Party People, what’s up? I’m down in AC with Fitz and my baby bro, Mousetrap. We’re here takin it to a whole other depth, dude...a little Hunter S. Thompson kinda stylo, except without the journalism or the interesting, acerbic thoughts. We skipped getting high altogether and are instead concentrating on getting twisted on the shaky, shaky boardwalk with the bright blue sky overhead and the ocean to the left with crazy florescent green reeds stickin up all over the place. It’s a little jarring and out of place to my New Yorker eyes to see crackheads in disgusting blond wigs wandering around in front of all that sky, but then again EVERYTHING is kinda fucked up when you leave the City. Especially in New Jesey. Out on the beach, the rusted carcass of a would-be casino starkly rots like a beached whale—cranes with corporate logos peer down from above, ready to pick it apart. We’ve got a winner’s circle suite at the wild, wild west Bally’s. We’re hotboxing in the bathroom and zoning out into the paintings of cowboys racing against hallucinogenic backgrounds of rolling red dust storm clouds and purple sunset explosions. I focus in on the clod of dirt being kicked up by the horse’s hoof. I’m taking things as symbols—as warning signs and talismans that come in pairs: the awful agonizing screech the elevator makes is followed a few minutes later by the sound of an old woman sobbing against the relentless drone of the slots. Or how the a dude named Jose who sold me my quarter ounce had a funny right hand—like, it was a perfectly normal hand except it was about three sizes too small for the rest of his body—like his real hand had been chopped off and replaced with a doll’s hand...then there was another Jose a few hours later—a security guard who took us into the labryinth of service tunnels that twisted beneath and around the hotel. He had a fucked up eye--it too was perfectly normal, except it was stuck in one position--looking up to the left.
Meanwhile, they were playing Sheryl Crow.
the first cut is the deepest
(it has to MEAN something!)
We are drinking, eating steak and shrimp twice a day. Fitz is openly hitting on my brother which he knows makes me sick. Then he’s brushing against my ass as we ride an escalator through an archway of blue light. I nearly get into a fight with a black townie girl who thought I was talking too loud on the boardwalk. She started walking behind me with her boy, talking shit. Mousetrap was there but he was too engrossed in the story he was telling to notice anything until I turned around and asked the chick point-blank if she had a problem.
“Yeah, bitch,” she said, “I guess I gotta a COUPLE.”
“Why don’t you step over here and tell about 'em in my EAR,” was my offer.
“What the fuck, TRUE?” shouted Mousetrap as he grabed my arm and yanked me into the wicker seat of a pushcart. He slamed a twenty into the guy’s thick hand and told him to step on it.
The girl strutted behind us for a few steps, degrading me with every name in the book. Then she proceeded to drop some rhymes, just for good measure:
“Nah-yeah—what a pity!
Yr committee
can’t hold a candle to Aay-City!
Bitch!
Bitch ass PUSSY!”
etc., etc.
Mousetrap rubbed his eyes and laughed.
Then, he quoted Biggie Smalls:
“Thoroughbred bitches
Adapt to any borough bitches
Be in spots where there were no bitches.”
Sometimes Mousetrap speaks in lyrics. I think it's a result of being raised in front of MTV.
“Yo, she totally started it,” I told him.
“Yeah, sere,” he said, stretching out his long legs so that they criss-crossed with mine in the bottom of the car.
“Fitz is kinda like family, now isn’t he?” he said.
“Huh? What?”
“Fitz. Fitzcarraldo.”
“Yes? Fitz? Well, I don’t know.”
“What do you mean? He’s been hanging around since forever.”
“I mean what I said.”
“I don’t understand,” he said. We passed the front of Caesar’s, where a pretty decent karaoke version of “We Are Family” was being blast out of PA speakers.
“How fitting,” I commented, which Mousetrap either didn’t hear or ignored.
“Tell me,” he insisted.
“Why wouldn’t Fitz be a considered a member of our family?”
I had an image of Fitz pressed up behind me with his hand between my legs—not so much an image but the feeling, the feeling of loosing control as he ever so barely brushed his finger over me there...thick waves passed in front of my eyes as I stared into the clean white pillowcase and bit down on my bottom lip...
I saw us in Prague.
I saw us in the Alps.
I saw us in Philadelphia and in Arizona.
Most of all I saw us in transit: on planes or waiting in stations…or on the autobahn at midnight, with the moon radiating through the black treetops...
“Because I don’t really know him,” I said.
(i am still going to write that email, hun)
skylar4ever
