Vertical Vern

Until my friend died I used to meet him at a restaurant in Seattle’s University District called “The Continental.” It was the last hold out where smokers of all nationalities communed in a hodge-podge of language and culture. 

My friend had a fixation with Third World women. He would tell me about them while he hot-boxed one cigarette after another, blowing it over his pancakes into my eggs and toast. It was pointless to complain because he couldn’t go fifteen minutes without a drag. 

Here is a tidbit of our last conversation before he fell ill and died. My nickname for him was…Vertical Vern. 

“Damn…look at me. 

I smoke three packs a day.

Three damn packs.

Have you checked the price of cigs?

Fucking ridiculous.

I’d sell my mother for a pack…

So they got me by the short hairs.

Been smoking ever since I was this high.

Tried the patch…and the gum. 

That shit don’t work.

My lungs got holes the size of the Holland tunnel.

What’s the point of stopping now?

I know people who’ve quit cold-turkey

And what do you know?

Dull as dirt. Got nothing to say.

“Hi, I’m John…I’m healthy…

Eat raw fish, hit the gym, don’t drink,

Wow…ain’t I something!”

Those kind of people shrivel my nuts.

You know why?

Because…BOOM! They’re the walking dead…

One foot in the grave.

Not me, man!

I’m going down huffin’ a carton of Marlboros, 

hooked up to an intravenous Dewars drip. 

Sixty-three years old and look at me…

Liver’s pickled…lungs are shot

But hey, I’m vertical! 

You’d think painting was a crime.

I should show you Isabella. She’s Cuban.

I had every intention of painting her

But I made love to her first.

She laid there like a mattress with a hole in it.

The only thing moving was her mouth

telling me about her family in Cuba. 

I painted her in bed.

That’s the last time I oiled. She was something.

Venus to my penis…What more can I say?

We all got faults but let me tell you something…

Do you think ol’ Vern here painted her with small titties?

Hell no! I painted a goddamn goddess rack.

Now I teach her bambinos to paint 

And we get along just fine.

See how it works? 

You’re smiling…but I know a thing or two about life.

Lived long enough to write the whole damn book.

Been married too. My ex ended up with a knee surgeon.

Now there’s a fucking racket. 

People born everyday with two knees ready to bust.

I guess I’m lucky.

Got two good ones…

But my lungs are shot. 

What do you expect…smoking three packs a day.” 

Strange that I remember this random, disjointed conversation like it happened today. The memories flood back…How I used to stop by his house to visit and he would answer the door in his underwear, oblivious to the fact he’d been up all night working on some new painting. We’d stand in the kitchen in front of his easel…layers of paint dripping from the stove doubling as a palate, and he’d tell me about a new hue he was experimenting with. It crossed my mind that he thought of women in much the same way he dabbled, diluted, and mingled his color wheel…. A man, who one morning after thirty years of marriage, possibly in search of an undiscovered exotic pigment, walked down to the bakery for a maple bar and never came home.”