By Mark S. Kourge.
Still flashing lights as the last band, Phantom Whore, smashes through the last chords of a song that come sunlight no one will remember. Feedback screeching from Peavey stacks, skinny lead vocalist cries: “YOU’RE MINE! I’LL KILL ANYONE BETWEEN US!”
Over amplified and sounding miserable, the song finishes as house lights quickly take over.
Instant sobriety collides with the eyes of the drunk. Dizzying, pupils going small, stunned. Mixed with massive amounts of embarrassment as the wooing see their fucked up minds view as a nite-mate crashing to dismal foolishness, so far away from their fantasy. This fantasy a result of bull-talk with friends and the hopes to get laid my hottie.
Coin turned, 180 degrees, eyes of the ladies fully see the asshole that they have let buy them drinks for hours. Shared sweat and kisses on the blurry dance floor and bar area, too close to bathrooms with nonexistent ventilation. Smelling urine and shit, not minding as booze changes immediate priorities. Sucking on tongue, holding, telling lies.
This bitch is a cow!
Damn! His face is covered with zits.
Was that tattoo a rose before she gained 150 pounds and it stretched?
Are those purplish blisters on his arms Aids?
Under the light that only the truly desperate experience at the closing of a bar, when all is as exposed as strolling nude through a shopping mall during Xmas shopping season. Like one who sheds all clothing during a Baptist revival, yelling Look at me!
He looks at his friend Mike. He hair black and tidy, resembling Charlie Sheen in Wallstreet. “Where is she?”
Mike, looking bewildered, asks: “Man, which one? You nailed two or three tonight?”
Mike visibly upset and even he does not know which is worse: Being upset because his best doesn’t remember the one he wants him to find or that his friend got laid three times and he didn’t. Hasn’t in the last three months. Failing.
“thuu one wit the hairrrrr,”
“Fuck wad, they all had hair!” Grabbing his last shot from the bar, a quadruple Jack straight back, he places an arm around his bombed friend. Taking a meager swig, loving the taste of the Tennessee whiskey as it courses his tongue flowing down his throat.
“This way, all closed. You go home now.” Ivan drones. Bouncer, 6 foot 2 inches, massive biceps and angled face adorned with jet black hair. Motioning, arms stretched, corralling, herding stragglers to the entrance/exit. Wanting them to leave quickly, he thinks of where he’d rather be. Safe place, tiny appartment with his wife and two small children. Place of love and quiet. Place without drunks to control. Place of peace.
“fuuuuuuck, brah! Guh-geyet yurr meat-hucks offsa me, bitch!” He said this to the bouncer cornering him and aiming toward the door.
Raising wasted arm to the massive body that held a shirt with a single word: SECURITY on chest and it being brushed off like a moths against a single candle-lit night.
“He’s not himself, “ Mike said, barely able to hold his friend upright as well as himself as the bouncer countered. Stumbling, wondering why he still does this over and endlessly for this friend. He covers him.
Leaving this riverside bar near Lorain Ohio, coursing a hood where peeps get blown away for much less than a bus-pass, walking arm in arm. Street lights overhead, every other one of them out: growing sodium glances on faces slowly with each footstep, rising and diminishing to shadow.
People die here. They do so on such a regular basis that the Lorain Police call this region the Hall of Gods Justice. Kind of like: If you died here, you somehow deserved it. Maybe your past life, Karma, whatever: If you were fucking here and caught a bullet, you must’ve deserved it.
“Wuhhhhrissss-sheeeeee?”
“Give me fuckin’ minute, cunt!” Mike, getting closer to his car he spots her.
She is standing there. Tall, leggy slender, alley glow from orange fluorescent casting erie glow. . Tight halter covering upper realms highlighting erect nipples and short butt hugging closure barely covering twat and such. She holds the strength of a crackhead desiring a fix, eyes attempting to lock and never able to do so, body shifting about quickly. At knifes edge, Tweaking.
Mike approaches her slowly and asks her: “you want to party?”
“Damn, whitebread! Whip the dick and show me you ain’t no 5-OH!”
Doing so, sobbering, Mike caught the fragrances of this place: Foul odors of the massage pallor, spoiled broccoli and the small Chinese restaurant and the raw uneaten things they sold as tibs.
Humid night in the city. All things seemed odd and most disgusting with echoing voices, horns blaring from ore freighters and crying children as a result of negligent parents.
Mike, fly unzipped, displays his wimp penis, as he’d done times before.
“Home’s, you got Vi-fuckin-agra?” Twisting hips about, casting needed, hungry, wanting expression at Mike.
“No, uh, well, not for me. It’s, uh, shit, for my friend here.” He, right arm moving behind his friend, taking him toward the whore for her.
Standing cocked, staring at the thing Mike showed her. I need double rubbers to do this fuckha.
“what’s his name? Gotta know this, homes, I won’t take less than two-fiddy to do him.” Holding herself back momentarily, wanting to back off from this. Not knowing why. Feeling of unease filling her.
“His names Julian. He wants to meet you. He’s asked for you,” Mike croaks. Shoulders drooping like many times before.
“Show me the dollars, cocksucka!”
Mike unfurling twenties and fifties like a fisherman casting to a great lake.
She leads them to her realm. Well kept place south of rt 57 of I-90.
Crossing the parking lot, Mikes friend oblivious to anything, he hears music of Thomas Newmans score from the Less Than Zero soundtrack. BOOPING the alarm on his imported mid-90’s Nissan Skyline with right hand drive. Walking over black-top, hot summer nights work steaming smoky breath after tiny rainfall, thinking: here I go again…
Venturing into her apartment slightly off rt 57, she takes Mikes friend.
He undresses and hits her bed, waiting for pleasure.
A single minute passes in the oddest of time for her.
Leaving her ground floor dwelling, looking for Mike. Eventually finding him laying his sweet car.
“he passed out, that or he’sruckin’ dead, shit, fuck. Dead. Drag his ass away from here… I got kids and don’t wants chiiiiiidrens fuck to lands on m’ azz!”
Pulling out his camera, Mike takes photos of his friend and various sexual poses he demanded of her for him to keep silent.
Both parties succumbed, Mike holding the digitals.
Maintaining cash flow.
Taking his friend back to his wife, explaining once again how he’d had too much to drink. Her accepting this.
Mike, with a line on many.
Went about his way.
Making a huge sum in their wakes.
Blackmail?
No, only the uneducated called this so.
This, my dear, is called extortion.