I have never been inside of a police interrogation room before. Two hours ago, that’s when all things fucked up hit their climax. That old saying about how there’s a
first time for everything, well Jesus Christ, fucking A, there have been quite a few firsts in my life lately.
The interrogation room I’m sitting in isn’t all that different than the ones I used to see in those cop shows on TV. You got your hard fluorescent lights beaming down
directly onto the isolated table in the center of the room. You got your dark shadows being cast in the corners. You got your standard double sided mirror with
concerned detectives and a politically ambitious D.A. standing on the other side of it. You got your scurvy, tattooed, strung out looking suspect plopped on a tiny chair
at the table trying to look tough and mean. About the only thing that’s missing is your rouge, handsome male detective with a troubled past that drives him to do this
kind of work, and his standard pretty, yet hardcore female partner who doesn’t take nobody’s shit.
Instead of that power couple, I got sitting across from me, Detective Johnson. This fat bald dude with a shiny scalp stuffed in a cheap gray suit. And his skinny boy
partner, Wilson, with Billy Schroeder boy looks, wearing an impressive black suit.
The room smells like pine solve and cheap plastic.
The detectives smell like cheap cologne and roast beef sandwiches.
And I gotta say I’m really fucking nervous.
I’m relieved.
But I’m nervous.
I’ve been wanting to tell my story for awhile now. I’ve been dying to get this off of my chest.
Pushing a tape recorder into the middle of table, Detective Johnson stares me down and asks, “Okay, Ronnie. Are you ready?”
“Yes.” My voice trembles.
“Good,” Johnson says.
Two hours ago I was sitting in my luxury, two bedroom apartment on the top of Nob Hill. I was surrounded by fifteen shoeboxes full of cash. I was preparing myself to
get out of the huge mess I’d made of my life and end my huge operation.
I was sitting in front of my computer with my jeans around my ankles. My black ribbed underwear pulled down to my thighs. I had one hand fondling my soft penis
while the other hand fondled my computer mouse as I sifted through one site of free transsexual porn after another.
By the way, I blame all of the above on way too much blow. I had been up for two straight days hanging out at the Brown Jug and at my old apartment with Lord and
in this dude’s warehouse basement in SOMA. I was out of control. It had been one of those, I’m going out for a drink on Tuesday, things. But I didn’t get home until
Thursday. I’d spent three hundred dollars. And finally, I decided to call it quits and stumbled onto Mission Street and flagged down a cab which took me to my home
sweet home.
Damn, I was so fucking horny. Horny enough to know that just some simple guy on girl shit wasn’t going to do the job, if that job was an orgasm that took enough
out of me to get me to bed. So like I normally did when I stayed up for this long, I amped up the ammie and typed in those three magical search words: Free TS
Videos. And just like that, I was taking a virtual tour of a world full of chicks with dicks, trying to find just the right video, the perfect one, the one where the pretty
little Latina manboy gets gangbanged by a room full of men.
Right as I had found the closest thing to that very description, there was a loud knock on my apartment door.
I ignored it.
I figured it was a neighbor looking to borrow something from me.
I went back to video viewing.
And there was another, even louder knock.
Once again, I ignored it and began to get things in their proper order for me to blow my load: One paper towel sheet to catch the flying wad of come. Another paper
towel sheet to wipe myself down. And another sheet to wipe my hands clean with.
Bust just as I was finishing with that:
BOOM!
BANG!
BOOM!
My apartment door was kicked open and in rushed twelve S.W.A.T. team officers in masks with semi-automatic guns pointed at me, yelling for my ass to get on the
floor and put my hands above my head and to shut the fuck up.
All of which I did while the video of the Transexual Gangbang played at full volume.
How fucking embarrassing!
You think about the most embarrassing moments that could ever happen in human history and this wouldn’t even make the list because you’d never think something
like this could even happen.
But it did.
To me.
I was placed in handcuffs.
Read my rights.
A shirt was thrown over my head.
And I was thrown into the back of a police van and brought to the downtown police station.
Leaning toward the center of the table, fondling the recorder, Johnson goes, “When I hit the record button I need you to state your name, date of birth, and place
of birth.”
“Got it.”
Johnson turns to Wilson and nods at him. Swinging his eyes back to me, he goes, “Let’s do this.”
I clear my throat.
He hits the record button.
“My name is Ronald Manson Jr. but people call me Ronnie. I was born on February 14th, 1984 in Columbia, Missouri.”
“Do know why you’re sitting here today, Ronnie?” Detective Johnson asks.
“Of course I do.”
“Why?”
“Because of my dealings with some people. Some sick, sick people. Very sick fucking people.”
“Please elaborate, Ronnie?”
“The whole thing?”
“Obviously,” Detective Wilson snorts.
“Cause, man. I’m ready to spill my guts. I’ve been living with this for too long.”
“Okay, Ronnie,” Detective Johnson says. “Just start from the beginning. Tell us your story.”
I take a deep breath.
And then I begin.
“This whole damn operation, all of this fucked up shit, began less than a year ago. At the time, I was living with this drug dealer, Lord who was pretty big time. Like
top one or two dealers within that whole Mission, Haight Street, black hair, tight jeans, fixed gear bike, bad sweater, hipster scene. We were living in this scummy
apartment right on the edge of the Tenderloin on Geary and Polk streets. The place was a total shithole. We rarely cleaned it because we were always too damn busy
recovering from party binges and shit. Dozens of trashbags stacked a mile high in the hallway was the norm. As were the hovering army’s of fruitflies in the kitchen. It
was a real interesting time in my life at that point. I’d recently graduated from the Academy Institute with a BA in Fine Art. I was on the move in the art scene.
Nobody was on my tip. Nobody was doing what I was doing. I was getting offered all these gallery shows all over SF and Oakland. I was making the scene. I was the
fucking scene. It’s how I met Lord actually. He was just my regular dealer at first, until we became good friends in that weird kinda way that a drug dealer can become
your good friend…Basically, you help pay his rent each month and he keeps you jacked up. He’s ready to spot you whatever you need, even if you don’t have the
funds on you at that very moment. He keeps you too high to think about the bad shit. It was cool though, like I said, he was big in the scene and was always talking
me up around those hipster circles, especially after I signed with a fine art agent. I thought I was about ready to blow the fuck up nationally, ya know. I was cocky.
Brash. There was never a minute when I wasn’t talking about myself or lassoing the conversation back to me. About the only problem I was having at that point was
that I wasn’t really getting laid that much by all these babes with black hair and tattoos and crazy boots that I would see at all the party’s I went to with Lord. The girls
I was hooking up with were okay, but I wanted better, and it was disheartening at times, but at least I still had my art. I was going places. But then things slowed
down for a real long minute. My production fell off. My drug habit took over my life and I just didn’t really give a fuck anymore. My shows became fewer and farther in
between. So when my student loans began to kick in, I had to get a job and finally landed one as the assistant manager of the Merrytime Wax Museum. That’s when I
moved in with Lord. But I was still frustrated. I had put in a ton of work to make myself, ya know, ‘San Francisco cool’.”
“San Francisco cool?” Johnson asks.
“Yeah. San Francisco cool.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
And I go, “San Francisco cool. It’s like a whole nother beast. See, what you have to understand is that I grew up in fucking Missouri. It was so not a place for the
trendy and the hip. Not at all. If you were one of the cool, hipper kids back when I was in high school, you were like just getting into Nirvana and the Smashing
Pumpkins about ’99, 2000, right after you realized what should’ve been completely obvious in the first place, that bands like Limb Bizkit, Korn, Staind, Papa Roach,
Muddle of Pudd, and Nickelback were like the death of music. Just a bunch of fat fucking tards making music for fat dudes with acne who wrestled their kid sisters on
trampolines and wore ICP shirts. They made music for bro’s with barbwire tattoos. Strippers with like six kids. And trailer trash hoes with yellow teeth and Eminem
Posters over their beds. But for a minute, kids got fooled into thinking the shit was kinda alright. The cool kids in Missouri thought it was sorta rad. They got all into
Godsmack and Kid Rock for a second. And they really wanted to check out the third Woodstock. Other cool kids shopped at the mall and bought shit from American
Eagle like cargo pants and “alternative” looking shirts that said shit like: Haight Ashbury 1969 on them. Or shirts with faded jersey numbers on them. A lot of the bro’s
even spiked their hair and got eyebrow rings, and a ton of them got Superman and tigers and weird tribal shit tattooed on their shoulder blades and pecks while the
girls got birth signs inked on their lower backs and butterfly’s on their big toes. This is what being Missouri cool was all about, ya know. It was all pretty Midwest. Really.
I mean take me personally for example. My own transformation. My mom and dad divorced when I was just six years old. We were living in Sioux Falls, South Dakota at
the time. That’s when my mom got remarried to this guy Morris who lived on a sixty acre hog farm with a tree nursery right off of a dirt road near Rochester,
Minnesota which is where we relocated during a very warm summer. Me and my four sisters.”
Pause.
I take a huge drink of water from the glass sitting in front of me and I say, “It was a tough adjustment at first. Being stuck out in farmland with pretty much no way of
getting anywhere. Not having anyone to hang out with except my sisters, all of whom were quite a bit older than me. Having to deal with the consistent aura of hog
manure in the air. It was very trying at times. But I did finally get used to it and began to make the best of the situation. I sent myself out on assignments. I carved
out all these adventures for my myself. Many an afternoon was spent exploring the wild lands that surrounded me. I often hiked through the seemingly endless array of
fields and prairies on my stepfather’s land with the boldness of a Spanish explorer. I discovered waterways that were “rivers” and small mounds of dirt that were
“mountains” and I claimed them as my own and gave them names like “Mt. Missouri” and “Pilgrims River.” Often, my family could find me stalking birds of prey from tree
to tree in the nursery, which to me, was a “jungle”, where I carved spears from sticks and climbed up tree trunks, jumping from one branch to the next like the weird
kid in the Jungle Book. In the barn where the farm machinery or “monsters” slept, I designed clubhouses and built strategic forts that served as watchtowers where
rounds rocks or “ammunition” were stored under the cover of leaves and pieces of sheet metal. But inevitably, there would emerge on the horizon, the dreary,
yawning days of thunderstorms and a sky that could turn pitch black by noon, full of menacing, gargantuan lighting bolts that could en-earth the man made roads and
destroy crops by the acres. And it was on those days that I was privy to another side of adolescent spontaneity. A much different side of life. On those days, stuck
inside the giant three story brown house with my sister’s, I would see first hand how the other sex acted and at times, become an integral part of their own
imaginative experiments. Numerous times you could find me seated on a chair in front of a large vanity mirror or plopped on a stool in the bathroom getting done up
like a doll. Like a little Princess. There I was, my father’s only son, Daddy’s future NFL star, the big Spanish conqueror, sitting passively with my hands folded in my lap
and my head moving just slightly up then down while my sister’s took turns coloring my cheeks with a wide array of blush. Or fine-tuning my eyes with mascara and the
many shades of eye-liner in their possession. That was me, ‘the man of the family’ with hair pins and bows and little butterfly clips all over my long, red hair, leaning back
against the bathroom counters with my chin tilted toward the ceiling, pouting my lips, while my sisters slid shiny tubes of lipstick back and forth on them.
“On other dreary days, you might’ve found me sitting on one of the orange sofas in the huge, gray carpeted living room with white colored walls, watching as my sister’
s threw their very own dance parties and bopped around the wide open space to the glaring sounds of the Bangles and Cindy Lauper and of course, Madonna, all of
which roared through the large, RCA stereo in the corner of the room. Sometimes, when I was also “digging” the groovy mood of the house, I would join in the wild
fun and immerse myself in dance, shaking my own ass to the crazy sounds of Tiffany and Whitney Houston…Much later on, at the beginning of my adult days, I would
openly comment on this era of my life, saying, ‘It’s a huge fucking surprise I didn’t grow up to be a big, giant faggot.’”
“Okay, Ronnie, where the fuck is this going? We thought you wanted to get all of this off your chest,” Detective Johnson says.
“I do. I really do, guys. And I’m getting there.”
“Getting where?” Wilson demands to know, slamming his right fist against the table.
“I’m trying to give you guys all the necessary information about how I started all of this and became mixed up with these sick people!”
“Wait,” Johnson says. “You started all of it?”
“Yes,” I groan, wiping my forehead with the back of my hand. “It’s all my doing.”
“Everything? The whole operation.” Johnson glares.
“The whole thing,” I say.
Wilson waves a finger in front of my face and growls, “So tell us about it you dirty punk.”
“I’m getting there,” I protest.
“Not fast enough, asshole!”
“What do you guys want?” I ask.
“The sped up version,” Johnson replies calmly. “Take us through everything, but do it a little faster, Ronnie.”
I sigh and wipe some more sweat away. “Fine.”
And Johnson goes, “Alright, now let’s get down to the real nitty gritty.”
So I say, “The elementary days.”
I say, “Things in grades k-5 pretty much started out with a bang. I enrolled in Kindergarten and immediately I knew that I was smarter and better than most of the
kids there. Not only was I further advanced in reading and math, but I was also much further along in my complete admiration and understanding and desire for the
opposite sex. Instead of playing Coodies Tag and shying away from the girls when they were acknowledging me like some of the other boys did, I actively pursued my
fascination of the hot ones and made my intentions quite clear. Many recess’s of mine were spent that year not just on the fifteen yard patch of green grass playing
touch football with the boys, but also standing under the monkey bars where I would gaze up the dresses of girls or stand near the swing set and stare gleefully as
their legs flapped open in the air and their skirts blew toward the sky. But trouble, if you can really call it that now, soon followed. It came in the form of the hottest
girl in the grade, Cyndi Johansson, who knew what I was up to and purposely moved slowly across those rusted monkey bars, looking down at me with a smirk as she
swung from one bar to the next. So brimming with a sense of confidence one day, I told her to follow me into the tunnel of tractor tires that occupied the north end
of the playground, and when we were tucked away into the middle of the darkness, I grabbed onto her hair and shoved my lips against hers and forced my tongue
down her throat, thinking that this is what she wanted me to do. I mean, what did she really expect when she followed me into the tire tunnel during the last recess
of the school day? But apparently it wasn’t what she wanted, and not only did she smack me across the face, but she told on me, and two days later, my mom was
unhappily summoned into the principals office where I nervously sat, my hands twitching in my lap, and was reprimanded quite harshly with a two week out of school
suspension, something which had never been handed out before. And my only defense to the punishment: This is eighties for crissakes. Isn’t everyone having good
time?”
Bursting into laughter, Johnson howls, “What in the hell are you talking about, Ronnie?”
“My life, man.”
“Well the two of us don’t wanna hear this shit. The only things we need know about your life is how you got to this city, what led you to weave this disgusting web
of thugs together, how it worked and who the hell was involved.”
And I’m like, “Thugs?”
I’m like, “I’d hardly call any of my associates thugs. I mean, there were times when a couple of them got rough while doing their thing, which made my job much
harder at times. But I think labeling everyone I’ve been working with as a thug is a little over the top.”
Jumping out of his chair, Wilson shuts the tape off and produces a plunger. He shakes it in front of my face, his face beet red, spit dropping from his mouth as he goes,
“Just get into the story you little fucking sleazeball!”
“Okay, okay,” I say, throwing my arms up. “Jesus Christ, Johnson. Hold your partner back.”
“Marc, back off,” Johnson says. “Put that goddamn plunger away and sit down.”
Veins in his forehead bulging, Wilson slowly takes a few steps back and sits down in his chair.
And I say, “Alright, guys. The San Francisco days. I understand.” I take another drink of water. “This whole thing. My whole idea. It wasn’t even my own original
thought. The idea was sorta transplanted into my head one night. Jesus Christ. I even remember the goddamn date.”
“When was it?” Johnson asks.
“January third.”
“What happened on January third, Ronnie?”
“Like I told you guys earlier, I was living with this dealer. He wasn’t just doing this gram, half gram shit, he was re-uping a bunch of other dealers in the city with ounces
of the white bitch at a time. That’s when things really started. That night. I remember it was raining really hard out. I’d been at work all day at the wax museum. Man,
it was a crappy job at that point. Dealing with motherfucking tourists coming to the city and paying big bucks to have their pictures taken next to these goddamn wax
statues of Christina Aguillera and Heath Ledger. It seemed so nuts to me at the time. The concept of hanging with the fake stars. I mean, the only time I ever
enjoyed anything that had to do with a wax museum was when I was a kid and saw that the Scooby-Doo Movie episode where the gang gets stuck for awhile in that
Wax Museum. Anyway, I got back to that shithole apartment that night and I was drenched and tired and pretty irritable. That pad stressed me out so much. Even
more so at that moment ‘cause I was really having a tough time coming to grips with the way things had been shaping up. My agent dropped me after I’d made a
series of early morning calls to his office harassing him about this feature in Interview magazine he was trying to get me that never materialized. I was having a tough
time getting shows because I’d pissed a lot off people of with my holier than thou attitude and motherfuckers were taking it out on me. Plus, this deal for this graphic
novel I’d illustrated had fallen through and the kid who’d written the story got so distraught over it that he set the fucking thing on fire. On top of all that, the
student loans were killing me. I was balls deep in credit card debt. And I had a three to four gram a week coke habit. You take all that and add it to the fact that I
hadn’t been laid in seven months and I was a goddamn miserable bastard. Pissed off and moody all day. I would sit in my room at night all by myself and try to flush out
whatever art was in my system but nothing was coming of any of it. Just a bunch of half-assed projects piled into a corner of my room. It was so bad. I was having
daily thoughts of suicide. About the only thing that made me feel any good was sitting in my bedroom by myself, tweaking on a baggie of coke, getting worked up
about how I was gonna be back on top soon, and checking my goddamn MySpace page every five minutes. I couldn’t even socialize with anyone outside of work or
the Internet anymore. My skin was breaking out. I was out of shape. I had these red spots all over my chest and my back. This was where I found my self the night of
January third, guys. That night, my whole plan was just to get home, eat the chicken noodle soup I’d stopped and picked up on the way, jump into bed, and watch
the Aviator. I wanted to wake up all early the next day and start this painting I’d been working on in my head for the past week. I was gonna start over. Go back to
scratch. Work my way back to the top. But as soon as I walked through the door that night, I was immediately bombarded by Lord and some of his friends. See, to
get to my bedroom, I had to walk by Lord’s room. And that night, his door was open and there were six people inside of it getting fucked up. This guy, Ryan who was
a dealer himself and re-upped through Lord. These three girls I’d never seen before. And this other dude I didn’t know, who was wearing this old school looking
Detroit Tigers jacket and had his jeans rolled to his ankles. The music was up so loud. I think it was Priestess. And as I walked past Lord’s doorway, I was practically
jumped by him. He threw his arms around my neck and started begging me to come into his room and party with everyone. I mean, he begged and he begged and he
begged. I tried telling him that I wasn’t into it. That I felt like total crap. Like Asia Carrera’s lower half after a gnarly double penetration scene. But man, Lord can be so
unrelenting. He always had just enough free coke and babes around him. I mean, do you guys know how fucking hard it is to say no to hot chicks and free cocaine?
How hard it is to turn your back on having one of the top dealers in the city talking you up like you’re the greatest thing since the Mike Patton talking shit about
Wolfmother video on YouTube. It’s pretty much impossible, guys. I put up a weaker fight than a chubby white girl in a room full of black dudes and a video camera.
The final knockout coming when Lord told me, ‘Dude, I got this amazing new shit. My guy, he told me that he’s had three people almost O.D. on just a coupla lines.’
He said that, ‘This shit, this shit will get you higher than David Crosby on any given day in the eighties.’ It was hook, line, and sinker, boys. You just don’t turn down
free drugs and a chance to hang with babes in your own place. Even you if you don’t feel up to it or feel uncomfortable and out of place. Which I totally did. I had
been for months.
“So I dropped off my backpack and the soup in my room and entered the dark lair of Lord’s party den. Complete with a bunch of drug addicts and a fat brown cat
named Terrance. I took a seat on the edge of his bed, right next to his turtle tank. His room was thrashed like always. Someone had even ripped the corner of the
Motley Crue poster he’d traded this kid a gram for. Just like I figured, I felt completely out of place. I was still in my work uniform which was a pair of soggy khakis, a
thin quicksilver belt, and a black button up long sleeve with the Merrytime Wax Museum logo embroidered above my left breast. My shoes and socks had holes in them.
I was wearing dirty underwear that smelled like my swampy ass cheeks. It had been awhile since I’d shaved, so there were these patchy blotches of hair all over my
grill. The back of my neck was this forest of straggly lines of hair. And I had a whitehead on the very tip of my nose. You take all that and start comparing it to these
awesome looking girls. Hair all done up like they were a bunch of models. Wearing amazing outfits. Trust fund bank accounts. And I knew I had no fucking chance. Yet
still, maybe I did. That was my mindset back then. It was all about the possibility of the thing. The possibility that maybe you might somehow find a girl in the city that
was more interested in what the fuck you’ve done than how scurvy and hip you looked and if you knew anything at all about the new Beirut album. I hadn’t found
one yet. And I wasn’t going to that night. Especially in that room with Lord around looking like some Latino, heavy metal James Dean. And that dude, Ryan, with his
long black hair and size two jeans and black jacket and that bandanna tied around his neck. Then there was the other guy, James Morgan, the man who planted the
seed in my head. He’s this international best-selling author. And you shoulda seen this guy chopping it up about how he was changing people’s lives. And how he was
the best post-modern writer alive. And how he was actually the best writer since Antonin Artaud. Jesus Christ! He wouldn’t stop. I mean, sure, I’d read his novel,
PieGrinder. It was pretty awesome. But shit, I always thought it was about what you’re doing now and not what the hell you’ve already done. So yeah, with all those
dudes getting fucked up and having a head start, I was way outta my league. Which had evolved into the norm for me anyhow. Around Lord and all of his friends, I
had really begun to feel insufficient. Very uncool. Not hip enough. That was the big trip about San Francisco. It was like any other city or town. With it’s clichés and
clicks. People still judge you here on the basis of what you wear and how you wear it. They still judge you here on race. And how good your hair looks. And what kind
of music you listen to. And how big you are in whatever scene you’re into. It was like it was for me growing up. Except here, in San Francisco, the clicks were more
diverse and there was more shit to do.
“So after I was introduced to everyone, the girls names being, get this: Luxie Hart, MaryJo Hastings, and Barbie Rulex, Lord dumped out a half gram of the new shit on
a CD case and told me to catch up. That James guy, he handed me a razor blade and while I was cutting the coke up, he was going, ‘Here’s the deal, guys. I’m doing
the most noble thing there is to do with your life. I’m giving people new ideas. New perspectives on shit. I’m sharing new stories with the masses. When people read
my book, their lives become enhanced. I’ve gotten over thirty thousand pieces of fan mail from girls and boys, young and old, telling me, going into explicit detail about
how my international best-selling novel, PieGrinder completely changed their life in some way. Some people quit doing stupid drugs. Some people started doing good
drugs. Kids are writing me all the time about losing their virginity and starting moped gangs. It’s the boss. It really is. That’s what makes some pursuits better than
others. If you’re helping further the lifetime experiences of other people and just not just your own, then you’re cause is better. Plain and simple.’ He went on like
that for maybe twenty more minutes. He was like, ‘Look at it. Lord, you enhance people’s lives. Ryan, you do the same. You help people have a better time and
forget about the bad shit for a few hours when they’re out.’ Then he asked the girls what they did. Luxie: Hair stylist. MaryJo: Bartender at Pops. Barbie: Part-time
student. And James was like, ‘See, Luxie, you make people feel better about themselves when they look in the mirror. MaryJo gets people off at night. And Barbie,
how old are you?’ She told him she was twenty-four. And he was like, ‘You need to start doing something worthwhile like all of us are doing. School’s out, baby.’
Barbie faked laughed and flipped James off and then I polished off the fourth line from the CD case, which constituted the whole fucking half and asked the whole
room for a cigarette. My mind was going crazy. It felt like there was this tiny cocaine alien fisting my chest. That James guy handed me a Parliament Light and asked me
what my name was again. I lit the smoke and told him and then he asked me what I did. But right as I was answering, Lord jumped in and went, ‘Ronnie’s an amazing
artist.’ And James went, ‘Shut-up, Lord. He can answer for himself.’ He asked me again and I stammered, ‘I’m the assistant front desk manager at the Merrytime Wax
Museum.’ I even yanked on the embroidered logo of my soggy jersey and pointed at it. I saw Lord shake his head and give off one of those looks, like, And you wanna
know why you don’t get laid ever. He was always getting on me to talk about my art more and use all the cred I once had to my benefit. But I never felt comfortable
doing that. I could never talk my shit up the way that James Morgan did. I thought the guy was a pretentious asshole. And he was. But he was a pretentious asshole
who got to nail all the girls I could only daydream about nailing.”
Detective Johnson cuts in. He goes, “What’s Lord’s real name, Ronnie?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit,” Wilson snaps. “You really mean to tell us that you lived with a guy for a full year and didn’t know his real name? Come on.”
“I’m serious, guys. I only knew him by Lord. The guy is completely underground. I never heard anyone call him anything else. He never said where he came from. Dude
didn’t even get mail.”
Johnson leans over to Wilson and goes, “We should forward this to Narcotics. Maybe they have something on this guy.”
“Oh, man,” Wilson smiles, his eyes locked right on me. “You better believe we’re following up on this guy. You’re boy is fucked Ronnie.”
I pick up the glass of water and my hands are shaking badly. Both detectives notice this.
I take another drink, finishing it, and say, “Can I get some more water and a cigarette?”
Johnson turns back to me. He says, “Sure, Ronnie.”
He says, “In a few minutes. But right now, why don’t you tell us more. Tell us the rest of your story, Ronnie.”
Pressing my hands on the table to make them quite moving, I go, “No one in the room that night responded to what I’d said. They obviously weren’t interested at all.
And right as I jumping into my follow-up with a bad pop culture joke about Lemmy and a wax blood transfusion, that MaryJo girl, who had the words MansRuin
tattooed across her knuckles, she asked James what the tattoo on the back of his neck said. And he went, ‘It’s Greek. It says, O Tolem Nika. Which means, He Who
Dares Wins.’ And then Luxie, who had Melvins cover art tattooed across her chest and was wearing this Pixies beater, asked Ryan what his band was like. Once again, I
was shut-down. I was twaked out of my brain to the point where I couldn’t even contribute to the conversation. The only thing I was doing was choking down small
sips of warm Tecate, bumming smokes off whomever, and staring into the Turtle Tank. I regretted everything already but I was still high. In my head, there was still a
chance that I could pull one of these babes. Even in my wax museum jersey. Lord told Luxie that he had Ryan’s band, The Fucking Pro-Hairs on his computer and all
the girls were like, ‘Let’s here it! Let’s here it!’ Which was funny. I remember looking over at James Morgan and he looked so irritated at that moment. I don’t think he
liked that Ryan dudes band very much. Cause right when the music changed to The Fucking Pro-Hairs, James immediately started the next round of conversation. It
was all bullshit yabber jabber. It always is on blow. If wine is the truth serum, then cocaine is like a Doctorate in complete B.S. None of it meant shit. But it felt like it
did at the time. That night reminded me of that part in Stand By Me where all the kids are sitting around the campfire rapping about all the nonsense in their lives.
Except instead of all this chatter about Goofy’s sexual orientation, PEZ, and bra stuffing, our little circle jerk had more of this cynical and jaded edge to it. But it still
seemed just as prevalent at the time. Us, barking back and forth at each other. Talking over one another. Talking massive shit. Shit like:
Ryan: Metallica would still be a solid fucking band if Lars had died in the bus accident instead of Cliff Burton.
Barbie: It’s not like I’ve been in school for that totally long.
MaryJo: Everyday I wake up and wish that it was Dave Matthews who died instead of Layne Staley.
Lord: How about Billy Joe Armstrong too.
Luxie: Agreed.
Me: Hmm…Uh…Ugh…
James: So what’s the deal? We’re not talking about me anymore?
Lord: If I see one more hipster pirate walking around the Mission or Haight, somebody’s walking the plank. I swear to god.
Me: Ummm…huh…Hmmm…
James: And what’s with all these dumb babes I see out dressing like they’re going to a Zepplin show and living in a fucking castle.
Ryan: Maybe you should write a book about it.
James: Yeah, dude. Good one.
Luxie: Has anyone heard the new White Stripes album yet?
Ryan: Does anyone care about the White Stripes?
MaryJo: I do. I still think they’re great.
Lord: Jack needs a new drummer.
Barbie: I mean, a lot of people go to college for more than five years.
Me: Ahem…Ummmm…Mmmmm
James: Ya know what, Luxie doll?
Luxie: What?
James: You look a lot like Fergie.
Luxie: I’ve heard that before.
Ryan: Do you piss your pants in public too like that walking IPod promo?
Luxie: You wish I did, man!
MaryJo: Does you Internet work, Lord?
Lord: Why?
MaryJo: I was gonna show you guys this amazing video of this creep freaking people out about a rogue helicopter pilot at this city council meeting.
Ryan: I’ve seen that.
James: No YouTube. Do not even open that Pandora’s box, Lord.
MaryJo: Why?
James: Cause we won’t leave this fucking room for the rest of the night, darling.
Ryan: Try two days.
Lord: James is right. No YouTube or Internet at all right now.
MaryJo: Whatever.
Barbie: Once I get my business degree, I’ll be changing people lives too.
James: What about all these asshole kids walking around the city in bright pink and blue t-shirts. Wearing fucking loafers and purple jeans with holes in the crotch.
Luxie: What about them?
James: I’m so over seeing that shit. Go Back Home! I mean, Christ. The only difference between those assholes and their frat boy cousins is that they wear girly shit
from American Apparel instead of Ecko gear.
Ryan: I totally agree.
Lord: Me too.
Luxie: Plus they have the shittiest taste in music.
MaryJo: Trend hoppers.
Barbie: But some of those boys are damn cute.
Me: …Salad!
“Everyone just stared at me. What the hell was I even doing in there? I didn’t really belong. I never really did. I mean, I could go on for another hour, guys. Easily. But
I won’t. What happened next was that the beer ran out. I’d barely scratched the surface of my only can. All the other kids were getting ancy and wanted to bail real
bad. They were all so wasted. Having so much fun. Cracking jokes. Not a goddamn care in the world. My life was total shit in comparison, man. It took them thirty
minutes to figure out where they actually wanted to go first:. The Hemlock. Fly bar. Lucky 13. The Attic. Phone Booth. Deluxe. El Rio. The Knockout. Whiskey
Thieves. The Transfer. They debated the pros and cons of each bar before finally deciding on The Ambassador on Geary Street. Then they got themselves together.
Me, the odd man out. Again. Always. I stood up and I told them to have a good time and Lord went, ‘You’re not coming, man?’ And I told him, ‘I’m totally broke right
now, dude.’ To which he replied, ‘That sucks. You should get a better job. You’ll have more money to hang that way.’ That wasn’t what I wanted to hear from him
though. Deep down inside, I wanted to hear, ‘Hey, man I’ll spot you some bucks until your next paycheck.’ But that’s not what I got at all. So we all vacated Lord’s
room and right before they all left, that James Morgan dude turned to me and went, ‘Do you ever think about having sex with any of the wax figures?’ Everyone
started laughing. I was never very good at taking a joke in front of other people. To me, if someone gives you shit, that means they think you’re a pussy and they don’
t respect you. I immediately got defensive. I was like, ‘Hell no, man!’ And James went, ‘You’ve never been close to just reaching out and grabbing Lindsay Lohan’s
beaver or fondling Laura Dern’s tits.’ I went, ‘No! Never. What the fuck, man?’ And James blabbed, ‘Cause I guarantee you that there are fuckers out there who are
totally into that. I bet you two out of every three fat slobs who show up at your little pop culture exhibit from Bum Fuck Wherever think about taking a grope while
they’re wives or girlfriends or moms are snapping photos of them posing with the female cast of Friends.’ And I sighed, ‘Well I’ve never thought about it, man,’ and
James said, ‘That would make a great fucking story. A man who pimps out wax figures.’ Then they all left. I was all alone. Again. Another night by myself. I almost
wanted to cry at first. My throat was dry and I felt so isolated from everyone else I knew. It was like ten and I was so twacked out of my skull. So strapped with
anxiety. My soup was probably cold. I wasn’t even hungry anyway. So I returned to my bedroom with Terrance and sat down at my computer and went straight to my
MySpace page. Oh, damn. Fucking MySpace. It was about the only thing I was good at anymore. I mean, you guys shoulda seen my page. It was the balls. At it’s very
peak, I had 20,222 friends. I had over 7,000 subscribers to my blog! That’s 7,000 people actually reading whatever the hell was on my mind. 7,000 people reading my
opinions about various things like: Who would win a fight between Jodie Sweetin and a pre-anorexic Tracy Gold…My preference of grape Bubbletape gum over
strawberry and original flavors…How much you would pay to never hear from Fred Durst again…Oasis vs. Blur…Frankenberry vs. Count Chocula…The problem with bike
messengers…You know you’re hipster trash if...Take it easy on those bandannas bro’s…Everyone seemed to enjoy my writing. I was told by: Angel Ain’t No Playa.
Female. 100 years old. Slovakia. That I was the second coming of Kurt Vonnegut.
Ricardo Sings The Blues. Male. 27. Orange County, USA. Said that I needed to start writing books A.S.A.P. so I could share my absolute brilliance with the rest of the
world.
And, I Want Your Blood Man. Female. 17. Boston, Australia. Wrote to me that I was her favorite writer ever and that she planned on studying literature in college
because of my writing.
“I felt an extreme sense of fulfillment. MySpace had allowed me to connect to so many people in so many ways. Ways I could never have at that point in my daily, day
to day life. I even put some of my poetry up. I would type it up as a blog then go then post a bulletin that said something real catchy in the title like: Eat Fish and Die.
Or, My Baby’s Momma Drinks Grapes. And when people would open it, the bulletin would read something like this: I gotta new blog up, kids. Read it. Don’t read it.
Whatever. This one’s this new poem I’ve been working on. It was a tough one to write. Hopefully you all enjoy it. I thought about burning it once it hit the paper.
But I felt you guys deserved to read it first. And probably my best received poem went like this:
The night has arrived again
I am full of infliction
So vulnerable to despair
I am broken glass with blood on the edges
Lying scattered
Shattered
On the endless white floors
Is this it?
Who am I really in this odd place?
Left to myself through heartache and pain
I was just numb and dumb for thinking it would be anything other than this
“Dion. Male. 37 Years Old. Delaware. Typed me a reply that went, Thank you so much, R. M. Jr. You described exactly how I feel everyday. It’s nice to know that
there’s somebody else out there who feels the same way. Thanks for sharing that glimpse into your soul, man.
“And, Harriet Milestones ‘n Life. Female. 21. Going Nowhere Fast, Kansas. Wrote, You are truly an inspiration, R.M. Jr. BTW, I really love the new pic you put up of you
pounding a bottle of whiskey with a beer in your other hand with that caption, Oh me, Oh Life. To the Losers go the Toils. Sheer Genius, R.M. Bravo!!!
“Fan mail was the tits. But the blogging wasn’t the only thing that made my page standout. My layout was pretty brilliant. The background was multi-colored rows of
alternating baby blues, pinks, and yellows. Everyday was happy and festive on my page. In the blue rows, there were these tiny Betty Boop icons. In the pink, the
icons of majestic unicorns with striped horns. And the yellow, all the different faces from that old Camp Candy cartoon. It was so spectacular. In fact, Lori Loves
Lamborghinis. Female. 31. Missing You, Texas. Typed that it was her favorite lay-out of all her friends.”
Wilson and Johnson turn and look at each other at the exact same time. It’s all pretty embarrassing. Both of them look like they’re going to start laughing their cop
asses off. In fact, Johnson has to cover his mouth as Wilson goes, “All that sounds pretty fucking fairy to me, boy.”
And I reply, “It kinda was.”
I go, “But the chicks of MySpace really seemed to be into it. Into everything I had up on my page. My selected song was always an absolute gem. Love can tear us
apart by Joy Division. The Killing Time by Echo and the Bunnymen. G Thang by Dr. Dre. Holy Diver by Dio. I have great taste in music. On my About Me Section, I
wrote: Just a small town boy. Living in a lovely world. My, Who I’d Like To Meet section: Rad people who are into Rad shit…My taste in everything was actually
exquisite. In fact TigerLilly. Female. 21. Suck Free City, USA. Typed, I have great taste in everything and you like the same stuff as me. Therefore you have great taste
in everything as well.
And, TurdBurglars Revenge. Male. 18. I’m so over it, Utah. Wrote, Every time I wanna find something new and amazing, I just come to your page. I’m like the coolest
kid in my school cos I watch and read and listen to the raddest shit ever. Most of which, I got from your recommendations. Keep it up, man. Keep the rest of us
informed.
“I was in over thirty Myspace groups. Groups like: People Who Love Pudding Pops…Turk Street All-Stars… Trashpad…The Gentleman’s Jacouzi…Poetry Slam
Superstars… The Watch-U-Talkin’ About Willis PeepCrew…I was even nominated as the group moderator for the groups Phuck Germany and I love redheads. People
were always coming to my site to take a peek. I was averaging close to a thousand hits a day. Hundreds of friend requests a week. I was like the king of MySpace. And
so that night, all by myself, feeling absolutely alone, terrified about my future and my loneliness, I took strong comfort in typing my password and having my homepage
pop up. I had one new message. Over twenty-three people had viewed my page since the last time I’d checked it at work. Nine people in my top thirty two were ON-
LINE NOW. The new message I had was from Michelle. Female. 18. Lovely, Arkansas. Her default photo was her in this skimpy Santa Claus suit like the one Lindsay
Lohan was looking all hot and sexy in, in Mean Girls. For about a month before that night, Michelle and I had been friends on MySpace. She was one of my favorites
actually. We had a lot of the same tastes in music and books and movies. She wanted to go to school for Fine Art in San Francisco. I graduated with a degree in Fine
Art in San Francisco. We messaged each other a lot about amazing albums to buy and killer DVD’s that were coming out and obscure novels that were must reads. We
probably corresponded with each other back and forth like this nine or ten times a week. It was always the standard comment or message. But that night, the
message she sent was straight outta left field. It started out fairly simple. She told me about buying the Sonic Youth album, Washing Machine and how it completely
changed her whole mind about how awesome music could really be. She went on about that for like three paragraphs and then she wrote that she was coming out to
San Francisco during the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend to check out this art school and wanted to meet up with me and hang out for a night or two. But at the
very end of the message, there was a picture of her wearing nothing except this visor that said: Momma’s Little Angel. I was fucking shocked at first. I really was guys.
But I was also out of my mind. She was so cute. And she was gonna come out to SF and hang with me. Fuck yeah. I got so pumped up. And then I read the last line
of her message. It said that she wanted me to send a similar picture of myself back to her. She wanted to see my goods. My junk. I swear to god, if I’d been in a
better frame of mind, there would’ve been no way. No way! I wasn’t one of those losers. That guy cruising the net all night trying to hook up with babes. But that
night I was. I succumbed just like almost every other pivotal moment of that year. Ya know, my willpower has never been anything to brag about but I’ve still said no
to a lot of fucking things. That night though, I didn’t. That night, it shied away like a fat chick with an invite to a bikini party.
“I grabbed my digi-cam, unbuttoned those damp khakis, pulled my underwear down to my knees, and began massaging my dick. It was so difficult to get it up because
of the coke. That goddamn cocaine. Bill Maher said it best once. He said, ‘If cocaine gave you an erection instead of took it away, not only would it be legal, but Bob
Dole would be doing commercials for it.’ Finally, I got some blood flowing. Slowly, I came out of my shell and the moment I reached the pinnacle of my erection, I
snapped a photo of me in my chair with my fairly stiff cock in my other hand. Then I loaded it and sent it back to Michelle. Man, I had no idea what I’d just done. The
potential consequences just didn’t occur to me. Over the next two hours, I probably logged onto MySpace twenty times to see if Michelle had responded back to me.
She hadn’t. I was so bummed. I kept clicking on her page. I went through picture after picture after picture on her slideshows. Thinking about how the two of us
were gonna be hanging out in a couple of weeks. And how she was probably going to move to the city. And how we’d probably end up being together. Going
steady. Possibly getting an apartment together. Maybe she was the love of my life. Maybe she was exactly what I needed. Images of her having my babies. Of us
going on family vacations. The two of us farming a sweet spread in the middle of nowhere, listening to Neil Young records and drinking scotch and talking the night
away about how much we were in love eased through my brain. I was actually tempted to write her again and tell her what I wanted to name our first child. If it was
a girl: Katliyn. A boy: Sam. I was tempted to tell her about how she was the only girl for me. That we were destined for a long sweet life together. I even thought
about writing her a poem. She had been a big fan of the poems on my blog. A few lines even filtered onto a piece of scrap paper next to my keyboard. Lines like: You
are the reason the sun rises each morning in my life…My heart mends with each inbox comminque from you…Eyes like angels, skin like silk, you’re hair of gold, your
complexion milk…But I never ended up sending any of it. I became distracted by how fast I was coming down from the drugs. The sinking sensation of my actual reality
was settling in. It was like none of the past six hours had even existed. It was just me, all alone, still in the same spot, still broke, and even more miserable. There was
nothing I could do. I got over the Internet real fast and took a shower. I took some Tylenol P.M. and went to bed. The next day I woke up around noon to Lord and
like four other dudes listening to Motley Crue. In fact, the first thing I heard anyone else say that morning was this:
Lord: I can’t believe that asshole bartender kicked me out of the Brown Jug.
Random dude: Yeah, what happened with that?
Lord: There was some guy limping around and the bartender told me that the guy got hit by a car a few weeks ago and tore up his leg really bad. So I was like, ‘Aw,
shit, I just thought he sucked at walking.
“Everyone in the room started laughing. I even had to chuckle myself. If there was one awesome thing that Lord’s all night partying with random kids produced, it was
these tiny gems of comedic brilliance that came out from time to time beneath the gnarly pile of shitgrime everyone had submersed themselves under. It could make
the angst go away. Hearing shit like that could make me forget about why I usually hated living next door to the dude in the first place. So I got out of bed as quietly
as I could and snuck around the apartment to get ready for work. The last thing I wanted was to have any of those monsters in the room next to mine know that I
was awake and to get trapped in the hallway by Lord, looking like some crazy vampire with caked white lips, trying to tell me some random bullshit about whatever the
fuck was popping into his crazy brain. I moved so quietly. I had too. I took a shower and got dressed. My work clothes were still damp and mill-dewey. Before I left for
work, I checked my MySpace page with some severe apprehension. On one hand, I was super interested to see if Michelle had responded to me, and if she had, what
the response was gonna be. But on the other hand, I felt pretty much like a scumbag for actually taking a picture of my cock, uploading the thing onto my computer,
and then sending it to somebody else on MySpace. There was a definite line I had crossed. That I was sure of. But when I checked my page there was nothing. Not
anything. No messages from anyone. I think that made me feel even worse. No response at all is always worse than the worst response somebody can give you. And it
really bummed me out. Deep down, I really figured she was going to send me something rad back. Something about how she was super stoked about my cock.
Anything. My gut was hurt. I had just been virtually punched. And it was with that exact feeling that I logged off and walked out of my apartment after hearing this
from Lord’s room.
Some other random dude: Yeah, I grew up in some shithole Oklahoma town. Yeah, I’m an Okie and a Sooner. And yeah, I’ve lived in a trailer before. Hell, I even
owned once. But shit, who hasn’t owned a trailer at least once in their life.
“I ran down the stairs. It was much nicer outside that day than the day before. The sun was out. There was a crackhead with a smile, defecating in the alley next to
my building. I started up for Van Ness to pick up the 47 or the 49 when I heard some guy holler my name. Turning around, I saw two men in suits approaching me
quickly, and then one of them went, ‘Ronnie Manson Jr.? Are you Ronnie Manson Jr.?’
“Who wants to know?” I asked.
“And the guy who said my name snapped, ‘FBI.’ Then his partner grabbed me and cuffed me while he informed me that I was under arrest for the distribution of
pornographic material to a minor and attempting to lure a minor over state lines. Turns out, Michelle, she was only thirteen. And those pictures on her profile were
doctored. Photoshopped. Turns out, she was actually from Kentucky and that she had never left the state and that she was in the middle of her eighth grade year
and that she wasn’t even into Fine Art. What happened was that she left herself logged into the family computer. What happened was that her dad, this nutjob with
a Wyatt Earp moustache went to check the updated weather forecast for the next day and saw her home page open with the words: New Message highlighted in
red. He clicked on it, opened the message, and was treated to a big ol’ picture of me, seated halfway across the country, wearing my wax museum jersey, holding
onto my semi-hard penis. He called the cops, who called the F.B.I. after interviewing his daughter, who got a hold of the local bureau chief here, who dispatched a
couple of agents to my apartment that morning. And they arrived, just as I was walking out.”
“Wait, wait, wait, wait,” Johnson interrupts. “You were arrested and charged?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry, Ronnie, but we have no information about that. None at all.”
“Because I got cut a deal.”
Both detectives turn and look at the mirror, then back to each other.
And Johnson goes, “Let’s take a break.”
He shuts off the tape recorder and they both get to their feet.
“What about that cigarette?” I ask.
Digging into the inside pocket of his suit, Johnson pulls a pack of smokes out and tosses one across the table at me along with a pack of matches.
I light up and the two detectives leave the room and just like that, I’m all alone.
Alone except for like the eight sets of eyeballs right on the other side of that mirror. And all I wanna do is finish this story and fall asleep somewhere. Here. Back at
home. It doesn’t make a difference. I’ve been awake for way too long. My brain hurts so bad. It feels like it’s melting.
And by the way, this is easily the best cigarette I’ve ever had.
Like three minutes later, Wilson and Johnson return to the room. Taking their seats again, Johnson goes, “Tell us about the deal.”
Rubbing my smoke out in the ashtray, I go, “I got taken to this large conference room inside the federal building. There, I told the agents the entire story. I served up
all the details about my on-line, MySpace romance with Michelle. From the sweet messages back and forth, to the comments I would put on her page of these videos
of cute scenes from French New Wave films. I broke down into tears as I pleaded with them not to be too harsh. That I had no idea about Michelle’s real age. With
me on my knees, my face in my hands, tears streaming down my cheeks, I told them my parents could never find out. My mom would be crushed. She’d die. Pounding
my fists against the table, I sobbed, ‘I can’t go to jail. I’ll be raped in there. Do you have any idea what they do to young white males locked away for being a sexual
predator? They’ll kill me. They’ll rape me in the shower and then they’ll kill me. I don’t wanna die. I don’t want to!’ I was eventually pulled off the ground by one of
the agents and tossed back into the chair. Both of them were laughing. I felt so humiliated. I told them I would never go onto the Internet again. ‘I’ll delete my
MySpace page’ I cried. ‘Just don’t send me to prison.’ And that was when I was told they weren’t going to send me anywhere like that. They told me I wouldn’t be
doing any time. Still laughing, one of the agents questioning me slid a file folder over to me and said, ‘This is what the girl you were really talking to looked like, Ronnie.’
Man, my hands were shaking as I flipped the folder open. Jesus Christ, had I been fooled. Inside the folder was a school picture of this fat girl with dyke short black
hair. She had like three chins and wore these thick brown glasses and had these yellow butterfly earrings in. She might’ve been the ugliest girl I’ve ever seen. I’m being
dead serious here, guys. I almost threw up. My tears of fear turned into tears of self-pity. Boy, I’d sure been duped. The agents left the room. An hour later, after I’d
drifted asleep with my head on the table, they came back in and offered me a deal. They told me that if I pleaded guilty to all counts they would recommend
counseling and community service and that my record would be cleared after my hours of both were finished. Needless to say, I jumped on the offer. I stood in front
of a judge and pleaded guilty and was given a hundred hours of community service and required to complete twenty hours in a MySpace Recovery support group for
MySpace addicts. It was a little weird at first. I’d never heard of such a thing. I almost thought it was some kind of a joke. I kept waiting for myself to wake up. A
MySpace Recovery support group. What the hell was that, ya know? But I wasn’t gonna argue with the judge. Shit, I’d gotten of lightly. I was handed a stack of
papers from an officer of the court and told everything I needed to know was inside.”
“Tell us about this MySpace support group,” Johnson urges.
“Apparently they started popping up in cities within a year after MySpace started. Being addicted to it is like being addicted to any drug or sexual act. People need it.
They can’t stand to be with out it. Constantly checking their pages. Always throwing up bulletins. Writing diary type blogs. Lurking on other people’s pages into the
wee hours of the night. It revolutionized the art of stalking. It really did.”
“How the hell is that?” Wilson snorts.
“Because somebody posts a bulletin about where they’re gonna be on a certain night and the lurkers show up and start creeping everyone out. That’s how.”
“Makes sense,” Johnson says. “Go on.”
“At first, there were only a few groups and they were started by individuals whose lives had begun to be controlled the social possibilities of networking. About how
popular they were on the site. About how they were actually able to attract an audience for their racy photos and bullshit opinions. But then came Friday, August
14th, 2004.”
“What was that?”
“In the recovery circles, it’s known as Red Friday. There’s been articles written about it. Studies done. Even PBS did an hour long documentary on it. Friday, August
14th, 2004, was the day of the massive power outages in LA where MySpace is headquartered. The problems that day started at around eight that morning west
coast time and weren’t corrected until almost five that night leaving MySpace down all day. Pandemonium ensued. People really lost their shit. Every time that anyone
in the world tried to log into their accounts they were greeted with the exact same message: Myspace is currently experiencing some technical problems. Please check
back in one hour. And people did. And the hours kept passing. A lot of people, they just didn’t know what to do with themselves. They couldn’t handle the
withdraws. It was all too much. And very soon, it began to take its toll. The first suicide was at one p.m. Eastern Standard Time in Redding, Pennsylvania. The victim
was a nineteen year old girl named Carlie Rawlins but on MySpace she was known simply as Shera X. Female. One hundred years old. Thailand, OH. Her favorite movie,
Clerks 2. Her favorite band, fucking Good Charlotte. I mean, Jesus Christ! Between the three of us, she obviously lacked sound judgment and common sense. And on
that day, Friday, August 14th, she decided to exercise those bad traits. She was found lying face first on her keyboard, a bottle of drano and rat poison on the ground
next to her feet. In all, there were sixteen deaths blamed on the MySpace technical crisis. The last death, a forty-three year old piano instructor in Portland, Oregon
named Marc Chielards, was a result of slash wounds to the wrists so deep the blood drained from his body in less than three hours and overran the sides of the bathtub
in less than two. Hence the name, Red Friday.”
Pause.
I’m like, “You two are cops. Shouldn’t you know all about this?”
“Just keep talking, scumbag,” Wilson snaps.
And I say, “After that, MySpace support groups began popping up in community centers and churches and people’s basements all over the country. To be considered
a MySpace addict, you have to meet the following criteria…Do you log into your account on an average of five times per hour? Have you spent at least ten hours in the
past two days looking through all of your friends, friends? Do you spend at least five hours a week talking about your page while you’re not on it? Do you feel a sense
of despair or emptiness and even anger when you post a new blog or bulletin and nobody responds back to you with a comment or message? Have you ever tried to
establish a relationship of sexual nature after meeting someone new on MySpace? It was all there, inside the little pamphlet they gave me after I got into trouble. They
even included these little illustrated drawings of kids sobbing their little eyeballs out in front of a computer screen that said: MySpace is experiencing some technical
difficulties. And there was even a time elapsing illustration series of an older man sitting at his computer, playing on MySpace, drinking beers with a clock above him.
The time says seven p.m. in the first frame and there’s one beer next to him but by the last frame, the hands of the clock say three a.m. and there are eighteen cans
stacked next to him on the desk. It was fucking hilarious. I actually thought the pamphlets were absolutely great. I even hung some on the walls of my apartment.”
“What about your roommate?” Johnson asks. “What did he think about all of that?”
“He was pretty weird at first. Ya know, the fact that I’d been picked up leaving our apartment by the feds. But once I came totally clean about why I’d been picked
up, he just made fun of me all the time and wouldn’t let up. He kept all those witty comments coming.”
“He wasn’t scared about getting busted or nervous that you might rat him out?”
“Nope.”
“Interesting.” Pause. “Okay, continue about the support group, Ronnie.”
“I was sent to the nearest support group. It was in the basement of the Mission Street Outreach Center on 24th and Mission. On that first night, it was raining hard
too. The meeting started at eight but I wanted to get there early and sorta case the place out. I was so fucking embarrassed to have to be there. I didn’t wanna be
late and have to walk into a room full of weirdos. The whole room going silent as I awkwardly made my way to an open chair. A million sets of eyes glued to me as I
took a seat. The overwhelming feeling that I’d just missed something important or funny or had just interrupted the climax of somebody’s sob story. This wasn’t going
to be like being late for class, ya know. So I got there about a half hour before I had to. Standing at the top the stairs, to the side of the red colored front doors,
under the faded glow of the flickering light bulbs above me, rain falling hard, I smoked three cigarettes. My stomach was tossing around. I was so nervous. When you’
re a little a kid and you grow up where I did and you think about being twenty-five or twenty-six or twenty-seven years old, you have these visions of having a family,
dressing in suits, coming home from work to your beautiful kids running to you and hugging you. Of the nice car you’ll drive. The big house you’ll own. You don’t ever
think for one damn minute that you’ll be this old, working a crappy retail job, living in a condemned apartment building, arriving early for your first MySpace support
group meeting that you were court ordered to attend after being arrested for sending photos of your penis to some young fat girl two thousand miles away while you
were strung out on blow. You just don’t. And that’s what I was thinking about at the top of those wet steps, smoking my cigarettes, shivering from the cool air of
the February San Francisco breeze. Once I took the last drag of smoke number three, I decided it was time to do it. I walked into the place and this strange sense of
familiarity struck me. Like I had been there before. That building with its really bad lighting and its atrocious acoustics, the booming footsteps of others, the echo of
whispers in the hallways, the sharp screams of squeaky doors swinging shut, it looked exactly like the Trinity Episcopal Church in the movie Fight Club. It even had this
list of the different support groups happening each night of the week posted on a bulletin board in the lobby. It seemed like there was a group for everything:
Boys who used to wear girl jeans.
People who felt betrayed by the White Stripes.
Fixed Gear Bike accident survivors.
Women with lower back tattoos.
“There was even one called: I’m afraid to take my huge sunglasses off inside the house. I could barely believe it until I remembered what I was doing there in the first
place. Until I had scrolled down far enough to see the words in that big, bold lettering. MYSPACE SUPPORT GROUP/RM: B-6 8:00 P.M. Basement room six. That’s
where I headed. Descending down the basement stairs, moving down the hallway, I sorta peaked into the different rooms. Each room had something going on in it.
People sitting in circles on cheap folding chairs. People partnering up and talking face to face. People nodding off. At room B-6, with my heart beating so fast, my palms
sweating, my cheeks on fire, I took a deep breath then let it out and stepped inside. Damn. I was so surprised. Sitting on metal chairs in a small circle in the middle of
the room were six men. Older men. Men in their mid to late thirties. In their forties. This one guy, he could’ve even been sixty. This was so not what I had expected.
In my head, as that day approached, I had imagined I’d be sitting in a packed room full of fat dudes who couldn’t see their dicks. Teenage boys with names like Crater-
face Collins, Pimply Pete, and Mathbook Marty. Or hot little thirteen year old white trash hos with dirty mouths who wanted to get fucked real hard and innocent
young Christian girls with braces and a laundry list of extra-curricular activities like re-posting bulletin surveys or having a new slide show up because it was fucking
Tuesday. It never crossed my mind even once that this was the crowd I’d be rolling with. An obese Hispanic man who whistled through his nose every time he took a
breath. This nerdy white dude with a high pitched laugh. That real older guy whose shirt was unbuttoned to the middle of his chest and wore these two thick gold
chains and smelled like Stetson. It was a full on Motley Crue of motherfucking perverts. And there I was, the newest member of the MySpace gone awry club. Or so I
thought.”
“What do you mean by that? Or so you thought?” Johnson asks.
“I mean, the meeting started with that fat Mexican man going, ‘Hi, my name is Omar.
Hi, Omar.
“He said, ‘Well I guess my problems started about three years ago. I had just gotten home from work one afternoon and my wife was waiting for me on the couch in a
red nighty. She told me that it had been over six months since we’d had sex and that she wanted to spruce our love life up again. She wanted to take the initiative,
she told me. She wanted to be the Seducer. As good as that sounds and sounded to me right then, the moment she reached out and grabbed my hand, something
inside of me shut down. Now my wife, she’s a pretty hefty gal and all but that’s one of the reasons I always liked making love to her. I’ve always had a bit of a soft
spot for big women and my wife was definitely that. It’s just when she touched me that afternoon and pulled me onto the couch with her, my hands against her butt.
Squeezing it. Her soft, rubbery skin wedging out between my fingers, I wanted nothing to do with it. I wasn’t at all turned on. And I had to make an excuse, I had to
lie, something about eating a bad shrimp salad sandwich for lunch and not feeling so hot. I felt horrible. My wife is an amazing lady and a wonderful mother but I was
revolted at the thought of physical love with her. Man, it got dark real fast in my life. For two weeks after that, I did everything I could to avoid being in my house. I
went to work early. I worked late. I had dinner meetings with new clients and tickets to Niner games. There were excuses for everything except my own sudden
disinterest in anything sexual. Nothing would rile my imagination. Not nasty thoughts. Not anything late on Cinemax. Not even the strip clubs in North Beach. I was
dead inside. I hadn’t had a hardon for weeks. I felt like a lost case. I mean, do you understand the despair that comes with the belief that you may never want to
have sex again? It was terrifying. My life had been deflated. It was the nightmare to destroy all nightmares…until I woke up. I was at my dentist’s office one afternoon
for a routine cleaning. I was sitting in the waiting room and my eyes happened to graze over the cover of this magazine sitting on the table in the middle of the room.
It was an Us Weekly. An Us Weekly with that head cheerleading girl from Varsity Blues, Ali Larter on the cover. And like that, my body sprang back into life. I got hard.
Real hard. I could barely contain my urge. I wanted to smother the cover and shove it down my pants. So as calmly as I could, I walked up to the receptionist and told
her I had an emergency to attend to and that I’d call back to reschedule, and left. I drove straight to Rite-Aid and walked right to the magazine aisle where I bought
the lot. People magazine. US Weekly. Star. Hello. And, OK!. After I paid, I wasted little time. I dove into my car, ripped open my jeans with one hand, holding that
same US Weekly issue with Ali Larter on the cover in the other, and two strokes later, I had a huge white mess in my hands and my pants and my car. But it felt so
good. So damn good. And from that moment on, something changed in me. From that moment on, I was chronically masturbating to every single celebrity magazine I
could get my hands on. What I still wasn’t touching was my wife. I had even more revulsion seeping through me when I looked at her. The only thing I wanted and
still want are the newest issues of every magazine. Issues with Reese Witherspoon in a bathing suit on the cover. Or Sarah Jessica Parker in a strapless gown smiling
and showing off the top of those magnificent breasts of hers. Five, six times a day, in my garage, in my bathroom, in my office, stuck in traffic, I grope myself and get
off like this. And it feels good. I’m addicted to it. My name is Omar and I can’t fucking touch my wife but goddamn it, I can sure touch those celebrity magazines.”
Both detectives look absolutely puzzled. Blank stares. I’m not sure really what they think of all of this but I’m not finished. Oh no. I’m not even close to being finished
yet.
I say, “I was sitting in the wrong support class, guys. The MySpace group I had been assigned to was cancelled and nobody bothered to post anything in the building
lobby. It was nuts. I was sitting in the Spousal Neglect/Celebrity Select group instead. Everyone who went that night was pretty much saying the same thing. ‘Hi, my
name is Robert.’ ‘Hi, Robert.’ Hi, my name is, Kenny.’ Hi, Kenny.’ Hi, my name is Lawrence.’ ‘Hi, Lawrence.’ And Lawrence was there because Lawrence was sloppy. He
was there because he promised his wife that he was done spending a hundred bucks a week on all those jerk-off celebrity rags. He told her he was over it and that it
had just been a bad phase in his life. A sorta mid-life crisis, which she believed until she uncovered a pile of those same jerk-off rags earlier that week from the back of
their bedroom closet. The pages all stuck together. The pages stiff as a board. A shiny film of something seeped around the edges of each issue. And so Lawrence was
back. Attending the meetings again. Trying to fend off a potential divorce. Because in the end, attending a free meeting in the basement of a community center is a
lot cheaper than hiring a lawyer for a divorce. And paying alimony. And paying child support. It was the same for all the dudes in the room.”
“So what did you say when it was your turn?” Johnson asks.
“Nothing. I didn’t say a single word. I just sat there and I listened to all of them. I mean, as much as it was gross and weird it was fucking hilarious too. Absolutely
phenomenal. And I couldn’t just walk out and leave in the middle of it. You couldn’t make this kind of shit up, guys. You just can’t. Not even the best writer could
think up this. So that first night, I listened to six grown men take turns telling six strangers about their addiction to masturbating to celebrity magazines. And when the
session was finished, I got up out of my chair, my head fucking spinning, and left the outreach center. I decided to walk that night. The rain had managed to cease
over the course of that very strange hour and I needed that moist, fresh air to really shake things out in my head about what had just happened. I chain-smoked and
went over the details of everything I’d heard. Of each story I had listened to. Jesus Christ, I couldn’t believe a group like that actually existed. It was an amazing
feeling. I felt like I had just won a prize or discovered something new. In my head, it seemed better than finding a cure for A.I.D.S. Or finding a way to get Chris
Cornell to grow his hair back out and start drinking beer again and run around with his shirt off while a bunch of bearded dudes played instruments in the background.
It truly felt great. But at that point, I wasn’t planning on attending anymore of the meetings. I figured it was for the best that way. I didn’t wanna ruin that
experience by having it not be as awesome as the first time or having to finally talk myself. So that night was it. It was only going to be the twenty hours of MySpace
groups from there on out.”
Pause.
“Until I saw him.”
Both detectives eyebrows raise. “Who did you see, Ronnie?” Johnson asks.
“I saw James Morgan.”
“That author scumbag,” Wilson snorts.
“Yeah. He was walking out of the Foreign Cinema restaurant on twenty-first street with some girl, bitching about the cowboy boots and trench coat some guy inside
was wearing. I ducked my head the other way so he wouldn’t see me and right as I got past him it hit me. It all came back to me. From that night I met him at my
pad for the first time. And what he said to me right before they all left to go out. When he said, ‘Do you ever think about having sex with any of the wax figures?’
When he went, ‘That would make a great fucking story. A man who pimps out wax figures.’ I stopped dead in my tracks. It was like a revelation. Like God appearing
to Moses. For an instant, I swear to you guys that a beam of light shone right on me from the sky. I swear to you both. I stood there and looked up into the light and
smiled and thought: What’s the next best thing if you can’t fuck the real Paris Hilton?”
“You didn’t,” Johnson says.
Nodding, I say, “Having sex with the wax figure of Paris Hilton.”
Wilson jumps out of his chair again. “You sick fuck!” he snaps. Reaching across the table and grabbing my shirt collar, he goes, “What kind of sick fuck are you?”
I rip my shirt out of his grasp. Throw my arms up to protect my face. And Johnson grabs Wilson and goes, “Hey, just relax, Marc. You need to calm down.”
And Wilson points at me. He says, “I’m gonna fuck you up. That’s what I do to sick fucks like you. I fuck them up.”
“What the hell, Johnson? I’m not saying another word with that maniac the room.”
Johnson looks at Wilson. “Okay, Marc, take a break.”
“What? Don’t listen to that scumbag. I’m fine. I can do this.”
“Hey,” Johnson snorts. “I said take a break. I said leave the room now.”
Wilson flips his head at me. He’s practically growling. “You’re going down,” he says.
“Whatever.”
Johnson grabs him again and goes, “Take a break, detective.”
Shaking his shoulders out, Wilson goes, “Okay.”
He leaves the room and Johnson takes a seat.
“You alright?” he asks.
“I could use another smoke.”
“Sure.” Detective Johnson hands me another cigarette and I light up and he says, “Okay, Ronnie. I need you tell me about the wax figures. How does this fit within
the operation.”
“That was basically the operation.”
“How so?”
“It occurred to me that night that I was sitting on a huge idea. A huge money-making idea. I’d just sat through an hour long support group session of grown men who
could only whack off to celebrity magazines. That was it. The next natural step up from that, besides real therapy, was having sex with the closest thing to a real
celebrity. A wax figure. I mean, have you ever seen the statues at the wax museum?”
“No.”
“They look fucking real. It’s fucking creepy how real they look. Down to the last detail. Jesus Christ, I’ve gotten raging hardons staring at Hillary Duff’s wax tits during
an eight hour shift. So I made my mind up right at that moment, that I was going to start pimping out the wax figures while the museum was closed. I had my own
keys. I knew all the codes. And I knew that the security tapes never got turned on at night. Because no one ever bothered. No one ever checked the damn tapes.
So now, I just had to develop a real plan as to how I was going to pull this shit off.”
“What’d you do first?”
“First, I had to see if it was physically possible.”
Pause.
“Ya know, intercourse with a wax figure. I mean, I worked there and all but I was no expert by any stretch of the imagination and I couldn’t just ask one of the
engineers. So I did my own research. I pulled stuff from the Internet. I checked out this How to Make a Wax Figure book from the public library. There was a ton of
good stuff I learned. At work, I even kept a close eye on how some of the figures were handled by the staff, just as a precaution. It was all a lot easier than I thought
it was going to be. See the beeswax used to make wax sculptures possesses the perfect properties to prepare the figures for rendering either by moulds or modeling.
Just at your regular room temperature you can cut and shape it, and at low heat it melts to a limpid fluid. So I figured out how I was going to make the holes on both
sides of the pelvis region. I decided to use a conning saw. Once the metal blade got warm enough, I would begin to make the incisions. For the vagina, I decided I’d
have to go eight inches up and four inches around.”
“Eight and four, huh?” Johnson asks, his left eyebrow arched.
“Hey,” I say. “We had a couple of black guys in the class.”
“And for the buttocks?”
“Six and three. I figured that a little more traction would make it feel more real.”
“And then what?”
“I had to test it out. It took me a few days to decide what wax figure I was going to try this out on. Which wax figure was going to take my wax virginity away. There
were so many choices. Women I’d dreamt about my whole life. Women I’d jacked off at night to while scenes from their movies and music videos played in my head.
There was Madonna. Julia Roberts. Loni Anderson. Marilyn Monroe. Bette Page. Candice Cameron and Jodie Sweetin together possibly. Demi Moore. This was more
about coming really close to fulfilling a childhood fantasy than it was about titty fucking the wax rack of Jessica Simpson.”
“So who’d you finally pick, Ronnie? Who was the lucky gal?”
I clear my throat. “Geena Davis.”
“Geena Davis?”
“That’s right. Geena Davis. When I was like eight my sisters and mom took me to see A League of Their Own and there was this one scene when Dottie, that was the
name of Gina’s character, does the splits to catch this foul ball, and when I saw those two upper thighs on that big screen, man, something turned in my body. I got a
boner. It was my first boner ever. So I figured what better way to celebrate that moment than fucking the next best thing to the real person.”
“And…? How did it work out?”
“Not too bad. I did it after my first closing shift for the week. Like usual, after we locked the door, there were two customer service reps counting their cash drops.
When I was finished double checking their work, I told them I had to stay late and do some things on the computer. They left and I was all alone. I was nervous. But
once I walked to the back of the second floor display where Geena stood so beautifully, with her hands pressed against her hips, like a perfect, illuminated angel, in this
black strapless dress and long white gloves that ran up her arms, the nerves went away quickly and I went to work. With the conning saw warm and in my hands, I
stuck my head between Geena’s legs and began to cut. Following the outline I drew with some chalk, I made a perfect incision and not three minutes later, an 8x4
chunk of wax dropped into my hands. It was so easy. Cutting a hole for Geena Davis’s asshole only took me one minute. And then it was time. I stepped into Geena
and ran my hands over her breasts and squeezed what would’ve been the nipples on a real person. Slowly but firmly, I moved my hands to her backside and slid them
down to her tight, firm, buttocks, and then I began to kiss her. I licked her neck and her entire face all over before slipping off her dress and laying her gently onto the
ground. Even though I decided that anyone who wanted to get in on this action was going to have to wear a rubber, that first time, with Geena, I decided to
bareback it. I needed this to feel as good as possible. I dropped my khakis and pulled off my shirt. I stood over Geena for a few moments and wetted my dog while
she stared marvelously at me, and then I went for it. I got on top of her and slid myself into the hole I’d cut. And to my surprise, it felt good. Real damn good. It was
like taking a wet paper towel and wrapping it around your dick, going back and forth, back and forth with it.”
Johnson looks absolutely appalled. I’m putting my cigarette out and staring at him.
Johnson with his mouth wide open.
Johnson looking pretty pale.
Johnson, whose own hands are shaking.
And I go, “I’ve never really been able to fuck very well soberly. It’s hard for me not to come right away when I’m not shitfaced. And that night was no different. My
plan had been to hit both holes and shoot the load into her butt. However, once I started in on the front side, I couldn’t hold it at all. Like four thrusts in and I
exploded. I dug my fists into the ground, propping myself just above Geena, and I let loose. I screamed, ‘Fuck Thelma, baby. Ronnie will go over any cliff with you.’ It
was awesome. While I slithered my pelvis around, waiting for everything to drain out of my lizard, I couldn’t stop myself from running a hand through her hair and
kissing her all over her face. I felt amazing. Like I’d just accomplished something. Fulfilled a partial dream. It was like winning the Special Olympics or something. Like I
totally had the advantage, I totally had my way, but nonetheless, I still came out on top, ya know. So after I cleaned Geena up and reinserted the pieces of wax back
into her, it was now time to take the idea to the men of the Celebrity Select group.”
“What about the MySpace group, Ronnie?”
“I went to those and finished my hours. But those meeting weren’t nearly as entertaining as the other group. The MySpace meetings were more tragic than they
were funny. Probably because they hit so close to home. I mean, I was actually sent to those support classes because I had a problem. Just like many of the people in
there did. But I was the only one who was forced by the hand of law to be there. The meetings themselves though were usually pretty dull. Just your basic MySpace
addict. The late-night lurkers. The fat girl making fake profiles to look the babes of GodsGirls. The fifty bulletins a day poster. The trash-talking stalker dissing anyone
who didn’t praise his page. They were all there. The fifteen login’s per hour girl. The seven blogs a day guy. The girl who details every moment of the day in a new
photo album. Oh, she was there. And everyone knew she was just dying to take a picture of herself at the meeting and add it to her page. It wasn’t shocking. It was
just sad. But I finished my hours.”
“So tell me about the other group. How did you present your proposition to them?”
“I gained their trust. I attended their meetings three times a week and started talking. I told my story to them. About how my name was Rake and how I was married
to my beautiful wife, Josephine. And how we once had a beautiful sex life and a perfect apartment and couldn’t keep our hands off each other. I told them about me
and Josephine’s three times a day fucking habit. About how we’d role play and bring in all these toys and how we’d do it in public spots every once in awhile. But out
of nowhere, my desire for Josephine began to wear thin. She was still beautiful in my eyes but the thought of making love to her. Of her touching me in any sort of
intimate way. Of me rubbing my hands anywhere against her nude body. All that shit made me wanna puke in my mouth. I didn’t know what had happened. My libido,
I feared, was gone. Had disappeared. For the life of me, I couldn’t get turned on. Until this one afternoon. When I was standing in the check-out line at the Potrero
Hill Safeway. It was there that my eyes caught a glimpse of this Star magazine with Clarissa Flockart, ya know, Ally McBeal, in this red two piece bathing suit on a beach
in South France. And just like with the other guys in the group, something came alive inside of me. I had to physically restrain myself from whipping out my cock and
jerking it right there. So I grabbed the issue and paid for it and as soon as I hit the car, there were lines of come spraying out of my piss hole. And after that, the only
thing that could arouse me was a sexy picture from a celebrity magazine. It was like crack, I told the guys every session. A sixty to seventy dollar a week habit.
Goddamn crack. And this is how I gained their trust. By telling my story three times a week to the same twelve or so men. Then one night, about three weeks after
my first time with the Geena Davis wax figure, there had been about six more after that, I decided it was time to make my move. The date was March seventh. After
the meeting was over that night, I waited on the front steps of the outreach center, smoking a cigarette. I was waiting for this guy, Maurice, who was like the leader
of the group each meeting. He kind of guided the group along from one person to the next and he seemed like he had the biggest celebrity masturbating problem to
confront. I knew if I could get him on board, then things would take off. So I waited for him. I smoked a second cigarette. I watched this girl and guy walk by the
building and I heard the girl go, ‘Everyday I wake up and I wish that it was Johnny Reznik who had died instead of Layne Staley,’ and the guy went, ‘Who’s Johnny
Reznik?’ and the girl went, ‘He sings for the Goo Goo Dolls,’ and the guy went, ‘I’d even be happy if he just died, even if we couldn’t get Layne back.’ And right as I
was about to light my third smoke, Maurice walked out. We chit-chatted for a few minutes and then I made my first move. I told him I’d like to buy him a cold one
down at Casanova’s near the intersection of sixteenth and Valencia. He told me he’d like that very much. So the two of us walked down the street to the bar. We
didn’t really say a whole, whole lot that most people might think was too important. That’s kinda the thing about a support group like that. The idea that you’re even
there makes you feel ashamed so I guess one of the last things you ever wanna do is open up to anymore details of your personal life than you already have. It’s not
like you really want some of these sick fuckers to know how you make a living. But I did. That’s how this plan was going to work. And if there was one thing that could
open up a dialogue into all of that besides cocaine, it was definitely a cold one. A few cold ones. You start getting somebody feeling real good like that and they start
feeling good enough to talk to you about most everything.”
“So you had some cold one’s at the bar?”
“Yep.”
“How does one come out and mention that he’d like to pimp out some wax figures?”
“It gets easier when you’re on your fourth round and you’ve just bought two shots of Jameson’s Whiskey. When you clank the two shot glasses together. When your
eyes meet. When you pour the brown the stuff down your throat. When you let out that first big, ‘Whoo, damn,’ and then wash down the whiskey with another sip
from your beer. It gets real easy after that, I gotta tell ya. You go, ‘How hard does it get for you to hold off the urge to walk into each gas station or liquor store you
see and buy up every Celeb magazine in there?’ And he goes, ‘For me, it get’s really hard. Especially once the idea gets firmly planted into my head. It stays with me
for some time. You try to push it out but you can’t and you know you can’t. You just sit there, paralyzed by the thought. You don’t think about anything else. The
only thing you can think about is how good it would make you feel to be holding onto an issue of US Weekly with a photo spread of Lindsay Lohan on a beach
somewhere in the Caribbean wearing huge sunglasses and adjusting the bottom of her bathing suit with your pants undone. I mean, there is not a better feeling in
the world, Rake.’ And then I went, ‘What if I told you that there was. That I’ve come onto something better. Something that I would love to share with everyone in
the group. But at a price. There would have to be strict rules and a decent price.’ And he goes, ‘Keep talking.’ I took a big gulp of my beer and I laid it out for him.
Everything. All of it. That night, sitting at Casanova’s, I told Maurice, ‘What if I said that the best feeling I’ve ever had in this life was intercourse with the wax sculpture
of a childhood fantasy of mine.’ Maurice made this weird face and went, ‘What the hell?’ but I jumped right back in. I said, ‘Maurice, just here me out.’ I said, ‘To
experience something this awesome is even better than seeing the face of God on some goddamn chocolate cake you just baked for your sick kid. This is as close as
you’ll ever get to having sex with any of these damn Hollywood stars and famous ladies. Here’s a little secret, Maurice.’ I leaned in closer and said, ‘How they get the
bodies to look so right, just like the real bodies, is that the real people actually model their own bodies for the moulds. So it’s all anatomically correct, Maurice. The wax
figures are the exact same as the real people. Forget about those stupid photoshopped pictures in the magazines, man. This is the real deal. This is the next best thing
other than nailing the real person. This is better than nailing Tracy Gold’s sister.’ It took Maurice a few moments to gather his thoughts but when he did, he went,
‘How do you know this?’ I said, ‘Because I’ve been the assistant manger at the Merrytime Wax Museum for the last two years. I’ve done it. I have access to the place
during the off hours. I know that they don’t run the cameras at night and I know that they don’t have any sort of security presence.’ And he said, ‘Why are you
telling me this?’ And I went, ‘Because you’re the leader of our group. If you took it the rest of the guy’s this could easily work. I’d even cut you in. I’d give you fifteen
percent of the profits.’ He finished his beer. He said, ‘So you’re propositioning that you wanna pimp out the wax figures of the Merrytime Wax Museum to the men of
the Celebrity Select Group?’ I nodded. He said, ‘You wanna be the Wax Pimp?’ Again, I nodded. And he went, ‘Well of course, I’m gonna have to try it out first for
myself.’ This time I smiled. I said, ‘Of course.’ And then I slid him over a list of the figures we had and told him to pick one out. I told him, ‘Tomorrow night. You call
that phone number on the sheet and leave me a message with the initials of the figure you wanna nail and then come over. Midnight sharp. Park two blocks away and
call that number again. Let it ring once and I’ll come let you in.’ Maurice started laughing. He said, ‘Deal.’ And that was it. That’s how the operation really began.”
“Who did Maurice pick?” Johnson asks.
“Ashley Olson.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. And get this, I tried to give him Mary Kate at first and the motherfucker knew the difference. He was like, ‘Nice try, but how about you bring Ashley out for
me.’ It’s like damn, ya know. Maurice knew his shit.”
“So then what?”
“I told him I needed two weeks to get everything ready. While I did that, it was his job to introduce this idea to the group.”
“How did you go about getting things ready?”
“First thing I did was I made up a price sheet. I decided to split the figures into three different price rates. There was the twenty dollar rate. That was for your more B
level, your more irrelevant starts. Your Kristie Alley’s. Your Courtney Cox’s. Your Alicia Silverstone’s. All your Alissa Jo Hart’s of the world. Next up was the forty dollar
rate. Part of this rate was all about your Lisa Bonet’s and your Jada Pinket’s and your Catherine Zeta-Jones’s. The forty dollar rate was mostly about the beautiful
minority celebs. In my world of wax pimping, everyone gotta chance to play. The other part of this rate was for your more…I was a leading lady once but not so much
anymore…crowd. Your Angela Basset’s and your Penelope Cruiz’s. But it just wasn’t minorities. Cameron Diaz fell into this group. So did Gwenyth Paltrow and Sandra
Bullock. And then there was the eighty dollar rate. These were the cream of the crop. Your Lohan’s and Hilton’s and Duff’s. Rachael Weiz and Sienna Miller were in this
group. Plus anyone who wanted to get with a star who was under the age of sixteen had to pay this rate. If one of the guys wanted to fuck the wax figure of that
Hanna Montana bitch, they had to fork me over the big bucks.”
Johnson rubs his face.
And I say, “After that, I hooked up a new phone number with a messaging service. I manipulated the schedule at work so I could get the same four closing shifts
every week. And I made up a small set of rules.”
“What were the rules?”
“First rule was that the appointments had to be scheduled at least twenty-four hours in advance. You had to call the messaging service, leave your name and number
and the name of the figure you wanted to go after. The other rules were you get twenty minutes to do your thing. You had to wear protection. Absolutely no rough
housing. And you had to clean up after yourself with disinfectant wipes and insert the pieces back in yourself. Maurice went over all the rules with the guys and then
presented them with a tiny card that had the name I was using, Rake Riggins printed on it with the new number. That was it. That’s how it worked.”
Johnson grabs the glass of water in front of him and takes a drink. “Tell me about business,” he says.
“Right from the first night it took off. That first night, there were seven guys there from the group and all of them except one wanted the cream of the crop. The
eighty dollar range. I’d cut holes in all the female figures a few days earlier. I wore a blazer jacket and a tie and had a few bottles of champagne sitting in a cooler of
ice. Everyone played by the rules and it was a smashing success. In fact for the first five months or so, for those four closing shifts a week, I was making close to four
hundred bucks a night. That was sixteen hundred a week. I gave Maurice two hundred of that sixteen hundred and kept the rest. It was awesome. Suddenly I could
afford almost everything I wanted. I no longer was the odd man, broke kid out. With money came confidence. Freedom. My skin cleared up. I was eating amazingly
well. I could go out and get drunk and afford as much coke as I wanted, when I wanted. My clothes got nicer. I even got laid a few times in those same months. Life
was finally looking up again. I even moved out of Lord’s place and into this beautiful luxury apartment. Things were great. And I wanted to keep it that way so I
decided to let the operation grow. I held a meeting at the outreach center one night with everyone who had ever paid for the services my business provided to them.
There were fourteen guys there that night. Fourteen men with wives and children at home, who spent part of two nights a week forking over cash for the
opportunity to dick a wax figure in my museum. I brought in soda and punch and sandwiches and chips and cookies. When everyone had finally arrived, I started the
meeting. I told them that things were going amazingly well. That this had been the best six weeks of my life. And then I told them that I really believed other people
ought be able to enjoy what we were enjoying. I said, ‘To not share this experience with those we know the best. To keep this away from other people who have
the same impulses is not fair and certainly not just.’ I told them they could each tell two people. I gave them each two more business cards. ‘Make sure these people
are deserving and that they know the rules. Because I will not hesitate to shut this operation down due to somebody breaking the rules.’ That whole idea, the idea of
growing the business turned out to be a big dumb mistake.”
“How so?”
“Because people suck. Seriously. They suck and they can’t handle a good thing when they get it. It’s human nature. It’s always been like that.’
“What happened, Ronnie?”
“Within three weeks of that meeting, things had blown up. Two friends. Yeah right. It was more like four or five different friends. I mean, I was getting maybe eighty
messages a night from people looking for a reservation and to be completely honest with you, at first, I wasn’t denying any of them. I actually encouraged it. I turned
the front lobby of the Merrytime Wax Museum into a goddamn lounge. Each night I opened up for business, I had a fully stocked bar at the ticket counter. I brought
in a bartender. There was a boombox there. It was off the hook. Guys finishing up with Alicia Keys and Courtney Love then coming into the front lounge and having a
few cocktails and doing coke. It was a full on party and at that point I was beginning to bring in close to eight thousand dollars a week.”
Taking another drink of water, Johnson rubs his forehead. Then he looks up at me and goes, “And nobody who worked at the museum suspected anything? Nothing
was ever out of place or messed up?”
“No. I was a pro. I mean, there were a couple of instances where things could’ve gotten real bad. A couple of times when I held my breath real tight and my face got
real red.”
“Like what?”
“Like for instance this time when one of the guys got a little wild with the Dolly Parton figure from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. He musta ripped his rubber off
and blown his load on her instead because there was this fairly decent sized line of come that ran from right above her right eye to her lips and the next day I’m at
work and I’m walking through the gallery and I got stopped by this fat German guy who pointed it out to me. He didn’t know what it was, but was concerned that
maybe the wax was melting. I told him not to worry about it but then the head boss came over. Apparently someone had mentioned it to him a little earlier. I got real
nervous as he stood there and studied the line. He was puzzled. Then one of the engineers came over. Nobody could figure out what it was. My heart was racing. I
mean, all they would had to do was take Ms. Parton to the back and do a full check-out and find those damn holes I cut into her. It was looking bad until my boss
wetted the tip of his right index finger and wiped some of the come off then licked his finger. He said, ‘It don’t taste like wax. It tastes kinda salty. Like maybe one of
the visitors threw something at it.’ I just stood there. Sweating. Nauseated. It was horrible. And then the engineer took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the
come off and that was it. They decided not to do another thing to it. So the party went on. And believe me, it was a party. Sometimes lasting until three or four in
the morning. But like all things that seem so great and seem so invincible at the time, it began to spin out of control. With more customers came more requests. More
cash being thrown at me. And some of the stuff was sick. Just downright sick. Married men with grown kids pulling me aside and offering me three hundred dollars.
‘For what?’ I would ask. ‘One hour with Haley Joe Osmond.’ Or a threesome with Larry and Balky from that show Perfect Strangers. And I would do it. Soon, I had
pieces cut off all the male figures. You’d be surprised at how many of these guys wanted a piece of these male celebrity’s. It was so insane. But I went along with it. I
mean, you look at thing like your ideals. Your ideology. How it fits with your current financial state. When you’re flat broke, you swear to god by these sort of populist,
societal welfare type of morals. The evil corporations. The unjust government. The horrible rich white male. But it’s amazing how fast that mindset fly’s out of the
window the moment you start balling in dough. And you’ll do virtually anything to keep that cashflow coming in steady. My old rules. What rules? The things I wouldn’t
stand for. I can put up with anything for the right price. And it was within this mindset that the operation became almost uncontrollable. Wax figures were beginning
to show up with finger marks dug in below their eyes. There were bite marks appearing on asses. There was even the indentation of a fist on the face of Jessica Biel.
It was more work cleaning up after these monsters than it was organizing the goddamn events and I was losing my mind. I was having nightmares of wax people
coming to kill me. Of being arrested and put to death by drowning in a sea of wax. I had one nightmare where I got reamed up the ass by the wax figure of Sean
Connery. I could barely look at myself in the mirror anymore.”
“So why keep going with it? Why keep the operation alive?”
“Because of the money. It’s always the money. I was pulling in close to thirty-two thousand a month. With that kinda cash comes the idea of invincibility. That not
even the worst thing these guys can do can get me to stop…”
Pause.
I say, “And then came two nights ago.”
“What was two nights ago?”
This is when I begin to lose it. I am so tired. I can’t hold this shit in. I go, “A couple of the guys who came in were real fucked up. Like they’d been up for days
smoking crank. They had that evil look in their eyes. That soulless look where you see them and there’s nothing there. Nothing in that brain but pure evil. They pulled
me aside. Offered me a thousand dollars for the thirty minutes together with Steve Urkel and Laura Winslow from that show Family Matters. I knew, I just knew that
nothing good was going to come from me agreeing to that. From me saying yes. But I allowed it anyway. A thousand dollars cash. I’d never had anyone offer me that
much before so I told them, ‘Okay, you got it. Just make sure you clean the both of them up when you’re done.’ My god. What a mistake. What a goddamn mistake.”
“What happened, Ronnie?”
“Things were going so well…”
Pause.
“Ronnie, tell me what happened.”
“Fuck.” I start breaking down into tears. I say, “There was this loud commotion from the gallery. There was shouting and screaming even. So I ran back there and one
of the guys who’d paid me the thousand was stabbing the Laura Winslow figure. Just stabbing her and stabbing her. It was fucking insane. So like four of us grab him
off of her and his friend starts freaking out and this big fistfight erupts. Shit goes down for like two minutes until finally someone yells that they called the cops and
people started scattering. I was so confused. Everything I’d started was over. Everything! Fuck. So I grabbed up all the money and split with the severed head of that
Winslow girl and I haven’t been back.” I’m crying so hard right now. My face is full of tears and I say, “Oh fuck. What happened to me? What happened? I never
meant for any of the wax heads to get cut off. I never meant to have a life that turned out like this.”
Pause.
I wipe my face with my hands and cry, “I need help. Please don’t tell my mom and dad. I need help. I’m so sorry Laura Winslow.”
The door to the room bursts back open. It’s Detective Wilson and he comes charging at me.
I jump out of my chair and run into the back left corner and Johnson is screaming for Wilson to stand down.
But Wilson isn’t listening. He flips over the fucking table and runs right at me and grabs me by the shirt and slams a mugshot of this Arab guy in front of my face.
“What is your connection to this man you piece of shit?”
“Paul,” I cry. “That’s Paul. He was a client. His name is Paul.”
“That’s not his name you asshole. His name is Amid Mojadeddi and he’s been arrested and is being held for the firebomings! What is your connection to him? Were you
funneling him money for his attack plans?”
“No,” I snort. “That guy is Paul. He was one of my biggest customers.”
“His name is Amid Mojadeddi you sick fuck! What is your connection to him!”
“He was a client. I told you!”
“A client! He called you thirty seven times between the night of the first firebombing and the morning he was arrested. What did he want?”
“He wanted to get his rocks off. I talked with him and he sounded all stressed out like he was having a breakdown but I told him I couldn’t help him. I wasn’t working
on those nights. He got really mad and then called me a name in Arabic and hung up. That was the last I heard from him.”
Johnson grabs Wilson and pulls him off of me.
“That’s enough detective,” says Johnson.
And Wilson goes, “What do you have to do with the attacks, asshole?”
“Nothing. I swear. Nothing. I thought you guys picked me up because of the wax museum incident.”
“No,” says Wilson.
And Johnson goes, “Ronnie, if you’re lying to us, we can’t help you out. We can’t make you a-“
But he gets cut-off.
A third man in a suit enters the room and calls both detectives over.
They stand across the room, the three of them, whispering, looking at me, and then Wilson leaves the room in disgust and Johnson walks over to me.
“Ronnie Manson Jr.”
“Yes.”
“Come with me.”
“Why?”
“Because somebody just set the Merrytime Wax Museum on fire. Now get up and come with me before I bring detective Wilson back into the room!”
I scramble to my feet and he handcuffs me. My entire body is shaking. “What’s going to happen to me?”
“We’re gonna hold you for awhile, Ronnie.”
“How long?”
Johnson pulls me forward and points at the door. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“For awhile kid. At least until we figure out what’s going on.”
I walk through the door. I feel dead inside. I’m done. Spent. Wrecked. The only upside to this is the fact that I’ll at least be able to finally pass out. Two days of being
up is a bitch.
The wax pimp needs a nap.
[home]
first time for everything, well Jesus Christ, fucking A, there have been quite a few firsts in my life lately.
The interrogation room I’m sitting in isn’t all that different than the ones I used to see in those cop shows on TV. You got your hard fluorescent lights beaming down
directly onto the isolated table in the center of the room. You got your dark shadows being cast in the corners. You got your standard double sided mirror with
concerned detectives and a politically ambitious D.A. standing on the other side of it. You got your scurvy, tattooed, strung out looking suspect plopped on a tiny chair
at the table trying to look tough and mean. About the only thing that’s missing is your rouge, handsome male detective with a troubled past that drives him to do this
kind of work, and his standard pretty, yet hardcore female partner who doesn’t take nobody’s shit.
Instead of that power couple, I got sitting across from me, Detective Johnson. This fat bald dude with a shiny scalp stuffed in a cheap gray suit. And his skinny boy
partner, Wilson, with Billy Schroeder boy looks, wearing an impressive black suit.
The room smells like pine solve and cheap plastic.
The detectives smell like cheap cologne and roast beef sandwiches.
And I gotta say I’m really fucking nervous.
I’m relieved.
But I’m nervous.
I’ve been wanting to tell my story for awhile now. I’ve been dying to get this off of my chest.
Pushing a tape recorder into the middle of table, Detective Johnson stares me down and asks, “Okay, Ronnie. Are you ready?”
“Yes.” My voice trembles.
“Good,” Johnson says.
Two hours ago I was sitting in my luxury, two bedroom apartment on the top of Nob Hill. I was surrounded by fifteen shoeboxes full of cash. I was preparing myself to
get out of the huge mess I’d made of my life and end my huge operation.
I was sitting in front of my computer with my jeans around my ankles. My black ribbed underwear pulled down to my thighs. I had one hand fondling my soft penis
while the other hand fondled my computer mouse as I sifted through one site of free transsexual porn after another.
By the way, I blame all of the above on way too much blow. I had been up for two straight days hanging out at the Brown Jug and at my old apartment with Lord and
in this dude’s warehouse basement in SOMA. I was out of control. It had been one of those, I’m going out for a drink on Tuesday, things. But I didn’t get home until
Thursday. I’d spent three hundred dollars. And finally, I decided to call it quits and stumbled onto Mission Street and flagged down a cab which took me to my home
sweet home.
Damn, I was so fucking horny. Horny enough to know that just some simple guy on girl shit wasn’t going to do the job, if that job was an orgasm that took enough
out of me to get me to bed. So like I normally did when I stayed up for this long, I amped up the ammie and typed in those three magical search words: Free TS
Videos. And just like that, I was taking a virtual tour of a world full of chicks with dicks, trying to find just the right video, the perfect one, the one where the pretty
little Latina manboy gets gangbanged by a room full of men.
Right as I had found the closest thing to that very description, there was a loud knock on my apartment door.
I ignored it.
I figured it was a neighbor looking to borrow something from me.
I went back to video viewing.
And there was another, even louder knock.
Once again, I ignored it and began to get things in their proper order for me to blow my load: One paper towel sheet to catch the flying wad of come. Another paper
towel sheet to wipe myself down. And another sheet to wipe my hands clean with.
Bust just as I was finishing with that:
BOOM!
BANG!
BOOM!
My apartment door was kicked open and in rushed twelve S.W.A.T. team officers in masks with semi-automatic guns pointed at me, yelling for my ass to get on the
floor and put my hands above my head and to shut the fuck up.
All of which I did while the video of the Transexual Gangbang played at full volume.
How fucking embarrassing!
You think about the most embarrassing moments that could ever happen in human history and this wouldn’t even make the list because you’d never think something
like this could even happen.
But it did.
To me.
I was placed in handcuffs.
Read my rights.
A shirt was thrown over my head.
And I was thrown into the back of a police van and brought to the downtown police station.
Leaning toward the center of the table, fondling the recorder, Johnson goes, “When I hit the record button I need you to state your name, date of birth, and place
of birth.”
“Got it.”
Johnson turns to Wilson and nods at him. Swinging his eyes back to me, he goes, “Let’s do this.”
I clear my throat.
He hits the record button.
“My name is Ronald Manson Jr. but people call me Ronnie. I was born on February 14th, 1984 in Columbia, Missouri.”
“Do know why you’re sitting here today, Ronnie?” Detective Johnson asks.
“Of course I do.”
“Why?”
“Because of my dealings with some people. Some sick, sick people. Very sick fucking people.”
“Please elaborate, Ronnie?”
“The whole thing?”
“Obviously,” Detective Wilson snorts.
“Cause, man. I’m ready to spill my guts. I’ve been living with this for too long.”
“Okay, Ronnie,” Detective Johnson says. “Just start from the beginning. Tell us your story.”
I take a deep breath.
And then I begin.
“This whole damn operation, all of this fucked up shit, began less than a year ago. At the time, I was living with this drug dealer, Lord who was pretty big time. Like
top one or two dealers within that whole Mission, Haight Street, black hair, tight jeans, fixed gear bike, bad sweater, hipster scene. We were living in this scummy
apartment right on the edge of the Tenderloin on Geary and Polk streets. The place was a total shithole. We rarely cleaned it because we were always too damn busy
recovering from party binges and shit. Dozens of trashbags stacked a mile high in the hallway was the norm. As were the hovering army’s of fruitflies in the kitchen. It
was a real interesting time in my life at that point. I’d recently graduated from the Academy Institute with a BA in Fine Art. I was on the move in the art scene.
Nobody was on my tip. Nobody was doing what I was doing. I was getting offered all these gallery shows all over SF and Oakland. I was making the scene. I was the
fucking scene. It’s how I met Lord actually. He was just my regular dealer at first, until we became good friends in that weird kinda way that a drug dealer can become
your good friend…Basically, you help pay his rent each month and he keeps you jacked up. He’s ready to spot you whatever you need, even if you don’t have the
funds on you at that very moment. He keeps you too high to think about the bad shit. It was cool though, like I said, he was big in the scene and was always talking
me up around those hipster circles, especially after I signed with a fine art agent. I thought I was about ready to blow the fuck up nationally, ya know. I was cocky.
Brash. There was never a minute when I wasn’t talking about myself or lassoing the conversation back to me. About the only problem I was having at that point was
that I wasn’t really getting laid that much by all these babes with black hair and tattoos and crazy boots that I would see at all the party’s I went to with Lord. The girls
I was hooking up with were okay, but I wanted better, and it was disheartening at times, but at least I still had my art. I was going places. But then things slowed
down for a real long minute. My production fell off. My drug habit took over my life and I just didn’t really give a fuck anymore. My shows became fewer and farther in
between. So when my student loans began to kick in, I had to get a job and finally landed one as the assistant manager of the Merrytime Wax Museum. That’s when I
moved in with Lord. But I was still frustrated. I had put in a ton of work to make myself, ya know, ‘San Francisco cool’.”
“San Francisco cool?” Johnson asks.
“Yeah. San Francisco cool.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
And I go, “San Francisco cool. It’s like a whole nother beast. See, what you have to understand is that I grew up in fucking Missouri. It was so not a place for the
trendy and the hip. Not at all. If you were one of the cool, hipper kids back when I was in high school, you were like just getting into Nirvana and the Smashing
Pumpkins about ’99, 2000, right after you realized what should’ve been completely obvious in the first place, that bands like Limb Bizkit, Korn, Staind, Papa Roach,
Muddle of Pudd, and Nickelback were like the death of music. Just a bunch of fat fucking tards making music for fat dudes with acne who wrestled their kid sisters on
trampolines and wore ICP shirts. They made music for bro’s with barbwire tattoos. Strippers with like six kids. And trailer trash hoes with yellow teeth and Eminem
Posters over their beds. But for a minute, kids got fooled into thinking the shit was kinda alright. The cool kids in Missouri thought it was sorta rad. They got all into
Godsmack and Kid Rock for a second. And they really wanted to check out the third Woodstock. Other cool kids shopped at the mall and bought shit from American
Eagle like cargo pants and “alternative” looking shirts that said shit like: Haight Ashbury 1969 on them. Or shirts with faded jersey numbers on them. A lot of the bro’s
even spiked their hair and got eyebrow rings, and a ton of them got Superman and tigers and weird tribal shit tattooed on their shoulder blades and pecks while the
girls got birth signs inked on their lower backs and butterfly’s on their big toes. This is what being Missouri cool was all about, ya know. It was all pretty Midwest. Really.
I mean take me personally for example. My own transformation. My mom and dad divorced when I was just six years old. We were living in Sioux Falls, South Dakota at
the time. That’s when my mom got remarried to this guy Morris who lived on a sixty acre hog farm with a tree nursery right off of a dirt road near Rochester,
Minnesota which is where we relocated during a very warm summer. Me and my four sisters.”
Pause.
I take a huge drink of water from the glass sitting in front of me and I say, “It was a tough adjustment at first. Being stuck out in farmland with pretty much no way of
getting anywhere. Not having anyone to hang out with except my sisters, all of whom were quite a bit older than me. Having to deal with the consistent aura of hog
manure in the air. It was very trying at times. But I did finally get used to it and began to make the best of the situation. I sent myself out on assignments. I carved
out all these adventures for my myself. Many an afternoon was spent exploring the wild lands that surrounded me. I often hiked through the seemingly endless array of
fields and prairies on my stepfather’s land with the boldness of a Spanish explorer. I discovered waterways that were “rivers” and small mounds of dirt that were
“mountains” and I claimed them as my own and gave them names like “Mt. Missouri” and “Pilgrims River.” Often, my family could find me stalking birds of prey from tree
to tree in the nursery, which to me, was a “jungle”, where I carved spears from sticks and climbed up tree trunks, jumping from one branch to the next like the weird
kid in the Jungle Book. In the barn where the farm machinery or “monsters” slept, I designed clubhouses and built strategic forts that served as watchtowers where
rounds rocks or “ammunition” were stored under the cover of leaves and pieces of sheet metal. But inevitably, there would emerge on the horizon, the dreary,
yawning days of thunderstorms and a sky that could turn pitch black by noon, full of menacing, gargantuan lighting bolts that could en-earth the man made roads and
destroy crops by the acres. And it was on those days that I was privy to another side of adolescent spontaneity. A much different side of life. On those days, stuck
inside the giant three story brown house with my sister’s, I would see first hand how the other sex acted and at times, become an integral part of their own
imaginative experiments. Numerous times you could find me seated on a chair in front of a large vanity mirror or plopped on a stool in the bathroom getting done up
like a doll. Like a little Princess. There I was, my father’s only son, Daddy’s future NFL star, the big Spanish conqueror, sitting passively with my hands folded in my lap
and my head moving just slightly up then down while my sister’s took turns coloring my cheeks with a wide array of blush. Or fine-tuning my eyes with mascara and the
many shades of eye-liner in their possession. That was me, ‘the man of the family’ with hair pins and bows and little butterfly clips all over my long, red hair, leaning back
against the bathroom counters with my chin tilted toward the ceiling, pouting my lips, while my sisters slid shiny tubes of lipstick back and forth on them.
“On other dreary days, you might’ve found me sitting on one of the orange sofas in the huge, gray carpeted living room with white colored walls, watching as my sister’
s threw their very own dance parties and bopped around the wide open space to the glaring sounds of the Bangles and Cindy Lauper and of course, Madonna, all of
which roared through the large, RCA stereo in the corner of the room. Sometimes, when I was also “digging” the groovy mood of the house, I would join in the wild
fun and immerse myself in dance, shaking my own ass to the crazy sounds of Tiffany and Whitney Houston…Much later on, at the beginning of my adult days, I would
openly comment on this era of my life, saying, ‘It’s a huge fucking surprise I didn’t grow up to be a big, giant faggot.’”
“Okay, Ronnie, where the fuck is this going? We thought you wanted to get all of this off your chest,” Detective Johnson says.
“I do. I really do, guys. And I’m getting there.”
“Getting where?” Wilson demands to know, slamming his right fist against the table.
“I’m trying to give you guys all the necessary information about how I started all of this and became mixed up with these sick people!”
“Wait,” Johnson says. “You started all of it?”
“Yes,” I groan, wiping my forehead with the back of my hand. “It’s all my doing.”
“Everything? The whole operation.” Johnson glares.
“The whole thing,” I say.
Wilson waves a finger in front of my face and growls, “So tell us about it you dirty punk.”
“I’m getting there,” I protest.
“Not fast enough, asshole!”
“What do you guys want?” I ask.
“The sped up version,” Johnson replies calmly. “Take us through everything, but do it a little faster, Ronnie.”
I sigh and wipe some more sweat away. “Fine.”
And Johnson goes, “Alright, now let’s get down to the real nitty gritty.”
So I say, “The elementary days.”
I say, “Things in grades k-5 pretty much started out with a bang. I enrolled in Kindergarten and immediately I knew that I was smarter and better than most of the
kids there. Not only was I further advanced in reading and math, but I was also much further along in my complete admiration and understanding and desire for the
opposite sex. Instead of playing Coodies Tag and shying away from the girls when they were acknowledging me like some of the other boys did, I actively pursued my
fascination of the hot ones and made my intentions quite clear. Many recess’s of mine were spent that year not just on the fifteen yard patch of green grass playing
touch football with the boys, but also standing under the monkey bars where I would gaze up the dresses of girls or stand near the swing set and stare gleefully as
their legs flapped open in the air and their skirts blew toward the sky. But trouble, if you can really call it that now, soon followed. It came in the form of the hottest
girl in the grade, Cyndi Johansson, who knew what I was up to and purposely moved slowly across those rusted monkey bars, looking down at me with a smirk as she
swung from one bar to the next. So brimming with a sense of confidence one day, I told her to follow me into the tunnel of tractor tires that occupied the north end
of the playground, and when we were tucked away into the middle of the darkness, I grabbed onto her hair and shoved my lips against hers and forced my tongue
down her throat, thinking that this is what she wanted me to do. I mean, what did she really expect when she followed me into the tire tunnel during the last recess
of the school day? But apparently it wasn’t what she wanted, and not only did she smack me across the face, but she told on me, and two days later, my mom was
unhappily summoned into the principals office where I nervously sat, my hands twitching in my lap, and was reprimanded quite harshly with a two week out of school
suspension, something which had never been handed out before. And my only defense to the punishment: This is eighties for crissakes. Isn’t everyone having good
time?”
Bursting into laughter, Johnson howls, “What in the hell are you talking about, Ronnie?”
“My life, man.”
“Well the two of us don’t wanna hear this shit. The only things we need know about your life is how you got to this city, what led you to weave this disgusting web
of thugs together, how it worked and who the hell was involved.”
And I’m like, “Thugs?”
I’m like, “I’d hardly call any of my associates thugs. I mean, there were times when a couple of them got rough while doing their thing, which made my job much
harder at times. But I think labeling everyone I’ve been working with as a thug is a little over the top.”
Jumping out of his chair, Wilson shuts the tape off and produces a plunger. He shakes it in front of my face, his face beet red, spit dropping from his mouth as he goes,
“Just get into the story you little fucking sleazeball!”
“Okay, okay,” I say, throwing my arms up. “Jesus Christ, Johnson. Hold your partner back.”
“Marc, back off,” Johnson says. “Put that goddamn plunger away and sit down.”
Veins in his forehead bulging, Wilson slowly takes a few steps back and sits down in his chair.
And I say, “Alright, guys. The San Francisco days. I understand.” I take another drink of water. “This whole thing. My whole idea. It wasn’t even my own original
thought. The idea was sorta transplanted into my head one night. Jesus Christ. I even remember the goddamn date.”
“When was it?” Johnson asks.
“January third.”
“What happened on January third, Ronnie?”
“Like I told you guys earlier, I was living with this dealer. He wasn’t just doing this gram, half gram shit, he was re-uping a bunch of other dealers in the city with ounces
of the white bitch at a time. That’s when things really started. That night. I remember it was raining really hard out. I’d been at work all day at the wax museum. Man,
it was a crappy job at that point. Dealing with motherfucking tourists coming to the city and paying big bucks to have their pictures taken next to these goddamn wax
statues of Christina Aguillera and Heath Ledger. It seemed so nuts to me at the time. The concept of hanging with the fake stars. I mean, the only time I ever
enjoyed anything that had to do with a wax museum was when I was a kid and saw that the Scooby-Doo Movie episode where the gang gets stuck for awhile in that
Wax Museum. Anyway, I got back to that shithole apartment that night and I was drenched and tired and pretty irritable. That pad stressed me out so much. Even
more so at that moment ‘cause I was really having a tough time coming to grips with the way things had been shaping up. My agent dropped me after I’d made a
series of early morning calls to his office harassing him about this feature in Interview magazine he was trying to get me that never materialized. I was having a tough
time getting shows because I’d pissed a lot off people of with my holier than thou attitude and motherfuckers were taking it out on me. Plus, this deal for this graphic
novel I’d illustrated had fallen through and the kid who’d written the story got so distraught over it that he set the fucking thing on fire. On top of all that, the
student loans were killing me. I was balls deep in credit card debt. And I had a three to four gram a week coke habit. You take all that and add it to the fact that I
hadn’t been laid in seven months and I was a goddamn miserable bastard. Pissed off and moody all day. I would sit in my room at night all by myself and try to flush out
whatever art was in my system but nothing was coming of any of it. Just a bunch of half-assed projects piled into a corner of my room. It was so bad. I was having
daily thoughts of suicide. About the only thing that made me feel any good was sitting in my bedroom by myself, tweaking on a baggie of coke, getting worked up
about how I was gonna be back on top soon, and checking my goddamn MySpace page every five minutes. I couldn’t even socialize with anyone outside of work or
the Internet anymore. My skin was breaking out. I was out of shape. I had these red spots all over my chest and my back. This was where I found my self the night of
January third, guys. That night, my whole plan was just to get home, eat the chicken noodle soup I’d stopped and picked up on the way, jump into bed, and watch
the Aviator. I wanted to wake up all early the next day and start this painting I’d been working on in my head for the past week. I was gonna start over. Go back to
scratch. Work my way back to the top. But as soon as I walked through the door that night, I was immediately bombarded by Lord and some of his friends. See, to
get to my bedroom, I had to walk by Lord’s room. And that night, his door was open and there were six people inside of it getting fucked up. This guy, Ryan who was
a dealer himself and re-upped through Lord. These three girls I’d never seen before. And this other dude I didn’t know, who was wearing this old school looking
Detroit Tigers jacket and had his jeans rolled to his ankles. The music was up so loud. I think it was Priestess. And as I walked past Lord’s doorway, I was practically
jumped by him. He threw his arms around my neck and started begging me to come into his room and party with everyone. I mean, he begged and he begged and he
begged. I tried telling him that I wasn’t into it. That I felt like total crap. Like Asia Carrera’s lower half after a gnarly double penetration scene. But man, Lord can be so
unrelenting. He always had just enough free coke and babes around him. I mean, do you guys know how fucking hard it is to say no to hot chicks and free cocaine?
How hard it is to turn your back on having one of the top dealers in the city talking you up like you’re the greatest thing since the Mike Patton talking shit about
Wolfmother video on YouTube. It’s pretty much impossible, guys. I put up a weaker fight than a chubby white girl in a room full of black dudes and a video camera.
The final knockout coming when Lord told me, ‘Dude, I got this amazing new shit. My guy, he told me that he’s had three people almost O.D. on just a coupla lines.’
He said that, ‘This shit, this shit will get you higher than David Crosby on any given day in the eighties.’ It was hook, line, and sinker, boys. You just don’t turn down
free drugs and a chance to hang with babes in your own place. Even you if you don’t feel up to it or feel uncomfortable and out of place. Which I totally did. I had
been for months.
“So I dropped off my backpack and the soup in my room and entered the dark lair of Lord’s party den. Complete with a bunch of drug addicts and a fat brown cat
named Terrance. I took a seat on the edge of his bed, right next to his turtle tank. His room was thrashed like always. Someone had even ripped the corner of the
Motley Crue poster he’d traded this kid a gram for. Just like I figured, I felt completely out of place. I was still in my work uniform which was a pair of soggy khakis, a
thin quicksilver belt, and a black button up long sleeve with the Merrytime Wax Museum logo embroidered above my left breast. My shoes and socks had holes in them.
I was wearing dirty underwear that smelled like my swampy ass cheeks. It had been awhile since I’d shaved, so there were these patchy blotches of hair all over my
grill. The back of my neck was this forest of straggly lines of hair. And I had a whitehead on the very tip of my nose. You take all that and start comparing it to these
awesome looking girls. Hair all done up like they were a bunch of models. Wearing amazing outfits. Trust fund bank accounts. And I knew I had no fucking chance. Yet
still, maybe I did. That was my mindset back then. It was all about the possibility of the thing. The possibility that maybe you might somehow find a girl in the city that
was more interested in what the fuck you’ve done than how scurvy and hip you looked and if you knew anything at all about the new Beirut album. I hadn’t found
one yet. And I wasn’t going to that night. Especially in that room with Lord around looking like some Latino, heavy metal James Dean. And that dude, Ryan, with his
long black hair and size two jeans and black jacket and that bandanna tied around his neck. Then there was the other guy, James Morgan, the man who planted the
seed in my head. He’s this international best-selling author. And you shoulda seen this guy chopping it up about how he was changing people’s lives. And how he was
the best post-modern writer alive. And how he was actually the best writer since Antonin Artaud. Jesus Christ! He wouldn’t stop. I mean, sure, I’d read his novel,
PieGrinder. It was pretty awesome. But shit, I always thought it was about what you’re doing now and not what the hell you’ve already done. So yeah, with all those
dudes getting fucked up and having a head start, I was way outta my league. Which had evolved into the norm for me anyhow. Around Lord and all of his friends, I
had really begun to feel insufficient. Very uncool. Not hip enough. That was the big trip about San Francisco. It was like any other city or town. With it’s clichés and
clicks. People still judge you here on the basis of what you wear and how you wear it. They still judge you here on race. And how good your hair looks. And what kind
of music you listen to. And how big you are in whatever scene you’re into. It was like it was for me growing up. Except here, in San Francisco, the clicks were more
diverse and there was more shit to do.
“So after I was introduced to everyone, the girls names being, get this: Luxie Hart, MaryJo Hastings, and Barbie Rulex, Lord dumped out a half gram of the new shit on
a CD case and told me to catch up. That James guy, he handed me a razor blade and while I was cutting the coke up, he was going, ‘Here’s the deal, guys. I’m doing
the most noble thing there is to do with your life. I’m giving people new ideas. New perspectives on shit. I’m sharing new stories with the masses. When people read
my book, their lives become enhanced. I’ve gotten over thirty thousand pieces of fan mail from girls and boys, young and old, telling me, going into explicit detail about
how my international best-selling novel, PieGrinder completely changed their life in some way. Some people quit doing stupid drugs. Some people started doing good
drugs. Kids are writing me all the time about losing their virginity and starting moped gangs. It’s the boss. It really is. That’s what makes some pursuits better than
others. If you’re helping further the lifetime experiences of other people and just not just your own, then you’re cause is better. Plain and simple.’ He went on like
that for maybe twenty more minutes. He was like, ‘Look at it. Lord, you enhance people’s lives. Ryan, you do the same. You help people have a better time and
forget about the bad shit for a few hours when they’re out.’ Then he asked the girls what they did. Luxie: Hair stylist. MaryJo: Bartender at Pops. Barbie: Part-time
student. And James was like, ‘See, Luxie, you make people feel better about themselves when they look in the mirror. MaryJo gets people off at night. And Barbie,
how old are you?’ She told him she was twenty-four. And he was like, ‘You need to start doing something worthwhile like all of us are doing. School’s out, baby.’
Barbie faked laughed and flipped James off and then I polished off the fourth line from the CD case, which constituted the whole fucking half and asked the whole
room for a cigarette. My mind was going crazy. It felt like there was this tiny cocaine alien fisting my chest. That James guy handed me a Parliament Light and asked me
what my name was again. I lit the smoke and told him and then he asked me what I did. But right as I was answering, Lord jumped in and went, ‘Ronnie’s an amazing
artist.’ And James went, ‘Shut-up, Lord. He can answer for himself.’ He asked me again and I stammered, ‘I’m the assistant front desk manager at the Merrytime Wax
Museum.’ I even yanked on the embroidered logo of my soggy jersey and pointed at it. I saw Lord shake his head and give off one of those looks, like, And you wanna
know why you don’t get laid ever. He was always getting on me to talk about my art more and use all the cred I once had to my benefit. But I never felt comfortable
doing that. I could never talk my shit up the way that James Morgan did. I thought the guy was a pretentious asshole. And he was. But he was a pretentious asshole
who got to nail all the girls I could only daydream about nailing.”
Detective Johnson cuts in. He goes, “What’s Lord’s real name, Ronnie?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit,” Wilson snaps. “You really mean to tell us that you lived with a guy for a full year and didn’t know his real name? Come on.”
“I’m serious, guys. I only knew him by Lord. The guy is completely underground. I never heard anyone call him anything else. He never said where he came from. Dude
didn’t even get mail.”
Johnson leans over to Wilson and goes, “We should forward this to Narcotics. Maybe they have something on this guy.”
“Oh, man,” Wilson smiles, his eyes locked right on me. “You better believe we’re following up on this guy. You’re boy is fucked Ronnie.”
I pick up the glass of water and my hands are shaking badly. Both detectives notice this.
I take another drink, finishing it, and say, “Can I get some more water and a cigarette?”
Johnson turns back to me. He says, “Sure, Ronnie.”
He says, “In a few minutes. But right now, why don’t you tell us more. Tell us the rest of your story, Ronnie.”
Pressing my hands on the table to make them quite moving, I go, “No one in the room that night responded to what I’d said. They obviously weren’t interested at all.
And right as I jumping into my follow-up with a bad pop culture joke about Lemmy and a wax blood transfusion, that MaryJo girl, who had the words MansRuin
tattooed across her knuckles, she asked James what the tattoo on the back of his neck said. And he went, ‘It’s Greek. It says, O Tolem Nika. Which means, He Who
Dares Wins.’ And then Luxie, who had Melvins cover art tattooed across her chest and was wearing this Pixies beater, asked Ryan what his band was like. Once again, I
was shut-down. I was twaked out of my brain to the point where I couldn’t even contribute to the conversation. The only thing I was doing was choking down small
sips of warm Tecate, bumming smokes off whomever, and staring into the Turtle Tank. I regretted everything already but I was still high. In my head, there was still a
chance that I could pull one of these babes. Even in my wax museum jersey. Lord told Luxie that he had Ryan’s band, The Fucking Pro-Hairs on his computer and all
the girls were like, ‘Let’s here it! Let’s here it!’ Which was funny. I remember looking over at James Morgan and he looked so irritated at that moment. I don’t think he
liked that Ryan dudes band very much. Cause right when the music changed to The Fucking Pro-Hairs, James immediately started the next round of conversation. It
was all bullshit yabber jabber. It always is on blow. If wine is the truth serum, then cocaine is like a Doctorate in complete B.S. None of it meant shit. But it felt like it
did at the time. That night reminded me of that part in Stand By Me where all the kids are sitting around the campfire rapping about all the nonsense in their lives.
Except instead of all this chatter about Goofy’s sexual orientation, PEZ, and bra stuffing, our little circle jerk had more of this cynical and jaded edge to it. But it still
seemed just as prevalent at the time. Us, barking back and forth at each other. Talking over one another. Talking massive shit. Shit like:
Ryan: Metallica would still be a solid fucking band if Lars had died in the bus accident instead of Cliff Burton.
Barbie: It’s not like I’ve been in school for that totally long.
MaryJo: Everyday I wake up and wish that it was Dave Matthews who died instead of Layne Staley.
Lord: How about Billy Joe Armstrong too.
Luxie: Agreed.
Me: Hmm…Uh…Ugh…
James: So what’s the deal? We’re not talking about me anymore?
Lord: If I see one more hipster pirate walking around the Mission or Haight, somebody’s walking the plank. I swear to god.
Me: Ummm…huh…Hmmm…
James: And what’s with all these dumb babes I see out dressing like they’re going to a Zepplin show and living in a fucking castle.
Ryan: Maybe you should write a book about it.
James: Yeah, dude. Good one.
Luxie: Has anyone heard the new White Stripes album yet?
Ryan: Does anyone care about the White Stripes?
MaryJo: I do. I still think they’re great.
Lord: Jack needs a new drummer.
Barbie: I mean, a lot of people go to college for more than five years.
Me: Ahem…Ummmm…Mmmmm
James: Ya know what, Luxie doll?
Luxie: What?
James: You look a lot like Fergie.
Luxie: I’ve heard that before.
Ryan: Do you piss your pants in public too like that walking IPod promo?
Luxie: You wish I did, man!
MaryJo: Does you Internet work, Lord?
Lord: Why?
MaryJo: I was gonna show you guys this amazing video of this creep freaking people out about a rogue helicopter pilot at this city council meeting.
Ryan: I’ve seen that.
James: No YouTube. Do not even open that Pandora’s box, Lord.
MaryJo: Why?
James: Cause we won’t leave this fucking room for the rest of the night, darling.
Ryan: Try two days.
Lord: James is right. No YouTube or Internet at all right now.
MaryJo: Whatever.
Barbie: Once I get my business degree, I’ll be changing people lives too.
James: What about all these asshole kids walking around the city in bright pink and blue t-shirts. Wearing fucking loafers and purple jeans with holes in the crotch.
Luxie: What about them?
James: I’m so over seeing that shit. Go Back Home! I mean, Christ. The only difference between those assholes and their frat boy cousins is that they wear girly shit
from American Apparel instead of Ecko gear.
Ryan: I totally agree.
Lord: Me too.
Luxie: Plus they have the shittiest taste in music.
MaryJo: Trend hoppers.
Barbie: But some of those boys are damn cute.
Me: …Salad!
“Everyone just stared at me. What the hell was I even doing in there? I didn’t really belong. I never really did. I mean, I could go on for another hour, guys. Easily. But
I won’t. What happened next was that the beer ran out. I’d barely scratched the surface of my only can. All the other kids were getting ancy and wanted to bail real
bad. They were all so wasted. Having so much fun. Cracking jokes. Not a goddamn care in the world. My life was total shit in comparison, man. It took them thirty
minutes to figure out where they actually wanted to go first:. The Hemlock. Fly bar. Lucky 13. The Attic. Phone Booth. Deluxe. El Rio. The Knockout. Whiskey
Thieves. The Transfer. They debated the pros and cons of each bar before finally deciding on The Ambassador on Geary Street. Then they got themselves together.
Me, the odd man out. Again. Always. I stood up and I told them to have a good time and Lord went, ‘You’re not coming, man?’ And I told him, ‘I’m totally broke right
now, dude.’ To which he replied, ‘That sucks. You should get a better job. You’ll have more money to hang that way.’ That wasn’t what I wanted to hear from him
though. Deep down inside, I wanted to hear, ‘Hey, man I’ll spot you some bucks until your next paycheck.’ But that’s not what I got at all. So we all vacated Lord’s
room and right before they all left, that James Morgan dude turned to me and went, ‘Do you ever think about having sex with any of the wax figures?’ Everyone
started laughing. I was never very good at taking a joke in front of other people. To me, if someone gives you shit, that means they think you’re a pussy and they don’
t respect you. I immediately got defensive. I was like, ‘Hell no, man!’ And James went, ‘You’ve never been close to just reaching out and grabbing Lindsay Lohan’s
beaver or fondling Laura Dern’s tits.’ I went, ‘No! Never. What the fuck, man?’ And James blabbed, ‘Cause I guarantee you that there are fuckers out there who are
totally into that. I bet you two out of every three fat slobs who show up at your little pop culture exhibit from Bum Fuck Wherever think about taking a grope while
they’re wives or girlfriends or moms are snapping photos of them posing with the female cast of Friends.’ And I sighed, ‘Well I’ve never thought about it, man,’ and
James said, ‘That would make a great fucking story. A man who pimps out wax figures.’ Then they all left. I was all alone. Again. Another night by myself. I almost
wanted to cry at first. My throat was dry and I felt so isolated from everyone else I knew. It was like ten and I was so twacked out of my skull. So strapped with
anxiety. My soup was probably cold. I wasn’t even hungry anyway. So I returned to my bedroom with Terrance and sat down at my computer and went straight to my
MySpace page. Oh, damn. Fucking MySpace. It was about the only thing I was good at anymore. I mean, you guys shoulda seen my page. It was the balls. At it’s very
peak, I had 20,222 friends. I had over 7,000 subscribers to my blog! That’s 7,000 people actually reading whatever the hell was on my mind. 7,000 people reading my
opinions about various things like: Who would win a fight between Jodie Sweetin and a pre-anorexic Tracy Gold…My preference of grape Bubbletape gum over
strawberry and original flavors…How much you would pay to never hear from Fred Durst again…Oasis vs. Blur…Frankenberry vs. Count Chocula…The problem with bike
messengers…You know you’re hipster trash if...Take it easy on those bandannas bro’s…Everyone seemed to enjoy my writing. I was told by: Angel Ain’t No Playa.
Female. 100 years old. Slovakia. That I was the second coming of Kurt Vonnegut.
Ricardo Sings The Blues. Male. 27. Orange County, USA. Said that I needed to start writing books A.S.A.P. so I could share my absolute brilliance with the rest of the
world.
And, I Want Your Blood Man. Female. 17. Boston, Australia. Wrote to me that I was her favorite writer ever and that she planned on studying literature in college
because of my writing.
“I felt an extreme sense of fulfillment. MySpace had allowed me to connect to so many people in so many ways. Ways I could never have at that point in my daily, day
to day life. I even put some of my poetry up. I would type it up as a blog then go then post a bulletin that said something real catchy in the title like: Eat Fish and Die.
Or, My Baby’s Momma Drinks Grapes. And when people would open it, the bulletin would read something like this: I gotta new blog up, kids. Read it. Don’t read it.
Whatever. This one’s this new poem I’ve been working on. It was a tough one to write. Hopefully you all enjoy it. I thought about burning it once it hit the paper.
But I felt you guys deserved to read it first. And probably my best received poem went like this:
The night has arrived again
I am full of infliction
So vulnerable to despair
I am broken glass with blood on the edges
Lying scattered
Shattered
On the endless white floors
Is this it?
Who am I really in this odd place?
Left to myself through heartache and pain
I was just numb and dumb for thinking it would be anything other than this
“Dion. Male. 37 Years Old. Delaware. Typed me a reply that went, Thank you so much, R. M. Jr. You described exactly how I feel everyday. It’s nice to know that
there’s somebody else out there who feels the same way. Thanks for sharing that glimpse into your soul, man.
“And, Harriet Milestones ‘n Life. Female. 21. Going Nowhere Fast, Kansas. Wrote, You are truly an inspiration, R.M. Jr. BTW, I really love the new pic you put up of you
pounding a bottle of whiskey with a beer in your other hand with that caption, Oh me, Oh Life. To the Losers go the Toils. Sheer Genius, R.M. Bravo!!!
“Fan mail was the tits. But the blogging wasn’t the only thing that made my page standout. My layout was pretty brilliant. The background was multi-colored rows of
alternating baby blues, pinks, and yellows. Everyday was happy and festive on my page. In the blue rows, there were these tiny Betty Boop icons. In the pink, the
icons of majestic unicorns with striped horns. And the yellow, all the different faces from that old Camp Candy cartoon. It was so spectacular. In fact, Lori Loves
Lamborghinis. Female. 31. Missing You, Texas. Typed that it was her favorite lay-out of all her friends.”
Wilson and Johnson turn and look at each other at the exact same time. It’s all pretty embarrassing. Both of them look like they’re going to start laughing their cop
asses off. In fact, Johnson has to cover his mouth as Wilson goes, “All that sounds pretty fucking fairy to me, boy.”
And I reply, “It kinda was.”
I go, “But the chicks of MySpace really seemed to be into it. Into everything I had up on my page. My selected song was always an absolute gem. Love can tear us
apart by Joy Division. The Killing Time by Echo and the Bunnymen. G Thang by Dr. Dre. Holy Diver by Dio. I have great taste in music. On my About Me Section, I
wrote: Just a small town boy. Living in a lovely world. My, Who I’d Like To Meet section: Rad people who are into Rad shit…My taste in everything was actually
exquisite. In fact TigerLilly. Female. 21. Suck Free City, USA. Typed, I have great taste in everything and you like the same stuff as me. Therefore you have great taste
in everything as well.
And, TurdBurglars Revenge. Male. 18. I’m so over it, Utah. Wrote, Every time I wanna find something new and amazing, I just come to your page. I’m like the coolest
kid in my school cos I watch and read and listen to the raddest shit ever. Most of which, I got from your recommendations. Keep it up, man. Keep the rest of us
informed.
“I was in over thirty Myspace groups. Groups like: People Who Love Pudding Pops…Turk Street All-Stars… Trashpad…The Gentleman’s Jacouzi…Poetry Slam
Superstars… The Watch-U-Talkin’ About Willis PeepCrew…I was even nominated as the group moderator for the groups Phuck Germany and I love redheads. People
were always coming to my site to take a peek. I was averaging close to a thousand hits a day. Hundreds of friend requests a week. I was like the king of MySpace. And
so that night, all by myself, feeling absolutely alone, terrified about my future and my loneliness, I took strong comfort in typing my password and having my homepage
pop up. I had one new message. Over twenty-three people had viewed my page since the last time I’d checked it at work. Nine people in my top thirty two were ON-
LINE NOW. The new message I had was from Michelle. Female. 18. Lovely, Arkansas. Her default photo was her in this skimpy Santa Claus suit like the one Lindsay
Lohan was looking all hot and sexy in, in Mean Girls. For about a month before that night, Michelle and I had been friends on MySpace. She was one of my favorites
actually. We had a lot of the same tastes in music and books and movies. She wanted to go to school for Fine Art in San Francisco. I graduated with a degree in Fine
Art in San Francisco. We messaged each other a lot about amazing albums to buy and killer DVD’s that were coming out and obscure novels that were must reads. We
probably corresponded with each other back and forth like this nine or ten times a week. It was always the standard comment or message. But that night, the
message she sent was straight outta left field. It started out fairly simple. She told me about buying the Sonic Youth album, Washing Machine and how it completely
changed her whole mind about how awesome music could really be. She went on about that for like three paragraphs and then she wrote that she was coming out to
San Francisco during the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend to check out this art school and wanted to meet up with me and hang out for a night or two. But at the
very end of the message, there was a picture of her wearing nothing except this visor that said: Momma’s Little Angel. I was fucking shocked at first. I really was guys.
But I was also out of my mind. She was so cute. And she was gonna come out to SF and hang with me. Fuck yeah. I got so pumped up. And then I read the last line
of her message. It said that she wanted me to send a similar picture of myself back to her. She wanted to see my goods. My junk. I swear to god, if I’d been in a
better frame of mind, there would’ve been no way. No way! I wasn’t one of those losers. That guy cruising the net all night trying to hook up with babes. But that
night I was. I succumbed just like almost every other pivotal moment of that year. Ya know, my willpower has never been anything to brag about but I’ve still said no
to a lot of fucking things. That night though, I didn’t. That night, it shied away like a fat chick with an invite to a bikini party.
“I grabbed my digi-cam, unbuttoned those damp khakis, pulled my underwear down to my knees, and began massaging my dick. It was so difficult to get it up because
of the coke. That goddamn cocaine. Bill Maher said it best once. He said, ‘If cocaine gave you an erection instead of took it away, not only would it be legal, but Bob
Dole would be doing commercials for it.’ Finally, I got some blood flowing. Slowly, I came out of my shell and the moment I reached the pinnacle of my erection, I
snapped a photo of me in my chair with my fairly stiff cock in my other hand. Then I loaded it and sent it back to Michelle. Man, I had no idea what I’d just done. The
potential consequences just didn’t occur to me. Over the next two hours, I probably logged onto MySpace twenty times to see if Michelle had responded back to me.
She hadn’t. I was so bummed. I kept clicking on her page. I went through picture after picture after picture on her slideshows. Thinking about how the two of us
were gonna be hanging out in a couple of weeks. And how she was probably going to move to the city. And how we’d probably end up being together. Going
steady. Possibly getting an apartment together. Maybe she was the love of my life. Maybe she was exactly what I needed. Images of her having my babies. Of us
going on family vacations. The two of us farming a sweet spread in the middle of nowhere, listening to Neil Young records and drinking scotch and talking the night
away about how much we were in love eased through my brain. I was actually tempted to write her again and tell her what I wanted to name our first child. If it was
a girl: Katliyn. A boy: Sam. I was tempted to tell her about how she was the only girl for me. That we were destined for a long sweet life together. I even thought
about writing her a poem. She had been a big fan of the poems on my blog. A few lines even filtered onto a piece of scrap paper next to my keyboard. Lines like: You
are the reason the sun rises each morning in my life…My heart mends with each inbox comminque from you…Eyes like angels, skin like silk, you’re hair of gold, your
complexion milk…But I never ended up sending any of it. I became distracted by how fast I was coming down from the drugs. The sinking sensation of my actual reality
was settling in. It was like none of the past six hours had even existed. It was just me, all alone, still in the same spot, still broke, and even more miserable. There was
nothing I could do. I got over the Internet real fast and took a shower. I took some Tylenol P.M. and went to bed. The next day I woke up around noon to Lord and
like four other dudes listening to Motley Crue. In fact, the first thing I heard anyone else say that morning was this:
Lord: I can’t believe that asshole bartender kicked me out of the Brown Jug.
Random dude: Yeah, what happened with that?
Lord: There was some guy limping around and the bartender told me that the guy got hit by a car a few weeks ago and tore up his leg really bad. So I was like, ‘Aw,
shit, I just thought he sucked at walking.
“Everyone in the room started laughing. I even had to chuckle myself. If there was one awesome thing that Lord’s all night partying with random kids produced, it was
these tiny gems of comedic brilliance that came out from time to time beneath the gnarly pile of shitgrime everyone had submersed themselves under. It could make
the angst go away. Hearing shit like that could make me forget about why I usually hated living next door to the dude in the first place. So I got out of bed as quietly
as I could and snuck around the apartment to get ready for work. The last thing I wanted was to have any of those monsters in the room next to mine know that I
was awake and to get trapped in the hallway by Lord, looking like some crazy vampire with caked white lips, trying to tell me some random bullshit about whatever the
fuck was popping into his crazy brain. I moved so quietly. I had too. I took a shower and got dressed. My work clothes were still damp and mill-dewey. Before I left for
work, I checked my MySpace page with some severe apprehension. On one hand, I was super interested to see if Michelle had responded to me, and if she had, what
the response was gonna be. But on the other hand, I felt pretty much like a scumbag for actually taking a picture of my cock, uploading the thing onto my computer,
and then sending it to somebody else on MySpace. There was a definite line I had crossed. That I was sure of. But when I checked my page there was nothing. Not
anything. No messages from anyone. I think that made me feel even worse. No response at all is always worse than the worst response somebody can give you. And it
really bummed me out. Deep down, I really figured she was going to send me something rad back. Something about how she was super stoked about my cock.
Anything. My gut was hurt. I had just been virtually punched. And it was with that exact feeling that I logged off and walked out of my apartment after hearing this
from Lord’s room.
Some other random dude: Yeah, I grew up in some shithole Oklahoma town. Yeah, I’m an Okie and a Sooner. And yeah, I’ve lived in a trailer before. Hell, I even
owned once. But shit, who hasn’t owned a trailer at least once in their life.
“I ran down the stairs. It was much nicer outside that day than the day before. The sun was out. There was a crackhead with a smile, defecating in the alley next to
my building. I started up for Van Ness to pick up the 47 or the 49 when I heard some guy holler my name. Turning around, I saw two men in suits approaching me
quickly, and then one of them went, ‘Ronnie Manson Jr.? Are you Ronnie Manson Jr.?’
“Who wants to know?” I asked.
“And the guy who said my name snapped, ‘FBI.’ Then his partner grabbed me and cuffed me while he informed me that I was under arrest for the distribution of
pornographic material to a minor and attempting to lure a minor over state lines. Turns out, Michelle, she was only thirteen. And those pictures on her profile were
doctored. Photoshopped. Turns out, she was actually from Kentucky and that she had never left the state and that she was in the middle of her eighth grade year
and that she wasn’t even into Fine Art. What happened was that she left herself logged into the family computer. What happened was that her dad, this nutjob with
a Wyatt Earp moustache went to check the updated weather forecast for the next day and saw her home page open with the words: New Message highlighted in
red. He clicked on it, opened the message, and was treated to a big ol’ picture of me, seated halfway across the country, wearing my wax museum jersey, holding
onto my semi-hard penis. He called the cops, who called the F.B.I. after interviewing his daughter, who got a hold of the local bureau chief here, who dispatched a
couple of agents to my apartment that morning. And they arrived, just as I was walking out.”
“Wait, wait, wait, wait,” Johnson interrupts. “You were arrested and charged?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry, Ronnie, but we have no information about that. None at all.”
“Because I got cut a deal.”
Both detectives turn and look at the mirror, then back to each other.
And Johnson goes, “Let’s take a break.”
He shuts off the tape recorder and they both get to their feet.
“What about that cigarette?” I ask.
Digging into the inside pocket of his suit, Johnson pulls a pack of smokes out and tosses one across the table at me along with a pack of matches.
I light up and the two detectives leave the room and just like that, I’m all alone.
Alone except for like the eight sets of eyeballs right on the other side of that mirror. And all I wanna do is finish this story and fall asleep somewhere. Here. Back at
home. It doesn’t make a difference. I’ve been awake for way too long. My brain hurts so bad. It feels like it’s melting.
And by the way, this is easily the best cigarette I’ve ever had.
Like three minutes later, Wilson and Johnson return to the room. Taking their seats again, Johnson goes, “Tell us about the deal.”
Rubbing my smoke out in the ashtray, I go, “I got taken to this large conference room inside the federal building. There, I told the agents the entire story. I served up
all the details about my on-line, MySpace romance with Michelle. From the sweet messages back and forth, to the comments I would put on her page of these videos
of cute scenes from French New Wave films. I broke down into tears as I pleaded with them not to be too harsh. That I had no idea about Michelle’s real age. With
me on my knees, my face in my hands, tears streaming down my cheeks, I told them my parents could never find out. My mom would be crushed. She’d die. Pounding
my fists against the table, I sobbed, ‘I can’t go to jail. I’ll be raped in there. Do you have any idea what they do to young white males locked away for being a sexual
predator? They’ll kill me. They’ll rape me in the shower and then they’ll kill me. I don’t wanna die. I don’t want to!’ I was eventually pulled off the ground by one of
the agents and tossed back into the chair. Both of them were laughing. I felt so humiliated. I told them I would never go onto the Internet again. ‘I’ll delete my
MySpace page’ I cried. ‘Just don’t send me to prison.’ And that was when I was told they weren’t going to send me anywhere like that. They told me I wouldn’t be
doing any time. Still laughing, one of the agents questioning me slid a file folder over to me and said, ‘This is what the girl you were really talking to looked like, Ronnie.’
Man, my hands were shaking as I flipped the folder open. Jesus Christ, had I been fooled. Inside the folder was a school picture of this fat girl with dyke short black
hair. She had like three chins and wore these thick brown glasses and had these yellow butterfly earrings in. She might’ve been the ugliest girl I’ve ever seen. I’m being
dead serious here, guys. I almost threw up. My tears of fear turned into tears of self-pity. Boy, I’d sure been duped. The agents left the room. An hour later, after I’d
drifted asleep with my head on the table, they came back in and offered me a deal. They told me that if I pleaded guilty to all counts they would recommend
counseling and community service and that my record would be cleared after my hours of both were finished. Needless to say, I jumped on the offer. I stood in front
of a judge and pleaded guilty and was given a hundred hours of community service and required to complete twenty hours in a MySpace Recovery support group for
MySpace addicts. It was a little weird at first. I’d never heard of such a thing. I almost thought it was some kind of a joke. I kept waiting for myself to wake up. A
MySpace Recovery support group. What the hell was that, ya know? But I wasn’t gonna argue with the judge. Shit, I’d gotten of lightly. I was handed a stack of
papers from an officer of the court and told everything I needed to know was inside.”
“Tell us about this MySpace support group,” Johnson urges.
“Apparently they started popping up in cities within a year after MySpace started. Being addicted to it is like being addicted to any drug or sexual act. People need it.
They can’t stand to be with out it. Constantly checking their pages. Always throwing up bulletins. Writing diary type blogs. Lurking on other people’s pages into the
wee hours of the night. It revolutionized the art of stalking. It really did.”
“How the hell is that?” Wilson snorts.
“Because somebody posts a bulletin about where they’re gonna be on a certain night and the lurkers show up and start creeping everyone out. That’s how.”
“Makes sense,” Johnson says. “Go on.”
“At first, there were only a few groups and they were started by individuals whose lives had begun to be controlled the social possibilities of networking. About how
popular they were on the site. About how they were actually able to attract an audience for their racy photos and bullshit opinions. But then came Friday, August
14th, 2004.”
“What was that?”
“In the recovery circles, it’s known as Red Friday. There’s been articles written about it. Studies done. Even PBS did an hour long documentary on it. Friday, August
14th, 2004, was the day of the massive power outages in LA where MySpace is headquartered. The problems that day started at around eight that morning west
coast time and weren’t corrected until almost five that night leaving MySpace down all day. Pandemonium ensued. People really lost their shit. Every time that anyone
in the world tried to log into their accounts they were greeted with the exact same message: Myspace is currently experiencing some technical problems. Please check
back in one hour. And people did. And the hours kept passing. A lot of people, they just didn’t know what to do with themselves. They couldn’t handle the
withdraws. It was all too much. And very soon, it began to take its toll. The first suicide was at one p.m. Eastern Standard Time in Redding, Pennsylvania. The victim
was a nineteen year old girl named Carlie Rawlins but on MySpace she was known simply as Shera X. Female. One hundred years old. Thailand, OH. Her favorite movie,
Clerks 2. Her favorite band, fucking Good Charlotte. I mean, Jesus Christ! Between the three of us, she obviously lacked sound judgment and common sense. And on
that day, Friday, August 14th, she decided to exercise those bad traits. She was found lying face first on her keyboard, a bottle of drano and rat poison on the ground
next to her feet. In all, there were sixteen deaths blamed on the MySpace technical crisis. The last death, a forty-three year old piano instructor in Portland, Oregon
named Marc Chielards, was a result of slash wounds to the wrists so deep the blood drained from his body in less than three hours and overran the sides of the bathtub
in less than two. Hence the name, Red Friday.”
Pause.
I’m like, “You two are cops. Shouldn’t you know all about this?”
“Just keep talking, scumbag,” Wilson snaps.
And I say, “After that, MySpace support groups began popping up in community centers and churches and people’s basements all over the country. To be considered
a MySpace addict, you have to meet the following criteria…Do you log into your account on an average of five times per hour? Have you spent at least ten hours in the
past two days looking through all of your friends, friends? Do you spend at least five hours a week talking about your page while you’re not on it? Do you feel a sense
of despair or emptiness and even anger when you post a new blog or bulletin and nobody responds back to you with a comment or message? Have you ever tried to
establish a relationship of sexual nature after meeting someone new on MySpace? It was all there, inside the little pamphlet they gave me after I got into trouble. They
even included these little illustrated drawings of kids sobbing their little eyeballs out in front of a computer screen that said: MySpace is experiencing some technical
difficulties. And there was even a time elapsing illustration series of an older man sitting at his computer, playing on MySpace, drinking beers with a clock above him.
The time says seven p.m. in the first frame and there’s one beer next to him but by the last frame, the hands of the clock say three a.m. and there are eighteen cans
stacked next to him on the desk. It was fucking hilarious. I actually thought the pamphlets were absolutely great. I even hung some on the walls of my apartment.”
“What about your roommate?” Johnson asks. “What did he think about all of that?”
“He was pretty weird at first. Ya know, the fact that I’d been picked up leaving our apartment by the feds. But once I came totally clean about why I’d been picked
up, he just made fun of me all the time and wouldn’t let up. He kept all those witty comments coming.”
“He wasn’t scared about getting busted or nervous that you might rat him out?”
“Nope.”
“Interesting.” Pause. “Okay, continue about the support group, Ronnie.”
“I was sent to the nearest support group. It was in the basement of the Mission Street Outreach Center on 24th and Mission. On that first night, it was raining hard
too. The meeting started at eight but I wanted to get there early and sorta case the place out. I was so fucking embarrassed to have to be there. I didn’t wanna be
late and have to walk into a room full of weirdos. The whole room going silent as I awkwardly made my way to an open chair. A million sets of eyes glued to me as I
took a seat. The overwhelming feeling that I’d just missed something important or funny or had just interrupted the climax of somebody’s sob story. This wasn’t going
to be like being late for class, ya know. So I got there about a half hour before I had to. Standing at the top the stairs, to the side of the red colored front doors,
under the faded glow of the flickering light bulbs above me, rain falling hard, I smoked three cigarettes. My stomach was tossing around. I was so nervous. When you’
re a little a kid and you grow up where I did and you think about being twenty-five or twenty-six or twenty-seven years old, you have these visions of having a family,
dressing in suits, coming home from work to your beautiful kids running to you and hugging you. Of the nice car you’ll drive. The big house you’ll own. You don’t ever
think for one damn minute that you’ll be this old, working a crappy retail job, living in a condemned apartment building, arriving early for your first MySpace support
group meeting that you were court ordered to attend after being arrested for sending photos of your penis to some young fat girl two thousand miles away while you
were strung out on blow. You just don’t. And that’s what I was thinking about at the top of those wet steps, smoking my cigarettes, shivering from the cool air of
the February San Francisco breeze. Once I took the last drag of smoke number three, I decided it was time to do it. I walked into the place and this strange sense of
familiarity struck me. Like I had been there before. That building with its really bad lighting and its atrocious acoustics, the booming footsteps of others, the echo of
whispers in the hallways, the sharp screams of squeaky doors swinging shut, it looked exactly like the Trinity Episcopal Church in the movie Fight Club. It even had this
list of the different support groups happening each night of the week posted on a bulletin board in the lobby. It seemed like there was a group for everything:
Boys who used to wear girl jeans.
People who felt betrayed by the White Stripes.
Fixed Gear Bike accident survivors.
Women with lower back tattoos.
“There was even one called: I’m afraid to take my huge sunglasses off inside the house. I could barely believe it until I remembered what I was doing there in the first
place. Until I had scrolled down far enough to see the words in that big, bold lettering. MYSPACE SUPPORT GROUP/RM: B-6 8:00 P.M. Basement room six. That’s
where I headed. Descending down the basement stairs, moving down the hallway, I sorta peaked into the different rooms. Each room had something going on in it.
People sitting in circles on cheap folding chairs. People partnering up and talking face to face. People nodding off. At room B-6, with my heart beating so fast, my palms
sweating, my cheeks on fire, I took a deep breath then let it out and stepped inside. Damn. I was so surprised. Sitting on metal chairs in a small circle in the middle of
the room were six men. Older men. Men in their mid to late thirties. In their forties. This one guy, he could’ve even been sixty. This was so not what I had expected.
In my head, as that day approached, I had imagined I’d be sitting in a packed room full of fat dudes who couldn’t see their dicks. Teenage boys with names like Crater-
face Collins, Pimply Pete, and Mathbook Marty. Or hot little thirteen year old white trash hos with dirty mouths who wanted to get fucked real hard and innocent
young Christian girls with braces and a laundry list of extra-curricular activities like re-posting bulletin surveys or having a new slide show up because it was fucking
Tuesday. It never crossed my mind even once that this was the crowd I’d be rolling with. An obese Hispanic man who whistled through his nose every time he took a
breath. This nerdy white dude with a high pitched laugh. That real older guy whose shirt was unbuttoned to the middle of his chest and wore these two thick gold
chains and smelled like Stetson. It was a full on Motley Crue of motherfucking perverts. And there I was, the newest member of the MySpace gone awry club. Or so I
thought.”
“What do you mean by that? Or so you thought?” Johnson asks.
“I mean, the meeting started with that fat Mexican man going, ‘Hi, my name is Omar.
Hi, Omar.
“He said, ‘Well I guess my problems started about three years ago. I had just gotten home from work one afternoon and my wife was waiting for me on the couch in a
red nighty. She told me that it had been over six months since we’d had sex and that she wanted to spruce our love life up again. She wanted to take the initiative,
she told me. She wanted to be the Seducer. As good as that sounds and sounded to me right then, the moment she reached out and grabbed my hand, something
inside of me shut down. Now my wife, she’s a pretty hefty gal and all but that’s one of the reasons I always liked making love to her. I’ve always had a bit of a soft
spot for big women and my wife was definitely that. It’s just when she touched me that afternoon and pulled me onto the couch with her, my hands against her butt.
Squeezing it. Her soft, rubbery skin wedging out between my fingers, I wanted nothing to do with it. I wasn’t at all turned on. And I had to make an excuse, I had to
lie, something about eating a bad shrimp salad sandwich for lunch and not feeling so hot. I felt horrible. My wife is an amazing lady and a wonderful mother but I was
revolted at the thought of physical love with her. Man, it got dark real fast in my life. For two weeks after that, I did everything I could to avoid being in my house. I
went to work early. I worked late. I had dinner meetings with new clients and tickets to Niner games. There were excuses for everything except my own sudden
disinterest in anything sexual. Nothing would rile my imagination. Not nasty thoughts. Not anything late on Cinemax. Not even the strip clubs in North Beach. I was
dead inside. I hadn’t had a hardon for weeks. I felt like a lost case. I mean, do you understand the despair that comes with the belief that you may never want to
have sex again? It was terrifying. My life had been deflated. It was the nightmare to destroy all nightmares…until I woke up. I was at my dentist’s office one afternoon
for a routine cleaning. I was sitting in the waiting room and my eyes happened to graze over the cover of this magazine sitting on the table in the middle of the room.
It was an Us Weekly. An Us Weekly with that head cheerleading girl from Varsity Blues, Ali Larter on the cover. And like that, my body sprang back into life. I got hard.
Real hard. I could barely contain my urge. I wanted to smother the cover and shove it down my pants. So as calmly as I could, I walked up to the receptionist and told
her I had an emergency to attend to and that I’d call back to reschedule, and left. I drove straight to Rite-Aid and walked right to the magazine aisle where I bought
the lot. People magazine. US Weekly. Star. Hello. And, OK!. After I paid, I wasted little time. I dove into my car, ripped open my jeans with one hand, holding that
same US Weekly issue with Ali Larter on the cover in the other, and two strokes later, I had a huge white mess in my hands and my pants and my car. But it felt so
good. So damn good. And from that moment on, something changed in me. From that moment on, I was chronically masturbating to every single celebrity magazine I
could get my hands on. What I still wasn’t touching was my wife. I had even more revulsion seeping through me when I looked at her. The only thing I wanted and
still want are the newest issues of every magazine. Issues with Reese Witherspoon in a bathing suit on the cover. Or Sarah Jessica Parker in a strapless gown smiling
and showing off the top of those magnificent breasts of hers. Five, six times a day, in my garage, in my bathroom, in my office, stuck in traffic, I grope myself and get
off like this. And it feels good. I’m addicted to it. My name is Omar and I can’t fucking touch my wife but goddamn it, I can sure touch those celebrity magazines.”
Both detectives look absolutely puzzled. Blank stares. I’m not sure really what they think of all of this but I’m not finished. Oh no. I’m not even close to being finished
yet.
I say, “I was sitting in the wrong support class, guys. The MySpace group I had been assigned to was cancelled and nobody bothered to post anything in the building
lobby. It was nuts. I was sitting in the Spousal Neglect/Celebrity Select group instead. Everyone who went that night was pretty much saying the same thing. ‘Hi, my
name is Robert.’ ‘Hi, Robert.’ Hi, my name is, Kenny.’ Hi, Kenny.’ Hi, my name is Lawrence.’ ‘Hi, Lawrence.’ And Lawrence was there because Lawrence was sloppy. He
was there because he promised his wife that he was done spending a hundred bucks a week on all those jerk-off celebrity rags. He told her he was over it and that it
had just been a bad phase in his life. A sorta mid-life crisis, which she believed until she uncovered a pile of those same jerk-off rags earlier that week from the back of
their bedroom closet. The pages all stuck together. The pages stiff as a board. A shiny film of something seeped around the edges of each issue. And so Lawrence was
back. Attending the meetings again. Trying to fend off a potential divorce. Because in the end, attending a free meeting in the basement of a community center is a
lot cheaper than hiring a lawyer for a divorce. And paying alimony. And paying child support. It was the same for all the dudes in the room.”
“So what did you say when it was your turn?” Johnson asks.
“Nothing. I didn’t say a single word. I just sat there and I listened to all of them. I mean, as much as it was gross and weird it was fucking hilarious too. Absolutely
phenomenal. And I couldn’t just walk out and leave in the middle of it. You couldn’t make this kind of shit up, guys. You just can’t. Not even the best writer could
think up this. So that first night, I listened to six grown men take turns telling six strangers about their addiction to masturbating to celebrity magazines. And when the
session was finished, I got up out of my chair, my head fucking spinning, and left the outreach center. I decided to walk that night. The rain had managed to cease
over the course of that very strange hour and I needed that moist, fresh air to really shake things out in my head about what had just happened. I chain-smoked and
went over the details of everything I’d heard. Of each story I had listened to. Jesus Christ, I couldn’t believe a group like that actually existed. It was an amazing
feeling. I felt like I had just won a prize or discovered something new. In my head, it seemed better than finding a cure for A.I.D.S. Or finding a way to get Chris
Cornell to grow his hair back out and start drinking beer again and run around with his shirt off while a bunch of bearded dudes played instruments in the background.
It truly felt great. But at that point, I wasn’t planning on attending anymore of the meetings. I figured it was for the best that way. I didn’t wanna ruin that
experience by having it not be as awesome as the first time or having to finally talk myself. So that night was it. It was only going to be the twenty hours of MySpace
groups from there on out.”
Pause.
“Until I saw him.”
Both detectives eyebrows raise. “Who did you see, Ronnie?” Johnson asks.
“I saw James Morgan.”
“That author scumbag,” Wilson snorts.
“Yeah. He was walking out of the Foreign Cinema restaurant on twenty-first street with some girl, bitching about the cowboy boots and trench coat some guy inside
was wearing. I ducked my head the other way so he wouldn’t see me and right as I got past him it hit me. It all came back to me. From that night I met him at my
pad for the first time. And what he said to me right before they all left to go out. When he said, ‘Do you ever think about having sex with any of the wax figures?’
When he went, ‘That would make a great fucking story. A man who pimps out wax figures.’ I stopped dead in my tracks. It was like a revelation. Like God appearing
to Moses. For an instant, I swear to you guys that a beam of light shone right on me from the sky. I swear to you both. I stood there and looked up into the light and
smiled and thought: What’s the next best thing if you can’t fuck the real Paris Hilton?”
“You didn’t,” Johnson says.
Nodding, I say, “Having sex with the wax figure of Paris Hilton.”
Wilson jumps out of his chair again. “You sick fuck!” he snaps. Reaching across the table and grabbing my shirt collar, he goes, “What kind of sick fuck are you?”
I rip my shirt out of his grasp. Throw my arms up to protect my face. And Johnson grabs Wilson and goes, “Hey, just relax, Marc. You need to calm down.”
And Wilson points at me. He says, “I’m gonna fuck you up. That’s what I do to sick fucks like you. I fuck them up.”
“What the hell, Johnson? I’m not saying another word with that maniac the room.”
Johnson looks at Wilson. “Okay, Marc, take a break.”
“What? Don’t listen to that scumbag. I’m fine. I can do this.”
“Hey,” Johnson snorts. “I said take a break. I said leave the room now.”
Wilson flips his head at me. He’s practically growling. “You’re going down,” he says.
“Whatever.”
Johnson grabs him again and goes, “Take a break, detective.”
Shaking his shoulders out, Wilson goes, “Okay.”
He leaves the room and Johnson takes a seat.
“You alright?” he asks.
“I could use another smoke.”
“Sure.” Detective Johnson hands me another cigarette and I light up and he says, “Okay, Ronnie. I need you tell me about the wax figures. How does this fit within
the operation.”
“That was basically the operation.”
“How so?”
“It occurred to me that night that I was sitting on a huge idea. A huge money-making idea. I’d just sat through an hour long support group session of grown men who
could only whack off to celebrity magazines. That was it. The next natural step up from that, besides real therapy, was having sex with the closest thing to a real
celebrity. A wax figure. I mean, have you ever seen the statues at the wax museum?”
“No.”
“They look fucking real. It’s fucking creepy how real they look. Down to the last detail. Jesus Christ, I’ve gotten raging hardons staring at Hillary Duff’s wax tits during
an eight hour shift. So I made my mind up right at that moment, that I was going to start pimping out the wax figures while the museum was closed. I had my own
keys. I knew all the codes. And I knew that the security tapes never got turned on at night. Because no one ever bothered. No one ever checked the damn tapes.
So now, I just had to develop a real plan as to how I was going to pull this shit off.”
“What’d you do first?”
“First, I had to see if it was physically possible.”
Pause.
“Ya know, intercourse with a wax figure. I mean, I worked there and all but I was no expert by any stretch of the imagination and I couldn’t just ask one of the
engineers. So I did my own research. I pulled stuff from the Internet. I checked out this How to Make a Wax Figure book from the public library. There was a ton of
good stuff I learned. At work, I even kept a close eye on how some of the figures were handled by the staff, just as a precaution. It was all a lot easier than I thought
it was going to be. See the beeswax used to make wax sculptures possesses the perfect properties to prepare the figures for rendering either by moulds or modeling.
Just at your regular room temperature you can cut and shape it, and at low heat it melts to a limpid fluid. So I figured out how I was going to make the holes on both
sides of the pelvis region. I decided to use a conning saw. Once the metal blade got warm enough, I would begin to make the incisions. For the vagina, I decided I’d
have to go eight inches up and four inches around.”
“Eight and four, huh?” Johnson asks, his left eyebrow arched.
“Hey,” I say. “We had a couple of black guys in the class.”
“And for the buttocks?”
“Six and three. I figured that a little more traction would make it feel more real.”
“And then what?”
“I had to test it out. It took me a few days to decide what wax figure I was going to try this out on. Which wax figure was going to take my wax virginity away. There
were so many choices. Women I’d dreamt about my whole life. Women I’d jacked off at night to while scenes from their movies and music videos played in my head.
There was Madonna. Julia Roberts. Loni Anderson. Marilyn Monroe. Bette Page. Candice Cameron and Jodie Sweetin together possibly. Demi Moore. This was more
about coming really close to fulfilling a childhood fantasy than it was about titty fucking the wax rack of Jessica Simpson.”
“So who’d you finally pick, Ronnie? Who was the lucky gal?”
I clear my throat. “Geena Davis.”
“Geena Davis?”
“That’s right. Geena Davis. When I was like eight my sisters and mom took me to see A League of Their Own and there was this one scene when Dottie, that was the
name of Gina’s character, does the splits to catch this foul ball, and when I saw those two upper thighs on that big screen, man, something turned in my body. I got a
boner. It was my first boner ever. So I figured what better way to celebrate that moment than fucking the next best thing to the real person.”
“And…? How did it work out?”
“Not too bad. I did it after my first closing shift for the week. Like usual, after we locked the door, there were two customer service reps counting their cash drops.
When I was finished double checking their work, I told them I had to stay late and do some things on the computer. They left and I was all alone. I was nervous. But
once I walked to the back of the second floor display where Geena stood so beautifully, with her hands pressed against her hips, like a perfect, illuminated angel, in this
black strapless dress and long white gloves that ran up her arms, the nerves went away quickly and I went to work. With the conning saw warm and in my hands, I
stuck my head between Geena’s legs and began to cut. Following the outline I drew with some chalk, I made a perfect incision and not three minutes later, an 8x4
chunk of wax dropped into my hands. It was so easy. Cutting a hole for Geena Davis’s asshole only took me one minute. And then it was time. I stepped into Geena
and ran my hands over her breasts and squeezed what would’ve been the nipples on a real person. Slowly but firmly, I moved my hands to her backside and slid them
down to her tight, firm, buttocks, and then I began to kiss her. I licked her neck and her entire face all over before slipping off her dress and laying her gently onto the
ground. Even though I decided that anyone who wanted to get in on this action was going to have to wear a rubber, that first time, with Geena, I decided to
bareback it. I needed this to feel as good as possible. I dropped my khakis and pulled off my shirt. I stood over Geena for a few moments and wetted my dog while
she stared marvelously at me, and then I went for it. I got on top of her and slid myself into the hole I’d cut. And to my surprise, it felt good. Real damn good. It was
like taking a wet paper towel and wrapping it around your dick, going back and forth, back and forth with it.”
Johnson looks absolutely appalled. I’m putting my cigarette out and staring at him.
Johnson with his mouth wide open.
Johnson looking pretty pale.
Johnson, whose own hands are shaking.
And I go, “I’ve never really been able to fuck very well soberly. It’s hard for me not to come right away when I’m not shitfaced. And that night was no different. My
plan had been to hit both holes and shoot the load into her butt. However, once I started in on the front side, I couldn’t hold it at all. Like four thrusts in and I
exploded. I dug my fists into the ground, propping myself just above Geena, and I let loose. I screamed, ‘Fuck Thelma, baby. Ronnie will go over any cliff with you.’ It
was awesome. While I slithered my pelvis around, waiting for everything to drain out of my lizard, I couldn’t stop myself from running a hand through her hair and
kissing her all over her face. I felt amazing. Like I’d just accomplished something. Fulfilled a partial dream. It was like winning the Special Olympics or something. Like I
totally had the advantage, I totally had my way, but nonetheless, I still came out on top, ya know. So after I cleaned Geena up and reinserted the pieces of wax back
into her, it was now time to take the idea to the men of the Celebrity Select group.”
“What about the MySpace group, Ronnie?”
“I went to those and finished my hours. But those meeting weren’t nearly as entertaining as the other group. The MySpace meetings were more tragic than they
were funny. Probably because they hit so close to home. I mean, I was actually sent to those support classes because I had a problem. Just like many of the people in
there did. But I was the only one who was forced by the hand of law to be there. The meetings themselves though were usually pretty dull. Just your basic MySpace
addict. The late-night lurkers. The fat girl making fake profiles to look the babes of GodsGirls. The fifty bulletins a day poster. The trash-talking stalker dissing anyone
who didn’t praise his page. They were all there. The fifteen login’s per hour girl. The seven blogs a day guy. The girl who details every moment of the day in a new
photo album. Oh, she was there. And everyone knew she was just dying to take a picture of herself at the meeting and add it to her page. It wasn’t shocking. It was
just sad. But I finished my hours.”
“So tell me about the other group. How did you present your proposition to them?”
“I gained their trust. I attended their meetings three times a week and started talking. I told my story to them. About how my name was Rake and how I was married
to my beautiful wife, Josephine. And how we once had a beautiful sex life and a perfect apartment and couldn’t keep our hands off each other. I told them about me
and Josephine’s three times a day fucking habit. About how we’d role play and bring in all these toys and how we’d do it in public spots every once in awhile. But out
of nowhere, my desire for Josephine began to wear thin. She was still beautiful in my eyes but the thought of making love to her. Of her touching me in any sort of
intimate way. Of me rubbing my hands anywhere against her nude body. All that shit made me wanna puke in my mouth. I didn’t know what had happened. My libido,
I feared, was gone. Had disappeared. For the life of me, I couldn’t get turned on. Until this one afternoon. When I was standing in the check-out line at the Potrero
Hill Safeway. It was there that my eyes caught a glimpse of this Star magazine with Clarissa Flockart, ya know, Ally McBeal, in this red two piece bathing suit on a beach
in South France. And just like with the other guys in the group, something came alive inside of me. I had to physically restrain myself from whipping out my cock and
jerking it right there. So I grabbed the issue and paid for it and as soon as I hit the car, there were lines of come spraying out of my piss hole. And after that, the only
thing that could arouse me was a sexy picture from a celebrity magazine. It was like crack, I told the guys every session. A sixty to seventy dollar a week habit.
Goddamn crack. And this is how I gained their trust. By telling my story three times a week to the same twelve or so men. Then one night, about three weeks after
my first time with the Geena Davis wax figure, there had been about six more after that, I decided it was time to make my move. The date was March seventh. After
the meeting was over that night, I waited on the front steps of the outreach center, smoking a cigarette. I was waiting for this guy, Maurice, who was like the leader
of the group each meeting. He kind of guided the group along from one person to the next and he seemed like he had the biggest celebrity masturbating problem to
confront. I knew if I could get him on board, then things would take off. So I waited for him. I smoked a second cigarette. I watched this girl and guy walk by the
building and I heard the girl go, ‘Everyday I wake up and I wish that it was Johnny Reznik who had died instead of Layne Staley,’ and the guy went, ‘Who’s Johnny
Reznik?’ and the girl went, ‘He sings for the Goo Goo Dolls,’ and the guy went, ‘I’d even be happy if he just died, even if we couldn’t get Layne back.’ And right as I
was about to light my third smoke, Maurice walked out. We chit-chatted for a few minutes and then I made my first move. I told him I’d like to buy him a cold one
down at Casanova’s near the intersection of sixteenth and Valencia. He told me he’d like that very much. So the two of us walked down the street to the bar. We
didn’t really say a whole, whole lot that most people might think was too important. That’s kinda the thing about a support group like that. The idea that you’re even
there makes you feel ashamed so I guess one of the last things you ever wanna do is open up to anymore details of your personal life than you already have. It’s not
like you really want some of these sick fuckers to know how you make a living. But I did. That’s how this plan was going to work. And if there was one thing that could
open up a dialogue into all of that besides cocaine, it was definitely a cold one. A few cold ones. You start getting somebody feeling real good like that and they start
feeling good enough to talk to you about most everything.”
“So you had some cold one’s at the bar?”
“Yep.”
“How does one come out and mention that he’d like to pimp out some wax figures?”
“It gets easier when you’re on your fourth round and you’ve just bought two shots of Jameson’s Whiskey. When you clank the two shot glasses together. When your
eyes meet. When you pour the brown the stuff down your throat. When you let out that first big, ‘Whoo, damn,’ and then wash down the whiskey with another sip
from your beer. It gets real easy after that, I gotta tell ya. You go, ‘How hard does it get for you to hold off the urge to walk into each gas station or liquor store you
see and buy up every Celeb magazine in there?’ And he goes, ‘For me, it get’s really hard. Especially once the idea gets firmly planted into my head. It stays with me
for some time. You try to push it out but you can’t and you know you can’t. You just sit there, paralyzed by the thought. You don’t think about anything else. The
only thing you can think about is how good it would make you feel to be holding onto an issue of US Weekly with a photo spread of Lindsay Lohan on a beach
somewhere in the Caribbean wearing huge sunglasses and adjusting the bottom of her bathing suit with your pants undone. I mean, there is not a better feeling in
the world, Rake.’ And then I went, ‘What if I told you that there was. That I’ve come onto something better. Something that I would love to share with everyone in
the group. But at a price. There would have to be strict rules and a decent price.’ And he goes, ‘Keep talking.’ I took a big gulp of my beer and I laid it out for him.
Everything. All of it. That night, sitting at Casanova’s, I told Maurice, ‘What if I said that the best feeling I’ve ever had in this life was intercourse with the wax sculpture
of a childhood fantasy of mine.’ Maurice made this weird face and went, ‘What the hell?’ but I jumped right back in. I said, ‘Maurice, just here me out.’ I said, ‘To
experience something this awesome is even better than seeing the face of God on some goddamn chocolate cake you just baked for your sick kid. This is as close as
you’ll ever get to having sex with any of these damn Hollywood stars and famous ladies. Here’s a little secret, Maurice.’ I leaned in closer and said, ‘How they get the
bodies to look so right, just like the real bodies, is that the real people actually model their own bodies for the moulds. So it’s all anatomically correct, Maurice. The wax
figures are the exact same as the real people. Forget about those stupid photoshopped pictures in the magazines, man. This is the real deal. This is the next best thing
other than nailing the real person. This is better than nailing Tracy Gold’s sister.’ It took Maurice a few moments to gather his thoughts but when he did, he went,
‘How do you know this?’ I said, ‘Because I’ve been the assistant manger at the Merrytime Wax Museum for the last two years. I’ve done it. I have access to the place
during the off hours. I know that they don’t run the cameras at night and I know that they don’t have any sort of security presence.’ And he said, ‘Why are you
telling me this?’ And I went, ‘Because you’re the leader of our group. If you took it the rest of the guy’s this could easily work. I’d even cut you in. I’d give you fifteen
percent of the profits.’ He finished his beer. He said, ‘So you’re propositioning that you wanna pimp out the wax figures of the Merrytime Wax Museum to the men of
the Celebrity Select Group?’ I nodded. He said, ‘You wanna be the Wax Pimp?’ Again, I nodded. And he went, ‘Well of course, I’m gonna have to try it out first for
myself.’ This time I smiled. I said, ‘Of course.’ And then I slid him over a list of the figures we had and told him to pick one out. I told him, ‘Tomorrow night. You call
that phone number on the sheet and leave me a message with the initials of the figure you wanna nail and then come over. Midnight sharp. Park two blocks away and
call that number again. Let it ring once and I’ll come let you in.’ Maurice started laughing. He said, ‘Deal.’ And that was it. That’s how the operation really began.”
“Who did Maurice pick?” Johnson asks.
“Ashley Olson.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. And get this, I tried to give him Mary Kate at first and the motherfucker knew the difference. He was like, ‘Nice try, but how about you bring Ashley out for
me.’ It’s like damn, ya know. Maurice knew his shit.”
“So then what?”
“I told him I needed two weeks to get everything ready. While I did that, it was his job to introduce this idea to the group.”
“How did you go about getting things ready?”
“First thing I did was I made up a price sheet. I decided to split the figures into three different price rates. There was the twenty dollar rate. That was for your more B
level, your more irrelevant starts. Your Kristie Alley’s. Your Courtney Cox’s. Your Alicia Silverstone’s. All your Alissa Jo Hart’s of the world. Next up was the forty dollar
rate. Part of this rate was all about your Lisa Bonet’s and your Jada Pinket’s and your Catherine Zeta-Jones’s. The forty dollar rate was mostly about the beautiful
minority celebs. In my world of wax pimping, everyone gotta chance to play. The other part of this rate was for your more…I was a leading lady once but not so much
anymore…crowd. Your Angela Basset’s and your Penelope Cruiz’s. But it just wasn’t minorities. Cameron Diaz fell into this group. So did Gwenyth Paltrow and Sandra
Bullock. And then there was the eighty dollar rate. These were the cream of the crop. Your Lohan’s and Hilton’s and Duff’s. Rachael Weiz and Sienna Miller were in this
group. Plus anyone who wanted to get with a star who was under the age of sixteen had to pay this rate. If one of the guys wanted to fuck the wax figure of that
Hanna Montana bitch, they had to fork me over the big bucks.”
Johnson rubs his face.
And I say, “After that, I hooked up a new phone number with a messaging service. I manipulated the schedule at work so I could get the same four closing shifts
every week. And I made up a small set of rules.”
“What were the rules?”
“First rule was that the appointments had to be scheduled at least twenty-four hours in advance. You had to call the messaging service, leave your name and number
and the name of the figure you wanted to go after. The other rules were you get twenty minutes to do your thing. You had to wear protection. Absolutely no rough
housing. And you had to clean up after yourself with disinfectant wipes and insert the pieces back in yourself. Maurice went over all the rules with the guys and then
presented them with a tiny card that had the name I was using, Rake Riggins printed on it with the new number. That was it. That’s how it worked.”
Johnson grabs the glass of water in front of him and takes a drink. “Tell me about business,” he says.
“Right from the first night it took off. That first night, there were seven guys there from the group and all of them except one wanted the cream of the crop. The
eighty dollar range. I’d cut holes in all the female figures a few days earlier. I wore a blazer jacket and a tie and had a few bottles of champagne sitting in a cooler of
ice. Everyone played by the rules and it was a smashing success. In fact for the first five months or so, for those four closing shifts a week, I was making close to four
hundred bucks a night. That was sixteen hundred a week. I gave Maurice two hundred of that sixteen hundred and kept the rest. It was awesome. Suddenly I could
afford almost everything I wanted. I no longer was the odd man, broke kid out. With money came confidence. Freedom. My skin cleared up. I was eating amazingly
well. I could go out and get drunk and afford as much coke as I wanted, when I wanted. My clothes got nicer. I even got laid a few times in those same months. Life
was finally looking up again. I even moved out of Lord’s place and into this beautiful luxury apartment. Things were great. And I wanted to keep it that way so I
decided to let the operation grow. I held a meeting at the outreach center one night with everyone who had ever paid for the services my business provided to them.
There were fourteen guys there that night. Fourteen men with wives and children at home, who spent part of two nights a week forking over cash for the
opportunity to dick a wax figure in my museum. I brought in soda and punch and sandwiches and chips and cookies. When everyone had finally arrived, I started the
meeting. I told them that things were going amazingly well. That this had been the best six weeks of my life. And then I told them that I really believed other people
ought be able to enjoy what we were enjoying. I said, ‘To not share this experience with those we know the best. To keep this away from other people who have
the same impulses is not fair and certainly not just.’ I told them they could each tell two people. I gave them each two more business cards. ‘Make sure these people
are deserving and that they know the rules. Because I will not hesitate to shut this operation down due to somebody breaking the rules.’ That whole idea, the idea of
growing the business turned out to be a big dumb mistake.”
“How so?”
“Because people suck. Seriously. They suck and they can’t handle a good thing when they get it. It’s human nature. It’s always been like that.’
“What happened, Ronnie?”
“Within three weeks of that meeting, things had blown up. Two friends. Yeah right. It was more like four or five different friends. I mean, I was getting maybe eighty
messages a night from people looking for a reservation and to be completely honest with you, at first, I wasn’t denying any of them. I actually encouraged it. I turned
the front lobby of the Merrytime Wax Museum into a goddamn lounge. Each night I opened up for business, I had a fully stocked bar at the ticket counter. I brought
in a bartender. There was a boombox there. It was off the hook. Guys finishing up with Alicia Keys and Courtney Love then coming into the front lounge and having a
few cocktails and doing coke. It was a full on party and at that point I was beginning to bring in close to eight thousand dollars a week.”
Taking another drink of water, Johnson rubs his forehead. Then he looks up at me and goes, “And nobody who worked at the museum suspected anything? Nothing
was ever out of place or messed up?”
“No. I was a pro. I mean, there were a couple of instances where things could’ve gotten real bad. A couple of times when I held my breath real tight and my face got
real red.”
“Like what?”
“Like for instance this time when one of the guys got a little wild with the Dolly Parton figure from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. He musta ripped his rubber off
and blown his load on her instead because there was this fairly decent sized line of come that ran from right above her right eye to her lips and the next day I’m at
work and I’m walking through the gallery and I got stopped by this fat German guy who pointed it out to me. He didn’t know what it was, but was concerned that
maybe the wax was melting. I told him not to worry about it but then the head boss came over. Apparently someone had mentioned it to him a little earlier. I got real
nervous as he stood there and studied the line. He was puzzled. Then one of the engineers came over. Nobody could figure out what it was. My heart was racing. I
mean, all they would had to do was take Ms. Parton to the back and do a full check-out and find those damn holes I cut into her. It was looking bad until my boss
wetted the tip of his right index finger and wiped some of the come off then licked his finger. He said, ‘It don’t taste like wax. It tastes kinda salty. Like maybe one of
the visitors threw something at it.’ I just stood there. Sweating. Nauseated. It was horrible. And then the engineer took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the
come off and that was it. They decided not to do another thing to it. So the party went on. And believe me, it was a party. Sometimes lasting until three or four in
the morning. But like all things that seem so great and seem so invincible at the time, it began to spin out of control. With more customers came more requests. More
cash being thrown at me. And some of the stuff was sick. Just downright sick. Married men with grown kids pulling me aside and offering me three hundred dollars.
‘For what?’ I would ask. ‘One hour with Haley Joe Osmond.’ Or a threesome with Larry and Balky from that show Perfect Strangers. And I would do it. Soon, I had
pieces cut off all the male figures. You’d be surprised at how many of these guys wanted a piece of these male celebrity’s. It was so insane. But I went along with it. I
mean, you look at thing like your ideals. Your ideology. How it fits with your current financial state. When you’re flat broke, you swear to god by these sort of populist,
societal welfare type of morals. The evil corporations. The unjust government. The horrible rich white male. But it’s amazing how fast that mindset fly’s out of the
window the moment you start balling in dough. And you’ll do virtually anything to keep that cashflow coming in steady. My old rules. What rules? The things I wouldn’t
stand for. I can put up with anything for the right price. And it was within this mindset that the operation became almost uncontrollable. Wax figures were beginning
to show up with finger marks dug in below their eyes. There were bite marks appearing on asses. There was even the indentation of a fist on the face of Jessica Biel.
It was more work cleaning up after these monsters than it was organizing the goddamn events and I was losing my mind. I was having nightmares of wax people
coming to kill me. Of being arrested and put to death by drowning in a sea of wax. I had one nightmare where I got reamed up the ass by the wax figure of Sean
Connery. I could barely look at myself in the mirror anymore.”
“So why keep going with it? Why keep the operation alive?”
“Because of the money. It’s always the money. I was pulling in close to thirty-two thousand a month. With that kinda cash comes the idea of invincibility. That not
even the worst thing these guys can do can get me to stop…”
Pause.
I say, “And then came two nights ago.”
“What was two nights ago?”
This is when I begin to lose it. I am so tired. I can’t hold this shit in. I go, “A couple of the guys who came in were real fucked up. Like they’d been up for days
smoking crank. They had that evil look in their eyes. That soulless look where you see them and there’s nothing there. Nothing in that brain but pure evil. They pulled
me aside. Offered me a thousand dollars for the thirty minutes together with Steve Urkel and Laura Winslow from that show Family Matters. I knew, I just knew that
nothing good was going to come from me agreeing to that. From me saying yes. But I allowed it anyway. A thousand dollars cash. I’d never had anyone offer me that
much before so I told them, ‘Okay, you got it. Just make sure you clean the both of them up when you’re done.’ My god. What a mistake. What a goddamn mistake.”
“What happened, Ronnie?”
“Things were going so well…”
Pause.
“Ronnie, tell me what happened.”
“Fuck.” I start breaking down into tears. I say, “There was this loud commotion from the gallery. There was shouting and screaming even. So I ran back there and one
of the guys who’d paid me the thousand was stabbing the Laura Winslow figure. Just stabbing her and stabbing her. It was fucking insane. So like four of us grab him
off of her and his friend starts freaking out and this big fistfight erupts. Shit goes down for like two minutes until finally someone yells that they called the cops and
people started scattering. I was so confused. Everything I’d started was over. Everything! Fuck. So I grabbed up all the money and split with the severed head of that
Winslow girl and I haven’t been back.” I’m crying so hard right now. My face is full of tears and I say, “Oh fuck. What happened to me? What happened? I never
meant for any of the wax heads to get cut off. I never meant to have a life that turned out like this.”
Pause.
I wipe my face with my hands and cry, “I need help. Please don’t tell my mom and dad. I need help. I’m so sorry Laura Winslow.”
The door to the room bursts back open. It’s Detective Wilson and he comes charging at me.
I jump out of my chair and run into the back left corner and Johnson is screaming for Wilson to stand down.
But Wilson isn’t listening. He flips over the fucking table and runs right at me and grabs me by the shirt and slams a mugshot of this Arab guy in front of my face.
“What is your connection to this man you piece of shit?”
“Paul,” I cry. “That’s Paul. He was a client. His name is Paul.”
“That’s not his name you asshole. His name is Amid Mojadeddi and he’s been arrested and is being held for the firebomings! What is your connection to him? Were you
funneling him money for his attack plans?”
“No,” I snort. “That guy is Paul. He was one of my biggest customers.”
“His name is Amid Mojadeddi you sick fuck! What is your connection to him!”
“He was a client. I told you!”
“A client! He called you thirty seven times between the night of the first firebombing and the morning he was arrested. What did he want?”
“He wanted to get his rocks off. I talked with him and he sounded all stressed out like he was having a breakdown but I told him I couldn’t help him. I wasn’t working
on those nights. He got really mad and then called me a name in Arabic and hung up. That was the last I heard from him.”
Johnson grabs Wilson and pulls him off of me.
“That’s enough detective,” says Johnson.
And Wilson goes, “What do you have to do with the attacks, asshole?”
“Nothing. I swear. Nothing. I thought you guys picked me up because of the wax museum incident.”
“No,” says Wilson.
And Johnson goes, “Ronnie, if you’re lying to us, we can’t help you out. We can’t make you a-“
But he gets cut-off.
A third man in a suit enters the room and calls both detectives over.
They stand across the room, the three of them, whispering, looking at me, and then Wilson leaves the room in disgust and Johnson walks over to me.
“Ronnie Manson Jr.”
“Yes.”
“Come with me.”
“Why?”
“Because somebody just set the Merrytime Wax Museum on fire. Now get up and come with me before I bring detective Wilson back into the room!”
I scramble to my feet and he handcuffs me. My entire body is shaking. “What’s going to happen to me?”
“We’re gonna hold you for awhile, Ronnie.”
“How long?”
Johnson pulls me forward and points at the door. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“For awhile kid. At least until we figure out what’s going on.”
I walk through the door. I feel dead inside. I’m done. Spent. Wrecked. The only upside to this is the fact that I’ll at least be able to finally pass out. Two days of being
up is a bitch.
The wax pimp needs a nap.
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