| More American Loser |
[Jul. 18th, 2007|12:38 am] |
Ok, folks, a bit of news here.
First off, I now have a myspace site for the novel. Here's the link
Second, I am considering no longer putting up the novel, just because it is reaching the point where first of all, I'm concerned about possible plagiarism, and second, with growing momentum and its completion growing near, cutting into potential sales has become a serious consideration.
What I may do is start locking down the entries so that you have to be on my friends list to read it.
Third, I've done a bit more editing and behind the cut is the first 4 chapters of AL so you do not have to jump around.
Now, time to get some sleep.
CHAPTER 1
A Brief Introduction to the World of "The Few, the Proud"
Few people know what it's like to be totally fucked.
I'm not talking "I'm two hours late coming home and my wife is pissed" or "the dog chewed up our $3000 leather couch" or "I crashed daddy's new BMW." Or even "I just got caught banging our 18 year old babysitter." This goes far beyond petty destruction of material goods or minor domestic squabbling. No, I am talking "you are now in a pit from which you will never escape and you should just kill yourself now" fucked.
In this world, there is no hope. You are worse than invisible; you are a leper painted bright yellow with open leaking sores, repugnant and scorned by all. There is nobody to lend you a hand up. No loved ones, no friends, just the most casual of acquaintances who would sell you out for a blowjob from an AIDS-infested crack whore or hit you over the head with a brick and steal your booze and leave you for dead while they got loaded on your booze.
Now THAT is fucked.
Everybody to one degree or another is ultimately fucked. You can't help it. You're born. You will die. Therefore you are fucked.
But within this group there are three distinct categories.
The first consists of people who are fucked but have absolutely no idea. They're completely oblivious. They go through life blindly ignoring all the obvious signs. They play the game. They buy mindless toys. They sweat all the wrong things. They get distracted by shiny objects to the point you could put an elephant in front of them and they'd never see it. The entire arc of their existence can be summed up best by a quote from Mr. Frog in Zippy the Pinhead, "Work. Worry. Consume. Die. It's a wonderful life."
They aspire to the American Dream in all its gaudy glory. Live it, breathe in the cotton-candy scented air that hides a poison a million times deadlier than anthrax. Go to school. Get a job. Get married. Have kids. Buy a house. Settle into a middle management position. Go into hock past their ears. Envy their neighbor. Secretly want to bang the intern in Marketing and picture her tight little body when the wife relents and allows them their yearly sex with her. Lose the ability to get it up without the aid of either a pill or hardcore pornography. Accrue the most things. Aspire to dominance over all and ruthlessly fuck anyone who gets in their way or tries to sneak a few crumbs from their pie. Build the largest monument possible to themselves so that others can bow down and grovel before them even after they're gone.
They live this unseen nightmare of the mundane suburban hell, with the endgame clearly written- death either by a heart attack while raging against the latest dandelion incursion onto their perfectly-coifed lawn or by some sort of cancer that slowly and insidiously ravages their body and sucks the life out of them, a fitting metaphor for their entire life but the irony of which they and those who mourn them will never see.
They never see the end coming and they pass on, totally oblivious to the fact that their life was a sick and cruel joke and they will quickly fade from everyone's memory. They weren’t even a blip on the cosmic radar and everything they did and all their worldly goods ultimately meant nothing. The scandal of the inevitable drunken hookup between their wife and their boss or best friend or wife, boss, and best friend in the bathroom at the post-funeral dinner will overshadow their passing, their final moment in the spotlight washed away in a wave of bodily fluids and obscene couplings. Before the worms have even started to nibble on their body their kids will be calling somebody else "Daddy".
The second group fares only slightly better. They too are oblivious to the horror that is everyday life. But then one night, usually during a bout of heavy drinking, the brutal truth flashes into their brain like a nuclear explosion. All the ugliness and emptiness of their life is laid before them like the Yellow Brick Road From Hell. Then, oh god, they start crying and weeping and babbling about how their life is shit and they suck and they don't want to live anymore. But you're too fucked up to care and laugh at them and leave to go hang out with someone who's not such a fucking downer and you find out the next day that after you left they called their ex and then got out a gun and attempted to pull a Cobain while on the phone.
But it gets better. Oh, yes, it can always get better. If they are truly totally fucked, the bullet won't do the job properly and instead of putting an end to it all, they end up a paraplegic vegetable and living another 40 years drooling like a retarded basset hound and needing someone to spoon-feed them yogurt and wipe their ass for them. They'll be just aware enough to know they fucked up but too helpless to finish the job. They can no longer pull a trigger and the goddamn nurse hides all the pills. Christ, they can't even fucking drown to death in their own drool because of the suction tube duct-taped to their face to prevent that very thing. And in the one final tweak of humiliation, the tape gives them an itchy rash they are helpless to scratch.
I can pretty much do without those spineless fucks in both those categories. They are stupid and weak and deserve a life of misery.
But then there's the last category.
The Losers.
They are fucked and they know it. Many years ago it was drilled into their head that ultimately, their life means nothing and they mean nothing, and the message took. But rather than be scared or ashamed of it, they embrace it. They know the real score and accept it.
But they are also angry. Angry at whatever ugly twists brought them to Loserville. Angry at those who fucked them over along the way and wanting nothing more than for karma to come back around and rip the fucking heads off of each and every person in their life who ever wronged them or even looked at them cross-eyed. Names were taken, dates noted, the supposed wrong duly recorded, and the entire record burned into the brain in acid, available for recall on a moment's notice and reread on a nightly basis.
They're also angry at themselves for whatever weaknesses and personal acts of stupidity brought them to this place and deep down inside know this is 75% of the reason they're where they are in the first place.
But rather than wallow in this anger or allow it to consume them, they wear their tag of loser like a badge of honor. They are free to raise the worst kinds of hell because they know they don't have anything to lose and everything to gain. These are the people about whom Nietzsche dreamt that caused him to wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, screaming, and then feverishly jotting down notes about this horrifying dream vision that later became the basis of "if God is dead anything is possible".
Without God, without shame, without any sort of moral strictures. Totally free.
But there is the final and most important component of this special class of losers. You know how on "Iron Chef" contestants are given one special ingredient? Same thing here.
This special ingredient is a twisted sense of humor. They know they're fucked, they're not ashamed of it, and sure, they're angry as hell about it. But they also figure that if they're going to hell in a handbasket, they might as well have some fun on the trip, especially at the expense of others. Why the fuck does life have to be gloom and doom, even if it is? Be in it for the yucks instead of the bucks. But if there are bucks as well, party bonus.
These are the most dangerous people on the face of the planet.
I should know. I am one of them.
I am an American Loser.
CHAPTER 2
"Welcome to the Brotherhood of the Fucked.
May we take your order?"
A Loser has absolutely no problem remembering the very moment when they knew they were fucked. Not at all. The memory sits right in the very front of the brain and nothing can come or go without going past it. When there is silence, we replay the moment over and over again, hoping in some desperately idiotic way that a glitch in the matrix occurs or a wormhole opens up and we can go back and make a different choice. It is a twist on the old saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and hoping for a different outcome. We keep entertaining some crazed hope that by reliving it, we can somehow change it- see something that wasn't there before, something upon which we can latch.
Now wouldn't that just be a total Hollywood copout?
Oh sure, it would make for a fun adventure tale, and maybe Spielberg has a few hundred million or so kicking around to get make this happen and bring it to the big screen. Now wouldn't that be a goddamn hoot? I could maybe satisfy a long-held fantasy of seeing Al Pacino playing me on the big screen. I could give him little pointers during the shooting.
"Al, Al, Al. I can see the acting choices you're making, but they just ain't me, babe." Oh yeah, I would put my arm around Al- "I can call you Al, right?"- and gently point him in the proper direction. "Now listen, Al, whenever I go to put my fist into a wall, there's this brief moment where I do a mental calculation as to where the studs are. Now don't be whipping out a fucking ruler or anything, just a quick glance and figure that 30" in from a corner is generally pretty safe. Because nothing sucks worse that breaking your hand during a nutty, you dig? Take just that briefest of moments and then WHAM!!!! Slam your fist right into that fucker and if you do it right, everyone in the room will drop a steaming load in their pants."
The movie would be a stunning success and my life would be changed. Fame. Fortune. Respect. Sleeping in until 3pm every day. TWO different hot blond babes every night tending to my sick and depraved needs.
Yeah, right. That's not about to happen. No, I'm stuck with this reality, this goddamn albatross of my own making hanging around my neck. Hell, not hanging. The fucking thing is stapled to me and there is no getting rid of it.
Oh, it was one hell of a moment, let me tell you.
I was down at Foxwoods, which is one of those goddamn Indian casinos that I am convinced is their ultimate revenge for the smallpox blanket. I had been there something like 36 hours straight, to the point where I was seeing the same casino staff come back for their third shift since I arrived. I hadn't left. I was in the same clothes and it was to the point where I could smell my own stink. My skin was clammy and greasy from the closed atmosphere, and even when I would go into the men's room to try to clean up a bit, within a few minutes my skin was nasty again. I kept chewing gum in a vain attempt to keep my breath from reeking.
To stay awake, I kept pounding down those weak free coffees brought around by the hospitality staff. Well, not exactly free, because you tip the server. But for maybe $.50, it's pretty much free.
I was the dream fucking client for the casino. Completely and utterly out of my mind, not thinking clearly at all, just stumbling around blindly and throwing money into the slots like there was no tomorrow.
Because really, there wasn't a tomorrow. I was down there gambling for every wrong reason they warn people about in Gambler's Anonymous.
It's not like I was broke. I had about 2 grand in the bank to cover me for the next couple of months. But still, going to a casino probably wasn't a very good idea. Quite the contrary, it was a very bad idea.
The night started out ok. Damn good, in fact. I walked into the casino with $300. I decided to take a chance right off the bat and gamble on the $1 slots and wouldn't you know it. I hit big. I hadn't been there 20 minutes and I hit for $1200. Then while that machine was paying out I took two dollar pieces and fed them into the machine next to me and bingo- another hit for $650.
Jesus, I was up $1850 and I hadn't been there an hour.
Now the smart thing would have been to take the money and run far, far away. But Losers aren't known for doing the smart thing, which is why they are called Losers and not investment bankers.
I took $1800 and folded it up in my wallet. I figured I was that far ahead, and if I gambled what was essentially found money, I might be able to make even more.
I pissed through the $300 or so of my original bankroll in no time, so I dipped into the roll in my wallet. I thought maybe trying a couple of pulls on the $10 slots might hit big, but no dice. I pulled back and went back to the $1 slots.
It didn't matter. My luck went cold. I wasn't hitting for shit. But instead of playing conservatively, I was tossing in three $1 pieces at a shot, hoping for what anyone with half a brain knows is a losing proposition. I wanted the big hit. I wanted Easy Street. I was looking at those pay tables at the top payoffs. All I needed was for the God of Odds to smile upon me just once, just one big ultimate jackpot. Then I could pay off all my bills and have enough left over to move somewhere and get a fresh start. Put a down payment on a place and finally settle down and build up some equity. Maybe even- perish the thought- get married and start a family. Grow fat and happy with a loving wife and kids that I can send to the fridge to fetch Papa a beer and mow the lawn.
I got blinded by the vision and ignored reality. I had a better chance of walking out to the parking garage and getting run down by some gambling-crazed grandmother than hitting The Big One.
I started peeling bills off the wad in my wallet. A hundred here, a hundred there. There were a few small hits, but then it was back to losing. I was losing, but at a pace that didn't seem excessive. I was tired and under the best of conditions my judgement is decidedly suspect. But at that point I had been in the casino for something like 14 hours and it was late morning the next day. I lost track of how much I was spending. Then I opened my wallet and….. nothing.
Nothing?
Jesus! Did I really just blow almost two grand? My brain refused to accept it. I emptied my pockets, thinking maybe I stashed the money elsewhere. Nope. Nothing.
At that point I could have walked out of the casino. I should have walked out of the casino. It would have hurt, losing all that money after being so far up. But if I had been thinking logically about it, I "only" would have been out my original $300, which would have been painful but certainly manageable.
I started to walk out but there, right by the exit out of the gambling area, was a bank of ATM machines.
I had the $2000 in my account. Before I really knew what I was doing, I was feeding my debit card into the ATM machine and taking out $300. Fuck the casino, I was going back in and making every last penny back. The machines might have gotten cold in the wee hours of the morning, but now some magic button-pusher would hit the switch and the machines would start paying out for the late-morning bluehairs that were the bread and butter clients of the casino, arriving by the thousands on buses every single day.
The $300 lasted a frighteningly short time.
Back to the ATM.
Back to the slot machines.
Over. And over. And over again.
Just like before, win a little, lose a lot. Not so slowly sliding into the abyss.
I really needed someone there to slap me and slap me hard. Drag me kicking and screaming out of the fucking casino and lock me in the trunk, if necessary. Jolt me into reality that I was completely destroying my life.
But there was nobody there to do that.
And the casino? They put those "Gambling out of control? Call Gambler's Anonymous." things on the ATM slips because they have to, not because they give a rat's ass about the finances of their clients. They have people who were sitting up there in the surveillance room shaking their heads that there I was again, taking out yet more money. They would never dream of sending someone down to pull you aside and tell you that enough's enough and send you home.
Then it happened. I went to the ATM to take out money and my card was declined for insufficient funds. I couldn't believe it. I tried it again. Same result. I tried the machine next to it. Nada.
I walked across the casino to another bank of ATMs and tried those. No matter. My balance was $3.78.
Fuck. It couldn't end. Not like this.
I went over to the cashier's cage, pulled out a credit card, and slid it to the woman in the cage and asked for an advance. No problem, she would be delighted to process it. Of course, the casino takes a big chunk, the credit card company charges a percentage for the advance, and then they charge you an interest rate that would have embarrassed even the most unscrupulous of shylocks back in the day.
No problem. I didn't care because I was sure I would make it all back and then could drive home, deposit my winnings, and then send the money right along to Citibank.
It's amazing how fast you can whip through a grand. I didn't have a watch, but I am guessing it was only maybe an hour.
I went back and took another advance. I went to the same clerk as before. She took my credit card and for just a second I thought I saw a look of something- pity, or maybe even concern- cross her face, but it was quickly replaced by her professional clerk face. She handed me the money, and I proceeded to blow it all in a ridiculously short amount of time.
The third time I tried to get an advance, it was declined. I pulled out another credit card. Paydirt!
This time I went to another clerk and got my money. I knew that this was it. I had no money left in my bank account. I had maxed out both credit cards. I was down almost $6,000. All I had left was the $500 in my pocket.
I was completely and utterly out of my mind. I kept switching machines, growing increasingly paranoid that someone in the back room was tracking me and controlling my slots to keep me from winning. I kept glancing up at the ceiling, letting them know I knew there were cameras up there and that I was onto their game. I would sit down at one machine and surreptitiously slide money into the machine next to me, hoping to throw them off. But they were too clever for me.
I broke my last hundred. Lost $20, $40, $60, $80…… Down to my last $20.
I hoped against all hope that I could catch fire. I needed to stretch out this last little bit. I got two rolls of quarters and went back to the quarter slots. There was one machine in particular that I knew hit quite often. It was my final hope.
I started feeding in quarters. I managed to hit a few small payouts and the first roll of quarters lasted me almost 30 minutes. I was hanging onto some hope that finally, the boys in the back room were done fucking with me and would now let me win my damn money back.
I pulled out the last roll of quarters and broke it open. I started feeding them in. Nothing. The roll grew smaller and smaller. I fed more quarters in. Still nothing.
At last I was left with only three quarters in my hand. I looked at them. This was all my money in the entire world. I looked at the pay table on the slot machine and saw that its top payoff was 30,000 quarters, or $7500. If I hit, I would walk out of the casino even.
I silently prayed to God for the first time in years, hoping that He and the boys in the back room were in agreement that the joke was a lot of fun but now it was time to return things to normal and make the machine hit.
I dropped the quarters in. I took a deep breath and then pulled the handle.
Triple red 7.
Triple red 7.
The final reel spun and stopped.
It was blank.
Right above the blank was the third triple red 7.
I missed it by one spot.
I was that close.
I stared at the machine, thinking that the security guys were screwing with me and would press the button to move wheel just one tiny little spot more.
But no, the fucking thing sat there as if mocking me. As if "they" were mocking me.
I felt the breath leave my body and felt my heart begin to palpitate. My vision started to blur and I was hoping I was about to have a fatal heart attack. Please, God, just fucking kill me now.
But of course God didn't. No, God and I have a rather strained relationship and for me to expect Him to put me out of my misery was almost as stupid as me dropping seven grand in that fucking casino.
For several moments I didn't move. I couldn't move. It was over. There was no hope, no more magic quarters. I had shot my entire wad and came up empty.
I was fucked.
I walked back to my car and sat in it. I wanted to puke. I wanted to cry. I wanted to cave my own skull in with a hammer for being such a total and complete idiot.
I drove away, ending up at this rocky promontory in RI that overlooks the ocean. I sat in the car for many hours, contemplating driving off the cliff into the cold Atlantic waters and letting death take me.
But I couldn't. Something stopped me, but damned if I know what it is.
All I had to do to end it all was turn on the ignition and put the car in drive. Very simple, very easy, even a small child could do it. But I couldn't even do that.
I was an idiot. I was a moron. And then it hit me in full.
I am a Loser.
I started laughing uncontrollably. Of course I was! Jesus! My entire life, all the signs were there. I had even been told to my face I was a loser, but I never allowed it to register.
But now it was impossible to brush aside, deny, or ignore. It was a 900 pound gorilla riding shotgun in the passenger seat and that bastard was staring me down hard. There were only two choices- accept that I am a loser or put the car in drive and take that fucker right over the cliff into the Atlantic down below.
There was no middle ground, no weaseling out of the situation.
Live life accepting that I am a Loser. Or end it all right then and there.
It was an easy enough decision. I already was a loser. Outside of the fact that in the space of 36 hours I completely fucked my financial life, what really changed?
Nothing.
I felt a great weight being lifted off my chest. "Know the truth and it shall set you free." I remembered that from history class, but damned if I could remember who said it. But whoever it was, they were dead on. I was a free man.
I took the keys out of the ignition and put them in the glove box. I wouldn't be needing them for a while. I moved over to the passenger seat and put the seat all the way back and stretched out. The summer sun was nice and warm, and the cool salt breeze carried the sound of the waves through the open windows of my car. It was a moment of great clarity and peace and my eyes grew heavy and breathing deepened. Lulled by the rhythms of the crashing ocean, I slowly drifted off into a very deep sleep.
AMERICAN LOSER
SECTION 2: "IN THE BEGINNING"
CHAPTER 3
Darwin Speaks From Beyond The Grave
So what was it that made me a loser? How did I end up this way? What was it that resulted in me sitting in my car on that promontory that day? Why has my life taken so many fucked-up turns?
Was I born this way or made this way?
It's the old nature versus nurture thing. Who the fuck knows? I certainly don't, although I have my own feelings on the subject. I do know this much- being born to poor losers certainly doesn't help. But man, if you're born rich….
Let's say you are the son of some hotshot Hollywood doctor who became filthy rich by discovering a cure for palpitating anal warts, an extremely painful affliction which is apparently quite common in Tinseltown.
Daddy's number is in the top 10 speed dial number list of every major director, producer, and studio head in the movie business. He's not cheap, but on a film set burning through almost a million dollars a day whether they film or not, shelling out $75k a day just to keep him on call for his services is chump change if it keeps things rolling and the assholes on the set healthy and relaxed.
Daddy's services are much in demand. There are a helluva lot of movies being filmed and many of those "production delays" on movie sets are caused by inflamed assholes. On a movie set with hundreds of people, it can take just one unhappy asshole to cause things to crash to a halt. Daddy's Treatment is an application of a combination of very special pharmaceuticals, guaranteed to sooth the most raging of sphincters with a 99.5% rate of effectiveness. As a consequence, his clients are very happy people and business for Daddy has been very good. Money ceased to be a problem a long time ago.
And here's Junior. He's been handed the keys to the kingdom- unlimited riches, a Hollywood address, access to the rich and famous and invites to all the A-list parties, and more importantly, he's cracked Daddy's passwords, allowing him to write prescriptions for a veritable galaxy of drugs and peruse Daddy's files to find out which of Hollywood's hottest and most bangable starlets have a clean bill of health and which ones are more disease-ridden than a Tijuana bathroom.
By objective standards, Junior's a total and complete fuck-up who should be locked in a closet until he's 50. By the age of 10 he was smoking weed. At 11 he was tossed out of school several times for various transgressions. At 12 he was snorting coke off the tits of a $2000/hr hooker while another $2000/hr hooker sucked his prepubescent cock. Before he was old enough to even get a learner's permit, he wrecked 5 cars, including 2 that were stolen. He spends more money on drugs and booze in the various hot LA clubs in a weekend than most people make in a year and he's not even legally supposed to be in those clubs.
Despite having absolutely zero socially-redeeming qualities, people will love him and bend over backwards just to be in his presence because, well, in the currency that is American pop culture, he's a Somebody and most definitely not a Loser.
Even if he wraps Daddy's new Ferrari around a tree while the latest Hollywood Cherry Poptart is sucking pharm-grade cocaine off his dick and he was driving with her thong wrapped around his head like a bandana and a blood alcohol reading that would make a Russian sailor green with envy and the crash kills the Poptart, he'll never see a day of jail. No jury would ever convict him. Instead his lawyer would get them to plop Junior's ass in a white-collar drug rehab spa and have Junior's agent seeing about getting him on the hottest "reality" show as soon as he is proclaimed "cured" and released by the clinic.
Hell, even as the EMTs are prying his sorry ass out of the car with the dead Poptart's mouth still wrapped around his dick, they're asking him for his autograph and snapping photos of themselves with Junior to sell to the tabloids and show their friends.
Meanwhile, word has gotten out. Junior's a darling bad-boy of the tabloids, L'enfant Terrible', and an entire cottage industry of slimy paparazzi and entertainment "reporters" has sprung up to record his each and every move to a brain-dead voyeuristic public that cannot get enough. Junior's accident spikes the coverage to Code Red and becomes the biggest thing since the OJ freeway chase. All across Hollywood at 3am, people are getting calls that cause them to jump out of bed and spring into action. There's a Story to cover, goddammit! Man the battlestations!
The frenzy begins with a zeal and earnestness that crosses into the psychotic.
That grown men and women see nothing wrong with standing outside somebody's house 24/7 hoping to get a glimpse of someone doing something as mundane as scratching his nuts or as crazed as offing a hooker and hacking up her body poolside (and both acts equally probable), well, you wonder if some day they'll wake up and realize that this is their life and then jab a fork in their eye repeatedly.
Most likely not, because they can always justify what they do because there's a demand for this stuff. People care. They want to peer like chimps into worlds far different and more glamorous than their own, to see how the Other Half lives and picturing themselves living in a world of ungodly wretched excess and orgies worthy of Caligula. Imagine having the option of no longer working, but instead sleeping until 4pm and then when you wake up, ordering in a kilo of the finest Peruvian Marching Powder and half a dozen tiny Chinese girls, provided gratis by your connection, The Rube, in exchange for certain in-kind favors from time to time.
Now imagine being able to do this every single day of your life, maybe ordering Thai or Hungarian girls just to shake things up a bit. Or perhaps even fat young boys on the QT if you're feeling a bit bored with the same-old same-old. Just pick up the phone, call The Rube, and within the hour the party is rolling in through the front door, wrapped in bows and pre-lobotomized for your pleasure.
This is Junior's life.
You? More than likely, you're a slave at a Walmart making $8 an hour and being bossed around by someone who didn't even graduate high school and is a grandmother at 35.
Instead of lapping shots of Chivas out of the bellybutton of some flat-stomached little bleached blond bimbo, you scarf down Hamburger Helper washed down with generic soda and watch Junior's latest travails on TV.
This is your life.
But you can still dream, right? Buy lottery tickets. Gamble. Dream of that big score that will put you on Easy Street and have you hob-nobbing with the Rich and Famous and having to hire several large Samoans with ceremonial war clubs to keep away the hoi paloi who clamor to touch your hand in the hope your fortune will rub off on them.
So of course, given the realities of the world, it's patently ludicrous to think that someone who represents the pinnacle of that dream- someone with absolutely no talent or redeeming human qualities whatsoever but has more money than most Central American nations- would ever be judged a Loser. Quite the contrary. Even if Junior is caught on video romping with naked underage boys and spraying them down with cans of Pam while wearing a clown costume, he has received a lifetime free pass, even if he has to go to some weird Arab country to cash it in.
But everyone else?
Let's just say they don't get a free pass.
CHAPTER 4
A Not-So-Happy Accident
I was the accidental by-product of the classic fairy tale where boy meets stripper, boy falls in love with stripper, boy and stripper are drunk and fuck several times in a dirty alley way several, stripper gets knocked up, boy is forced to marry stripper. It's an age-old classic story, really.
Dad was a young guy working construction downtown at a site just outside Boston's notorious Combat Zone. "The Zone", as it was called, was a section of Chinatown zoned to allow strip clubs and dirty bookstores in the hopes of containing all of Boston's vice to this one area, and never mind what Chinese who lived in the area thought.
Mom worked in one of the strip joints, the White Pussycat. It was a dark dingy place that reeked of stale beer, cigarettes, and cum. The drinks were expensive and watered down, but patrons could get handjobs under the table or more in one of the back rooms, and this trumped shitty overpriced drinks. Mom was 17 when she started there, giving the owner a fake ID that he barely glanced at. She had tits, a nice ass, and was pretty and she would make him a bundle and that's all he needed to know. He put her on the 3pm to midnight shift, knowing that this was prime time because 3pm was when the local construction workers got off work and were ready for some beer and tits.
Dad was one of these construction guys. Every day after work, he and the other single guys would go to a strip club and drink and flirt with the strippers. The married guys usually would only make it out on Friday, which was payday and their wives understood that after a hard week of work, their men needed to blow off a little steam, although sometimes the guys took that a little too literally....
Dad and his coworkers would go to Stilleto's, which was the club next to the White Pussycat, and were regulars there. One day, though, Dad made the mistake of having a little too much tequila and committed the cardinal sin of grabbing a stripper without paying for her first, much to the dismay of the bouncers. Dad and his buddies were gently removed from the club and told that if they ever showed their faces again they'd have their fucking skulls caved in with a baseball bat. This subtle message was delivered by Tiny, the head bouncer, whose name was a bit of a misnomer.
Still in the mood to party, they all went into the White Pussycat. It was there that Dad saw Mom and fell head over heels in lust with her. She hustled him for drinks, he slid her cash for an under the table handjob, and somehow it came to be midnight and he was still there. He offered to walk her to the train and along the way, they ended up in an alleyway fucking.
They ended up in the alley for over an hour and missed the last subway home. Dad flagged down a gypsy cab to get them home. They couldn't keep their hands off each other and the cabby got a decent tip and an eyeful in his mirror.
This went on for several days until Dad ran out of money. He couldn't afford to go to the club Thursday. Mom missed him and kept looking toward the door every time someone came in. She liked him- he was young, handsome, had a hard body, and he was a definite upgrade from the usual fat ugly smelly old guys who tried to slide a finger inside her thong while she sat next to them getting them to buy $100 bottles of cheap champagne that only cost the owner $5.
But she missed something else as well. Her period. Friday came and there was nothing. She wasn't supposed to dance Friday to Monday to accomodate her monthly visitor. She was worried because she was regular like clockwork. She tried to put this out of her mind as she tended bar.
Friday was payday and it killed Dad that he couldn't go to the club Thursday to see her and then fuck in the alleyway on the way to the subway. All day Friday all he could think about was seeing her. When the quitting time whistle blew, he quickly changed his clothes and cleaned up and then ran to the bank to cash his check so he could get to the club to see her.
When he walked in the door he scoped out the club and when he saw her, they locked eyes and that was all it took. He forgot about work and she forgot about her period.
He was disappointed she wasn't dancing that night and his friends gave him shit for ignoring all the other gorgeous naked strippers, but he was happy sitting at the bar watching her. She had to work until 2am that night and he stayed until she was done.
They went to Revere Beach to Kelly's Roast Beef after with a bunch of friends and after eating, they spent the night on the beach fucking and talking. They caught the first train back to Forest Hills. As they stood outside her parent's house, she told him that she was really only 17, that she never wanted him to come to the club again, that she wanted to be boyfriend/girlfriend, and that she might be pregnant.
Needless to say, Dad's world was rocked by those four bombshells and he was only able to stand there speechless. She was afraid because he wouldn't speak. He kissed her and left without saying a word.
She didn't see him for a week. She was starting to feel naseous in the morning and by Thursday, she couldn't ignore it any more. She took Friday off from work and went to the doctor's and sure enough, she was pregnant.
She told her parents most of the truth. She left out the part about working in a strip club. She had told them she worked as a cocktail waitress at a bar and as long as she gave them a part of her paycheck, they never questioned her. She just told them she had met this guy and was in love with him and she was carrying his baby but she hasn't seen him since she told him she thought she was pregnant.
Her father did what most fathers did and demanded to know who this guy was and where he lived. Terrified both of what he would do if she didn't tell him but equally terrified of what she would do to him if she did, she erred on the side of self-preservation and told him his name was Matt and that he lived only a few blocks away.
It turned out her Dad knew Matt's Dad from the pub. Still, though... He grabbed his snub-nosed .38 from the closet, loaded a few rounds into it, and off they went to visit Matt and his Dad.
Matt saw Stella and her father coming up the driveway, saw the look on her father's face, noted the .38 sticking out of his waistband, and he knew his life was about to change forever.
His Dad answered the door and heard out Stella's father. Negotiations were short and sweet and Matt's father bellowed out a summons to Matt and told him either he marry Stella or he would give Stella's father permission to shoot him in the balls right then and there.
Six months later, with Mom's resplendant in an altered white hand-me-down gown to accomodate a belly full with me and Dad in a rented tux that made him break out in a rash, the knot was tied by Father Callaghan, who was very displeased to be marrying a woman who was obviously a whore but kept his mouth closed because one of Matt's brothers knew from very up close and personal experience his weakness for young boys and sacramental wine and told him point blank any bitching and his little secret would become a very public one.
A week after the honeymoon at Hampton Beach at the borrowed cottage of a second cousin, Mom woke up at 3am having labor contractions. She called Dad, who was still living at his parent's, and he called a cab that took them to the hospital. At 7:35 am, Yours Truly, Michael Robert Stevens, popped out of the womb and screamed.
Looking back, I think I might have known something even back then. |
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sonofabish's journal
