The Short Skirt Ch 01 1

Downtown Tokyo, New York: Even in hell you can find happiness.

If you know where to look.

And that's where I was: In hell.

Actually, I was scratching my balls and looking out the window of my very small, one-bedroom apartment - there are two guys out there in the street fighting over a parking space. A woman pulled up on her little scooter and parked it in the space and then walked across the road to our building. The two guys don't know what to do, so are leaving. They climb back into their beat-up cars and drive away in opposite directions.

I watched the woman. She was taking her helmet off. Thick, beautiful blond hair tumbled out of it around her shoulders. This looked like trouble. She was full of what looked like female corruption. Part human, part myth, I'd never known a woman like this to exist...!

She looked up and saw me at my window.

I waved.

And using a series of flags to further communicate with her, I let her know I was available.

And could also offer drinks or a choice of other light refreshments, if she wished.

I also bust out a series of very current, intricate hip-hop moves so that she knew I was serious, still young at heart and would be okay in a club environment.

She signaled that I should meet her outside - where I was robbed by her and two accomplices...

Really, it was just a little cash and a box of condoms.

No big deal.

But then they mocked my dance moves.

"Really, ladies, that's taking things too far," I said.

"So long, sucka," the blond said.

She got back on her scooter and sped off; I didn't see what happened to the other two - I think they may live in the building.

I called the police and when they saw my dance moves, they laughed, too.

What can I tell you, life's a grueling machine: Put something in one end and it comes out all fucked up the other end.

"You fucking people have got to be more sensitive," I said to the police, hinting at the possibility of taking legal action.

Yeah, if I wasn't so massively insecure I'd really do something about it. Instead, I started singing and making jokes you may already be familiar with. They gave me a form to complete if I wished to complain any further about them and they drove off, too. However, the entire incident did serve up an experience on how not to dance so: BE WARNED.

And right at that moment, as the police were driving off still laughing between themselves, the blond on her little scooter zipped! past going the other way. She beeped! her horn and waved.

Women, they always seemed to play a part in my downfall. There was little use contemplating why or how. It seemed somehow organic and quite natural. Hell, this was a system that had been implemented and hadn't changed for thousands of years. You couldn't fight it. And if you did, proven fact, you'd lose.

Unrelated, I was still standing outside considering my life when I saw a woman shouting at her son that: He would grow up, he would go to school and he would go out into the world and find a job - if the economy held.

He was maybe 3 years old.

"What if I don't want a job," the boy sobbed.

"We can see what daddy says about that," his mother said.

"Fuck what daddy says," the little boy said.

"Hmmm. I'm almost inclined to agree with you," the mother said.

A man was coming out our building. He had a puppy on a leash. A woman entering the building stopped to talk to him. She was wearing a short skirt.

A very short skirt.

"What a cute little puppy! Does he have a name...?" she asked, down on one knee. The puppy licked her face.

"Shitface," the man said.

"Shitface? That's funny! Hello little shitface...!" she said.

"He likes to lick his own asshole," the man said.

The woman immediately grimaced and pushed Shitface away.

"Ugh..!" she said, wiping her face.

This was true, I'd seen the man. He'd take the little guy off the leash so he could do his business on the communal lawn outside the apartment building. The dog would take a shit, then lick his ass. The man would go nuts and run at the little dog yelling: "Shitface...! Shitface...! Stop licking your asshole...!"

As the woman walked hurriedly past me I said: "Morning, Bobbi-Jean."

Bobbi-Jean ignored me.

There'd been an incident. I'd managed to spend an impossibly inordinate amount of time hanging around one of the building's communal female toilets.

Before someone raised the alarm and drew the attention of the building superintendent, Ethel Sackball.

Sackball pushed her glasses back up from her nose. Her hair was tied tight in some kind of bun.

"What you doing here, hanging round these toilets, Broadway...?" Sackball demanded.

"Honestly? I'm hoping to get lucky," I said.

"What...!" Sackball screeched.

"Jesus, lady, I didn't mean with you. It's just a little toilet humor. Besides, the guys toilets are locked on my floor. I don't have a key for any of the other floors," I explained.

Sackball didn't care.

She found my "local" humor unsuitable and told me to move my ass on.

Turned out it had been "Bobbi-Jean" who'd reported me to Sackball, saying there was a "...suspicious, unemployed-looking man lingering around the female toilets."

I watched Bobbi-Jean go into the building. She was wiping her face with what looked like a wet wipe. Still, she was very classy and her very short skirt hugged tight around her little ass.

"Goodbye, Bobbi-Jean," I called after her.

Short skirts have a way of making a man's mind wander. This is different from to "wonder", meaning to question how much longer a man was going to continue being stupid, wandering all over town chasing this short skirt, wondering if she was ever going to give it up to him.

I thought: Goddamn! was I tired of this woman and her very short skirts...!

I went to work and there were short skirts.

I went to lunch and there were short skirts.

I came home and there was Bobbi-Jean in her short skirt.

Short skirts were every where - what in Satan's name was going on here...?

The man with the little pooch was still outside. The man was looking after Bobbi-Jean. The dog whined at me. I could tell, that little dog had the size of me. It really says something about a man when even an animal that licks its own asshole has sympathy for him.

It was a Monday.

I thought: Fuck you, Monday.

And all the rest of you days.

Every new day's another gravestone staring at us, waiting.

And I had to get to work. I had a train to catch and I was already late.