Vladimir Hustlings' Day Off by Anneka Shannon

Vladimir Hustlings hasn’t seen a woman without her shirt on in 8 years. He’s forgotten what it feels like to stare at someone so honestly. He is forty-six, he is balding, and there is a very large, potbelly sticking out of his middle. It peeks from under his small, red polo in an egg-like manner, with the same roundness as that baldhead of his. His mother enjoys blaming it on too many muffins.

He isn’t sure if the breasts look more like soft roses to him, blooming and reaching outward in the warmest of ways, or like eyes that won’t stop watching him in a manner that makes him feel rather awkward, rather uncomfortable.

Vladimir Hustlings once had a friend that told him that women’s breasts were what inspired Pierre-Auguste Renoir to be a painter. That friend said that if those round bulbs had never existed, that the French-y, impressionistic, prostitute-lover wouldn’t have made it into the museums. Vladimir thinks that this seems strange to him, that he might like her shoulders better right now, that they are round too, and that, why did Renoir not see those gadgets as a thing to fixate on, rather than these ones, with the two little pink targets in the middle of their pale-skinned, globular shape, which seem to follow him around the room in such a manner that makes him so sweaty and uncomfortable?

But it doesn’t matter, he decides. They aren’t really watching him and his friend said that while they were at a bar, drinking and young. The bar has probably been shut down by now and the friend is probably dead by this time.

He should stop thinking about these things and remember to better enjoy his freedom and the woman’s breasts, as he once used to enjoy them. He reminds himself that he will see a lot of things today that will seem strange to him, but that that’s okay. Facing the outside world is all right; it’s possible.

Deep breathing. He didn’t used to have to remind himself to do deep breathing. He used to be restless. That’s okay, he tells himself again, because things change. And he breathes deeply.

Vladimir Hustlings works at a plant. He shuffles papers all day after he wakes up at 8 o’ clock, sharp. He likes to think that he wakes up sharp. That by saying he wakes up sharp, he is also waking up to a day in which he will spend his time sharply, even if not necessarily more smartly. So, he sharply makes it to work after eating breakfast, than he sharply signs in and takes his pills and begins to shuffle those papers until lunch break, sharply.

Lunch break is nice. He tries to sit with Lenny whenever he can, because Lenny is his favorite human. He likes the sharp things Lenny says about him, and even though these are often sharp insults that draw sharp laughter out of the mouths of others, he thinks Lenny is special. Lenny is good at really seeing people, even if it’s in a bad way, and saying things about them that are actually true even if they’re mean things. He thinks this sort of thing takes some kind of bravery.

Vladimir knows they watch Lenny extra carefully, even more carefully than they watch him. The correction officers, that is.

After lunch break (which includes a green apple, a stick of cheese, two slices of wheat bread and a slice of cake, always), Vladimir goes to the Albert Hurthington Health room and registers with the blood nurses. They take all those measurements and then he can go back to sorting and shuffling papers. He really doesn’t know what the measurements are for, or the pills, or the papers, but he thinks they might have something to do with something he said to someone, long ago, when he was young.

            Vladimir continues to stare at the woman. Now he sighs: he must decide what to do next. He has sat for long enough. That’s the problem with freedom. One must decide how to bid ones time.

Should he touch the woman’s breasts? Perhaps he should. They are probably squishy and it would be interesting to find out if they are indeed as he imagines them, because they look a little like they might be soft like water balloons, fun to play with. Then again, he’s not sure if he really wants to make the effort. If he touches them, then he will make a ruckus. He looks at the art students around him. They are all very concentrated, sitting up straight and tall like soldiers, their backs made to posts of absorption, and many of them even bite their bottom lips. They are trying very hard to get her curves just right with their little black, smudgy chunks of charcoal. Vladimir thinks they look kind of like him and the rest of the workers at the plant, when they are shuffling their papers and trying to look important.

He remembers when he was an art student. That was a while ago, when he was sixteen, and he thought a lot differently. That was before the trouble.

So if he wants to touch those breasts, then he will have to make a dash for them. That means scrambling his large, pot-belly through their easels, probably knocking things over in the process, and then dashing out of the studio after maybe getting in one good nipple-pinch.

He sighs again. Should he create some chaos? Or should he just go on observing, waiting for someone else to make something interesting happen… He certainly doesn’t feel as strongly about those soft globes as Renoir did. His sixteen-year-old-self would have said, “Fucking do it.” He doesn’t think he will. Chaos is a hard thing to live with. Creating it is okay, but living with it sort of sucks sometimes.

When he was young, he used to create chaos, and he used to think a lot more about things. He used to apply metaphysical terms to his relationship with ideas and he sounded a lot more intelligent back then. But that got him into trouble. All that thinking: that’s why they called him crazy, and prescribed him a cure for his craziness. And that’s why he got assigned to work at the plant, and that’s why he isn’t allowed to do art anymore, or say bad words, and that’s why he has to check in at the Health room everyday now, instead of just once a week, and that’s why he must take an extra strong dose of the yellow pills.

Saying too much after thinking too much gets you in trouble. It makes you end up at a plant, he is thinking now. He can feel it. The thoughts are coming back. Yes, now he remembers why he wanted to spend the day free, without pills. Not as much for the woman’s breasts (though they’re looking less and less like something watching him and more like hooters he’d very much like to touch) or even the art studio. Most of all, he wants his thoughts back.

Though the pills’ chemicals are still in his system, working from the day before, he can feel the effects wearing off, slowly. He has little time. He must touch the tits, then he must hurry and leave, quickly.

When he calms down again, when his pulse lowers and he isn’t shaking as much, Vladimir notices that the dulling effect those pills have on his brain are diminishing again, significantly. He checks the time and quickly calculates how much longer he has. It’s three o’ clock in the afternoon and it’s raining. They’ll be looking for him by now. He usually signs in with the Health room at around one. That means another five hours, probably. He’s feeling better now, more energetic, more alive, kind of scared, but very excited. He looks at his hand.

He looks at its veins and the thick brown hairs across his lower arms. He looks at the purple, the scrapes that turned to scares, all as if he’s never seen any of it before. He flexes. God, you’ve gotten fat, he thinks to himself. But then again, of course he’s not the same. Sixteen was a bright time. Now is a duller time, not so sharp, even though he wakes up at eight o’ clock, sharp.

It took him an hour to get home. He hasn’t gone to the inner city since he was a teen so finding his way back from the old art school to his little cell-like, government-given (or maybe he should just face up and say assigned since he’s not taking the pills right now anyway) apartment on the East-side took a while. But that whole thing—the long walk, the adrenaline, the embarrassment—it was all worth it. Wonderful female breasts! They’d jolted him awake, as they had when he’d been a boy. He joyously notices the tingling between his legs as he thinks of it. He hasn’t felt that feeling in years, since the last time he managed to skip his pills. God, he thinks, it’s sure good not be jacked up on a pacifying prescription, to be living again, really living. Though he’s not completely sure if this counts as really living either. After all, he still hasn’t decided on what he wants to do next.

Going for the nipple pinch certainly did cause a ruckus in the classroom though. He’d felt bad at first, knocking over some of the art students’ easels like that, but not too bad. Besides, they just weren’t as good as he’d been. His talent had always made the teacher uncomfortable enough to send his name into the office every day, which is a real compliment when you think about it. If your teacher thinks you’re good enough to be jotted down, that means you stand out because you might have a bit of a brain, a little too much of a brain, and that brain has a talent that could say something. You know, like spread a message or something. Recalling some of the paintings he did when he was young… Well, damn. No wonder he ended up at the plant. He’d had balls back then.

Vladimir relaxes into the side of his couch and crosses his arms, smiling. So he has a few hours before they come to get him. What does he want to do? Make use of his sex drive, slowly making its way back to his groin? Or maybe get out the old pads of paper and pens he’s hidden under one of the floorboards?

Sadly, none of this sounds exactly right to Vladimir. He can still recognize the drowsy drugs in his system and he wants them to completely wear off. But at the same time, the more they wear off, the more he feels the come down. That’s the comfort that comes with pills. There’s never anything bad that happens. Those tablets turn you into a fucking passive-as-Hell lamb, he thinks sadly: a happy fucking idiot.

Vladimir slams his fist into the side of his couch. He stands up and sighs, and makes note of the fact that he really is fat now, and bald too, and he recalls his slender, muscular build from before with sadness. Tomorrow, he’ll be prescribed more pills and a less populated paper-shuffling room to work in. He’ll get fatter. He knows that when they find him, they’ll take him directly to the Health room where the blood nurses will take his blood proteins and send it to the government to try to find out what the hell went wrong with mother nature, what part of him is what those government officials love to call, “an anti-social insurrectionist.”

Yep, he knows that two more yellow pills will be added to his dose in the morning. Two more yellow pills. He’ll be made into even more of a smiling, ignorant, child-like and peace-absorbed do-nothing-er, even more of what he thought his name had always sounded like: imbecile.

He still likes his last name though. As a boy, he’d dreamed of it fitting a rebel-fighter, hero-type archetype. His last name… No, Hustlings is not the last name of a balding man with an egg-pot-belly, drowned into the submission of color-tab drugs. No, he tells himself, putting his arms behind his head and leaning back again. Hustlings doesn’t fit, but that’s all right, because the pills are artificial too. He’s not sure what part of him exists anymore. Is he all chemicals now? Where did Hustlings go?

His head is throbbing. Withdrawal. That’s what he is right now, he decides. Sometimes thinking hurts, he decides.