I Whooped Cupid's Ass

Author: Prof. Ivan Darnelnikov
Word Count: 1794
previous browse writing next

Of course, I’d seen him around the block, from time to time, screwin’ other brothers and sisters’ heads around like propeller blades with his slings and his arrows. I just always figured he’d have known better than to point that toy bow at a stone cold, no-nonsense mother such as myself. Especially after I put his boy, the Stork, in intensive care for knocking Ginny Brestwick up and tellin’ her the seed was mine. I don’t play that shit, and I thought I’d made that message perfectly clear. Crystal, even.

It all started one Saturday morning, near the end of January. I was walking down … Columbus, I think it was … when something hit me.

No sooner did I spy the cherubic little son of a bitch who’d stuck me flittong away into the gnarled treetops which adorned the property line of Dexter Projects, than I caught the sight of her bright yellow, low-cut dress (unusual on a day when the wind chill was so far below zero that even the rats knew better than to leave their nests) coming my way from down the street. It was like the sun, like love … at first sight.

“Damn it all to Hell,” I muttered. “Not me …”

But, I couldn’t resist her pull. My heart was wrenched up in fetters, tied up in knots, and tethered to the gyrations of that ass. I had to find out her name, where she lived, what she was doing later that night … say, around 8.

Her name was Rosanna. She was 24 and living with her mother in a small apartment on Palmer and 81st. She smiled when I said ‘Hello,’ and laughed at all my lame old jokes. We stood there, in the cold, like a couple of teenagers, shooting the shit about everything from Al Green to weird dreams for almost an hour.

After a while, I couldn’t feel my face. But, that didn’t matter. I wasn’t paying much mind to the cold, anymore.

That night, at 8, I picked her up at her place and we went down to Orion, that Go-Go joint down on 28th. From the way she got on once she hit the dance floor, I knew this girl was a freak. I couldn’t wait to get her back to my place, and she seemed to be of the same mind.

Once we got back and had a few drinks, I figured it was go time. She’d been sliding slowly closer to me ever since we sat down on the couch, until she was practically sitting in my lap. I could feel her body melting into mine as I leaned in to kiss her.

“No,” she squeaked. “Wait.” I could feel her warm breath pass gently into my mouth and nostrils as she spoke, our lips hovering just outside the point of contact.

“Don’t worry, Rosie,” I assured her. “I’ve got protection.”

Suddenly, her eyes grew wide as dairy saucers. “What did you say?”

“I said I’ve got protection, baby.” I placed my hand between her thighs and stroked, expecting her to curl right up and purr like a kitten. Instead, she recoiled from my touch, slapping my hand away by the wrist as if it were the dirty little mitt of some snot-nosed kid she’d caught trying to raid her cookie jar.

In my younger, wilder days, I might have smacked her like a dog for doing something like that. Truth be told, I was barely able to restrain myself, even then. I’m not proud of it, but my pimp hand’s just that strong. What more can I say?

“What’s the matter, girl?” I asked. “You get down, don’t ya?”

“Get down?” she snapped. “Wait just one minute, there, little brother. What kind of women do you take me for? Huh? You think I’m one of those girls like we saw at that club?”

“Aw, come on, baby. You’re finer than any of those bitches.”

I could see, even before I shut my mouth, that my words had been taken for a ride.

“BITCHES?!?” she barked. “You’re going to have to clean out that mouth of yours if you want to get with me, Leonard . You’d best believe that.”

I couldn’t believe it. All night, she’d been blasting me signals on all channels … and I thought I’d been receiving them, loud and clear. I thought we both wanted the same thing, here.

But, I was wrong. Come to find out, my girl, Rosanna, was one of those real proper type of women — a dyed in the wool Baptist ‘good girl,’ the kind of ho that goes to church 3 nights out of the week, not including Sunday morning. This, in itself, wouldn’t bother me so much, if it didn’t also mean that she would absolutely not, under any circumstances, engage in any sort of premarital fun and games.

“I thought we were just going to have a cup of coffee, like you said,” she explained after I’d accused her of leading me on by coming up to my apartment, in the first place. There’s no way she could have been that naive … right?

Normally, I’d cut and run on a broad like that But, by that time, it was too late. My fate was sealed. There was just something about Rosanna. Something upon which I couldn’t quite put my finger. Whether I liked it or not, I knew, then, that I’d follow her to the ends of the Earth.

The next several weeks of my life were spent in a dizzying haze as I begrudgingly catered to her every whim. Like a sweet-talkin’ slave driver, she had her ways of keeping track of my every movement and subverting my will for her own. For the first time in my life, I felt housebroken … and I hated it.

“I’m in control of my destiny, God damn it!” I’d mutter to myself as I scrubbed her dishes, one by one, and organized them according to her ridiculously complex system of colors, shapes, and minor cosmetic defects in the china, so that only the ‘nice’ dinnerware would be visible upon first glance.

Many times, I thought of sending the entire contents of that sink crashing onto the checkerboard linoleum, but I never did it. I couldn’t bring myself to. Cupid had seen to that … the fat little bastard.

“I’m gonna get that porky little man-child if it’s the last thing I do,” I told myself. But, I was on a schedule … Rosanna’s schedule … which left me little time to go out roaming the streets in search of vengeance. My beef would have to wait.

As luck would have it, however, that wait didn’t turn out to be a very long one, at all. In fact, you might say that baby-faced son of a bitch wound up landing right in my lap.

I’d just left Chan’s Dry Cleaning, down on Washington, where I’d gone on an errand for my ‘Rosebud’ (yes, by that time, I’d even begun to use a pet name for her … don’t laugh) when I saw him hovering behind a row of hedges out front of the YMCA. It looked like he was staking someone out, his bow at the ready, but the street was nearly deserted. Other than the two of us, the only person in sight was this little Mexican guy laying on the grass between the Y and the liquor store, plucking something slow and somber on his guitar.

“HEY, CUPID!” I yelled. “I’VE GOT SOMETHING FOR YOU!”

The hobo mariachi in the grass let out a loud ‘whoop!’ as he saw me take off, and began to bang those strings like a drum skin, kicking up the tempo of his strumming until it reached a fever pitch. I felt like Clint Eastwood or something as I tossed Rosanna’s garment bags into the gutter and leapt from the curb, my heart keeping perfect time with the music.

The look on Cupid’s face as I closed in was priceless. He must’ve thought he was invincible, up until that very moment, with all that fancy Eros magic on his side. He just stood there, gawking at me, dumbfounded, as if he’d never met an unhappy customer (for lack of a better word).

“What’s wro …” My fist cut short his line of questioning with a loud ‘SMACK!’ as it collided with his pudgy little jaw, sending him crashing to the pavement just like the sack of shit I knew he was.

The impact was narcotic. A smile crossed my face as I laid into him, again and again, working his torso like a prizefighter. “Ay! Ay!” the mariachi cheered me on, laughing like a madman as I launched into a hat dance of sorts, kicking my dwarven foe in the ribs and face. All the while, Cupid tried to cry, but could only whimper between blows. Pathetic, really, but ingratiating, nonetheless.

Finally, the whimpering stopped … but I didn’t. Even after he was unconscious, I wailed on him without mercy. For the first time in what seemed like an eternity, I felt like a man again, and I was determined to milk that moment for all it was worth.

To this day, I have no idea who could’ve called the paramedics. It was probably just some nosey neighborhood shut-in who’d gotten an eyeful of our royal rumble through her front window and decided that she’d seen enough. Or, maybe it was someone who worked at the Y. Whoever it was, I’m glad they did. Had I not heard those sirens approaching and gotten the Hell out of dodge, I might have killed the little bastard. Not that it would have been any skin of my back, mind you, but I’ve never been in any hurry to get locked up over some stupid ‘crime of passion’ (as, I’m sure, my attorney would have described it in court) like that. I’m too pretty to go to prison. They’d eat me alive in there.

Fortunately, I got away. Un-fortunately, I was still very much head over heels for Rosanna, for reasons I still couldn’t fathom. I couldn’t even enjoy my victory in full as I walked back to my apartment, knowing that I’d left her Sunday best just lying there in the gutter. Frantically, I thought up one half-baked excuse after another and tried to brace myself for her indignant wrath. “Welcome to the rest of your life,” said a little voice inside my head.

“Watch your mouth,” I replied with a snarl, “or your ass is next.”