The Life and Times of Innis E. Coxman by R. P. Lester Page B

and she floored the accelerator. I could feel my patellas
being crushed as blood seeped through my denim pants, small flakes of bumper
chrome mixing with the blotches.
    If
I didn’t launch a counterattack, I’d literally be cut off at the knees. Being
that I was trapped, my defense options were limited, but not absent. I pounced
when I saw it, stretching my rippling, muscular chunky, oafish body to
the passenger side and snapping off her radio antennae. If crippling me wasn’t
a concern, maybe she’d care enough about her vehicle. Loud whipping noises
arced across the carport as I thrashed the maroon hood like a disobedient
Hebrew slave. Within seconds, it looked as though hydrophobic badgers had
played hopscotch on the paint job.
    I’d
had the presence of mind to snag a weapon in a dreadful situation, giving
Raptious’ cherry new ride deep scars like the ones I’d forever have on my
knees.
    A
small wave of pride crested in my soul.
    The
wave broke when she reversed her car and I fell to the ground like a severed
foreskin. I collapsed, knees to my chest, rolling on my back, wallowing in
physical torment.
    By
this time, the neighbors had poured from their homes to see what all the ruckus
was about. We lived in a cookie-cutter part of the city with houses mere yards
from one another, providing them ringside seats to our soap opera, and trust me
when I tell you—if there’s anything that residents love in their neighborhood
on a Sunday afternoon, it’s the blood-curdling screams of marital discord.
    This
was around the time cell phones became commonplace in our society. I’d even begun
to see the homeless with those shitty bar phones everybody used to have; the
novelty of ownership hadn’t waned for them, either. People held their cell
phones to the same importance as their middle fingers and were just as attached
(my, how the times have changed).
    Imagine
publicly fighting with the mentally disturbed only to have bystanders throw
their hand to an ear and relay every juicy tidbit to the cops.
    I
rolled on the concrete like a turtle on its back, my knees killing me as the
piercing shrill of sirens approached the neighborhood. I cautiously got to my
feet, fighting against the agony, composing myself for their arrival and
preparing to go back to jail.
     
    ***
     
    Ah.
You’re in the dark about this. I’m sorry, good people, allow me to expound:
    You
see, in a majority of DV calls (Domestic Violence for the uninitiated), cops
generally side with the female, even if the male’s been beaten like an eighth
grade phallus. I’ve known plenty of men who will back me on this to the nth
degree. Seeing as how Raptious was consistently out of her fucking mind, this
wasn’t the first time the police had visited our residence, and even though
she’d yelled and cursed at them on multiple occasions, somehow they’d always
assumed I was in the wrong.
    Large
+ tattoos + permanent scowl = guilty as shit.
    But
I was certain that sense would prevail on this occasion. One look at the marks
on my face and the blood on my knees and they could see that-
    “Fuck!
You’ve gotta be kidding me! I didn’t do anything, you
motherfuckers! Get off o’ me!”
    “Easy,
Mr. Coxman. Do you remember what happened last time?”
    “Yes
I do, Officer Wankman! She threw a brick through the kitchen window and I went to jail after you tased me. Raptious, tell ‘em it was you. You know it was you!”
    “He
said he was gonna throw a pipe bomb in the police station. I had to stop him
‘til y'all got here.”
    “What?!
You lying whore! ”
    “That’s
a disturbing the peace charge, too, Mr. Coxman. Now watch your head.”
     
    ***
     
    Now I’m back on the streets and my records are clean..... oh, sorry.
The last thing I listened to was Eazy-E.  
    But
I was, in fact, back on the streets. More pointedly, I was walking one of the
busiest streets on one of the coldest nights ever, headed home after bailing
myself out. They let you do that if you act