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THE BIG SLEAZY
Oh won't you please take me home...
EPISODE IV: The Big Sleazy
(If you have no fucking clue what's going on, go down about four posts... and also, blow me).
Jesse had picked up an event guide that oozed potential from every page: everything from exotic eateries and jiggling gals in pasties, to fire-eating showmen and shrines with crying virgins. Parades were audible from that very Motel Hell. Rick offered the first suggestion. “Let’s go get a beer!”
The beer-getting carried over for two pubs. I went for any blackened sludge that I couldn’t find in Missouri. After two pleasant surprises, I was foiled by the third brew recommended by the barkeep, another “dark, heavy and filling” lager that failed to resemble even moisture. I had paid five irretrievable dollars for what appeared to be poorly-camouflaged hemlock. Confused as to why the barkeep had chosen to smite me, I asked what that vile excretion was called. His accent was too heavy, and the bar too loud for me to discern the name he muttered, but it sounded dangerously close to “Colostomy Bag Lite.”
Carl suggested we go for food, to unanimous approval. After nearly a decade away, I longed to once more measure the goodness of God by the flesh of His numerous tasty creations. Flipping through a restaurant guide I picked up from a woman who was naked beneath hundreds of cleverly-layered beads, Rick relieved me of the choice by pointing where the others would follow…to another bar across the street. This was getting old, but the decent food worked with the alcohol in helping me forget.
This was the first bar in which I remembered Jesse advising Rick on the virtues of various hard liquors—that some were “wise,” or “spiritual,” or a “worker of love.” Rick went for the Bottle o’ Love. He then elaborated his romantic intentions to “cream some girl’s face” or “ice her donuts” because “they do that shit down here.” He repeated this a grand total of seven times over the remainder of the evening. It made me slightly ill, but I couldn’t place why—my dreams were no less sweet or sleazy.
Wandering dangerously closer to the heaving, collective unconscious unconscienced masses—close and dangerously heaved collectives, conscious only of wandering—we sought beads and boobies, pale shelter and loose halters, and any skirted or de-skirted thing that would oblige to flash, accept our cash, and speak with any form of twang.
New Orleans was, as likewise Baton Rouge seemed to have been, exceptionally quasi-ethnic. There were races, creeds, dialects, and drugs of choice for every color of that great land’s rainbows, bayous, or ghettos. It was interesting to see taxicabs in perfectly average neighborhoods garnishing windshields riddled with bulletholes and bottle-scrapes. It was also a point of interest that the police did precious little, aside from pulling over speeders, parking in dark alleys for long stretches, and breaking up bloody street brawls when they got a bit too obvious. And therein was the key to this city as I came to see it: Everything existed; nothing was forbidden…and little was against the law, unless you were caught.
Over the restless course of seven faceless bars and crab shacks hopped in rapid succession, we hopped four faceless others, like ravaging hordes of nervous, hypertrophied bunnies, our rabid furry noses twitching from black market Viagra. This was to say, honestly, that some of us were stoned, and others were simply bored. And something in this town smelled funny after a while. They never mentioned that.
Acme Oyster Bar was excellent. Michaul’s On St. Charles was nice. We failed to make it into the famed Bourbon Vieux Room. Of course, every Skanky Corner Pub and Sidewalk Table of Random Crustaceans just fucking teemed with charming local color. It was not until we covered, perhaps, our 11th block of charming local color, that it dawned upon the few sober among us: The color of this, and every other town—charming, local, or otherwise—would, after endless static hours, reveal itself to the initiated as the Same Old Gray you left behind. Well…okay…maybe it only dawned on me, but everyone was getting rather burnt-out, in particular with one another. It appeared that all four bitching and itching, sneezing and whining members of our loving, adventurous brotherhood privately conspired either to quietly free away from the group, free the group from Rick, or free Carl from his money. I made the decision to run.
I would be on foot. Having encircled the same Celebration-puking party blocks over and over, so often as to actually be catching beads from the same floats repeatedly, I gathered my general position fairly well—wherever I went, I was fucked. Did I mention the odd smell of this town, yet?
But I had a key, a defiant will, a surging libido, as well as beer and stripper money obtained from a stoned, winking Carl—smiling as one who recklessly dreamt those dreams they still hanged men for in the Bayou. I owed Carl nothing in return but formal, sportsman-like gratitude, courteous directions home, and first crack at scoring that weird, wrapped-up spongy thing back in the van. Attempts at procuring any other level of involvement and/or invasion of my personal space would result in gratitude extended only in the form of a handmade weapon, and a nice, running start. Switch-hitting gimps with flimsy limbs would fall briskly in this land of dog-sized swamp rats, coiling, poison serpents, deadly gators, and—that fiercest of any—the wiley, native Cajun who hunts and kills all three, then cooks them in Wild Turkey after church. And Carl would do well not to rely upon Rick always being there to be held back for him.
So off I went…far away, that I might get away…far off, that I might get off. If nothing else, I could shamelessly womanize freely without my leering Pabst-pals...
The most shy, innocent Southern Belle could make the most aggressive Midwestern female seem uptight. This was a town even my rotten fortune could fail to see laid proper. Every offbeat feature of this fallen creature, that repelled local gals, only seemed to light the gulf coast gals aflame. Young, religious Cajun Babes longed to have their Bible Belts unbuckled. Goth Gals mourned the streets in their sexy sadness and gathered in depressed, decadent droves anywhere Anne Rice was said to tinkle. Domestic Midwest bat-bush babes were rarely seen or eighteen. But here, there dwelt vast bat-caves and black-velvet waves of an Ocean Vampirella.
One Nympho of Eternal Night fancied me upon sleazy sight: She was a Banshee devotee, her geometric hair like Siouxsie Sioux; I was the wild-eyed wolverine, a furry mammal prone to eat some things it wasn’t meant to. Plucking buttons off my shirt, her long black talons roamed seductively in a coroner’s Y-cut. In a Baskin Robbins bathroom, as pale breasts lost their bodice, tongues found a 32nd flavor. In the glut of a gluttonous sultry strut—our unwrapping linens, our wrapping loins, but…the witch had sworn off riding brooms. She offered mere tastes of the abyss… seeking to return the favor. Though denied the Wham-Bam-Thank-You-Ma’am of the Damned, my cursed thirst left her bitten thighs, and smitten eyes… Nibbling like flickers of Hell, the Hellbound southern belle lent her south-of-Heaven vamp-clamp… By pierced tongue and piercing eyes, she left all clothing stained and creased and eyes rolled like the deceased. Alone…nothing spilled, though vast seas parted…relieved…my will conceived and filled—to be drained and killed by the cold hearted, the Devil’s deceived, and the black-lipsticked head of the dead.
Oddly satisfied and let down all at once, I found myself at odds with what I let be satisfied, and down. My amoral fever-pitch had reached the ninth inning, and seen far too many an outing in these post-religious eyes. My cross-bearing resume hid quite poorly an unfathomable Biblical narrative of former service to services formerly held in the Name of Christ. It all seemed so distant now, like it never really happened, or happened to some distant relative I never met. My views changed as my position and relation to the Object in Question did, and as my Quest for Objection gained positive, relative momentum to view my change—I longed to hold in question every answer I held too long. I really needed to get laid, also.
But tonight, I would have fun, just to spite every inhibition, confused conscience, slurring yuppie, and creepy leering gimp. For I would have more fun by sheer default, than with the Dream Team, with whom it was just one slosh of over-priced booze after another…one more drunken conversation that failed to stimulate me; one more blurred and staggering sidewalk procession; one more failure to appear to our opposing gender—even the buzzed and careless ones—as anything other than Frat Boys in semi-retirement.
The latter of those entrapments was, by far, the most unforgivable. This was my time to howl, to revel in unattached romance, in companies of infrequently clad Goth Chicks and Cajun Babes, passions not always obtainable in familiar company; or to find even shallow, hourly forms of unobtainable passions—in total, anything not involving a single woman I knew, north of the Mason-Dixon line. And I would be damned to Hell’s Special Ed. Class—between the demonic, giggling mongoloids of Death and Hades and that lisping kid in the fishy-smelling army jacket—for all eternity, if two sauced yuppies and an elastic bisexual gimp are going to ruin anything that I haven’t ruined on my own. And how dare they revel with such weak, piss-water beer. No man with so much as a tumor for a testicle welcomes fruit into his beer.
TO BE CONTINUED...
)+(
The beer-getting carried over for two pubs. I went for any blackened sludge that I couldn’t find in Missouri. After two pleasant surprises, I was foiled by the third brew recommended by the barkeep, another “dark, heavy and filling” lager that failed to resemble even moisture. I had paid five irretrievable dollars for what appeared to be poorly-camouflaged hemlock. Confused as to why the barkeep had chosen to smite me, I asked what that vile excretion was called. His accent was too heavy, and the bar too loud for me to discern the name he muttered, but it sounded dangerously close to “Colostomy Bag Lite.”
Carl suggested we go for food, to unanimous approval. After nearly a decade away, I longed to once more measure the goodness of God by the flesh of His numerous tasty creations. Flipping through a restaurant guide I picked up from a woman who was naked beneath hundreds of cleverly-layered beads, Rick relieved me of the choice by pointing where the others would follow…to another bar across the street. This was getting old, but the decent food worked with the alcohol in helping me forget.
This was the first bar in which I remembered Jesse advising Rick on the virtues of various hard liquors—that some were “wise,” or “spiritual,” or a “worker of love.” Rick went for the Bottle o’ Love. He then elaborated his romantic intentions to “cream some girl’s face” or “ice her donuts” because “they do that shit down here.” He repeated this a grand total of seven times over the remainder of the evening. It made me slightly ill, but I couldn’t place why—my dreams were no less sweet or sleazy.
Wandering dangerously closer to the heaving, collective unconscious unconscienced masses—close and dangerously heaved collectives, conscious only of wandering—we sought beads and boobies, pale shelter and loose halters, and any skirted or de-skirted thing that would oblige to flash, accept our cash, and speak with any form of twang.
New Orleans was, as likewise Baton Rouge seemed to have been, exceptionally quasi-ethnic. There were races, creeds, dialects, and drugs of choice for every color of that great land’s rainbows, bayous, or ghettos. It was interesting to see taxicabs in perfectly average neighborhoods garnishing windshields riddled with bulletholes and bottle-scrapes. It was also a point of interest that the police did precious little, aside from pulling over speeders, parking in dark alleys for long stretches, and breaking up bloody street brawls when they got a bit too obvious. And therein was the key to this city as I came to see it: Everything existed; nothing was forbidden…and little was against the law, unless you were caught.
Over the restless course of seven faceless bars and crab shacks hopped in rapid succession, we hopped four faceless others, like ravaging hordes of nervous, hypertrophied bunnies, our rabid furry noses twitching from black market Viagra. This was to say, honestly, that some of us were stoned, and others were simply bored. And something in this town smelled funny after a while. They never mentioned that.
Acme Oyster Bar was excellent. Michaul’s On St. Charles was nice. We failed to make it into the famed Bourbon Vieux Room. Of course, every Skanky Corner Pub and Sidewalk Table of Random Crustaceans just fucking teemed with charming local color. It was not until we covered, perhaps, our 11th block of charming local color, that it dawned upon the few sober among us: The color of this, and every other town—charming, local, or otherwise—would, after endless static hours, reveal itself to the initiated as the Same Old Gray you left behind. Well…okay…maybe it only dawned on me, but everyone was getting rather burnt-out, in particular with one another. It appeared that all four bitching and itching, sneezing and whining members of our loving, adventurous brotherhood privately conspired either to quietly free away from the group, free the group from Rick, or free Carl from his money. I made the decision to run.
I would be on foot. Having encircled the same Celebration-puking party blocks over and over, so often as to actually be catching beads from the same floats repeatedly, I gathered my general position fairly well—wherever I went, I was fucked. Did I mention the odd smell of this town, yet?
But I had a key, a defiant will, a surging libido, as well as beer and stripper money obtained from a stoned, winking Carl—smiling as one who recklessly dreamt those dreams they still hanged men for in the Bayou. I owed Carl nothing in return but formal, sportsman-like gratitude, courteous directions home, and first crack at scoring that weird, wrapped-up spongy thing back in the van. Attempts at procuring any other level of involvement and/or invasion of my personal space would result in gratitude extended only in the form of a handmade weapon, and a nice, running start. Switch-hitting gimps with flimsy limbs would fall briskly in this land of dog-sized swamp rats, coiling, poison serpents, deadly gators, and—that fiercest of any—the wiley, native Cajun who hunts and kills all three, then cooks them in Wild Turkey after church. And Carl would do well not to rely upon Rick always being there to be held back for him.
So off I went…far away, that I might get away…far off, that I might get off. If nothing else, I could shamelessly womanize freely without my leering Pabst-pals...
The most shy, innocent Southern Belle could make the most aggressive Midwestern female seem uptight. This was a town even my rotten fortune could fail to see laid proper. Every offbeat feature of this fallen creature, that repelled local gals, only seemed to light the gulf coast gals aflame. Young, religious Cajun Babes longed to have their Bible Belts unbuckled. Goth Gals mourned the streets in their sexy sadness and gathered in depressed, decadent droves anywhere Anne Rice was said to tinkle. Domestic Midwest bat-bush babes were rarely seen or eighteen. But here, there dwelt vast bat-caves and black-velvet waves of an Ocean Vampirella.
One Nympho of Eternal Night fancied me upon sleazy sight: She was a Banshee devotee, her geometric hair like Siouxsie Sioux; I was the wild-eyed wolverine, a furry mammal prone to eat some things it wasn’t meant to. Plucking buttons off my shirt, her long black talons roamed seductively in a coroner’s Y-cut. In a Baskin Robbins bathroom, as pale breasts lost their bodice, tongues found a 32nd flavor. In the glut of a gluttonous sultry strut—our unwrapping linens, our wrapping loins, but…the witch had sworn off riding brooms. She offered mere tastes of the abyss… seeking to return the favor. Though denied the Wham-Bam-Thank-You-Ma’am of the Damned, my cursed thirst left her bitten thighs, and smitten eyes… Nibbling like flickers of Hell, the Hellbound southern belle lent her south-of-Heaven vamp-clamp… By pierced tongue and piercing eyes, she left all clothing stained and creased and eyes rolled like the deceased. Alone…nothing spilled, though vast seas parted…relieved…my will conceived and filled—to be drained and killed by the cold hearted, the Devil’s deceived, and the black-lipsticked head of the dead.
Oddly satisfied and let down all at once, I found myself at odds with what I let be satisfied, and down. My amoral fever-pitch had reached the ninth inning, and seen far too many an outing in these post-religious eyes. My cross-bearing resume hid quite poorly an unfathomable Biblical narrative of former service to services formerly held in the Name of Christ. It all seemed so distant now, like it never really happened, or happened to some distant relative I never met. My views changed as my position and relation to the Object in Question did, and as my Quest for Objection gained positive, relative momentum to view my change—I longed to hold in question every answer I held too long. I really needed to get laid, also.
But tonight, I would have fun, just to spite every inhibition, confused conscience, slurring yuppie, and creepy leering gimp. For I would have more fun by sheer default, than with the Dream Team, with whom it was just one slosh of over-priced booze after another…one more drunken conversation that failed to stimulate me; one more blurred and staggering sidewalk procession; one more failure to appear to our opposing gender—even the buzzed and careless ones—as anything other than Frat Boys in semi-retirement.
The latter of those entrapments was, by far, the most unforgivable. This was my time to howl, to revel in unattached romance, in companies of infrequently clad Goth Chicks and Cajun Babes, passions not always obtainable in familiar company; or to find even shallow, hourly forms of unobtainable passions—in total, anything not involving a single woman I knew, north of the Mason-Dixon line. And I would be damned to Hell’s Special Ed. Class—between the demonic, giggling mongoloids of Death and Hades and that lisping kid in the fishy-smelling army jacket—for all eternity, if two sauced yuppies and an elastic bisexual gimp are going to ruin anything that I haven’t ruined on my own. And how dare they revel with such weak, piss-water beer. No man with so much as a tumor for a testicle welcomes fruit into his beer.
TO BE CONTINUED...
)+(
posted by GABRIEL C. ZOLMAN @ 7:06 AM
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