Josephine Skinny Jeans: Chapter 1

Lee found a ship's figurehead in a dumpster behind some shitty Indian restaurant last night. He brought it up to the apartment and watched Adult Swim comedy through anime and back to comedy until I got up to take a piss and saw he had the thing propped up next to him, rank as shit and smeared with curry. Lee's always bringing weird shit home-he's got two rusty wheelchairs in his room he uses to play video games and surf the net, a mounted boar's head over his bed with both glass eyes missing so it just stares with empty sockets, and a closet full of sad abandoned art student opuses made from pipes and wire and paper maché he rescued from street corners and trash heaps. 

That's also where he grows his weed too, way in the back behind the palisade of junk, and the few times I actually caught a look in there the backlight from the heat lamps made the lopsided bendy creations seem malicious and apocalyptic, like if I walked past them and through the ganja I'd be shanghaied into some feral alternate dimension with krakens and manticores and shit. I was just surprised he didn't rinse the fucking thing off before spooning with it on the couch. So I just figured the dude dipped into that Grandaddy Purple he'd been nursing and giving leaf rubs every day for months and he was in one of his more bizarre burnout comas.

Kid shot up as soon as I flushed the john, wiped the drool off his cheek and neck and seemed more startled at my vulgar use of the plumbing than he was at the putridly aromatic hardwood carving of the seriously stacked torso of a woman he had been grinding up against during what looked like a sex coma. But after shaking off the flabbergast and the dumbfound he got that expression on his face, the one when he looks like a goddamn boob and he's psyched to tell me something.

“Dog, you will NOT fucking believe the find I made tonight. It is epic, like gorgeous slut agreeing to be Eiffel Towered epic. It's motherfucking unbelievable.”

“I'm gonna stick my neck out on this one and guess it's that rancid-smelling half-statue of a chick you've been cupcaking for the past few hours. You really have to run that thing under the shower or something, man-that stench is fucking intrepid. I can taste it.”

Lee must have been either completely immune to or completely comfortable amidst the dense thicket of something kindred to scalding hot flatulence in putrid harmony with the lingerings of an otherworldly nastiness. And to the refined palette, just a hint of vindaloo. It really was heinous, and that's coming from a man who's assimilated piping hot morning beer shits into his daily regimen. So Lee gently set the figurehead down into the tub and made sure to test the temperature of the water before angling the shower head to rinse her. It was probably 4 a.m. now; not quite light and twittering with disrespectful birds yet, but no doubt that'll start up the minute before I'm unconscious again. 

“I'm considering undergoing a notable metamorphosis.”

Lee was standing by the mirror, using my Tweezermans® to pluck out protruding nose hairs. 

“Oh yeah? What's that?”

The wooden bust looked like it was soaking in a stew-whatever horrible mystery glaze it was coated in before was lifting right off, but it was also tainting the tub both in hue and fragrance. And I would bet a nut Lee's never touched bleach in his life. But at least he wasn't cradling that thing in there, lathering it up all sensual with a loofah or something.

“D'you think I have the bone structure to pull something like that off?”

“Say that again?” I must've blacked out for a second. There's a torso in the bathtub.

“A Big Ass Fuckin' Moustache. A bushy one. Magnificent, right?”

A flashframe still of my 6'5” lanky-ass roommate with his 13-year-old girl hips and long furry orangutan arms walking through town with the racoon tail from Davey Crockett's hat drooping down over his lips elbowed its way into my head, leaving me with an astronomical momentary clash between alarm and hilarity that quickly faded to ambiguous bemusement. I forgot again that I was supposed to speak words.

“What about Libby? No way she's gonna go for that.”

Libby was Lee's girlfriend of two and a half years. She was sort of a little bitch who pissed society off at fixed intervals forever, then she'd get all sad and go cry to some poor dude or chick she just tore a new asshole about how everybody hates her and she's all alone. She's also not great looking-her skin's a little sallow and either through genetics or lack of maintanence she's cursed with an enormous frizzy Jew fro, which she always wears bobbling back and forth in a gigantic spheroid on top of her head. Maybe that's the only way it can be worn, I have no idea. Oh, and she wears a lot of misshapen khakis that are somehow too big in the ass and thighs yet still end a good four inches above her ankles. And oversized fleece zip-ups with tons of tiny pills of fuzz all over from too much wearing or the wrong kind of washing or something.

But Lee met her at my ex-girl's place, and I guess they hit it off because neither of them really get any, plus Lee likes being spoken at and Libby likes to talk a shitload. He got her smoking weed like several times a day, which makes her mellow and not a catty twat all the time, and that makes everyone happy.

“Nah, she'll be chill with it, man, I just gotta explain it to her good. Like, I'm not the moustache, you know? I'm just the man behind the moustache. Still me under there, right? And plus- it's not a moustache like your dad has a moustache, or like how Officer McBallhair or even how Costco Wholesale CEO and Co-Founder James Sinegal has a moustache. They take their upper lips wayyy too seriously, man. My moustache will be, like... a satire. Yeah! A satire on moustaches.”

“Dude, how do you know who the founder of Costco is?”

Lee rolled his eyes as he lifted the figurehead out of the tub with my best towel.

“I read, man.”