pg 141 of 188

I sold a painting to some art dealer for $2000. This shelter costs $50 per night and I suggest we loosen up and hit the casino in the town. Panda has nothing better to do and decides that she can take her depression away and fake a smile.

     

The slugs at the door ask for our ID and we both have fakes so they ask the basic questions, Where you live? How long? What flavour butt fucking condoms can I use? etc.”

     

The usual.

    

Panda Bear gets in right away and they're still trying to make me sweat. I have studied my alias perfectly and now they think they could sneak me out with a few silly questions. He looks me in the eye and he sees it. The cross and lets me in with a smile while I sneeze “fuck you”. And he smiles at me in a cloudy haze of reality.

    

Right away, Panda Bear skips to the roulette table.

“How much cash do you have on you?” she asks.

“Well, I have the full $2000 but we need at least $500 to cover the room for the next couple of days,” I say furrowing my brow.

     

But then again, the booze is free, and that's how they get you. Drink all day and night and spend your money on any of our cash sucking machines that pay only the lucky ones who are not maniacal about pressing a button 15x and hoping, just hoping, that they hit it big and smile. I get dragged to the roulette table and instantly put 5 dollars on the spin for red. And the wheel spins and it lands on red. Not too bad for a beginner.

I'm starting to like this a little bit and the drug addict beside me tells me, “You are my lucky charm” and that I should, “Bet 00” and I do, I put $50 on 00 and just as the man predicted, 00 it was. I don't know how much it pays but the dealer just shoveled 100 dollar chips in my direction. Approximately $1750.

     I decide to give Panda Bear the winnings and she's ecstatic. I walk around, people watch. It's kind of depressing, but I lost the girl and I forget about it. $500 lost turns into $700 lost and we still need to save money for the bed and breakfast. And Panda has lost $1400 on a combination of craps, blackjack and roulette. I look in my pocket and there's only $600 left, but we need this money to survive. And she keeps begging for more and more, a rush only a burn could satisfy. And there's no burns scheduled at this casino.

*********

     I decide to test my luck on a machine, my last 20 dollars, room and board gone, no paper money, and no ideas where I'm going to spend the night, maybe under a bridge somewhere, using a lost business briefcase for a blanket. Panda Bear would have to use her prowess to sex someone up but no one's interested in her. She lifts her thong up and she finds a willing customer. Jim and his wad of hundreds end up side by side with Panda Bear.

“This is my friend Jim,” she winks. “We'll be okay.”

     

I won't and I look at a Soldier of Fortune machine in the corner of my eye, flashing, making the regulars drool for a payout. Panda Bear and Slime-bag Jim sit beside me as I insert the last 20 dollars, grocery money, and spin the magical wheel and nothing. I lost $5 out of the $20, then I bet maximum and hit the Soldier of Fortune and it spun and I hit the jackpot and everything goes crazy for a moment. Some people look around in shock and I stand there oafishly. Still watching, the slots attendant congratulates me for the win. And the special number is $200,000 since it was a Progressive slot machine. I sign the slip and run to the bathroom and I looked up in that stall, and I prayed to god, thanking him for not allowing the coke to destroy my life and then find repentance and now I believe. I say a prayer and walk out the Men’s room and security is there with wads of chips and I ask for a check and they say no problem. I know they want me to put some chips on the table but I need to get out of this casino and into something far away. Slime-bag Jim fucks off and it's just me and Panda Bear and we cab to the B&B and I cash the check.

     

We are officially rich, and as I check my bank statement, my wrist feels a tight squeeze and today, at this moment in time I am 27. $200,000 is a nice number to end the day with. 27 and $200,000, I couldn't sleep. I just began writing and came up with my next short story about a man and his wife and their kids and their car. But I don't want that. I need out of this town, this country, this continent, and find myself on land unknown.

page 83 out of 188

What exactly happened to Johnny Be Good in the nightclub down the stairs? He met the woman of his dreams and her thong underwear was bouncing up and down, riding this sexy mulatto man. He had the moves, and he had the moon shine and to me, I don't quite get it.

     

Why involve Be Good? I doubt he was a mole and maybe, just maybe, he knew the contact Panda was looking for. It was all in the eyes. He looked at me then Panda then him, the man who was sitting alone on the basement stairs. She would pretend to be a waitress, and I don't know how she got away with it, but it worked and I guess Johnny knew all about the meaning of eye contact. First looking to me, signaling to get me ready, then to Panda in for the kill and then man on stairs for the moon shine drop, the kingpin. That had to be it. It just had to. I saw her approach the man on the stairs with 3 shot glasses and she pulled down her shirt and pushed her tits together, and probably said:

“Drink up!” to the man on the stairs.

    

She whispered something in his ear and they both drank and she handed him the next shot, oh so fast, and bang he went limp. All of his innards just stopped working.

    

Then his crew came and started shooting at Panda Bear and she bolted for the door and I swear, Be Good was behind her, but I could have been wrong.

     

But I was sure it was him.

     

Be Good started shooting in the air and that's when about 14 guns appeared from back holsters, side holsters, ankle holsters and just guns that appeared from no where. I didn't see this, but I know this is what happened. Johnny smashed through the glass door like an ex football player and was shooting backwards, hitting a security guard and tumbling to regain his balance.

     

He paved a way for Panda and the hit was complete.

     

All of this happening while I'm being bitten by sexy StrawBlonde and trying to maintain a full erection. The bullets pierced through Be Good and he fell to floor. I really liked him. Fuck. The car window was hit and that's where we come into play. Bullets into Be Good's body to ensure death then the crew got a cartridge off and that was that, we were gone and driving and the paranoid me kept looking back behind us to see if we were being followed and StrawBlonde gives me a kiss and all I can think about is Be Good, his eyes meeting mine, the girl with him on the dance floor and his final moments breaking through glass and falling to the floor taking his final breathes in a gutter somewhere being stomped and shot into dreaming about the fun he was having and the moment of ecstasy that produced on his young, once vibrant face.

   
Panda was speeding and I was speechless

pg 14 of 91

Let's f--- now. Put the book down beside your bed and grab whoever is next to you. I am doing this as I'm writing with the non drunk sexiness I found in the lobby. And just get lost. Get lost in her eyes and just pound away. Think of yourself as being in a porno and just ram ram ram, but gently, nicely, time yourself, pump pump or ride ride and moan. 

I know your sex life right now is boring, because you are reading this nonsense, but get him or her hard as you joyously rock the casbah. I love it. She's moaning so much, as she should, and it turns me on even more. I tell her that my ears are the most sensitive and she licks them and I get goosebumps on my arms and my neck and she pulls the hairs off of my chest and she slaps me in the face, and I f---ing love it. I don't even know what to say, so I tell her that, this is f---ing hot, you're hot and I want to come with you on this bed, surrounded by luggage. 

So I close my eyes and I just push, I push myself into her and its AWESOME and I start to twitch and I bite her neck and I want her to come with me and I'm lost. I don't know any words, I can't open my eyes and I can't even speak English, just moans and yells and screams and it happens. I feel her tensing up and each bang puts me closer and she tells me she's there and I push myself as fast as I can, as fast as my little hips can push and she yells and I look at the ceiling and she makes fists and bangs on my chest like King Kong and I'm coming and she is too and I twitch and I, I, I, I don't know anything. I'm free. And I pull out and just lay there, looking at the walls then my hands and then my feet and I just stare. 

She cuddles up beside me and it's heaven. We both close our eyes and I ask her if she's on the pill and she laughs, and I laugh, and then I realize that it would be one hell of a good looking kid. We fall asleep in each other's arms and I forget everything and it's bliss. Heaven on earth. And I think I'm in love. She's both the nurse and the mile high club, and I'm satisfied and content and safe in her arms and we fall asleep and I know it's love.

But I don't fall in love that easily anymore...

pg 62 of 91

Now you may think the story is too violent or too much to handle but remember that this is a dream and nothing of it could ever be renounced as otherwise. I wrote this because I read and read and read and found content and style and genre and I don't really know if it fits, until she wakes up and explains, in the critical sense, what it means. I won't even show her actually because why ruin a good thing. I like the story and if that makes me happy so be it. At least it's an art form from someone who spent most of his child hood watching people smoke and piss into a canister, and I did this because I read and understood. 

I'm neither a poet nor a prince but I can be what you wish I be, and that's what I'm going to be for her, an artist, until she leaves me with that asshole on the couch. That came to me in a dream too but there was something else that causes the problem and it's not me precisely but what hides in the basement of this log cabin. Something waiting to burst at the seams and destroy everything good and meaningful in a life when everything is okay, because then I would be lying because as humans we always wonder what's on the other side of the bedroom door, or under our bed, or in the palm read or the tonsil pulled waiting for the all you can eat ice cream. 

We strive to know, as Freud lived his life in a realization that the most important part of life and living is continuous self logic. So when she woke up, I went downstairs and got her a joint from the pot head guy and she waked and baked and got all warm and fuzzy under the covers and I asked her to read what I wrote during the night and she told me 5 minutes. And I waited and she smoked the joint and I just got high off the fumes and we giggled. I handed her the two pages and she read them. This, this, this is what she read:

pg 57 of 86

We get dressed, one leg at a time, and she looks gorgeous. She's got this frilly dress on, I can't even explain it, it's like nothing I've ever seen before. This is red carpet material. I put on my black dockers and a black tee-shirt for tonight I am an artist in the artist's world. Or at least I could pretend to be. She wears a black dress with the frills on the shoulder. That's the only thing I can explain with my mouth gaping at her beauty. You ready? She asks and I shake my head. I got to brush my teeth, then mouthwash, then hair. And she combs her hair gently. She looks like Carly Simon and even though I may be vain most of the time, I am honest in my opinions. After I brush my pearly whites and gargle and fray my hair, we both look into the upright mirror. The only mirror in the attic and we look marvelous. I grab a scarf and it adds to the character of my magnificence and she puts a bow in her hair. Patsy Cline and Leroy Brown, the main headline of an opening cast of misfits and wanna-bees. We could be, though. That's the thing about looking in the mirror. We are real, we could make it anywhere in the world with just what we need. For me that would be coffee, for her that would mean pot. That's all we needed. Coffee and pot and hand in hand walking down the street. That's all we ever need and I am thankful for that. 

For the second time, I think about the girl I met in Johannesburg, June 7, 2010 and I hold my breath and look into the mirror and shes the new one. She's the one I want forever and ever mine. And she looks at my eyes in the mirror and asks, is this what you want tonight? And I shake my head YES!, fifteen times, as she starts to giggle, you're such a silly, silly boy and I love it. Off to the art gallery where we will fit in and belong and learn to love one another. I think this is it. But a story like this never ends with a positive position and I hide that little tidbit in the back of my mind, how can I ruin this and I hide it in the back of my mind, this can't be over before it has begun, I think in the back of my mind. Then I think of her in Johannesburg, one second if there ever was such a thing. One second of pain. Miss Cline says she'll start the car and I'm left in the mirror in the attic all by myself, looking at myself and I tell myself, looking myself in the eye. 

DO NOT FUCK THIS UP. 

And I look down at my shoes and my scarf and smile. I won't. But something will. Something in the cabin. Something we haven't decoded yet. And I think of Panda Bear and her burn and Cherub with her closed lips, and I wonder if they're alive. Thinking the same thing I ever thought. Does love ever die? And in my mind I see Panda Bear and an army knife. And I walk down the stairs and hop in the car and Miss Cline asks are you okay? 

And I say, peachy keen. Peachy, keen...just shut your mouth and look good.