Sleep was coming easy there for a long time but not anymore.
I toss and turn every night until three or four in the morning before I get up to choose from two hundred channels of garbage.
I watch depressing coverage of epic disasters and hear depressing
accounts of bad things happening to peoples' children.
Sometimes if I have an idea I will write vulgar short stories in the middle of the night.
I used to have some blue Xanax but I ate them all. I was sleeping all
right with the blue "Zannies" but they're all gone now.
I drink the last of the Bacardi Gold in the freezer and go back to bed where I toss and
turn until around six.
I get back up out of my worthless bed and go to watch the sun rise.
Ain't no sleep happening in the bed and ain't no woman in the bed so ain't no reason to stay in the fucking bed.
Alcohol used to knock me out but hardly ever does now. I have to get
more than a couple in me and more and more as the sleepless nights march past.
I have to drink liquor instead of beer and I'm told I act like a jack-ass when I drink liquor like it was beer.
Drinking beer to chase a little bit of liquor is the obvious safe way to
do it but it is hard to predict how a bout of real hard drinking will go.
Now that I'm outside to watch the sun come up I start to remember when I
was younger and the sun coming up was a signal to hit the sack after
drinking all night. I try to go to bed earlier now but at the same time
I start drinking earlier now.
The sun comes up just as I suspected it might.
I finally get to sleep around eleven in the morning.
I piss around the house and there's nothing going on here. I should have
gone back to school this year.
I go into the kitchen and look in the fridge and the freezer and the cabinet but there's nothing to drink in
here. Whatever could I do about that?
The kitchen's a mess. The gnats in this house are getting out of control.
Spiders are building webs on the dirty dishes and glasses piling up. Lots of glasses.
I put on Eagle One Oh Seven point Five on the radio and that's all right. I sit down and try to draw and scrawl some lines and give it up.
I have two cans of sardines with mustard sauce on crackers for breakfast. It's around the middle of September.
My girlfriend died in September a couple of years ago so I will always hate this month, for
the rest of my life, probably.
When Kara left this world, that's when I lost all my Chick Magnetism, my Mojo, or my Will to exercise it.
I pick up some work when I can, the harder the labor the better,
but instead of knocking me out and helping me go to sleep,
for some reason the work seems to leave me even more pissed off and frustrated.
I want to live as a total Hedonistic scumbag.
Now an unexpected little windfall of cash falls into my hands.
I figure maybe getting myself into a sexual adventure
with somebody new will break me out of this funk.
I go up to the bar that I hit sometimes to get a start on my buzz.
There is a girl that's always here that I was trying half-assedly to pick up for
weeks to no avail.
It took me the longest time to figure out that the reason she is always
there was because she is the girlfriend of the woman tending bar.
She doesn't dig the type of equipment I was born with.
After I had that epiphany I didn't try to pick her up anymore. I still go to the place though. I do all right there sometimes.
Of course I've left the place by myself a lot but never sober.
This time I go there and all the regulars are there and two or three
strange people. I see that old Weasel Tustin is in here again. Weasel
has a grey hillbilly beard and a long grey braided ponytail down to his
Harley Davidson belt.
"Hey, Weez, any jokes?" I ask as I pull up an empty barstool. Old Weasel
is always good for a joke, none of them fit for print in any respectable
publication.
"What's brown and comes in little white cans?"
"I dunno."
"Micheal Jackson." That's one I haven't heard. Weasel pounds his shot.
"Who's quarter is this?" That's one of the strangers. They want to shoot
pool. One is wearing a Jersey Devils jersey. The one talking is wearing
a jersey that says "69."
"That's me," says Weasel, and he gets up as he takes a toke off of his
bottle of Iron City. I order a beer and a shot of Bushmill's. I drink
for a moment and go to put some Fleetwood Mac on the jukebox.
I like to play the whole Rumours album and whatever's left over is always
something different.
This time I go with some Creedence Clearwater Revival.
As I load the jukebox I hear Weasel ask "Sixty-Nine" if he cares to make the game a little more interesting. Now this should be good.
As I enjoy my refreshing beverages I hear Weasel admonish one of the
dudes he's playing with.
"We shoot like white people in this joint; you call the shots."
I sit and drink a little more and Stevie Nicks fills the bar with her
soothing voice. A girl comes in the bar and I get my hopes up for a
second but she is quickly followed by a bestial guy I assume to be her man.
After a little bit I glance over at Weasel Tustin's billiards game and
see that it is down to brass tacks. I down one more shot of Bushmill's
and take my beer over to watch.
Weasel has high ball and there's one thirteen ball on the table. The guy
in the Sixty Nine shirt is down to the eight ball. It's Weasel's shot.
Old Weasel calls the thirteen ball in the side and sinks it with ease.
Then he calls the eight ball in the corner. He aims, takes his shot, and
scratches.
"Shit!" he cries.
"That'll be two hundred bucks, pops," Sixty-Nine says smugly. Now it's
gonna get interesting. Weasel Tustin will have at least four hundred
dollars on him at a time, but I know for a fact these clowns won't see
a penny of it.
Now here comes a trick I've seen old Weasel pull before.
"I keep the money here in m' sock," he says, sounding suddenly like a
feeble old man.
He slowly pulls off his left biker boot and just as slowly removes his sock.
He stands up straight and picks up the eight ball, the sole ball on the
table.
He drops the eight ball into the sock, swings the makeshift device over
his head twice, then plasters Sixty Nine hard in the face with it.
The guy is knocked stone cold out. It all happened so casually that he
doesn't see it coming at all. I knew what was gonna happen.
His friend in the Jersey Devils shirt sprays a mouthful of beer all over
the place.
He picks up a pool cue and breaks it in half over the pool table,
flinging the skinny half down to the floor.
He advances on Weasel with the fat half, and this is when I decide to
get involved.
I try to break my empty bottle of Rolling Rock off of the side of his
head and for some reason it doesn't break.
It just kind of bounces off his temple and flies from my hand.
Definitely embarrassing for me..
He looks at me dumbfounded and takes aim with the pool cue.
I take a step back and slip on the discarded skinny half of the pool cue
and fall down onto the beer-soaked floor.
The guy in the Devils jersey and Weasel meet around the corner of the
pool table and I hear a savage battle.
The other people in the bar circle around to watch.
When I finally get up to look I see the guy in the jersey fall over,
defeated. But then old Weasel slumps into the pool table himself. I go
over to him to see what I can do.
"Sorry I wasn't much help, Weez," I tell him. I put one of my cigars in
his mouth and light it for him. He takes some mighty lungfuls. The
gathered people disperse, the show over. He starts breathing hard.
"'S alright boy. You're good fer tryin'. You always been squar with me."
"You be all right?"
"I'll be all right," He hands my cigar back to me, "listen, Billyboy...I
can tell ya wanna get some tail by the way you lookin'... at girls in
here...Listen..."
"What I really want right now," I tell him, "is a girl that I can do
something ignorant with, then she leaves me alone. Can you dig it?" Old
Weasel Tustin beckons me with his hand to come closer.
"I got jest the thing fer ya... can't believe I'm tellin' ya... Don't
tell no one."
"Go on then."
"I know a place... a pit... underground... place fulla chicks... more
than ya ever seen. Can't get laid in thar... won't get laid anywhere."
"What do you mean a pit?"
"Deep underground... down the stars. Through yon doorway"
"Where do I---"
"Shut up. I'll tell ya. But when ya get there...you be hard... gotta be
tough... Don't mention my name."
He whispers in my ear the address and some more directions there and
what to do there and he shivers and collapses.
The bartender calls for an ambulance.
I write some of what he told me on a book of matches. Weasel waves for
me to come in close once again.
"Take...these," he hands me a pharmacy bottle, "my buddy gave 'em... to
me. I don't want 'em to find 'em... if I gotta go to the hospital."
I look and see it's a month's worth of Vicodin.
Might last me a week, if I stretch them. Goody.
The two jocks eventually regain consciousness and slink out of the place
with their tails between their legs.
The paramedics come take Weasel away. I'm sure he'll be all right.
And the night is still young.
So I go home and throw all the dishes in the garbage. The flystrips my
father gave me have some victims on them.
My head is buzzing with the staggering secret knowledge Weasel laid on me.
I know it is nothing but pure-D unadulterated gospel truth.
I can always tell when Weasel's full of shit, and this ain't one of
those times. It wasn't the right time for bullshit.
I throw off my clothes and take a shower and put on fresh drawers. I
look into the closet and look through my sharpest threads. No, not the
somber funeral shirt. The one I wear to weddings will do nicely.
Brush the teeth. Gargle. Right Guard. Little green bottle of scent
called Lucky You. My old girlfriend had stolen it for me when she was
still around on this mortal plane.
I had kept the bottle she gave me without using it up and just keep
buying more bottles so I still have a little something from her.
And I like the smell of the stuff a lot.
I go into the kitchen and turn up the radio loud and I go to work on
the some of the twelve pack of Rolling Rock Green Light and a new jug of
Bacardi Gold, focusing mostly on the jug of rum.
Based on what Weasel told me, I should get good and lit up before I
attempt my siege.
I call a cab and go out on the porch to smoke and wait. The cab pulls up
after a while and I tell him where.
This town is littered with little penny-ante casinos. The cabbie makes a
little bit of small talk with me but I'm kind of distracted.
After about ten minutes we're in front of one, a real hell-hole of a dive.
My head spins and I double-check the address.
This place?
This dump?
........................................................................
"Don't fuck around with me, Chief, you wanna play, get yer money ready,"
a rough-looking Hispanic-looking guy growls it impatiently, but I'm
not biting.
"That's not what I'm here for, asshole, and you know it," I snarl back
at him, "Where's all the girls at in this dump?"
Everybody plays looking stupid.
Nobody makes a move to forcibly eject me so I decide to kick it up a
notch. I unhook my belt so I have a little bit of a weapon.
I'm not here to lose all my money at the tables or the slots and I feel
harder than prison bricks and it shows in my presence, in the extra
space I seem to be taking up.
Not hard downstairs in the pants just yet but I feel it for damn sure
everywhere else. Must be something I drank.
Now I eyeball all these milksops one at a time. You'd think such a
treasure would have some tough guys guarding it, but maybe not.
I start shoving jokers around a little.
"How 'bout you, ya fuckin' trick, you show me where?" I direct this at a
tall thin black guy who looks like Jimmy Walker that used to star in
"Good Times."
He stammers something at me so I back-hand him across the side of the
face with the loop of the belt.
It makes a loud pistol-crack sound and everyone jumps.
"Hey hey hey!" Jimmy Walker says, "Slow down, man. Go through the
kitchen right there and on the left, past the dish--- past the
dishwashing machine and you'll see where."
I make sure to give him just a little more of the steely eye.
One of his eyes, on the side of the face where I had just struck him
with the belt, is twitching, bloodshot and teary.
"Thanks," I finally say, all Clint Eastwood, and I snap the belt.
I head back through the kitchen and it is here that I finally
encounter some resistance.
"What in the motherfucking hell are you doing back here?!?!" a fat-
assed bald-headed man with a filthy apron and meaty red forearms is
screaming, sweat pouring off of him, "Who told ya you could come back
here?"
"Don't worry about it, Hambone," I tell him, and give him a kneecap in
the groin. He drops to the floor and curls into a fetal position in
agony, clutching his punished testicles in both hands.
Everybody's back here busy with big boiling pots and sizzling frying
pans. The casino I came through isn't that big so downstairs must be
some gigantic operation.
Motherfuckers gotta eat.
Still no girls yet back here in the kitchen, it's all males so far, but
I came here knowing what I have to do.
I go back and to the left and here's a short greasy corridor, the end of
which is adorned by a Seventies-era beaded curtain. Through the curtain
is a long straight flight of stairs going down.
Now I feel that I'm getting somewhere. Here's a dark little room at the
bottom that looks like storage, with boxes stacked up and a dusty smell.
I wonder if Jimmy Walker sent me into a trap.
But I open the nondescript door opposite and all my fears are alleviated.
I step into what Frank Booth's henchman in Blue Velvet was talking about when he asked Jeffrey Beaumont about whether or not he'd been to Pussy Heaven.
Jeffrey said he hadn't ever been there.
I guess I just arrived.
I can't believe my eyes, which feel as if they're bugging from they're sockets on stalks.
I retreat back into the storeroom at the bottom of the stairs to fix my belt back in its loops.
And then I re-enter the splendors of the wonderful Playroom,
which is just about as awe-inspiring upon the second viewing.
It's done up very handsomely.
Mirrors all over the place. More slot machines everywhere. No tables in
here, though. Neon lights lining counters loaded up with food and drink.
Kind of dark and I like that.
The whole spacious room is sort of a large dome shape and the main color
is this dark grey.
And there are girls everywhere. Girls lounging against the slot
machines. Girls walking with serving-trays of more food and more drinks,
mostly drinks. Girls just standing around talking.
White girls, Black girls, Indian and Latina girls, all dressed up
in formal type gowns and other sexy outfits. All of them in boots.
Luckily I myself am dressed to the nines. Nice jacket, matching pants.
My favorite silky shirt and tie. I look slicker than all the shit.
Now the only thing I want to know is how a guy like Weasel knows about this place.
There's a nice bar over here and I approve of that. I sit for a minute
and order a tall draft beer and a shot of Jim Beam.
The girl working at the bar tells me I can have a Beam on the rocks.
I ask her if she can hold the rocks and she tells me it ain't that kind of joint.
Well that certainly sucks! Maybe one or two more glasses of Jim-Beam-on-the-rocks
and I'll look around some.
Old Weasel tells me that once you make it down here
all the girls will do whatever you want for free.
Alcohol for free, too.
The trick is in making it here but I seem to have accomplished that through sheer force of will.
Nobody seems to be kicking me out yet, either. Maybe I'll become a
regular, or something, if they let me. They might respect my brutality.
I have a couple of bourbon flavored ice cubes to chew on and thank the
woman and leave her a five dollar tip.
The only thing in this big room that costs anything at all is the gambling,
and I don't feel that lucky slot-machine-wise.
I did real good upstairs and I don't really feel too inclined to further press my luck.
Plus, one would have to be an extraordinary dummy to stare at the slots instead of the available array of beautiful females.
Unless the slot machines were all spitting out thousand-dollar bills, of course.
I walk through the room slowly, soaking in the wealth of both the decor
and the spectacular cornucopia of females' flesh glistening softly in
the dim light.
It's a lot nicer down here than it is upstairs.
I stroll through, taking a drink which turns out to be a gin on the rocks
off of a tray and decide I want to shop for either an Asian girl or a dark
skinned black girl.
Asian girls are one of the few flavors of female I have had yet to try.
Doesn't look like any dark skinned black girls either.
When it comes to black girls I say the darker the better but all these girls are light skinned.
Conversely, I like my white girls real, real pale.
Skinny dark black chicks and chubby pale white chicks is what I like for females.
It's not that complicated. I'll go for different skin tones and body types if the girl's sweet enough.
I'm starting to think maybe I'll find an Asian girl or Latina instead,
but the Asians seem to be in short supply, too.
Maybe a Latina sandwich. Two at once would be fun, fun, fun.
But I'm not typically greedy. I'll take what I can get without complaint in here.
I notice there are no men in here at all.
As soon as I think I notice this I see that there are a couple after all. One or two like me shopping, and some clown with a mop.
More drinks are in order.
I've got about fifteen Vicodin in my jacket pocket and some of these I crunch on discreetly as I do my shopping.
The gin-on-the-rocks is quickly down to just rocks.
More drink is definitely in order. More gin would be nice for continuity's sake but I'm also a fan of some decent rum or half-decent bourbon.
Something to wash the pill dust out of my teeth is what I need, and it needs to be alcoholic in nature.
I do like the pilly taste in my mouth, but it does me no good just sitting in there.
There are so many girls here, all without a flaw, that it makes my head
spin. I like a little bit of flaws. As I slip one more Vicodin in my
mouth to eat someone catches my eye and I find I have made my choice.
Lounging against a slot machine is a knock-out Latina girl with long
black hair, awesome wide hips, tall boots and big wet brown eyes, so dark they are almost black.
I've had a vasectomy, so I can't produce any more kids, but the child-bearing hips are still a plus. Big tits, too.
Also she has full, bright red lips, pouting.
She's cute like a young woman in a Disney cartoon, like Aladdin's girlfriend or someone.
I decide this is the time to lay on every fluid ounce of my slimy charm.
It turns out it's easier than I think.
I quickly find out her name is "Gina" and I slowly run my first two
fingers on my left hand slowly up and down her soft exposed upper back.
This makes her shiver a little.
I see she is wearing fishnet stockings and I can't even bear to look at fishnet stockings for too long if there are attractive legs inside.
Far too provocative for me.
She says I have the nicest hands she's ever felt on a man. Just rough enough without being too banged up.
The fact that I know how to maneuver them into delivering caresses lighter than a feather helps my cause.
It doesn't take long to find that Gina is readily responding to my
arsenal of flirtations and charms. Now at last downstairs is getting
hard.
She feels my hardening crotch with one hand and kisses me, wetly,
full on the mouth. There's a nice wintergreen flavor in her mouth. Just
about the nicest wet kiss I ever had.
I catch a feel of her buttocks and with the same motion draw her closer.
I put a wild west style cigar in my mouth and begin to feel around in my
pants pocket for a match. Gina produces a lighter out of nowhere and
makes to light my smoke. I stop her.
"Don't you know ya can't light a cigar with a lighter if it ain't a Zippo?
It's a sin," I tell her.
"Sorry," she says, and bats her long eyelashes at me.
"Is there anywhere we can go?" I ask her softly.
"Come with me," she whispers, and pulls me towards a heretofore
unnoticed doorway cut into the curved wall. There's a small dim room
inside with a couch like at the shrink's office. Lots of mirrors in
here, too.
"We screw here," she throws me down on the couch and fairly dives on me.
In seconds she is at the nefarious belt and the pants button and zipper.
The prick springs out, happy to be on the loose at last.
"Feel," she says, and guides my hand up into her black leather skirt,
between her fishnet stocking clad legs.
I grope her vulva and feel that her pubic mound is shaved as smooth and bald-headed as a cue ball.
As this knowledge is registering itself in my fevered brain,
her face drops to my staff and she goes to work on me with her agile mouth.
I try to get a finger or two up in her and find she is too tight to weasel in even one.
So I just focus mostly on rubbing on her nice wet clit,
which gets her moaning through my rod in her mouth.
Which is just about more than I stand.
Finally a finger slips in a little.
I'm about to come a lot faster than I'd like to, and I can tell it's gonna be an H-bomb of an orgasm.
I almost bite the tip off the cigar.
I think after I come I shouldn't have any problem getting it straight back up.
Then I'm gonna have a go at that smooth wet tight little slit, I figure.
I fling the cigar into an ashtray. Now I got both hands in her hair, but gently.
"Here it comes," I say through clenched teeth just to give a warning and does it ever.
I'm surprised it doesn't push her head up off of me.
Makes me feel like a champagne bottle on New Year's Eve.
The most intense climax and orgasm I ever did recall and she swallows every last drop.
Now for that bald-headed snatch, I think. I'll pump it but proper.
I jump when the door flies open and an uninvited and unwanted third party barges in on the scene.
Even from my vantage point on the psychiatrist couch I can see he is both taller and wider than me.
Skin-headed and tattooed with far more ink than I got anywhere on me,
he is both big and dangerous looking. He has a police baton swinging from his belt.
"Members only, motherfucker!"
I'm doing my pants back up as he grips my shoulders roughly and shakes me as he's yelling, "What the fuck is wrong with you? I oughtta bust open yer skull!"
He punches me hard in the face and I feel my nose break.
I just got it fixed two months ago from the last time it got broke!
Blood's pouring from both nostrils. Now there's blood all over my best shirt!
I don't know how the hell that's coming out.
I start to stammer something at him but have nothing real to say.
Now that the hardness has left me downstairs it seems to have abandoned me everywhere else too.
Gina jumps up and stands between us, facing the skinhead bully of a bouncer.
"Leave him alone! I love him!" I'm left dumbfounded. Love already, wow.
"Now look what you did, asshole," the skinhead yells, "You broke her! She's fuckin' worthless now."
Gina tosses him off of me and starts slamming him against the wall.
He gives her a devastating right hook that spins her head round until it's facing directly backwards, looking at me.
Then he takes the police issue billyclub and caves her skull in.
Her big brown eyes fly out of their sockets and bounce off my shirt.
There is no blood but instead sparks and black smoke issuing forth from her ruined head.
I see wires and circuitry inside in lieu of brains and other, more expected tissue and fluid.
"Jesus Christ Almighty! Fuck's going on?" I yell.
"They can do great things now with cyberskin and animatronics," the bouncer tells me, "All the females down here are 'artificial people.' You could live with one for decades and never be able to tell."
"That's fucking crazy," I say, but the evidence is smoking before me on the floor.
"I don't know how you found this place," the bully growls, "but you ain't leaving here alive to tell anyone else. I'll see to that."
He grabs me by the throat with one slab of a hand and takes aim with the nightstick.
It is then that Gina's body and the smoking remains of her head pull themselves up off of the floor.
The body stands up and the arms and hands find the big skinhead bouncer's throat and begin to squeeze.
I can hear from where I stand the bones crack in his neck and I see his body fall limp.
I take this as my cue to leave.
"Thanks, Gina," I say and I run past a "woman" with a tray of drinks and grab one off and down it right quick.
Almost half of it runs down my fucked up ruined bloody shirt.
I look around for an exit out of this crazy madhouse place filled with sexy artificial people.
A siren starts to sound and I get a little panicky. I need to be as horny as I once was to bring out my inner caveman again.
Knowing that all these girls are robots lessens the attraction they once held over me.
Now that I know them for what they are, however, I can appreciate what their designers had in mind.
Lots of long legs, wide hips, thick lips, big tits and bubbly butts.
And I do appreciate all that.
Bouncers start to come out of the woodwork. I don't know what I'm going to do with all these big bastards.
Time to take out the old belt again so I have that at least.
Going to go out swinging like Indiana Jones or Zorro.
I'm outnumbered five or six to one. No time for a wholly accurate count.
I'm trying to find the passage back to the place I was before.
Then I see it.
I sting a couple of faces and temporarily blind a few pairs of eyes with the belt on my way to the door. I zap one motherfucker good with the buckle.
I run up through the storeroom and up the steps and quickly through the kitchen.
There's water on the floor and I slip and fall on my ass. Struggling, I'm back on my feet.
Some of the kitchen workers make feeble protests but I pay no heed. Bouncers come out of the stairwell door and I run into the upper casino room where I began this sordid venture.
There are men and women playing the tables and slots in here. I assume these women are real people at least. Flaws here and there.
I run out into the street and into the night and a taxicab nearly kills me as it flies into me. I roll up the hood of the vehicle and smack flat into the windshield.
I don't break the windshield, but the windshield hurts the fuck out of my rib cage. I regain my feet fast and fling open the backseat door of the cab.
"You saved my life, man," I say as I get in, "Let's go!"
The oily-haired, scrubby cabby gets me on my way to freedom. He's a god-damned superhero as far as I'm concerned.
I just got hit by a car and I've got a broken nose again but I have the painkillers for it.
I'm gonna sleep like a baby tonight.
