the beanpole Israeli bops around stage with Squirrel's band? Who recycles the Kennel’s barrels of bottles and shit? Cyndi scowled. I hate those guys! Fucking piece of shit Squirrel! That old fart spoiled my fête at the Block Party last summer dontcha remember that ass hat? I chortled with a spasm. Cyndi it's old hat, not ass hat, and besides, word is those dudes were deported to Mexico, babe. Undesirable! C'mon, it's the birthday of the Country. We ought to celebrate and if it's free, whoopee! Cyndi snapped alert, with a singsong: And if ya gotta pay, no way! Now we were good. Like swinging children at the park, wholesome perky brats with pre-washed clothes freshly cut mops and summertime every day on afternoon TV. We swung aboard a 70 Muni the electric kind jolts us when it stops starts stops starts so in the best of times we're outa the rain and doing something. I believe the Muni drivers were a wee bit afeared of us and besides it being a holiday we were dressed to kill so hooray for the undead sect. Cyndi'd quit make-up and I'd quit subverting my missives to the local rags for publication. Done with all that, I mused, for the remunerative value was nil: adverts now my fantasy-in-chief - jingles. Billboards and movie-stills, celluloid tattoos. Yer dreaming! Cyndi, ever the enthusiast, waving her tabloidal wand about like a sparkler. The picture out the bus window was of a low blue lake-view horizon smattered with oscillating fireflies. Lake Union luminescence. Ooh-la-la, I hummed, ear to Cyndi's tight belly beneath torn zebra-striped leotards. Sounded empty in there. Hollow like an echo chamber yet me, replete with bat sonar. Whatcha listening to, Eye? I was Eye again, not you. It pissed me off when Cyndi resorted to you, when she called me you, when she called Eye, me, myself and I, Ivan, you… you! Cyndi hated my broken guts. That's what love does, it nurtures habits, bad habits; it breaks men and it breaks open the sky for monsoons to drench the shit-show shooting gallery of transience, the blank bank holiday pot-lucks with nothing to bring but a purloined slab of rank cheese. Pretty, prettily dark but for the streetlights and eerie faded green paint-job facade of the Kennel, and icy around the windpipes. I clutched Cyndi as we broke the threshold into the cavernous tavern. Bee-lined it past the bar to the rear where the plates and platters and bowls of victuals were set on folding tables. But the damage had been done. The food was gone. Cyndi's face fell. A heavy hand clapped on my shoulder, the shoulder of Eye. I wheeled about, ready to scrap ‘n’ brawl, since we were too late, too much in love, too defiant and radiating defeat. But it was only the skinny Israeli. I musta been frailer than I thought. Ariel, you shitty little gossip pissant, what the fuck? There's nothing left! But Ivan, I swear to you, there was so much, hams and turkeys and the red jelly from the can and pies of potato, and pumpkin, how to say, cream on ice! You should see! You were where? Now that you've missed? I swear, my brother, it was here, but the fat hippies, they came, so many came, they shove, like the primate, like the hairy dog! They shove! Cyndi's face reddened, approaching crimson. Then I saw it. Sticking up into sordid smoky space. A leg. One leg left. A left leg. A big one. In two strides I was over there and eyes darting about, snatched it. Some remains of pie as well, Jello-orange pudding on a cardboard crust, which I hefted slowly, with great dexterity, great solemnity, carefully aiming for Ariel's Sephardic kisser. You would not, he uttered, back, backing away… But Eye would, I growled, picking up the pace, young turk-leg shoved in coat pocket, cheese melt, pucker gloaming, tavern alight like a Van Gogh still-life on fire.

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.