Bobby The Pervert

I think Bobby came back to work during the first winter I worked here. He was about six foot four, and at the time probably weighed a hundred eighty pounds. Really skinny, with unkempt hair and perpetually dirty clothes. He always seemed to have dog hair on him, for some reason, although he hated animals. Bobby hated just about everything.

Except for sex. And talking about sex. Which was unfortunate for those of us who had to work with him, at least those who had any imagination whatsoever. I spent a lot of time smoking dope in those cold winter months, just trying to blot out the mental pictures he'd present.

He hated women, too, which I never really understood. Such a base, intense hatred that I often wondered how he and his wife stayed together...I guess hate sex is pretty potent stuff, and she hated him as much as he hated her. They seemed locked in a fight/fuck spiral of unsurpassed intensity.

She would drive him to work every day, in a big ol' mid-eighties model boat of a car. You could hear them fighting (every morning, without fail) before he opened the car door. From inside the shop you'd hear the car motor, then faintly the two of them screaming at each other. Then an abrupt increase in screaming volume as he exited the car, and finally a door slamming and tire squealing as he started another day at work.

"Filthy fucking cunt," he'd say as he clocked in.

During the day we'd hear stories about how stupid she was, and how much she liked to be fucked, and (if we were especially lucky) how she let him put it in her ass the night before. One memory I'll never get rid of is how we stood in a cold, cold north wind, taking down Christmas lights, listening to Bobby talk about how his wife gave him a rim job. "Rim it, you bitch," he'd mutter, to no one in particular, winding holiday lights around his dirty sleeve.


The only time I saw him genuinely happy, I think, is one day in the early spring. There was no fight that morning, at least as far as I could hear, and Bobby came in with a spring in his step. "I finally got that fuckin' bitch to agree to a threesome," he announced to the room, "now I just gotta find the right hooker." I was actually kind of happy for him.

He left shortly thereafter, and I didn't see him til the following fall, when he pulled up in a lawn truck and told me he'd give me fifty bucks to look the other way while he stole equipment off my rig. Which was a mistake. Fifty bucks isn't nearly enough to listen to my boss rage and whine about how he's getting fucked at every corner.

Bobby also told me that at nights, he was running a phone sex line with his wife and three or four strippers. They had decided, he intimated, that they wouldn't be happy "unless they were working in the sexual industry." Once again, I was disturbed to find myself happy he'd found his niche.

Ten years later, that is, last month, he called out of the blue, looking for work. He's a couple of years older than me, so I wasn't surprised at all to find him balding and overweight. He seemed cleaner, though, so we hired him back on temporarily to do light duty stuff like watering.

Bobby was divorced, and his two kids (oh yeah, I forgot about the kids in the backseat for those arguments) and ex wife now lived in Tulsa. She apparently had gotten hooked on meth, ran off with a dealer, and had only recently returned to Tulsa with the kids. Bobby had been working selling cars, but couldn't find new work in that field because he hadn't brought back a "demo" car after he'd quit his last job. "Embezzlement," that's called, and dealerships apparently don't like to see that on your record.

He'd been married twice since then, but "hated both those stinking cunts" just as much, or more, than the first one.

I tell you, the anger and hatred rolled off him in waves.

Upon getting his first paycheck, he borrowed my car to go to Chino's, a little bodega down the street that cashes our paychecks. They stay open late, whereas our banks close at six, so the guys can get their money with no problem. I've known Chino for a long damn time, and never heard anything bad about him from any of our guys, either.

But they wouldn't cash Bobby's check. I'm not sure why, he wouldn't tell me, but he DID tell me that he "cussed them gooks like you wouldn't believe," which didn't really make me very happy. He hated "them gooks" even more than "Meskins," apparently because Asians didn't buy as many cars from him during his tenure as car dealer. I gave him ten bucks and told him to pay me when he could, and to PLEASE stay out of Chino's.

A couple of nights later, he told me he had a date with "this stupid bitch I used to fuck, who's a paranoid schizophrenic."

As you can imagine, I was doing everything in my power to get someone else to give him rides back to his hotel room, which he hated because it was "a fag hotel." And, from what I can see, there appear to be a lot of rather dubious looking men standing in doorways, so maybe he's right.

This paranoid schizoid apparently roller skated everywhere she went, because "the government wouldn't let her drive." This was later revised when she gave him some taxi coupons, which are apparently paid for by the state. Nice. "She's crazy," said Bobby, "but they're all crazy, and she fucks like crazy too."

[By the way, I'm offended by all this language as well, which is why I'm being careful to put it in quotes.]

Monday he came in during the evening and told me he'd been kicked out of Chino's store. Apparently he'd made a big enough scene to get that part of the surveillance tape rewatched, and Chino wasn't having any part of this dude abusing his family. I wish I'd have been there to see it--Chino's about five foot nothing, and Bobby's six four. Chino apparently hollered "Hey! You name Bobby?! You get out! Never come back!" while shaking a finger as close to Bobby's face as he could get it.

After I finished laughing, I asked him if he'd hooked up with the P.S. woman. "Naw," he said, "my fucking mother flew my wife in from Houston for the weekend, fucking bitch. So I had to fuck her instead. Filthy little beasts, with their kitty litter and tampons."

The next morning, we got orders for Child Support garnishments for him. And for something like that, there's nothing I can do. He was less than pleased, as you can imagine, but didn't let loose of any new or creative epithets, which might have been a sign of how pissed off he was.

He got over it, temporarily, because the next morning he was more inclined to tell me about the "date" he'd gotten from the "phone lines in the back of the Gazette," the local weekly alternative paper which apparently has a whole section devoted to "massages" and "phone chat." Not surprisingly, this is the first place Bobby goes when reading the paper, but he hadn't been having very much success. Both of the girls that had called him smoked rock, and apparently he'd had enough of that years ago. No word on whether they actually used the phrase "I'll suck yo dick for twenty dollars," but it's something I like to think still occurs.

After the second weeks' garnishment, Bobby couldn't stand it anymore. The "fags" were getting to him, he couldn't get no pussy, and he wasn't making no money. So on Friday, he packed up his porn and headed to the train station, after getting as much of a draw from us as he could. We'll probably never hear from him again.

What amazes me about him is how much like an addict he is about sex. He hates and fears women, but keeps going back, and keeps doing more and more dangerous things (frankly, there's no way in hell I'd tell a crackhead my hotel room, whatever her motives. I have another story about that, just ask) to get his fix. Never mind dignity--I'm not sure he ever had any of that to begin with. Never mind his kids (he's moving back to Texas, where he can send them child support at his own pace)--and never mind the IRS, which he's been dodging since the early 90's at least.

I used to think that everyone eventually woke up and realized you can't get away with it forever. Credit card debt doesn't evaporate. Taxes don't go away, and children grow up to hate your guts. Meth makes your teeth fall out, and acid gives you flashbacks. You can't beat it, folks, it's gonna happen to you, too. But Bobby's going to fight it to the end, cursing everyone in this world that isn't "on his side," and secretly hating everyone that is.