URINE.

[dadio]

“Urine. The whole darn place stank of urine,” said Ursula, “and I told that fag who ran the place, if you think I’m sending my mother to this geriatric graveyard you can go suck yourself, and Irwin who sat next to me at the table outside the Parisian café gave a small nod as if in agreement, his cigarette rising and falling in his mouth like some small appendage with a mind of its own. And Unity, the blonde bitch that Oscar brought along, just stared at me, her eyes like a cat’s ready to scratch, her bright red lipstick coated lips closed allowing no word to escape, not even a puff of breath to filter into the evening air. And my mother just sat there in the chair of that stinking hole in New York gazing around the place unaware of the stink, the stench of piss, with the blank eyes taking in little, not even noticing the fag’s features, which gave me the creeps and I gave him the stare, all the while telling him what I thought of the hellhole. Oscar said he knew places like that when his father’d had a stoke and they needed to put him somewhere and some of those holes you’d not put a corpse in, he said sipping from the glass of wine, holding it just a way from his lips, unaware that Unity was eyeing him, maybe undressing him for bed already. Irwin said he’d rather die before he got to that stage, couldn’t bear for his mind to go before his body was ready and willing, and he thought he’d put a gun to his head and pull the trigger if he sensed his brain was on the way out. My mother ended up staying with her niece in Chicago while I was making my trip to Europe, don’t know how’ll that’ll work out, what with the drugs and my mother’s insistence on having her Charlie Parker record played over and over like some darn religious ritual. Unity’s knee touched mine beneath the table, her eyes were on me, her lips broke open like the legs of a whore ready for business, and her pure white teeth shone at me, and her head leant to one side like some one had just broken her neck and not told her. Irwin was in conversation with Oscar about some business deal he was about to pull off back home and if all went well he’d be on a roll and could buy that house he’d always wanted in California and take his wife off to Italy like he promised and she could then see her parents before they folded up and died. Unity leant forward and lifted her glass and seductively put it to her lips, all the while eyeing me, her knee moving itself between mine like a huge penis underneath the table, out of sight of the two men, her whole manner like an invitation to make love and maybe when we got back to the hotel and the guys were in slumber land and if she could give Oscar the elbow, we could get to business and I guess I had the blonde dame wrong all along, and like I said to Mother when I left her in Chicago with Lily, you’ve got to try everything once, and sometimes once is good enough and sometimes it isn’t and who knows, I thought to myself, what this Unity had in store and who the heck cared as the Parisian moonlight and stars promised us a swell night out and a night to swim and drown in the arms and sweet flesh of the smiling blonde and forget the whole stink of urine that that fag’s place had which still lingered in my nose’s cells and cool memory.”1

[sooZen]

Fantastic! The editor in me comes out and I want to make corrections (to the spelling "insistence" instead of "instance"? and paragraph indentations to make it easier to read but the whole of the story was GREAT!!! Good write!

[dadio]

thank you sooZen. I have edited the typo= instance =insistence.

[mnaz]

masterfully-painted and interwoven scene(s). well done. i think you meant to type "had a stroke" in the 13th line.

[dadio]

thank you, mnaz.

[stilltrucking]

I don't know why Henry Miller comes to mind except maybe because I think he is one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.
You left me happy and sad with that one Terry.

Thank you for writing

[dadio]

James Joyce inspired this at least in structure, but Henry Miller is one of my favourite writers, too. Thank you for reading.

[stilltrucking]

I have not read Joyce, just about him. I am not saying that because I am proud of it

On the first reading of your poem it reminded me of Miller because he could write of wretchedness and yet the joy of life came through too
"Joy is like a river [says miller] ,it flows ceaselessly."

please pardon the multiple replies

[dadio]

Thank you, stilltrucking. I love any chat about good writers.