Stripper Funeral

Daddy drank too much.

And Mama? 

Well.

Mama just cried.  

Old Nelly lived with us too.

I assume she was my aunt (but I was never quite sure of that).

She would touch me in places that I had to point to on a doll

later

in the county courthouse.

Before they took me away.

But back then she lived upstairs.

Old Nelly loved prune juice.

"Like drinkin' sunshine, boy!"  she'd holler, though I was standing right next to her.

I’d hide her prune juice sometimes, and she's roam around the tiny dormer room upstairs.

And she’d scream: "Damn you damn you damn you to hell!" 

When Daddy died I rolled up the rugs and made egg nog. 

I’m not sure why. 

I thought that was what one did, when someone died.

I was only ten. 

Even by then I had done a lot of drugs.

I mean a LOT of drugs. 

And I wasn't sure if the things I saw were real.

Or just pictures in my head.

When Daddy died Old Nelly cried:

"Oh God what should we do?  What should we do?" 

 And I tried to pour her prune juice down the sink but the pipes had rusted. 

They sighed like a cheap whore spread eagle on a carny’s knee. 

When Daddy died the gang of old men from town gathered in the parlor for the funeral.

And they looked up, trying to find the source of that horrible noise. 

The creaking pipes.

And my aunt wailing.

When Daddy died, they hired an Asian stripper to dance on his casket. 

She took off all her clothes, except for her high heels.

And for a finale, shot bing cherries and a cucumber out of her vagina.

Like a machine gun.

We drove to the graveyard and lowered Daddy into the ground.

I stood poised over the casket in the hole, like a tightrope walker on a Udon noodle. 

Old Nelly cried.

Mama was still.

And the men - who had hated Daddy, one and all  - laughed and laughed, spewing out spiral staircases of cigar smoke. 

"He would have wanted us to remember him this way." 

They said.

I laughed with them.   

Poised, waiting breathing. 

Over that hole with the great big box. 

And then.

I jumped.