Three.Last Night

  She always carried around with her this sort of omnibus. Full of stories and poems, most of which were from the romantic period. She loved words and on the last night I ever saw her, the night before the morning I left town, we sat at a table in a bar downtown and talked mostly about this love.
 Others were there that night, people from my work, and I tried to talk to all of them, answering their questions about my future plans, and thanking them for the well wishes, but my attention kept falling back on Ada. She would show me the poems she had dog eared in her book and ask for my interpretation or opinion. While I told her what I thought I would smoke the cigarettes she had given me that I hadn't asked for, and I would drink the black and tans she had bought me.The whole time wondering why she showed up alone. Why Dedrick hadn't come with her.
  None of my "real" friends were there. None of them, except for Dedrick were even invited, and it was for the better. I was leaving town with no plans of ever returning, and that coupled with my drinking left me afraid of what I would say to them.
  Ada was supposed to just be a friend's girlfriend. A mere acquaintance. That's how a lot of people would see it but Ada was a little different. She came with the territory. I never saw her and Dedrick apart. No matter who's friend you were, if you spent time with one you spent time with the other. I assumed Ada would be there but only with Dedrick. When I questioned her about his presence she avoided the subject and said only that she didn't want to miss her last chance to see me. Without Dedrick there I was afraid of what I'd say to her.
  Every time I was around them Ada would take me aside and assure me that her and I were truly friends. That she cared about me. That she believed in me. That even if Dedrick wasn't in the picture, if he wasn't my friend, she and I would still be friends. That night was really no different.
  "You know, one day I'm gonna be carrying around a book that you wrote."
  "I'm not gonna be writer though.You know that. I'm gonna be a teacher."
  "God, I hate when you talk like that. You don't need to be a teacher. You don't need to teach anyone about books, or teach anyone how to write. You know how to write so write. I'm the one that should probably teach. Those who can't do, right? I love this stuff," she clenched her omnibus, "but i can't write for shit. I know I shouldn't have done it but I've snuck a peek at some over your notebooks when I've been at your house. Those poems, or lyrics, or whatever they were were really great."
  "They were all supposed to be lyrics and I've thrown all those notebooks away. That whole thing fell apart and it's not like I was going to try to make that a career anyway."
  "That hurts me to hear that. That you threw away those notebooks. You should have kept them. Reworked what you could into poems. I knew you weren't gonna make music a career. Everyone knew you were only doing it for fun. Especially Dedrick."
  She smiled.
  "I do miss the practices though."
  "You mean the ones you actually got to sit through?"
  "I remember one time you made me wait out in Dedrick's car for an entire three hours. Do you remember that?"
  I laughed, "Yeah I do. That was when you two first started seeing each other wasn't it?"
  "It was. You must have really hated me back then."
  The whole time we talked Ada sat close to me in the booth. Her left leg pressing up against my right. At first she couldn't help it, it was because we were squeezed in by the people on either side of us. But even when the people to her right left, she still sat close. She still let a part of her body press against mine.
  "I guess, uh...I guess I just had a hard time being around you."
  Ada looked away from me and straight ahead to the bar. Her leg was no longer touching mine. Most of the table had cleared out. I looked down at myself, moved over slightly, then finished off my fourth black and tan. I watched her brush a piece of hair behind her ear and begin playing with one of her earrings. She looked back at me.
  "Looks like most of your coworkers have left. We should get out of here. Come back to my place, you know, so you can see Dedrick. He didn't come because he's sick but I know he'd really like to see you."
  "Does he know you came here tonight? If he doesn't know then I don't want to go with you. I think it would be awkward
  "Of course he knows. Why wouldn't he?"
  We got up and I said goodbye to my coworkers who were still there, most of whom were sitting at the bar, while Ada paid the rest of the tab.
  Ada hadn't driven. She had taken the bus. She left the car at home in case Dedrick needed it at all. It was cold so we stayed close to one another as we walked down the street to the bus stop. Away from the smell of cigarette smoke, and spilled beer, and all the vodka drinks a coworker had ordered that were much too strong, I noticed something I had forgotten about Ada. It was the one other thing she always carried with her besides that thick literary omnibus: her lingering pomaceous scent. It always got to me.

  Inside their studio apartment in the crest Dedrick lay on the stained futon.
  "Oh, hey man. What are you doing here?"
  I tried to speak but was cut off by Ada.
  "I had to go downtown again to meet Hector. When I went to catch the last bus we ran into each other. I thought it would be great if you two got to see each other. It's kind of a bummer  we didn't get to go to the bar."
  I just stared at Ada then heard Dedrick say, "Yeah, it is a bummer. I'm glad that you're here though. I didn't want to go out. I was just feeling really sick."
  "Yeah, he was sick but I have something that will make him feel a lot better. I have some things that will probably make you feel better too."
  She walked over to the record player and put a record on. The room filled with Lynn Anderson's Voice. She was singing "Easy Lovin."
  "Say, do you want a drink?" Ada asked as she walked into the bathroom.
  "That would be great."
  "Behind the futon there should be a bottle of whiskey hidden."
  Dedrick sat up and I lifted the cushion. I found the half empty bottle of Canadian Club and sat next to him, taking swigs straight from the bottle. From where I sat I had a perfect view of Ada in the bathroom. She was bent over the sink, her ass jutted all the way out. She looked at me in the mirror while she held a small spoon over a large maroon candle. Dedrick, in a complete daze, stared at some old cartoon on the television. I   imagined him getting too high and passing out, then taking Ada and fucking her on the futon right next to him.    Or maybe we would just fuck in the bathroom to play it safe. She was already bent over. I would just come up right behind her and fuck her. I wouldn't pull out. I thought about how good that would feel, to come inside of her.
  It was in these thoughts that I hated Ada. I hated her for coming to the bar that night. I hated her for bringing me back to her apartment. I hated her for Lynn Anderson. I hated her because she knew what she was doing. She always knew what she was doing. When I thought about it, she did it to a lot of men. To a lot of guys that were supposed to be my friends, and that were supposed to be Dedrick's friend. Dedrick was always too high to ever notice. She turned a lot of us on and just knowing that was all she ever needed to get off.
  I started to look at Dedrick. He was wearing only a pair of jeans. I looked at his bare chest and thought about being with him too. About the the three of us being together. Me and him taking turns fucking Ada, then taking turns fucking each other. I wondered who would hurt whom the most in this scenario. Who would be left the most damaged. I took an extra large swig of the whiskey and tried to push the thoughts out of my head.
  Ada stared walking out of the bathroom. Careful as to not expose the hard on my thoughts had left me with, I moved to the floor to let Ada sit next to Dedrick. She wrapped the cord from a hair straightener around her arm and let Dedrick shoot her up, then he did himself. They asked if I wanted to try it, but I had never shot up heroin, and I wasn't planning on starting that night. I asked if they had any coke. They always had coke. They liked to mix the two together and shoot up that way. Dedrick laid several lines out on to the coffee table.
  "So, where are you moving to again?"
  "I'm transferring up to Oregon."
  "And after he's been up there for a couple years," Ada said, "he'll have met a lot of interesting people and have a lot of interesting things to write about."
  "We've talked about that. And I'm not going to be a writer. Remember?"
  "What are you gonna do?" Dedrick asked.
  "Teach. You wanted to be a teacher at one time, didn't you?"
  "Yeah, I was gonna teach little kids. What are you gonna teach? Probably high school English or something, huh?"
  "Yeah probably."
  "Fuck that man. Just keep going to school, try to become a professor or something. It's not worth it teaching those little faggots."
  I paused. "Anyway, how's music going?" I asked.
  "Shitty. I can tell Bob is just dying to kick me out of the band. He's like orchestrating this big plan. I can tell."
  "I guess it's all gonna fall apart the way it did before."
  "The reasons were a little different back then. I've put a lot of work into all this so it really sucks. It's frustrating when they talk to me. I thought I was going to cry the other day at practice. This sucks that you're leaving. We should have written some new songs. We can write some songs tonight. I have a couple guitars."
  "I don't write songs anymore. I don't write anything. I can't even remember the last time I played a guitar."
  Dedrick sat back and after a few minutes both he and Ada nodded off. I sat in silence for a while and just watched them. Ada laying half way on top of Dedrick.
  There was more coke on the coffee table but I didn't want to stay up any longer.
  "It's getting late," I said, waking them up.
  "Yeah, it is," Ada said. "I don't think either of us should drive and it's much too late for you to catch a bus. You're just gonna have to stay here."
  "Okay. I'll sleep down here on the floor."
  "No you won't. You'll sleep up here. With us." Ada pulled the futon out.
  Dedrick gave me some foil and a little bit of their heroin and told me to smoke some of it if I needed any help falling asleep.
  With Dedrick between me and Ada the three of us lay there. Both of them quickly fell back asleep while I gingerly took hits of the heroin. It tasted awful but mixed quite nicely with all the whiskey I had drank and it wasn't long before I too nodded out.

  In the morning when I woke they were gone. There was a note stating that they had to leave early to go meet Hector and that they wouldn't be gone for long. After I read the note I took off my clothes, which I had fallen asleep in, and continued to lay there. I started replaying everything Ada had said and did the night before. Then the previous night's thoughts and fantasies began entering my head. My hand reached beneath the blanket and I began jerking off. It didn't take long to come.
  Afterward, I reached down and grabbed a hold of a shirt. It a was the green low cut v-neck Ada had been wearing the night before. I looked at it for a few seconds then used it to wipe my stomach.
  Another thought came rushing back to me. I hated Ada. This time the hate was lasting. Something inside of me wanted to write. To compose a poem.
  Instead I wrote a note. I taped it to the front door and then left the apartment.
  Several hours later I left Las Vegas and never returned.
  I never spoke to either Ada or Dedrick again.

Two.Shitting and Fucking

  The one feeling I tend to get after sex is often the same feeling I get after I defecate: The complete and utter shame of being alive. Both of these have always seemed like perfect times for me to come face to face with my own existential dread.
  All the beauty in the world seems to dissipate after I either shit or fuck and I begin asking myself all the big questions. I mean, really, why am I here when all my existence ever seems to boil down to are the pitiful excretions my body makes?
  I tried to explain these feelings to Karen one night, but, of course, she couldn't relate to them at all. We had just had sex and she told me that I always pull out too fast after I come. This wasn't just a casual observation of hers. There was something in her voice that said she was really hurt by my actions. I figured I owed it to her to at least try to explain why it was that I always did this.
  "It's your generation," she said, reminding me that she is nearly twenty years older than myself.
  "That's fucking stupid. There are plenty of people, regardless of their age, or anything else for that matter, that have the same thoughts that I do. It has nothing to do with my generation, or even your generation."
  "Well, I don't know anyone else that thinks the way you do."
  "Maybe that's part of the problem," I said, reaching across Karen for my Parliaments.
  "Can I have a drag of that?" she asked after I lit one.
  "But you don't smoke."
  "I used to. Sometimes. When I was younger. I probably haven't smoked a cigarette since I was your age, twenty-three or twenty-four."
  "What did you used to smoke?"
  "Marlboro Ultra-Lights. Just let me get a drag already. I wanna see if I still like it.
  I handed her the cigarette then stood up next to the bed.
  "Look," I said, "Are you happy with the way you are?"
  I began pacing a little.
  "That should be a question I ask you."
  "What do you mean?"
  "Are you happy being so miserable?"
  "I'm not miserable I'm just aware."
  Karen looked away from me.
  "If you're not miserable then you're just strange. You have strange thoughts. You like strange things. Like this music, this is strange, what the hell are we listening to?"
  "It's the Velvet Underground," I told her. The Gift had been playing on my record player.
  "This music is as old as you." I stopped myself. If she couldn't understand the things I felt then why even try to explain to her who Lou Reed is?
  I was tired of this. Tired of this conversation. So I got back into bed and tried to fuck her. She didn't want to at first but she finally gave in when I got her arms over her head. I fucked her but I couldn't come.. Not at all. I couldn't even come when I tried fucking her in the ass, so I got off of her, and went over to my book shelf.
  "That's it?" she asked.
  "Yeah, that's it I guess."
  "What are you doing? Are you going to give me something to read that will make me as miserable as you?"
  "No, that's not what I'm doing. And I'm not miserable. Jesus Christ. Don't be such a fucking cunt."
  I always did this. I still always do this. I hid a piece of foil with some heroin on it inside of a book and couldn't remember exactly which book it was. That night it turned out to be Finnegan's Wake.
  I took the foil and sat at the edge of the bed, completely naked, and took the last few hits of heroin that I had. Karen knew that I did drugs but this was the first time that she had ever seen it.
  "I want to understand you," I heard her say.
   I knew then that Karen would never understand me, though, because she couldn't even understand the one thing that I wanted her to that night: That the worst feelings in life usually come after the best experiences.

One.Milo's Apartment

 Sitting in Milo's new place off Maryland that he shares with some girl who goes to UNLV and majors in French. At least I think she said she majors in French. Can you even major in just a language? Either way she's teaching me how to say Je t'aime correctly and going on about how she has a real nasty pill habit, six to eight Oxycontin a day, but she can't get any right now so she's just been getting high off the dope that Milo has been supplying her with, and I wonder if she even pays for it or if she's fucking Milo considering the place is a one bedroom, and assuming that Milo can even get a hard on anymore. I question him about this when the girl gets up to use the bathroom.

  "Well the thing about me," he says, his eyes half closed, trying desperately amongst the the abrasions to find an untapped vein,"is that...I'm really only attracted...to bitches that are hot."

 "Of course you are," I say, not really understanding what he means since the girl is actually pretty attractive.

  "What is her name again?"

  "Carrie."

  "Right. Right. Carrie." Too close to Karen.

  He then goes on to explain how Carrie has the bedroom and he sleeps out on here on the couch.

 "Oh, I see," I say, knowing what he really means: the fucker just can't get hard anymore, which is typical.

 I look around the room and notice a copy of Fear of Dreaming on the coffee table, a VHS of Trainspotting over on a shelf, and next to it a small stack of Burroughs(the Wild Boys, Ticket that Exploded, and of course, Junky.) Half the junkies I know are like this: completely into being a junkie, as if they made a conscious decision to get to this point. It's sort of like when you were in adolescence and you went through some stupid phase, like say, punk rock and you were so proud of your self for finally forging that sense of identity, so you would use anything you could to display that you were indeed "punk rock." Wearing the fact that you were punk rock as a sort of badge. The only difference now is that these assholes aren't in adolescence, they're in their late twenties to early thirties, and they can only wear their badge half the time. The other half they have to wear long sleeves.

 Carrie comes back from the bathroom and chunks up a new piece of H on her piece of foil, which is comically large.

 "You know it's probably for the best," I say to her.

 "What is?"

 "That fact that you can't get those Oxycontin anymore."

 "What are you talking about? What do you mean?"

 "This stuff is a lot cheaper you know. A lot easier to deal with. I used to do Oxycontin and if you like this kind of high, which obviously you do, you might as well do this stuff," I wave my foil in front of me,"the real thing."

 "Yeah, I guess so. I just, well, you know, I feel kind of dirty smoking this shit. But right now I'm withdrawing pretty bad and it can get pretty annoying at work."

 "I know exactly how that is. What is it you do again?"

 "Hairdresser. So standing all day can get to me. You get the kicks. You know? Then the pain shooting up my arms and into my hands while I'm cutting hair. And not to mention those goddamn dope sniffles.So for now I just take what I can get, but I'm going right back to Oxycontin as soon as I can get them."

 I definitely know about taking what you can get. Why the hell else would I be here right now? I throw Milo two twenties and he pushes two balloons across the coffee table. The asshole is probably double charging me but I don't really care  because my guy is closed for the night and all I really want is to get high.

 "It's some really good stuff," Milo says. "Fuckin' Julio came through man. The Mexican came through."

 I open up the first balloon and put half the H on a clean sheet of foil.

 "Let me ask you something," I say to Carrie, "when you do those Oxycontin do pop them or do you smoke them?"

 "I smoke them."

 "So what's the difference? Why do you feel so dirty smoking heroin?"

 "It's just that," her eyes are fixed on a couple of needles laying on the table, "It's just that...um...well..."

 "It's just what?"

 "Nothing. It's just nothing.

 I notice just how pretty Carrie really is and think about what Milo said earlier. I want to stare at her staring at those needles for as long as I can until she looks up and notices me. When she does look up though, she doesn't look at me, she looks at Milo, who has nodded off. The expression on her face tells me that she feels bad about something; but what? Maybe she thinks she contributing in some small way to Milo's growing addiction or maybe she thinks she offended him in some way with her comment about feeling dirty, but if she was of any intelligence she would know that Milo is always too fucking high to ever know if something offensive is said towards him.

 I take two hits of my H then notice Carrie's breasts in the gray silk top she's wearing which is low cut, and has spaghetti straps, one of which is hanging down on her shoulder. Her breasts look amazing and I start to think that maybe I should try to fuck her, or maybe not, because, even though she is nothing like Karen, just her name alone sounding too much like Karen's is a little more than I can take at the moment.

 "Uh, look, I should really get going," I say.

 "Stay a little longer, hang out, it's Friday night," Carrie says.

 Exactly. It's Friday night and I want to get the hell out of here before I make another poor choice. I'd rather go make that poor choice in a bar somewhere, all of which down here on Maryland are bound to be full, and even if they're not, there's got to be at least one party in the Crest, maybe over at the Lodge.

 "I'm sorry but it's getting kind of late and I really just want to go home and get into bed."

 "Alright, but maybe tomorrow you can come back? We'll hang out. Get high."

 "Hey, Milo," I yell, waking him up, "I'm leaving now but I'll swing by tomorrow night."

 "Alright man. Hey, do you want to help me out? Not tomorrow but just sometime this week. I have to go start cleaning a few of my dad's rental properties."

 "Yeah, that would be cool, I could use a little extra cash. Say, do you have a cigarette?"

 "Yeah, for sure," he hands me a Camel.

 "Goodbye guys," I say to both of them, nodding, as I head out the front door. I make my way over to the AM/PM on the corner of Maryland and Trop and buy a sixer and a pack of cigarettes for myself then head down Elizabeth and into the Crest.

 Another desperate little night, in a desperate little apartment, in a desperate little city.