Chance: Chapter -6(the strangely-enumerated beginning)

yep, that's right, kiddies. today, we're gonna learn all about a certain brand of human parasite whose purpose still eludes your teacher after extensive years of study.....who's that again??
the P-i-m-p....okay! we'll start off with a popular definition: (n) a young (usually black)male who makes his living by "holding" the money of several (usually white) prostitutes. his major duties include chauffering(pink cadillac?), "motivational speaking"(WHACK SLAP "bitch") and procurement(eg dope, clothing, food, motel rooms). also, collective bargaining("if you guys look the other way, my bitches'll give you free blow jobs").....scouts prospects for future business ventures. allegedly "protects"(although the particulars of that remain very hazy for this writer).....in any event, it seems that this culture cannot think of a FEMALE prostitute without also picturing "her pimp"....people believe they are somehow an integral part of employment as a sex-worker in the world today....
okay, so, that there is BY FAR the most charitable picture i shall ever EVER paint for you of a pimp. read it, love it, toss it aside; now i'm gonna tell you the truth, as i learned from personal experience.
1)pimps do not actually help a girl find work. that part she does all by herself, the same way all the free-agent girls do it: stand on the corner in slutty clothing making eyecontact with motorists. guess that's why pimps are also totally useless as "protection" against sickos, whack-jobs, and sadistic lust-murdering pricks of all sorts....weasel-boy ain't IN the front seat of that car with ya when it really counts! might kinda dampen the mood if John saw where his money was really goin......
2)not all "girls" have pimps. i did not, and i was just as much a ho as the rest of em....yeah, that's right i was--throw a fucking rock if you don't like it. block me from your stupid myspace page; it's been done before.....now where was i?
3)pimps are pussies, for the most part--they're used to dealin with dumb chicks who don't ask a lotta questions(yknow, like "why exactly would i want a pimp when i'm doin just fine on my own??") or beat-down chicks who are afraid.....they operate like the leader of some ratty-ass cult, dictating from on high....and they don't really have all kinds of glamorous style, for the most part....they live like poor white trash outta some welfare motel. they are transients who are a little bit schooled in the art of mind-control and "voluntary" captivity.....like cults, they often kidnap recruits for the initiation rites and demand all worldly possessions and earnings. you get separated from the herd and progressively brainwashed.....but seriously, why would anybody go to one of these losers in the first place??
i asked so many little girls as we stood out on the corner, and never seemed to find an answer.
now, there's another story i'd like to tell you: a story about the real life of pimps and their "bitches".....i got a firsthand peek into their life in a way few people do, you see....as a young teenaged girl workin the streets, i was every pimp's potential recruit....i tried to avoid confrontation with the "real" businessmen and swindled the wannabes.....for the most part, i stayed safe, but one summer morning, i got taken literally for a ride, against my will, by this punk-ass black dude in a mercedes by the name of Chance. why would he go by a dog's name? i got my "chance" to ask him, hah.....
but that story, i'm gonna save for later....i'm tired of typing and i've got stuff to do......before i go however, there is one thing i wanted to tell y'all: back in those days, i saw all kinds of kids workin the "boy block". i always got on with them far better than i did with the "owned" females....funny how i never met a male hooker who had a pimp....

chapter -5

heeey i'm back.....now where was i, faithful readers??
oh yes.
once upon a very long night of crack-smoking, i got the Jones big-time, went back out to make myself a bit more money at 7 in the mornin or so....lucky for me, i lived right in the middle of it all, in a quaint li'l neighborhood known as "gay village"(officially, Bay Village). guess you could call me a swindler, cause i had a good racket goin that made me a hot commodity in a market flooded with girls.....
see, my closest-guarded secret was what for most folks is the most obvious thing about them.....bein that i'm nearly six feet tall, big-boned and flatchested, and i've always been sorta boyish in mannerisms, it was real easy to slide right on by in Gay Village as one of the dozen or so drag-queen hookers walkin the block at any given night.....wanna know the weirdest part? i fit in far better with them than i ever have with other girls....(plus, me and my boy/girlfriend Angel the six foot blonde made a pretty stunning pair--we'd go out on the town and get treated like celebrities....it was great fun.)
actually, i didn't really go out to scam folks into thinkin i had a "dangler", hah.....it was a role i just slid into without even knowin it.....i'd hang around being myself and chattin folks up in the local bars and apparently everybody assumed i was a queen....now and again somebody'd ask me my sex and it didn't matter what answer i gave cause they already "knew".....it would go like this:
"so are you a boy or a girl--cmon, tell me...."
"what do YOU think?"
"i knew it, you're real pretty though....are you on hormones?"
"oh well they come naturally since i'm a girl an'all...."
"yeah, right, you're a bad liar sweetie pie...."
"oh really, and what if i told you i was a he-man under this dress?"
"i'd say that god only gives ya an ass like that for one reason, honey!"
hah, well, my husband's back from work so i'm gonna go....see ya later all you anonymous readers of cyberspace!

chapter -4

oooh my my i cannot believe y'all are willing to read my silly li'l true tales of "whoa"! My Convoluted Construct, indeed.....yes yessss my pretties.....
uh, yeah, that's me parting the Magickal Mysts of Thyme....
so as i just told y'all, in those days i was making my living as a Freelance Performance Artiste.....gymnastics and acting combined with a heavy dose of abnormal psychology.....being rather abnormal myself, i found myself pretty well suited to the job, to tell ya the truth....no seriously.
meet lots of oddballs, the hours are great, and walking around aimlessly at all hours of the night is something i've always done anyway.....plus, i was pretty good at it--"brand loyalty" is the name of the Quality Assurance game, eh?....and NO it wasn't cause i was cheap, either(yeah, i know there's some wise-ass out there snickeringly considering THAT possibility....HELL i had a reputation to uphold! buncha "respectable" married men out cruisin for a 100 dollar drag queen Quickie would be happy to weasel their ways outta payin ME if they thought they could get away with it....anyhow, this is CAPITALISM kiddies!! it's not the legitimate cost of the item in question that my boys were payin for, but the NOTION of superiority which me, the advertiser, succeeded in projecting....after all, sex only comes in a few flavors--close your eyes and that mouth on your dick feels the same as if it were your own fat momma's, hah....)
the true irony of it all is that now, as a legit human being on the "right side of the law", i'll probably NEVER be able to make the kind of money i used to make back when i was a drag-queen-posing ho. hopefully at least i'll be able to make some sorta Lastingly Meaningful Contribution to Society instead......BAH HAH HAH HAAAA yeah fuckin rightie-oH! hopefully at least i can manage to raise kids who don't grow up juvenile delinquents like Yours Truly! let's reset that bar, folks!! hah hah hah!!
hm, did i digress? yep, looks like it.....a detour to the land of NASTY, perhaps?? an economics lesson? or perhaps a small treatise upon a dark philosophy of existence?? yeah, take THAT Nietzche, fuck your "super man" he's a fag and everybody knows it!! it is for you, my valued reader, thereof to be the judge.....tee hee....but i must go, for my rabbits are in need of water.

chapter-3

my tangent grows longer! Current mood: thirsty
ah....where were we, when last i ran off at the keys here? oh, right, i was gonna tell you why i, personally, think pimps suck...but first(and absolutely free of charge!)let me throw in a few of the reasons i think society's (daytime) treatment of prostitutes as social undesireables is a complete joke. you lucky devils, i'm so generous that way.
anyhow....yep, everybody hates a Ho--oooh, they're skanky and gross and nobody likes em sellin their asses near where they live....and of course, NOBODY we know EVER pays for those much-maligned wares....hell, if everybody was tellin the truth there, though, i guess all the little boys, girls and boy/girls would have to find a new business to go into....good thing some of those respectable husbands, fathers, priests and teachers of our various communities are only "wink wink" denying.....hah!
i mean, shit--at least you know what a ho wants from ya.....you can fulfill that particular need(unlike the ol'Battle Axe at home who's got ya by the balls with the prenup or the Catholic Church or whatever you are runnin from)....i met all sorts of upstanding citizens in my old line of work: doctors, professors, preachers, architects, policemen(of course) businessmen of all sorts....even a pro golfer(hey, golf's a daytime game, right?)
most of em thought i was a dude underneath it all, and the charade was easy enough to perpetuate, cause(as you may already be aware)many queens are sorta "touchy"(hah pardon the play on words) about a certain "offending organ"....don't want it touched or seen, even....some go as far as binding the entire region with duct-tape just to keep everything intact and in line....
hm, well i'll be back soon.....still haven't gotten to the point, have i? oh well....you'll hear the story eventually--when i damn well feel like it! ha hah hah
thanks for reading, boys and girls!

chapter -2

chinatown Current mood: contemplative
why hellooo silent readerses....i'm back once more.
hm....gettin past the duct-tape footnote of my last writing effort....
okay, come with me to the early-AM streetcorners of Gay Village and boston's chinatown.....that's where i lived, you see, and plied my trade.....
chinatown's a colorful place, day or night, full of the exotic, the lurid and the illicit; also, the violent, the ugly and the generally seedy or corrupt; methadone clinic on the corner next to the slaughterhouse on a block with jewelry stores, fabric shop, ancient traditional chinese herbalist parlors, cafeteria-style asian dining-stands, religious paraphernalia boutiques, dirty movie theatres, massage parlor and aquarium hobby-shops.....a 24-hour restaurant where you can sit down and order "cold tea" anytime and get a ceramic pitcher filled with lukewarm beer for five bucks....brothels, sweat-shops, asian grocers, human-traffickers and bakeries; greasy pigeons drinking from squalid puddles stalked by elderly chinamen with nets....the earliest-opening, lowest-rent liquor-store in town whose customer base sits drinking from brown paper bags in a trash-strewn park beside a vacant lot down the block and sleeps 'neath the mass pike underpass that looms concrete gray to the east, weathered as the hands and faces of those it shelters.....humanity's intersection; with danger riding shotgun.....
i loved chinatown.....i'd sit on the old granite steps of a condemned brownstone, just watching all the people....i got to know their faces, where they worked, and yet many of them i never once spoke to....the language barrier, and cultural taboo, most likely.....i wonder how they lived, if life really is better for them here.....perhaps it is for some, but i wonder....

Chapter -1

Chance the Pimp: "how we met" Current mood: awake
one morning, after the sun had come up and most of the streetcorner crack dealers by the transportation building had gone home to catch some sleep(it was around 8, i think) i still had a pretty serious jones.....it's always that last "one more good hit" that gets ya, man....i'm tellin ya--party hard enough for long enough and the judgment centers start gettin blurry whilst the rest of ya's still cryin for more....shit, i knew it was a hopeless venture, but the part of me that probably would love to buy lottery tickets was at the controls by then so out of my comparatively-safe house i went, into the squinting brightness and rushing of a summer morning downtown.....there still might be a few dudes cruisin the block, lookin for someone like me....my mouth was bone-dry, hands shaking faintly, sighing more than breathing, probably......felt kinda naked out in the light of day, really.....
so i was pretty glad when a well-washed newer-model beige mercedes with tinted windows pulled up to the curb.....looked just like so many of the rich-guy vehicles i'd gotten used to climbing into, i really didn't think anything of it one way or the other when the window rolled down to reveal a youngish black guy in an expensive suit......i mean, he looked pretty legit...."goin out?" "how much?"
blah blah blah....the usual haggling....but he showed me the bills so i got in the passenger seat....little did i know i was about to get the grand tour of a whole different world from the one in which i had become used to existing.....one from which some don't make it out alive......

Chance chapter 0

monica goes to mattapan Current mood: curious
so there i was in this dude's nice-ass car, having just finished both the pay and service elements of our agreed-upon transaction....but this dude didn't act quite right--generally dudes get real quiet and ready to say Bye Bye to the person in their passenger seat when the deed's over and done with like it was....hell, i was gettin antsy--i wanted to take my newly-acquired cash and buy me a bag of rocks before the dealers went home for the mornin/afternoon.....and suddenly here i was stuck in the car with some weirdo who cannot STOP chattin me up?? fuck that shit! he didn't even wanna put the key back in the ignition, that's how intent he'd become on "getting to know his friendly neighborhood hooker". i was suspicious, but kept my poker face--smile, nod, gently urge we get our asses in gear so i can escape this loser and his thousand questions game.....the questions themselves were not exactly ROUTINE, but in that line of work, folks will ask you all manner of weird things out of curiosity or less-savory psychological motivations.....just to keep em on their toes, it was my strict policy to give only the vaguest of answers.....let em all wonder, yknow?
finally, we were driving out of the parking-lot. unfortunately, i was pretty certain we were not driving to my intended destination. hell, by now i knew i wouldn't be able to buy shit, anyhow. personal experience had taught me that resistance in such ambiguous situations generally leads to a serious risk of otherwise-avoidable bodily harm....why turn an extended drive with some tweaker into the last hours of your life just cause you'd rather be someplace else, yknow? i may be on the tall side, but i'm no fool--i may keep my life but if a dude's hellbent on commiting bodily violation upon me, i'd rather convince him to wear a condom and know what he's up to than awake in a few hours with a severe head injury and no clue what had transpired. actually, i've always liked my brains, and those are the first thing to go, after a few good beatin's, yknow....i figured i'd probably about hit my limit in those regards......
so i was quiet and passive in this dudes passenger seat as we drove further and further into unfamilliar territory.....actually, i think we went in circles a bit.....he'd sneak a peek now and again, sidelong.....


ah yes so after several days of writerly absentee-ism, i've returned to close the deal.
here's my Lame Ass Pimpin story.
i hopped into this dude's car--front passenger seat.....door locks, and the dude seems to be a bit too glad to be just driving off with me....doesn't answer when i try discussing standard business....."uh, what do you wanna do? you got someplace in mind to do it that we're drivin to?" that sorta thing.....just as i was about to force the lock and take Abandoned Prospect's Leap onto the pavement, the dude finally parked and quit playin deaf-mute....now, dear readers, it may strike you as rather lame, this guy subjecting me to that kinda rudeness and me just accepting it without much question. perhaps it would befit the situation to impart some lessons-learned herein: firstly, as a prostitute, one sees the range of treatment, especially on the rides TO and FROM the "deed" itself....some dudes are perfect gentlemen, as if i was just the lady they were takin out for a real, old-fashioned date.....those guys are nice, but uncommon.....most guys are pretty quiet, a bit abrupt....then of course, you've got your various freaks and weirdos who wanna discuss nasty shit for as long as you're in shouting distance....these folks can be entertaining, but generally they're strictly cheapskates lookin to get a free jerk-off on a workin grrl's time...the ones among that group with money always ended up findin me like a magnet, though....hah....being a sick, quick-minded, creative soul does have its upside in the wonderful world of Ass for Sale...course, when you're lookin for weird shit, i get to charge extra, but that don't explain why those boys kept on comin back.... hah
anyhow, the last subset of the John crowd are your classic psychological sadist/control freaks....way less fun than the pervie set, rest assured.....unfortunately, there's a lot of em out there.....these guys are an interesting bunch, from a distance....in some ways, you could classify most sex-trade customers as being into control/dominance in a basic sense, obviously....they pay to be Mister Right for a little while, and whatever they say, goes(for the girl lookin to stay in business).....if they say they think dogs are handsome, by golly, you nod your pretty little head and tell em "you are too baby". hah. they whip out the one-inch wanker and it's the best one you've seen all week....if that's what they wanna hear....sometimes it can be a bit tricky, pickin up on the cues....see, it goes back to basic psychology.....
okay, when a dude goes out and pays for sex, generally he's done it before and mostly it's not because the man is unable to find a chick willin to spread her legs free-of-charge. this leaves many folks wondering "why does he choose to pay?" well, if he's not a tightwad, perhaps it is because he can afford a prettier hooker than Frieda Freebie was, even in her prime....but even so.....what is it that makes some boys keep comin back?(btw: street-payin crowd: exclusively male. never even heard of a female "John" cruisin the block. though i did have a Sugar Mama, once...different story...)
the best answer that i could figure out after numerous encounters with the aforesaid group was that you, as the hooker, are essentially a "blank slate". everybody has their "ideal fantasy", of what they REALLY want in a sexual encounter, what "gets them off" if you will....now, being totally anonymous and presumeably a decent personality-study, the hooker plays "movie screen" to the john's slide-projection.....the funny thing is that some of these guys are not consciously aware of their own desires.....they probably don't even think much about why they would rather pay a hooker than do their wife.....you (if you feel some pride in your job as a hooker) must discern what kind of person gives this dude a hard-on the quickest.
some guys probably have several main fantasy scenarios they might play off of over time.....others are pretty well focused on one, which they build upon. generally, the "other" character in this play has a pretty well-defined character worked out for them already, too....some dudes want you to be their high school girlfriend, in all seriousness....this one guy would pay to stroll an athletic field in dorchester, hand in hand, across to the bleachers like he'd just played a football game and i'd cheered him on.....there we'd be in the dark, this guy at least fifty and overweight, still livin with his mama where he'd grown up, reliving the best years of his life.....i kinda felt for him, but not enough to give the man a discount, heh heh....
other guys have 'hooker-based' fantasies....only of course they still want you to be someone "other"....some dudes want you to tell em you're so sad to be out there sellin your ass on the streets, so ashamed, etc....then they can comfort you or save you or whatever it is they wanna do for Poor Little Polly Prostitute, hah.....very victorian, huh!
then there's the ones who want you to be super-submissive, like the stereotypical asian geisha.....you exist only to be seen by Him, speak only when spoken to, no eye-contact, that sorta thing....he is smart, capable, clever, sexy, whatever it is that he wants you to act like he is. you are nothing, and he treats you like it. he likes to see you confused or bewildered because that is a classic indication of powerlessness, which is what he wants more than anything else. he is short-tempered and disdainful, sometimes....mean, in other words. he says one thing, then insists he said another.....does a million little disrespectful things just to let you know your place. is not interested in your "personhood" other than to ask occaisional degrading questions, perhaps.....you are demure, whenever possible. unless he wants you to beg him not to hurt you or some shit. some of these dudes really get off on seein you look fearful.....these are the ones who probably tortured bunny-rabbits back when they were little punk-ass kids, still workin on their Mommy Complexes....i played em like a fine violin, but hated every moment i had to spend in their presence--it was all i could do sometimes to keep from removing certain vital anatomic structures...
oops, it looks like i got sidetracked again...YET again....oh well, guess that means i'm in control here.....that's right: i got the power, and you better LIKE TO WAIT, mama-san.....motherfucker!

Chance: ch.+1

chance takes me to his spot Current mood: horny
so there i was, forlornly lookin out the passenger-side window of this fancy automobile, feelin kinda resolute....oh well, guess crack can wait til tomorrow, eh?
as we drove, this dude said "gimme your money".....not exactly the first time THAT had happened to me.....generally speakin, that's Order of Business #1 for an Asshole, once he gains the proverbial "upper hand" in the situation...hm, they always want a refund.....hey, what's one bj among many? so he got his sixty bucks back.....generally that's all they want, unless they really like me a lot.....but the Driving Tour of Gangland? i was becoming nervous.
[Implied Threat of Force.
something you learn to taste in the air around ya: "this guy would have no problem doing XYZ" ....see, some folks just don't have that aura about em....they can threaten all day long, lookin to get my money, and i'll just laugh, "what you gonna do, boy?" don't matter if they flash a weapon, either.....some folks don't have serious Hurtin in em.....others though need not say anything because you can just tell, even if they're naked as a jaybird.....real badness works wonders with his hands...
still, it takes a little while to figure out who means it vs. who's just talkin shit.....i generally erred on the side of callin bluffs til i got knocked out a couple times and got sick of memory-holes....mostly i depended on my golden gift of gab to work my way outta dangerous situations, though....it was my invisible armor, sword, shield and security-blanket that i carried with me always; where-ever i went, i was wrapped in the comforting knowledge that my mind was sharp enough to pierce the callous outer layers of all but the most-soulless of human beings; with lowly words i could work my way inward, towards the heart, until i was no longer a stranger....deceptively immaterial asset; the secret weapon which so many times did save my life....]
finally, the dude parked. i took a deep breath--was this the end here? i held my breath and my submissive pose.
"yknow, girl, you gave over your money real good. i like you..."
"thank you" it was nearly a whisper...my brain was runnin like a gerbil on a wheel....the Robber-Punk/Gentleman? now there'd be a first.....
"ah, girl, you good....that's why today's gonna be your lucky day--baby, if you stay with me, i'll show you how it's REALLY done...."
what choice did i have? the damn car was set up so i couldn't leave.....
"you want that, boo?"
guess that was my cue....."uh(i looked at my feet)i don't really understand".....i tried to look a bit vacuous--playin dumb gets their guard down sometimes.....
"you gotta lot to work with here, boo....what's your real name?"
Monica. [they never believed me ......don't know why; guess many hookers use "stage names".....if your name is William and you make your money in high heels and a thong it's understandable......or if you're a little girl named Mary Rose you'd rather be Sabrina Sexpot or somethin...still, i'm rather fond of my name....this one guy once told me in thick Irish Brogue, "yer a sweetheart, but i don't like that name honey"...."ACH tell that to me Mams!" i told him. he gave me an extra 20 bucks right there, just for bein witty! how bout that, huh?]
"I'm chance, baby....They call me chance cause that's what i am....i'm YOUR chance, now, boo....i'll get you out there makin some REAL money, see--i know how it's done"
[ah, now it was beginning to make sense....i'd been screwin over would-be upstart pimps for quite some time now.....get em to share some rock with me, promise to come back and be Their Girl and tell em seeya....this dude, however, i suspected might be the real deal.....curiosity got the better of me, mixed with disbelief.....you hear about something like that for your entire life, but never quite know how much truth is in those stories, yknow?? especially cause the queens who i was friends with and all the boys from the Jock Block were all free agents......i only ever heard of pimps in the whispered accompaniments to pointed fingers....i'd nudge my runnin-buddy Angel some night we were workin the street together...."hey honey, ain't she sexy?" nod toward some chick off in the distance...."bet she'd look nice in leather, tee hee" and angel would shake her head "hhm-hm, she's WAY off-limits, girlie; she's one of them with So-n-So; won't even answer back if we talk to her!....anyway,she's ALWAYS out here, real used goods! aw, cmon, let's get outta here, find a better corner!"
( i'd let Angel escort me gingerly by the arm, and we'd trot away....i always let Angel play Big Sis to me, cause it made her happy.....she'd endured an isolated childhood as a boy in dorchester, never had anybody to care for like she wanted to, never had anybody to look out for her until she realized at age 13 that she could be a sex-toy for somebody and never have to worry....i think it kinda mended a bit of that wound, bein somebody's sister)]
anyhow, i said as little as possible to this dude....just looked floorward and nodded when appropriate, let him tell me everything he wanted to tell about his life as a Pimp....it was apparent that i would soon get to see for myself exactly how much of his lecture was true and how much was pure wind from an inflated ego.....
after all, i was a "captive audience", even if i'd been polite enough to pretend otherwise.....
hey, politeness saves the ass. practice it and it just may be yours it saves one day, too....
well, my hands hurt and i'm gettin fidgety here so i'll leave off....shall return, darlings.....

Chance(chapter +2)

finally, we pulled up at this place with a name like "harbor inne" or some shit.....the details are hazy in my mind, as my concentration was focussed elsewhere....i'm not sure if it was one of them "pull up to your motel room" type places, or if we walked in via the lobby--all i really recall is a little institutional-knee-burn carpeting of red hue and a handicap ramp by the front entrance.....by now, Chance(a good canine name, don't you think?) had really got up a head of steam, explaining the finer points of pimphood to Monica Fresh-Meat....
okay, first off, he'd drive ya to the corner and it was your job to go out and make money the old-fashioned way....you and the other girls did your thang and then after each trick, hand Chancie the money you'd just made, and go back out and do it all again....he'd take license-plate numbers, he said.....as comforting as that was, i'm pretty certain he did this for "personal future reference" rather than "information for the proper authorities in case of kidnapping"....after all, what's ONE bitch in the big pimp-business picture? somebody's gotta play Canary to his GoldMine, eh?
as a Pimp and his Bitches, Chance said, we was all one little family, with family rules and family punishment....he was Dad, and he was the king of the household. his girls were to do what he said "or else"(unspecified). [Much like all the documentaries i've seen on Mormon polygamists, in fact....only of course, mormon boys are white and the whole damn bunch of em are first cousins, hah hah hah....] then, just like the mormons, there was a "time served" sorta hierarchy among his women--his Top Girl was the one who'd been his bitch for longest, and she was the only chick who could push us other chicks around....she was his eyes and ears whilst Chancie was away, "recruiting" the likes of me, he said.....(note: there is none more dangerous, frustrated and psychologically-twisted than a despot's second-in-command. respect and fear her, especially if she has something to lose if you're "too" successful)
good ol'Chance also informed me that he was to be allowed a piece of ass, whenever and where ever he wanted, from any of his livestock....he even had a handy little one-word code for "bend over and take off your pants, bitch"....it was something like "drop" or "roll" i think....i can't recall offhand....he did a little Translatory Rundown for me, for all his special code-words....."give me the money you just made sellin your ass" was a little phrase like "square up", (or clean up or....? i was watching the guy's body language more than anything)he had a small laundry-list of catchy phrases to ease the verbal burdens of white-slavery.....one thing i recall quite clearly, however, was the way he kept on lookin me up and down, saying "yeah, you got a lot for me to work with here boo, you'll do good once i clean you up"....like i was a sickly farm-animal and he was doin me a favor.....after all, his girls' asking-prices were the same as mine was already, and i never had any shortage of willing clientele....hell, i was getting calls all day sometimes, from boys lookin to book....i was turnin folks down--my main problem wasn't one of saleability, it was one of schedule--what i needed was a John who'd pay me every time i ran out of crack, and a dealer who didn't go to sleep before eight in the morning! shit, i'm not real vain, but i was gettin a little insulted, here! the only way this dude could make me any better than i already was would be if he became my Fairy Godmother and i got the keys to that mercedes he was drivin!!
so i guess you could say i still wasn't really sold on the whole You Boss Me Bitch thing.....but i decided i'd play it cool, let my day unfold as it obviously was going to do whether i wanted it to or not....i still had one basic question: what was the upside? what, exactly, did having a Pimp provide a chick that bein self-employed did not??
also, i have to confess: part of me just could not believe that this short little black dude(however well-appointed and muscular)could REALLY have the stable of Fine White Bitches Workin For Him that he claimed to have....i wanted to get a look at these chicks for myself--i put the odds at 5 to 1 that they'd prove Bumpy....
[still, i've known enough sexy women with ratty-lookin little(much-fawned-over) weasels for boyfriends(and nearly as many other sexy women who WANT those same booby-prizes of manhood with an unrequited passion.....chicks are crazy, i don't care what they say)]
so, as we entered the anonymous little motel-room, my wariness was tempered with an almost bemused curiosity.....

Cuckoo: the tale of Mike the Rock.

mike the rock was built like a fire hydrant: short, wide, and stocky enough to withstand a car’s impact. with shaggy white curls and bright blue eyes, he had a slightly crazed look about him, but he was mostly a mellow old deadhead. in fact, he was so stable upon first impression, generally speaking, you might swear he was gettin over on the government. however, he spent intermittent, intense periods of time truly earning his cuckoo check. during those times, he had a tendency to disappear, suddenly, without telling his friends. in the grips of his inner demons, he would run off in a “state”; a different man. that mike would wantonly steal things, scream and yell, smash things, tear things apart, beat people up, god knows what else—mike would just go out on the rampage until somebody stopped him, which, apparently, was not easy to do.
since these were solitary episodes of madness, we could only ever speculate as to what truly may have taken place, either from mike’s storytellin, (later, upon his quick return, if we were lucky) or from his prolonged absence(at which time we just assumed he was either in jail or, more likely, the looney bin, again. he always got out eventually, one way or another—how, remains a mystery to all but mike the rock.)
that is why it was so hard for mike to remain in subsidised housing. he would get a place, keep it for a few happy months of homemaking, get all settled in, and then suddenly go bats again. disappear, get locked down someplace for a few months, get out, thumb a ride back to Home Sweet Home, and find it occupied by a new tenant. his belongings would be long-picked-thru by either neighbors, landlords, or his “long-term-guests”, not that there was anything good there, anyhow.
then, he would get desperate, sleep outside, drink cheap whiskey with me(I had that youthful liver, and so could drink him under a dumpster with a liter of old thompson. yum, caramel coloring.) and end up goin batty again before you could say “cuckoo”. which he probably did. at least, after homelessness, getting locked up was no big thing. three hots, a cot, a toothbrush to sharpen, showershoes, dope, prison bitches, you name it, man. all the comforts of indoor livin.
but that wasn’t the Rock I saw. nope, the mike I knew was rough-but-gentle, friendly, and jovial all the time, always lookin for a semi-honest way to make a buck. we walked thru allston together, putting fliers in every pissed-off yuppie’s doorway, windshield, ass, you name it. yep, we plastered the place with ads. for what, i never payed much attention, but it wasn’t blatantly illegal at the time. and walking around outside gettin happy was something we both liked to do. he would tell me his old hippie stories. I’d tell him my young-hippie stories. that was a nice way to spend a summer day.
mike had a place for awhile in brockton, in a neighborhood that would not be more obviously infested with crack, if it had had a neon sign with an arrow above it, flashing “the drug dealers are IN”. brockton is a lovely city. mike raised nary an eyebrow with his guitarpicking antics and oddball guests. in fact, he received such a warm reception, a young puerto rican neighbor gave mike a pitbull puppy as a welcoming present. perhaps he anticipated a future customer in mike the rock. the kid was probably right.
mike loved that pup. his name, appropriately, was Cuckoo. he grew into a very sturdy specimen of dogliness in no time; full of energy, a doggy smile constantly plastered on his goofy, brown-white-and-pink face, tongue perpetually lolling out the side of his mouth. cuckoo loved people, belly rubs, children, even other animals. he was everything a pitbull is rumored not to be, and loving it, as stubborn as they come. and boy, was that dog solid. like a miniature mike in all respects, was cuckoo—boisterous, gregarious, a little bit odd, and generally the friendliest pain in the ass one could ask for. I liked them both. they were good for eachother, I figured.
in brockton, mike had a porch on his secondfloor crib, overlooking a shopping-carriage parking-lot of a vacant lot and several other dilapidated multiunits with similarly old, grey, and rotting shingles covering their outer walls. it was like old-hippie heaven, with a nice chair for him, a few milkcrates in case of guests, and a pot dealer right next door. mike and cuckoo were sittin pretty, living off of cheap steaks and government-issue canned goods, in their personal prepaid palace. there was nothing nice in the apartment to wreck, and no neighbors who would object to anything up to and likely including a dead body in the hallway, were one to appear.
check day was a veritable holiday in that place.
we visited mike one time out there, while his friend Matty was living with him. matty had been given The Boot by his longtime girlfriend/possible wife whose name was never spoken, and he was bummed out. matty was a pathetic specimen of personhood, when we got out to brockton. long brownish/greyish hair bedraggled, face puffy, clothes unchanged since god-knows-when, matty looked to be the champion of moping, as he lay sprawled on the “guest mattress” in mike’s back room. he barely spoke, and his brown eyes were very bloodshot. we didn’t ask him how he was doing. he didn’t volunteer.
mike and cuckoo more than made up for matty, however. cuckoo was pleased as punch to have new visitors to beg pets from, wiggling and waggling all over and slobbering big puddles of drool onto the decades-old formerly-red-and-brown linoleum covering the kitchen floor. he nosed us pleadingly, then tossed himself into my lap, all forty or so pounds of him, panting stinky hot dogbreath in my face and making sad-puppy eyes. a bit forward, but charming nonetheless. we smoked a bone and laughed at little cuckoo’s antics, then got the munchies and fried up some big hunks of meat. yum. pot makes things taste much more edible than they really are, I suspect.
mike and phil both are experts at chewing the proverbial fat, so after a bit of THC, nobody could get a word in edgewise, as the stories flew. even mattie graced us with his presence a bit, although he remained silent. the males all began working on the case of meister brau we had picked up at the (conveniently-situated) packie on the way over. I began swilling my pint of old thompson, not being a beer person—too slow for me.
mike was clearly taken with his happy little dog. he told us all about him the whole evening. we, in turn, told him our rabbit stories. my favorite has always been how, one time, our fifteen-pound White Rabbit (aka Grace Slick) hopped into our apartment (we had a backdoor and yard, and the bathroom doubled as the back-entryway), sneaked into our living quarters, and made off with a half-ounce of weed, still bagged, from the pocket of a sleeping Arthur. we only guess this is what happened, but there was plenty of incriminating evidence to support the theory: Arthur still asleep, an empty baggie in the backyard, and two tripped-out rabbits at their food bowl, chowing. Arthur didn’t appreciate the humor of this at the time, but he came around, after re-upping and smoking another few bowls with us.
cuckoo had a beer habit himself, as we found out. he liked to tip unattended cans with his nose and lick the resulting spillage off the floor. what a dog.
as evening fell, we sat on mike’s backporch and played guitar, sang songs, generally had a nice time. mattie retreated to his small cave of gloom and sulking. after that, we slept the night there, leaving the next day.
wish that was the end of the story, but it isn’t.
about two months later, the doorbell rang(as it did many times a day, every day). when we went to see who it was, it was Mattie, eyes still bloodshot, hair still tangled, wearing what looked to be the same outfit he had been wearing at our last encounter, holding a leash. at the business end of the leash waggled cuckoo. he had gained about fifteen pounds of height and muscle since our last meeting. the same could not be said for Mattie. he mumbled something tersely about mike the rock being in jail someplace, and held out the leash. phil and I were not used to people just showing up as far as the doorstep, but mattie looked to be in a hurry, and we were more than happy to hold cuckoo for mike if he were incarcerated. we liked cuckoo alright, and I was willing to hold the leash. dogfood is cheap. we invited mattie in, but he declined, and slunk off on his way, to wherever that may have been. cuckoo was ecstatic. he could hardly wait to sniff every bum in the basement(and every bum’s bum—he was a dogly dog.).cuckoo made himself at home right away, knocking over phil’s 40-ounce of colt 45 and slurping it up off our filth-caked, grey, trash-score oriental rug. phil was not amused, but I was.
as the days turned to weeks, cuckoo came to be our pet. he went everywhere with me, and we loved him. he was great for buying crack with—nobody dares rip off a girl walking a 60-pound pitbull. people offered me insane amounts of money for sweet little cuckoo. one gangsta-clothes-wearing crack-dealer broke out a wad of twenty dollar bills, counted off two thousand bucks, and said it was mine on the spot for cuckoo, but I was not even tempted. for one thing, he belonged to mike. for another, i knew everybody eyed cuckoo as a fighting dog, and that would have broken my heart. cuckoo was so sweet, he even liked our bunnies. he once broke off of the leash just to go play with a group of small children diagonally across copley square from where we sat. phil went chasing after him, and when he caught up, cuckoo gave him the “sad-puppy” look, but went willingly.
there wasn’t any way that I would sell that pup into a lonely life of pain. he was a real good dog.
then, one day, mattie showed up at our door again, looking about the same. I was beginning to wonder if his hangdog appearance had anything to do with the loss of his ladyfriend. this time, mattie had this young puerto rican kid waiting behind him, arms folded. mattie said that mike was getting out, and that he wanted to get cuckoo back for his return. he had been keeping the apartment warm for mike, apparently.
we were a bit flustered—something didn’t seem right, but we didn’t figure it out until after we had given cuckoo over to mattie. who was that kid, and why was mattie in such poor shape? we had other things to worry about, and cuckoo really was in need of more space than we had, anyhow. phil seemed to trust mattie, so I wasn’t about to get too particular about it.
that’s how poor, sweet cuckoo got sold into doggie-slavery for the price of one lousy bag of dope.
when mike finally got out of jail, he had lost his apartment to mattie’s habit, so he spent a few nights with us, crying and yelling over the shittiness of the world, raging about mattie’s disregard for his puppy, for his friendship. he disappeared soon after, probably off on another run of madness, and that’s the last I have seen of mike the rock.

Detention(my ninth-grade years)

my highschool career may have been exceptionally shortlived, but I ended up leaving there with an “instant party”, ready and waitin at my parents’ house. just add weed and stir….ah, but where to begin?
amongst the more-mainstream crowd, I was a little-seen entity, a pariah known only as “pirate” and rumored to be everything from schoolbathroom-lesbian-sex-fiend(nope) to the sort of person that they warn kids about in film strips on the dangers of reefer—(hell, I already had a line at my door, it wasn’t like I was actively seeking recruits to the afternoon potsmokers’ club)….
course, I did smoke up pretty much everyone who had any interest in learning about weed—I was that kid who invited “squares” and “geeks” over to get stoned with the druggies, if they were curious. but they always came to me, contrary to all film-strip-endorsed claims involving innocent, gullible children and a dark, seedy character in bellbottoms, beckoning from the sidelines, “everybody’s doing it…”
I remember once in fourth grade, this cheesy little bit about the unbelievably terrible dangers of LSD. as crazed, dazed looking long-haired “trippers”danced about on the pull-down screen atop the chalkboard, a very authoritative male announcer bellowed, “people under the influence of LSD have stared into the sun until going blind. some have jumped out of buildings to their deaths, thinking they could fly. those who survived the experience describe sensations of feeling colors and tasting sounds…..”
man, after watching that, I could barely wait to try the stuff for myself! this, I did a couple years later, at first opportunity. it was almost as good as advertised, too.
in fact, on my first day of high school, I was still experiencing the effects of hits I had eaten the night before. the hallways were sparkly and the air had a prismed snowflake-like quality to it, which, upon later inspection, seemed amazingly out-of-character with the rundown, leaky public-school building I found myself attending.
as that first schoolday dragged on, the major memory I have is one of looking out of a basement window during a 10th-grade geometry class I had tested into. the teacher was a bitch—my first impression was later reinforced by her constant currying of favor with the shallow-yet-popular girls who made up the majority of the classroom population, and the fact that if I ever showed up to her class, she would find a reason to send me immediately to the principal’s office. I figured she had wanted to be popular when she was a kid, but instead became a math teacher who vicariously enjoyed the social status of girls she taught, rewarding her pets with easy grades and a free-for-all on cutesy-yet-cutting remarks aimed at the outcast of the classroom, namely, yours truly. fuck that.
but as I sat there on that first day, my bleak school career stretched forlornly out before me, I turned my head towards the one window in the room, and there, stretching out like the proverbial promised land, was a grassy field at the forest’s edge. in my heart, I longed to be running across that grass right then, barefoot, heading away from that awful basement geometry class. it surprised me, how very badly i wanted to be hurtling towards the cool shade of those distant white pines, how painfully I just desired to be “not where I was”. it felt like somebody had shoved their hand into my chest and was twisting my heart in a clenched fist; it took my breath away.
instead, I went to the bathroom for a smoke. that is how, over the first weeks of school, I met most of my friends. nicotine as a social enabler.
the rest, I met either thru my prolonged stays in the school bandroom, or my neverending quest for herb. it’s always good to have a few backups, in case your main supplier runs out.
a couple kids, I met just thru sheer attraction by intelligence—I may have been reputed to be a no-account druggie, but I also was among the brightest kids in the school, and it seemed that some people liked my conversation for its intellectual content. so I was in the unique position of being friends with a cross-section of the social minorities of the highschool: the “lost souls” gravitated to me, and I introduced them to my “nerd” and “band geek” friends; I sought out and soon was on good terms with the school drug dealers and their outside associates; I knew every kid who came to detention hall, due to my continued presence there; and, being a juvenile delinquent, eventually “segregated” from the “mainstream” population, I got to know the school badasses really quite well also.
this ability to get along with a varied array of people, I used as a sort of social experiment: my sisters and I would hang out with a group of kids who had previously been near-strangers, on my parents’ screened backporch. we would get them stoned outta their minds and then watch them become fast friends with eachother. this is how I ended up with a sort of homegrown clique of people springing up around me—freshmen to seniors, flunkies to honor students, they all smoked up on my porch with myself, annie and lill. sometimes, we three would amuse our stoned selves by inciting our guests to talk philosophy. some kids likely didn’t even know what the word meant, and you would never be able to imagine the phrase “meaning of life” emanating from their mouths if ya hadn’t been there…..finding that hidden depth in people has always been a hobby of mine.
another group of people I came to be friends with were the school janitors, who admired my work ethic, as displayed during vacations and the weekend punishment sessions I privately attended, in which I paid for my numerous studently transgressions. I was the only person brave enough to clean the Home Ec room, ever, they admiringly told me. it was better than just hanging around, doing nothing, I had answered, modestly.
I also maintained the dubious distinction of being the only student at the school to get more detentions in a matter of months than could ever be repaid, even if I served one every day for the rest of my highschool career. how did I get into so much trouble, anyway? oh, let me count the ways….but first, back to the social end of things.
not all of my friends were interested in meeting eachother, of course. some were sworn enemies and the like. others just moved in separate circles. what all of us had in common, besides the enjoyment of far-out conversations, was fucked-up family life. my parents’ house was our hangout of choice due to my parents’ prolonged absences from it, and their accompanying lack of vigilance over their well-stocked supply of cheap liquors.
my friends were kids with crazy parents, no parents, alcoholic parents, abusive parents, dads who killed their pets, relatives who molested them at gunpoint, parents who chained them to a cinderblock in the backyard rather than pay for childcare. they got farmed out to foster homes sometimes. one kid had a vietnam-traumatized dad and a schizophrenic mom, and his house was literally falling down around him. in fact, none of us had a nice house to call home. we were the kids who went home to dwellings filled with catshit, or dominated by wrathful, destructive tyrants. our houses included one ramshackle trailer with seven occupants, a one-room apartment, an aging subdivision house with no working toilets and the infamous “doorway to nowhere”, where a deck had sheared right off the second story kitchen. a few had small, drab concrete shacks, and others lived in apartments in buildings with saggy floors and leaky roofs. we were the kids who hoped to be able to walk to the bus stop a few blocks, so as to avoid getting shit from our delightful, parentally-cared-for classmates.
so, I knew that my sisters and i didn’t have it that bad, on the whole. at least our parents weren’t home too much. how some of my best friends could be expected to show up and focus on school, with the horrors of their homelife looming over them, was beyond my comprehension. it always seemed so “wrong” to me that these kids lived in hell, came to school dazed and on edge, and then got further punishment for their lack of classroom concentration. how can someone be expected to care about school if they are going home to get beat on, go hungry, get molested? and most of these kids didn’t get even the benefit of any extra school services—they suffered in silence, fell thru the cracks, and just got ignored whilst a small minority of vocal juvenile delinquents got all the “help”, the attention, the understanding. it made me angry to watch. what about kids like my friend marcia?
marcia was one of my closest friends in highschool. she was enigmatic, to say the least—a short little freckled thing with a very sexy feminine body, who always hid it under layers of loose-fitting clothing and a boyish demeanor. marcia was a great storyteller, of the type who swears up and down that whatever wild tale she tells is true, and almost convinces you to believe her, she is so wide-eyed and smooth-spoken about it. marcia also had the ability to slide easily between social circles, although her taste in social contacts didn’t always overlap mine perfectly. she was madly in love with a pimply, greasy-string-haired, unbathed, womanizing thing named Andrew, whose merits remained obscure.
this matter was only further confused by the fact that Andrew had cheated on her with a fat, unwashed, apparently-more-willing-to-do-the-nasty, girl named Kate, during andrew and marcia’s four-month fling, then dumped Marcia. also, she had a much nicer, more-faithful, and better-looking boyfriend, named, coincidentally, phil(“her”phil’s birthday was the same as “my” phil’s, oddly enough.) I liked phil.
years later, I learned that “her” phil had spent huge amounts of time pining away for me. he told me this after we had downed a rather large bottle of vodka together, waitin on marcia to show up someplace(she had a way of arriving late)….the poor kid went on about how cool he thought I was, and how bad he had wanted me all these years. i was very kind to him about it, and since we were both the “honest” type, we just kept on drinking and never mentioned it again.
funny how I had never suspected before. sometimes I was(and still likely am) a bit clueless with regards to males actually liking me in a normal social context. I just had always assumed that folks wanted to chat with me, while going for my numerous cuter female friends. I didn’t mind—a little intrigue is an integral part of a good party, i always felt. thus, my parents’ queensize bed likely got more action from my friends having sex on it than it ever will get from my parents. guess the joke’s on them.
marcia lived in a house that was literally packed with garbage. her father was what nowadays might be referred to as a pathological collector. their house was so full, you could open the front door just about a foot, and this only thru sheer exertion upon all of the crap on the floor behind it. the stairs to the second floor were not visible—the stairway resembled a mudslide of sorts, made of all varieties of trash. it covered the floors of every room, elevating them at least a foot. to walk about, you had to follow the packed-down paths that wound their way around the dwelling atop the miscellanny. step off the path, and you were likely to fall or twist your ankle, or, even worse, step in something really, really nasty.
adding to the general ambiance of the place was the lack of aeration, due to all windows being nailed shut, and absence of sunlight, due to heavy-duty privacy shades. also, there were numerous feral cats multiplying invisibly below the rubble, doing their business in places it was best not to ask about, and darting in or out of the one access-point to the outside world, the front door, as you tried to jam yourself thru it. cardboard boxes were piled high around the walls, up to the ceiling. any and all furniture was obscured, under the sea of crap. all other access/egress points were completely inaccessible, covered by piles of garbage-filled boxes. the beds were buried, so to sleep over, you had to shove mountains of stuff aside to clear yourself a spot.
there was not always heat or hot water in the winter, and space heaters sure struck me as being a bit risky. the electrical system was also unpredictable, and the hanging overhead lamp in the kitchen had a fearsome way of sparking and crackling when bumped. it was along the “pathway” to the bathroom, however, so it was hard to avoid. the stove was buried and the refrigerator was out of service, and marcia’s nonschool diet consisted of spam, warmed on a hotplate. perhaps predictably, marcia’s bathtub was filled with garbage, and the shower was not operational. that left marcia washing her hair and taking sponge baths in the school sinks on a daily basis. I used to let her shower at my house, so as to avoid this sort of embarrassment. I fed her, too.
and as if that wasn’t enough to contend with, marcia’s dad, her sole guardian, was into kids, and she was all-too-aware of it. the first thing she always told her friends before coming to her house was to be careful around her father, not to agree to go anyplace alone with him. this, sadly, was not one of her stories. you could see the truth in her eyes, and the way she treated herself. also, she never would actually come out and say it, which, for marcia, was a sure indicator of the truthfulness of an unpleasant statement.
marcia and I spent our days together, skipping school and lighting bonfires in the woods, thumbing rides, getting stoned and telling tales. we ran across that field I had wished to escape thru so badly. we got drunk together before morning classes.
in fact, marcia was fairly well-adjusted for a kid who went home to that shit, I always thought……it would have been fair to expect her to have done herself in by ninth grade, if you ask me…..
after I dropped out of school and began working at Mcdonald’s in clinton(it was about a forty-five minute commute on foot, if I walked fast and took the shortcut down the traintracks) I introduced my school-friends to my fellow-employees, further widening the circle of people I apparently brought together. we would all get together and party someplace out in the woods, and then crash at somebody’s house, waking up hungover the next morning with new funny stories to tell about who “patty the large-breasted sex-addict” slept with the night before….
patty was another pretty friend of mine who had some issues….hers were the opposite of marcia’s, though….she had a way of calling attention to herself that even made her 38-DD boobs look insignificant….it involved miniskirts, skintight clothing, and a very “friendly” way of interacting with males: young ,old, ugly, cute, smart, dull, fat, thin, you name it—patty was truly democratic in her choice of sex partners. if you were male, you were in—course, you likely had to wait your turn, patty being a rather popular young lady…..when I met her, I didn’t realize she had this odd athletic hobby….being female, I guess I couldn’t have been expected to surmise it until I saw her interacting with her “target” group…..still, I never could get over the number of times I saw patty leaving a party briefly with something that more closely resembled a drowned weasel than an actual human male….she was charitably-inclined, perhaps. goodness knows she always gave herself away. I always did wonder what was goin on in her head that would possess her to be SO active with no apparent ulterior motivation…..the only thing she got was attention, and even most of that looked to me to be negative. I still liked her alright, though. heck, her peculiarities didn’t affect me, except to make my parties a little more lively. wonder what SHE’s up to these days.

Monica Plays with Sharps

in the cramped and filthy basement kitchen, monica diced vegetables (half price on the old foods rack at wollastons grocery) and boiled chicken in a pot, making soup. the day was grey and little light filtered down thru the detritis in the window wells adjoining the brick sidewalk above, so the kitchen was cast in the warm yellow glow of the overhead fixture. momentarily, monica’s sadness faded as she looked towards the new day and stirred the chicken.
the rest of the narrow basement room remained in semidark, shades of dingy smoke-color softly illuminating piles of dirty clothing, a twin mattress which reeked of piss, the thin carpeted path thru the empties to the bathroom, a spewtum receptacle or two, and several unwashed human beings, grey in their own right and smoking rollies salvaged from cigarette snipes in the household ashtrays. bonanza was soundlessly flickering on the ten-inch black and white television, the picture sporadically broken by fuzz, the dials and rabbit ears too far away to turn without motivation. everybody was hoping for a knock on the door.
this was phil’s castle. day in and day out, phil and monica played host to an unending procession of lowlives, most of them dirty old homeless men, some crazier than others, and all of them bearing gifts of something mind-numbing to pay their way and allow their hosts to tolerate them a bit better for the duration of their stay(however long that might prove).
phil was the one who answered the door with open arms, welcoming all and sundry into his little slice of hell, to stay as long as they wanted. monica, by default, got the less popular role of bouncer. she was phil’s protector, watching his sickly little crumpled passed-out body to make sure no delightful guests attempted to pick his pockets or worse, and evicting those who began to cause problems. they always did, eventually. one tiny basement room can be hard enough for a couple to share(especially with a twin bed), let alone a dazed, desperately depressed, drug-addicted couple with a few stinky, drunk, somewhat insane grown men crashed out on the floor.
also, these men were disgustingly horny, since, as bums, they were less than a wanted commodity with the ladies or anybody else, for that matter. having spent a good deal of time in correctional facilities, they had often become less discerning in their definition of “female”, so monica kept a tight vigil on her small-boned, long-haired, jewellery-wearing boyfriend. he was far too trusting or careless for his own good, if he was as straight as he claimed he was. monica could tell he liked the attentions of these old dudes, but he never was into gay sex, so she just figured he must be fulfilling some sort of twisted need for desireability. he was such a chick that way. although, if he showered a bit more often and drank a bit slower, he could have still been cute to a much wider audience, if that was really his thing—monica just couldn’t figure him out sometimes.
what with his bad liver, phil was quick to become a sheet in the wind with the booze, and he guzzled it like a pig. everyday, he was wracked with wet, hacking coughs and stinking, chemical sweats which irritated his pores and had begun to cause alcoholic puffiness in his face. his body was ashen, malnourished, his once-sharp mind duller and more schizophrenic, of late. it was like she could watch him deteriorate before her very eyes, which truly broke her heart.
of course, monica was only aware of one cure for heartbreak—getting wasted, which she generally did as quickly and constantly as possible, so as to be able to join her love in the land of Nod. still, she was too uneasy with the company to allow herself to completely pass out. unconscious girls don’t fare well among the prison-pervert crowd, so she slept with an eye open.
today was one of those days where phil had run out of money. monica was less than enthused about turning tricks for booze, which was such a cheap and dirty drug to begin with, and so had held fast to her income from the previous night. fuck him, with his nasty insults about her occupation and his demands for handouts uttered in the same breath. she figured phil would deal, since it was st. patrick’s day today. a good old fashioned drinking holiday oughtta bring some bums with free booze out of the woodwork. she was right, of course.
the knock on the door was right on schedule: the moment before everybody went insane with the need for intoxication. monica continued her assault of vegetable matter while phil performed his princely duties, hopping up from the filthy bare mattress, throwing on monica’s green velvet bathrobe(he always stole her favorite clothing) over his skinny naked white body, and ran clumsily up the basement stairs to let in the first guest of the day. His hands shook, jangling his numerous bangle bracelets(also stolen from monica, who still wanted them back).
As monica went about transforming cut-rate, somewhat aged food, into something edible, phil practically slid down the stairs on his ass, he was so pleased to allow clarence the pleasure of giving away his booze to everyone. clarence was a fat black man, of few words and questionable sexuality—his motives for spending time with phil and monica were unclear, as he actually did have a place of his own, causing monica to keep a special eye on him. he had an aura of deviance, but he always behaved himself, at least around her. plus he gave everyone booze, so he was alright, as long as he kept his paws visible at all times.
monica did not appreciate funny business. she was the “up-front” type—either you came right out and said, I’ll give you x for y, or you were just present as a guest. people who tried to give phil or monica stuff as apparent gifts, were told before the presents were accepted, how it was; if they didn’t like it, that was up to them—nobody could try and “guilt” her into stuff. monica didn’t believe in being “beholden”to anyone.
clarence made his plodding way down the stairs, pulling a bottle of old thompson out of his inside pocket. he watched phil’s naked frame a little too closely for monica’s taste, but she just smiled and cleared the garbage off of a kitchen chair so that clarence could sit and give her that whiskey he was holding. he did, and monica got a good big swig of it to start off her morning right. (“whiskey—a part of this complete breakfast.”) it was only a half pint, and she knew what a pig phil could be, so she had to look out for herself. he was none too chivalrous with alcoholic beverages, that’s for sure. buy the man a bottle and he’ll hand it back to you empty. even if he would have passed out from only some of its contents.
and monica did not like going places with a dead man for a boyfriend. over their time together, she had realized that phil guzzled much more than his liver could handle, especially when given hard liquor or wine. since monica was not a beer drinker(doesn’t get you drunk quick enough—her drink of choice was straight whiskey chased with cheap wine)she had gotten to transport his passed-out corpse in all manner of ways.
phil had been wheelbarrowed about at her parents’ house. he had been carried over her shoulder. once, monica had stuck him into a wheelchair that they had found and pushed him around the city. he had been dragged down sidewalks on disaster blankets, transported in shopping carriages, rolled out of alleyways, coaxed into semiwakefulness and guided places. all because he outdrank his liver capacity.
it pissed monica off--she could have actually enjoyed all that wasted booze in wakefulness. instead, she was always getting saddled with a man who was literally not present in spirit (and incapable of sharing in any more-pertinent physical desires that needed addressing, to boot). ah, the joys of youth.
so monica had her way with the bottle before allowing it to change hands. hell, she deserved it, cooking for an army of drunks as she so often did. mildly buzzed, she pushed the vegetables off of her cutting surface(grimy as it was) and into the boiling chicken-pot, letting it come back to a boil and then turning down the heat.
since clarence had set up camp in the kitchen, phil had also found a space there, and he was soon merrily on his way to drunkenness. on came the music, and everyone was more comfortable. soon there were other guests at the door.
“spider” came over and smoked a bone with everyone, as he sometimes did. he used the tiny apartment as a stopping-place in which to bag and rebag his merchandise. in payment, he always shared some with monica and phil, or he brought phil booze and shared some drugs with monica(monica wasn’t going to settle for lousy booze when there were better drugs to be had, and spider knew it).
as the day grew brighter and the soup began to smell good, tuck the parking-lot attendant showed up with some more weed and some beer, and ronnie, the huge-but-generally-stable homeless man who had grown up the son of a hooker in the combat zone, also stopped by. he had a bottle, but he was looking for pot. spider was happy to oblige, of course. as long as you paid your unofficial cover charge, phil’s was a good place to go and network, away from the prying eyes of law enforcement.
by evening, phil was quite happy. marijuana was kind to him; monica encouraged its use in place of liquor. it let him stay awake and had the added benefit of motivating him to get some of his nutrition from sources other than beverage. phil did not eat much, generally speaking, and monica knew that this would only exacerbate his bad health.
weed also brought back some of the hippie charm that monica had fallen for when she met him; it was almost gone these days, and she could see now that their coincidental meeting had been at the fleeting tail-end of his youth. he had been so handsome when she smelled weed that day in copley square.
such a strange way to meet your mate, just to run into him out of the blue one day as a fifteen-year-old, fifty miles away from home. phil had been 27, back then. he had looked so young; his hair shiny, his eyes bright, his speech lucid, his skin smooth and clear.
in just two short years, monica had seen it all slide down the slippery slope into life’s toilet, and she knew it. yet she stayed with him, for she believed that love goes beyond such outward things. or maybe she just hoped that someday the phil that she had watched die would rise like a phoenix from his beaten heart and mind, lighting up his features once more; evicting the dull, jaded, angry, crazier, meaner imposter who had replaced him. she wanted her boyfriend back.
dusk began to fall as one last guest knocked on the door. silly and generally friendly and outgoing, phil bounced up the stairs to play receptionist. still cooking but more concerned with the joint being smoked, monica awaited the new arrival, hoping that they had some good drugs. as phil came down the stairs with him, a silence fell upon the occupants of the basement. sighs were heard all around.
the latest guest was not a popular person; he drew the heat with his bizarre behavior and it seemed years on the street had made him less than amenable to indoor life. his name was crazy paul, and he lived up to it. it was rumored he was a diddler; this contention was not helped by the fact that when he drank southern comfort, he started grabbing peoples’ asses. unfortunately, soco was his favorite drink, and monica had his favorite ass. she had slapped him more than once for his handy ways, and she had absolutely barred him from their dwelling-place, especially when he was under the influence of his favorite beverage.
but phil just loved to piss monica off, it seemed. he just played dumb, letting paul in like it was all hunky-dory. monica kept her mouth shut, but much eye-rolling was being done—everybody but phil was in agreement on this situation. as paul whipped out his bottle of soco, tuck, ron and spider excused themselves, said their goodbyes, and left. monica moved out of the kitchen and asked paul if he wanted some soup. he didn’t answer, which she read as a decline. clarence had parked himself in other room, too.
paul was not in good shape; his eyes were bloodshot, wild; his demeanor jerky and rhythmic. he was saying odd things about jesus and some fundamentalist cult he seemed to belong to part-time, and making sexually inappropriate motions and innuendos every which way. monica gave phil a LOOK, and threw herself onto the bed, sick and tired of having this man in her house already but unable to do anything about it. whilst she asked phil to please see that paul behaved, she realized that he was now in the kitchen, rattling around, messing with her food. the fucking animal. she had turned tricks for that food; it was all she had except what she could find in the newbury street trash cans.
desperate, she shot up like a spring, leapt into the kitchen to stop this wastrel from stealing her sustenance—wasn’t it enough that she always offered him a serving of her freshly cooked meals? what more could he want?
monica surveyed the damage: in a few short minutes, paul had broken all her eggs, messed up her soup and eaten an entire stick of butter—her only one. he had, in fact, taken everything in the refrigerator and freezer and thrown it into a pot, which he then tossed into her soup. the motherfucker. how could he? why? she screamed at him. she yelled and pushed at him, but he wouldn’t budge and the damage was already done. he just laughed. monica had had more disrespect than she could take, having her physical wellbeing threatened by this asshole who just wanted to make mudpies with it. nicely, she asked clarence to leave, so that there would be fewer witnesses for what she was about to do.
after clarence had left, monica asked phil, for the last time, to see his friend out. phil pretended not to hear anything, having drank himself to a happy cantankerousness. he did not care that monica wished to eat in the near future without foraging like a raccoon in city garbage cans. he did not care that paul constantly grabbed her ass and disrespected her attempts at civility. this was not the time for polite requests. paul needed to know how much he could get away with; she would show him exactly.
monica stalked back into the kitchen where paul was still squishing and banging away at that horrid stew of her former soup and god knows what else. she reached into the sink and pulled out something she had been using earlier. the knife. it was serrated, cooks’ club brand, about six inches long. she wanted to see how well paul responded to having his future survival threatened for someone elses fun.
she gripped it tightly and stepped towards paul, muscles taut. pointed to him with it. “you. asshole. get the fuck out of here, don’t come back. do you hear me?” apparently, he did. he quickly danced and drank his way out the back door, thru the bathroom, into the backyard, and away.
after paul had left, phil became agitated. “what did you do that for? what did he do?” phil again played dumb. monica again told him about paul’s kitchen escapades. he loved to inflict his friends on her and then give her shit these days. phil started in again, giving her the third degree about her mean, crazy temperament and her sexpot, whoring nature, all of which seemed more than a little improbable to monica, since phil was the one who had sent her out there in the first place.
but she, too, was drunk. and she just could not take it anymore. why did he treat crazy paul better than his own lover? why did he berate her at every opportunity? why must she pay for the sins of the other women who came before her? why did she get shit for doing something that phil had done for years, and using that money to feed them both? monica had had enough of taking it. she was still holding the knife. what happened next, seemed like slow motion. like she was watching it from above in disbelief.
monica’s arm was in the air, the knife in her hand. “no, it can’t be happening. this can’t be real,” she thought.
the knife curved down towards phil, slowly, slowly….this isn’t right, she thought. this won’t help. what if I kill him? stop! she was screaming at herself inside her head…..all the while watching herself in shock, total alienness. what the fuck am I doing? how can this really be happening? what the hell have I become?



oh, shit….how can this be our life?

Healthy Choice

her feelings were turned off. like the mute button on a remote control had been pushed, pointed at her heart. still, though, she knew that someday this shit was gonna hurt. she just did not know when, or even why she did not feel anymore. thus a heap of unpleasant experiences--of moments of pathetic desperation, self-debasement, physical and emotional violation—collected like so many dirty socks in her consciousness, pushed away but not forgotten, to be dealt with later.

she was glad. now it didn’t matter what happened to her anymore. she was happy that now, finally, she was cold and calculating, that now she could live by the fine art of manipulation. those useless, simpering sentiments were not getting in her way anymore. now, in fact, she could just sit back and watch her every little move, watch herself operate, and fine-tune everything she said and did. yeah, this was the life. now she knew what it was really all about. greed. and escape—that was her specialty—escape through drugs, sex, momentary sensations of power, that was her occupation, you could say. full-time. a member of the world’s oldest profession and proud of it.

sometimes she would sort of separate from her body, looking at herself as from slightly above, or just even next to herself. sometimes, this would start to happen, but then cease midway through, and like a ghost superimposed on a living human, she would wonder what the fuck was going on, and if she was dead or something. not that she would worry about it. she just did, didn’t waste all this energy caring about stuff like that. really, why did it even matter whether she was alive, anyway? she didn’t give a fuck if mike and leslie wilson did it seventeen years ago and didn’t use protection. hell, man, she already felt like a ghost half the time, just empty and wandering the earth unseen, unnoticed, while the living chattered and hurried around her on the sidewalks, worrying and pretending, distracted by the insanely small problems that afflicted their daily lives.

not knowing that in their midst stood the spectre of a child without innocence, willingly exploited nightly by their husbands, their fathers, the guy who cut their hair, their professors, their bankers who knows who else, but all members of their snotty ranks, all a bunch of liars, fakes. what did these scurrying people know, really? they sure didn’t know that little monica got paid a hundred bucks to go down to boston college with her favorite little drag-queen, angel, and have sex on the floor of this white-haired, respectable catholic pervert’s classroom last night. his classroom, fuck! there were probably students, little snot-nosed, uppity college students, sitting over that spot right now! she did not even believe it herself until they all got out of the car at this lovely old stone building surrounded by manicured vegetation, and the dude got out his set of keys and told her and angel to hurry up.

johns--all terrified of getting caught, they are. she still couldn’t figure them. really—practically pissing themselves with fear before and after, all for a three-minute deed that took place in an alley, probably across town from their wives and kids, and likely with a person they would never talk to in a million years. all the while thinking that they are the ones in control of the situation. like they have the power. oh, and she let them—just smiled and nodded, and said whatever she sensed that they wanted to hear, that they needed to hear to get their sick, old-creep rocks off. she was the person they wanted her to be. she adjusted herself like someone turning television dials, fiddling with the antenna. age, situation, preferences, even sex, most of the time—she never disclosed them publicly. living in her neighborhood(gay village, where the drag queens walk the block), she easily passed as whatever she wanted to pass as, being 5’9” with a very deep voice, no tits(some queens grew bigger ones with their hormone shots), and a body that really threw folks for a loop. thick, black curls and pale, smooth skin. emaciated from the “crack diet”, with long muscular limbs and a face that was at once lost-looking and older than her years. her frame fell cleanly in the middle of the male/female spectrum—larger than most females, but possible; delicate for most males, but on the slighter side of standard. she did not have the classic feminine figure, certainly, but she was not unattractive, either, and she turned those unisex features into a true asset, getting free drinks from fags of both sexes at the local gay bar. sort of like that shit about life giving you lemons, but less corny.
except that life did not give her a lemon for an ass. fuck, man! what is it about asses that fascinates? she used to idly wonder about that sometimes, when she had a good buzz on from her lifesaving bag of reefer(her daytime fix). they aren’t exactly reproductive, now are they? in fact, the ass has the opposite purpose, the far less glamorous job. how is it that humans evolved over the centuries to so favor it as a sexual body part, to fixate on it to the point of preference over the actual human reproductive system, in some cases?
in fact, it seemed that both eating and shitting receptacles did a much brisker business with johns than the actual reccomended penis receptacle ever did. fine by her—no risk of getting knocked up from anal sex, unless you really fuck up somewhere! and hiv—well, who even cares? what does anything matter, anyway? she did not care if she died, and sure as shit nobody else did, either. (sometimes, while toking, she would idly daydream about dropping dead. god, if only she could be around to see the shenanigans that her dead body would cause, she would off herself for sure. it always cracked her up, picturing that bunch of paranoid alcoholic bums her boyfriend called friends, scurrying and panicking as they tried to discreetly dispose of her someplace—dead chicks draw the heat, man!….would she get folded up in a shopping cart full of cans, pushed loudly along a brick sidewalk by a filthy drunk who kept looking over his shoulder, swigging listerine, eventually forgetting what the hell it was that he was so worried about and passing out? or dumped laboriously into the charles? nah, her final resting place would be a dumpster somewhere, in a shiny black trash bag. maybe as squishy, dismembered tidbits, each first wrapped separately….the possibilities were endless.)
men are easily manipulated. whatever you tell them is off-limits is immediately more desireable and worth more money than what they already have. that is why doing a young kid in the bum is so much better than going home and doing your wife in the pussy, apparently. at least that’s what monica figured.
her one female admirer wasn’t too different, either, although she never actually paid up front for services. chicks are too emotional—jenny always bartered, never could face her deed by paying up with cold, hard cash. wanted to hear “I love you”and that sort of mushy lying shit. monica didn’t really like saying that, knowing it was a lie. why that was, she didn’t really know. maybe it was the implied commitment, who knows?
one thing that monica did know was that Jenny didn’t have any of what little monica really loved—that magic powder that you cook up and smoke, or you put in your arm and let it knock your little ass to the ground as the world buzzes deafeningly and consumes you in its roar and your heart races and flutters until it feels like it is bursting and you’re barely breathing and panting, sweating and shaking, barely holding to consciousness and you don’t care. she lived for being obliterated, annihilated, gone, shot straight out into the abyss…..alas! but only for the briefest of fleeting moments!
then you were back to the all-consuming desire, that next shot, the excruciating waiting. oh, that waiting! that is how monica blew her veins and gave herself an abcess, jabbing herself wildly with tremulous hands and a dirty needle, missing. the rest of that night, she was wracked by desperate sobs as she stared at the stuff she had sold her ass for, festering in a hard lump in the crook of her left arm and turning red. she violently wished she could just cut herself open and get it out, to try again.
after that incident, she took to cooking it up and smoking it. less risk involved of losing it, what with her abused circulatory system being so hard to find and all, but little monica still loved needles best both for the high they gave and the act of injection itself. so physical.
god, did monica love that shit. just the thought of it gave her chills and set her to painful jonesing.

Life in Prince Charming's Palace

perhaps the true love of phil’s life was alcohol. lady liquor got first dibs on his reproductive anatomy, or the functioning thereof, to be certain.
she also ruled his other bodily functions pretty thoroughly—imagine for a moment how fun it would be to share a twin-sized mattress with a man who consistently drank himself into unconsciousness and lost control of his bladder forthwith. I don’t have to imagine that feeling—I know it like some people know lottery tickets.
after wakin up covered in someone elses’ malodorous bodily fluids, damp, chilled and depressedly disgusted, I’d have to try and rouse phil from his comalike slumber, to see if I could convince him to at least change his jeans if not take a shower…..then, I’d have to go to sleep someplace—since generally all the real estate available on our apartment floor was being filled by sleeping freeloading partiers, my only option was likely a return to the twin-mattress-cum-leachfield from whence I had shudderingly sprung forth.
if I had successfully awakened phil, I’d guide him like one guides a demented senior citizen, holding his elbow and supporting his back slightly, gingerly avoiding small obstacles, thru the apartment, to the closet-sized bathroom. I’d gently unbutton his stinking, piss-drenched pants, ease them off as he sat uncomprehending on the covered toilet, squinting in the bright white fluorescence of the bathroom light. I’d remove his shoes(phil went to bed fully clothed most nights) and peel off his soaking-wet, nearly-disintegrated, worn-for-weeks tee-shirt. these, I’d toss into the mountainous “dirty laundry” pile(by dirty, I mean, “biohazard, filth-encrusted”)upon which pothead arthur would be blissfully aslumber, undisturbed by the gently thumping arrival of the latest additions to his questionable collection of bedding.
I had to keep an eye on phil as I did this, for he would still be mentally absent from his body, and likely to keel sideways off of the toilet, which would put him either in the bathtub or cracking his skull against the sink depending on which side he favored. naked and wet, he’d be shivering in the drafty air that slipped into the bathroom beneath its other door, which led to the backyard. “you had an accident” I’d say to him if he looked questioningly at me, although I knew he didn’t really hear me.
I’d towel him off and try to enlist his assistance in my efforts to re-dress him in dry threads—these sometimes took great effort on my part just to uncover in our disastrously unkempt apartment. once phil was acceptably covered once more, I’d sit him back on the toilet for a moment so I could go to the other room and flip over the mattress. we never used sheets, so it wasn’t much trouble transferring the bedding from one side to the other, if it hadn’t been caught in the crossfire of the “incident”, of course. I’d scrounge up as many big scratchy grey “disaster blankets”(standard homeless-charity-van fare) as I could, pile them near the mattress, and go retrieve my still-absent boyfriend.
slowly, carefully, I’d guide him back to the bed and help him to resume his horizontal orientation. I’d cover him snugly and go back to the bathroom to care for my own needs and remove my damp clothing. I’d shower and wonder if there was anything left in the house that would help me to rediscover sleep. sometimes, I’d put on something revealing after my shower; paint my face with makeup so I could go out to find my own comforts in a world where the man I cared for never even woke up to notice it, because he had drank all the booze in the house.

Philip Charles Weiand (the fourth)

Philip Charles Weiand the Fourth is the end of the line. there will be no philip charles weiand the fifth. I know this for two reasons: first, phil is not excited about the idea of reproduction in general, and his various sperm cells are likely so stoned that they can barely be induced to leave the comfort of their “bedroom”, if you will…. second, were phil to actually overcome these hurdles, any offspring would likely bear names such as “moon unit”, to use an already-invented example…..
this is because phil’s favorite pastime is pissing his mother off. it is phil’s full-time job; his life’s calling. this has been the case ever since phil was very young, according to all the oral history accounts I managed to obtain on the subject. these I have condensed and streamlined, and will impart to you forthwith…….hmmm…where to begin?
Chapter One…… “from bungled beginnings”
obviously, there were several philip charles weiands before phil. the first two, I don’t know about, but #3 was a professional racecar driver. he made a lasting impression on the industry by inventing something called the “weiand manifold”, aka the “high weiand”(appropriately enough!), and he began a little company that built these doo-hickeys: “Weiand Automotive” of Los Angeles, California, where mr. weiand #3 resided.
as is sometimes the case in the high-risk occupations, philip III survived a terrible auto accident, but paid a dear price for his career-choice: he became a paraplegic. this is how he came to be a fifty-something wheelchair-bound bachelor/company executive/owner, with a twenty-something secretary named Joan.
Joan was an orphan from arkansas. she had not had the advantages of a loving childhood spent in material comfort, nor did she enjoy a deep inner life of the mind, but Joan was shrewd, hardworking, and driven. she was determined to claw her way into a successful lifestyle, whether along “legitimate” lines or otherwise, and one thing Joan did have was willpower. she remains a lady who gets exactly what she wants, regardless of cost to herself or others. that is how she became mrs. philip charles weiand III, wheelchair and all, a couple years after beginning her secretarial career.
this arrangement suited her just fine, for Joan was not the “touchy-feely-emotional” type—she probably did fine on her own in the sex-life department, her favorite motto being “if you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself.” joan did not form deep emotional bonds with those around her; it likely reflects her upbringing.
the true benefit Joan enjoyed from her marriage was one of power: philip III depended on her totally, and soon she was the silent president of his company, running it behind the scenes. as it turned out, Joan’s shrewd coldness made her the perfect businesswoman—far better as company president than her husband ever had been. in fact, after Phil the Third’s early(timely?) death, Joan rescued Weiand Automotive from the brink of bankruptcy where it had been teetering and made herself a millionaire, as well as finally seizing official recognition of her position as Queen Shit, Boss of Bosses, and Person to be Generally Feared by all employees, who now officially belonged to Her. just as her dearly-departed husband had, not to mention her six-year-old adopted son.
apparently, Mr. Weiand’s accident had left him not just shootin blanks but unable to draw the gun entirely. or maybe joan just didn’t want to have to deal with the messy logistical issues which would surely surround trying to copulate with an aging paraplegic-it does bring to mind some amusing, if unsavory pictures. but for whatever reason, at least one of the members of that unlikely marriage wanted to reproduce. enter baby Phil.
phil was the unexpected result of a summer fling between 14-year-old Terry and 15-year-old Bill in a small southern-california town somewhere near LA. terry got sent off into hiding to finish out her pregnancy without bringing shame upon her family, and bill got a serious ass-kicking by everyone involved—it didn’t teach him much. now bill lives up in a tiny town in the mountains of northern california, puttin his green thumb to use and sporting the latest motorcycle-club fashions on his Harley, reminiscing fondly about Sweet Terry the One That Got Away(much to the chagrin of Barbara, his housemate)over a little wine and a little more smoke. I always liked bill. (interestingly enough, Terry now works at a beer factory. she doesn’t drink.)
soon after baby Phil was adopted, joan and phil the third’s version of marital bliss(one can only assume) began to sour. the details are hazy, but when phil was about four years old, his adoptive father suffered a major stroke, rendering him basically a vegetable. a couple of times, phil told me stories of time that he remembers spending with “dad”. little phil and family went to a Jack-in-the-Box one time and ordered food—burgers and fries for phil and joan, and ice cream for dad, who could not eat solid foods anymore. joan being the distant person she was, it was up to five-year-old phil to feed his father with a plastic spoon. phil had to put a bib on his dad—“open up, now…here it comes….good job, daddy, oops, don’t spit it out….” a confusing position for a kindergartener to be in, to be sure, but less disturbing than phil’s other major memory of life with his father.
one evening, joan became disgusted with her wheelchairbound vegetabular “mate” and “snapped”. she screamed and howled as her frightened son cowered beneath the table, attacking her defenseless husband so violently that he flew from his wheelchair and bumped his head on a cabinet door, whereupon, joan started pummeling him. now, this sounds so horrible, one almost hopes it is a malicious drunken lie, but having met joan many times, I would have to say I believe her to be fully capable of this, and possibly more. in fact, if ever a person I met was capable of poisoning family members, it would be Joan. her husband did kick the bucket at quite the opportune moment, financially speaking, after that equally-well-timed stroke he had suffered a few years earlier. and she sure does have some “complexes” reminiscent of “Out, Damn Spot!” but that is purely speculation.
phil remembers his father’s funeral, when he was six. he didn’t cry, couldn’t feel anything, and knew even then that he hadn’t really known the man that all the grown-ups had gathered to say their tearful last farewells to. three years later, phil the fourth was already a daily consumer of hard liquor.

Tricia Cady

trish finds things. expensive things. they just pop up everywhere when trish walks by. fender strat with amp peeks out of dumpster when trish walks thru alley. she nonchalantly regards it, picks it off the pile of trash, and later finds it to be in perfect working condition. designer clothing shoes and jewelry show up this way, too, as does furniture and practically anything else one might think of.
trish takes them all home with her, wherever she may be living at the time.
she collects a cuckoo check from the state, too. $900 every month.
she is angry, sad, frustrated. she rails at how those around her--those who are addicted and living on the streets, those who sell themselves to johns, those whose artistic talent is unused, intelligence forgotten—how they waste themselves, fritter away their gifts, settle for less, abuse their bodies.
trish is talented and smart, too. she paints striking pictures with paints she found, on canvasses that presented themselves to her on trash day. nice, blank canvasses, just showing up for trish to find. brushes, too. but that’s trish.
she lives in a violent love/hate relationship with the world around her, its people, its places. trish loves people. she tries to care for people on the streets of boston and allston, where she lives, clothing them in clean outfits, giving instruments to the musical, paper to the artistic, beads to the crafty. she dresses up the women in the pretty garments she finds, tells them they are beautiful. she feeds them, too, and gives people cigarettes and a few bucks to go to the packie if she sees them stemming. she hates to see anybody asking for money on the street. she can’t stand to see a person fishing in trash cans for food.
trish hates to see people hurting themselves and others. she hates to watch them degrade themselves and waste their brains and bodies. it makes her so angry to watch a person hurt themselves wantonly, when there are those who care for them in this world, that she could practically kill them. she hates people, because they hurt her through themselves and waste the gifts she gives them. the musical pawn her instruments for drugs, or they get stolen. the crafty and artistic draw up lovely little signs to assist in their panhandling. the ladies take their new outfits and turn tricks, and everyone sees trish and expects money and a cigarette. she can’t stand any of them, wants to scream at them all.
trish is pretty too. she is tall with long hair. she has a sense of style and big hazel eyes. she used to be very thin. now she has big boobs, though. she is forty. she does coke. she doesn’t really drink alcohol much. coffee is more her thing. neither does trish like reefer—tobacco is her smoke of choice. she walks about the city, wandering aimlessly, finding things and meeting people all night long sometimes. she hates boston, always talks about leaving town. she’s been talking about it for a decade at least—once even bought a bus ticket to florida, but then didn’t use it. that is the way trish is. she still rails about how she didn’t go, how she totally regrets staying here, in this hellhole, with her lousy, good-for-nothing boyfriend. he gets the treatment too.
trish is both sweet and ferocious; a force of nature, like a tornado; not to be toyed with. her inner workings are mysterious yet predictable. she is powered by her mental centrifical force, her emotional turmoil. she has two opposite poles, like the earth, which she is gravitationally centered around, emotionally. trish is forever caught between love and hate, sweetness and loathing, creation and destruction, past and future, circling unstoppably from one to the other and back, unable to break free. she smashes her paintings, burns her furniture, throws away her clothing. she beats up her boyfriend and verbally lambastes her beneficiaries. she sells herself to a no-account sleazebag john named donald for cocaine and hates his lousy guts. she pulls and twists her hair, frays it at the ends, cuts it unevenly. she gives away her coke and then wants it back too late. trish buys herself food and then doesn’t eat it. she ends up living on cheap snack cakes and free meals. trish finds things that she loves everyday, and always gives them away. anything she keeps, eventually she will violently destroy.
trish knows that somewhere in her mind is a memory of childhood molestation; she has been searching for it for years to no avail. where is it hidden? was it ever there at all? she combs her childhood, hashing and rehashing her every remembered experience, looking desperately for the one thing she cannot seem to find. can you look for something when you don’t really know what it is?