Camera man.
Me and Eddie, we’ve been holed up in this basement working on this damn documentary for the last six hours.
Wait.
Scratch that.
I’ve been working, editing this documentary for the last six hours while Eddie’s been sitting in a wheelchair. Smoking cigarettes. Getting shitfaced off an eighteen pack
of Coors Light and making asshole comments about the girls in his film.
Comments like, “You were on a fucking porn site for crissakes.”
Like, “I wouldn’t touch that tattooed bitch with your small cock, Mikey”
Like, “Jesus Christ, lady. No wonder you did porn. You’re dumber than shit.”
The basement we’re in sits smack dab on the corner of Steiner and Haight. It’s actually this degenerate of a place. This condemned space that one of Eddie’s friends
found out about and was somehow able to rent despite the toxic mold clumped into every corner the ceiling. The huge holes in the walls. The rats that sneak around
in the dark. The constant auroma of the building sewage running through the exposed drainage pipes.
Last year, Eddie’s buddy Marshall, he found this spot and talked the landlord into letting him and Eddie turn it into an art work space.
The guy finally agreed and the two of them built an editing suite on one side of the room and turned the other side into a work, live space for Marshall.
Popping a wheelie in the chair, Eddie goes, “If any of these stupid girls were my daughters, I’d disown their pale asses too.”
So much for making an non-objective documentary.
What Eddie is really doing is he’s waiting for this dude Ryan to show up with some cocaine and I’m just waiting for Eddie to get fucked up enough to call it a night.
Eddie’s phone rings.
Dropping the chair to the ground, Eddie answers it and goes, “Cool, dude. I’ll let you in.”
He jumps out of the chair and rubs his hands together real fast and says, “The party is here, Mikey boy.”
“Sweet,” I mumble and watch him leave the room.
Seconds later, Eddie walks back in with that Ryan dude and James Morgan.
“Mikey Tomalis,” James says, walking right at me. “It’s been a long time.”
Ryan follows Eddie across the room to Marshall’s work desk.
“How ya been, man?” I ask James.
“Good,” he says. “I just got back from Minneapolis.”
“What were you doing there?”
“Funeral.”
“Oh shit. Who died?”
James pauses to light a cigarette. He says, “I don’t really know who died. You remember that foxy babe Carla who used to bartend dollar drinks at Arrow on Sundays
way back when this city was still fun?”
“Oh yeah.”
“I went with her. It was someone she knew. I just wanted to go check out Minneapolis again, man. It had been too long since I’d been there. Since the last book
tour.”
“Shit, dude. You’re with Carla now?”
“I am,” James says, digging through the pockets of his Detroit Tigers jacket, a cigarette hanging loosely from his lips. “You jealous?”
“No.”
“Cause you should be, Mikey boy. Cause she’s only the hottest babe in SF right now.”
I light a cigarette. “You might be right.”
James leans in closer. “I know I’m fucking right, man. And ya know what’s so awesome about her besides the fact that she’s a stone fox that loves Sinatra more than I
do?”
“What’s that?”
James steps back and says, “She’s a natural beauty, man. That girl ain’t no mission troll with shit all over her body and dyed black hair. She don’t wear large sunglasses
that cover her entire shitty face. I am so over that shit, man. That shit died with The Killers.”
“I know it.”
James pulls a couple handfuls of paper scraps and wrappers out of his jacket pockets and drops them onto the desk. “When I was at the visitation in Minneapolis, one
of the friends of the dead person introduced me to her kid. His name was Russ and he had started his very own Ministry Of Creatures moped chapter in his hometown
after reading my International, best-selling novel, ''PieGrinder''.”
“How cool did that make you feel?”
“Fed the ego a lot actually,” he says, rummaging through his trash and picking up a baggie of coke. Putting out his cigarette, he goes, “It was pretty surreal, man. I
mean the kid was ten years old. I felt so great after that.” James pauses briefly. Then says, “It was almost like finding a new way to hate Paul MacCartney. Or like when
I was thirteen, me and my friends were watching one of those music awards shows and Neil Young got this Lifetime Achievement Award and right in the middle of his
acceptance speech, this huge fucking white rock dropped out of his nose and that dude just kept on talking like nothing had even happened and me and my friends
were all like, ‘Fuck yeah, man!’ and high-fivin’ each other.”
“That’s awesome,” I laugh.
James opens his coke and pulls out a key and asks me if I want some.
“No, man. I’m off that shit.”
“Suit yourself.” He digs out this huge bump and takes it, then picks up one of the scraps of paper on my desk and hands it to me. “You see this?”
On the top of the paper it says MASH and below that are the remnants of the game.
Snapping the piece of paper back from me, James sniffs “Carla and I each did one, man. This is mine. Listen to this. I’m gonna live in a shack, drive an ’87 Datsun, marry
that chubby rapper, Queen Latifah, and be a janitor.”
“Sounds about right. How did your babe fare?”
James flips the page over. “Carla gets an apartment. She gets to marry Jon Bon Jovi. She drives an accord and works as a swimming instructor.”
“I think you win.”
“I know it. Fuck Jon Bon Jovi. I always win.”
James digs another bump out and does it and says, “So what the hell are you doing down in this dungeon with Eddie Asshole Rose?”
“I’m editing a documentary for him.”
“What’s it about?”
“Internet pin-up sites.”
“Like BettiesPage and all that bullshit?”
“Yep.”
“Fuck those sites, man. That whole thing was a bad joke. I mean, did you ever go onto any of those sites and check out some of those broad’s journals?”
I ash out my smoke. “Not really.”
“Kudos to you, man. Most of that shit was fuckin gay. It’s like no one who cruises that site gives a shit about how many words you can purposely misspell or how many
randomly capitalized letters you can fit into a fucking sentence or what your favorite AFI song is. No way. They just wanna peek at your tits and get off without
getting too much come on their keyboard.”
“Awesome,” I laugh.
James slides the computer mouse around and the black screen dissolves into a still frame of this Monica Page girl that Eddie interviewed a coupla weeks ago in a strip
club dressing room.
“Hey, that’s Sexy Rexy Hopeless’s bitch,” James blabs, then does another bump.
“You know her?”
“I do know Penelope. I actually got into this huge fight with her last week outside of the Hemlock.”
“What about?”
“About her being a dumb bitch.”
“She seemed pretty alright to me, man.”
“She’s not. She fucking sucks, dude. Seriously. I was in the smoking room with a group of people and someone asked her about Rex and she started saying all this shit
about how Rex was gonna settle down with her after his band got off tour. And how he wanted to maybe move somewhere else with her. Maybe New York. Maybe
overseas. And maybe start a family with her and I lost it. I can’t stand that kind of shit. I’ve known Rex Hopeless for over six years and the last thing that dude is ever
gonna do is settle down and have some kids so I told her that. I told her it wasn’t gonna happen and that he’d probably slayed at least ten girls on the tour and she
got so mad. She went off about how if I really thought that way about Rex, then I didn’t even know him that well and I was like, ‘Don’t tell me I don’t know one of
my good friends. I don’t care what he tells you in private ‘cause he only says it to appease you so that you’ll stick around and take care of him when he’s hungover.’ I
mean, damnit Mikey. It makes me wanna puke in my fucking mouth when I hear some dumb cunt tell me that I don’t know one of my good friends. It makes me so
mad when some stupid little girl really believes someone like Rex Hopeless is gonna settle down and start a family with her. Bullshit. And ya know what?”
“What?”
“Two days after that happened I got a text from Rex that said: ''Dude, you’re killing me. But the shit you said, so damn funny.”''
“So you were right.”
“Of course I was. I’m always fucking right. People need to be honest like I am. A lot of kids in this city think I’m an asshole but I’m just being honest. Kids in this city
who wear costumes to be part of a scene. Kids in this city who change in order to fit in with a new kinda fad. Kids who think they know something about life and
success then cash the check their parents send them on the first of every month are gonna hear it from me because they haven’t heard it from anyone else. The best
medicine for a dumb kid is a solid dose of truth from somebody who’s actually changed people’s lives.”
“Wow,” I say mockingly. “I guess you really are something special, Mr. Author.”
James smacks me lightly in the face. “Don’t be jealous, man.” Then he tries putting me in a headlock but I squirm out of it and karate chop him in the thigh and Eddie
hollers, “What are you two homos doing over there?”
James and I stop fucking around and Ryan and Eddie walk over to us.
“Ryan,” Eddie says. “Do you know Mikey Tomalis?”
Ryan shakes his head. He doesn’t even look at me as Eddie goes, “Ryan, this is Mikey Tomalis. The best film editor in San Francisco.”
Ryan shakes his black hair around and straightens his bandanna. “You looking for anything?” he asks. “’Cause I’m not coming back down to this stupid fucking place
tonight.”
“I don’t snort that bullshit.”
“You don’t do good drugs then.”
“No, I don’t do shit drugs.”
“Yeah. Whatever, man.”
And James goes, “What’s up Eddie Rose?”
“Not much, James Morgan. Just making another film.”
“Is that right?”
“Yep. What about you? How the hell are you doing?”
“Just writing another book, man.”
“So you are doing something new after all?”
“Yep. I’m about two-thirds of the way into my new novel.”
“What’s it about?” I ask.
“This fat heavy metal slob named Irene who details her journey back and forth across the U.S. following this band, Hippopotamus Death around.”
“What are you gonna call it?” I ask.
“''Dickpig: Confessions of a Heavy Metal Groupie''.”
“That sounds fucking cool,” I say.
And Eddie says, “It might be interesting. I’ll give you that.”
“Way more interesting than Ro-Sham-Bo or some domestic terrorism movie that didn’t make any sense,” James cuts in.
And Ryan goes, “I actually wanna write a choose your own ending book about the drummer for Def Leopard. I wanna do a hundred endings and in ninety-nine of
them, that dude still loses his arm but always gets laid, and in the last ending he doesn’t lose his arm, but he can’t get laid.”
Everyone starts laughing and James goes, “I wanna leave.”
“Where you guys going?” I ask.
“We’re gonna stop by the Beauty Bar real quick and then jump over to Bottom of the Hill to see the Black Angels play.”
That Ryan guy throws up the rock horns and goes, “Destroy, dudes.”
Then they leave.
Right when Eddie hears the door shut, he says, “Fuck James Morgan, man. Fuck that published author bullshit.”
I light another cigarette and Eddie sits back down in the wheelchair and pulls out two Coors Lights and hands me one.
I take a drink. “Why don’t you like James, man? He’s always been a pretty solid to me.”
“’Cause I had to live with that cocksucker a few years ago.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. I was living at this flat over on South Van Ness and he was fucking one of my roommates and she was letting him stay there while he looked for a new pad. His
stupid book wasn’t even published yet but he’d already gotten his deal and was always, always letting you know about it. Every night that asshole would get loaded on
a bunch of coke and go off on somebody at the house about how he was gonna change lives and make shit happen. It was so annoying. I hated him so much. But
the real shit between us was over this girl, Camille.”
And here it is. The same dumb sob story. With guys like Eddie and James, shit always comes unglued over a chick. Always. No matter how much guys like Eddie and
James talk about how they don’t give a shit about girls, in actual reality, it’s the exact opposite. Guys like James and Eddie, they’d fuck sixteen year old sister the
moment you walked out of a room if she was kind of cute and had pretty cool hair and knew about the ''Funhouse'' album.
And Eddie says, “I had the biggest crush ever on this girl and decided to invite her over to the birthday party for the girl that James was banging. I thought things
were going awesome until I couldn’t find her. I tried calling her phone but it went straight to her voicemail every time and I couldn’t understand what had happened
until Rachael started looking for James and couldn’t find him. No one could figure out where he’d gone until his friend, Daniel mentioned that he was pretty sure he’d
seen James leave about five minutes after Camille left.” Eddie pauses and runs a hand down his face, over his stache. “Shit sucked, man. It stung so bad. To have that
beautiful girl get grifted right from under my own damn fingers, especially by that arrogant piece of shit…it really messed with me. And to make matters worse, Rachael
took his ass back. She forgave him the next day and I had to deal with seeing him at the house all the time. It was in my face and I hated it and he knew it.” Pause.
Eddie takes a swig of beer. “And that’s my problem with James Morgan.”
For a real quick second, Eddie chokes up and I almost laugh. It’s pretty funny to see Eddie doing this in front of me because Eddie himself is one of the most arrogant
pieces of shit I’ve ever met. So it’s a relief that I see him choke down the huge lump in his throat and tweak his stache again and put on a pair of shades and go,
“Time for a line, Mikey Boy. You in?”
“Nope.”
“Come on,” he snorts, smacking my shoulder. “Just do a little.”
“No way. I hate that drug.”
“Please. Do some of this shit with me.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t wanna do it by myself.”
“That’s your own problem, Eddie. Jesus, man. I don’t want to do any of that crap.”
“Mikey, I’m not taking no for answer. We’re a film crew, dude. Solidarity all the time whether were on set or not.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Do some?” He sticks the coke in my face. “Do some or I’ll take your name off the editing credit.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Bullshit, Mikey. I can and I will. It’s your choice.” Eddie tweaks his stache again. “What’s it gonna be?”
“Whatever, man. Fine. I’ll do it.”
“It’s all for the sake of the film, Mikey.”
“Yeah, Eddie, for the sake of the film.”
Eddie wheels to the desk and grabs a CD case and dumps some blow on it and makes four lines.
Rolling a dollar bill, he goes, “Fuck hepatitis. Maybe sores are cool.” Then he slams two and snaps his head back. “Jesus Christ, I already gotta take a shit.”
“That was quick.”
“Fuckin’ lactose cutters. Excuse me.”
Eddie bounces from the room and I pick up the dollar bill. It’s been a long fucking time since I did any coke. Close to a year actually. And there were some valid reasons
behind that. Mainly from every other time I put the shit up my nose. What it does to a person. What it leads to.
Nights and days spent sitting in those same smokey rooms. Albums on repeat. Rent money disappearing. Savings account being drained. Fingernails covered in dirt.
Gnarly breath. People talking over people. People not saying anything at all. Blank stares. Empty looks. Promises. All those promises. Waiting for someone else to break
out their bag. Eyes glued on the bag as it’s passed. Half-full cans of beer. Lies. Oh, all those damn lies. Like anyone in the room really broke their high school three-point
record. Or lost their virginity at twelve. Or really partied with Sean Lennon and Jay-Z. Or wrote hate mail to Chuck Palahniuk. Or had a parent who was in the Pentagon
just before the plane struck it on 9/11. Or tortured and killed someone in a basement. Everything all a three day load of crap.
Just those thoughts send a shiver up my back. My back actually cracks. Just looking at the coke in front of me puts me in such a dark place and I’m about to dump it
off the case instead of doing it when Eddie shoots back into the room.
Rubbing his hands together, shaking his neck loose, Eddie says, “I feel good. Cocaine’s a hell of drug.” He looks at the case. “Mikey, come on. Do your lines. Be radical.”
“Radical. Got it.” I lean down and snort and it feels so nice. It really does. I lean back down and do the other line. “It’s pretty good stuff, man.”
“You think?”
“It didn’t make me gag or wanna throw up which is what a lot of shit in this city does.”
“I guess you’re right. It’s not great by any means though.”
“I haven’t had great stuff in at least five years. The shit I was doing before I quit, that wasn’t just getting stepped on, motherfucker’s were trampling over that stuff.”
“Tell me about it.”
My bowels shift.
Bam!
Like that.
I’m high as fuck and I have to shit and Eddie says, “Anyway, dude. I’m out.”
“Where the hell are you going?”
“I’m gonna meet that stripper chick, Mercedes at her place.”
“Dude? You get me to do this shit and now you’re gonna bounce. What the hell am I supposed to do? I’m gonna be all twaked out with nothing.”
“I’ll leave a pile.” Eddie walks over and dumps a large pile out. “There ya go, man.”
“So we’re done for the night?”
“I’m done. But I want you to keep editing. Try and make at least three more cuts.”
“Wow, you’re really something, man.”
“Yeah. Something who’s paying you to do this shit. Here.” Eddie tosses me fifty bucks. “Buy some beer. Buy some smokes. And make some more cuts. Do me proud,
Mikey,” he says, then snags another beer and leaves.
Me, I roll straight to the toilet, drop my jeans, and push the mush out that was sitting in the bottom of my stomach. I let it dribble and slide and run from my asshole
while reading this short Chuck Palahniuk story about a male stripper with epilepsy in ''Vice'' magazine.
Cocaine cut with baby laxitives.
It’s like eating an unwrapped piece of pasteurized American cheese one week after you first saw the fucker laying in the back of the lukewarm ice box.
Back at the computer, I take a seat and take a breath and wipe my forehead. I light cigarette and roll my head around. I rub my nose again.
Grabbing the computer mouse, I drag the timeline all the way back to the beginning and watch what I’ve cut so far.
So far, I’ve got fifteen minutes worth of shit put together. This whole documentary, it’s supposed to be an hour. One goddamn hour of these shitty babes blabbing
and bitching and by the end, it’s gonna feel like four hours.
I pause the movie and make another line. I feel so good. Good enough to forget why the I quite doing this shit in the first place. That’s the thing about cocaine. It’s a
such present and future type of drug. On cocaine, the past becomes about as relevant as Don Johnson.
Rolling another bill ‘cause Eddie took his with him, I lean over the pile and inhale another line of the fun powder.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
This is way cooler than that dickhead Bush song.
I take a drag of my smoke and my forehead starts to water. My cheeks burning. My mind flying in a million different directions.
I wanna call somebody so bad.
Maybe someone from back home.
Maybe some babe I met last month.
Swinging my eyes back to the computer, I hit play and Eddie’s lame film starts all over again.
The tattooed girl with black hair talking on the screen, this is SouVicious and she was on BettesPage for close to four years. In fact, according to her, her page had the
most fan hits. She was the so called “face of the site” her image was and still is being used on all kinds of BettesPage products.
Book covers.
Wife beaters.
Underwear.
Fucking playing cards.
According to Ms. Vicious, she never considered what she was doing as porn.
She says, “I was part of that initial surge. That re-discovery of classic pin-up art. We were taking what Bette Page and Marilyn Monroe had started and we were putting
our own twist on it. It was really our own. To me, there was nothing ''that ''pornographic about it all. It wasn’t until the people in charge of the site started selling our
images to other sites that anyone I know even equated what I’d been doing to what we think of today as “porn”. And it wasn’t fair.”
I pause the film. I can’t watch anymore of this. All of these girls, this whole fallout, rooted in money. Everything else just a smoke screen to delude that fairly obvious
fact.
I pull up the Internet. My body twitches. I log onto Facebook and check my page. One new message from some fat kid I went to high school with who wants to
know how Frisco is treating me.
I got like seven friend requests from all these babes with one name and pictures of them in bathing suits. All the bulletins posted by the same two people.
I sign off.
Turn my attention back to the documentary and drag the timeline to the end and start thinking about the next cut but it’s hard to stay focused. My mind is going off.
I rub my hands together then cut another line and take it. I go back to the documentary. My thoughts are all over the place. I check Facebook again.
Another friend request from an account that’s already been deleted. Back to the documentary. I watch the last two cuts. Try to think what to put next. Nothing
doing. I cut another line. Light a cigarette. Almost vomit from choking down a swig of beer. Watch the same two cuts again. Nothing. I shoulda known better. I never
could do anything creative on coke. It’s like trying to jackoff to a Playboy after the age of twelve. It always seems like it can work until you drop your pants and
something more interesting grabs your attention.
Deep. Deep. Breaths.
Relax.
I look at pile of trash that James left still sitting there. Reaching across the desk, I finger through it and see another piece of paper with the words M.A.S.H on it.
According to this, someone James knows is going to live in an apartment. Drive a Mitsubishi. Marry Ricki Lake. And work in a toll booth. Not so bad.
I flip the paper over and read the words: Captain Hipster: If you don’t know who I am already then you shouldn’t even be talking to me.
What a fucking weirdo.
Below that, it says: Salad Finger. Episodes 1-7. YouTube. Jeremy Fisher. What do you taste like, Hubert Cumberdale?
I cut another line and go straight to YouTube and type in Salad Finger.
Holy shit.
It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. A creepy cartoon about some weird green kid who lives all alone in a shack and eats sand and licks his fake finger friends and
loves nettles. Best. Thing. Ever.
By eleven, it’s pretty fucking obvious that I’m not going to be getting anymore editing done. Any hope of that disappeared as soon as the first line went up my nose.
So I save and close up all of the programs and cut another line and take it.
Now I’m completely jacked. If someone else was in even this room with me, I’m not sure I’d even be able to talk. Say anything at all. That’s how high I am. I’m so
fucked up, I superseded the expectation of the drug.
The paranoia sets in quickly. Every sound in the room causes a sudden a twitch. Quick feelings of suspense. Footsteps upstairs. A door slamming. Voices and radio
music. I’m freaking out. My body is shaking.
I get a text message.
The sudden noise makes my heart jump and I do a spin in the chair to see if anyone is watching me.
Nobody is.
The text message I get is from this dude we call Keith BadVibes. His real name is Billy Ray but we call him Keith BadVibes ‘cause he has this greasy black hair and wears
jean vests with nothing under them and clucks around the Mission in penny loafers and rides around the city on this black Schwin with a wire basket, screeching at the
top of his lungs about Norah Jones, chinamen, and biscuits.
The text message says: ''Dude, just finished raiding the ruins of the Wax Museum. I got a ton of shit. Rode home with the charred torso of John Candy. Not as fat as I
thought. Whoever did this is a hero. Come over to the Church and check out the goods…PieGrinder.''
I snap my phone shut.
Last week, the Merrytime Wax Museum got torched to the ground by a someone or some somebody’s. It was pretty cool. Whoever the fuck did it, they sauced the
walls and the hallway floors with gallons of gasoline before shoving a coupla two dollar out the door High Life forties underneath the wax statues of Hillary Clinton and
Rosie O’ Donnell.
A match was lit and everything went orange.
And when the trails of flames hit their two dollar out the door climax, people who lived within an eight block radius heard two loud explosions. A billion pieces of The
High Life everywhere. The force of the explosions were so powerful they sent both statues into the air and sent Rosie O’ Donnell’s fat head through the roof where it
landed two blocks away inside this trashcan behind a twenty-four hour Denny’s.
Food For Fucking Ever.
No one in the city had ever seen anything like it. The aftermath, I mean. The moment the flames were extinguished, that’s when the fun started. All these kids
showed up in the middle of the night on their fixed gear bikes. In their pick-up trucks. Their lurker vans. Some kids were even pushing wheelchairs and makeshift
stretchers. All these boys and girls just digging through the smoldering remains of the Twenty First Century Gods.
It was bad as hell.
Television cameras capturing the sacred images of Kirk and Candace Cameron being dragged through the streets of the Mission by kids with black hair. Tight Jeans.
Black Sabbath shirts. American Apparel Hoodies.
Somewhere in the Tenderloin, the melted and leftover remains of the Goo Goo Dolls and Phish were found swinging from a store front window draped in Zepplin
schwag.
In North Beach, a photo surfaced of Jack Kerouac, his wax figure, tossing the salad of the wax Neal Cassidy.
And in the Marina, girls and guys took turns posing perfectly at parties with Drew Barrymore and Paris Hilton and the lead chick from Grey’s Anatomy.
All these images surfacing from everywhere and all these television stations and newspapers bringing them to the rest of the world.
People chimed in immediately about what the attack meant and who was responsible for it and what the hell the U.A.P.A. was.
The United Arabic People’s Army.
That’s the line we’re being fed.
A conservative dude on FOX News even went as far as saying that the hit on the Wax Museum was a symbolic hit. He sat like a troll in some satellite station in D.C.,
drooling on about the placement of the forty bottles. How they’d been specifically put there to prove a point. He talked over everyone else, slobbering, that of course
the firebombing of the Merrytime Wax Museum was done by IslmamoFascits.
Spitting, “Think about it. The bottles were put under the figures of two leading women. Woman who are living proof of what the Woman’s Liberation Movement did.
The radicals in Islam hate that kind of stuff. So they’ve decided to wage a war in the most liberal city in the U.S. and they obviously made a statement by sending
these wax statues of Hilary Clinton and Rosie O’ Donnell into pieces. This was a calculated statement that used dangerous weaponry and once again, it’s time that we
go back to the maps and decide where we fight these pigs next.”
Even the mayor’s office was putting out information about how the city was under siege and that this is a defining moment for the people of San Francisco.
The thing is, no one in this city was really buying it except for some crazy’s out in the Sunset.
It seemed like everyone else in the country was getting whipped into a frenzy about the attacks except the people who were actually living in the city where the
attacks were taking place.
Yeah, they were mad. But no, none of it had affected or spilled into any of their personal lives the way the shit might in other parts of the country.
The splintered mind of a nation.
Fear. Confidence. Ignorance. Arrogance. Consumed. Consumption. Timidity. Aggressiveness. The way people are terrified of the unknown. How many things they are
willing to give up for the idea that they are safer.
Footsteps above me somewhere.
I do the last line and text message Keith BadVibes that I’m coming over and then I make sure I have all of my things together and lock the door to the editing room
and leave this stupid place.
It’s cold out tonight. A crisp wind carries through the Lower Haight. Last week, after the Wax Museum burnt to the ground, there was a big rumor going around that
a mob of jewish kids shoved the wax remains of Mel Gibson into a furnace somewhere on this very block.
I stand in front of the gate entrance and light a cigarette, shivering, and walk up to this lightpole and look at all the flyers taped to it.
Agent Orange at the Red Devil Lounge.
Times New Viking at the Hemlock.
The Melvins at Slims’s.
Sugar and Gold at the Knockout.
Get Dead at the Elbo Room.
The Oh-Sees at Café Du Nord.
Lamborghini Dreams at the 2/6 Grindhouse.
The Hollowpoints at Thee Parkside.
Master Slash Slave at Kimos.
Some pretty damn good shows.
I take a drag and blow smoke rings and look up the block toward Molotov’s and the Peacock. Sidewalks covered with drunk people. This short dude with a beard
pushes a Bay Guardian newsstand over. Sloppy girls stumbling while they try to hail a cab. A bottle shatters on the ground. Danzig coming from the jukebox at Molotov’
s. Crackheads bitching at drunk kids walking out of the liquor store on the corner for not giving them cash. This fat chick and skinny dude walking by me, holding
hands, talking about cheesesteaks in North Beach. Three dudes on fixed gear bikes. Black hoodies. Riding by talking about getting some dough together and buying
some cocaine. Even though one of the guys can’t put in ‘cause he dropped his money on the ground at the last bar.
Again.
I start for the Church, this actual abandoned church right off the corner of Hayes and Divisadero that some kids broke into a few weeks back and turned into this
hangout spot and after-hours speakeasy.
As I cross the middle of Haight, my hands in my jean jacket pockets, a blue beanie on my head, I notice this strange car parked just a half block down from where I
was. It’s one of those black luxury Sedan cars with very dark tinted windows. The kind of car you see rich people getting picked up in outside of the tall buildings in
the financial district. It peeks my interest a lot because cars like that never sit idle in a neighborhood like this. The same type of car was also parked two straight nights
near my apartment on Oak and Broderick two weeks ago.
It makes me feel a bit anxious. Like maybe I’m being watched or something. Like someone knows I’ve been doing blow. My stomach tightens and I take a deep breath
and speed up.
Sound of a car starting.
I look over my shoulder and the same car is pulling out and driving towards me.
Heart speeding up. Face turning red. Sweating. Throat dry.
The car flashes it’s headlights and speeds up then slows down.
They are after me.
Haight and Pierce street. Crossing the intersection. The car stops at the stop sign. No one else is around. I get to the other side and glance quickly over my shoulder
and the car is just sitting there. I keep moving. I’m practically running. I’m almost to Haight and Scott when I pass these two really drunk girls and hear one of them
say, “Everyday I wake up and wish it was Scott Stapp who died instead of Layne Staley.”
“Me too,” the other girl slurs.
I want to laugh but I hold back and look over my shoulder. The car is still sitting there. But right as I flip my head back around, I hear tires squealing. An engine roaring.
I turn my head again and the black car is flying at me.
This is when I take off. A dead sprint. I hit Scott street and cut right and just run as fast as I can.
One block. My chest starts to hurt. I’m panting. The right side of my stomach cramps. I’m out of breath.
All these fucking cigarettes I smoke.
But I keep moving. I keep pushing. I make it through the intersection of Oak and Scott and am halfway to Fell Street before turning around again.
There’s nothing. A silent street lit only by streetlamps. Tinted orange. Another gust of breeze blows by me. It feels good. The car is gone for now and I lean back into
the deep shadows of the apartment building behind me and wipe my face. Five minutes I stand there. Until the fear slips away with the breeze. Somebody just fucking
with me. Some stupid kids getting hyphee with a car. Jackasses. Piegrinders. Troll Humpers. These cocaine blues are getting the best of me.
I light a cigarette and start walking toward Fell.
The intersection of Fell and Scott.
I’m standing on the corner, texting Keith BadVibes to see if the Church needs any beer when this huge white van pulls up to the stop sign and the passenger side
window rolls down.
This girl with black dreadlocks and a nose ring pokes her head out of it. “Hey, man,” she says.
“Hey.” I look back at my phone. Face red.
“Hey, man do you know how to get to Haight Ashbury?”
I look up at the van. “You’re serious aren’t you?”
“Yeah, dude,” she says. “Haight Ashbury, man. Come on. Where is it?”
I step off the curb to approach the girl when the van shoots like five feet forward. Footsteps behind me. The side door flies open and I get tackled into the van.
I don’t even get a chance to make a sound.
Mouth taped shut. Two doors slamming. More engine revving. More tires squealing.
A black hood is pulled over my face and something crashes against the side of my skull…
''I haven’t been laid in over two and a half years. It’s true. The last time I slayed a babe I was growing out my first beard and everyone in the Mission was still starting
conversations at bars with, “Have you seen that movie Dig yet?” The problem with me is that I’m scared of rejection. My self-esteem is at an all-time low. I’ve immersed
myself amongst a group of friends and mostly acquaintances who outshine me at every moment. They look better. Dress better. Have better hair. More tattoos. They’
re skinnier. Sell drugs. Massive egos. And a lot of them have done shit that everyone knows about. I’m always in the background. The camera man. The editor. The
only reason why I even asked out that BettesPage girl was because the entire time we were filming her, everyone in the crew wouldn’t shut up about it. Wouldn’t
shut-up about how one of us had to try and fuck her before we screened the film so I went for it. I wanted my moment. The first time in my life to say, “I nailed the
sexiest bitch in the room.” But I got rejected. Passed over because surprise, surprise, the dumb hog was in love with some dude in a band. Yet I still managed to
throw a good face on the whole situation by telling all the guys, “What? It’s not like I can’t go to the Phonebooth and pull some troll who looks exactly the same as
her.”''
''More spin. About the only thing I’m super good at. The fact is, everything I do is some kind of front. What it comes down is I’m a jealous man. An envious, spiteful
man to the bone. I desperately want the things that others have yet I always lay claim that I don’t. No matter what it is, I’ll fucking lie about it and make fun of the
people who posses and have done the things that I want to do. It’s who I am deep down inside of me. I am not a nice person. I am bitter and I am angry and I am
conniving and I do not care that much for most of the people I associate myself with. I want my own moment in the spotlight. By myself! I only want to fuck the
girlfriends of the people I know. I’m sick of being irrelevant. The nice guy. I’m sick of the way I look. I hate my style and I hate that I don’t ever have money and I
hate the decisions I’ve made in my past that have put me in such an irreversible spot. ''
''I have nothing.''
''I am nothing.''
''Even though I am better than everyone.''
''I have less than all of them.''
''This is my confession.''
''I haven’t been laid in over a two and a half years.''
Things are blurry when I open my eyes. Head throbbing. Throat burning. Mouth taped shut. Voices whispering in the shadows. Bright spotlight shining in my eyes.
Killing them. My hands tied behind the chair I’m seated in. Brian Jonestown Massacre lyrics pounding through my skull…
''I don’t wanna die…I’m too fucking young to say goodbye…''
Repeating themselves. Again. And again. And again.
Easily the scariest moment of my pathetic little life. And somewhere deep down inside of me I’m thinking about how uncomfortable it is that my gut is hanging over
the waist of my jeans.
I can’t believe I just got fucking kidnapped.
How bad at life am I?
It was only two weeks ago that Duncan told the whole film crew during lunch about a friend of his roommate who was walking through the Lower Haight at four in
the morning and got tackled into a van. Beat-up. Knocked out. And woke up handcuffed to a toilet. Hankerchief stuffed down his throat. Jeans missing. All these scary
older dudes with beards and shaved heads and white trash tattoos kept coming into the room and spitting on him and holding knives to his throat and pissing on him.
He thought he was dead until he somehow broke the cuffs from the toilet. He stood up and kicked open the door. He was in this tiny room surrounded by all these
torture instruments. He saw an empty body bag. He heard footsteps coming down the stairs so he kicked through the first window he saw and shimmied through it,
cutting himself all over the glass, then jumped two stories, spraining his ankle, and limped off into the street.
And I remember thinking at the time, ''What a pussy? How the fuck can a grown-up get kidnapped right off the street? How bad do you have to suck at living for that
to happen?''
But here I am.
Sitting god knows where. Tied to a chair. My stupid mouth taped shut.
More voices. The sound of footsteps somewhere.
The spotlight begins to dim. Slowly. It dims into two separate lights and they get smaller and smaller and this hard outline of a woman in a chair straight across from me
comes into focus.
The lights keep dimming until a clear image of this woman materializes. Blond. Hair pulled back and up. Sculpted face of a model. Thin lips. Gold earrings. Hard body.
Black leather jacket. Tight. Buttoned. Black skirt. Slit. Knee High leather boots.
Cougar is definitely the right word.
And it’s the first one that comes to mind.
The cougar crosses her legs. Three quarters of her amazing right thigh becomes exposed. And I still have no idea what the hell is really going on here. Not one fucking
clue. Nothing. Nadda.
Folding her hands across her lap, the cougar looks over my shoulder and flips her chin. “Remove the tape,” she says.
These two fat, hairy hands creep up from behind me, palms smearing against my face, and – WHOOSH – the tape is ripped off my mouth leaving my skin and lips
feeling like they’re on fucking fire.
My first thing is I spit. I try to get that shit taste mixture of sweat and tape and cocaine discharge out of my mouth.
I spit again.
“I hope we weren’t too rough with you,” the cougar smiles.
“Who the fuck are you?” I snap.
“We put some ointment on the gash in your forehead so it wouldn’t sting as much when you regained consciousness.”
“Where the hell am I?”
Pause.
The cougar lowers her head to look at her hands. She taps her fingers together. One by one. Tap. Tap. Tap. Smiling so big.
“I said where the hell am I, Lady?”
“Ya know I was just eight years old when I had my first job, Michael?”
“What?”
“It was a paper route. I got it the summer before I started third grade and made fifteen dollars a week doing it. Now that doesn’t sound like a lot but when you’re
eight years old, it’s on par with being a millionaire as an adult. I was the Rosalie Mera of my neighborhood. Self-made. While all the girls in my age group were playing
dress-up dinner party with each other, I was working. I ran a lemonade stand as well. I also sold ice cream treats. Just eight weeks after I started working I had
accumulated an enormous amount of capital. I was able to completely control both the local lemonade and ice cream markets. I bought the best quality stuff at
wholesale value and sold it for a lower price than anyone else could. Hell, I put the ice cream truck completely out of business in my neighborhood. It was fabulous.
Even the community newspaper ran a front page story on me. But my incredible success also came with it’s pitfalls, Michael. Because I had money and good product,
some the girls in the neighborhood wanted me to give them loans for their stupid little dress up toys. A lot of kids on the block wanted me to spot them product. Fat
girls and fat boys constantly bombarded me with me requests for free snacks to satisfy they’re disgusting sweeteeth and eventually, I gave in. I displayed my first ever
sign of weakness. I began to spot people product and it got really out of control. At one point, I had taken on almost fifty dollars worth of their debt and when it
came time to collect, all of them seemed suddenly unavailable. Nowhere to be found. Their mom and dads answering the door to their houses and telling me that their
children were sick in bed. It infuriated me. Something had to be done. An example had to be set. So I set my sights on Martha Hoy, this fat disgusting brat of a kid
who wasted away in her family’s backyard day after day playing inane children’s games like Dress-up wedding party and Barbie playhouse. I planned it out perfectly one
afternoon. When her and three of her best friends were in the middle of a tea party. I rushed at them and kicked over the table. I stomped on all of their bullshit toy
accessories and broke everything they had, down to the tiniest pieces. I meant business. That was my message. If you didn’t pay up, your asshole toys were not going
to be safe in my neighborhood. And ya know what…it worked. Everyone paid up in a matter of days. It was exhilarating. Being the bad ass. I mean, I would’ve made a
hell of drug dealer, Michael. But I went a different route. I entered an even more cutthroat world. The corporate world where I have excelled beyond my wildest
imagination.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
Laughter. The cougar starts laughing. Laughter in the shadows. I can’t see anyone other than her but I can hear them.
All of them.
“Who are you?” I snort again.
“I represent a client whom you owe money too.”
As defiantly as I can, I say, “I don’t owe money to no one. You got the wrong guy. I don’t owe anyone anything.”
The cougar laughs again. She looks down at her hands and sighs. “You don’t owe money to anyone, huh?”
“No.”
“That’s good,” she snorts. “Let’s play a little game. I say a name and you nod your head Yes if you know them or shake your head No if you think you don’t.”
“Let’s play.”
“The Robert Reynolds Corporation.”
And before she even finished the life felt like it was vacuumed right out of my body.
The Robert Reynolds Corporation.
The hundred thousand dollar scholarship.
The contract.
“From the look of your reaction, Michael Tomalis, it looks as if you know exactly who you owe money to.”
I was twenty years old when I decided it was time for me to leave Nebraska. I was sick of working as a bullshit roofer. Sick of living at home still. Sick of living in
Nebraska. I knew I was capable of much better things. I had a desire to be somebody. A person who dictates the culture instead of plays within it’s rules. It wasn’t
fame or money that necessarily drove that desire as much as it was the chance to get people off to my opinion on how to live or my idea of how to cure the ills of our
society. It really was. And I knew if I didn’t leave at that point, then I probably would never leave so I began to brainstorm ways to get me out of the place of my
birth and decided that getting into filmmaking would be the best way to do that.
And the cougar says, “The one thing that’s held true during the entire duration of me doing this job is that when finally confronted with the obvious fact that they are
in debt a fairly large amount of money to one of my clients, there seems to be sudden memory loss. They have no idea what I’m talking about. I always have the
wrong person or the wrong info. Somewhere along the line, they’re had to have been a misunderstanding. Only the thing is, Michael, it’s all about the body language
and the reaction of that individual who I’m confronting that completely negates any chance that I may have fucked up. The fact is, Michael I just don’t fuck up.”
The next step after deciding on getting into film was to find a school. I researched for about a week and decided to settle on a tiny art school in San Francisco. It
seemed to have a great reputation and obviously the location was perfect. It seemed perfect anyway. Only problem was it was expensive as hell. Eight grand a
semester. No way could I afford that so I had to find another way to get the money. Again I researched. I looked into every method of payment but nothing was
coming together. I kept hitting my head against the wall of financial doom until I came across an ad for a scholarship program for screenwriters and producers only. The
whole thing seemed to good to be true. The ad promised a scholarship of a hundred grand but only a handful of applicants would be granted the money. It was like a
competition. To apply, I had to write a one thousand word essay about the positive aspects of product placement in film and television and I had only two weeks to
complete it. Needless to say, I got right to work.
And the cougar says, “You see Michael, the fact is that when I said the words Robert Reynolds Corporation your body went limp, your face turned snow white and
your jaw dropped. You didn’t even have to confirm my question with a nod or a shake of the head, your guilty reaction gave you up.”
The first thing I did was compile a list of films where some of the main characters and plot points are based on product placement. ''The Saint'' with Val Kilmer and the
Volvo car. ''Days of Thunder'' and the Mellow Yellow car. ''Desperado ''featuring Mexico. Even that movie ''Bye, Bye Love ''and how McDonald’s acted as a main
character. The thesis of the essay centered around the economic value of massive product placement or P.P. as they use in the industry. I aggressively argued that
from the studios end, with their financial outlook becoming increasingly dire, it was an absolute win-win because not only could the studio avoid over paying an actor by
replacing him or her with a product, but they would already turn a profit by having the company pay them to insert their featured product into the script as many
times as it was possible. And from the company’s point of view, it was win-win because their product would be all over the screen. They wouldn’t have to pay extra to
advertise because the studios would be doing that for them. Overall, the only losers would be the audience, but, I argued, audiences tend to forget rather quickly and
by the time of the sequel, people would be more than happy to give it another shot. It was the best thing I’ve ever done. I nailed it. Then I sent it in.
And the cougar says, “One of things that makes me the best at what I do besides collecting is my ability to look past the obvious and really get into the heart of the
situation, Michael. To not just get the money back and walk away but to analyze all the angles and come up with a potential solution other than simply making your life
a living hell. To maybe present an alternative solution where the two parties can help each other.”
A whole month went by and I hadn’t heard a word about the scholarship. I emailed the sponsors three times and heard nothing. It was becoming clear that none of
this was gonna happen and then came August first. Maybe the best day of my life. The day that changed my life forever. Early that morning I received a phone call
informing me that I was one of the five winners of the scholarship and the sponsors flew me out to their office headquarters in Washington D.C. for a private signing
ceremony with the other four winners. I was chauffeured around the capital in a Limo. Wined and dined at all the best bars and restaurants in D.C. I was given a
nightly stipend of two hundred dollars. Even girls visited my room in the wee hours of the morning. Easily the best time of my life. And on the last night, strapped in a
designer tux, I ate dinner at the mansion of a Robert Reynolds V.P. and halfway through the six course meal, I was slid the signing papers for the scholarship by the V.
P. himself who told me, before I could scribble anything, “Michael, it’s very important that you fully understand what will be required of you by this scholarship before
you sign it. Corporations,” he continued, “Hell, business’s in general have been taking an especially serious and very irresponsible P.R. beating over the last few years,
ever since WorldCom and Enron, and I’ve had enough of it. It’s ridiculous. All these goodie too-shoe non-profits running around, trying to scare people on the backs of
the taxpayers by claiming they’ve got the public’s best interest in mind. Bullshit! They’ve got an agenda of control. They want to take away the freedom of consumer
choice and replace it with a nanny state! All these wacko do gooders running all over the place screaming venomous crap from a taxpayer purchased podium and it’s a
goddamn sham, son! This is a modern tragedy. You don’t even want to know what kind of money and time we waste each year tied up in pointless litigation. Sue me?
Bullshit. I am the one bringing employment to people. My products satisfy people. If they think my product may harm them, they have every single right to choose not
to consume it. But choice isn’t good enough for these people. They want us banned from everywhere. All these lawsuits. Our own advertising budget being used to
defame ourselves. It’s un-American my dear boy, because in America, the corporations are sovereign!”
And the cougar says, “The difference between me and the other proud men and women who do this very gratifying line of work, the reason my phone rings more
often and always for the most important clients is because of my ability to think outside of the box. To tinker with the details and come up with other ways of working
the problem out that may be beneficial to everyone. Now that’s not to say that I won’t use excessive force because I will and I have. It’s just that below the glossy
surface of truth are all these other ways of deploying creativity which makes me a fucking God in this field.”
With the scholarship papers right there and a pen in my hand, the V.P. roared on. He went, “But I’ve come up with a new way to fight back, Michael. This is where
you come into the equation. I’ve decided to fight back through the various mediums of art. Litigation can work, but well, it’s kind of like Ringo Starr. Very adequate
and useful when it needed to be but as of now, too irrelevant to ever be featured in the big picture again. Just right now,” he bragged. “Right now, we have over
thirty men and women under the age of twenty-five studying in various mediums in art schools and colleges around the world with scholarships provided by this
company. Young men and women just like you, Michael. With one goal in mind. To win back the public support of the products we represent by enhancing their
stature favorably in the public’s mind. We’re changing the story of product, Michael. So what signing this scholarship means is that you will have four years to graduate
from school. Exactly one year after the day you accept your degree, you will be required to write and turn in two screenplays a year for the first four years of your post-
graduation life with each screenplay being simply a massive microphone and stage for our products. Failure to do any of this will result in the immediate re-payment of
the money plus interest at fifteen percent and a promise by me personally to blackball you at every step in your life. Not only that, but your parent’s will also be
required to pay back fifty percent of you sum on top of your payments and by the looks of things, Mr. Tomalis. Your parent’s cannot afford that at all.” He paused
briefly. Then continued, “But absolute compliance with this scholarship means that you’ll never have to pay a dime back to us and keep all the money you get from
each script plus a five figure bonus from us. This is our proposal, Michael. Sign when you’re ready.”
I didn’t even hesitate.
My name was on that paper before he could even swallow a drink of scotch. And two weeks later, I was on my way to San Francisco.
And the cougar says, “So this is where we find ourselves, Michael. You and me, almost two years after you graduated.”
Struggling to square myself on the chair, I snap, “I’ve written shit. I have. I’ve been writing scripts and turning them in! I turned in two last year. It’s not my fault that
nobody wanted to make them. Not my fault!”
“Oh, please Mr. Tomalis. Don’t even try to justify those two pieces of trash you turned in to the Reynolds people as anything other than what I just called them.
Trash. Who did you really think you were fooling by turning in a script about a super hero dog made out of Pepsi cans and another about an orphan girl who thinks she’
s the illegitimate child of Grimace and falls in love with a Nutty Bar? That’s not what anyone wanted. Those were not even close to meeting the requirements that you
agreed to yourself when you signed the scholarship papers. Are you fucking kidding me? The illegitimate child of Grimace! What were you thinking when you decided
to write and turn that in? Falling in love with a Nutty Bar? That was not part of your agreement.”
`“I did what was asked of me.”
“No you did not. You were just writing to scheme your way out of paying the money back and it didn’t work. It didn’t and so here we are.”
“So send me the fucking bill. Don’t stalk my ass around and kidnap me. You can’t fucking kidnap somebody for defaulting on a loan.”
“It should me apparent by now, Mr. Tomalis that I can do whatever I want.”
“What the fuck, lady? I’m serious. You kidnapped me! What the hell is this? Seriously.” My voice is shaking. Spit flying from mouth. “Why did you kidnap me?”
The cougar rubs her hands together slowly. She rolls her head around her neck then re-crosses her legs and says, “I normally don’t operate like this for such a lower
tier case but this is a special circumstance, Michael. You are in a very unique position and you should be thankful that I was the one called for this case.”
“Thankful? I got tackled into a van and knocked out and now I’m tied to a chair god knows where, so excuse me if I don’t feel very thankful right now.”
“Have you heard a word I’ve said to so far. I mean, really listened to what I’ve been telling you. Michael, you hold the keys to this situation, I’m just here to guide you
to the right choice.”
“What?”
“I’m here to make you a proposition, Michael Tomalis.”
“What kind of proposition?”
“A highly sensitive one. The reason why I kidnapped you.”
“Oh…kay.”
“Right when I read your file, one thing immediately jumped out at me. I mean, it jumped off the page, Michael. You’ve been the camera man on all of Ceaser Estrada’s
campaign commercials.”
“So?”
“You got the job because you were a close friend with Stephanie Wilson. She was your lighting teacher in college.”
“Right.”
“And Stephanie Wilson’s domestic partner is Vira Holmes.”
“I know.”
“And Vira Holmes was a high ranking advisor to the Estrada campaign who resigned abruptly last week.”
“Yeah. So what? I don’t know where this is going.”
“Fuck that immigrant commie,” the cougar snaps. “I need you to help me, us, take down Ceaser Estrada, Michael.”
“Huh?”
The man is a threat to this city and this country and you’ve been actively pushing his unethical ideas onto the people of this city. You’ve been a key cog in his anti-
American rhetoric for goddsakes. This man wants to see my way of life destroyed and I will not stand by and let him do to that to me, my clients, and the citizens of
this city.”
“Are you fucking nuts?”
“Hardly,” the cougar grins. “He’s nuts. Just look at the first thing he’s proposing to do if he’s elected. He’s proposing a ban on all corporate advertising within one mile
of any school located in the city. He wants to kick our soda machines and our lunch counters off of school grounds. He wants to tax me and my clients over a hundred
percent of what they’ve been paying to pay for obesity programs and provide services to terminally ill people whose diseases supposedly stem from the root of our fine
products and then he wants us to fund billboards and commercials attacking ourselves and he’s got the votes on the board of supervisors to get that death sentence
passed. It’s a downright sham. My clients do not force feed these people their products. These slobs make those choices for themselves. They choose to consume
what they consume. Nobody else plays a role.” Pause. “For months, I’ve been watching this unfold, hoping I wouldn’t have to get that personally involved in this but
Gayle Webber has failed me. Failed the citizens of San Francisco. She’s made mistake after mistake and today they go ahead and release that Arab terrorist wannabe,
the only suspect they had in custody from the explosions and he turns out to be a fucking volunteer for her campaign. Unbelievable. She’s going to get killed in this
election and this anti-American, anti-business freak is going to get elected unless somebody does something.”
“What the hell do you think I can do.”
“Here’s what I’m proposing, Michael. I’m gonna use you to get the dirt on that pig. Our people have heard rumors about demons in Estrada’s closet. Cocaine use.
Orgies with Transvestites. Even oral sex with a minor over six years ago. But we haven’t been able to get anyone close enough to him to collect any evidence until
now.”
My brain feels numb. Everything keeps getting worse. “And how am I supposed to that if nobody else has already? All’s I did was shoot the damn videos.”
“And attend private Estrada parties at his campaign headquarters. We have pictures of you talking and smoking cigarettes outside with three of his handlers, Michael.
We need you to track Estrada’s every move. Get information on his whereabouts and come back to us with hard evidence. Shake the trees and see what falls out of
them, Michael.”
“You’re asking me to do the impossible.”
Recrossing her legs again, the cougar smiles and says, “No, we’re just asking you to pay us back. You do this for us and your debt vanishes. Poof. Like that. It’s gone.
Your parent’s will be fine. You’ll be able to just continue on with your un-important, failing life. But if you don’t, if you say no, if you don’t come through with anything
good for us to use, your life will be a financial and professional hell for the foreseeable future and your mom and dad will lose everything. Everything. All that they’ve
helped you with will be for naught. Every time they helped you with rent. Every time they’ve stuffed a hundred dollars into your account. Or sent you money for food.
All of it just to get fucked back over by you.”
Pause.
“So what do you say?”
“What can I say? I mean, Jesus Christ. I don’t know how I’ll do it but I will do it.”
“Good answer.”
“How long do I have?”
“Ten days.”
“And once I’ve gotten something, how do I get a hold of you?”
“You hang a red banner on the outside of your apartment window. After that, we’ll get a hold of you. Are we clear?”
I nod.
“And one more thing, Michael.”
“What’s that?”
“I often find that it’s people whose backs are pushed against the wall. Desperate people. People who need to make things happen out of the fear from the
consequences of not making them happen that usually get the job done splendidly and professionally. Do you understand what I’m saying, Michael?”
“I think so.”
“Good. Now get this asshole out of my face!”
Two hands from behind me again. Black hood pulled over my face. Something cracks me in the skull and I begin to slip away.
I open my eyes. Head throbbing. Body sore. Face feels broken.
I get to my feet. I’m all the way in DogPatch. On like third and 22<sup>nd</sup> second streets. Silence all around me. I turn around and catch a glimpse of myself in
this large pane of glass. There’s dried blood on my face. Scratches on my chin. My hair is balled up into a clump on the top. A huge gash on my forehead.
I want to go home. I pull out phone out and check the time. Two in the morning. I have twenty dollars on me, barely enough to even get there.
I call a cab.
My shitty future hanging in the balance.
The future of this city in my grasp.
I’ve always wanted to dictate what people think about and how they live their lives and I guess this is my big chance.
Fucking over somebody just to get ahead.
This is the true American way.
With my eyes drifting to the sidewalk, my head pounding so hard, I notice these two stencils on the ground that say:
Captain Hipster: I don’t wear tight red flannel to stay warm.
Captain Hipster: My sweater is cooler than yours.Shaking my head, I turn my gaze toward the downtown lights of the city. Even out here, the residue of my friends still
scar these city blocks.
And I’m scared as hell. My life is a whole big nothing. Nobody knows who I am. I haven’t done anything. I’m so far in debt. I’ve never gotten ahead. And girl’s just won’
t date me.
This all sucks real bad.
Up ahead of me, I see a Taxi approaching and walk to the corner and flag it down, hoping to god that it’s a smoking cab.
Me and Eddie, we’ve been holed up in this basement working on this damn documentary for the last six hours.
Wait.
Scratch that.
I’ve been working, editing this documentary for the last six hours while Eddie’s been sitting in a wheelchair. Smoking cigarettes. Getting shitfaced off an eighteen pack
of Coors Light and making asshole comments about the girls in his film.
Comments like, “You were on a fucking porn site for crissakes.”
Like, “I wouldn’t touch that tattooed bitch with your small cock, Mikey”
Like, “Jesus Christ, lady. No wonder you did porn. You’re dumber than shit.”
The basement we’re in sits smack dab on the corner of Steiner and Haight. It’s actually this degenerate of a place. This condemned space that one of Eddie’s friends
found out about and was somehow able to rent despite the toxic mold clumped into every corner the ceiling. The huge holes in the walls. The rats that sneak around
in the dark. The constant auroma of the building sewage running through the exposed drainage pipes.
Last year, Eddie’s buddy Marshall, he found this spot and talked the landlord into letting him and Eddie turn it into an art work space.
The guy finally agreed and the two of them built an editing suite on one side of the room and turned the other side into a work, live space for Marshall.
Popping a wheelie in the chair, Eddie goes, “If any of these stupid girls were my daughters, I’d disown their pale asses too.”
So much for making an non-objective documentary.
What Eddie is really doing is he’s waiting for this dude Ryan to show up with some cocaine and I’m just waiting for Eddie to get fucked up enough to call it a night.
Eddie’s phone rings.
Dropping the chair to the ground, Eddie answers it and goes, “Cool, dude. I’ll let you in.”
He jumps out of the chair and rubs his hands together real fast and says, “The party is here, Mikey boy.”
“Sweet,” I mumble and watch him leave the room.
Seconds later, Eddie walks back in with that Ryan dude and James Morgan.
“Mikey Tomalis,” James says, walking right at me. “It’s been a long time.”
Ryan follows Eddie across the room to Marshall’s work desk.
“How ya been, man?” I ask James.
“Good,” he says. “I just got back from Minneapolis.”
“What were you doing there?”
“Funeral.”
“Oh shit. Who died?”
James pauses to light a cigarette. He says, “I don’t really know who died. You remember that foxy babe Carla who used to bartend dollar drinks at Arrow on Sundays
way back when this city was still fun?”
“Oh yeah.”
“I went with her. It was someone she knew. I just wanted to go check out Minneapolis again, man. It had been too long since I’d been there. Since the last book
tour.”
“Shit, dude. You’re with Carla now?”
“I am,” James says, digging through the pockets of his Detroit Tigers jacket, a cigarette hanging loosely from his lips. “You jealous?”
“No.”
“Cause you should be, Mikey boy. Cause she’s only the hottest babe in SF right now.”
I light a cigarette. “You might be right.”
James leans in closer. “I know I’m fucking right, man. And ya know what’s so awesome about her besides the fact that she’s a stone fox that loves Sinatra more than I
do?”
“What’s that?”
James steps back and says, “She’s a natural beauty, man. That girl ain’t no mission troll with shit all over her body and dyed black hair. She don’t wear large sunglasses
that cover her entire shitty face. I am so over that shit, man. That shit died with The Killers.”
“I know it.”
James pulls a couple handfuls of paper scraps and wrappers out of his jacket pockets and drops them onto the desk. “When I was at the visitation in Minneapolis, one
of the friends of the dead person introduced me to her kid. His name was Russ and he had started his very own Ministry Of Creatures moped chapter in his hometown
after reading my International, best-selling novel, ''PieGrinder''.”
“How cool did that make you feel?”
“Fed the ego a lot actually,” he says, rummaging through his trash and picking up a baggie of coke. Putting out his cigarette, he goes, “It was pretty surreal, man. I
mean the kid was ten years old. I felt so great after that.” James pauses briefly. Then says, “It was almost like finding a new way to hate Paul MacCartney. Or like when
I was thirteen, me and my friends were watching one of those music awards shows and Neil Young got this Lifetime Achievement Award and right in the middle of his
acceptance speech, this huge fucking white rock dropped out of his nose and that dude just kept on talking like nothing had even happened and me and my friends
were all like, ‘Fuck yeah, man!’ and high-fivin’ each other.”
“That’s awesome,” I laugh.
James opens his coke and pulls out a key and asks me if I want some.
“No, man. I’m off that shit.”
“Suit yourself.” He digs out this huge bump and takes it, then picks up one of the scraps of paper on my desk and hands it to me. “You see this?”
On the top of the paper it says MASH and below that are the remnants of the game.
Snapping the piece of paper back from me, James sniffs “Carla and I each did one, man. This is mine. Listen to this. I’m gonna live in a shack, drive an ’87 Datsun, marry
that chubby rapper, Queen Latifah, and be a janitor.”
“Sounds about right. How did your babe fare?”
James flips the page over. “Carla gets an apartment. She gets to marry Jon Bon Jovi. She drives an accord and works as a swimming instructor.”
“I think you win.”
“I know it. Fuck Jon Bon Jovi. I always win.”
James digs another bump out and does it and says, “So what the hell are you doing down in this dungeon with Eddie Asshole Rose?”
“I’m editing a documentary for him.”
“What’s it about?”
“Internet pin-up sites.”
“Like BettiesPage and all that bullshit?”
“Yep.”
“Fuck those sites, man. That whole thing was a bad joke. I mean, did you ever go onto any of those sites and check out some of those broad’s journals?”
I ash out my smoke. “Not really.”
“Kudos to you, man. Most of that shit was fuckin gay. It’s like no one who cruises that site gives a shit about how many words you can purposely misspell or how many
randomly capitalized letters you can fit into a fucking sentence or what your favorite AFI song is. No way. They just wanna peek at your tits and get off without
getting too much come on their keyboard.”
“Awesome,” I laugh.
James slides the computer mouse around and the black screen dissolves into a still frame of this Monica Page girl that Eddie interviewed a coupla weeks ago in a strip
club dressing room.
“Hey, that’s Sexy Rexy Hopeless’s bitch,” James blabs, then does another bump.
“You know her?”
“I do know Penelope. I actually got into this huge fight with her last week outside of the Hemlock.”
“What about?”
“About her being a dumb bitch.”
“She seemed pretty alright to me, man.”
“She’s not. She fucking sucks, dude. Seriously. I was in the smoking room with a group of people and someone asked her about Rex and she started saying all this shit
about how Rex was gonna settle down with her after his band got off tour. And how he wanted to maybe move somewhere else with her. Maybe New York. Maybe
overseas. And maybe start a family with her and I lost it. I can’t stand that kind of shit. I’ve known Rex Hopeless for over six years and the last thing that dude is ever
gonna do is settle down and have some kids so I told her that. I told her it wasn’t gonna happen and that he’d probably slayed at least ten girls on the tour and she
got so mad. She went off about how if I really thought that way about Rex, then I didn’t even know him that well and I was like, ‘Don’t tell me I don’t know one of
my good friends. I don’t care what he tells you in private ‘cause he only says it to appease you so that you’ll stick around and take care of him when he’s hungover.’ I
mean, damnit Mikey. It makes me wanna puke in my fucking mouth when I hear some dumb cunt tell me that I don’t know one of my good friends. It makes me so
mad when some stupid little girl really believes someone like Rex Hopeless is gonna settle down and start a family with her. Bullshit. And ya know what?”
“What?”
“Two days after that happened I got a text from Rex that said: ''Dude, you’re killing me. But the shit you said, so damn funny.”''
“So you were right.”
“Of course I was. I’m always fucking right. People need to be honest like I am. A lot of kids in this city think I’m an asshole but I’m just being honest. Kids in this city
who wear costumes to be part of a scene. Kids in this city who change in order to fit in with a new kinda fad. Kids who think they know something about life and
success then cash the check their parents send them on the first of every month are gonna hear it from me because they haven’t heard it from anyone else. The best
medicine for a dumb kid is a solid dose of truth from somebody who’s actually changed people’s lives.”
“Wow,” I say mockingly. “I guess you really are something special, Mr. Author.”
James smacks me lightly in the face. “Don’t be jealous, man.” Then he tries putting me in a headlock but I squirm out of it and karate chop him in the thigh and Eddie
hollers, “What are you two homos doing over there?”
James and I stop fucking around and Ryan and Eddie walk over to us.
“Ryan,” Eddie says. “Do you know Mikey Tomalis?”
Ryan shakes his head. He doesn’t even look at me as Eddie goes, “Ryan, this is Mikey Tomalis. The best film editor in San Francisco.”
Ryan shakes his black hair around and straightens his bandanna. “You looking for anything?” he asks. “’Cause I’m not coming back down to this stupid fucking place
tonight.”
“I don’t snort that bullshit.”
“You don’t do good drugs then.”
“No, I don’t do shit drugs.”
“Yeah. Whatever, man.”
And James goes, “What’s up Eddie Rose?”
“Not much, James Morgan. Just making another film.”
“Is that right?”
“Yep. What about you? How the hell are you doing?”
“Just writing another book, man.”
“So you are doing something new after all?”
“Yep. I’m about two-thirds of the way into my new novel.”
“What’s it about?” I ask.
“This fat heavy metal slob named Irene who details her journey back and forth across the U.S. following this band, Hippopotamus Death around.”
“What are you gonna call it?” I ask.
“''Dickpig: Confessions of a Heavy Metal Groupie''.”
“That sounds fucking cool,” I say.
And Eddie says, “It might be interesting. I’ll give you that.”
“Way more interesting than Ro-Sham-Bo or some domestic terrorism movie that didn’t make any sense,” James cuts in.
And Ryan goes, “I actually wanna write a choose your own ending book about the drummer for Def Leopard. I wanna do a hundred endings and in ninety-nine of
them, that dude still loses his arm but always gets laid, and in the last ending he doesn’t lose his arm, but he can’t get laid.”
Everyone starts laughing and James goes, “I wanna leave.”
“Where you guys going?” I ask.
“We’re gonna stop by the Beauty Bar real quick and then jump over to Bottom of the Hill to see the Black Angels play.”
That Ryan guy throws up the rock horns and goes, “Destroy, dudes.”
Then they leave.
Right when Eddie hears the door shut, he says, “Fuck James Morgan, man. Fuck that published author bullshit.”
I light another cigarette and Eddie sits back down in the wheelchair and pulls out two Coors Lights and hands me one.
I take a drink. “Why don’t you like James, man? He’s always been a pretty solid to me.”
“’Cause I had to live with that cocksucker a few years ago.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. I was living at this flat over on South Van Ness and he was fucking one of my roommates and she was letting him stay there while he looked for a new pad. His
stupid book wasn’t even published yet but he’d already gotten his deal and was always, always letting you know about it. Every night that asshole would get loaded on
a bunch of coke and go off on somebody at the house about how he was gonna change lives and make shit happen. It was so annoying. I hated him so much. But
the real shit between us was over this girl, Camille.”
And here it is. The same dumb sob story. With guys like Eddie and James, shit always comes unglued over a chick. Always. No matter how much guys like Eddie and
James talk about how they don’t give a shit about girls, in actual reality, it’s the exact opposite. Guys like James and Eddie, they’d fuck sixteen year old sister the
moment you walked out of a room if she was kind of cute and had pretty cool hair and knew about the ''Funhouse'' album.
And Eddie says, “I had the biggest crush ever on this girl and decided to invite her over to the birthday party for the girl that James was banging. I thought things
were going awesome until I couldn’t find her. I tried calling her phone but it went straight to her voicemail every time and I couldn’t understand what had happened
until Rachael started looking for James and couldn’t find him. No one could figure out where he’d gone until his friend, Daniel mentioned that he was pretty sure he’d
seen James leave about five minutes after Camille left.” Eddie pauses and runs a hand down his face, over his stache. “Shit sucked, man. It stung so bad. To have that
beautiful girl get grifted right from under my own damn fingers, especially by that arrogant piece of shit…it really messed with me. And to make matters worse, Rachael
took his ass back. She forgave him the next day and I had to deal with seeing him at the house all the time. It was in my face and I hated it and he knew it.” Pause.
Eddie takes a swig of beer. “And that’s my problem with James Morgan.”
For a real quick second, Eddie chokes up and I almost laugh. It’s pretty funny to see Eddie doing this in front of me because Eddie himself is one of the most arrogant
pieces of shit I’ve ever met. So it’s a relief that I see him choke down the huge lump in his throat and tweak his stache again and put on a pair of shades and go,
“Time for a line, Mikey Boy. You in?”
“Nope.”
“Come on,” he snorts, smacking my shoulder. “Just do a little.”
“No way. I hate that drug.”
“Please. Do some of this shit with me.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t wanna do it by myself.”
“That’s your own problem, Eddie. Jesus, man. I don’t want to do any of that crap.”
“Mikey, I’m not taking no for answer. We’re a film crew, dude. Solidarity all the time whether were on set or not.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Do some?” He sticks the coke in my face. “Do some or I’ll take your name off the editing credit.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Bullshit, Mikey. I can and I will. It’s your choice.” Eddie tweaks his stache again. “What’s it gonna be?”
“Whatever, man. Fine. I’ll do it.”
“It’s all for the sake of the film, Mikey.”
“Yeah, Eddie, for the sake of the film.”
Eddie wheels to the desk and grabs a CD case and dumps some blow on it and makes four lines.
Rolling a dollar bill, he goes, “Fuck hepatitis. Maybe sores are cool.” Then he slams two and snaps his head back. “Jesus Christ, I already gotta take a shit.”
“That was quick.”
“Fuckin’ lactose cutters. Excuse me.”
Eddie bounces from the room and I pick up the dollar bill. It’s been a long fucking time since I did any coke. Close to a year actually. And there were some valid reasons
behind that. Mainly from every other time I put the shit up my nose. What it does to a person. What it leads to.
Nights and days spent sitting in those same smokey rooms. Albums on repeat. Rent money disappearing. Savings account being drained. Fingernails covered in dirt.
Gnarly breath. People talking over people. People not saying anything at all. Blank stares. Empty looks. Promises. All those promises. Waiting for someone else to break
out their bag. Eyes glued on the bag as it’s passed. Half-full cans of beer. Lies. Oh, all those damn lies. Like anyone in the room really broke their high school three-point
record. Or lost their virginity at twelve. Or really partied with Sean Lennon and Jay-Z. Or wrote hate mail to Chuck Palahniuk. Or had a parent who was in the Pentagon
just before the plane struck it on 9/11. Or tortured and killed someone in a basement. Everything all a three day load of crap.
Just those thoughts send a shiver up my back. My back actually cracks. Just looking at the coke in front of me puts me in such a dark place and I’m about to dump it
off the case instead of doing it when Eddie shoots back into the room.
Rubbing his hands together, shaking his neck loose, Eddie says, “I feel good. Cocaine’s a hell of drug.” He looks at the case. “Mikey, come on. Do your lines. Be radical.”
“Radical. Got it.” I lean down and snort and it feels so nice. It really does. I lean back down and do the other line. “It’s pretty good stuff, man.”
“You think?”
“It didn’t make me gag or wanna throw up which is what a lot of shit in this city does.”
“I guess you’re right. It’s not great by any means though.”
“I haven’t had great stuff in at least five years. The shit I was doing before I quit, that wasn’t just getting stepped on, motherfucker’s were trampling over that stuff.”
“Tell me about it.”
My bowels shift.
Bam!
Like that.
I’m high as fuck and I have to shit and Eddie says, “Anyway, dude. I’m out.”
“Where the hell are you going?”
“I’m gonna meet that stripper chick, Mercedes at her place.”
“Dude? You get me to do this shit and now you’re gonna bounce. What the hell am I supposed to do? I’m gonna be all twaked out with nothing.”
“I’ll leave a pile.” Eddie walks over and dumps a large pile out. “There ya go, man.”
“So we’re done for the night?”
“I’m done. But I want you to keep editing. Try and make at least three more cuts.”
“Wow, you’re really something, man.”
“Yeah. Something who’s paying you to do this shit. Here.” Eddie tosses me fifty bucks. “Buy some beer. Buy some smokes. And make some more cuts. Do me proud,
Mikey,” he says, then snags another beer and leaves.
Me, I roll straight to the toilet, drop my jeans, and push the mush out that was sitting in the bottom of my stomach. I let it dribble and slide and run from my asshole
while reading this short Chuck Palahniuk story about a male stripper with epilepsy in ''Vice'' magazine.
Cocaine cut with baby laxitives.
It’s like eating an unwrapped piece of pasteurized American cheese one week after you first saw the fucker laying in the back of the lukewarm ice box.
Back at the computer, I take a seat and take a breath and wipe my forehead. I light cigarette and roll my head around. I rub my nose again.
Grabbing the computer mouse, I drag the timeline all the way back to the beginning and watch what I’ve cut so far.
So far, I’ve got fifteen minutes worth of shit put together. This whole documentary, it’s supposed to be an hour. One goddamn hour of these shitty babes blabbing
and bitching and by the end, it’s gonna feel like four hours.
I pause the movie and make another line. I feel so good. Good enough to forget why the I quite doing this shit in the first place. That’s the thing about cocaine. It’s a
such present and future type of drug. On cocaine, the past becomes about as relevant as Don Johnson.
Rolling another bill ‘cause Eddie took his with him, I lean over the pile and inhale another line of the fun powder.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
This is way cooler than that dickhead Bush song.
I take a drag of my smoke and my forehead starts to water. My cheeks burning. My mind flying in a million different directions.
I wanna call somebody so bad.
Maybe someone from back home.
Maybe some babe I met last month.
Swinging my eyes back to the computer, I hit play and Eddie’s lame film starts all over again.
The tattooed girl with black hair talking on the screen, this is SouVicious and she was on BettesPage for close to four years. In fact, according to her, her page had the
most fan hits. She was the so called “face of the site” her image was and still is being used on all kinds of BettesPage products.
Book covers.
Wife beaters.
Underwear.
Fucking playing cards.
According to Ms. Vicious, she never considered what she was doing as porn.
She says, “I was part of that initial surge. That re-discovery of classic pin-up art. We were taking what Bette Page and Marilyn Monroe had started and we were putting
our own twist on it. It was really our own. To me, there was nothing ''that ''pornographic about it all. It wasn’t until the people in charge of the site started selling our
images to other sites that anyone I know even equated what I’d been doing to what we think of today as “porn”. And it wasn’t fair.”
I pause the film. I can’t watch anymore of this. All of these girls, this whole fallout, rooted in money. Everything else just a smoke screen to delude that fairly obvious
fact.
I pull up the Internet. My body twitches. I log onto Facebook and check my page. One new message from some fat kid I went to high school with who wants to
know how Frisco is treating me.
I got like seven friend requests from all these babes with one name and pictures of them in bathing suits. All the bulletins posted by the same two people.
I sign off.
Turn my attention back to the documentary and drag the timeline to the end and start thinking about the next cut but it’s hard to stay focused. My mind is going off.
I rub my hands together then cut another line and take it. I go back to the documentary. My thoughts are all over the place. I check Facebook again.
Another friend request from an account that’s already been deleted. Back to the documentary. I watch the last two cuts. Try to think what to put next. Nothing
doing. I cut another line. Light a cigarette. Almost vomit from choking down a swig of beer. Watch the same two cuts again. Nothing. I shoulda known better. I never
could do anything creative on coke. It’s like trying to jackoff to a Playboy after the age of twelve. It always seems like it can work until you drop your pants and
something more interesting grabs your attention.
Deep. Deep. Breaths.
Relax.
I look at pile of trash that James left still sitting there. Reaching across the desk, I finger through it and see another piece of paper with the words M.A.S.H on it.
According to this, someone James knows is going to live in an apartment. Drive a Mitsubishi. Marry Ricki Lake. And work in a toll booth. Not so bad.
I flip the paper over and read the words: Captain Hipster: If you don’t know who I am already then you shouldn’t even be talking to me.
What a fucking weirdo.
Below that, it says: Salad Finger. Episodes 1-7. YouTube. Jeremy Fisher. What do you taste like, Hubert Cumberdale?
I cut another line and go straight to YouTube and type in Salad Finger.
Holy shit.
It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. A creepy cartoon about some weird green kid who lives all alone in a shack and eats sand and licks his fake finger friends and
loves nettles. Best. Thing. Ever.
By eleven, it’s pretty fucking obvious that I’m not going to be getting anymore editing done. Any hope of that disappeared as soon as the first line went up my nose.
So I save and close up all of the programs and cut another line and take it.
Now I’m completely jacked. If someone else was in even this room with me, I’m not sure I’d even be able to talk. Say anything at all. That’s how high I am. I’m so
fucked up, I superseded the expectation of the drug.
The paranoia sets in quickly. Every sound in the room causes a sudden a twitch. Quick feelings of suspense. Footsteps upstairs. A door slamming. Voices and radio
music. I’m freaking out. My body is shaking.
I get a text message.
The sudden noise makes my heart jump and I do a spin in the chair to see if anyone is watching me.
Nobody is.
The text message I get is from this dude we call Keith BadVibes. His real name is Billy Ray but we call him Keith BadVibes ‘cause he has this greasy black hair and wears
jean vests with nothing under them and clucks around the Mission in penny loafers and rides around the city on this black Schwin with a wire basket, screeching at the
top of his lungs about Norah Jones, chinamen, and biscuits.
The text message says: ''Dude, just finished raiding the ruins of the Wax Museum. I got a ton of shit. Rode home with the charred torso of John Candy. Not as fat as I
thought. Whoever did this is a hero. Come over to the Church and check out the goods…PieGrinder.''
I snap my phone shut.
Last week, the Merrytime Wax Museum got torched to the ground by a someone or some somebody’s. It was pretty cool. Whoever the fuck did it, they sauced the
walls and the hallway floors with gallons of gasoline before shoving a coupla two dollar out the door High Life forties underneath the wax statues of Hillary Clinton and
Rosie O’ Donnell.
A match was lit and everything went orange.
And when the trails of flames hit their two dollar out the door climax, people who lived within an eight block radius heard two loud explosions. A billion pieces of The
High Life everywhere. The force of the explosions were so powerful they sent both statues into the air and sent Rosie O’ Donnell’s fat head through the roof where it
landed two blocks away inside this trashcan behind a twenty-four hour Denny’s.
Food For Fucking Ever.
No one in the city had ever seen anything like it. The aftermath, I mean. The moment the flames were extinguished, that’s when the fun started. All these kids
showed up in the middle of the night on their fixed gear bikes. In their pick-up trucks. Their lurker vans. Some kids were even pushing wheelchairs and makeshift
stretchers. All these boys and girls just digging through the smoldering remains of the Twenty First Century Gods.
It was bad as hell.
Television cameras capturing the sacred images of Kirk and Candace Cameron being dragged through the streets of the Mission by kids with black hair. Tight Jeans.
Black Sabbath shirts. American Apparel Hoodies.
Somewhere in the Tenderloin, the melted and leftover remains of the Goo Goo Dolls and Phish were found swinging from a store front window draped in Zepplin
schwag.
In North Beach, a photo surfaced of Jack Kerouac, his wax figure, tossing the salad of the wax Neal Cassidy.
And in the Marina, girls and guys took turns posing perfectly at parties with Drew Barrymore and Paris Hilton and the lead chick from Grey’s Anatomy.
All these images surfacing from everywhere and all these television stations and newspapers bringing them to the rest of the world.
People chimed in immediately about what the attack meant and who was responsible for it and what the hell the U.A.P.A. was.
The United Arabic People’s Army.
That’s the line we’re being fed.
A conservative dude on FOX News even went as far as saying that the hit on the Wax Museum was a symbolic hit. He sat like a troll in some satellite station in D.C.,
drooling on about the placement of the forty bottles. How they’d been specifically put there to prove a point. He talked over everyone else, slobbering, that of course
the firebombing of the Merrytime Wax Museum was done by IslmamoFascits.
Spitting, “Think about it. The bottles were put under the figures of two leading women. Woman who are living proof of what the Woman’s Liberation Movement did.
The radicals in Islam hate that kind of stuff. So they’ve decided to wage a war in the most liberal city in the U.S. and they obviously made a statement by sending
these wax statues of Hilary Clinton and Rosie O’ Donnell into pieces. This was a calculated statement that used dangerous weaponry and once again, it’s time that we
go back to the maps and decide where we fight these pigs next.”
Even the mayor’s office was putting out information about how the city was under siege and that this is a defining moment for the people of San Francisco.
The thing is, no one in this city was really buying it except for some crazy’s out in the Sunset.
It seemed like everyone else in the country was getting whipped into a frenzy about the attacks except the people who were actually living in the city where the
attacks were taking place.
Yeah, they were mad. But no, none of it had affected or spilled into any of their personal lives the way the shit might in other parts of the country.
The splintered mind of a nation.
Fear. Confidence. Ignorance. Arrogance. Consumed. Consumption. Timidity. Aggressiveness. The way people are terrified of the unknown. How many things they are
willing to give up for the idea that they are safer.
Footsteps above me somewhere.
I do the last line and text message Keith BadVibes that I’m coming over and then I make sure I have all of my things together and lock the door to the editing room
and leave this stupid place.
It’s cold out tonight. A crisp wind carries through the Lower Haight. Last week, after the Wax Museum burnt to the ground, there was a big rumor going around that
a mob of jewish kids shoved the wax remains of Mel Gibson into a furnace somewhere on this very block.
I stand in front of the gate entrance and light a cigarette, shivering, and walk up to this lightpole and look at all the flyers taped to it.
Agent Orange at the Red Devil Lounge.
Times New Viking at the Hemlock.
The Melvins at Slims’s.
Sugar and Gold at the Knockout.
Get Dead at the Elbo Room.
The Oh-Sees at Café Du Nord.
Lamborghini Dreams at the 2/6 Grindhouse.
The Hollowpoints at Thee Parkside.
Master Slash Slave at Kimos.
Some pretty damn good shows.
I take a drag and blow smoke rings and look up the block toward Molotov’s and the Peacock. Sidewalks covered with drunk people. This short dude with a beard
pushes a Bay Guardian newsstand over. Sloppy girls stumbling while they try to hail a cab. A bottle shatters on the ground. Danzig coming from the jukebox at Molotov’
s. Crackheads bitching at drunk kids walking out of the liquor store on the corner for not giving them cash. This fat chick and skinny dude walking by me, holding
hands, talking about cheesesteaks in North Beach. Three dudes on fixed gear bikes. Black hoodies. Riding by talking about getting some dough together and buying
some cocaine. Even though one of the guys can’t put in ‘cause he dropped his money on the ground at the last bar.
Again.
I start for the Church, this actual abandoned church right off the corner of Hayes and Divisadero that some kids broke into a few weeks back and turned into this
hangout spot and after-hours speakeasy.
As I cross the middle of Haight, my hands in my jean jacket pockets, a blue beanie on my head, I notice this strange car parked just a half block down from where I
was. It’s one of those black luxury Sedan cars with very dark tinted windows. The kind of car you see rich people getting picked up in outside of the tall buildings in
the financial district. It peeks my interest a lot because cars like that never sit idle in a neighborhood like this. The same type of car was also parked two straight nights
near my apartment on Oak and Broderick two weeks ago.
It makes me feel a bit anxious. Like maybe I’m being watched or something. Like someone knows I’ve been doing blow. My stomach tightens and I take a deep breath
and speed up.
Sound of a car starting.
I look over my shoulder and the same car is pulling out and driving towards me.
Heart speeding up. Face turning red. Sweating. Throat dry.
The car flashes it’s headlights and speeds up then slows down.
They are after me.
Haight and Pierce street. Crossing the intersection. The car stops at the stop sign. No one else is around. I get to the other side and glance quickly over my shoulder
and the car is just sitting there. I keep moving. I’m practically running. I’m almost to Haight and Scott when I pass these two really drunk girls and hear one of them
say, “Everyday I wake up and wish it was Scott Stapp who died instead of Layne Staley.”
“Me too,” the other girl slurs.
I want to laugh but I hold back and look over my shoulder. The car is still sitting there. But right as I flip my head back around, I hear tires squealing. An engine roaring.
I turn my head again and the black car is flying at me.
This is when I take off. A dead sprint. I hit Scott street and cut right and just run as fast as I can.
One block. My chest starts to hurt. I’m panting. The right side of my stomach cramps. I’m out of breath.
All these fucking cigarettes I smoke.
But I keep moving. I keep pushing. I make it through the intersection of Oak and Scott and am halfway to Fell Street before turning around again.
There’s nothing. A silent street lit only by streetlamps. Tinted orange. Another gust of breeze blows by me. It feels good. The car is gone for now and I lean back into
the deep shadows of the apartment building behind me and wipe my face. Five minutes I stand there. Until the fear slips away with the breeze. Somebody just fucking
with me. Some stupid kids getting hyphee with a car. Jackasses. Piegrinders. Troll Humpers. These cocaine blues are getting the best of me.
I light a cigarette and start walking toward Fell.
The intersection of Fell and Scott.
I’m standing on the corner, texting Keith BadVibes to see if the Church needs any beer when this huge white van pulls up to the stop sign and the passenger side
window rolls down.
This girl with black dreadlocks and a nose ring pokes her head out of it. “Hey, man,” she says.
“Hey.” I look back at my phone. Face red.
“Hey, man do you know how to get to Haight Ashbury?”
I look up at the van. “You’re serious aren’t you?”
“Yeah, dude,” she says. “Haight Ashbury, man. Come on. Where is it?”
I step off the curb to approach the girl when the van shoots like five feet forward. Footsteps behind me. The side door flies open and I get tackled into the van.
I don’t even get a chance to make a sound.
Mouth taped shut. Two doors slamming. More engine revving. More tires squealing.
A black hood is pulled over my face and something crashes against the side of my skull…
''I haven’t been laid in over two and a half years. It’s true. The last time I slayed a babe I was growing out my first beard and everyone in the Mission was still starting
conversations at bars with, “Have you seen that movie Dig yet?” The problem with me is that I’m scared of rejection. My self-esteem is at an all-time low. I’ve immersed
myself amongst a group of friends and mostly acquaintances who outshine me at every moment. They look better. Dress better. Have better hair. More tattoos. They’
re skinnier. Sell drugs. Massive egos. And a lot of them have done shit that everyone knows about. I’m always in the background. The camera man. The editor. The
only reason why I even asked out that BettesPage girl was because the entire time we were filming her, everyone in the crew wouldn’t shut up about it. Wouldn’t
shut-up about how one of us had to try and fuck her before we screened the film so I went for it. I wanted my moment. The first time in my life to say, “I nailed the
sexiest bitch in the room.” But I got rejected. Passed over because surprise, surprise, the dumb hog was in love with some dude in a band. Yet I still managed to
throw a good face on the whole situation by telling all the guys, “What? It’s not like I can’t go to the Phonebooth and pull some troll who looks exactly the same as
her.”''
''More spin. About the only thing I’m super good at. The fact is, everything I do is some kind of front. What it comes down is I’m a jealous man. An envious, spiteful
man to the bone. I desperately want the things that others have yet I always lay claim that I don’t. No matter what it is, I’ll fucking lie about it and make fun of the
people who posses and have done the things that I want to do. It’s who I am deep down inside of me. I am not a nice person. I am bitter and I am angry and I am
conniving and I do not care that much for most of the people I associate myself with. I want my own moment in the spotlight. By myself! I only want to fuck the
girlfriends of the people I know. I’m sick of being irrelevant. The nice guy. I’m sick of the way I look. I hate my style and I hate that I don’t ever have money and I
hate the decisions I’ve made in my past that have put me in such an irreversible spot. ''
''I have nothing.''
''I am nothing.''
''Even though I am better than everyone.''
''I have less than all of them.''
''This is my confession.''
''I haven’t been laid in over a two and a half years.''
Things are blurry when I open my eyes. Head throbbing. Throat burning. Mouth taped shut. Voices whispering in the shadows. Bright spotlight shining in my eyes.
Killing them. My hands tied behind the chair I’m seated in. Brian Jonestown Massacre lyrics pounding through my skull…
''I don’t wanna die…I’m too fucking young to say goodbye…''
Repeating themselves. Again. And again. And again.
Easily the scariest moment of my pathetic little life. And somewhere deep down inside of me I’m thinking about how uncomfortable it is that my gut is hanging over
the waist of my jeans.
I can’t believe I just got fucking kidnapped.
How bad at life am I?
It was only two weeks ago that Duncan told the whole film crew during lunch about a friend of his roommate who was walking through the Lower Haight at four in
the morning and got tackled into a van. Beat-up. Knocked out. And woke up handcuffed to a toilet. Hankerchief stuffed down his throat. Jeans missing. All these scary
older dudes with beards and shaved heads and white trash tattoos kept coming into the room and spitting on him and holding knives to his throat and pissing on him.
He thought he was dead until he somehow broke the cuffs from the toilet. He stood up and kicked open the door. He was in this tiny room surrounded by all these
torture instruments. He saw an empty body bag. He heard footsteps coming down the stairs so he kicked through the first window he saw and shimmied through it,
cutting himself all over the glass, then jumped two stories, spraining his ankle, and limped off into the street.
And I remember thinking at the time, ''What a pussy? How the fuck can a grown-up get kidnapped right off the street? How bad do you have to suck at living for that
to happen?''
But here I am.
Sitting god knows where. Tied to a chair. My stupid mouth taped shut.
More voices. The sound of footsteps somewhere.
The spotlight begins to dim. Slowly. It dims into two separate lights and they get smaller and smaller and this hard outline of a woman in a chair straight across from me
comes into focus.
The lights keep dimming until a clear image of this woman materializes. Blond. Hair pulled back and up. Sculpted face of a model. Thin lips. Gold earrings. Hard body.
Black leather jacket. Tight. Buttoned. Black skirt. Slit. Knee High leather boots.
Cougar is definitely the right word.
And it’s the first one that comes to mind.
The cougar crosses her legs. Three quarters of her amazing right thigh becomes exposed. And I still have no idea what the hell is really going on here. Not one fucking
clue. Nothing. Nadda.
Folding her hands across her lap, the cougar looks over my shoulder and flips her chin. “Remove the tape,” she says.
These two fat, hairy hands creep up from behind me, palms smearing against my face, and – WHOOSH – the tape is ripped off my mouth leaving my skin and lips
feeling like they’re on fucking fire.
My first thing is I spit. I try to get that shit taste mixture of sweat and tape and cocaine discharge out of my mouth.
I spit again.
“I hope we weren’t too rough with you,” the cougar smiles.
“Who the fuck are you?” I snap.
“We put some ointment on the gash in your forehead so it wouldn’t sting as much when you regained consciousness.”
“Where the hell am I?”
Pause.
The cougar lowers her head to look at her hands. She taps her fingers together. One by one. Tap. Tap. Tap. Smiling so big.
“I said where the hell am I, Lady?”
“Ya know I was just eight years old when I had my first job, Michael?”
“What?”
“It was a paper route. I got it the summer before I started third grade and made fifteen dollars a week doing it. Now that doesn’t sound like a lot but when you’re
eight years old, it’s on par with being a millionaire as an adult. I was the Rosalie Mera of my neighborhood. Self-made. While all the girls in my age group were playing
dress-up dinner party with each other, I was working. I ran a lemonade stand as well. I also sold ice cream treats. Just eight weeks after I started working I had
accumulated an enormous amount of capital. I was able to completely control both the local lemonade and ice cream markets. I bought the best quality stuff at
wholesale value and sold it for a lower price than anyone else could. Hell, I put the ice cream truck completely out of business in my neighborhood. It was fabulous.
Even the community newspaper ran a front page story on me. But my incredible success also came with it’s pitfalls, Michael. Because I had money and good product,
some the girls in the neighborhood wanted me to give them loans for their stupid little dress up toys. A lot of kids on the block wanted me to spot them product. Fat
girls and fat boys constantly bombarded me with me requests for free snacks to satisfy they’re disgusting sweeteeth and eventually, I gave in. I displayed my first ever
sign of weakness. I began to spot people product and it got really out of control. At one point, I had taken on almost fifty dollars worth of their debt and when it
came time to collect, all of them seemed suddenly unavailable. Nowhere to be found. Their mom and dads answering the door to their houses and telling me that their
children were sick in bed. It infuriated me. Something had to be done. An example had to be set. So I set my sights on Martha Hoy, this fat disgusting brat of a kid
who wasted away in her family’s backyard day after day playing inane children’s games like Dress-up wedding party and Barbie playhouse. I planned it out perfectly one
afternoon. When her and three of her best friends were in the middle of a tea party. I rushed at them and kicked over the table. I stomped on all of their bullshit toy
accessories and broke everything they had, down to the tiniest pieces. I meant business. That was my message. If you didn’t pay up, your asshole toys were not going
to be safe in my neighborhood. And ya know what…it worked. Everyone paid up in a matter of days. It was exhilarating. Being the bad ass. I mean, I would’ve made a
hell of drug dealer, Michael. But I went a different route. I entered an even more cutthroat world. The corporate world where I have excelled beyond my wildest
imagination.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
Laughter. The cougar starts laughing. Laughter in the shadows. I can’t see anyone other than her but I can hear them.
All of them.
“Who are you?” I snort again.
“I represent a client whom you owe money too.”
As defiantly as I can, I say, “I don’t owe money to no one. You got the wrong guy. I don’t owe anyone anything.”
The cougar laughs again. She looks down at her hands and sighs. “You don’t owe money to anyone, huh?”
“No.”
“That’s good,” she snorts. “Let’s play a little game. I say a name and you nod your head Yes if you know them or shake your head No if you think you don’t.”
“Let’s play.”
“The Robert Reynolds Corporation.”
And before she even finished the life felt like it was vacuumed right out of my body.
The Robert Reynolds Corporation.
The hundred thousand dollar scholarship.
The contract.
“From the look of your reaction, Michael Tomalis, it looks as if you know exactly who you owe money to.”
I was twenty years old when I decided it was time for me to leave Nebraska. I was sick of working as a bullshit roofer. Sick of living at home still. Sick of living in
Nebraska. I knew I was capable of much better things. I had a desire to be somebody. A person who dictates the culture instead of plays within it’s rules. It wasn’t
fame or money that necessarily drove that desire as much as it was the chance to get people off to my opinion on how to live or my idea of how to cure the ills of our
society. It really was. And I knew if I didn’t leave at that point, then I probably would never leave so I began to brainstorm ways to get me out of the place of my
birth and decided that getting into filmmaking would be the best way to do that.
And the cougar says, “The one thing that’s held true during the entire duration of me doing this job is that when finally confronted with the obvious fact that they are
in debt a fairly large amount of money to one of my clients, there seems to be sudden memory loss. They have no idea what I’m talking about. I always have the
wrong person or the wrong info. Somewhere along the line, they’re had to have been a misunderstanding. Only the thing is, Michael, it’s all about the body language
and the reaction of that individual who I’m confronting that completely negates any chance that I may have fucked up. The fact is, Michael I just don’t fuck up.”
The next step after deciding on getting into film was to find a school. I researched for about a week and decided to settle on a tiny art school in San Francisco. It
seemed to have a great reputation and obviously the location was perfect. It seemed perfect anyway. Only problem was it was expensive as hell. Eight grand a
semester. No way could I afford that so I had to find another way to get the money. Again I researched. I looked into every method of payment but nothing was
coming together. I kept hitting my head against the wall of financial doom until I came across an ad for a scholarship program for screenwriters and producers only. The
whole thing seemed to good to be true. The ad promised a scholarship of a hundred grand but only a handful of applicants would be granted the money. It was like a
competition. To apply, I had to write a one thousand word essay about the positive aspects of product placement in film and television and I had only two weeks to
complete it. Needless to say, I got right to work.
And the cougar says, “You see Michael, the fact is that when I said the words Robert Reynolds Corporation your body went limp, your face turned snow white and
your jaw dropped. You didn’t even have to confirm my question with a nod or a shake of the head, your guilty reaction gave you up.”
The first thing I did was compile a list of films where some of the main characters and plot points are based on product placement. ''The Saint'' with Val Kilmer and the
Volvo car. ''Days of Thunder'' and the Mellow Yellow car. ''Desperado ''featuring Mexico. Even that movie ''Bye, Bye Love ''and how McDonald’s acted as a main
character. The thesis of the essay centered around the economic value of massive product placement or P.P. as they use in the industry. I aggressively argued that
from the studios end, with their financial outlook becoming increasingly dire, it was an absolute win-win because not only could the studio avoid over paying an actor by
replacing him or her with a product, but they would already turn a profit by having the company pay them to insert their featured product into the script as many
times as it was possible. And from the company’s point of view, it was win-win because their product would be all over the screen. They wouldn’t have to pay extra to
advertise because the studios would be doing that for them. Overall, the only losers would be the audience, but, I argued, audiences tend to forget rather quickly and
by the time of the sequel, people would be more than happy to give it another shot. It was the best thing I’ve ever done. I nailed it. Then I sent it in.
And the cougar says, “One of things that makes me the best at what I do besides collecting is my ability to look past the obvious and really get into the heart of the
situation, Michael. To not just get the money back and walk away but to analyze all the angles and come up with a potential solution other than simply making your life
a living hell. To maybe present an alternative solution where the two parties can help each other.”
A whole month went by and I hadn’t heard a word about the scholarship. I emailed the sponsors three times and heard nothing. It was becoming clear that none of
this was gonna happen and then came August first. Maybe the best day of my life. The day that changed my life forever. Early that morning I received a phone call
informing me that I was one of the five winners of the scholarship and the sponsors flew me out to their office headquarters in Washington D.C. for a private signing
ceremony with the other four winners. I was chauffeured around the capital in a Limo. Wined and dined at all the best bars and restaurants in D.C. I was given a
nightly stipend of two hundred dollars. Even girls visited my room in the wee hours of the morning. Easily the best time of my life. And on the last night, strapped in a
designer tux, I ate dinner at the mansion of a Robert Reynolds V.P. and halfway through the six course meal, I was slid the signing papers for the scholarship by the V.
P. himself who told me, before I could scribble anything, “Michael, it’s very important that you fully understand what will be required of you by this scholarship before
you sign it. Corporations,” he continued, “Hell, business’s in general have been taking an especially serious and very irresponsible P.R. beating over the last few years,
ever since WorldCom and Enron, and I’ve had enough of it. It’s ridiculous. All these goodie too-shoe non-profits running around, trying to scare people on the backs of
the taxpayers by claiming they’ve got the public’s best interest in mind. Bullshit! They’ve got an agenda of control. They want to take away the freedom of consumer
choice and replace it with a nanny state! All these wacko do gooders running all over the place screaming venomous crap from a taxpayer purchased podium and it’s a
goddamn sham, son! This is a modern tragedy. You don’t even want to know what kind of money and time we waste each year tied up in pointless litigation. Sue me?
Bullshit. I am the one bringing employment to people. My products satisfy people. If they think my product may harm them, they have every single right to choose not
to consume it. But choice isn’t good enough for these people. They want us banned from everywhere. All these lawsuits. Our own advertising budget being used to
defame ourselves. It’s un-American my dear boy, because in America, the corporations are sovereign!”
And the cougar says, “The difference between me and the other proud men and women who do this very gratifying line of work, the reason my phone rings more
often and always for the most important clients is because of my ability to think outside of the box. To tinker with the details and come up with other ways of working
the problem out that may be beneficial to everyone. Now that’s not to say that I won’t use excessive force because I will and I have. It’s just that below the glossy
surface of truth are all these other ways of deploying creativity which makes me a fucking God in this field.”
With the scholarship papers right there and a pen in my hand, the V.P. roared on. He went, “But I’ve come up with a new way to fight back, Michael. This is where
you come into the equation. I’ve decided to fight back through the various mediums of art. Litigation can work, but well, it’s kind of like Ringo Starr. Very adequate
and useful when it needed to be but as of now, too irrelevant to ever be featured in the big picture again. Just right now,” he bragged. “Right now, we have over
thirty men and women under the age of twenty-five studying in various mediums in art schools and colleges around the world with scholarships provided by this
company. Young men and women just like you, Michael. With one goal in mind. To win back the public support of the products we represent by enhancing their
stature favorably in the public’s mind. We’re changing the story of product, Michael. So what signing this scholarship means is that you will have four years to graduate
from school. Exactly one year after the day you accept your degree, you will be required to write and turn in two screenplays a year for the first four years of your post-
graduation life with each screenplay being simply a massive microphone and stage for our products. Failure to do any of this will result in the immediate re-payment of
the money plus interest at fifteen percent and a promise by me personally to blackball you at every step in your life. Not only that, but your parent’s will also be
required to pay back fifty percent of you sum on top of your payments and by the looks of things, Mr. Tomalis. Your parent’s cannot afford that at all.” He paused
briefly. Then continued, “But absolute compliance with this scholarship means that you’ll never have to pay a dime back to us and keep all the money you get from
each script plus a five figure bonus from us. This is our proposal, Michael. Sign when you’re ready.”
I didn’t even hesitate.
My name was on that paper before he could even swallow a drink of scotch. And two weeks later, I was on my way to San Francisco.
And the cougar says, “So this is where we find ourselves, Michael. You and me, almost two years after you graduated.”
Struggling to square myself on the chair, I snap, “I’ve written shit. I have. I’ve been writing scripts and turning them in! I turned in two last year. It’s not my fault that
nobody wanted to make them. Not my fault!”
“Oh, please Mr. Tomalis. Don’t even try to justify those two pieces of trash you turned in to the Reynolds people as anything other than what I just called them.
Trash. Who did you really think you were fooling by turning in a script about a super hero dog made out of Pepsi cans and another about an orphan girl who thinks she’
s the illegitimate child of Grimace and falls in love with a Nutty Bar? That’s not what anyone wanted. Those were not even close to meeting the requirements that you
agreed to yourself when you signed the scholarship papers. Are you fucking kidding me? The illegitimate child of Grimace! What were you thinking when you decided
to write and turn that in? Falling in love with a Nutty Bar? That was not part of your agreement.”
`“I did what was asked of me.”
“No you did not. You were just writing to scheme your way out of paying the money back and it didn’t work. It didn’t and so here we are.”
“So send me the fucking bill. Don’t stalk my ass around and kidnap me. You can’t fucking kidnap somebody for defaulting on a loan.”
“It should me apparent by now, Mr. Tomalis that I can do whatever I want.”
“What the fuck, lady? I’m serious. You kidnapped me! What the hell is this? Seriously.” My voice is shaking. Spit flying from mouth. “Why did you kidnap me?”
The cougar rubs her hands together slowly. She rolls her head around her neck then re-crosses her legs and says, “I normally don’t operate like this for such a lower
tier case but this is a special circumstance, Michael. You are in a very unique position and you should be thankful that I was the one called for this case.”
“Thankful? I got tackled into a van and knocked out and now I’m tied to a chair god knows where, so excuse me if I don’t feel very thankful right now.”
“Have you heard a word I’ve said to so far. I mean, really listened to what I’ve been telling you. Michael, you hold the keys to this situation, I’m just here to guide you
to the right choice.”
“What?”
“I’m here to make you a proposition, Michael Tomalis.”
“What kind of proposition?”
“A highly sensitive one. The reason why I kidnapped you.”
“Oh…kay.”
“Right when I read your file, one thing immediately jumped out at me. I mean, it jumped off the page, Michael. You’ve been the camera man on all of Ceaser Estrada’s
campaign commercials.”
“So?”
“You got the job because you were a close friend with Stephanie Wilson. She was your lighting teacher in college.”
“Right.”
“And Stephanie Wilson’s domestic partner is Vira Holmes.”
“I know.”
“And Vira Holmes was a high ranking advisor to the Estrada campaign who resigned abruptly last week.”
“Yeah. So what? I don’t know where this is going.”
“Fuck that immigrant commie,” the cougar snaps. “I need you to help me, us, take down Ceaser Estrada, Michael.”
“Huh?”
The man is a threat to this city and this country and you’ve been actively pushing his unethical ideas onto the people of this city. You’ve been a key cog in his anti-
American rhetoric for goddsakes. This man wants to see my way of life destroyed and I will not stand by and let him do to that to me, my clients, and the citizens of
this city.”
“Are you fucking nuts?”
“Hardly,” the cougar grins. “He’s nuts. Just look at the first thing he’s proposing to do if he’s elected. He’s proposing a ban on all corporate advertising within one mile
of any school located in the city. He wants to kick our soda machines and our lunch counters off of school grounds. He wants to tax me and my clients over a hundred
percent of what they’ve been paying to pay for obesity programs and provide services to terminally ill people whose diseases supposedly stem from the root of our fine
products and then he wants us to fund billboards and commercials attacking ourselves and he’s got the votes on the board of supervisors to get that death sentence
passed. It’s a downright sham. My clients do not force feed these people their products. These slobs make those choices for themselves. They choose to consume
what they consume. Nobody else plays a role.” Pause. “For months, I’ve been watching this unfold, hoping I wouldn’t have to get that personally involved in this but
Gayle Webber has failed me. Failed the citizens of San Francisco. She’s made mistake after mistake and today they go ahead and release that Arab terrorist wannabe,
the only suspect they had in custody from the explosions and he turns out to be a fucking volunteer for her campaign. Unbelievable. She’s going to get killed in this
election and this anti-American, anti-business freak is going to get elected unless somebody does something.”
“What the hell do you think I can do.”
“Here’s what I’m proposing, Michael. I’m gonna use you to get the dirt on that pig. Our people have heard rumors about demons in Estrada’s closet. Cocaine use.
Orgies with Transvestites. Even oral sex with a minor over six years ago. But we haven’t been able to get anyone close enough to him to collect any evidence until
now.”
My brain feels numb. Everything keeps getting worse. “And how am I supposed to that if nobody else has already? All’s I did was shoot the damn videos.”
“And attend private Estrada parties at his campaign headquarters. We have pictures of you talking and smoking cigarettes outside with three of his handlers, Michael.
We need you to track Estrada’s every move. Get information on his whereabouts and come back to us with hard evidence. Shake the trees and see what falls out of
them, Michael.”
“You’re asking me to do the impossible.”
Recrossing her legs again, the cougar smiles and says, “No, we’re just asking you to pay us back. You do this for us and your debt vanishes. Poof. Like that. It’s gone.
Your parent’s will be fine. You’ll be able to just continue on with your un-important, failing life. But if you don’t, if you say no, if you don’t come through with anything
good for us to use, your life will be a financial and professional hell for the foreseeable future and your mom and dad will lose everything. Everything. All that they’ve
helped you with will be for naught. Every time they helped you with rent. Every time they’ve stuffed a hundred dollars into your account. Or sent you money for food.
All of it just to get fucked back over by you.”
Pause.
“So what do you say?”
“What can I say? I mean, Jesus Christ. I don’t know how I’ll do it but I will do it.”
“Good answer.”
“How long do I have?”
“Ten days.”
“And once I’ve gotten something, how do I get a hold of you?”
“You hang a red banner on the outside of your apartment window. After that, we’ll get a hold of you. Are we clear?”
I nod.
“And one more thing, Michael.”
“What’s that?”
“I often find that it’s people whose backs are pushed against the wall. Desperate people. People who need to make things happen out of the fear from the
consequences of not making them happen that usually get the job done splendidly and professionally. Do you understand what I’m saying, Michael?”
“I think so.”
“Good. Now get this asshole out of my face!”
Two hands from behind me again. Black hood pulled over my face. Something cracks me in the skull and I begin to slip away.
I open my eyes. Head throbbing. Body sore. Face feels broken.
I get to my feet. I’m all the way in DogPatch. On like third and 22<sup>nd</sup> second streets. Silence all around me. I turn around and catch a glimpse of myself in
this large pane of glass. There’s dried blood on my face. Scratches on my chin. My hair is balled up into a clump on the top. A huge gash on my forehead.
I want to go home. I pull out phone out and check the time. Two in the morning. I have twenty dollars on me, barely enough to even get there.
I call a cab.
My shitty future hanging in the balance.
The future of this city in my grasp.
I’ve always wanted to dictate what people think about and how they live their lives and I guess this is my big chance.
Fucking over somebody just to get ahead.
This is the true American way.
With my eyes drifting to the sidewalk, my head pounding so hard, I notice these two stencils on the ground that say:
Captain Hipster: I don’t wear tight red flannel to stay warm.
Captain Hipster: My sweater is cooler than yours.Shaking my head, I turn my gaze toward the downtown lights of the city. Even out here, the residue of my friends still
scar these city blocks.
And I’m scared as hell. My life is a whole big nothing. Nobody knows who I am. I haven’t done anything. I’m so far in debt. I’ve never gotten ahead. And girl’s just won’
t date me.
This all sucks real bad.
Up ahead of me, I see a Taxi approaching and walk to the corner and flag it down, hoping to god that it’s a smoking cab.
| ©2007-2011 Jason Myers. All rights reserved. |
