I remember her as a pothead, so I’m more than a little surprised when she pulls out a rig and a bag of speed. Fucking hell. I don’t shoot drugs. I mean, I have, sure, but it was a long fucking time ago. And I never knew how to do it myself; I always had to have someone find a vein for me. I was scared of the needle. But she seems to have a pretty good handle on it. She chops up the speed and pours a little water into a spoon and sucks it up into the syringe, all very methodically. When she jams it into a vein and a little rose cloud floats into the syringe, I have to look away. Then she’s all high and talking really fast and moving her hands around.
She motions for me to go ahead, so I follow her lead. When I get the gunk into the syringe, I don’t really know what the next step is, but I kind of blunder ahead and figure it out and actually manage to get the thing into a vein. It hurts like hell because the needle is so dull, but in it goes and I hit the plunger and when I pull it out my heart starts racing and I get that whoosh, like light behind my eyes, and I’m a little afraid that I did too much. But then it settles in just right and Daphne is looking at me and talking so fast. She’s telling me about Fassbinder. She’s telling me about The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant. I don’t know why, but I’m riveted. She’s so beautiful.
“I’m Hanna Schygulla, you know? I’m Hanna, the princess who treats her lover like shit because her other lover is treating her like shit. And you are wondering why I want those big hands all over me. You are wondering why I let him touch me, because you find it disgusting.”
I can’t figure out why she’s going on about the movie. Not a clue. But she looks so pretty as she’s talking. Her face is bright pink and her hair is hanging in her face. She’s wearing a bikini top and it’s tied. I know the film. I guess she remembers this about me. I made her watch that movie one night with me during a long shift when there were almost no johns because it was raining really hard. I brought it from home and she and I sat in front of the television and ate food we’d ordered from Waiters on Wheels and watched this crazy, fucked-up, painful love story. Daphne really liked it. She cried, I remember. She even kissed me and said she loved me, but I knew she meant as a friend. We fell asleep on the couch and Arnie woke us up in the morning. He was pissed off.
Fassbinder was an ugly, miserable man. Every single character in his films is awful in some very true way. I’m thinking about the movie. Playing it in my head. And then Daphne is on me, kissing me. It’s been ages since I’ve kissed a girl. I just prefer the company of Jack Daniel’s and pot, so at first it feels weird. But her lips are so soft and her body is on mine and I feel like you feel when you’re in love. I know the rush is really the drugs and has nothing to do with Daphne, but I pretend and kiss her back.
“Tell me you love me,” she says. She’s looking at me with her big green eyes and I’m thinking, What the fuck? How did I get here? But her skin is so perfect and she’s begging me. I slide a couple of fingers in and then a few more, and then I press my thumb into my palm and I’m in to the wrist. It was so fucking easy. “Holy shit,” I mutter, and we fuck like crazy. She starts clawing me and biting. I’ve never fucked on speed before. It doesn’t feel good. She doesn’t seem to want to come, either. So I don’t really know what to do. I keep pumping but my hand is getting tired. I’m getting a cramp. And just as I’m thinking I’m gonna have to try something else, she climbs off me and I am sort of relieved. I wipe some of the stickiness on Jay’s bedspread and sit back against the wall. She’s being quiet and I feel out of my body. I have no idea what to say to her. When she starts fixing herself another hit, I really want to leave. I get up, and since she doesn’t really acknowledge me, I just slip out the door.
Outside, it’s dusk. Not too many people are left. It’s quiet. The big groups of girls have become smaller groups, and no one needs to yell to be heard anymore. I spot Nat half-asleep in a lounge chair and join her by the pool.
“Hey, buddy,” she says.
“Do you have any cigarettes?” I ask, and she hands me one.
“So, how’d you do with Daphne? Did you get her number or anything? I saw you walk into Jay’s room with her.”
“Uh, yeah, we just talked about old times. She’s a really great girl. I always liked her. She’s dating some dude, though.”
“A regular dude?” asks Nat.
“The guy who used to run the massage place.”
My mouth is really dry, so I open another beer and drink some of it. I’m still a little shaky because of the hit I took, but I’m pretty much coming off it now. The beer helps me feel more stable.
I look out at the pool and the few stragglers still at the party. Our friend Jay hasn’t been around all day, even though it’s her house. She probably took off to a private spot with some girl. That’s what she usually does. I know everyone who’s left. They are all friends and acquaintances, and some old girlfriend of mine is here, too, but she’s ignoring me. She does this thing where she looks at me and doesn’t acknowledge me at all. She hasn’t spoken to me much since we split up. I don’t feel like dealing with her. I feel like Fassbinder. I feel ugly. I have enough other stuff going on; I don’t need her.
“You and Anne still don’t talk, huh?” Nat asks me when she notices me staring in that direction. Anne giggles loudly and I think it’s probably for my benefit. She’s such a cunt. In her fucking skimpy-ass bathing suit and her long hair, she looks so LA. Her friends all hate me, too. Every time she walks away I see some of them look around for me.
I grab one of the blow-up rafts and launch it into the pool, then climb in after it. I stick my beer in the floating beer holder and climb aboard. It’s gray outside but still sort of warm. It’s pretty nice.
I guess it was probably Arnie who turned out Daphne. What a bastard. But she’s not my problem, she’s his, I tell myself. So I drink my beer and lie back on the raft and close my eyes and let the water rock me to sleep.
DEAR RACHEL, PLEASE READ
Bucky Sinister
Nothing happened, okay? Daphne will tell you differently, but you have to listen to my side of the story. Don’t listen to what Dave at the Horseshoe said, or what Dave up at the Nitebreak said, or what Dave the doorman at the I-Beam said. They’re all fucking full of shit. Please read this to the end, because nothing happened.
Not to shift blame, but I want to remind you that it was your idea that I hang out with Daphne while you were on tour. First you said you didn’t want me hanging out with my straight women friends while you were gone. Fine, I understand that. Then you said you didn’t want me hanging out with Dave from work or Davey D. from upstairs, because they would want me to go to the Lusty Lady with them or something, and fine, I understand that, too. But that didn’t leave a lot of people for me to hang out with, and when I asked you who you thought I should hang out with while you were going across the country and back, you said the other band wives. Speaking of which, that was cute at first, lumping me in with all the others, but you know it’s a little weird for me sometimes, since I’m dating a girl in a dyke band. You’re giving me gender-role issues that I’m not emotionally equipped to deal with, and pardon me if that sounds all hippie-dippy or self-helpy, but I learned it from you anyway.
Even though Daphne, Isis, and Sketcher treat me like one of the guys, I am a guy, you know, and Isis and Sketcher wanted to go to Osento, that women-only hot tub place in the Mission, because they heard that Jodie Foster was in there last weekend and she’s still shooting that movie here and might be there again. Well, what am I supposed to do on a Friday night? I can be as down as I want, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to get into Osento, not in your wildest Bosom Buddies dreams. Daphne didn’t want me to feel left out, and that’s how we ended up, just the two of us, hanging out.
I don’t need to give you the play-by-play of the night, so I’ll try to shorten this up. Our whole plan was to take acid and go see the Melvins and Alice Donut at the I-Beam. We each took a hit, and timed it so we’d be coming on by the time we hit the club,
and peaking during the Donut.
We met up at the Horseshoe and went into the bathroom to tear the hits off the sheet. That’s all that happened in there. I didn’t want to tear off the hits in the middle of the café—we’d have to share with all those fuckers. We dropped the acid and left.
Right as we were outside the café, this white limo pulls up and honks. The window comes down and it’s Dave the limo driver. You know, Dave who used to be the EMT who totally kept Anthony Kiedis from choking on his own vomit after that show at the Cow Palace? Well, he got a really slick job as a limo driver to the stars after that. So he offers up a ride. It’s Huey Lewis’s limo, and he’s supposed to kill time till Huey’s gig is done. So we get in and decide what the hell, let’s ride around for a while.
Dave is up front, yakking away, when Daphne picks up the Band-Aid box. I guess she found it looking for cigarettes or something; I don’t know. All of a sudden, she has it and opens it, and I can tell by the look on her face that it isn’t Band-Aids. Dave won’t quit talking about Slash and Izzy Stradlin, how they’re totally tight now and all that bullshit, when Daphne shows me the contents of the box. She flips up the metal lid and I tell you, it wouldn’t take the Miami Vice guys to know that was some real fucking cocaine in there. I have to assume it’s Huey’s stash. This is ’80s rock star shit, from the guy who wants a new drug and all that, so you better believe we took it.
We weren’t able to cut lines without Dave noticing, so we took turns snorting straight out of the box with a rolled-up dollar bill. There were some straight-up chunks in that shit, too. I tell you, it was the best shit I’d gotten since the Reagan administration. My whole face went numb. I felt like that Nazi dude at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
I’m only telling you this so you’ll know how and why we got really, really fucked up, and I’m sorry that we did because that’s why all the confusion happened. Maybe if we’d stopped there, it would’ve been fine, but it was still only like 8:00 PM, and there was no way we were stopping, especially since we needed to take the edge off.
The show was great. We had some drinks at the I-Beam—if Dave saw us holding hands there, it’s because the acid was super fucking strong. It’s that stuff I got from OTO Dave; it was the weirdest, cartoony-est shit I’ve ever had. Or maybe it was that with Huey Lewis’s coke. Whatever.
Then it was up to the Nitebreak, which was remarkably empty for a Friday night. The band was a black metal band from Memphis. They sang in that growly voice, but with a Southern twang. Daphne was getting a little freaked out, so we were touching as much as possible. Again, it was the acid making us a little feely.
We were pounding vodkas, but it wasn’t enough. We left and went across the street to Cala Foods. We needed something stronger. Robitussin. Well, it made sense at the time, okay? We bought our Robo and some more booze while the tweakers were buying their tinfoil behind us and the crackheads stuffed TV dinners down their pants. I just wanted to get out of there.
I’m getting away from the point, but I want to illustrate that we were totally fucked up. We did go back to Daphne’s place to chill out, but nothing happened.
We tried to play some board games, but we couldn’t figure out how to get the dice to roll. We tried singing to them and yelling at them, even sneaking up on them and scaring them, but they wouldn’t roll. We didn’t try actually rolling them. That’s my point: How the hell would we have been able to fuck all night, like the story goes? We did stuff like listen to records at the wrong speed to make Sinéad O’Connor sound like James Earl Jones singing for Black Sabbath. Then we got this idea that maybe James really had sung for Black Sabbath, but they just sped it up and sold it to us as Sinéad O’Connor. I bet they totally do that: They take all these unused tracks from the ’70s and put them through the computer to make them sound new, and presto! A Lenny Kravitz record.
I left Daphne’s house at 8:00 AM, went home, and tried to sleep, but of course I just lay in bed with the TV on. I was coming down but I couldn’t sleep, and I was so burnt I couldn’t move. Which reminds me, the guy at the corner store says he can sell us a black box to get free cable for $200. Cable is like forty bucks a month, so the box pays for itself in, like, six months or something. The way we’re stealing it now, we don’t get HBO, which we should totally have. Anyway, I didn’t leave the house again until Sunday morning. That’s when the rumor shit had spread faster than butter on a bald monkey.
Nothing happened. But I heard the rumor, too, and it goes like this: Daphne and I fucked in the bathroom of the Horseshoe and 69ed each other in the limo; I got her off fingering her at the I-Beam; she lap-danced me at the Nitebreak until I came in my pants. None of that happened, that or anything else Daphne says.
Daphne told everyone that she and I spent the whole day Saturday fucking. She really thinks that, but it wasn’t me. It had to be someone else who looked like me or smelled like me or something. She swears it was me, and that’s where my trouble really started.
I didn’t know any of this shit until Sunday morning. I went to the Spaghetti Western for breakfast and Linda Perry refused to serve me. You know, the girl with the Uncle Sam hat who’s in the band that always plays the Paradise Lounge. So I say, “I need some service down here,” and Dave the cook says, “Come in tomorrow. It’s on me, bro.” I’m like, “What?” and he’s all, “She’s mad at you because you’re a dykefucker.” At first I’m thinking, Is this still some fallout over that A. J. shit from last year? And then he says, “Daphne told us about last night, and personally, dude, you’re my hero, but you gotta go, ’cuz Linda’s got her dick hard over it and she’s swinging it like she’s Jose Canseco.” So I’m like, “Fine, I’ll go,” and I leave to figure it out later.
So of course I went to the Horseshoe, and it’s Dave there behind the counter. He’s making that porno bassline bowchickabowbow noise as I walk up. And I’m like, “What?” He’s all, “Dude, Friday night in the bathroom was one thing, but you are a stud.” I’m like, “What?” and he’s all, “Dude, everyone knows. Those guys in Heavy into Jeff are her roommates. They heard the whole thing through the walls. In fact, they recorded it on a four-track, and you two getting off is going to be the background noise of their next record. They’re naming it Excelsior!” And then he started laughing.
And I’m like, “What does that mean?” and he’s all, “Dude, that’s what you kept shouting during sex.” I got my iced coffee to go and I split. So that’s why all the guys keep yelling “Excelsior!” at me from bikes, skateboards, and cabs.
So I split for home, but when I got there, Daphne was in the living room, waiting for me. This is why the mezuzah with the hidden key compartment is a bad idea. She had two cigarettes burning, and was alternating which one she was smoking. I’m all, “Daphne, we have to talk about what happened.” And she’s all, “Talking wasn’t what I had in mind,” and she busts out the Band-Aid box. That little box held a lot. So she dumped some of Huey Lewis’s coke out on your Primus CD case and crushed it up. I swear I could smell that shit, so I thought, I have to get some of that; then we’ll work this out. I’ll be able to talk better once my hangover is gone, right? ’Cause you know I don’t talk too well in the morning anyway. So we snorted a couple of lines, and I’m all, “Daphne, we have to talk about this shit. Why did you tell everyone at the Spag West and the Horseshoe . . . ” when she pulled off her panties right there on the couch. I got totally distracted by her pussy. I was staring at it because it was all perfect and trimmed up—not bald, you know, just trimmed—and you used to do that for me but you don’t anymore. It would really help me with the oral, you know. I keep the hair off the boys myself, with the idea that you’ll take my balls in your mouth like you did when we were first going out. I really liked that.
Anyway, I totally lost track of what I was saying, and she says, “I trimmed it up like you like it,” and I’m all, “I didn’t ask you to do that,” and she says, “But you did tell me yesterday that that’s how you like it.”
&n
bsp; I’m telling you all this so you know how the coke got in the scratches of the coffee table and your CD, and how Daphne’s panties got in the couch. She must’ve stuffed them down there when I wasn’t looking. But I meant what I said about the oral, you know. After we make up for all this, we need a long 69er, okay?
So I tried to convince Daphne that it wasn’t me, that if she did fuck someone all day, it wasn’t me, right? But she’s like, “If it wasn’t you, who was it?” And I’m all, “I don’t know.”
You keep bringing up the fact that I once told you that I thought Daphne was hot. But if you’ll remember, that was the day last year when we went to see Blue Velvet at the Kabuki. Dave said that thing about your ass being big, and you asked me if I thought your ass was big and I said yes, but I meant it the good way, like big good, that it isn’t about size, it’s about shape; that an ass that’s round in the right way is awesome, like an upside-down heart shape. And that’s when Daphne and Trigger walked into the theater in front of us, and Daphne was wearing that skirt that made her ass look perfect, like the bubble in the middle of the Trouble board game, and you said no, it was Headache, and we got in a fight over which game had the die stuck in the bubble in the center that you had to pop to get it to roll, and I said, “You try to pop Daphne’s ass and see if that doesn’t start some Trouble.” I’m sure you remember, because that’s the time Trigger got arrested for beating up that dude in the Farm Aid shirt. Anyway, I knew you liked her ass, and I told you that you guys have the same ass; yours is smaller because you’re smaller, but proportionally, you guys have the same ass. And that’s when you said, “Daphne’s hot, don’t you think so?” And I was all, “Hell yeah,” but my point is that you brought it up and I was just agreeing with you, so if you’re mad that I said Daphne is hot, you’re just mad that I’m agreeing with you and I’m only trying to be supportive of you and your ass esteem.
Fucking Daphne Page 7