(no subject)
“I gotta come clean, Mabel,” Len Wieshofer told his wife.
She was hunched over the pile of green glass and metal shavings. Len stared at his wife’s ass. The crease of her polyester pants rode right up her butt, because she was wearing a thong. Len had told her to wear a thong a while ago. Said it would really turn him on. She protested, saying it felt like butt floss, and that it was uncomfortable. She claimed it conflicted with her Catholic sensibilities.
“Oh Len,” Mabel had said one Saturday morning in late March. They were getting dressed, to go out to a late March birthday party, and Len as he pulled on his pants, expressed interest in Mabel wearing thongs. Len had heard about thongs, about girls wearing thongs down at the college, and a lot of the looser types in the Smokin’ Monkey Lounge on Harrison Avenue.
“C’mon honey,” Len coaxed. He pulled up his pants, and pulled the belt taut. He was almost to the end of the holes. He slapped Mabel on the ass, and she jumped and smiled.
“Stop it,” she said.
Now, in Cheviot Machine and Screw, Len was clutching his brass twenty four hour coin. He had a water cannon to make. George Ist Gestorben was dead now, but he was, at least, an authentic being. Len realized his own inathenticity. The O’Doul’s bottles on his desk, and the ones shattered on the floor and now in a pile swept up by his wife who was wearing thongs at his request.
Big Ernie Shores peeked his head in the door. His eyes danced around the office
“Hey Len,” he said. Big Ernie said, “Len I got that water cannon barrel finished.”
Len stared at the floor.
Big Ernie Shores had twenty two years clean and sober in NA.
William Comparetto
© 2006