"Yeah. Sure."

Part 2 of The DAIZY Trilogy

3 short stories by Walter Cessna

Photographs of Brandon & Lindsey by Walt Cessna NYC 07

I wiped my nose with a dirty dollar bill that I found after I poked my hand into my pocket only to encounter a hole, a couple of roaches, a Bic that had ceased functioning a few years ago and not a single fuckin’ Kleenex.


The day wasn’t especially a great one, or a sunny one. Not even a gloomy one. It was just one of those days that float aimlessly with no purpose and isn’t that the best thing about a day like that anyway? Yeah, sure.


I didn’t exactly need to wipe my honker, but it was bleeding and the blood was getting on my new white shirt, so I rubbed the odorific George W. across my red smeared nose and tried not to drip any red drops on my once crisp Banana republic shirt that now resembled something from it’s bastard step brother The Gap after a dramatic discount.


It seemed to be happening all the time lately. I started the day looking so fresh and so clean…clean. I’m sorry Miss Jackson (hello, Outkast), but this is for real. I ended up a fucked up piece of blood stained roadkill. Yet somehow I always survived. How fuckin’ lucky for me. Yeah, sure.


The dollar barely soaked up anything, so I resigned myself to looking like a buzz saw victim and attempted to hail a cab during the lovely and extremely annoying early a.m. rush hour of NYC. Sixth Avenue and Fourteenth St. to be exact.


It seemed as if I had been standing on that goddamn corner for almost an hour when some poor fuck cabbie took pity on me and didn’t even seem to notice the fact blood was streaming out of my nose like molten lava.


Where could I go? My place was out of the question because Roger would be home and there’s not enough room in this story to even begin to explain that situation (although I can in one word. Tired. Tacky. Ok, two words. Bite me).


I had worn out my welcome at every single persons house that I used to call a friend and even the ones that used to admit being related to me. Even my own mother wouldn’t unlock the door of her condo for me, her only son. I used to be her favorite (pain in the ass, that is). Yeah, sure.


It looked like I had one choice. In order to get at least a good days sleep and get my shit cleaned the fuck up, I was going to have to lose a bit of whatever pride I had left and eat some pussy. Not just any pussy, mind you. This was prime East Village babe material that even a big fag like me could appreciate for her Russ Meyer proportions, attitude and un-adjustment.


Her name was Dandy Outlaw and she was at least forty-six years old, give a decade or two (or three, the way she looked). She claimed to be a very sassy thirty-five, but the coke whore wrinkles permanently etched stone like into her facial crevices was a dead give away to her true age. Add that to the fact that she liked to dress up as her favorite teen pop star Christina Aguilera, even though she had neither the bearings or the belly button to do it justice and you had the makings of a tasty yet tacky treat. Yeah, sure.


Back in my daze of San Francisco, we have a lovely little area called 6th and Mission, which translates loosely into “fifth gateway to Hell”. Dandy once called the entire block home and often made her presence felt, although no one was ever exactly touched by it, dear. She lived in a residential hotel, which was a polite way of saying “crack whore central”. I’m starting to notice a theme of double meaning without the excitement of an entendre developing here so I’m gonna quit while I’m ahead. Bite me. Hard. Harder! Thank you.


That was where we first met and if I could get my ecstasy stained brain to co-operate, I recall it was almost twenty years ago when I was still a ravishing yet terminally decadent twenty-five. I had a taste for badly lit bars in poorly determined neighborhoods, preferring to linger with those who had stopped mingling with the normal world a long time ago. Down here, at 6th and Mission, time stopped yet no one could stand still. Tweaking like fire flies without light and giving off a murky glow tainted by their own impending self-destruction. It’s inhabitants found it to be a happy kinda’ place, if ya know what I mean. A place that they called home, even if to others it was hell.


Dandy was a real bute, but no one else thought so but me. Funny, that’s how everything seemed to go in my life. Nobody else saw what I did. To me, the grotesque was intriguing. Mystifying. Unique. I loved that she had already ravished herself before the age of twenty-one and had every intention of doing even more amazing damage to herself. She was addicted to her own living demise, viewing the world through scum stained tears, hidden behind lead lined hoods masquerading as eyes. Yeah, sure.


Pretty grim picture huh? Not to get all Marilyn Manson on you or anything, but she was a poignant kinda’ chick, ya know?


There was an instant intensity between us even though we literally met by chance. I was visiting San Francisco after getting out of my fourth re-hab in NYC and was living with a couple of dope fucks on the lower Haight who sold wack mariujana to support their heroin habit. I hated needles but never saw a white line I didn’t want to suck, so suck I did. Frequently. Until I had become just as big a fucked up cheeba whore as they were and they had kicked my ass out of the house because I nodded off during a weed deal and the dude fucked my mans shit up big time so I had to take it on the chinny chin chin. Heh. Yeah, sure.


So I was fucking homeless for the first time in my fuckin’ life. Things had been bad before, but this was taking suck to a new low life level. So like every other down on their luck piece of shit, I wound up at 6th & Mission and as I crossed the street towards the one semi decent lookin’ roach hotel I ran smack into a retarded blossom of a girl, all spindly legs and long black hair with the ends dipped in blueberry syrup dye.


She’s adamant that it’s all my fault and I ain’t buyin’ none of her crap, even though it’s some pretty attractive looking crap. Next thing I know where spinning like tops, right in the middle of the mother fuckin’ street. My cigarette drops outta my mouth but I don’t give a shit and I look up at the sky and smile cause for the first time in ages I’m feelin’ spontaneous. Free. Fuckin’ fabulous and I ain’t even high. But that’s what always happened right before I was about to go on really bad benders. Lost weekend type of ordeals.


We stumble off the street and into a bar that would normally repel even a dedicated alcoholic like myself. She knows everyone and I begin to recognize a story I’ve seen a hundred times before. The former it girl. The one that got the cutest guy. The one who could handle her drugs and kept doing more and more of them. The one who lets it all fall apart in front of everyone and gets dirt thrown all over her pretty face. The one whose parents tell her to go back to her boyfriend, only now he’s living with her younger sister. The one who gets kicked out on the street and calls Wendy’s value meals dinner and sleeps in a closet sized room that rents by the quarter hour.


I was about to have blood on my shirt that day to, only I didn’t know it. Yeah, sure. I knew it. I always did, because trouble was something I courted more than the fiercest lover. The drinks pour down us like rain on a parched desert floor, hungry and desperate for more. We drank until the neon lights looked like the morning sun and we laughed until our bellies hurt so bad we thought for sure we’d puke. Yeah, sure. It was love at first sight and when she mentioned going back to her room and getting high, I was hooked. Line. Fucking sinker.


So back to the blood. Everything was going so nicely. I was loving life and it was loving me right the fuck back. We stumbled past the non-committal stare of the hotels desk clerk on our way up to Dandy’s room and the last thing I remembered before I blacked out (normal for a booze whore like me) was a strange painting on the staircase. Hung a bit ajar and streaked with an avalanche of dust, it was upon closer inspection a near perfect copy of Richard Avedon’s legendary photograph, Dovima & The Elephants. A painting of a photo that literally defined the state of style when it first appeared. I love the way she was standing, so regal, yet so correct, almost dancer like. Girls like that seemed like the perfect fit for me. Yeah, sure.


When I came out of my blackout, I was confronted by the sight of three naked bodies strewn about my own on a bed that normally holds one. I tried as gingerly possible to remove myself from the sexual jungle gym of the previous evenings distractions. No one seemed to notice that I was awake, so it didn’t even dawn upon me until I heard the croak of girlish distress emanating from a dark corner. Was that a love call beckoning me or was I still under the self-delusional grandeur of the previous days mutual soaking up of cheap, bottom shelf vodka?


A mixture of both it would turn out as my booze riddled mind tried to re-scramble the facts into a somewhat function-able re-enactment of my previously blacked out events. No, that was a true living human soul wailing to me from a distance. Suddenly my brain flooded with a million memories stemming from the past twenty-four hours. The endless bottles of Vodka, the sub street quality of the crack we smoked and the heroin we snorted to try and come down from the obviously crystal tainted cocaine that our fucked up selves had decided was important.


Dandy broke my train of thought with her increasingly panic stricken shrieks. It sounded as if she was burning in hell, so I dragged my bone white naked ass up, tip toeing as if on a crazed mushroom trip and trying hard not to dent the pretty flowers. Yeah, sure.


Sitting in the corner “kitchenette” sink, sorta half standing, half sitting actually, was Dandy, a look of sheer delight riddled with insanity spread like margarine across her white bread face. She was wearing my shirt and sure enough, it was caked in blood. Whose, we’ll never know, but that was enough for me. I headed back towards the other room, in search of my pants, or at least someone else’s when I felt something go ka-boing against my head. I spun around to see Dandy, who was hurling plates, forks, Tupperware…whatever the fuck she could get her hands on.


I laughed out loud simply for my own amusement. It certainly wasn’t entertaining Dandy. She was screaming at me now about how I had gotten totally fucked up last night and disappeared on her. When I showed up, the naked crew, still miraculously sleeping through Dandy’s outburst by the way, was with me. Two very cute boys and one short extremely spun out sixteen-year-old girl that had the words FUCK WITH ME & I’LL LIKE IT! written into the expression spread across her severely wide forehead. This girl had one big old fuckin’ head.


Dandy’s yelling again, but I’ve found my pants and a very nice black sweater that I’ll have to thank one of the sleeping brutes for later. Like, never. As I lace up my sneakers I spy a mini pile of semen splattered condoms, some speckled with the shit of a thousand angry fucks laying next to the bed on the floor. The night suddenly spilled back into my memory and the image of me snorting lines of dope off one of the boy’s ass as a very frustrated Dandy looked on. The short, scary girl tried to bring her into the picture, but Dandy was getting final cut. If I wasn’t going to fuck her, then nobody was. Especially this squirrelly lookin’ teenager.


In my drunken and drug fueled enthusiasm I had neglected to give everyone but my happy and horny little hostess a proverbial piece of my well-worn ass. The trio of supposed terror crashed after a few more lines and I proceeded to literally fuck the shit out of not just the two boys, but the girl as well. According to Dandy, that is. But I suspected it might be true. I had been accused of piggish ness before, but frankly, I was more amazed I had actually gotten it up for the chick. The wonders of booze and drugs never cease to amaze and disgust me. I walked toward Dandy and gave her a long, warm, hard hug that seemed to shrink both of us to the size of children eager and giddy with the impending day. Yeah, sure.


I ended up moving in with her that very day and for the next two years lived an existence that to this day I have trouble recalling. At least completely. I remembered the endless drama, the constant need for more drugs and her growing impatience with my faggot ways. She had gotten too ugly to get anybody to fuck her unless they were jacked up and desperate, which meant their dick was good for shit and the only way she was gonna get off was if she found someone that actually liked her. That’s me.


As it became increasingly apparent that things were about to get uncomfortable (Dandy had moved her new boyfriend/pimp/freakazoid into the hotel room and he wasn’t exactly what you would call the friendly type), I packed up my shit and hopped a Greyhound for the East Coast and hopefully a reprieve, even if temporary, from the past twenty-four months of dope deluded satisfaction.


Somehow, Dandy and I had kept in touch over the years and when I finally convinced her to move to NYC, she actually took me up on the offer and proceeded to move into my apartment (which I was sharing with Roger, but remember, that’s another story) for the next five months. That was almost ten years ago. Since then, she had blossomed into a self-imposed role of sex goddess to the East Village minions who worshiped her, although not all for Saintly reasons.


She had an apartment; a typical Manhattan roach pit disguised (badly) as a “functional yet funky studio for modern gals on the go” and even managed to remember to feed the four stray cats she adopted when she first got here “cause they looked depressed” (although they mysteriously disappeared about two years later). The only place Dandy was going to was straight to the bar. Although she “said” she had given up her drug addled ways, she more than made up with her alcohol consumption, which at this point, was legendary amongst even the old timer alco’s who got to the East Village bars exactly when they opened at 8am.


So here I am, sitting in the back of a cab with blood still streaming out of my nose, but I ignore it and get off on the sensation of the warm ooze dragging itself slowly over my skin and seeping into my mouth, mixing with the little saliva that I could actually muster in my increasingly dehydrated and deranged state. I sure wasn’t a pretty sight, but when I stumbled out of the cab in front of Dandy’s apartment building, I caught my reflection in a mirror and somehow convinced myself that I had it all together. Yeah, sure.


I must have blacked out while I was ringing the buzzer, because when I woke up, I found myself shivering my fuckin’ ass off on a jail cell floor with a pool of fresh vomit to my right and an extremely bizarre looking Indian wearing a turban wrapped like a cobra around his head to my right. He was chewing furiously on a pencil that actually looked like it might taste good. Shit, I was hungry. Where the fuck was I and how the hell did I get here? I couldn’t remember a thing except that every part of my body ached and I was also wearing a completely different set of clothes that I had never seen before in my fuckin’ life. Dan-dee, Dandy! Once again, I had fallen into her pot of black tar honey, only this time, I wasn’t even left with a sticky sweet impression.


The turban dude was looking at me all crazy like and I had a feeling it was time to sit up and act as if I was capable of taking notice of my surroundings. Unfortunately, my body didn’t react as fast as my brain and I slipped back on my own puke, which from it’s glistening on the cement sheen appeared to be a daring mixture of dark alcohol and chunks of citrus fruit. Pineapple, perhaps. What the hell had I been up to anyway? Hawaiian Scotch on the rocks? Who knows at this point. All I can think about is my one phone call and who might actually answer it if they knew it was me. Since that was an extremely short list, I decided to scream my bloody ass off for the guard. As usual, my Drano like wail of mis-contempt did the trick. A huge black whale of a man in a constricting uniform soon stood before me.


I tried to look as innocent as possible, even though I had just mistakenly slicked back my hair with some upchuck Hawaiian Scotch and had eyes that were more crossed than a dissed lover. Without even speaking, he unlocked the gate and motioned for me to make my exit. Feeling very Gloria Swanson, I made a Sunset Boulevard type exit, praying that I hadn’t shot somebody and let them drown in a pool (although, it was a fabulous moment in the movie). I was lead down a long hall and let through a series of electronically locked gates until I was standing in a room where my belongings were handed to me and I was told I could go.


Go? Where? I didn’t even know how I had gotten there. I looked into the plastic bag they had handed me and pulled out a thick, silver Rolex watch and a pair of very fierce Gucci sunglasses that were colored the shade of a lime atomic explosion. There was a set of keys and a business card. I held the business card close to my desperately needing glasses eyes and read the name aloud. Bas Samot. 5 Tudor City Place NYC Penthouse. 212-456-9872. Whoever the fuck this dude was, I must have ripped him off or something even weirder, which I really didn’t feel like contemplating so I Etch-a-Sketched my mind to a blank and signed the series of papers suddenly put before me.


I looked quickly at my charge and shook my head in disbelief. Drunken conduct and sleeping in a public space. But where did they find me? I tried to look again but the sheet was ripped from my hands before I could finish. The cop quickly shuffled me out the door and before I knew it found myself scratching my head and desperate for a smoke outside of the Fifth Precinct on Fifth St. in the East Village. Well, at least I was walking distance from Dandy’s pad. Time to get my groove on and just look what happens to be in the inside pocket of my brand new pants? A crisp one hundred dollar bill, which I immediately walked over to the liquor store across the street. I love convenience shopping. Yeah, sure.


New clothes, only partially marred with puke, money in my pocket, a fifth of Sky Vodka in my hand, already splashing against the back of my throat and some seriously trendy sunglasses to wear even though it would soon be night. Only the God’s knew for sure, but I had a feelin’ a sleazy lil’ devil named Dandy had a few ideas as to my newfound enrichment. I turned the corner of 11th St. and 2nd Ave. and walked two blocks down to Ave. A, where I found myself for the second time in twenty-four hours ringing the bitch’s buzzer. Only this time I didn’t black out and I heard the familiar croak of a voice scarred by cigarettes and fruitless semen. It was Dandy.


Her building was one of those typical about to crumble down on all it’s inhabitants affairs and the semi fresh layer of paint already peeling off the hallway walls looked to be the color of picked dandelions that had never seen a vase of water. The color underneath was even more baroquely garden-esque, a pastiche of weed like shades decayed over the years until each layer of paint had faded seamlessly into the other. I climbed the steps until I had reached the fifth floor landing and the entrance to the roof top apartment. The door swung open as I was about to reach for the knob and standing before me was Dandy in all her tainted, radio activated looking post nuclear glory.


She was wearing a long, yellow, ruffled flamenco dress whose polka dots had probably jumped off in fright when she had slipped it on. It was torn at it’s hem and dipped scarily off to one side of her shoulder, exposing a collarbone that was as ragged looking as the dress trying to shield it. Her barefoot toes were like gnarled little worms; each ones head sticking in a different direction and colored an unfashionable shade of bubblegum pink that was chipped to near imperfection. They were studded with cheap, dime-store rhinestones that were dull with dirt and had lost their sparkle along time ago.


Her face looked as if it had been painted into a permanent mask, air brushed like a bad Patrick Nagel painting that had been hanging in the sun for decades and hadn’t seen a dust rag since then. A joint dangled from her lips, although it’s ember had faded and the last remains of a cough drop martini (Kettle One Vodka mixed with a smidge of Jaggermeister and a dash of pancake syrup for good measure) dangled precariously from her long, extension cord like fingers that hadn’t dropped a glass of booze in years. Her hair, dyed tangerine (in good light), was fumbling its way around her face like it had never seen a good brush out.


She smiled broadly at me, not a single trace of irony evident on her face. Dandy knew I would be full of questions and she also knew that I hated to be fucked with, but as she produced another cough drop martini from behind her back, I sucked down the remains of my own bottle, grabbed the glass from her hands and saluted her as sincerely as I could. No use in wasting good hooch and no use in prolonging the inevitable escapade our soon to be drunken shenanigans would find us embroiled in. The martini flowed like a long winding river down my throat, coating my insides with a false protection and an inner hope to escape the hostility that would later accompany it. It always did. Yeah, sure.


The rooftop apartment was hardly what I thought it would be. Not as small as she had said and a lot groovier than Dandy was capable of. It was a single room with a make shift kitchenette in one corner and a closet sized toilet and shower in the other that was partially hidden behind one of those tacky, Japanese looking screens that you bought down on Canal St. before it actually turned into Chinatown. The only two pieces of furniture were a huge, expensive looking and most likely hand carved Mahogany bed that was shaped like a broken heart and randomly covered by a half dozen or so thread bare comforters that would have seemed more at home in some old hippie chicks house.


An antique rocking chair permanently shifted back and forth in the drafty room, secluded in the only other free corner, it’s feet littered with dozens of magazines and puzzle books. Funny, I had never thought of Dandy as an earth mother type, nor a sentimental granny, rockin’ in her retirement chair, but I guess even demented souls like her deserved a break, even if their usual one came from Mickey D’s. Yeah, sure.


It was the day that the whole world went away (thank you Mr. Reznor) and I stopped so time could catch up with me. The room seemed still and Dandy finally opened up her mouth after what seemed an eternity. She said that it was about time I had shown up. She had gotten herself all dolled up, just for me mind you and she wanted to take me out to dinner and then to the Holiday cocktail lounge on Saint Marks for a drink or ten.


I put my hand to her mouth and walked her over to the bed where I sat the two of us down and pointed out my new clothes, the watch and my Gucci goo’s. I pulled the remains of the hundred out of my pockets and the business card as well. I looked her as squarely in the eye as my confused mind could muster and asked her what the fuck had happened to me and who the fuck this Bas Samot dude was?


To which she casually replied, wiping a stain of Jaegger-syrup from the corners of her now upturned and mischievously smiling lips.


“He’s my brother.”


“Your brother? I never knew you had a family and shit. Why’dja keep it such a big secret?”


“Everybody has secrets. Mine happen to be my family.”


“Well are you going to tell me how I ended up looking like a reject from a Details fashion shoot or not?”


“Not.”


“What…”


“Not. It rhymes with twat, which if I recall, you’re probably still not featuring.”


“Yeah, sure. Let’s not get on that subject again. It’s tired and so am I.”


I got up and walked over to the rocking chair, laughing softly to myself at the absurdity of the situation and it’s strange appeal suddenly taking hold of me. I wanted to know more, but I also wanted to sit down in that goddamn rocking chair and numb my brain out with the roach I had just spied sitting on it’s arm rest. So I did and royally pissed off Dandy in the process. If it hadn’t been for the cell phone ringing on the chair under my just sat ass, things might have gotten ugly. I pulled the phone out and flipped up the receiver.


“Daizy?” It was a man’s voice, but his request had me puzzled. Daizy? Who the fuck was Daizy?


“Who is it…”Dandy asked.


“It’s someone asking for Daizy,” I replied, feeling more and more skeptical the longer I stared into Dandy’s widely expanding eyes.



“Then give me it,” she barked as she grabbed the cell from my hands. “It’s for me.”


“For you?” I asked, rocking forward in the chair and leaping to my feet as Dandy sulked away and mumbled something into her cell. I spun her around and knocked the phone out of her grip. “Who are you?”


“I’m Daizy,” she said, scurrying for the phone on her knees and throwing it down in annoyance when she realized the caller had hung up.


“That was my brother Bas. You’re wearing his clothes. That’s his watch and sunglasses.” She was upset, yet I couldn’t figure out why. Maybe it was because I was just as in the dark as she seemed to be.


“Why am I wearing your brothers clothes and why is he calling you Daizy?”


“Because that’s my real name and after the shit we got into last night, you’re lucky to be wearing clothes at all!”


“What shit are you talking about?”


“Listen,” Dandy or Daizy, or whatever the fuck her name was said as she was started to gather some things into her bag. “I have been on the run from my sick ass brother for almost two weeks now. The only reason I had his clothes was because they got jumbled in with mine last time I was with him.”


“Why are you running away from your brother?” I asked, more curious than I had ever been about anything in my entire life, including whether or not Brittany Spears tits were real or not.


“Because he’s wants to kill me…”


“Kill you? What the fuck for.”


Dandy stopped what she was doing and slowly faced me. She was crying, green emerald streaks of mascara Ozing down her cheeks.


“Because…he’s in love with me.”


“Why is your brother in love with you?”


“Because twenty years ago, I was in love with him…” Dandy started to sob and threw her-self down on the bed. She reached under the pillows and pulled out an orange suede satchel that she stuck deep into her bag. She got up and took my hand, leading us slowly towards the front door and hopefully an answer to this weirdness that had once again invaded our lives. Yeah, sure. This was fucked up and I was not featuring the idea of someone’s mysterious past suddenly catching up with them and dragging me down into the sewer along with it.


We raced down the stairs and hopped into the first cab we could catch, unsure of where we were going, but suddenly happy of our friendship and the false safety we sometimes find in others. Yeah. Fucking sure. This was the beginning of a new adventure and both of us were charged with the excitement of where the next day might take us. We looked behind as a sleek black Lexus pulled up to Dandy’s apartment building and a frustrated man dashed out and burst his way through the front door.


“Driver?” I asked as we turned the corner and narrowly avoided a fate I knew not how horrible might be. “Can you stop at the first liquor store you pass once we’re about one hundred blocks uptown and on the West side from here?”


“No problem,” a black spectacled grandpa in a tartan vest with cherry cheeks and an apple blossom smile replied.


“I know what it feels like when ya need a drink,” he offered.


Dandy and I both looked at each other and laughed.


“Yeah. Sure,” we giggled and then fell back into the seat and got on with the business of the rest of our life, which knowing us, would probably be colorful, fun and profane, glazed like a ham with a succulent nuance for counterfeit astonishment and un-meaningful innuendos spiked with pitiful revenge. We loved ourselves for hating ourselves and everybody else in return and deserved to outlive every bad fortune that was spun our way.


Yeah.


Sure.


The.


End.

DAIZY

Part 1 of The DAIZY Trilogy

3 short stories by Walter Cessna

Lindsey & Brandon photographed by Walt Cessna NYC 07

4/ 99 - 12/2000


Daizy was in one of her usual impatient with the entire world moods. These were dangerous and if you found yourself even remotely in their wake, debauchery could pretty much be assumed. I was often the last standing thing lying in the aftermath of her catastrophic outbursts. You see, I had learned how to survive what no mere mortal ever could. I had learned the trick to dealing with Daizy. Ignore the bitch. Pure and simple. Pay her starving for attention ass absolutely no heed and get on with whatever the fuck it is you're doing. Countless boyfriends had failed to learn this easy lesson and were therefore laid bare and bleeding, a love sucked image of carnage brutality. And there was Daizy, laughing out loud to no one but her own amusement. But I never wanted her. I just wanted to be with her. Not sexually. Not even as a friend. More of a keeper. A watcher. A protector, albeit silent, but a protector nonetheless. And Daizy loved me for it. She became my best friend. A sister. My confidante. Almost a wife. And then one day he came into our lives and I knew instantly that nothing would ever be the same.


Strangely, it happened at a time when everything between us had become strained and my ability to see things clearly at an all time low. It was as if I had finally come to some sort of conclusion about Daizy and I, but its meaning was still out of my grasp. I had almost been expecting him, recalling fragments of my fucked up dreams and slowly coming to the realization that a change was due. Whether I liked it or not. Daizy seemed restless as well and our usual, playful banter had been reduced to cutting comments geared towards slaying put downs and sadistic sarcasm. Yet, I still loved her and she me. No matter how tense we became, or how much we got on each others nerves, in the end, all we had was each other. Or at least that's what I thought.


By this point you're probably thinking that Daizy and I have some sort of bizarre, psycho freako relationship. Nothing could be further than the truth. You see, Daizy, really was my sister. She was barely twenty-one and I had been fifteen going on forty for most of my teen life. My name is Sebastian Taylor Tomas, Bas for short and my sister Daizy and I were lucky enough to grow up on the lower east side of Manhattan before there was a Gap on St. Marks, yuppies were not yet an en-powered species and Starbucks was just a sick dream fostering in the brains of demented coffee addicts.


Our mother was the editor of a slick, yet desperately trendy downtown magazine called STOP! and our father was a former skateboarding champion who now lived in the Chelsea Hotel on the residual checks from his endorsements. They weren't married any more, but they weren't divorced either. At least not legally. One day my sister and I had arrived home from school, I think it was third grade and we were greeted by the sight of my mother straddling my dad and plunging what looked like a pair of scissors repeatedly into his chest. They were tripping, fucking tacky old hippies we thought, but miraculously my father lived and never returned home. My mom scared him shitless.


Now, let's get to him. The dude who would try to come between Daizy and me. He was the kind of person that turned all his toys into weapons when he was a kid. Everything shared one purpose. Destruction. Kill. Destroy. Bury alive. He was a brutal child that grew up way too early into a fiercely fucked up young man. And the only thing that he had ever wanted in his entire life was Daizy. Not so hard to understand when faced with her impossible beauty. Daizy had never had an ugly moment in her life.


They had gone to grade school together, but never particularly gotten along. He constantly tried to get her to open up to him. He would stare at her in class until she grew noticeably uncomfortable. He walked a block behind her as she came and went from school each day. He hid notes and flowers inside her lunch box. When she still failed to respond, the sight of dead bugs mixed with her sandwich greeted Daizy. Once he even went so far as to dump a handful of slugs into her gym bag.


By this point, you're probably wondering how he managed a second chance in Daizy's already confusing life. After all, serving up a bug sandwich is not exactly an act of endearment. Then again, compared to the dull complexities of everyday life, at least it was a colorful intrusion. He popped up one day as strangely as he had disappeared almost ten years earlier. Not to the day, however. That would be too strange a coincidence and Daizy was immune to coincidence. Her life had been mapped out before she was even born, but destiny wasn't to blame. She was just one of those people who never have to decide which way to go in life. She just went where it led, no questions asked.


It was Daizy's 20th birthday. Mom was typically busy at work, Dad hadn't showed his face in months and I was the only one who seemed to give a flying fuck. As usual, this was a major birthday for Daizy. She kept saying she was now just one year away from the first day of the rest of her life. That seemed pretty stupid to me, considering Daizy had pretty much been doing whatever the hell she pleased since she was able to walk. The most guidance our parents had ever instilled in her was to please close the zip-lock bag that they kept their pot in and at least learn to properly forge their signature on school notes if she was going to make a career out of cutting school.


I myself had cut school for Daizy's birthday and had organized a fabulous schedule of celebratory type things for us to indulge in. After all the tension we had been going through, I saw her birthday as a chance to re-establish our highly correct connection and close whatever open gaps we had. First we were going to have breakfast at our favorite diner, The Cooper Square on 5th St. and 2nd Ave. After our usual, grilled Swiss on wheat with tomato and mustard, burnt French fries and chocolate milk with a shot of Jack, we would thrift shop until the prices disgusted us (I'm sorry, but I'm not paying fifty bucks for somebody's old pants, even if they are from Screaming Mimi's), then pay a visit to our best friend and local dope dealer, Scratch. Afterwards, once we were correctly inebriated, it was as many movies as we could sneak into at the multiplex on Union Square.


He had never even made it into my plans, yet there he was, an unwelcome addition to our day. After waiting for eternity until Daizy got dressed, we were finally on our way. We closed the apartment door and there he stood, leaning against a car across the street. We proceeded to approach him as he stood almost menacingly in our way. I half expected Daizy to turn around and run back into the apartment, but instead she took hold of my hand and pulled my hesitant self towards her potential suitor. I had no idea this was the pre-teen terror of her past, yet Daizy knew immediately. Like I said before, there is no room for coincidence in her life, this was planned by the gods.


He was a little over six feet and had thick, unruly red hair that tried to stay in place. Not hard enough though, because it kept spring up in places like a battered box spring that had seen better days. Green eyes pierced from his face and a smattering of rather large freckles flew haphazardly across his cheeks. A sturdy yet lean frame was clothed in a snug pair of cords and a battered but not threadbare sweater that was so faded, it was impossible to tell whether or not it had once been green or blue. Being a stickler for detail, I then looked down at the biggest feet I had ever seen on a man who didn't play professional basketball. They were at least a size fifteen and he had them encased in a brand new pair of sky blue and silver New Balance trainers.


When we were about a foot away from him, Daizy released my hand and extended it towards our new friend.


"I'm sorry, but I can't recall your name," Daizy said as he took hold of her long slim fingers for what seemed to me the longest five seconds in history.


"Jude. I used to be in grade school with you, do you remember?"


"The bug sandwich guy. How could I forget."? Daizy looked at me and realized how uncomfortable I had become. "This is my brother Sebastian. We call him Bas."


Jude let go of Daizy's hand, but didn't exactly offer his to me. Instead he made a half- hearted attempt at a wave and then shifted his focus back to Daizy.


"I hope you don't mind my stopping by like this. I remembered where you live and when I got back in town I thought I'd see if you were still here."


"You used to follow me home. I thought you were a weirdo," Daizy said, almost sarcastically. "Then one day you were gone and I kind of missed my escort."


"My family moved outta the city, to Jersey. I never got a chance to say goodbye. I'm sorry." It seemed genuine, but I couldn't get past how he was staring at Daizy. He seemed not to blink, his gaze was so intense. I looked at my sister and tried to see what he saw. When you look at someone for fifteen years, it can be hard to understand what other people are looking at. In Daizy's case, however, it was fairly obvious. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Anyone had ever seen for that matter. I was smitten with her in the most unsexual yet completely in love manner. It sounds corny but I would have died for her.


Her skin was almost olive colored, a striking contrast to her jet-black hair, which was cut into an exaggerated bob with the front slightly longer than the back. Her bangs were constantly falling in front of her face, which supplied her with the almost annoying habit of chewing on one end with her teeth. Her eyes were a very ordinary shade of brown, but huge and round, almost cartoon like. Like a Keane character. Her lips were bow shaped and naturally stained cherry red as if she was forever sucking on an Italian ice. Her body was slim and showed no hint of a woman's figure. She was as lean and straight as a board, with long, thin fingers and narrow, tiny feet. She barely stood over five feet tall.


You may be wondering why anyone would be attracted to a twenty-year-old child woman. It wasn't just her looks that made Daizy so special. It was just her. Her way of being. The way she stood half askance and the way she sighed when she opened up the fridge and discovered there was no milk for her Honey Nut Cheerio's. The look she got in her eye, transfixed yet doe like, whenever she saw a boy that tickled her fancy, or the way she laughed at the movies; loud, hard, like a sailor, totally oblivious to how annoying it was to the other people in the theater. It was as if she were this famous, glamorous star living right in our own house, only nobody knew it but Daizy and I.


Jude broke what had seemed like a ten-minute silence and forced me out of my self-created exile.


"What are you up to today," he asked.


"It's my birthday and Bas…"


"I'm taking my sister out for the day," I cut in, grabbing Daizy's arm and trying to budge her immobile body from his presence. "I'm sorry, but we've got to get going."


"I'm sorry Jude," Daizy said as she struggled with me. "But my brother is a bit persistent this morning."


"That's alright, but…can I see you later tonight? Maybe around 8pm?"


Before I could successfully drag her away from the monster's clutch (I've always been a bit dramatic), Daizy broke free of my grip and stepped right up to Jude. Without even a blink of her well mascara'd lashes, Daizy gave Jude a sweet, perfectly innocent peck on the cheek and whispered her phone number in his ear, thinking I wouldn't hear. I did.


"That would be lovely," she said, then turned to join a visibly annoyed and on the verge of scowling me. As we got a few blocks away, she took her hand and placed it on my shoulder, stopping me. She took her other hand and sifted it gently through my hair, a half smile, half look of scorn spreading across her lips.


"I know you love me in whatever sick, weird way your imagination has convinced you, but I am not going to sit on a shelf like some fuckin' china doll and gather dust. Don't fuck with me Bas. I'm your sister, not your goddamn wife for fuck's sake!"


Now I felt fucked over, stupid and annoying, as well as embarrassed by my own presence. I was definitely not touched by his presence, dear. I shifted about nervously and contemplated suicide. For Daizy to be mad at me was tantamount to the extinction of mankind, as we know it. I had shown too much emotion, made myself way to vulnerable and thus sunk myself so deep into a hole my only chance of escape was a quick and blunt reply, absolving me instantly of all guilt, conspiracy or fraud.


"Nobody has ever had a sister like you Daizy, you're beyonder. I love you so much that sometimes…I get jealous. I want to always be there for you, but sometimes it feels as if you don't want me to even be your brother!"


"You're over reacting a bit, don't you think?" Daizy replied as she took hold of my hand and completely shifted the tone but not the subject. "I know you love me. But one day I'm going to leave here and that means I'm going to have to leave you. At least for awhile."


"What do you mean your going to leave here?" I asked, my voice belying a soon to be steady stream of tears and fitful guffaws.


"I mean, I'm not getting any younger Bas. Today I'm twenty years old and you know what? I'm sick of my life. I'm sick of our fucked up parents and I can't stand living in this roach hotel city a minute longer. I want to see what's out there for me and the only way I'm gonna find out is by…"


"Going out with him," I said, finishing her sentence.


Daizy actually looked puzzled, a face that was often beneath her more self assured demeanor. "Who's him?"


"The bug sandwich guy. Your precious Jude. The stranger that you almost allowed to interrupt our birthday celebration," I seethed, suddenly unable to control my rage. Daizy took a step back, but then quickly reversed herself and reached out to hug me. I fell into her arms like melted butter on popcorn; only I smelled a whole lot better than golden flavor. A haze of contentment swept over us, until I could almost feel nothing but our two hearts beating together as one. Then it hit me. She was going to leave me. She had finally admitted it, my biggest fear. I was going to be left all alone. It was at that moment I reached my ultimate conclusion. Jude the bug must be squashed.


She broke away from me and I wondered if somehow she sensed that I had become full of fear and overflowing rage. Maybe she was right. Maybe I was in love with her. She was the only one who had ever loved me. At least that's how it seemed. The last time my mother did anything remotely maternal for me, I was either still in diapers or too shell shocked from my fathers abuse to actually remember it. Daizy on the other hand filled my head to the point of bursting with all the good things she had done for me. If she were going to be out of my life, my own would cease to exist.


"Bas?"


"What?"


"Are you going to be alright? You're shaking like a leaf," Daizy said and brushed a loose lock of hair out of my tear stained face.


"Are you going to see him tonight?" I asked, looking briefly away.


"I don't know for sure and even if I did I'm not going to tell you. This is something I want to do on my own and for once, you're just going to have to deal with it." Daizy had never spoken so firmly to me before and it freaked me the fuck out.


"Then do me the favor of at least having him pick you up at home so I can apologize for my rude behavior", I lied, and rather well, might I add. "If you're so intent on seeing him, I might as well get used to the idea."


Daizy looked at me and for a second I thought she was staring right through my devious soul. Had I gone too far? Was she buying my counterfeit sincerity? Her answer was like a kiss behind my ear.


"Alright, but I'm warning you Bas, if you pull anything I will kick the living shit out of you."


"Don't worry sis, I'll be the best you've ever seen."


The next four hours flashed by me in a haze of self-inflicted anxiety. I had no idea what I was going to do but something told me it was going to be a doozy. A brilliantly blind spotted debacle that would melt any doubts that Daizy might be harboring regarding my ability to freak out even the fiercest opponent. I had to go for the jugular mentally and perhaps draw blood physically.


We decided to continue Daizy's birthday plans and headed off to our now late breakfast at Cooper Square. After stuffing our faces, neither of us felt like a movie anymore, but the thought of a thick spliff at Scratch's still appealed to me. The only thing that seemed to get Daizy going was shopping, and she wanted to go shopping on Eighth St. to get some new make-up for her date with Jude. We kissed each other goodbye, but it just wasn't enough. I went to hug her, but it turned more into a grope. As her body seemed to collapse against mine, I let my head linger a bit too long in her chest, making her increasingly uncomfortable.


Daizy broke from my grip, smiled faintly and walked away. About half a block away I was still staring at her, watching her figure diminish into the crowded NYC street and blending unfocused into the fold of a million other people. She looked back at me, but her smile was gone, replaced with something that looked like a mix between a scowl and a frown. It was then that I saw her for what she really was to me. My obsession. No longer just my sibling, no longer something I could lie to myself about. I had fallen in love with my sister even though I had been in complete denial forever.


Scratch lived over on Ave. B and 11th St., above a funky old bodega that served as one of the last drug fronts in Guilliani's newly sanitized and supposedly crime free NYC. Next to that was a trendy, poser bar for patrons who liked Gap leather and vintage concert t's, but still got up and paid homage to their boho yuppie experience by getting to work fresh, early and disgustingly perky. I hated what the East Village had become. What once was edgy was now dull. Polished, but lifeless. Glistening with new money, yet fading fast from reality. Scratch was sitting in his window on the second floor, surveying the whole scene like a token watcher whose one mission in life was to observe the modern decline of all that used to be cool, but now wallowed in it's own pretentious and tacky shit.


I rang the bell even though Scratch had seen me coming from a block away and ran up the steps three at a time once he buzzed me in. His apartment was the only one that hadn't been refurbished by the condo crazy landlord. Scratch had the oldest lease in the building and had so far eluded every legal attempt to force his pot-smoking ass out. Daizy and I had met Scratch quite by accident. We had come to there expecting to meet our friend Troll. She was this extremely spastic candy raver we knew from hanging out at this floating club Concrete Jungle. She had met this "really cool guy" Scratch at Dojo's one day and they had spent the afternoon drinking mint tea and debating Hillary vs. Rudy.


Within a week they were living together, even though Scratch was about two hours from thirty and Troll hadn't even had her sweet sixteen. They were both addicted to Tootsie blow-pops, VHI-Behind The Music marathons, spaghetti dinners on Bleeker St. and drugs. All kinds, forms and effects. As long as they fucked you up enough, that's all that really mattered. Troll had always been me and Daizy's hook-up, but we hadn't seen much of her since she moved in with good old Scratchy. Daizy got her cell phone number from the cashier at this trendy raver boutique Liquid Sky where Troll used to work and still hung out occasionally. She convinced her to have lunch and Troll invited us to pick her up at the apartment she was sharing with Scratch. It was the beginning of the end for Troll and she didn't even know it.


We were early for the first time in either of our lives, which should have been some sort of sign. Troll answered the door, giggling and sporting pupils as wide as saucers and as crossed as an ex-lover. She led us down the skinny hallway of the railroad flat until we were in the living room and graced with Scratch's presence. Daizy and him took one look at each other and came to the same conclusion. They wanted each other and now wasn't a moment too soon. For Troll it was all instantly too late and extremely over. She left in a fit just as Scratch was licking the back of Daizy's neck while I pretended too look shocked, but couldn't resist a stifled guffaw or two.


Scratch romanced Daizy as best he could, but the trouble was Daizy was never big on heads and Scratch smoked nearly a pound a day. This meant he wasn't paying enough attention to her. In fact, none would be a better word. One day they were walking out a club together and Daizy jumped into a cab and slammed the door leaving Scratch itching his chin in bewilderment. No wonder she didn't feel like coming with me today. She hasn't seen Scratch in a year, doesn't even mention his name. Scratch never stops whispering hers though. He had never forgiven her for dumping him, which is probably why he stayed friends with me. I was his last connection and all he was to me was another dealer. Someone who could get me high. Period.


As Scratch opened his door to let me in, that's all I could think of. Getting high, forgetting Daizy and all these weird new feelings for her and figuring out what I was going to do to get rid of this new annoyance, Jude. I felt like driving into the thick of the night, my car radio stroking me like the tender fingers of a long lost lover as I cut into the road, swerving on the black tar until I become one with the long, winding path that lay before me. All the while, singing the last refrain of some insane song blaring from my radio. Scratch grabs me and socks me back into reality. "So you wanna go get high, " Scratch whispers, breaking me from my self imposed morbid spell.


"Of course I do, dumb ass."


"Then get the fuck over here and smoke this."


I grabbed the joint out of his fingers and took a long, deep drag that slowly fills my lungs and quickly numbs my frantic brain until Daizy ceases to exist and all I can think of is my next toke. The next one is even deeper. I could feel the resin soak my lungs and the cloud of smoke get stuck in my increasingly itchy throat. I finally let it out, staring dumbfounded at the thick cloud and stonily imagining a rough yet seemingly real image of Daisy transpiring through the smoke. Just when I seem to forget her, she always comes right back at me. Scratch quickly broke my spell.


"That's some good old write home to fuckin' mama cheeba, right?"


"It doesn't exactly suck," I offer, then take another hit before Scratch grabs the joint out of my fingers and down his own hungry throat.


"Why do you always eat the roach?"


"It gets me more fucked up. Whatever…. anyway, waste not want not, right?"


"Yeah, whatever. If you wanna act like a human ashtray, that's you're fuckin' business. So how's about fixin' me up with an eighth, ok?"


Scratch walked over to his closet, pulled out a grubby old laundry bag and dumps a huge sack of gorgeous green leaf onto the floor mixed with a dozen pairs of crusty underpants. That's Scratch for ya. He'll sell you some of the best pot in the city, smelling like his ass. He weighed out a bag for me, but stopped short just as he was about to hand it to me. I already had three twenties in my hand, but instead of taking them he looked me directly in the eye and smiled.


"What's up with you? Usually you like to hang here for hours. I bet that flaky sister of yours is driving you bug fuck gain." Scratch laughed, ripped the bills from my fingers and handed me the bag, which I furiously pocketed.


"No, Daizy is not driving me bug fuck," I seethed, attempting to get up and leave. Scratch's strong arms held me down.


"What's the matter man, older sister got you down. Again." Scratch was smirking, on the brink of hysterical laughter. Until I cut in.


"Listen, asswipe, I'm not the one she dumped who can't seem to get over it. That's your lucky role in life."


It worked. Scratch shut up and sulked across the room.


"Did you ever think of getting back at her?" I prodded, a sick idea forming in the back of my mind.


"For what?" Scratch seemed to whisper.


"For fucking you over and never looking back, that's what."


"I don't exactly remember it that way."


"I do. You were the loser. Big fuckin' time."


"What about you, you little fuck. You let her walk all over your shit. At least I don't gotta live with her anymore."


"But you want to. You still love her and you'll never get over her."


My ploy had worked. Scratch was freaked the fuck out. I was in my glory, but did my best to hide it. Then I went in for the kill.


"So Scratch, how long has it been?"

"Since what," he asked, simmering like an overheated crock-pot.


"Since you actually dipped that dick of yours into something other than your own well lubed fist?"


Scratch lunged at me, knocking me down on his cracked linoleum kitchen floor. I got up and tried to run across the room, but he grabbed the back of my shirt, ripping it off my shoulders and tossing me face first into the kitchen table. It wasn't a pretty scene. Before it was over, it became downright ugly. Scratch fucked my shit up and I was soon to be the proud owner of two very black, blue, yellow and purple eyes. But my newly hatched plan had worked. Scratch was still in love with Daizy and he was going to be my way of getting rid of Jude. Of course he was completely unaware of this. Or so I thought at the time. The image of a smiling child like girl holding a huge butcher knife behind her back invades my mind until I can recant…


"Daizy really pisses you off, doesn't she," I ask Scratch as I rub my stinging pupils and struggle to get off of the now collapsed kitchen table.


"I'm sorry Bas," Scratch says, "I guess I over-reacted."


"I guess," I muttered back, then gaining my composure, reach back and swing a fierce punch into Scratch's right jaw.


"Guess what?"


"What?" Scratch hisses as he falls back into the refrigerator.


"I just figured out how you could ruin Daizy's day, give yourself a big heaping handful of satisfaction and get me out of a bind at the same time."


"How?" Scratch was obviously curious and I realized I had him hook, line and stinker. I was a little stinker I thought to myself, not realizing I was grinning like Cheshire cat.


"It's all quite easy. It seems Daizy is about to lay the soul of another brother bare."


"She got herself a new boyfriend, huh?"


"About to be boyfriend. First date. First kiss. First taste of his fresh flesh till she tires of it and casts it aside. "


"What's his name?"


"The bug guy. Jude the dude. And he's picking her up at our apartment at eight."


"Tonight?"


"Tonight. Why don't you stop by around the same time? It might just make something rain on Daizy's parade. And you know how much she hates getting wet."


"All bitches do," Scratch muttered as he got up and pulled some ice out of the freezer.


"Put this on your eyes, Bas. They look really fucked up and you wanna look your best tonight for the family reunion." Scratch was laughing and for a second it made me uneasy. But the thought of ruining Daizy's date made me incredibly happy in a kind of Grinch who stole Christmas way. If I was a cartoon character at that moment I would be poison green and shaped like a sorry sow with snarling lips and sad cast eyes exuding twisted feelings of revenge mixed with remorse.


I got up and headed towards the door. Scratch stopped me and for a moment I thought he was going to deck me again. Instead, he gave me a long hug that almost hurt as bad as a beating.


"I'll be there at eight," Scratch said as he let go of me and I headed out the door.


"Don't be late," I shot over my shoulder as I bound for home, almost leaping across Thompkins Square park and onto Ave. A. Past poser bars and millionaire yuppies dressed as down as they could, pretending to savor the burritos at Bennies and desperately trying to look cool as they walked their poor dogs and talked ceaselessly into cell phones behind dark glasses. New York dreary.


Daizy was already putting the polishing touches on her perfectly flawless makeup. She was wearing a lime satin thrift store suit that had been taken in from it's former boxy self to a sexy, nipped and tucked cocktail number that showed off the few feminine curves her boyish body allowed. She had borrowed a pair of Manolo's from our mothers vast collection that had tiny seashells at the tip of each gold muled toe and she had an "emerald" tiara perched atop her black bangs, slightly askance, that I had given her for her birthday last year. Most people would look garish, a bit fucked up, but Daizy made it all work effortlessly, looking fairly chic for a twenty year old with an aversion to clothes bought from department stores.


She pries herself slowly away from the mirror and acknowledges my new bruised presence. After staring at me in mock horror for a few seconds, Daizy brushes past me and heads for the kitchen where she heads straight for the peach Haggen Daz which she eats out of the carton with her long, pink nailed fingers.


"Ever consider using a spoon?" I grabbed the ice cream out of her hands and placed it up against my still sore eyes.


"What the fuck happened to you?"


"I ran into an old friend…"


"It looks like he ran into you. So, how do I look? I'm not too dressed up am I?"


This was weird. Daizy was never nervous, especially about a new outfit. Could she actually already be into this guy? Like in love?


"You look major. You're a real babe."

"I detect a note of sarcasm. Please try to keep it to a minimum when Jude gets here."


"Did he call? Is he coming over?"


"Yes and he will be here any second, so please try not to freak out on him. I could use a little support."


How about a little sabotage, I thought to myself as I smiled at Daizy and retired to my room to change. After a brief bout of style resistance, I quickly threw an old hoodie over my t-shirt and joined her in the living room. It was at times like these that I wish I were the fifth member of The Fantastic Four. Gigantofreakodude, capable of all other four members superpowers, plus my own unending capacity for counterfeit astonishment-thank you Roger Ebert and Russ Meyer- and my own amazing ability to bullshit or hustle anyone out of their last fucking dime. A hero for my own imagination, incapable of ever getting fucked up, over or out.


Alas, I was not a superhero, nor was I the brave, devious soul I imagined. Without thinking, I suddenly blurted out everything I should have kept secret.


"I have a guest coming over as well. An old friend of the family."


How old?" Daizy asked suspiciously.


"Oh, about twenty past boyfriends."


"Past boyfriends. Are you gay and forgot to tell me?"


This made Daizy laugh and me cringe. She was always calling me a fag, or hinting that I was into her boyfriends, which is why I hated them. It was just the opposite only she was too self-absorbed to ever really figure it out.


"Not my wicked past. Yours." Daizy looked concerned. Annoyed. Royally fucking pissed off.


"What the fuck are you up to Bas? Are you about to pull one of your infamous stunts, cause if you are then I…"


"I'm entitled to my own method of social intrigue, just like you." I stood defiant as Daizy raced up to me and grabbed me by the front of my shirt.


"Your idea of intrigue often crosses the borderline of insanity," Daizy hissed at me just as the doorbell rang. We both stopped instantly and turned towards the door wondering which mystery guest had arrived. Daizy broke free of her grip on me and raced towards the buzzer.


"Who is it," Daizy whispered into the intercom, almost wearily.


I was almost relieved when I heard the bug dudes voice croak through.


"It's me, Jude. Can I come up Daizy?" The sweetness in his voice distracted me. It was almost soothing. I found myself almost wanting to hear him say more, when it dawned on me how annoyed I was becoming. Just as Daizy had headed towards the front door, the buzzer rang again and my eyes lit up like Christmas lights, only brighter and tackier. I raced for the intercom before Daizy could spin on her Blahnik heels.


"Who is it," I croaked, breaking into a coughing fit as I tried desperately to hear who it was. Scratch's creepy voice was like music to my ears.


"Yo Bas, It's me. Let me fuckin' up already." I buzzed him in just as Daizy threw open the door and Jude sauntered into the apartment. Daizy shot me the most evil stare ever, but I ignored it and watched in disbelief as Scratch came bounding through the door, stopping about an inch short of Jude's heels. Daizy took a step back when she realized which ex boyfriend of hers had actually turned up. Luckily for me, it was her extreme least favorite.


"Why are you here Scratch? I dumped your ass over a year ago!" Daizy grabbed Jude's hand and tried to pull him into her room, but the carrot-topped pest was having none of it.


"You got two dates goin' down tonight?" Jude was suddenly seething, his hair flaming and cartoon like as eyes darted suspiciously from my own to Scratch's.


"Are you her new boyfriend," asked Scratch, taking a step back as Jude spun around to face him solely.


"I was about to be…"


"Bas, what the fuck is the meaning of this and why is Scratch fucking here?" Daizy cut in.


"Because I still love you baby and I thought it was time we had a little bit of a reunion."


"The only reunion we're going to have is with my fist you dumb ass stupid son of a bitch!" Daizy was seriously pissed. Her cursing extent usually only encompassed a few words, never whole phrases. Frankly, I was impressed. Jude however was not. He was already heading for good ol' Scratchy and I was not anticipating a subtle scene.


"I think you need to move your ass on up and outta here," Jude seethed as Daizy tried to pull him away from Scratch. But it was too late. Scratch had lunged at Jude and the bug dude simply held out his arms and welcomed his toked out opponent. It wasn't pretty. The three of them crashed backwards into out mothers antique china cabinet, sending a fortune of porcelain shattering across the tiled floor. Daizy had rolled herself backward into the kitchen while Jude and Scratch socked it out amidst the broken plates and teacups and saucers that our mother had annually collected since she was a teen-ager. I stared in glee, loving every minute of my family history suffering carnage and marveled at the sheer spectacle and chaos I had knowingly created. Daizy had other thoughts.


She leapt to her feet and raced over to the kitchen drawer and pulled out a huge butcher knife that we had once had to pry out of our acid saturated mothers hands before she could murder our father. Daizy looked at me and locked my gaze solely with her own. I didn't even notice as she flung the tiara from her head and shook off her jacket. Next to go were the Manolo's and without a word she raced towards me and brushed me to the side as she stood over the battling lothario's and made her presence known.


"Stop it. STOP IT!" she bellowed, cow like and unconvincing, almost getting knocked on her ass as Scratch stumbles to his feet and lands a slow, but correct sucker punch to Jude's cheek that tosses him doll like to the floor and momentarily immobile. Scratch looks at Daizy and laughs, pointing at the knife in her hands and cackling like a crow as he reaches into his own back pocket and pulls out a small silver pistol that catches the light from the chandelier like a warning beacon that only I seem to notice. Daizy seems stunned, unable to grasp what is about to happen, but it has all become too clear. Scratch had no intention of simply beating up Jude and he had no intention of trying to steal Daizy away into the deep dark night. No, he was going to kill her. And me. All of us it seemed and I wasn't going down like that. Too common.


Daizy started to spin around and Scratch had already taken aim when out of nowhere Jude had gotten back up and jumped on Scratch's back as he grabbed Daizy's arm with one hand, letting off two rounds with the pistol in the other. The bullets lodged into the ceiling and for a second everything seemed to slop, but the knife in Daizy's hand was already up and before I knew it she had plunged it into Jude without realizing, aiming for Scratch but killing her new love instead. Jude fell back and Scratch knocked him even further aside. He spun Daizy around but she was too quick and knocked the pistol from her hand with the knife before she let it slide across his smirking face, leaving a deli like slice of facial bologna in it's wake.


What the fuck was going on? Had we suddenly been transported into some demented Tarantino-ish other dementia? Was this a sick joke, had somebody spiked my Cinnamon Apple Cheerio's again? No this was real. Daizy slipped on the now blood soaked floor, rolling over Scratch who was desperately grabbing at his now faceless head. Jude, the bug dude, lay squashed a few feet away, flat on his face, his hands strangely tucked underneath him as if he were playing with himself. I looked for the pistol, but couldn't spy it at first because it was hidden far in a corner. I leapt across Daizy and the still wiggling mass of Scratch until I had reached the weapon, grabbed it and slowly took aim. The bullet shot in a fractured explosion from the gun that broke the room free of its eerie stagnation and newly blood soaked presence. Daizy looked at me in mock horror as Scratch's body just spassed out and shook in endless convulsions. Frankly, I found it boring and overly dramatic. Even in death, Scratch had to be a fucking ham.


"What the fuck do we do now?" Daizy muttered as she stepped over Scratch's now still body and grabbed the pistol from my trembling hands. I pushed Daizy aside and walked over to the CD player and put on my favorite record. The Sleep, by Psychotica. It was a simple piano and violin composition that perfectly conveyed the dead stillness that seemed to fill the room and simultaneously tarnish our now seemingly non-existent future. Or did it. I finally had what I wanted. Daizy had no one but me. There was nowhere for her to go unless I took her. And that is exactly what I did.


"Where the fuck are we going?" Daizy asked me as I took her hand and we headed for the door.


"Anywhere. Any fucking where we want. Only thing is, we have to go together…. can you deal?"


"You finally got exactly what you wanted and I ended up giving it to you." Daizy didn't seem pissed. In fact, relief would be a better word. Maybe she had known all along. Could it be that not only was I in love with her, but she was in love with me to?


My question was answered as she took my head in her bloodstained hands and stroked her fingers gingerly across my red hot and flaming face. Her lips descended upon mine and we briefly kissed, lingering only to taste the few drops of saliva that spread across them. Daizy tasted as beautiful as I had always imagined. It didn't even matter at this point if we had sex. She was mine. Completely. So we left. Moved to California. San Francisco to be exact, where Daizy and I live together as boyfriend and girlfriend. I know, it doesn't make sense. Whatever. Life doesn't fucking make sense and the sooner you figure that out the happier you'll be. That's what Daizy taught me and for that…I'll always love her.

MY DINNER WITH MICHAEL

Text & Photos By Walter Cessna

1-97


It’s two minutes past midnight on a Friday at the Bowery Bar. I’ve just stepped out of a cab and I’m flanked by two of the most outrageous transsexuals in the world (or the New York club scene, at least). Amanda, or A-Man-Duh as she liked to pronounce it and Olestra Lucille Stools. Amanda resembles a risen from the crypt Marilyn, only with much puffier lips, while Olestra prefers a Carol Brady on super hormones look.


I had met them while I was living at Hotel 17, a funky yet fierce club kid habitue that thinly disguised itself as a residential hotel. My scene is writing, at least when I’m getting paid, which wasn’t too often. When I’m not I wear a variety of hats. I’ve been a hustler of all sorts, from promoting nightclubs, to pushing myself, sometimes in ways that I haven’t always been proud of. My friends were equally on the take and lived their lives for only one thing. The night and the chance to go clubbing and get fucked up.


After years of dragging my well-worn ass through one club after another, my capacity for friendship had been strained to the breaking point. Imagine my surprise when Michael, one of my worst enemies and strangely best friends, became a nightlife impresario at the tender age of twenty. Of course, nothing on the New York club scene is ever as it seems, so when I found out he was also fucking his boss, the supposedly straight and wheelchair bound club owner Meter Satien, I was hardly surprised.


Together they ran the wildly successful club Slimelight, housed in an old church and home to some of the most hedonistic debauchery ever witnessed between the hours of midnight and four a.m. I guess I should also mention that just two years ago, Michael and I were lovers, both doing it behind our boyfriends backs. An illicit affair that fooled everyone but us, for it’s scars would stick a long time, longer than both of us would ever realize. Until it was too late.


You see, I’ve never been very good at keeping secrets and neither was Michael. Only he was stupid enough to actually still trust people. His friends. The inner circle of fellow club kids whom, supposedly, would never blab. I on the other hand, didn’t trust anyone. I had lived in New York for far too long to be that dumb. I was also embarrassed by my membership into Michael’s inner circle. He never realized how easy he made it for me to escape when he was dumb enough to confide his horrible secret to me at that notorious dinner.


Michael had invited me to attend a supper he was throwing at the Bowery Bar to celebrate his newfound notoriety as a murderer. That’s correct. A murderer. To make a long story short, he had been accused of murdering his friend Lucifer, a despicable Special K. dealer, supposedly after falling into a major K hole. The rumor was that Michael and his pals, Troll St. Troll, Jenital Gal, Gila Monster and Thaw, woke up and found Lucifer’s decapitated body lying in the sheets between them. Since Thaw was a rival drug dealer, it was assumed that everything had gone down because of a fucked up drug deal.


Several versions of the story were making the rounds. That Michael hadn’t actually done it, but paid his club troll friends to commit the murder. Another was that Meter Satien had ordered a hit on Lucifer because he was about to cooperate with the DEA on an undercover investigation into the drugs being sold to minors under his and Michael’s supervision at the club. The most twisted story going around was that Michael had Aids and had infected Lucifer who had secretly been his lover. When Lucifer found out, he had tried to kill him and almost succeeded until Michael’s evil circle came to his rescue and took matters into their own hands.


Whatever the story was, Lucifer’s headless body was found about six months later, decayed almost to the point of un-recognition in a dumpster by the West Side piers. They never did find the head, but were able to identify the body because it was still wearing Lucifer’s trademark angel wings, an ironic and unfortunately trendy accessory favored by too many club trolls that year.


The rumors had only recently started. After Lucifer turned up missing, Michael had become an even bigger spectacle and drug freak than he was before. Still, no one was suspicious. Meter fired him from the Slimelight after one of Michael’s many drug fueled escapades, this one involving a fourteen year old raver he had been screwing that had over dosed on the dance-floor and had told the police he had bought the drugs from Lucifer.


Since they were already getting nosy about the club, the DEA officially opened its investigation, ironically about a month after Lucifer’s mysterious disappearance. After making over two hundred undercover illegal drug buys at Slimelight, the DEA temporarily closed the club. Michael, feeling betrayed by Meter, was delighted and went to the police to volunteer as a state witness against his former boss. The cops, unaware of Michael’s involvement in the drug sales or Lucifer’s now very public disappearance, hired him as an undercover source when Meter was able to get the club re-opened. That was until he started bragging to all of his club cronies that the police were actually paying him to squeal on his ex-boss.


The story got picked up in all the gossip columns. They wrote about how Michael had been ratting out Meter and a few even began to mention the strange mystery revolving around the disappearance of Lucifer, whose sister had gone first to the police and then the press when she didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. It seems she was suspicious of Lucifer’s club friends, especially one in particular. Michael. It didn’t help matters that Michael, slipping ever steadily into a deeper and deeper K hole, had been bragging about killing Lucifer to certain loose lipped members of his inner circle, thus spawning the wild series of rumors that soon followed him like a bad stench.


Still, the police hadn’t questioned Michael. There simply wasn’t enough evidence and most regarded his ramblings to be just that, the fucked up spewings of an even more fucked up club kid on the verge of losing his position and stature on the scene. As the months passed, it was if he was untouchable, no matter how many or wild the rumors got. Intershmooze magazine had just put him on their latest cover and done a twelve page photo spread and interview that pulled out into a clever calendar featuring cute pictures of Michael impersonating the worlds most infamous serial killers with adjoining quotes on what he admired most about each one.


It was a tasteless attempt at sensationalized journalism, but it did get more than one person thinking that maybe, just maybe, he actually had something to do with Lucifer’s death. Among those whose curiosities were finally peaked were the police, who immediately launched a secret investigation into Michael’s now crumbling life, paying hefty sums to his drugged out friends as long as they promised to provide some kind of incriminating evidence. As all this went on, Michael blindly went about his business even though the entire city was whispering behind his back. It was as if he were enjoying it, even as it fucked up his once lucrative career as a club promoter. Strangely though, his luck held out and even started to change.


The dinner was Michael’s way of announcing he was back. In addition to the magazine spread, he had just been named as creative director at Meter’s archrival Boris Brahns new club, E-Coli. We were to be escorted by limo after dinner to the clubs grand opening with Brahns picking up the tab. When Amanda and Olestra heard I was invited, they begged to accompany me. In club crazed New York, no matter how macabre the occasion might be, it was a still a free evening out. I acted as their entry and they were my temporary armor. Not that I needed protection, but in a crowd like Michael’s, a little buffering can never hurt.


As I looked around the mess of people situated outside of Bowery Bar, it turned out my assumptions were correct. The usual casting call of drag queened to death freaks and trolls were vying for entry to the packed restaurant. Michael had typically over invited. What was supposed to be a cute dinner for thirty had escalated into a club kid invasion numbered at over one hundred and swelling by the second. Two burly security guards were tripping out and trying to turn everyone away. More than once I heard one of them mutter under his breath “that asshole Michael sure fucked up.”


We had been waiting almost twenty minutes and had just about given up, resigning ourselves to the dreaded thought of actually having to pay for a meal. Olestra was arguing with one of the doorman when the high, shrill scream of an abnormal queen froze us from behind. It was Michael and as I turned around and soaked him in, I was met with his pathetic splendor head on like a car crash.


He was smiling like a Cheshire cat and wearing a pair of Power Rangers pajamas with the feet attached and the ass cut out. Silver sequins were plastered over his shaved eyebrows and a demented, clown-like mouth was painted on in bright red lipstick. He clutched a worn looking stuffed Smurf doll and a small rubber novelty store ax which he kept hitting people over the head with and laughing hysterically. For the first time since the gossip had started I wondered if he had really done it. I was broken from my trance by the sound of Michael calling my name.


“Walter. Let Walter and his guests in.”


Like the parting of the Red Sea, the crowd opened for us and we fairly tumbled into the jam-packed eatery. With Michael pushing from behind us, we were rushed through the front room, past the crowded bar and into the more private back room which also served as a mini nightclub on the weekends called Bouge.


The room was typically over crowded with the kind of snot nosed, uptight ass-holes usually associated with New York’s over done fashion crowd, but tonight was especially creepy. From over-rated fashion photographers, diva in training junior fashion editors and wannabe junkie fashion models, the place was crawling with trolls and oozing with an insincerity that seemed as dark and vacuous as a black hole. I was in hell, but hey, it was the cool place to be and I knew what I was getting into when I accepted Michael’s invitation. Like a trend starved storm trooper, I bit my lip and let him lead the girls and I to his table.


The guest list read like a downtown fashion victim and club kid rogues gallery. Every fucking annoyance worth their price in night life land was present and accounted for, as well as Michael’s little posse of underage (some as young a twelve) ravers, tweaked out on Crystal, K and no sleep for days or weeks in some cases. I had heard stories about Michael feeding the kids huge overdoses of Rohypnol and fucking the shit out of them once they blacked out. Lovely. He had recently held a child pornography after hour’s party at which the guests used Monopoly money to buy dates with club kids as young as fourteen. Michael gave the kids free drugs and drink tickets to make sure they went through with it.


At the far end of the table sat the undesirable and equally dastardly drag queen contingent of Michael’s social circle. Miss Demeanor, Glory Hole, Endurance, Cliche, Fierce Ruling Diva and last but not least, Lucresia Elizabeth Gabor. She was particularly fierce because she was responsible for corralling Michael’s ever growing stable of underage boys. She had become one of his closest confidantes and little did he know that like me, Lucresia would be unable to keep his little secret. Neither of us realized at the time how connected we were. It was ironic, for we absolutely hated each other and rarely had a polite moment.


Michael’s club kid posse occupied the center of the table, upon which Michael had literally gone and sat, practically on top of a large smoked duck pizza. His main partners in crime sat at his feet, ready to do whatever his twisted little mind conjured up. Troll St. Troll, Jenital Gal, Gila Monster and Thaw. I couldn’t help but notice how carefree yet corpselike they looked. Cliche sounding as it may be, they reminded me of vampires who sucked the life out of the poor trendy souls who looked up to them with awe and treated them like gods.


Amanda and Olestra went to sit at the far end with the other queens, while I sat down at the opposite end with the real Queens. Those being the downtown empress of alternative fashion Rat Field and her drag king wife, Do-Do. They made for an odd couple, Rat being old, tobacco stained and scary, with green skin and bright fire engine red hair. Do-Do was an abnormal goddess, pure in her function as a desirable object and willing to be used by anyone that could take her to the next level.


Sitting closely beside them was Spam Goldwyn, the renowned nightlife photographer, Screaming Banjee Abel, a used up hag trying to cut it as a house music singer, club promoter and unbeknownst to Michael, the star witness in the police investigation on him. There was also Daisy Dexatrim, the illegitimate daughter of Jack Nicholson, Christopher Walken or Lee Harvey Oswald, depending on which night and what drugs she was on. They were all sitting like vultures, picking at the flesh of anything they could sink their long Lee Press-On claws into.


I sat down next to Rat and Do-Do, ordered a very large glass of chilled Tequila, straight up, from a very cute waiter I might add. Then I eased my way into the flow of conversation that seemed to trickle around the table, a sinful stream of misused and abused situations both fictional, real and unrealistic. Michael had jumped off the table and was now sitting directly across from me.


I glanced around the restaurant and noticed people staring at our table, Michael in particular. I knew what they were saying even though I couldn’t read their lips. I was having dinner with a murderer and no one could quite believe he was getting away with it, especially myself. It was all just a little too trippy and way weird, even for a connosouir of freakazoids like me. I didn’t even realize Michael was talking to me until he stood up from his seat, pulled down his Power Ranger pajama bottoms and peed into his wine glass as a woman at an adjoining table screamed and started choking on her Portebello mushroom salad.


“What the fuck are you doing Michael?!”


The voice came out of nowhere and we all looked up to find Eric Goodbar, the owner of Bowery Bar staring at Michael in disbelief. As he shook the last drops from his penis and pulled his pants back up, Michael raised the wine glass and took a long swig of his own urine, smiling at Eric as the befuddled club owner just scratched his head and quietly giggled.


“Oh Michael, isn’t your fifteen minutes up yet?” Eric said, then turned away.


Michael just sat down and grinned broadly, dumping a pile of cocaine out of a vial he had fished out of Jenital gal’s lunchbox and snorted it as loudly as he could off the table. No wonder he wasn’t worried about being caught. Nothing ever seemed to happen to him, no matter how hard he tried.


“You know what would have been really funny?” Michael asked me.


“What?”


“I should have offered Eric a sip of my piss...I think I have Hepatitis!”


He started laughing frantically, his eyes twitching from the coke, his hands wringing around each other so tight, the skin was a mixture of swollen red streaks and clammy, ghost white skin. I looked at his face and noticed the way he seemed to look like two people at the same time. Good and bad. Sad and happy. Sorry and mad. He was the male version of Sybil, except it was hardly entertaining. Fascinating, though. Sickening. And scary. Very scary.


A waiter arrives with bottles of red wine. He’s followed by several more carrying large pizzas and plates of mixed greens. I grab a bottle and fill my empty Tequila glass with the warm scarlet fluid. Everyone settles down and once dinner is served, the table returns to it’s unsteady streams of conflicting conversation, most of which end on a did Michael do it or not note. I tried my best to appear subtle as I casually listened in.


“I see their giving us the club kid menu,” smirks Rat as her and Do-Do pick at a strange looking pizza topped with what looks like canned shrimp and onions.


“What did you expect?” cuts in Daisy Dexatrim. “Caviar? Please. They know Michael is going to run out on the bill so they’re probably serving us leftovers from last night.”


“Or last year!” howled Screaming Banjee.


“Frankly, I’m amazed they gave him a reservation. What with everybody talking and all,” says Rat, as she takes a giant bite out of the supposedly day old food and washes it down with a hearty gulp of wine.


“Trust me, Michael still has pull,” counters Spam. “The question is, for how much longer?


Screaming Banjee suddenly stops devouring her own sloppy slice and puts in her two cents.


“Well I happen to know Michael’s days are numbered.”


“What the fuck are you talking about?” purrs Rat.


“I hear the police are getting ready to arrest him as soon as they gather a bit more evidence.”


“And just where did you hear this?” asks Daisy, a pit of pizza cheese dangling from her front teeth.


“I have my sources,” Screaming Banjee shot back and then returned to her own slice, suddenly consumed by the need to suck it down her throat as quickly as possible.


I jolt back into myself when the sound of Tina Turner screaming “I am the acid queen...” blares over the sound system. The queens at the far end of our table start screeching in delight and Cliche, Miss Demeanor and Lucresia all hop up on the table and start serving us with their best Tina-mations. The rest of the restaurant starts applauding and screaming for more, so Endurance, Glory Hole and Fierce Ruling Diva climb up on top of the table as well, kicking slices of salmon and yellow pepper pizza onto the floor in the process.


The entire room becomes an eruption of noise and spontaneous combustion as the queens effortlessly segue into the next song and the crowd goes absolutely mad, forgetting for a moment that there might be a murderer in their midst. Michael is more than aware of the sudden change in the room and fearing his loss of spotlight, grabs me by the arm. Before I can complain, we have shoved our way through the crowd into the tiny bathroom off to the side of the DJ booth.


Michael is spilling a pile of coke on top of the lowered toilet lid as I adjust my eyes to the bright fluorescent light. He sucks up a few lines and hands me a rolled twenty. Without even thinking I crouch down on my knees and suck up the remaining white powder. Now, not only am I dining with a murderer, I’m doing his drugs too.


“Do you miss me?”


The question stunned me, but after grabbing the vial out of Michael’s trembling hands and helping myself to a few more lines, I came back with the only answer that made sense.


“No.”


“Not even a little...”


“Not even a little.”


He looked sad for a moment, then stood up and turned towards the mirror. His make-up was fucked, so he pulled a few sprucing items out of his pocket and started reapplying sequins to his flushed face. I wanted to say something. Anything to break the strange silence that had fallen over us as we both began to tweak from the blow and the toilets cramped quarters. I made a move to leave, but Michael stopped me.


“If you leave me right now, I’ll kill you.”


“Very funny.”


“You don’t think I would? It’s not so hard. They say it’s easier the second time around.”


“Shut the fuck up Michael.”


“Why?”


“Cause you sound weird. Fucking crazy.”


“Are you afraid of me? Everyone else is. It’s actually quite entertaining. When people hug me now they do it in the strangest way.”


He pauses to inspect his almost finished reflection, until he notices a stray sequin slowly slipping down his cheek. With a dramatic flick of his fingers he plucks it off and continues.


“It’s as if they can’t wait to get away from me. Like I have Leprosy or something.”


Michael continued to apply more sequins to shaved brows, never once taking his eyes off his own face as he addressed me.


“You think I’m some fucking get over queen! You think you’re too good for me now!


“Fuck you Michael.”


“You used to fuck me...you used to do a lot of things.”


“I still do a lot of things.”


“You don’t hang out at the club anymore.”


“It’s closed, remember.”


“It re-opened. And besides, I don’t hang out there anymore either. There’s still a lot of other places to go though.”


“I’m over the scene.”


“You seem to be over everything. How come you don’t hang out with us anymore?”

“You and the freak patrol?”


“You used to be a freak. I knew you only showed up for the free food.”

“Don’t forget the booze.”

“How could I.”


Michael finally finished applying his face and turned to me.


“So why did you come tonight?”


“I was curious.”


“Because you think I’m a murderer. Don’t you? Well they haven’t even questioned me yet.”


“They will. They always do.”


Michael started to cry. Quietly at first, then followed by loud sobbing wails. I don’t know why, but I felt sorry for him. He was so fucking pathetic and lost. It was hard to tell if he was even aware of how sick he really was. The next moment surprised me even more. He kissed me on the cheek and threw his arms around me. As I moved my head our lips met and for a brief second they locked and I kissed him back, until my mind exploded with a ripping sock to my senses.


I pulled away, but Michael grabbed me tighter. It was all I could do to breathe. I had to get the fuck outta that bathroom. His lips were still on me and his saliva streaked my skin. I was freaking, completely tweaked and ready to spew, so I bit his lips as hard as I could, until the bitter flow of warm blood rushed through my teeth and spilled all the way back into my throat. Michael started to scream as I broke free of our embrace, but all I could do was laugh, temporarily driven insane by my own surprising actions.


I felt behind myself for the doorknob and then found the lock. Once released, I pushed open the door, stopping only to take one last look in the mirror. I was met with the reflection of Michael and myself, both of us dazed and dripping blood from our mouths. It reminded me of how earlier I had realized that everyone on this fucking scene was a vampire and Michael was the biggest one of all. The roar of the room blasted into the now open bathroom doorway and I looked at Michael one last time before heading back to the table. He was saying something, but I couldn’t hear him, he was speaking so low. Forcing myself to focus, I read his lips as he repeated himself.


“They’re never going to get me.”


I wiped my blood-stained lips and spit out as much of Michael’s evil presence as I could. As I made my way back to the table, I felt everything I had eaten in the past two days suddenly rise to the back of my mouth.


“Where’s Michael?” Jenital Gal screeched as I tried to walk past her. My response was to puke all over her as she sat there and screamed.


Somehow it all seemed appropriate. I stumbled out of the restaurant, but I wasn’t ready to go home. Instead I fell into the back of one of Michael’s waiting limousines and grabbed a bottle of Cuervo, which I poured down my throat, hoping to numb myself out. I sank into the cool leather seats and closed my eyes, falling into a nightmare filled sleep from which part of me hoped never to awaken. I didn’t wake up until almost an hour later when I realized the limo was moving. I opened my eyes to see Michael jerking off some young and extremely strung out baggy panted raver.


The jerk off session ends when Michael realizes the kid is too strung out to come. He signals the driver to stop, opens the door and shoves the poor kid out into the middle of some serious midtown traffic. I look out the window and stare in disbelief as the kid struggles to pull his pants back up and not get run over. Michael is laughing hysterically and preparing to shoot up. I must be in hell or having the worst nightmare of my life.


I lean forward and press against the now closed limo door, but soon realize it’s locked from the driver’s seat and there is no easy escape. Michael has just sunk a hundred bucks worth of junk into his vein and all I can do is sit back and marvel at the sickness of it all. The limo seems to be in slow motion. Michael pulls out a vial of coke and tosses it to me. I greedily accept, not understanding my hunger to get high or why I am stuck with this troll in locked quarters for the second time that evening. I dump a mountain of powder upon my clenched fist and immediately suck it up. Time and space cease to exist and for the moment I am temporarily transfixed by my own sickness and not just his.


“Do you wanna know why I did it?”


“Did what?” I ask as innocently as I can fake.


“Please don’t play stupid, you know what I’m talking about.”


“No. What the fuck are you talking about?”


“Do I have to spell it out for you? I’m talking about why I killed that fucking pathetic drug dealing scum, Lucifer.”


“Please don’t, I really don’t wanna know...”


“Yes you do, everyone does. Now shut the fuck up and listen. I need to tell someone and it might as well be someone who doesn’t give a fuck.”


“How lucky for me.”


“He was my lover.”


“Your what?”


“My lover, dumb ass! My piece, my fuck friend. Only there was one problem.”


“What?”


“Lucifer had the fucking plague...he was positive. We barebacked one too many times and low and behold, I tested positive as well. That motherfucker never told me he had Aids. All he ever said was ‘Michael, I love you’. Well fuck him!”


Michael grabbed the vial back from me and dumped some coke onto his clenched fist, snorting it up between swigs of the half empty Cuervo bottle I had started. So at least one of the rumors was true, half true. Everyone thought that Michael had infected Lucifer, but in fact it was the other way around.


“So you killed him because he gave you Aids?” I asked, slightly shocked, but more amazed, incredulously absorbed by the bewildering circumstances unfolding before me.


“Of course that’s why. Isn’t that enough?”


I didn’t know what to say so I shut the fuck up. Michael sank back into his own seat, temporarily purged of his guilt and ready for his next high. Not a word was uttered until the limo came to a sudden stop. As I looked out the window I realized we had pulled up to the front of the E-Coli club. Michael instantly regained his composure and sprung to attention. In a flash, he leaned forward and kissed my surprised mouth. I recoiled in horror, but his sickening smile showed how oblivious he was. He hopped out of the limo and I blindly followed.


I looked around and noticed a long line of ultra scary bridge and tunnel types waiting to get into the club. Behind our limo, five more had pulled up and an avalanche of New York’s supposed club finest, including Michael’s dinner guests, poured out of them. Everyone appeared super fucked up and my coke soaked mind was freaking from the sheer spectacle unfolding before me. Boris Brahns was standing at the door like a nervous father expecting his first born and motioned for the doorman to let Michael, his little Rosemary’s Baby and myself into the club.


E-Coli was a poor imitation of Slimelight, lacking the most important thing; Meter’s money. Now Boris at least had Michael and his sick crowd, but without Meter’s cash flow it could never work. My first impression upon entering was hardly promising.


The club was chock full of imitation club kids, wannabes, hangers on and posers, as if the real ones weren’t bad enough, high on the illusion of grandeur that their sorry souls could hardly support. Michael led his now lengthy posse through the main room. We were like a freak parade and the entire club was riveted, staring at us as we made our way through the crowd to a secret staircase at the back of the club. I guessed we were about to be granted entry into the VIP room and once we entered through a door at the top of the stairs, I knew I was correct.


A group of well-worn club denizens were crashed about the dimly lit room, sprawled across several leopard print couches that looked as if they had been salvaged from the Goodwill. A small bar was set to the left while an even smaller stage was situated to the right. This was one bare bones VIP room I thought to myself as I removed myself from the herd, pulled out my flask and sat down on one of the couches so I could suck the whole demented scene in. Polynesian Acid House music was being piped in from a hidden speaker system, a bit too loud to actually allow conversation. It really didn’t matter, because this crowd couldn’t give a shit about what anyone was saying anyway.


I shook a bit from the Tequila washing down my throat, but it was chilling me out from all the coke and Michael’s confession, so who the fuck cares. I looked down at my watch and saw that it was getting close to four a.m. If I left now, I could make it back downtown in a cab to my corner bar and knock out the last bits of my consciousness. I get up and walk towards the only other door in the room, assuming it must be the john. Turns out it’s one of those co-ed situations, you know, girls, boy, drag queens, two stalls, one urinal, bad lighting and the stink of a thousand scary situations. I loved the place immediately. It made me feel warm and safe, like a nest for sick club freaks like me.


I locked myself into one of the stalls and sat down on the toilet. I raised my legs and placed the soles of my black booted feet on the door in front of me. I took another swig from my flask and looked back on the past evening. It was almost funny, if it wasn’t so goddamn sick. I closed my eyes and almost fell asleep, until I heard the shuffle of several feet swish into the bathroom and into the stall next to mine. I took a deep breath and listened in on what turned out to be quite an interesting conversation.


There were three voices. One was Michael’s. It was slurred, thick with drugs and it’s own demonic tinge. The second voice was laced with a feminine daintiness, but it was questionably male. I recognized it as Lucresia Elizabeth Gabor’s and she sounded just as fucked up as Michael if not more. The third was definitely a mans and it sounded the most messed up of the three. Macabre, tortured and torturous. I instantly knew it was Thaw, perhaps the most demented member of Michael’s inner circle. He was leading the discussion, angrily questioning Michael.


The sound of someone, probably Michael, Hoovering something up their already stuffed nose reverberated through the bathroom as I groped in the dark stall for the pen that I the writer always kept on me. At first I couldn’t find it, but after some frantic searching, I turned up a thick black Sharpie. At first I considered writing on the stall door, but my eyes fell on an extra half used roll of toilet paper behind me on the toilet receptacle. I grabbed it and proceeded to write everything that I heard coming from the next stall on the thin tissue paper. Where’s the fucking Charmin when you need it? It hungrily soaked up the ink, slowly expanding each letter until they took the shape of disfigured bubbles tattooed on TP.


“What the fuck is your problem Michael? Have you gone out of your goddamn mind?”


It was Thaw and he was seething, his words jumbled and thick like a man foaming at the mouth. Michael seemed to ignore him, for the vacuum like sniffing continued and the sound of something chipping away against metal could only be one of them cutting up more lines of coke.


It was Lucresia cutting lines on top of her Hello Kitty lunchbox that was making the noise. Thaw couldn’t handle being ignored by Michael any longer, so he tried to knock the lunchbox off of Lucresia’s lap, but Michael stopped him just before the coke blew across the floor.


“What is your fucking problem Thaw?” Michael screamed, then burst into fits of laughter, wearing his insanity as comfortably as a cardigan.


“My problem is that every-time I turn around, you’re telling someone how fabulous it is that your getting away with murder.”


“That’s not what I’m saying!”


“It’s what people think!” piped in Lucresia as she wiped her chalk white nostrils clean.


“Shut the fuck up Lucresia!” Michael shot back, but Thaw was hardly satisfied.


“If anybody finds out...”


“Finds out what Thaw? About how you helped me cut off Lucifer’s head because I was in too much of a K hole to finish up the job?”


“Shut up Michael, this is serious.”


“About how you told me that Lucifer deserved to die because he was spreading the plague and that we could get away with his entire stash, which incidentally, you finished after a few weeks without sharing even the tiniest bit with me?”


“You never told me that part Michael,” Lucresia purred, searching through her lunchbox for her waterproof mascara and hopefully some more coke.


“It gets better, believe me,” hissed Michael, grabbing the mascara out of Lucresia's hand once she found it. As he started to apply it to his already clumpy lashes, Thaw grabbed him by the throat and slammed him against the wall.


“So now you’re blabbing everything to this kiddie pimp cunt?” Thaw said as Michael struggled free of his grip.


“Fuck you Thaw, you’ve fucked half of those little boys, with or without Michael, so cut the self righteous crap,” Lucresia snapped back as she swiped the mascara away from Michael and began applying it to herself. “You’re just as fucked up as Michael. For all I know, both of you freaks could kill me right now and I could end up a headless cadaver like Lucifer!”


“Cut the crap Lucresia, can’t you see you’re just egging him on,” said Michael as he pushed Lucresia off the toilet seat, sat down and pulled a bag of K out of his pocket and snorted the whole thing at once.


“So Lucresia knows everything. Who else does? How many more Michael? Do you think we can kill them all like Lucifer?”


“The thought had crossed my mind...” Michael mumbled but Lucresia cut him off.


“Well get the fuck over it you freak, because Lucresia Elizabeth Gabor ain’t goin’ out like that!”


“Chill out Lucresia. Thaw’s just a little hot under the collar. He forgets that he’s in this just as deep, if not deeper, as I am. Right Thaw? Right?!”


There was a long uncomfortable silence punctuated by the familiar snorting noises, which almost seemed to serve as a second language for these crazy K heads. I was getting a huge cramp in my ass from sitting still for so long, but I was afraid to make even the slightest move in case I made a noise and they heard me. The next sound was as unexpected as it was frightening. There was the thud of a hard thump against the side of the stall, accompanied by the sound of Lucresia’s screams piercing the air. I held onto the toilet with one hand while my other continued to write down what I was about to hear.


“Why did you hit him Thaw?! screamed Lucresia.


“Cause I’m sick of his shit,” answered Thaw as he knocked Michael upside his head one more time. Michael collapsed further into Lucresia’s hardly able arms, then his body began to twitch as he suffered one of the numerous seizures which seemed to afflict him on a daily basis these days.


“Oh shit, is he having another one of his spas attacks?”


“No thanks to you and your bad temp...” Lucresia cried.


Lucresia never got to finish her sentence. Thaw pulled out a knife and plunged it straight into her screaming mouth and out the back of her thick hairy neck. I ran out of toilet paper at the exact same moment that I noticed a stream of blood start to trickle from the next stall into mine. Lucresia had stopped screaming and Michael’s seizing body hit the floor, where he bounced for a few more seconds like a fish out of water. Lucresia’s now dead body collapsed upon Michael’s, smearing him with the river of blood that continued to flow from her neck.


Thaw unlocked the stall door and rushed over to the sink. He washed his hands over and over again, muttering something unintelligible to himself. After a few moments he turned off the faucet and dried his hands, obviously frustrated that there was still blood not only all over his clothes, but splattered on his shoes as well. He cursed aloud then ran from the bathroom, probably out of the club. Wouldn’t you if you had just stabbed someone to death?


I was frozen in fear, repulsion and utter fascination. I didn’t know what to do, but when Lucresia’s blood soaked arm seemed to move under my stall, I cried out loud and bolted, pausing for a moment to take in the whole sick scene that had played out next to me. Lucresia’s eyes were wide open, suspended in a frightening look that made me sick to my stomach.


Michael was starting to come out of his seizure and the last thing I saw were his pleading eyes as he struggled to escape from under the weight of Lucresia’s body. The look he gave me cut into my sub-conscious like a laser ripping into steel. I immediately ran from the bathroom, clutching my wad of toilet paper and shaking as if I had been locked in a freezer for eternity.


The VIP room was still packed with posers and trolls, the air thick with attitude and the stench of European cigarettes that made me want to puke. I fairly ran through the crowd, looking straight into the faces of people I used to call my friends, even though they were hardly even acquaintances. I hated them all, yet without them I was alone, lost in a world where people got up and went to work just as I was usually heading off to my third after-hours. I was hardly above any of them, yet I had fooled myself that I was. Only now I had a roll of toilet paper in my hands that was going to buy me the easiest and hopefully guiltless exit from a scene that I had come to deplore.


Nobody even looked twice at me as I ran down the staircase, through the club and out the door. It wasn’t until ten minutes later, when I was sitting in a cab and not realizing that I had already told the driver where I was going, that I snapped back into reality and told the driver once again to take me to The New York Post. Once we pulled up to the newspaper’s offices, I fished a crumpled twenty out of my pocket and casually tossed it through the partition. Then I waited for five hours until the offices opened and walked into one of the weirdest situations of my life.


The next days Post had the slashed neck of Lucresia on the cover and an exclusive interview with me, the star witness. For the next week the papers were full of stories about Michael the murderer. Every club troll worth their weight in body glitter tried to squeeze their own fifteen minutes out of it and many succeeded. The police picked him up after he had a seizure in Rat Field’s trendy Ninth Street boutique while trying on a pair of foot high lace up stacked platforms. He nearly broke his neck.


Thaw is still somewhere on the run, hopefully the moon for all I care. But just in case he ever shows his face, I always watch my back. Especially when I’m trolling through dark nightclubs, where the people you think are your friends may turn out to be killers and a dead drag queen in the bathroom is just another passing fancy.


Yeah, I know. I was gonna quit going to clubs and clean up my act, but you knew I really wouldn’t. I’m just as big a sucker for all the phony bullshit and insincere thrills the scene has to offer. It’s all grist for the mill, any kind of mill you want. Pervert, fruits and freaks preferred. And they all lived happily ever after.