Poor Petey 

Poor Petey got his name from the fine townsfolk of Pancake Texas. The people around here say Poor Petey is retarded. They say it, not me. I hate that word and would gladly punch anyone in their pie-hole if they said it in front of me… pow, right in the puss! Petey is not retarded, he’s just a wee bit socially challenged. He doesn’t speak much, except to me, his eight cats and Charlie, his goldfish. Actually, Charlie is the 26^th goldfish he’s had since I met him over 40 years ago. He keeps naming them Charlie. He talks a lot to Charlie, but it really doesn’t bother me. I have my own quirks, for example, I like to dress up Ms. Mullet like Dolly Parton and try to get her to howl along to ‘9 To 5’. She hates that, but… it makes me laugh. So we’re all a bit ‘special’ in our own fucked up little ways.

Petey had it hard growing up. In the spirit of calling a spade a spade, his mother was the town tramp. She’d gladly give you a hand job for a Bud Lite and a fag; she called it a ‘Happy Hour Handy’. The problem though was she wasn’t one of those ‘hookers with a heart of gold’ types. No sir, she was a beastly bitch, perpetually pissed off. She yelled a lot. My Grams said the only time her big yap wasn’t screaming about some stupid shit was when it was crammed full of a big fat pecker. Grams was always saying funny stuff like that. Anyway, back to Petey… he was pretty much screwed the second he came sliding out the Holland Tunnel. That’s what the old men around town called his mom’s ‘downstairs girly parts’. 

Petey lived in constant fear the first 19 years of his life. While his mom never hit him, she screamed a lot… about stupid shit. ‘Why is my lipstick in the cat pan!?!?!’, ‘What’s this needle doing in the ice-box!?!?!’,’Where’s my Dallas Cowboys teddy!?!.... you haven’t been wearing it again, you little perv…have you!?!?!’ The June Cleaver gene completely by-passed her ass. She set their trailer home on fire three times before she packed up her circus and headed north to service the rural area of northern Wyoming when Petey was 19. She left him all alone to fend for himself. What the hell kind of job was he going to find with a third grade education?

 Wal-Mart up in OK City hired him as a greeter. That didn’t last long though; he got fired after three weeks because several of the customers complained. So he accidently tripped an old fat hag. Maybe she should have been paying more attention to where she was walking instead of racing her fat ass across the parking lot to get to the last motorized cart. The last straw was when the district manager stopped by for a surprise inspection. His claim was Petey ‘creeped him out’. He said Petey had all the charm and warmth of Vincent Price. Not True! Petey has a lovely soul, you just have to get beyond all the superficial shit; like the fact he’s color blind, so his socks rarely match, or any of his clothes for that matter. As a post script to poor Petey’s Wal-Mart experience, it was no surprise that he was immediately replaced by the district manager’s pimple-faced, butt-munch nephew. He wore an oversized bow tie that looked a lot like a propeller strapped to his chicken neck.

Probably nobody knows Petey like me. I take care of him now, I have to, nobody else will. Well, honestly, I like having him around. He more than meets all my requirements in a mate, he’s quiet and he doesn’t judge me. More importantly, I love him in all his royal hot-messiness. He knows this, so he loves me too. But we don’t advertise this, no sir, not here in Pancake Texas. Yes, there was some stupid ass billions of years ago that thought that Pancake would be a good name for a town. Why not Potato Chip or Pickle, I like those a lot better than Pancakes. Anyway, Pancake people don’t like guys like Petey and me. Guys that like guys. They think we like having sex with their little boys and goats. The boys they might overlook, but not the goats. Goats are sacred here in Pancake, they’re like those cows in Asia, or is that Japan? Anyway, ‘don’t fuck the goats in Pancake’ as the old men down at Barney’s like to say. Petey and I have Never had sex with little boys or goats. We keep to ourselves, and so far, that’s been okay with the Pancake people. Oh, we hear the whispers, but we can’t let it bother us, we just can’t. The only time I ever came close to retaliation was one night down at Barney’s when some greased up redneck was blabbing about that movie ‘Brokeback Mountain’. Okay, so I never saw the movie, but I wasn’t living under a rock… I had cable, I knew what it was about. “Fucking faggots! Now they’re making movies about it! Who ever heard of such a thing! Homo Cowboys…. give me a fucking break!”. I thought, ‘Shut up you stupid trout troll!’ Instead of saying this out loud, I simply got up, went out to the parking lot and took a piss in the gas tank of his fucked up Ford Bronco. Then I went home and made love to Petey.  I suspect the general attitude of Pancake is ‘Keep that shit to yourselves and there won’t be any problems’. So, we do, and there isn’t any.

Not all the Pancake people are dildos, there’s Emma next door. Grams never really cared much for her, she called her ‘the dirty woman next door’. Grams didn’t know Emma like I do, she’s one of those people that just don’t seem to quite fit into anybody’s idea of what a normal person should be. But, unlike Petey’s mom, she is kinda like that ‘hooker with the heart of gold’... she has a wild streak, but she’ll fight tooth and nail for those she cares for. These days, that would mainly be Petey and me.  Every now and then, Petey and I will go over to her house and have a bowl with her. Emma likes her pot, so in the spirit of being a good neighbor, she shares it with me. Petey tried it once, but we all decided it wasn’t a good idea after the first time he tried it and ended up on old man Thompson’s hen house because he thought ants were plotting to kidnap him. So Emma and I smoke alone. We smoke and listen to the great soul divas… Aretha Franklin and Etta James. Emma says Etta ‘takes her there’. I don’t know where there is, but it sounds wonderful to hear Emma describe it.

Another decent soul in Pancake is Conrad. Conrad prefers to be called Crystal, so we are only too happy to call him that. Petey met Crystal first, and brought him into our lives. Crystal’s story is a sad one for another time, so all you need to know for now is Crystal operates in his own universe, plenty far enough away from reality. He claims he’s the one that suggested Farrah Fawcett ‘feather’ her hair. I’m not sure about that, but Farrah was from Texas, so who knows… but in Crystal’s reality, that’s just how it happened.   Crystal is obsessed with hair. His tiny 3 room apartment stores dozens of wigs, all on their headstands with names written on them… Britney, Cher, Christina, Dolly and you know the rest. There’s a story behind every one of those wigs, a story that could have only happened in Crystal’s universe. The moment I realized I wanted Crystal as a friend happened one day when Petey talked him into going fishing with us. Crystal showed up in a yellow sun hat, pink tank top and purple sweat pants. That alone was enough to win my undying friendship, but Crystal wasn’t done. He opened the sewing box he brought  with him and pulled out a lure… a lure with a tiny wig hot-glued on it.  He claimed it would attract the ‘bigger, more manlier’ fish. The best thing about Crystal is he’s Petey’s best friend aside from me. Petey fits right into Crystal’s universe, and by default, because I’m Petey’s partner, me too. I have to say, for me personally, it’s a beautiful place to be.

That pretty much is our world; Emma, Crystal, Ms. Mullet, Charlie the goldfish and eight assorted cats with names that change constantly. And Petey is my world…

Petey’s life changed when I invited him to stay with me after the bank repossed his mother’s trailer. ‘Fuck them Petey, their getting what they deserve, a trashed out trailer with three scorched bedroom walls and a stench all the Lysol in the world couldn’t get rid of’. Petey cried; my stupid-ass, piss-poor attempt at trying to cheer him up failed. My heart broke, watching him cry. But, it wasn’t the first time I had seen him cry. That happened many years before, when we both were in the same kindergarten class.

Petey was a mess even back then; and to be a mess back then in a small Texas town meant you got picked on. I wasn’t really aware of this dynamic back then, all I knew was if this poor guy was being picked on over me, he must really be fucked up… more than me. The more I paid attention to his ordeal, the more I identified with him; his loneliness, sadness… I feel in love with Petey… poor Petey. So, maybe I wasn’t really in love with him back then, what does a six year old know about love?  But I was obsessed, attracted to him… to his loneliness.  By the time we got to first grade, everyone got bored with Petey, so they simply ignored him. He was there, but nobody noticed, no one but me. The teachers were just as bad as the students; they were more concerned about the very-married Mr. Tucker porking the coach’s fiancé under the bleachers at the homecoming game than about Petey or his problems. This became very apparent one early spring afternoon in our cafeteria. Petey was sitting at a table by himself, eating whatever crap his mom tried to pass off as lunch. I noticed he fell to the floor and was grasping out at the nothing that was in front of him… I sat there, watching. I was frozen, I couldn’t move; I couldn’t help him. Evidently, no one else could either. He was twisting on the floor… scared and crying. After what seemed like forever, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, what seemed to be a table hurling through the air, a table surrounded by napkins, plastic spoons and G.I. Joe lunch boxes; then Mr. Clark, our gym coach came flying across the cafeteria. He scooped up Petey and squeezed him, hard. And at the risk of ruining the mood of this story, I have to say, horror aside, I almost pissed my pants when whatever god-awful glop of goo came flying out of Petey’s mouth and landed right in Hallie Hannaford’s pretty lace-covered lap. She squealed like Ms. Piggy on crack.  “Didn’t any of you idiots see this…. pitiful boy choking!!!” Coach Clark yelled. The worst part wasn’t watching as everyone tried to pretend they hadn’t seen him, the worst part was seeing Petey cry, as the words ‘pitiful boy’ bounced around in his head. Again, my heart was broken, over Petey… poor Petey.

“Petey, you have to go, you can’t stay’. “Where?” he asked. The time had come, I had to help him this time. “With me, you can live with me and Grams”. “Why?” Why… Jesus Christ! He was forcing me into a corner. I wanted to help him, but at what price? I was confused, so I panicked and told him the truth.

This is where the twist is, it wasn’t me who helped Petey, it was Petey who helped me… poor me. I needed Petey to bring me back to life, back to a life I thought was long over with. So I pretty much begged Petey to come live with us. Happily, he packed up his cats, mismatched socks and Charlie the 9^th and moved in.

While I may enjoy occasionally enjoy dressing Ms. Mullet up like Dolly Parton, I’m not overly girly. I believe in love and sharing it, but I like to do it in my own way; one where I don’t seem like a love-sick groupie at a rock concert. Petey knows this and loves me anyway, and I love him… Poor Petey.