Eric Dimbleby - White Out

Even with a twenty-foot gap between the two windows, I can see her blushing. She is impressed by how sweet I am. Ain’t that precious? This is why I’m a good wanderer, because I know how to put on the charm when the time is right. I wander because people love my shit, no matter where I go. Even though she thinks I’m a little light in the loafers, that don’t mean I won’t be deliverin’ her the meat-man in record time, know what a’mean?

“Aren’t you a sweet dear?” she asks. I don’t know if I’m supposed to answer that question. That’s what they call re-tor-ikal . And yes, I am. I’m a sweet, sweet dear. I’m a peach. I’m a prince. Look at me, makin’ the world a better place. Punky Fuckin’ Brewster over here.

Another cat comes up to Marianne, rubbing against her arm, showing its ass in my direction. She looks at it, smiling and nuzzling her face against its fur. You have no idea how bad I want to tell her that I want to come over and touch her pussies . Zing. I don’t go saying that like I want to, since that will really fuck things up if I do. But a man can think whatever he wants, right? I’ve got a whole garage full of pussy jokes, just waitin’ on her to give me the opportunity. Life is grand sometimes.

Marianne keeps trying to push these nasty hotdogs on me. The bull of it is— and man oh man am I biting my tongue as I explain this shit to her like a proper gentleman —they ain’t hotdogs at all. They ain’t even meat. She keeps hemmin’ and hawin’ about how delicious they are, and how healthy they are for my colon, and how they’ll spoil if we don’t eat all fifteen packages of them soon. I tell her there’s no worry in that, since it ain’t meat, so it has almost no chance of spoiling. She doesn’t believe me, but I know they won’t spoil. Them silly shits are made of plastic, I swear it.

They taste like a little baby’s mashed up fingers, and they kinda look like ’em too. I never eaten a baby’s mashed up fingers, but I bet they would taste better than her endless supply of “Happy Pups” hotdogs. They’re some fake-ass shit and Marianne’s a damn faker for eating them. I almost tell her that it’s been a long time since she had a real hot dog in her mouth and she might’n change her mind if I stuck my commander-in-beef in there and wiggled my hips around, just for a few minutes. I can make this shit-for-brains a meat eater again, and you just watch me. And there’s a big ol’ zing for ya’ . Zing a ling.

This morning she keeps feeding them baby fingers to her cats. They chomp on ’em like they was made outta mouse meat or somethin’. Marianne keeps dippin’ them tasteless nubs in some sort of barbecue sauce, and that just about turns my stomach inside out. I love me some barbecue sauce, especially on a hot rack o’ ribs, but this hippie bitch has ruined that right there for me.

I force one of them into my throat, mostly because my stomach is growling like it’s pissed off at me and there’s not much else to eat in her fridge. Everything else is just as fucked up—some shit called Kim-Chee (I once banged a Korean tramp named Kim Chee , bet your buttons I did, zing zing zing ), pickled cabbage that looks like it was dragged out some sewer grate, and some weird ass rubbery stuff called “temper.” I wanna tell her that my temper is risin’, especially if she tries to get me munchin’ on that deathly lookin’ shit. The temper (she keeps correctin’ me with temp-UH, temp-UH ) has this bluish and gray tint to it. It’s more of that fake-ass meat she says. Ain’t nothin’ that’s pretending to be meat should be blue. Maybe brown, maybe red, but not blue. That’s some twisted shit right there.

Jesus Christ, oh Lord on high, oh King of Kings, spare me this woman before I smite her ass. Spare me her shitty taste in food, if you even wanna call it that.

While I chew on the little baby fingers, I close my eyes and try to remember the last time I had a juicy hot dog that didn’t make me want to vomit. I keep thinkin’ that maybe I can trick myself (all of it up inside my mind) into thinking that this is a real tasty hot dog, and that I don’t want to cut this chick’s head off real slowly, and with a toenail clipper.

Yep, I remember my last hot dog. It’s been awhile.

I remember Kyle, wearing his stupid red and white paper hat, fishin’ out chili on to a dog.

Frannie’s Franks.

That’s what he called his hot dog cart. I never knew where he got the name, but he gave me a job when I was first tryin’ hard to settle in and settle up. Matter a’ fact, it was the last time I had me a job. Was about two years back, maybe three, when I took to roamin’ in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, more in the south than I am these days. I was pickin’ cans at the landfill when I seen this fella rooting around for scrap metal. He’s dressed in a striped up suit, whistlin’ to himself like he’s one of those seven fuckin’ elves that lives with that pale princess bitch in the woods.

We get to talkin’ and I find out he’s real excited about hot dogs. “Christ on a bike… who the hell isn’t ?” I said to him. So Kyle said that he just opened up a hot dog stand and he needs somebody to watch it for him, just for four or five hours a day while he’s at his day job. I didn’t have much else going on—the cheap fucks at the State Offices in Rhode Island wouldn’t give me any money for my horrible affliction from the big War. They kept askin’ me which war it was, and I said that I fought in the greatest war of all—the battle between the wanderin’ man and the suburban suck-rod . They didn’t find much of a laugh in that, so I left brown logs all over the employee parking lot. It was only like three or four of them, but I’d been holding them in my gut for a few days. I can be a real spiteful shit like that. We wanderin’ men get constipated from not havin’ much fresh water to drink. When we get backed up, and it finally comes out… well… cover your eyes, cover your ears, cover your mouth.

So Kyle… the freakin’ king of the frankfurter…said if I guarded his cart every night, (since he left it out on a main avenue in Providence, so that nobody would ever take his spot) I could get four dollars an hour plus all the hot dogs I could eat. I didn’t mind the gig much, because I was livin’ in the outdoors anyway. Being able to sleep underneath a hot dog cart was a-okay by me. Better than snoozin’ in a dried out drain pipe, which is what I was doing up until the hot dog gig.

M’job lasted about three weeks and let me be clear: I enjoyed those steamy little fuckers to the full extent of my pleasure-buttons.

I even invented a couple hot dogs myself.

Yep, you heard right. Edgar is an inventive son of a bitch.

The Brain Licker. Half a bottle of ketchup, jalapeno peppers, heavy on the onions. Somebody actually threw one at me because they thought it tasted like shit, but I picked it up and ate it, showed them I ain’t a wasteful cunt like they were. I didn’t give ’em their money back either.

Texas Pete. I’d chop up the hot dog into tiny little pieces, almost like it got mashed on accident. Then I would swirl it all up with some barbecue sauce and mustard, and then I’d sprinkle celery salt all over it. Those didn’t make people as mad as The Brain Licker, so Kyle actually gave me a fifty-cent raise for inventin’ a top seller.

I was well on my way to freedom.

And my favorite hot dog creation— The Wanderer. Named it after myself ‘cause the meat was mighty tasty on the lips, just like your old friend here. Zing. Chopped onions, ground beef, spicy mustard, sour-krout (however the fuck you spell it), and diced chili peppers. The chili peppers were a whole new thing on his cart, on account of me buying them at the dollar store on my own dime. Like I said to him, “You’re welcome, Kyle. You unappreciative cocksucker.”