The Life and Times of Innis E. Coxman (8 page)

Hegayla
finally pulled it together. “Hey, Innis, is it true? Hee, hee, hee.”

“Is
what true?”

“Slobadong
said you and her hung out during the movie. Hee, hee, hee.”

I
eyed them suspiciously. “Yeah, so what?”

Chuckling
like a first grader who can’t get through a fart joke, “She said you two were
talking and.....tee-hee, hee, hee, hee.”

I’d
never smoked marijuana up to that point but I’d always heard it was next to
impossible to tie your thoughts together under its influence. My patience was
wearing thin at having to deal with two dumbasses who couldn’t complete a
sentence.

“Yeah,
we did. So what’s your point, man?”

Fagsund
had been chomping at the bit and could stand it no more. “Dude—
did you cum
on yourself?!”

I
was as shocked as a Kardashian getting a clue.

It
wasn’t enough to make me miss a classic American tale of a New York City cab
driver slipping into the abyss of delirium. No, Slobadong also broadcasted that
she’d made me blast my boxer shorts without so much as touching my tubesteak.
No lips, no graze of the teeth, not even a flick to the nuts. After the movie,
she’d enlisted an introverted lackey named Finger Porkin to help spread this
vicious lie. Finger was eager to please, for she hadn’t felt the burn of
attention since her father had given her herpes in junior high. She was more
than happy to assist with my destruction. The cherry atop this scoop of shit
was that everyone believed them.

My
fate was sealed.  

Really,
I should have seen it coming. I was the new guy who reeked of loneliness and
hand lotion, and Heaven knows that setting homeless people ablaze can only keep
the maladjusted focused for so long.

***

Sex
offenders don’t suffer the ostracism I endured.

Being
bullied in the halls by rednecks and jumped in the locker room by the brothas
honed my fighting skills. Weathering four years of exile from the rest of the
student body taught me the pleasures of my own company. But the fondest
memories that I hold dear are the slanderous names which have bolstered my
present sensitivity to others. Alcohol and chemicals did their best to destroy
them, but I can still recall some highlights:

Cum
Boy.

Cum
Bubble.

Nutty.

Nut
Head.

Loose
Cannon.

Fuck
Fountain.

Gooshy.

Goosher.

Splooge
Mcgooge.

Sticky
Stanley.

Hose
Stick.

Wet
Willy.

Hey-Dude-You’re-Supposed-to-do-That-on-Her-Stomach.

Slicky.

Slickster.

That’s-the-Guy.

Punching
Bag (more of a viewpoint than an insult).

And
the most creative handle for a newcomer with a bull’s-eye on his back: Look Ma,
No Hands.....

VD
clinics don’t have that many names on the sign-in sheet, good people.

I’m
not downplaying when I say the experience was difficult. There were many times
when I felt myself breaking at the joints, coming close to suicide at the ripe
old age of fourteen. Naturally, now that I’m older, have seen more of the
world, and have witnessed people with real problems overcome them, I’m glad I
didn’t. With all the atrocities out there—war, famine, Simon Cowell, steamed
squash, cold coffee, and that old lady at the head of the line who still writes
a check instead of using a fucking debit card—my dilemma didn’t amount to a
hill of Xanax. But I’ll be a monkey’s inappropriate uncle if I didn’t have to
go through years of self-annihilation to see that.

***

(Unfortunately),
things turned out well for Slobadong. After undergoing extensive electrolysis,
some time with a speech coach, and a radical name change, she became a stand-up
comic with one hell of a stage show. With a successful run of club work under
her belt, she went on to pursue a career in movies and television. You may have
seen her in such films as
Exit to Eden
playing second fiddle to the
comic genius of Dan Aykroyd,
A League of Their Own
trying to convince
Madonna to stop being such a slut, and the live-action version of
The
Flintstones,
where her role as Betty Rubble butchered the sexiness of the
character, prompting John Goodman to retch off-camera.

Of
course, many will recognize her as host of the strangely popular and thankfully
cancelled
The Rosie O’Donnell Show.

In my early 20s I anticipated a violent death by my mid-20s.
And nothing
heroic like a warrior falling in battle or a mishap with two wet prostitutes
and an electric dildo. I mean the sort of demise that beckons your angry spirit
to look down (or up) at your withered meatsack with seething antipathy.

The
existence I was leading wasn’t conducive to physical longevity. If I’d stayed
on that path I most certainly would’ve wound up face down in a puddle of puke
with the straw in my nostril as proof I’d had a really good time. The amount of
narcotics the human body can tolerate in a single sitting is limited; there
were many occasions when I hocked a loogey in the face of such logic. To
further an early grave, the social circles infiltrating that lifestyle bring
the threat of ferocity, be it from the attempted theft of your drugs to someone
in your bunch mistaking a simple “Hello” as an offer to intercourse their
mother.

I
was also married to psychosis who wished to snuff me and who wasn’t the least
bit concerned if she joined me in the demise.

***

I
was at a very dark place in life, so close to the edge that some of my dealers
pondered an intervention. They opted out when they realized I was eighty
percent of their gross. Satan exacerbated the downward spiral when he gave me a
perfect addition to my self-destruction, a wife. Her name was Raptious de la Cray
and we were wild together: parties lasting days, enough acid in our bodies to
fuel a car battery, and experimenting with Martha Stewart’s engrossing
bestseller
Martha’s Meth Cook: Speedy Recipes
For
the Sniffer in a Rush.

It
was a hasty courtship. Raptious and I met at a local bar, discovered we had
nothing in common except drug suppliers, and after only a few weeks we
foolishly got married. In the beginning it was great, the ideological romance
of newlyweds still fresh on the table. It didn’t last long. Within a month of
our nuptials, I began to suspect something was awry.

One
day I returned to a still house. I called out for Raptious and heard echoes in
response. Her brand new Buick was in the carport so I knew she was home. I
walked through the faded-wallpaper living room, passed the glass table
supporting a Pyrex bong and a pile of weed, wending past the white plastic wall
shelf holding lines of crystal divided on a cookie lid, down the hall
stretching to our bedroom. I found her kneeling on the floor at the foot of our
bed sitting on her feet, the lobe-length auburn hair chaotic as a bird’s nest,
her chunky frame hunched over a pile of clothes with her back to the doorway.
Hiding one of my Zippos in her hand. The lamps in the room were off, the only
light being that streaming from a globed sixty-watt in the hall. She wore only
a holey pair of black underwear and a pink wife beater. I knew then that
something was wrong; she never wore wife beaters because they cut into her back
fat. The air was teeming with the scent of freshly poured lighter fluid. My
sympathetic nerve system rushed to life and I didn’t know what to expect.

I
suddenly began kicking my own ass for not replacing the expired fire
extinguisher in the kitchen.

I
meekly called to her, “Raptious?”

She
shot up like a ninja, whirling her corpulent body and planting both feet in the
carpet. The words came screeching.
“Don’t come any closer, motherfucker!
I’ll do it! I swear to God I will!”
Her eyes were wide, wild, like a newly
captured tiger biting the bars of its cage. Before I could ask as to the
trouble, she lit the Zippo and swung it back and forth, grasping the lid,
letting the fiery bottom case dangle over the malodorous heap of cloth. She
laughed like an orphan plotting the murder of its abusive caretakers.

In
that instance, I was able to talk Raptious down and confiscate the Zippo before
she lit the fabric ablaze, possibly destroying our home and killing us both in
the process. The experience was my first whiff that something in her mind was
broken, but it wouldn’t be the last.

I
soon realized my new bride was made of sugar, spice, and everything nice.

And
lunacy.

***

It
was a blustery Sunday in January and it couldn’t have happened on a better day.
After all, Sunday is the day of worship and domestic violence, so sayeth the
Lord.

I’d
created a bend in our river of bliss when I cheated on Raptious the night
before with a cashier from a convenience store. My cousin had concurrently been
in their living room fucking her roommate. For reasons that remained unclear
for quite some time, that asshole told Raptious all about our boys’ night out
(years later, I came to realize that they were
maybe
probably
definitely sleeping together). She asked me details about the assignation
between bouts of assault. Her angry fists landed madly for two hours and I had
reached my breaking point.

Not
concerned with my marital faux pas so much as my well-being, I said I was
leaving our love shack, vowing to return when I was high enough to deal with
her insanity. After plucking a pre-rolled joint from the stash in my
nightstand, I grabbed my keys and plaid blue coat and headed out the door. She
followed me, yelling that if I left right then I’d, “regret it!” I gave no ear.

The
sight of me strolling blithely around the hood of my stylish Ford Escort was
too much for her. From the open carport door, she threatened to halt my
departure by harpooning her Buick into the foyer. I thought she was blowing off
steam, but when I opened the door to my car, she sprinted to her monstrous
Regal, got in, turned the ignition, and revved the engine loud enough to rival
stampeding buffalo. She threw it in reverse and backed out of the driveway
toward the street. Such was my desire to avoid a gaping hole accenting the
fireplace, I ran to the driver’s side of her battering ram and attempted to
make sweet, hasty amends.

“You crazy cunt!
You drive that fuckin’ thing in the
house and I’ll tell your mother you stole her speed!”

She
rolled down the window. “Fuck you! Tell her, you cheating cocksucker! Just
don’t be surprised if I do some remodeling while you’re gone! Remember those
French doors you wouldn't let me have? Well I’m about to get ‘em for
free,
dickhead!” She capped her declaration with a
whiiiiiiiiiiiir
of the V6.

I
didn’t think she’d do it. Then again, I’d had no reason to suspect she’d douse
every article of clothing we owned with flammable liquid.

It
was imperative that I stop Raptious from wrecking our home with that car. I
would achieve this by slamming a fist into her windshield.

I
ran to the passenger side and raised my clenched right hand, bringing it down
with gusto—
crunch!
—to form huge fissures running in every direction with
a fist imprint at the center. From behind the steering wheel, Raptious drew a
breath, held it, her eyes widening to fury as she stared at the injury her new
vehicle had sustained. I pried my bloody knuckles from the windshield and shook
the shards from my flesh, satisfied that I’d prevented her shenanigans from
advancing any further. I crammed my torn hand into my jean pocket to retrieve a
pack of Marlboro Reds. Tapped one out and lit it. I eyed her for a moment
through the fractured glass before strolling to my hatchback, confident that my
action was in no way about to have an imminent consequence.

Smoke
blew from the tires when she reversed it farther down the driveway.

I
halted and turned around. I was fed up with her bullshit and called her bluff,
bellowing the threat of a man with more heart than sense. In the wake of this
incident, I’ve concluded that the words were poorly chosen, having rehearsed
them in my head to the point of mental fatigue, certain that if I could revisit
the event I’d pick a phrase more apt to soothe the savage beast than inflame the
ire:  

“I FUCKING DARE YOU!”

It
was obvious that I’d disparaged her grit; the motor roared with extreme passion
and batshittery.

A
loud
clu-chunk!
belched
from under the hood;
a transmission thrown into drive as it drowned my pleas for sanity.

When
the Buick raced toward me, I was pinned at the knees to the designer plywood of
our carport, proving once again I am built for power instead of speed.
(Cat-like reflexes were sacrificed for a great story. You’re welcome.)

I
opened my eyes and took stock. I was alive. The next order of business was to
thank God for keeping me whole. After a brief exchange with The Almighty, I
focused on the stinging sensation in my legs, electric shocks of pain surging
to every receptor in the brain. And how fortuitous! None of my receptors were
doing a goddamn
thing
right then so they were
all
available to
tell me that it was fucking
excruciating!

In
the middle of our fracas, I had an epiphany: without my legs, I was never going
to have the pleasure of sinking my foot in her ass once I was freed.

I
beseeched Raptious to release the gas, or at least put it in park. Her dementia
refused to comply and she floored the accelerator. I could feel my patellas
being crushed as blood seeped through my denim pants, small flakes of bumper
chrome mixing with the blotches.

If
I didn’t launch a counterattack, I’d literally be cut off at the knees. Being
that I was trapped, my defense options were limited, but not absent. I pounced
when I saw it, stretching my
rippling, muscular
chunky, oafish body to
the passenger side and snapping off her radio antennae. If crippling me wasn’t
a concern, maybe she’d care enough about her vehicle. Loud whipping noises
arced across the carport as I thrashed the maroon hood like a disobedient
Hebrew slave. Within seconds, it looked as though hydrophobic badgers had
played hopscotch on the paint job.

I’d
had the presence of mind to snag a weapon in a dreadful situation, giving
Raptious’ cherry new ride deep scars like the ones I’d forever have on my
knees.

A
small wave of pride crested in my soul.

The
wave broke when she reversed her car and I fell to the ground like a severed
foreskin. I collapsed, knees to my chest, rolling on my back, wallowing in
physical torment.

By
this time, the neighbors had poured from their homes to see what all the ruckus
was about. We lived in a cookie-cutter part of the city with houses mere yards
from one another, providing them ringside seats to our soap opera, and trust me
when I tell you—if there’s anything that residents love in their neighborhood
on a Sunday afternoon, it’s the blood-curdling screams of marital discord.

This
was around the time cell phones became commonplace in our society. I’d even begun
to see the homeless with those shitty bar phones everybody used to have; the
novelty of ownership hadn’t waned for them, either. People held their cell
phones to the same importance as their middle fingers and were just as attached
(my, how the times have changed).

Imagine
publicly fighting with the mentally disturbed only to have bystanders throw
their hand to an ear and relay every juicy tidbit to the cops.

I
rolled on the concrete like a turtle on its back, my knees killing me as the
piercing shrill of sirens approached the neighborhood. I cautiously got to my
feet, fighting against the agony, composing myself for their arrival and
preparing to go back to jail.

***

Ah.
You’re in the dark about this. I’m sorry, good people, allow me to expound:

You
see, in a majority of DV calls (Domestic Violence for the uninitiated), cops
generally side with the female, even if the male’s been beaten like an eighth
grade phallus. I’ve known plenty of men who will back me on this to the nth
degree. Seeing as how Raptious was consistently out of her fucking mind, this
wasn’t the first time the police had visited our residence, and even though
she’d yelled and cursed at them on multiple occasions, somehow they’d always
assumed I was in the wrong.

Large
+ tattoos + permanent scowl = guilty as shit.

But
I was certain that sense would prevail on this occasion. One look at the marks
on my face and the blood on my knees and they could see that-

“Fuck!
You’ve gotta be
kidding
me! I didn’t
do
anything, you
motherfuckers! Get off o’ me!”

“Easy,
Mr. Coxman. Do you remember what happened last time?”

“Yes
I do, Officer Wankman! She threw a brick through the kitchen window and
I
went to jail after you tased me. Raptious, tell ‘em it was you. You
know
it was you!”

“He
said he was gonna throw a pipe bomb in the police station. I had to stop him
‘til y'all got here.”

“What?!
You lying
whore!
”

“That’s
a disturbing the peace charge, too, Mr. Coxman. Now watch your head.”