| TAXI'S LIL' SQUIRTS | OPIUM DEN | MEET HERB SMITHERS | JUNK TRUNK | ABOUT |
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Taxi's Little Squirts.. |
| Taxi's Little Squirts.. |
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HOW TAXI BECAME A DADDY:
It had
been a good day. I’d gone into work late and left early, and
no one yelled at me for the few hours I was there. I got
home and was presently surprised that lovely Taxi: Hello? The unmistakable voice is the kind that you never can never forget… regardless of how much you drink to blot it out. Ex-Mrs. Taxi # 2: Hey, fuckhead (her term of endearment for me). How’s it going? Taxi: Everything was fine until the phone rang. How’d you get my number? Ex-Mrs. Taxi # 2: I called your mother. Betrayed by my own flesh and blood! I scribbled a note to have my mother confined to an assisted living home as soon as possible. Twenty some odd years had passed since I’d last encountered Ex-Mrs. Taxi # 2. Although my divorces from Ex-Mrs. Taxi # 1 and # 3 had been fairly amiable (although # 3 did demand my baseball card collection as part of our settlement due to my lack of liquid assets at the time), the divorce with this bitch had been a nightmare, and it all started over a little misunderstanding…. Flashback to:
We were
in the kitchen one night when what should have been a minor
discussion
The stinging sensation was short, but I suddenly felt a sting in my groin. Moments later I felt something dripping down into my sneakers. They weren’t white anymore though… they were red... and getting soggy. My wife had a somewhat dumbfounded, blunder-headed look on her face, but that was generally her common expression. Then I saw what she was holding… it was an ice pick that had been laying on the counter… an ice pick that she’d just rammed into my scrotum. While she started screaming, “I don’t know why I did that!” (she was a raving lunatic… that’s why she “did that”) I quickly yanked down my jeans… dear Lord, I looked like one of those poor bastards from “Saving Private Ryan”. I grabbed a couple of dishtowels and stuck them down my pants, then ran to my truck and high-tailed it to the emergency room. It was flu season, so there was a lot of coughing and hacking going on in the waiting room. I easily stood out from the others because I was the one sitting in the leatherette chair with a pool of blood underneath it. A stout Negro janitor would occasionally stop by with his bucket and mop under the chair. My genitalia was finally rinsed off by a nurse so that the doctor could examine me. His prognosis was good… the ice pick had made a clean puncture that would not require stitches, and the only precaution for me to follow was to wrap my package in a warm towel twice a day to prevent any swelling, since the last thing I needed was a sack the size of grapefruits in my pants. He gave me a prescription for thirty Vicodin, so that made me happy. On the way out, the nurse gave me a pamphlet that listed support groups for battered husbands. I immediately tossed it, because I had no plan of being a husband, battered or otherwise, for much longer. I stopped at a 7-11 for a six pack of Michelob, then sat in my truck and turned on an “easy listening” station while whacking back a few beers and a couple of Vicodin every fifteen minutes. After that pleasant numbness filled my body, I headed back to my happy home, which was made much happier when Ex.-Mrs. Taxi # 2 packed her belongings and vacated the premises the next morning. It took me awhile to recover from the mental portion of her maniac attack. For awhile I had nightmares of her standing over me, a female Norman Bates, continuously plunging the ice pick into my groin. But, as the saying goes, “time heals all wounds”, and eventually so did my scrotum, with the only aftereffect being that I noticed that my genitals had started to whistle when I jogged. But now she’d track me down. I grabbed the Corona from Bingo, drained it in one long sip, and quickly motioned for another to steady my nerves before I continued the conversation…. Taxi: So what exactly do you want? Ex.-Mrs. Taxi # 2: Well, I have something to tell you. I immediately hope that it’s good news… like an inoperable tumor, or one of those diseases that have an abbreviated three letter name that you don’t know what it stands for, only that you definitely do not want to be told you have it. Taxi (excited): Yes! Yes! Ex.-Mrs. Taxi # 2: You’re a father. Taxi: A father of what? Ex.-Mrs. Taxi # 2: A daughter. Right after we split up I found out I was pregnant. She’s yours. The bottle of Corona dropped from my hand and crashed to the floor. I was ready to get down on all-fours to lap it up. Ex.-Mrs. Taxi # 2: I got remarried… to a nice guy… and he raised her, but she’s at the age now where she wants to know who you are. Don’t ask me why, I told her you’re not much, but she still wants to meet you. Father… child… Taxi… these words did not seem to fit together. Ex.-Mrs. Taxi # 2: You there? Taxi: Uh-huh. Ex.-Mrs. Taxi #2: So she’s coming out to California next week.’ Decided she wants to move there. Taxi: Uh-huh. Ex.-Mrs. Taxi #2: Any questions? I was beginning to come around a little. Taxi: You’re not going to ask for child support for all this time, are you? Ex.-Mrs. Taxi # 2 (cackles): Your mother told me you’ve been divorced and are remarried again. She said this one can even count to 10. Forget the child support… I’ve already got a jar I keep my pennies in. I grab the pad. I add “put Mom in assisted living facility after cutting her tongue out”. Taxi: So when is she coming? Ex.-Mrs. Taxi # 2: She left yesterday. She’s driving, so she’ll probably be there by Tuesday. Taxi: Okay. I got it. Does she have... Ex-.Mrs. Taxi # 2: Your mother gave me directions. Taxi: Okay then .Well, I guess I don’t need to learn how to change diapers or anything like that (ha-ha). Ex- Mrs. Taxi # 2: She’s 22. Maybe she’ll offer to change your diapers. You’re getting to be that age, you know. Oh, and make sure you put all your porno and sick sex toys somewhere where she won’t find them. Taxi: I don’t have much porn anymore…. but I’ll find a safe spot for the sex toys. Ex-Mrs. Taxi # 2: Thatta boy. Okay, so that’s it for now. ‘Talk to you later… daddy (hysterical laughter, followed by phone clicking). I stand there with the phone still in my hand. Bingo looks at me with a questioning look on her face. I say, “You’re going to be a mother… kinda”. Bingo gets all excited, “You finally decided I can have another dog!” Still a little dazed, the only thing I could think of saying was, “Well, it’s not a dog…. but it is housebroken”. The night before Little Taxi arrived, she called from Barstow for final directions. The conversation went great… we talked for about an hour about this and that… how her boyfriend was stationed overseas in the Army, and how she had decided to start a new life in California. She asked about rental prices for places here, and by then I felt so comfortable that I told her I had plenty of room in our house, and that we’d fix up the guest room for her to stay for as long as she liked. This made her happy, and she when she exclaimed, “Thanks, Dad!” I smiled… I’d been called many names in my life, but never “Dad”. When the doorbell rang the next day, I answered it, and there she was… Little Taxi… my daughter. I had borrowed Carl’s, my neighbor, metal detector that he uses for treasure searching at the beach. I was going to run it over Little Taxi’s bags to make sure she wasn’t packing a Ginzu knife to finish off the job her mother had started, but she had such a sweet and innocent face that I decided just to rummage through her bags later on for any concealed weapons.
We
hugged and we kissed, and Bingo was the hostess-with-the-mostest
by setting out a lovely cheese log and canopies that she’d
prepared (Rachel Ray's 30 Minute Meals # 65). The three of
us sat on the sofa, and while the two laughed and giggled,
I’d frequently drift off while Bingo and Little Taxi talked…
“So how do you like California so far?... I marveled
at her beauty and grace… “We should go to the mall later!”…
I marveled at her keen sense of humor and intelligence. Yes,
the mighty
I
eventually wobbled my way back to the living room. Little
Taxi and Bingo were putting their coats on. “We’re going
shopping!” Bingo giddily babbled. “We’ve got a lot of
work to do to turn that guest room into a nursery!” I
continued bobble-heading. I got kisses and hugs from both
Little Taxi and Bingo… two new best friends… as they left.
Once the door closed behind them, I decided that I needed to
find a dark, quiet room. “Grandpa” desperately needed to lie
down. Maybe Rachel Ray’s 30 Minutes Meals was on. Maybe she
was whipping up a recipe for custard. |
started.
As I recall, it was over the innocent fact that she was
unhappy with my continued dating even though we were
married. Regardless, voices rose and soon escalated into the
type of screaming match that eventually proves for good
footage on “Cops”. There was a lot of pushing and shoving,
the usual thing that goes on nightly in most households, but
things took a drastically bad turn for the worse when “the
incident”, as she still refers to it, occurred…
Taxi’s gene pool had produced a Blue Ribbon prize winner.
Perhaps I should donate my semen to science!… “So when
are you due?”… Wait... what was that? “Due”? Due for
what? Did Little Taxi have an appointment somewhere? “About
mid-July,” Little Taxi replied. Bingo had jumped up and
was running her hand over Little Taxi’s belly. I’d seen this
strange ritual among women before, a tummy rubbing that
usually represented… oh, my God! Bingo had that happily
retarded look on her face. “Isn’t this great! You’re
going to be a GRANDFATHER!” Hey, hold on there a minute,
buckaroo. I needed some time to decipher this. I needed some
time to think. Fuck... I needed a drink. I mimicked Bingo’s
happy simpleton expression while feeling my head involuntary
nodding up and down like a bobble-head doll. I excused
myself and found myself wandering the house, not quite
knowing where I was going, and somehow ended up in the
bathroom. Liquor, that’s right. That’s what I was looking
for. I reached for a bottle of Nyquil, the nearest alcohol
available. I took a long swig, then grabbed a vial of Valium
from the medicine cabinet, popping two that I washed down
with another belt of Nyquil. I rinsed my face with cold
water and put a cold compress to the back of my neck. I felt
like I’d been thrown into an episode of “The Twilight Zone”.
I’d been a father for about half an hour, and now, in two
months, I was going to be a grandfather… a grandpa… a grampy!
I looked in the mirror and thought back about my own
grandfather. I remembered the hair that grew out of his ears
like sideways pigtails, and how he frequently debated as to
whether to have Jello or custard that night for dessert. A
terrible mistake must have been made… I was young! Vibrant!
I loved strippers! I liked narcotics! I owned one pair of
“big boy pants” because I had never stopped dressing like a
twelve year old, for crying out loud!