Ralph Taylor Sucks

Ralph Taylor Sucks

By Maria Paloma Herrera

It’s a somewhat bleak existence, living at home with your parents, whose raisin bran cereal and velcro orthopedic shoes serve as an omen of their imminent descent into elderhood. They’re getting old. So am I. Somehow, I can’t remember what life was like not living here. Although I did move out for a time after college, my Jeux de Vive or whatever concoction of Axe body spray and potential that oozed out of my pores got sucked out and coughed back up by an all-you-can-eat academic mentality and a breakup.

Within the past year and a half at the hovel of Camp Taylor, I have mastered with militant-like dedication, a regiment of squandered potential.

Awaken.

Check phone.

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Ruminate about the emails from Angela burning a hole in my inbox amongst the piles of forever accumulating subscriptions to nothing companies and Reddit writer's threads.

Ralphy,

It’s me again. I’m still waiting to hear back from you. If you have anything new, send it my way.

-Angela

I could have been good once. Winner of the James M. Harrington Prize. A scholarship that basically guaranteed a book deal. “They don’t give that to just anybody”. My Dad quipped when I told him over the phone during my senior year of college. I believed it too at first. I got that deal. Driving Thoughts sold pretty well. Not great. But well enough to be a sort of stepping-stone project.

Look at Ruby’s page.

There’s a new photo and the caption reads: “My forever”

Remember the feeling of Ruby’s fingers braiding themselves into my hair and caressing the back of my neck while reading the first reviews.

“Self-aggrandizing,” says Tony Lockart

“Technically talented but lacks a higher level of introspection,” says Marie Clark

“Unfinished,” says GoodreadsUser873728392

“I liked it alot! I can’t wait to see what else he writes.” Says LindaCharles63

Thanks, Linda.

I met Ruby a week before the last week of classes at The Crow. I don’t remember meeting her. My brain was full of final deadlines and piss beer. And suddenly I was talking and she was there, listening. She let me talk until my throat hurt. I vomited up my dreams of being a writer, my disdain for 1960s architecture, and how the feeling of pipe cleaners rubbing against my fingertips made my teeth hurt. I couldn’t stop. She just smiled and laughed and let me talk. After four years of professors, both stuffy and inspiring, spewing out different literary and writing techniques and the comments of fellow students who casually peppered “insofar as” into everyday conversation, it was nice to have someone listen.

It’s been two years since I broke up with her. Nothing really happened. Suddenly her listening just felt more like pity. I couldn’t help but feel a tinge of resentment laced into her caresses and her just-write-about-whats-true-for-yous and I-believe-in-yous. I wanted her to say something real. I wanted her to tell me that my work was lukewarm at best. That I should just be realistic and work for my dad because this was as good as it gets but she never did. I talked and she just listened.

Her arm is draped over some financial Wall Street American Psycho of a guy who looks like he is wearing cargo shorts for the first time in his life—The type of guy we’d make fun of in dimly lit hipster coffee shops while drinking overpriced americanos. She smiles at me through the screen, blinding me with victorious Crest White Strip teeth and a glitzy rock on her ring finger. It’s disgusting.

She looks happy. I don’t think I really miss her anymore. I highly doubt she misses me. Still, it was nice to have someone to listen.

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If I do manage to peel off my crusty t-shirt and sweatpants combo that would make even the crummiest hung-over college sophomore shudder, I venture upstairs to see what kind of daytime television my Mom is watching. She likes Jeopardy. I watch it with her sometimes and I feel a fleeting surge of pride when I answer the trivia questions before the contestants. I may be a destitute thirty-something single loser living in his parents' basement but I do know the mountain range that runs from Morocco to Tunis.

What are the Atlas Mountains?

Ralphy,

Anything new? I’ll look at a draft if you need a set of eyes.

-Angela

It’s not the same since Alex Tribec died. Inevitably, Mom will make some comment about how this new guy just doesn't have any charisma and how Pat from Wheel of Fortune is getting old now too and he’s only ten years older than my father. My father isn’t gonna be around forever and maybe I should at least consider working at the Vacuum Emporium. It’s surprisingly good money for the area. Those big city skyscraper cleaning companies are always gonna need vacuum cleaners and we have that rapport with them. 35 years means something. Maybe running a business might provide me with “divine inspiration”. I should see how my father talks about the vacuums. This speech usually was my cue to once again crawl back into my cave and stare at the flashing cursor on my computer screen for a couple of hours.

Ralph,

Proof of life?

I’ve done what I can, but they’re gonna pull it at the end of the week if they don’t get anything.

-Angela

I was lucky to have Angela the big-time publisher as my aunt although sometimes I wish she wasn’t. I’d prefer flounder in peace. When I was a kid she seemed like whatever an adult was supposed to be. She wore shiny boots and had a heavy leather purse with two cell phones rattling around in it. In a time when no one had cell phones—she had two! When I was ten years old she showed me how to fold pieces of paper together and cut them at the creases to make a book. Now, The thought of looking her in the eye the next Thanksgiving or Christmas knowing I had metaphorically let every printer paper notebook we ever made rot into ugly paper mache nothingness made my stomach turn. I imagined her lips pursed tightly, at first in concern then waning to disappointment as her thick French-tipped nails clipped her keyboard. I was washed and she knew it. I decide it’s best not to prolong the inevitable. I stand now in my Dad’s office at the Taylor Vacuum Emporium, my blank document serving as my white flag. I surrender.

Despite my guilt for time and again rejecting my father’s offer for the keys to the proverbial city, I had, and still have little interest in becoming the next great Vacuum Salesman nepotism baby. I hate the aisles and aisles of twisty tubes and clunky bodies standing amidst a perpetual plume of dust particulates courtesy of my dad’s frequent product demonstrations.

As a child, I had a recurring nightmare of my dad chasing me around the aisles with the heavy-duty industrial model, the Kraken. I would trip and fall against the hard carpet, waking up in cold sweat at the moment I was about to be sucked up with the crumblies and loose fibers interwoven with the floor. My Dad takes me on a memorized tour of the building that I have seen many times before. There in the corner, in a sea of Sharks and Dyson, I see the Kraken staring back at me, ready to finally take me into her belly.

I often wondered why my Dad stayed here for 35 years. I envied the way he could just persist in the same seemingly menial space with no perceivable end. I follow my dad down the line and he stops short at the Kraken. He looks at her with a sort of loving gentleness.

“Some dame.” I quip.

My dad’s laugh melts into the man-to-man look I remember from the drive to Adrianne Benaire’s house on the night of junior prom.

“They are beautiful though, Son. I think vacuums are alot like women.” He chuckles to himself. “Don’t tell your mother I said that. But I really think they are. Every vacuum is different. Some are tall and skinny. Some are shorter with larger exterior body compartments or detachable nozzles and flexible pivots.” He continues to laugh a little at his own metaphor as he glides his hands across their handles to say hello to each one of his girls.

“That’s what’s kept you here all these years? All the hot babes?” I ask, half joking, half genuinely wondering.

“Not entirely, they have great personalities too. Some are gentle. Some are firm. Some are contemptuous. Some are reliable sweethearts.”

“Which one is Mom?”

He blushed. “Oh, no. She’s incomparable to these vacuums.”

“A Roomba?’

“Absolutely not.”

“The Kraken then?”

“No.” There was a glint in his eye. “She’s not a vacuum. She’s an industrial carpet steamer.”

His smile warmed again. “I do think that there is something for everyone. I love to find that perfect machine her perfect person. I think people see that I love helping people and they come back. That’s why I’m still here Ralph.” He put his hand on my shoulder the same way he did after my elementary school baseball games. “I’m glad you’re here with me.”

I hardly realized it, but in that moment, I was glad too — perhaps for the first time. The inevitability of my vacuum salesman career could be something more like a hybrid destiny. I too, could learn to suck others into my world and bring beauty to theirs, even if it did mean working alongside the Kraken.

When I got home, I opened my computer.

Angela,

Sorry for the lack of communication recently. I have attached here a short essay and already have a few more in the works. I’ll send you some drafts by the end of next week

-R.T.