Bro, there’s a waiting list.
So what are you doing drugsick in the TL if you have such a good hustle?
I’m just cleaning the tanks; I’m not getting a cut.
You got a lady?
No.
You got money?
Fuck no.
You want to put in some work for me?
Is it legal?
Big Mike busts up laughing. Bro, he says, you are fucking hilarious.
THE TRUTH ABOUT MINIWHALES
EVERY YUPPIE AND techie wants his own Moby Dick whale. And why wouldn’t they? There’s no cooler whale; until we get the killer whales or narwhals, it won’t even be close. Blue whales come in a distant second. Way far in the back of the pod is the non-albino sperm whale.
But all these fuckwads have to have one. And if you want one, we’re the only game in town. You can get them from us, or you can settle for last year’s dwarf goats with their inner-ear problems and their shit-spraying assholes. You can get the dwarfed bison with their rage flare-ups and their bad pelvises.
If you want a MiniWhale, you have to come to us. We trademarked this shit. Sure, someone else will make a tiny swordfish or some shit, but if you want to be a whale, you have to own a whale.
If you’re going to be taken seriously, you need a condo south of Market with a Tesla in the garage and a MiniWhale tank in the living room. You don’t know what a thread count really is, but your sheets have the best thread count possible. Your bathroom has heated floors, and your kitchen has more stainless steel than RoboCop. There’s no evidence that you were a scrawny nerd in high school, and you prominently display your CrossFit medals and your Tough Mudder participation trophies.
The whale tanks are as common as giant Macs and ugly furniture. You have to have a sixty-inch TV, some kind of unusual coffee maker, and a whale tank. Pets are the new accessories. They’re the killer app; they’re the brand-new status-power cocktail; they’re the newest electric car. Accessories, all of them. No one wants things because they want them; they want things to show the world what they can afford. If you spent the hundred grand that a Roadster cost in 2010 on Tesla stock, it would be worth over a million bucks now, but no one would be able to see you drive your stock portfolio down Market Street.
Here is the dirty secret: the Moby Dicks are clones. Here’s the problem with that: the more we clone them, the crazier they get. Like insane crazy. Like serial-killer crazy. It’s like making a copy of a copy or something. We’re cloning off an original sample, but there’s still some kind of mental deterioration.
We sell them as unique dwarf breeds straight from the ocean. Each one is supposed to be different, but they’re all the same. Not exactly the same, as they’re technically a little worse each time. I don’t get it; I’m not the fucking whale scientist.
Eirean, my boss, is the one who got rich off this. I won’t. There’s always stories you hear about someone who was an original Yahoo employee or some shit, not even one of the engineers, just a receptionist or something, who is now worth a shitload of money. It was the big chase of the first dot-com wave and is happening again in the tech age of San Francisco. No one’s getting rich except a few lucky dickheads.
I clean the tanks. I feed the whales. I transfer the whales to the van. I deliver the whales to rich fucks in the mirror-walled condos that rise like giant glass dicks south of Market. I build their tanks and balance their water and remove the dead whales when the rich fucks are too dumb or stupid to feed the poor whales right or they piss in the tank during a party or something.
I’m a grunt. I’m working at the bottom of a high-end company. I can’t afford to take home what I work with all day. I can’t afford one of these whales. I know them better than anyone, and I’ll never own one.
If it weren’t for rent control, I wouldn’t be able to live in San Francisco anymore. It’s all software guys and biotech people, app developers, and big pharma. It’s weird how big it’s gotten here. The dot-com bust was supposed to end all this shit, and it’s bigger now than it ever was then. And unfortunately, it’s also a lot more stable. These companies have actual revenue streams. Some of them will go away, but a few of them never will. They’ll turn into AT&T or Pepsi or whatever of whatever it is they do. In the end, all these app companies will be owned by two big companies, and no one will remember when there were thousands of little ones like these.
Someday, these will be the shit jobs with the glut of employees that are overqualified and underpaid. Until then, though, if you have a software engineering degree and a beard, you’re a rich motherfucker sitting in the techbird seat.
Of course, without these rich fucks, no one would be able to afford these whales, which would mean I would be out of a job. I’d be back to living off girlfriends and sleeping on couches. Honestly though, I might have been better off back then, as far as general well-being goes. Those were happy times, even though I was depressed through most of it. I only enjoy that era in retrospect. Should’ve been the best time of my life.
If you’re in your twenties and not having a great time, you’re fucking up. It’s never going to be that easy for you again. You’re going to fuck the hottest people in your life, and it’s not going to be difficult. You’re going to get drunk and the hangover won’t be that bad, and you’re going to get high for days and it won’t really matter. When you’re twenty-two and you pass out at a friend’s house, it’s totally normal. When you do it at forty-two, you’re never invited back.
In my twenties, I lived in San Francisco when you could still get by working part-time. My rent was always about two fifty a month for a shared room in a flat. I worked at a newsstand, a couple of cafes, and some bars. I often had anywhere from three to five jobs that were each one day or so a week. I hated working anywhere more than twice a week.
The slacker years. Gen X. Grunge. All that shit I hated being said about me and us. You told me I was grunge then, I would’ve told you to fuck off. I was punk. But, looking back at the pictures, yeah, it looked more grunge than punk. But still, we hated all that shit being shoved down our throats.
Now I’m well into my forties, and I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing. Drugs are more of a juggling act. Druggling. I have to get right more than I get high anymore. Trying to keep it at normal. I rarely enjoy being loaded nowadays. It’s another job. Work a job all day, then work a job all night. Stay right.
Until I figure it out, I’ll be right here, arm-deep in a dwarfed whale tank. Cleaning the tanks, feeding brine shrimp to some, krill and plankton to others, this weird whale chow that’s supposed to be what they have in the ocean. Fuck it, they’ll eat anything. What’s the problem? Is it going to stunt their growth?
THE WORKOUT
BIG MIKE DOESN’T go to a gym; he lives in one. He has a squat rack, a bench, and a rack of dumbbells in his studio apartment, weight plates and mirrors lining the walls. No room for a bed. Rarely needs a bed. When it’s time for his body to rest, he takes some GHB and sacks out on a bare twin mattress on the floor.
Powerlifters and true bodybuilders are rare sights at gyms these days. When you do see them, it’s like spotting a white buffalo in the wild. It’s not the skinny little guys being made fun of at the gym; it’s the guy who has the bloodstream of a chemistry set and the veins you can see running down his arms. The giant freaks have disappeared like dinosaurs.
Gyms aren’t for lifters anymore. They’re for people who want to lose some weight, not pack it on. Guys want their arms to look better in a shirt at the bar, and women want to sweat off water weight and see that magical weightporn number on the scale. Juice bars and Zumba classes. There are gyms where you can’t dead lift, for fuck’s sake.
And forget it if you’re really hardcore, like Big Mike. No place is okay with juicing. You can’t shoot a syringe full of roids in a locker room anymore. And it’s not just roids for Big Mike. It’s crack. Big Mike smokes crack and lifts. Just smokes and lifts and lifts and lifts. Bench presses like a piston. I los
e count of the reps.
How many do you do?
To failure, he gasps. I don’t count reps anymore. If you’re counting reps, you’re not serious about it. It’s about the pump, the failure. If you can lift more, you’re not done. Then you add or subtract weight, and you do it again. And again. Three sets of twelve are for assholes at the chain gyms.
He sets the bar, gets up, puts these two-and-a-half-pound weights that look like CDs in his hands on either side of the bar.
He’s wearing black boxer briefs, a tank top that looks like two strings hanging right over his nipples, and nothing else other than a body full of faded prison tats, all skulls and snakes and a bunch of scary gang shit I don’t want to know about. He’s probably butt naked when I’m not around.
With every movement, muscles fire and relax. Veins pop, just below his skin, scattered across his arms and face like a roadmap. His whole body reddens.
When his muscles finally fail, he stands back up, and there’s a noticeable shift in his sweat slime as it rolls over his prison ink. There’s a look on his face that’s a mix of euphoria and befuddlement, like he just got a blowjob from a ghost.
He methodically opens a can of tuna and eats it in a couple of fork scoops. He throws the can at the trash bag on the floor, drinks a ridiculous amount of water, then picks up the glass stem and hits it. He extends it to me. I wave it off. He shrugs and gets back under the bar.
We have to get moving soon, I tell him. I can’t keep the whale truck all day.
Last set, he says. I gotta get a pump. Help yourself to some stash.
Any speed?
I have a little bit of everything. Look in the kitchen.
The kitchen is a haphazard mess of street drugs and workout supplements. The cabinets are populated by bags of weed in eighth-ounce bags. A fire-hydrant-sized tub of Mass Blaster. Oxy. Creatine. Ecstasy. Nitric oxide. Vicodin. Glutamine. Percocet. Beta-alanine. What is this shit? 714s? Those can’t be real. Fake ludes. He wouldn’t have real ludes up here with all the riffraff . . . Dexedrine. Yes.
There it is. Fuck this Adderall shit; Dexy is my pharmaceutical speed of choice. I pop one in my mouth and take three for later.
There’s more in the fridge, he yells. Mostly roids and T, though.
I’m taking two Dexys. Is that cool?
Yeah, no sweat.
What should I take for later? What’s the best thing in here for a speed crash?
More speed, he says.
SIZE MATTERS
BIG MIKE’S WEIGHT tilts the truck when he gets in. He’s a massive man. It’s not just the muscles; it’s the neckless pumpkin head, the thick, fat-fingered hands. There’s a difference between tall and big, but this guy is both at the same time.
He eats a microphone-sized protein bar like it’s a job, methodically taking bites, chewing, and swallowing. There’s no joy in eating among bodybuilders. It’s only fuel for a constantly draining tank. Anyone else would have fun eating six thousand calories a day. Anyone else would die in a year from eating this much.
We’re driving out to the racetrack in Berkeley. I always forget there’s a track out here. Once a year or so I’ll drive by it and think, I should really go there sometime, but I never do. Have a Bukowski day at the track, lay down a few bets, and drink some beers in the sun that only exists in the East Bay and never in San Francisco.
I’ve been up all night working the midnight-to-eight shift at MiniWhale, but the Dexys are treating me right. Pharmaceutical-grade speed is so nice. All the up and the pep without that teeth-grinding, fist-clenching tweakiness. This is the real shit. That street shit is garbage. Absolute trash. There are so many different better drugs to do than that. If you’re doing street speed, you’re doing drugs wrong.
It’s been a long time since I crashed without the help of something else. Naked. That’s how it feels. Coming down without the right drugs is like walking out your front door naked. You should take something to either numb out or amp up. And I’m not talking about taking some downers and passing out in a corner.
I need to really crash free of everything, let my body squeegee the bloodstream clean and start over. There’s so much bullshit in my system that I can’t tell when I’m high or crashing until it gets really bad.
Big Mike sniffs around.
Bro, he says, crack a window. You smell like a cat peed on you.
Yeah, I know, I say. There’s some gnarly shit we use to clean the whale tanks. I wash it off, but it gets in my pores and the speed is wringing it out of me. I think everyone at work is numb to the smell. They don’t notice.
Bro. I notice. That’s the problem. I don’t give a fuck what your coworkers think. This cab isn’t that big.
So tell me, I say, rolling down the window and changing the subject, when did all this giant skinhead stuff happen? I mean, you were always big, but this is ridiculous.
San Quentin. I got busted bringing back a truck of roids over the Mexican border. With my record, I wasn’t sure if I was getting out. That’s when I got real about lifting though. I did all my time just eating, sleeping, and working out. It’s not enough to be big in there. You have to be big and scary, and the skinhead thing was good for that. But it grew on me. I like it.
Big Mike stuffs the rest of the protein bar in his mouth like a shovel of coal going into a furnace. Even his chewing and swallowing is aggressive. Then he continues:
Scary is good. Scary works. Scary is better than a gun. If you’re not scary, people will fuck with you so that you have to fight them or fuck them up or shoot them. If you’re scary, you don’t have to bother with any of that shit. They will find someone else to fuck with.
The sad irony of it is, some people get big for protection from others, but the roids fuck with their heads so much, they start fucking with everyone else. Roid rage is real, bro.
I knew this dude who got so jacked on roids he tried to fight a truck. He was going bananas with his sets, running around the gym after them, and we told him to run outside, so he’d get done with a set and run out the emergency exit, across the street, touch the wall of the parking garage, and run back. Well, one of the times, on the run back, he stops in the middle of the street, winds up, Popeye-style, and tries to punch this delivery truck as it slams on its breaks. Truck won. The truck always wins.
We pull in behind the racetrack through a service entrance. Fresh-cut grass and horseshit. Big Mike tells me to wait with the truck and wanders off somewhere.
I can hear the cars from the highway far in the distance. One of the places I lived when I was a kid was right next to a freeway. The sound of traffic always calms me. It’s like the ocean for most people, I guess.
Someone tests the loudspeaker. It turns on with an electric pop, followed by a feedback wail and the words TESTING, TESTING, ONE, TWO, THREE.
I turn on KALX. I’m hardly ever out in the East Bay, but I still love picking up this station. They’re playing Op Ivy. Fuck. Op Ivy. “Junkie’s Runnin’ Dry.” Figures.
May 1989: I hopped in a van and came up here with Don and Tim. For no real reason, you know, just for the fuck of it. Among other things, we were set on going to Gilman. Op Ivy was playing that night. Of course, I got way too wasted and passed out in the van. Missed the show of my life.
But that’s how I got here. When they went back, I just stayed. Fuck, it seems like yesterday. What the fuck happened? I’m over twice the age now that I was then. Old. Fucking old guy.
Back then, life was as long as you needed it to be. Days were just full of all the hours you’d ever want or need; they just went on and on, and there was time enough to do anything you wanted. Most days, I woke up with no idea of what I was going to do. No plans or responsibilities. And suddenly, the days click off much faster than you want them to, and you have to think about what year it is because it all moves through you without you noticing. You’re busy as fuck even when your life is a zero.
And shit mattered. It just doesn’t now. I used to think a good show would fix wh
atever was wrong, and I’ll be damned if it didn’t feel that way. Now there’s nothing to get excited about or to look forward to. Shows happen, and if I do hear about them, they’re already over, but what the fuck would an old man like me be doing at a punk show, anyway?
I crank it up, but it doesn’t sound as loud as it used to.
Big Mike bangs on the door. Startles me.
Open the back, bro.
I get out, come around the truck, and don’t know how to process what I see: a dead horse on a forklift.
No, no, no. I can’t have a fucking dead horse in here.
What? Bro, don’t sweat it. I needed your truck because it has the rear climate control. We have to keep this cold until we get where we’re going.
Where are we taking it?
A butcher. I know a guy.
PARTY
I’M IN THE glow of a red light, I think I’m in someone’s house, but I’m not sure. There’s so many people around me that we’re all touching a little bit. There’s a girl looking up at me with big eyes, and she won’t stop smiling. I’m screaming something at her that she likes over the music that’s coming from somewhere . . . I think there’s a DJ, but I don’t see one . . . it’s a mashup of the theme from Footloose and the James Gang’s “Funk 49” with a thumping bassline . . . people are doing what is intended as dancing, but there’s not enough room in here to do much else other than move up and down a little.
Right now, there’s a party going on that you’re not invited to. You don’t know about it. You’re doing whatever it is you do with your day. You’re making a sandwich or looking for the remote or breaking up with your girlfriend or applying for another job while you’re the job that you hate. But somewhere in the world, there’s a party going on, and people are getting fucked up. Somewhere in the world, someone is having a great time, and you’re sucking on a big ball of shit.
Hopefully, I’m at that party. I’m at some of these parties—as many as I can find. Parties are where I found out about drugs and sex and the best music I’ve ever heard. Parties were the place where I wanted to be me for the first time, where I was glad I was me and not someone else.
Black Hole Page 2