TRUE.Beach

a true story

by Astor W. Heinemann

When I was a kid my family and I used to go to the beach a lot. This was great when I was younger, but as I got older and my legs started getting hairy they itched like hell. From all the scratching I developed some pretty bad rashes which did not go well at all with the salt water.

This is when the problems started.

The earliest memory I have from those trips is when I wouldn't go into the water, my mom and one of my aunts decided it would be good fun to pick me up and throw me in. I was bigger and stronger than both of them, but I didn't want to kick or punch too hard for fear of hurting either one of them. Apart from the humiliating experience, my rashes got even worse that week. This was how it went for a while.

A few years later they had given up asking me to come into the water and I usually just stayed behind in the shade listening to some music. This particular time we were in Atlantic City and there were no trees or shade I could sit at, so I had to stay out in the sun.

It was pretty empty for late summer, but I enjoyed the solitude anyway, just sitting in the sand, sun burning up my skull, nobody and nothing around me other than the bags and clothes from my family already in the water by then.

There were a lot of birds flying around and if you've ever been there you know what I'm talking about. So I was there minding my own business when out of nowhere this fucking bird decides that out of all the empty space for meters and meters around me, I was the perfect spot for taking a shit.

It came without warning, like a bomber dropping it's deadly nuke perfectly aimed at a critical enemy target. It came right unto the right side of my head covering a large portion of my hair, sloshing through part of my face and finally ending up in my jeans, as if I had just jizzed my pants...from the outside!

Whiter than the sand, white as an old man's head, white as snow, pure, untarnished bird shit all over me. At first I didn't know how to react, I was confused, what was this warm feeling taking over me, it was shit. My immediate thought was not to look up for fear of being targeted with a second bomb, this time straight on my face. I looked around in fear, terrorized at the prospect of anyone seeing this.

So I took off my clothing, used my jeans to wipe off the shit and went quietly into the water and to my surprise my legs didn't itch anymore. No one ever knew, well, at least till some months later.

And this happened again several times. Just hanging out with the neighborhood kids outside my place, sitting on the sidewalk below the power lines where birds also hang out with their friends. It seems word got around that it was hilarious to take a dump on me, a hotspot, the deserving one, so it kept happening, birds sizing me up, taking their strategic positions, ready, aim, fire. Every single time, my friends saw it and a new nickname stuck, the birdman.

The beach is a source of plenty pleasant memorable moments for most people, but for me it is the source, the beginning, the shit. I don't remember white sandy beaches, I remember white, slimy aerial septic waste flying down firmly on me.

I am Astor, and birds shit on me.

Ende.

TRUE.Gum

a true story

by Astor W. Heinemann

An afternoon just like any other for us. It might have been sunny or overcast, in either way it was extremely hot and humid as summer breaks always are. We did our usual routine, five o'clock Tony brings his cart out, big fryer full of oil who knows how old, everything was cooked in there and it may have been the reason why his snacks were so tasty. Deep fried empanadas, the least lean ground meat available, some old cheese and vegetables. You took a bite out of one of these things and you could feel the hot oil burn your skin as it dripped out.

Tony didn't sell refreshments, I don't know why, maybe he thought he couldn't make a decent profit from them, so we always walked a block down to the grocery store. It had recessed window, so we used this as our sitting area while we indulged in grease and sodas. That day Saul noticed a piece of gum just sitting neatly on the concrete slab that supported our asses, as if it had been purposely placed there. He picked it up and was about to remove the wrapping when I went "whoa! you sure you wanna do that?", "why not? it probably just fell out of some one's pocket", "well, how do you know that someone didn't just do something to it and just left it there for the next sucker to come and pick it up? He may be laughing his ass off watching us right now". Saul looked at it funny, placed it on the palm of his left hand and fiddled with it for a second, "that motherfucker" was all he said.

After we had our tummies full we went over to his place, sat on the fire escape and listened to some music. As  usual, the downstairs girls came up to hang with us. We called them the dog face sisters, with good reason. Not that they were really that ugly, it was a combination of not such good looks, not caring for themselves and their general punk wannabe attitude, and that was what most guys were turned off by.

Saul turned to me and said "I'll be right back". About a minute later he came back with a can of root beer. The dog face sisters had the annoying habit of violently grabbing whatever you had in your hands to eat, and one of them did so with the drink, with an evil haha-ain't-nothing-you-can-do-about-it grin on her face, while the other laughed. At that point Saul turned his back on them, towards me and pulled out the gum. He peeled a bit of the wrapping off and showed it to me. It had a dark brown spot and a piece of curly hair on top, which he removed and said "that wasn't there before" whispering while he winked his left eye at me. All I did was look at him in horror, but quietly sat back and watched. He put the gum back in his pocket.

Not five minutes had gone by when he put his hand in his pocket, not a word said, we were back to enjoying the music, and he pulled out the gum, making sure to casually keep it out to give the sisters enough time to see it. As he peeled back the first piece of wrapping the other sister jumped and took it from his hand, laughing maniacally as she did so. She kept on removing the wrap, layer by layer, as my eyes just got bigger and bigger. My jaw started to drop slowly, their laughter getting louder. Saul blurted out some fake complaints but made sure it wasn't enough for them to give it back.

From that point on, everything happened in slow motion. I could see this magnificently mischievous plan blossom to reality right there, in my presence. I couldn't believe it! Saul just seem to lean over to her with anticipation, my eyes just about to pop out, the root beer sister laughing at us, she probably though our expressions were from amazement at their consumables thievery prowess. The gum was finally fully out of it's wrapping, she looked at it with an almost watering mouth as she pulled it closer, discarded paper flying off into the wind. My arms tensed, I held on to Saul's arm with one hand and the fire escape railing with the other, it was unbelievable and inconceivable that it was actually happening, but it was!

Most of the specifics of what happened immediately afterwards is almost a blur now, what I do remember is her face chewing the gum, me yelling out "oh shit!" and Saul triumphantly announcing "exactly, m'boy!". We were laughing so hard that we had to come back in, so as not to plunge down to our demise accidentally. I can't remember the sisters' reaction to our laughter, we didn't tell them anything, but years past and they became conscious of their appearance and how it deterred guys from approaching them. Both became friendlier, started dressing better and actually looked pretty good. Some of our friends dated one or the other later and every time we found out about it, we would silently look at each other, first seriously and then crack up laughing uncontrollably.

Ende.