One of my most vivid memories is the story I wrote about Leonard and Carrie, which I have chosen to title "Bugs In the Drain." I seem to remember that at the time, I had a really deep concept about how the bugs in their house were like a metaphor for the secrets and shame that was kept in their marriage. Obviously I didn't explore the metaphor terribly deeply (I'm bolding/emphasizing the bug references for my own future attention). Anyways,here it is. Oh, and I'm editing the names/ err changing the names to protect the innocent.:
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Bugs in the Drain (originally written Dec. 12, 1994)
Back in the early 1990’s, my friends and I used to go every weekend to the Jessups'. Usually we would sit around in the clammy basement all squished in together on the saggy olive green sofa and run Gurps or Paranoia, or Dungeons and Dragons if we were really bored.
Billy Jessup was the father. He was sweaty, and you could always see a hairy band of stomach bulging out from beneath his white undershirt, which functioned less as an “under” shirt and more like a fancy every day dress shirt. He said “fuck” a lot and didn’t have to bend over to display his butt crack. His oily face had dents all over it. Billy was a huge man. He must’ve been seven feet tall.
He always sat upstairs in the living room, in his Lazy Boy chair, watching tv. That’s all he did. One day he accidentally leaned too far back in the Lazy Boy and put his head through the living room window. He didn’t even flinch. He just said, “fuck,” more annoyed at the inconvenience of having to fix the broken the window than at the fact that he might have been injured. I’d only seen him out of that chair a few times.
He loved the chair, because the t.v. was in full view, and he could see right out the front window. Always paranoid of intruders, Billy installed motion-detection lights in the front yard, and kept a tall shot gun leaning on the wall next to him. Also, he could conveniently swivel the chair around to his computer, where he would proudly show us the porno gifs he had downloaded that week.
Billy and Laurel had four kids. The oldest one, Matt, was in high school with me. He was from Billy’s first marriage. The youngest one, Billy and Laurel had together. They named him Bubba. Bubba couldn’t speak very well, so the school wouldn’t let him go to kindergarten, even though he was old enough to go.
Laurel Jessup was the mother. She was in her early twenties. She was so petite that she could fit into children’s sized clothing. Laurel was very pretty. She had a young face and looked like she could be one of us teenaged kids. She always wore skin-tight jeans, the kind with zippers at the bottom of the legs. You’d never know by looking at her that she’d ever given birth.
Sometimes she would bring popcorn down to us in the basement and hang out with us for awhile, always wanting to tell us her personal business. Billy had saved her. Like a superhero. She was previously married to a man who beat her up all the time, and Billy helped her get away from that husband. Billy gave her a home, and she didn’t even have to work.
One night she told us that he had wanted to have anal sex for a long time. He was BUGGING her about it every day, and she finally caved in. It made her bleed for four days. She was mad, because if he had stopped when she said it was hurting, then she wouldn’t have bled for so many days.
Billy and Laurel’s house had a lot of COCKROACHES, especially for some reason, in the bathroom. I think Laurel was bothered by all the ROACHES, but Billy wouldn’t pay for an exterminator. “They’re not that bad,” he would say dismissively. I was afraid to wash my hands in the bathroom sink, because I always saw BUGS crawling down into the drain.
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