‘Ah Sunday morning!’

Jube loved Sunday mornings, and even Sunday afternoon.

He was feeling right young today. He knew he was old, but only had a vague idea as to how old. What he was sure of was that he had been drunk since May 24th 1991, when the last white person—except for him—had moved out of his apartment building.

As usual, he had planned well for his Sunday out. Jube was a man of ritual after all. He had been raised catholic, had been righteously beaten by nuns and even poked by a priest, but had gotten over it. After he had molested little Mary Jane Hempstead in the church stairwell he stopped feeling all bitter about ‘Father Freakagin’ as they used to call him back in the day. Hell, when Mary Jane grew up she even came to visit him with her freaky lesbian girlfriend like he was Daddy or something…

Then the blacks moved in; took over the whole place. Jube was stubborn though. Hell, Jube even learned to drink their drink, not wanting to be imposed upon to go out of the neighborhood to get his microwbrews. On Friday he slammed Steel Reserve into the wee hours. When he lurched out of bed and puked out the window into Miss Johnson’s flower box below, he went right for his Saturday morning nectar—Olde English 800—a case of forties he put away yesterday!

Now it was Sacred Sunday, the day that was the anniversary of his deflowering by ‘Father Freakagin’. He had been caught—as the altar boy—sneaking some wine, so the priest had punished him and then loved him up. Jube—whose name had been something else back in the day—left the church then, though he would always be catholic by injection, and had kept his taste for wine. It was Sunday morning, the Lord’s Damned Day. So, not wanting to risk walking to the bus stop bench without a buzz on, Jube knocked back an entire bottle of 20/20 Mad Dog, his version of wine. He then packed two bottles in his carry case and got dressed.

His Sunday go-to-meeting carry case was yellow. For this there was a reason. Yellow was the color of Father Freakagin’s sash. Jube looked at himself from toe to head in the mirror, all duded up: yellow leather loafers; yellow Golden Toe socks; yellow leather bellbottoms; two pare of depends underneath so that he would be good for a few hours on the bench; yellow leather belt; yellow silk shirt—open to reveal his white chest hair; yellow leather vest—open; yellow leather jacket—open; yellow leather go-to-hell hat with a yellow feather, and yellow plastic earrings he had bought from that eleven-year old prostitute he did business with last Sunday.

The Lube was lubed and ready to roll. He had not thought up his own name. That had come from the black boys in the apartment who had just always called him “The Lube”. He was on good terms with the black fellows. After all, from the time they were seven or eight they could come to him with their money and he would buy them whatever they wanted at the liquor store. When they became teenagers they could come do their drugs in his digs so long as they brought a pretty girl. He liked them pretty little black girls, he did.

It was time to roll as only Jube the Lube might; decked out proper and fearless in the hood. He usually stayed out late on Sunday night blowing on dice behind the laundry mat. His luck was legendary. He didn’t dare play for winnings as he was so drunk by Sunday night that he could not fight his way out of a wet paper bag. Hell, when you wake up drunk, there is only one way the day is going with a bottle in your hand: drunker! He did bless the dice for the boys though, which always got him a miniature or a swig or a hit—got him protection too. The Legendary Lube the Lucky was rolling out.

There was only one more thing to grab, his CD pocket player and earphones. He placed the player in his pocket, slipped the earphones on under his go-to-hell hat, and checked to ascertain that the properly pious Sunday morning CD was in there—Jethro Tule: Aqualung.

‘Yes sir me, time to go watch them pretty panties run!’

Out the door he went with a wet fart that had him nodding in agreement with his sage self that depends were the best undergarment known to man.

It was later than he had planned, almost noon—damned Old English 800! Always the booze’s fault it was. Jube had the discipline of the drunk and was proud of his punctuality, generally considered a byproduct of his functionality. He now went out into the world irked at yesterday’s booze. It was a curious world, a blessed fine day but no one in sight. In fact, there must have been a major outdoor party last night, because there were still some folks laying around sleeping it off. There was also not a car on the street, at least not running. Well, he could not help it that the world was screwed up.

The park was just too far off for his old bones so he used the bus stop bench instead. The people left him alone. He was cool; always tipping his hat to the ladies, winking at the children, nodding to the men, and leering out from under the hat rim at the pretty little girls. He saw no girls this morning, probably already in church. Never mind, he would knock back some ‘2-Dog’ and nap right here while he waited for church to let out. The sun felt fine on his cheek and hand and he snoozed off into yesteryear, dreaming of the days before altar boy school and Father Freakagin.

He was playing out in the backyard while Mom and Uncle Joey got it on in the basement. His favorite thing to do was play army in his sand box with his army men, pretending that he was General Vietnam and that his sister’s dolls were Vietcong babes being held for interrogation. Then a big damned spider crawled into his sandbox, right into his boyhood dream and bit him!

Jube looked to his right as he sleepily opened his eyes and saw this big damned spider with a mosquito tube for a nose perched on the back of his hand soaking blood out of it. The thing was about the size of a nickel and had a white X on its back that was slowly turning red as it filled up on his blood.

“You little bastard. I only have but so much of that.”

He then remembered the mosquito trick he did to convince the little black kids he was magical. He would squeeze his fist when the mosquito feasted until it exploded. That’s what had gotten the little black kids to calling him ‘The Magic Man’. He liked that. They would have mom’s that were near little girls themselves and he might get invited over for dinner…

He squeezed and the thing filled up quick, to quarter size, and then lifted off, it having some kind of beetle wings. Two others pounced on his other hand and then he noticed the first one spinning around and then crashing to the sidewalk, continuing to skitter and then explode!

“Yes, fuck with me will you! You bit The Magic Man’s hand!”

He squeezed his other hand and the same thing happened, both of the greedy bugs spiraling to the pavement and skittering until they burst. He was worried though that he was losing blood so decided to replace what had been taken, and knocked back some 2-Dog. Without a cop in sight he did not see the sense of bagging it up again and just kept it to hand.

He began to nod off again and was then wakened by someone prying open his eyelids like the black suited-up preacher always did when he found Jube asleep on the church steps and was rudely checking to see if he was dead. He looked eye-ball to eye-ball now with another bug, who was moving around his eye-lids with its claws from a perch on his cheek. He then noticed that something had crawled into his mouth but was now crawling out and falling down his chin and into his chest hair, where he felt it claw and skitter and then explode.

“Oh you all bugs are nasty. That is my Sunday bench shirt I will have you know!”

He now glared at the bug that had just backed off of his cheek and fluttered in front of him in the air with beetle wings a flapping. There were other bugs about too, looking at him and hovering. He then heard some metal on glass scrape and looked down to see that one of these nasty bugs—they looked clean really, just greedy—had crawled down into the neck of his bottle of 2-Dog and was doing the goddamned backstroke.

“Y’all got me pissed now. You hear!”

He generally had a good time with people pretending to take his 2-Dog. But bugs had no right! And they seemed greedy besides, likely to drink it all up. Who even knew how many of their friends they would invite over to drink up his limited supply of Sunday liquor!

Then the bug crawled out of the bottle, tried to fly, and then crashed and died like the others, with all of its pals watching. He then looked at the hovering bugs, took a big swig, downed half of it, and sprayed the rest of the mouthful at them. They scattered like cockroaches under light.

“Come back when you grow some liquor balls—goddamned straightedge nondrinking invasives.”

He nodded on and off through the early blue afternoon and had drained most of his second 2-Dog bottle by the time he soaked his first depends. The warm pee always made him sleepy so he cranked up the head set, leaned back, and was swept off into dreamland again, while Ian Anderson sung about sitting on a park bench and watching those pretty panties run…

He was awakened slightly by the sounds of a bus, then again by some distant gunshots. He had slept through this kind of thing before and kind of reveled in it. The cops would never hassle him about open container business when there were gang bangers to deal with. On into the afternoon he snoozed.

He then heard what he knew were the sounds of a bus and a cop car across the street and opened his eyes. Lo and behold there was an MTA bus on the parking lot just around the corner of the liquor store. He got to his feet and let the bottle drop and break on the sidewalk when he saw that the bus was riding toward him over the opposite sidewalk and that two cops were getting out of the car and some goddamned Italian Chuck Norris was flying over the car kicking the one cop’s head off.

“I’ll be damned.”

He walked mesmerized toward the cop fight, not believing his eyes. The cop seemed to come apart and turn into some kind of squid, “Oh shit, they let a batch of absinthe into that Two-Dog or some shit! I need to thank Mister Kim for this! Shit, who needs DVDs with this?”

He continued to stagger over as dignified as possible toward the weird fight between Italian Chuck Norris and the Alien from Atlantis. The bus driver was honking at him but Jube waived him off as he walked closer for a look. The cop on the far side of the car was down and some small person in a hazmat suite was buzzing around over there.

“I need to get ringside for this shit. It’s probably Daryl and Levantay fighting over that white slut again. They always have good fights.”

He was now close enough—about twenty feet off—to see that there was something nasty and road-kill like on the ground and that Italian Chuck Norris was about to get eaten by that red-headed space-marine chick’s alien ex-husband from Atlantis. People on the bus were screaming, and now the Italian dude was on the ground spitting at the weird-ass monstrosity—which exploded with a boom, all over Jube’s Sunday duds.

“What the hell!”

Jube was in a rage over the fouling of his leathers and looked down at the goddamned mess which Italian Chuck Norris was extraditing himself from. And, on the other side of the mess was a tiny boy in hazmat suit holding a smoking police pump shotgun, flat on his back from the kick.

The man and the boy scrambled to their feet and stood gawking at Jube. Jube, however was in a high rage, “What the hell you goddamned freaks looking at? I know what you’re looking at! You’re looking at the Sunday leathers that you are about to either clean or replace or my name ain’t whatever the hell it used to be before I got drunk!”

The man and the boy looked at each other, shrugged their shoulders, and then went about their business: the man tearing off his shirt and wiping off Jube; and the boy—two pistols, two air riffles, and a shotgun now slung over his little back—was taking out a knife and cutting a human ear from some mess on the asphalt.

The man was built like some kind of meat eating athlete and was very polite as the people on the bus screamed for them to board, “I’m so sorry Sir. That will have to do for now. We have to board. Miss Betty sounds pissed.”

Jube then looked up at the bus and saw a pretty little white girl and a handsome black girl with their faces pressed to the window, “Hell yes son, I’m right behind you!”

His heart felt as warm in his chest as his depends did under his Sunday leathers, and he boarded with the smooth cultivated grace of a stone drunk who never failed a sobriety test. Lube meant ‘functional’ in ghetto slang, and he was smoothly functional just now, just wanting a seat with those pretty girls.”

“Hell yes son. Atlantic City here I come! I look good right?”

The younger man’s strong hand pushed him aboard, “You look better then you smell boss. I’ll give you that.”

The little armory of a boy pushed by him and scampered to some firing position in the back of the bus and the big machine stared to wind out, a hardworking man behind the wheel, determined to go somewhere—to a casino he supposed.

Continued in Who Loves You?: First Contact #15