They called him Sledgehammer Steve because of the way he waxed his hair up like a massive metallic sheet, and jerked his head forward when he was excited. And he was often excited, sometimes excited enough to head-butt his pals for fun. Sledgehammer Steve was a 15-year-old without a job, with plenty of friends to egg him on. Passersby would determine him a spaz when coming across him and his buddies out smoking cigarettes on his porch.
One woman, with a chestnut ponytail swaying from the point of its pink scrunchy, didn’t determine him a spaz, in fact she didn’t even register his presence. She was used to men’s catcalls, and this teenager was by comparison only a tiny mosquito the breeze would eventually hoist off in its current.
What snapped Sledgehammer Steve away from his failed attempts at issuing titty twisters his friends would never forget, was the bright fabric of this lady’s pink pants, wrapped tight around the curvature of her toned calves, and child bearing hips, briskly waving the flag at the bull. Sledgehammer Steve’s head quickly pivoted and zeroed in on this stimulus. He brayed a loud disclaimer of his intended prize: Pink Pants! Pink Pants! Pink Pants!
Steve was a fast runner if provoked in the right way, like if it was announced that hot dogs were ready at a barbeque, or if challenged with “loser has to do the dishes.” The sight of these pink pants dosed him with the same lust he often felt sitting behind girls in class; freckled shoulders crossed by the thin straps of a salmon tank top. The color, in its many shades, was for him a turn on, and the heat of these pink pants in particular rallied the magnetism of every pinkish hue all at once.
His friends guffawed and thrust their thumbs up in the air. “Sledgehammer Steve is getting laid tonight! Boy wants it bad, damn!” The cheers didn’t cause the lady look back, nor did she quicken her pace. Sledgehammer Steve’s long, skinny legs allowed him to catch up to her not even a third of a block away. As he closed in on her, the pink seemed to increase in brightness. He felt an ache throb within his eyes as his vision faded into pulsating dark spots. It was as though he had looked into the sun, but he could still see enough to know the pants were still there, within reach, and his engorged penis pressed against his zipper, crying out a request that he should be pantless, and so should this lady! She should reveal what was underneath and highlighted by such extraordinarily loud pink pants.
With his right hand, Sledgehammer Steve attempted to grasp her right thigh. As his fingertips made contact, a painful shock kicked his hand off and to the side, where it followed the course of inertia. His body spun and he stumbled into a bush. Branches poked and scratched at his chest and face. His right hand was an escalating mesh of numbness and tingles, the feeling spread up to his elbow, and almost to his shoulder. The right arm was now useless. His buddies laughed, and some clapped a partial glee at his defeat, mostly out of jealousy if he were to score with a lady wearing such captivating pink pants.
But Sledgehammer Steve didn’t think himself defeated just yet. Once again he sprinted after her, faster than before, perhaps the electrical charge had circulated to his feet. A half block later he was right behind her. His right arm swung limply at his side, but his left arm could still flex. He made another pass, this time lunging down to hook her by the shin. Before he could even slap his palm against the bony part, it was kicked forward by the power of an intense repulsion. Sledgehammer Steve’s footing slipped out behind him and he fell forward. He was able to jut his neck down, causing his spine to curl, and the rest of his body rode the flow of gravity as he did a somersault. The bottoms of his feet slapped concrete as he righted himself back to standing, then stumbling, then once again running as though he couldn’t turn off the motors. The lady still hadn’t looked back, nor had she quickened her pace. She was able to gain some yards while Sledgehammer Steve had struggled with a brief challenge to his balance. His friends could see him from a distance; it looked as though he’d taken a spill. They were racing to help him up, chuckling, mostly eager to mock him.
Desire was still at the forefront of Sledgehammer Steve’s mind, in fact all sense of restraint was zapped into the background. The world was mostly dark, but those pink pants were still screaming an indication of something so delightful, something he must possess at whatever cost. The pleasures would consume him forever, bliss would reverberate without ever dissipating and life would never be a drag again, if he could just-
His eyes locked in on the lady’s butt, only a foot away. Round and pronounced, and shimmering, just looking at it was intoxicating. Who cares about hitting the ground, if he could press his open mouth into the firm flesh. Like a ballplayer abandoning all to slide safely into home plate, Sledgehammer Steve dove forward, opening wide. His top teeth clipped her glutes until the biggest jolt of all was conducted through his jaw, into his brain, and Sledgehammer Steve was stricken with seizures for nearly 4 minutes on the curb, until the uprising of his nerves flopped him into the street and traffic halted. By time his friends caught up to the scene, the lady in the pink pants was out of sight.
Sledgehammer Steve tried to let the paramedics know what he thought would surely cure him: Pink Pants! Pink Pants! Pink Pants! He was eventually able to stand up and walk a little but he had a difficult time standing up straight, his sense of balance had seemingly been burned away. His mouth hung open as he tried to talk, lips unaware of the slip of saliva. From that point on he became known as Slobbery Slanted Steve and he’d never again be referred to as Sledgehammer Steve.
Years later, a grey-haired Slobbery Slanted Steve grunted an attempt to vocalize recognition when The Aughts on CNN did a segment about forgotten inventions. A woman, with a robust sheen of hair flowing through a pink scrunchy, made snarky remarks about investor after investor turning up their noses at a product that she fully believed would replace mace and the rape whistle. She laughed off her youthful delusion of convincing men to pony up seed money for women’s pants they wouldn’t themselves be able to unbutton and slide off as a surprise.
Slobbery Slanted Steve was unable to successfully communicate the importance of what he saw on TV and why it put him in a medical housing facility. His frantic gestures only led to an argument between orderlies about whether anybody had bothered to feed the man his lunch yet and if that’s why he became so fussy all of a sudden.
Drinkers with Writing Problems 