The Life and Times of Innis E. Coxman (6 page)

Being kicked in the nuts by a little girl with high heels hurts
like a goddamn
son
ofabitch.
For you to buckle under the weight
of that statement, allow me to apply a bit of context:

The
typical ten-year old boy isn’t aware of the phrases “blunt force trauma” or “OH
GOD MY BALLS ARE IN MY THROAT!” And to be dealt such a sack-crushing blow by a
floozy in a parochial school uniform was either a crash course in
self-preservation, or a crystal ball foreshadowing my experiences with women
for the next twenty years.

Jury’s
still out.

Let’s
kick it old school like Spuds Mackenzie and Trapper Keepers. Back to a time
when
Perfect Strangers
ruled the airwaves and Alf was the brother I
never had.

***

I
was the chunkiest, cutest little motherfucker you were ever lucky enough to run
out of your fridge. My cheeks were as red as a baboon’s ass, my hair so curly
it rivaled Screech’s pubes, and the girlies were on me like a twelve-step pin
on Rick James.

That
is to say, I was a rather unpopular kid.

It
took loads of healthy introspection, but at length I embraced the solitude, it
enabling me to discover the joys of hip hop, rock ‘n’ roll, and pornography.
Still, it vexed me that I could never figure out the source of my social
quarantine, for I had so much to offer any child inhabiting my play space: my
G. I. Joes were regally poised in block formation, I’d sanctioned the invasion
of Castle Grayskull by the He-Man hordes, and that little bitch down the street
said I was so plump I popped her Pogo Ball.

Meaning
she
wasn’t coming around anymore so that left me ample time to
contemplate my place in the world.

Add
Motley Crue teaching me that girls, girls, girls rode something called a crazy
horse in Paris, France and you would’ve thought that Vince Neil spoke through
me whenever I flapped my besoiled braces.

What
about me just wasn’t adorable?

As
you may have guessed, there was a little angel wishing to bring my faults to
light.

As
it happened
one bright, sunshiny day
one horrible, crotch-searing day, I
was by the jungle gym performing research on the effects of wailing guitars in
a juvenile setting, charging my classmates as unwilling test subjects (my
handheld blasted speed metal so loud as to be heard across the playground).

It
was Halloween and the principal had let the students wear their costumes to
school. By then my interest in going door-to-door begging for cavities had
waned so I didn’t participate. My needs for the day were as simple as they were
irritating: I sought to bedevil the living shit out of everyone with music spun
on Bottom 40 radio. No one had complained thus far.

Except
a witch named Trashley Sexneeder who wanted me to know
exactly
what she
thought of my swinging, metallic tunes.

***

Trashley
Sexneeder was surly, violent, and hit harder than an alcoholic foster parent.
Her stringy, unkempt hair and spaghetti-thin frame gave her the appearance of a
lonely child searching for a meaningful friendship. Or a wayward lass from an
afterschool special in desperate need of a strict but loving authority figure.
It was a perfect mask to hide the bloodthirsty mongoose lurking within.

That
venomous bitch was so God-awful that Mother Teresa would’ve prayed for her crib
death.

The
first time I ever met Trashley was in kindergarten when I was waylaid for using
her crayons. We were engaged in free time after a day spent prepping for lives
of Guilt and Regret—benchmarks of a Catholic education. My fat body shook the
light-blue uniform shirt ferociously as I was taint deep in an
Inspector
Gadget
coloring book completing a stunning likeness of Dr. Claw, Gadget’s
faceless and diabolical rival. It was nearing completion and I was driving on
zeal alone. I reached over to my box of crayons to discover I was missing the
color needed to finalize his enviable gauntlets.

Trashley
was prostrate on the floor next to me, her colors abandoned as she was heavily
engrossed in fashioning a shank from a cafeteria spoon. She was really getting
in there, too, beet-faced and grunting, applying pressure on the lime carpet to
sharpen her weapon (I remember thinking how the poor girl was never going to
achieve her goal because fucking carpet).
Not wanting to disturb her, I
wordlessly grabbed the one color required to finish my project from her Crayola
box. I’d no sooner lifted “grey” from the top column than I was met with
knuckles befitting an unlicensed cage match.

The
force of the punch snapped my head back. I regained my composure and looked up
to see Trashley kneeling, the oversized black-and-white checkered school dress
hanging like a potato sack with her nose scrunched in indignation. Her fists
were clenched into wads of steel. I scrambled to my knees, eye-level with my
attacker. I put a hand over my bleeding bottom lip.

“Why
did you do that?”

Her
eyebrows furrowed and she jabbed her finger into my flabby chest when she
spoke. “Fuck you, Innis! These are
my
colors! Don’t you
ever
touch my colors,
Cock
man!
”

I
was aghast. No one had ever spoken to me so harshly in my entire life, much
less hit me without provocation (marriage later raised the bar). It dawned on
me that I should’ve asked to borrow her crayons like I’d been taught, despite
the fact they were lying unused.

Why,
I wasn’t exercising good manners!

I
sought to end our quarrel and asked permission to use her chromatic supplies.
“I’m sorry, Trashley. That was very presumptuous of me. If you don’t mind, may
I please use your crayons to finish color-” She bashed me in the nose with a
flaming right cross that opened the floodgates in my eyes. I was shocked,
bleeding, blinded by tears. I didn’t know what sin I had committed but
obviously it was a whopper of a fuck-up.

I
waited for the dizziness to leave and my vision quickly returned. Seconds
passed as Trashley and I remained kneeling, looking down at the blood dripping
on my coloring book. Without a word, she snatched it up and ripped it apart,
tossing the scraps at me like a woman throwing a drink in a man’s face.

Our
teacher had been sitting on the other side of the room clipping coupons for Preparation
H, oblivious to the activity taking place in her class, the rank of Elmer’s
Glue and talkative children filling her senses with inattention. The space
cadet called for recess and Trashley stood, towering over me. She stuck her
goddamn tongue out and stomped away, likely busying herself with the live
burial of a classmate in the sandbox.

I
sat back down on the carpet, dumbfounded. I began to feel woozy from blood loss
and stumbled to the boys’ bathroom to clot my bleeding, trying to figure out
what in the hell just happened, leaving my destroyed, unfinished work lying
helplessly on the floor. My dreams of attaining artistic perfection had been
dashed upon the rocks. Dr. Claw’s appearance would have to
gel
another day.  

In
the spring of second grade I’d developed a crush on Trashley, the poetic hint
of a “young man’s heart turning to fancy” and whatnot. It was a classic case of
unrequited love when she shoved me from the top rung of the slide and gave me a
fancy plaster cast on my leg.

As
we grew, the child became more hateful and full of spite. I’d managed to avoid
her wickedness for the next three years, careful not to come within arm’s reach
of her wrathful aura, until the day arrived when the hemlock planted in
kindergarten grew to bear poisoned fruit, sprouting on an elementary school
playground for all the world to see.

***

Trashley
reached the patch of dirt I’d staked, removing her witch’s costume in case a
scuffle broke out. Her black cape and pointed hat laid beneath her plastic
broom on the ground, the ill-fitting Catholic school uniform hanging on her
pathetic body like John Candy’s robe. The black come-fuck-me pumps her mother
had bizarrely shoed her with glinted in the afternoon sun, harboring untold
trepidation.

She
forcefully told me to tame my theme music with all the tranquility of
silverware in a woodchipper. “Hey, fat boy! Nobody likes that shit and we think
you’re weird! Turn it down!”

Oh,
but how I loved her sugary voice!

I
never forgot her propensity for chaos. Not wishing another pugilistic sleight
of hand to land across my chubby face, I heeded her demand with the appropriate
delicacy: “Why don’t you give Roger Rabbit his teeth back, ya bucktoothed
bitch?!”

I
just knew my retort would quell the ensuing fray.

Had
I known that hairy-pitted cretin was about to deliver some footwork mastered
only by Olympic soccer players I would’ve migrated to another location on the
schoolyard post-comeback.

The
Kick of a Thousand Mustangs was so powerful it created a dust cloud, landing
with the might of a vengeful God raining sulfur upon the wicked. I wouldn’t
feel pain like that again until years later when I was trapped between a wall
and a Buick in my dealings with another woman.

I
puked everything I’d eaten since breakfast. Such was my distress, I
half-expected to see my underdeveloped pellets in the pile of corn dogs and
Trix. Instead, when I looked up through watery eyes, I saw a smile across
Trashley’s face, her canines tapering into smart points (“Monster Mash” blared
from somewhere in the distance). A crowd of children gathered around to see
what had transpired. I doubled over and fell on my side to conceal my shame.

In
a twinkle of seconds, the Wicked Bitch of the West had stunted my manhood,
turning me into a chick forthwith as red dots speckled my crotch.

I
was curled into the fetal position, pondering the word “sex” and what
importance it would have in my adult world. I’d heard about it from some of the
other kids but was given only minor details. What I
did
know was that
you needed a video camera and
your
junk to do it. I
panicked when I realized that Trashley had kicked
my
nuts into my pelvis and that this “sex” thing may be something I’d have to
relegate to fantasy like those surgically implanted knuckle spikes I’d always
craved. I was in a world of agony, so chagrined that I wanted to stick my head
in the Earth like an ostrich.

But
all was not lost, for just as the horny aunt of embarrassment was running over
to envelop me into her large, lopsided bosom and marvel at what a big boy I’d
become.....

Thank
God for Fred! In the afternoons, he’d meet me by a makeshift hole in the fence
for our walk home from school. He’d seen everything.

My
faithful friend hoofed it toward Trashley with hot daggers in his eyes and
enough fumes in his ass to blow away an entire acre of evil! That little
sorceress may have had a reptilian heart, but I had a fearless omnivore ready
to eat her black spirit! He gnashed teeth at Trashley, halting her from another
assault as I heaved in the background.

Keeping
that succubus at the fringe, Fred made attempts to look for my little raisins
in the dirt so they wouldn’t get squashed, him being a goat and not realizing
that it’s physically impossible to kick the testicles out of a scrotum. I think
it is, anyway.  

Seeing
futility in further attack, Trashley accepted defeat (that’ll teach
her
to fuck with my music!). She grew weary of the fat bastard writhing in pain and
put her witch’s costume back on, straddling her broom like a Thoroughbred and
clopping away to steal the leg braces from that handicapped kid with the
asthmatic seeing eye dog whose mom was in jail.

With
good fortune held together by spit and prayer, I was able to take a knee, but getting
up wasn’t in the cards. My loyal ally picked me up with his Herculean teeth and
helped me right myself. We exited through the hole and I limped the six blocks
home, Fred supporting me whenever I began to falter. I was a butterball, but my
goat was tough and could prop me for hours if need be.

And
oh
God,
did I need be.

My
parents had gone out of town for a few days so I was spared the twenty
questions. I collapsed on my bed where I slept for the rest of the night. Fred
laid down on his blue quilt and chewed on a pair of Victoria’s Secret panties
from the garbage can of the escort next door, prepared to alert me should
Brunhilda return to finish the job. When I awoke the next morning, I discovered
that he’d nudged my Wiffle Ball bat next to my unconscious body.

Ride
or Die Fred, my only friend in the world.

***

It
looked like a cow had chewed a pack of Juicy Fruit and slapped it under my
dick.

My
pebbles reappeared the next day, though seemingly worse for wear. I probably
should’ve gone to a doctor, but fuck that—that would’ve led to my parents’
involvement and I wasn’t telling them
shit.
I guess I could’ve gone by
myself, but I was ten years old; what the hell was I going to use for payment,
fucking
Batman
comics? After a few days my sack quit looking like a
stressball in an abusive marriage so I knew it was cool.