Until the Last Dog Dies

by Robert Guffey

  All in all my act was a rousing success, if I may say so myself. After telling a joke about a male hooker with twelve assholes, I glanced to my right and saw Eddie giving me the wrap-up sign at last. I reeled off a short routine about being married to a severed head, then said, “Goodnight, ladies and gentlemen and everyone in between! Keep the Ravioli in orbit, for God’s sakes!” Then I got the hell off stage.

  Backstage I saw Eddie and the band standing there waiting for me. Eddie was jubilant, but that was to be expected. As long as the crowd was happy so was he. Esthra and Ogo were both laughing uproariously. Even Jesse was grinning. In distinct counterpoint to these reactions was Mike himself, who loomed over Jesse’s shoulder like a demonic wraith waiting to bite him and everyone else on the neck. The guitar I’d seen in his bedroom, the one with red rectangular “WARNING: FLAMMABLE” stickers plastered on almost every inch of it, hung from his shoulder by a black strap. Plastered on his face was a scowl far more flammable than the guitar; it seemed to me as if the scowl might at any moment ignite into berserk rage worthy of his father. Worst of all, his bloodshot eyes were fixed onto me and me alone.

  Between guffaws Ogo said, “Man, that was great, the best I’ve ever seen you! That was unbelievable! I had no idea you knew Mike already.”

  “Neither did I,” I said.

  As Eddie walked out on stage to introduce the band, Esthra slipped her hand into mine and said, “Thank you. That was perfect. You were hilarious.”

  “Well, it’s good I took your advice instead of Eddie’s.”

  She laughed and squeezed my hand gently, then followed Ogo and Jesse out onto stage. Mike brushed past me, glaring at me as if he might kill me right then and there. The coldness emerging from him was tangible enough to chill my very insides. I couldn’t even maintain eye contact. I had to stare down at my shoes after a couple of seconds. When I knew he had passed I glanced over my shoulder and watched the band file out onto stage to the roars of the crowd. I had a strong urge to stick around and watch them perform, if only to see Esthra jumping up and down with her guitar, but I had an equally strong urge to get the hell out of there before Mike decided to do an impersonation of his father on my skull.

  Before I could make a decision either way Eddie returned from his on-stage introduction, slapped me on the back and told me to stick around for awhile. He wanted to buy me a drink at the bar and discuss booking further engagements.

  “Marsha knows my schedule better than I do,” I said, “but I’ll take you up on that drink.”

  “Perfect,” Eddie said. “Do you mind hanging out here for a moment while I visit the bathroom? I have to clean up after Aster. We were in such a rush to get him out on stage I think we might’ve left some incriminating evidence behind if you know what I mean. I don’t want anyone getting to it before I do. Shit as pure as that is hard to come by these days unless you live in New York. And who would want to move all the way there just for some china white?”

  I told him I understood perfectly, though I didn’t. “I’ll be right here,” I said as the opening feedback of the band’s first song screeched out of the amps.

  “That’s ‘Suicide Boy,’” Eddie said, backing away down the hall. “I hear it’s in the top five of the college radio charts. If they manage to break out into the mainstream we’ll have a hot little item on our hands with that video we’re shooting tonight, yes sir.” He held up his stubby fingers and crossed them, then sprinted away down the hall.

  “We”? I thought. Who the hell’s “we”? I probably wouldn’t see a dime from the damn video, even though I sweated like a pig in a fucking steam room just so it could be produced. While in the flow of my act I had been able to put the heat out of my mind, but now that the adrenalin rush was tapering off I suddenly realized that my face was soaked with sweat. Streams of perspiration were trickling out of my armpits and down past my ribs. I felt like a bug who’d almost burned to death beneath a child’s magnifying glass.

  I pulled my t-shirt up to my face and wiped the sweat away as the instrumental opening to “Suicide Boy” came to an abrupt end. Without warning Mike launched into the heart of the song, thrashing away on his guitar while screaming into the mike with the rhythm of an AK-47. Whatever Ogo had given him had certainly taken effect big time. The clown knew his medicine, you had to give him that.

  Remembering what Ogo had said about Mike’s lyrics, I tried to pay extra special attention to the words.

  Suicide Boy

  Suicide Boy

  Thinks he’s a greater artist than Goya

  But plays little jingles on his Casio toy

  Suicide Boy

  Suicide Boy

  Wraps a broken rope ‘round his throat

  Puts an empty gun to his head and writes a blank note

  He thinks he’s clever but he’ll never die

  He’s a damn coward and his suicide’s a lie

  Suicide Boy

  Suicide Boy

  His mommy gives him a Christmas present almost every day He makes his grandparents pay and pay

  He’s great at acting oh-so-depressed

  The boy who cried wolf was in greater distress

  Suicide Boy

  Suicide Boy

  Pushes the envelope right off the table

  Likes to suck cock whenever he’s able

  Like his dead father he’s a closet faggot

  His brain’s as soft as a pale white maggot

  Suicide Boy

  Suicide Boy

  His girlfriend Shannon’s a psycho-whore

  His videos and music are a big fat bore

  He sits in his room and records TV shows

  His brain’s a sieve and his poetry blows

  Suicide Boy

  Suicide Boy

  Checks into AA like a hotel stay

  His mommy’s payin’ but ask and he’ll say

  “I’m on my own tomorrow and today”

  He’s independent and he wants to get laid

  With the stripper whose face was hit by a truck

  Or Fred the heroin addict who he loves to fuck

  For a swift needle prick or a tummy tuck

  Either way he’s stupid and shit outta luck

  Cause he’s a Suicide Boy

  He’s a Suicide Boy

  He’s a Suicide Boy

  He used to work at Citicable 22

  Now he’s got a website and he’s surfin’ for you

  Lookin’ for a date with a girl or a boy

  He’ll take either cause he’s a Suicide Boy

  Suicide Boy

  Suicide Boy

  He thinks he’s good at saying goodbye

  Over and over he tries and tries

  He thinks he’s good at his little lies

  I wish he’d just fuckin’ up and die

  Suicide Boy

  Suicide Boy

  Why don’t you die die die die die

  Why won’t you die die die die die

  Why don’t you die die die die die

  Why won’t you die die die die die!

  The kids were going nuts, and I could understand why. It was one of the most intense songs I’d ever heard. Mike delivered the lyrics with such anger I almost expected him to excrete pure hatred through the pores of his skin as a big finale. It was obvious to me that the song had been written about a specific person, someone who Mike despised more than his father, Nixon, Hitler, and Henry Kissinger all combined. Was it about himself? At the same time, however, I got the funny feeling that some of that anger was directed toward me.

  Before the echoes of the last chord had faded away, the band dived right into another hardcore jingle called “Queen of Conspiracies,” which Mike dedicated to someone named Mae Brussell. I wondered if that was a friend of his. If so, he must have cared for her a great deal. For this song Ogo had set aside his bass guitar and now stood behind the upright bass, sawing a bow across its six strings to create a weird flapping sound like the beating of vast, leathery bat wings. Esthra, meanwhile
, had thrown down her guitar and was now pounding away on the keyboard. During the chorus Jesse peeled off his t-shirt, revealing the impossibility that Ogo had told me about before: a glass-lined hole the size of a bowling ball right in the middle of his chest. Through the hole I could see the stripes of the American flag behind him. Whatever the anomaly was, it was no hallucination on my part. Everyone else in the audience saw it too. The mere act of revealing the hole elicited a wave of swoons from the females in the audience as if Jesse were a Chippendales dancer stripping away a skimpy loincloth.

  I felt Eddie’s hand on my shoulder. “Hey,” he said, “Earth to Greeley! They haven’t blown out your eardrums yet, have they?”

  I guess he’d been babbling about something, but I hadn’t heard him; I’d been too engrossed by the band’s performance. “Have you ever seen anything like that?” I asked, pointing at Jesse’s hole.

  Eddie shrugged. “Aw, I’ve seen all kinds come through here. What’s a glass-lined hole compared to a naked eighteen-year-old albino chick who belts out old Tom Jones tunes while letting a Doberman lick her cunt?”

  “You’ve had acts like that here?”

  “Well, no, not exactly, but you do get some weird auditions in the back office from time to time.”

  “They couldn’t possibly think you’d book such a thing. You’d get shut down in two seconds.”

  “Hey, it’s hard to know what anyone’s thinking, particularly when they’ve got a dog’s schnoz stuffed up their fuckin’ muff. I was forced to turn the act down, of course, just out of general principle. Boy, it was sure fun while it lasted, though.” He had a joyous gleam in his eyes, as if he were remembering the high point of a distant, perfect day.

  I snapped my fingers in his face. “Hey, Earth to Eddie!” Lucidity returned to his eyes. “Didn’t you say something about a drink?”

  “Oh, of course,” he said, just now remembering the offer, obviously still dazed from the Doberman memory. “We have business to discuss, don’t we?”

  I said nothing (which, of course, people always take as a yes) and let him lead the way to the bar.

  CHAPTER 12

  I Was a Psychic Spy for the FBI Part I

  (October 3-4, 2014)

  The bar was at the very back of the club. I allowed Eddie to babble on about future bookings while I watched Esthra swaying back and forth to the slow chords of a demented love song entitled “Melanoma Heartbreak.” In the back of my mind I wondered if the brief physical contact I’d had with her was a foreshadowing of things to come. You idiot, I told myself, just because a girl touches you for a second doesn’t mean she wants to go to bed with you. You’re an egotistical jerk to think you can steal her away from a fuckin’ rock star, no matter how screwed up he is. You basically live a boring life. He lives on the edge every day. Girls love that kind of lifestyle, even if they have to submit to being a punching bag a few days out of the week to maintain it.

  After a few beers I had changed my position. While watching her swing her hips to the free form, jazz-like rhythm of “Suicide on Sunday, Poolside on Monday” I was convinced she was transmitting secret signals to me through subtle thrusts of her groin, giving me (and me alone) The Eye from over two hundred feet away. Though the idea that she could even see me through those lights was rather improbable, I believed it nonetheless. Or at least I wanted to. Hell, so did every other guy in that room over six years of age. Imagine a woman like that casting her wayward gaze on my sorry ass. It was silly to even think about it, but that didn’t stop me. Probably didn’t stop anyone else either. That’s why most of these kids had come to the show, after all. Esthra hadn’t been lying when she’d told Ogo that she was the main draw.

  I wondered what it felt like to be on that stage in front of all those hungry eyes, knowing that each one of them was undressing you, touching you, perhaps even fucking you in the darkest alcoves of their minds. I was a bit disgusted by the idea that I was one of them, only one of hundreds upon hundreds of psychic rapists.

  To my right I heard Eddie saying, “Fuckin’ A, I don’t even know why I try to have a conversation with you.”

  “Huh?” I said, not taking my eyes off the stage.

  “Huh, huh?” He imitated my voice. “Your fucking tongue’s hanging out of your head, man. Could you be any more obvious?”

  “About what?” I tried to look confused and annoyed as I downed another swig of beer.

  “About what.” He laughed. “She’s one hot tottie, isn’t she?”

  “Who?”

  “You know damn well who.”

  I shrugged. “She’s okay.”

  “Okay, hell! She’s perfect. What more could you ask for?”

  “How about the sudden disappearance of a certain boyfriend with a hair-trigger temper?”

  Eddie waved his hand. “Don’t worry about him. Just wait until he nods out, then you can make your move. She looks like she’d be up for anything. I think you know what I mean by anything.”

  I looked up at the ceiling. “Uh … Super Mario Galaxy 2?”

  “What?” He drew the word out to three syllables. “No, no. I’m sayin’ she’s up for some backdoor action, man.”

  “Backdoor action, hm … she wants to play Super Mario Galaxy 2 near the backdoor?”

  “Quit with the jokes already, I know you’re interested in her. Let me tell you a secret, the feeling’s mutual.”

  “Who are you trying to kid?”

  “I’m tellin’ you. I could see it in her eyes when she was watching you from backstage. Man, you were the only person in the world to her while you were doing your act.”

  “Sure, while I was doing my act. That’s natural.”

  “Nah, it was more than just you being funny. Her poontang was dripping, I could smell it.”

  I wrinkled my nose in disgust. “Jesus Christ, Eddie!”

  “It’s true! I’ve got a hyper-sensitive sense of smell, I always have. It’s a blessing and a curse. It’s nice to know when a girl’s hot for you, but when it’s time to do the unspeakable act and you’ve got your nose hovering over a real musty one sometimes you almost gag the god damn scent is so overwhelming.”

  “And to think I actually had an appetite a couple of seconds ago.”

  “Don’t play innocent with me, I can tell you’ve been around the block a few times. There’s a lot of girls out there who like funny guys.”

  “Yeah, harelips and lepers are the first two examples that leap immediately to mind.”

  “Okay, okay, keep downplaying it. I know it’s all part of your routine. It’s easier to get girls if they think they’re doing you a favor.”

  “You think so? Hell, maybe I should cut off my arms and legs and act like a retard, then I’ll have a whole chorus line of charitable broads camped out on my doorstep day and night.”

  “You’re quick with a comeback, I have to admit, but that doesn’t change the facts. Esthra was giving you the verifiable, guaranteed, one and only Look of Love backstage and it was pissin’ off Punk Boy something awful.”

  For the first time I began to take Eddie’s meanderings seriously. “Mike noticed it?”

  “He sure as hell did. He looked like he was gonna haul off and deck her right then and there. Perhaps that was just the cocaine kickin’ in, but I don’t think so. I’ve seen a lot of jealous rages break out at this club from time to time, and he looked like about twelve of them waiting to happen all at once.” “That’s reassuring.” He waved his hand again. “Like I say, don’t worry about it. After this performance he’ll taper off again pretty fast. Jumping around up there takes a hell of a lot out of you. You want my advice?” I gestured for him to continue; I knew he was going to give it to me no matter what I said. “When I was in the bathroom trying to wake Punk Boy out of Slumberland, Ogo told me they were planning on going to a party after this. I suggest you tag along. Why not? You heard them, they all loved you (except for Punk Boy, of course). How could they say no? At the party Punk Boy will be more interested in s
coring some more junk than anything else. While he’s having pleasant dreams you can move right in.”

  “Seems kind of underhanded.”

  Eddie spread out his hands. “All’s fair… .”

  “Yeah, but I’m not in love and nobody’s at war.”

  “Aw, everybody’s always in love with somebody. They may not know it, but they are. Same with the other thing. There’s always a war on, though not everyone is always aware of it.”

  “Are you getting philosophical on me? That’s when you know you’ve had too much to drink, particularly when you’re not making any sense.”

  “I’ve only had three beers.”

  “Yeah, in the last half-hour. I don’t know how much you had before I arrived.”

  Eddie swivelled his rheumy eyes back toward the stage, where the band was starting up a new song. He watched Esthra dancing to the repetitious, hypnotic beat of “I Was a Psychic Spy for the FBI Part I.”

  “Yeah, I’d fuck that bitch,” he mumbled, “I’d fuck that bitch in a second.”

  “Hey, you’re talking about the woman I love,” I said in a listless voice. I settled back against the bar, closed my eyes, and allowed the music to wash over me. I was impressed by how distinct each of the songs were from each other. The band’s repertoire appeared to span a number of different musical forms. I listened to Mike belt out a droning chant in a flat, sleep-inducing tone that was rather unique compared to the voice he had used on all the songs preceding it… .

  I’m undercover with a psychic coven

  I eat young trim like chocolate chip muffins

  I commune with spirits like Marilyn Monroe

  I play poker with the Egyptian Tarot

  I’m undercover with a psychic coven

  I stuff young boys into microwave ovens

  I follow the order of the FBI