Mary
by Robert M.
Cluesman
The death of Cookie
Monster was the end of it all. When Cookie Monster was killed, I left
for good, this was in 1994. I couldn’t stand to see Mary slowly kill
herself anymore.
Once upon a time I
lived in New Orleans and Mary was my best friend. Mary had a ceramic
Cookie Monster cookie jar her father gave her when she was 4 years old.
She kept it her entire life until that fateful summer night when it was
hurled against the wall by her boyfriend, Lucifer. They’d had yet
another argument when he did it. I just watched in amazement. I knew
what Cookie Monster meant to Mary and all she’d been through with him.
Shit, I knew what Sesame Street in general meant to her.
The argument was
about sex; who would fuck whose ass tonight. I could hear it all from
the kitchen where I was looking for something to eat. Suddenly they
burst into the kitchen. Mary was half naked and Lucifer stood there in
the doorway holding her strap-on dildo in one hand. There was yelling
and screaming and the next thing I knew, I saw it all in slow motion.
Lucifer grabbed Cookie Monster from the table and held him back over his
head. Mary looked at him in horror and he threw it right at her. I
followed with my eyes as it sailed across the room and smashed against
the wall. Mary ducked out of the way just in time. It exploded into a
million pieces of ceramic and cookie all over the floor. Mary looked at
the pieces and her lower lip quivered. She looked at me and she looked
at Lucifer. It was 4 in the morning and the only thing she was wearing
was see through lingerie. She turned to the back door and ran into the
night. Lucifer looked at me...
“Man, Lucifer”, I
said, “you really fucked up this time. Do you know what you just did?”
He asked me in a
cracked voice, “Where the hell is she going?”
“I have no fucking
idea,” I told him.
Lucifer ran out
after Mary and I sat on the kitchen floor trying to find a decent
chocolate chip cookie in all the mess. After a few minutes Lucifer came
back in looking whiter than he really was.
“Dude, what the
fuck? Come out here right now.”
I looked at him like
he was crazy. I’d had enough of playing mediator in their sordid
relationship.
“Man,” I said, “I
don’t want to get involved in you guy’s bullshit, deal with it
yourself.”
“But...” and this is
when I noticed Lucifer was crying.
“But, she’s...” He
paused and chocked back a tear.
“She’s what?” I
asked.
“She’s eating
grass”, he said. “She’s screaming in the neighbors yard and eating
grass.”
How I came to live
with Mary in New Orleans was totally by accident. I had a tiny MG
convertible and decided to take a road trip. I left Miami at 5am on a
chilly summer morning in 1993 and tore across interstate 10 as fast as I
could. It was 16 hours to New Orleans if I drove fast enough and didn’t
stop except for gas. The trick is that I had to pick up my friend Carl
in Mobile, Alabama along the way.
We made it to New
Orleans at about 11pm that night, checked into the Hummingbird Hotel on
St. Charles Street and hit the French Quarter to see what we could see.
I was in a dildo shop on Decatur Street when I heard a familiar voice. I
turned and looked, it was Mary. Her father sent her to Loyola University
and she’d been living there for 6 months. We partied all night and Mary
told me she needed a roommate. That’s how I ended up living with her.
I met Mary 4 years
earlier in Miami, Florida in 1989. I was working for a magazine called
Truth Tabloid. Truth was owned by a guy named Trevor and Mary was a part
of his entourage. She was tall and beautiful. She was only 17 at the
time and was the object of absolutely every mans desire that she came in
contact with. She had this unique and amazing ability to command any
room she walked into with a cocking of her hip or a flipping of her
hair. Mary’s job at Truth Tabloid was to escort me on my assignments
which included night club and concert reviews. I saw her walk into
disco’s and have the owners (all grown men) groveling at her feet. She
was amazing. Better than that, she became my friend. We spent all hours
of all days together. When she wasn’t at my apartment I was at hers. We
talked about everything and shared ourselves completely. Mary would help
me pick up girls and I’d help her pick up guys. We’d walk into a place
and Mary would tell all the pretty girls there how cool I was.
Everywhere we went, people loved us. They all thought we were a couple,
but we weren’t. They were even more intrigued when we’d try to seduce
someone. In their minds, we were some crazy young swinging couple, but
we weren’t.
Like all men who
came in contact with Mary, I was taken by her when we first met, but I
learned fast. I learned the night she came to my door bleeding from her
mouth and knees.
She met a guy named
Victor and went out for a few drinks with him. She went back to his
apartment and he raped her. As she cried on my couch she told me the
whole story. She told me how he forced her clothes off, held her down
and fucked her. And she told me how much she loved it. She told me how
she really didn’t want to sleep with him and how she said no over and
over again and how she cried and begged and how he ignored her pleas and
how turned on it made her that he fucked her anyway.
When he was done he
offered to drive her home and she had him drop her off at my place. When
they got to my apartment Victor got out of the car with her. He wanted
to come up and see her apartment. Panicked, she refused because she
didn’t want him know it was my place. He threw her on the ground and she
hit her mouth on the bumper of the car. He lifted up her skirt and stuck
his finger in her ass. He made her suck his cock right there in my
driveway until he came in her mouth. Then, with her still on the ground
crying, he got in his car and drove away. Mary explained to me that she
fell in love with him right then and there. She lay there on my couch
crying and telling me how she could still taste his cum and her blood in
her mouth.
Mary’s father is
William, former financial director for the south-east region of PBS. In
the mid-eighties he was indicted for embezzling tens of millions of
dollars from PBS funds. Without proper evidence against him, he was
simply forced to retire. This is how Mary was able to go to Loyola, have
an amazing apartment in the Uptown District of New Orleans and drive a
74 convertible Cadillac Eldorado.
“Mary”, I asked. “If
you’re apartment is being paid for by your dad, why do you need a
roommate?”
“Because”
She looked at me
with a look that seemed to say she was telling me something only I could
understand.
“Because, Robbie, I
want you here with me and I don’t want to be alone.”
“But, Mary, you have
Lucifer”
She looked at me
like I was being frivolous.
“You know what I
mean”, she said.
And I did know what
she meant. She wanted me there to protect her. Not from Lucifer, but
from herself. One of the reasons Mary considered me such a good friend
is that I never judged her. I was always and only ever there to simply
be a friend. A friend who understands the raging ghosts that haunted
her. Mary knew that those ghosts also haunted me. Mary knew a lot.
Mary was on lithium
for her depression. Also for her depression, Mary had to accept weekly
injections of $500 spending money from her fathers bank account and an
extra $100 in groceries.
“Robbie”, She said
to me. “I need someone I trust to help me spend all this money and be a
real friend to me while I’m here. Yes, I have Lucifer, but I need you.”
I reluctantly
agreed.
One winter Miami day
in 1991 Mary disappeared. She was gone for three days. Her father was
ringing my cell phone non stop. The police were called and an APB was
put out for her.
On the third day she
ended up at my door. Victor had kidnapped her and hid her in his
apartment for three days. He tied her hands and feet together and laid
her on her back. The way he had her tied is that he put her arms around
her legs so that as she lay on her back, her arms held her legs straight
up in the air. This, Mary told me, is when the experiments began. He
stuck a vibrating dildo in her pussy and turned it on. In her ass, he
put an expanding butt plug. An expanding butt plug works like a balloon
that you pump more and more air into so it expands and gets larger and
larger to fill your ass. After this was done, Victor held her head back
and stuck a funnel in her mouth. Into the funnel he poured a 5th of
vodka. After a few hours, Mary had to piss. Victor wouldn’t let her up
and he made her piss right there on his living room floor. This sort of
thing went on for three days only to be interrupted by periodic beatings
and fuckings.
I looked at Mary
with curiosity.
“So do you still
love him or should we call the police?”
Mary looked at me
with a rebuking malice.
“Are you fucking
crazy? Of course I love him. I mean, I hate him... but I love him too.”
“Why, Mary, why?”
“Because”, Mary
said. “He loves me. These other guys around here all want me. They buy
me dinner, clothes, drinks, they kiss my ass for nothing. If they
thought I was going to fuck them, they’d probably buy me a house if they
could. I hate those fuckers. I’m not property to be bought and sold, you
know. Victor didn’t buy me shit. I bought him drinks the night we met. I
went home with him willingly. Sure, it wasn’t to sleep with him, but I
went there just the same. Victor didn’t kiss my ass, he slapped my ass.
He threw me down and fucked me. He raped me and I respect him for that.
At least it’s honest.”
I looked into her
dark blue eyes. I knew she believed what she was saying.
“Robbie, what you
have to understand is that I'm a big girl. Trust me, I know what I get
into. I know what I’m doing.”
I didn’t know what
to say. I knew Mary really liked what Victor was doing to her. I knew
her personal demons were being exercised when Victor would beat and rape
her. Humiliate her when she least expected it, or force her to do
something against her will. What I didn’t understand is where I fit in
in all this.
“Mary, why do you
tell me all this shit anyway?”
“Because, Robbie, I
love you. You’re the only person in the whole stinking world I can
trust. You’ve never tried to fuck me. You’ve always been my friend.”
“But, Mary”, I said,
“There was a time when I loved you.”
Mary looked at me
intently.
“Do you believe in
ESP?” She asked me. “I do”, she continued. “I knew you loved me the
first day I saw you. I also knew you’d never do anything about it.
There’s something else I knew too. I knew you were haunted just like me
and that you’d always be there for me and never judge me. I knew you
understood me and I knew we’d be friends for life.”
“You knew a lot,
didn’t you?” I asked.
“Yes, I did”, she
replied. “And I know you still love me too.”
“Then tell me this,
Mary, why do you let Victor do this shit to you? Why do you complain
about him hurting you and then always go back for more?”
“Victor doesn’t
victimize me. I victimize him. It makes him sick to do the things he
does to me. When he first raped me, he puked afterwards. It was then
that I knew how to control him. See, Victor believes that he has power
because he can beat me up and rape me, but actually I have the power. I
have the power because I can take it and it doesn’t even phase me.
That’s torture to him, the fact that I can take it. He tries so hard to
hurt me. See his power is pain. With someone like me, that’s no power at
all. In fact, it’s like a therapy for me.”
“Then why do you
come crying on my couch all the time afterwards?”, I asked.
“That’s a part of
the therapy.” She said. “Crying about it and having you here to
sympathize takes me into a type of zen space where my mind and soul can
finally find peace. See, the other guys want to buy me. They try to make
up for being old, ugly or just uninteresting by offering me money. Even
my father wants to buy my happiness. My father thinks he has to make up
for what a fucker he was in my childhood and to a certain extent, he’s
right. But I see the hypocrisy in all this. Victor doesn’t want to buy
me, he just takes me. It hurts and upsets me, sure. I’ve spent my whole
life hurt and upset and not knowing why. With Victor, at least I know
WHY I’m upset. And here you are to listen to my problems. Problems I can
explain, problems I can solve. But if they were solved I wouldn’t know
why I was sad anymore and that’s worse than this. Robbie, you know I’m a
sad and haunted person.”
I looked at her for
a long time. I wiped the tears that were streaming across her cheeks and
kissed her forehead. Yes, I did know she was a haunted person. I was
torn between two worlds. The world where I call her insane and tell her
she needs professional help and the world where I love her take care if
her no matter what. After all, who was I to judge? If it made Mary happy
to have someone rape her just so she could feel something, why should I
stand in the way? Why shouldn’t I just be the friend I was and help her
clean up the mess afterwards? And that’s what I did. I drew a bath and
put some anise oil in it. I washed her hair and back. She was like a
child in that tub. A little girl and I was the father she always wanted.
A father who didn’t judge her or try to substitute love with money. Just
someone simply to take care of her when she felt she needed it. After I
rinsed her hair, I leaned down and kissed her lips.
“Mary”, I asked her
finally. “Where did this all begin?”
“With Big Bird”, she
replied. “When I was 4 years old. My father worked for PBS and they had
this huge fund raiser going on. There were a million people at my house
at all hours day and night. My father used to take me to the fund
raising events with him and there’d be all the characters from the PBS
shows giving candy and stuff to the kids. Oscar the Grouch, Bert &
Ernie, you know, all that. I thought my father was the greatest person
in the world. My other little friends all had dad’s that worked in
stores or factories but my dad worked with Sesame Street and I loved him
for it.
Well one day during
all this my father took me to the side and told me I couldn’t go to work
with him that day because he was so busy, you know and he said to me,
‘Mary, while I’m
gone I want you to stay away from the closet ok? Whatever you do, don’t
touch that closet door.’
So all day long I
played in my room until I noticed something strange. From the closet
door there was sticking a big bright yellow feather. I looked at it for
a long time. My father told me to stay away from that closet but I just
HAD to know what the feather was so I went over and jiggled the door
knob a little bit. The door flew open and hit me in the head. I fell
down flat on my back and as I looked up, I saw the gigantic body of Big
Bird falling towards me. I rolled out of the way just in time and it
fell right next to me. Big Bird lay there motionless and I grabbed him
by the shoulders screaming,
‘Big Bird, Big Bird,
wake up!’
But he never did and
I cried and cried. I sat there for two hours before anyone came up to
check on me. I sat there crying with my face buried in the chest of Big
Bird’s cold dead body remembering that my father told me not to go near
that closet. I knew then that my father must have been the one who
killed him.”
“Holy shit, Mary,
what happened after that?”
“My father tried to
make it up to me in a million ways but nothing worked. I wouldn’t even
speak to him. But then one day there was a knock on my door. My mom told
me to answer it. It was Big Bird. He told me he heard I thought he was
dead. He told me he was alive and ok and that he loved me. He said my
dad was a friend of his and that my dad wanted him to give me a little
present. Big Bird leaned down, kissed me on the cheek and handed me the
present. I gave him a big hug and he left.
Anyway, whenever I
think my life sucks, I always trace my problems back to the thought that
my father murdered Big Bird.”
“What was the
present he gave you?” I asked.
Mary looked up at me
from the bath and smiled for the first time that evening. She said,
“This really
beautiful ceramic Cookie Monster cookie jar.”
-Robert M. Cluesman
rmcluesman@yahoo.com
*************************************
The preceding is a work of fiction. ANY resemblance to any persons
living or dead is purely coincidental.
Robert M. Cluesman is a photographer and film maker of ill repute in
Paris, France where he is working on the new independent film release,
"Flasher".
