“Does cocaine make you a manipulative prick or were you one to begin with, without any added stimulative effort?” asks Co-Op Board Member Number One with stone cold detachment, a fifty-something, well-dressed CFO who never met a Brooks Brothers striped shirt he didn’t like.
The Manipulative Prick wiggles in his wobbly wicker chair and swallows a big gulp of saliva to extract some last-second drips from the blast of cocaine he did moments prior, in his Tudor style apartment in the river town of Dobbs Ferry, NY, about 30 minutes north of his old school buying spot in Washington Heights where he bought from Julio Silverbade, the Third before his co-op eviction trial began.
The Manipulative Prick (otherwise known as Sir Snort A Lot) loved doing cocaine—mainly on the weekends, though, when he wasn’t working. So, what harm was there in that, besides his addiction to speed spilling into other spheres of his life (such as rapidly fading domestic bliss, after getting married to a nurse who was growing tired fast of his liar, liar, nose on fire routine, too)?
Last month, when the newlyweds received their first of many more noise complaints to come, the manipulative prick, a forty-year-old phone sales rep for Verizon, says, “Relax babe. Our neighbor, the retired accountant, complains about our alarm clock being too aggressively loud for his taste. But he’s just lonely and miserable since his wife died and is redirecting his rage at the world at me because his life sucks compared to mine; that’s all.”
Wife Kate, a thirty-five-year-old, one-time divorced, pretty yet worn-down-looking ER nurse, says, with weary disgust, “You’re a forty-year-old cokehead who sells smart phones for a living, which sell themselves. Plus, he has one full set of hair more than you do. So, what is he so jealous about, exactly—your tar stains on your two front teeth?
“Is he jealous about how your best friends are druggy, alcoholic degenerates like yourself who make more money and are more career-secure? Do you think he longs for lustful urges to get pegged by trannies at four am in the morning because he can’t ejaculate into his wife’s fairly tight, doody-free snatch?
“Or is the accountant jealous about how you still have to call up mommy and daddy for help with the rent because your money management skills are so piss poor, for a Jewish cokehead, that your Hebrew name is under judicial review? “Maybe he’s jealous about you being a no-show uncle who’s more likely to remember the spread on the Giants game from five years ago today than your brother’s kids’ birthdays, despite one of them being born on New Year’s Day, moron.”
Now the Manipulative Prick starts to defend himself against charges of being an annoying, loudmouth, serially selfish, ungrateful, spoiled rotten neighbor who deserves to stay in his humble one-bedroom apartment in Dobbs Ferry for another day.
He says, “First off, I take incredible offense at being labeled as a manipulative prick of any kind.” Then a freak of nature happens, as a bulge in his pants emerges, which concerns him immediately, because normally anal stimulation is needed on coke, to get him erect with aroused interest at all, these days.
The Manipulative Prick looks down at his swelled bulge, smiles amusingly at it, and continues his customary bullshit artist ways, insisting, “Stop treating me like Bernie Madoff. I’m not screwing anyone out of money, here.”
This time, the Manipulative Prick’s prick makes a near-deafening sound out of the freaking blue, by smashing up against the table he’s sitting behind for his eviction trial, sounding like battering ram just made full blown contact against it.
Now the Co-Op Board Member Number One snaps out of his ice-cold veneer and says, “Causing more noise commotion during your eviction notice hearing, already? You really do know how to make a sustained shitty impression. Is your middle name Automatic Fuckup, or what?” Now the Manipulative Prick starts getting a rapid surge of heart palpitations, especially after glancing down to his lap at his middle appendage, noticing how it now resembles the hammer of Thor.
Co-Op Board Member Number Two, a wrinkly, diminutive, yet feisty, retired realtor, chimes in and says, “How are we supposed to believe you’ll become an oasis of calm or an embodiment of measured normalcy, compared to all our other fifty-and-over tenants, when you can’t even sit still and remain commotion-free during your final eviction notice hearing?
“Just try not to be so out of control, boozy, and drugged out loud when consequences for your got-to-have-satisfaction-up-my-nose, whenever-I-want behavior have never been greater.”
The Manipulative Prick takes a sip of water on the table in front of him (the same aftershock table that shook all the cobweb corners lose in the room prior, in addition to the realtor’s wig) and says, “All I do on the weekends is smoke weed and watch Giant games alone while my wife works the weekend shift, especially since COVID hit, these days. I don’t even see my friends to do coke anymore, especially since I got into weed oils (which don’t stink up the hallways nearly half as much, actually).”
Now a humongous dick blasts through the Manipulative Prick’s pants, blasting straight through the art deco tin ceiling and through a fancy schmancy chandelier while looking more like the worm giant from Dune. All the Co-Op board members duck for cover under their judgment table as shards of glass fly across the room in every conceivable direction.
Co-Op Board Member Number Two, squatting underneath the table for cover with a look of abject, confused bewildered terror on her face, screams, “What the fuck is that?”
The Never-Ending Prick.
Michael Kornbluth
Do It All Dad Year Podcast Blog 