(This is a story I've been working on recently, it's still very rough and far from being completed, but I wanted to give people an idea as to what I've been working on.)
That Time I Sucked Hank's Cock (working title)
I always seem to wind up in the slums of a city, the seedy underbelly. Magnolia Avenue or South Federal Street. Every city has a skid row, and sometimes it’s the only place an artist can fall.
The artist. The bluebird. The martyr. The suicide kid.
The women came with the drinks, and they left me with them.
After leaving a bar, I stroll for some ass on Cherry Street, but eventually settle for a joint behind a tractor-trailer on Jackson Street, just down from the Greyhound Station.
I finish it off and walk to my car. Driving away from downtown, I debate with myself if wearing sunglasses at 2 am would be too obvious. They would be, so I set them down and listen to ‘Rubber Soul’.
I turned into my driveway twenty minutes later, the concrete cracking and separating like a spider web. I stumbled to my front door only to drop my keys and smack my forehead into the doorknob. “Fuck!” I yelled. The dogs a few houses down barked a few times until retreating back to their houses. I put my fingers to my forehead. “Fuck.” I said again, significantly lower this time.
I reach back down and grab my keys. The door creaks. I remind myself to get WD-40 for the millionth time.
I didn’t check the mail today.
In the morning, the trash collectors drive through the neighborhood for the weekly pickup. My can is in the garage for the third consecutive week.
I leave for Los Angeles today. My publisher is bringing me out to do a reading at a bookstore close to their offices. It’s not my birthday, so I’m driving across the country. (I only take planes on my birthday, in hopes that it will go down and I can die on the day I was born.) I’m supposed to showcase new stories that I’ve written. The problem being, I haven’t written in six months. The drive to L.A. should take two days, but I’m going to try to stretch it to three so I can come up with at least one new story to read.
After a battle to get out of the house, including vomiting and a rather nasty shit, I got my bags packed and into the car.
My first stop was at the liquor store. Never go on a road trip without enough alcohol to kill an elephant. I already had a quarter of pot in my possession, so I was finally ready to hit the road.
I got to Memphis around 4:30 that afternoon. I stopped to fill up and to take a piss. I went to the men’s room first. I got the key from the attendant. The bathroom was on the backside of the gas station, facing away from the interstate. The walls in the bathroom were filled with the same immature graffiti you find in almost every gas station bathroom across the country. “Fuck Jews Blacks Fags”. I don’t understand hate banter on bathroom walls. Sure, I hate people, but not enough to divide them into categories. I hate them because they tan too much, or the force their religion on me. As far as race divisions, they’re all the same to me . . . a lot of bad apples and a few fuckable women.
I finish pissing, shake a few times, play with myself for a second, and wash my hands. I walk out to my car and put 14 gallons of petrol into my tank.
I left the gas station a couple minutes later. I put ‘New Skin For The Old Ceremony’ on the stereo. I looked up to Cohen. If one day I could be as powerful as him with words, well . . . just, it’s what I strive for.
I don't mean to suggest that I loved you the best/I can't keep track of each fallen robin
My next stop was Oklahoma City. I decided to stay for the night. I had to get some writing done and the city that was home to a domestic terrorist attack during my lifetime seemed to be as good as any. After all, it was right off of I-40. I found the cheapest motel close to the interstate and paid for a room.
Now, to write a story. I would need at least half a bottle of the Burnett’s Vodka that I purchased to put one together. After bringing one of my suitcases in, I went back out for a bottle. It was grape flavored and within minutes I was 300 words in. What came out was a dream that I had had months ago, about going insane.
It may be the best story I’ve ever written, but I’m not sure, because I haven’t finished it yet. Though, I’m hammered. I feel everything is my best. When I go back over it, I don’t believe that I wrote it. I think to myself, “Did someone else use my computer to write a story? Because this seems like my writing and my thoughts, though it’s too good to be my own.”
In the morning I took another nasty shit and got back on the road. I still had two days to get to L.A., but I wanted to make sure that I didn’t show up late or too tired to read my material. Not that it mattered. I could always just start the show with a bottle of whiskey and read until it had finished me off.
I drove for a few hours, until I had to refill, and got back on the road as quick as I could. My goal was to stop in Albuquerque next. I would have only half a day to get to L.A. after that, so I didn’t want to stop before then. After another complete day of driving, I made it to Albuquerque. I grabbed something to eat and then settled down in another hotel room to work on the story again. This time, only adding a few more paragraph’s and editing the majority a bit.
In the morning I woke up to my fifth straight day with a hangover and got in my car to finish the drive to L.A. I crossed in to the Los Angeles city limits at about 5 p.m. Just enough time to grab something to eat and a bottle of liquor for the reading, even though I had told my publisher to have one for me at the auditorium. It never hurts to have a back up.
When I got to L.A. I drove to the airport and left my car there. That’s where I told my publisher to pick me up. I figured that would be easiest for all of us. I wouldn’t have to worry about finding the venue and they wouldn’t have to worry about me getting lost and cut in to pieces or being late. Both were a potential scenerio. They picked me up and when we arrived to the venue I was already one sheet to the wind, only two more to go.
I sat backstage for a while, letting the venue fill up while I got a little more drunk and bullshitted with the employees. We talked about family, politics, and a couple of them asked me to read specific stories for them. Of course, I would oblige them as much as I could. There were a few that I wouldn’t be able to, because I had no recollection of what story they were talking about. That’s the one problem with drinking too much before a reading, sometimes, you just can’t make everyone happy.
