Mommy, You Broke My Mind

By John D. Morton

    Six foot one, two hundred and fifty big pounds woke up and convulsed with dry heaves for a full three and a half minutes. Like his body was having an earthquake.

    Then the body, that was named Jinx, painstakingly, lovingly, and with great ceremony, prepared the ‘Good Morning’ shot (which was quite diminished due to the rather large size of last evening’s ‘Good Night’ shot.) But it was enough to correct the nausea. Enough to enable him to get the morning’s work done.

    He rang Patrick.

    Iggy sang, “And it’s always...and it’s always this way.”

    “Oui?”

    “It’s me Patrick. I was wondering if it would be possible to go downtown this morning? I need to forget all my troubles, forget all my cares.”

    “No, it is not possible to go downtown now. Maybe we can do this thing in about two hours, however if you would like to go uptown that would not take as long.”

    “Geeze Patrick, I really don’t think it would be wise to go uptown without going downtown first, but maybe we could go downtown then uptown later on?”

    “Yes, I think this thing is possible in perhaps two hours.”

    “Shall I call first?”

    “No. It is not necessary.”

    Jinx hung up and flipped on the black and white he had purchased at Sears with his wife, when he had a wife. Technically he was still married. He’d heard Michele lived on the Lower East Side somewhere and even though he roamed there daily, he had never run into her.

    Mr. Green ‘Red’ Jeans flickered into view. He was singing ‘This Land is Your Land.’ Man, how old are these pooftahs anyway? They have got to be in their seventies. And how in the fugging world did Mr. Green ‘Red’ Jeans ever make it out of the McCarthy era unscathed? He must have ratted out every fucking ‘fellow traveler’ he knew!

    Bunny Rabbit came on and unashamedly fucked The Captain out of two bunches of carrots, greens still attached. Then Mr. Moose came on and did something. Jinx could never figure out what Mr. Moose’s function was, he was so bland, but for that matter, so was Mr. Green ‘Red’ Jeans, Bunny Rabbit and The Captain. When he was a kid, Jinx figured the live actors on the show were just peripheral junk around to showcase ‘Tom Terrific.’

    Then ‘twas ‘Morning Matinee.’ ‘Abbot and Costello Meet the Mummy.’ A rather minor noir, but of some historical significance because of its co-stars, Mel Welles and Richard Deacon.¹ Despite their obvious onscreen chemistry, it would sadly and curiously be the only film they were ever to appear in together.

    Jinx was hesitant to get emotionally involved as it would very soon be time to go . . . DOWNTOWN (don’t wait a minute more !!)

    The F train at Carroll Street. A long, long flight. The ‘Good Morning’ shot was wearing off and time just took longer.

    Just to keep everything cool, the conductor said at each new station stop, “This is So and So Street. Change here for your B and C, your R and N, and your M and J trains and please watch out for the closing!!”

    “Doors! Watch out for the closing-fucking-doors!” The good news being that the conductor’s syntax murder kept Jinx distracted a bit from his heroin short nausea.

    After eternity. After eternity, Jinx exited at the 2nd. Avenue stop. "I say a ninety per cent chance of snow with two too three inches of accumulation possible," to himself to pass his one minute walk. Jinx rang the buzzer for apartment 13 at 101 1st. Avenue.

    “Who?”

    “It’s me.” Of course it’s me. Absolutely irrefutable.

    “I’ll be right down.”

    Patrick’s ghost face appeared behind the dirty Plexiglas and wire mesh of the inner door. Jinx wasn’t sure if Patrick liked him or not. He wasn’t sure if he liked Patrick. Dope really diminishes ones ability to feel emotions. Jinx’s father had died of cancer six months earlier. “At least he knew it was coming. He was an OK dude I guess.” A junkie’s parental love.

    Patrick said on the sidewalk, “I have the coke already. It is so good. The police, man, those motherfuckers, they were parked on the street shutting everything down for two hours. They have been doing it all week. Come, we will go get some ‘Toilet.’ It is the best for now.”

    They made their way four blocks east and one block north to the ‘Toilet’ store. A hole in the cinder block wall of an abandoned apartment building. Inside the place was lit by four candles. Very romantic.

    Jinx was Patrick’s de-facto partner. Patrick had needed protection on a couple of large purchases from an independent (that means non-mafia) dealer and had taken Jinx along. Beyond Jinx’s size, he was just, like-real intimidating man. Patrick always had Jinx along after that. The scavenger junkies usually picked easier prey.

    Patrick was going to end up an old junkie whereas Jinx was of the usual. He would either be dead before forty of disease/overdose/murder or, if he was lucky(?), be on methadone maintenance for the rest of his miserable fucking life.

    “¡NO SINGLES SEÑOR MARICÓNE!” One dollar bills being too bulky for the business and the gay joy banger in front of Patrick left with two bags instead of three.

    15 year old P.R. “¿How many?”

    “For five hundred.”

    “I give you sixty bags.” The standard 10% volume discount.

    “Oui, O.K.”

    Laden with sixty glassine envelopes, each stamped with a little pink toilet, Jinx and Patrick made their way down Houston Street towards First.

    Patrick, “Don’t turn around. Speed up a little.”

    Jinx did as he was bid. It had happened before.

    “Oui, just as I thought, they have split up, they intend to come from both sides, when I say run . . .”

    At the corner of First and Houston, Patrick gave the command. They both tore ass towards Patrick’s apartment and Jinx saw them for the first time. Two extra-skanky white guys, one coming up from behind, the other from the side. Patrick and Jinx would arrive at the unlocked outer door one point five seconds ahead of their pursuers.

    Patrick opened the outer door and he and Jinx slipped in. Jinx strained to close the door against the pneumatic valve as Patrick unlocked the inner door. The predator junkies were banging on the outer door with two knives and trying to pull it open against Jinx. The knife blades were so long they looked like they were brandishing fucking swords. The pneumatic worked against their adversaries as Jinx and Patrick slipped in the inner door then Patrick pulled a plastic automatic pistol out of his jacket and aimed it harmlessly through the plexi. The two scavengers dropped below the window and fled out to the street.

    It did look real.

    Patrick’s kitchen, the first room after the entrance. 14 inch color TV on top of the refrigerator. The ‘Mid-Day Matinee’ on.

    “Hey Patrick way-cool, look!” the TV, “This is a Primo-fucking-tastic example of Japanese cinema! ‘Invasion of the Astro-Monsters’ Inoshiro Honda, 1966 with additional footage of Nick Adams spliced in for the American release. Can I fix here?”

    “Oui, but of course! For how much Jinx?”

    “$70”

    “Oui.” Patrick made it so with nine bags of heroin and three cokes, the extra being the tacit fee for Jinx’s protection.

    Jinx put three dopes in a spoon. The same number as yesterday, except that yesterday, a bag was nine percent heroin, and today, a bag was fourteen percent.

    “How much coke should I use Patrick?”

    “It is very strong today. You can do for one, it makes for the perfect speedball.”

    Jinx added a bag of coke to the spoon and cooked it up with a hypo full of tap water drawn from the omnipresent Flintstones jelly jar glass.

    “Save the cotton yes?”

    “Oui Patrick.”

    Patrick sold heroin to hipsters that were wisely afraid to buy on the street. Patrick would save the cottons used to strain the dope and when some customer came crying about needing a fix desperately but having no money, Patrick would donate seven or ten used cottons to the simple fuck, and that usually supplied a big enough jolt to get the simple fuck well enough to go out and earn some simple fucking money to buy dope with. That was as far as Patrick’s charity extended.

    Jinx and Patrick pulled their respective plungers out, the little rose-bloom of blood mixed with the tepid heroin/coke water told them they had hit a vein. Then they both took the plunge, as it were, simultaneously. Like cuming together, except better.

    Jinx got a little half lidded. He sort of wavered a bit in his chair.

     It was indeed good coke.

      Coke slides off. H kicks in.

         Then,

       Never Never Land.

         Then,

      Unconscious, just short of death. Nick Adams descending a
        ladder from a giant spaceship on the TV.

    “MOMMY!! MOMMY!! HELP!!! HELP!! MOM-MY!!”

    Jinx’s room was painted all green. His favorite color. Mommy came in.

    “What is it Sweetums? What’s wrong? Were you having a bad dream?”

    “I was a bad man Mommy. A very bad man.”

    “Were you having a nightmare Jinxy?”

    “No Mommy. It was real. I was a bad man. I did what the doctor does and bad men were chasing me.”

    “What does the doctor do Jinxy?”

    “He gives you a shot, ‘cept I did it to myself.”

    “You gave yourself medicine?”

    “Yes Mommy.”

    “Oh that’s not bad. It means you are going to grow up to be a doctor.”

    “But I don’t want to be a doctor. I want to be a train.”

    “You can’t be a train Jinxy. You could be a train engineer.”

    “No! I want to be a locomotive.”

    “STOP IT!” Mommy raised a hand in threat, “O.K. young man. Get dressed and come down for breakfast.”

    Jinx took a chance at this next request. “Pez Mommy?”

    “We’ll see. Maybe after breakfast.”

    Jinx appeared seven minutes later downstairs in the kitchen where Jinx’s choosy mother was putting the finishing touches on a nutritious breakfast of Wonder Bread topped with peanutty creamy Jif and a glass of Grape Tang that was chock full of vitamin C.

    “Jinx, your shirt is on backwards.”

    “It’s O.K. Mommy. It’s striped, it’s all the same way!”

    Regardless, Mommy righted the shirt.

    Jinx sat down in front of the black and white Zenith. Mom put his breakfast on a TV tray.

    Do you dream in color? Wouldn’t that be more natural than dreaming in black and white? I dream in terror.

    “Do you want Captain Kangaroo Jinxy?”

    “Yes Mommy.”

    Mr. Green Jeans and The Captain flickered in standing in front of a very garish Christmas tree. They were doing the ‘Big Rock Candy Mountain’ routine.

    When breakfast was over Jinx asked for Pez again. This time it was O.K.

    “Do you want Mickey Mouse?”

    “No Mommy. Goofy.”

    Fuck Mickey. Fuck Pluto. Fuck Minnie. Goofy rules! Mommy could fill the Pez dispenser all at once. It was better, because Jinx could get three in the dispenser at one time, max.

    “Here you are Jinxy.” She handed him Goofy loaded with assorted Pez flavors. Jinx chain Pezzed. Totally Pezzed-out in three minutes.

    “More please Sir?”

    Manfred the Wonder Dog was sauntering across the screen when Mommy came in with a bottle of paregoric and a Q-tip.

    “I have to rub some paregoric on that tooth coming in so it grows up strong. I know you don’t like the taste,” (Au contraire, Ma Mere.) “But it’s medicine.”

    Just like General Jack Ripper in ‘Strangelove’ Jinx’s mom favored a preemptive all out strike. If Jinx started to get a tooth in, Jinx’s Mom didn’t wait for him to complain, she got out the paregoric. If Jinx coughed but once, turpin-hydrate.

    The family pharmacist was surprised to find out Jinx was an only child.

    “Mommy, Mrs. Jones said we were supposed to wear our costumes to nursery school today ‘cause tomorrow’s Halloween.”

    “Jinxy, I’m sure Mrs. Jones would have sent along a mimeo if you were supposed to wear you cos...”

    “But Mommy! She said...”

    Mommy slapped Jinx across the face. It didn’t knock him over. It just hurt. Jinx stood motionless, his face blank.

    “Up to your room. Now!”

    Jinx only started to cry when he got to his room. He fell asleep. Tears on his pillow.

    “‘Tis the winter of our incontinence.”

    That’s what Jinx thought Melanie was saying. She was slapping him on the face with her left hand, in her right, she had three ice cubes in a washcloth held against his jugular. The slapping made him hark back to thoughts of Mom.

    “Lights back on Jinx? Here, hold this against your neck.” She gave him the ice cubes.

    Jinx looked over and saw Patrick in the tub, (the tub being in the kitchen) wearing his cloths in water with some ice cubes floating around.

    Melanie went over to the kitchen table and started to fix. “Well boys, you’re lucky I came back when I did.” Melanie was Patrick’s wife.

    “What happened?” Jinx.

    “I came in and Patrick was on the floor and you were slumped on the table. I got Patrick in the tub and then I worked on you.”

    “Oh.”

    Patrick, “Man, that was close!”

    Jinx, “The two guys?”

    “No, this is very good dope.”

    Melanie, “What two guys?”

    Patrick, “These two scum thought they could rip us off. It could never happen with Jinx around.”

    “Patrick, you still need to be careful.”

    “I am careful! What do you think? I am crazy? This is a hard way to make a living. What would you have me do?”

    There were fifteen seconds of silence while Melanie hit. It seemed to relax her.

    Jinx, “It’s weird, I’ve experiencing very much Déjà Vu. It’s been happening all day.”

    “Déjà Vu?”

    “Yeah. You should know what that means. You’re French..”

    Patrick didn’t answer. He was nodding again. Melanie got up and went over to the tub and slapped him hard across the face. Ah love!

    Patrick jerked back awake, “Jinx, we need to go out and get some more of this. It might not be so good tomorrow.”

    It had been snowing heavily while Jinx and Patrick were having their drug induced adventures, and there was considerable accumulation.

    Jinx and Patrick entered the ‘Toilet’ store through the hole and stood in line. A Jew in a yarmulke, business suit with a briefcase stood in line ahead of Jinx and Patrick.

    That’s what makes this country great.

    Then Patrick’s turn.

    Same P.R. kid, “¿How many?”

    “Is it the same as this morning?”

    “¡Si, is the same! ¿Is bueno yes?” (What’s he going to say? “No, it’s nowhere near as good?”)

    “Then how many for nine hundred?”

    “I’ll give you the same day discount. One hundred and twenty bags.”

    “That is very good, yes we will do it.”

    “I don’t have that much extra here. You’ll have to wait while we send out a runner.”

    Before Patrick could say “Oui,” “Hondo” was being called down the street. The lookout’s name for the police. The dealer blew out the candles and needlessly told everybody to shut the fuck up.

    Jinx looked through the hole and saw the front of the police car pull into his view and stop. It was a little winter vignette. The blue cop fender, some street, some curb and the sidewalk with big bright white flakes of snow coming down in a windless sunlight. The snow deadening all sound.

    “LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW.”

    Jinx and Patrick watched the little scene in silence for an hour and a half. Then the police car pulled away and the all clear sounded.

    Fifteen minutes later Jinx and Patrick exited out through the hole and went back to the apartment. Walking through a veritable WINTER FUCKING WONDER LAND.

    Jinx went up to the apartment and had a sorely needed one for the road and in thirty minutes was on a Brooklyn bound F train bemused by a conductor that read little haikus that he had authored between the train stops. All together a much more enjoyable commute than the morning’s. Some of the haiku was actually quite good.

    Five thousand square feet of loft with a pre-stressed concrete roof and a single fifty gallon drum turned into a wood stove to heat it. The stove warmed in about a seven foot diameter.

    Jinx put on ‘Sun Ra Visits Planet Earth’ listing the musicians as the ‘Power of Astro-Infinity Arkestra’. It made Jinx think he should put in a little ‘space’ in before his next shot.

    He was inspired. “Sometimes you just got to stick something up your asshole!” Jinx went to the refrigerator and picked out a fairly large carrot. He bit the end off to blunt it and put some Vaseline on it. He started working it in and out of his anus with his left hand and started stroking his penis with his right. The carrot was cold. He was fantasizing about the time this woman had seduced him in his kitchen with accupressure while his wife was asleep in the other room. The girl had kneaded his fingers for a while and then moved on to his penis. Just a regular run of the mill sex fantasy. Jinx reached flaccid, but no further. “Time to up the ante.” He started on a made up exotic fantasy. A white Arab (horse!) was doing him in the ass. A crowd of people stood and stared. The ‘Heartbreakers’ were playing live. Not the Tom Petty assholes but the Johnny Thunders assholes. After another five minutes with no better results and he gave it up, dislodged the carrot and made sure to throw it away. He didn’t want to eat it later by mistake.

    He turned on the TV and prepared dinner. Half a Sara Lee pound cake with vanilla Häagen-Dazs. (Why do you think they call it junk food?) There was a really weird (and consequently good) movie on staring Harvey Kitel as a medieval knight. Klaus Kinski and Fernando Rey were also in the cast and this kept him sweetly occupied until it was time for the ‘Good Night Sweet Jinxy’ shot. He nodded out at the table with the needle in his arm.

    “Mommy. I was bad again.” Jinx had just woke from his nap. “The policemen said I was bad, a lady hit me and put my friend in a bath tub with his cloths on!”

    “Huh? Oh sweetums, it was just a dream. Put your cloths back on and come downstairs and have lunch before the bus comes to pick you up for nursery school.”

    Jinx sat down in front of the TV. Dorothy Fultime had just finished her editorial. (And she could say any frigging thing she wanted. She owned the station.) Then Captain Penny. It was a real neat show for a change. ‘The Little Rascals,’ ‘Who’s The Funny Man,’ ‘The Three Stooges’ and Jinx’s favorite, ‘Deputy Dawg.’ In today’s Deputy Dawg cartoon, a turtle kept limping around saying, “Mr. Dylan? Mr. Dylan?” Finally Vincent Van Gopher corners him, “Are you looking for Marshall Dylan?” “No,” the turtle answers, “I’m looking for Bobby Dylan. I thought maybe he’d write a song.”

    The yellow nursery school van beeped its horn.

    Jinxy boarded the bus and was amongst his classmates. They were princesses, pirates, Zorro, Sgt. Garcia, that asshole Mickey Mouse, Cleopatra and three witches. Everyone had a costume on but Jinx and Bruce, and Bruce still peed his pants every other day. Jinx started crying. Once they got to school, they offered Jinx a clown costume. Bruce had already put one on and had already pissed it. He stood there with a sort of dumb grin on his face, the garish yellow rayon of the clown costume all wet in the crotch and down one leg.

    “I DON’T WANT TO BE A FUCKING CLOWN!” Mrs. Jones was appalled. The other kids asked what ‘fucking’ was and Jinx crawled under the table and cried real tears! All the time thinking about his cool Popeye costume he could be wearing if his Mother wasn’t such a stupid cunt.

    After a bit, while he was thinking about the fact that they were branding him a clown even before his fifth birthday, still crying, Jinxy fell asleep.

    Jinx woke up and convulsed with dry heaves for a full three minutes. Like his body was having an earthquake.

    Then, painstakingly, lovingly, and with great ceremony, he prepared the ‘Good Morning’ shot (which was quite diminished due to the rather large size of last evening’s ‘Good Night’ shot.) But it was enough to correct the nausea. Enough to enable him to get the morning’s work done.

    He rang Patrick.

    And Iggy sang, “And it’s always...and it’s always this way.”

____________________________________________________________
Footnote:
¹ Mr. Mushnik from 'Little Shop of Horrors' and Mel from 'The Dick Van Dyke Show' respectively.

The End

© John D. Morton
September 2000