Don't Touch My Wang...

When I was twenty years old I found myself living in an efficiency apartment right over Bourbon Street with three other guys. There was Hank VanDenBrook, a warped and perverted artist who had spent many years working as a sculptor in Brazil; Free, a five foot tall anarchist, veteran of many direct political actions and enemy of all classes besides the lower; Steve Chaucer, a friend of mine from Houston who's band Arch Demon Fred I had been the drummer of; and me.

The apartments, called Chez Bourbon, were located directly above Chris Owen's night club, and the legendary New Orleans icon was our landlady. I never met her myself but Steve said that when he went to pay the rent one morning the eighty year old singer answered the door fully made up and wearing a skin tight leather outfit. Isn't that inspiring?

All four of us were raging drunks and the location only served to intensify out debaucherous lifestyle. Every night we would go out and scour Bourbon St. for ground score frozen daiquiris discarded by tourists going into one bar or another. When we had collected as many as we could carry we would bring them up to the apartment, store them in the refrigerator and go back out for more.

Free and I would often sit on a stoop and watch people walk by, "Boushy motherfuckers!" snarled Free, "Look at 'em yukkin' it up while the world burns. I bet they wouldn't help us if we were bleeding out on the sidewalk. All they care about is making enough money so they can come here and get shitfaced drunk and walk around in tit hats that were made by orphans in China."

"Hey look!" I interrupted, "Those drunk girls are leaving their Hand Grenades on that trashcan. Lets move!"

For food we often had only French Bread with ketchup and mustard. If someone should happen to procure something more nourishing the refrigerator was the last place they would think to put it.

"Alright, which one of you motherfuckers drank my milk?" said Hank.

Collective silence and averting of eyes.

"I know one of you scumbags did it you goddamned milk drinkers!"

Steve, ever the diplomat, stepped in to try and defuse the situation, "We honestly don't know who drank your milk, Hank. It could have been any of us. It could have been you for all you know. Last night you could hardly stand up. You shouldn't accuse others of drinking your milk when you, yourself, don't really know."

"It was you wasn't it? You drank my milk you cocksucker!"

It looked like things were about to get ugly so I spoke up, "I did it. I drank your milk. Here's five dollars."

He snatched the five and gave me a dark look as he went out the door.

One day Free came in and told us about a guy he had met from the forth floor, an artist named Lawrence, "I told him I was living here with three other dudes. He said he'd give us fifteen dollars an hour to pose while he draws practice sketches. He wants to keep in shape while he's between portrait commissions. I'm going to go up there and do it tonight."

"So this guy just wants to draw us, huh?" asked Steve, "We just have to sit there?"

"Well, there is one catch. You have to get naked."

"Hmm, I don't know." I said, "Sounds like a bad idea to me. What if he waits until we get naked and then tries to molest us?"

"He made it sound like an art thing, not a pervert thing."

Hank, a brilliant artist and perhaps the most perverse man I've ever known, let out a knowing cackle and leered maniacally with his predatory, bird-like face, "Bwahahahahaha! You're fooling yourself, dude. There isn't any difference. You're gonna' be smoking his pole in no time. You should tell him you'll lick his balls if he gives you an extra five bucks."

"There's no way I'm going to get naked in some strange guy's apartment. I don't care if it is just for art." I said.

"You should go gay Mikey. All the girls would love you. You'll be so covered in pussy juice you'll look like a freshly baked glazed doughnut. If they know you're gay they'll lower their defences and then, when they're not paying attention, you slap the old man-meat on em'. Works every time."

Before I could respond I heard Steve say, "I'll do it. I'll go if you go Free."

"Count me in too." said Hank.

"Well, he said he only wanted guys under thirty." replied Free.

"Bwahahahahahahaha!"

Later that night Free and Steve got back with a case of beer they had scored with their art money. Hank cracked a beer and said, "Well, how was it fellas? Are you going to start dressing in spandex and walking Rampart?"

"Nah, he was kind of weird but he didn't try to have sex with us or anything. And look, he let us keep the sketches."

We all exploded with laughter. The faces looked like Steve and Free but the bodies looked like Greek gods with rippling muscles in place of their scrawny, malnourished frames. Most hilarious of all, he had given them enormous, twelve inch schlongs.

"Jesus Christ" said Hank, "I didn't know you guys were hung like giraffes. Have you ever considered doing pornography?"

"Well, he did exaggerate a little." said Steve. 

"I'll bet! Are you sure you didn't blow this guy?"

They swore that nothing had happened but they were both acting kind of strange about it and I wasn't sure if I could believe them.

A few weeks went by without much action except for a brief but harrowing outbreak of head lice brought in by a couple of hippie girls who crashed on their way to the Rainbow Gathering in Florida. At first I wasn't even tempted by Lawrence's offer, being a modest person by nature, but as the Summer grew hot and the tourist dollars evaporated, so too did my puritan resolve, "Say, Free?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you think you could set me up an appointment with Lawrence?"

Hank cackled, "Remember what I told you Mikey. Lick the balls!"

I climbed the stairs to the forth floor and knocked on Lawrence's door. After a few seconds he answered, "Hi. you must be Mike. Come right in."

Lawrence was middle aged and blubbery with flowing blonde hair and a pink Polo shirt. I could tell immediately that he was gay but that didn't put me off. I'm not homophobic in the least and, besides, you had to figure that was the case. I went inside.

His apartment was tastefully appointed and immaculately clean, quite unlike our own squalid hole. There was a futon in the middle of the room with a sketchpad and a chair set up next to it.

"Can I get you anything to drink? A beer maybe?"

"Sure!"

He got me a Red Stripe and sat in his chair, "Well, you can get undressed out here or you can go in the bathroom and put on a robe."

"I'll just get undressed out here."

As far as I was concerned it was just like a doctor's appointment. I got undressed and reclined on the futon, "Is this alright?"

"Sure, that's perfect." he began to draw.

"So are you from around here Michael?"

"Sort of. I was born in Louisiana but I haven't ever been to the French Quarter as an adult so I'm kind of a local and a tourist all at the same time."

"Do you have a girlfriend?"

"I've been seeing a girl."

"Does she have a nice ass?"

"I like it, yes."

"I love a girl with a nice ass!" he said emphatically.

I wasn't sure what he was getting at so I just took a swig of beer and stayed quiet. He kept sketching.

After awhile he looked at me very intently and said, "You know, you have a great looking penis. It's shaped perfectly."

"Yeah, my junk does look pretty sweet." I said.

"Say, you know who has a great ass? Let me show you this magazine I was looking at earlier today."

"Uh-Oh" I thought. He went into the bathroom and came out with a copy of Penthouse, "Look at this girl. Isn't that the greatest ass you've ever seen?"

"It's alright." I replied nervously.

"Check out the photography by Bob Guccione. He uses this soft filter that makes the girls look fantastic!" he said as he flipped through the pages.

Now this might be hard to believe but I was still somewhat puzzled by his behavior. Why would a gay man have Penthouse magazine in his bathroom? Suddenly I had an epiphany, "Lawrence are you trying to get me to have an erection?!"

"Uh..." he stammered, "Well it's just that you have such a great looking cock and I want to do it justice, you know, draw it at it's full length."

"I'm sorry but I can't do it. You're just going to have to extrapolate."

And then, much to my profound shock and dismay, Lawrence reached down and started fondling my wang.

This was, and still remains, the only sexual contact I have had with a man.

Later at the apartment I told the fellows what happened.

"Bwahahahaha! How did you say it?" asked Hank in undisguised glee.

"I just looked at him very calmly and said, 'Don't touch my wang, Lawrence.'" (This would become a catch phrase for us.)

"How did he react?" asked Steve, also in hysterics.

"He took his hand back fast and got all flustered. He claimed he didn't know what "extrapolate" meant. I said, 'It means to make my dick look bigger in the drawing, not to jerk me off.' He apologized, finished up in a hurry and I got the fuck out of there."

"Did he pay you?" asked Free.

"Yeah, in fact he gave me five dollars extra. He said it was because we went over an hour."

"Ha!" cried Hank, "I knew you were gonna lick his balls!"

Just then my girlfriend Lucy came calling at the intercom and I buzzed her up.

"So how did it go? Did you lose your virginity?"

I told her the story and she, too, thought it was the funniest thing she had ever heard, "Haaaaaa! Let me see the picture."

I showed it to her and she laughed even harder.

"That guy certainly did extrapolate."

"Aw, come on, it's not that exaggerated."

"So you say."

"Actually, he did make mine a little shorter than he made you guys. Wait a minute!" I made the connection, "Did you guys pop a bone for Lawrence?!"

They both looked at the ground sheepishly, "Well he wanted us to for the picture and he was paying us, after all.If you had just got it up for him he wouldn't have had to violate you."

"I can't believe it. You guys are prostitutes. Gay prostitutes."

"I'm not the one who let him give me a hand job."

Lucy sighed impatiently, "So, are we going to go get drunk or what?"

"Look at you! You're awfully eager to spend my hard earned prostitution dollars. I had to let a fat guy touch my shlong for this cash."

She slapped me on the ass and said, "Yeah you right! Bitch better have my money!"

My Review of the Brown Stuff I Found on the Ground.

I am afraid of death; afraid of ageing. I have been acutely aware of my own mortality since the death of my father many years ago.(we didn't get along) Rather than decrease over the years as I had thought it might, time has only intensified and deepened my fear. Now that I've reached the ripe old age of 34, I know that death looms closer than ever.

The only thing, the only thought, that gives me even a small measure of comfort is the notion that, if I do live into old age (small chance you're thinking), I will finally get to play the roll I was born for, that of a crotchety and cantankerous old man. The kind of guy who tries to cause you physical pain when he shakes your hand and who dismisses everything you say with a gruff retort and furrowed brow. If, in the meantime, I grizzle myself with sufficient vigor, I might hope to eventually approach, however humbly, the tone of the great and irascible old bastards of yore.

Having thus acknowledged that I have not yet attained the kind of authenticity that only advanced age can bring to such an endeavor, I will now engage in a misanthropic diatribe about the current generation of American young people.

What, may I ask, is up with kids these days with their Wyatt Earp mustaches, their macrobiotics and their goddamned dubstep music? Granted the era I grew up in was no Italian Renaissance, but the ghosts of authentic culture from the past still clung perilously to this world and continued to inform the zeitgeist. (Like all those bands in Texas that sounded like the Butthole Surfers) I am fully aware that there could be something I'm missing but the modern mainstream, and even the first few layers underneath, seem to me to be informed by a vapid and shallow sensibility. How else are we to explain the proliferation of bands that revolve around creative marketing rather than creative music and band cultures that revolve around brand identity rather than the sharing of ideas and true fellowship?

American young people gather in urban centers on the weekends and gravitate to whatever club corresponds with their communal aesthetic. Their clique is defined by such trivialities as their style of clothing, what flavor of modern pop music they listen to, and of course, their drug of choice.

Which brings us, albeit in a roundabout fashion, to the brown stuff I found on the ground this morning, behind just such a club, amongst the refuse of last night's debauchery. A crystalline powder in a small plastic bag, the mystery substance, whatever it is, must have been fished out of some poor yupster's pocket by mistake. Perhaps he was reaching for a pen to write down some girl's number and dropped it on the ground without noticing, only to realize later and curse his luck. Or maybe he's laying in the hospital right now drifting in and out of consciousness, whispering to his friends in a moment of clarity, "It was that brown stuff."

Whatever the case, the mystery substance now belongs to me.

Is it wise to snort random substances you find on the ground? Probably not, and I even hesitated for a few minutes while considering the possibly catastrophic consequences. But what validity can The Ground Score have if I'm not willing to walk the walk? When you look at it from that perspective I really have no choice but to ingest the suspicious substance and reliably report the effects to you, the curious reader. And so...

Having ingested said brown substance I will now take notes throughout the day documenting my impressions of the drug. (I had initially intended to transcribe whatever notes I came up with verbatim but this turned out to be impossible. For sake of clarity and readability my notes have been edited and abbreviated.)

Initial Impressions--- The Brown Mystery Substance is apparently an amphetamine based hallucinogen. Early reactions are elevated heart rate and respiration, mild excitement and euphoria, and a minor hint of paranoia. (but that might be because the police are really on to me) Of course, there are all kinds of bizarre "research chemicals" on the market these days and I'm sure there are many that even I have never heard of. If I had to hazard a guess I would say the mystery substance could be Molly, Sassafras, 5MeO-DIPT, 2CT7, 2CB, or possibly toad venom. We'll never know for sure but judging by that dubstep music it must be some fucked up shit.

2 Hours In--- The only thing that matters is our ability as a species to reconcile our differences and gather around the common goals of maximizing our resources here on Earth while putting all of our scientific know-how and engineering capability into colonizing other star systems or, at the very least, finding some other viable sources of energy beyond the Sun. It is too early to tell, but it is possible that at some point in it's evolution the phenomenon known as "life" will be able to have some effect, some say, on the evolution of the universe. It may be that all intelligent species are predisposed to self destruct before they have technology advanced enough to effect events on a cosmic scale, or it could be that such power is ultimately unattainable. But I don't think so. There are physical boundaries to be dealt with and many non-trivial engineering issues to be overcome but I believe that if a sentient species, like our own, could be made as a group to understand the stakes and the possible consequences of inaction, over the ages, progress could be made. Indeed, so far we have already come, but many of our works are tainted with malice and greed. We must excise these cancers if we are to ever take ourselves seriously as a race. In other words, why not aim high? The way to achieve this goal is as follows: Have sex and teach your kids about science.  

4 Hours In--- Maybe the mustache people are actually benevolent and I've allowed myself to be blinded to their basic humanity by superficial details. Perhaps the world is not so black and white as I thought but only appears to be so because we create our own reality. Or maybe the world really is brutal but we just have to radiate love and positivity anyway so at least we can say we're not part of the problem. Maybe in the big scheme of things someone who hates people with mustaches is even worse than people with mustaches. It's just a whimsical little decoration after all. Sure it's silly but maybe those people need mustaches. Maybe the mustache somehow protects them from the horror of the world. Maybe I should try to have more compassion for my fellow man just because they MIGHT have redeeming qualities.

The Come Down--- Ahhh Christ Jesus why do I have to be such a fuck up? What the hell am I trying to prove. I'm a dead man walking. When they finally put me in the ground tell them I did it all for science. See there's that fear of death creeping in again. (It's a drag do you know it?) Human consciousness would seem to have so much more value if only it were more enduring. That's why I'm into the Carl Sagan trip. Even though I, as an individual, am just a flit of dust in the cosmic perspective, I can only hope that my species will somehow make it's mark in the universe. Even if it's just a big "Fuck You" spelled out in asteroids. 

Final Analysis--- Euphoria is only valuable if it is a euphoria born out of knowing. If all you're interested in is euphoria there are better ways to induce it than through psychedelic drugs. A good psychedelic forces you to see the truth about who you really are and your place in the universe. The euphoria comes from being at peace with who you are and learning to rejoice in it. I was half expecting the mystery drug to be a banal party facilitator but it proved to have weight and substance. It induced the good fear. The rich, genetic fear that you have to overcome in order to be one of the tribe. In the modern world there is no need to endure the Ant Ritual or the "Man Called Horse" treatment. The young people have found a new way. 

Today--- That was all written into my notebook yesterday on Sept 7 and today I'm typing it up at the library. I was all set to dismiss the mystery drug and ended up spending the whole day writing about outer space. I came up with a bunch of stuff I left out of the review because I'm going to try to expand it into a science fiction story about a guy who snorts a random substance he finds on the ground and is teleported into another dimension. In conclusion I'd like to add that all of these stunts were performed by professionals and should not be attempted at home.   

Attacked by a Homebum

Well, my big mouth finally got me in trouble and as a result I got my ass kicked , literally, by a drug addicted, mentally ill homeless man.(like myself)

A few days ago I was walking down Brazos St. early in the morning when I saw him standing outside the Breakfast Taco Bar. I've been seeing him for over a year now, a huge black guy who never bathes, changes clothes, or, from what I can tell, ever leaves the three block radius around Brazos St. I call him the Ghost because I like to think he's the spirit of a schizophrenic bum who was murdered on Brazos St. years ago, and only I can see him. The Ghost is always talking to himself and staring off into space and, when he's feeling lively, he goes to the corner and tries to get people to give him money for tacos. He is a menacing presence and obviously enjoys using his size to intimidate people.

As I walked up on him the other day, I sensed from his body language that he was in a waking state and feeling more belligerent than usual. Sure enough as I was trying to pass him he got directly in my path and said, "Hey man, where are all the drugs at? Where's all that good weed?"

Now, the truth is I'm kind of an asshole. I try to stay out of people's way and to avoid confrontation in general but if some doofus bothers me in a public place I have no problem with telling him what I think. I'm especially irritable in the morning and so when the Ghost asked me what I felt was a stupid question I responded, "If you don't know where the weed's at by now maybe you should go back and live with your mother."

His reaction was instantaneous, "Hey, fuck you, you mother fucker!" As I walked away he yelled threats and curses at me, "I'm gonna fuck you up. You're a dog on the ground. I'm gonna fuck you up you piece of shit!"

I didn't think anything of it. Maniacs threaten you all the time and nothing ever comes of it. I did note, however, that he was still watching me after I had gotten several blocks away.

A week passed in relative peace until today as I was walking down Piss Alley and saw the Ghost walking towards me from the other direction. I had zero apprehension. The guy is an obvious powerhouse but also slow and stupid. Besides, I figured there was a good chance he would think I was just a hallucination. As we got closer he gave no indication of recognition until our paths crossed. Then he looked at me and said, "I should knock your head of right now you motherfucker!"

With that he swung at my head with a wild right hook. Like I said, this dude is very large; his meat hook is half the size of my entire body. I'm no master of self defense but somehow I dodged out of the way while landing a punch of my own to his abdomen. My blow had no effect. I might as well have been punching three hundred pounds of damp clay. I turned to run away and as I fled he landed a kick square in my ass. It was a solid blow but didn't slow me down or cause much pain. Within a few seconds I was far enough away that there was no chance of the Ghost catching me. I turned to face my attacker, "Good work Weirdzilla. You just made an enemy for life."

He looked at me and said, "Why are you running you coward? You know why? It's because your ancestors were afraid of women. They were afraid of women and they set us against each other. You're afraid because of your ancestors. You're afraid of women!"

"I'm not afraid of women you nutcase, I'm afraid of drug addicted lunatics who physically attack me. There's no shame in that. Any sane person would run from you."

"You're a dog" he replied, "A dog on the ground. Your ancestors were afraid of women you coward."

"Whatever you say crazy man. You don't know where I sleep. I'll see you tomorrow passed out on the bus-stop at 6th and Brazos. I'm gonna kick your ass and have you arrested before you take your morning dump."

With that he let out a brutal war cry and started running at me with surprising speed. I took off down the alley and easily  got away coming out at the corner of 7th and Trinity right by the church. I waited a few moments and looked back down the alley but there was no sign of the Ghost.

 I'm not really going to hunt the guy down in his sleep but I know that he's out there even as we speak, haunting Brazos Street, angling for tacos, and plotting my destruction. Thanks to my acid wit I now have one more enemy to watch out for; one more danger to avoid. The obvious moral of the story is that when a maniac asks you where to score drugs, no matter how rudely, just tell him where they're at.

UPDATE Sept. 7--- Today I had a change of heart and went over to the taco bar and apologized to the guy for talking shit to him and he apologized to me for kicking me in the ass. We both agreed that it was mostly the heat that got us riled. We're friends now. His name is Chris. I asked him, "Seriously though, what did you mean when you said my ancestors were afraid of women and that's why we were fighting?"

He said, "Your ancestors were afraid of their women so they didn't have enough children to work the land for them. That's why they had to enslave black people. I'm not sure if that was the case with your ancestors, they mighta' just been fucked up in the head."