Mongo

My brain has a nasty default setting. I said too much, they all despise me now and worse, they know I’m poor. I figure next time they’re gonna get out the cootie spray. Spray me down. Everything is so green because it is underwater. There is a prehistoric fish and his red and black sneakers I took the white cross on route 59 in Nanuet when mongo gave it to me. His brother named him that because he liked to frequent whores, hence whoremonger/mongo. He was tall and lanky, gave good backrubs and lived in a house with his brother off the highway at the entrance to a state park.  Anonymous, completely nebulous territory. For 16-year-old me, perfect. The perfect setup. Plus always weed in those football things. Power-hitters or something they were called, I don’t remember. But they were great. You got high fast. That was a good thing. Anyway we were driving, in his car of course, my parents would never give me a car, what are you kidding? Route 59 scrolled in front of us, a flat expanse of traffic and big box stores that went into spring valley finally, which was uphill and very urban what with the apartments and shopper’s paradise and all that shit. Here, try this, he said, his big hands holding a pill. What is it? White cross. I studied the thing. Indeed it was a white pill with a cross on it. Huh. What are they used for?  Depressed people in the hospital. Down the hatch. Before too long, the scenery of strip malls, traffic and mongo himself were blindingly, achingly beautiful. So beautiful I was bursting out of my skin with a vibrating ecstasy that verged on pain. It was that good. I never wanted it to stop. I turned to him and said “don’t ever give me one of these again.” I knew what I would do if I got strung out on those and someone got in my way. Nothing good.