These are Rock Bottoms, These are Bloody Twos

Krystal Simmons – Third Place

I.

In 2017, Casa Diablo, a vegan strip club in Portland, was feeling pressure from the Feds to stop their marketing ploy of handing out blood stained two-dollar bills. The owner, Johnny Diablo Zukle, had been hand dyeing the edges in a “trade secret” manner as an ode to The Titty Twister, the vampire filled strip club from the film From Dusk Till Dawn.

In many similar establishments, you, the patron, might stare at your ATM-crisp Benjamins and hesitate, as many do while holding larger denominations. Eventually, you would hand over your hard or easily earned big bills to be broken up into little pieces to rain over the gyrating bodies of post-pubescent women. One such lady steps into a glass box for all to watch as she furiously grabs at the air attempting to pocket as much as she can from this money tornado game. After the music stops, and all the excitement dissipates, the spectators move on to the next attraction. She’s only managed to bag $23.

What if the small Washingtons had been two-dollar Jeffersons? She would have doubled her profit for the same effort. This is why the societies of undressed women would wise up and start handing out two-dollar bills in exchange for your big Franklins. After you cast the new droplets of currency that seem to suspend mid air over your preferred tiny dancer’s dry panties, she winks at you. Her wink sounds like whatever noise your phone makes when you get a bank notification. Especially when your deposit is from a paycheck in which half of the dollars were paid time off hours you cashed in.

Damn, I got paid the same as last time, for half the work, you realize. Twice as much for having fun, the dancer giggles as she counts.

II.

At the same time, the pious were receiving these bloody bills as change also from their coveted McDonalds. They would rather their change be stained with McRib sweat, than that of a Vampiric performer from the house of the devil. But 5-0 knew that wasn’t a legal enough reason to get Johnny Devil to stop. So, they hid behind some law about the destruction of God’s preferred country’s legal tender. Johnny buckled.

In order for the money to get the attention of 12, it suggests that there are a high number of bloody twos blanketing the city all coming from multiple sources. Small liquor stores use new two dollar bills as bait money in robberies. When you, the thief, step up to the plate in the strongman game between you and the cashier, you swing your hammer down to see just how high you can you make your buck go up. The bell sounds which means the operator gives you your prize and your turn is over. Back at your home base, you exhale that comfortable sigh and count your easy earned bounty. You nick your hand on your weapon of choice as you retrieve the bills from the bag. Now you are in possession of bloody twos. The next cashier you encounter provides a chance for you to give rather than receive.

“One McRib please,” you mutter.

The barely legal aged worker glances at your crimson Jefferson. “Oh no, we’re not allowed to accept those,” she warns.

You bow out graciously and flee. If you are the dummy that I think you are, for robbing a liquor store because the McRib is back, you’ll deposit the twos at a Walmart money center into your online only bank account. As you leave, you have to weave through people Sunday driving their oversized carts filled with bargains and babies sans pants. Lo and Behold, there is a Mickey Deez at the exit. Before you have the opportunity to offend the next cashier, swat is on your back like brown on rice. Turns out your biologically dye-packed twos had their serial numbers pinged, or however it works.

III.

Option three for the origin of red tar smudged guap comes from my own experience. I didn’t live in Oregon, but California which is close enough according to everyone who doesn’t reside on the west coast. It was the year of our universe, two thousand and seventeen. I started my day like any other, in sheer panic induced by a particular strain of yawns. As soon as my eyes opened, an internal timer had begun. It kept track of when my pores were to open up and start releasing all the liquid I had kept at bay for the past 24 hours. It kept track of when my sinus cavities would lose all control over their mucus, and of when my legs would become more restless than I. It knew the schedule for my skin to begin resembling raw chicken legs fresh out of the plastic packaging; clammy, bumpy, and covered with stray feathers needing to be plucked and picked at. Then would come the nauseating smell of everything, followed by several commode runs, and choking on cigarettes because I could finally taste them again.

My mother’s car engine rumbled. That was my cue.

The sense of urgency I used to display as a prized restaurant worker had been transformed into a seemingly lifesaving skill. I quickly spanned the 40-foot walk from my room to my mother’s and entered her private threshold. I got to work. Careful not to touch anything, I used my eyes to scan and rifle through her possessions. I had already been through the less-than- mint-condition coins buried deep in the ghost of purses past. I had also decided that the most recent treasure of gift cards she had received from wedding guests need not run completely empty because that was too obvious of a tell. So where to next? I opened a bedside set of drawers that I had seen in her room in multiple houses over the course of 20 years. I ignored my rule of touching only whatever I deemed as necessary, when I recognized my own handwriting on a piece of folded blank printer paper. It was a letter I had written to my mother about one or two years prior to this moment.

I lifted the letter, revealing my deceased father’s wallet (also 20 years old), a few pieces of mail, and to my surprise, a rubber banded stack of slightly crisp two- dollar bills. I hastily counted them. It was only enough to buy a dub. I googled the year they were issued to see if they had appreciated in value. My search told me that each bill was worth…two dollars. These had to belong to the mother of my mother’s mother, who

raised my mother. I took them, all of them. Unlike you, I wasn’t dumb enough to go to Walmart. My dealer was foreign and might think these were as good as monopoly money, so I went to a grocery store bank and gave them change for a twenty-dollar bill. Now they owned my red handed twos.

Looking back, I probably could’ve given my connect the two-dollar bills. I woke him up, pounding on his door at 6:00 am with a handful of change. He accepted. I had seen EBT cards, defunct electronics, and family heirlooms in his one room wooden shack. And I’m pretty sure the guy standing guard outside was holding a pawned machete. My connect wasn’t that picky. But I needed to know that my great-grandmother’s forty-year-old stack of Jeffersons weren’t going to be handed back as change into some unnamed heroin addict’s blood stained fingertips. What if the families scorned and robbed could add serial numbers to their memories, the smell of perfume that lingered on jewelry, or the microfibers of the cedar box that once held one of the watches so haphazardly thrown into a pile at my dealer’s dwelling. How many people could trace their bait belongings to that shack? Their faces start to poke at my core while I imagine how they would feel while buying back their own belongings that they didn’t sell or trade, just so this prick can keep his business open, ouch. A few weeks later I confessed to my ma that I indeed was a drug addict. A week after that she installed a camera over her door. I did attempt to make amends once, during a busy family event whilst sober and was met with “Do we have to right now?” A relief. We’ve never discussed this rock bottom, or our bloody twos.