Pornography

     Duo sat on the curb outside of a nightclub, his face between his wide hands.  Compacted dust snuggled deeply underneath his fingernails, gathered there after a long night shift at Kroger moving boxes and stocking shelves.  It is amazing how dirty one's nails could get merely stocking shelves.  Duo suspected it was the boxes which were dirty, dirty from jostling against each other and the walls of a dirty truck.
    When he thought of the idea of the dirt which dug its way under his nails and around the cuticle, he was amused.  He relished in the thought that this was not dirt from Houston, but dirt carried in from other parts of the country, beautiful soil from Virginia or Washington, the dirt of the farmer, good honest dirt, with good moral fiber.  
     He might have washed the dirt from under his fingernails save that he would have not been able to go home, take a shower, and be back to see the Dirty Little Pleasures perform, a punk band from the Valley, loud ruckess, with sweat dripping from every pore.  He was turned on to the band by his friend Skids he knew all about punk bands, read the magazines religiously, and spread the word like a preacher on a mission.  
     In fact, it was not uncommon for Duo to find Skids in the parking lot of the high school they both attended, a bulbous portable stereo sitting in the trunk of Skids beat-up truck blasting saw blade guitars and a drumbeat like a machine gun piercing through the number of students walking by whose pained looks suggesting they had been shot.   
     And Skids would stand on the back of his truck so that he could stand above the persons walking by, and with a the passion of a missionary to speak of the evils of modern pop music, the illegitimate child of Brittany Spears and Justin Timberlake, the grandchild of Madonna.  'Every note, lacking texture, shallow, depthless, thoughtless.  Every lyric an after thought of a moist pre-pubescent girl's crusade.  A whore house of commercialism lining the pathway to hell.'  
     Duo had been attracted to Skids's passion, his unswerving dedication to true, honest music, written not with dollar signs, but with integrity.  DIY was his ralleying cry, a motto he wore proudly on his shoulder, which he would display only when he took off his shirt at the numerous concerts he attended.  
   If Skids was the preacher, the building outside of which Duo now sat was his church, a dirty dank hall, painted black, inside and out, so that no one could detect how much of a hovel it was at night.  Music blaring hot blew out from the entrance underneath purple blue neon, showering a conical in front of a ticket window display.  It was so hot inside, with the writhing, sweaty bodies swimming through a mixture of cigarette smoke and manufactured stage mist, dancing on a mixture of beer and body fluids.  
     Duo allowed the cool air outside to caress his neck and to kiss his flushed cheeks.  He grabbed his shirt sitting next to him and wiped the sweat from his short hair.  Some punk rock girls with midnight black hair, catholic girl skirts, and ripped t-shirts leaned up against a wall, blathering away, as if each word was cheap, thrown away, discarded with no regard.  
    Duo had hoped that he would have seen Gretchen here, a girl in his Biology class.  Gretchen was a plain girl, never wore much make-up, never spoke to loudly, wasn't terribly smart, wasn't terribly popular.  She was honest, or so her appearance indicated.  She never wore shirts with words, bever carried a purse, never talking about shopping or boys or that kinds of thing.  She had friends that were girls just like she had friends that were guys.  
     In Biology that morning, he had found her at her desk chatting with her friend, seemingly in a pleasant mood.  He walked past her, slipping carelessly into the desk behind her, from which he observed her day after day.  His stomach churned endlessly.  She turned in her chair and smiled at him.  "S'up?"  She asked, the words slippling from her lips.
     "Nothin'" he said, trying not to reveal the burn he felt in his stomach.  "I think I may be goin' to a concert tonight."
     "Really, who's playing?"
     "Dirty Little Secrets."  Duo had been impressed when Skids had said the band's name, as if each word in the name, had its own import, as if the name was a piece of bread for the starving meant to be gobbled up and used as sustenance.  When Duo repeated the name, it sounded hollow and fake.  It sounded made-up.
     "Cool.  What kind of music do they play?"
     "Punk."  The word sounded even more clunky than the band's name.  "You wanna come?"
     "I dunno.  Where are they playing?"
     "The Cavern."  He looked at her while she thought, trying to read the words like a banner in her mind.  "I get off at ten and then I am headed straight over there.  I'll meet you there if you decide to come."
     And so he found himself here on the curb in front of the Cavern, wondering if Gretchen had shown up already, had found some one else in side, some jackass with huge punk rock spikes jutting from his head, a silver chain hanging from a ring inside her nose.  Maybe it was to much to hope that she would come tonight; maybe she was locked up behind closed doors, shut-in by her evil parents with no time for the time foolery of the youth.  
    Just then, the band who had been playing so loud and for so long struck their last note, the lead screamer yelling out a gracious "Fuck you!" and throwing the microphone to the stage floor, reverb humming through the floors and the walls.  Suddenly, a flood of people flowed out from the building, pooling in small pockets at various places on the sidewalk.  Cigarettes were porduced and lit.

Chapter One, Part One

Brad Holden’s identity was held between a couple pieces of leather, stitched together in tight strokes. Of course, Brad had a driver’s license which indicated that he was born on May 1st, 1983, that he weighed approximately 170 pounds, and that he stood about 5 foot 6 inches above the ground. It indicated that he eyes were hazel and his hair brown. The driver’s license would have also indicated that he was to wear spectacles had he been diagnosed with less than perfect vision. For those illiterate few, or even for those who had little time to read the information so plainly stated, to analyze the statistics, and to incorporate an image in their own mind, the driver’s license had a picture of Brad Holden, taken by a subdued or disgruntled Department of Public Safety drone, carelessly floating through her week in effort to get to Friday’s alcoholic bingeing and mindless flirtations.

Although Brad Holden had a driver’s license which identified him as Brad Holden of 546 Oak Street, Marshall, Texas, (Home of the Fighting Toros! Go Toros!), Brad Holden had numerous credit cards, cards of all sorts of different colors and names. Each of the cards had raised numbers, and sometimes letters, lined in straight line across the bottom of the card, arranged in long sequences that no possible person could remember. Each of them had brown strip, an alleged magnetic strip, (even though Brad had never seen the strip show any attraction to metal), some with smudges and scrapes from use, signs of the eroding credit which Brad had with the nameless corporation identified on the front of the card. Each of them also had a signature line, a small thin block with diagonal words in orange and black patterned across the white background. None of the signature blocks had been signed by Brad, although the card expressly stated that they should be subscribed by Brad.

Brad also had numerous business cards he had collected within the wallets folds, cards he had accepted from salesmen, business associates, friends. Some were picturesque, displaying close-up image of a waving American flag, blowing in the wind, purple mountains majesty towering above golden fields of grain. Some were simple, grainy cardboard squares with an embossed name across a embossed line, an address, telephone number, and maybe an email address. Whether more ornate or more plain, each of the cards were somewhat worn at the corners, as if they had been rubbing against each other in Brad’s wallet whenever he walked.

Perhaps the most revealing pieces of identification contained in Brad’s wallet were the receipts he had shoved into the wallet after purchasing items from the stores, for each of these long strips of paper showed his tastes in music, food, and clothing. It should that while he had a distinct preference for Starbuck’s Coffee, it also showed that he preferred to buy and brew the Starbuck’s coffee himself rather than pay the “outrageous” $3.19 it cost when you bought it from the coffee house. It should that he had a preference for green leafy vegetables rather than meat, though he had purchased Good Morning© Breakfast Buddies © which contained what appeared to be sausage patties and “real” bacon bits to put on the salads he made at home.

It was one of these receipts he grabbed for now as he stood before the Mega Market employee, a kid of no more than seventeen, with long bushy hair, which fell like black petals around the edge of his head. He had a small golden ring which hung off the end of his large nostrils which was slightly red and irritated. He had dreaming eyes set far back into his head. He also wore a red polo shirt and a white T-shirt which fell out from each of the sleeves and at the waist. Around his neck he wore a set of beads as a choker.

Brad found the receipt he was looking for and handed it over to the kid who humphed when he took the receipt from his hand. The kid first retrieved his thick commercial gun and pointed it at the bar code at the bottom of the receipt. The machine behind which the kid stood beeped in recognition.

Brad’s hand was still on the Buddha figure, much like a father would do when placing a reassuring hand on the head of his son. “I just bought it yesterday. Certainly, there is no reason why you couldn’t give me a refund.”

Not bothering to look up, the kid, who Brad noticed from a loosely fashioned name tag hanging from the kid’s shirt was named Derek, raised his eye brows and frowned as if Brad were in fact asking him to move the remove the moon from its orbit. Ignoring the comment made by Brad, Derek began his interrogation. “Now, tell me again what’s wrong with the product.”

“Nothing really noticeable,” Brad replied. Brad thought he could hear the groan of impatient old woman, standing by a basket filled with bags of clothing she had planned to return. He turned his head over his shoulder to give her a look of disgust. “There is a crack on the bottom. I didn’t notice it until I got home.”

Derek lifted the statue off of the counter, weighing it in his hand as he did so. He turned it over to look at the bottom, scanning the flat surface for the crack. After what seemed several minutes to Brad, Brad pointed a fragile line running like a river from the edge of the bottom to its center. Derek nodded to indicate that he saw the flaw too. He ran his finger down the line following its curves as it wound toward the center.

“Well?” Brad asked.

“The thing is… this is a clearance item. You can see that here on the receipt.” Derek pointed to one of the items on the receipt. Brad didn’t bother looking at the receipt. “ We do not give refunds on clearance items.”

“Well, how about a store credit?” While it a store credit was not as good as getting the money Brad paid for the Buddha statue, he was in Mega Market often enough where he could find something to use the store credit on.

“No, I can’t really give you store credit, either.” Derek was already looking past Brad at the next person in line, a cue, in Brad’s estimation, to move along.

“What can you do for me?” Brad’s face began to get red, his nostrils flaring.