Chicken Lady

On the train to San Francisco I sat next to a chicken-faced chicken lady who gave me the bad eye through her fat glasses. While she slept on my shoulder -the fat beneath her chin trembling with a crude snore- I took a peek at her melting tits. I had never been with a woman before, and it was my fault. Roseville High girls were sluts. You could hump a fat chick in Burger King’s bathroom for a smile and a four-liner in myspace. But I was a nervous kid.

Chicken lady had lost her husband in a trip to Mexico. He choked on a pork chop. After the burial in Texas she got a new pair of prosthetic teeth that could cut through anything, then turned vegetarian.

Her wrinkly vagina flip flops on my tongue, she clings to my long curly black hair and moans, pulling me deeper and deeper. How was I to know that women had three holes down there? I was never big on Zappa.

She has a small flat in China Town, mild yellow walls and a stained couch. She hadn’t been there for years. A small love nest; I could imagine the chicken lady and her dead husband hurrying through the crowded streets, bathed in the fresh sounds and colors of expensive gift shops, impatient to undress, to melt in their swampy bed and forget. But the streets are too steep for her now. It is not desire but arthritis that makes her hold my arm on the way there, hurting me with her bony spider-like fingers. I feel bad taking advantage of an old lady, but it’s hot in the city and she has a fridge full of cranberry juice.

She is into some weird ass music. I never talk about the shit I listen to while my fat friends drink wine in my badly lit room and talk about how bad ass Satan is. She introduces me to jazz and Spanish guitar. She played the piano back when her tits and socialism stood straight and proud.

´Why don’t you play anymore?’
‘I do’
‘I thought you said…’
‘I meant I don’t play professionally anymore’
‘Oh’
‘I had children and moved to Texas’

She wasn’t angry, just full of annoying peace. She showed me pictures of her children, all of them were older than me. Sociologists, the lot of them, just like their father, lost in god forsaken South America.

I met a girl in Roseville High once that dreamt about South America, she was ugly but kind to me. She showed me pictures of beautiful ladies, half naked in colorful hats; that was Brazil. I’m never going there, I’m never going further than New Mexico.

I try to tend to her needs as best as I can, cleaning around and making tea. We don’t have sex anymore; longing for it makes me feel ashamed. I’ll be going home soon, to a promising future in my dad’s workshop. ‘Jesus made furniture too!’ he says; but Jesus had super powers, dad, and some day I’ll have the balls to tell you that.

One day I came home with a bunch of movies I got at Rasputin’s on sale. Looking back, I understand what a cheap trick was trying to put her in the mood with old cheesy flicks. Big mistake. Her bright blue eyes died on the front art of ‘Jezebel’

‘I don’t have a DVD player. And you have to go’
‘Huh?’
‘Leave’

I heard her sob in the kitchen while I made my backpack. She barged into the bedroom, swearing and flailing her purple veined arms at me. I backed into a corner and waited. Wild chicken lady leaped and caught me in a passionate embrace. She made love to her husband, I was the awkward medium. I left the house while she slept, my balls hurting and my will drained.

The night train to Roseville was filled with strange Filipinos on their way to Reno. When the lights went out and the clattering sound of their laughs ceased, the ghost of Panther lady came to me, she slept with her head on my shoulder and I peeked at her beautiful iridescent tits.