Hyena (15 page)

I get to thinking about my own bedroom with the covers ripped off the bed, the drugs everywhere and used condoms all over the floor.

I’m thinking how tired I am of condoms, how you gotta stop what you’re doing just to put ’em on. I’m tired of the smell, the feel, but mostly what they represent—that I’m fucking a stranger.

She’s still talking but I don’t hear her. I take a bite of my taco, and I don’t know if I want it anymore.

I’M AT THE TAR PIT
having dinner when this badass chick walks in and posts up at the bar.

We’re all checking her out. Z looks at me, whispers, “Look at her, she’s beautiful, man.”

Hamed says, “Go and talk to her.”

“Nah, I’m good.”

It looks like she’s waiting for somebody. Her head pops up every time the door opens and when it isn’t for her she goes back to playing on her iPhone.

Fifteen minutes go by, and she’s still sitting there solo.

Hamed stays on me. “Go and talk to her, bro. Just say, ‘Hi, my name is Jude, you are very beautiful woman.’ And then she’ll talk to you.”

His English ain’t the best, but I dig what he’s saying.

I go take a piss and I get it in my head that if she’s still there sitting by her lonesome when I get out, I’ll go speak. I come out and sure enough, she’s solo.

I walk over to her and say, “If you was my girl, I wouldn’t have you waiting like this.”

It sounds like some bullshit line, but it’s true. I wouldn’t make my girl wait.

She says, “Excuse me?”

“It’s obvious you’re waiting on someone and they’re late, so why don’t you let me buy you a drink and you can join our table, so you’re not sitting here all alone.”

She tells me she’s good with her water and asks me my name.

“Jude.”

“I know you.”

“How?”

“eHarmony. We were supposed to go on a date, but I was in Spain and we lost touch.”

“Oh yeah, you shoulda called me when you got back. Well, we can hang out now.”

I give her my number, we talk a bit more, then her date shows up. I dip.

This dude. Fucking Hollywood cliché. He’s five seven and dressed like a tool—flaps on the back of his jeans and an overworked button-down.

Hamed says, “What did you say, bro? How did it go?”

“It went well and if she don’t hit me, then she’s into douchey agent types and ain’t shit I can do about that, now is it?”

When I left that night she hit me.

It was kismet. We weren’t even supposed to hit the Tar Pit that night. I wanted burgers. Z talked me into going there, and
I see her all pretty and lonely sitting at the bar playing on her phone. If her date would’ve showed up on time, I never would’ve hollered at her, but he didn’t and I did and we reconnected after linking on the Internet the year before.

It was like one of those romance movies where the rich guy’s cruising the streets in his Lotus, looking for hookers and he finds a white one with all her teeth and he buys her some new clothes and dusts her off and then he sees her as the pretty woman she is and not as the whore she’s acting like and they get married and live happily ever after.

I fucking love romance movies. They give me hope. Deep down, I don’t believe any of it, but I want to. I want to believe in that shit the same way I want to believe in wizards and unicorns.

What I really think happens is you find a girl, get married, get divorced, and pray she doesn’t rape you for half your shit. That’s all I know.

But that’s not all I wanna know. I wanna learn something different. Maybe some lady will pick me up, dust me off, and see me for the man I am and not the whore I’ve been acting like. So I was stoked when I met that chick in some serendipitous, what-are-the-odds type fashion.

I hit her to hang out that weekend.

Nothing.

Maybe I’m being too desperate, calling her when I say I’m gonna.

I let it breathe three weeks, hit her again.

This time with the text bullshit. I fucking hate texting. It’s soulless.

I text her anyway, let’s get up.

We make tentative plans.

I’m looking sharp.

She blows me off. No call. No show.

Fuck her.

She hits me the next day with excuses.

Whatever, it’s cool.

I saw the dude she went on a date with.

She was at the bar waiting a half hour on a midget in distressed jeans and embroidered shirt and you gonna blow me off!?

So much for kismet. Sometimes coincidences are just that. Life is life and movies are movies.

And these romance movies are about as bad for my head as porno flicks. I got as much chance of Pretty in Pinking my way into getting a girlfriend as I do of performing
bukkake
on a Japanese schoolgirl.

I’m gonna find a woman I’m crazy about and that I gel with and get along with and all that shit, but I know this—when I do find her, some days she’s gonna get on my fucking nerves and some days she won’t and it’s gonna be some work and they don’t show that in the romance movies.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go look at some porn.

VAUGHN’S IN THE CAR WITH
Rachel when they pick me up at LAX. Vaughn heard me talking about PCP on the air and wants to get dusted. Rachel wants to go to a dance party. I been dancing all week in New York. The last thing I want to do is hit some fucking art-fag dance party with a bunch of youngsters downtown.

I say I’ll think about both, but I’m lying about one.

Rachel hits the party. I end up getting sushi with Vaughn and Alex. We let the chef choose what we eat. I eat the face off a shrimp—deep-fried, headfirst, let’s go. I offer a shrimp face to Vaughn, he don’t wanna do it.

He’s like, “I’ll smoke some sherm but I don’t know about the shrimp heads. Their legs are freaking me out.”

I’m like, “Just eat that shit face-first, like you’re a motherfucking monster. Merk that shit.”

He goes in. I’m mashing some eel. Chasing it with green tea and Advil; my tooth is killing me.

After sushi we stop at this art show. I run across the street to holler at my boy who works the door at some trendy bar. I go there mainly to chop it up with him, but also to feel superior to these fucking hipsters on line vying to get in. When I’m running back across, I fart and shit myself midstride.

I don’t even know it. I’m in the art gallery talking to some dude that recognizes me from
Jenny Jones
when I feel something wet running down my ass cheek. The bathroom opens and I clean myself up, stuff my boxers in the trash, and rage on. Whatever, I’m falling apart.

We decide we’re gonna smoke the PCP at Alex’s, and he’ll watch us and make sure we’re good. We’re driving down the street banging “Born in the USA.”

Vaughn’s hyped; he keeps saying, “We getting dusted.”

I’m driving on Hollywood looking for a head shop, with Alex’s shih tzu on my lap; I’m looking for some herbal cigarettes to smoke.

Vaughn’s like, “Dude, I don’t get how you’re gonna smoke some fucking PCP, but you’re worried about smoking cigarettes.”

We find a parking spot right in front of the smoke shop. Some white dude with a cholo accent helps us out; he’s throwing us deals cuz he loves the dog. They don’t even have the herbal smokes I drove halfway across the city to get, so I cop some Newports instead and some Whip-Its and a cracker for good measure.

We’re back at Alex’s getting ready. The sherm I got from Solo is in a vial inside of a prescription pill bottle. Vaughn cracks it open and it makes the room smell like a morgue.

He’s like, “I don’t know, man. I might like myself too much to smoke this shit. It smells like the inside of a dead body.”

Alex is trying to figure out how to work some expensive camera. He thinks it’ll be good for Vaughn’s rap career to document this. It probably will be. These new rappers play at being crazy. We don’t pretend. We eat shrimp heads and smoke sherm.

I dip my Newport in the vial and watch the liquid seep up the paper. Alex is hitting me with a light monitor. I’m blowing on the cigarette, trying to dry it.

I’m nervous. I’m pacing. I’m clowning his tiny sweater hanging up on the closet door. His housekeeper shrunk it.

He says, “Yeah, I need to put
NO LAVAR
signs on my wool shit to keep her from fucking it up. She keeps ruining my sweaters, but what the fuck? These are white people problems.”

I’m like, “Fuck that, you worked hard to get your white people problems. Tell her to stop fucking up your shit. My housekeeper threw out two hits of my acid last month. I keep telling her not to fuck with shit in the butter drawer, but she don’t listen.”

Lito comes by; he’s Middle Eastern with gold teeth and a knife scar across his forehead. He does graffiti and Muay Thai. He’s smoking spliffs with Vaughn. I’m doing Whip-Its, waiting for Alex to figure out the fucking camera.

I’m like, “Just film it with your fucking iPhone; this camera shit’s taking all day.”

He tells me to chill the fuck out.

I hit the nitrous and lean back; my ears go all wawawawa
on me. I see Lito sitting across from me; he hits the spliff, gold teeth smiling. I keep doing the Whip-Its till I get rotgut.

I need food. I’m in his fridge trying to get a cupcake but Alex won’t give me one. He says I won’t like it cuz they’re all natural.

I’m like, “Bruh, I came up all natural. My folks are some hippies.”

“Yeah, but it’s like vegan or something.”

Vegan? What do I care? That shit looks delicious. He just doesn’t wanna give me one. He gives me some Paul Newman Oreos instead.

I mash like ten of ’em. Alex finally figures out the lighting.

Let’s get this show on the road.

We’re in the window. I put a flame to the sherm-dipped Newport, blow it out, and pass it to Vaughn. Alex is snapping pictures. I tell him don’t take my picture, I’m not a rapper, I don’t need photo documentation of my drug use.

Alex is complaining about the smoke. He says it smells like death and chemicals. I can’t tell. I can just taste it. It tastes like shit, it tastes like you’re smoking toxic chemical shit, but it’s not that bad cuz there’s this minty Newport finish.

I feel the effects in minutes. Me and Vaughn are amped; it feels kinda like K but way dirtier, way shittier. It’s not bad, it’s just different. I keep clenching my fists and flexing my chest. Ten years ago when Alex was smoking it, he said he ran through a screen door. I get it. I don’t wanna break anything but I would do the fuck outta some Tae Bo right now.

Vaughn sparks up another ’Port. He dipped his cigarette too much and he’s not getting a good hit.

I say, “Here, lemme see it.” I put the flame to the tip and take three or four monster pulls off the ciggy and blow that shit out. Lou Reed’s playing, that’s my shit. “Walk on the Wild Side.”

That’s when I go. I don’t even see it coming. I’m dancing by the window and then I’m gone.

Alex said it looked like I was trying to read the table, I was hunched over it for such a long-ass time. On my feet, bent over, with the cigarette in my hand burning. That’s when they laid me down. Eyes wide open. Snap snap snap in my ear. Clap clap clap in my face. “Jude, you there? Hey, asshole, you there?” Nothing.

Sometimes tripping out is kinda like dreaming; whatever you were thinking about that day comes to you in your head. Months back, I was in a K-hole, talking to the Mid-Life Crisis on the couch and she was telling me about how her white-trash homeboy would punch his girl in the stomach a gang of times when her period was late, and I started going in and out of reality.

I’d been reading this fantasy book about an enchanted forest. I was convinced that she was one of the tree people from my book and I’m thinking, since she’s a tree person made of wood can I get her pregnant? Is the kid gonna be like half a tree or something? Will we raise it in the forest, will it have roots? Am I gonna be stuck in the forest forever? I was kinda
freaking out about having a tree child but then I came to and remembered that she’s a human and the condom came off in her but I finished on her belly so we should be fine.

It’s the same thing here, but this time, I’ve been rereading
Game of Thrones
and I been trying to talk to my daughter all day. It’s her birthday and I keep leaving messages but we keep missing each other, it’s weighing on me. So I’m on another planet with my kid and the midget from
Game of Thrones,
and I’m not such a shitty dad after all. Alex’s shih tzu is laying on my chest and I’m thinking it’s the Luck Dragon from
The Neverending Story.
Now we’re all cruising around the universe on the
Neverending Story
dog.

I’m gone for a while, like a half hour, laid out, eyes wide open, dog on my chest, planet surfing, when the Frenchman checks my pulse.

“His blood, he’s still pumping.”

I jerk up. I try to talk, my tongue’s swollen, it’s clumsy. I say, “Did I shit or did I cum?”

They’re like, “What?”

“Did I ejaculate?”

I’m worried about both because of what happened at the art show and because Solo told me I might wanna get buck naked off that sherm and the last thing I wanna do is be on a good one, playing with my dick and not knowing it.

They tell me it doesn’t smell like I shit, and just like that I’m gone again. Back to my midgets and Luck Dragons.

I’m still on the floor when the Frenchman leaves. Someone turns off the lights; hours have gone by. My spit’s foamy;
it’s hard to swallow. Vaughn’s worried. They put on my iPod, they think I might recognize something and come to. I wanna tell you I heard some Bob Seger and some INXS but I don’t know, I just don’t know.

Universes and scenarios keep flipping on top of each other and on top of each other over and over again. I think I’m in the bowels of a spaceship shoveling coal. The room is pulsating with a
cuuuuuhhhaaaaaaa cuuuuuuhhaaaaaaa
. I’m toiling away with the slaves in the orange glow of the ship’s furnace and Gladys Knight is singing to me. I recognize it. I come back, it’s 5
A.M
.

The
cuuuuuhaaaaaa cuuuuhaaaaaa
is Alex snoring. Vaughn’s curled up in a ball on the couch. My stomach’s wrecked; my mouth tastes like formaldehyde. Moving’s difficult; my head’s on a swivel. My feet feel ten feet long. Somehow I make it to the bathroom.