It Feels So Good When I Stop Read Online Free Page A

naked in the wind like the Statue of Liberty stripped of her green clothes and skin.
    Fuck New York.
    I wondered if it was possible to avoid it for the rest of my life. A guy can say with some degree of certainty while passing through What’s-his-nuts, Montana, on a bus, that, God willing, he’ll never be back that way. But for him to make that claim about New York City—even if he doesn’t have a wife there—is hubristic.
    I picked at the wound where the carpet had separated from the baseboard. For the time being at least, I wasn’t going anywhere near New York. I had done my part by prying open the lioness’s mouth. There was no way I was going to stick my fucking head in. I rolled onto my back and gave in to my growing hunger for a cigarette.
    The TV was still cooking from the night before. I jacked the volume from zero to full with an unbridled, upward flick of the toe. A long, distorted trumpet blast from an elephant spanked the bare walls of the empty living room.
    “Nooooo,” I pleaded with the TV. I turned the volume down before the set could explode. My eye was caught by a visually pleasing, grainy 1960s nature documentary. The auteur was clearly a fan of the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup . Some elephants were dancing and laughing as they sprayed muddy water over one another’s wrinkled hulls. An orchestra of piccolos, trombones, xylophones, and tym pani swelled to a crescendo as a calf wading shoulder-deep in the slop vanished beneath celebratory salvos. I was transfixed, like a toddler at his first puppet show.
    In the next scene an alpha male gibbon was about to join his face to the private parts of the monkey of his choice. This was no ordinary prelude to a kiss. The alpha strode in super slow-mo toward his mark. She stood on her haunches, her business end swollen and red like an Italian cherry pepper. The alpha puckered up, advancing with a brutal authority not witnessed on film since Bogie first kissed Bacall. Just before the moment of impact, the editor cut to a shot of a chimpanzee called Henry the Eighth tenderizing a piece of fruit by firing it down at a rock from high up in a tree.
    “C’mon, Henry. C’mon, old boy,” the overdubbed narrator cheered.
    An overdubbed chimp’s voice squealed in response. The chemistry between man and beast was so convincing, I could imagine them perched on the same limb or BBC soundstage.
    “I am not an animal,” I said. I had another smoke, then dozed back to sleep.
    When I woke for the second time, my breath smelled like a bum’s pants. I got up and headed for the can. I felt hungover, but I was just decompressing from the bender of having deserted my wife.
    At least Pamela and James don’t seem to hate each other anymore, I thought. By mistake, I opened the closet next to the bathroom. It was empty except for some universally bluish gray floor lint and a coat hanger with a paper-covered fuselage.
    Everything in the bathroom—the toilet, tub, tiles and sink—was a faded pink and well past its prime. Five grand in improvements might have made them fifteen on resale. Pamela said getting rid of the place and moving on with her life as soon as possible were her top priorities. She and Roy moved into a newish two-bedroom condo in Plymouth. She wanted to be closer to our parents, which seemed like a terrible idea to me.
    I owned no property to speak of. I had reluctantly moved from Amherst, Massachusetts, to Brooklyn to live with Jocelyn two weeks before we eloped. All I brought with me was a Gibson Hummingbird acoustic guitar and a soft maroon suitcase. The only remotely durable good Jocelyn and I owned together was a Mini Shop-Vac we’d bought from the Astor Place Kmart. I waited until we got to the front of the line before I gave her my half of the cash. Jocelyn took the money, and it felt like my arm went with it. She handed the checkout girl her Visa, and it came back bloody: our domestic hymen officially torn to shreds.
    The pink paint on the bathroom