(graphic by Nick Meador*)

Steve by DAN CRUMM

"He was insane, or at least irregular. About six foot and a little heavy set with dark hair and darker eyes. His arms were tattooed completely with symbols of counter culture, whatever that was."

"That's a rape, man."

"No it isn't, how would a rapist be able to get so many different camera angles? Plus she just smiled."

I was in my mother's basement with my brother and a friend of mine, watching an internet clip titled: "cute French girl gets raped." My mother had left town for a month and she asked my brother and I to feed the dogs and watch the house while she was away. I was happy to oblige since her modest suburban home was a good deal more comfortable than the couches and bare floors that, as a young street urchin, I was accustomed to. She'd asked us to keep the place clean and have no guests, but once the grocery money had been appropriated into a beer fund her house was quickly transformed into a comfortable squat for all the drunks, cretins, and disaffected youth I spent my time with.

It was early evening in a typically hot and balmy Michigan summer. The heat out doors made the basement feel especially dank and musty which seemed appropriate for the company I kept. I had spent the day washing dishes for rich people at a restaurant that I couldn't afford to eat at, gazing into the filthy swirling water of the dish tank and trying in vain to find a metaphor for life. I thought that perhaps the people could be seen as the scalding hot frying pans, burning with life and love until the cold cruel spray of life cooled us to room temperature for sanitation and storage purposes. Or maybe we were the uneaten bits of food, clinging desperately to the filthy plate of life even though we had been discarded as unwanted or unneeded. Or maybe I was a minimum wage laborer gone half mad from too much acid and too much Bukowski. No, I doubt it's the acid. So much uncertainty. At any rate I had come up short in my pathetic search for hope in a sink full of garbage, but that was okay because coming up short is something I felt a man should get used to if he wants to retain his sanity, if even there were such a thing as sanity.

Anyway the day's work was done and now I sat, flecked head to toe with food scraps, the front of my shirt soaked through with dirty and stinking dishwater, starting to drink and watching porn with my brother and a friend in the basement. The video was somewhat convincing as a rape but ultimately the artistry of the camera work gave away the fact that is was a professionally produced video. Or at least as professional as pornographers who specialize in rape fetishes could be.

When I looked back over my shoulder I saw that my friend, Steve, had his pants around his knees with his hand groping around in the darker recesses of his crotch at an angle that suggested he was touching his asshole.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

"What's it look like?"

"Looks like you're touching you're asshole."

"Yep. I'm scratching my asshole with Joe's pen."

His eyes grew wide and he gasped.

At this point it's necessary to tell you something about Steve. He was insane, or at least irregular. About six foot and a little heavy set with dark hair and darker eyes. His arms were tattooed completely with symbols of counter culture, whatever that was. He loved GG Allen but could sing word for word every Spice Girls song ever written and he was frequently jailed or institutionalized. He was an anomaly and I admired him very much because despite his bizarre habits and bouts of suicidal tendencies he was honest and loyal, although erratic. I once saw him beat a guy with a baseball bat as a favor to a mutual friend of ours while he shouted a random line from his favorite movie: Boys in the Hood. The guy deserved a beating but I pitied him only for the endless amount of confusion it must have caused him to be beaten so savagely in front of his own home by a stranger who's only words were: "Ya need ta keep dem got dam babies out the street nigga." He was disdainful in the eyes of society but I think if Christ were ever to walk the earth again to enlighten humanity it would be in the form of Steve.

"Holy shit it's in. Joe you're pen is in my fucking asshole right now," he laughed.

Joe said, "Aw what the fuck, Steve? You owe me a new pen."

He only smiled as he withdrew the shit-covered end of my brother's pen from his ass and tossed it onto my lap. The end of it had been chewed so much that it was jagged and bell-shaped and it looked very uncomfortable. But sure enough it had been in his asshole. That was plain to see on account of the streaks of feces that had been left on it.

Steve was now giggling to himself as he tried to walk upstairs and fix his pants at the same time. We found a video clip of a Russian man having his throat cut that we decided must have been real footage and went upstairs for more beer. The house was cloudy with cigarette and dope smoke. I tried to clear the air in front of my face and I tripped over a half naked punk rocker that was sleeping in my mother's kitchen. He was cussing up a storm as I grabbed a couple more beers and headed out to the screened-in back porch, leaving him to mumble some seriously vulgar threats to no one from beneath the covers. I could hear all the other fuckups drinking, talking shit and taking comfort in each other's misery. When I opened the door it was a terrible sight.

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