Unnng. Shit. Another morning and I am still alive. 72 years old. I thought it would be over a long time ago. What’s the fucking hold up? Just end it. I have been smoking cigars since I was 8 years old. Drinking since I was 9. And here I am still kicking. I take a shot of my morning scotch and head out on to the porch. This is my spot. Most of my days are spent here. I have lived in this house since 1954. They built the whole town around me. I was married at the time. It was our first house. My wife, Helen and I raised 6 kids together. She was an amazing woman. Well, she was a woman. An adequate woman. Not particularly attractive. Not particularly nice. Why the fuck did I marry her? Oh yea. Tits. She had nice tits.
I remember how I used to come home from work and she would have dinner ready. We would sit as a family at the table where I had my dinner drink of milk and scotch. I was beardless at the time so I didn’t get the respect I do these days. The kids would yell. I would start swinging. They shut up. It was a different time. A time when you didn’t need to worry about the effect your actions would have on your child. It was about them behaving while you enjoy your drink. I remember one time when Helen thought I was giving it to Allen, the oldest, a little too hard. I also remember the night she wasted a good steak on her black eye. Must have been a coincidence it was the same night. I married her for her tits. Not her opinions. She figured it out eventually.
Dammit. The neighborhood teens took a baseball bat to the mailbox again. Punks. I was a teen once. I guess I would be doing the same thing wouldn’t I? No. One, because I have something called self-respect. Two, because when I was a teen I was watching my friends get their brains blown out all over the pacific. We had baseball bats but we made them from the legs of dead Japs. The only good kind if you ask me.
The smoke from my cigar infuses into my grey beard as I reminisce. Small pieces of my breakfast jerky find their home there as well. A car pulls up to my driveway and out gets three kids and an angry looking father.
“Sorry to bother you Mr. Brazen. I think these boys need to apologize for something.” Says the father. I vaguely recognize him. The boys apologize in unison and not one of them has the balls to look me in the eye. My good eye I mean. A crafty Jap took the right one with a bayonet in the middle of the night on Iwo Jima. I took his spine. I blow smoke on them. The kids shuffle back to the car. The fathers says something about them coming back to fix the mailbox.
“Kids these days, so much to occupy them and still causing trouble” He says. I notice razor burn on his feminine smooth skin.
“Damn right” I growl back. “No one knows discipline these days.”
“Oh I hear ya. With Marsha over my shoulder I can’t even raise my voice.”
“A quick belt to her mouth would solve that problem.” I say as I take a drink. He laughs and I don’t understand why. “What war did you serve in?” I ask trying to be polite.
“War? Well, Vietnam was going on but took some extra college courses so the draft wouldn’t get me and spent most of my time marching in protest and smoking weed. I mean what did they ever do to us? Just because they have slanty eyes it makes them my enemy? If they ever made me go I would fight on their side protest!”
Grown men will cry and beg when you shove anything bigger than a tootsie roll up their ass. Apparently this tree hugging fuck had trouble making room for just one of his shoes. His boy showed a lack of discipline and tried to intervene. I explained that his father was a no good commie prick but he didn’t seem to care as tears streamed down his face. Tears? The kid had to be 16 or 17. What kid of man cries after age 3? What has this world come to? That mailbox smashing fuck didn’t even get back in the car until I shoved my trusty 1911 in his old man’s mouth. So many nip bastards tasted that same barrel. At least they had the self-respect not to cry or beg.
The father stumbles towards the car. And drives off. He face rubbed raw where it had contact with my beard. I felt good about myself. Taught a teen what discipline was and taught a grown man that men without fight in them end up stuffed full of shoes and shit. The police pull up. 4 Cars. I take a drink and a long pull on my cigar.
“Ok Mr. Brazen. We are going to need you to hand over your weapon”
Well, it looks like I’m not done teaching for the day after all.
-Paul Brazen
June 1994