Quicksilver Come to Cure Me
| QUICKSILVER COME TO CURE ME a short story published in Folio magazine |
VIEW PDF AND READ THE STORY "The Gulf Girls wash Lafayette in a deep aluminum basin, boil him, with his knees nearly up to his chin. They have two kinds of soap: sweet soap, and bug soap. They use the bug soap first and it hurts. Inside the soap are rough bits like bark and sand, and it smells of gasoline, turpentine, and lye. It burns, makes Lafayette feel like his cock is a match, as though one more rub and it might erupt, engulfed with flame and ash. After the bug soap, the water is a murky black, brackish, and the Girls help him up so one of them could take a turn." AUTHOR'S NOTE: This story is excerpted from the novel The Kerosene In The Kisses (see PROJECTS page). My South Carolinian great-grandfather abandoned his wife and children, ran off to live in a brothel, and came home several decades later with an advanced case of syphilis. Another great-grandmother was famous for her noxious home remedies involving chemical scorching with ingredients like lye and kerosene. They knew a lot about hard living. - QAW |
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