My entire thought process on coming to Roswell was “Roswell? Aliens….Cool!”. I never gave much thought to what I would actually do when I got here so when I stumble upon the visitors center I dip into the parking lot. Visitor centers are usually good for finding out the goings on around town, things to see, places to go. Plus this one has the coolest mailbox I’ve ever seen. I’m inside for all of two seconds because the first thing I see is a sign that says UFO Museum 3 blocks with an arrow. I’m there for the rest of the day.
Aliens creep me the fuck out. Everybody’s got their thing; wether it be ghosts, or demons, or birds in an elevator. Everybody’s got at least one thing. That one thing that gives you the heebie-est of jeebies. So much so that you won’t discuss it out loud because just thinking about it starts that shiver in your spine Aliens are my thing. I think it’s because aliens are probably real. Out of all the millions of galaxies that we know are out there now, it’d be weirder if aliens didn’t exist. There’s just too much room out there for earth to be the only place in all the infinite cosmos to have self aware beings living on it. Aliens are also scary because they can just BE in your room all of a sudden. You can lock your doors and barricade yourself inside but aliens don’t give a shit. They’re just in there. Man, you ever seen The 4th Kind?……Aww fuck dude! One minute you’re sleeping and the next BAM! Aliens all up in your bedside. And they’ll probably have that crazy space technology that paralyzes you to your bed so you can’t run away. They always have that.
Ever read a book called “Communion”? Where Whitley Strieber claims that aliens have been visiting him repeatedly throughout his entire life. He never tells his son about these visits but one day his son describes the same exact aliens the author describes. Down to odd little details like the smaller ones in blue jumpsuits are the grunts, the workers; while the taller slender ones seem to have more authority. The kid says he sees them in his sleep, or something like that. Yeah….creep me the fuck out. So thats why I go to the UFO museum.
A giant timeline of the Roswell Incident runs the length of the museum on the right side. The who, what, when, sort of thing with testimonials from different perspectives and the like. Claims of evidence being stolen or destroyed or replaced with parts of a weather ballon. It really is pretty engrossing and I could spend more time perusing the exhibits but the place is closing. It’s almost 6 so I head back to the quick lube to see if Matt will make good on his offer to put me up for the night.
I park near the back door and when Matt comes out and see me he yells “I just can’t get rid of ya huh!?” he laughs outlandishly to show he’s joking. “Just give me 10 mins to close up shop.” After a bit he locks the back door and hops in the jeep with me. “Ya hungry?” he asks by way of greeting. I’m kinda hungry but I’m trying to stretch every dollar and groceries are cheaper than restaurants. I open my mouth to answer and Matt interrupts, “If we can stop at the grocery store for beer and the Asia place for food it’s all on me.” Sounds like I’m coming out on top of that deal so I quickly agree and we proceed to a Chinese buffet where we each load up a styrofoam clam shell to capacity. Back at Matt’s house I thank him profusely for the lodging and the food while I'm stuffing my face full of beef and broccoli. He just waves his hand in that same ‘don’t mention it’ kind of gesture and continues talking. And boy is he a talker. Loud and boisterous and a million miles an hour. Firing off stories like a fully automatic weapon one after another.
He was born in Califorina, grew up in Arizona and now owns a house in Oregon. He came to Roswell in an attempt to help a chronic fuck-up of a brother. I didn’t want to pry, so I didn’t get all the details but it sounded like drugs got hold of his brother and just wouldn’t let go, no matter how hard Matt tried to help. The quick lube was supposed to be something they could do together, and keep his brother out of trouble but he stopped showing up soon after they opened the doors. He no longer even knows where his brother is. This story is told in the tone of someone who is deeply saddened by the situation but has been numbed to it. As if it occurred so often over the years, it's become the norm. I try to relate. It’s true that time heals all wounds but the serious ones leave scars that can last for years…..or lifetimes, unnoticed by a flippant glance but still a part of who you are….always.
Matt doesn’t give me time to feel sorry for him. He’s already told another story and is halfway through a third. The house we’re in belongs to a friend of his, a judge. Apparently the judge and his wife raised a family here and when the wife died of cancer the judge wanted nothing to do with the house. I look around and notice there are no family pictures on the walls, just rectangle dust shadows where something used to hang. Just empty space on desktop and mantlepiece. Memories are the enemy now, even the good ones. So the judge lets Matt stay here just so the place doesn't get broken into. That explains all the available bedrooms and hastily packed boxes. The somber mood never fully settles in the room because Matt’s already giving me his list of past employment and various adventures he's had with each. Moving cars and heavy equipment back and forth across the country, physical therapy for a quadriplegic, caring for 98 monkeys, small business owner. He’s got the quick lube/carwash now but he used to own a laundromat. (Back then people would call him Laundry Matt. Ha! I find it much more humorous than he does.) At this point he’s been talking non stop for over an hour while we slowly get drunker on beer he bought us along with the Chinese food but I’ve got to stop him here. “Whoa, whoa,” I interrupt “Ok, when you say ‘monkeys’ you mean..?” He stick out his hand, palm down as if it indicate the height of a toddler, looks me in the eye and with a single nod just replies “Primates.”
“98 of them!?” He stops momentarily and makes a thinking face.
“I think it was 94 of them actually.” I’m not sure why but for me, this slight correction make the story infinitely more believable. “Monkeys are mean dude! Sometimes we couldn’t control them so the only thing we could do is spray with the hose to get them to back off or stop humping things.”
“Monkeys don’t like to be sprayed with water huh?” I ask.
“Nope….neither do people” he says with a shrug. I laugh, because it’s a good point. Think about how anyone would react if you just started spraying them with a hose. They would lose their minds. Probably they’d run away, but they'd definitely stop whatever it was they were doing. Monkeys are no different.
When one story ends he moves seamlessly into another. It’s difficult to follow but the enthusiasm with which he speaks is ruthlessly entertaining. He’s onto caring for ‘Sharon’ a quadriplegic woman now, illustrating his responsibilities with off color jokes and politically incorrect comments which happen to be my favorite kind of jokes and the best type of comments. In one incident he’s invited some of his friends over to Sharon’s house and they’re being noticeably quiet and seem uncomfortable. By way of reassurance Matt tells them “Don’t worry guys! It’s not she’s gonna come peeking around the corner, sticking her head in here or anything! She’s not gonna sneak up on us…..cause she can’t! Followed by uproarious laughter. “I know where she is…..cause it’s right where I left her!” I laugh harder than is socially acceptable, shake my head and choke out “that’s awful,” as I make little head way on reigning in my giggling.
“How does a person go from monkey handler to physical therapist?” I ask perplexed.
“They we’re HER monkeys.”
“WHAT?! The paralyzed woman had nearly 100 monkeys!?” I can’t believe what I’m hearing but at the same time it’s one of those stories thats so crazy it has to be true. Think about it. What’s more crazy? A guy having a job taking care of 94 monkeys that belong to a quadriplegic woman who he also takes care of, OR a guy making that story up out of thin air and then saying it…..out loud…to another person. The second guy is clearly a sociopath right? Like the scary, wear your skin like a an overcoat kind of sociopath. Matt seems good natured and harmless and I’m still convinced that his stories were true, or at the very least based in reality.
My personal favorite is the one where Matt leaves Sharon a plate with a sandwich on it for lunch. Apparently she can move her arms enough to feed herself but not much else. He leaves her room to go handle some monkey business…(HA!) When he returns the plate is over turned on the floor, the sandwich having been stolen by a rouge monkey who now has each of Sharon’s ears clenched firmly in each of it’s tiny monkey fists. A monkey foot on each of her shoulders on either side of her head, fully aroused and vigorously face fucking this poor paralyzed woman who's not strong enough to fight off a monkey or get up and run away. Matt spit this story out between fits of uncontrollable laughter and ended it by shooting the offending primate with a squirt gun, looking at Sharon’s mortified face and asking, “So.....How was lunch?”
“Was this woman qualified or trained in any way to have monkeys or anything like that?” I ask.
“Fuck no!” he fires back. “She was a junkie whore. She was paralyzed in a car accident while she was blowing a trucker! One day she told me she wanted a baby and I thought fuck, can’t help you there,” implying that he refused to have sex with a paralyzed woman whose nether regions he already cleans on the regular. Her desire for a baby is what led to the acquisition of one single monkey which she fell in love with and led to all the others.
Reguardless of the level of truth present in these tales they were painfully entertaining. Matt is a born story teller and simply a decent human being. I end up staying with him for 4 days, doing laundry, watching movies, and sleeping in an actual bed. He buys Royal Crown and grills filet mignon that he doesn't even eat. We get drunk and trade stories everyday when he gets home from work. Some highlights from these whiskey soaked conversations include one liners like “chicken lips and butt pork”, and “She wasn't much to look at but she could suck start a Harley.”
