Well, its been however long it has since I had that crazy night whose hangover was so awful it inspired me to start a blog. I still haven't showered since then, and god oh god do I need to. I deserve to. I owe it to the world and society that I take a shower, but i still haven't. I'll take one tomorrow.
I've been sleeping in my insanely sad, dirty excuse art studio since that night, on a hammock strung from wall to wall in front of the low-brow interview stage I've built. I threw a pillow and some memory foam on top of it, and even in the cold Florida winter, I'd have to say its pretty damn heavenly when you put a goose-feather comforter over it. The comforter is starting to smell, though, and so am I. I could use a good meal, too. Last night I emptied out a can of baked beans and heated them in a pot, gulping down the entire can out of the pot with the help of a plastic spoon. Tomorrow night I shall go out for sushi, or fillet, perhaps. Or perhaps I will just sit around drinking coffee, thinking about painting, or writing, or drinking alone. Or drinking in the scuzziest bar I can find just to see what sort of riff raff I encounter trying to gain a fresh perspective on things.
Either way, I still have not paid my rent for the month. I haven't heard from the landlord of the small warehouse garage I call my art studio, yet, either. I'm not sure if he hasn't noticed or if he just doesn't care. Either way, hopefully I will hear nothing from him. On the first of the coming month, I'll give write him an extra fifty bucks on the check and leave a little note with it in his mailbox to let him know I'll at least give him a monthly extra ten percent of my outstanding balance until I can repay him the principle in full. He has my phone number, even though I screen all calls and don't return calls for days. Exclusive telephone communication is a privilege, not a right!
I believe I trailed off from my story of ultra-fucking myself last week somewhere between the strip club and the bottle club. I'll get back to that in a moment. This past week I have only been leaving the studio via skateboard to collect beer and living supplies from the gas station down the street or to The Mental Lounge for coffee breaks from doing hardly anything you can call constructive.. Despite that, I have some interesting experiences. In my experience I have found strange places attract strange people. If they're truly strange, they bring out the odd quirks in everyone instead of scaring them away. Some people just aren't ready to let go, though. Fear is a hungry beast, and some people don't know what it feels like to be its lunch. Do you? Have you ever been Fear's lunch? Sometimes it just picks you up and gobbles you down before there's anything you can do about it. Sometimes, you still walk away. Sometimes, your changed forever. You can love it, embrace it, or you can run from it, and try to hide. Those who have been there, though, will know that constant look of the fear of fear in your eye. Some of us will try to help you, the others will poke at it, and laugh, and try to force you to face it. We know you don't to, but god help us, we'll show you the mirror.
So the bondsman, one big black man, and myself went to the bottle club. All of the last calls had come and gone through the rest of the city and here we were at the place that kept on drinking and doing whatever the hell it was they did all night. I had never been. I always imagined a place where you brought your own bottle of booze, paid a cover at the door, and sat around in a nice drinking environment sharing booze with the other flies who ended up there that night. It was sort of like that, but still not quite what I would call parallel with my vision.
There was a cover, but the bondsman and his crew apparently don't have to pay it, the door was held open and we stepped inside. The amount of cigarette smoke hanging in the air mixed with the black lights to make the place look a bit like a haunted house. Music was playing, but all I remember hearing, or feeling rather, are the heavy thuds, rolls and hums of large, loud bass smacking my chest with blasts of low frequencies. I usually seek out scuzzy places, but I try to find them when I'm still at least half sober so I can feel the place out so I how to handle things before I am a blithering drunk. I still wasn't quite blithering, yet, though. However, it wouldn't be long before I staggered across that line.
The three of us walked up to the bar, and the bondsman asked what I wanted. I asked for a tall glass of wild turkey with a splash of coke, but they didn't have it. I settled for Jack, instead. While the bartender made my drink I tried to surmise how the whole after-hours drinking club thing worked, the Jack came out of a stand-up fridge with a Pepsi logo on the side filled with various other open bottles of booze capped with cone paper cups. I have no idea if people are traditionally supposed to bring their own bottles of booze to contribute or what, but the bartender asked the bondsman if my drink was going on his tab and he said it was. I do know that much. They also have draft beers, which confused me further, as the place was known as a bottle club.
The woman in the place looked like some of the same ones you could find standing on the street corners in a not so far away part of town. Perhaps they were indeed some of the same ones. Before I even made it through my first drink the bondsman ushered me over and asked me if I wanted to get some blow with him; it was expensive, and supposed to be really good. I had heard the ol' "this is really amazing shit" line before, and had my doubts as to the quality of the product, but I didn't give one bit of a care. "fuckin a," I told him. "I could use a little up and up." I had been drinking steadily for five hours and all the excitement was wearing me out, and I didn't know how long we were going to be at this strange place, it was the bondsman's birthday, and I didn't really have any fucks to give about much of anything. It all seemed perfectly reasonable to me at the time, and it gives me a little bit of a chuckle in hindsight. "Come on, follow me into the bathroom to meet this guy," the bondsman said. Oh yes, it was clear the glamor of the night was beginning to shine through.
The bondsman, some twitchy bald guy with long hair coming from the back of his head and a fat mustache on his face, and myself huddled in the tiny bathroom and I pulled a fifty out of my wallet. I handed it to the guy and he left. I looked at the bondsman, who apparently already had a the bag. It was a tiny little thing, and I suspected the bondsman had pulled a little out already by the looks of things. I wasn't going to raise any questions about the exact measurement of such a tiny amount of something so vicious, though.
The bondsman asked if I had a knife on me. I hadn't carried one since I broke my switchblade practicing my knife throwing abilities on the green-screen wall in the art studio. I have gotten another and started carrying it again, though.
The loud bass from the speakers penetrated the bathroom and my head. I swayed, and the bondsman told me, "That's alright, we don't need a knife." He pulled out a hard pack of Newport cigarettes, and tore a little piece of stiff paper off of the cover piece. He folded it longways and scooped a little bit of the powder onto it, then holding it out to my face. I hovered over it, then ZIP! Up the snoot-shoot it went.
It was fantastic! Some of my wits instantly came back to me, and something else came with it. My eyes went wide, a smile spread across my face and I slammed the rest of my drink with one quick gulp. The bondsman took a scoop for his own nose, and then I took another for mine before heading to the bar for another drink. By the time I left that bathroom, my balls had dropped and I was strutting around like I owned the place.
To be finished soon..
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