#36: They were on the couch watching television. He had his arm draped over her shoulder. They watched a program about a group of young lawyers full of compassion and human values battling for the rights of society’s underprivileged. A young man had been accused of raping a woman. He was in court now, trying to plead his case. The girl on the couch said, “He’s guilty.”
He asked her how she knew, thinking that perhaps she had already seen this episode.
“I know he did it. A woman can always tell. We know how men are. Yes, he definitely did it.”
He looked at her.
“What a load. I know how women are. They say that they want it, but if they don’t like it or they get pregnant, they yell rape, and the guy goes to jail. It’s a pile of shit I think. If they didn’t want men coming up and trying to get next to them, then why do they wear the clothes that they do? It’s a mean, fucked-up game if you ask me. Women have men by the balls and sometimes the weaker of them loses control after getting their dicks teased through the roof.”
She looked back at him like he had just dumped a bucket of llama shit on her head and asked for a dollar.
“You think it’s okay for some guy to do what he wants to a woman? That the clothes she wears are an invitation for gratuitous sex? If that’s your attitude, I’m leaving right now. Men are pigs!”
“No!” he shot back. “That’s not what I meant at all. I don’t think some guy can do what he wants to a woman. Come on, what do I look like? Damn.”
“Okay,” she said, “I know what you mean about the teasing thing. I hate to say this, but me and my friends used to do it when we were younger and not as classy as we are now. We used to get guys all hot and bothered and see how far we could go before it got too heavy, and then we would leave. It was fun for a while, but I can see how it would drive a man wild.”
He reached down and cupped her breast. She looked at him and smiled. He kissed her and worked his hand into her shirt. He got his hand into her bra and outlined her nipple with his finger. With his other hand he went up her skirt. He had his hand in her panties now and was running it through her pubic hair. She slowly removed his hand from her shirt and held it. She took his index finger into her mouth and ran her tongue around its tip and looked into his eyes. She took her other hand and placed it on the bulge in his pants. A commercial came on. An ad for milk.
A beautiful girl drank a glass of milk, licked her lips and said, “Ummm, yummy.”
The beautiful girl smiled and the ad went off. She squeezed the bulge and said, “Ummm, yummy.”
She started unbuttoning his shirt, kissing the places where the buttons had been. She dug her tongue into his navel as she undid his belt. She pulled his cock out and started talking to it.
“Hello handsome, you look so good I could eat you like candy. I bet you taste so good. You’re so big and strong. What’s a poor girl to do? I can’t control myself!”
He could feel her breath on his cock. She looked up at him and smiled. He closed his eyes and let out a long sigh. This was going to be great. She gave his cock a slight tug and laughed as she got up.
“That’s the kind of stuff that we used to do. God, weren’t we mean? Those poor guys must have hated our guts! Well look, I’ve got to go. Me and the girls are going to go down and see that new Joe Cole film. Have you ever seen him? He is so hot. All my friends want to rip his clothes off! If any of them call here looking for me, tell them I’m on my way. Bye!”
#66: A dick thing. She promised to call me after she got back from her trip. I waited for her because I wanted to see her badly and was looking forward to it. Ten days after her supposed return to the country she still hadn’t called. Now, if she was blowing me off, she could have at least had the guts to have called and told me. I call a few numbers looking for her. Finally I reach her. She seems surprised to hear from me. I ask her why she didn’t call me. She gives me a noninformational answer. I know this girl very well. I have known her for years, and I know when she’s lying. She is not good at it either. So I have a little fun and ask her some rapid-fire questions about things that she should be able to tell me immediately. She can’t get answers very quickly. Of course she can’t, she’s making them all up as she goes. Being insulted hurts, especially when it’s over the phone. Have you ever felt so powerless as when you’re trying to deal with something like this over the phone? I know! It makes you crazy. So we finally agree to meet at a restaurant. We can’t meet at her new place because “it’s being painted.” That’s nice that her new man is painting the place for her. This is days away from now. I called her later this evening to try to talk to her because it was getting impossible for me to get anything done around here. I called and got a nice deep male voice on the answering machine. Now I don’t get into revenge and all this heated-passion bullshit, but you know sooner or later I will run into the two of them and it doesn’t matter how big or tough this guy is. Chances are he isn’t as fucked-up crazy and as ready to die as I am. If he is, well all the better. I want her to see me mutilate this guy for the fun of it and also so she can have a good horror story to tell her children years from now.
#70: He would go to those dances. He could never get the nerve to ask a girl to dance. Like he would really know what to do when he got her out on the floor. He had tried dancing alone in his room and had gotten so embarrassed that he just had to stop. He watched them though. If you could get points for being attentive, he would have cleaned up. Women were so mysterious and full of shit. He wouldn’t have a clue what to say to one if he ever got the chance. The dances went by and he went to almost all of them. He would find the darkest part of the gym and watch them with his back to the wall. He saw a girl who was doing the same thing he was. He checked her out: She was pretty enough. A few times she caught him looking. She was looking at him too after all. He looked at her again and she waved at him. His entire body shuddered. He knew what he should do, and at the same time he knew he didn’t have the balls to go over and say hello. He was so shy he could barely answer to roll call in class. He looked down at the floor trying to appear unconcerned and even bored. When he looked up again, she was there in front of him. His heart started pounding. He thought he might choke. She introduced herself. He managed to get his name out as well. They both agreed that these things were stupid and that they were both there to see how stupid their friends could be and how stupid it was to dance, etc. They decided to try it as a joke. You know, like “Here, eat this pound of lard, but only as a joke though.”
They went for it in the dark corner of the gym. It was a slow song, something by Three Dog Night. The singer shouted over the music.
“Look at this! We have all the boys against one wall and the girls against the other. Why can’t you all be like THOSE TWO OVER IN THE CORNER?!!”
He felt his dinner rising up. They broke apart. She ran off. He never saw her again.
#83: I was going to shoot her in her living room. I knew it. I had it all in my head. Earlier that morning, I had been there and picked up the rest of my stuff. I felt like an asshole picking up my shit and putting it in a plastic bag while she watched like some mother. I could see that she didn’t really want me to go. Perfect. Keep them hanging on so you can hurt them later. If they forgive you once, they’ll keep forgiving you. You can do any damn thing you want with them. This woman pissed me off. I thought I was above falling in love. I was always the player, the mindfucker. I was damn good at it too. I used to take a real pride in seeing how far I could take these stupid bitches. I loved seeing them cry. This morning it was me who was the one crying. I asked her how she could turn me away like this. I figured I would plant the guilt seed in her tiny mind so I could rake her through the coals later on. I could see it almost work. She tried to stay strong.
“Why don’t you grow up and be a man for once in your life? Cut out the dramatics.”
I felt my whole body tense. I was going to break her neck right there, but that would be too easy. In this life, I strive for contr
ol at all times. She made me almost lose it all. I’ll admit it, I loved her.
Hours later I was on my way back to her place with my gun in my pants. I got to her place and knocked on the door. She didn’t open it up but instead pushed the mail slot open and told me that she was busy and would call me later. So busy that she couldn’t open the door? What the fuck was going on in there? I told her to open up. I wanted to give her something. She told me to put it in through the slot. I said okay. I opened up the slot and looked in. She was standing right in front of me. I fired three times. I hit her in the stomach at least twice. I turned and split. I walked back down her street toward Sunset Boulevard. I felt nothing. I passed an apartment complex. There was a man standing in front of the small pool right by the fence. I stopped and stared at him. I don’t know why. Finally he smiled and said, “Hello, my name is Paul.”
I took the gun out of my pants and shot him in the stomach. He fell to the ground. I walked away. I didn’t run. I don’t know why. I don’t remember feeling anything. I went home, made some dinner, played some records, and fell asleep. I went to work the next day. That was six months ago.
#92: He stood behind her for the better part of an hour. She barely moved. It was as if the television had some kind of magic hold on her. He watched the back of her graying head as it gently nodded with the canned laughter.
It was the end of all time. It was the end of all struggle and all sorrow. No more lying awake at night thinking about the job and money.
Numbers! How many hundreds of hours had he wasted thinking about money and little numbers in little rows so nice and neat? Numbers weren’t anything! What a revelation so late in the game.
What was real life like anyway? Did he ever really live? Was there ever a moment when he wasn’t in fear of losing something? Had he wasted his life away? He thought about the lines in his face. Sixty-four years—was that old? Too late to start over again. He would look at all the women on the street and know that it was too late to even think about doing anything.
He looked down at her head. He called her name out loud.
“Ellen.”
She jumped slightly and turned around in time to see him shoot himself in the mouth. It was the end of time.
#99: At this point you have found the note and you have found my body as well. In the envelope with this letter, please find the three hundred dollars in cash. That should cover the cost of cleaning the room of the mess that I have now made of it. I think there’s a cleaning company that specializes in getting blood and gunpowder out of rugs and walls. Check the yellow pages. There should be some money left in my account; please use it to dispose of the body. Anything that’s left over, please pay any outstanding bills that come up in the next few weeks.
I know what you’re thinking. If he’s dead, why the hell would he care if the bills are paid or not? Well I do care. I might as well be responsible for all of this.
You should have seen me here wracking my brains (ha ha!) trying to find a way to kill myself and dispose of the body at the same time. I wouldn’t like to be looking at this scene. Sorry, I tried to do something with a little bit more style and flair, but at the time, my mind was troubled. Now it’s all over the room, ha ha.
I suppose you want to know why I did it. I couldn’t find anything that meant anything to me. Money, women, sex, love, fame, friends—none of that could hold me. I think it’s all a bunch of shit. So much lying involved to get any of it happening anyway. When was the last time you got a date with a girl and didn’t lie every five minutes? Right, well I got tired of the lies. If you tell the truth too much, you’ll go broke!
At my job, I felt like a fucking robot. I can’t believe I stuck with it so long in the first place. Isn’t it the stupidest damn thing you can think of to do with your time? Get up, get dressed and go there to take it from some asshole. Go back home and get ready to do it all over again the next day? Not me. Not anymore. Look at all of our friends—if you can call them that. The only time they’re not bitching is when they have just found a new way to fuck someone over. Otherwise, they’re the same predictable mean-assed bunch, just like all the others.
I don’t mean to come on all heavy, but I felt like a hamster in a cage. Running for the food, hitting the treadmill every day.
It was an insult that I could no longer stand. The things that I considered “good”—good torture is what it was. Good sadomasochism. Nothing more. Life is death in slow motion. It takes years. They give you the poison slowly so you don’t even taste it.
So look, don’t get all bummed out with this okay? I am where I should be. It was coming to this. I saw this coming years ago. It was just a matter of time until I got the courage up to give up the poison. I don’t want you to feel that you have to do this. If you can deal with life’s bullshit parade, then more power to you.
Again, sorry for the mess.
Black Coffee Blues
March 4, 1989. Vienna, Austria, 7:59 a.m.: It rarely gets better than this. I’m in the breakfast room of this old hotel. The gray light of the Austrian morning puts a soft cast on the empty tables that surround me. Across from where I’m sitting is a long table of food: eggs, cheese, bread, rolls, butter, jam, milk, orange juice, muesli, and a large pot of coffee. I am halfway through the first cup; it is awesome. There are beads of sweat developing on my brow.
I have stayed in this hotel before, in 1987. The band was playing across Europe, a ten-week tour. The table we sat at is to my left. What a great, mighty morning it was. We ate so much food that I think they were going to throw us out if we so much as even looked at the food table again. It was fantastic, an exercise in overeating, “sport eating” we used to call it in Black Flag. After we had eaten much too much food, we made sandwiches for the road, put them in our pockets, and exited.
I have finished the first cup. I ask the friendly young woman if I can have some more coffee. Her reply endears her to me until checkout time. “Yes, of course,” she says. She understands. The second cup has arrived.
This hotel is across the road from the train station. In 1987 I walked the streets here on a night off. I went into the station and watched an amputee try to sleep on a bench. He was rousted and expelled. I watched the whores work the boulevard in their thigh-high white plastic boots. Last night as I was getting back from the club, I thought about taking a walk down to where I saw this beautiful blond whore hold up the side of a building. She was a hot icy sex-merchant machine. Last night I thought about her as I stared into the darkness of my room. I wondered where she was—maybe still out on the boulevard, maybe dead. Was she still as pretty as I remembered? Is anyone? How memories lie to us. How time coats the ordinary with gold. How it breaks the heart to go back and attempt to relive them. How crushed we are when we discover that the gold was merely gold plating thinly coated over lead, chalk, and peeling paint.
She comes forward, a pot in each hand. “Would you like another cup of coffee?” she asks.
“Yes, please.” I reply, through clenched teeth, trying to pull my right hand from my leg, which is gripping it so hard I might be cutting off the circulation. She pours it. There it sits, black and ominous, a slight oil slick at the top. I drink. Smooth—like death.
Today I go to Budapest, Hungary, where the idea of coffee is but a joke. Hard to find and when you score, it usually tastes like instant that has been stored and aged in the bladder of a goat. I see why they drink so much booze.
As I drink, I think of her, the beautiful whore. Since I saw her, she has probably sucked ten kilometers of cock, gained an incredible insight into the frailties and insecurities of the average male, seen enough to know that she’s seen too much, and knows enough to know that sometimes it’s better not to know it all. You brave, beautiful sex beast. This third cup is for you.
Excuse me, I must be on my way.
March 6, 1989. Linz, Austria: Staring at cup #3, not SO hot. Not half as hot as the waitresses in this place. Same girls as last time. They act the same way too, co
ld and distant. Tonight feels empty. Spent the day driving through the countryside of Hungary and Austria. I don’t know, something in this place is pulling me down. The waitress is wearing perfume, it smells like something wonderful. Good thing the coffee is here to blast me through. Sometimes you hit these situations where all you can do is endure, take it minute by minute. It’s good though, to be in this room full of voices and not be able to understand a word of what anyone is saying. I like this lean feeling that moves relentlessly through me. Sometimes I feel like a perfect stranger, like I was born to be forever isolated from them. Do you know what I’m talking about? Totally alien. Heavy coffee blues #3 is hanging in there, staring up at me. People all around me talking. I’m on another planet. I don’t feel lonely, just anxious and confused. People staring. I hear my name start to pop up in their conversation. Forces my eyes to the paper, to the coffee, the oily black eye of Truth!
For the life of me I can’t figure out the women here. Are they made of wood or ice or a combination of both? I observe them. I don’t talk to them unless one of them asks me a direct question; otherwise I have nothing to say to them. Who is them? Them are them. Them are everywhere. I don’t understand them. I used to think I did, but now I see that I was wrong, I was fooling myself. All the hours I spent fooling myself. Everybody fools themselves sometime. The better of us spend less of our waking hours doing this I think. There is however a lot to be said for those who are good at being foolish. They get all the headlines.
March 7, 1989. Linz, Austria:
Alone in a room
R.E.M. playing on the tape deck
Staring at the floor
Single bulb stares down
The Portable Henry Rollins Page 9