DUM DUM Zine would like to welcome back Justin Maurer for the final installment of “Little Armenian Prowler” (read Pt. 1 and Pt. 2!), which we’ve serialized in 3 parts in the month of May. You may remember work from our past serials featuring Jessica Garrison’s One Dollar Stories, and more recently, Kristen Felicetti’s radio play, “The New York Crimes.”
A few weeks later my girlfriend was out to a work dinner and I was enjoying sitting in my underwear eating Thai Food delivery out of the box.
I got a phone call from my neighbor Jorge, the out of work gay actor who lives upstairs with his husband, another actor.
“Could you do me a big favor,” he asked.
“Sure,” I said.
“Would you mind staying in your living room?”
“No, not at all, I said.”
“I’ll explain later, well, we have this house guest and he’s going crazy and I have to throw him out,” he said.
“No problem,” I said, flicking on the living room lights and the front porch light.
I saw a man with an umbrella and a duffel bag leaving and heard my neighbor’s door slam shut. I heard the man with the umbrella say, “Fuck fuck fuck fuck.”
A few moments later there was a knock on my back door. It was Jorge.
“Come in,” I said. “Do you want any water or juice?” We didn’t have anything besides water, juice and milk and I didn’t think he would want any milk.
“No thank you,” he said, sitting down at our dining room table. He was wearing a black leather jacket, a new-ish one, and had hair gel in his hair. Gay guys are always so well put together. I was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, mismatched socks and a dirty pair of blue jeans with burrito stains that I hastily pulled on.
Jorge began to tell me the story, “We have a houseguest. He was in a play with my husband Francis last year. He seemed normal and we heard he was living on the street in Hollywood so we said he could stay over for a little while.”
He showed me a photo of the crazy guy. The crazy guy looked very gay. He had a big femmy smile and a lot of hair gel. I think they call this kind of gay guy a “twink,” even though I don’t really know what a twink is or what that classification of gay really constitutes.
Jorge continued.
“On the couch he’ll just sit there staring straight ahead. Even if we talk to him he just stares straight ahead. At night we lock our bedroom door.”
He rubbed his hands together out of nervousness or lack of warmth.
“We went to the grocery store and there was this pretty girl working at one of the cashiers. He went up to her all close and starting hitting on her. She clearly didn’t want anything to do with him. I said, ‘Joe, come on.’ And he didn’t listen. I walked over to him and he said, ‘I just got out of jail, I haven’t had a woman in a long time, leave me alone.’
‘Oh MY God,’ I thought, Jorge said in an affected way that made him sound like a teenage girl.
“So we walked back and he started yelling, ‘Fuck fuck, you fucked it up. You fucked it up. Since Francis and I are from Chicago we hide knives all over the house for protection. Just in case, I mean this is L.A. I found one of the knives and put it in my jacket pocket.”
He pulled the knife out of the inside breast pocket of his newish black leather jacket. It was one of those military style hunting knives that’s in a black leather sheath. My dad used to have one like that with a compass screwed on the end of the shallow handle. It was called a survival knife I think. It had a snakebite kit inside the handle along with some other basic survival tools. I remember hoping that I wouldn’t get bit by a rattlesnake. My dad said he knew how to cut an X on the snakebite and suck out the venom but I didn’t believe him.
I found my mind wandering and Jorge was still telling his story.
“So I got his duffel bag and put it outside. He left and took his umbrella which he always carries around for some reason and a suitcase. I don’t know where he got the suitcase or what he has inside of it. I don’t know if he’s shooting up or on drugs or what. Anyway I can’t have him in our house around our dogs. So if he comes back, don’t let him in.”
Jorge went out the back door. I drank a beer and let the dog out to go to the bathroom and then watched a documentary in bed. I was drifting off, so I shut it off and went to sleep. A few hours later my girlfriend stumbled in reeking of vodka tonic. She woke me up and told me that a man had tried to kiss her in an elevator. When she pushed him away he bit her on the nose.
“What,” I said. “Where was the can of mace I bought you? You should have kneed him in the balls,” I said.
“I know, but all I could think of doing was to push him away. He tried to put his tongue in my mouth. He was calling me a prick tease and I said I didn’t know what he was talking about, I didn’t know him or recognize him. There was an old man in the elevator too.”
“And the old man didn’t do anything,” I asked.
“No he just asked the guy what he was doing. And then the elevator got to the bottom floor and I ran.”
“Why didn’t you complain about the guy to the restaurant,” I said. “They might have cameras in the lobby there, you could have pointed out the guy.”
“I know, I’ll call them tomorrow,” she said.
I twisted and turned in bed angrily. There is never a dull moment in Little Armenia.
Justin Maurer was born in Los Angeles but came of age in the Pacific Northwest. He has written 2 chapbooks and 3 novels. He plays in punk bands like Clorox Girls, Red Dons, Suspect Parts, LA Drugz and Maniac. He sells thingies to dentists. He likes his peanut butter crunchy. See more of his writing and music here.