Sauce*Box 21: All for Nothing

All for Nothing
by Dusty Angel

o this day, I cannot sleep without the rumble of a motor. A car is my solace. I won't own an apartment or a home, but I will own a '68 Rambler and sleep in the back seat. It got chilly, but I drove west. I never have to stay. I make a bad friend, I put the trust in the wrong souls, I fuck the wrong people, and then I leave.

The truth is, I will continue to fuck up until I run out of places to go. They have ships that will take one and his automobile to another continent. I suppose that is what I'll have to do, seeing as there are limitations within North and South America, and I can't cope with many minorities stricken with poverty for extended periods of time. Once I learn the language and the sex, I leave.

I love my car.

It began when I lost a family to a wrestling match, I took down a whore with a kick to the stomach... But my mother, on the other side of the whore, let me go, listening to my swears that I'd never come back, knowing I would.

But she knew nothing. She was a whore.

I slept in parks while it was warm. Wrote in diners when I begged enough change for a plate of hash browns. Slept on the trains during rush hour, so that it was safe. I was pussy.

Under the expressway overpass I found more comfortable living conditions. The wind began its' rampage and the snow followed quickly, and without shelter one must find a substitute or collapse in the pursuit.

I, however, collapsed at the success of the chase. It was more exhilarating when I struggled... I suppose I still did.

The evening I found the place, an old Puerto Rican man with burns across his face welcomed me. A black man, passed out after a few too many blasts and fifths, was spread across the incline. A group of grimy Mexican teenagers huddled over a case and a half of Tecate.

The fried old man offered me his scotch and whiskey (an addictive property) and some filthy, torn up piece of fabric for a pillow. I accepted, contracted some repulsive disease I'm sure, and lay down to sleep. The cars were loud, and the place stunk of piss and poverty.

There was a pigeon a few feet away, staring at me through its' moldy half-eyes. It had one wing, few feathers, and innards spilled across the cement. The beak was parted in a morbidly silent whimper. I swear that tears ran across the thing's face, but had I been sober I would have known that it was just the rot in the flesh taking form.

I sung to the thing, until I took slumber with it, and I awoke to the burnt old man setting some sickly piece of meat on fire.

"A beautiful voice," he told me.

I half smiled. "All for nothing."

He half smiled.

"Nothing for all," I finished.

"Something for me."

"Let it go. Song of death. All for nothing."

"Death isn't so bad."

"When you die alone, it is."

"I'll die soon; I'll be alone. I don't mind so much."

"I'll stay with you."

"All for nothing, my love."

"Why do you say that?"

"Todos morimos solos."

"Ah, si... But I will be with you while you go..."

"Oh sweet thing, you will not be with me. You leave, sing your song to other old winos who need it more than I."

"They are nothing."

"And I am..?"

"Something."

"Your song is something."

I stared at him for a moment. Scars across his face, one eye almost swollen shut from bruises. Skin where the fire had left stripes rose up from his shirt, along his throat, to his jaw and across his right cheek to his ear. From the other ear, thin, grey hairs stuck out like a boy's erection.

I fucked that man the night following, we made love while the Mexican teenagers returned and watched, and the coked up black man came soon after with a whore of his own.

He wasn't old, I found, only fifty-four. I slept with him the nights following. He wouldn't fuck me, he said it was wrong. I said he was right, but that I didn't care.

He laughed in my face, and that night I left. I write songs, and more songs, and all it is, is him.

I found the Rambler for one hundred and fifty dollars and took it out to Ohio, sleeping in it on rural streets. I headed west after a week. Back through Chicago. I was driving on the expressway, and got off at Diversey. Red light. I glanced down the street, at the underpass. I drove straight, back on to the expressway, and headed west.

And that is where I am, struggling for the exhilaration of it, and waiting to die alone.

After all, we all die alone.

All for nothing.

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