The Devil May Care

...but most likely he didn't.
I don't think I ever bothered to describe what the devil looked like so I'll do that now before I go any further.
When I knew the devil he was still a young, twenty-year old, skater punk with sandy blonde hair. His face was rather average if not cute with a complete lack of facial hair. He was about 5'11 and average of build. He was really someone you could walk past in a store or party and not take notice. It was only when he smiled did you realize that hell was upon you. You see, the devil never smiled over social norms...not babies, comic asides, or the mundane. He only smiled when it meant someone's suffering somewhere at some time. His toothy grin was biting with eyes that reminded you of the blood-thirsty teens you would see playing shoot-em-up video games. His eyes were blue and empty like a sky after a storm. He usually stank, not like fire and brimstone but more like someone who doesn't care that he sweats or eats mexican food too much.
Now I will tell you about the dorm room we shared together in Minot, North Dakota.
If you opened the door to our room you were first presented with a small collage assembled on the interior of the door. It consisted of an image of Dustin Hoffman dressed as a woman when he played "Tootsie" glued to a piece of cardboard under which I had written "We're pro Queer" in red with an adjoining red ribbon drawn to the right. under that was an upside-down cross with the letters "SANTA" written with sticky mailbox letters. I think there were some random stars and hearts stickers we took from the blood donation place a few weeks before...the glittery kind.
Once inside our lair you would see my meager, wooden, fold-up futon against one wall with one of those tapestries your grandad kept in his garage hangout...the weird one with woods and deer and shit hangin' out like some old ass lady sat at the edge of these scary woods and hand loomed a fuckin' blanket while watching nature scenes at dusk, but i liked it.
then there was the little TV area in the corner of the room with speakers and junk...used mostly for watching porn and skate videos. on our windowsill was the true piece de'la resistance...a collection of lawn ornaments stolen from around the city of minot. we had the yard gnomes pushing wheelbarrows and holding shovels that the devil jumped over a fence and stole from the yard of catholic monastery. also, a virgin mary statue that i stole from an old ladies house the same time i took the "chairman of peace" rocking chair that i will talk about later. the devil defiled the poor statue with paper mache horns and the same markings on her forehead and hands as charlie manson sported when he went to trial. and a little cherub that was squatting to admire some other lawn art originally but we had placed a fake turd under instead.
but wait, hold your judgements for the next part.
after i had built the devil a tall-ass bunk bed to keep him from fuckin' with me in the night he had decided it framed the wall behind it much like a mural in ancient greece. so he adorned it with his own work of art.
from the back pages of all his hustler, juggs, hippo and playboy mags he cut the ads you never looked at. the ones that offer sex hotlines, escort services, man on man feasts, and whatever advertisement you could think of that gets slapped in your hand by the porn pimps as you walk down the strip in vegas. yup. pure smut.
and he cut out pictures. words. numbers.
and made the wall of porn.
an eye sore even to the most dirty, lonely, over-weight, unshaven, unemployed ex-con. this went past funny into the grotesque.
and how we passed our military room inspections every month i do not know.
maybe they were only able to stand at the brink of hell and look in for fear that their immortal souls were at risk if they even viewed our monstrosity.
and so it kept our little slice pretty quiet. no one ever really came over to hang out. so we were free in our room. to be our selves.
the art and stolen artifacts only grew with time until the fateful day i almost destroyed the devil.
but that's another story.