Guest Post: Jasmine...A Short Story by Matthew Lynn

She called herself jasmine and she carried my folding money around in her
panties. She drank cherry dr pepper leaving wounded and dead soldiers
to litter my nightstands and countertops. we played games like hop
on pop, hungry hungry hippos, trivial pursuit, rock 'em sock 'em
robots, and operation. Translated that means we fucked, ate a shit ton
of narcotics, I chased her frivolously, eventually beat her up and she
removed my heart. She loved animals, I loved drugs. I wanted her to
love me.

We got drunk and got tattoos out on the beach one sunny april day,
mine was a tear drop on the inside of my index finger, it cost me
sixty dollars american, the shop minimum. She got something written in
greek, claimed it was some wise old phrase. I told her to think for
herself and she punched me in throat. I couldn't sing karaoke for a
month without collapsing, the rednecks and red-faced suits ate it up.
I was their hero.

The out of shape business world failure with the outgoing bottle
blonde bombshell. Being a hero is a lonely thing to be. Heroes don't
bleed or feel pain or have lives of their own aside from public
opinion which tends to state, "aww c'mon look at your life, it's not
that bad, man. You got it great! Look at everything you've got going
for you! Count your blessings, bro, be thankful."

Yeah, lets. A house in foreclosure, an estranged ex wife who took the
kids and now takes the money, while some square with glasses and a
website kicks his shoes off at the front door and lays his head in her
bed, a driver's license lost to unpaid speeeding tickets for doing 9
over, a father with Alzheimer's taken care of by a mother who believes
only in labels and how posh the name is, and a drug habit that has
claimed every guitar, bass, amp and surfboard that ever took me away
from all this hero.

But I can hold my liquor, I can sing karaoke, and I date a stripper
with great big cans. So to them. I am God.

I, on the other hand, am an atheist.

I believe in waves.
The up and the down in equal undulating perpetual motion. Crests and
valleys, mountains and pitfalls. Just like Jasmine's
unnaturally-oversized chest.

The thing is, these traits that the racing rats idolize me for are the
same things we abandon as we grow from boys into manhood. I have
regressed and anyone who would care enough to point this out and set
me back on the straight and narrow has since been slighted in some way
shape or form and walked away. Now all that's left is the dreck, the
shipwrecks of voyagers whose journeys met with violent storm, the
broken body of icarus who flew to near the sun, bald, blind sampsons'
shackled and humiliated publicly. Which of these has voice enough or
perception enough to rise and say "drop that fucking pipe, dickhead!"?

None.
they say tomorrow, tomorrow. we sing the song of tomorrow, glorious
and high. promises as heartfelt as they come, sworn to, oaths of
camaraderie taken to hold one another up come the rising sun. but it's
heat melts us back into the quagmire and we remember that there is no
crazy glue for our dusted hearts. So make an encore of the pipe, let
the bottles once again take center stage, and in the green room the
scent of artificial Jasmine lingers on yellowed fingers and a crowd of
jackals goes wild while the hero dies, then rises to the occasion.

Story by M. Lynn
Photo by Dylan Hartmann