Sins of the Flesch: The Vice of Extramusical Dalliance
Rick
In my younger years during grad school I worked as a security guard in one or two places. It was awesome. Every. Single. Time. Awesome. Seriously, if I could get a security job that paid my mortgage I’d drop this whole career thing I’ve been slowly peicing together in a heartbeat, get a small, portable tape recorder, turn it on and fall asleep near wherever the 65-year-old former- marines-turned-security-guards were most skilled at ogling hot 19-year-old girls in booty shorts without getting caught. Well, that’s not true. Most of them don’t care if they get caught, because I don’t think they view hot girls as anything more that mobile, fleshy support systems for suspending boobs at slightly below eye level. Here is an actual exchange I witnessed just before lunch one day.
Girl With Big Boobs who was More Than Likely Over 18 But We’re Not Really Sure: Hi. Can you tell us where the…are you staring at my chest?
Mitch: Yes. (I know, right?! Balls like fucking mortar rounds.)
Girl: Eeeew.
Mitch: What? I like boobs.
Girl: You’re disgusting! (stalks off)
Mitch: (Turning to me) Dude, what a fucking cunt. I hate the class of people who come here. And get that fucking kid off the table before he kills himself, would you? Don’t these little pricks realize how much paperwork I have to do to explain to management that they learned a valuable lesson about gravity? Shit.
Maybe that’s just funny to me, but I’m sitting here alone typing this out and laughing my ass off. Also, that entire profanity-laced tirade was within about, oh, two feet of a whole herd of kids and their chaperones.
Now among the collection of retired police officers and military gentlemen who worked at a particular job in Cleveland, there is one person who rises so far above the rest of the cream it would be almost impossible to begin to describe how awesome he is.
To describe Rick physically is to describe virtually every other aspect of his existence. He is probably about 70, and his state of pasty dilapidation suggests he has spent his 25,000,000 or so days on this planet locked in a damp, concrete solitary confinement cell deep in the ground, paranoically oiling his shackle chaffing and counting his bottles of urine mumbling "The way of the future... The way of the future..."
He is roughly shaped like a dangling dry-aged ham with two stubby short legs protruding from a pair of trousers which have a waistband the size of a beachball. The pant legs have no taper straight through to the ground, and are so large one is wholly unable to detect the movement of his legs therein. The resulting illusion not only allows him to sneak up on and scare children who are misbehaving because his pant legs appear to remain still, but gives the convincing impression that he propels himself by means of a single, broad foot which hydroplanes on a layer of slime.
Rick has few vices any more owing to the fact that his liver and kidneys are barely able to process the constant decay of a body ravaged by time, Wild Turkey, Vietnam, a hateful marriage, and the two Hungry Man XXL frozen turkey entrees he takes in during every lunch break. The ridiculous amount of salt he consumes in these two meals is probably the only thing keeping him alive other that the rejuvenating properties of staring at 17-year-old girls, because his astronomically high blood pressure allows him to successfully pump blood past his semi-herniated abdomen to his toes. Normally a systolic pressure of 750 would immediately rupture every blood vessel in the human body like a condom being inflated by a fire hydrant, but Rick’s arterial walls are so hard from a combination of cholesteral and three tours of Vietnam that his blood is basically flowing like sausage through a meat extruder.
Oh, and about those three tours of Vietnam. Rick was drafted when he was barely 18, and he appears to have had a somewhat different impression of the whole scenario than most of the PTSD-affected veterans who returned as shattered, broken shells of once great men. Rick? Well, I’ll let him tell it.
Rick: I did three tours in Vietnam
Me: Holy shit dude, that’s terrible.
Rick: What, are you kidding me? Vietnam is the greatest place on earth. Let me tell you something sonny, killing {racist epithet} is the single greatest sport mankind can engage in. When my first tour ended, I went back to the states and they made me an MP. After a year of that shit I got bored because I was teaching stupid spoiled rich kids about things I’d already done for real, so I reenlisted to get the hell back in the action. I had a great time until I got shot in the leg.
Me: Holy shit dude, that’s terrible.
Rick: What, are you kidding me? I didn’t even know there was a problem until I pulled off my boot and poured out a puddle of blood. I thought the squishing was some {racist epithet} I stomped on. My buddy wasn’t so lucky. He had a ricochet catch him right in the middle of his forehead going straight up. Peeled the skin straight back and popped the top of his skull clean off like a tin of Spam. Nastiest thing I’ve ever seen. His brain was just sitting there like he took off a hat, and the top of his skull was flappin’ like a flag in the wind. I thought for sure he was dead.
Me: Holy SHIT dude...that’s terrible.
Rick: Naw, the doctors just flipped that baby back over and sewed it closed again. Had him back home in no time, and once they fixed my leg up I got right back to killing’.
Me: Holy shit dude…
Rick: You know what the best part about Vietnam was? Open season and no bag limit. God I miss it.
Me: Dude...
Yeah. Apparently Rick loved Vietnam so much that when the war ended, they had to kick him out. I will say that again. They literally had to KICK HIM OUT OF VIETNAM. I guess he hung out on the army’s tab by volunteering for virtually every cleanup duty he could possibly find until the military looked at his service record and told him he had to get the hell out because they thought he was crazy for wanting to stay in a war zone that long. Yes. That is correct. Rick loved Vietnam so much it made an organization dedicated to killing people uncomfortable about how much he liked killing people. I didn’t think that was possible.
So now Rick works around kids.
Although we had a standard uniform we had to wear every day at work, we were allowed a few small bobbles and trinkets to personalize our work experience. For the ladies it’s often large earrings or a necklace. For Rick, it’s weapons. Plural. Rick doesn’t carry guns to work, but you can be absolutely assured that he’s got a knife or two on him because, hey—you never know when you might have to shank a kid on a field trip. He actually pulled that thing out once and threatened some teenagers (Rick hates teenagers more than MPs.) because they were harassing a squirrel. Oh wait, I forgot to tell you: there is one thing Rick loves more than Vietnam. Well, maybe not that much, but almost as much. That would be animals. Loves 'em. Rick would throw himself out a plate glass window to catch a baby slug that blew off the roof, and I’m pretty sure a squirrel in the park occupies a somewhat highter level of affection. But as soon as a chimpanzee loses its hair and starts walking upright…Pure. Unadulterated. Hatred.
So where was I? Ah. Rick was going to shank some teenagers. So these 14-year-olds are out throwing rocks at a squirrel or some shit, and Rick sees this—from the fourth floor window mind you—abandons his post, and immediately gets on the elevator. I could not help but be reminded of the time a friend of mine had a boyfriend who shoved her into a wall and she called home crying. As soon as she told her dad, the phone just hit the floor. Her mom picked it up and said, “What the hell did you just tell him?!? Your father’s putting his pants on!” Yeah. So Rick goes straight down the elevator, out the front door, whips out the knife, and says as calm as could be (I’m told):
“If you throw one more rock at that squirrel and I’m gonna slit your tummy open and wrap myself in your guts like a meat toga. You understand me, shithead?”
THAT’S SO AWSOME I’M NOT EVEN SURE WHAT THAT MEANS!!! Predictably, the kids pretty much pissed themselves and then pissed off.
So Rick comes back upstairs, more than likely to a look of giddy glee on my face, and the first thing he says to me after almost killing people is, “Did you see that ass on the girl in the black spandex? Jesus Christ, sonny, it looks like two bear cubs fighting over a pot of honey.”
I actually fell to the ground laughing. Rick got a slightly bemused smile on his face, happy his advanced level of dirty-old-manness could be used to educate the younger generation, and says ”I’d eat that out even if she had gas so bad my chin came up brown.” Then he went to lunch. That was his afternoon. And probably every afternoon of his life.
1. Almost shanked a child
2. Ate lunch.
Ah, but there is so much more to Rick. We haven't even begun to discuss the delights of firearms.
Literature, Humor: Sins of the Flesch: The Vice of Extramusical Dalliance—Prologue
Literature, Humor: Sins of the Flesch: The Vice of Extramusical Dalliance—The Security Guard Years pt 1: Rick
Literature, Humor: Sins of the Flesch: The Vice of Extramusical Dalliance—The Security Guard Years pt 2: Owen
Literature, Humor: Sins of the Flesch: The Vice of Extramusical Dalliance—The Security Guard Years pt. 3: Owen Eats Habaneros for Breakfast
Literature, Humor: Sins of the Flesch: The Vice of Extramusical Dalliance—The Security Guard Years pt. 4: Rick Explains how to Kill People