The wedding of Blood Monkey

Blood Monkey was the affectionate nickname for our light-man back in the Oral Blonde days. He was a young kid when Doc brought him into the fold, fresh and freckle-faced. He looked about twelve but he was a muscular little guy and fit right in. I don’t remember the circumstances of him earning the moniker, only that Doc just started calling him that one day, and it seemed to coincide with Bug’s simian pet suddenly disappearing.

After the band suffered its last breath and we all ventured down dissimilar roads, some of us kept in touch. So much so, when Blood Monkey brought a long courtship to fruition and finally tied the knot, he felt compelled to invite some of his old band chums to the wedding. Doc, Bug, The Mayor, Alice and I had all graciously accepted and Chas had signed up as best man.

We arrived and were seated together at a large round table in a corner of a huge ballroom, dimly lit and decorated with the usual wedding paraphernalia, streamers, flowers, balloons, gifts of all shapes and sizes and that air-conditioned freon smell of temperature five degrees lower than it should be.

With our invited guests by our side we chatted and conversed in a jovial fashion. I was in a particularly bad relationship at the time with a girl named Lara. She was hopelessly trapped in the eighties in hairstyle and mentality. Her overall appearance was well shy of being hot and her demeanor barely registered above white trash. In essence, it was a union that should have ended a week or two in. However, she had been in a debilitating car crash the second week and I couldn’t bring myself to be the asshole who broke up with her while she lay in a hospital bed or the ensuing recovering months on crutches. So here we were, still together a good nine months after it should have ended. She was a bad drunk and the open bar wasn’t going to help our evening any.

Somewhere between the dinner and the heartfelt congratulations of best man Chas, Lara had leaned over to me from her little boat of insecurity on the jealous sea, and the accusations had started. "You want to fuck that chick over there don’t ya?"

"Who, the mother of the Bride? Are you for real?"

The band had been defunct for sometime and it had been a while since Alice had booked any of our gigs. I wanted the chance to play catch up. She had been through a host of bad dating experiences until she’d finally found a nice guy who had accompanied her to the wedding and was in the process of bringing me up to speed.
"They’d always bring me gifts for some reason."

"Well you’re a very likable chick Alice."

"No, John you don’t understand these were unusual gifts, whipped-out gifts. The kind you don’t give to a girl on a first date, on any date."

"Like what?"

"Like washer fluid, mouse traps, dental floss, a big bag of screws . . . "

"...I see where that was going . . . "

"Oh it didn’t stop there. You want me to go on? Toe nail clippers, talking beer mugs, a budgie..."

"As in bird?"

"Yeah, sept it was the middle of winter and he had a pick-up truck. Tossed the cage into the flat bed and the bird still in it. The poor thing froze to death on the way over. Gave it to me anyway. Said it was the thought that counted."

"What happened to the guy you started dating the last time we were down your way? Rick was it?"

"Ah Rick. Yes. He was alright until I finally got invited over to his place. The wall above his bed was covered in various sized dildos. I didn’t know weather to sleep with him of go rock climbing?"

"Sounds kinky?"

"Yeah until the KY came out and he started greasing up his own butt. Handed me a strap-on and everything. He also had this fetish for shoes. I couldn’t get any sleep even if I wanted to. He was always waking me up in the middle of the night by trying to shove pumps with spike heels onto my feet as I slept. I couldn’t handle it. I need someone more down to normal, plus he had too much shit hanging."

"Too well endowed was he?"

"No, he had a lot of cold-sores."

We both laughed. "The new guy’s nice."

"Yeah he’s a keeper, treats me good."

Lara budged into our conversation, "Hey! Can I talk to you? Alone!" She tugged on my arm insistently.

"Excuse us Alice," I let myself be led away. "What is so frickin’ important?"

"I’ve been watching you from the bar."

"I’m not surprised. Go on."

In the background the DJ’s voice like the sweetest sugar rolled over the P.A. system out of the darkness. It said, "Let’s have a warm welcome for the Bride and Groom and their first dance together." Polite applause and the glittering beams of a mirror-ball, led Blood Monkey and the love of his life onto the dance floor.

"You want to fuck Alice don’t you? I see the way you look at her. The way you laugh together."

"Alice is a dear old friend Lara. She used to book the band. Now if her sister was here that would be different."

"Don’t they all look the same? Aren’t they twins or somethin’?"

"Quadruplets . . . "

"I don’t care if they’re quad-ra-pa-ledics . . . "

"You’re so drunk you can’t even say it."

"I am not!" she stated, as she placed a hand on my shoulder, more to steady herself than a sign of affection.

The DJ’s voice interrupted us once again, "The Bride and Groom have chosen a special song for this wondrous occasion, The Power of Love." He extended love, so it sounded like luuuuuv. The first notes of the perky pop song from Huey Lewis and the News, burst from the speakers. I glanced at Blood Monkey as he and his Bride remained motionless, their mouths open slightly in disbelief.

"It’s supposed to be Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Power of Love . . . idiot. The guy calls himself a DJ."

"Look at me Johnny damn it. Don’t change the subject and don’t you lie to me! You want to fuck her don’t you?"

"Look, Lara, even if I did, do you think that would be the smart thing to do with her boyfriend here and my soon to be ex-girlfriend at my side?"

"What do you mean EX?" She was becoming more belligerent.

Blood Monkey and his bride were still standing motionless as they were joined by various women kicking off their shoes and hollering as they shuffled onto the dance floor in stocking feet. Some of the women were of Titanic proportions. One must have hit an iceberg because she slid and fell on her derriere but was rescued by some passing ships and soon was bouncing up and down again to the rhapsodic thumping rhythm.

"I asked you a question!"

"Lower your voice. You’re making a scene."

"What do you mean Ex?" She was glaring at me savagely through grit teeth.

"If you keep this up Lara, you will be."

"Is that supposed to be some kind of threat?"

I felt my hand clenching into a fist. Would I dare? I’d never hauled off and hit a woman in my life. I’d never hit anyone for that matter, but here was this person nattering on ceaselessly with the most preposterous bile, and suddenly for a brief instant I considered performing a little dental examination with my knuckles.

"You’re going to dump me for that . . . that cunt aren’t you?"

"You WILL NOT! Talk about my friends that way! Do you hear me?!" Her eyes started to well up as I continued, "I can’t be around you right now. You disgust me."

"Don’t walk away from me Johnny. You’ll be sorry."

"Lara, I was sorry a long time ago." I thundered off. I passed Alice on the way out. "This ends tonight. Wait and see." I thrust my fist into one side of the saloon-type doors that led from the ballroom just as Doc came waltzing through the other. "Is everybody happy?" he yelled. He rushed to join the rotund dancing juggernaut of bare feet and nylons.

I walked out of the building for air and did not return until I had time to put my, It’s not you It’s me, speech in order. I guess it’s the standard goodbye blow-off that most people use when they want to dump someone without causing too much of a scene. This was, after all, Blood Monkey’s wedding and I had to be precise in my breakup surgery.

I had reached the end of my wits and was tired of it all. Tired of Lara and her attitude. Tired of her mental blowups that I could set my watch by. Tired of her drab apartment with the parrot colored towels hung crookedly over the rack, the leopard print throw rug, the ubiquitous wolf prints on everything from coasters to dishrags to designs etched in glass candle holders.

They howled at me from the bedroom comforter. They barked at me from the welcome mat. They yammered away from the closet on sweaters of powder blues, ashen grays and kissing pinks. I was tired of Lara and the whole jungle. Tonight it would end and I would march right back in there and tell her so. Another L was about to end up on the alphabetical pile of Ex’s.

When I returned, I could not find her anywhere. I located Alice cuddling up to her new beau in the hallway as they were preparing to leave. "Alice did you see my idiot girlfriend?"

"I think she had too much to drink. She went to throw up I’ll bet. I saw her disappear into the restroom about twenty minutes ago."

"I can’t go into the women’s. Will you do me a huge favor and go in and see if she’s still
there?"

"She didn’t go into the women’s. She went into the men’s."

"Sounds like her all right. Ok, thanks."

I walked into the washroom to the echo of retching and the simultaneous grunts and coos of bathroom noises in mid vomit. There was a smell of paper towels, wet with pink liquid soap, and the squeak of shoes on the tiles followed by the occasional banging of a stall door.

"Lara, that you?" The banging and squeaking ceased. The retching however, continued. I identified the offending stall and slowly swung the door in. Lara had her face in the toilet with her dress hiked up to the hips and her bare ass smiling at me sideways. Her dress hung in folds on either side of her legs like curtains off the stage of some adult puppet show. Her knees seemed tied by her black lace panties as if they were being held hostage.

Bug stood over her, his hand still on his zipper barely just pulling it to attention. There was another wretch and I could hear Lara’s voice from the bowl. "Why did you stop?! Don’t stop . . . waugh!"

"Someone’s here," Bug uttered.

Lara again from the bowl, "I don’t care, fuck me . . . waugh!"

Bug pushed by me and I followed him, letting the door swing shut with a bang.

"I’m sorry John . . . I was in here and she just barged in. She said she felt sick."

"Really. How does she feel to you now?"

The toilet belched, "Waugh!"

"I was just trying to help her throw up."

"I see. By pushing her repeatedly into the can with your penis? I’ll have to try that one day."Actually I was jumping for joy inside. There would be no need for the breakup talk now. This was perfect, but I kept my face in a scowl of anger and disappointment. "How could you of all people do this?"

"It just happened."

"Waugh!"

"I know Lara and I have had our problems Bug, but you should at least wait for the grass to dry before you turn on the sprinkler. You owe me Bug. One day I’ll remind you of that."

"Waugh!"

Boy I wish I had to take a piss right now. I raised my voice so that it roared off the tiles, "I see you decided to do the smart thing Lara. Have a nice life."

I turned away, trying to conceal my smile, and left them both behind. The satisfaction I felt was one of relief mostly, bordering on euphoric elation. The same feeling you got at the end of that long car ride as you stood in front of the urinal squeezing the hell out of your bladder with you stomach muscles until you achieved that emptiness through a steady stream. It was the slamming of your hand down on the snooze button for another ten minutes in blissful slumber. It was Rolaids relief quelling the burning esophagus and in actuality I owed Bug, not the other way around.

Tomorrow excerpt from: Slow subs and chicken nuts