Two Dollar Baby
My roommate Audra proudly showcases her artwork on the walls of our living room; my favorite is a painting of a creepy old man holding a rubber ducky. Audra’s most recent is a painting of Phil, if he had just been in a fight. In the portrait Phil’s right eye is bruised and bloody and just above, on his forehead, there is a big, bloody gash. This ominous piece hangs just outside their bedroom door.
“I feel like he’s always watching me.” Audra confessed to me about the painting one morning. “He’s keeping an eye on me.” She added. Audra is not paranoid; it really does look like he’s watching. No matter where you are in the living room it looks like he’s looking dead at you. This was Audra’s intention.
Now Phil and Audra don’t always get along, they have some pretty intense fights. Audra cries, Phil yells and throws things. It’s quite the spectacle I would imagine, I’ve never seen one of their fights, they usually fight when nobody else is here, well at least when nobody is in our apartment. Some of the ladies on the first floor have heard the fights and they sound pretty wild and crazy…with a Z. That’s right, these fights are so INSANE that I have to use the wicked letter Z, and you know how I feel about the letter Z.
Last night the fighting was real, as in bad. I was in my room crying (I was sitting on the floor, cutting onions, balling my eyes out Jon Guidry-style. The onions, as in yellow, are for my chain of theme restaurants, Wiggly’s. I cut them myself to save on labor, a penny saved is a penny earned know what I mean Vern? hehehe….Obviously I don’t have the money for Wiggly’s yet otherwise you would see them on every street corner and after every little-league game right kids!? hahahahaha….ahhhh…where was I? Oh yeah, close parenthesis.) Mullet was in his room, not sk8boardin, and the ladies were downstairs (where they live) with Dave (where he doesn’t). It was just after 6, post meridian, when the yelling and screaming and crying started. Words were flying all over the place and maybe cats as well.
Phil was drunk and went on some sort of tirade, he had Audra all upset. Then, as Audra later told Ben Mullet and me, Phil started breaking things - Audra’s things. You see, Phil’s only possession is a deer antler and when you really think about it the antler belongs to the deer that was wearing it when Phil killed him…probably with a hammer. Phil was becoming violent, but he was taking his anger out on things, not Audra. Phil would never hit Audra because 1. He knows it’s wrong and 2. Audra would kick his ass.
When the royal rumble started I was in my room, when it got really loud Mullet and I starting IMing each other, wondering if we should do something. Then it got bad. BAD. It was loud and things were breaking (they were in their room) and then it sounded like Phil was beating the shit out of Audra. HA! He was NOT. It was quite the opposite. Oh you can bet Phil could smell what his 90 lb. girlfriend was cooking. Audra put the smackdown on Phil with his own portrait. Did I mention that this is a scale portrait of Phil and that the canvas is 6 feet high? Yes it is. She ruled him. He fell in line so to speak.
They broke up and Phil left, both the antler and the apartment. We all knew there was no place Phil could go but it took him twenty minutes of walking around to figure that out. Phil came home, they argued some more and now everything is better, I guess. He looks like shit. Phil’s right eye is bruised and bloody and just above, on his forehead, there is a big, bloody gash.
…and that my friends is irony, in it’s most delicious form.