Storymania - Miss America by Reuben Gregg Brewer

Miss America
Reuben Gregg Brewer

"There she is, Miss America," Johnny slurred to himself from his spot. "She think she so hot and so much better than everyone else. Bitch."

She was indeed beautiful, this Miss America of which John spoke, a tall natural blond who carried herself well—she didn't slouch as do so many tall women, afraid their height will scare off the shorter boys. She had long legs and rather large breasts for her slim frame; although she wore clothes that accentuated her legs, she tried to hide her breasts because the attention they received made her uncomfortable. She didn't mean to come off as a snob, she was just scared. A six-foot tall blond with gray blue eyes attracted enough attention, but add a small frame and large breasts to the picture and you have an ogler’s dream. She was simply doing the city walk from Grand Central to her job, which was about three blocks away. You know the walk about which I’m speaking, the one where you look straight ahead and don't look anyone in the eye. Where you don't smile, don't frown, don't emote in any way. The one where you count every step and hope that no one touches you or gets in your way. Yeah, you know the city walk, its the one that makes you look like a bitch. But Miss America didn’t mean to be a bitch, she was just scared.

In fact, the city scared her so much that, although she had worked in the same place for years, she had never been more than four or five blocks away from Grand Central. She couldn't even tell you how to find Times Square—which, for those of you who couldn't find it either, is just a few blocks west of Grand Central on 42nd Street. No, she didn't mean any harm, but Johnny didn't like her, or, that is to say, Johnny liked her but couldn't have her.

Indeed, Johnny was one of the things that scared Miss America. How could he not, she was a WASP from Westchester, a rich suburb of the city, that grew up on mommy and daddy's credit cards. She got a degree from some Ivy League school for which mommy and daddy paid. Just before she left for college Mommy told her to go and get her MRS degree—its the one degree her mother had, three times over. "Once your married dear, always ask for diamond studded jewelry, they won't want it in a divorce and its worth its weight in, well, gold," her mother told her with an upper middle class chuckle. Once she graduated, and, to her mother's chagrin, still hadn't gotten a ring, daddy number three got her a job with one of his golf buddies. What did this little rich girl know about poverty? What did she know about addiction? Johnny, on the other hand, knew all too well about both topics.

He had grown up on the streets in some Hispanic ghetto way up town. He couldn't even remember where now, it was so far away and his brain was so fried from all of the shit he put into his body. At fifteen he dropped out of high school to join a gang, and, when he turned 18, he killed some poor bastard that couldn't pay a drug debt. "I got no luck," he told the officers when they came to arrest him, "two weeks earlier and I would have been under age."

Although John got a light sentence because it was the first time that the cops had ever caught him, jail sped him on his way to oblivion. The drugs were easier to get on the inside than they were on the street, and Johnny was eager to partake. All he had to do was whore himself to the old timers who knew how to get the stuff—the word was that they had business deals going with the guards. Its not that Johnny wasn't already on the way to his own personal hell, he would have spiraled down the drain himself if he were on the outside all those years, but jail just made it worse.

When our hero got out, he tried to get a real job. But who would hire an ex-con without an education and a bad drug habit? If you said no one, then you'd be right. So at age 32 Johnny gave up, and gave in to the drugs. Right now alcohol was the drug of choice, it was the easiest and cheapest to get. Of course, if he could score some harder stuff, he'd pump it right into his veins with a safety pin and an eye dropper, but lucky for him that didn't happen too often anymore.

No, now Johnny just sat in "his spot," begging from anyone that would look at him. He made enough to feed his habit, and still had a little left over with which to buy food. For some reason, though, the haze around Johnny cleared a little when Miss America walked by. She brought out some latent dream that still clamored for life in the din of his drug-ravaged mind. At the same time every day she "New York walked" right past John, and, every day, he’d think the same slurred thoughts, "There goes Miss America, the slut think she so hot and so much better than everyone else."

Latter on, when for some unknown reason her image popped up in his mind, he’d dream, though delusions of grandeur is probably a better way to describe these thoughts. He’d imagine that he owned a house in the woods with a white picket fence and flowers growing all over the place. He’d see himself waking up after a nap in the hammock out back. Shielding his eyes from the sun, which was slowly rolling across his azure dream sky, he saw see Miss America, a little way off in the shade of his tree, reading a book and drinking lemonade. Sitting up, dream Johnny looked over to her and said, "I love you." Miss America, dutifully playing her part in this mental farce, looked over her book and smiled.