In the little time I knew her, my mom showed me that nice-nice doesn’t get you anywhere. But Dad was a mean and cussing son-of-a-bitch and he always got whatever he wanted.
From the bit I remember, she was always real kind to him, even when he’d come home and wake us up with his fussing and yelling. Then after he left with the lady who smelled of bubblegum, he’d still come back from time to time and she’d be all kind to him again. She was real sweet with my teachers, too, but I still flunked third grade. Then Mom was nice to that guy at the fairground. She’d told me we only had enough money for three rides, but I must have gone on that spinning, flying thing about a hundred times. Then the guy with the dragon tattoo who ran the ride showed up at our place and she was smiling and laughing a lot and they were dancing when I had to go to bed. Later, I woke up when the cops came to take him away and Mom was crying. Her face was all different colours, like Smarties.

Besides the funeral – where she didn’t look like she should be sleeping because she looked very pretty in that purple dress – the last thing I remember about her was that she was nice to Dad when he came back with his brown cardboard suitcase and brought me a toy rifle like The Rifleman had. He patted my head. But I heard him start cussing and yelling again, and that’s the night he used the knife on her.

That’s what I told the psychiatrist guy I had to see this afternoon, but I probably cursed a lot more. I don’t even try to talk nice around the suits anymore. Anyway, he’ s sitting there looking all stiff and waiting for something, and then he clears his throat and says that stuff about vertical conflict. Says my Rosencraps or whatever the heck those tests are demonstrate deep rooted hostility. He gets two hundred bucks an hour for that. For free, I could tell him he’s so tight that a tractor couldn’t pull a pin out of his crack. Then I listen up a bit because he goes on that I show strong artistic impulses and need to express them.

“How I do that down on the dock, doc?” I say, and I really want to know.

“What is your preferred medium of artistic endeavour?” he asks. I could tell he wanted me to ask for a translation because he sort of leans back puts on that face the bigger dog always does.

“Were I to hazard a guess, Doctor, I might venture that literary pursuits intrigue me,” I say. “I’m outta here.”

But I duck into Melvin’s for a couple and some sort of tour company must have messed up because there are about two dozen German women sitting around in the dark and listening to a classic rock station piped in on Mel’s cheap speakers. I’m sitting at the bar watching Kenny pour drinks from dusty bottles and then three lookers are around me; all first or second-line centers. It’s like the Dixie Chicks in a dungeon. After a few pints, I’m starting to really like German girls because they don’t mind that you look real hard at them as if you’re trying to understand what they’re saying. Finally I figure that one girl, Irma, wants to know what I do, and I tell her I’m a writer. Why not? I mean, it’s doctor’s orders.

“Would you write on me?” she asks. I figure she meant to say ‘about me’, but what the heck?

“Sure,” I say.

Now we’re both naked at my place and she doesn’t want to do anything except give me phrases to scribble on her with a magic marker.

I’m tired of writing already. And I’m tired of asking nice.