They came at me: three of them, sweating, shoving women aside, yelling through the screams.
“GET OUTTA THE WAY, WHORES!”
The first one looked like a sullen frog: a tight smirk, a tidy goatee hinting at vague, barely repressed homosexual tendencies, delicate facial hair in jarring contrast with bloated jowls, a neck immersed in football player muscle gone to flab. I decided I could take him. The asscrack hunt had me supercharged, full of adrenaline, a robot in a Jap cartoon, electric.
I picked up the cane and switched it from hand to hand, waiting. He came at me with the taser. I feinted left and there was a flash, a pop, a small amount of smoke. I jabbed the cane into the wide band of fat on his side. He uttered one syllable, “URK”, and fell to his knees. I whacked him across the back of the neck and the cane snapped like a wrestling prop. He fell forward, all jello and hollow bones.
The other two had fear in their eyes, confusion, none of the scene making any sense. I laughed and gave them the finger and ran to the back of the store.
“STOP RIGHT THERE!” said one.
“YOU’RE IN A LOT OF TROUBLE, PAL!” yelled the other.
I hid behind a rack on which were hung all sorts of clearance items: gaudy, ugly, poorly sewn, made of the cheapest synthetic materials- defective garments from the lost peninsula of Korea. I sat there, my heart racing. The security guards worked their way to the back of the store. One of them had a deep voice and the slightest hint of a Mexican accent. He tried to reason with me.
“Look, we’re good dudes. We’ll be a lot easier on you than the cops will,” he said.
“Come out of there, you motherfucker!” screamed the other. His voice was thin and reedy and I imagined his testicles to be roughly the size of cashews. “We’re gonna get you one way or the other! You got any idea what if feels like to be tasered?”
“It’s not good,” said the one with the deep voice.
“You’re fuckin’-A it’s not good! Now come out of hiding, ya prick!”
Good cop, bad cop. I rolled my eyes. These guys had seen too many movies.
I tried to figure a way out. I couldn’t see a rear exit; I’d have to go through the front. It seemed impossible. They were closing in, sealing off the only way out. I couldn’t handle both of them. I sat and I thought and I remembered my time in County, those months spent fighting off spic gangsters and Negroes twice my size and all the simpering, ugly fairies you could imagine. The thought of going back was terrifying and I felt a hollow, helpless rage. I buried my face in the cheap clothes on the rack and smelled the chemicals of a Korean factory half a world away. After a moment I opened my eyes and read the tag of a rayon blouse:
GAP, INC. WASH COLD. TUMBLE DRY LOW. FLAMMABLE MATERIAL. DO NOT WEAR NEAR OPEN FLAME. MADE IN KOREA.
I thought for a moment. I smiled. I looked down at the bottom of the rack, underneath the shirts. It was set on wheels so the shop girls could move it easily around the store or into the back room.
They were closer now.
“I’m sick of this hiding shit!” screamed Cashews. “When you’re down on the ground twitching I’m gonna kick you in the teeth! I hope you got a good dental plan, asshole!”
“Blow me,” I said.
I pulled out my lighter: a Zippo etched with a drawing of Betty Page’s asscrack. I flicked it. A long jet of flame shot out. I held it to the bottom of the blouse and it lit up like it was doused in kerosene.
“Hey,” said the deep voice. “You smell that? Like melting plastic.”
Flames leapt from garment to garment. Within seconds the whole rack was ablaze, a multicolored bonfire, like ornaments burning on a Christmas tree. I stood up, swathed my hands in discarded jeans, and pushed the cart forward, slowly at first, then faster, faster.
I burst from the back room, screaming, a flaming battering ram, a kamikaze pilot. The security guards stared, unable to comprehend, their small brains locked up, mouths agape, small creatures hypnotized by the tiger’s eyes.
I barreled into them and they flew like bowling pins, arms and legs flopping around like they’d been run down by a Mack truck. I shot past them and toward the front doors. The rack ignited other racks of clothing and they went up like tinder and I flew forward, smoke in my eyes, small bits of burning fabric like fireflies stinging my face. A crowd of people had congregated outside and there was much screaming and running and leaping as I crashed through the doors and onto the sidewalk. The rack slammed against the curb on the other side of the street and burned, crackling merrily. I ran. Behind me, the Gap was in flames.
I stumbled back to the library, turned left off the sidewalk, and saw two cops standing near the Pacer. I got back on the sidewalk and walked on, staring straight ahead. I told myself they’d been too far away to see the bits of charred material in my hair and on my shirt. I walked away and knew I’d never see my beloved Pacer again.
They couldn’t have had time to connect me with the fire in the Gap. It wasn’t possible. Yet they wanted me for some other reason, and would connect me to the fire soon enough.
I walked along, working my way southeast down clean and quiet suburban streets. I looked at all the serene houses as I walked by and in a reverie saw housewives watching television shows on lonely couches while their husbands worked in sterile cubicles. I thought of all those asscracks fattening up, bored and uncared for. Then I punched myself in the head and tried to think about other things, walking and walking, not knowing exactly what I would do next.
Men running from the law head instinctively, as if by some internal dowsing rod, to the train yards. I stepped down the concrete, graffiti-covered embankment of the Los Angeles River and came up the other side into the industrial section of Glendale. Big rig trucks came and went, carrying cargo. Factory workers took their smoke breaks on the weedy and rutted street, joyless, not looking in my direction. The buildings were old and many had been uninhabited for decades. I walked along and considered squatting in them for the remainder of my life. When a train’s horn bellowed off in the distance I turned left, west, towards the sun, towards the train tracks.
A train rolled past, rattling down the track, too fast for me to catch. I hid behind a clump of gnarled, desiccated bushes. The battered and rust-spotted cars clicked and clattered past me, picking up speed. The train was a roaring blur of wind and steel. Then it was gone and the railyard was empty and I was alone.
I sat and watched the trains go by until the sun set. Then, when all the trucks were gone, the factory workers sent home, the dirty-windowed buildings locked until the next shitass day, I skulked back up the tracks to where the trains stopped before departure.
The railyard was bathed in flat white light and I ran on the side of the yard that lay in shadows, looking for an open boxcar. Finally I found one. I crawled inside and sat against the cold steel of the far wall, in the dark, and waited.
Some time later, I awoke. Outside the boxcar was a strange part of inner city Los Angeles, a poor part of town I’d never seen. I wondered if the train would end up in Compton or Carson or some other inhospitable place where a white boy would stick out like a piece of salt in a pepper shaker. I could do nothing. Helpless, exhausted, I resigned myself to my fate. I unzipped my windbreaker and ducked my head into it, lay on my side, and listened to the clattering and creaking of steel, the ringing bells of railroad crossings. After a while I slept again.
“You got matches?”
I opened my eyes and saw the land rolling by: a long, open vista of desert, sagebrush, Joshua trees, an early morning sun stuck to the gray sky.
At first I wasn’t sure I’d heard the voice. Then it spoke again.
“I seen you was waking up. Got any matches?”
I rolled over to see a man sitting on the other side of the boxcar. He sat cross-legged, in a plaid shirt and jeans, thin but sturdy-looking. His beard was long and unkempt and streaked intermittently with gray and blonde, except beneath the nostrils, where the hair had retained its original brown color. It brought to my mind uneasy thoughts of an old man’s piss-and -shit stained trousers that had been run through the washer but could never be clean again. His eyes were very round and very blue and in one hand he held a cigarette.
I sat up, pulled out my Zippo, and threw it in his direction. He caught it and lit up and, puffing the cigarette to life, held the lighter at arm’s length, examining it with a slight frown. His eyes fixed strangely on me for a moment; then he walked over in a half-stoop, handed me the Zippo, and nodded a gesture of appreciation.
“You don’t look like a bum. Maybe you’re a straight yegg, huh?” he said.
“I don’t know what that is,” I replied.
“If you ain’t a yegg with an angle you must be a college kid, riding freight trains for kicks.”
“I’m no college kid.”
“That was a big fad a couple of years ago. Jump on the freight train. Fun and games, and then a kid gets cut up by some bad yeggs, or beat up with a tire iron, or gets on a train going to Wyoming wearing a Hawaiian shirt and damn near freeze to death.”
“I’m too old to be a college kid. I didn’t even go to college,” I said lamely.
“Law problems then. I don’t want to know, hey, that’s your business.”
I said nothing.
“My name is Slim,” he said. “Arcadia Slim.”
“I’m Richard Wagons.”
“Ricky, huh?”
“Where is this train going?” I asked.
“This one’s goin’ to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Nonstop through the Mojave Desert and Nevada all the way to Arizona. There’s a quick stopover in Phoenix, then it shoots off quick down to Injunland.”
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“I’m...partial to Phoenix. Very partial to Phoenix. Los Angeles, Dallas, and Phoenix are my cities.”
“What’s so great about those cities? What about Denver, or Seattle, or San Francisco?”
His eyes went blank and he looked out over the landscape. When he spoke he did so rapidly, his sentences piling on top of one another. Other times he stared pensively and said nothing.
“There are two reasons I love those cities above all others. The first reason: it’s easy for me to make money in those cities. I have many connections in them. I know them well.”
“What’s the second reason?”
“I know those cities so well ‘cause I’ve spent so much time in them. And I’ve spent a lot of time in them because of the second reason. And for now that’s my business. Just like your law problems are yours.”
“I don’t care about your second reason. I wish I knew how to make money like you’re doing, though. I don’t know where to turn. I’ve lost all that I had. I’ve got nothing left.”
He regarded me with his round and blue and strangely vacant eyes.
“You’ve got good front. You might make a decent yegg.”
“A what?”
“You don’t know what you’re doing out here, kid. That’s obvious. Your clothes and face are clean. You’re a good-looking kid (don’t look at me that way, I ain’t no faggot). Maybe you killed somebody. I don’t know or care. What I’m interested in, mostly, is garnering coin. And trust me: there’s plenty of it around.”
“Coin...”
He rolled his eyes. “Jesus, you are green, aintchyou? Coin, cabbage...money. I can show you some good money-making ventures. On a condition.”
“What condition is that?”
“You do everything I tell you. I’m the boss. In return you’ll learn things you never knew existed. Secrets of life and all that jazz. I will pass on my life’s knowledge to you. We split the take 60-40. And you can guess which end you get.”
I thought about it for a moment.
“It sounds good, Slim. I don’t know what else I’m gonna do. You’re right when you say I’m on the run. I can’t go back to the normal world. They’ll send me to prison and I’d rather be dead,” I finished.
“That’s right. Nothing in prison but niggers. No place for a white man, that’s for certain,” he said. “We’ll start your apprenticeship in Phoenix, then.”
He pulled another cigarette from his battered pack of Camels and offered me one. I shook my head and threw him the lighter. He lit up and looked out the window, pensive, cross-legged, arms wrapped around his knees, holding my Zippo in one hand.
The train pulled into Phoenix that night. I was awakened by a tap on my arm. “Let’s bail,” whispered Slim. The train had stopped in an empty, lightless lot. Slim jumped out onto the gravel and I followed him.
“No yard bulls,” he said. “We lucked it.”
We walked through the lot to a road that traveled up at a slight incline. A large metal sign peppered with rust-tinged shotgun pellet holes said ASPHALT CONSTRUCTION, INC. Large silos and bulldozers and other hunks of machinery sat on the side of the road in the moonless dark. The lights of Phoenix sat flat and orange in the distance and everything was very still.
“Shit, I’d say we’re about 20 miles outta town. Well, I ain’t getting back on that shitass train. Let’s find some wheels.”
We walked around the construction site, our footsteps crunching on gravel. Slim gestured toward a small trailer house illuminated by a single orange arc light.
“The foreman’s shack,” he said.
On the other side of the trailer was a green pickup truck emblazoned with the company logo. Slim pulled a telescoping rod with a hook at one end from his pants pocket. He stuck the hooked end into the small space between door and glass and started working at it. We were quite exposed under the arc light and I looked around. After what seemed like a very long time there was an audible click, a grunt of satisfaction from Slim and, as I got in on the passenger side, the sound of the engine starting.
As we pulled onto the empty street Slim said: “Sometimes it’s easier to hotwire the thing than it is to get the fuckin’ door unlocked.”
Phoenix was not a happening place at one in the morning. Its streets looked exactly like those of Los Angeles- trash in the gutters, soot-blackened palm trees thrusting up into the sky, bums with shopping carts. Yet I could feel deadness in the air, a lack of electricity, a sense of doom and isolation. Phoenix was exactly like Los Angeles, but without an ocean; a desert town, a trap, a place where the vultures once grew fat on the carrion of lost pioneers. I could imagine the city in thousands of years: all the humans gone, sand piled up on shop windowsills, alleys choked with tumbleweeds, coyote packs prowling. The place was a ghost town full of people and buildings, a terrible place.
Slim knew the streets well, driving up the wide lanes, humming a song to himself, following the speed limit, glancing in the rearview mirror every once in a while. He drove with a purpose.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“I’m looking for someone. A friend of mine who I last saw in El Paso. He told me he’d be here around this time...”
We drove by a late-night coffee shop. Slim slowed down and scanned the patrons intently, looking for his friend. “Nope,” he said, and we drove on.
This went on for the better part of an hour. We cruised past coffee shops and diners and gas stations while Slim looked for his friend. Finally we stopped in the parking lot of a twenty-four hour self-serve copy place. We walked in. Haggard people copied documents under fluorescent hospital lighting. A dull scene. Slim walked to the rear of the room, where fresh and clean and earnest-looking students sat studying. He tapped a man on the shoulder. The man turned around. He was a Korean with a gaunt and bony face.
“Shit, sorry,” said Slim. “I thought you was my buddy Pete.”
We left and hit the streets again. “I know Pete’s around. If Porno Pete tells me he’s gonna be in Phoenix the last week of December, you better believe he means it. Unless, of course, Johnny Law got him.” He looked at me and winked.
“Porno Pete?”
Slim said nothing more and we drove on. Soon we passed another coffee shop. “Bingo,” he said, and pulled a sharp U-turn. We parked in front of the coffee shop and walked in.
The place had a holiday feel to it: a gift shop that sold coffee. You could buy cups, plates, compact discs, coffeepots, microwaves, pocket vibrators, condoms- useless things, doodads. The counters were made of gleaming plastic and I could see every tiny speck of sugar some thoughtless slob had spilled. Everything was orderly and clean. The very act of spilling sugar on a countertop seemed an affront to decency. The people behind the counter were clean and cheerful and charming and attractive and wore facial jewelry. The air was filled with the din of people talking, of keys tapping on laptop keyboards. Here were the cheerful workers, the active members of society. The positive thinkers. Nothing about the scene seemed right or natural, especially not at one in the morning. When we walked in, disapproving eyes looked up at us, at our dirty clothing, at Slim’s disgusting beard and crazy eyes. He didn’t notice at all. He walked to the back of the room and I followed.
“Pete, long time no see.”
Pete looked up from his laptop. At first I wasn’t sure he was a man. He wore a shower cap on his head, his eyes had been carefully tweezed into fine lines, and his lips were pursed together like those of a disapproving grandmother. When he recognized Slim the lips softened a little. Just a little. It looked to me like Pete had gotten himself a nose job.
“Slim, well. It’s good to see you again. Have a seat.”
“All right. Pete, this is my new partner, Ricky.”
Pete shot me an imperious glance. I nodded. Then he looked back down at his laptop. When he spoke his voice was deep and sonorous and every syllable was clear and distinct. The last word of every sentence was emphasized with a jeering purse of the lips.
“Just got in town, I’ll bet. Here’s some money- why don’t you have yourselves some nice coffee and pastries.”
Pete held up a twenty with two manicured fingers. Slim took it and nodded at me. I went to the counter and came back with two coffees, a couple of croissants, and cookies. The bill came to $19.48. I was very hungry and I shoved a croissant into my face. Slim didn’t seem much interested in eating.
“So what business are you tending to?” asked Pete. His nails clicked daintily on the keyboard.
“Oh, just the usual. You know my routine.”
“Yes I do. I can’t believe our paths crossed in El Paso. Gawd.”
“I don’t know what I was thinking. That place is an abomination.”
“Tell me about it, dear. Believe me when I say I was only there out of a combination of bad luck, worse luck, and shit luck.”
“I hear you. Paso’s no place for a yegg.”
“I’m not really a yegg, Pete. You know that.”
“But you’re part of the brotherhood. Always will be.”
“Hmm. Well, I’m heading into Mexico via Laredo. Ever been to Laredo?”
“Back in ‘85. Jesus. That’s no place for a white man.”
“I know it. And just try finding a place with wi-fi. It’s an impossible proposition. I may have to camp out in a public library.”
“That don’t sound like you, Pete. Classless. Why go to Laredo? That’s a thousand miles from here. Hell, you could go through anywhere on the Arizona border. Nogales is an hour or two away.”
“I have unfinished business in Laredo,” said Pete. “My connection is there.”
Then his fingers started tapping faster and faster. His lips pursed up like a blue asshole. He began to sweat. I could see that Pete wore pancake makeup because it started to bead up in little white droplets on his forehead. The keys clattered, faster and faster.
“Excuse me for a moment, gentlemen,” he said. He stood up and walked quickly to the restroom. He wore a cheap blue satin jacket and baggy black sweats. He had absolutely no ass.
“What the hell’s his problem?” I asked Slim.
“I’ll explain later.”
Five minutes passed. Pete came out of the restroom. He was completely composed. He’d patted his face dry. He sat down and started tapping at the keys on the computer again.
“So anyway,” said Slim. “I need to borrow some money. Just enough for me and the kid here to get something going.”
“Last time we met you had a roll of bills thicker than a baby’s arm.”
“You know how it is with me and the horses.”
“I sure do... still following that route? Phoenix, Albuquerque, Dallas. Fly back to Los Angeles. Walk out of Arcadia with no money. Get on a train. Start the cycle all over again.”
“Well, sometimes it’s a good long while before I leave Arcadia on my feet. One time I lasted a year. It was beautiful...”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll lend you money. I know you’re good for it.”
Pete reached into his jacket. He pulled out a huge leather wallet emblazoned with the Harley-Davidson logo. I could see a lot of money in there. He pulled out five one hundred dollar bills and laid them on the table. Slim put them in his breast pocket.
“Much obliged,” he said.
Pete nodded almost imperceptibly, his nose in the air. A dignitary. Then something caught his eye at the front of the coffee shop. His eyes squinted and his lips looked like they might disappear into his face.
“Don’t look,” he said, “but the heat is here.”
“Shit,” said Slim.
I could see their reflection in the plate-glass window to my left: two blond men, in shorts and sandals and University of Arizona sweatshirts, looking around the room for someone.
“I don’t know how they found me so fast,” muttered Pete. The laptop closed with a click and he stood up.
What happened next happened quickly and I’m still not sure of what I saw.
Pete stood up, arched his back in a gymnast pose, and cartwheeled across the room. The men stared at him, astonished. Before they could react, Pete stood before them with a large-caliber pistol in each hand.
“Back it up, you sonsabitches!”
A girl screamed. Other than that, the place was deathly silent. The two men were frozen to the spot.
“Put your guns on the floor. Do it now. The bullets in this gun have a delightful way of perforating one’s face. Don’t make me demonstrate.”
The men looked at each other. The first one reached underneath his sweatshirt and pulled a pistol from the waistband of his shorts. He held it by the barrel and set it down on the floor. The other man did the same.
Why do these assholes always come in twos? I wondered.
“Hands in the air. That’s right. Now start moving. Out the door.” Pete jabbed them in the back with the gun barrels. They moved.
Slim’s eyes widened. One of the baristas, a young kid with a face full of fishing tackle and a long black ponytail, was sneaking up behind Pete.
“HERO ALERT!” yelled Slim.
Pete whirled around. The guns roared. The barista’s face was a mash of blood and sinew and teeth, a mangled mess of brain tissue and facial jewelry.
“HOLY FUCK!” I screamed.
The place went apeshit. Everyone ran for the front doors. One of the feds had Pete face down on the floor, a knee in his back. The other tried to keep the crowd from running out, waving his hands in the air like a traffic cop in an intersection. Someone smacked him in the head with a ceramic coffeepot and he went down.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Slim. “Grab that laptop. Do it!”
I did it.
We made it out with the swarm and ran to the pickup truck and escaped with a screech of tires.
“Jesus, Slim... What the hell was that all about?”
“They got him for murder now, the fool.”
“Why? Why did he do that?”
“They’ve been trying to catch Porno Pete for a long time. For 9 years he was on the road, hangin’ out wherever he could hook up that laptop. He could always sense them coming, though. It’s too bad he kilt that kid, ‘cause otherwise they wouldn’t have nothin’ on him. Now he’s headed for death row... for shit sure.”
I looked down at the laptop.
“They want him for what’s on here, don’t they?”
Slim nodded.
“So?”
“So what?”
“So what the fuck is on here?”
“You don’t want to know. Something valuable. Something you don’t want to see. Forget about it.”
He pulled the pickup into the parking lot of a Wal-Mart and turned off the engine and we sat there. He pulled out a pack of Camels and this time I took one. I lit up, my hand shaking. I thought again of the barista’s face sheared off beneath the nose.
“We gotta safeguard that laptop. What’s on there is more valuable than you know.”
“Tell me,” I said.
Slim puffed, squinted. The cab was filled with blue smoke. He looked off in the distance and his eyes betrayed nothing.
“I’ll tell you later. First, we have work to do.”
We walked into the Wal-Mart. We bought rope, duct tape, two ballpeen hammers, a crowbar, a glass cutter, a battery-powered drill, and a sheet of red plastic.
Slim handed me a hundred dollar bill. “Take half of this shit to another line.”
We paid and left and drove away. The neighborhoods we drove through went from poor to fairly suburban to expensive. Finally Slim parked the truck in front of a nice two-story villa. We sat in the dark and I watched him affix red plastic to the flashlight with duct tape. He flicked it on and the cab was aglow with dim red light.
“Follow me. Do what I do. And keep quiet.”
We walked toward the house. It was dark. He tried the knob on the front door. Locked. He motioned to me and we walked over to a wooden gate on the side of the house. He stood on tiptoe and reached over and unlatched the gate.
He held up one finger and we waited. It was very dark and cool. Crickets chirped and water trickled in a fountain somewhere. We stood there for at least five minutes. A rivulet of sweat ran down my back. I felt a leaden sensation in my belly, not unlike the need to shit. But I knew it wasn’t that.
Finally he motioned and we went on. We crept down the narrow concrete corridor on the side of the house into the back yard. I saw a gazebo, a swimming pool, and a glass patio table. On the table were a half-full liter of wine and a couple of tall glasses. Slim stopped and held up his finger and again we stood perfectly still for five minutes.
He walked over to a sliding glass door, peered in, and tried it. It opened the tiniest bit with a sound that sounded to my ears like a cannon blast. He waited another few minutes and then opened the sliding glass door inch by infinitesimal inch.
Finally, after what seemed like hours, he was inside. He motioned me to follow and I did. My legs were numb but I made them work.
We stood there in the dark, listening to the sounds of the house. Slim flicked on his flashlight and the room was bathed in a red glow. Red means danger.
“Sweet Christ,” whispered Slim.
Chickens surrounded us. Not real chickens, but chicken memorabilia: pictures of hens on the walls, small statuettes of roosters, pillows and sofa covers emblazoned with fowl imagery, and wicker baskets filled with multicolored eggs. The kitchen was a nightmare of chicken potholders, forks with hen-head handles, and dishware hand-painted with bucolic farmyard scenes. It was jarring.
“There are sick people living here,” whispered Slim. “But there’s money here, too.” He hefted a soup spoon with a handle cast into the shape of a rooster. “That’s silver. Put it in your pocket.”
We made our way through the house. Slim shook his head in amazement. Chickens stared at us from every wall, from shelves, from the ceiling. My foot nudged something and I looked down. The dead glass eyes of a stuffed hen stared back at me. The hair on my forearms stuck straight out; my asshole clenched and unclenched of its own accord. Slim touched my arm.
“Easy… easy…We gotta go upstairs. Follow me and be quiet.”
We walked up the steps with excruciating care. We’d take one step up and wait. Then one more. Then another. It was hard work. Finally we were at the top of the stairs. To the right was a bathroom. In front of us were two doors, both closed. Slim handed me the crowbar.
“Watch me and watch the other door. If anything goes wrong, make like Hank Aaron with that thing. It’s them or us.”
I held the crowbar in my right hand. It was heavy and warm and slightly moist, like something imperceptibly but dangerously alive.
Slim turned the knob of the door and waited. He waited and waited. Then, hearing nothing, he pushed the door open just a bit. I could hear a floor fan buzzing. A rush of warm air wafted out of the room, faintly redolent of rosewater. Slim glanced back at me once more and motioned for me to keep an eye on the other door. Then he went into the bedroom.
The room was bathed in moonlight. A woman lay face down on the bed, snoring softly. She was alone. She’d kicked the sheets off and they lay in a pile at the foot of the bed.
Slim crept to the corner of the room and slid open the top drawer of a large bureau. The drone of the fan muffled his furtive sounds and he became more brazen, looking over at the woman every few seconds. She slept on. He went through the bureau drawers, one by one. He put things in his pockets. I stood and watched, my hands sweating on the crowbar.
I tried to watch the other door but it was impossible. The sleeping woman wore pajama bottoms pulled tight over full and well-rounded buttocks. Her face was buried in a pile of stringy strawberry blonde hair. Her asscrack was showing. I stared and stared at the divine divide, the cleft so silver and pale in the moonlight. Sweat trickled down my forearms, onto my palms. The crowbar was cold and slick in my hands and I prayed silently for Slim to hurry, to get the goods, before I lost my mind. Ecstasy and agony warred in my mind and heart, the urge to huff coming over me in waves, dizzying and brutal and unrelenting. Finally Slim finished searching the room. His pockets bulged with watches, with rings, with cash. He walked toward me and I turned to go.
But he wasn’t done.
I heard the click of the flashlight and I looked back to see Slim shining the dim red light over the woman’s prostrate form. He stood there and stared for a good long while. Then he bent over at the waist and moved his hand toward the woman, holding it right above her ass.
What I saw next I will never forget.
He moved his hand over the ass as if caressing it, mere inches away from the chunky cotton-swathed cheeks. His hand hovered, trembling. Then he bent low, his nose an inch from the cleft. I saw his nostrils enlarge and I could see he was huffing. He huffed in silence, his eyes cold and professional and unmoved. After some time he stood up, flicked the flashlight off, regarded the woman for a few seconds with a disgusted sneer, and turned away. He took the crowbar from me and walked down the stairs and I followed him down. It was easier walking down than walking up.
Slim walked out of the living room and into the kitchen. He stopped and I bumped into him.
A huge yellow and orange shape stood before us and the thing screamed. It was a man in a chicken costume. It lunged forward and wrapped its arms around Slim and the two of them went down in a pile of garishly dyed feathers. The man was big, at least three hundred pounds, and he had Slim pinned to the ground. He swung a left, a right. They were good shots.
“Ricky- get this chicken off of me!”
The crowbar was on the ground a few feet away. I grabbed it. Then someone was on my back. It was the woman. She smelled like rosewater and her nails were on my face, scratching. She went for my eyes; I shut them as hard as I could and we twirled around the room. We collided with a small table covered in chicken figurines. They flew across the room and the woman screamed and bit my ear. She grunted and gnawed like a wild animal.
The big chicken pummeled Slim. My ear was being torn to shreds. It didn’t look good for us. I spun around the living room and saw a six-foot high glass case filled with hundreds of miniature hens. I turned so it was behind me and began to run backwards.
The woman stopped biting my ear. I felt a gout of blood and spit shoot from her mouth on the back of my neck.
“NO! NOT THE HUMMEL HENS! NOOOOOOOOO-”
We hit the case. It shattered with a sound like a big rig smashing into a greenhouse. The woman dropped off of me and rolled on the floor, sobbing, picking her broken hens out of the glass, small shards protruding from her bloody pajama top. Like a lion’s eyes her asscrack hypnotized me, but just for a moment. The urge to escape was stronger.
I picked up the crowbar and swung at the chicken. It caught him in the middle of his back. He grunted, turned, and leapt at me with surprising agility. He was pretty lithe for a 300-pound man in a chicken suit. He took me down and we rolled around on the floor. He was on top of me, his hands on my throat. His breath smelled like salami and milk and his face was rage, pure red rage beneath a false orange beak, sightless false eyes, and fake yellow feathers. It was like being murdered by a piñata.
Then the crowbar hit him. It hit him again and again. I could feel the impact of each blow travel through his body and I watched his face go slack. He collapsed on top of me and I couldn’t breathe, I was smothered, I thrashed helplessly…
I awoke to the thrumming of steel and the smell of dust and sagebrush and open miles of desert. I opened my eyes and saw a vast grey wasteland passing by in the hazy dawn. A boxcar, I was in a boxcar again.
I looked over to see Slim, sitting cross-legged on the other side of the car, smoking a Camel. His face was covered in bruises and cuts; the left eye was closed and looked like it might be infected.
I sat up.
“How long have I been out?”
“Four, maybe five hours. I thought that chicken killed you. Saw you were still breathing, hefted you in the truck. Got out of there. Cops went right past us with their sirens blaring. I got us to the yard. We lucked it, kid.”
I sat up. I turned my head a little and daggers of pain shot through my cranium. My eyes felt like stones wrapped in cotton; they throbbed in their sockets.
“We made out all right with the loot,” he said. “Watches, some rings, a fat roll of bills. Don’t know where that chicken came from, though.”
“Her husband?”
“Probably. Those people were sick fucks. I can’t figger the likes of ‘em.”
We sat in silence and then I said it. I had to know.
“You…you huffed. I saw you huff.”
He stared at me for a moment with his vacant blue eyes, impassive, calm. Tendrils of smoke writhed around his beard. After a moment’s pause he said:
“I saw your lighter. The one with that pinup girl’s butt- cleavage. That’s when I knew fate had placed you under my care and tutelage.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Why do you think I operate in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Dallas? Why do you think I follow this route, never deviating? Why do you think I avoid San Francisco, Minnesota, Denver, Des Moines, and Detroit?”
It came to me. It was so simple, so obvious. Slim saw the look on my face and said,
“That’s right. The women in those cities conceal themselves. They wear heavy clothing. And they’re downright ugly. Denver women especially…their bloodlines go straight back to the American pioneers. And those were the ugliest women in history!”
“You only go to cities with a high proportion of asscrack. You’re a traveling asscrack huffer. ”
“That’s right. Dallas and Phoenix and Los Angeles are world-renowned for their asscrack. And when I say world-renowned, I mean it.
“Fellows from all over the world swarm on those cities. Prowlin’, pervin’ out. All year long. It’s underground and it’s real. There exists a secret country. There exists a secret country.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You’re telling me that there are other people out there who huff?”
“You have no idea,” said Slim. He took another drag of his cigarette. “You have no fuckin’ idea.”
I sat and thought and let the enormity of what I had been told sink in. Outside, the desolate arid plains of New Mexico shot by in a gray and mauve blur. It was a nice day out there.
“What about Porno Pete? Is he one of…us?”
“Porno Pete is a whole different ball of wax. He’s one of us, but not one of us. I can’t explain more than that.”
“So what do we do now?”
He pointed to my left, where the laptop sat on a pile of old rags.
“We are going to Laredo, Texas. That laptop will bring us a lot of money. We have to make Pete’s connection and give him his share of the loot- whether he’s in federal prison, or not. We must do all we can for him. It’s a matter of honor. It’s the code of the Brotherhood.”
“What do you mean, ‘Brotherhood’?”
“The Brotherhood…of the Cleft.”
I watched the country roll by and let his words sink in. I wasn’t sure whether to believe him. Yet, in my guts, deep in the visceral part of me, I knew his words were true. My stupid small self, the person I thought I was, had exploded into thousands of pieces. How could I ever put it back together again? I never wanted to think there were others like me. I thought I was different, special. But no: just another run-of-the-mill sicko, a pervert, a statistic. I thought about jumping off of the train in the middle of the night, going my own way, living the life of a vagabond.
“Ricky,” he said. “I know this is a shock, and maybe too much to handle right now. But listen: in two weeks we are going to have a lot of money. And you know what’s even better?”
“What?”
“Laredo has some of the sweetest senorita asscrack I’ve ever seen. Are you with me?”
I thought about it. He looked at me with knowing eyes, the eyes of a sage, a guru.
I was with him.
The train rolled on.
(To be continued)
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Saturday, December 30, 2006
I Believe I Can Fly #4 (from DIARY OF A DAY-PROWLING PERVERT #1)
But then I stopped.
This opportunity may never come again, I told myself. Make it last. With much effort I stepped backwards: first one step, then two, then I was out of the store, on the sidewalk. I turned quickly and walked toward the entrance of the mall.
I walked past the shoppers, the screaming children. Past all the shops selling doodads, bullshit, nothing, absolutely nothing. I bought a pretzel from a cart and chewed on it, trying to soothe my nerves, gnawing at it like a rat gnaws on wood to wear down its teeth. I chewed and I walked and I looked around. Finally I found it: the local botique where all the teens go to buy their band t-shirts and sparkly eye makeup and bondage outfits- Goth Topic.
The girl at the counter was sullen, her skin sallow, her eyes piggish points of light beneath thick green mascara. Her hair looked like it had been cut with a weedwhacker, smeared with babyshit, and tacked together with bobby pins. She stared at me and I stared back, waiting for her to greet me. For five minutes we stared at each other with naked contempt.
"Sunglasses," I said.
She rolled her eyes and led me to the back of the room. I watched her ass wobble in front of me and it wasn't too bad. Her black velvet skirt was hiked very high. I didn't like that. I fought the urge to pull it down just a bit.
She gestured toward the sunglasses and walked back to the front counter. I looked through them, found a pair with round, very dark lenses, put them on, and admired myself in the mirror. Then I went back to the front counter.
"Now I need a cane," I said. "I see you've got top hats and other nonsense. You must have a cane."
"We have fifteen types of canes," she said. I could hear jewelry clicking around in her mouth. Slut.
"Give me one austere and useful. No extravagant, Marilyn Manson bullshit."
She showed me the canes and I picked out the most basic one they had. I paid and left.
I walked around the mall for almost an hour, practicing. When I walked toward the escalator people became nervous. "Do you need some help getting on the escalator?" A kindly old woman said.
"Mind your fucking business," I said. She gasped.
Finally I was ready. I walked out of the mall, into the street, swinging the cane back and forth, back and forth, shuffling unhurriedly. I was becoming excited again and I did a little jig.
I was back in the Gap. The asscracks who left had been replaced by more asscracks. An asscrack swarm. I walked in with my cane and sauntered casually to the clothes racks. I kept my head tilted slightly up and stared off at some distant point, carefully keeping an image of Stevie Wonder in my mind.
I held the cane in one hand and with the other I reached a trembling, tentative hand toward the rack where the jeans were. Some of the asscracks looked over at me, momentarily distracted from their shopping frenzy, and I saw flickers of compassion cloud otherwise vacant stares. Hah. females are so weak-minded, I thought to myself.
I began to feel the fabric of the jeans, slowly, methodically. I took a pair off the rack and held it up, feeling the seams, the pockets, the buttons. Then, making a sound of surprise, I dropped it on the floor.
"Oh my!" I said.
The girl next to me glanced over. She was tanned, almost too tanned. She had the kind of body that would turn to butterfat within 3 years, but for now she was big in one place and that was where it counted.
"Oh here, let me help you," she said.
She squatted down, right in front of me, and the bronze asscrack bulged from cheap Korean denim. I stared and stared and then the moment was over. She handed the jeans to me.
"There ya go, " she said.
"Why thank you, young lady, " I managed to say in a strangled voice. My god, a room full of asscrack and here I am, mesmerized by the first one... I stared at her, my mouth hanging open, drool forming at the corners. I snapped it shut. Then I dropped the jeans again.
"Oh jesus, oh jesus I'm so darn clumsy," I said.
She gave me a strange look but squatted again. This time I had a better angle and I could see straight down into the butt gully, down deep, and I felt my head bend forward to huff as if compelled by unseen forces. No no no not yet I told myself but it was too late, I had to huff, and I yelled triumphantly and plunged my nose straight down into her pleasure ravine.
She screamed. I huffed. Peaches and cream and anal odor. I huffed and huffed.
She wrenched away. Women were screaming, running. Jeans and sundry clothing items flew through the air. I saw an asscrack run by. I lunged at it, hooking my fingers in the loops of its jeans. An asian asscrack. It was light and I lifted the entire rear end to my nose. I huffed. I huffed. She screamed and went limp. Not enough asscrack for me anyway. I let her drop to the ground. I cornered a black woman. Her eyes were wild , hunted. She juked left, I went left. She juked right, I went right.
"Listen mama, you ain't gettin' outta here 'til I huff that chocolate furrow."
"What did you say to me?"
"I said give me that asscrack, woman!"
I lunged at her. She swung a roundhouse right and got my ear. Suddenly that ear was very hot. I didn't care. As she tried to run away I made a flying leap for her ass. I wrapped my arms around her legs and took her down like an NFL quarterback. She screamed and the contents of her purse sprayed out in every direction. I climbed her thighs, panting, like a mountainclimber finally making it to the top. I pulled down the jeans and the crack was dark, as dark as nite, and I stuck my nose in there and really HUFFED. It was musky ecstasy.
Looking up from the black crack I saw security guards trying to fight through the throngs of women screaming and clawing and pushing their way out. I leaned forward and whispered in her ear:
"I hope it was good for you too."
She lay there and stared into space, seemingly catatonic. The security guards saw me and I saw them, I saw them and the tasers in their hands.
This opportunity may never come again, I told myself. Make it last. With much effort I stepped backwards: first one step, then two, then I was out of the store, on the sidewalk. I turned quickly and walked toward the entrance of the mall.
I walked past the shoppers, the screaming children. Past all the shops selling doodads, bullshit, nothing, absolutely nothing. I bought a pretzel from a cart and chewed on it, trying to soothe my nerves, gnawing at it like a rat gnaws on wood to wear down its teeth. I chewed and I walked and I looked around. Finally I found it: the local botique where all the teens go to buy their band t-shirts and sparkly eye makeup and bondage outfits- Goth Topic.
The girl at the counter was sullen, her skin sallow, her eyes piggish points of light beneath thick green mascara. Her hair looked like it had been cut with a weedwhacker, smeared with babyshit, and tacked together with bobby pins. She stared at me and I stared back, waiting for her to greet me. For five minutes we stared at each other with naked contempt.
"Sunglasses," I said.
She rolled her eyes and led me to the back of the room. I watched her ass wobble in front of me and it wasn't too bad. Her black velvet skirt was hiked very high. I didn't like that. I fought the urge to pull it down just a bit.
She gestured toward the sunglasses and walked back to the front counter. I looked through them, found a pair with round, very dark lenses, put them on, and admired myself in the mirror. Then I went back to the front counter.
"Now I need a cane," I said. "I see you've got top hats and other nonsense. You must have a cane."
"We have fifteen types of canes," she said. I could hear jewelry clicking around in her mouth. Slut.
"Give me one austere and useful. No extravagant, Marilyn Manson bullshit."
She showed me the canes and I picked out the most basic one they had. I paid and left.
I walked around the mall for almost an hour, practicing. When I walked toward the escalator people became nervous. "Do you need some help getting on the escalator?" A kindly old woman said.
"Mind your fucking business," I said. She gasped.
Finally I was ready. I walked out of the mall, into the street, swinging the cane back and forth, back and forth, shuffling unhurriedly. I was becoming excited again and I did a little jig.
I was back in the Gap. The asscracks who left had been replaced by more asscracks. An asscrack swarm. I walked in with my cane and sauntered casually to the clothes racks. I kept my head tilted slightly up and stared off at some distant point, carefully keeping an image of Stevie Wonder in my mind.
I held the cane in one hand and with the other I reached a trembling, tentative hand toward the rack where the jeans were. Some of the asscracks looked over at me, momentarily distracted from their shopping frenzy, and I saw flickers of compassion cloud otherwise vacant stares. Hah. females are so weak-minded, I thought to myself.
I began to feel the fabric of the jeans, slowly, methodically. I took a pair off the rack and held it up, feeling the seams, the pockets, the buttons. Then, making a sound of surprise, I dropped it on the floor.
"Oh my!" I said.
The girl next to me glanced over. She was tanned, almost too tanned. She had the kind of body that would turn to butterfat within 3 years, but for now she was big in one place and that was where it counted.
"Oh here, let me help you," she said.
She squatted down, right in front of me, and the bronze asscrack bulged from cheap Korean denim. I stared and stared and then the moment was over. She handed the jeans to me.
"There ya go, " she said.
"Why thank you, young lady, " I managed to say in a strangled voice. My god, a room full of asscrack and here I am, mesmerized by the first one... I stared at her, my mouth hanging open, drool forming at the corners. I snapped it shut. Then I dropped the jeans again.
"Oh jesus, oh jesus I'm so darn clumsy," I said.
She gave me a strange look but squatted again. This time I had a better angle and I could see straight down into the butt gully, down deep, and I felt my head bend forward to huff as if compelled by unseen forces. No no no not yet I told myself but it was too late, I had to huff, and I yelled triumphantly and plunged my nose straight down into her pleasure ravine.
She screamed. I huffed. Peaches and cream and anal odor. I huffed and huffed.
She wrenched away. Women were screaming, running. Jeans and sundry clothing items flew through the air. I saw an asscrack run by. I lunged at it, hooking my fingers in the loops of its jeans. An asian asscrack. It was light and I lifted the entire rear end to my nose. I huffed. I huffed. She screamed and went limp. Not enough asscrack for me anyway. I let her drop to the ground. I cornered a black woman. Her eyes were wild , hunted. She juked left, I went left. She juked right, I went right.
"Listen mama, you ain't gettin' outta here 'til I huff that chocolate furrow."
"What did you say to me?"
"I said give me that asscrack, woman!"
I lunged at her. She swung a roundhouse right and got my ear. Suddenly that ear was very hot. I didn't care. As she tried to run away I made a flying leap for her ass. I wrapped my arms around her legs and took her down like an NFL quarterback. She screamed and the contents of her purse sprayed out in every direction. I climbed her thighs, panting, like a mountainclimber finally making it to the top. I pulled down the jeans and the crack was dark, as dark as nite, and I stuck my nose in there and really HUFFED. It was musky ecstasy.
Looking up from the black crack I saw security guards trying to fight through the throngs of women screaming and clawing and pushing their way out. I leaned forward and whispered in her ear:
"I hope it was good for you too."
She lay there and stared into space, seemingly catatonic. The security guards saw me and I saw them, I saw them and the tasers in their hands.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
I Believe I Can Fly #3 (from DIARY OF A DAY-PROWLING PERVERT #1)
I waited, clicked the refresh button, watched the screen. After an hour my thread had been viewed 38 times, but no one was responding. I began to fidget. The feeling came upon me and I looked to my left, my right, up and down the library aisles. "Forget them, forget this internet world," I muttered to myself. I added another response to my thread. It said: " You all think I’m joking. I am not. I won’t be denied." Then I logged off of the computer and stood up and stretched, trying to look casual, my heart suddenly pounding.
I stood up and paced the aisles where people sat at long tables: reading, writing, studying. Teenagers, male teenagers, no no no: and old women, and old men...reading last week’s newspapers, dentureless gums working, chewing the words into a puree for old and worn brains. I was out of luck. No asscrack, no women for that matter, at least none born after the Korean War. Sweat broke out on my forehead, a cold sweat.
I looked out the window of the library. The trees outside seemed forlorn, the grass on the front lawn seemed sad and brown and lifeless, hoping for a cool breeze to stir it. But the breeze never came.
I looked up the street, at the cars, the heat out there, the smog of December bearing down, the hateful sunlight on my face. I felt like a bug beneath a magnifying glass. I closed my eyes and felt the hopelessness of a world arrayed against me, the need for asscrack keening, terrible. The need to huff ass blocked out everything . I could feel only a yawning chasm in my gut. All the puppies and kittens and cherubic children of the world could die in a smoldering Hiroshima to satisfy my craving, and I would sigh like a man settling into a warm bath...
Then I saw it. Up the street. At the mall. My mouth dropped open. I stood there at the bay windows of the Public Library, my eyes glazed over, trance-like. "Holy Christ..." I muttered. It seemed so clear, so obvious. I began laughing and a few of the old folks looked up, annoyed, from their week-old copies of the L.A. Times. "It’s so simple! And wonderful!" I clapped my hands and ran out of the library. I decided not to take the Pacer; too long to find parking. I walked very quickly up the street, my arms pumping. I tried hard not to sprint, tried to control myself. The sign and the building came closer and closer, a beacon. All of the sudden it felt like Christmas morning. I felt very, very good. The building was a Gap and the signs in the window read:
"LOVELY LOWRIDER SALE: LOW-CUT JEANS SUPER CLOSEOUT. SATURDAY ONLY. SAVE UP TO 70% ON OUR SELECTION OF FINE KOREAN-MADE APPAREL."
Today was Saturday. It was right; it was destiny. I’d make my stand here. I would touch the sky.
I walked into the department store. Bingo. Women of all shapes and sizes, all races: fat ones and thin ones and Asian ones and white ones. Just like that old War song. They milled about at the racks of jeans, frantic, absorbed in their addiction, the shopping addiction. There is a goddess for the woman and the goddess wears a chain mail made of Visa and Amex cards. The store was filled with the sound of plastic hangers clicking against other plastic hangers. I saw many anxious faces. Then I forgot the faces and watched the asses.
The women already wore low-cut jeans, but they wanted more. I felt a strange kinship: they needed low-cut jeans more than life itself, and I needed them to wear those jeans just as badly. It was almost romantic. They wore the jeans cut a bit too low, and shirts cut a bit too high. That way they could show off the lower back tattoo, the badly done tattoo they’d had done in some suburban strip mall parlor, the dragon or the flaming skull or the Tweety bird: a signpost for the red-blooded American male to read. Fuckable, the tattoo said. One bottle of Arbor mist and I’m yours.
I couldn’t care less about the tattoo: to me it’s a signpost of a different sort, a poorly drawn arrow pointing downward.
With these thoughts ricocheting in my brain, I walked toward the racks, I walked towards the women absorbed in their search for pants, I walked toward them and started perusing the goods.
I stood up and paced the aisles where people sat at long tables: reading, writing, studying. Teenagers, male teenagers, no no no: and old women, and old men...reading last week’s newspapers, dentureless gums working, chewing the words into a puree for old and worn brains. I was out of luck. No asscrack, no women for that matter, at least none born after the Korean War. Sweat broke out on my forehead, a cold sweat.
I looked out the window of the library. The trees outside seemed forlorn, the grass on the front lawn seemed sad and brown and lifeless, hoping for a cool breeze to stir it. But the breeze never came.
I looked up the street, at the cars, the heat out there, the smog of December bearing down, the hateful sunlight on my face. I felt like a bug beneath a magnifying glass. I closed my eyes and felt the hopelessness of a world arrayed against me, the need for asscrack keening, terrible. The need to huff ass blocked out everything . I could feel only a yawning chasm in my gut. All the puppies and kittens and cherubic children of the world could die in a smoldering Hiroshima to satisfy my craving, and I would sigh like a man settling into a warm bath...
Then I saw it. Up the street. At the mall. My mouth dropped open. I stood there at the bay windows of the Public Library, my eyes glazed over, trance-like. "Holy Christ..." I muttered. It seemed so clear, so obvious. I began laughing and a few of the old folks looked up, annoyed, from their week-old copies of the L.A. Times. "It’s so simple! And wonderful!" I clapped my hands and ran out of the library. I decided not to take the Pacer; too long to find parking. I walked very quickly up the street, my arms pumping. I tried hard not to sprint, tried to control myself. The sign and the building came closer and closer, a beacon. All of the sudden it felt like Christmas morning. I felt very, very good. The building was a Gap and the signs in the window read:
"LOVELY LOWRIDER SALE: LOW-CUT JEANS SUPER CLOSEOUT. SATURDAY ONLY. SAVE UP TO 70% ON OUR SELECTION OF FINE KOREAN-MADE APPAREL."
Today was Saturday. It was right; it was destiny. I’d make my stand here. I would touch the sky.
I walked into the department store. Bingo. Women of all shapes and sizes, all races: fat ones and thin ones and Asian ones and white ones. Just like that old War song. They milled about at the racks of jeans, frantic, absorbed in their addiction, the shopping addiction. There is a goddess for the woman and the goddess wears a chain mail made of Visa and Amex cards. The store was filled with the sound of plastic hangers clicking against other plastic hangers. I saw many anxious faces. Then I forgot the faces and watched the asses.
The women already wore low-cut jeans, but they wanted more. I felt a strange kinship: they needed low-cut jeans more than life itself, and I needed them to wear those jeans just as badly. It was almost romantic. They wore the jeans cut a bit too low, and shirts cut a bit too high. That way they could show off the lower back tattoo, the badly done tattoo they’d had done in some suburban strip mall parlor, the dragon or the flaming skull or the Tweety bird: a signpost for the red-blooded American male to read. Fuckable, the tattoo said. One bottle of Arbor mist and I’m yours.
I couldn’t care less about the tattoo: to me it’s a signpost of a different sort, a poorly drawn arrow pointing downward.
With these thoughts ricocheting in my brain, I walked toward the racks, I walked towards the women absorbed in their search for pants, I walked toward them and started perusing the goods.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
I Believe I Can Fly #2 (Origin of the Asscrack Huffer)
(the following chapter is a transcript of the thread posted on www.greatflutterykrishna.com)
"I HAVE SOMETHING TO TELL ALL OF YOU"
User: SlimElliot
Posted on: 12/12/06. 7:53 PM PST.
I have something to tell all of you. I am a connosieur of asscrack. It all started when I was eight years old. I was raised by a single mother. When she went to work waiting tables she’d leave me with the middle-aged mexican woman who lived next door. Every nite was the same: she would make me dinner and we’d sit on the couch and watch novellas in silence. She was a stout woman. Her buttocks were quite large; they shivered and shook beneath a black skirt patterned with moons and palmtrees, many small multicolored pictures making a wide landscape. It frightened and fascinated me.
One night we were watching the novellas. She began to nod off. I sat and watched her as she snored, her mouth hanging open so I could just see the glint of silver fillings in her molars. Her hair was in a bun, her skin ruddy. She made a snuffling sound and turned on her side.
Her skirt came down just slightly, and there it was: the asscrack.
The top of the cheeks of the ass were pinched by the elastic of the dimestore skirt. The elastic was cheap and couldn’t restrain the solid brown fat spilling out, a mystery leading to something below, something strange and alluring. A faint trail of black hair ran from the top of the asscrack to the lower back. I stared at it. Then, possessed by something, I leaned forward. It was as if phantom hands were gripping the sides of my head. I stuck my nose into the asscrack and sniffed. I smelled damp cotton and the faint redolence of sweat and shit and...something else... I dug my nose in deeper, sniffed deeper...
She moaned and rolled back towards me, over me, on top of me. I pushed my head back into the couch cushions. I was trapped in the darkness, her asscrack smothering and huge. My nose was close to a circle of heat and stench and hair. I understood instinctively what it was and I squirmed, tried to wriggle my way out.
Now I felt hands grabbing the side of my head, strong pudgy hands gripping me around the ears. She ground my face into her asscrack. I heard her voice resonate through her big body, coming to me muffled, like sound settling into deep water. "You like to put your nose in places, do you? Huh? You enjoy that, dirty boy?" The tip of my nose touched the warm, moist, fetid, stinky circle. Her hips began to swivel and she clutched my head tighter. My head was being swiveled around and around. She shoved the tip of my nose into her asshole, pulled my head back, shoved it forward again, pulled it back...faster and faster... The asscrack was so deep the inside cleft of the cheeks almost covered my ears. A strange fluid began to ooze onto my face. It didn’t taste like anything, but smelled like the powdered pink handsoap in the boy’s restroom at school. I was about to vomit when suddenly the movement stopped. She lifted herself off of me and I sucked in air. I never knew air was so clean, so sweet.
She got up, went into the kitchen, and began to make dinner. My face felt like it had been rubbed hard with a brillo pad and dipped in egg yolk. I watched the novellas and listened to her movements in the kitchen. I had an erection and I touched it through my bermuda shorts.
Anyway, I have been an asscrack lover ever since. And now I'm not ashamed to say it. I'm going to tell the world. In fact, I am at a public library, and I am going to celebrate my uniqueness in just a few minutes. I'm going to sniff every female asscrack in this fucking place, and no one will stop me.
User: Daddy's Little Rapist
Posted on: 12/12/06. 7:58 PM PST.
You are a faggot.
(no other responses)
"I HAVE SOMETHING TO TELL ALL OF YOU"
User: SlimElliot
Posted on: 12/12/06. 7:53 PM PST.
I have something to tell all of you. I am a connosieur of asscrack. It all started when I was eight years old. I was raised by a single mother. When she went to work waiting tables she’d leave me with the middle-aged mexican woman who lived next door. Every nite was the same: she would make me dinner and we’d sit on the couch and watch novellas in silence. She was a stout woman. Her buttocks were quite large; they shivered and shook beneath a black skirt patterned with moons and palmtrees, many small multicolored pictures making a wide landscape. It frightened and fascinated me.
One night we were watching the novellas. She began to nod off. I sat and watched her as she snored, her mouth hanging open so I could just see the glint of silver fillings in her molars. Her hair was in a bun, her skin ruddy. She made a snuffling sound and turned on her side.
Her skirt came down just slightly, and there it was: the asscrack.
The top of the cheeks of the ass were pinched by the elastic of the dimestore skirt. The elastic was cheap and couldn’t restrain the solid brown fat spilling out, a mystery leading to something below, something strange and alluring. A faint trail of black hair ran from the top of the asscrack to the lower back. I stared at it. Then, possessed by something, I leaned forward. It was as if phantom hands were gripping the sides of my head. I stuck my nose into the asscrack and sniffed. I smelled damp cotton and the faint redolence of sweat and shit and...something else... I dug my nose in deeper, sniffed deeper...
She moaned and rolled back towards me, over me, on top of me. I pushed my head back into the couch cushions. I was trapped in the darkness, her asscrack smothering and huge. My nose was close to a circle of heat and stench and hair. I understood instinctively what it was and I squirmed, tried to wriggle my way out.
Now I felt hands grabbing the side of my head, strong pudgy hands gripping me around the ears. She ground my face into her asscrack. I heard her voice resonate through her big body, coming to me muffled, like sound settling into deep water. "You like to put your nose in places, do you? Huh? You enjoy that, dirty boy?" The tip of my nose touched the warm, moist, fetid, stinky circle. Her hips began to swivel and she clutched my head tighter. My head was being swiveled around and around. She shoved the tip of my nose into her asshole, pulled my head back, shoved it forward again, pulled it back...faster and faster... The asscrack was so deep the inside cleft of the cheeks almost covered my ears. A strange fluid began to ooze onto my face. It didn’t taste like anything, but smelled like the powdered pink handsoap in the boy’s restroom at school. I was about to vomit when suddenly the movement stopped. She lifted herself off of me and I sucked in air. I never knew air was so clean, so sweet.
She got up, went into the kitchen, and began to make dinner. My face felt like it had been rubbed hard with a brillo pad and dipped in egg yolk. I watched the novellas and listened to her movements in the kitchen. I had an erection and I touched it through my bermuda shorts.
Anyway, I have been an asscrack lover ever since. And now I'm not ashamed to say it. I'm going to tell the world. In fact, I am at a public library, and I am going to celebrate my uniqueness in just a few minutes. I'm going to sniff every female asscrack in this fucking place, and no one will stop me.
User: Daddy's Little Rapist
Posted on: 12/12/06. 7:58 PM PST.
You are a faggot.
(no other responses)
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
I Believe I Can Fly #1 (from DIARY OF A DAY-PROWLING PERVERT #1)
I left the shrink's office with the same feeling I'd had after my previous 37 visits: constipated, unable to shit: ashamed, ridiculous, ripped off. Another eighty dollars gone. I walked out into the mothersucking sunlight and squinted and looked up and down the street. The office was in an ivy-covered brick building in Burbank. Three Armenian men smoked cigarettes on the corner- not men, but boys posing as men. They spoke, but not to each other: they wore identical triangular devices on the right ear, ridiculous, carrying on conversations. Their voices shot out into the firmament and back down again, probably into Glendale. I looked at the Armenian youth and decided it would be in my best interests to never get better, never be cured. I could end up like that: Buck Rogers ear, flashy jewelry, polo shirt. Smoking under that sun. Remember that Camus character? The sun convinced him to kill without feeling because the sun didn't give a shit. I understood. The day was hot, unbelievably hot for December. I walked past the Armenian boys and across the street where I’d left the Pacer parked.
Ahhh...the shrink. I’d wanted a female shrink but the court knew about me and they gave me a man. The most repulsive man imaginable. His eyes were dark-ringed, hollowed out, the sure sign of a failing liver, internal organs turning to mush, nascent rot...and his teeth: huge spaces like caverns yawned between yellowed, nicotine-coated stones. And just like the Armenian boys on the corner, he smoked. He ate breathmints like candy. When he talked a sickening odor would wash over me in waves as I sat in his musty leather recliner, an odor like tepid nyquil in an ashtray. As I talked he tapped away on a laptop and I watched his face. The laptop really bothered me.
"How do I know you’re not on there looking at porn or checking your stocks?" I said.
"Why do you feel that way?" he replied. He was very reasonable. He wondered why I talked about porn. And this. And that. But he didn't bring up asscrack. And I didn't either. Not willingly.I paid my money and smelled his breath and left pissed off, every time... but he'd never take the asscrack from me.
I got into the Pacer and turned up the radio. News radio. I let the smooth drone wash over me. the human voice can be quite soothing when it's anonymous, directed at the whole world... for truck drivers, nuns, baggers, carpenters, paralegals, serial killers...and asscrack huffers.
I sat and pushed the scan button on the radio. I rolled up the windows and felt the temperature rise as the sun mocked me up there in the sky... in twenty minutes, if I could hold on, I could be dead...I smiled and felt a little better and looked for a radio station.
And then it happened. A song spoke to me. Sweet positivity, like Bach. But the voice was Negro.
I sat, transfixed, rolled down the window, listened to the lyrics.
I believe I can fly
I believe I can touch the sky
I think about it every night and day
Spread my wings and fly away...
"That was R. Kelly," the DJ said.
That hit me in the gut, hit me hard. R. Kelly had been accused of pissing on a 13 year old girl! Was he being forced by the courts to see a shrink? No! Instead, he wrote a song embracing his perversions, the perversions of the world. Yeh, I like pissing on little girls, he seemed to say. And I will piss again.
But me, with my harmless diversion...staring at the lovely butt clefts of adult women(most of them), taking the occasional photograph...
I was a reject in the eyes of society! Me!
I decided, once and for all, to celebrate my uniqueness. To embrace diversity by being myself. That’s what I saw all around: diversity: the gays want to suck cock and get married; the Mexicans want to sire large families and drive them around in big trucks with chrome women on the mudflaps; the Armenians want to drive around in Mercedes and smoke Winstons and remind us to not forget their genocide; the Irish want to drink beer and bitch about the potato famine; the white people want the right to be ironic, sip lattes, and work as graphic designers. But what of myself? My desires? My need to be accepted by society? The shrink took a cold view of my forays into the back alleys, the barrooms, the libraries, the churches, the post offices, the gyms, the coffeeshops. He took a dim view of the female asscrack. Don’t you want to love, to be loved, to have children, to feel the glorious unification of man and woman? He plied me with these things, imploring me with his small hollowed-out eyes. I viewed him as subhuman. His worldview repulsed me and I'd considered killing him. But no: I was so over that. The time for other action had come.
The light and heat in the Pacer suddenly waned as R. Kelly's song ended. I looked up into the sky: a single cloud, one cloud in the entire thankless sky, had flown over the sun. A sign if there ever was one. I looked to my left and saw the Armenian boys driving away in an SUV, still talking on their Buck Rogers devices, still smoking. I watched them drive away, down Olive Ave., to Glendale, away. I watched until I couldn't see the SUV any more.
Things were looking up.
My spine tingled: the world suddenly seemed full of magic and beauty: I would come out of the closet. I would tell the world of my love for crack. Asscrack. Ass. Crack.
I drove to the nearest library. It was just up the street. I almost ran over a bum and his shopping cart as I roared into the parking lot. He cursed me and as I ran past him I flung a dollar in his direction. "YOU CHEAP MOTHERFUCKER!" he screamed. My hands were trembling. I walked quickly into the library, took a seat next to a guy who looked just like Adam Morrison and smelled like weed, scanned around quickly for asscrack, saw only old women, logged onto a computer, and quickly typed in my destination: www.greatflutterykrishna.com.
I'd been logging onto this site for a while. It was a fansite for a great forgotten polish comedian, Bill Hendrowski, a travelling ventriloquist. Truly a great man. His dummy was named Buddy and was supposed to be a subnormal, a mongloid. Hendrowski spent the first minutes of his act arguing with the dummy, calling him a retard, insulting him. The dummy would say very stupid things and Hendrowski would play the straight man. Then the dummy would turn the tables: he'd start insulting Hendrowski, would turn the whole thing on its ear: the crowd was astounded by the dummy's wit: and when the dummy thought Hendrowski had said something particularly stupid, he'd exclaim: "GREAT FLUTTERY KRISHNA"! The crowd waited for this, they paid tickets for this, and when they got what they paid for they'd stomp and hoot and scream.
I'd seen Hendrowski at the Lancaster Fair in 1989, as a child, and had followed him and Buddy forever after. Hendowski had problems making the rent with his act, though: the internet era killed ventriloquism for good, the county fair crowds thinned to nothing, and Hendrowski moved to Hollywood. After a few years of shit parts on bad shows he landed a role as an overweight bus driver on the hit comedy Short Bus. The show featured a young retarded child named Buddy who rode the bus and said clever, insulting things. The show ran for five seasons and went into syndication. Hendrowski retired to the Hollywood Hills. He even got a star on the walk, right near the liquor store on the southeast corner of Hollywood and Vine.
But there were people, just a few, who remembered the ventriloquist. Somehow these few people had found each other online. I had a username: Slim Elliot. I didn't comment much, just read everyone else's conversations. I was scared of most of the subnormal, obssesive personalities lurking about. Many of them were clustered in Chatanooga, Tennesee. It was a puzzling fact. Slowly, though, I figured it out: In 1976 Hendrowki had recorded his seminal album there, the double LP Buddy Comes Alive!. Thirty years later the place had evolved into his defacto Graceland: a population out-of- work housepainters, klan members, Jehovah's Witnesses, video-game players, tweakers, boozers, criminals, and shut-in losers had reached critical mass. When Buddy called blacks "the mudpeople" at the Elks Lodge on July 14th, 1976, Hendrowski changed Chatanooga's future generations forever.
It wasn't just Chatanooga. The freaks were everywhere: the Blind Children's Institute in Valrico, FL, had somehow acquired computers, and two strange teenagers there had stumbled onto the site: they were gay lovers, young boys whose embrace had apparently brought warmth to a cold, institutionalized life. One was named Frederick, Username Billfreak. He posted a picture of himself: one eye didn't quite point in the right direction, and his posts were as skewed as his eyeball. The other boy was named St. Billy and he was in love: with Frederick, with wrestling , and with the Iron Sheik. These two seemed to be on the computer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I tried to avoid them and their suggestive private messages. But now I felt assured: if people as strange as them were accepted on greatflutterykrishna, so might I.
I started a new thread. It was titled: "I HAVE SOMETHING TO TELL ALL OF YOU."
(to be continued)
Ahhh...the shrink. I’d wanted a female shrink but the court knew about me and they gave me a man. The most repulsive man imaginable. His eyes were dark-ringed, hollowed out, the sure sign of a failing liver, internal organs turning to mush, nascent rot...and his teeth: huge spaces like caverns yawned between yellowed, nicotine-coated stones. And just like the Armenian boys on the corner, he smoked. He ate breathmints like candy. When he talked a sickening odor would wash over me in waves as I sat in his musty leather recliner, an odor like tepid nyquil in an ashtray. As I talked he tapped away on a laptop and I watched his face. The laptop really bothered me.
"How do I know you’re not on there looking at porn or checking your stocks?" I said.
"Why do you feel that way?" he replied. He was very reasonable. He wondered why I talked about porn. And this. And that. But he didn't bring up asscrack. And I didn't either. Not willingly.I paid my money and smelled his breath and left pissed off, every time... but he'd never take the asscrack from me.
I got into the Pacer and turned up the radio. News radio. I let the smooth drone wash over me. the human voice can be quite soothing when it's anonymous, directed at the whole world... for truck drivers, nuns, baggers, carpenters, paralegals, serial killers...and asscrack huffers.
I sat and pushed the scan button on the radio. I rolled up the windows and felt the temperature rise as the sun mocked me up there in the sky... in twenty minutes, if I could hold on, I could be dead...I smiled and felt a little better and looked for a radio station.
And then it happened. A song spoke to me. Sweet positivity, like Bach. But the voice was Negro.
I sat, transfixed, rolled down the window, listened to the lyrics.
I believe I can fly
I believe I can touch the sky
I think about it every night and day
Spread my wings and fly away...
"That was R. Kelly," the DJ said.
That hit me in the gut, hit me hard. R. Kelly had been accused of pissing on a 13 year old girl! Was he being forced by the courts to see a shrink? No! Instead, he wrote a song embracing his perversions, the perversions of the world. Yeh, I like pissing on little girls, he seemed to say. And I will piss again.
But me, with my harmless diversion...staring at the lovely butt clefts of adult women(most of them), taking the occasional photograph...
I was a reject in the eyes of society! Me!
I decided, once and for all, to celebrate my uniqueness. To embrace diversity by being myself. That’s what I saw all around: diversity: the gays want to suck cock and get married; the Mexicans want to sire large families and drive them around in big trucks with chrome women on the mudflaps; the Armenians want to drive around in Mercedes and smoke Winstons and remind us to not forget their genocide; the Irish want to drink beer and bitch about the potato famine; the white people want the right to be ironic, sip lattes, and work as graphic designers. But what of myself? My desires? My need to be accepted by society? The shrink took a cold view of my forays into the back alleys, the barrooms, the libraries, the churches, the post offices, the gyms, the coffeeshops. He took a dim view of the female asscrack. Don’t you want to love, to be loved, to have children, to feel the glorious unification of man and woman? He plied me with these things, imploring me with his small hollowed-out eyes. I viewed him as subhuman. His worldview repulsed me and I'd considered killing him. But no: I was so over that. The time for other action had come.
The light and heat in the Pacer suddenly waned as R. Kelly's song ended. I looked up into the sky: a single cloud, one cloud in the entire thankless sky, had flown over the sun. A sign if there ever was one. I looked to my left and saw the Armenian boys driving away in an SUV, still talking on their Buck Rogers devices, still smoking. I watched them drive away, down Olive Ave., to Glendale, away. I watched until I couldn't see the SUV any more.
Things were looking up.
My spine tingled: the world suddenly seemed full of magic and beauty: I would come out of the closet. I would tell the world of my love for crack. Asscrack. Ass. Crack.
I drove to the nearest library. It was just up the street. I almost ran over a bum and his shopping cart as I roared into the parking lot. He cursed me and as I ran past him I flung a dollar in his direction. "YOU CHEAP MOTHERFUCKER!" he screamed. My hands were trembling. I walked quickly into the library, took a seat next to a guy who looked just like Adam Morrison and smelled like weed, scanned around quickly for asscrack, saw only old women, logged onto a computer, and quickly typed in my destination: www.greatflutterykrishna.com.
I'd been logging onto this site for a while. It was a fansite for a great forgotten polish comedian, Bill Hendrowski, a travelling ventriloquist. Truly a great man. His dummy was named Buddy and was supposed to be a subnormal, a mongloid. Hendrowski spent the first minutes of his act arguing with the dummy, calling him a retard, insulting him. The dummy would say very stupid things and Hendrowski would play the straight man. Then the dummy would turn the tables: he'd start insulting Hendrowski, would turn the whole thing on its ear: the crowd was astounded by the dummy's wit: and when the dummy thought Hendrowski had said something particularly stupid, he'd exclaim: "GREAT FLUTTERY KRISHNA"! The crowd waited for this, they paid tickets for this, and when they got what they paid for they'd stomp and hoot and scream.
I'd seen Hendrowski at the Lancaster Fair in 1989, as a child, and had followed him and Buddy forever after. Hendowski had problems making the rent with his act, though: the internet era killed ventriloquism for good, the county fair crowds thinned to nothing, and Hendrowski moved to Hollywood. After a few years of shit parts on bad shows he landed a role as an overweight bus driver on the hit comedy Short Bus. The show featured a young retarded child named Buddy who rode the bus and said clever, insulting things. The show ran for five seasons and went into syndication. Hendrowski retired to the Hollywood Hills. He even got a star on the walk, right near the liquor store on the southeast corner of Hollywood and Vine.
But there were people, just a few, who remembered the ventriloquist. Somehow these few people had found each other online. I had a username: Slim Elliot. I didn't comment much, just read everyone else's conversations. I was scared of most of the subnormal, obssesive personalities lurking about. Many of them were clustered in Chatanooga, Tennesee. It was a puzzling fact. Slowly, though, I figured it out: In 1976 Hendrowki had recorded his seminal album there, the double LP Buddy Comes Alive!. Thirty years later the place had evolved into his defacto Graceland: a population out-of- work housepainters, klan members, Jehovah's Witnesses, video-game players, tweakers, boozers, criminals, and shut-in losers had reached critical mass. When Buddy called blacks "the mudpeople" at the Elks Lodge on July 14th, 1976, Hendrowski changed Chatanooga's future generations forever.
It wasn't just Chatanooga. The freaks were everywhere: the Blind Children's Institute in Valrico, FL, had somehow acquired computers, and two strange teenagers there had stumbled onto the site: they were gay lovers, young boys whose embrace had apparently brought warmth to a cold, institutionalized life. One was named Frederick, Username Billfreak. He posted a picture of himself: one eye didn't quite point in the right direction, and his posts were as skewed as his eyeball. The other boy was named St. Billy and he was in love: with Frederick, with wrestling , and with the Iron Sheik. These two seemed to be on the computer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I tried to avoid them and their suggestive private messages. But now I felt assured: if people as strange as them were accepted on greatflutterykrishna, so might I.
I started a new thread. It was titled: "I HAVE SOMETHING TO TELL ALL OF YOU."
(to be continued)
Friday, December 1, 2006
Uptown Ass, Downtown Man #4 (from DIARY OF A DAY-PROWLING PERVERT #1)
“Hello ladies,” I said.
They looked up, all three of them. Three wary faces. Makeup and hair and perfume. My disarming smile didn’t work. Not a smile among them. I could spot the leader of the group right away by the insolence in her eyes, by the solidness of her breasts behind a black blouse, by her carefully teased blonde hair, by her arms thick and strong and mannish beneath a wool pullover. Obvious lesbian, I thought to myself. Closeted. Her eyes burned from beneath silvery eyelids, a sneer on her lips, waiting. Her hands were busy tearing a napkin into small pieces. I kept the smile on but pursed my lips a bit, coy, shamefaced.
“I’m sorry to bother you... I see you’re enjoying yourselves and probably don’t want to be bothered.”
“That’s right,” she said. Her hands kept tearing the napkin
.
“Well, I apologize. I suppose I’m just looking for a captive audience.”
“Oh really?” She smirked and exchanged glances with the other ladies. An Asian girl with thick black bangs and glasses didn’t notice: her eyes were riveted on me. I could tell by the slight sheen in her eyes that the cosmopolitan sitting in front of her was working hard on the cerebral cortex. A lightweight. Perfect. I looked into her eyes as I spoke. She would be my mole.
“Truthfully, and I know this is corny, I know it sounds like some bar routine...”
“It does,” said the lesbian.
I chuckled. “I’ll admit as much, but please...hear me out. You see, I’ve got a problem. My problem is that I’ve got a great job, a great career. I’m succesful. But...” I paused. “I’m unfullfilled... I’m unfulfilled.”
The third girl chimed in. She was black and her hair was perfect, braids tied up behind her head. When she spoke she shook her head and the braids shook and for a second, just a second, I almost glanced down at her thick thighs. But I caught myself. “You’re not fulfilled, well...we were all just talking about that,” she said, and lifted a drink to her lips. “We’re unfulfilled as hell.”
The girls all laughed. I played coy.
“Well then, perhaps we have something in common,” I said. “May I sit down?”
Before anyone could respond I pulled up a stool.
“My problem,” I said, “Is that I’m a copyright lawyer. I make a lot of money. But I hate what I do.”
“What’s a copyright lawyer?” asked the Asian girl. She seemed fascinated, or stupefied. Perfect either way. I smiled warmly.
“Well let’s just say- I’ve got clients who have patents, who write things. Creative folks. And if anyone ‘copies’ what they do, I sue those people...the ‘right’ way.”
Muted laughter. I brushed it aside and went on.
“But ever since I was a child, I wanted to be a magician. It’s a dream, sadly, that I’ve never realized.”
“You mean like David Copperfield ?” asked the lesbian.
I looked down at my hands shyly. “Well, perhaps. Though I’m not as good looking as that fellow...I doubt Claudia Schiffer would ever give me her phone number!”
The girls liked that and they laughed. I went on.
“But still, I amuse myself with my little....parlor tricks. And no one at work will humor me. So I’m reduced, I’m afraid, to approaching strangers in bars with my little schtick.”
The Asian girl clapped her hands. Her eyes gleamed and gleamed. I saw myself reflected in her glasses andI liked what I saw. A shadowy figure holding a wheat beer. “Oh, I love magic! Show us a trick!”
My hooks were in. The girls were animated; even the lesbian seemed interested. I reached inside my jacket to reveal a gold coin. Their eyes fixed upon it and I rolled it across my fingers: I flipped it across the knuckles, made it disappear, then reappear again. I thought of the months I’d spent in the Los Angeles County jail ,where a big queen named Harold had shown me magic tricks with coins and cards and numbers. He was a kind man, and patient, and he’d watch me fumble around with the coin and we’d laugh. After six months I was a master of prestidigitation. He wanted reciprocation. One night I felt his hand moving up my inner thigh. I shattered his nose with a deft shot of the palm. End result: I left County a magician. And Harold left with bone fragments lodged deep in his sinuses.
I shook off that memory and turned my attention back to the women. I held my palm open, the coin sitting there in plain view. Their eyes were transfixed upon it. I closed my hand into a fist, reopened it , and the coin was gone.
“OOOOOO!” yelled the Asian girl . “OOOOOOO!”
“Now where did it go?” I said . I stood up, paced around the table. They half-turned to watch me. I stopped behind the black girl. I showed them my empty hands. I could smell the girl’s perfume, floral, musky, and I glanced down to see it: yes: the asscrack, poking out from her slacks, just a hint of it, hard to discern in the dim lighting, but there. I tried to act casual.
“Well,” I said. “I can’t believe where that coin ended up.” I looked at them apologetically. “I mean, it’s shocking, but...”
I reached down and pulled back her slacks. She tensed up and I thought she might scream but the other girls were enrapt and as I pulled the coin from her asscrack they laughed and, bewildered, she lauged too. They began to clap and I stood back from the table and gave a little bow. But I was sweating , now: when I reached down to pull back her slacks I saw that endless canyon and felt her tension and I’d almost messed myself. I was breathing hard but, with much effort, remained calm.
“More tricks, more tricks, more tricks!” said the Asian, clapping her hands. I raised a finger towards the bar.
“I’m taking up enough of your time with my tomfoolery...the least I can do is buy you ladies another round. Bartender!”
He cocked an eyebrow at me and I gestured toward the table. “Another round of cosmopolitans for my friends!”
He frowned, paused, then sullenly started pouring the drinks. The drinks came and I sipped my wheat beer. It was sour and warm but I nursed it: it wouldn’t do to drink too much and ruin the finale.
“All right, ladies. I have one more trick. It is a numbers trick. And for this trick I’ll need your participation.”
I looked at them. The lesbian was getting tipsy and her hard gaze had softened a bit. The Asian girl was fucked up and gazed at me adoringly. The black girl wore a tight smile and her braids were quite rigid. She seemed a bit troubled but she was playing along. Good enough for me. All I needed was a few more minutes. Just a few more minutes...
“All I need is a few more minutes,” I said. “This is the trick I’ve had the most trouble with and I’ll need you all to follow my instructions and help me perfect it. And I hope I’m not too much trouble,” I added.
“Go ahead,” said the lesbian.
“All right. I want each of you to close your eyes and think of a number between one and one hundred.”
They closed their eyes. After a moment I said,
“Now- and this is the strange part, but it’s crucial- I need you all to lean forward- towards the center of the table- and visualize that number.”
“Why do we need to do that?” asked the black girl, frowning, her eyes still closed.
“It’s a part of the act and it’s crucial. Please, humor me, I beg of you...” I could tell my breathing was becoming heavier, huskier. I was losing my cool. Just a bit longer, I told myself.
They all leaned forward, their heads nearly touching at the middle of the table.
“Okay, now hold that a second,” I said, “and think hard about those numbers. Concentrate!!!”
They concentrated. I looked at the bar. The bartender was watching the Lakers game. Kobe Bryant was arguing with a referee. I began to pace around the table. Each woman’s asscrack was clearly revealed: the Asian girl’s, just a slight depression on silky white skin; the black girl’s, a lovely chocolate canyon, deep and fecund; the white lesbian’s, pudginess poking out, phantom hints of stretchmarks white in the dim orange light , lightning traces on fat. I paced and I paced and I circled the table.
“Lean forward further! YOU MUST CONCENTRATE!”
They leaned forward further. Their heads bumped together and they giggled but they kept their eyes closed. I reached into the inside pocket of my suit and withdrew my ace-in-the-hole, my secret weapon, my device. James Bond had nothing on me: it was a pen, the size of a thick ballpoint. It was a camera. I paced around and shot pictures, the flash unnoticed as everyone in the bar focused on the television screens, on the Lakers. The next day I’d read that Kobe Bryant had scored 30 points in a single quarter. The quarter I'd taken my pictures. Thank God for that.
“Can we stop concentrating now?” asked the Asian. She was a little unsteady on her stool. I put a hand on her back as if to help; but with one deft move I shoved the pen camera down her crack and took my last picture. She didn’t seem to notice.
“All right, ladies,” I said, and clapped my hands. “ I think I’ve got the numbers.” They sat up, looking a little dazed. I felt like a hypnotist, I felt like god. I felt like Cortes contemplating the rape of the Aztecs.
“You first,” I said, pointing at the lesbian. “ 67.”
Her mouth hung agape.
“And you,” I said, pointing at the black girl. “ 45. No, wait, 44.”
She lifted her drink to her lips and laughed and started coughing. “Daaaaaaammn.... How did you...”
I looked at the Asian girl and winked. “And you, dear....a strange number...” I looked at the other girls and put a hand on my brow with mock embarrasment. “ Your number was 69.”
She laughed and blushed and I picked up my wheat beer and took a warm sip and tried not to grimace. My stomach turned, a slow turning roil, horrible. I was done now and I looked at the exit.
“ Well, you’ve all been very nice.” I shook their hands one by one. They were becoming drunk and they liked me now. They seemed up for anything. But I’d got what I wanted: now I wanted out.
As I was leaving I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was the Asian girl. Two cosmopolitans had her fisheyed. She reeked of vodka and she trembled; she quivered as she handed me a scrap of paper.
“I don’t mean to be too forward,” she said. “ I think you’re really cool. Maybe you can show me how to do some magic sometime.”
“Oh yes, of course,” I said. I looked at the paper: it said “MIKO”, followed by a phone number, followed by a couple of hearts. “You’re very lovely,” I said. I pulled out my wallet and handed her one of my cards: Richard Wagons Schroder. Copyright Law. Since 1997.
“Call me anytime,” I said.
“Yes,” she said, and walked back to the table. I waved at the girls and they waved back.
They turned back to their conversation. I was about to walk out but I stopped. I went into the men’s restroom and found a stall. In the stall I looked at the little scrap of paper again.
MIKO. 274-9421.
I felt my stomach churn. I gagged a bit.
MIKO. 274-9421.
I tore the paper into tiny pieces and threw them in the toilet. I took out my cock and pissed on the pieces and watched them scurry about under the urine stream , tiny ships on rough yellow seas. I flushed, put it back in my pants, walked out of the restroom, left the bar without looking back, walked up the hill and back down into MacArthur park, got in the Pacer, and drove home with the heater on. I put a tape into the 8-track: Culture Club. As I heard the old familiar song I sang along and tapped the steering wheel:
“I’ll tumble for ya...
I’ll tumble for ya...
I’ll tumble for ya, I’ll tumble for YOU...”
The nite was full of romance. It had been a good nite.
They looked up, all three of them. Three wary faces. Makeup and hair and perfume. My disarming smile didn’t work. Not a smile among them. I could spot the leader of the group right away by the insolence in her eyes, by the solidness of her breasts behind a black blouse, by her carefully teased blonde hair, by her arms thick and strong and mannish beneath a wool pullover. Obvious lesbian, I thought to myself. Closeted. Her eyes burned from beneath silvery eyelids, a sneer on her lips, waiting. Her hands were busy tearing a napkin into small pieces. I kept the smile on but pursed my lips a bit, coy, shamefaced.
“I’m sorry to bother you... I see you’re enjoying yourselves and probably don’t want to be bothered.”
“That’s right,” she said. Her hands kept tearing the napkin
.
“Well, I apologize. I suppose I’m just looking for a captive audience.”
“Oh really?” She smirked and exchanged glances with the other ladies. An Asian girl with thick black bangs and glasses didn’t notice: her eyes were riveted on me. I could tell by the slight sheen in her eyes that the cosmopolitan sitting in front of her was working hard on the cerebral cortex. A lightweight. Perfect. I looked into her eyes as I spoke. She would be my mole.
“Truthfully, and I know this is corny, I know it sounds like some bar routine...”
“It does,” said the lesbian.
I chuckled. “I’ll admit as much, but please...hear me out. You see, I’ve got a problem. My problem is that I’ve got a great job, a great career. I’m succesful. But...” I paused. “I’m unfullfilled... I’m unfulfilled.”
The third girl chimed in. She was black and her hair was perfect, braids tied up behind her head. When she spoke she shook her head and the braids shook and for a second, just a second, I almost glanced down at her thick thighs. But I caught myself. “You’re not fulfilled, well...we were all just talking about that,” she said, and lifted a drink to her lips. “We’re unfulfilled as hell.”
The girls all laughed. I played coy.
“Well then, perhaps we have something in common,” I said. “May I sit down?”
Before anyone could respond I pulled up a stool.
“My problem,” I said, “Is that I’m a copyright lawyer. I make a lot of money. But I hate what I do.”
“What’s a copyright lawyer?” asked the Asian girl. She seemed fascinated, or stupefied. Perfect either way. I smiled warmly.
“Well let’s just say- I’ve got clients who have patents, who write things. Creative folks. And if anyone ‘copies’ what they do, I sue those people...the ‘right’ way.”
Muted laughter. I brushed it aside and went on.
“But ever since I was a child, I wanted to be a magician. It’s a dream, sadly, that I’ve never realized.”
“You mean like David Copperfield ?” asked the lesbian.
I looked down at my hands shyly. “Well, perhaps. Though I’m not as good looking as that fellow...I doubt Claudia Schiffer would ever give me her phone number!”
The girls liked that and they laughed. I went on.
“But still, I amuse myself with my little....parlor tricks. And no one at work will humor me. So I’m reduced, I’m afraid, to approaching strangers in bars with my little schtick.”
The Asian girl clapped her hands. Her eyes gleamed and gleamed. I saw myself reflected in her glasses andI liked what I saw. A shadowy figure holding a wheat beer. “Oh, I love magic! Show us a trick!”
My hooks were in. The girls were animated; even the lesbian seemed interested. I reached inside my jacket to reveal a gold coin. Their eyes fixed upon it and I rolled it across my fingers: I flipped it across the knuckles, made it disappear, then reappear again. I thought of the months I’d spent in the Los Angeles County jail ,where a big queen named Harold had shown me magic tricks with coins and cards and numbers. He was a kind man, and patient, and he’d watch me fumble around with the coin and we’d laugh. After six months I was a master of prestidigitation. He wanted reciprocation. One night I felt his hand moving up my inner thigh. I shattered his nose with a deft shot of the palm. End result: I left County a magician. And Harold left with bone fragments lodged deep in his sinuses.
I shook off that memory and turned my attention back to the women. I held my palm open, the coin sitting there in plain view. Their eyes were transfixed upon it. I closed my hand into a fist, reopened it , and the coin was gone.
“OOOOOO!” yelled the Asian girl . “OOOOOOO!”
“Now where did it go?” I said . I stood up, paced around the table. They half-turned to watch me. I stopped behind the black girl. I showed them my empty hands. I could smell the girl’s perfume, floral, musky, and I glanced down to see it: yes: the asscrack, poking out from her slacks, just a hint of it, hard to discern in the dim lighting, but there. I tried to act casual.
“Well,” I said. “I can’t believe where that coin ended up.” I looked at them apologetically. “I mean, it’s shocking, but...”
I reached down and pulled back her slacks. She tensed up and I thought she might scream but the other girls were enrapt and as I pulled the coin from her asscrack they laughed and, bewildered, she lauged too. They began to clap and I stood back from the table and gave a little bow. But I was sweating , now: when I reached down to pull back her slacks I saw that endless canyon and felt her tension and I’d almost messed myself. I was breathing hard but, with much effort, remained calm.
“More tricks, more tricks, more tricks!” said the Asian, clapping her hands. I raised a finger towards the bar.
“I’m taking up enough of your time with my tomfoolery...the least I can do is buy you ladies another round. Bartender!”
He cocked an eyebrow at me and I gestured toward the table. “Another round of cosmopolitans for my friends!”
He frowned, paused, then sullenly started pouring the drinks. The drinks came and I sipped my wheat beer. It was sour and warm but I nursed it: it wouldn’t do to drink too much and ruin the finale.
“All right, ladies. I have one more trick. It is a numbers trick. And for this trick I’ll need your participation.”
I looked at them. The lesbian was getting tipsy and her hard gaze had softened a bit. The Asian girl was fucked up and gazed at me adoringly. The black girl wore a tight smile and her braids were quite rigid. She seemed a bit troubled but she was playing along. Good enough for me. All I needed was a few more minutes. Just a few more minutes...
“All I need is a few more minutes,” I said. “This is the trick I’ve had the most trouble with and I’ll need you all to follow my instructions and help me perfect it. And I hope I’m not too much trouble,” I added.
“Go ahead,” said the lesbian.
“All right. I want each of you to close your eyes and think of a number between one and one hundred.”
They closed their eyes. After a moment I said,
“Now- and this is the strange part, but it’s crucial- I need you all to lean forward- towards the center of the table- and visualize that number.”
“Why do we need to do that?” asked the black girl, frowning, her eyes still closed.
“It’s a part of the act and it’s crucial. Please, humor me, I beg of you...” I could tell my breathing was becoming heavier, huskier. I was losing my cool. Just a bit longer, I told myself.
They all leaned forward, their heads nearly touching at the middle of the table.
“Okay, now hold that a second,” I said, “and think hard about those numbers. Concentrate!!!”
They concentrated. I looked at the bar. The bartender was watching the Lakers game. Kobe Bryant was arguing with a referee. I began to pace around the table. Each woman’s asscrack was clearly revealed: the Asian girl’s, just a slight depression on silky white skin; the black girl’s, a lovely chocolate canyon, deep and fecund; the white lesbian’s, pudginess poking out, phantom hints of stretchmarks white in the dim orange light , lightning traces on fat. I paced and I paced and I circled the table.
“Lean forward further! YOU MUST CONCENTRATE!”
They leaned forward further. Their heads bumped together and they giggled but they kept their eyes closed. I reached into the inside pocket of my suit and withdrew my ace-in-the-hole, my secret weapon, my device. James Bond had nothing on me: it was a pen, the size of a thick ballpoint. It was a camera. I paced around and shot pictures, the flash unnoticed as everyone in the bar focused on the television screens, on the Lakers. The next day I’d read that Kobe Bryant had scored 30 points in a single quarter. The quarter I'd taken my pictures. Thank God for that.
“Can we stop concentrating now?” asked the Asian. She was a little unsteady on her stool. I put a hand on her back as if to help; but with one deft move I shoved the pen camera down her crack and took my last picture. She didn’t seem to notice.
“All right, ladies,” I said, and clapped my hands. “ I think I’ve got the numbers.” They sat up, looking a little dazed. I felt like a hypnotist, I felt like god. I felt like Cortes contemplating the rape of the Aztecs.
“You first,” I said, pointing at the lesbian. “ 67.”
Her mouth hung agape.
“And you,” I said, pointing at the black girl. “ 45. No, wait, 44.”
She lifted her drink to her lips and laughed and started coughing. “Daaaaaaammn.... How did you...”
I looked at the Asian girl and winked. “And you, dear....a strange number...” I looked at the other girls and put a hand on my brow with mock embarrasment. “ Your number was 69.”
She laughed and blushed and I picked up my wheat beer and took a warm sip and tried not to grimace. My stomach turned, a slow turning roil, horrible. I was done now and I looked at the exit.
“ Well, you’ve all been very nice.” I shook their hands one by one. They were becoming drunk and they liked me now. They seemed up for anything. But I’d got what I wanted: now I wanted out.
As I was leaving I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was the Asian girl. Two cosmopolitans had her fisheyed. She reeked of vodka and she trembled; she quivered as she handed me a scrap of paper.
“I don’t mean to be too forward,” she said. “ I think you’re really cool. Maybe you can show me how to do some magic sometime.”
“Oh yes, of course,” I said. I looked at the paper: it said “MIKO”, followed by a phone number, followed by a couple of hearts. “You’re very lovely,” I said. I pulled out my wallet and handed her one of my cards: Richard Wagons Schroder. Copyright Law. Since 1997.
“Call me anytime,” I said.
“Yes,” she said, and walked back to the table. I waved at the girls and they waved back.
They turned back to their conversation. I was about to walk out but I stopped. I went into the men’s restroom and found a stall. In the stall I looked at the little scrap of paper again.
MIKO. 274-9421.
I felt my stomach churn. I gagged a bit.
MIKO. 274-9421.
I tore the paper into tiny pieces and threw them in the toilet. I took out my cock and pissed on the pieces and watched them scurry about under the urine stream , tiny ships on rough yellow seas. I flushed, put it back in my pants, walked out of the restroom, left the bar without looking back, walked up the hill and back down into MacArthur park, got in the Pacer, and drove home with the heater on. I put a tape into the 8-track: Culture Club. As I heard the old familiar song I sang along and tapped the steering wheel:
“I’ll tumble for ya...
I’ll tumble for ya...
I’ll tumble for ya, I’ll tumble for YOU...”
The nite was full of romance. It had been a good nite.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Uptown Ass, Downtown Man # 3 (from DIARY OF A DAY-PROWLING PERVERT #1)
It was Friday afternoon and I knew parking would be impossible downtown, so I parked the Pacer on a side street near Macarthur Park a few blocks away. I set the alarm system, racheted the Club onto the steering wheel, pulled out the 8-track player and set it beneath the passenger seat, and locked the doors. A bum pushing a blue shopping cart overloaded with bags and cans and bottles and debris didn’t look twice at my dark gray suit, my carefully shined shoes. Neither did the women pushing strollers. The poor always seemed to be pushing something, but not me. I felt superior. A white man.I felt like Cortes contemplating the rape of the Aztecs. I sneered at them as they walked by. I put on my ray-banz and strolled down the street past the decaying bungalows onto Wilshire Boulevard.
After fifteen minutes I was downtown. I walked onto Flower Street and I looked up and down at the bustle, the insanity of people in cars, people walking, people eager to escape the hell of offices and lawyers and meetings and the water cooler. It looked like the evacuation of some mass disaster. Herds of women, cows and sows and heifers clustered together: the asses: asses in business slacks: Fillipina, Latina, White, Black, Japanese, Chinese, Lebanese. My eyes found a group of young women walking, talking amongst themselves. The workday was drawing to a close and they were garrulous. They talked and talked. I walked behind them and saw they were a promising group. Pinstriped pants. Silvery synthetics. None of them were skipping meals or eating salad for dinner that nite, I was sure: their buttocks jumped and writhed, bulldogs lunging at each other under rayon and cotton. I silently thanked the God above that women no longer wore dresses, and rarely wore skirts. Women in pants. Feminism in the workplace. Equality between the sexes. Carefully sculpted buttocks in slacks. Thank you God. A woman in a dress is a woman to be ignored- that’s a motto I live by.
I followed the women as they walked into a bar. It was a bar I’d seen but never gone into: a bar for lawyers and brokers, for con men and yes men. They drank with the girls , the paralegals and secretaries. They bought the drinks and hoped for a late-nite handjob. The bar was a terrible dull place where the movers and shakers would go to “smooth things out” over a wheat beer. The Lakers always played on the television. You could be assured to see Kobe Byant’s face 349 times in one nite if you kept your eyes on the TV. It was a place worthy, in other words, of a freak electrical accident, a fire. One could hope. Despite my repulsion for the place, Ismiled to myself: I did a mental jig as I followed the women in. My moment was close, so close. I felt electric tension in the pit of my stomach. The bouncer at the door was rotund and dumb, a mexican with big teeth like tombstones and a scraggly mustache. He nodded and smiled at me. I ignored him and walked into the bar.
I walked in and let my eyes adjust to the dark. The women had seated themselves at a table far across the room. Not a good sign: I’d hoped they would sit at the bar. It would be easier that way, a straight line of women. Fish in a barrel, lined up, boom. Well, I saw it was not to be. No matter. I took a seat at the bar. The bartender walked up. He looked to be about 20. Blonde, chiseled chin. Surfer type. I looked him up and down like I’d found a piece of lint on my lapel, or dogshit on my shoe.
“Maker’s Mark. Splash of water. No ice.”
“Okay,” he said. As he walked away I looked at the girls talking and chattering.
“Hold on,” I said. “Make that a wheat beer.”
He put down the bottle of whiskey, raised his thin blonde eyebrows, and opened a Sierra Nevada.
“Glass?”
“Uh...yeah.”
He poured it in the glass and walked away and watched the Lakers game on the TV above the bar. Twat, I thought to myself. No tip, that’s for sure.
I turned toward the women and put on a disarming smile.
After fifteen minutes I was downtown. I walked onto Flower Street and I looked up and down at the bustle, the insanity of people in cars, people walking, people eager to escape the hell of offices and lawyers and meetings and the water cooler. It looked like the evacuation of some mass disaster. Herds of women, cows and sows and heifers clustered together: the asses: asses in business slacks: Fillipina, Latina, White, Black, Japanese, Chinese, Lebanese. My eyes found a group of young women walking, talking amongst themselves. The workday was drawing to a close and they were garrulous. They talked and talked. I walked behind them and saw they were a promising group. Pinstriped pants. Silvery synthetics. None of them were skipping meals or eating salad for dinner that nite, I was sure: their buttocks jumped and writhed, bulldogs lunging at each other under rayon and cotton. I silently thanked the God above that women no longer wore dresses, and rarely wore skirts. Women in pants. Feminism in the workplace. Equality between the sexes. Carefully sculpted buttocks in slacks. Thank you God. A woman in a dress is a woman to be ignored- that’s a motto I live by.
I followed the women as they walked into a bar. It was a bar I’d seen but never gone into: a bar for lawyers and brokers, for con men and yes men. They drank with the girls , the paralegals and secretaries. They bought the drinks and hoped for a late-nite handjob. The bar was a terrible dull place where the movers and shakers would go to “smooth things out” over a wheat beer. The Lakers always played on the television. You could be assured to see Kobe Byant’s face 349 times in one nite if you kept your eyes on the TV. It was a place worthy, in other words, of a freak electrical accident, a fire. One could hope. Despite my repulsion for the place, Ismiled to myself: I did a mental jig as I followed the women in. My moment was close, so close. I felt electric tension in the pit of my stomach. The bouncer at the door was rotund and dumb, a mexican with big teeth like tombstones and a scraggly mustache. He nodded and smiled at me. I ignored him and walked into the bar.
I walked in and let my eyes adjust to the dark. The women had seated themselves at a table far across the room. Not a good sign: I’d hoped they would sit at the bar. It would be easier that way, a straight line of women. Fish in a barrel, lined up, boom. Well, I saw it was not to be. No matter. I took a seat at the bar. The bartender walked up. He looked to be about 20. Blonde, chiseled chin. Surfer type. I looked him up and down like I’d found a piece of lint on my lapel, or dogshit on my shoe.
“Maker’s Mark. Splash of water. No ice.”
“Okay,” he said. As he walked away I looked at the girls talking and chattering.
“Hold on,” I said. “Make that a wheat beer.”
He put down the bottle of whiskey, raised his thin blonde eyebrows, and opened a Sierra Nevada.
“Glass?”
“Uh...yeah.”
He poured it in the glass and walked away and watched the Lakers game on the TV above the bar. Twat, I thought to myself. No tip, that’s for sure.
I turned toward the women and put on a disarming smile.
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