========================================
*** THE INNER SWINE ***  
Volume 3, Issue 1, May 1997  
www.innerswine.com 
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"When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff" - Cicero

CONCEPT BY Jeff Somers, Robert Gala, Ken West, Jeof Vita 
COVER ART BY Jeof "Pookie" Vita 
EDITOR: Jeffrey Somers 
INSPIRATION: My own bad self 
ADVICE & FREE DRINKS: Im on my own, kids. 
PROOFREADER EXTRAORDINAIRE: Karen Accavallo
OVERALL OFFICIAL COOL CHICK: Lauren Strutzel

OFFICIAL SNEAKERS: The Original Chuck Taylors, which are getting mighty hard
to find these days, and which are the greatest sneakers ever because they
offer no support to your ankles, have no leather, and arent worn by even one
money-sucking sports star.

FRIENDS OF THE SWINE: R.A. Haberman, who has fearlessly spawned despite the
risks of exposing a child to my deviant Uncleship (love ya despite your
encroaching maturity, R.A.); Lauren "LL Cool J" Strutzel, whose personal
life is a never-ending source of material for me, and who I love very much
(even if she is deadly when using the oven); Misty S. Quinn who actually
reads this thing from cover to cover (much to my ongoing amazement); Karen
"No Soul" Accavallo, even though she wimped out on me for the hundredth
time, for once again allowing me to shamelessly lampoon her in this
magazine; Elizabeth Augoustiniatos, for reminding me again and again what it
means to really miss a real friend (love ya, babe); Rob "Mojo" Gala who has
remained a friend even after seeing my madness firsthand and not liking it;
Joanie Chen who puts out a great Zine herself and, most importantly, who
likes my writing; Aaron Yarlas, bless his heart, for buying me a drink and a
half by subscribing; My Mom for admitting she liked the last issue; Wes Hegg
for still being willing to shill our mags up in Canada; Alison Culshaw for
not being a weak-sister and for bearing the cross of my acquaintance with
dignity; The Gus Pustule Social Club for putting their pride aside and
writing some really weird shit for me; Paul T. Olson for saying something
nice about us in a public forum.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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EDITORIAL: "Pig in Shit #7: A Dark and Hungry God Arises: Living in the
Debtors Prison of Life" 
FICTION: "Naked Came a Guy Named Lee" 
COMMENTARY: "Suffer the Little Children: Are We All Really That Stupid?" 
COMMENTARY: "American Wedding Confidential: My Weekend with Carla" 
SPASTIC OPINIONATING: "Lemmings Never Fear" 
FICTION: "Isnt it Grand Boys?"

----------------------------------------  
The Inner Swine Volume 3 Issue 1.
Magazine published May, September, and January by Oinking Sow, Inc. (There
is no company, really)  Individual subscription rates: $9.00 (cheap!) per
year in U.S.; $15.00  (cheap!) per year foreign including Canada. Single
Copy $3.00 (cheap!) plus $1.50 (cheap!) for postage and handling if ordered
by mail,   but stop teasing me, youre never going to order a subscription. 
Checks payable to Jeff Somers, Editor. Address submissions and
correspondence to Jeff Somers, The Inner Swine, 293 Griffith Street #9,
Jersey City, NJ 07307.  But if you send me something, make it good or I will
be angered.  All submissions or requests for Guidelines (there are no
guidelines, though) must be accompanied by S.A.S.E. The first 500 people to
actually subscribe will get a free video entitled "Misty Sue Quinn, Why and
How?" a study of one of the great curiosities of our times, the exact
evolution of the modern Misty Sue Quinn. Also included as a FREE bonus is
the companion video "When Misty Attacks" showing horribly burtal footage of
Misty in the wild stalking her prey. This video is certainly NOT for young
or immature viewers.

======================================== 
WHAT THE FUCK'S BEEN GOIN' ON?
========================================

I was sitting in a Diner the other day, drinking bitter coffee and smoking
cigarettes, contemplating my health or lack thereof. I often force my
friends to listen to my theory of life: that there is no afterlife and so
youve got to accomplish your goals immediately because once you die (and it
could happen at any moment, dont kid yourself) its over, all youve got to be
remembered by  is what youve done. Thats old news, but what people sometimes
like to ask me is: if thats the way I view life, then why do I spend so much
of my time being so unhealthy? After all, you might die at any moment, sure,
but what if youre not destined to be run over by a bus, what if you might
live to be 105 if only youd stop treating yourself like shit?

Aside from the obvious rejoinder that living to be 105 may not be quite the
paradise it sounds like ("time to clean you up, Mr. Somers!"), I have no
real answer to that question. For a man obsessed with his own mortality I
take precious little care of it, and I also like to make my intimates cringe
by making jokes about how Im going to die young, blah blah blah. Maybe I
imagine on some level that by denying my own mortality Ill defy it, the idea
being that positive thought can conquer any weakness of the body. I doubt
that, though. I think a more accurate theory would be: I am a lazy shit and
I merely hope that Ill live forever without having to put any work towards
the goal.

Since issue 2(3), I have been contemplating a lot of the vagaries of life.
Im two years older than I was when the first issue of El Pig de Interior
bowed, almost four years older than I was when the idea first seemed like a
good one, and yet things are very much the same: I waste a great deal of my
time on activities and people who are not worth it. One of these activities,
it has become clear to me, is supporting the vast and burdonsome debt I have
accumulated. Clearly, paying someone elses bills with the immense interest
rates I have hung around my neck is not the most productive way to spend
your life. SO, I sat in that diner and contemplated my health and tried to
figure out how much money I might owe the state when I finally died
(probably of something idiotic, like getting hit by a bus), and the figure I
came up with is truly breathtaking: three trillion dollars.
($3,000,000,000,000.00)

Instead of being dismayed by this calculation (reached through a complex
series of mathematic and probability equations) I was suddenly invigorated.
Thats a lot of debt, folks. I figure that would have to be some sort of
record. It suddenly occurred to me that instead of being a burden, my debt
could be a goal! I could aspire to owe more money than any single human
being ever, in the history of our civilization in general and credit cards
in specific. I would go down in history. And since I live in the Debt Era, a
whole generation of kids raised to want what they cant afford and to swear
by the APR, I figured that going down in history as the most indebted man in
history would likely make me some sort of cult hero, an icon, a voice of my
generation. Forget Kurt Cobain with his whiny drug-fueled complaints, forget
Doug Coupland and his bad prose about Gen X. I would be the fiery voice of
revolving credit, and I would have the masses at my feet. Once they were at
my feet, would it be so hard to convince each of them to choke up twenty
bucks? Thats how much all those Nirvana CDs cost, after all.

Of course, my new vision wont come easy, but I am busily borrowing every
thin dime I can get out of my friends and family, bank and business
associates, not to mention total strangers. Join me now, Pigs, or be first
against the wall come the revolution.

======================================== 
VOICES IN MY HEAD
========================================

Aaron Yarlas sent me a check for $9.00 and a nice note in which he expressed
a desire to bear my children (not really, but we gotta spice this department
up somehow)....I got Goth Smoth 2 in the mail and never read it, which
should not be taken as a sign of anything more sinister than illiteracy....I
also received a copy of Athena and it was pretty badly put together, let me
tell you; why people think anyone wants to read their scrawled, handwritten
poems is beyond me (any idea why I think you want to read my nicely typeset
droolings? Me either)....Jim Dewitt wrote me and let me know that Fact Sheet
Five listed us in one of its issues without notifying us (Nazi bastards!) If
anyone has any info on which issue we appeared in, Id be grateful....Still
no Hijinx 3....I once ate a pound and a half of Oreos, and I was sick for
days, let me tell you....Tom Schifano moved back onto the east coast causing
yet another sharp decline in west-east migration in this country....John
Updike continues to steal book ideas from my subconscious and Im getting
sick of it, goddammit....Wes Hegg is still alive, and thank god....My W2
form for writing that Slider comic book came in the mail and I have to pay
taxes on it, which sucks, in case you werent paying attention....My cousin
John used to be able to do a note-perfect Donald Duck impersonation....I am
polling people for gift ideas for when Rose Ann pops her pup, anyone with a
suggestion should please contact me with it....Riverside Art Scene sent me a
copy of their Zine and a bunch of propaganda: the clip-art style gave me a
headeache but they have attitude in spades, so you ought to request a copy:
RSAS, c/o Ski Mask, PO Box 638, Kenmore, NY 14217...Norman Masters sent me a
rambling letter which discussed his love of J.D. Salinger (who is the one
who does not appear on "Party of Five", you morons) and he is either a
psycho or a nice guy, which is the usual choice you get with new people,
right?...Paul T. Olson, who puts out Goth Shmoth et al, wrote of the Swine:
"Theres just so damn much here, its impossible to adeuqately describe",
which is the nicest thing said about my zine in a long time...And to the
"intelligent" jackass who sent me the religious tract which quotes "Stairway
to Heaven": I wont bother with a response unless you include a return
address. Anonymous opinions are the tool of the weak-minded and stupid. Take
credit for your opinions or they will be ignored as the timid ravings they
are. Thanks!

======================================== 
*** EDITORIAL ***
Pig in Shit #7  A Dark and Hungry God Arises:  
Living in the Debtors Prison of Life 
by Jeff Somers
========================================

"Whaddya mean I don't pay my bills? Why d'ya think I'm broke?" - Dave
Mustaine, Peace Sells, but Who's Buying?

DEBT - the dark and hungry god hangs around my neck, an albatross whose
every stirring and twitch I have come to know intimately. I am beginning to
experience the Helsinki Syndrome, wherein hostages come to love their
captors, with my debt: I love my debt. I fear paying it off; what would I do
without it, without statements and coupons and mean-spirited phone calls?
I'd have no mail (my friends refusing to commit evidence of our relationship
to paper), I'd become arrogant and dislikable in wealth, and I would no
longer be able to have those long, rambling philosophical conversations with
"Steve" at mastercard. I know it's his job, but I like to think he'd call me
anyway.

Debt in its many forms runs our lives, if you think about it. Not only
financial, but social and emotional debts guide us through just about every
decision-making process. Take, for example, the fact that you are reading
this magazine. Aside from obviously terminal cases of either a) boredom or
b) madness, there's a lot of debt involved in your decision to read this
rag, you must admit:

1) Financial. There is a 99.9% chance you received this magazine for free
and refused to ausuage my poverty via a subscription because you can't
afford to pay for something you get for free (this is what I choose to
believe, my other choice being: you are a heartless bastard). In short,
strangely enough you are reading this because your other choice is to pay
me.

2) Emotional. If you're not feeling guilt as a reason to read this magazine,
maybe you're a friend or close acquaintance of mine, and find yourself
reading this in a vain effort to make up for not spending more time with me,
a way of feigning interest in my bitter, twisted existence without actually
having to experience it.

3) Social. Or, a debt of politeness. Just like when crazed newlyweds thrust
well-thumbed wedding snapshots under your nose at parties and you spend a
good couple of hours staring glassy-eyed at them because this is what you
owe society. When I shove one of these babies under your nose you owe me at
least a cursory read, if nothing else.

Everything, you see, comes down to how much you owe, who you owe it to, and
what kind of payment plan you have set up. Debt is the social glue of a
capitalist society. Those of you naive enough to still believe in free will
and other fairy tales will no doubt not believe me, and as I've said before
I don't propose that all of this is the product of some big conspiracy
(hence no documentation) - but the fact remains: debt makes the world go
'round. Consider: if I had no debts, I might quit my job, wander the land,
examine myself, and take up arms in bloody revolution. All right.....I might
quit my job. Everytime someone calls me and leaves a message, I owe them a
phone call, for I am compelled by society's logic to return the act in full.
My mother every year pays attention to who sends her christmas cards so she
knows who she owes cards to next year. Almost everything we do involves some
concept of debt, without the idea of owing, the fabric of society might tear
and fall apart.

Ah, I can feel the madness coming upon me as I warm up to the debate...

Of course, when most of you slack-jaws think of debt it's hard to get past
the obvious financial aspects of debt (but believe me I know full well how
large debt looms in our lives when it has a dollar sign attached; pretty
much my debt is the only reason I get up in the morning, these days. That
and beer.) Since we live in a society where a proper education and
reasonable career goals are priced way out of most everyone's financial
reach, we are more or less raised to embrace debt. Credit Cards, student
loans, car financing  -it all adds up to one conclusion: a debt-run society.
Even if you stay out of the usual pitfalls, there are still debts, just the
everyday bills that you have to pay in order to live. You nuke that burrito,
you owe someone money. You call your worthless friends who never return your
calls or invite you out with them, you owe someone money. The minute you're
born, the hospital is printing the bill. It's pretty obvious how pecuniary
deficits guide our lives: you're born and spend the first 20 years or so of
your life accumulating debts of various pedigrees and sizes, leaving you the
rest of your life to earn enough money to pay them off. Thus are we all,
sadly, locked into this middle-class hell. And while I maintain that there
are those other debts which guide our decisions as well, financial debt is,
of course, the most palpable and most easily explained of them all.

Of course, if you come over to the dark side to caper with me in cynically
joyous abandon and believe that debt is the driving force of life as we know
it, you should also be prepared to acknowledge the destructive side of debt.
Some of you, I'm sure, have experienced the results of too much debt, which,
like all social engines and stimulants, mimic the results of too many drugs:
panting, panic, sleeplessness, desperation, the loss of all material
possesions, and suicide. The equation is simple because it has to be in
order for it to be understood on a society-wide level: if you owe and do not
pay, you lose everything.

I am horribly familiar with all this, because my own immense debt restricts
me from doing almost anything I would want to. Two years ago, as you loyal
readers of this rag know, I quit my job, dumped all my crap at Mom's house,
and drove cross country. I couldn't do that now. If I had no money, by the
time I got home from my trip, I not only wouldn't be able to afford to fix
my car, I also would have defaulted on any number of debts and my poor
Mother would be in jail.

But there are subtler dark effects of debt. Take, for example, the
phenomenea of friendship erosion:

Let's say a friend of mine (let's call him Ken, for fun) lends me $25 in
1995 so that I can go to a Beastie Boys concert, despite knowing full well
that I have no money and no prospects, that I spend what money I come across
on increasing my collection of pornographic Disney figurines. For a few
weeks the debt is ignored politely, and I even make mention of it a few
times to show my insincere resolve to pay it back as soon as I can. In
truth, I rely on Ken's notably sluggish memory and my own fading boyish
charm to get me through.

As time goes on, the debt begins to loom large between Ken and I, especially
as I continue to buy rounds of drinks and pay for expensive pay-per-view
events on cable. Generous magnamity sours into vengeful anger as Ken slowly
realizes I might have enough money to pay him back, but am simply choosing
not to (shocking!). This quickly sours the entire friendship, reducing our
conversations to shouted profanities and even further into shoving matches.

Only six months after the concert, Ken and I have been reduced to primitive
enemies, hurling rocks at each other from fortified bunkers and
prank-calling all night. All because of debt. The moral? Neither a lender or
a borrower be. Unless You think you can get away with it.

Or, take this true-life example: I once sold something to a friend (let's
call her Barbara, although her real name is Karen Accavallo) for $12.00, a
trifling amount for a grand Miser like her. Karen then refuses to pay me the
$12.00 she freely admits she owes me. Why? Because Karen is insane, and
enjoys playing games such as the following:

1. The Oops, I only have hundred-dollar bills! ruse, wherein the offender
claims they cannot pay their debt because their wealth is not available in
such small amounts as your puny claim on them.

2. The I must travel to a far-away ATM and risk exhaustion and possible
injury scheme, wherein the offender claims that they would like to pay you
back, but not at risk of their own lives, since the only ATM they can use in
New York City resides on 258th street.

3. The I had no idea you were a money-obsessed freak ploy, wherein the
offender tries to make you feel small for demanding payment of a debt they
owe you.

This would have resulted in the destruction of a friendship, if I consider
Karen to be my friend, which I clearly do not.

Of course, there are those other forms of debt that I keep mumbling about,
and they can be just as energizing or destructive as money. Take the concept
of lunch-debt, for example:

Insane co-worker #23 invites me to lunch on a wednesday, for no other reason
than the compelling perfume of my personality. I scramble mentally and come
up with an excuse: I am having my leg lengthened over lunch in a complex
outpatient procedure at Mt. Sinai and cannot eat food prior to going under
the knife. Ok, Insane Co-worker #23 replies cheerfully (the voices in their
head singing jolly songs all the while), some other time.

ME:Sure. IC23:How about tomorrow? ME:Uh.....

See? Simply by inventing the occasion of our lunch, Insane Co-worker #23 has
established that I owe them an hour of my time, approximately six bucks of
my personal fortune, and just about all of my remaining sanity. And the
funny thing is, I can't dispute it. Suddenly, I owe them lunch, and if I
don't eventually break bread with them, I'm a welsher. This is how society
perpetuates itself. The only way to get out of it would be to be brutally
honest and say something along the lines of "I do not now nor have I ever
desired your company. Go away, insane person." This would instantly brand me
an asshole, however, and put me in the wrong with all future dealings with
humanity, and so is not really an option.

The question, then, is: can we ever be completely debt-free? Probably not,
at least I don't think we can and still remain in this society. Maybe if you
move to the mountains, grow your own food, and shoot strangers on sight, but
if you want anything to do with civilization, I'm afraid you probably
already owe someone something. The trick is, I think, to make debt work for
you instead of against.Debt probably becomes a more palatable subject when
you're Donald Trump, or, say, First Union National Bank, than when you're
the one paying the bills. Of course, I wouldn't know. I once calculated that
if everyone who'd ever read an issue of The Inner Swine paid me five
dollars, I'd still be broke.

I once read that former princess Fergie from Britain was 5 million dollars
in debt. This boggles my mind. Think of it this way: if she won five million
bucks in the lottery, she'd still be broke.

So: debt rules our lives. It powers and ruins our society simultaneously, it
provides a reason for us to strive beyond our mere survival, it enables us
to live beyond our immediate means, and it is so interwoven in the fabric of
our society that to remove it would likely result in collapse and ruin, not
to mention the unchecked proliferation of communists.

========================================
*** FICTION ***
Naked Came a Guy Named Lee
by Gus Pustule*
========================================

I was driving my slate-grey porsche I affectionately called Laverne (after
my sainted mother) around Manhattan at three in the morning, chain-smoking
cocaine-laced cigarettes and recording my heart-rate in my little notebook
every time I stopped at a light. On the radio I was playing news from the AM
stations at top volume. I kept my headlights off unless someone was
approaching me from the opposite side of the avenue, and then I would speed
up and flick on my high beams at the last second in an attempt to make them
lose control of their cars. My timing was off, however, because my heart was
pounding like a jackhammer and my eyeballs were bulging from the pressure
within, and no one swerved into the sidewalk, unfortunately.

I loved Manhattan; I always had, and ever since my transformation after
winning sixty five million dollars in one lump payment from the Nebraska
Lottery I loved it more. Let me tell you how I won the lottery in Nebraska:
Id been driving cross-country, nursing my ancient car along the highways of
this country in the deluded belief that there were better things waiting for
me on the other coast. Now I know the truth: all the good things are right
here, it was just that I couldnt afford them before. I stopped in a gas
station in Nebraska somewhere and bought a lottery ticket for no reason in
particular, and Id been in L.A. for three weeks before I discovered Id won
the whole damn thing. Id been just about to sell my body for the first time
in a desperate ploy for cash when I heard the news about the "mystery
winner". Suddenly exultant and a few mere days away from eye-popping wealth,
I sold myself anyway.

I downshifted to a stop at a red light and lit another cigarette, pressing
my finger against my neck to time my heartbeat. It was soaring. I knew I
must be setting some sort of record.

I moved back to New York, bought an apartment on Central Park West and
havent slept in two years. I spend my nights working out with weights or
driving around recklessly, fueled by coke, nicotine, and the fifth of Earl
Times I always kept in the glove compartment for emergencies. My muscles are
huge and bulging, my skin is thick and leathery and creaks like rawhide
whenever I flex. My head is shaved and shined to a metallic sheen,
completely without flaw: no scars, bumps, or skin maladies. In my spare time
I do some head modeling for some of the bigger advertising agencies in New
York. I dont need the money, but it gets me invited to parties. I spend my
days translating central American poetry into Russian, the Russian versions
into Japanese, and then the Japanese versions back into Spanish in order to
observe the amusing nonsequiters that are produced. No one else understands
that, but it gives me a deep, warm joy.

I glanced up to see the light turn green; someone driving a yellow
Volkswagon Beetle was approaching me from across the intersection. I tensed
myself, my skin creaking like ship-rope in a storm, and as they were about
halfway through the intersection  I flashed my high beams, which had been
made specially for me on custom order by the good people at Porsche. They
used the same bulbs in my car that they used to light major stadiums and
ballparks for night games. I timed it right, and the Beetle swerved
suddenly, spun, and slammed into the building on the corner. Silence filled
the night, and all that was left to hear was my panting, the quiet hum of
the Porsche, and the gentle clicking of the Beetles ruined engine. Smoke
billowed up from the collision. I carefully turned my car in a big loop,
pulling up alongside the Beetle. The driver was still alive, I could see
eyes watching me. I got out and walked around my car, and the eyes widened
in shock, which is the usual reaction my body gets when Im driving around
naked at night. Especially when a successful blinding has left me excited.
Bloated with collagen implants, my penis is fourteen inches long.  

Fourteen inches, and thats when its soft. Thats the problem though. Its
always soft. I cant get it any harder than wet ice cream on a June
afternoon. Hard line cocaine and smack cocktails in the morning make me
about as useful as a match in a hurricane. But I get by.

I take a final drag and relish the white fire in my lungs. Ive started to
sweat one of those good, sexy sweats that make my body glisten in the amber
glow of the stoplight. The guy in the Beetle isnt having such a good night.
His head is in a weird position. I figure hes broken his neck in at least
two places.

I start walking towards him. He wants to scream but nothing comes out. All
he can do is widen his eyes. Hes got....     

........pretty eyes.

"You cant take your pretty eyes from me Tula!" Im crying like a baby on her
shoulder. I can barely her words over my own sobbing.

"Lee, we cant be together if things dont change. I cant just walk away from
him! You know it doesnt work that way. What good would it do us if we both
died?" Tulas voice was soft and strong. Kinda like her. At this point she
coulda told me that the moon was melting and I would have looked.

"Tula...you gotta give me some time. Things are gonna change. I can feel it!
I promise you baby, things will get better." Ive promised her that I would
rise from the dead for her. The sick thing is, I would.

"Then make things better, Lee honey! Either that or you gotta hit it big!
And by the looks of things, that aint happening anytime soon."     

If you could only see me now, eh, Tula? But soon enough...Ill find ya.
Meanwhile, the driver is wishing for this night to be over. Im leaving wet
footprints behind me as I let the bladder go. The smell of fresh urine,
smoke, oil and gas is kinda pleasant. I shoot a quick glance at the lone
Happy Burger lot in the distance. I hope there aint some nosy hash slinger
out and about.

Its cold out but I dont care much. The one thing about have sixty-five
million in the bank is that it buys you the luxury not to care. Hell, this
lottery money bought me the key to Gods washroom. All else are just
playthings. I dont care about nothing, Except for...     

"Tula! Ill do whatever it takes baby!" I meant it, too. She wanted him gone.
Id make him gone.

"Youve got what you need Lee honey. Do it, and we can be together forever.
Then you can always have the taste of me in your mouth, huh? Isnt that what
you want?" She cooed and nuzzled right up to me. So I fucked her. And she
fucked me. We always did it every which way but sane. Trapeze of Love, Sixty
Nine Deadly Sins, Twelve Ways of Paradise, cock rings, ball gags, cat-o-nine
tails, cuffs, plugs, masks, gloves, acid, Saran Wrap, tubes, lubes, you name
it we fucked with it. Sometimes I pitched, sometimes I caught. Some guys
might be a little intimidated by what Tula was. Not me. It didnt matter to
me. She had it all where it counted. And man did she make it count. That was
before I had the chance to bulk up the body and freeze-dry my brain so she
tossed me around like a rag doll when she wanted to. But she bent when she
had to as well. Hell, it always felt natural to me.     

My nipples could cut glass the way they were poking out right then. My
muscles were twitching with anticipation and I was getting all lightheaded
in my bodys futile attempt to engorge my cock with blood. Either that or the
speedball cigarette was hitting me. Either way, I saw three Beetles. I
headed for the one in the middle and leaned up against the engine. New
Smell. Melting flesh. There was a nasty itch developing on my ass and I
figured I was gonna need some serious burn lotion in the morning. The
ruptured gas line was spurting petrol into the air in front of me. I reached
out and caught a handful, bringing it up to my lips to have my own brand of
nightcap. Ill find ya, baby. Before she finds me. Might sound funny but in
this situation, one song comes to mind as I step a little closer to my new
friend. So, I sing it out loud:     

"Why do birds....suddenly ap-pear....everytime....you are neeaaarrr....just
like me.....they long to beeee.....close to youuouououu...."     

The driver is now sitting in his own shit.

It's funny, I guess, how seemingly unimportant decisions can change your
life forever. I say as much to my new friend. Even though time is ticking
and you really can't stay at the scene of an accident for too long before
the authorities arrive and begin asking questions, I'm in a contemplative
mood and want to talk. It's so rare you have a captive audience, and my
senses, normally acute and hyped up to red-line levels by my drug intake,
steroid abuse (I have a little trick where I put a quarter behind one of my
ears and flick it backwards using only those usually-ignored muscles that
I'd developed obscenely so that my ears stuck out like Dumbo when relaxed ,
but could be laid flat against my neck if I wished to. I have attained
speeds of fifty miles per hour with this little trick. It's great at
parties, the chicks really dig it) and what my shrink used to call
"psychosis", are swamped with smells, sights, and sounds, making it
difficult to think. Talking has always helped me to think. Or sex, but I
sadly don't have time for that anymore.

"Fate is unpredictable, guy." I say lightly above the hissing of the
Beetle's radiator hose. I pad back to my trunk and pop it open. "Me and
Tula, we were young and poor and all we had was that we were each
multi-orgasmic and double-jointed. Back then, I thought that was love." I
pulled out the small cooler filled with ice and the electric carving knife
I'd stolen from Sears, just for fun.

I walk back and set these items on the hood of the Beetle. My feet crunch
broken glass, but thick one-inch callouses protect me. I get those kinds of
quality callous by rubbing sandpaper on my feet, two hours every day.
Sometimes I hire someone to do it for me.

"It wasn't love. That bitch taught me what real love is, right before she
left me for dead. Love almost killed me, buddy. But then came the Nebraska
State lottery and salvation!"

I revved the knife to test the batteries and leaned into the Beetle's
smashed interior. The reek was intense and I breathed it in, straining my
nervous system further. I had begun to shake with all the input my mind was
receiving. He followed me with his eyes, which were wide and yellowed,
welling tears.

"Can you move, man?" I asked gently.

He didn't do anything.

"All right then. This will hurt like hell, unless you're numb."

He started to scream when the knife hit his wrist, and I started to sing
again, as blood spit up everywhere and he just twitched. The coppery smell
of the blood almost pushed me over the edge, and when it was done I slumped
down onto the street and sat there, gasping, while the night lit up in
fantasy colors, eveything so quiet, and there she was, beautiful as she had
been seven years ago when she given me that little push and set my feet
firmly on this path. Hairy and unkempt, pale and emaciated, with cruel
yellowed eyes and teeth, she grinned down at me and I could smell her, like
it used to be, the concentrated scent of her underneath the blankets, sweat
and lubricant, latex and garlic.

And then it was over, and I was just shivering on the city street with a
dismembered hand in my lap and a battery-powered carving knife in one hand,
my stomach growling with hunger and my pectoral muscles twitching
uncontrollably as if small rodents were trapped under my skin. The quiet had
snuck up on me, and so had the dawn, I had no idea how long I'd been
tripping on this dude's blood. In a few hours traffic would return to this
street, and so I had to get going.

I gently placed the hand in the cooler, snapped it shut, and returned both
cooler and knife to my trunk. I got back in the car, lit a new cigarette,
and put her in gear, tires squealing, suspension groaning. I switched the
radio to FM and sang along with the first song that came on.

"Let the sun shine in....meet it with a grin....open up your heart and let
the sun shine in...."

I got on the FDR to head home before the sun, glanced in my rear-view
mirror, and almost lost control of the car in shock. Bearing down me hard
was a Happy Burger van, driven by none other than the driver of the Beetle!
My shock made my foot go lax, and before I knew it, he was forcing me onto
the shoulder of the highway.  Instinctively, I reached into the glove
compartment for the fifth of Early Times; this was definitely an emergency.
With one finger on my jugular, I sucked the bitter liquid down before the
driver reached my door, which was safely bolted with hermetically-sealed
custom locks like those on bank vaults, also made to order for me by the
good people at Porsche. The familiar burn of the booze jolted me back into
reality; the sky lost its technicolor appeal and with a leap and a jerk my
heart pushed blood back into my brain. I sat inside my impregnable fortress
of a car (aside from the locks, everything was bullet-proof and
flame-retardant, and the upholstery released oxygen into the interior so I
would never suffocate) and wondered how much of the evening had been
fantasy.

My head exploding, Early-fueled veins bulging at all pulse-points, I felt
ready to pulverize the driver. Beating on Laverne, my rubber-soled classy
chassis, he yelled: "Hey man! I gotta talk to you! I cracked up becuzza you!
Get outta this car now!"

It was Evil Knievel, and my red, beady eyes bulged at the sight of him.
Straight off a SuperStunts of the Seventies special, he stood before me in
one of his trademark red-white-and-blue beaded leisuresuits, with
bellbottoms big enough to sneak a Mexican family of 12 over the border.
Awed, I had to have a leisuresuit exactly like his.

"Get outta this car now, man! I gotta thank you!"

Slowly, I started entering the password sequence to disengage the lock
system. Ten minutes later I stood before him on the FDR.

"Hey, Evil! Wow, man, you look great! Uh... werent you hurt in the crash?"

"Hurt? Me? No way, man, Ive been rebuilt more times than I can count!  There
aint no way to hurt me now. Is that why you freaked out and ran off after
you looked in my car?"

"Uh, yeah,... of course thats why." My brain was spinning and screeching
like a jet engine.

"You walked over, mumbling something about love and multiple orgasms, saw my
twisted neck (its been like this since the spill I took in that leap over
the 200 flatbed trucks loaded with burning manure), shreiked, and took off
running into the Happy Burger. The fry cook there said you ran in screaming
that a severed hand was chasing you, and then you covered yourself in French
dressing from the salad bar. When you settled down, you skipped outside, and
took off in your car."

"Of course, I remember," I lied. "So why do you want to thank me?"

"Man, I cant thank you enough!  You just saved my career! That stunt you
pulled back there was brilliant! Ive gotta hire you as my new
stunt-coordinator. How does one hundred grand a year sound?"

"Evil, man, I dont understand. You want to hire me? What did I do for you?"

"That trick you pulled with the highbeams took me completely by surprise,
man! If theres any world-expert on crashing its me, right? But thats because
I plan every aspect of the gig. By introducing a trick like you pulled on
me, itll highlight my skills even better! Can you imagine the statistical
odds of me spanning the Grand Canyon blinded?"

I could see his point, and my overtaxed brain immediately started planning
death-defying stunts for him worldwide. Tula and I would spend hours
planning similar sexual adventures for when we were rich.  

"Tula, baby, be patient. Theres noone for you like me, sugar." I was
pleading with every fiber of my flaccid being. "We gotta lot to live for!
Were gonna be the first to fuck while riding a yak all the way through
Chinese-controlled Tibet, remember?"

"Yeah, Lee, I know, but when, baby, when? Im ready to go now!" 

"Wow, Evil, are you serious? I would love to work for you! Tell me, where
can I buy one of those groovy suits?"

You like this suit?  Its made of cockroach shells, you know, so its
resistant to everything life can throw at you! [He guffaws loudly.] Ill buy
you as many as you like; I have them custom-made, of course!"

"Geez, cockroach shells?  Ha, ha, ha. Yeah, I guess theyd have to be
custom-made. But where?"

"In Mexico. I have a deal with a one-family village there; this seamwork is
their specialty, and it helps them keep their roach population down too, of
course. I dont pay them, I just walk back into Texas with a couple of the
relatives in my pants, if you know what I mean..."

"Wow, man, great deal!" I was genuinely impressed with his generosity to the
impoverished. After chatting politely for a few more minutes, I saw that the
sun was rearing her fiery head to the East, my cue to leave. Evil and I made
plans to meet after he returned from his spa-treatments: he had to have his
Rogaine injections to keep up his forest of chest-hair.  

Comfortably back in Laverne, I was seized with a hunger only one thing could
sate. Without checking for traffic, I spun into the left lane, did a quick
U-turn and headed down to Chelsea. Within minutes I was pulling in front of
the Mecca of all breakfast foods: Krispy Kreme.  The "Fresh and Hot" sign
was on, indicating that my beloved honey-glazed donuts were rolling hot off
the belt. Leaping out of the car, I was instantly overtaken by the sweet
aroma of butter and sugar. It was all I could do to keep myself upright to
walk in and order. Back in the car, I flicked on the radio and bit into my
first confection. The FM station was playing a favorite tune: "Creme, get on
top... creme, you will cop... creme, dont you stop... creme, shaboogie
bop...". Inspired, I stacked the bakers dozen on my penis. With my one hand
suddenly free, I updated my notebook of heart-rates. Their heat and sugary
glaze reminded me of...  

"Tula, my sweet baby, you go girl!! Unnnnhhhhhhhh.... God baby, youre gonna
drown me."

"Lee, honey, please hurry up, were both gonna drown in a minute!"

There was a hint of fear in her voice, and she was right, of course. Raging
below us was Niagra Falls, and try as I might, I couldnt hold her over my
head for as long as I would have liked.   

Oh Tula, where are you now? I could hold you forever now, baby. Laverne
eased her way up Eighth Avenue, and in minutes I was in the elevator up to
my penthouse overlooking Central Park. The renovations had just been
completed, and I was very proud. Despite his vehement protests, the designer
had recreated Graceland for me, complete with Jungle Room, White Vinyl
Living Room, Gold Lame Bedroom, and of course, the completely mirrored
exercise room. Turning the key in the lock, I heard music blaring inside:
"...the more you suffer, the more it shows you really care, right?
Yeah....."

Throwing open the door I shouted, "Tula, is that you? Are you here, baby?" 

I turned the corner to find......Jake. Jake!

"Jake! Oh, god, how did you find me? I can't believe this! What a fucking
week..."

"How sweet," he said softly, "you don't speak to your dear old brother in 5
years and this is the reception I get, no hug?"

"How did you find me?" I thought, I can't deal with this now  -and why is
that song playing? "Jake, how did you get in here?"

"Lee, Lee, Lee  -you underestimated your older brother  -you were always the
stupid one, how long did you think you could keep all that money a secret
from us? I'm sure you were just getting settled in, having all that money
must make a person busy."

"Yeah, I've been busy. Thanks for stopping by, Jake, good seeing you again 
-now get the hell out!" That music, I thought, is it getting louder, my head
is pounding. "Jake, is someone with you?" I look around and notice the bags
strwen in the corner. One of them is open, revealing bags of cocaine, which
holds my interest for a moment before I realize that I have bigger fish to
fry. If only I could get into that stash, I thought unsteadily, it would
certainly calm me down. I need something. "Jake, who else is here?"

Jake's smile, like everything else about him, was identical to my own. I was
pumped and leathered and my nervous sytem existed by the thinnest thread of
god's mercy, but if you looked closely we were very obviously twins.
Sometimes, when it was quiet and moody, I could hear his thoughts, and him
mine.

"Honey," he called out, "come on out here and say hello to my rich brother."

And then  -that scent, that one of a kind stench of garlic and spermicidal
foam, that vibration in the air  -I knew it. I knew it intimately. It can't
be!

"Tula - is that you?!"

She's wearing just a bra and panties  -her hair is still dripping, not clean
but wet, just like I remember it. Her gut stretched the elsatic of the
panties to its limit, her teeth were yellow stained and a thin stream of
watery blood trailed from her coke-ravaged nose  -she's as beautiful as
ever.

"Hey, Lee baby, nice house. I hope you don't mind I was in your hot tub."

Mind? I thought. I felt like taking her and throwing her into the hot tub,
rip off what little she was wearing, and...

She walked over to Jake and snaked herself around him. "I thought you were
going to join me?" she cooed.

I'm gonna be sick. I thought.

Jake pushed her away. "Later. I've got business to take care of."

My mind was working overtime. What happened? What's going on here? Tula and
Jake  -but how, why? Look at her, that body  -she hasn't changed at all 
-Jake, I can't believe she's with Jake.

"Tula?" I can barely talk. I feel like crying.

"Yes, Lee honey?" She starts to walk toward me and I feel my pathetic
phallus struggling to attain an erection. My sight goes grey as the blood
drains from my head, and I know that if I feel the electric-eel shock of her
slimy touch I was lost, I would swoon in passion and I'd kill myself to feel
her all around me, just once more. I struggled to clear my head and get
away. I was crashing, I was weak, I was beginning to sweat and twitch and it
wouldn't be long before I was actively nauseous. But she was getting nearer
and nearer and I couldn't move, and then she reached out one delicate hand

And everything went black.

And when I woke up I was hog-tied and lying on my side, and my muscles were
twitching so violently it looked like snakes were slithering under my skin.
My shivering filled the room and I'd sweated a damp spot on the couch. I
hadn't seen my brother Jake since our failed double-suicide pact ten years
before, where we'd each double-crossed the other revealing the morass of
distrust and hatred we'd had for each other. It isn't difficult to hang
yourself, but it also isn't difficult to fake hanging yourself, and we hung
there in our room for hours, me waiting to be absolutely sure he was dead
before letting myself down. Back then, he'd been stronger then me and I'd
had to run, so in a way he'd set my feet on this path as much as Tula had. I
could hear him now, in my head, his serpentine thoughts like worms on my
brain:

Oh, god, Tula, oh yeah, ooooh baby oooohmygoddddd

I shut him out and thought of spaghetti for fifteen minutes, limp wet
spaghetti, broadcasting it as hard as I could until the veins in my temples
were throbbing. Then I let my thoughts wander again, picking him up:

never happened before I don't understand let me try again baby baby please

I grinnned, forcing my rebellious muscles to create the expression by sheer
force of will.

The door flew open and there was Jake, sweaty and puffing, naked, his body a
slim version of my own, of the one I used to have. I was beginning to swell
up and the ropes were cutting cruelly into my skin, which was creaking and
groaning and threatening to split open. I usually had to rub a gallon of
moisturizer into my epidermis every day to avoid cracking open like a pair
of tight pants. Often I paid a troop of Girl Scouts to do this for me: with
fifteen agile hands working at once it cut down my lotion time to barely
five minutes. We laundered the money through cookies.

"All right, Lee." He panted. "Time for you to die. I'm going to become you
and live the life I deserve." He picked up a syringe and tapped it with an
expert eye. "You're going to die of a massive drug overdose. Your heart is
going to explode. And when they find you on the street in a few days, you'll
be just another junkie. And your millions will let me and Tula live the life
we want, the life you couldn't give her and then denied her."

My eyes zeroed in on the syringe and dilated in ecstasy, my body immediately
calmed a little at the sight of the lovely clear liquid inside. I rolled
over to give him a better view of my bulging veins, presenting my buttocks
(laced with fat calf's veins I'd had surgically implanted by my private
hospital so I'd have an easy and easily hidden place to shoot up) to him in
joy.

"You can't get away, Lee." he said, kneeling down and choosing a
likely-looking vein. "Good bye, brother."

I felt the needle slip in, and then  -

My brother was wrong. I wasn't just another junkie. I was a super junkie. My
system was used to massive quantities of narcotics, steroids, and
depressants. I couldn't function if my blood levels fell below what most
people would consider coma-inducing. I lived my entire life in a steady
stream of sleep-deprived heart-pounding ultraviolent hallucinations and the
piddling amount of cocaine in that syringe didn't kill, it didn't even harm
me, it jolted my system back on-line. My vision cleared, my muscles stopped
twitching, my heartbeat jumped back to acceppted levels (which would have
had any hospital monitor shrieking in horror), my hair stopped falling out
in clumps. In short, all this negative energy was just making me stronger.

With a groan of pleasure, I stretched my aching and atrophying,
steroid-starved  muscles and snapped the ropes almost by accident. Then I
reached for Jakes neck, and snapped it like a freeze-dried twig snapper
would snap a freeze-dried twig.  Not only had he not considered the fact
that companies like Prestone had been trying to isolate some of the more
noxious chemicals in my blood for use in new diesel-coolant products for
years, but he also forgot that I was one buff mo-fo.  I turned to Tula,
grabbed her thinning, greasy, but surprisingly well-coifed matte, ready to
sow more vengeance, and then maybe some seed. 

"Well Tula, do you want me back now?" I sneered. "I got $65M, a porsche, and
what some would call a hedonistic life-style.  Hit it big you told me. 
Well, I got everything you ever wanted! Whats it gonna be?" 

"I want you Lee," she cried.  "I was just with Jake cause I knew hed find
you.  Please, please believe me Lee.  Let me back into your life."

I melted right there.  How could I pass her up?  I caught a swift look and
smell of her lumpy, pocks mark inner thigh.  Oh how it beckoned.

"All right Tula.  But I swear, Ill never see you leave me again alive."
Right then we fell into some old nasty habits.  Tied up, tied down, up
against a wall, shes my rubbermaid baby and she could do it all.  We sated
each other quick-like; the day would soon arrive, killing any more chances
to kill, at least for now, and we still had to dispose of Jakes body. "Tula,
go turn on my Mac, start Excel and hit the macro button with the skull and
cross bones on it.  Im gonna get Jake into this bodybag."

She ran to the desk while I wrestled with the bag.  "Lee honey, the computer
says  chicken cordon bleu with asparagus." 

"I said hit the skull and cross bones button, not the one with the frying
pan!" She had hit the random-meal generator, not the
random-body-disposal-method generator. 

"Oh sorry, Lee honey.  It says the pole".

Ahh yes, the pole.  Ohh, how fitting - Jake on stake.  Heh heh.  Good. 
"Tula honey, help me with jake." Me and Tula hauled the body out to the
elevator and headed straight for the basement.  I love walking apartment
halls at night.  Its like your in other peoples homes but you have every
right to be there too.  And they think theyre safe behind locked doors. Dumb
fucks.

Four AM in the middle of summer is the best place to be.  A drive through
the cloyingly sweet smell of pre-dawn, its purple haze all around.  Thats
it.  Thats when I feel at home.  Only you and the other failed predators are
out then.  Miss that antelope at 11PM and you have to fight for the carrion
at 4.  Thats me, a carrion eater.

We dumped him in the back seat and headed straight for the small flag pole I
cased out on E59th.  My fingers smelled like shit.  Yeah, mine.  I own the
god damned hand.  Was that fucker scratching his butt before I crashed him?
And it looks like he hasnt clipped his goddamned nails in a month.  Fuck it,
Im nervous.

Most people make the mistake of greasing the pole up too much but you dont
want the body to slide down too fast, you want it to fall slow, aching to a
sticky-mucus halt eye-to-eye with you.  Fast is too easy, whether youre
killing someone or just fucking with their body. That done, me and Tula
hopped back into Laverne, and headed straight up to Harlem.

We ran into a juke joint where we heard the guitar playing.[1] Me and Tula
grabbed seats at the bar and we stared off down the dark corridor-of-a-place
into a spot of red light hanging over the trio. They were doing some
rendition of "Old-man blues", and it was whaling like a cat with its tail
caught under a rocker. Man I dig those rythym and blues![2] The bartender
came over and stared us up and down; me cause I was covered in blood and
mucus, Tula cause she was more or less a tramp. I barked at him, raising my
upper lip, and he returned with two martinis, shaken, not stirred.[3] We may
look like trash, but weve a fine taste for a well-mixed drink. Thats what
drew us together in the first place...

"Bartender! Another martini, on the double, and ah. . . remember this time,
shaken. . ."

". . .Not stirred." She came out of a sun-haze glowing like sweet-potato
pie. "Hello there. Im Tulanna Vanderbilt."

"Hello there, Tulanna. My name is Lee Majors. How do you do," I snickered.

"Very well, thank you. Im sorry to cut in on your order, but I couldnt help
but overhear what you were drinking. Its funny you know, theres only one
other person I know that likes their martini that way."

"Oh yeah? Whos that?"

"My ex.  James.  A real jet-setter," she raised her eyebrows and threw her
eyeballs way back into her brain.

"Where might this fool  be, since I dont see him sitting beside you?"

"Oh, well. . . James and I split up several months ago. His line of work
keeps him away from home so often. Plus, there were always these beautiful
women around him when he flew in from the airport. He swore he didnt know
them, but I was always suspicious. Anyway, Im much happier without him."

So, that was how we met, down on the island of Antigua, sipping martinis,
shooting the shit. Things were different then. Life was simpler, sweeter. I
watch Tulas face now as she enjoys the music. Something about that red light
is attractive to her. Must be from her days dancing on the runway. That was
after I left her for Lindsey, my brief stint in California. Tula was out of
her mind with despair, she was just cut out of her familys will. After
Lindsey dumped me for that weasel Oscar, I returned to New York and found
Tulacious in a g-string cutting a rug against a ten foot glittering pole
amidst fat dykes and greasy thugs. I rescued her of course, (pause) we went
for a drink (martinis, shaken, not stirred). She loved me instantly, of
course.  (pause) Of course, shortly after I had to leave on business. Wed
been fighting and so as soon as my plane took off she hooked up with my
scumbag brother, whos now, by the way, slowly sliding down a flag pole on
E59th. Fucker!

I was daydreaming when the bartender smacked me and handed me a phone.
"Hello? This is Lee Majors. . ."

"Lee, you pain in the ass. Ive been tracking you all over the city. What the
fuck are you doing in my juke joint at 5am?"

"Evil? How the hell did you find me? Wait, you own this hole in the ground?"

"Never mind that you idiot. I planted a homing device in the fingernail of
the hand you ripped off  me at the crash. Listen, Im in a jam and I need
your help.?

"What can I do for you old boy?"

"Im at the goddamned airport and I forgot my passport. The bitch at the
counter says she cant recognize me and so I cant get on the plane for Paris
without it. Can you run up to my apartment and get out her in 45 min?"

"Sure Evil. What the hell? . . . doesnt that bitch know youre the greatest
stuntman to ever live? Are you wearing your trademark white jumpsuit and
scarf?"

"Yeah mano, but this bitch is from the South. She thought I was fucking
Elvis!"

"Well shit brother. . . Ill be right down. Say Evil, Im going to have to
break into your apartment, is that ok?"

"Do whatever you have to shithead, just get my passport to me ASAP!" 

I left Tula at the joint, she was dazing in a dream[4] anyhow. I headed
downtown to Chelsea for Evils passport. I always wondered what his real name
was anyhow, so this was an opportunity not to be missed. I found his place
alright, but instead of just climbing through the back fire escape, I
decided to bust open the front wall. Hell, he said get in anyway you can,
so, I was thinking, why not have some fun doing it? I grabbed the mini stick
of TNT from my jean jacket pocket (we had to be dressed to get into the
joint, so I mugged some asshole on the corner) and stuffed it in a crack in
the brick of the building. I lit the fucker and ran for cover.

Thirty seconds later, a gale of smoke and fume whirled in front of me, my
ears ringing like a fucking Independence Day parade. I ran inside, and much
to my surprise, his place was nicely decorated. It was just like out of
Better Homes and Gardens. Whod have thought that a stuntman like Evil,
living a bachelor life, would have matched the ruffle on his bedspread with
the valance on his bedroom window. I started rifling through his desk
drawers. I found a picture in a gold heart  frame of some guy named Spencer,
a shitload of valium pills in a silver pill box, a stack of bail bonds the
size of a fucking Websters unabridged dictionary, and several Bee Gees CDs
scatterd about. This guy was a fruitcake. I discovered the passport lying on
the bed. I grabbed it and closed my eyes. I guessed the names - Todd, Jerry,
and then, finally, Robin. I opened it and stared down in horror. Bartholomew
Knieval! Jesus!

I decided right there and then, that my acting career needed a boost, it
would be the thing to save me from people like Tulanna and Bartholomew. I
took the passport to sell on the black market; I needed quick cash for a
plane ticket to Cali. Either Sothebys or the Enquirer would scoop this thing
right up. Damn, no wonder why he was getting all those Rogaine treatments.
Our famous Mr. Tough-guy is really a hot-tamale-sissy-boy from Iowa. DOH![5]

I ripped the tab-top curtain from the window and wrapped it around me in 
Caesar fashion. I cinched the fucker with the only leather braided belt from
Evil. . .Bartholomews closet. I knew they wouldnt let me on the plane naked,
so I thought ahead. I swallowed all of the valium from the drawer, and I
shot up whatever was in the needle on the nightstand.

"Fucking Evil Knieval, man! Hes got the whole world fooled. Fuck it, Im
going back to Cali.  (pause) Cali.[6](pause) Yeah, Ill get me a new
contract, maybe do an action prime time series. Ill show that fucker Knieval
what a real stunt man looks like."

I walked right out through the gaping whole that was the front wall, looked
uptown and blew a kiss to Tula-bell. Shell probably sit on that barstool and
drool out martini juice from the corners of her mouth for three days before
she figures Im not coming back. Crazy mess.

"Fuck it, its just me and showbiz now."

--------------------
*ABOUT Gus Pustule:
--------------------

Jeff Somers publishes this magazine and enjoys eating Twinkies. His current
goal in life is to appear in the Guinness Book of Records under the heading
"Largest Head".

Jeof Vita calmly awaits the religious epiphany which will transform and
justify his existence. In the mean time, he sells his hair and blood for
"mad money".

Alison Culshaw was created by the government in a secret lab in Flatbush.
She has been genetically engineered to be completely scentless, and her mere
presence will send dogs into barking fits.

Misty Quinn hasn't slept in over six years and accepts the hallucinations as
part of life. She enjoys swimming nude in the Hudson River and running the
unauthorized kissing booth at the St. Patrick's Day Parade every year.

Dan Sills can compute large sums in his head without mechanical aid. He
spends his days wandering the grounds and being cleaned by professionals.

Lauren Strutzel likes to wear underwear that doesn't match on purpose, and
often fries bacon naked in the kitchen for "thrills". Eventually, she
expects to have children so she can "dress them up pretty".

--------------------
FOOTNOTES (1) originally uttered by Bono. (2) originally uttered by the guy
who sings AMERICAN PIE, but nobody can remember his name. (3) originally
uttered by Sean Connery. (4) second half of the line previous quoted as
being uttered by Bono. (5) originally uttered by L L Cool J. (6) originally
uttered by Homer Simpson.

======================================== 
*** COMMENTARY ***
Suffer the Little Children:  
Are We All Really That Stupid? 
by Jeff Somers
========================================

The world can seem dark and complicated to a simple lad like your Editor
here  -especially complicated on those mornings when you wake up drunk and
don't get to hungover until noon, not that I would know anything about that.
The amount of evil, stupidity, and skyrocketing insurance rates* in our
world can really get you down, and maybe sometimes we all find ourselves
wishing someone was minding the goddamn store. We all have a little nazi in
us, goose stepping around demanding more control, more enforcement, more
cops, jails  -part of us is terrified of the chaos, part of us would gladly
sell our own mothers to be safe from the chaos.

But, of course, we shouldn't.

We shouldn't for the very simple reason that seeking shelter from the chaos
is sort of like living in a bunker during a hurricane - sure you're
protected from the storm, but you have no idea what's going on outside, and
long after the storm is over you're still crouched in there, wondering if
it's safe to go outside again. Let's take this idiotic analogy a little
further. Let's say you live on a wonderful island  -it's filled with all
sorts of great stuff, and you have a great time wnadering the beaches
collecting things. One day you're told that a season of storms is coming
your way, and you'll never make it through alive without protection  -this
is my way of illustrating the concept of we cherubic innocents living
through the chaos, in and of itself a relatively vague argument. Okay, so
you can see the clouds gathering, and some really tall blond guy approaches
you and says "Doon't vorry, Herr Cheroob  -ve vill buildingk you  a bunker
to vithshtand die shtorm. Come vith me and follow my orderrs very very
closhely und you vill be oh-kay."

Thinking that this is better than getting washed out to sea, you follow our
little field commander and he locks you into a nice, comfortable bunker,
telling you he will let you out when it is safe. But the problem, of course,
is that you have just handed your control over to Colnel Clink  -you never
really know if the storm is really all that bad, and every time you knock on
the door and ask how things are going down there, Clink replies, as if from
a great distance, "Not yet, mein friend  -these shtorms are shtill quite
brutal!" and all you can do is open another can of vienna sausage and hope
that Clink knows a bad storm when he sees one. Because, you see, when we
give over our welfare to protectors, we're relying on their sense of what's
dangerous, and not our own. Clink might very well be hiding you away because
he can't be totally sure that no storms are on the way, so just to be
safe...

In the same way, the various organizations and systems which have been set
up by people  -the Holywood ratings board, The Moral Majority, Ann Landers-
to protect their fellow citizens are usually paranoid groups of people who
see storms on every horizon, all the time. Number one, it takes such gall
and arrogance to set up something like the Moral Majority that it's only
natural that it's leaders feel themselves esepcially able to protect the
rest of us, dimwitted little consumers that we tend to be. Number two, they
depend on the threat of chaos for their existence. If they were to ever
admit that there really wasn't any danger, they'd have to shut down.

Let's look at Jack Valenti and those annoying movie ratings (and now, of
course, television ratings). I have always thought it greatly disturbing
that the movies were rated meticulously on violence and sex and profanity,
but never on how good the fucking things were. Instead of an R rating for
violence, maybe if they'd given half the movies last year an S for Sucks
we'd all be truly better off. But more importantly, do we really need some
asshole with bad hair telling us whether a movie is safe to see? Sure, maybe
you don't want your eight year old sitting through Seven and then not
speaking for the next twelve years, but it's more involved than that, isn't
it? The fact is that if a movie doesn't get at least an R rating, it won't
find a distributor very easily, which is why even big-budget films submit
and re-submit to the ratings board, snipping blood here and orgasms there in
order to get that R. While you might argue that an extra Brad-Pitt cum shot
or another few moments of Robert DeNiro's guts blown to hell won't make much
difference to the artistic integrity of a film (especially a film which
features, of all thespians, Brad Pitt)  -but who the fuck told you that you
had any ability at all to percieve artistic integrity?

And now, we have rating on television. Big fucking whoop. Number one, TV has
had an implicit ratings sytem in place for decades: 7-9pm was family fare,
9-10 more adult stuff, 10-11 the really scary shit. And then, of course, the
most violent thing on TV since the dawn of fucking time, the news. Now,
however, this is no longer good enough, because apparently all of us cherubs
are getting even dumber as time goes on, and can no longer make that simple
association between the time of night and the type of crap spilling out of
the wasteland.

Of course, there really isn't any immediate impact, because this wonder of
modern thought is, after all, a voluntary imposition on the part of the
television industry. They simply evaluated their own shows and slapped often
confusing ratings on them in order to elude the spectre of Governmental
Control. But you know what that means: that means that right now TV-14 means
the level of violence, nudity, and cussing that appears on NYPD Blue. What
happens in a few years when some bright light in Hollywood wants to make a
show that pushes the envelope a little further? They run up against the NYPD
Blue rule and are threatened with a TV-NC17 rating or something. And
probably end up making adjustments just to get on the air with some paid
advertising: Colnel Clink, refusing to open the door for fear of storms.

The question, when you get beyond the paranoia and fear and small-minded
bible-bumping mentality that made this country strong, really is: are we all
truly that stupid? Are we so incapable of judging situations for ourselves
that we can't handle extremities? Obviously not, since we're supporting a
multi-million dollar pornography industry and we're the same people who
gather outside of death row prisons and cheer when the lights go dim. We
can't handle sex and violence? We're Americans, for fuck's sake, we invented
the shit.

And there, perhaps, is the problem. Having hand-crafted more murder,
perversity, and mayhem in our two-hundred-twenty year history than most
societies manage in eons, perhaps we back shyly away from the corpse and
shrug, looking dumb on purpose.

Ah, but it doesn't end there, does it? Unfortunately, no. No, not only are
we so dumb that we can't witness the extremes of life without being scarred
and warped, but we can't even witness bad habits without being brainwashed.

Recently, someone wrote to Ann Landers about this subject. Let's forget the
fact that apparently I read Ann Landers, and concentrate on the fact that
this busy-body wrote Ann in order to complain that cigarette companies must
be paying Hollywood studios to product-place cigarettes in their movies. Ann
sucked this crap up like the bubble-headed middle-american cretin she is,
and informed us that yes, tobacco companies pay to have the characters in
movies smoke on film, and that this causes kids to smoke, which as we all
know now is EVIL.

What Ann didn't do, because she never does, is offer any proof of
product-placement deals between Hollywood and Tobacco companies, or any
proof that there is one kid out there who is smoking sixteen packs a day
because of Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction. It's the usual paranoid bullshit
the slow-witted amongst us like to drool out when they're at all challenged
by life. It never occurs to Ann and her sponge-brained cohorts that maybe
the characters in movies smoke because the writers thought it was a
personality tic that fit, or because it gives actors something to do so
they're not standing around with their dicks in hand. Nope, that can't be,
it's got to be a conspiracy of sorts, right? And the fact that despite the
attempts of the PC gestapo who feel we might all live forever if we'd just
stop smoking so damned much a lot of people smoke cigarettes and therefore
having a character smoke could be perceived as, oh, I don't know,
verisimilitude never occurred to a single corn-fed goose-stepper amongst
them.

This sacrifice of artistic freedoms for supposed moral strength is an
ongoing myth that perpetuates the idea that we're all pretty stupid. My
opinions of the aforementioned sponge brains aside, I do have a certain
faith in the intellect of my fellow americans  -I wouldn't be mailing you
this collection of rants every few months if I didn't, right? And I believe
that if you're sitting there with you're third pack of the day burning a
hole in your right lung it's not my fault, it's not their fault; buddy, I
hate to tell you this, but it's your fault. We could have John Waters, David
Lynch, and Cameron Grant produce a snuff film about bestiality and catholic
nuns who smoke cigars and mainline heroin, and if the cops raid your house
next thursday and find you in flagrante delicto with your dog, Sheba, stoned
on smack and with a lit cigarette stuffed up each nostril, it's nobody's
fault but yours. And, possibly, your Mom's.

When closing out one of these offensively failed attempts at argument, I
usually like to repeat what I've said several times already and then trail
off into insults. But, see as I've apparently already done that, I thought
I'd end this differently, by changing the subject entirely. In short, I'd
like to say a few poorly chosen words about cigarettes and their role in our
society, a role which is often overlooked in today's enviroment of
intolerance and PC breat-beating.

Now, first I need to say that YES: cigarettes are deadly little cancer
sticks, and YES: people really ought not to smoke because it's dangerous,
and YES: teaching kids to smoke is evil, and YES: millions of people
continue to smoke and there isn't a goddamn fucking thing you or anyone can
do about it.

Now, you can tell a  lot about a person by the cigarette they smoke and the
way they smoke it. It's one of those instant tip-offs when you walk into a
room and see someone for the first time, right up there with the type of
cocktail they prefer, the clothes they have on, how many if any chemicals
foul their hair, and what they select on the jukebox.

For a broad example, women overwhelmingly smoke most of the light cigarettes
in the world. Men might switch to a "low-tar" cigarette in an effort to ween
themselves (hence the ridiculous concept of Marlboro Mediums) but they avoid
the term "light" like an unmanning spectre, which, of course, it is. A man
who is sitting in a bar smoking a light cigarette, for example, has a 75%
chance of being the boyfriend of some chick sitting near him. Already you
know something about him just by casually examining his choice of poison.

What else, let's see...how do they light it? Matches can indicate an
occasional smoker, or a new smoker. A lighter can indicate someone who
smokes enough to have become annoyed at matches. A zippo usually means they
smoke about three thousand cigarettes a day, give or take  a few hundred. Do
they inhale? An obvious but telling detail. Roll-your-own cigarettes hint at
ominous overtones of machismo, as do any filterless cancer-stick. Luck
Strikes? He probably thinks bungee-jumping would be a cool diversion and is
probably wearing construction boots.

When a couple smokes, does he light the cigarette for her, or do they each
light their own? Does she have her own pack, or does she steal from his? Do
they smoke different brands? If one of them lights up, does it cause the
other to? All these things say a lot about the relationship and the
individuals.

So, I guess I have been on my original subject after all. If cigarette
smoking can be such a conrucopia of character tics and telling details, how
can it possibly be simply a callow sell-out for a writer or director to
include them in a movie? It can't. Oh, it might be. Sure, I admit that the
tobacco companies probably love paying off studios to exhibit cigarettes in
their films, but I don't think it is necessarily the way things are all the
time. Generalizations are the field of the imbeciles, after all  -there are
usually so many exceptions to their rules you wonder what the point was.

And there lies the danger, pigs: if we let the imbeciles lay out the playing
rules, how will we tell each other apart? We're not, as a whole, really that
stupid, but some of us certainly are. You never let the village idiot frame
the laws. You never let the pace be set by the slow and ungainly. You never
bow to stupidity, and you never let the ignorant or the blind decide what
looks right. If you do, you raise us all blind, and give us a culture of
homogenized shit that we lap up eagerly, desperate for a buzz that no longer
comes.

* On the subject of insurance in general and car-insurance in specific, I
only have one thing to say: If the blood-letting parasites who govern and
regulate the insurance in this sad world (and in New Jersey in particular)
feel that it's fair for me to pay almost two grand a year in order to have
the privelige of driving my 1978 Chevy Nova named Laverne from time to time
(when she is working, which is rare these days) than they are absolutely,
positively, the first people up against the wall when the revolution comes,
and I will be grinning when I give the order.

======================================== 
*** COMMENTARY ***
American Wedding Confidential #1 
My Weekend with Carla 
by Jeff Somers
========================================

Editor's note: My loathing for weddings is legendary, of course, and in this
new department I will strive to demonstrate why. All the stories are, sadly,
true. All the names have been changed due to legal considerations. I went to
four weddings as a guest last year, and already have 3 scheduled for this
year. I am in hell.

I showed up at Carlas around 2:30pm, shaved, showered, and pressed into
uncomfortable shoes, which I do not wear for just anybody. I also smelled
good, which anyone who knows me well will attest is not such a common
occurence. I was buffed, shined, and ready to boogie. As I stepped into
Carlas apartment it became obvious that she was not: the place was littered
with underwear, recently purchased shoes, and trash. Carla was in the throes
of typical chick-like lateness, rushing about applying last-minute makeup,
brushing her lustrous hair, and vacuuming herself into rubber underwear,
all, I presumed, for my benefit (hubba hubba).  

I tried to make myself at home, but any time I tried to leave the living
room I encountered a pile of underwear and Carla, screeching that I couldnt
go in there. Eventually I found that I was only welcome to sit in an
uncomfortable chair in the shadowed area of the living room, and there I
stayed.  

Carla finally emerged ready to go, and I witnessed the first of many
transformations for My Wedding Date, this one from Crazy Girl to Normal
Girl. In her nice dress and with her hair combed, she appeared almost
normal. We got into her chariot and off we were to pick up her friend
Dorothy in Englewood. Here I grew worried as Carla seemed to have little
idea where her friend lived, and seemed content to just drive around in
circles and hum to herself. Adding to my desperation was the fact that Carla
kept one finger mashed on the "lock" button all this time, so I could not
give in to my urge to leap from the moving vehicle. We were saved by the
sight of Dorothy waving at us from her front porch.  

We got out and Dorothy told us to beware of snipers; apparently some local
outpatient had been shooting at her trees just moments before. Carla seemed
interested in this story, and I began to think her friend would have a
calming effect on her, when Carla suddenly noticed that the dress Dorothy
was wearing was strikingly similar to her own, and a cat-fight broke out on
the front lawn. I was able to save Dorothy only by pointing out to Carla
that since the offending dress was now stained green and red with grass and
blood it no longer resembled her own. I carried the unconscious Dorothy
gently to the car and we were off.  

At the wedding, Carla developed an unseemly fascination with the bald head
of the man seated in front of us, which was actually a good thing, as it
kept her relatively quiet throughout the ceremony, except when she loudly
informed me that I would be blasted by lightning for my sins and the several
times she asked me if I was interested in any of her girlfriends, all of
whom, she asserted, had "big bazooms". With the aid of several burly ushers
I was able to rush her from the church before being identified.  

We arrived triumphantly at the hotel for the reception, and Carla lost
little time digging into the rum supply, double-fisting it for most of the
evening. Her transformation from Normal Girl to Drunk Girl was seamless, as
was her almost unnoticed transformation from Drunk Girl to DANCING QUEEN. Id
had no idea I was the official nonthreatening male guest of the DANCING
QUEEN, but my education was quick and brutal. She danced the Twist, which is
to say she danced the Twist to every song that the band played, often by
herself on the dance floor with the hot spotlight following, once with a
dozen tuxedoed men clapping time and hooting.  

As the hour grew late, I was pulled aside by Wedding Officials and asked to
remove her from the dance floor so that the older couples could safely dance
without fear of being smacked or trampled by the rampaging DANCING QUEEN. I
donned my fatigues (I was "going commando" at the wedding anyway) and
hustled her off to the bar, where she loudly berated the bartender for
trying to give her her drinks in plastic cups instead of glasses. As he
hustled off  to take care of this, she leaned over and breathed into my ear.

"My rubber underwear has cut off my circulation," she said, "I think my feet
are numb."  

Around one in the morning we all admitted weariness and retired to the room
we had rented for the evening. Here Carla instructed me to strip and lay
down in the tub, but I refused, knowing better, and wrapped myself up in a
bolt of fabric in order to protect myself from Carla and from the corrosive
cold of the air conditioner, which the other denizens of the room had
insisted on activating. We implored Carla to change out of her dress and
remove her rubber underwear, fearing permanent brain damage from the lack of
circulation, but Carla became irrational at this point and seemed to feel
threatened by this piece of good advice, curling up defensively on the couch
and growling at anyone who came near her, accusing several of her friends of
attempted sodomy. In a bizarre moment, her friends made up a taunting song
which included the words "finger" and "crack", and sang it over and over
again until poor Carla wept.   At this point I fell asleep, and so cannot
detail Carlas undoubtedly agonizing transformation from Drunk Girl to
Hungover Girl.  

In the morning Carla announced several times that she felt like a "whore"
but still refused to change clothes, planning instead to hang around the
lobby of the hotel in the hopes of getting into another wedding reception,
and at yet another rum supply. I enlisted several of her big-bosomed friends
to help me force her into the car, wherein she grew grim and drove me home
in silence, complaining that her underwear was up around her neck.  

THE END

======================================== 
*** SPASTIC OPINIONATING ***
Lemmings Never Fear 
by Jeff Somers 
========================================

In my arrogant rampage across the small, independent Zine scene I have
tended to speak first and wonder if anyone understands later, which often
leads me to painful conversations with people who just dont get it. I dont
particularly care if you agree with me on any given subject, but its fun to
argue with you, especially since I am often convinced that I have some sort
of unholy ability to be right, all the time. This attitude in itself is
dangerous, of course, but since it hasnt led me astray yet, I cant really
complain.  

But, in the past few years Ive had several people approach me with the sort
of self-satisfied smirks that the mean-spirited and intelligence-challenged
get when they think theyre going to score one off you and suggest to me that
my little magazine isnt very, well, shocking, is it? Nothing they havent
seen before, after all, nothing that couldnt be printed in a mainstream
publication, if you removed the cuss-words and made the writing good. After
all, they point out, its more just your grumpy attitude than anything
outrageous. Then they continue to smirk as if they had just deconstructed my
entire reason for living, and now I might as well crawl off to watch Singled
Out reruns.  

The fact is, though, I dont really care to shock. Shock is the easiest thing
in the world. I could write a story about little kids having sex with
rabbits while mainlining floor cleaners for kicks, and you might be shocked,
unless that sentence describes your checkered past a bit too closely. I
could get Jeof Vita drunk one night and have him doodle a few cartoons
involving livestock and nuns and you might be shocked, unless your twisted
imagination has been there, done that. Shock is easy. Shock is so easy
corn-fed idiots all across this nation get shocked every single day  -shock
is so easy it just plain doesnt interest me. I could shock you in my spare
time, kids, but theres no fun it. Any moronic high school dead-head with
access to a photocopier can print up a Zine thatll make you sick to think
about it. I shoot for something thats almost impossible: I try to get you to
think, a little.  

Now, when you print a self-important and mildly pompous statement like that
youre either inviting abuse or convinced that god has put his middle finger
so far up your ass light is coming out of your eyes. Or something like that.
I think the hardest thing in the world to get an American citizen to do is
think. Try it sometime. I guarantee youll get complete incomprehension, or,
more likely, hostility. Stupid people get hostile pretty quickly; as a
matter of fact you can gauge someones general intellect, I think, by how
fast they get hostile. Ask someone a probing question on the bus tomorrow,
just to make conversation, and the more they snarl at you the dumber they
are. Go ahead. Turn to your seatmate tomorrow and say something like: "Do
you believe that your congressperson actually knows or even cares what you
think on a variety of topics, or is representative democracy really just a
scam of gigantic proportions and weve got the blood in our underwear to
prove it?" and see if you get an intelligent answer or a stream of curses,
and possibly physical abuse.  

Alright, I suppose accosting total strangers on a bus might invite some
hostile behavior without actually proving anything about intelligence. Fine.
Try it at a social occasion, try it at home, try it anywhere with anyone and
I still guarantee that the less hostile the response, the smarter your
guinea pig is. You might even find a few smart ones. The rest of them? God
help us all, because theyre our neighbors.  

Any fifteen-year-old with a smartass mouth could shock any one of them,
without any time to prepare material, even. But try and get them to actually
consider an alien viewpoint or unfamiliar opinion. There, kids, there is the
real challenge. The saddest part about all this conversation regarding The
Inner Swines inability to shock is the disappointment accompanying it: the
concept that shock is the greatest goal we as Americans can achieve with our
freedom of speech. We cant all be Larry Flynt, kids, nor should we want to
be. The idea that the first amendment protects our right to be gross,
disgusting, mean, or perverted has been celebrated a bit too much lately. I
dont argue the point (as a matter of fact I revel in it) but is that really
all its for? The argument that the First Amendment protects even scumbags
who depict Santa Claus in a lewd and intimate manner is a flashy one, and a
true one, but it distracts us, kids, from what I consider to be the real
work: thinking. It takes extremes, of course, like the court battles
pornographers have gone through to make the point, sometimes, but lets not
forget that those battles are supposed to serve a higher purpose. If we dont
keep that in mind were in danger of finding ourselves inundated with a lot
of jerkoffs trying to shock you, and not one of them saying anything.  

You might say I have a low opinion of my fellow Americans, and youd be
right. You might also say that that low opinion is arrogant and indicative
of a serious character flaw, since it is usually a good rule that you are
generally somewhat the opposite of how you perceive yourself. In other
words, the smarter I think I am, the dumber I actually am. This may very
well be true and I dont care if thats your opinion, and if it is the case Im
probably too dumb to ever realize it, so fuck it, Ill be stupid and arrogant
and have a great time feeling superior. What I would say to that argument
is: thats you getting hostile towards me instead of thinking about it.

======================================== 
*** FICTION ***
Isnt it Grand Boys? 
by Jeff Somers 
========================================

PROLOGUE: Postulating Lung Cancer as the Least of Your Problems

I KNEW someone who sold me his soul for a pack of cigarettes, once. 
Menthols, no less. While drunk in bars people will do amazing things,
sometimes, but Bobby Conklin was more amazing then most, most times. 
Sometimes he was downright incredible.  Wed been sitting around with a
couple of girls from Bobbys job, a couple of administrative assistants not
far out of high school and still feeling their oats.  Bobby was openly
trying to lay any one of them who might have been paying attention. 
Supposedly, I was there to help, which I was, of course, more than happy to
do.

We had passed the point of subtlety three rounds before, it was my turn to
buy and as I tried to get the bartenders attention by waving crisp and
fresh-smelling money around, Bobby begged me for a cigarette in the
devilishly sweet way he had.

"Come on, man.  Im dying for a smoke."

Bobby was one of those faithless smokers who only lit up when drunk in bars,
who normally cared too much for his shined and perky white ass to invite
death into himself so openly.  He was giving me his squint-eyed Burl Ives
grin, the sort with lots of teeth showing in preparation for the shit being
shoveled its way.  It was charming, when youre drunk.  I wasnt drunk, not
yet.  I made a pack of Newports appear and held it up by my ear.

"Ill sell you this pack."

It was the sort of thing Bobby liked, he laughed and nodded, reaching for
his wallet.  I shook my head, and said something you didnt hear very often
in bars.

"I dont want your money, man."

Bobby gave me his best look of distrust, which wasnt very much of one.  Like
all happy drunks, Bobby trusted everyone implicitly.  Happy drunks were the
least reliable people in the world, because they didnt know misery.

"Sell me your soul for this pack."

I matched his grin, then, which was something I could do, sometimes, when I
applied myself.  He was laughing again, shaking his head.  The girls had
lost interest, and supposed we were male bonding, which usually does drive
all the women away in a sort of thinly veiled disgust. Male bonding isnt
pretty and it accomplishes little except to pass the time between drinks,
really; I have made several incredibly close and wonderful friendships in
bars late at night which I deny to this day.  Id rather move on to the next
eternity alone and disregarded than speak with any of them again.

"Thats rich!" he chortled.  "Do I have to sign in blood!?"

I shrugged.  "Ill shake on it."

He held out one sweaty, limp hand and I shook it, trying hard not to curl my
lip as we did so. I handed him the pack and as the night dried up I bummed
more than a few of them from him anyway, and he seemed to have forgotten all
about our arrangement within moments.  I didnt remind him.  Bobbys soul was
a thin and greasy one, just like most of the beer sucks who sat around
farting through pointless witticisms and dickless brutality every night, and
I wasnt sure why I had wanted it.

That was the way with most of them.  They had dissipated over time and had
emerged in the shadowed bars of America with their sheer and delicately
stretched spirits patched together with string and spit, and the hunting was
slim and boring.  It was easy, though, and I guess thats why I kept coming
back.

Between fourteen cigarettes he wasnt used to smoking and a truly
eyebrow-raising amount of booze, Bobby was in sorry shape by the time
midnight rolled around.  Two of his girl-pals had left him, sniffing at such
uncouth behavior.  The one he really wanted to fuck, though, had stuck
around and as Bobby threw up into the dumpster out back, she leaned against
the alley next to me.  I lit a cigarette for her while Bobby moaned
jovially.

"Is he going to live?" she asked, feigning concern.

I shrugged.  "Beats me.  I suppose.  Hes got the look of someone who usually
does."

She liked that, and sent a gale of smoke into the night.

"Well, you own his soul.  Id like to think youd have some concern for him."

"His soul, yes, puny as it is.  Him? No. Souls are eternal, babe.  His
existence is meaningless." I smiled.  "Want a cup of coffee?"

She smiled back, "No.  Id like another drink."

We left Bobby there, and people tell me he eventually found his way home,
thick-skinned and irrationally immortal as he was.  I still have his soul,
despite the fact that whenever we go drinking these days he tries to buy it
back, earnestly.  Once, he even cried.

ONE: Arguing Immortality as an Undesirable Lifestyle Option

WHEN we first heard that Gil Hinkley had passed away, we were drunk in a bar
called Margos which we all consistently mispronounced as Magoos, more or
less on purpose depending on how long we had been there and how long it was
before we intended to leave.  Danny had gone to check messages on his
machine, something he did obsessively eight or nine times a night.  The rest
of us had discussed this bizarre behavior before, in detail.  It was bizarre
to us because no one ever called Danny, this was fact.

When he was out with us he was out with such a large proportion of his
friends that the odds of any stragglers or strays calling him were on the
low side.  Wed come to the following conclusion and left him alone about it
ever since- Danny checked his messages obsessively not in spite of the fact
that no one ever called him, but because of it.

He came back looking pate and wobbly, and I leaned over to casually take his
glass away from him.  Besides me and Danny there was Kim ODonnel, the nicest
guy on the planet (present as always to counter-balance me) and Paul Cent,
the whitest black man living in America.  We all turned to watch Danny
carefully, alarmed by his appearance.

"Gils dead." he said simply.

There was a moment of greasy silence as none of us knew exactly what to say
to that.  I for one took a few seconds to ponder who the hell "Gil" was,
before I realized that it must be our Gil, the same Gil Id known off and on
for the past six years.  Gil had originally been Harry Bingfords friend,
later introduced to Mary Rogers, who dated Gil for some grim and black
months before dumping him, but not before introducing him to our own Danny,
who quickly became his best friend.  I knew Gil well enough, but his death
wasnt going to alter my social life much once we got past the usual blast of
funerals and wakes and meetings-for-drinks.  I vaguely looked forward to
getting it over with, and then we were all on our feet.  I wasnt sure why. 
Everyone else had leapt up, so I did too.  Then I stood there, wondering
why.

"Gil? Dead?" Kim asked, an unlit cigarette in his mouth.

Danny sat down and we ordered him more drinks.  After hed sufficiently
boozed himself  up he took some hacking breaths of thick brown bar air and
told his story: Elaine, Marys friend, had left a message on his machine
saying that Gil had been hit by a car and had died at St. Peters Hospital
earlier in the evening.  That was all the information he had.  After this we
ordered him more drinks and then sat in grim silence until Danny passed out.

"Wow." Kim said.  Kim was round and red-haired and freckled, and if he didnt
sport an ugly but prodigious beard youd think he was twelve years old.  He
was dumb that way, in a smart way.  Kim could do math in his head fine, but
he couldnt quite understand death.  "I cant believe the old bastards dead. 
He wasnt any older than us."

Why this mattered made no sense to me, and I said so.

"Wouldnt you feel cheated, you died just like that, before youre even
thirty?"

I shrugged.  "I wouldnt want to live forever, anyway."

Kim seemed surprised at this.  Guys like Kim, they went through life with
their eyes wide open in wonder.  They could never understand dark concepts
like cynicism, ennui, hatred.  Kim would jump at the chance to live forever,
and he wouldnt even think to regret it.

"Why not? You want to die, man?"

"No," I said, warming up to the subject and blowing smoke around, "at least
not right this minute, but forever? No way."

"I would." he said primly.  Kim was a great son of a bitch and I was glad to
know him, but he was too full of himself most of the time, and I liked
playing hell with his beliefs and sensibilities.  I was what my friend Alice
liked to call a provoker.  I liked to argue.  I didnt need to particularly
believe in what I was arguing, I just enjoyed frustrating people.

"You would? You want to watch us all grow old and die? You want to step into
a legal nightmare when all your paperwork says youre two hundred years old?
You want to try and remember centuries worth of stuff Christ, Kim, you can
hardly remember to wear socks in the morning, for christs sakes.  Youre
going to remember three hundred years worth of things? No way.  And what
happens if your brain rots, if you just dont have the batteries for that
kind of trip, man? You gonna just sit and rot in a sanitarium forever, never
dying, just staring? Kim flinched back from this onslaught.  "Hey, I never
-"

"Thought about it, obviously." I interjected.  Paul chuckled.  "Leave the
guy alone, Mike."

I smiled and leaned back.  "Okay." I sometimes did what Paul told me,
because he said everything out of sincere conviction and who was I to argue
with a saint in our midst? When I got drunk enough I would start calling
Paul The Saint, and he would get mad.  Not that saint Paul would ever do
anything about it, but he would.

Kim, however, felt his pecker coming up.  "How do you know itll be that way,
Mike? How do you know that living forever doesnt have its set of rules and
shit?"

I shrugged.  "I dont.  How do you know it will?"

He shrugged back.  "I dont."

"Then were both right."

Paul began to applaud.  "Very stirring intellectual conversation, kids.  But
there are more important matters to discuss tonight ere we weary and go
home: What the hell do we do with Danny?"

TWO: Bulimic Gods Vomit Up the Fruits of Our Knowledge

DANNY proved to be a long and arduous task for Paul and 1. Paul was good
enough to volunteer for Danny-detail, and bad enough to volunteer me, which
left me feeling positively dubious towards him as we struggled Danny into a
cab.  We sat to either side of Dan, smoking with the cabs windows open,
watching New York slide by like it was all just a picture, useless.  The
night air was crisp, and woke me up a little.  I prayed to God Danny stayed
asleep.  We would be okay if he stayed asleep.  Once he woke up, things
would get ugly, quick.

"Cant believe Gils dead." Paul said suddenly.

I was trying to think which of us was really Gils friend; I knew him and hed
known me, but I wouldnt call him a friend.  An acquaintance.  Paul might
have been, Danny I suppose.  Alice and Elaine, of course.  Not Kim.  Gil had
hated Kim, because of Kims childish nature.  Gil was very much into being an
adult.  Maybe that was what killed him, in the end.  When Gil had been six,
hed wanted to be twelve.  When hed been twelve, he wanted to be sixteen.  At
sixteen, twenty seemed a nice age.  At twenty, twenty-five meant respect. 
At twenty-five, he had two years left to live and I couldnt help but wonder
if hed used up all his years racing along.

Still, Paul had a point.  I was twenty-seven and I couldnt imagine anyone I
knew dying.  Gil being dead wouldnt affect me much, although I supposed I
would have to comfort Elaine at some point, Elaine wept openly at movies-,
someones death would like as not have her in hysterics, especially the Great
and Terrible Gil whom she had harbored a sickening crush on for most of the
past three years.  I couldnt imagine death.  I remember when Id been a kid
and my favorite teacher had quit, and Id lived in denial for months, saying
to myself that she was just on vacation and would be back soon.  That kind
of self-delusion took my breath away, these days, and I lived in fear of it.
I often wondered: what if I were living in denial right now, and didnt even
know it.

Danny lived in a squalid little apartment because he insisted on living in
Manhattan proper, which meant he was paying an outrageous amount of money
for the privilege of sleeping in a closet.  Normally upon arrival at his
hovel I had a bunch of smart things to say about living below your means and
the price of garbage in New York City, but with Danny a damp weight in my
arms I didnt really see the point, and Paul wouldnt appreciate my used,
rented wit.  We hauled Danny onto the sidewalk and ignored the smirks of the
cabbie, who probably thought that we probably deserved it, bunch of drunk
well-off idiots.  We tipped him badly and contemplated Danny, lying on the
sidewalk so mutely.

"You get his feet, Ill get his arms." I suggested.

"Hell no.  If he gets sick, its downhill to me." Paul complained.  "Well
each take a leg and drag him."

"What is he, ballast?"

"Just grab a leg."

So, we each took a leg and dragged Danny into his building like a side of
beef We were both buffing and puffing before too long, feeling our age and
then some.

"When they say cigarettes age you faster," I gasped, "they werent kidding."

At his door, we had the distasteful task of going through his pockets and
finding his keys.  We left him on the couch and raided his fridge, looking
for snacks.  Before I knew it it was three in the morning and Paul was
cooking bacon and making toast for BLTS.  Danny snored loudly behind me as I
sat at the kitchen counter, smoking.

"I suppose well all go to the wake and the funeral." I said gloomily.

"Of course." Paul said.

"I hate funerals, wakes.  Perverse."

Paul shrugged, flipping bacon around.  "I like them."

"What?"

He looked at me, and then back at the bacon.  "There are two times in life
that people stop and look around and wonder about life: weddings and
funerals.  As long as its not like my Mom sitting in the casket, I kind of
enjoy them."

"You enjoy them."

"I like the contemplative nature of them."

"You enjoy .... death."

Paul looked at me, all the while smearing mayonaisse onto white toast.  "I
didnt say that.  I just like the atmosphere, the calm in the storm of life.
Does that make sense?"

I felt tired, and the bacon smell was making me a little sick.  "Yes, it
does make sense." I said.  "And its perverse."

There was a horrible noise behind us, a sort of wet screech, and we turned
to regard Danny, who had woken up to be loudly sick on his own carpet.

THREE: Battling Casual Apathy in Modern Day America

IT is amazing, how quickly they can have you sewn up and ready to be viewed
in modern day society.  Paul was in his glory, I supposed, as we all stood
about looking grim and thoughtful in our tasteful suits and dresses,
perfumed, combed, and sober.  Danny was a little green around the gills, and
admitted privately to me that he had only stopped being actively sick a few
hours before show time at the funeral parlor.  He looked moderately
presentable, though, at least not very likely to do anything embarrassing. 
I would have loved him to do something embarrassing, though, it would have
sparked some of the mannequins moving around Gil into action.

I stood with Elaine at the rear, an arm comfortably around her as she cried
a little.  She had been crying pretty much nonstop since Gil had stepped out
in front of that speeding Mazda.  Killed by a foreign car, which had been
going 75 in a school zone.  The driver was unhurt, but his car had been
wrecked by the tree hed turned into after thumping Gil.  There was at least
some charming justice in that.  Elaine was pretty and smelled great,
standing there dressed in a short black dress, and while I sometimes
fantasized about her in my idle moments there was absolutely no romantic
spark at all between us.  With most of my female friends, even ones I
wouldnt date if my life depended on it, there was still some low-grade
romantic tingle that said that under different circumstances, or if we ever
got drunk enough, wed have a go.  There was nothing with Elaine.  I was
attracted to her, but it was a cool, sterile attraction, existing in a
vacuum.  Still, I enjoyed having my arm around her.

The man who had lit Elaines subtle fires was lying dead in a casket twenty
feet away.  She had been introduced to Gil Hinkley two years before at a
bar, a time when Danny was trying to make his various cliques of friends be
friends with each other; a noble but light-headed venture that had no hope
of success.  I for one didnt like people as a rule, new people in specific,
and Paul tended to resist any attempts to force friendships.  He valued
spontaneity.  Kim, of course, loved everyone equally, but it meant nothing.
He loved trees, too.  She had immediately gotten wet at the sight of him,
tall, blonde, and easily charming, Id always found Gil a little light in the
presence department, but apparently he had an affect on women.  I theorized
that it might have been his cologne.

It was funny how we had made the ceremony of death and grief into the
biggest social event of the season.  We were all decked out in our best
clothes, smelling good and with enough hair care products between us to set
a new standard in spontaneous combustion, we were chit-chatting and the only
thing missing were the drinks warming gently in our manicured hands.  It was
a party, and Gil Hinkley was the best host wed ever had: he was quiet,
unobtrusive, and left us to our own devices.

Alice was a red head, and had a nature that didnt match at all, which was
because she was a fake red head and colored her brown hair religiously.  She
was quiet and acerbic and if you knew her well and she felt comfortable with
you she had the foulest mouth imaginable.  Throughout her life she had had
problems with the parents of her various boyfriends: they always thought she
was the sweetest girl theyd ever met until she got comfortable with them, at
which time she often shocked and terrified them with a truly heroic bout of
blue language.  I myself encouraged cursing as a fruitful mode of
expression, banking on the theory that the words wouldnt have been invented
if they didnt have a function.  We had dated, briefly, and had had sex once,
which had been the occasion of our break up.  I didnt ever want to date her
again, but often I would look at her pale skin, smooth and somehow pinked by
a blush by whatever passed for shame in her mind, and I would wish I could
sleep with her again.  I never tried, though, because I thought I wouldnt
get anywhere, because Alice was the sort who made up her mind and stuck with
it, or so it seemed to me.

I eased away from Elaine and towards Alice.  It was a sad fact I didnt like
to think about the fact that Elaine would find plenty of guys who would be
willing to put a comforting arm around her, to let her cry into their
shoulders, and even to let her walk away later without even a hint of
attraction.  Elaine was one of those girls who could get away with teasing
you because she didnt do it on purpose, she did it naturally, without
conscious realization.  I couldnt hold it against her. I put a hand on her
shoulder, and she frowned at me.

"Hey, Mike.  Look at all these jackals."

"Hmmn?"

"They dont care, they dont give a shit.  Theyre here to look good, like all
those fucks on 90210 when they get written into a funeral.  Fucking
ciphers."

"Well," I started, wondering if the fact that I didnt give a shit about Gil
Hickey and his amazingly sensitive funeral would put her off.

"I mean, these sons of fucking bitches just want to have something to talk
about for a couple of days.  Most of them didnt give a shit about Gil." I
bit the bullet.  I was an honest soul at heart, despite persistent rumors to
the contrary.

"Hell, Alice, I didnt particularly like Gil, you know."

"Then why are you here?" she demanded.

I looked at her, wondering if she truly didnt understand six thousand years
of human tradition.  I shrugged, possibly not the best choice of gestures at
that point.  "I knew him, right?"

That seemed to take her aback.  It was funny, when you were trying to be
wise and witty, you most often fell flat.  When you were just expressing the
dumbest part of yourself, the part that knew the least and found the worst
jokes funny, you often stumbled into wisdom.

She nodded.  "Yeah," she sighed, "I did too."

And like that, we were okay.  She looked at me and I looked at her, and at
first I wasnt sure what was going on.  Her eyes were shining in a way I had
only seen once before, the night in the back seat of my car that I had
finally wiggled a finger inside the defense perimeter of her panties and had
gotten my girlfriend of three months to admit to lust and fuck me.  It had
turned out to be the last time Id seen that look, until this precise moment.
In the years between we had settled into a sort of friendship, the sort of
friendship between two people who had slept together and regarded it as a
mistake.  If youve been there you know what I mean.

Oddly enough, I hadnt thought about Alice in a sexual way in a long time;
she was still attractive and still smelled great, but I suppose even dogs
can be taught new tricks if theyre young enough and I had learned that Alice
and I were no longer dancing partners.  Suddenly, she was looking at me with
that vulnerable look men learn to recognize by the age of twelve or perish.
Death, I decided, could be a strong aphrodisiac.  Quite out of the blue, I
cared more about Gil Hinkleys sad demise than I had ever imagined I would,
and struggled to let it show.

FOUR: Proposing Death as a Successful Element in Seducing Catholic Women

THE night after the first day of the wake, we all went out for drinks at
Magoos, and when I say all I mean of course the seven or eight of us who
would think to ask each other out for drinks.  Danny, Kim, Paul, Me, Elaine,
Alice, a few others.  Bobby was there, and I steeled myself for another
round of metaphysical begging for his soul.  I wasnt interested in anyone
else.  I was buying Alice drinks, and talking about how fragile life was.

Seduction is a delicate business, requiring full commitment to guile and a
complete lack of scruples.  Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.  The
fact is that the good guys do not get laid in this country, only the liars
and shitheads.  I had long ago decided to be a shithead, and so far it hadnt
hurt me much.  I had up until Gil Hinkleys death considered myself a
relatively honest man, but with Alice drinking in my sensitivity so
breathtakingly, I was in high gear and unable to stop myself.

I told her how I wished Id known Gil better, and she nodded sympathetically.
I considered adding a tremble to my voice as I mentioned that so many of my
friends were fading from my life, and Gils untimely demise had made me aware
of it, but in the final delivery of such an amazingly heavy and melodramatic
line I chose stoic flatness, on the assumption that women will always assume
more emotional turmoil and sensitivity than you could ever display.  Women,
as a whole, like to think that the guys they are getting hot for are mature
men in touch with their feelings.  The fact that most men are only in touch
with their cocks never occurs to them, and thank god.

In the middle, Danny stood up drunkenly to make a speech.  Elaine was
weeping next to him quietly, and Danny was as drunk as hed been the night
before, only now fully in mourning.

"To Gil Hinkley!" he said creatively, and I had finished my drink before I
realized he wasnt done, his swaying was not a complex form of sitting down,
but rather a complex form of remaining on his feet.  "A great guy." he
continued pedantically, "And a great friend! Only two weeks ago me and Gil
were in this same bar, talking about life and joking about how we were
wasting so much of ours." he paused there, and I have to admit it was a
strong moment.  Even I was bothered by the weight of such a memory, and poor
Danny was a slimmer beast than 1, not ready for such guilt.  He had
scruples, and they would kill him.  "To Gil!" he finished lamely, if
emotionally, and we all clinked glasses in silence.  I even bothered to
clink mine, empty though it was.  Under the table, Alice squeezed my knee. 
I suppose she was supporting me, in case I feltlike bursting into tears
myself I put my hand on hers, and squeezed back.

Danny sat down heavily, more like he fell down accurately, and Paul caught
my eye and winked.  I didnt wink back.  I didnt want to end up carrying
Danny home again, I had Alice to think about.  We only had two more days of
mourning, and then, for all I knew, her comforting urge might evaporate.  I
asked her if she wanted to go outside and smoke for a bit, and she said yes,
she would.  As we walked outside I admired her in a way Id forgotten, the
slimness of her waist, the perky way she walked, the nice way she smelled. 
Once outside I lit us each a cigarette and leaned in to kiss her, and she
responded with a nice, soft kiss.  I pressed myself against her and she
didnt retreat.  I was suddenly in a hurry to get her home.  I broke the kiss
and looked in her eyes.

"Will you come home with me?"

She nodded, silent.  She was shaking slightly.

I ran inside, to get our coats.

"Mike! Just the man I wanted to see!"

Paul was grinning, his white teeth seeming to erupt from his black face. 
Danny was slumped over his arms at the table, and everyone was causing quite
a fuss over him.  I sighed.  "This time," I said as hard as I could, "you
get his feet, and no arguments!"

FIVE: Calculating Baseball Averages as a Way To Achieve Inner Peace

THE last time I had slept with Alice (though there had been precious little
sleep and no bed, just the dank back seat of my car) she had been gawky and
inexperienced, but more than willing to make up for it with energy and
willingness.  I remember thinking, in the middle of it while I nibbled her
shoulder affectionately, that things were working out well and that I might
be willing to fall for her.  She certainly wasnt like most of my previous
girlfriends (most of whom had been high-school wallflowers) who had regarded
sex as the dreaded hurdle of all relationships, something to be endured and
survived.  Alice had gone after me with an orgiastic gusto I hadnt expected,
and it was quite enjoyable: the sweat, the grunting, the realization that
this girl liked sex.

Immediately afterward, however, we had descended into a dark morass of
regret and doubt, which effectively ended our romance and stopped us from
having sex again, even under friendly circumstances, which happened
sometimes when you were lucky and either amazingly mature or amazingly
screwed up.

At three in the morning, with Danny lying green and snoring on the couch, we
fooled around on his loveseat, and I started to think we were going to make
it.  I didnt even care, at that point, if the same thing happened again, if
we went through another bout of distance and confusion.  It just felt good
to finally kiss her and feel her moving beneath her clothes.

She had a curiously sexy mixed smell, half bar and cigarettes and half
perfume and young woman.  We were quiet and whispery, afraid of waking Danny
from his stupor into a puking consciousness that would at the least ruin the
mood and at the most start all sorts of crummy rumors about us.  Rumors
could kill any budding relationship.  Until you were ready to say you were
dating or screwing or whatever, no one liked to hear anyone else say it. 
They tended to get a little self-conscious.  We had volunteered to drag
Danny home and Id glanced at her and wed shared a giddy, breathless moment
of being on the same wavelength, note for note, peak for peak.  It didnt
happen often, at least not to me.

I had always been good with bra straps; hers came off with a slight pop and
a giggle, and I drew it from within her blouse with a flourish, and she
leaned back slightly to undo the buttons of her shirt with equal
showmanship.  If I had been a sentimental man I might have thought right
then that sometimes you were given second chances, opportunities to make the
past right, to go back and re-work the script a little, and if I was
sentimental enough for that I would be sentimental enough to think that such
opportunities were rare blessings and should be treated with care.

I was not sentimental, however, and as Alice parted her blouse with a rare
moment of shyness and restraint, the only thoughts going through my mind
were spells designed to keep Danny passed out.

Afterwards, I dozed with her on top of me, her head resting in the crook of
my arm.  We were half dressed and half sweat and Danny still tore the night
up with his brain-wracking snores. It looked like he might make it through
the night without puking, at least, though I had no doubt he would be
spending some quality time in the bathroom the next morning.  I absently
stroked Alices hair, but I wasnt really thinking about her.  I was thinking
about Gil Hinkley, and the time wed played baseball.

It had been two years ago, almost to the day, which was eerie, and it had
clinched that Gil and I would not be very good friends.  I was jealous of
the easy way he got all the girls to swoon for him, even Alice (who had been
well along as a good friend by then) had expressed a few soft thoughts for
him.  It wasnt fair that such a dull young man whom I could see nothing in
should be so attractive.  Kim and Elaine had organized the game, saying that
we should all get together.  It was one of several attempts to bring various
cliques together, we were supposed to drink beer, eat sandwiches, and play
ball and by the end of the day we were supposed to all love each other like
people in commercials.

It hadnt quite worked, of course.  Oh, I suppose most of the others came
away with at least some fondness for each other, but my instinctive, if
unfair, dislike for Gil was solidified.

Heres what happened:

Gil was pitching for one team, but my team was beating them by a goodly
margin and Paul and I had taken to fooling around out in the field.  We were
just having fun.  But I stepped in to bat in the seventh inning, with Elaine
and Alice chanting cheers along with some of the other girls, and I grinned
at Gil.  He didnt grin back.  What he did was throw at my head, as hard as
he could, and, I thought, on purpose.

I dived down and ate dirt, and then, because I was younger and less ruined,
I stood up, made a joke about eating dirt, and brushed myself off.  I
shouted to Gil that if that was his best fastball hed best let Elaine pitch,
and grinned to let him know that I was kidding and that I could take a joke
with the best of them.  He didnt laugh, he just reared back, wound up, and
threw at my head again.

Lying on my belly in the dirt, I counted to ten slowly.  Bobby Conklin knelt
down and put a hand on my back, and told me to take it easy it musta been a
accident.  I finished my count and stood up.  The cheers had stopped.

"Do that one more time and I wont be able to think its an accident, Gil." I
said.  Then I grinned, because I was still trying to be a nice guy, back
then.  "Ill have to think you really are that bad at pitching."

Elaine laughed nervously.  She wanted Gil and I to get along, because she
planned on having Gil seduce her some day.

The bastard threw at me again.

This time, I backed out of the box and was walking towards the mound even
before Bobby let the pitch sail by untouched.  Bat in hand, I stalked out
towards the bastard.  Gil started coming towards me, but then he seemed to
notice the bat, and he started backing away.  I freely admit I would have
killed him, right then and there, had Paul not run up behind me and grabbed
my arms, pulling me away with superhuman strength and whispering something
about not being an idiot.  Gil shouted apologies and swore he didnt mean it
on purpose, and we eventually resumed the game.  Elaine spent the whole
night torn between me and Gil, not sure which one she ought to be
comforting.  I resented that a little, but got over it, just like everything
else.

And now, Gil Hinkley was dead.  I sat in Dannys apartment with a half naked
Alice Mollik dozing on my chest, cured of murderous thoughts and slightly
hungover from earlier that night, and Gil Hinkley, or what passed for Gil
Hinkley these days, was sewn together and made up, lying in a coffin at
Sharps Funeral Home.  I felt my heart beating, slow and steady, and felt the
peace of being young still and in relative health for a while, comforting.

SIX: Examining Tribal Hierarchies with an Experienced Eye

Alice didnt say a word to me the next morning.  She dressed and left without
a single word, just a few scowls.  I wasnt sure how to take it: was I an
asshole because I took her up on her offer of physical comfort? Or was I a
disappointing lay? Or, maybe, I was just another mistake.  It made me a
little sad, sitting there smoking, all alone in the kitchen, wondering if
Alice thought that sleeping with me was a mistake even before I could do
anything to prove it.  I wanted at least the right to be an asshole on
purpose, to offend her and at the very least get the thrill of being mean
before being shunned.

By the time I was done being sad, Danny had risen from the lower levels of
the couch to stand, slightly green, in the gloom of his living room. "Holy
shit," he said dismally, "youre going to be holding a wake for me, soon."

"How you feeling?"

He grimaced.  "Used.  Badly, I might add."

"Lets get coffee."

We went to the Dignity Diner, which is where I used to hang out when I was a
kid in high school, after late nights and early mornings.  I hadnt been
around much of late, it was still the kids hangout and I was no longer a kid
any more.  We took a smoking booth in the back, where the super bright sun
would not harm poor Danny and his suddenly tender eyes.

"I dont think I can handle another day of this." he moaned.

"Come on," I said evenly, "if youd stop crawling into a bottle and started
dealing with it, you wouldnt be such a wreck."

"lm a wreck?"

"I come from a family of wrecks, Danny.  I know a wreck when I see one."

He looked at me, then reached over to bum a cigarette off of me.  "Wow.  I
feel like I should be mad."

I nodded.  "You should.  I just knocked you down a peg.  But lets not have a
passing contest over it, okay? Youre being a little idiotic about all this,
and Im the one telling you so.  I do this out of friendship, you know."

"Wow." he  repeated,  lighting  his  cigarette  with  an  open-faced, 
childish  look  of  wonder.

"You should never drink to deal with things, man.  I used to that, I lost
three years of college to booze.  I dont even know what I was up to, most
nights.  You know what its like to wake up, not remember where youve been?"
I asked, taking charge.

He nodded.  "Yeah." He was being serious now, thinking about it.

"It sucks, man.  You wake up, theres a beautiful girl in your bed.  Cant
remember a fucking thing about it.  You might have had great sex, who knows?
Or you go out with a friend you never see any more, the next day she leaves
a message saying we had a good talk.  What did we talk about? Ill never
know.  It sucks.  Little bits of your life, gone.  Fuck it.  Get drunk, if
you want, get drunk with your friends and have fun, but never crawl all the
way in, man." I watched him take all this in.  I watched him struggle with
the fact that I had taken charge of the conversation.  The pecking order got
a little blurry when it came to Danny and me, but I had just vaulted over
him.

All men instinctively know their place amongst the other men.  Were all just
tribes, really, with the squaws and the hunters.  The hunters know where
they stand, and in any random group of acquaintances the men all know who
the chief is and what the rankings are, all the way down to The Village
Idiot.  In any random group of strangers this same order is quickly drawn
up, usually within a few minutes of banter.  I meet some guys on the street,
within moments we know who the Big Dick is and where we stand in relation to
him.  This can change, of course, but there is always an order, a ranking.

Maybe women do this too, who knows? If they did the less I knew about it the
better off I was.

Danny and I had been so neck and neck on the pecking order of our friends
that we never thought about it.  Now I was taking charge and moving past him
and he would never forget it.

He squinted at me carefully.  "You saying Ive got a problem, Mike? That what
this is, a one-man intervention?"

"Fuck, no." I said, leaning back.  "I dont believe in that shit.  Everybodys
got a goddamn problem these days.  Fuck that.  Youre just feeling sorry for
yourself and you dont want to deal with the fact that your pat Gil is dead,
and that tomorrow were sinking him into the ground and hes never going to
let you sleep over his apartment any more.  Youre crawling into a bottle so
you dont have to deal with it.  Theres no problem there, no disease, just a
lot of selfishness, Dan.  Because, fuck you, weve got to deal with it.  You
refuse to because youre being a temporary asshole, but weve (Tot to clean up
your puke, get you home, apologize for you in the bar every night.  Im
telling you that I hold everyone responsible for their actions.  Youre an
alcoholic? Fuck you, get help.  Choose to not drink any more, you cant
handle it.  Youre grieving for your friend? Ask me for help, Ill help you. 
Want to talk, Ill talk to you all night and watch the sun come up in a blaze
of male bonding bullshit and creepy homophobic affection.  But I will not
sit here and say oh, Danny, what a sad soul, with his drinking problem and
his dead friend Gil.  I never say the words "poor Danny", Dan." I was
getting exhilarated, these things we never say to anyone being said.  I
snuffed my cigarette and picked up my lukewarm coffee.  I was King of the
table, that was for sure.  Danny had handed me his balls.

He was just studying the table, turning over what Id said.  He smoked a
little, and I just sat back, watching him.  He would either resent me and
(,et mad, or hed walk away in a huff, I figured.  But at the very least I
had absolved myself of responsibility.

He surprised me.  "Yeah, I guess you dont ever say that, man." Then he
laughed.  "Fuck, youre a goddamned character, Mike.  I never met anyone who
could be such a hard ass in his words and such a good guy underneath it all.
Youre the only one I know who says "Fuck you" with affection.  Thanks."

Thanks.  I was dumb for a moment.  Danny was thanking me, as if he actually
thought I was here helping him out.  I couldnt believe he hadnt resented me.
I wondered if there was evolution left in him yet.  "Thanks?"

"Youre right." He said simply.  "Not completely, but youre right Ive made an
ass of myself Im sorry about that.  Im sorry you had to take me home, sorry
I made you guys clean up after me.  Youre right.  I should just deal with
it."

"Well, alright," I said, losing my self-righteous swagger, "fuck you."

He stared at me for a moment, and then we both began to laugh.  It had been
the most civilized pissing contest Id ever been in.

SEVEN:  Treading Water in the Sea of Estrogen

I SAW Alice the moment I walked into the parlor.  She was looking normal,
looking good with another small dress and some nice white stockings.  We
looked at each other as I walked in, and I spread my hands to ask her how
she wanted to play it.  She just looked away, and I stuffed my hands in my
pockets, grinning to myself and shaking my head.  I didnt really think I
knew what Id done, if Id done anything.  I was going to have to wait until I
had an opportunity to defend myself Until then, I would wallow in the fact
that the equations still held: sex, plus regret, equals bad man.

Everyone was back, and I found myself being borne into one of the side rooms
Funeral parlors always seemed filled with, quiet places to contemplate your
life or cry or just avoid people, whatever.  Paul and Kim were each shaved
and smelled like cologne, Kim with his skin reddened by the razor.  They
were grinning, but I scowled at them.  Part of it was that I knew what they
were grinning about.  Part of it was that this was a funeral, and you werent
supposed to be walking around grinning like a pack of wolves.

"So, Mike, whatchu been up to?" Paul asked, smooth.

"Not much, why?" I asked tiredly, wanting to get this over with.

"We hear youve been up to Alice Mollik." Kim said with a leer.  Kims face
was not built for leers, and it looked alien on him.

"Whered you hear that from?" I asked, still playing cool.

"Danny.  "

"Danny." I said flatly.  So the bastard had been conscious for something,
and hadnt said a word to me.  All morning when lm giving him the rah rah be
a man about it speech, hes got some snippet of me and Alice playing in his
head.  I started to feel a little angry, with my two friends grinning at me
like little children, Danny not saying a word to me but bolting from the
Dignity Diner to spread rumors like a little old hen.  Screw it, I got angry
and stood up.

"Fuck off, idiots." I growled.  "You want gossip go speak with the women,
okay?" They were laughing.  They didnt know I was really pissed. "Hey,
fuckheads," I hissed, "this is a fucking wake, not a fucking pep rally,
okay?"

Kim leered at me again, practicing his new expression.  "We just -"

I couldnt stand his face, looking at me with that sleazy look.  I stepped up
and slapped him, not hard, just a tap, to make a point.  "I said shut the
fuck up."

Kim touched his cheek, and stared at me in amazement for a moment. out of
the corner of my eye I could see Paul just standing there, shocked.  Then
Kim frowned.  "You didnt have to fucking hit me, asshole -" he started,
taking a step towards me.

Paul was suddenly between us.  "Okay, okay, the mans right, its a wake, not
a boxing ring.  Calm down, cairn down both of you."

Kim made to take a swipe at me around Paul.  "Asshole, take a fucking joke!"
he hissed.

I backed away.  We were making a little bit of a scene, and some gawkers had
come to stand in the doorway.  I put my arms up so Kim could see I didnt
want to fight him.  I could beat Kim in a fist fight if I had to, the
smiling young man had never been in a real fight his whole life.  But I
didnt want to.

Paul turned on him and pushed him back, telling him to calm down, relax, not
make a big deal out of it at the wake, for christs sake.  I pushed my way
through the gawkers and went out into the parking lot, letting the cold
night air fill me up and flatten me down.  I lit a cigarette and sat on my
car, looking up at the moon.  Pretty soon Paul came out looking for me. 
When he spotted me, he sat down next to me and stayed quiet for a little
while.

"What was that all about?" he asked.

"You guys pissed me off.  You were being idiots."

He nodded, in good humor.  "Granted.  But that doesnt mean you hit Kim, your
friend."

"The nicest guy in the world." I said.

He chuckled.  "Is that right? I think youre right, Mikey.  Kim doesnt have a
mean thought in his body.  You might have taught him one in there, though. 
That was uncalled for."

"And you two giggling like schoolboys because I slept with Alice Mollik is?
Fuck you."

There was a little quiet between us for a while.  "You want to talk about
it?" He finally asked, quietly.  Paul was not a man who was comfortable in
his male bonding.  I gave him points for trying

"I dont know," I said, exhaling smoke.  In the cold it looked like I was
breathing out clouds.  "I dont know.  For years weve been friends, and
now......I dont know."

He shrugged.  "You cant have sex and expect it to be the same."

"I was drunk." I said.

"So was she." he said.  I didnt know what that meant.

"So now what, you regret it?"

I nodded.  "Yeah I regret it.  Two days ago we would talk and hang out and I
knew that I still wanted her but it was okay.  Now I think I fucked it all
up."