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BUSTED UP DREAMSTHE STORY OF MIDGET XMy parents were dirt poor when I was growing up in Austin, Texas. They didn’t have a bucket to shit in or the proverbial window to throw it out of. Our house was a shotgunshack on the outside of town with a yard about as big as a postage stamp. Talk about a bunch of fucking hillbillies, we actually had chickens scratching around in the front yard.My brother and I dressed in hand me downs from the Goodwill or the Salvation Armyand stood out like a couple of sore thumbs. The kids at school were brutal to us. I don’tknow how many times we were kicked out of school for fighting.I had just started junior high when my older brother, Aaron, was killed on his bike whenhe rode out in front of a dairy delivery truck. Milk grows strong bones. I saw it happen.The whole fucking thing was so surreal. When the truck hit him, he flew through the air like a rag doll. His head literally exploded like a grape. I had nightmares for years after.After that I kinda went inside of myself. My parents had been huge drunks before Aaronwas killed. After the funeral they got crank and grass involved in the mix. They’d turn oneach other and fight like maniacs, sometimes physically. More than once the cops would pay us a visit.I started staying away from home for long stretches of time. Then I met the Hultgrentwins. Terry and Thomas. They were both like me. Outsiders. The throwaways of society.Terry was kinda slow, almost retarded, but a good kid. He always stayed close to thehome. The farm would always be his life. Thomas was a wild man. He lived to drink, liftweights, fight, and chase after girls who always turned him down. The twins didn’t knowtheir father, he had been a one night stand, but their young for her age mother, Ruth, wasa damn fine person and she basically took me in. I spent more time in their old farmhousein my high school years than I did at my own house. She was the only person who ever had any faith in me and was the one who convinced to try to become a writer. She wasalso an incredible source of sexual fantasies for me.Thomas and I became partners, we formed a bond, the kind you do when you’re youngand you don’t ever envision a future. We had had each other’s backs. Anyone fuckedwith one of us the other one wouldn’t be far away. We may get our ass kicked in the process but we’d give the prick something to think about.There wasn’t a day that Thomas didn’t talk about his dream and what life would be likeonce he achieved it. How he wouldn’t be the small town loser everyone thought he wasanymore. I never told him I thought he was full of shit. But good friends don’t step oneach other’s dreams. The day after high school graduation he jumped on a bus headedtowards Los Angeles. The city where he said he could live out his dream. He never toldme he was going to do it. All of a sudden he was just up and gone. I couldn’t believe myfriend was gone. I wouldn’t see him again for years.* * *
 After washing down a couple of reds with a beer, the ride from Ensenada to Tijuana had 
 
 passed by in a flash. When he woke up, they had already pulled into the parking lot of thebullring, the scene of that night’s matches. He had wrestled here numerous times beforeand hated it with a passion. The fans were vicious and had been know to assault wrestlers, and the air was hard to breath inside the bullring with all the red dirt dust that was kicked up in the air. His back was already killing him after he had slipped off the toprope and landed hard on the ring apron the previous night and sleeping on a van seat with shitty springs hadn't done anything to improve the situation. The other wrestlers had already gotten out of the van and were limping and shuffling towards the dressing room. He sat up, grabbed his gym bag, and followed the others. When he stepped down fromthe van, his title belt, which proclaimed him the "World Champion of the MexicanWrestling Federation," slipped out of his bag and fell to the ground. With a groan hereached over and picked it up. Dusting it off, he couldn't help but think how about how hehad sacrificed his body and self respect for this leather, plastic, and metal piece of shit. At one time, he would have given up his left nut to own that piece of garbage. Now it meant nothing. He slung the belt over his shoulder and headed towards the dressing room.***
The call from the Galveston police came when I was at work. My boss took the call andglared at me as if I had farted and had shit my pants instead. A body had been foundfloating in the Houston ship channel and someone was needed to identify it. Thatsomeone was me, since my name and both home and work phone numbers had beenfound amongst the victims personal affects.The drive down from Austin took about four hours. It was a Saturday, my day off of course, and I had to fight the idiotic tourist traffic once I got close to the island. It wasaround noon when I finally arrived and the temperature in Galveston was already as hotas the proverbial gates of hell. The morgue was located down in the basement of thehospital and the closest parking spot I could find was about three blocks away. By thetime I walked back to the hospital my armpits were bubbling like a witches brew and Ihad completely sweated through my shirt.I rang the buzzer on the morgue door and was let in by the duty forensic technician. Hehad a lit Camel in one hand and what looked like a lizard and peanut butter sandwich inthe other. The place was like a freezer inside and I immediately developed a nastyheadache as my head constricted from the extreme change in temperature. The room hada weird sweet, formaldehyde funk to it. There was a radio in the corner playing Ted Nugent’s “Stranglehold” very loudly. Which was odd, considering both thecircumstances and the location. There was pissed off looking man standing in the corner.He was silent but I assumed he was the cop I had talked to on the phone the day before.The technician walked over to one of the examining tables, jammed the sandwich in hismouth, and with a flourish, pulled a sheet off the body.“Voila!” he shouted with full mouth.I instantly blurted out the body’s name. I knew it would be him. Who else could it have
 
 been?“What are you, some sort of fucking smart ass?”The cop had finally spoken. The cop, actually a detective, I would find out, looked like hehad walked straight out of central casting. Huge gut, mutton chop sideburns, beady little pig eyes, spaghetti stained and pitted out white dress shirt, all topped off with a redalcohol flushed face with a cigar jammed in his mouth. Definitely the look of cop whowas on the dark side of a long awaited, stress induced heart attack.He was standing across from the body glaring at me with his hands on his ample hips. Iwas really starting to regret smoking those two reefers and drinking that six pack of Tecate on the drive down.“Well, did your hear me? You’re telling me that’s his name? Are you trying to be a smartass?” he repeated.I was having problems concentrating. This was the first and hopefully last time that Iwould ever be in a morgue. There were three chrome metal slabs inside the tiny room andthe other two were also occupied. There weren’t sheets covering them. On the far tablethere was the body of a dead hooker that was found in the dunes up on east beach. Shehad been severely beaten and then strangled. Her killer, mostly likely her pimp, hadfinished the job by shoving an empty bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 up her employment chute.Laid out on table number two was a college aged young man who was presumably thevictim of a hellacious case of spring break induced alcohol poisoning. Even in death helooked like he was enjoying himself. I hadn’t seen many stiffs but the few I had seen sureas shit weren’t smiling.People came to Galveston Island to party, maybe smoke a little pot, drink a couple coldones, get some pussy, and have a good time, but sometimes they got more than they bargained for. Resting on table number three was the reason I was in this hellhole. Hislittle, muscle bound body was green with algae and had been scavenged upon by fish,crabs, and seagulls. Surprisingly, considering the condition of the rest of the body, the Xtattooed in gothic script on his right bicep still stood out. There was a large bullet holeentry wound right in the middle of his forehead.“Hey! Dipshit! I don’t have all goddamn day so answer my question so I can get the hellout of here. This isn‘t the little Lindbergh kidnapping case you know. I have moreimportant things than to stand around here and look at a dead dwarf, and one that‘sstarting to get pretty goddamn ripe on top of it.”He was a midget, I thought. Not a dwarf. He hated being called a dwarf. And he reallywhen nuts when some politically correct asshole called him a “little person.” “I’m afucking midget, not some sawed off cocksucking circus freak!” he’d roar at the offender.The room suddenly got very hot. The oxygen felt like it was being sucked out my lungs
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