Bookshelf Battle

Seacaucus, New Jersey

              The modest home located at 52 Periwinkle Drive looked like any other.  It was white with black shutters, had a finely manicured green lawn and a sturdy oak tree that abutted a white picket fence.  A beat-up pick-up truck sat in the driveway next to a wood paneled station wagon.

To their neighbors, the family that dwelled within appeared typical.  In fact, as Disco Werewolf partied hearty across the Hudson River, Larry and Lorraine Lumpkiss prepared for a quiet evening at home.

Larry, the man of the house, wore a plaid shirt and a pair of jeans.  His body was beginning to suffer the ravages of middle age, namely a hairline that was receding and a waistline that was expanding.  Even so, he was sturdy and carried his bulk well.  He squinted through a pair of glasses as he read the evening edition of The New York Courant, to which he was a dedicated, long time subscriber.

“Will you get a load of this?” Larry asked.  “Environmental Activists Protest in Wake of Three Mile Island Nuclear Planet Meltdown.”

              Larry looked up from the paper.  “Bah!  Lousy good for nothings.  Get a job, hippies!”

Lorraine, Larry’s devoted housewife, tended to an assortment of pots and pans on the stove.  Her hair was brown with streaks of gray and she wore a yellow apron over a pink dress.

“What’s that, dear?” the lady of the house asked as she pounded a pot full of potatoes with a masher.

“Oh, nothing,” Larry said.  “Just a bunch of degenerate no-goodniks getting in the way again.”

Larry looked to his left, where an old man was sitting.  The codger had a worn, shriveled body, with just a few tufts of hair left on his head.  Most of his teeth were missing.  His glasses were the size of cola bottles and he wore a cardigan that had been buttoned haphazardly.

“If you ask me, all these big mouths shouldn’t have a say in anything until they get a job and pay taxes just like the rest of us, don’t you think so, Pop?”

The old man shrugged his shoulders.  “Meh.”

“You worked.  I worked.  Yet all these kids think they just know it all, don’t they?”

Pop shook his head.  “Meh.”

 

Larry patted Pop on the back.  “Good talk, Pop.”

“Meh.”

Lorraine opened up the oven and took a peak inside.  A cheese covered tuna noodle casserole was baking up to a golden brown.  “Looks like a few more minutes.”

“Hot dog,” Larry said.  “I am starving.  Where the hell is Whitney? She should be helping you.”

“Oh, you know,” Lorraine said.  “Out in the garage with her little friends as usual.”

Larry pounded the table.  “Hippies!  In my own house.  It’s an infestation, I tell you.”

“I don’t think they’re hippies, Larry,” Lorraine said.

“Well, they’re some kind of strange, I’ll tell you that.”

“No arguments there.”

Pop choked and gasped.  Larry turned around just in time to catch his father choking on a plastic disk.

“Jesus H. Crow, Pop!” Larry said as he yanked the circle out of his father’s piehole.  “That’s not food!  That’s a coaster!”

Larry returned the coaster to a stack in the center of the table, then stood up and rummaged through a cabinet.  He retrieved a cookie and handed it to the old man.  “Here.  Have at that.”

“Oh, Larry,” Lorraine said.  “You’ll spoil his dinner.”

“Sorry, hun,” Larry said.  “Just one, Pop.”

“Meh,” Pop said as he used one of his few remaining teeth to gnaw on the treat.

Ring!

“Now who could that be?” Lorraine asked as she looked up from one of her pots.

Larry walked over to a rotary phone attached to the wall.  It was bright yellow, with a circular dialing disk in the middle, and a long, curly cord that dangled down to the floor.  “I got it.  Hello?”

The man of the house listened patiently for a minute.  “Huh?  What’s that now?  A timeshare in Fabulous Downtown Bayonne?  No, that does not sound like a good deal.  No, not at all.  What?  No, I don’t care if you’ve got one in Flagstaff, Arizona.  Yeah, but…uh huh…well, ma’am I’m not much interested in spending any time in Butte, Montana either.  Why?  How about because I’m not made of money, OK?  Yeah…hey…no…right…no…listen, lady, I don’t know how you got my number but you must have confused me with the King of Siam if you think I can afford all that so I’ll thank you to lose my number, OK?  Goodbye.”

Larry returned to his seat at the table.  “I told her to lose my number.”

“You were tough but fair, dear,” Lorraine replied.

“I know,” Larry said.  “That oughtta settle her hash.  Women selling timeshares over the phone.  Jeeze Louise, next thing you know they’ll have a woman president and blammo!  She gets her monthly visit from Aunt Flo, hits the button, nukes Russia and it’s World War III.”

Lorraine feigned laughter.  “You’re such a card, dear.”

“I know.”

Larry picked up his paper and began to read again.  “Oil prices are through the roof.  No surprise there.  Why don’t you just bend over and let the Ayatollah get up there hard and deep, Jimmy?”

“Oh,” Lorraine said.  “Speaking of that, did you remember to fill up my car?”

Hubby slapped his forehead.  He set the paper down and turned to his wife.  “I did not.”

“Larry!  I’m going to be in the gas line all morning tomorrow then!”

“Nope,” Larry said.  “You’re good.  You know I always keep an extra can in the garage for emergencies.”

“Well,” Lorraine said as she stirred a pot full of gravy.  “I guess it’ll have to do.”

Larry stood up, walked over to the stove, wrapped his arms around his better half’s waist and smooched her on the cheek.  “The day will never come when Lawrence T. Lumpkiss fails his little lady, be it in life or in the boudoir.”

“Oh, Larry,” Lorraine said with a smile.  “You’re incorrigible!”

Larry planted a plethora of kisses on Lorraine’s neck.  “Aren’t I though?”

Ring!

“For Pete’s sake!”  Larry said as he walked over to the phone.   He picked it up.  “Hello?  Yes.  Yes, this is Mr. Lumpkiss.  What’s that now?  Encyclopedias?  How many?  A whole set?  Why in the…well, no I don’t want my kids to grow up stupid but, hey just a second pal, what are you implying?  Well, no they aren’t rocket scientists by any stretch of the imagination but they aren’t drooling dullards either.  They get by just fine, not that it’s any of your business.  Yeah…right but…look, the thing is, they’re all grown up and hopefully almost out the door so really, this would just be a waste of money and…uh huh… for me?  Oh fella, I know it all, anyway.  Goodbye.”

Larry hanged up the phone and returned to his seat at the table.  “I tell you, whoever made it so these telephone salespeople can just call you out of the blue all night long should be tarred and feathered.”

“That seems a bit harsh,” Lorraine said.

“Maybe,” Larry replied.  “Maybe I should just look up their numbers and call them at home.  Try to sell them timeshares and encyclopedias while they’re sitting down for dinner.  Now that would burn their biscuits.”

“I’m sure it would dear.”

“Gack!”

Larry looked at his old man, who was chewing on a coaster again.  “Damn it, Pop!”  Son took the coaster out of father’s mouth, seized the entire stack, stood up, and rested them on a counter.  “That’s it!  No more coasters for you!”

An ear poppingly loud guitar riff poured out from the attached garage and into the kitchen.  Mom and Dad grabbed their ears.  Pop paid it no mind as he was deaf as a post.

“Are you kidding me?!” Larry asked.

“I thought you told her not to rehearse in the garage anymore!” Lorraine cried.

“I did!”  Larry hollered.  “Looks like it didn’t take!”

Thump, thump, thump, thump, crash, crash, crash!  The sound of drums and cymbals being pounded reverberated throughout the entire house.

“Drug music!”  Larry screamed.  “I can’t believe it!  Drug music in my house!”

Out in the garage, Whitney Lumpkiss took to the microphone.  There was a bit of screechy reverb before the teenager began to sing, or more accurately, shout out random obscene words and phrases that somehow passed as punk rock lyrics.

Sexual vomit!  Sexual spit!  Puke on my soul and rearrange it!  I thought we were one.  I thought this was it!  But then it turned out to be…to be…to be….SEXUAL VOMIT!  YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

              Dogs barked all across the neighborhood.  Mr. Fitzpatrick, the Lumpkisses’ neighbor to the left, pitched a fit.  “Hey Lumpkiss!  Knock that racket off, will ya’?!”

Larry opened up a window and shouted out into the evening air.  “I got it, Phil!  Don’t you worry!”

“Well, don’t just sit there with your dick in your hand blabbing about it!” Mr. Fitzpatrick yelled.  “Do something about it!  I pay my taxes, Goddamn it!”

“I pay mine too, Phil!”

“I don’t care, Lumpkiss, just do something already!”

“I bet I pay more than you, Phil!”

Lorraine tapped her husband on the shoulder.  “Hun, now isn’t the time to get into a pissing match with Mr. Fitzpatrick.”

Larry nodded.  He looked to the table.  Pop was fast asleep, his head back, mouth open so wide that it could catch flies.

“Amazing,” Larry said.  “I wish I could sleep like that.”

The drums and guitar got louder.  The lyrics got more disgusting.  “I thought your sweet nothings were like the fragrance of a freshly cut rose!  But instead, they were just a pile of wet farts emanating from the diseased, cacophonous never regions of Satan’s asshole all along!!!”

              Mom and Dad’s jaws dropped in unison.

“Did she just say…”

“She did.”

Larry shook his head.  “Well, that tears it.  I’m going to give her a piece of my mind.”

“Don’t be too hard on her, dear.”

“Hard on her?” Larry asked.  “Are you kidding me?  A young lady talking like that?  She’s on her way to selling her goods for pennies on the dollar in a Tijuana boom boom room with a mouth like that, Lorraine.”

Lorraine nodded.  “I know, but, you know.  She’s just trying to be creative.”

“Creative, my rear end,” Larry said.  “We’ve got to nip this in the bud, Lorraine.  We’ve got to nip it and nip it good before it snowballs out of control.”

Fitzpatrick piped up again.  “I’m gonna call the cops, Lumpkiss!”

Larry stuck his head out the window.  “No need to call the cops, Phil!  I told you I’ll handle it and handle it I will!  Your peace and quiet is coming!”

“Yeah!” Fitpatrick shouted.  “So’s Christmas!”

The man of the house started banged on the door that led to the attached garage.  “Whitney!  Keep it down in there!  You hear me?!”

The music died down.  Larry wiped the sweat from his brow.  “Whew.  Good.  That’s enough of that.”

And the music started back up.  More drums.  More guitar.  More crude lyrics:

You chewed up my heart, and swallowed it into your stomach!  But all I ever got from it was….SEXUAL VOMIT!!! YEAAAAHHHHHHH!!!  SEXUAL VOMIT!  BARF, BARF, BARF, BARF, BARF, HURL, HURL, HURL, HURL, PUKE!!!”

              Larry banged on the door to the garage.  “Whitney Hildegard Lumpkiss!  This is your father!”

Lorraine rolled her eyes.  “She knows, dear.”

“Whitney!”  Larry shouted.  “I’m warning you!  Knock it off right now because if I have to come in there, you are not going to like it!  Not one bit!”

The music stopped.

“Finally,” Larry said.

Pop snoozed away.  Lorraine breathed a sigh of relief.  She set the table.

Fitzpatrick provided more commentary.  “Thank God!  You finally grew a pair, Lumpkiss!”

Larry shoved his head out the window.  “Bigger than yours, Phil!  Guaranteed!”

“Ahh!” Fitzpatrick yelled.  “Go soak your head!”

“You first!” Larry replied.

Larry pulled his head into the kitchen.  He grabbed a stack of plates and helped his wife arrange the table.  “Sexual Vomit.  What will these kids come up with next?”

“I don’t know,” Lorraine said.

“How does something like that even pop into her head?” Larry inquired.

“I have no idea,” Lorraine replied.

Larry set a plate down in front of his slumbering father.  “We ought to wash her mouth out with soap.  That’s what we ought to do.”

“Parents don’t do that to kids anymore, Larry,” Lorraine said.  “It’s not good for them.”

“Why not?” Larry asked.  “My mother did it to me all the time and I never even said anything close to that little ditty our little girl was just singing.”

“She’s not so little anymore.”

“I suppose not.”

The music started up again.  “Blood, blood, blood, blood, piss, piss, piss!  Your sexual vomit is what I will not miss!  Ejaculate spewing forth from the rotten, stinking phallus of a dead hobo’s carcass is all our love ever was and ever will be!”

Larry glared at his wife.  She nodded.  “Go ahead.”

“Thank you,” Larry said.

The phone rang.  Larry picked it up.  “Lumpkiss residence….oh, blow it out your ass, Phil.”

Larry slammed the phone down on the hook.  The phone rang again.  Between the ringing phone and his daughter’s profane tired set to a noise that was somehow meant to be perceived as music, the man of the house lost it.  His face turned red.  His eyes turned yellow.

“Larry, no!” cried Lorraine.

“I can’t take it anymore!”  Larry shouted.  His chest expanded, putting pressure on the buttons of his shirt.

“Just take a deep breath, dear,” Lorraine said.

Whitney belted away.  “A sensation of urination all over a slumbering heroin junkie’s hibernation is the extent of my consternation for your endless resuscitation so we must cease this mental masturbation!  We are so through and you’re the one who quit it!  So, stick your tongue down your throat and enjoy your sexual vomit!  SEXUAL VOMIT!!! YEAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!”

              Larry’s buttons popped in every direction, clattering their way around the kitchen as they bounced off the walls.  His glasses fell to the floor.  His shirt and jeans ripped into rags as he grew and grew and grew until finally, he had become his alter ego – that of a big, brooding werewolf.”

“Grrrrrrrrrr.”

Lorraine reached over her sleepy father-in-law, grabbed the newspaper off the table, rolled it up and wacked her wolfed out husband with it, right in the snout.  “Bad boy!”

Werewolf Larry welped.  His wife lectured him, stopping to deliver intermittent newspaper beatings along the way.  “Bad boy!  Bad…bad…bad!  That’s…the third…set of clothes…you ruined…this week!”

The wolf of the house lowered his head in shame and whimpered.  Lorraine kissed him on his cold nose.  “Oh, I can’t stay mad at you.  Go on!  Go into the bathroom and calm down.”

Hubby nodded and trudged into the living room.  His wife called after him.  “And whatever you do, don’t sit on the sofa, Larry!  I just vacuumed it!”

Larry woofed in response.

Lorraine put on her oven mitts, retrieved the casserole from the oven, then set the hot dish on the table.

The music continued.  “Wandering eye sockets of the destroyer of worlds longing to be ravished by the incoming tide of a fleeting inflection of an erection that belongs to neither me nor you but rather to a nation ruled by neither king nor queen and no amount of sexual vomit will replenish our love’s once lusty sheen!  Sexual vomit!  Yeah!  SEXUAL VOMIT!  YEAAAAAHHHHHHH!”

“Oh Whitney,” Lorraine mumbled to herself.  “You’re in for it now.”