I want to be a cult phenomenon.

Hi.

So, I have a story up here (thanks to the ladies at Sleep Snort Fuck):

http://sleepsnortfuck.blogspot.com/2010/05/old-enough-my-wants-wont-kill-me.html

Read it, comment, follow the blog, submit yourself.

death. Or something like it.

So we die.

Not meaning to sound fatalistic but let's face it, it's true. When I died it wasn't at all like I expected. I've had what you may call a bad life. Beaten and abused. Wishing for death. But just not quite hitting the mark. I guess I just wasn't serious enough for it.
I honestly don't remember dying. Of course I know that I died, or else this would just be bullshit. But, I seriously can't remember my actual death.

I just died one day.

I woke up and I was dead.

A coronary or something. Apparently doing a shit load of drugs will actually come back and get you several years later.

I just woke up one morning and I was dead.

Or didn't wake up.

Whatever.

All I know is that I woke beside myself.

I was pretty sure this was just a dream, but it still freaked me out.

My body just lying there.

All pale.

Not white guy pale. Just not right.

Then some asshole puts his hand on my shoulder and says, "It's time to go."

I turn around and some Robert Smith looking asshole is giving me these sad eyes, just staring at me.

Just staring, like I'm supposed to just go along with it.

"Listen you emo fuck, I don't know how new you are to this gig, but you fucked up."

Those sad, sad eyes.

"Listen, I'm know you're just doing your job, and normally I would just accept that, but this seems like a fuck up on your part, man."

Those sad, sad eyes.

"Look. I try to kill myself on an almost daily basis. We've never met, but trust I've gone through this plenty of times before. Normally I'd just go with you, but I didn't do anything tonight. Honest. You've got the wrong guy. I'm Adam Strange; born Joe Adam Hernandez. I drink and smoke pot. But last I checked you can't OD off that."

It is your time.

"But this is ridiculous. I know I didn't try to kill myself tonight and I didn't even do anything close to it. At least tell me how I died."

It is your time."Ya, and I'll accept that and go with you quietly if you just tell me how I fucking died, okay."Around this time a bunch of other unnatural motherfuckers started showing up, looking all angelic and shit.
"Look I know you're just trying to do your job, but this seems kind of crazy. If I died, just tell me what I died of. Come on don't I have a right to know?"
The other grim assholes started off with the whole, "It's your time," line.

"Cool! Cool! Just, can't one of you tell me what the fuck killed me?"

I noticed some worry in their faces, so I pressed the issue.

"Come on. If I died just take me. No problem. I want to die, but this just doesn't make since. If I'm dead why can't any of you tell me exactly what killed me."

Next thing you know I was in my, already cold body, watching these assholes argue, except I couldn't hear a word.

Many of the the other spirits turned away and disappeared. The main spirit and one other stayed.

I was back out off my body.

You may live.

"What?"

It is not your time."But what about what that asshole said?"

Hey buddy, you do drugs and drink like a fish. You're a fucking alcoholic and could die any day. You're just lucky I don't bring you in today. I'll get you, dirtbag."

Next thing you know, I woke up in a hospital. The doctors said I was lucky to be alive and I had a coronary. No one believes my story, but I know that self righteous asshole is still out there. And you know what. This shot is for him.

Dickweed.

¡Viva La Raza! or Why Stuart Antonio Rey-González didn't attend yesterday's marches

See, I have this thing. She's called a "girlfriend." Friday night was her birthday. I spent every penny I had from my tax return on a swanky hotel room in VP. There was Evan Williams. There was cocaine. We drank, inhaled, and watched the NBA playoffs on an HDTV, blaspheming overpaid assholes the whole night. Just me and her. It was sweet. Romantic.

I told her that I had to be more conservative with my excess because May Day (this year) is an important day for us Mexican-Americans. Of course, she's of the blonde-Swiss variety, so she just stared blankly at LeBron James or whoever. I don't know. I started cutting a coupla lines on the glass coffee table when there was a knock on the door. Housekeeping? Can't be. There's a DO NOT DISTURB tag on the doornob. Roomservice? We never called for any. Fuck. The room was like, $450 for a night!

My girlfriend, in a paranoid panic, swept the two lines that I'd been painstakingly molding with my long expired, maxed-out credit card off the table. After some choice expletives, I went to the door, stuck my face to the peep-hole, and saw a strung-out looking hipster and his-- I had presumed-- morenalicious girlfriend. I shrugged, turned to my girlfriend, who was snorting grains from the carpet, and decided to let them in.

They claimed to be part of a big wedding party and were inviting the entire floor down to the bar for the festivities. After prying my Swiss beauty from the carpet, we made way downstairs. We did some shots with complete strangers, and then the hipster dude and morenalicious (they said their names were Homer and Gracie) came back to our room where we played drinking games and did lines of coke off the girls's asses.

The whole time I was thinking, "man... I've written a story that was kind of like this." The last thing I remember is that we swapped partners. At least I thought we did. Because Homer and I woke up naked, spooning on the balcony; finding that we'd been locked out. After the initial, "holy shit, we're gay" scare, we tried to see if the girls were in the room. Neither of us had our phones, so we had to scream for them. Nothing.

Hours later, we were let out and asked to explain ourselves. The girls were gone and the room was fucked. The glass coffee table: broken. The HDTV: the object used to break it. The handle of Evan Williams, tipped on its side. Its contents: soaked into the carpet. Thousands of dollars of damage. Homer and I claimed that we were fucked up and that we didn't know what the hell had happened. I tried to deny that the room was in my name, but was unable to avoid it as I "looked more like a González" than Homer.

In short, I was profiled!

I'll also be hearing from their lawyer.

Redefining the Threesome as Ultimate Male Nightmare. LO-fuckin-L

“When you get fucked at the Motel 6, you really get fucked at the Motel 6”

By Stuart González

When you get fucked at the Motel 6, you really get fucked at the Motel 6, but it’s probably the best sex you could ever hope for. I met two women at a strip club on the outskirts of town, and the price was right. I had just received a grand in tax return money that was burning holes in my pockets. Forty dollars in one dollar bills went a long way in a joint such as the one I found myself in, but it didn’t go far enough. I’d already spent about two-hundred. They informed me that all a night with them would cost me was a room at the Motel 6, a couple handles of whiskey, a bottle of Thunderbird, lots of rolled cigarettes, and an eight ball of coke.

These women were a mother and daughter team of strippers: blonde, skinny, and tatted to the hilt. They weren’t my type at all, and they could barely speak proper English, much less could they possibly relate to me on an intellectual level, but sex is sex, and need is need. They were offering sex, and I was needing it.

They had cool stripper names. Roxy and Allura. Allura giggled and said that her name was like “allure,” but with an a. Because she’s a girl. Get it? I got it, and the sleaze in me wanted it. I was an expert at mixing liquor with sex, but I’d never before purchased coke myself, so I gave Roxy the money for the eight ball. There was method to my madness. I waited in the motel room with Allura. She turned on the TV and started dancing to latin music on LATV. She didn’t have hips to speak of, but I could feel my dick hardening in my jeans. I cracked into the whiskey and poured two cups.

We sat on the bed, sipping whiskey, quiet. The TV had been turned down and the girls were still dancing and sprawling themselves on the hoods of souped up cars; little more than ornamentation, a sexy visual compensation for shitty music. I asked her if she liked that kind of music. She said that she didn’t know what it was, but it made her want to fuck.

I tried to get her started, but she said that we couldn’t start without Roxy. It wasn’t long after that the devil appeared, and she had an eight ball of coke and some weed. We started with the weed. I took a couple of hits and then turned down further offers in favor of the liquor and coke.

They took off all but their tops, and I did lines off their asses and began drinking straight from the bottle. They did lines off my dick, which was erect and poking out through my open zipper. They weren’t long lines, but soon the coke was less involved and their tongues more prominent. It turned into a mother-daughter tag-team on my cock. I managed to get Allura’s bikini top undone and off, revealing her small, perky tits. Roxy volunteered the removal of her top. Her tits were saggy and covered with awful tattoos, recipients of years of groping and abuse.

We all three fell onto the bed in an animalistic mass and noise. Roxy straddled me and proceeded to grind and gyrate into my groin while I swapped saliva with Allura. The mass and noise of our tryst seemed to outgrow the motel room. I imagined it as a Kafka story about the sex in a motel room between a coconut Mexican and two white trash strippers that engulfs an entire city to become a new city called, placerparasiempre-- or whatever it would be called in German.

I was in the throes of that excitement when the door was kicked in by two guys with guns claiming to be state cops. They were yelling something about having received an “anonymous tip” about our orgy and drug buffet, and that I was going to spend a long time in the federal pen. What the fuck? They were calling me a spic, a scumbag, and all kinds of shit. On top of that, the guns that they plunged into my face made my dick instantly soften inside Roxy. She and Allura were both laughing. It was the funniest shit in the world to them. Because it was a trap. I was being rolled.

These cops had an empty duffel bag, which they filled with the weed, the coke, the whiskey, my clothes, and my money. I was drunk, high, and scared. I shat myself. It was messy and smelly and fucking embarrassing. Roxy and Allura joined the two assholes dressed as cops in mocking me and poking and prodding at me while I squirmed in my own excrement.

Eventually they had me cowering in a corner, telling me that they were going to kill me. All I remember was screaming about how if they were going to kill me, they should dispense with the casting of aspersions and get it over with. I regretted nothing. Fuck them. They punched and kicked at me a few times before I felt a sharp pain in my head. It was the butt of a gun.

I woke up in the tub with a headache and a bloody lump on my head. I touched myself to make sure I was alive. My balls were sore. I thought about crying but decided to see if I had anything left. Nope. No clothes. No money. They even took my fucking socks and shoes. There was half a bottle of Thunderbird on the table and a couple of half smoked cigs in the ashtray.

I downed the Thunderbird and lit one of the cigs. The cleaning lady came in, and didn’t seem to think it was strange to see a bloody, naked Mexican sitting at the table smoking a cigarette. She tried to ignore me, but when she noticed the shit smeared all over the sheets, she exclaimed, in Spanish, that they didn’t pay her enough to clean up people’s shit.

Lo siento, I said. Lo siento mucho. She called me a filthy pig and said that I’d have to pay for the mess. With what? I was just robbed, I said. She didn’t answer. She left the room and came back about twenty minutes later with clothes. Cleaning service attire. She made me clean the room and wash the sheets and towels. When she told me I could leave, I realized that they had also stolen my car. I had to walk five miles back to the city.

When I finally got home, I masturbated, thinking of Roxy and Allura.

(2010)

A broad abroad. Or the manhood of Europe

“The Manhood of Europe”

from ¡Existe el amor solamente para matarme! or Love and Me Have No Business Doing Business

By Stuart González

Sarah got her man. She got him in every country. In Albania and Poland. In Italy and Germany. In France and Spain. In Denmark. She had them all. Men typical of their nations. Stereotypical. Some were greasy. Some pale. Some dirty. Too dirty. Some clean. Too clean. Some hirsute. Some androgynous. She hated that the most. It wasn’t that she was old-fashioned, she just liked her men to-- look like men. She didn’t want to wonder or be made to play a guessing game. The only points she wanted to stack up were penis points. And she was never behind.

Sarah Leigh and her not esteemed friends, like many young Americans with loaded parents, traveled Europe after high school. Despite hating each other, they called themselves a “band of sisters” and decided-- fuck men-- they were going to fuck men. The plan was to backpack from country to country, notching bedposts, and hopefully, maybe, gaining some culture along the way.

The journey began in England, where she met guys with great teeth and poor fashion sense. Seriously. There, she bedded young men who called themselves things like, Wilbur and Philip. In the seemingly ubiquitous pub environs of London, they wore argyle sweaters and sipped on pints while watching football on the telly. They weren’t sporty guys, but they feigned well enough their European machismo. Their sex was quick and eventless. Slow to start, fast to finish. Oh, how her sexual appetite had not been sated in the slightest!

In Germany, one of the girls let a guy named Friedrich shit on her. Sarah was appalled when the girl giggled and said that she enjoyed it. How could someone get off on being so debased? She herself met a guy in Bavaria who liked to have his nipples bitten to the point of bloodshed, but other than that, it was all quite normal, and he wasn’t nearly as quick as the English men.

By the time they reached France, Sarah found out that she was in the lead. Of course, she lied a little. At least ten of the guys she counted were just random oral partners. No penetration. But the truth was, outside of collecting condoms filled with seminal fluids or taking photographs, there could be no certitude. No real way to substantiate quantities.

It wasn’t too much later that her epiphany came while she ground her hips into a Scottish guy's crotch in Glasgow. In a room solely consisting of shadows and blue light. It was simple. She felt no joy. It was too easy. She could conquer, oh yes, and easily at that, but one cannot rape the willing. She wasn't doing anything new, even for a woman. None of them were. And despite the much touted and spoken of romanticism that supposedly gripped Europe, she felt she must be in the wrong place.

Because romance for the European male was merely a clever, serpentine artifice to the fruition of raw, unadulterated sex, by the time she met the beguiling Oliver from Italy, she’d become jaded to the whole contest. The “band of sisters” had traded pleasure for competition and what was the fun in that? A guy could thrust once, come, and that would be it. It’s just another number without the sensation to copy to memory. So with Oliver, Sarah began to count her orgasms. Maybe she wouldn’t break any records (she didn’t), but she’d feel damn good, and the process; focusing on her own pleasure, would lend more to hedonism than whoredom. Because that was what she needed. In the midst of all the boring, monotonous, occasionally wild copulation, she needed to regard herself as the user and not the usee.

Nearing the end of the trip, she’d become emboldened by her experiences. Now she could gather all her notes. She’d fucked men in two different continents. White men. Black men. Mixed men. Men who barely spoke the same language as she.

Her confidence solidified itself on a bus in London. She sat next to an older man. They were traveling from Greenwich to Westminster and she was reading "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love." When she took her eyes from the pages to look out the window, she noticed the man shifting his eyes from her face to the book in her hand.

"Raymond Carver is no Hemingway," said he, chuckling.
"And Italians don't fuck nearly as good as Chicanos," she responded.
"Yes... yes. Very well," he said, and eased himself out of the seat with the aid of a cane. He tipped his hat to her as he stepped off into the wet street.

(2010)

BioJunky: Man and Animal

"You see what man has forgotten is that there is no distinction from man and any other animal. We all come from Mother Earth and by using biohacking technology we BioShamanic prophets have broken the bonds of man's cursed exile and came back to our true selves."

What a load of horseshit.

King Leo, the frontman and head bullshitter for popular bioshaman metalcore band Lion's Mouth, is splayed across a beaten leather couch, half feline groupies tentatively grooming him. The King in his den, he smiles a predator's smile.

We're backstage in the Trees green room just after the King and his pride put on an amazing show. The King may be a lot of things and the least of them is he's a hell of a showman.

The rest of the band is loitering around drinking, smoking pot or getting head from groupies only so happy to have a celebrity blow his load in their face.

The King purrs out an enhanced lungful of weed smoke still smiling that wicked smile. You can tell he's been practicing.

"So King, what about people who say that you biohippies are just trying to use barely legal technology to circumvent well established laws such as laws prohibiting polygamy and under age marriage?"

"See, right there. All you media types are all too ready to label us with such derogatory terms like biohippy and CMF, custom-made freaks. Because you're afraid of the BioShaman revolution. You're nothing more than corporate lackeys each and every one of you!"

OK, don't blow the interview. Don't call the him on his hypocritical bullshit. You can't fuck this up. Play nice Adam, play nice.

"Fuck you!"

The room goes quiet. The King lets out a low growl, body suddenly tense, ready to attack. I continue with my tirade.

"Fuck you and all your bullshit. You wanna call me a corporate lackey, that's fine with me. I've never claimed to be anything other than a literary whore. But, I won't take this shit from a pampered celebritard who thinks he's the voice of a revolution when in fact all he's doing is a pathetic excuse of an impression of Bob Marley selling out."

I can feel my own fangs and claws extending. Every bone in my mutated super freaky body is ready to attack. The King just laughs.

"I like you. You've got balls."

The prick laughs and passes me the blunt he's been smoking. Blue Frankenstein, a mutated blend from out of Amsterdam; damn good weed, sativa with opiate additives.

I blow out a large cloud of blue smoke and start to relax and enjoy myself, watching the half feline girls with renewed interest.

Stop!

My brain screams.

Fight it.

Remember your rage.

Remember your hate.

I shake it off.

"Good stuff. Thank you."

The King lets out a robust laugh.

"Man, that's even better than what I got."

I pull out a blunt from the inside pocket of my coat and light it. A few puffs and the green smoke starts to blend with the already abundant blue.

The King takes it with wide eyed appreciation.

"What is it?" The King asks cautiously, sniffing at it like the animal he pretends to be.

I smile.

"It's called FED 47. A totally synthetic strain."

He hands it back.

"Sorry, I only smoke natural herb. The way Jah intended."

Ignoring the hypocrisy of the earlier blunt, I blow out a heavenly cloud of green smoke. The scent of cannibus, jasmine, and honeysuckle perfume the room.

"So you're willing to alter your body in wholly unnatural ways. Bend barely legal scientific advances to reach your own twisted beliefs. But, you won't smoke synthetic pot."

Let it never be said I didn't enjoy a calling people on their own bullshit.

All eyes in the room are no longer on the King and I. Every singe person in the room is now entranced in the aroma coming from the little tobacco wrapped joint in my hand

I pass it to the closest groupie, a tall amazonian she-beast in a fur wrapped bikini, currently eyeballing me with those "I want to fuck you, then eat you for dinner eyes."

I let out an uninitialized purr. This is not the result of some ani-graft, but something I've always done when content with myself. The King does not see it that way. He stares at me with real hate, the first non rehearsed emotion he's shown all night.

"You see King, the way I see it, the reason for the whole lion get up is you so desperately want to be someone important that you've literally rebuilt yourself into some sort of prophet totally catering to all the lost souls incapable of being their own individual selves. That's why you insist everyone around you look exactly like you, from your band to your multiple wives and girlfriends."

In a flash of tan fur, King Leo is towering over me, foaming at the mouth, a walking nightmare with outstretched arms, claws extended in my direction.

"You fucking hipster! You dare challenge me in my own den!"

With all of the considerable strength in my enhanced body, I jump up and slam my fist into his jaw in a punishing uppercut sending the King and all his intimidating mass flying back into the wall above the sofa he was just lounging majestically on.

In total battle mode, I start stomping on his face with my steel toe boots then turn around with a supernatural speed owed entirely to drunken bar fights to meet the three security guards strategically positioned across the room.

I rip open the first poor sap's chest with my claws, then punt the second one in the balls. The third one manages to tackle me and wraps his arm around my neck and starts slamming his fist into my stomach. We start grappling, rolling around, pounding and clawing each other with the viciousness of two assholes that live for this shit.

Eventually backup arrives and five or twenty security guards put the boot to me, working me over for a good five minutes untill all the fight in me has been beat out with extreme prejudice.

They drag my limp broken body out to the parking lot and leave me lying there laughing. I roll over on to my back and fumble for my cigarettes in my coat pocket. I pull out the pack and see that all of them are broken and I start to laugh harder.

"If you keep that up people'll start to think your crazy"

The sultry voice belongs to the tall lioness I passed the joint too.

"And they'll be right, sexy mama. Say you wouldn't by chance have a cigarette on you?"

"Depends, you got anymore of that weed?"

"Ya, sweety. On my bedroom counter next my condoms."

"Ya, you don't look like you'll be able to use either tonight."

I spring up like a toddler after naptime.

"Never underestimate the willpower of an orgasm addict."

As we walk off toward my loft a few blocks away I say,

"By the way, I'm Adam Strange."

"I know. I'm Fiona, Leonard's first wife."

I start laughing hysterically again.

"See, fucking nutso."

I laugh all the way home. Me and Fiona fucked all night. Then I sat down at my computer and wrote this article.

Ha! Leonard.

Welcome to Fucktune (segment)

By Patrick Patterson-Carroll

Marko met up with Bernadette at the urban market behind the library. They had planned to meet at one of the usually sun-soaked round metal tables with the uncomfortable set of chairs, but it had rained the day before and the sun hadn't been around in a week, so things were still pretty wet, but brave the elements they did. They covered the chairs and tabletop with pieces of the town's independently distributed paper and sat tentatively, their collective focus torn between one another and their place in the universe according to the chairs and table. The wind was beginning to pick up and so they battled (only) briefly, then muttering "fuck it" to themselves and gathering the partially wet, partially fluttery paper and shoving it into the nearby trashcan.

"Now what?" Bernadette queried.

"I know a quiet place where we can talk. Come on."

They walked quietly west along the sidewalk, wide and empty; the traffic trickling in the street, running against them, eastbound. City busses appeared to lean on the corner like bums with their heads in dumpsters. Even farther in the distance, street preachers yelled the “word of god” as revealed by Christ, and panhandlers tested them in turn by requesting they make good on their exclamations in purely pecuniary gestures (after all, these Christians bandy about words like “charity” often). While people exhaustedly boarded the busses, Bernadette, unaffected by the urban spectacle ahead, commented on the dead air between them.

“I generally try to think before I speak. As my brain is occupied, so my lips are sealed,” said Marko.

“I do, too. I guess I’m being impatient.”

“I think you’re fine.”

“Good. Where are we going?”

There was a small park on the southwest part of downtown which was situated around a large serpentine sculpture that Marko had always found "ugly as fuck," but the benches were comfortable and obscured by trees. This, giving the clean green ground an intangible feel of intimacy, of easily traversed boundary, made him feel like an outdoorsman-- rugged, yet urban (or is it the inverse?), he could, in just a few steps, be his usual metropolitan self.

He gestured to Bernadette to sit. The wood of the bench damp but not wet, she dabbed her fingers at the ring-patterned surface, and then smiled and sat, crossing her legs ladylike. In the silence, he found himself being stalked by his libido. Blinking several times and trying to focus on a thought to make into words for Bernadette, he knew that the task was futile. His libido was fucking with him. Nude, pale, and poking its penis into a blow up doll that looked like one of the local weather ladies, this pathetic manifestation of his libido smiled and winked at him.

“I’m thinking of quitting my job at Neiman,” she said.

“Huh?”

“My job? I told you about it. I do retail for Neiman Marcus. It pays the bills, but I get so sick of all the snobby old hags that patronize the counters, ‘I want this, and this and this just like this dear, and if you would be oh so sweet, could you wrap it and put a nice bow on it... maybe spritz some perfume on it.’ Bitches. I wish I could shop all day and still make money. It isn’t fair.”

“I sit in a cubicle all day and twiddle my fucking thumbs. I make shit for it, too. I’d rather flirt with old hags than be a hamster in a cage. Spinning and spinning and sitting and sitting and monotony the only constant....”

Through the gusts of wind displacing her hair, Bernadette looked at him expectantly as if to plead, “Yes...? yes? There’s more, I know there is!” But he just stared at the belly of the sculpture, trying to ignore his libido as it thrust quicker and quicker into the doll. He tried to think of ways to recreate the sparks that flew the other night in the sports bar. His penis was beginning to knock on the door of the crotch of his jeans. Folding his arms into his lap, he said, “Have you ever known someone so attractive that the very idea of not being able to behold such a sight was heartbreaking?”

“No. I don’t care much about looks.”

“Hmmm. No... hmmm.”

“Yeah, I prefer guys with money,” she said, choking out laughter.

They were silent. The trees quivered with each bluster of air from the southwest. She settled her purse in her lap, opened it, and pulled out a shiny metal case. Inside were four cigarettes and one neatly rolled joint. Extruding the joint with a smile, she shifted her body-- legs still crossed-- toward him. Like in the bar with the cig, she pokes the joint in his direction, "Want a toke?"

"Nah. I'm already seeing weird shit." She crumpled her face, withdrew, and put the joint between her lips. Marko watched his libido. It was done fucking the doll and was smoking a cigarette. He could smell the marijuana smoke and he could faintly hear her making excuses for why she does it. Of course, he didn't give a fuck about her justifications. A little pot every now and then never killed anyone.

He turned and smiled at her. For a moment he considered reiterating his previous question. His libido was escalating the game by pissing all over the doll. Perhaps it was a bid for attention, or maybe a devolutionary swing toward fetishism, but all the same, in that space of time he wished he were high, drunk or dead.

"Let me hit that," he said, and she gladly handed it over. He drew from the joint and pondered what all the fuss was about. He turned to Bernadette and said,

"The way lawmakers talk about this shit, you'd think it'd be more interesting. This has got to be the most boring, everyman drug there is."

"Are you badmouthing my weed?"

"Eh."

Silence.

"There was this one guy," she said, blowing away some ash that had accumulated in the cherry's wake. "He seemed to me like the quiet, mysterious type. At first. Had this very Slavic look about him. Angular, edged face, blue eyes, light skin, one of those Owen Wilson noses, and was very solidly built."

"Hmm. So what was wrong with him?"

"How'd you know?"

"How'd I know what?"

"That there was something wrong."

He thought about her question for a moment and then told her that in his experience, young women made excuses not to stick with men whom, to their own specifications, were physically attractive, but had some kind of nagging, perhaps even trivial personal issues. She laughed at the suggestion, and told him that he watched too much fucking Seinfeld, which, to her mind, was a display of male pettiness and socially arrested neurosis.

“And don’t you dare bring up Elaine,” she added. “Females are outnumbered like, four to one on that penis fest.”

“Uh... I don’t watch that show. But your defensiveness is duly noted.”

“Whatever. Anyway, this guy. I used to follow him around. Stalk him. Kind of. Around downtown. Rides a bike, I know. So one day, I followed him into the coffee shop on Commerce and stood in line behind him. When he finally noticed me, he smiled...”

...

“And?”

“And I smiled back. He took this as license to sit with me by the window. We exchanged pleasantries, but the more we small talked, the more bored I became. I did the ‘uh huhs’ and stared into his beautiful eyes.

“Amazing thing is, I was back at work, leaning on the counter, daydreaming. I don't even remember walking back or even parting with the guy. You know? Like there was this large patch of time that I’d lost. Fell right into oblivion. I couldn’t remember anything of what he said. Not his name, what he does, or even what he thought about the weather. But I will always, always remember his eyes and his skin. And that nose. Mmm.”

Marko laughed at her swoon. The ridiculousness of that girlish expulsion of breath at the thought of a man’s large, crooked nose. He was a little annoyed, disappointed even, at the thought of the moments wasted in listening to her eventless story of aesthetic stimulus lost, and his libido only sat naked, Indian style in the grass, hoping to get a peek up her dress.

Initially he thought it bizarre, this hallucinatory manifestation of his libido, behaving as a seasoned fetishistic porn star one moment and in the next, as a child with a healthy sexual curiosity. But it made sense, because in his mind he was conflicted. He wasn’t quite sure how to view the woman sitting next to him. Possible on-again-off-again fling? One night stand? Unstable relationship characterized by frenzied, passionate sex with an underpinning of empty conversation and boredom?

The woman who at first so stunned him was beginning to, for reasons in that moment unbeknownst to him, grate on his patience. After a time, he blinked rapidly, hoping to shutter the pasty little fucker out of existence. Finally, she returned to his cognizance, offering him a cigarette which he declined as he stood up to stretch.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Nowhere. Just stretching.”

She lit the cig.

“So... what’s your story?”

To mention Denica, for him, would’ve been to once again tramp the fields of lonely disappointment. Bernadette observed him with intent, with demand. He didn’t think her revelation deserved that kind of “blood,” but as prevarication wasn’t an option, he decided to tell her. Fuck it. There was nothing to lose, and even less to gain, he’d realized.

“Denica.”

“Denica?”

“That was her name. She was beautiful. I didn’t really know her. She was an aspiring model from Mexico. An itinerant, she spent some time in my apartment. We didn’t talk lots, but when we did, it had an impact on me.

“She always had the sweetest way of describing me. In Spanish. I never understood any of it. She could’ve been calling me an emasculated momma’s boy for all I knew, but it was beautiful. And so was she. I was depressed for weeks after she left.

"The busker dude downtown played a lot of Rod Stewart tunes. Shit’s depressing to me. I must’ve dropped thirty bucks in attempts to shy him away from that particular part of his catalogue.”

“Wow,” she said in a voice tinged with boredom, exasperation. The conversational welcome between the two appeared to have worn itself out. There grew a tension between them suddenly-- though it’d been developing slowly over the course of their interactions-- that was neither sexual nor rancorous; it was somewhat indifferent, but altogether discomfited.

In the silence, she unearthed one of those cell phones that do everything but perform oral sex and began fiddling with it. Marko watched his libido as it became more brazen, running its fingers along Bernadette's silken legs. He met eyes with the pallid form and they exchanged smiles. The libido licked her knee with its tongue and said that the best thing about fucking a new woman was that she'd have no idea what a shitty lover you were until after the fact.

©Patrick Patterson-Carroll (2009)

No Silver Lining

It was definitely broken. I could tell that as reality returned, as I emerged from the long dark tunnel of unconsciousness , eyes squinted against sunlight... or perhaps in wince.
" You really did it this time."

A voice chuckled at me. I recognized it as my friend David. What a dick.

The events of the night slowly rolled back. They were of course clouded by beer... copious in quantity and capacious in quality. I recalled snippets in visions like those plastic goggles you have as a kid; the kind you look into and hit the button to rotate the film, switching between slides of animals and shit.

Last snippet I remember is looking down at a big blue blotch, dark in the corners, light blue where a ray of light pierced through the middle, adorned by a crowd of inebriated onlookers, piqued by a potential display of bravado or idiotic carnage... Jim's pool. Had to be. Even in my most delusional nightmares I'd recognize the gaudy lawn set his parents had given him... a throwback to the last huzzah of a breed that nearly became extinct in the 80s - hippies.

I had finally done it... for years I'd told Jim that I'd jump from the roof into that damn thing. He always called me a pussy. I told him he had to set me up on a date with his sister if I jumped into the pool. He shrugged and said "fine".

"Hey man... at least you're famous now." David informed me through a sly grin. He spun in the chair next to my bed and turned the monitor of my PC towards my prostrate body.

"Great...." escaped my lips in a sigh.

My immortalization went like this: I was focused through the camera, my hands skyward in the infamous Nixon. Mumbled amused voices, camera panning out to the pool. A few cries of "DO IT!" and "NO BALLS!" and "PUSSY!!!", a brief pause in sound... in video actually... some fucker mixed in a cut of R.Kelly's I Believe I Can Fly. I made to leap, but had too much liquid courage, and not enough dexterity in me. I pushed off... but should've run... maybe. My feet flailed as if pedalling an invisible bike... I fall short of the water by a foot and smash to the ground like flesh without a skeleton... Attempt to stand... vomit profusely, noticing the sound returning to what the camera had recorded, amplified wretching sounds as if I'm calling dinosaurs. Then I fall backwards onto a patch of cush grass that lines the pool.

The redemption... if it could be called that came when I stood up, my bare chest resembling a pizza, or some saucy italian dish, and walked inside, with David running after me. The credits rolled. "Starring Ryan as Superman", a cropped photo of my trashed midsection designating my role. "Sponsored by Dos Equis... Jose Cuervo..." "Guest Starring as Kryptonite, Gravity"

David glanced over... and I knew what he was thinking... Shit, I was thinking it too. "Don't even say it."

He started laughing, he'd say it anyway... who am I kidding? I would've too. "This is the same shit we regularly view on the net and laugh at until we're hoarse." His smile didn't move from his face, and one even started creeping across mine. "Plus side..." He displayed, scrolling the screen down "19604 views in the first 16 hours"... the dick.

I placed my estimated time of departure at... hmmm... 0300, with arrival at 0301... which made it 1900 or so now... the booze out of my system, my skull feeling much too small for my brain, and my ankle entirely too big to fit into any of my shoes... at least only one of these things was irregular for a Tuesday morning.

"Well at least I get to take Jim's sister out." I smirk, looking desperately for the silver lining to the looming cloud of medical bills and humiliation.

"Jim says its a no go bro." David stated, dropping his eyebrows and sucking air through his teeth.

"The fuck?!" I bark clenching fists and sitting up, immediately wishing I hadn't, as white hot pain played a game of hyperspeed Pong between my shattered foot and hungover brain.

"Dude... You didn't make it into the pool. He says the deal was for you to jump from the roof into the pool. Hell, he said if you'd fallen forwards instead, making it into the pool he'd've even paid for the night after seeing the angle of your foot on impact."

"Balls."

-Matthew Royall

Taxonomy is usually a method of Categorization.

Taxonomy One. 35 with 2 children. He gazes forward into the sky through the office window. 47th floor. He knows that at some point that once milky white phone with all the blinking lights, now covered with smudges, will ring. He knows that ring will throw tantrums in his ear canals. She'll call him to tell him that it's over. They're done. After 13 years. He wants to cry. He wants to scream for his secretary. Secretary. That's right. That woman. Women. They're the problem. Always have been. Maybe today he'll just surprise them all. Maybe he'll get up from his cluttered desk, take in a deep breath, adjust his tie, walk over to the big office window, survey the traffic 47 floors beneath him, laugh, walk back to his phone, dial up the secretary, tell her to cancel all his appointments, hang up and make a running start at the window. Maybe.

Suddenly he remembers something his foreign exchange roommate back in college told him about women in America. He smiles for the first time all day. The phone rings.

(2008)

Taxonomy Two (Rugby House) 10:45 PM, Arrival. There’s a cigarette between my lips and a gathering out back. I hop the fence and greet the strangers at the table before me. They break conversation for a moment, stare, and continue. The cigarette takes forever to burn and I’m thirsty. 10:47, I balance the forever burning cig on a nail that protrudes from a shingle of the shed and run into the kitchen via the den. Quiet party thusfar. "Jungle Juice or Shiner?" "Jungle Juice, my man." The coloration of the red cup in my hand nearly matches the pigmentation of my newly acquired tan that only goes as high as the sleeves of my shirt will allow. I soberly, clumsily stumble my way through the den and back outside to find my cigarette still balanced on the nail. Victory. 10:55, Girls, girls, girls. Well, three of them anyway. They’re talking about how great it is to be women. Why? I have no idea. I tell them about the horrible nightmare I had the night before. They guess quite accurately that I’d dreamt of being a woman. "It was horrible," I say, "I was short, had huge knockers, which, admittedly, were fun, but worse was that I actually knew what 'colors' like lavender and periwinkle look like. Weird." They laugh and I laugh, but laughter is followed by an awkward silence. 11:07, Flirtation. Dalliance. Her name is Nancy. My name is what it’s always been. At parties, anyway. I offer her a cigarette. She says no thanks, I’m breathing. I mockingly laugh at her sarcasm and tell her that trenchant females are just my type. She doesn’t know what trenchant means, and I gasp in shock because she claims to be an actress. She sips her drink, and darts her eyes in other directions, perhaps looking for a more attractive, less annoying guy. 11:32, Some of my pals show up. I’m working on my second cup of jungle juice, and from my vantage, I can see that the den and kitchen are packed with people itching to not be sober. Wes asks if I’ve had any luck. I assume this is in reference to women. "What do you think, man? See a woman attached to my arm?" 11:53, Dancefloor. Shitty music. No one cares. Pretty girls, though. 12:09 AM, Almost done with my second cup of jungle juice. Feeling nothing. Dreading the line in the kitchen. For some reason, I keep looking at the foreign exchange girl in the corner. I’ve seen her around campus. She’s pretty. Hmm. 12:15, Cup number three. After the hellacious line, I step outside for another cigarette. I notice my thespian friends in the corner. Nancy is with them. I shade my eyes and mingle in the opposite direction. I see Wes chatting up a girl. He’s drinking something of his own concoction no doubt. I sit at the picnic table, sip and smoke, perhaps hoping that maybe some poor drunken girl will plop herself next to me. 12:17, No such luck. I get up. 12:30, Dancefloor. The music still sucks. Still, no one cares. The girls are prettier, and maybe I’m just little buzzed. The foreign exchange girl is dancing with a guy I’ve never seen before and I get brave and start to dance. With a guy. He’s really drunk and just smiles at me. The song abruptly switches to a salsa. I can’t do this. After a few measures I retreat to the corner. I need more alcohol. Another cigarette. 12:45, I get my fourth cup. It seems low on alcohol, so I pour vodka into it. My cup is half jungle juice, half vodka. A deadly smelling combination. I know because I asked the foreign exchange girl. She was waiting in the bathroom line. Her name is Mari and she’s from the north of Spain is what she tells me. "It stinks," she exclaims. "What, the north of Spain?" I ask. She laughs and says no, the drink. "Oh, well... I’m sure in some places it does," I say. "No. It’s amazing," she insists. I tell her I love her accent, but she doesn’t believe me. "A lot of people hate it when Spaniards speak English, but not me, I love it." This is about when I realize that I’m quite possibly drunk or "crunked" as Wes might say, and I should probably quit while I’m ahead. 1:02, She really likes taking pictures. I’ve been in a lot of them. Wes taps me on the shoulder and says that "Bohemian Rhapsody" draws near. I say this to Mari and her friends. "Don’t make me explain it, just follow me." "Bohemian Rhapsody," for the uninformed, is a classic Queen song that, for many my age, was made popular by the film "Wayne’s World." At the Rugby House, the song is played at some point in the night, and we drunkenly gather and sing and dance to it. 1:14, "Ooooh baby, can’t do this to me baaaaby. Just gotta get out. Just gotta get right out of here." I come out of the scrum with only half a cup of jungle juice left. Mari laughs at me. I tell her that not everyone can be so beautiful. She offers me a cigarette. "Did we just have sex?" crosses my mind, but for some reason, gladly, this phrase does not escape my lips. 1:38, I’m drunk. Unequivocally so. Mari and her friends are still around. I begin to wonder how in the hell I could not have scared them off. 2:03, We’re out in front now. Her friends are very drunk and kissing on each other. I’m pretty turned on, but I say nothing. Mari mentions that I’m the first drunken American guy that hasn’t tried anything. Am I not living up to expectations? Should I be? I ask her if this is a bad thing. She says it’s a good thing. In my head I think it’s a horrible thing. I’m so horny. 2:30, She’s so drunk, her English sounds terrible, and I tell her to just speak Spanish. 2:40, I’m too fucking nice. I have her number, but I’m too fucking nice. 2:48, I go to sleep early.


© Patrick Patterson-Carroll (2008)

Dormitory Debauchery

"Dorm Sex"

By Alix Orozco

It was my second semester of college. I'd already done as much as I could to build up a reputation as a pothead, an alcoholic, maybe even a slut. Not intentionally, mind you. I'd been approached only a month before by one of the more lax resident assistants to go get high.

Now that same RA was asking if my friend Vance would buy the 3 of us some 40s. He agreed and once the contraband had been procured and safely stored in the RAs room, we began drinking and listening to music. Half way through the second 40oz and our filters were off. We began watching porn and showing each other our favorite porn stars.

Then came the drunk texting.

I don't know if the cloud of testosterone that overtook the room got to my head, I don't know what it was that I was trying to prove, but I felt the insatiable need to get laid. And I knew just who to call upon. We met only the week before. After drunken makeouts and confessions of, "I think you're hot," I fellated him in the backseat of his BMW.

In retrospect it's hard to remember what exactly had convinced him to come over, probably some explicit review of the things that awaited him.

"I have to go!" I squealed to Vance and the RA.

"Where are you going?" the RA asked.

"To get laidddddddd, suckahhhh," I replied with zeal.

I made my bed quickly and found a condom. I suddenly heard a knock on the door. I grabbed my cell phone and texted my roommate, "I need the room for a bit. Text you when I'm done."

He surveyed my room and focused on the array of books scattered across my desk. His eyes zeroed in on a Player's Handbook I had for Dungeons and Dragons. "Oh, you play D&D! I have a chara..." he started.

"I didn't say I wanted to talk, Brody. Take off your pants and get on the bed."

"Oh, uhh, okay."

I straddled him. "Is it okay if I tie you up?" I asked.

"Yeah, umm, I guess so," he answered timidly.

I unzipped his pants, slid them down and began fellating him as I'd done once before. Suddenly I felt not only his penis in my mouth, but my own vomit. Part of me was disgusted, but the desire to continue was overwhelming. I swallowed it and continued.

A few minutes and once his penis was fully erect, I put on the condom and assumed the position (reverse cowgirl style) and began to gyrate my hips. He thrust his own forward until I made him stop. I wanted complete control of the situation. He was moaning.

He came and I untied him. He thrust his fingers into me and I directed his every action until I could no longer speak.

Half an hour later he was coming to orgasm a second time, "Oh shit," he said, "I think I got a little bit on your wall."

I pulled my skirt back down, showed him downstairs and ran back to greet the RA sitting on a couch in his hallway. "Guess who just got laid!" I sang while thrusting my hips forward suggestively.

"But you're a girl!" he protests, "It's easy for you!!!"

"You look like you could use a cigarette," a voice says from behind me. It's Liam and he's wearing a sly grin on his face.

"Yeah, actually. That'd be great."

We went outside and I was beginning to sober up from the night's activity. I was suddenly very aware of the rain falling on the awning above us, the silvery dance of smoke emanating from our lips, the dull, satifying ache between my legs.

Liam finally spoke after a few drags off of his cigarette, "Did you take that purity test everyone's been doing?"

"Yeah," I said, "I think I scored like a 46."

"You know," he smirked, "I got a 22. I'd be willing to help lower your score."

I surveyed my surroundings, taking into account possible things that were on the quiz that I had yet to do. "Well," I replied, "I've never had sex with 2 different people in one night, I've never had sex outside, or in public, or in the rain."

"Yeah?" he ventured. He put out his cigarette, "I'm in room D222."

I went to my own room and passed out. I woke up with a hangover.

© Alix Orozco

Excerpt from: "The Best Way to Do Shots"

In Celebration. From "The Best Way to Do Shots"

We met for $2 shots at that new place that used to be a coffee shop. At the moment the name escapes me-- too many drinks in between-- but I'll probably remember it when I'm sitting on the crapper reading the New Yorker or something. We had just thrown our daughter a party for her second birthday in a very family friendly environment, so after leaving her with her grandmother, my girl and I decided it'd be fun to get away and slam a few. After all, she's the one who should be getting the presents, right? Baby had a head like a melon. I always laugh about that, but she doesn't.

So I was buying. We decided that we'd do shots 'til we dropped. She had the Yellow Cab Co. on speed dial. We get the first round. She picked vodka. I was a little disappointed because I'm a whiskey guy, and I have horror stories with regards to mixing lights with darks, but I jammed with it. Vodka it is. "Any particular kind sir? House?"

"It's all two bucks, right?"

"Yes."

"Stolichnaya," I said, and turning to her, "I never heard it in a rap song."

She chuckled.

She looked at me smilingly, adoringly. I had to shake my head. Pinch myself. Never thought I'd be the recipient of such lovely things, not from this woman. We get our glasses.

"Did you know," I said, "that vodka is Russian for water, and that it was originally seen as a feminine drink?"

"That was on the Wikipedia entry."

I toasted to her and we drank. She signaled to the barman. Two more. "Everything's on Wikipedia," I said. She nodded. “Mhmmm.” We turned, and two more glasses filled with clear alcoholic water stared up at us. She toasts to me, we drink.

“Are you implying that everything I learn, I learn from the internet?” she asked.

“No, but... I don’t see you read much.”

“Fuck yourself,” she said.

Two more! We glared at one another, stifling laughter, awaiting our poison. The bottoms of the glasses scratched against the bar’s surface as the bartender slid them toward us. We grabbed blindly at the glasses, careful not to break the glare. We toasted to our daughter and drank, reacting animatedly to the burn.

“TV,” I said.

“What?”

“TV. The thing is always on.”

“I don’t watch that much! It’s just noise!” she insisted loudly.

“Yes, you hate silence,” I said, signaling for two more. She seemed a little perturbed at that point.

The bartender handed us our shots directly, one at a time. We toasted to us and sent them down our throats. She wiped her lips and smiled. “How ya feeling?”

“Good,” I said. I was confident. Just as confident as the first day I met her. I put my hands on her hips and drew her into me. She pushed off and told me I wasn’t getting out of it. She called for two more. She toasted to my horniness. I toasted to her always being on her period when I’m horny. She laughed and we slammed the shots down our throats.

“I hate it when you leave me with the baby,” she said.

“I hate it when you nag me,” I countered.

Two more! We toasted. After that we got two more. We had to sit down. We were all over one another. Just like junior year of college. Next thing I know, she had called a cab and we were standing outside, puking on the corner of the night, waiting for it.

Wiping the vomit from our lips, we fucked one another with our eyes. We started kissing. Inside the cab we held hands in silence. As the vehicle made the turn on our street, she looked at me and told me that it was too bad she was on the rag.

©Patrick Patterson-Carroll (2009)

Damned By Faint Praise: Where fiction and reality meet and eventually fuck, spawning horrible, horrible children

The following is an excerpt from a short story I wrote a few months back called "My Life as a Model UN Delegate." In 2002, as a junior in high school, I was 18 going on 19, and if the truth must be told, I should've graduated in '01. Because I am/was a truant and have no qualms admitting it, I didn't graduate until '03.

Yes, I really was a Model UN nerd. Kind of. One of the running themes throughout these entries is 9/11. I don't write about it a lot for various reasons, but it was certainly in the background as we traveled. The dates are accurate.

and now...

March 27, 2002 from "My Life as a Model UN Delegate"

I hate these fucking dress shoes. They give me blisters. Carla sneered at me when I complained. Lunch break. Hopefully it’ll be better than the awful continental breakfast. Those are always bad. Nothing new. Two meetings in, and the only thing I really remember is the moderators-- college kids, all fucking one another, most likely; sexual tension and all; sexual competition; gender division; girls moderating the Security Council; guys moderating the Human Rights Council; who can churn out the most resolutions; intimidation-- with their gavels and their obnoxious loud voices, yelling about decorum. Decorum you little shits! That’s what they really want to say. So I laughed when Miles showed me a funny picture of one of the guys with a huge dick ripping into his ass and cum gushing out of his mouth like one of those European fountains you see in all the tourist photographs.

Mostly we sat around watching representatives from other more important nations running around, wheeling and dealing. Ideas. Debates. Resolutions. Occasionally we’d be approached by someone from Lesotho or Papua New Guinea wanting our input on some resolution they’d drafted that guaranteed such and such or affirmed whatever for whomever they pleased. It was all very boring, very useless, and very much an exhibition of spinning wheels on wet pavement. Futile, destined to hydroplane. Good luck getting America to give half a shit, much less the two that seems the hyperbolical norm.

Met these two guys from Vermont. One was Jewish, the other Muslim. Best friends. Nice guys. We showed shock at the revelation of their long tenured friendship. We shouldn’t have, but the current events, the media; in that moment, we were everything we hate, I think. They represented another country that would have little input into the meetings. In fact, if you weren’t a Western power, an Asian power, or certain middle eastern countries, you were destined to spectate.

Ben and Carla came to our council meeting to brag that they had just been "semi-instrumental" in getting a resolution passed. Yay for them, but I'm not sure what they mean by "semi" instrumental#. Anyway.

After all was done, we did some more tourist shit that culminated in a trip to the observation deck of the Empire State Building. Miss Tanguay and Jasen held one another quite romantically, making me very uncomfortable. Miles must’ve been off smoking a cigarette, and Ben and Carla, who knows? Asking questions at the information center? Either way, it was pretty damn fucked up to leave me there.

It was cold and high above the city, the building having reclaimed its position as tallest building in NYC. By default.

More tomorrow. Goodnight.

©Patrick Patterson-Carroll (2009)

A note on the #. Apparently this format doesn't support footnoting. In the story, the footnote is simply a dictionary definition of "instrumental."

Flâneur Fiction: "Detouring Vol. 6"

“Detouring Vol. 6”

By Patrick Patterson-Carroll

I’m still pretty drunk as I sit here at the bar. I feel giddy. Happy. Effervescent. What’s more, I don’t even harbor ill will towards Steve, who tonight has his Mohawk spiked and dyed orange. The makings of your typical "mall-punk;" all the studs in his face arouse in me only laughter, but I‘m sure his actual intent was to somehow distinguish himself from the twenty other douche-bags who regularly stomp up and down Lower Greenville. Way to make a statement. Of course, Strange doesn’t understand why I always pick on him specifically. Why I have a problem with him. I say, “Maybe I’m just an asshole.” The only response I get is an impassive “probably.” Holy shit, I say. Is “the Strange” becoming burnt out on my negativity?

“Nope. It’s just that the amount of shit you talk far outweighs the times you’ve had your ass handed to you. Karma, she’s gaining ground on your pacifistic ass. I can’t protect you forever. Even if you are right.”

“Fuck the alpha-male mentality, man,” I say.

Yes. Fuck it. The alpha-male mentality. That’s the thing, though. I need a friend, not protection. A friend. He could’ve stood there earlier and let Steve pound the snot out of me and I wouldn’t have loved him any less. Shit.

The music provided by the house DJ is becoming ever more grating. This is weird for me because when I’m drunk like this, I usually tune out anything undesirable. That is, if it doesn’t make me want to dance or fuck, or if it doesn’t remind me of some off-the-cuff talking point, then I assign it non-existence. It’s really quite easy.

On particularly bad nights, I can go the entire hop without noticing any songs. I’ll focus on visuals (i.e. women) or on drink specials or on titillating conversation I might be able to overhear without being too much noticed. If a cabal of chatters seems amenable to my injection into the proceedings, then there’s little room for the music to impinge on my ears because one as passionately focused as myself when it comes to talking, lecturing, and socializing cannot be shaken by mere top 40 variety songs. No, no, no. It takes something I really enjoy. Something I can-- if only vaguely-- connect to an indefinable nostalgic memory. The kind of music that awakens the sentimentalist in me. Makes me think of a girl. Hearkens me back to better days. Sadder days. Days of the 400 Blows!

The songs playing tonight are typical jock rock bullshit. The DJ smiles wide and nods his head from track to track, so proud of his plebian tastes, somehow confirmed by the fact that no one is paying any god damned attention to him. No one fucking cares. He could just as easily let the night go on auto-pilot and it wouldn't sound any better. The difference would be nil.

I see Steve grab a beer and lean his ear into the cocktail waitress' face. This place is busy. I would say "busier than usual," but I am not usually around. I am thinking of stumbling back home. It's not like I can ride on Danger's tab all night. I need some sleep. I resolve to lift myself from the seat.

My legs tremble beneath my upper body as I stand. I'm a bit dizzy, but I think I'll be fine. Lately I've been getting really sickly drunk. Tonight, my stomach feels calm. I think that I might be hungry. I'll have to raid the pantry when I get back to the apartment.

Approaching Steve as if we're good buddies and not arch-nemeses, I ask him to tell Danger that I'm out. He gives me a brief glance and says "ok." Just like that. Giving the four letter, two syllable word the brevity it deserves. He doesn't look at me, expecting me to be verbally combative, abusive. Begging for an ass kicking that I rightfully deserve. Maybe it's not even worth it to him anymore. To indulge me in my drunken outbursts.

I don't know. There's something disingenuous about Steve’s persona. His appearance that so gently caresses the face of social conformity. His bullish, pseudo-protective stature that only seems to reinforce all societal stereotypes; reflecting upon him negatively as self-righteous bully. Yeah, he says he’s punk. He exudes aggression. But deep down he’s no different than those people who insist half of America should rightfully be in prison.

He’s a fucking phony.

This is not to say that I’m the only one that sees it; that I’m some kind of savant, revelatory, seeing through some kind of transparency that no one else recognizes. No. Everyone knows this. Everyone on this block accepts this. Strange knows it, too. He’s just too busy actually being a punk to notice it.

I step outside and I see a crowd of people stuffed in the door of the bar across the street. It’s The Peruvian. I’ve never been in there. In fact, I think it just opened. Like, they had a “ribbon cutting” ceremony, a “grand opening” very recently. Paying no attention to the traffic, I make my way across Greenville. People are shoving, fighting, yelling obscenities. Some are snapping photos with their cell phones. I can hear something about “fucking assholes” and “dickheads” and such.

Peeking through the crowd, I notice that there are several guys, some with the “twist-tie” handcuffs cutting through their wrists, others in plain black shirts, and still more with hats that have TABC emblazoned across the front.

“These motherfuckers! These fascist motherfuckers!” One of the guys yelled. There were some retorts to the effect of “shut the fuck up,” but they were responded with more profanities. A guy started talking to me. I am winding down to a state of tipsiness, and I feel very tired and sleepy, but we’re engaged in this conversation about cops and we’re both feeling the same way about the situation. You give these assholes any kind of authority and they abuse it. Hell, these TABC guys are nothing more than glorified security guards. Fucking rent-a-cops for the state of Texas. Basically, what they do is troll bars and clubs and streets for drunken violations. Their main function is to write tickets and assess penalties to liquor selling establishments, but of late they’ve been rather forceful and even more recently, brutal.

A while back they were in hot water over some aggression at a gay bar in Ft. Worth: lies, accusations, physical abuse, violations of civil liberties, etc.. I expect this to be in the papers and on the local news, too. The TABC finally makes the fatal mistake that results in its immediate disbandment: they fucked with the wrong white people.

I reach over the crowd to snap some pictures on my cell and go on my way. The cops should be around soon, and I’d rather not incriminate myself with an inebriated presence.

My mouth is parched and I feel like having a lie down on the sidewalk. However, I know that I must resist such urges, considering the propinquity to my apartment. Less than ten minutes. That's all I have to wait. Then I can suck down a few glasses of tap water and throw myself onto my unmade bed.

At the Ross light, I balance myself against a telephone pole and stare emptily into the distance, the headlights of vehicles blaring out from the abyss ahead. A voice calls my name. I turn my back and I see a young woman's head poking out of the driver side window of a Kia Rio.

“Vanessa!” I shout. She cries out my name and I make my way to her window. Car horns are honking behind her as the light has just changed to green. She begs that I quickly hop into the passenger seat, and unthinkingly, I do.

The AC blasts in my face. She’s asking me what I’ve been up to. I smile and shrug. “Are you drunk?”

“Yes. Yes I am. Is it obvious?”

“I don’t know. You are walking along Greenville at almost two in the morning.”

She makes a right on Live Oak, accelerating westward. It’s been a while since I’ve been in a car. It smells new. Definitely not the kind of smell one would encounter in a vehicle that has been made into a temporary love den. Oh how one’s dreams can weigh on one’s perception of reality!

“I have cigarettes in my purse if you’re interested. It’s at your feet.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

I grab her purse, look inside, and there they are, a pack of Marb Reds, nestled between her wallet and a tampon. It’s unopened. I pull the pack out and slam it against my palm a few times. The car stops at the light on Washington and Live Oak. The Jack in the Box to the right of us is dark, with all appearances lending credibility to the fact that despite the sign proclaiming its 24 hour availability, it’s closed, sitting on its concrete island in silence.

Trails of smoke billowing from my mouth and nose, I say, “We’re going to your place, huh?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“Oh. Cool. You live far?”

“Just a little further down on Live Oak. Pretty close to downtown, which is good because I work downtown.”

“What do you do?”

“Office work.”

As it turns out, her residence, a studio loft on the corner of Cantegral and Live Oak is one of the structures that I marvel at in passing on my treks downtown. As the car slows to a stop, she grins at me. I’ve been kidnapped, I think. It’s weird; kind of a thrill. Most of all because it isn’t true; it‘s not real. And though I’ve disabused myself of childish games and the melodramatic angst indicative of adolescent sexual development (or claim to have), I can see why “playing” can be so exciting.

We both slam the car doors and she steps onto the curb and holds her hand out to me. Crossing the threshold of the opened front door, we go hand in hand, her first (as per the chivalrous dictum that goes something like, "ladies first"), etc. and she slaps the wall, which lights up the entire room.

The place is immaculate, Spartan, the antithesis of "lived-in." I stand in the middle of the living room-- I think-- and if I say something, I believe the reverberation will overcome the both of us.

"Nice, right?"

Nice, right?

Yep. Indeed, I say. Indeed. I'm staring at the black leather semi-circular couch in the middle of the room. Wooden floors unadorned by carpeting of any variety. Walls barren and white/grey. The glass coffee table; the floor beneath, unobstructed by magazines or newspapers or books, taunting me with its empty middle class modernity. I motion to the couch as if asking for the privilege to sit. She says, “take a shower first.”

I laugh.

“Seriously,” she says.

The contrast between the bathroom and the rest of the loft is noticeable. Opposing. The bathroom is cluttered with beauty and hygienic products. Unmentionables are strewn about as if in the aftermath of a tornado. I have to hack my way through the jungle of lingerie to find the shower.

I strip down and step into the shower. The water temperature fluctuates then settles into a nice warmth as it plashes over my head. I start smelling the shampoos and conditioners. They're all very fruity. Feminine.

Sitting on the toilet, I towel myself off. I hate bathing. I hate getting my head wet. It gives my naturally curly hair reason to act up. The act of putting my clothes back on seems counterproductive. I mean, I'm clean now, but they are dirty; redolent of spilt alcohol and cigarette smoke.

In the living room, Vanessa is sitting on her couch as I enter. She is grinning at me. Scaring me. I say that I'm tired. She asks me to have a drink with her on the balcony. She promises the view of downtown is beautiful.

We are sitting quietly, drinking some really god awful champagne. I think of asking her how someone who "works in an office" can live like this. Instead I take in the sight, the neon lighted structures of downtown Dallas looming monolithically to the west, representative of the western world's contribution to architecture.

Why not? You know? It doesn't matter, this really is nice. A breeze blows in from the north and I feel a smile forming on my lips. I just hope she doesn't expect me to fuck her.

©Patrick Patterson-Carroll (2009)

Flâneur Fiction: "Detouring Vol. 5"

"Detouring Vol. 5"

By Patrick Patterson-Carroll

The phone is ringing. Shit. Strange is expecting a call from a possible future employer and I'm supposed to pretend that I run a small mom and pop pizza shop; as a reference. Or something. The details were never clear, so the assumption is that he expects me to come up with something believable. Because the truth is that he is an employer's worst nightmare. He's flighty. He quits jobs and doesn't say shit to the people in charge. Leaves other hapless paeans in his wake; hanging, as it were. When questioned, he simply shrugs and calls himself a proletarian nomad.

Dilemma. Why? Because I'm beating my fucking meat, that's why. I stop and reach for my phone. The display is a number that is not logged in my SIM card. It suddenly stops ringing. The display reads that I have a missed call. No shit.

I regain my masturbatory mindset, gradually pacing myself back into a good frictional momentum, pumping my fist into my crotch quickly while the images on my laptop monitor provide me with the appropriate visual stimuli.

When I finally spill some seed into my hand, the phone rings again. I reach across my body with my left hand for the phone. My arm, however, isn't that long, so I have to slightly dip myself into the crevice of the couch made by the convergence of cushions in order to pick up the phone, which itself is resting in the fault line created by the middle cushion and the far right cushion. I can feel the semen that has oozed between the head of my cock and fingers getting cold.

Looking at the display, I see that it's the same number as before. This person is unrelenting. I press the green 'go' button and put the phone to my ear. "This is Benny Salvatore; Benny and Vinny's Pizza, whadduya want?” There is a silence here. Then:

“Hello... um... I’m calling regarding an applicant. Um... an Adam Rodriguez.”

“Oh yeah? Haven’t seen him in a month.”

“Well, I’m a manager at Profit Bar. We like to screen our applicants for references. What can you say about Mr. Rodriguez?”

“Who?”

“Uh... Adam Rodriguez.”

“Oh. Called himself Strange. Good guy. Can‘t usually trust Mexicans, so that‘s saying something. My brother Vinny hated him, though. His friends were obnoxious drunk fuckers, always come in and hit on all the lady patrons. But he worked harder than anyone, and if my brother wasn’t such a pussy, the kid’d still be working for us.”

“Oh. Well... um... thanks a lot... Mr. ... ?”

“Salvatore.”

The guy hangs up and between a dial tone and the cold, disgusting bodily excretion seemingly gluing together my flaccid cock and my fist, I feel very silly. I can’t believe I actually did the Italian American accent. I know it probably sounded fake and awful, but fuck it, I think I scared that guy shitless.

I go into the bathroom and wash my hands and my dick and begin searching for clothes that smell clean. My Nirvana shirt is on the floor. I pick it up and smell it. Nothing discernibly foul, and from looks, besides a few wrinkles, it’s good. I pull it on and then cover the lower half of my body with a horrendously ripped up pair of jeans.

While doing vanity exercises in front of my bathroom mirror, I feel the sudden urge to laugh at myself. In the past, girls have accused me of being more obsessed with my appearance than their younger teenage sisters. I laugh and say aloud to myself that they were right.

I hear the front door open. It’s Strange. He calls out. “Marco!” “Polo!” I echo back.

I see his head peek into the bathroom. He asks me what’s up. I tell him he got a call from Profit Bar. He smiles. I follow him into the living room. He says he has good news. I see a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of vodka on the table. Both 750 ml. The whiskey is Jameson. The vodka is something that I know he picked up for less than 10$.

“Well. My mom is throwing me some money. Grudgingly. So I can get a place.”

“Awesome,” I say.

“Yes. I feel kind of dirty. Like a middle class suburban bitch.”

“Anyone would take the money. Guilt free. They’re liars if they scream otherwise. Hell, even I can admit that my dad will probably drop me a few pounds this week.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Help me find a place around here. No Upper E shit, though. It’s only $500.”

We decide to “think efficiency.” Yes. It’s like living in a closet, but it’s better than sleeping in parks or beneath underpasses. “I might do that just for inspiration,” he says, laughing. We sit on the right and left cushions of the couch, staring into the wall ahead. He says that I should do something with my empty, boring wall.

"What? Knock it out? No thanks. I'd rather get drunk and pretend there's shit on the walls than have to look directly out into that nightmarish still life called ‘the porch‘ by management even though it is undoubtedly a courtyard."

"All I'm saying," Strange says, cracking open the bottle of vodka. "Is that arty renditions of naked women might spruce shit up some."

“That explains why your place was always so boner inducing despite the lack of promise...” I trail off.

Thoughts are conjuring themselves in my mind. I laugh. We both laugh. Drinking, passing back and forth the bottled spirits. But then I tell him that the truth is that that kind of stimulation is bad for me. Yes. It’s enough that I jerk off to internet porn as much as I do. I mean, shit. I can’t even operate without the imagery provided by my open laptop.

The days of rubbing one out in the shower or laying in bed, legs akimbo, blowing loads onto my stomach or fucking seldom worn dress socks are quite past me. There is a challenge-- a certain sacrament-- in having to push some buttons and wait for a wireless network I can surf and wank to ejaculatory glory. Walls adorned with fleshy feminine shapes would give me an ease of mental access that left zero room for ritual.

Strange lights a cigarette and leers at me a little. He laughs uncomfortably. We both do. All is quiet. The white wall ahead watches over our gluttonous imbibing, over my revealing revelation.

And amidst the quietude of the abated mirth-- discomfited as it was-- and through a gulp of whiskey straight from the bottle, I say, "So yeah, the Profit Bar called about references for 'Adam Rodriguez.' I pretended to be this transplanted New Yorker named Benny Salvatore. I think I scared the guy, but he might call, so just a heads up."

"Ha, he bought it?"

"Yeah. I even added that bigoted Italian American thing. You know, where they hate immigrants and minorities and shit."

“Cool.”

I ask him if he got anywhere with Vanessa. He says no. Not at all. I say that I had a dream that they were fucking in a VW. “She has a Kia Rio,” he says. “They started out making bikes,” I say, getting up. I go into my room and shuffle through a pile of books. I pick up Strange’s book.

He turns to watch me bring the book around the table and plop myself into the cushions of the couch. I grab the whiskey, throw back a gulp or two and then flip through the book. The cover is somewhat bent because it was jammed, sandwich-like, between two other books. Something called, A Freudian Interpretation of Dreams and Debord’s Panegyric. The only thing I remember about the former was a six page explanation about the significance of a silken white glove in dreams. Hint: it’s sexual. Debord’s book is a postmodern memoir of sorts. I remember some stuff about how he likes women. Other than that, all I can say is that the pictures are cool.

“What are you doing?”

“There’s a passage in your book that my dream reminded me of,” I say.

Of course, there was nothing exact about the relation between my dream and his book, except that in both cases there is this weird tunneling through of the REM wall that separates actual sleep from the environs in which said sleep takes place. There is certainly a scientific phrase for this phenomena, but fuck if I know what it is.

Anyway, when Strange took off with Vanessa, the idea of them walking to her car made me dream of walking. The previously built up sexual tension without release set up the vaginal and sexual imagery; a manifestation of a theoretical continuation due largely to my failure, in reality, to perform ’neath and ’twixt the sheets.

In the book, there’s a bit, which I begin reading aloud to him, where the narrator is dreaming through a haze of a malt liquor and marijuana that his female roommate is sitting naked, sweating, talking to him about her mother who has a parrot that says things like “fuck me! fuck me real hard!” and he questions her as to whether or not she taught the parrot to say it as a practical joke on her mother and she says, “are you kidding? I’m too much of a stoner to take the necessary time for that. My mom fucks all the teenage acne-faced boys in the neighborhood.” The narrator of course stirs himself awake, his underwear heavy against his flesh with perspiration, and realizes that his roommate is fucking her boyfriend in the adjoining room, screaming “fuck me! fuck me real hard!”

“My question, dear Adam, is where the fuck did the parrot come from?” I ask, laughingly, closing the book and swigging on the bottle of whiskey.

“When I was writing it I had this great tat mag that had a pullout section dedicated to tattoos of exotic animals, and this very beautiful girl had a huge tattoo of a macaw on her back. Amazing coloring. It seemed like something funny and interesting at the time.”

We sit around and continue to drink. It’s dark outside. Strange pulls out a piece of paper and hands it to me. I look at it. It’s a phone number. “Vanessa?” Yes. Vanessa. I crumple up the paper and toss it into the kitchen.

Inundated by a wave of spontaneity, he asks me if I want to walk down to Lower Greenville. I think about it briefly. We’re obviously more than a little drunk (hence the rashness). I say yes. Fuck it! Let’s do it. I stand to my feet, salute Strange, and take another nip of whiskey. Both bottles are dangerously low on liquids.

Even in our soused stupor, we realize that we’ll have to empty our pockets to see for ourselves that between us (remember I am flat broke) we have about $1.69, which isn’t enough to buy shit. At least not at bars on Lower Greenville.

Placing ourselves gently, in concurrent motion, back onto the couch, we sip at the remnants of the bottles, Strange with the vodka, and me with the whiskey. Then we swap.

“Well,” I start. “We’re already pretty lit, wouldn’t you say?” He nods. “Well then, lets just head out and see where the night takes us.”

“Could be promising,” he adds, belching loudly.

Outside the air is neither humid nor arid. This balance is somewhat staggering because it has been hot and dry of late. A beautiful, timely surprise really, especially with the warmth in our guts and heat on our faces due to the alcohol consumption. There is a breeze roving over from what feels like a northwesterly direction. It feels amazing. We begin our stumble through the parking lot toward Munger Ave.

Thoughtlessly, we drop trou in the alley and release some fluids against the newly erected wooden fence. No one sees us and we continue northbound on Munger. Strange starts talking about some of his ideas in relation to my blog. He wants us to collaborate on a massive happening campaign involving city council members, black dildos and jail time, if necessary.

“Think of it. Like... live art.”

“Spontaneous!” I shout.

“Kind of. I mean, it’s planned.”

“Calculated.”

“Yes! I mean, fuck city council. Look at our black leaders. Look at them! They throw around allegations of racism like they’re paid to do it, and then they run out any and everyone who might be willing to help the predominantly black neighborhoods that they represent yet don’t even live in! They do more harm than good.”

We cross Swiss Ave.. Without bothering to question or assume a position of “devil’s advocacy,“ I allow Strange to continue his drunken inveighing unabated as we pass the quiet mansions on the corners. It’s about giving voice to voiceless people, he insists. Because they vote for the representation who they assume, due to racial similarity (which is an interesting fallacy; hear: What’s Beef? by Black Star [Kweli and Mos Def]), will represent them justly and fight for their best interests, and what they get out of it is fuck all.

“So here, here’s your black dildo Mr. Councilman. You like to fuck your own constituents, here! Here’s an object with which to actually do it!”

This unusual grammatical precision, combined with uncharacteristically coherent annunciation makes me laugh. Normally he's very disjoint and unfocused in his drunken proclamations. As most are-- more so than most. In extreme cases, his language will devolve into grunting and other slurs of the tongue. But right now, as we trek toward Lower Greenville, penniless yet excitable, he's the most articulate I've ever known him to be in this state. Or maybe it's simply the fact of my own state, which is quite similar, commenting on his, filling in the blanks. Articulating automatically that which is in fact, not articulate at all.

We stop at the light on Live Oak and Munger and I start laughing for no particular reason. I feel light headed and nothing seems to have any weight about it. No solid, tangible qualities. This compels me to muse about the red hand commanding us to not walk. That we should just fuckin' cross because it's not like the red hand is really an authority. It is an inanimate object which must defer its very existence to our animate dominion.

“Now,” I reason. “One can argue that the hand is a symbol, suggestive of the authority of our governing body, which has so decreed that the only way for our streets to function is to force everyone to take turns getting from one point to another and to defy said decree can lead to many an unfortunate result. Like getting ticketed or being hit by a car, etc..”

Strange looks at me and the light goes green. We step into the street with faltering steps. “All that talking while you could’ve been walking,” he says, shaking his head.

“And why didn’t you go ahead and cross?”

“Because I wanted to hear your drunken bullshit. It’s only fair. You listened to mine.”

“That’s very sweet of you.”

“You’re the cautious one. I just walk. Those lights and signs are suggestions to me at all times. Not just when I’m drunk. You preach to the choir.”

“We do that all time with each other. Things like this, we fuckin’ agree.”

Lower Greenville, from this distance, seems fairly dead. With this in mind it should also be noted that it’s a Sunday night. We’ve crossed over to the east, northbound traffic side of Munger. There’s a big church to our right. Some mornings homeless folk can be found sleeping in the stairwells and in the grass near the back of the church. On the other side of the street is a quiet park with benches and picnic tables and 90’s style playground (plastic) equipment. During the day, it’s a family friendly gathering place. At night, old men partake in brown bag dinners on the benches. This is Strange’s vocabulary. He admits he has himself been guilty of this (see: routine). After work he'd pick up a forty across the street at the Valero and stop at the park en route to this apartment on Swiss. The one he’d roomed in with Danger.

Munger has turned into Greenville Ave. and we’re coming up on a deserted strip of former bars and clubs that now seem little more than obstructions due to the great difficulty of walking the sidewalks that border them. Ferns, pines and other flora protrude in vivid color, with the slight suggestion of something approaching zest, into the walkway, daring passersby to brave the gauntlet. After all, to get across to Lower Greenville, it’s impossible to avoid. Unless one drives or jaywalks.

We do neither. Nor. At least not normally.

The reason the northbound traffic side is easier is because of the nature of the intersection ahead. Ross and Greenville Aves. both fork at odd angles; Ross peals slightly southeastward while Greenville goes northeast. This leaves a blind spot on the corner of the southbound traffic side of the intersection.

There is a white sign with a crude pictograph representing a peripatetic human of some sort surrounded like a child in a bubble by a red circle with a line (of same color) slicing through the human depiction-- the universal symbol of negation-- on the north side of Ross in front of a small taco stand. No Pedestrian Crossing.

We are now crossing Ross onto Lower Greenville. Passing a tattoo parlor, Strange fumbles with his cell phone. He punches a button and puts it to his ear. He’s trying to reach Danger, I assume.

For some reason I’m thinking of Kundera’s euphoniously titled Unbearable Lightness of Being. Saying it over and over in my head. I like it. It sounds elegiac. Poetic. I’ve never read the damn thing, but the title alone is enough to merit a read one of these days. And I laugh. I’m laughing because the “lightness of being” I am currently experiencing is anything but unbearable. It is euphoric.

The Euphoric Lightness of Being.

I say it aloud as we approach Revolution ‘59. New Edition’s Candy Girl can be heard distinctively as people pass through the doors and onto the sidewalk or vice-versa: from the sidewalk up to the bar. For the longest I had assumed that it was a Jackson 5 tune. The guy outside the door asks us for our ID’s. We oblige and without incident or even comment, are ushered in.

“This is my kind of place,” Strange shouts to me over the music. It’s empty, but revolutionary paraphernalia abounds. The prevalent ubiquity of Ernesto “Che” Guevara-Lynch manifests itself rather forcefully and prosaically; the famous mural made t-shirt design for young pretenders everywhere to express their suburban/urban haute discontent. Hell Yeah (Pimp the System) by Dead Prez kicks in and I begin to nod my head with the beat as M-1 and stic.man begin invoking ‘hoods and cities in much the same manner epic poets of yore would invoke muses.

“I like this song,” I say. “But there’s a reason this place is empty.” I point to the sign.

Revolutionary Specials:

Draughts (Dom.)-- $4.50

Draughts (Foreign)-- $6.50

Bottles-- $3.50

Well drinks-- $4.50

Strange gives the sign a glance and then walks up to the bar. I follow. The tender has an undie mag. splayed out on the counter before him. He’s chewing gum and there’s a sharpened pencil tucked between his head and the soft fold of his right ear. From the looks of the magazine, he’s been giving the models moustaches and shit.

“What’s with the prices?” Strange strains his voice over the music.

“The prices?”

“Yeah. The prices. Who can afford this?”

The guy just looks at him. “I don’t fuckin’ know, man. I don’t set the prices, I just charge them.”

“And what kind of tips do you stand to garner?” I slur.

“Huh?”

“Nothing,” I shout.

The guy looks at me and then at Strange and then points to me. “I’m not serving him. He’s drunk off his ass.” I am not bothering to defend myself. I start for the door. Yes, I’m feeling it. The whiskey. The beer. Taking its toll. “The only thing revolutionary about those specials is how fucking expensive they are!” I shout. Strange grabs me and we head for the exit.

“Yo! Yo Strange!” I blather as we crash out the door together. “What is big, dumb, and less punk than Punky Brewster?”

He laughs. I stumble and point to Steve, who I see across the street. “That gargantuan motherfucker right there! Hey Steve! Steve! Stevie! Hey man, don’t hurt me, alright. I’m afraid of the pain. That, and if you slug me in the gut, I swear I’ll puke all over your pansy ass shoes.”

“He’s a dumb fuck, Steve, but don’t hit him,” Strange says.

“Wait a minute,” I say, really feeling the liquor hit my brain. “Hey Steve, man. I’m sorry, but I was thinking about Kundera earlier and... ever read that guy? Me neither, but I was inspired to write a story. Yeah, it’s called “The Unbearable Stench of Steve the Closeted Homosexual.”

He laughs. “You’re real funny, man. Look, I could beat you six ways to Sunday, but it won’t change the fact that you’re a broke fucking loser that needs to learn some self composure.”

“Composure? Oh, look at this Adam. Look! This fucking guy! Where’d you learn to talk like that Steve? Hey, I got a book for you to read...”

Strange smacks me.

“Shut the fuck up, man!”

I wake up at the bar where Danger works. Steve is smiling at me. I look at my phone. The digital clock in the corner of the tiny glowing screen says 12:53. I groan and ask Steve what happened. He leans in and tells me that he didn’t beat me up or I’d be in a hospital having my stomach pumped to retrieve my own teeth. I rub my head and fake a laugh. I tell him that I’m drunk as shit. He puts a beer in front of me. Says I’m on Danger’s tab.

“Can I get a shot of whiskey after this?”

“Don’t push your luck.”

I sit back in my chair and sip the beer. It’s a light beer of some sort and tastes like shit. Just as I begin to wonder where Strange has gotten off to, I get a text. In typical Strange fashion, it’s brief.

With a cute pnk girl. See ya tomorrow.

Seeing Danger for the first time in a few weeks, all I could think was to ask if he had any white pony. As we’re exchanging pleasantries, I out with it, and he looks at me very seriously and says, “No fucking way would I ever sell to you.” I laugh and thank him for the drinks. He says “no problem, brother. Any time,” and quickly cuts over to a girl he knows. Or doesn’t know.

The MILF looking lady nursing a neon colored cocktail next to me has a cig in her mouth and is looking through her purse for a lighter. I unsteadily flash mine in front of her. She inserts the tip of the cancer stick into the orange part of the flame and makes an audible sucking noise as she takes in the fume. In this process, her cheeks deflate against the bone structure of her face. I ask her if I can have one and she shoves her pack against my elbow, now digging into the counter.

Lighting my cigarette, I attempt to start conversation with her, but she tells me there’s a group waiting for her, and picks up her purse and cocktail and slides off the chair. Fuck it, I say to myself and knock back the rest of the beer.

©Patrick Patterson-Carroll (2009)

Flâneur Fiction: "Detouring Vol. 4"

“Detouring Vol. 4”

By Patrick Patterson-Carroll

I smell tobacco smoke as I awaken, eyes blinking rapidly, the hangover screaming at my ears like a nagging, self-righteous mother giving me the “what-for.” Sitting up, I hear noises in the living room, amplified by my condition, banging around dolorously in my head. A familiar heavy-set figure appears in the doorway.

“You’re awake!” says she, stating the obvious as people with pretensions to humor in situations embarrassing to anyone but themselves tend to do.

“Yeah, I’m awake.”

“You were unable to perform last night.”

“Who are you, again?”

She’s telling me that we met at the party on Live Oak last night. I know that. My last memory of her was watching her vomit into the shrubbery. Strange appears in the door behind her and laughs at me.

“I have all kinds of fucked up pictures of you.”

“That’s not surprising,” I say, lifting myself from the mattress. “Why the fucking congregation in my living room?”

"Trying to figure out how it was exactly that Jesus turned water into wine... and how it relates to our salvation."

Further, Strange explains that he tried to tell the heavy-set girl (note: in vol. 3 referred to as chubby) that these sort of sleep-ins were normal for people who binge on a regular basis, and that her response was that one day these kinds of binges lead to death; so they were discussing what to do in the event that I were to either stop breathing or begin vomiting. Naturally, they then go into a debate on whether or not I should be on my back or on my stomach while I sleep the sleep of the most devout of Dionysian devotees (my metaphor, not his).

I laugh and pick myself up; dizzy. My posture is, of course, a feint. I definitely want to stagger. To fall, even. But I have a reputation of hard drinking stamina to uphold. And all I can manage is to blurt out, “If you’ll both excuse me, I have to piss.”

My stomach is rumbling as the piss streams from the tip of my dick and into the bowl below me. I will probably end up on my knees, puking into it before all is said and done. I am not too proud, no. I figure that Strange has enough to lord over me as regards my escapades, and the heavy-set girl, well, she’s already made it clear she’s a novice when it comes to the ingestion of spirits; no, I simply didn’t want to fall from my bed directly onto my face, and I certainly didn’t want to crawl into the bathroom.

I tuck my penis back into the fold of my boxers and kneel to the throne. The tingle moves from my stomach and into my throat. The hairs on the back of my neck are raised, and I’m retching, even going so far as to shove my fingers into my mouth in an attempt to precipitate regurgitation. This works. By now I’m used to this sort of thing. I’m not accustomed to this activity in the same way that young women who counteract their binges with purges are, but I do have a liver that is dreaming of the day I become an ascetic teetotaler. Dream a little dream, dear liver.

Strange sips on a beer in the kitchen. No doubt it is the last one. I say nothing. I reach over him and into the cupboard for a glass. He says there’s no ice. It’s okay. I run tap water into the glass and chug it down. The heavy-set girl whose name is Vanessa comments on the fact of my dehydration with an annoying upward inflection indicative of a question, failing just as miserably in her second attempt at humor as she did in the first. I ask her if she’s always this poignant in her observational routines. This doesn’t register. I fill the glass again, gulp down more water and then set the glass noisily into the sink.

All three of us sit on the couch, smoking. Vanessa smells good. I think she may have used my shower. But it could be Strange. He’s finished his beer and is now peeling his jeans away from his crotch. Vanessa comments on this as typical male behavior. I’m starting to worry that sweet beautiful silence may never spend the day (or night) here again.

“So. Last night,” she says. Strange forces a chuckle.

“What about it?” I ask.

“I wanted to have sex, and you were too drunk.”

“It’s called whiskey dick.”

She asks me how old I am and if I see a proctologist regularly. I say that I’m twenty-five and that I don’t know. Turning the table, I ask her how often she sees her gynecologist. She says that she doesn’t because she has no healthcare.

“Fucking Republicans,” Strange interjects. “Those motherfuckers think everyone should bow down to their fucking OTB scam. ’Here insurance company, here’s my monthly fee, because I just KNOW that I’m going to get sick!’ I say FUCK MIDDLEMEN.”

“OTB means off-track betting. I think it has to do with horse racing,” I say.

“Huh?”

“OTB just doesn’t make sense, though I get the comparison. Sort of. I think.”

Vanessa is silent for a change as me and Strange banter back and forth. We are carrying on to the point where I know that I will have to pull out my laptop. And we’ll have to Google the term OTB. My assumption will be proven correct and he will concede victory to me. I will smoke a victory cig and then take Vanessa back into my room and do to her what I should’ve done last night.

However, the most that this will ever be is a fantastical succession of possible events lazing around in the back of my mind while I’m trying to convince Strange that it isn’t a big deal. Which is exactly what I’m trying to do. I’m telling him that I agree with the premise, it’s just that I’m not sure if the metaphor is apt. And does it matter? Not really. The point is that her asking me about my proctologic history is neither here nor there. It has nothing to do with the fact that I couldn’t get an erection. I’m not forty.

“Is it because I’m not skinny?”

“No,” I say. “I don’t care about that. I’m telling you, there is a ceiling to what you can do while being heavily intoxicated.”

“It sucks," Strange adds, "Lady Liquor can be a bitch like that. Sometimes she just wants to be the only lady in a guy's life."

I motion an "amen" in his direction. Always a good wingman. Vanessa stands up and gives us each "once-overs," finally demanding that I take her to my room and finish the job. After some laughter, I tell her to go and get ready. She smiles, curtseys to us both and runs into my room, slamming the door behind her.

"Got a condom?" I ask him.

He laughs.

"What happened last night?”

"You started giving girls piggy-back rides. Then guys. "

“That’s hilarious.”

"Oh, don’t doubt it, asshole. I have pictures. So you can Google it later, motherfucker."

Then he shows me the pictures. Photographic evidence of my much heralded stupidity. Yes, I’ve heard the stories. But this is the first time any real visuals have been provided. Pictures of me rolling around on the wooden floor, spilt liquor mixing with the dirt from peoples shoes, leaving colorful streaks; me licking it up. There’re pics of me hanging my dick out of my jeans while wearing the shittiest of shit-eating-grins on my face. Tousled hair. Slideshows of me lip-locking with every girl whose personal space I could charm/drunkenly invade my way into. A fat guy sitting across my back, likely the result of a piggy-back ride gone awry.

“Could’ve been worse,” Strange says, commiserating. “Could’ve been caught giving that guy’s asshole a moustache ride.”

“I wasn’t talking about how ‘throwed’ I was, was I?”

From his grin I deduce an affirmative answer. Fuck. The best one, he says, is the one he didn’t get. But everyone was talking about it.

“You pulled down your pants and took a shit in the bush.”

“That’s too bad. I would’ve gotten you a frame for that one.”

My social M.O. might not preclude benders and awkward sexual encounters at gatherings, but it doesn't normally include shitting in shrubberies. This most isolated of incidents could've been the result of anything. Perhaps in my clouded perception of things, I was expressing boredom. Boredom with routine. Partying, a routine in many circles, combines the same elements (with some variation) but coalesces different perceptive expectations. The good time vs. the bad time. Inebriation vs. sobriety. Sex vs. a landscape of copulative aridity due to a great many of variables: A gender ratio skewed in favor of the opposite sex/sexual orientation, one's own finicky aesthetic tastes, one's own displeasing aesthetic appearance, a lack or over-abundance of liquor (as per lack: causing one to be more inhibited, discerning; as per abundance: causing an inability to perform, sexually, socially), or more likely, one's unpleasant attitude; anything may or may not happen because the cut and dry is that routines can be planned, outcomes cannot. When I decided to step onto that property, it was to get drunk, talk a loud load of shit about journalism and literature and film, and maybe make out with/offend women (beautiful and not-so-beautiful alike), but I had no idea that things would end with a scatological act. To quote the hipster art gallery guy I once interviewed: “Totally fuckin’ drunken DADA, man.”

I didn’t want to break the man’s heart, but the qualifier cancelled out the word it qualified.

I enter my room and Vanessa is spot reading of the books that was laying on the floor. I ask if she’s enjoying what she’s perusing. She says yeah, because it’s straight up porno. I feel like maybe discussing the finer points of Henry Miller with her, but realize that that sort of endeavor would be comparable to me climbing the Himalayas. I.e., fucking impossible. “Yes,” I agree. Total porno. No substance whatever. But I enjoy it. I begin to climb onto the bed, but she commands that I bathe myself because she doesn’t want to be turned off by the pukey, shitty smell of my person.

“The hot water is out of commission,” I say, lying. Of course, she doesn’t believe me and checks for herself. Her suspicions are confirmed and she says that if I don’t want to fuck her all I have to say is I don’t. I argue that I don’t see the point in showering to do something dirty. It’s counterproductive, and more than that, as senseless as demanding that a girl shower pre-cunnilingus.

“But... you stink,” she insists.

So I climb into the shower, turn on the spout, and let the water rinse over me. The previous night’s should-be regrets circle the drain. I wash everything thoroughly. My nether-regions have never been so clean! Clean to the point that I start thinking to myself that there's a possibility that what I figured was a really bad tan was actually just an accumulation of dirt and grime due to my inconsistent showering habits.

Toweling myself off, I start to put on a fresh pair of boxers but reconsider. After all, I'm going to be naked anyway. Instead I cover the important parts in talcum powder and open the door. Vanessa is lying spread-eagled under the covers.

"You're clean," she says.

"And naked."

Underneath the covers we begin kissing. It doesn't last long because she realizes that I haven't brushed my teeth. She's just looking at me. Changing the subject of voiceless subtlety to the act at hand, I insert myself betwixt her thighs. She sighs and I begin to push dryly into her. We're both quietly discomfited. I try to get some juices flowing by grabbing her breasts and sensually squeezing and kissing them. But I can't keep from slobbering for some reason. As I expect, she tells me that it isn't working. Her breasts aren't that sensitive. At least not to loose saliva and poor hand technique.

"Well, I can't stay hard, anyway," I admit.

"Fuck it. I'll masturbate. Leave me be."

Strange is drinking a beer and eating some chicken. "You had money?"

"I didn't have money until I lifted this guy's wallet. Drunk. Loud. Talked way too much... what's that word you like to use?"

"Braggadocious.”

“Yeah, that’s it. Talked lots of shit. Found him passed out on a couch, ass pocket bulging. Snagged it easily. Only had about thirty bucks and a couple of credit cards. I wasn't so cruel, though. I left him his ID."

"I hope you bought beer for all of us."

He points to the fridge and mumbles something along the lines of "help yourself." I open the fridge and there are five beers left out of what was a six-pack of Modelo Especial sitting next to a carton of OJ and half a package of bacon. I grab a can and sit on the couch next to him. Steam escapes the lip of the can as I crack it open. As I begin my first sip, Strange asks me if I fucked her.

“No. She made me shower.”

“Oh. Yeah, you’re pretty fucking dirty.”

“I can be.”

“You shit in the bushes,” he says, sucking on a jalapeño. “It’s not illogical to assume that in the course of a drunken shit, you might forget to wipe your ass.”

Vanessa’s moans can be heard over the hum of the AC, which kicked on only minutes ago. Strange comments on the fact that I’m letting a strange girl pleasure herself on my bed.

“Well, I couldn’t get the job done.”

“Again? Shit. Let me do it.”

I’m not so sure that I want to confront seriously my manhood and its deficiencies, drunken or mental. Because I’m certain that I don’t suffer from ED. So certain in fact, that I am actually concerned. I’m too young, right? I’m not a drug addict-- booze and assorted pills, sometimes coke-- is that a factor? I’ll have to do some research on causes of ED, but I’m almost positive that I’m not a candidate. Vanessa emerges from my room with a satisfied countenance.

“Will one of you fine gentlemen walk me back to my car?”

“You have a car?” Strange asks. “I’ll walk you if you take me to the liquor store.”

“Sure,” she agrees.

Strange blows me a kiss as he and Vanessa head out the door. I finish the remaining gulps of my beer. The pack of cigs is next to my laptop on the coffee table. There are two left. I pull one out of the packet and light it. As I exhale, I follow the trails of nicotine fog as it floats away from me, gradually entering an oblivion that I couldn’t even begin to imagine to fathom. I continue smoking in the kitchen. Pacing somewhat, I take casual puffs of the cig between my fingers, talking to myself, wondering if the assholes at Artology are going to stick me with yet another bullshit interview. At this point, I’d rather do opinion pieces about the new DART Rail Station or the beloved Good-Latimer tunnel that no longer exists except on Flickr pages than interview hipper-than-thou gallery owners or up and coming artists who will say anything for cred even if it means subverting their own values which were clichéd or untenable at best to begin with.

I open the fridge and pull one of the beers out, tear into it and commence chugging. It’s all I know at this point. Because I always want to tell myself, to convince myself even, that I have so much integrity and that these artists, these gallery owners, they’re the problem. They aren’t taste making, they’re selling. They’re selling and they’re hoping we’ll buy. They aren’t out scouring the gutters or the schools for who has the most talent or promise; no, they want a gimmick and all that’s needed to drive gimmickry is ambition and a shit load of it.

But even that wasn’t true. I finish the beer and toss it into the sink. Open the fridge, pull out another and crack it open and chug. Now I have beer dripping from my chin hair and onto the floor. Some of it has gone down my neck, onto my chest, and down into my belly button. It wasn’t true because I know for a fact that given the first opportunity at some kind of exposure, I’d off and run with it. Simply put, one could say that I am a hypocrite. A hypocrite stewing in his own dearth of acclaim. A wannabe Thompson, Bangs, or Self, even more subtly, scholastically, a Robert Hughes at the height of his acerbic acuity, which he uses to deftly poke and prod at sanctified monuments of liberal and conservative thought alike. Shit, carving a niche of one's own becomes more and more of a depressing proposition the more one ponders it.

I finish the can and drop kick it into a corner of the living room. I go into the fridge and repeat the cycle. I’m beginning to wonder to myself if I should dispense with bad habits and sit down and write a novel or something. I’ve never really considered myself to be creative, even in my most calculated of deconstructive screeds against a great many artists and the like. There’s never been an afflatus to imagine or perceive in a manner befitting a writer or artist. But I’ve always been able to dissect, comment, and laud or pan or whatever. Quite effectively, in fact. Better than most other writers on the Artology staff. Putting aside the inherent silliness of astrology, as a Libra, I strive for balance. Even in my desperate toil for concision, I have been known to consult various thesauruses and lexicons when simple everyday vocabulary just doesn’t get the point home.

Then I start arguing with myself over the semantics of writing “professionally.” I’m getting mired in how to define objects and states, etc.. Such as: can one be a critic and still be creative with words? Should my Wordsmithery be viewed as an art or craft? Both? Art vs. Craft. Is one superior or do they exist on different planes of creation? And if so, do they ever converge? I’m drinking. I’m talking to myself. I’m half naked. Mostly naked, actually. I’m sporting wet hair and boxers. I finish the beer. I walk into the living room and pick up the pack of cigs, burrow my finger through the silver lining and extract the last cigarette. I put it to my mouth and light it. Maybe I should sleep, I say to myself.

Striding and puffing my way back into the kitchen, I open the fridge and peer in. One beer left. I decide to drink it because, fuck it, Strange is out getting liquor. Besides, my fridge, my fucking rules. I pull it out, crack the tab, and have my way with it. I drop the diminished cig into the can and set it in the sink with the other can I’d previously used and abused.

I throw myself onto the couch and close my eyes. After a time, I fall into a dream. A dream where I’m walking the streets of Dallas, hand in hand, with a flaccid, uncut, immaculately veined cock, seemingly representative of a map of the highways and byways of the Plastic City herself. And in front of me and this sad excuse for a member, an impossible to reach vagina, spread before us. The more we walk, the farther away the massive pudenda gets. I’m starting to sweat and so does the cock, accompanying this likewise perspiration an odorous emission of god knows what.

We walk. And we walk. Interminably, it seems. Briefly I awaken as a noise stirs me, but then I fall right back into the dream. Except now the vagina is draped in pubic hair in much the same way the old houses on Swiss Ave. are covered in twisting, verdant vinery. The penis now appears to me more rigid. Erect. Proud. Lacking that awful fancy dairy scent. This is better. This is more acceptable. We are walking east bound on Live Oak. We pass Strange and a fat girl, fucking in broad daylight in a luxury VW.

I shake myself from the reverie and sit up. My dick is poking out through the hole in my boxers. I stuff it back in, sit up, and realize that I’m bit light headed. I run into the bathroom and puke some more.

© Patrick Patterson-Carroll  (2009)