Black Hole

by Bucky Sinister

  So if you design the most popular drug, you have the most popular club. There’s no better draw to a club, if you ask me. Drugs and clubs go hand in hand. People need somewhere to get high and people to get high with. They need the anonymity of the darkness and the music to keep them from having to talk to people. You can pump in whatever smell you want. You can change the lighting. People taste what you have in the club. So you’re controlling every aspect of the experience, and if you control the drugs, you control the way all of those aspects are perceived.

  Mighty Mouse spoons a small amount in the vodkas. You don’t have to twist my arm. My favorite drugs are free drugs.

  What’s in it? I ask. Not that I care, really, just curious.

  The usual dance-club mix: a little bit to keep you up, a little bit to make the music sound good, a little bit to make you want to touch the other homely fuckers in the club. But the thing that’s going to make me a rich man is a thermogenic. It actually burns more calories than the vodka contains. You can drink all night and actually lose weight. Do you have any idea how popular this is going to be with gay men and women?

  I take a drink. Tastes like grapefruit juice that went bad.

  This is fucking horrible. I shake the taste out of my head. Then, like the problem addict I am, I finish it in a big shot.

  And it makes you sweat a little more than normal. And if you drink too much, it probably will induce renal failure. And fuck up your endocrine system over the long haul. But hey, did I tell you you’ll lose weight? You’ll never go broke underestimating the vanity of the American public.

  The pump comes on slowly. This song sounds great. I know I’m high when I like this fucking music. I know objectively it’s horrible, but it’s sounding good right now. I feel like I look better. Better? Hot. Yes, I look good. Hot enough to fuck. God damn, this shit is good.

  Mighty Mouse takes us downstairs to see what he calls the Big Show. He won’t tell us what that is. Right now, I don’t care. I will fuck whatever it is.

  On stage, a Hulk Hogan impersonator and an Andre the Giant impersonator are singing “You’re The One That I Want” from the Grease soundtrack. They look pretty good, but they’re not the same size as the originals. They’re normal-sized people, and it looks weird. Fake Andre is only like, five eight, and his wig is coming off. I think this is the Big Show, but I’m wrong. It’s the end of the show right before the Big Show. Fake Hulk and Fake Andre have a big finish, with Fake Andre jumping into Fake Hulk’s arms. They pose for the adoring crowd, then scatter off stage, taking props with them.

  There’s a lag in the music and a drug-stoked tension in the air. Gay catcalls ring out. Everyone’s clearly waiting for whatever’s about to happen.

  The DJ plays a mashup of Godzilla music, Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero,” and “Big Bad John.” Fuck, I am high. The crowd goes fucking nuts, and I go nuts, too. I’m cheering. For what, I don’t know. But they’re excited, and I’m one of them. We’re excited. Holy shit, what the fuck is coming? I yell for it to come out, whatever or whoever it is.

  Through the crowd, a man walks, and as he gets closer, I can see he’s completely naked. He’s oiled up, shining like a fish pulled out of the water. His face has all the expression of a mannequin.

  I see everyone looking at him. We’re all high on the same shit. We’re a crowd of horny lizards. We want to consume; to eat, fuck, and kill. They’re higher than I am, which puts them completely beyond humanity. And they look great. Great in the way tweakers and junkies look great right before they go to shit. It’s the thermogenic in the drinks. They’re burning calories faster than they can eat them, but who gives a fuck when you’re thin, right? Their eyes are all the same. They’re all looking at this man walking through the crowd, the champion of Pump.

  He takes the stage, and you know, I haven’t seen a whole lot of cocks, but I doubt I’ll ever see another one this big. It’s hanging there like a sock with a cue ball in it.

  A bass beat kicks in, and a look of fierce determination takes over his face. It’s like he’s angry, but not at anyone. He grits his teeth and begins sweating in front of us, and I realize he’s not oiled—he’s slickened with his own sweat, and it runs off him in a slow sheet.

  Slowly his cock awakens, like a cobra coming out of a snake charmer’s basket. The crowd roars its approval. I cheer too, and although I know I could really give a shit, it’s impressive seeing a cock this big get hard in front of everyone. He must be getting light-headed.

  When it’s fully hard, it looks around the room with its hideous gaping mouth-eye. His eyes are closed and his head is tilted back. I would think he’s passed out, but he’s still upright and his fists are clenched so hard his arms are shaking. The crowd can’t take it. Men shove their way to the front. Bodybuilder bouncers keep them from rushing onto the stage.

  The man stands there, his cock quivering, like it’s having a nightmare or it’s confused or something. It swells and pulsates. Veins throb on the shaft and on each fist, running up in gutters across his arms, up his neck, and into little squiggles on his forehead.

  How long this goes on, I can’t tell. I’ve lost track of time. He’s glowing bright red as his capillaries swell and burst.

  Precum glistens off the head of his cock, a simple milky tear, and now I know what the Big Show is. I back up through the crowd, trying to get as far away from the stage as possible. His penis shakes at us like an old man’s angry fist, and then it happens.

  A shot of cum like the ghost of a snake shoots out, and men jump to catch it like it’s a free T-shirt at a stadium. It’s followed by short angry jizz bursts. The man’s yelling, but I can’t hear him over the noise of the crowd. The spectators rush the stage and dog-pile him. I head out the door. I need some air, but nothing is going to top that. Maybe ever.

  The cool night air of Folsom Street hits me. I’m soaked with sweat. I didn’t notice so much inside, but out here, it’s freezing.

  A dank, sour, shit smell hits me. I look for a pile of bumarrhea but don’t see anything. I must be coming down off the birthday cake.

  A convertible Jaguar rolls by us. I want to fuck it. Those curvy, beckoning lines. The light changes, and the driver hits the gas, leaving brakelights trailing like toothpaste in its wake.

  THE BOSS

  MY ARM HURTS. It’s wet. I look down. I’m at work. Arm’s in a tank. Moby Dick whale biting the fuck out of me. Fucker. I hate this guy. He lives up to the dick part of his name. Dick. Asshole whale. I wrestle him a while. The only way to get him to let go of you is to stick a finger in his blowhole. I jam my finger in knuckle-deep, and he lets go and swims to the corner of his tank.

  I don’t remember coming in. This isn’t good. Entire chunk of lost time. I remember the gym. Going to Pump. The Big Show. Being on the curb, sweating my ass off. Then I’m here. Hell. Something’s wrong. I need to fix my mix. More drugs? Different drugs? Less mixing the drugs? More of just one?

  Eirean rolls in, literally, on a pair of vintage Nike disco skates. He’s wearing his best power-plaid flannel. There must be a meeting today.

  Eirean O’Malley, the boy genetic genius. The guy who figured out the dwarf genome in the whales. The man who made an empire of making the world’s biggest mammal into the world’s most collectible.

  Eirean is barely into his twenties. Drives a Tesla Roadster, owns a pair of Tibetan dogs he bought from a temple while on a trip and bribed them back to the US. He has a condo in one of those mirrored buildings that stands tall over the Bay Bridge on-ramp. He’s a rich fucker selling things to other rich fuckers.

  Chuck, bro, we need to talk.

  Fuck, I think, I’m caught for something. I could be busted for any number of things.

  What’s up, boss?

  I have a client coming in later. I need something special for the party.

  Ah, hell. This is why I don’t get fired. If you come into work drunk, you can get fired, but if you’re a great drug connection, you’ll never get fired. Y
our only worry is that some other degenerate fuck with a better phone full of contacts doesn’t get hired.

  What are you looking for? Psychedelics? Amphetamines? Designer stuff?

  No. Something special. Something not on the market yet.

  How am I supposed to get something that’s not on the market?

  I don’t know, figure it out. Should I ask where you’re going in the company trucks in the mornings? Should I ask why you sometimes stand in front of the tank and do nothing but stare for an hour? Should I ask why someone drank your Vitamin Water by accident from the fridge and didn’t come down for two days?

  That shit was clearly labeled as mine.

  Not the point. I know what’s going on with you. Frankly, I don’t give a fuck. But you need to do this for me.

  OSO

  I CAN SMELL Oso from outside his building. He’s up a few floors, but he leaves a trail of his funk behind. It’s not bad out here, but it’s rough up close. It’s a sour smell, like something went bad. It’s a quick-hitting smell, like when you open a container and sniff, and everything’s fine until you’re about to pass out. Some people say that it’s a fat-guy smell, that he can’t wash himself. But I think it’s worse than that. I know someone who did time with him, said he would take a full shower and would come out still stinking, said a celly hanged himself because they wouldn’t transfer him out, said he got shanked one time, and the fat closed over both the sharpened spoon and the guy’s hand, and Oso beat him to death while he was stuck there like that, because he was that weird fat-guy strong, slow, but hit like a mule kick. I’ve walked into clubs and known he was in there because of the smell.

  Oso is easily five hundred pounds. Maybe he’s six. I don’t know. I don’t have a reference for anyone being that huge. Three hundred, I’ve seen, and he’s well past that. When he sits, parts of him hang over other parts of him. When he stands, parts of him don’t get up when other parts get up. He’s not shaped like a human anymore.

  He doesn’t leave his Tenderloin apartment often, but when he does, everyone gets out of the way. He wears a black outfit and floats through the sidewalks. His street name is The Death Star, but no one says that to his face. He has his groceries and drugs delivered, so when he leaves the apartment, he’s only leaving to kick some ass. No one knows who it will be, but they know to run.

  Pity the poor fuck who doesn’t see him coming. His rage matches his appetite. I’ve seen him pin a junkie against a car with his belly, like a fat fleshy airbag, in a suffocating gesture. Your body immediately exhales then can’t inhale. There’s no more panic than the lack of air.

  What you fools looking for? Oso slurs.

  He’s eating a pie with a fork. Not a slice of pie, but a pie with a fork. He stops intermittently to spray more whipped cream into it.

  Something special, I say. Something not on the market yet. Something new.

  How much you fools looking to spend?

  Not a dime over five large.

  In his apartment with Big Mike, I’m the smallest man in the world. I’m trying to picture dropping three hundred pounds of fat on Big Mike, what would happen to his prison tats, but I can’t formulate it in my head. Both of these guys started out at around nine pounds as babies and now they’re enormous.

  We cleared five grand in the horsemeat deal. Had to pay off the racetrack guy, and the gym was buying the meat wholesale. So we’re trying to buy something from Oso.

  I think I got the thing for you fools, he says with a snicker. He puts the pie down and reaches behind his chair, retrieving a lidded jar that’s full of black marbles.

  Bro, what is that? Big Mike asks.

  Shit is too new for a name.

  That’s what we’re looking for, I say. What’s it do?

  It’s a synthetic smokeable speedball. Comes on speedy, then, where the crash would be, a nice Oxy-style comedown.

  Great, I tell him. How much for the jar?

  Fuck, you fools ain’t buying the jar. These retail at a thousand bucks apiece.

  No way, Big Mike says, standing up. We’re out. You’re fucking with us.

  Wait, wait, I haven’t told you the best part yet . . . this shit doesn’t run out.

  Now I’m interested, Big Mike says.

  I’ve been hitting my own every day for a month; it’s still the same size. I’ll give you fools eight for five.

  Too much, Big Mike says, I don’t know anyone who can afford it.

  I do, I blurt out. This is exactly what I need.

  DRUGSITTER

  NOT ONLY DO I have to find these rich fucks drugs, but apparently I have to babysit them as well—Eirean and four of his friends, with names like Colin and Taylor and Colby or whatever. They’re all vaping; it smells like they’re freebasing Jolly Ranchers.

  Eirean’s friends are exactly what I thought they would be: a bunch of nerds under thirty with more money than most suckers will ever see in a lifetime. What do they spend it on? New Balance jogging shoes, tight pants, plaid shirts, Tesla Roadsters, air hockey tables, and studio apartments that rent for as much as homes sell for in the Midwest. And occasionally, they spend a thousand bucks getting high.

  We’re on one of those bullshit bachelor-party-bus buses, the ones that look like a commuter shuttle got gutted and decorated like a casino, with LED lights everywhere and a stripper pole. It’s the absolute opposite of cool.

  Fuck it. I don’t care. I sold five marbles, got our money back, and still have three left over. One for me and two more to sell. If I had a drug that wouldn’t run out, I would definitely share it. But each of these rich fucks wants his own.

  We’re hitting this shit and watching FernGully: The Last Rainforest on DVD. The guys are pointing out how Avatar totally ripped it off. I’ve never seen this shit before. I was a full-grown man getting high and fucking women when this shit came out.

  This whole hipster generation is stuck in their childhoods. I guess they had nice childhoods. They were told they were special and given lots of shit, they felt free to take out enormous student loans, and they do not give a fuck about what came before them. They had bike helmets and car seats and no one ever smacked them in the face for talking back.

  They stop for cupcakes. I stay in the bus. I can’t get out. I can’t bear this bullshit. There’s this huge line down the block, but they use a linecutter app and swap places with people near the front of the line for a fee.

  They come back in the bus with bacon–German chocolate cupcakes. They take bites but don’t finish them. They’re too high to eat.

  The marbles are much better than Oso let on. Whatever this shit is, it’s clean. The world goes from standard definition to HDTV.

  We stop at a club. Now it’s on, I think, party time, but I’m wrong. As we’re ushered into a private room, I’m still excited. But instead of strippers, it’s videogames. Japanese shit that’s not out here yet. They came to a club to get high and play videogames. For the love of fucking god.

  GOOD MORNING

  I WAKE UP with a sticky note on the floor next to my head. It says, Who are you? It looks like a girl’s handwriting. I’m not sure whose floor this is. It’s daytime. I check for my drugs, wallet, keys, and phone. All there. I’m wearing clothes and shoes. Time to go.

  I go out the front door and enter a hallway. I’m either in a new apartment building or a really swank hotel. I find an elevator and get in.

  In the reflection of the elevator wall, I see there’s something spattered on my face. Little dots of something. I can’t tell exactly what.

  I check my phone’s map. The pin drops at First and Harrison. Not bad. I know how to get home from here.

  On First Street, a homeless man approaches me with a blind rap about needing food and a place to stay. It’s eight AM. There are a lot of places to eat in San Francisco at this moment. Also, never bullshit a drug addict about drugs. We’re all liars, and it takes one to know one. But when he gets close, his eyes widen, and he apologizes and runs. Whatever.

 
FRANK’S COFFEE

  FRANK’S COFFEE IS the last of the ’90s-style coffeehouses in San Francisco. It’s a vestige of the past. All the new places are one-cup-at-a-time types. Frank’s used to be a central meeting place of all of SF subculture. Now it serves the twenty or thirty badly aging hipsters left from then.

  Faded tribal tats with fallout done at Erno’s by Greg Kulz. Ripped-open flesh tats with biomechanics underneath. White-boy dreadlocks turned whiteman dreadlocks recede on skulls. Nose rings older than the average barista hang from septums. Old men who used to be young men who dressed like old men are now unironically dressed like old men. Giant cell phones sit on tables. People are reading books instead of Kindles. Bukowski. Bulgakov. Henry Miller. Hubert Selby. The same bullshit they tried to impress people with all those years ago.

  Trashy paperbacks fill the shelves. Framed Frank Kozik posters from the Kilowatt and the Kennel Club decorate the walls. A big NO CELL PHONES AT THE COUNTER sign hangs below the cash register. Some kind of leafy plant that is somehow still alive hangs from the ceiling like it always has. Twenty-five-year-old staples from flyers are still in the wall. Jane’s Addiction, Ritual de lo Habitual, on a cassette taped off a CD, hangs in the air like a bad smell.

  More consistent than anything else is the manager, Joel. Joel’s first job in San Francisco was bussing tables and cleaning up here while he was living at the hostel that used to be across the street, which, of course, is now a condo complex. Hundreds of employees have come and gone, but he’s still here.

  Joel pours me an iced coffee when he sees me walk in. He knows what I like. I’ve ordered more than a thousand of these from him, never changed the order.

  I give him three bucks.

  You have blood on your face, he says in a monotone.