Hawk Haven Neighborhood Watch
BE ON THE LOOK OUT for an alleged assault & batterer with silver-blonde hair, approximately 6’4”, squinty eyes, mid-to-late 40s, calls himself Mel Devlin, also known as Del Melvin or Elvin Norkvist, self-alleged possessor of “Big Dick Energy”, often seen smoking unfiltered cigarettes through a mouth too small for his face. The individual often flashes a Space Force badge thought to be counterfeit. His approach is often friendly, but soon turns to threatening. Contact your nearest Neighborhood Watchman if this individual is spotted within the Hawk Haven community.
Gwayne Goshawks is living out of a van in an undisclosed park somewhere in Seminole County. He’s left me a map on how to find him, using landmarks as identifiers (“past the place where the dancing girls wear tassels”, “right at Quick-Lube where Coatrack Bisset used to sell Oxy”) as Goshawks never bothered to learn the street names. Per his request, I have brought him a couple of Reuben sandwiches with extra thousand-island dressing and a suitcase of cheap Manigan’s Ice Beer “there’s no feeling like feeling like a Manigan… ICE”. I arrive to see the sliding door of his van open to oaken shade, not that the shadows offer much in the form of comfort when the temperature is 90 degrees and the humid air breathes-in like hot cotton. I find Goshawks semi-conscious without a coronavirus mask, which is excusable as no passersby would require extra incentive to remain socially distant from a lanky madman napping in a sketchy van. I am wearing a mask as it’s the decent thing to do, not to mention we are near the epicenter of the Florida coronavirus epidemic. I diligently shoot a few squirts of sanitizer in the direction of the van, but the spray quickly evaporates under the oak canopy’s humidity.
With a sandwich bite torn-off, Goshawks explains his current predicament with a full mouth and a tortured heart. Goshawks mentions this dude, Mel Devlin, who is stalking Goshawks because he believes Goshawks stole his girlfriend. I ask the obvious. Nope, Goshawks says, looking over his shoulder into the van as if confirming her absence. I ask the next obvious question. Goshawks says he doesn’t know where she is, but as long as Mel Devlin is looking of him, Mel Devlin is not going to find her, which is for the best. I ask the next obvious question.
“Yes, dude! Fuck yeah, I think he’s dangerous!” Gwayne Goshawks says with sleepy lividness. “My sister, Michelle, she goes to Fresh Fields the other day to do her weekly grocery shopping, right? She’s coming out of the store, wheeling her cart of food through the parking lot, my nephew is strapped to her chest like a koala and this tall dude shows and says ‘Hi Michelle, I am a friend of Gwayne’s’, right? Bullshit, but Michelle don’t know. My sister, she isn’t all that excited about this rando creeping close because of the ‘Vid and all, but also because, I mean, dude looks like an Aryan rapist, but he name-drops yours-truly and she accepts his offer of help loading groceries into her car, right? Anyway, dude opens her egg carton and starts talking, ‘your brother Gwayne is a good guy, but he’s got a hard head’ and then this motherfucking dude clenches an organic range-free egg and crushes it in his hand. It just fucking pops! Yoke and shit spilling between his fingers. My sister flips-the-fuck and throws a sriracha bottle in his face before getting in her car and speeding off, driving over parking curbs, her trunk still open and spilling cans of hard seltzer and baked beans in her wake. My sister hears the creep yell after her, ‘You be sure to let your shithead brother know Mel Devlin said hello!’ Anyway, my sister has kicked me the fuck out of her house, which is for the best, I mean, with this beardless berserker running me off the road.”
Oh?
“Yeah, I am riding my bro-in-law’s bicycle down Red Bug Lake Road, right? Minding my own fucking business when this Ford F-5000 sideswipes me. I’m fucking hurled into the grass, but its wet with rain and I just slide a mile, picking up ants and fossilized dog shit with my teeth. Truck speeds away; I can’t make out the license plate, but I do recognize the Trump 2020 bumper sticker from Memorial Day Weekend.”
What happened on Memorial Day Weekend?
“First I have to explain the girl.”
Ah yes, the girl.
“Not that girl.” Gwayne Goshawks clarifies. “Not yet. Yeah, so Ember Baker was my one true love of 2019. We met last summer; we were both counselors up at Salvation Creek Redemption Camp in North Florida, teaching a bunch of shithead hormonal time-bombs the importance of gospel and abstinence. I mean, these little fucks were Grade-A self-righteous, holier-than-yo-mama, entitled grandchildren of Duval County land developers and they mostly keep it in their pants, but they are teenagers, thereby shitheads, so at the end of every day, we camp counselors, we smoke the shit out of whatever we can buy-off the Jesus-looking hillbilly drug-dealer we found at an I-10 rest area. I mean, it was a summer of good times, right? Ember was 24, studying law, had skin which smelled like vanilla hand-lotion and her breasts were like ripe peaches, mangoes even, not that I could taste the fruit cos she was saving herself for marriage, which I was totally down for, I mean, I was drinking the same Kool-Aid at the time and, fuck, dude, I would have married the shit out of Ember Baker cos the moment I saw her, first thing in my head was ‘shit, this chick might be my 4-evah girl’ and I’m sneaky scoping her short-shorts and her fingers to see if there was a promise-ring and there was, natch, obvi a chick like this is going to have her suitors, but, of course, what are promises good for other than breaking and by the end of summer her promise-ring might as well have been a maybe-ring, a TBD-donut, not that I deflowered her or anything, but she and me did some serious dry-humping on the reg. My junk is still raw from all of the blue-jean on blue-jean friction.”
Memorial Day Weekend, I remind Goshawks.
“Getting there, mon frere.” He says. “Ember Baker spends her autumn months on an evangelical mission to Haiti, preaching the Good Word and smoking some dank bud. By the time she gets back to Jacksonville, it is holiday season, shit is crazy, and FYI, I’ve left North Florida for Central in order to work as a theme park furry for minimum wage and benefits. We lost touch, a bit, right? Anyway, February, give-or-take, I get this call from Ember Baker, she’s throwing this party up at Jax Beach. I’m re-in-love within a minute. I don’t jerk-off for a week in preparation, y’know, just in case, and drive from Orlando to Jacksonville in record time for this party only to find Ember Baker engaged to an Olympic track star from Port-Au-Prince. I’m totally second-fiddled, but good on Ember for upgrading. So I am at this beach-house-party full of strangers or people I’d rather forget and after an hour of despondent woe-is-me binge-drinking, I meet Alice from Dallas, who has been Ember Baker’s BFF for the last three weeks and has heard nothing but great things about me and my dry-hump prowess. But forget dry-humping, by midnight we’re naked on the beach, Alice from Dallas and me, but I’m too wasted to really do anything, but I am thinking, ‘fuck! This chick could be my 4-evah girl’ which is a nice thing, especially since my one true love of 2019 is marrying some next-level Olympic stud, right? So, Alice from Dallas and me are in love. She’s from Ember’s church and couldn’t be more born-again if she were a cow from Calcutta, but while she loves her some Jesus, she especially loves getting naked, at least when cocaine is involved, so she’s cool, right? But all great things, am I right? At the end of the weekend, I’m back to work in Orlando. Alice from Dallas and me, well, we make plans, but then coronavirus happened. Like this Bat-Flu out of China was a massive cold shower and we’re left to meeting online for bible-study. I’m pretty sure Alice from Dallas was destined to be my one true love of 2020, but Covid-19 has me quarantined in my sister’s garage, Facetiming with Alice from Dallas just to keep channels of communication open. Each time I call her expecting a session of video-sex, her pastor drops-in and I have to cover myself with the pillow my bro-in-law’s mother crotched for my nephew. Anyway, our video-chats become less frequent, things between us get distanced. And I spent a couple weeks off-the-grid camping on the abandoned golf course with Nadia and the anarchists, so no Facetiming then, obvi. March passes into April and April into May and it isn’t until the end of May when Governor says the apocalypse is officially cancelled because he’s bored. Out of the blue of my balls, I get this rando text from Alice from Dallas: she wants me to come visit her in Palatka for the Blue Crab Festival over Memorial Day Weekend. Fuck yeah, right? Turns out the festival is postponed because Covid, but a shit-ton of people are going boating on the St Johns River, anyway, social distancing be damned! Where do I sign-up? I couldn’t be happier, except, for the itch, man, it had been something ferocious ever since those days romping in the palmettos with Nadia Nadazero, but I figure a little Gold Bond Extra Strength and a couple extra sheep-skins would be enough to quarantine that rash.”
Memorial Day Weekend, I remind Goshawks.
“Jawohl, mein herr!” Gwayne Goshawks says, completely lucid within his van theater. “Rendezvous is set for a boat dock in San Mateo, south of Palatka. I show-up in cheetah-print bikini-bottoms, an orange hunter’s vest, an Australian water-buffalo leather hat and hiking boots. In my backpack, I have DEET, sunblock, a family-pack of sheep skins, petroleum-based and water-based lubricants, a Ziploc of cocaine I bought off of a Jesus-looking Rastafarian on Orange Blossom Trail, 3 mini-bottles of vodka, a JUIZD-UP energy drink, half a Reuben sammie, a compass, three spare cigarettes, a canteen of old whiskey I don’t know the origins of, dental floss, a bottle opener and a an ex-girlfriend’s favorite dildo just in case my sword of destiny isn’t fulfilling, right?”
And what did Goshawks find along the San Mateo boat docks?
“Alice from Dallas greets me wearing a hip-loving bikini and a windbreaker. There was no hiding her baby-bump, though, my bro. It was for real obvious her belly was either full with child or helluva lotta beer. Given the last few months of coronavirus quarantine, it could have been either. Not that I’m bothered brother, cos I’m back in love with those peach-fuzz dimples and cherry-pit nipples, never mind the baby-bump! Even if swimming around inside her there is a baby she plucked off some strange dick, I still think I love her. But then, we hear distant thunder. Ominous, right? But it’s just this flatulent old man stepping off the boat. The whole dock wobbles, I’m like WTF? Alice from Dallas introduces me to her baby-daddy, Mel Devlin. He’s like, old enough to be her dad, but he’s got this old-man strength, his handshake was like a vice. Mel Devlin says to me, ‘I’m told you’re the cutest thing since veal, but you just look like a scared calf pretending to be a bull.’ He then laughs and opens his arms wide, ‘Oh, I’m just fucking with you shit-peanut!’ and he hugs me even though I’m wearing a coronavirus facemask and obviously don’t want to be this socially close. He says, ‘I have what the kids call “Big Dick Energy” and that might be off-putting to you’. I’m like, whatever, man. He asked me what I do for a living, but in that way people ask you the question they want to answer them self. I can barely mention my theme park work before dude is talking about how he is a special agent for the Space Force. He says he was living in a townhouse next to Alice from Dallas and they barely spoke except when laundering clothes but then Covid came and isolated everyone and they connected over their back-porches and while the quarantine made them twin silos they overtime merged into one. ‘A lot of merging, pal!’ Mel Devlin insists as he tore the bottle camp off a beer with his teeth. ‘And now she’s having my baby’ Mel raises his beer bottle towards the pregnant woman. I’m clinking bottle and doing math and thinking, prego-chicks don’t start showing until 3 months down the road, right? I mean, I’ve seen my sister go through this. It’s late May and the quarantines began halfway through March. I’m thinking, Alice from Dallas may be knocked-up, but it ain’t from Mel Devlin’s old-ass sperm ding-donging the doorbell.”
I ask if Goshawks thought the child might be his.
“Hell-nah!” Gwayne Goshawks laughs. “I had done too much blow that night on Jax Beach, but not intentionally cos I thought I was snorting crushed Vitamin C. No, for real, all the news back then was about the crazy Bat-Flu from Wuhan and everyone wanted to keep their immunity on fleek. By the time I realize this Vitamin C was actually Peruvian marching powder, I was already chewing on the walls, and by the time Alice from Dallas got naked under the Big Dipper, I had gone full Fred Durst, dropping trou with just a loose burrito to show for myself. So it goes without sayin’ whatever lurks in her belly ain’t DNA-stamped ‘Goshawks’.”
Why would Alice from Dallas invite Goshawks aboard her baby-daddy’s boat?
“No fucking clue, man, but things got interesting in a hurry. Seems the chemistry between Alice from Dallas and me was legit! Mel Devlin is playing Ahab at the helm, speeding us downriver, drinking Southern Comfort mixed with his Mountain Dew Big Gulp, but behind him, Alice from Dallas and me are catching-up on lost time, joking and touching, her foot is caressing me, right? But Captain Jack-Ass blazes through a no-wake zone and the water cops chase us down. I’m freakin’ out, spilling my baggie of coke onto the most-smiley alligator you’ve ever met, but cops don’t notice cos Mel Devlin is flashing his Space Force badge. Maybe he’s real, I’m thinking, or maybe these coasties are too dumb to recognize a fake-badge. Anyway, we’re out of trouble and Mel Devlin continues to haul-ass to the party zone. It’s this sandbar where a redneck flotilla has come together. Country-music, confederate flags, jet-ski cowboys with MAGA hats turned backwards. We anchor and Mel Devlin saddles up behind one of his cowboy buddies and says he’ll be right back. I turn to Alice from Dallas and she’s taken off her windbreaker and asked me to apply tanning oil on her for sunbathing. I’m thinking this what I signed up for! Lightning has struck twice; I got a second chance at happiness with my one true-love of 2020!”
And?
“I oiled her up, moving from her toes to her legs to her swollen belly-bump when she told me I missed a spot. Like, the good spot, right? I pour the rest of the tanning oil over my torso and Alice from Dallas and me made sweet, slippery, passionate love as passing boaters hollered catcalls and blew their fog-horns. It was amazing. Pure bliss. It lasted, like, 20 seconds. To this day, my tongue still tastes like chemical coconut. So, like, a minute after baptism, we’re post-coital cuddling on the deck of the boat when Alice from Dallas asks me to kill Mel Devlin. She says she can’t leave him, she’s afraid he’ll axe-murder everything she loves. Before I can even wrap my mind around this or unwrap my legs from that, Mel’s jet-ski returns and I have to fetch my cheetah thong from off the steering wheel. Mel Devlin notices nothing, but all I see is his grotesquely-enlarged Adam’s apple and wonder what sharp object I should shove into it. The rest of the afternoon, I loose myself in a good whiskey drunk; Mel and Alice from Dallas act like everything is peachy keen, partying with their flotilla friends.”
And Mel Devlin never suspected Goshawks had lain with Alice of Dallas during his brief absence?
“I didn’t think so at first. End of the day, we pull into the docks; Alice from Dallas goes to fetch the Ford while Mel and I are hosing-off the boat. Mel says, ‘Hey shit-spoon, you think I don’t know what you were up-to back at the sandbar?’ and I’m telling him I can’t say what he doesn’t know as I haven’t really given it much thought, right? Dude fucking grabs me by the windpipe and kicks my legs out. He wrestles me in the boat, my face pressed against the same deck I had sex with Alice from Dallas hours earlier. He’s holding down my neck and pulls off my cheetah thong. I’m thinking he’s going to dick me in the butt, but he has other plans. He’s sayin’, ‘You’re a fancy hotdog aren’t you? Time to cool you off, hotdog!’ and I can feel the hose nozzle between my cheeks. I’m screaming and clenching my ass as if my sphincter is holding on to the edge of a cliff as this psychopath is trying to give me a dockside enema. Anyway, I must have absorbed enough tanning oil off of Alice from Dallas, my torso and neck slipped out of his grip and in a single balletic bounce I leapt overboard and into the dock water, losing my cheetah thong along the way. And man, shit, I fucking swam like a dolphin trained on crack-pipe and I was halfway to Jacksonville before I came up for air.”
Did Goshawks call for help? Ask for the police?
“Hell no. I mean, Mel Devlin might actually be a Space Force Agent and I was a soon-to-be-fired pizza delivery boy. It was his word versus mine. Anyway, river people are good people. Someone brought me to shore and gave me a towel to wear and five bucks for a Slurpee. I hitched my way south on Highway 17, eventually getting back here only to be laid-off cos my boss at Dioscuri Brothers says a Space Force Agent walked into the pizza shop and said I was a criminal wanted for sexual deviancy. I say to my boss, Dino, ‘Why would Space Force be policing sexual deviancy?’ and Dino says he asked the same and the Space Force Agent told him the act of perversion occurred at Cape Canaveral, which is his jurisdiction.’ Anyway, I am out of a job thanks to Mel Devlin, Space Cop.”
Is there any chance of a future between Goshawaks and Alice from Dallas?
“My immediate future is hunkered-the-fuck-down in my uncle’s van, man. If the local Neighborhood Watch could do me a solid and watch my back, it’s the most I could ask for. After a while, who knows…? She might wait for me. But knowing Alice from Dallas, she probably won’t wait more than a week.”
BOLO for Mel Devlin. If spotted, please contact the Hawk Haven Neighborhood Watch at VicNeverman@gmail.com.
For other tales of loves lost and random bullshit, see these Gwayne Goshawks stories
APOCALYPOLIS 